Eugene
A flag snapped in the wind above the dome. The dome was green—not because anyone had painted it, but because the copper had simply gone to rust.
Once, the bank had been the most emblematic building in the district, and the tallest. The war had stolen the copper dome that was its symbol, but it had not managed to steal the height. Even now, stand at the crown of that dome and you could look down on this ragged city for as long as you liked—which was to say there was no finer place to plant a flag. A foreign nation's colors fluttered over foreign ground.
"Hell of a fine day."
The rain had let up for a while, so I crawled out from under the bridge.
A man cannot live on dew alone. That was why the skin of my stomach had stuck fast to my back.
"I'm starving to death."
Grrrgh—thunder rolled through my gut. Small wonder. The last time I had chewed anything was two days ago, and my gallant attempt to last the past five days on two hunks of bread and rainwater had ended in wretched failure. In theory, they say a person can survive a month on water alone. From where I stood, that theorist had never once gone hungry. It was a misery fit to kill you.
Fortunately, the rain had stopped. Merchants opened their doors and unfolded the stalls they had packed away, and this squalid city would recover a little of its vigor. I took up again a line of work I hadn't been able to practice for some time.
The mouth of the market street: a prime spot, and it happened to be empty. I dropped down onto it and set in front of me a tin can I'd scavenged nearby. Sitting cross-legged was out of the question—it looked arrogant. I drew my knees together to press the pity, and I did not forget to smear soot across my face. With that, the preparations were done. Sit still now, and some gentleman of years, passing by, would toss me a coin.
This was my work.
Some people called it begging, and meant the word as a slur. Hardly. Where else was there a trade so free of discrimination? Ordinary business demanded a head for commerce, neighborly connections, an eye for good merchandise, and above all a birth that let you raise capital. This needed only a few humble tools, and anyone could do it. There wasn't even a middleman, so the take was pure profit.
Call me a businessman, then.
"Spare a coin— I've no bread to eat today—"
I began to solicit with my whole soul in it. There were plenty of people; the mouth of a market will do that. The trade resembled fishing, and the more fish, the better. Not that those people were my customers. A man who had glanced this way held the look for a moment, then whipped his head aside. That much made him a gentleman. Most pretended not to see me at all, or brushed past without a thought.
"A coin—"
Every time I opened my mouth, that strained effort to look away. Only now did it feel like work. A novice would have nursed a grudge—how could they be so cold?—but this was the ordinary way of things. Strip the feeling out and look, and you could see their lot was only a little better than mine. Small fish are busy feeding themselves. They have no kindness to spare for anyone else.
My true customers lay elsewhere. What I was angling for was a predator: belly full, back warm.
"Spare a coin—"
After thirty-odd minutes of working the line, someone took the bait.
Clink! The can let out a bright, satisfying cry, and a pitying gaze turned on me.
"Oh, dear. You have to eat, you know."
"Thank you. Thank you..."
"Really. How pitiful."
A woman in a coat that was plainly expensive lavished her sympathy on me, and a coin into the bargain. I bowed my head again and again toward her back as she hurried away down the market street. Inside, though, I smiled a mean little smile.
Just as planned.
Cheap pity, and an expensive coin, tossed down and left behind. By the findings of my long study of this market, there was a high chance she was the wife of an officer in the Frauvia Federation army. A great many soldiers had been sent to administer the postwar affairs of a nation of war criminals. Quite a few of the officers had brought their families with them, and so a rather large temporary quarter had been established in the area.
They were not like us, who had fled in a scramble. They had packed up their households and come by ship. They had money—that was the long and short of it. The officers themselves were one thing; it was the spending of their wives and children that fed the whole district. I could hardly let a boom like this pass me by.
"Well, now. Oh..."
Clatter. Two copper coins lay in the can. A generous soul. Tonight, it seemed, I would be able to eat a whole hunk of bread. I pressed the smile down and began to solicit again.
"Spare a coin— I've been starving for three days—"
It was no lie. The coins tucked into my pocket notwithstanding, this was the third day I had eaten nothing. A man of the lower orders. An orphan with no one in the world, even before the war. And now, on top of all that, saddled with the infamy of his country. But at least an honest man. That was the last dignity left to me—to Eugene.
Regrettably, a society that has lived through a war treats another person's dignity like a stone lying in the road.
"Hey! Eugene, you beggar bastard!"
And so I had no answer for those words.
The street was full of ashen dusk. Thanks to the passion with which I had raised my voice, six more coins had gathered—and if it counted as a talent to drive a lifted mood straight down into the pit in a single stroke, then this was a talent. They'd come. Remi's crew. Just as I styled myself a businessman, they styled themselves a vigilante band. We may even have resembled one another in this: the reality was the opposite.
From here on, I had to keep my wits about me.
In a rush, six sturdy boys and girls swarmed in and surrounded me, each of them armed with something blunt—an iron pipe, a wooden club. Surely not. Were they actually going to do it? It was still a little bright for evening, and this was the mouth of the market, with plenty of people still out on the street. However far gone a man might be, would he beat someone where dozens of eyes were watching?
I knew better. Those bastards were not far gone in any ordinary sense. They were lunatics who made a trade of theft, assault, and extortion right beside the Frauvia garrison.
At the center of the pack, Remi—in a rather decent raincoat—looked me over with his weight cocked on one hip.
"Well, hello. Been a while."
"Can't say it's a pleasure."
"You little shit. Not a scrap of manners in that mouth, and that gigolo face—same as ever. Anyway. Who the hell told you to spread your mat here?"
"I did."
"You did, my fucking ass. Eugene. You even know how many months you're behind on the fee for this spot?"
"I told you from the start I wasn't paying—"
Thud!
"Guh—"
My jaw whipped sideways before the sentence could finish. Whether he'd pulled the blow or not, it wasn't enough to kill me with the pain. It was more than enough to break a man's pride. Remi sneered.
"Mm. Didn't haul myself all the way out here to listen to some beggar bastard's excuses. Kids?"
He crooked a finger, and the five of his crew grinned wide. He was remarkably wise, for a thug. He understood perfectly well that talk was wasted on a wretch who was an orphan and a beggar both. Goddamn it.
A fist came flying.
"Drop dead!"
Wham!
"Kh—!"
They went for the pit of my stomach with no preamble at all. Cowards. A sickening pain lanced through me, and cold sweat poured off in sheets. I couldn't draw a breath.
"Kehuk!"
While I pounded at my chest in a spasm, they paid me no mind and set about beating me the way you'd thrash a dog on the hottest day of summer. Thud. Whack. A sudden theater of violence, staged right on the thoroughfare. I curled in on myself, doing everything I could to hurt a little less, and through slitted eyes I looked out at the street between their legs.
I could feel the watching. A dozen people at least were looking this way. Yes—only looking. Before long they seemed to realize that I was looking back, and in the next moment they turned their eyes away and went on about their business. Fish, after all. They might swim in a school, but that was nothing more than instinct asserting itself; throw so much as a stone and they would scatter in a panic. I didn't resent them for it. It was that kind of world.
"Where do you think you're lifting your head?"
Crack! Something clubbed the back of my skull.
"Urk—"
Ah. An iron pipe is cheating.
My brain rang. The strength ran out of my whole body and I sprawled on the ground, but the beating had no thought of stopping. The boys, at least, knew a man could die if a blunt weapon landed wrong, and they measured their strength. The rough girls, untroubled by any such worry, drove their kicks in hard. Personally, I found the latter the viler of the two.
"Enough."
Say this for the bastards: they listened to their boss. Having called his underlings off, Remi squatted down in front of me where I lay half dead. I was weighing whether to spit on that sickening face, and was a breath away from doing it, when he opened his mouth.
"A good clubbing warms you up, don't it?"
"Yeah. Cold day like this—much obliged. Ptoo!"
Ah. Couldn't hold it.
Spit mixed with blood fouled Remi's face. Now it was my turn to sneer.
"Figures. Face that oily, the gloss of spit suits it. And while we're at it—who'd you steal the coat off?"
"...You little shit."
Hoo. Remi wiped his face on his sleeve and let out a long breath.
"You ought to count yourself lucky I'm holding back."
"Ah. Yes, sir. How very kind."
"Playing proud right to the end, when you ain't got a damn thing. Our distinguished man of business. You can't pay the spot fee because you're broke, right? That it?"
I held my tongue.
"So you should've just taken the offer I made you last time. I get what I want. You don't get hit. Good for the sister, good for the brother-in-law—everybody walks away happy."
"Shut up. My skull's ringing. Get to the point."
"Hand over the magic book."
His eyes went wide. The look in them was dead serious.
"I'm telling you I saw the whole thing last time, you clutching it like it was precious. Come on. Be a good boy and hand it over. Hand it over nice, and from now on this spot is your private seat. Do all the 'business' you want."
Ha—the bastards burst out laughing. My head was still humming, so the sound came at me piled in layers. The reason Remi was making an offer like this, though, was obvious. The bounty. It had to be the bounty the Federation had posted on anything to do with magic.
Our country, the old Bayer Empire, was walking the road to ruin. While the Frauvia Federation across the sea rose in brilliant prosperity, the Empire paid the price for having turned its back on magic. Glory that had once ruled an entire continent gave way to a fiscal crisis deep enough to bankrupt the state. Even after things came to that, the Empire—unwilling, it seemed, to bow its head to the Federation—dragged dust-covered weapons out of the armories and started a war. And was crushed. That was five years ago.
The Empire had been atrocious. In its war there was no humanitarianism, and no keeping of international accords. The Federation resolved to be the mirror, and to answer in kind. The collapse of the regime went without saying. Beyond that, the Federation proclaimed a prohibition on magic over the whole of the former Empire—a declaration that they meant, in effect, to erase the Empire's future, and the occasion on which the books of magic, already few, were burned away to the last.
When the great purge was finished, the Federation turned the work over to private hands. They hung a bounty on it. Hand a magic-related article or book to the Federation army, and they paid a considerable reward. Fifty pounds, to be exact. That, surely, was what Remi wanted.
And what was I supposed to do about it? Did he imagine I was the one person alive who didn't know there was a bounty? In a world where dignity had fallen into the gutter, magic was my very soul—and to a man trying to spend that soul for money, there was only one thing worth saying.
Remi's face crumpled all at once.