Railsea

looked ensepiaed, as if seen through dirty glass. Mostly they were shaped like people, mostly like women or girls, though of deeply questionable physical proportions, with thickety knotted & scrambled hair where it remained at all. A few were grotesques, monsters. Many were limbless. They needed the ministrations of a dollmaker.

Everywhere Sham went the responses to his question, his description of the arch & the two children, were either sincere-seeming ignorance, or guarded recognition followed by lies &/or suggestions that he leave it alone. Mostly it was the salvors who displayed the former, the local merchants the latter.

What did he know of this family? Older sister, younger brother. Messy house. With vigorous & far- travelling parents. Who, the bones said, had died.

Which thoughts, inevitably, took Sham to thinking of his own family. He did not often ruminate on his mother & father, lost by him to heartbreak & accident. It was not that he did not care: certainly he cared. It was not that he did not suspect their not-there-ness was important. He was not stupid. It was, rather, all but unremembering their ministrations, cared for as he had been throughout his life by Troose & Voam—who were his parents, really, no two ways about it. The care Sham felt for his mum & dad was care for lost strangers, dwelling on whom might feel disloyal to those who had raised him.

But he was abruptly aware that he seemed to share with these two children in the image the fact that he was, technically, to be exact about it, an orphan. Well there was a word to sit in the throat. So. Were this girl & this boy also doctors’ assistants, dissatisfied, salvage-pining, missing something? Sham doubted it.

There were clocks all over the hall in a thousand designs. Some were modern, others obviously salvage, proudly rejigged to work again, extruding little birds at set moments. Some were blue-screened, glowing with digits. All showed Sham how fast time was going.

“How did you become a salvor?” The tough-looking woman to whom Sham spoke looked up in surprise. She was sipping tarry coffee, had been exchanging dig-anecdotes with colleagues. She laughed at Sham, not unkindly. She flipped a coin at a baker at her stall & indicated that Sham should take a pastry.

“Dig,” she said. “Find a piece. Take it to a salvage train. Dig more. Find another piece. Don’t be a …” She looked him up & down. “A dogsbody? A cabin boy? A steward? A trainee moler?”

“Doctor’s assistant,” he said.

“Ah. Well yes, that, too. Don’t be that.”

“I found a bat,” Sham said through a mouthful of his sticky bread present. “I suppose that ain’t salvage, though. It’s my mate.”

He was still watched, he realised, by the little gang. & they, he saw, were watched by another young man, a wiry & quick-moving lad Sham wondered if he’d seen before.

The salvor rummaged below her table. “I need more Smearing Widgets,” she said.

“Thank you very much for the cake,” Sham said. The woman was splendid-looking. He blinked & tried to concentrate. “I don’t suppose—have you ever seen two children? They live near a …”

“An arch,” she said. Sham blinked. “A salvage arch. I heard someone was looking for them.”

“What?” said Sham. “Since I came in you heard that?”

“Word travels. Who are you, lad?” She tilted her head. “What do I know about you? Nothing yet. You know I’m not from here. But these salvage-surrounded siblings, they ring a bell.”

“You must come here all the time,” Sham said. “Maybe you heard of them once.”

“Of course. This is Manihiki. It sticks in the mind, that sort of architectural detail you describe, don’t it? I was here, it would be a couple of journeys ago, which would be a few months, I suppose? Selling direct. Anyway.” She nodded slowly at the memory. “There were two here like the ones you’re describing. Young! Young young, but calm as you like.” She raised an eyebrow. “Prodding, picking, asking questions. & they knew their salvage.”

“You think it was the ones I’m looking for?”

“I could hear this lot whispering.” She twirled her hand to indicate the stallholders: not salvors, but local agents, the merchants. “Talking trash about them. & trash is my business.” She smiled. “They bought a load of stuff from me.” She clicked her fingers. “Talking of which, I really must get on.”

She lifted up a little box of alt-salvage things. Thumb-sized, each shaped unlike any of the others, each a green-glass shard, each hairy with wires. & each slid side to side as if alive on the tabletop & spread behind it a snailtrail of what looked like black ink, that disappeared after a few seconds.

“Smearing Widgets,” she said. “I’d give you one,” she said, “except that I’m not going to.”

“I need to find those children,” Sham said, staring acquisitively at the offterran refuse.

“I can help you. They bought too much to carry, arranged for delivery.”

“To where?” Sham’s voice came quick. “Their house?”

“It was in Subzi. You know where that is?” She drew a map in the air with her fingers. “North of the old city.”

“Do you remember the street? The house number?”

“No. But don’t worry about that. Just ask for the arch. It’ll do you. It’s been a pleasure chatting.” She held out her hand. “Sirocco. Travisande Sirocco.”

“Sham ap Soorap.” He started at the expression his name provoked. “What?”

“Nothing. Only—I think perhaps someone mentioned you, Soorap.” She cocked her head again. “Chap about your age, on the lookout for certain things. The Medes, is it? Isn’t that your train?”

“Yes,” Sham said. “How did you know?”

“It’s my job to pick through things thrown out there, & that might include things said. The Medes. Made an unexpected stop in Bollons.” Sham’s gasp was awfully eloquent. “Ah, it’s not so much of a thing,” Sirocco said. “I can tell you the same sort of snippets of likely wholly boring such stuff about plenty of recent arrivals.” She smiled.

“If you say so,” he muttered.

“Still wishing things had gone another way?” She inclined her head. “I’d stick with your crew if I were you.” She did not say it unkindly.

“Well … thank you.”

“I think your friends are waiting for you.” Sirocco nodded at the still-watching gang.

“They ain’t my friends,” Sham said.

“Hm.” The woman frowned a little. “Watch yourself, then, won’t you?”

He would. Sham was already ready.

There were occasions he’d been accused of being a bit dozy, had Sham ap Soorap, but not this time. He hefted the bag of books onto his shoulder, thanked Sirocco again, left the building. & it really did not come as a huge surprise to him, when he emerged into the afternoon light of Manihiki, that the ganglet bundled out of the hall after him & rushed him, grabbing for his bag, his money, came with their fists swinging.

THIRTY

A FIGHT, THEN.

What kind?

Fights are much taxonomised. They have been subject over centuries to a complex, exhaustive categoric imperative. Humans like nothing more than to pigeonhole the events & phenomena that punctuate their lives.

Some bemoan this fact: “Why does everything have to be put into boxes?” they say. & fair enough, up to a point. But this vigorous drive to divide, subdivide & label has been rather maligned. Such conceptual shuffling is inevitable, & a reasonable defence against what would otherwise face us as thoroughgoing chaos. The germane issue is not whether, but how, to divide.

Certain types of events are particularly carefully delineated. Such as fights.

What ran towards Sham, announcing its presence with throaty jeers, was incipient fightness, carried in the vectors of eight or nine aggressive young men & women. But what kind of fight?

Let fight equal x. Was this, then a play x? An x to the death? An x for honour? A drunken