Low Town by Daniel Polansky Read Free Book Online

you left the Crown’s service and … took up your new vocation.”
    “You mean after I was stripped of my rank and started selling drugs on the street?”
    He sighed. I could remember him making that same sound when I came to him with a bruised eye from fighting, or he realized I’d stolenwhatever new toy I was playing with. “I spent years trying to break you of that habit.”
    “What habit?”
    “This way you have of taking everything as an insult. It’s a sign of low breeding.”
    “I am lowbred.”
    “You could work harder to hide it.” He smiled and I found myself doing the same. “Regardless, you have returned, and as grateful as I am to see you, I can’t help but wonder to what I owe the reappearance of my prodigal son? Unless you reappeared at my doorstep after five years solely to inquire of my health?”
    When I was a child, the Crane had been my benefactor and protector, doing me what kindnesses the fiercest urchin in Low Town would accept. As an agent, I had often turned to him, both for advice and for the assistance his prodigious skill could offer. Yet for all my practice this newest round of supplication choked me on its way out. “I need your help.”
    His face tensed up, a fair reaction to a plea for aid from a man he hadn’t spoken to in half a decade, particularly one on the wrong side of the law. “And what services do you require?”
    “I found Little Tara,” I said, “and I need to know if you’d picked up anything on her from your channels. If there’s a divination you think might be helpful, I’d ask you to do that as well, and without alerting Black House or the appropriate ministry.”
    I suppose he had assumed I was there for money or for something illicit. The discovery that I was not evoked the return of his natural demeanor, amiable and slightly mischievous. “It seems I was confused about the full range of your new duties.”
    “I’m not sure I take your meaning,” I said, though of course I did.
    “Let me be clearer, then. How exactly does finding the murderer of a child fit into your current purview?”
    “How does aiding a criminal fall into the purview of a First Sorcerer of the Realm?”
    “Hah! First Sorcerer!” He coughed into his hand, a wet and unpleasant sound. “I haven’t been to court since the Queen’s Jubilee. I don’t even know where my robes are.”
    “The ones trimmed with gold thread and worth half the docks?”
    “Damnable things itched my throat.” The Crane’s laughter was forced, and after it was over the afternoon light fell on an old and tired man. “I’m sorry, my friend, but I’m not sure there’s anything I can offer. Yesterday evening, when I heard of the offense, I ran a message to a contact in the Bureau of Magical Affairs. They said they put a scryer on it but came up with nothing. If they couldn’t pick up anything, I don’t imagine I would have any more luck.”
    “How is that possible?” I asked. “Was the scrying blocked?”
    “It would take an artist of exceptional ability to completely cover any trace of his presence. There aren’t two dozen practitioners in all Rigus capable of such intricate work, and I don’t imagine any of them would resort to so vile an undertaking.”
    “Power is no guarantee of decency, more often the opposite—but I’ll grant you a mage of such ability would have easier means of satisfying his desires should they incline in that direction.” I could feel the old muscles working again, stretching off their torpor after years of neglect. It had been a long time since I’d investigated anything. “Apart from magic, what else would work against your scrying?”
    He took a decanter of vile-looking green liquid from above the mantel, then poured it into the tumbler that sat next to it. “Medicine, for my throat,” he explained, before downing the fluid in one quick gulp. “If her body had been cleaned very thoroughly or sanitized with some kind of chemical. If the clothing she was