Page 45 of Odder Still
a universe apart and always just out of range.
WE STEP INTO THE anarchy of the lower city, and the flow of traffic takes us over. A hundred thousand sounds fill the silence of my own footsteps. The humid air swelters in my lungs and draws sweat along the back of my neck. I pause us to pull off most of the chef’s outfit and tuck it under one arm. Tavish can’t do the same, not without displaying his upper-city garb.
As soon as we start moving again, he bumps against a passing selkie’s shoulder. I return his cane, but his first swing of it hits the feet of three separate pedestrians. His expression pinches. He tucks the aid against his chest and scoots closer to me, looping his arm through mine. I wish I could make his path clear, so he could walk on his own, exactly as I know he’s capable of.
As we cross the square, a spot of fresh paint catches my attention, slapped onto the metal floor with no regard for symmetry. A hint of red pokes out one side. The assassin’s symbol, or a copycat.
Tavish’s crystal voice cuts through the lower-city bustle just as easily as it did the lavish boardroom. “So, where do we find your Lilias?”
“I don’t now—yet. We’ll ask around. Lilias isn’t exactly a subtle person.”
“I suppose this means we should strike up a conversation with one of these jolly vendors?”
“Careful with that aristocratic speech, you might scare them off.”
His lips quirk. “You ken that, do you, you wee, canny dobber?”
“Fine, fine, you’ve slain me, silt-breather.” I laugh in a way that’s too light and soft for my sobriety, the sound itself a thing of rejuvenation.
As soon as the sound fades, though, all its confidence and joy slip away. I have to fight to draw it back, piece by piece, but every breath drains me again, leaving a larger, darker melancholy than before. The parasite’s warmth twists along the emotion’s edge, watching in silence. I swat at its presence, but I’m met with only a gentle humor, darker and softer than my own, as velvety black as the creature it comes from.
I shudder it off and pull Tavish out of the way of a sprinting woman with a bundle of newspapers on her back. “I know a place we can start. It’s a bar in a pretty low district. I saw Lilias between it and the central gate, and the locals seem like the sort who might recognize her name, if nothing else.”
“Then lead the—” A yelp leaves him as his boot catches on a crack in the sidewalk, nearly plummeting him off the curb.
I pull him closer with an arm around his shoulders, guiding us toward the steam trolley stop. We pay with the coin Ivor gave me, receiving a piece of change that has value only in the fact that its size flows perfectly between my knuckles, and crowd on board. The machine rumbles and rocks as it twists its way through the streets.
Tavish tucks his face toward my shoulder. “It’s busier here than I imagined. We always drive through most of it with a cart.”
“You don’t have Sheona and your fancy clothes scaring people off, either.” I tilt my head toward him as I say it, and the jostle of the trolley bumps my nose into his hair. The urge to feel that mess of curls between my fingers hits me like a monsoon, fraught by other urges that don’t have any place, not here, and not with him. I swallow them down and look away.
“I never really understood—” He is cut off by someone shoving into him while working their way toward the door. “I knew the populace estimates were high, with all the factory work available, but I certainly didn’t imagine this.”
We chug around a corner. Through the shifting steam and the busy foot traffic, I make out a board of worn fliers fluttering against a dirty wall. “Some of these people were lured out of that town we met in—Falcre, was it? Taken from the fresh air and a world full of choices and trapped in this mess of vapor.”
Tavish doesn’t reply, but his jaw twists and turns beneath a heavy brow.
We depart the trolley a street away from Ivor’s place, close enough to see the brush-marked red letters on the metal sign:Reid’s Bar. The tune of the radio spills into the street, mixed with laughter from a throng of workers crowding the counter. We enter just in time for all chatter to quiet as its jolly music fades to the announcer’s booming voice.
“We got the news in, you wee scunners! And you aren’t gonna believe it.”
The other host replies with a scoff. “They believed it last time. Maybe you just aren’t giving them due credit?”
“MacNair, MacNair, my love, my one and only, why ruin this for me?”
“It’s my lot in life, I’m afraid.” A long silence lapses, in which the bar’s populace exchanges the sort of exasperatedly bemused glances I imagine the radio hosts must be giving each other, before MacNair pipes back up. “Well, you gonna tell the poor folks?”
“Aye, scunners. We’ve heard right from the source, the gates are reclosed because of a second murder. A second Findlay murder.”
Scattered mutterings nearly block out the radio’s sound until the host continues, “And do you want to guess who died this time?”
“Was it our future job opportunities with dear Bubble?”
“It was, in fact, Ailsa Findlay, found murdered in her own library!”
The bar erupts with cheers and shouts, and a few roars of “Slit Raghnaid’s throat already.” The radio continues on, running through a series of jokes that bounce uselessly off my eardrums as Tavish wilts. He reaches out, finding the bar’s wall just in time to stop himself from crumpling. His delicate fingers look out of place against its rough, red-green tinge.
I touch his shoulder. With the strength of a lapping wave, I nudge him toward me. He collapses into my arms, letting me wrap him up in the kind of devouring hug that could turn two people into one if they’re not careful. But I don’t know how to help him further. I don’t know, and I mourn my lack of experience. I mourn for him.
