Butcher Bird (6 page)

The blind woman gave him a crooked smile. "Oh yes. The pretty pony boy. How are you?"

"I'm . . . " He started to answer, but realized he had no idea what to say. He felt giddy at having found her, but there was the accumulating wreckage of the rest of his life. "I'm fine," he said. "I can see things now. The real world. That's how I found the market. And you."

"Good for you," she said. "Maybe you're more clever than I thought. A trick pony. Me, I'm off to find new lodgings."

"I can see why," said Spyder.

"What do you mean?"

"What do I mean? Look! Your hotel is an in-fucking-ferno."

"No, it's not. I would be able to feel the heat."

"Of course it is. I can see it burning from here."

"Really? Because the Coma Gardens isn't going to be built for another fifty years," she said. "And it's not going to burn for another twenty after that."

"Then how were you staying in there?"

Shrike breathed deeply and nodded. "You can see things now. And it's all brand new and you don't know what to think of it, do you? Take a walk with me." Shrike reached out and took one of his hands and led him through the crowded market, swinging her white cane gently in front of her feet. The effect of that cane was less that of a blind person feeling her way along than her warning people that she was coming, Spyder thought. Everyone and everything got out of her way.

"People are afraid of you," said Spyder when they reached a less crowded part of the market.

"They're afraid of rumors and tall tales. And I let them be afraid. It makes my job easier."

"What is your job?"

Shrike sniffed the air as they passed a perfumer's stall. "Smell that? Raw ambergris. There's nothing else that smells like that. It's one of those magical substances that makes everyone—humans, demons, angels, ghosts and your little dog Toto—all swoon. There are merchants whose entire trade is delivering ambergris to the markets in Purgatory."

"A couple of days ago, I would have considered that a very odd thing to say."

Shrike nodded. "Yes. Your little vision problem," she said. "First of all, that burning hotel you saw . . . I'm sure by now you've noticed that the world is a much more flexible place than you're used to. Time isn't the same everywhere you go. And space can change depending on what time it is. Understand?"

"Hello. My name is Spyder and I'm five years old. Have you seen my mommy?"

Shrike smiled and looped her arm around his. Spyder liked how she felt. "Listen," she said, "the waterfront is one of the places where the edges of all the Spheres, the planes of existence in which we live, meet. It's why the market's here. I was able to stay at a hotel that hasn't been built yet in this Sphere of existence because it's already been built in another Sphere. Unfortunately, time being a slippery and relative thing here, the hotel has already burned down in another Sphere. That's what you saw. For me, though, it hadn't burned down. I was booted for an exorcism trade show."

"You went into the future, but you went into the wrong future?"

"Close enough. I was already in the future and the future I didn't want, the one with exorcists in party hats, drifted close enough to make my room reservation disappear. I have to find another place to sleep."

"You can crash at my place," Spyder said.

"No, thanks."

"I'm not coming on to you. My girlfriend's moved out. There's plenty of room."

Shrike removed her arm from his and leaned over to retie one of her boots. "I'm sorry about your girlfriend, but my client isn't expecting to find me in some cozy Victorian flat. Don't take it personally. This is a work-related rejection."

"What the hell is that?" said Spyder. They were at the back of the market, walking back in the direction Spyder had come earlier that night. San Francisco was white and chilly with fog. Looming out of the mist exactly where it shouldn't be was a gigantic stone archway sporting Roman columns. On top was a tarnished copper chariot being pulled by four enormous horses. Shrike sniffed the air, turning her head this way and that.

"It smells like Berlin," she said. "Near the Brandenburg Gate."

"Berlin? Like, the real Berlin?" asked Spyder. "I always wanted to go there."

"Here's another secret for your scrapbook. There is no difference between San Francisco and Berlin. In all the world, there is only one city. Because of how mortals perceive things, the one city appears as different cities, broken up and scattered all over the globe. But if you know the right doors to open, the right turns to make, the right tunnels and rocks to look behind, even mortals can find their way from one city to every other city. There are maps and trackers, ancient, hidden smuggling routes that only a few in the thieving guilds know."

"That's supposed to make me feel better? I almost had enough frequent flyer miles to take Jenny to Prague. Now, she's gone and we could have walked there all along." Spyder stood in the quiet beyond the market, looking up at the gate. When he looked down again, mist was beading on his jacket and he was growing cold. "I can't do this," he said. "I need help. Can you put me back the way I was?"

"I'm sorry. I can't."

"Can anyone?"

"Maybe."

It might have been better if that thing had gutted me at the club, Spyder thought. He said, "Why did you help me the other night?"

"I don't know. I just had to. You were so clueless."

"Why can't you help me now?"

"I'm on my way to meet a client."

"You didn't answer me when I asked you earlier. What exactly do you do?"

"You've seen what I do. I kill things," Shrike said. "People. Beasts. Demons. Whatever a client wants dead."

"The Black Clerks?"

"No one kills the Black Clerks. They're elemental forces. Killing them is like trying to kill wind or light. Why do you want to know?"

Spyder pushed up his jacket sleeve and put her hand on the scar on his arm.

"Damn," she said. "By the pike, you're a fool."

"There's nothing to be done about this?"

"Not by me. When they come for you, offer the Clerks a better deal."

"I could offer them you."

Shrike moved close to Spyder. She smelled of musk and jasmine. She whispered in his ear. "If I didn't know you were such a fool that remark could cost you your head."

"I'm sorry," said Spyder backing away from her. "I'm falling apart. I would never do something like that."

"I know that. I have a pretty good nose for treachery and dangerous folk."

"Where do I fit on the danger scale? Say that one is a pretty little butterfly and ten is the thing that beat me like a two-dollar drum the other night."

Shrike thought for a moment, then reached into the pocket of her coat. "I don't know exactly what you call one of these. It was a present from my niece." She held out a blue plastic rabbit that fit snuggly in the palm of her hand. Shrike wound the rabbit up with a silver key in its side and the toy started to vibrate while a little bell jangled inside. "I suppose this could get stuck in an enemy's throat and choke him, so it's a one. You're a bit bigger and a little smarter, though. I rate around a two." The toy wound down and Shrike dropped it back into her pocket.

"You're Death Valley. You know that? Beautiful, but harsh," said Spyder. He sat down on a sand dune and Shrike sat beside him. "I never got to ask, if you're blind how did you kill that demon?"

"I've trained for this all my life. My father taught me. Then a friend, before he turned out to be exactly the bastard I'd been told he was. Besides," she said, "there's blind and there's blind."

"What does that mean?"

"Just what I said."

"My head is spinning. I have this magic juju sight and've seen such demented shit in the last twenty-four hours. I wouldn't mind being blind for a while."

"It's not really magic sight, you know," Shrike said.

"Then what is it?"

"Memory," she replied. "When that demon had you, some part of it—saliva, a fragment of tooth, a fingernail—infected your blood. Everything you're seeing now you've seen all your life only you've chosen to forget it an instant later. If you remembered anything of this part of the world, it was in your dreams and nightmares." Shrike pulled up Spyder and started walking. "Don't feel bad. Forgetting is the way it is with almost every living thing in this Sphere. But now you can't look away and you can't forget."

"Poisoned with memory. And you can't help me."

"That's right."

"Can you at least point the way back to civilization?"

Shrike pointed back at the market with her cane. "Follow the stalls to the right until you come to a café in an old railroad car. You'll see streetcar tracks just beyond. Follow them along the waterfront and they'll take you all the way to more familiar territory."

"Thanks," said Spyder. "Good luck with your client."

"Take care. You know, I forgot to ask you. Are you Spider Clan?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about. Which is probably the perfect way for us to say goodbye."

"Take care, pony boy."

Spyder walked slowly back to the market, following the route Shrike had described to him. He passed horse traders and what looked like a kind of sidewalk surgery, with a hand-lettered cardboard sign describing procedures, from amputations to nose jobs, along with prices. Spyder found the train car café a few minutes later. He was colder now. His body ached from his injuries and his shoulders were knotted with tension. Somewhere in the dim back of his brain he knew he should be worried about the Clerks and what he was going to do with Lulu and how he was going to open up the shop tomorrow, but none of it got through the fog of exhaustion that was narrowing the universe to thoughts of walking and sleep.

At the edge of the market, by the last big dune, some teenagers were juggling fire without moving their hands. They stared silently and the balls of flame moved through the air all by themselves. Spyder started walking up the dune, when he heard someone call his name.

"Spyder, are you there? It's me!"

He turned and saw Shrike running after him through the sand.

"I'm here," he said quietly, and she hurried toward his voice, to the base of the dune.

"I've been thinking about it and I have a proposition for you," Shrike said, a little out of breath. "This client I'm meeting, she's expecting me to have a partner. But my partner isn't here. Stand in for him and I'll pay you."

"My rent's covered. I want my life back."

"I can't give you that. But some of the people I work with have power. If this client is who I think it is, she might be able to help you."

"Might?"

"It's the best I can do."

"What would I be? Your bodyguard? Your windup rabbit?"

"Your job will be to stand next to me and say absolutely nothing," said Shrike. "I'll do all the talking."

"I'm a mute?"

"People interpret silence as strength. In your case, the less you say, the better you get. I need you to look more dangerous than you really are."

"And maybe she can help me."

"No guarantees."

Spyder walked down the dune to where Shrike was waiting. He stood a little above her in the sand. "I'll help you get your bags from the hotel," he said.

"That's not necessary," Shrike said. She removed a battered leather book from an inside pocket of her coat. "Everything I need is right here." She opened it and little paper shapes stood up from the pages. Horses. Swords. Things that might have been exotic fruits or vegetables. To Spyder, it looked like a kid's pop-up book.

Shrike put the book away and led Spyder over the dune in the opposite direction. "Jean-Philippe, the bird-man, told me about a lovely deserted warehouse where we can spend the night."

"Feel that fog? We'll be ice pops by morning," said Spyder.

"Don't worry. I'll read to you," said Shrike. "A good book will always keep you warm."

Shrike led Spyder over the dunes toward North Beach, the old Barbary Coast, for two hundred years the traditional haunt of pirates, thieves and the kind of regular citizens who want to vanish into oblivion or into newly invented lives.

Behind an abandoned furniture warehouse under the Bay Bridge, they ducked through a hole in the hurricane fence and stomped through weeds and smashed glass to the back of the building.

Spyder, who had broken into more than his share of warehouses, spotted a smashed window near a rusting fire escape on the second floor. "Looks like we can get in through an upstairs window," he said to Shrike.

Shrike was feeling her way along the back wall of the warehouse. When she came to a door, she jiggled the knob, but the door was locked.

"Hey, there's an open window," said Spyder.

Shrike kicked in the door with her big boots. Her cane had already flicked up and transformed into a sword. She held it in striking position as she strode into the warehouse. Spyder was impressed, but kept quiet.

"Stay behind me," she whispered.

"Hear anything?"

"Rats. People. Shh."

The interior of the warehouse was a black hole decorated with a few grimed windows inlaid with chicken wire and decorated with graffiti. Shrike moved cautiously, but quickly, seemingly sensing where the trash and broken furniture lay and avoiding it. Spyder stumbled along behind her trying to keep up.

"Is it all open down here or are there any rooms?" Shrike asked him.

Spyder tried to see as deeply as possible into the dark. "I can't see much, but it looks all open down here. I think I can see some offices upstairs."

"Show me."

Spyder led Shrike upstairs and she checked all the rooms until she found one that was still locked.

"Move back," she told Spyder.

Faster than his eye could register, Shrike brought her sword arcing down and sliced the padlock off the door. The lock clattered to the floor noisily. Half of it skipped way and rattled down the stairs. Spyder heard low voices as doors leading to some of the other rooms opened.

Shrike turned toward the darkness, holding her sword at waist-level. "You're all welcome to stay here, but anyone stupid enough to come through this door will end up like that lock."