Christian didn’t know who old Marie was, but he didn’t ask. The tone of Maura’s voice told him that the answer would only depress them both. The turn of the conversation was making Christian uneasy, giving him the feeling that something had jolted out of place. When he was young enough to daydream, he had thought often of topside, even hatching elaborate plans in which he and Maura would escape to the surface and live together, well fed and content. Those daydreams had been his original impetus to explore the vast labyrinth of the Creche, to map it in his head. But getting out of the tunnels was far more than a matter of geography. Maura was a crib baby. Last weekend, Christian had opened a man’s carotid and watched him bleed to death. He still believed in topside, yes . . . but what place could either of them have there?
“What’s all this about topside?” he asked, more roughly than he meant to. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” Maura said, with a casual air that did not quite deceive him.
“Not nothing. Tell me.”
“Well, I’ve been requested.”
Christian absorbed this information quietly. Requested . . . it meant that Maura had been summoned for delivery, to service a client not down here in the Creche but topside, in the city. Every pigeon in the Creche aspired to be requested, for it meant not only a paid journey to the upper world but also the possibility of an arrangement with a client, one rich enough to import from the Creche. If Maura caught herself a rich client, she could expect all manner of better treatment from everyone in the stable, Mrs. Evans on down. Christian knew that being requested was a good thing for her, an important thing . . . and yet his stomach felt like lead.
“Congratulations,” he said dully. “When?”
“Tonight. I’ll have to start getting ready in a few minutes, so you’d better help me clean up this mess.”
Christian could think of nothing further to say. He bent to grab another dress, then hissed as something deep in the pile of clothing jabbed his palm.
“Christ!”
“Are you all right?” But Maura’s question was perfunctory. She was already grabbing the clothing away from him, her blonde hair falling in a sheaf to hide her face.
“I’m fine. What was that?”
Maura did not answer, only turned away from him to dump the pile of clothing on the bed, and so Christian, who had always been one to know things without being told, understood that he had grabbed a syringe.
“You’re on the poppy,” he said flatly.
“Only a bit.”
This reply did not ease Christian’s mind in the least. Career fighters in the Creche accumulated so many wounds that they needed an almost constant supply of narcotics, and though morphia was reserved for only the worst injuries, Christian had still seen enough of it to know that that particular habit could dig its claws deep in no time at all. And although he had just been pondering the foolishness of his child’s daydreams of topside, he found himself suddenly furious with Maura, as though she had dug up those old daydreams, soaked them with oil, and lit a match.
“I suppose it was only a matter of time until you went on the needle.”
“Tend to your own business!” Maura snapped. “Unless you’ve suddenly grown a cunt and it’s open for sale, then you’ve no idea how to tend to mine.”
Christian felt his cheeks grow scarlet. She had never spoken so openly about what went on in here, and some small part of him—a tiny corner that somehow pretended, against all odds, that Maura and her men had tea and traded gossip—hated her for it. And yet the greater part of him was ashamed. Hadn’t he just been thinking, bare minutes ago, that all of them—Christian, Maura, the pigeons, the whores—were in the same boat? But of course they weren’t, not at all. The promoters sold Christian out, yes, but it wasn’t the same. He suddenly remembered the two of them, him and Maura, standing on the auction block in the vast room, holding hands, shivering; the room had been cold, and both of them naked. How old could they have been? Four, five? Too young, that was certain; too young to understand what was in store. He thought of the bracelet she had given him one night in the ring, a bracelet woven with the symbol of the Blue Horizon. It had disappeared long since, grown far too small for his wrist, but now Christian found himself wishing that he had kept it.
“Listen,” he said suddenly, impulsively. “We’ll get you off the poppy. I’ll help—”
The curtain over the door was suddenly yanked back, and Christian snapped his mouth shut at the sight of Mrs. Evans.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you,” Mrs. Evans said kindly, with great solicitude. She had likely been an excellent whore; every word reeked of sincerity. Only by watching her eyes did one see the truth.
“Maura, it’s time. We need to get you bathed and dressed.”
Maura nodded. She clasped Christian’s shoulder in farewell, but he barely noticed, for now he had caught sight of the figure behind Mrs. Evans: a young man, several years older than Christian, tall, awkward as a gantry, his bright blue eyes taking in every detail of the room. By now, Christian knew most of the pimps by sight, if not by acquaintance, and this one, Arlen Thorne, was rumored to be one of the worst flesh peddlers in the Creche. All manner of rumors surrounded him; some said he was a bastard-born child of the nobility, others that he was a crib baby who had murdered his handler when he was little more than a boy and taken over the entire operation. Thorne’s stable wasn’t even in the Alley proper, but two floors below, in the Deep Patch, where stranger things than children were sold. Some said that Thorne’s menagerie included a witch, a white woman who could kill a man with a glance. Christian didn’t believe in witches, or anything else he couldn’t see with his own eyes; still, he would sooner have trusted Maura with a Reddick wolf than the likes of Arlen Thorne.
“Lazarus, you should leave now.”
Mrs. Evans spoke with regret, but only a fool would miss the note of steel that had entered her voice. Behind that steel stood not just six enforcers but enough contacts and knowledge to bring down the Creche and half the city behind it. Christian turned to Maura, but the beseeching look on her face said everything. Suddenly Christian hated the lot of them: Mrs. Evans, Thorne, even Maura herself.
Tend to your own business.
He would have liked to ignore Maura’s words, but he could not, for she was right. Unless he was prepared right now, at this instant, to take her away, to remove her utterly from this life—
But even then, you wouldn’t have the right to take the syringe out of her hand.
After another long moment’s hesitation, Christian turned and walked away. Many times he had dreamed of simply wringing Mrs. Evans’s neck, but that was just as much a fantasy as topside itself, and it wouldn’t have changed anything anyway. Customers paid, tricks turned . . . the players changed, but the game never ended. Only the suffering was real. As Christian ducked through the grating of his shortcut, he suddenly saw Maura as he had first seen her: the tiny girl who had taken his hand when they were both in the pens, waiting to go on the block. For those few days, they had stayed together, keeping each other from panic, as sale drew closer and the darkness closed in. Even after Wigan bought them both, Maura had done her best to create an invisible circle around the two of them, making birthdays, singing songs, tending his wounds after fights. They had protected each other.