The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [80]
Tonight there was a mob, a group of Fine-Icers and some several folk from smaller stirpes, and even a few limerocks, those sad neutrals who hold no real place in the pageant of our city's life. They were crowded around the base of the fifth ladderway, shouting and shoving. They were mobbing someone to death.
And to sunlight with that, I thought. If anyone's to be killed here, it's me going to do the killing. I stroked my shadow suit into noctilucence and drew the Blades Sinister and Truth. Roaring with the voice ofwinds all Shadows know, I stormed the crowd from behind. "Stand free, there, or I'll cut you open and charge by the slice!"
The crowd parted as crowds will at such sound and fury, though I was smaller than almost all of them. I let the Blades dance, my hands spinning, so that the bright blur of my shadow suit would catch their eyes ― and turn their knives ― while the Blades held their fear.
Their parting pushed back further, making a kind of lane through to a little man, even smaller than I, crouched on the splintered decking of the ladderway's landing. His hands were folded over his head in anticipation of the kicking he had been about to receive and spilled around him was ―
"Ah," I said.
No wonder they were ready to kill. This was one of the perverted folk from above, twisted by their sneering little civilization and regimented, line-scarred maps, and he'd brought his food with him.
Eating in public was a capital offence here in Ooze. The mob was certainly within the bounds of propriety. Our visitor was already dead, though his sentence had not yet been carried out.
"It's my business now," I announced to the crowd, Blades still dancing. "Get on."
"I'm fetching the Reliables," someone shouted, safely hidden behind several departing Fine-Icers.
"Fetch away, friend," I said with a smile in my voice. The Reliables were our police stirps, never interested in extra trouble. "They'll certainly stand aside for a Shadow in this matter."
Then I crouched beside the dead man, whose cowering head was pointed away from me, and sheathed the Blade Truth. The truth was already known. I steeled my resolve, then sniffed deeply, scenting for his sin.
Something light and earthy...corn meal, perhaps, baked in a cake. A pungent scent, with undertones of sugars and something sharp...beans, in a rich sauce. And finally the rich smell of protein with salty, sweaty overtones. Fish.
I poked the dead man with the Blade Sinister, its tip sliding perhaps a quarter inch into his buttock.
"Hey!" he screeched, jerking his head up from his crouch.
"Hello, dead man," I said. "What brings you here in your perversions?"
"I...I...fish. I am a fisheater. You cannot touch me." He looked wildly around, lank, pale hair slapping against his shoulders. Even past the food, I could smell the sour reek of his sweat and the musk of his fear.
"We have no fisheaters here. You mistake us for the drug-crazed visionaries of Cui-ui." Cui-ui was a Dark Town in distant Nevada whose neutrals assiduously consumed fish, careful to keep the watery reek on their breath at all times for a casual inspection too disgusting to contemplate.
"Cui-ui," he whispered. "I am of Cui-ui. What is this place?"
I studied him carefully. Narrow face, dark protuberant eyes glinting in my city's dim shadows. No body hair at all, skin slick as skimmed fat. And he was dressed in lumpy gray robes no more attractive than his person. His breath certainly stank of fish.
"Perhaps you are of Cui-ui," I said, "but that buys you no right of passage in Ooze. If your story is worthy, I might listen to it, but first you must rid yourself of perversion."
At Sinister's point, I forced him to clean up the disgusting but strangely alluring food ― the smells tempted me toward his