Chapter 47 - The Trail of Canal Five

Morning broke over the Third District in drab shades of gray, veiled in a fine drizzle of soot and cold mist that left the iron flagstones slick beneath boot soles.

Dante walked down into the ground-floor workshop of townhouse forty-two at seven-thirty.

He wore his waterproof canvas duster over his heat-resistant leather vest, with his coin pouch belted at his hip. In his left hand, he carried a manila envelope tied with thin twine, holding sixty crisp ten-scrip notes, the six hundred scrip he planned to turn over to Miro as restitution for the fifty-caliber ordnance sold in Low Ember. Tucked in his inner pocket were two hundred additional scrip in small denominations of fives and tens reserved for information expenses.

Maria was out in the courtyard, cinching the final buckles of the greatsword's back harness.

She had left her iron brigandine in the upstairs bedroom, wearing only a heavy rawhide jacket with vulcanized rubber elbow guards over dark work trousers. She knew that prowling the tenement slums along the district rim in military-grade plate invited the scrutiny of cutpurses and Legion informants from three blocks away.

"We start at the tavern's service entrance," Dante said as she stepped inside the shop. "The cook saw his face every day for two weeks. Someone had to clear the kid to scrub pans back there."

They exited through the iron side gate, secured the double street padlocks, and struck out toward the main thoroughfare.

......

The Copper Boiler still had its front timber doors padlocked behind heavy chains when they arrived.

Dante circled down the side alley, stepping into the same narrow chute where Miro had scaled the basalt wall the previous night. The sewage mud on the ground still held the deep indentation from Maria's boots where she had vaulted from the kitchen threshold.

He rapped four times with his knuckles against the iron sheet of the service door.

Nearly two minutes passed before an interior bolt pulled back with a dry clunk.

The door cracked open a handspan. The same cook from the night before, a thickset, red-skinned demon with chipped horn nubs and an apron greasy with pork tallow, glared through the gap, gripping a boning cleaver stained in fresh blood.

"Tavern opens at eleven," the man growled, his breath foul with raw garlic and woodsmoke.

Dante made no attempt to shove the door.

Reaching into his duster, he pulled out four ten-scrip bills bearing the Central Bank's purple seal, holding the paper flat before the demon's yellow slits.

"We aren't city watch, and we aren't here to collect the refuse levy," Dante said in his customary level tone, keeping his voice down. "We want to know where that masked busboy sleeps."

The cook eyed the four tens, then surveyed Maria's broad shoulders standing directly behind him with hands jammed into her leather pockets.

Clearing his throat with a wet rasp, he scooped the cash with grease-caked fingertips and eased the door open another few inches.

"Name's Miro," the man muttered quickly, keeping his voice muffled so it wouldn't carry toward the front hall. "Turned up two weeks back, dropped off a coal transport from the north yard. Had his jaw split open, eating potato peels out of the street gutter. The pit master felt sorry for the wretch and put him on carrying ash and scouring kettles for five scrip a shift."

"Where does he bunk?" Maria asked from the steps.

"He has no roof of his own," the cook wiped his cleaver blade on his apron. "Bunks in the back of the Pipe Flophouse down in Canal Five. Old brick tenement where boiler stokers rent straw mats for two scrip a night. If he didn't skip town after last night's riot, he's holed up in that basement trying not to starve."

"Does he run with anyone in there?" Dante asked.

"Kid doesn't speak to a soul," the demon shrugged, pocketing the bills. "Afraid of his own shadow. Keeps his hood pulled low and won't let a soul lay a hand near his spine. Now clear out before the day boss walks in with the flour delivery."

The iron door slammed shut, the rattle of the deadbolt closing the matter.

Dante and Maria left the alley and took the cross-street heading south.

......

Canal Five ran along the lowest tier of the Third District, where stormwater mains and industrial runoff drained toward the filter locks along the southern wall.

The scenery here lacked the broad steel flagstones and brilliant arc lamps of the central avenues.

The roads were narrow chutes of black loam mixed with crushed slag, cut through by open ditches carrying oily, graywater runoff that reeked of lye soap and oxidized rust. Four-story exposed-brick tenements loomed on either side, wire lines strung with gray boiler overalls stretching between windows, and tangled nests of copper pipes wheezing with small steam leaks on every corner.

Maria navigated the alleys with an ease Dante lacked.

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She understood these streets. She needed no map to grasp the internal rhythm of a working-class slum: the wary stares of men lingering on stone doorsteps, barefoot kids weaving between hot pipes, and the total absence of Legion uniforms.

"Feels like the shantytown I grew up in when I was eight," she muttered, skirting an oil slick in the center of the lane. "Only difference is, back home the runoff came from rain, and here it drains from factory boilers."

"The social geography of industrial slums is universal across any plane that feeds on cheap labor," Dante answered, scanning every cross-corridor they passed. "Nobody here holds a permanent residence registry. Everyone survives on day work."

They stopped before a corner apothecary with a tin shingle hung from wire twists: Gurg's Salts and Salves.

The shop was a ten-foot-square closet lined with splintered shelves holding corked clay jars and bunches of dried herbs dangling from the rafters.

Behind a counter of riveted iron sheet, an old man with milky, cataract-blinded eyes and an intake brand nearly erased by decades of age worked a stone pestle, grinding gray leaves that reeked sharply of camphor.

Maria rested her palm against the counter.

"Morning, Master Gurg."

The old man didn't lift his head, but his nostrils flared, scenting the entrance.

"I don't front mining morphine without a foreman's voucher," the old man rasped. "And I don't buy stolen copper."

Dante drew two ten-scrip notes from his pouch, laying them on the counter.

"We want to know if a young man bought wound dressings here early this morning," Dante said calmly. "Pale skin, chemical burn scars down his face, and chitin mandibles tucked behind a rag."

The old man checked his pestle stroke for three seconds.

Extending a bony hand, his long fingers swept the countertop until they brushed the bills. He tested the texture of the Central Bank stamp with the ball of his thumb, swept the cash beneath the ledge, and resumed grinding his leaves.

"Came in at five this morning," the apothecary muttered, dragging out his words. "Bleeding from a split lip, cheek raw from metal shrapnel. Bought a ten-scrip tin of salamander grease and half a bolt of unbleached cotton bandages."

"Where did he head?" Maria asked, leaning over the counter.

"He was shaking with fever," the old man continued, pestle never breaking stride. "Said he needed a dry crawlspace before noon. Took the left-hand alley toward the decommissioned steam substation behind the Pipe Flophouse. There's a subterranean vault back there where the old mine water valves used to sit. Nobody goes down that hole, the decking is rotten with rust."

"Thank you, Master Gurg," Dante turned toward the shop entrance.

"Watch yourselves with that kid, boy," the old apothecary rasped behind them before they cleared the threshold. "His head's scrambled. Rambles on about needles and folks in white descending from the rafters. The deep-mine vapors turned his wits."

Dante and Maria left the shop, taking the black dirt alley climbing toward the rear of the tenement.

......

The decommissioned substation sat at the terminus of a dead-end street, backed against the stone retaining wall of the drainage canal.

The building was a rectangular two-story hull of blackened brick, half its corrugated roof caved in, its iron window frames boarded shut with crooked nails.

In the center of the overgrown lot flanking the structure, surrounded by clumps of dry wiregrass and crushed tins, sat a circular cast-iron maintenance hatch five feet across, shoved partially off its masonry collar.

Dante halted ten paces from the iron hatch, drawing air carefully through his nose.

His twenty-six Wisdom resolved the tactical details instantly.

In the hard-packed dirt around the lip of the ring, four parallel claw gouges were scored deep into the dry earth. They were identical to the scratches carved into the steel pylon of Crane Four.

Torn against a jagged length of rebar near the entrance hung a scrap of cotton bandage, smeared with green salve and dark blood.

Maria stepped forward, her right hand drifting instinctively toward the hilt of the greatsword across her back.

Dante placed his left hand on her forearm, checking the motion firmly.

"No steel, Maria," he whispered. "If he hears the rasp of a blade clearing its scabbard, his first reflex will be to bolt down an overflow conduit or strike with whatever he's holding."

Maria drew a deep breath, easing her fingers off the hilt and letting her hands rest loose by her sides.

"We go down together?"

"I drop first," Dante retrieved the manila envelope holding the six hundred scrip from his inner coat pocket, keeping the parcel visible in his right hand. "He saw me in the boiler without heavy arms. He knows my physical strength is no threat in close quarters. You hold the lip of the hatch, sealing the exit if he tries to bolt upward."

Maria gave a single nod, her brown eyes tracking every breach in the abandoned substation's brickwork.

Dante walked measuredly toward the circular iron opening.

The shaft smelled of ancient mold, rust, and the sharp, pungent reek of the salamander grease the apothecary had described. An iron ladder set into the concrete wall descended twelve feet down to the flagstone floor of an old valve room.

Dante set his boots on the rungs, stepping down quietly so the rubber treads made no sound against the metal.

When his feet touched the damp floor of the chamber, the gray daylight filtering down from the hatch outlined a silhouette huddled at the far corner.

Miro sat wedged into the gloom between two rusted steam manifolds.

He was crouched atop a pile of greasy burlap, his torn leather duster gathered over his knees, gripping a two-foot length of sharpened iron rebar in his right hand with white-knuckled desperation.

His face was wrapped in crooked cotton bandages that exposed only his four dark, multifaceted eyes, gleaming with feral terror in the cellar's shadows.

The sharpened rebar shot up toward Dante's chest the instant his boots settled onto the stones.

"Hold right there..." Miro's voice came out in a raspy hiss beneath the cloth wraps, his gloved hand shaking with fever and rage. "Don't take another step, or I'll drive this through your throat."

Dante didn't step back.

He raised both open hands to shoulder level, displaying empty palms, devoid of glowing focus rings or conductive chalk between his fingers.

In his right hand, he held only the heavy manila envelope tied with twine.

"Lower the iron, Miro," Dante said, his voice slow, even, and scrubbed of any trace of aggression. "I came to pay you for the ammunition we sold back in Low Ember.”