terrible of duties, escorting your loved ones to their unsettled grave, the stench and smoke of their passing rich on your tongue.
Now a chorus of voices echoed over the water, keening their grief without words. Heard from afar, the singing did not sound entirely human. The wind was in it, the waves. Out at the ring-net, the ghosts would be gathering.
The pyre blaze grew smaller. Vikram let out a breath he had not realized he was holding. He switched on the motor, welcoming the mechanical hum.
The shelter covered three floors of 307-West. The bunks were eight or ten to a room, narrow with thin mattresses, but they had pillows and blankets, and the rooms were warm. The second floor housed a medical room and the canteen. When Vikram arrived, no one was eating, but the lights were on and he could hear dishes clattering behind the serving hatch.
He found Shadiyah sitting on the end of a bench, both hands around a steaming mug, talking to their single security guard. The Resources division said they could not spare anyone else, although Vikram had noticed an increase in the skadi on the border over the last month.
“What are you doing here?” Shadiyah said. “You’re not on call tonight.” He thought she looked pleased to see him nonetheless.
“Nothing better to do,” he joked. “How’s things?”
“Alright. We had to break up a fight earlier and that raving old dear turned up again. Took offence to one of the nurses, decided she was a Council spy. Calmed down now. We’re full for the night but we just had two kids come in. Brother and sister, I reckon. Boy’s got a nasty knife wound.”
“Shanty kids?”
“Likely as not. I’m going down to the med room now, want to come?”
“Sure.”
They walked down the corridor together, filling one another in on the minutiae of the day. The corridor walls had been painted pale yellow. They were still peeling, but they were cleaner and brighter. Disinfectant masked the underlying stenches brought in with the very poor.
A door to one of the dormitories opened and an old man shuffled out. He had rags wrapped around his feet.
“Osuwa,” he mumbled. “Bright lights-over again. Was the searchlight caught him in a dark hole.”
“Alright, Mr Argele?” called Shadiyah. “Are you looking for someone?”
He peered at them from under bushy eyebrows. His face was a garden gone wild; hair, beard, even his eyelashes seemed overgrown.
“Turn off the searchlight, young woman,” he ordered Shadiyah. “They’ll be here soon. Don’t you know your discipline?”
He retreated and shut the door. Vikram and Shadiyah paused, listening for signs that he might have disturbed the other men. But there were no sounds from inside. Just the muffled rumble of the laundry room a few doors down, as the dryers turned in their final cycles.
“Young woman,” echoed Shadiyah. “First compliment of the day.”
Vikram had found his colleague on a boat frying up kelp toast for hungry kids. It was her hands that struck him first. She had been wearing fingerless gloves. Her fingertips were rough skinned, their nails short and slightly yellowed, a blister on her left thumb from the spitting fat. Her hands brought back a jumble of memories: hours spent in line at soup kitchens or fry-boats, waiting to beg for scraps at the end of the day.
Shadiyah told Vikram her story whilst smoke from the grill drifted out of the boat window. She received a negligible amount of funding for her tiny charity. It was a tough business. Her fry-boat was raided every month for its stock. Shadiyah had a sharp mouth and a discerning eye; she was able to distinguish the hungry from the starving.
“And sometimes it’s a fine line,” she’d said, leaning out to hand down a sizzling, paper-wrapped kelp square to one of her beneficiaries. “After all, who this end of town ain’t hungry?”
She turned down his offer of a job instantly. He hadn’t thought that his exposure to the City would show so soon, but perhaps it had already begun to tint him. He came back the next day, and the day after. It took time to persuade her.
It was time well spent. Once she had agreed, Shadiyah took practical charge of the shelter, creating a model on which future projects would follow. Walking through their allotted floors, they had planned everything together from the layout of the building to an information campaign. They printed flyers and people handed them out on the aid scheme boat kitchens.
Shadiyah knocked before entering the medical room.
“It’s only me and Vikram,” she said briskly.
The children’s heads snapped up. Their faces were wary and hard as ice. The boy was perched on the single bed, his toes grazing the floor. In one hand he clutched what looked like a bundle of rags. Vikram realized the medics had cut his jumper away. A clump of t-shirts were peeled back and one of the doctors was applying stitches to a ten centimetre gash across his shoulder, whilst the other held a tray of needles and gauze. The sight of the pinched flesh brought back Vikram’s own knife injury in a flash; he struggled not to avert his eyes.
The girl slunk back against the bed curtain. Her hair was chopped as short as the boy’s. She had a bowl of soup at her mouth and her tongue poked out, mid-lap. Her eyes darted; Vikram, the doctor, the door, the needle, the door, the boy. There was a fading bruise on her cheekbone and scratches on her neck.
“Hey,” said Vikram. “Everything okay?”
At the sound of his voice the girl jerked backwards. The soup slopped in the bowl.
“We’re alright,” said the doctor holding the tray. “It’s a nasty cut, but it’ll heal. Just make sure you keep it clean,” she told the boy. “We’re going to give you some pills and an antibiotic spray. I want you to use it twice a day. Okay?”
There was no reply. All of the muscles in the boy’s shoulders were tense as the other doctor hooked his needle in and out, gradually knitting the exposed flesh together. Anaesthetic must have curbed the pain but not the desire to bolt. Vikram could see the outline of a knife at the boy’s hip. He knew that if anyone tried to take it, the boy’s hand would snap to his side in a second.
“You give it me,” said the girl suddenly. Her voice was a tiny rasp like a match being struck.
“What’s that, puffin?” said Shadiyah.
“Gimme the anti-whatsit. They won’t find it on me.”
Vikram caught the subtle interplay between brother and sister; the boy’s quickly masked glare, the girl’s concealed shrug.
The female doctor, Marete, spoke to the girl. “It’s very important. Don’t give it away, you understand? And don’t sell it. Not to anyone. Or your brother will get really sick.”
For answer, the girl held out her palm. Marete hesitated a moment and looked at the other doctor, who gave a curt nod.
“We’ll go get it,” said Shadiyah. “Standard issue, Hal?”
“Please.”
Vikram and Shadiyah went next door and swiped into the medical supplies room.
“How old do you reckon they are?” he asked.
“The boy says thirteen but I reckon ten or eleven.”
“Did he say how he got the cut?”
Shadiyah raised her eyebrows to suggest what a ridiculous question this was and Vikram nodded. She was right. He could guess-he could even ask, but he would not find out. They were shanty town kids, by the half-starved look of them. Somebody owned them-one of the dealers, one of the pimps or the gangs. They were lucky to have survived this long.
Vikram opened the medicine cabinet but did not immediately take out the prescriptions.
“I saw a funeral, on my way here.”
She nodded. “Bad business. The skadi raided a tower last night. Suspected insurgents, you know the lines. People resisted. It got messy.”
“No one told me.”
“They wouldn’t, would they.”
