Chapter 11: The Purple Collars
The cell stank of piss, mould, and the metallic trace of old blood. Coyote could taste it at the back of his throat, foul, damp, lingering. He had been in worse places. The thought brought no comfort. Only irritation.
He had been arrested less than an hour after crossing illegally from the Scarlet Valley into Steamhollow through an official mirror. Efficient pricks, when annoyed. Now he sat in a prison cell built for common criminals and fitted for Mirrorwalkers. A suppression field hummed through the walls, low and constant, designed to stop Walkers from drawing reflective energy to heal, fight, or damage property. Broken ribs, apparently, were acceptable. Council property was another matter.
The Council medics had done the minimum. His side was wrapped badly. A cut along his ribs pulled every time he breathed too deeply, and the bruising across his shoulder had settled into a thick, hot ache. He chewed another ironberry from the strip hidden in his sleeve. Rare, expensive, and only mildly useful. It helped with blood loss a little. Not enough to improve his view of anything.
Across the cell three men watched him with the lazy interest of people deciding whether he was worth the effort. One of them, thin and sharp-faced, leaned back against the wall and grinned.
“Thought that was you.”
Coyote glanced over. “How unfortunate.”
The man laughed through his nose. “Talvek says you still owe twenty.”
“Then Talvek continues to be a dull man with an excellent memory.”
That earned a few snorts from the others. Not friendly. Just appreciative in the way bored criminals appreciated anything that might turn unpleasant.
The thin man pushed off the wall. “Prison does not clear debt.”
“No,” Coyote said. “Though it does lower the quality of collection.”
The man smiled without warmth. “We collect in other ways too. Men short on credits usually find themselves useful.”
A couple of the others laughed.
Coyote looked him over slowly. “If that is Talvek’s idea of repayment, I begin to understand his financial troubles.”
Another prisoner lifted a hand before things went further. Big fellow. Shaved head. One ear half gone. Thick fingers wrapped round one knee. He sat by the bars, looking like a man who let others start trouble so he could finish it.
Coyote took the hint and said calmly, “Tell Talvek that Vesk will cover it.”
That changed the air.
The thin man gave a short laugh. “Vesk?”
“Yes.”
The big man looked at him properly then. “You haven’t heard?”
Coyote frowned.
“Vesk vanished,” the thin one said. “His gang announced the new leader not long ago.”
Someone muttered from the straw that there had been no body, no message, no trail worth a damn. By rumour, Vesk had been missing since last year. His people had searched, asked questions, and broken a few men over it, but found nothing. They kept it quiet, hoping to find him before Brassville noticed.
Coyote disliked the sound of that.
Vesk ran one of the ugliest gangs in Brassville. Loud when it suited him, greedy by nature, and not the sort of man who simply vanished. More irritating was the pattern. Vesk. Then Eric. Then Ophelia, recently. Three Walkers gone in a row. And those were only the ones Coyote knew about.
The sensible part of his mind told him it proved nothing. People disappeared all the time. His instincts disagreed. Quietly.
“When was he last seen?” Coyote asked.
The big man narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
“Curiosity,” Coyote said. “One of my more expensive defects.”
Before the man answered, keys rattled outside the bars. A mirror officer stopped in the corridor, grey coat and brass buttons catching the weak light. The Great Council emblem was stitched over the breast in dull silver thread.
“Coyote. Up.”
That improved the room.
The thin prisoner clicked his tongue. “Lucky bastard.”
Coyote stood carefully, mindful of his ribs. “Not luck. Administrative charm.”
The officer ignored him and led him out.
The corridor beyond smelled different from the cell. Less piss. More oil, damp stone, and stale paper. Brass pipes ran along the ceiling, hissing softly where steam leaked through old seals. Wire-caged lamps cast weak yellow light over iron doors and grey-painted walls. The officer’s boots rang against the metal strips bolted into the floor, the sound carrying farther than it should have.
They stopped at the discharge office. Coyote’s belongings lay on a scarred wooden table beneath a hanging lamp: his ripped coat, a half-empty backpack, the gearwallet, and the package. The clerk behind the desk had yellowing cuffs and the expression of a man who considered mercy a filing error.
“Your bail has been paid,” he said.
Coyote raised an eyebrow. “How generous.”
“You may leave now,” the clerk said, “or remain to complete the original term of three months for unlawful mirror crossing from the Scarlet Valley.”
“A difficult choice.”
The clerk slid the forms forward. Coyote pressed his brass ident plate to the registry box, then checked his things one by one. His backpack was missing only the instruments he had lost near the sealed mirror. The gearwallet was intact. When he picked up the package, he felt a small private satisfaction. The reflective encryption still held, untouched.
The Council rarely troubled itself over suspected smuggling unless someone brought proof. A protected package alone was not worth the time or paperwork of decryption.
Coyote shrugged into his coat, tucked the package inside, and stepped back into the yard. Cold air hit him first, clammy with soot and rain. Steam hissed somewhere beyond the outer wall.
His client waited by the gate, expensive coat and bad temper arranged neatly under the iron arch.
“You took your time,” the man snapped.
“You paid for release, not efficiency.”
“Not here.”
They walked two streets to a narrow service lane between a boiler shop and a boarded tavern. Wet brick, coal smoke, oil, and the sour, stale smell of old cabbage leaked from some unseen kitchen.
The client turned on him immediately.
“Do you have any idea what this delay cost me?”
“Yes,” Coyote said. “One bail payment and whatever remains of your nerves.”
“You were arrested.”
“I had noticed.”
“You were meant to deliver discreetly. That bail comes out of your reward.”
Coyote looked at him with quiet contempt. The man was desperate and they both knew it. Coyote drew the package from his coat and held it out. The client grabbed it and tried the latch. Nothing. A faint reflective shimmer slid along the seam.
“What did you do?”
“Reflective encryption.”
“Open it.”
Coyote held out his gearwallet. “Payment first.”
The man frowned. “I paid your bail. I’ll cut it from the amount.”
Coyote looked at him mildly. “No. And the price has changed.”
The man stared. “What?”
“Double.”
“That was not the deal.”
“It is now.”
“You little shit.”
Coyote grinned. “You are welcome.”
The client held the package as if rage alone might open it. It did not. At last he swore, transferred the credits, and stepped back. Coyote checked the sum, took the parcel, broke the reflective seal with a brief pulse of light, and handed it over properly.
The client snatched it like an insult and left in a fury. Coyote adjusted the poor bandage at his ribs and decided the day had not been entirely wasted.
Coyote called a cab and turned toward one of the few places in the city where he could arrive without explanation. The cab dropped him two streets away. The cab dropped him two streets away. The brothel was one of the oldest and cheapest in Brassville. It had never liked unnecessary attention, and neither had Coyote. He walked the rest of the way.
The building stood exactly where it always had, pressed between two taller houses that leaned toward it like tired neighbours. The sign above the door had faded into polite anonymity. Only the shape of a painted bird remained.
Inside smelled of soap, cloying perfume, and kitchen grease. A few of the birds looked up as he entered. One of them blinked, then laughed softly.
“Well,” she said. “You look like something disagreed with you.”
“Professional misunderstanding,” Coyote said.
No one asked for details.
Birds led him upstairs without fuss into his mother’s old room. Coyote had been born in this place and bought the room when he could afford it. Nostalgia, perhaps. Or habit. He had never examined the distinction closely and saw no need to begin now.
The doctor the house used arrived soon after, stitched what needed stitching, and wrapped his ribs again with the calm efficiency of someone who had done this work for years.
“Nothing dramatic,” the doctor said. “Try not to get stabbed again today.”
After he left, Coyote pressed a small button on his brass bracelet. Reflective energy began the slow work of healing. Then came the hot bath, the finest bud and silence. A few hours later, he came downstairs acceptably clean and functional again. The brothel looked as it always had. Soft light over old wallpaper. Powder hiding cracks.
Someone placed tea in front of him.
“You did not come only for the hospitality,” one of the birds said.
“No.”
He asked about Eric. The birds thought for a moment.
“Haven’t seen him in months,” one said.
That matched what Coyote expected.
“Did he come with anyone unusual?”
At first there was nothing. Then one of the birds leaned back.
“Actually… there was a man once. Eric was talking to him outside.”
“What do you remember?”
“Not the face,” she said. “But the collar.”
“The collar?”
“Purple. Silk, maybe. Or something pretending very hard to be silk. It caught the light strangely.”
Coyote said nothing.
“That’s why I noticed it,” she added. “Most men around here dress like damp laundry.”
“You heard them speak?”
“Only a few words as I walked past. Enough to hear the accent.”
“Not from Steamhollow?”
“No. Definitely not local.”
That was all she had. And all Coyote had to work with: a bloody foreigner in an elegant collar.
Which might not be a clue at all. Eric did official crossings most of the time, but occasionally took illegal work on the side. Birds were his expensive hobby.
Vesk, at least, might leave a better trail. Bigger men left bigger shadows.
The factory on the edge of Brassville had once belonged to industry. Now it belonged to the gang.
The building took up most of the block. Broken windows. Exposed iron supports. Brick dark with soot and damp. The whole place leaned slightly. Inside, the air smelled of oil, cold metal, and old smoke. Rusted walkways crossed the open space overhead. Dead machines stood where they had failed, some stripped for parts, others left where they dropped.
The gang had made the ruin usable. Gambling tables sat under hanging lamps. Crates, tarps, and old blankets had been pushed into corners to make sleeping spaces out of the draught. Smoke drifted up through the broken rafters and hung under the roof.
Many of the people moving through the factory wore the usual signs of Steamhollow’s cheaper solutions to expensive problems. Improvised limbs hammered together in workshop metal. Glass eyes. Reinforced jaws that clicked faintly when they spoke. Bad surgery patched with practical engineering. The kind of repairs people got after fights, bad deals, or desperate visits to the wrong sort of surgeon.
Contraband was there, certainly. Strange devices. Rare materials. Goods that had clearly crossed mirrors without permission. Vesk had been a Walker, which meant his gang handled things from other worlds more often than most. That made the stock valuable. It also made it dangerous. Other gangs wanted it. The Great Council wanted to confiscate it. Vesk’s people had long since become used to both.
One man watched from a broken conveyor platform above the floor. Half his skull was bare bone. The other half had been replaced with glass. Under the clear casing, artificial tissue pulsed faintly, threaded with pale metal. Every so often a spark jumped inside when he moved or spoke.
Ugly work. Expensive survival.
More importantly, no one else spoke over him.
The welcome was not warm, but recognition moved through the room quickly enough. Coyote had dealt with Vesk’s people for years, moving certain goods through the black markets. That history kept the knives where they were, at least for the moment.
“What do you want?” someone asked.
“I’m asking about Vesk.”
Suspicion sharpened at once.
“Who sent you?”
“No one,” Coyote said calmly. “I heard today that he vanished.”
A few faces hardened further, weighing that.
“He mattered to me,” Coyote said. “We did business for years. I’m only trying to find out what happened. Same as you.”
The room stayed quiet for a moment while that settled.
“We already looked,” someone said.
“Everywhere,” said another.
“Asked questions.”
“Found nothing.”
Then the man with the glass skull spoke after a long pause, his voice slightly warped by the machinery in his head. “There was one thing. If you find anything, you’ll share it with us.”
Coyote nodded.
“People saw someone following Vesk before he disappeared.”
“How many?”
“Two. Maybe three.”
“Why remember them?”
The man tapped the glass side of his head.
“The collars.”
“What collars?”
“Purple,” someone said from the back. “Dark purple. Shining oddly under the lamps.”
“Identical,” another added. “Too neat for fashion. Too coordinated for coincidence.”
“Magic?” Coyote asked.
“Maybe.”
A woman near the weapon bench wiped her hands on a rag. “We looked for them. Markets, docks, gambling halls. Anywhere Vesk’s enemies might hide. Nothing.”
The man with the glass skull gave a small shrug.
“They didn’t belong here.”
“Meaning?”
“Travellers,” he said. “From somewhere else. Another world.”
Coyote left the factory with almost nothing. Except the collars.
Coyote turned the pieces over in his head and got nowhere useful. Instinct had carried him as far as it could, but no further. That got on his nerves.
Corvell would have assembled the fragments into something resembling sense. He had always been good at that, even back when Coyote had been a little street brat and Dorian the polished son of a wealthy house.
Unfortunately Corvell was not here.
Which meant Coyote needed the Keeper.
He headed for the nearest mirror that led to Haven.
It was time to ask for help.