Her lover would not be among the workers; Binter waited for her back in their cubicle. She should return to the safety of the undercorridors. But on the way to the dropshaft, she passed the Pit of Desumpt, and heard the Flesh Tinker cursing from its depths.
Tomov had not bothered to post a guard, relying on the high glassy sides of the Pit to contain his prisoner.
She pushed the button that lowered the maintenance ladder.
The Flesh Tinker swarmed up the ladder and bounded toward her, smiling joyfully, reaching for her with hands like hooks. She darted away, screeching, but he caught her in an instant.
“Ah,” he whispered, looking into her face, “Ah... You’re not one of them.” She could not look away from his face. Emotion washed across that eroded landscape; a pulse of white-hot rage, a pulse of bewilderment, a pulse of mad humor, a pulse of insupportable weariness.
Pity appeared, was instantly gone. “No,” he said, “you’re not one of them.”
She turned away, pulling the cowl forward to hide her face.
“Come to my boat, later,” the Flesh Tinker said. “I’ll reward you.” He left, twirling his cape.
Binter stood in the darkest corner of the refurbished storeroom she shared with him. “I’m home,” she said, and went to the bed. He came slowly into the light. He smiled slightly, the expression filtered strangely through the net of scar tissue covering his face. He might once have been a handsome man. He was still tall, and he was powerful from his work at the waterline. Before flaying his face and giving him to the sea, the Mindamoni had taken his tongue; a common punishment on dark Mindamon. Arcimor’s undercorridors were full of faceless silent men and women. They did the city’s dirtiest labor.
Binter had another scar in his side where the barbs had taken him. The man who had hooked him alive from the sea was Binter’s oldest friend.
Binter carried a vocoder strapped to his shoulder. His fingers twitched at the keyboard. “You’re late. I was worried.” The machine’s voice was slow, flat, with a buzzing undertone.
“A pleasant thing happened.”
He opened his eyes wider, indicating interest. He had few expressions left to him, but she was adept at reading them. “Your enemy is dead?” he asked.
“No. But he’s embarrassed, at least.” She told Binter about the Flesh Tinker, dwelling on Tomov’s imminent chagrin.
Binter stirred uncomfortably. After a time she rose and went to him. She patted his heavy shoulder, reassuringly. “I’m sorry I worried you, Binter.”
His eyes were the only undamaged part of his face, large and dark and liquid. “I’m afraid when you go to the upper corridors. Earlybird gangs have killed a hundred underpeople this month; you know this.”
“I’ll be more careful.”
When they went to bed, Binter made her forget her scars.
Only two guards watched the starboat.
How would she get inside? She pictured herself pounding on the Flesh Tinker’s armored hatch while the guards cut her to pieces. Ugly thought. Still, what other chance would she ever get to even the score with Tomov?
The guards stood together, talking in low voices, facing away. She saw the hatch split open a crack. The Flesh Tinker motioned urgently at her. She ran.
She was close to the hatch when the guards saw her. One jerked out his weapon and fired as she tumbled into the lock. The Flesh Tinker stepped into the opening, snarling. The beam flared from his Shield, sparking so brightly that Madeira covered her eyes; then the hatch slammed shut. The Flesh Tinker’s face was placid when he turned to her; he looked a hundred years younger. “Rascals,” he said.
In the boat, the light was harsh and blue.
The Flesh Tinker led her through a narrow passageway. To either side, open hatchways revealed the shadowy shapes of machinery. Other cabins glowed with the twinkle of telltales, the pulsing light of antique video screens. At the forward end of the passageway he ushered her into a large lounge.
Lifelike statues rose from the floor, thrust from the walls, tumbled through the ceiling. Every human subspecies seemed represented; alien specimens were even more numerous. She stared at one, a Linean male frozen in the act of bursting upward through the alloy floor. The batrachian face reflected precisely the same emotion as all the others — a transcendent, ineffable surprise. She bent close. Every detail was exact, the scaly blue skin, the tiny hooked teeth, the huge golden eyes wide in astonishment.
She felt a sudden irresistible suspicion that it was a cunningly preserved corpse.
She jerked back and lost her balance, almost fell, but the Flesh Tinker shot out a long arm and set her back on her feet. He did not immediately release her arm, and though his grip was gentle, his fingers felt strong as old tree roots. The magenta eyes were incandescent. “Wondering about my curios, aren’t you?” He let her go, laughed wildly, rolled those eyes, clapped his hands to the sides of his head as if he feared it might split open. Abruptly his mouth snapped shut with an inaudible click, and he threw himself into an armchair upholstered in intricately tattooed leather. “Go or stay,” he said in a calm weary tone, gazing at nothing. “I assure you: all who grace my walls came to their deaths through some natural agency.”
Madeira was terrified, but where would she run, if the Flesh Tinker meant her harm? “Natural agency?” She pointed to the Linean. “What of this one?”
“He died during a voyage. It happens. I myself would never take the coldsleep.”
“Why did he?”
“We had a bargain.” The Flesh Tinker glanced at her sharply. Feverish tides of passion rose and fell in his face. “You may believe me, child. Lying is a luxury reserved for those whose heads are not so full as mine.”
Curiosity pushed back her fear. “What do you want here in Arcimor?”
“That’s my business, and none of yours.”
“Will you answer none of my questions? What of the bargain you made with the Linean?”
“What is it to you? I see, I see it now. You wish to make this same bargain! Hee. Hee.”
“No, actually... ”
“Come!” The voice was dark and cold, suddenly empty of all that extravagant emotion. “Disregard my outbursts, excuse them as the weakness of age. I’ll offer you a bargain. I’ll perform my usual service for you; in return you will come with me on a voyage. But you must ride the ice.”
All her life she had prayed for such an escape. “Your ‘usual service’? What is that?”
The Flesh Tinker looked up at her, too surprised to be exasperated. “Isn’t it obvious? My name is my work. I carve bodies into new shapes.”
New shapes? “Faces, too?”
“The simplest matter.”
“But what do you get from the bargain. Not company, if I must ride the ice.”
“Mementos.” The Flesh Tinker gestured, a large movement that took in the whole lounge. “About one in ten thaw out dead; I then acquire a keepsake, an example of my art. And there are other reasons why I must have the boat to myself. I suffer from fits, you see, and at such times, I’m not myself.”
“But there’s so many of them...”
The magenta eyes cooled. “I’m old.”
"What could you do?”
The Flesh Tinker’s hand shot out, touched her face. The long fingers wandered slowly over the scars. The Flesh Tinker’s fingertips had a dry smoothness, like old polished wood, not unpleasant, but very strange. She struggled not to pull away. His hand trailed down her body, over the narrow shoulder, the thick waist. There was nothing sexual in the touch. “I could give you beauty.”
“Could you make me the Fashion Goddess?”
“Of course, but remember, you can’t stay to enjoy your reign. Is it a bargain?”