The Doktor's Spyglass

Chapter 8.3

A little over an hour later, Helg stepped beneath a shaft of weak daylight and pointed a curled index finger upward. A corroded iron ladder led up the wall of the sewer line to a heavy grate. Thijis climbed up and peered out. The grate was partially clogged with old leaves and grime, but he could see the corner of a stately home and the red crown of a bloodgood tree if he craned his neck from one corner. He tested the grate to make certain that he could budge it, found it heavy but maneuverable, and climbed back down.

"I think we're on the northwest corner of the park," said Thijis, seating himself across the tunnel from Helg. "The suns are setting. We'll wait till dark." Helg nodded silently as Thijis settled himself across the tunnel from him. The sewer they were sitting in wasn't a main, but a smaller branch that seemed to be in disuse: the sloped floor was dry and littered with stones and the stains of ancient waste. The curved brick wall behind him was half-comfortable, he found, and with the sunslight streaming in through the old grate, they could have found a worse spot to wait it out.

Dear God, Thijis thought. Did I actually just admit to liking a sewer? The last couple of days had clearly done a number on his standards. Sighing, he brushed at his filthy dinner jacket, more than a little sorry at having to appear before the Margravine in such a state. The fine grosgrain was torn and hanging in one place, and the left arm of the jacket was blown out at the seam. So much for being a dashing man about town. He was feeling increasingly sorry for himself when he brushed his outer pocket and felt the soft lump inside. Smiling, he fished it out, silently thanking Krizner for being an easy mark. The cigarettes were bent and half-crushed, but smokable.

He had a moment of panic when he thought he might have no way to light them, but relaxed when he found Krizner's lighter in the opposite pocket. He could have sworn he'd given it back to him—in fact, now that he thought of it, he distinctly remembered Krizner taking the lighter back to light his own cigarette in the precinct house. You're getting sloppy, Thijis. He scratched his head and decided not to question his good luck.

He lit the fag, inhaled deeply, and blew the used smoke out into the shaft of sunslight, watching it billow and roll. Helg sat behind it, his skinny knees drawn up to his chest, eyes a thousand miles away. Next to the doktor, he supposed, he looked pretty good. Helg was still half-naked, his sallow skin even more damp and scummy after hours in the sewers. Well, if Mother wants a bow on him, she can damn well tie it on herself.

"You want one?" Thijis asked, proffering a bent smoke. Helg's eyes focused slowly, and he thought for a long moment, then finally reached a hand out. Thijis scooted across the tunnel a bit and placed a cigarette carefully between his fingers. The man's fingernails were long, yellow, and jagged. He waited a moment, then pushed the man's hand back toward his mouth. Helg wrapped his wet lips around it and Thijis applied the lighter.

"I don't get you, mate," he said, lapsing into the lilting Forge dialect he'd perfected over the years. Forge-men had a wonderful gift for conveying a working-class incredulity that questioned the very existence of problems that didn't involve metal or fire or union meetings. Wot's got you then, mate? Wot's in yer gob?

Thijis fingered the heavy key in his inside pocket, and after considering its shape for a moment, took it out. He watched Helg enjoy the first draw off his fag, then held it up to the light. The old man's eyes did their lazy focus thing, then widened, and Thijis saw some of the fiery, manic energy return to his face.

"Mine," said the doktor. "Mine!"

"Yes," said Thijis, "it was. Among many other fine things, now forfeit to the sheriff for your crimes against bloody humanity." He took another puff of his smoke and put the key back in his pocket. Helg seemed to be barely containing something: was it rage? Or something else? The hard lump of the revolver under his arm was reassuring. He didn't want to have to shoot him, but there were things he needed to know, and Helg obviously wasn't going to offer them up on his own.

He realized, feeling the coal of his cigarette start to burn close to his knuckles, that he was looking for a reason not to turn Helg over to the Margravine's outfit. The realization was sudden and strong. Smoke caught in his throat and he coughed. He spat into the trough of the sewer.

He'd come down into the sewers with this man with full knowledge of his proclivities, hoping to find out something that would please the Margravine, and, ideally, Tolvaj both. A fool's errand for a fool, maybe. He'd wanted to take control of the situation, and the only way to do that was to get Helg out of their reach. Do what people least expect and you shake things loose, sometimes. But the journey into the outskirts of the Undercity, as strange as it had been, hadn't revealed much, beyond the fact that the old man had a history in the Oridosi underground. The doktor himself was still very much a mystery, though, and that bothered Thijis.

Helg was like an unshucked oyster, full of juicy meat if you know how to open him right. He'd known since the beginning that there was more to this case than met the eye—there always was, when someone like Tolvaj was involved—but he was surprised to discover that "more," in this case, might really be more. Might really be something big. It might be that Keynish Helg wasn't a murderer, but much more of a pawn in a much larger game than Thijis had initially assumed. He just needed to hear it from him.

"You don't strike me as a kept man, Helg," he said, finally. "What were you up to?" He hadn't really thought the doktor would answer—had expected him not to, in fact. But Helg spoke.

"The elekstone," he said. "They wanted to know about the elekstone."

"That much is obvious. But that's not what I asked." Thijis leaned forward. "I asked, what were you up to? Because whatever it was, it didn't look like what Tolvaj and Orban expected. Were you playing them?" He didn't mention the Margravine. Helg didn't know he knew she was involved, and it was best to hold some things in reserve, if only as a kind of control.

Helg looked up at him then, the cigarette hanging from his lip, and swallowed.

"They had so much of it," he said thickly. "So much—rooms of it. Only way to find her."

Thijis had grown familiar enough with the doktor's halting, drugged speech patterns to know that he had to be patient if he wanted to learn anything useful. Finishing his cigarette, he lit another one from the coal and waited.

"Seffa," Helg said, his hands on his hollow cheeks, the tears beginning to run again. "Seffa."

"It's another few hours to full dark. We've got time. Tell me a story, Keynish. Tell me about Seffa."

His eyes on the creature before him,his lungs full of smoke, and his mind alive with possibility, Thijis listenedto the story of Keynish Helg.

To be continued in Chapter 9 on Friday, September 18th!    

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