I Went Down (NaNoWriMo Read-Along)

33 Dapper Jack

Dapper Jack held the girl as her body convulsed. Finally the life went out her; her arms and legs went limp and she sagged in his arms. Her head flopped backwards, exposing the smooth skin of her throat. He had a sudden urge to kiss the soft hollow between her clavicles. Instead he shifted his grip around her body to pick her up. Like most Ibai, she was built on a smaller frame than the long limbed Plainsmen. She was as light as a hollow-boned bird in his arms.

He should leave her in the alleyway with the refuse. Someone would find her in a day or two: just another young casualty of the city. Delta Mouth made a habit of sucking in the young people from the lands around it and then, more often than not, spat out their bones. There were plenty of boys and girls from the Plain of Angiers whose lives had been cut short in this dank metropolis.And what a waste, to have come all the way from Ibai to die in an alleyway.

Not to die—to be killed. Let it not be forgotten that she would be living still, perhaps meeting some young man who had caught her fancy, if it were not for the hands of Dapper Jack. At his back was the familiar shape of his knife, warm as his own body. He was one of the sharp teeth in the city’s mouth.

Dapper Jack looked down at the girl. Although she must have been sleeping when he came for her, she had still taken the time to pencil her eyebrows and add a dusting of powder to her cheeks. The scarf over her hair had shifted as she struggled against him and her dark curls were escaping into a black haze around her face. He hefted her weight again and maneuvered until her head was on his shoulder, as she if were asleep. She had closed her eyes at the last, which helped the illusion.

The glass vial crunched beneath his boot as he stepped out of the alley and onto the street. The taxicab was long gone and there was only a single passerby at the far end of the block, a man hurrying somewhere with his collar turned up. Jack watched until the man disappeared around a corner and then turned the other direction.

He carried the girl along the edge of the canal for a while. He passed an old woman pulling a small cart. She glanced at him on briefly; her attention was taken up by the vegetables piled on the cart, for the threatened to spill onto the street with every bump. She would be coming from the Darley Market and if he continued in this direction he would soon cross the Darl and find himself there. Just beyond the Darl was Old Tarn. That would be appropriate, to take the girl somewhere where her own people would find her. But he had been carrying her long enough that she began to grow heavy and his arms ached. Now she was less of a bird and more like a sack of corn. Where should he leave her? It still would have been best to leave her in the alley, but it was too late for that now.

He sat down on a bench, still cradling her head against his breast. “Poor girl,” he whispered to her. There was a streak of deep indigo on one side of her mouth. Jack pulled the loose scarf from her hair and wiped her lips, taking care not to get any of the liquid on his gloves. The swirled pattern on the cloth did not show the dark stain. “Poor girl,” he whispered again. A stranger in the city, unaware of the long conflict between the the Pels and the Plainsmen swirling around her. The Ibai might have thrown themselves in with the Pelagoans, sharing the waterways with them. Or they might have sided with the Angiers in trying to uproot the foreigners who had come and built the city around the small village on the delta island where they had lived quietly before the first Pel explorations had reached the mouth of the river. But the Ibai had never willingly involved themselves in the political machinations of their neighbors. If they had, they might have changed the history of the whole region.

Dapper Jack eased the girl out of his lap until she lay flat on her back on the bench. Someone would find her, Pel or Plains or her own people. She might be buried in a nameless grave on the Melisande or shipped up the river to the Ibai homeland at the river’s headwaters. In the meantime, Jackdaw Dorsane would be meeting with the Angiers Liberation Army and making changes that might have saved her life, had they come a little earlier.

There was a pair of women crossing the closest bridge, heading towards the Darley Market and chattering to each other. Dapper Jack stood up and walked away from the bench with purposeful strides. He wadded up the scarf as he approached the canal edge and tossed it into the water. He pulled his gloves straight—they were loose again, he’d need another new pair when he got back to the city—and tipped his hat to the women on the bridge as he passed them. There was a tram stop on the other side. The tram would take him back to the Ornette. He’d fetch his small satchel from a luggage locker at the rail station, and in a few short hours he’d be out of the city and entering the Plain of Angiers.