39

The Goddamn Parrot plopped onto my shoulder as I hit the street. “Shiver me timbers,” I muttered. “Do I live a blessed life, or what?”

“Awk. Something is following you.”

“Am I surprised.”

“Many of the presences are coming this way.”

People stared. It was not often you saw a man chatting with a parrot. “And I’m headed thataway.” I began trotting toward the Dream Quarter. Shouldn’t be that hard to make the safety of the Street of the Gods. Getting back off again might turn out to be a grand adventure, though.

Apparently the Dead Man had little trouble detecting gods once he took an interest. In fact, there was an amazing array of things he could do if you could just get him started. That was a secret I really wanted to crack. I might trade my keyness . . . Nah.

I wondered if the Dead Man being able to spot them meant that my divine acquaintances had chosen to manifest themselves especially strongly during their struggle or if, perhaps, TunFaire was always infested with petty gods and we were detecting this bunch only because we were watching for them. My guess was that these two gangs were obvious mainly because they were fighting for their lives.

The Goddamn Parrot fluttered up and away, off to I-don’t-know-where, once again leaving me to dread a future in which the Dead Man could tag along wherever I went through that bird-brained feather duster.

I walked around a corner and there was Rhogiro, bigger than life and twice as ugly, holding up a wall like your everyday garden-variety street thug. Obviously he wasn’t really waiting for me but was there just in case something turned up. I never slowed a step. I whipped across into a narrow breezeway. It dead-ended on me. I put my back against one wall, my hands and feet against the other. Up I went. Meantime, Rhogiro realized who he had seen, came to the end of the breezeway and did some holy thundering. He was too big to get into the crack and too stupid to recall that he had divine powers. At least in the moments it took me to get up top.

My luck, as always, was mixed. The climb was just two stories. Good. The roofs up there were flat and identical and stretched on and on. Excellent. They could be run upon almost like the street. None of the buildings were more than three feet from their neighbors. Fine.

But in this part of town the slumlords wasted no resources on maintenance. My foot went through a roof almost immediately. I didn’t get hurt, but I realized that I had to slow down or get down.

Slowing down gave me time to think about what I was doing, which, mainly, was heading away from the Dream Quarter. I needed to get down and head the other way.

I got down rough, after jumping to a roof so fragile I punched right through. I caught myself before I plunged into whatever disaster lurked below. I stared downward. My eyes were not used to the gloom there, but the area immediately below me looked empty. I lowered myself as far as I could, let go. The floor was not that far. And it held.

The place had been abandoned. Only the masonry was more substantial than the roof. Now that I was into the gloom I could see light leaking through the overhead in fifty places.

The walls consisted of plaster crumbled till it was almost gone, the lathing behind it mostly fallen too. The floor groaned and creaked. The stairway looked so precarious I backed down on all fours. I was interested only in getting out but did note that there was nothing left worth stealing except the brick itself and some wooden bits that would end up as firewood.

I was surrounded by things on their last legs. My partner was dead already. My housekeeper had one foot in the grave. The city where I lived seemed ready to commit suicide.

The street out front was almost empty. That was an ugly omen. These tenement blocks swarm with kids playing, mothers gossiping, grannies whining about their rheumatiz, old men playing checkers and complaining about how the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Where was the Goddamn Parrot? I could use a good scouting report.

Didn’t look like I had time for anything fancy. I ran toward the Dream Quarter. On the other side of the tenement row Rhogiro continued to bellow and blunder around. Maybe his displeasure was leaking over enough to have startled the locals.

I could not see that some gods would be much missed.