Mean Streets

"Because we have to travel all the way across town," I said. "And the rush hour can be murder."

TWO

She'd never seen the sky before. Preoccupied with so much new sin and strangeness right before her, it had never even occurred to her to stop and look up. Now, on the rain-slick pavement outside the oldest bar in the world, LizaBarclay followed my pointing finger and stood very still, held to the spot by awe and enchantment, quite unaware of all the people, and others, hurrying by on every side. In the Nightside, the sky is full of stars, thousands and thousands of them, burning bright and sharp in constellations never seen in the outside world. And the moon… ah, the moon is big and bright indeed in the Nightside, unnaturally luminous and a dozen times larger than it should be, hanging over us all like a great mindless eye, like an ancient guardian that has quite forgotten its duty and purpose. Seeing all, judging nothing.

I often think that it isn't a matter of where the Nightside is, so much as when.

Meanwhile, all kinds and manner of Humanity, and many things not in any way human, pushed past with brisk impartial haste, intent on their own personal salvations and damnations. No one got too close, though. They might not give a damn about Liza, clearly just another starstruck tourist, but everyone in the Nightside knows me. Or knows enough to give me plenty of room. Liza finally tore her gaze away from the overcrowded heavens, and gave her attention to the crowds bustling around us. The street, as always, positively squirmed with life and energy and all manner of hopes, the pavements packed with desperate pilgrims come in search of sin and temptation and the kinds of love that might not have a name but most certainly have a price. Hot neon blazed and burned up and down the street, gaudy as a hooker's smile, signposts to all the most succulent hells. If you can't find it in the Nightside, it doesn't exist.

Liza clung to my arm like a drowning woman, but to her credit she never flinched or looked away. She took it all in, staring grimly about her, refusing to allow the strange sights and tacky glamour to overwhelm her. She pressed a little more closely to me, as a bunch of eight-foot-tall insect things paused to bow their devilish heads before me. Bones glowed through their flesh, filmy wings fluttered uncomfortably on their long chitinous backs, and their iridescent compound eyes didn't blink once. Their absurdly jointed legs lowered them almost to the ground as they abased themselves, speaking in unison with urgent breathy children's voices.

"All hail to thee, sweet prince of a sundered line, and remember us when you choose to come into your kingdom."

"Move on," I said, as kindly as I could.

They waited a while, antennae twitching hopefully, until they realised I wasn't going to say any more, and then they moved on. Liza watched them go, and then looked at me.

"What the hell was that all about? Who… what were they?"

"They are all that remains of the Brittle Sisters of the Hive," I said. "They were just being polite."

"So you're… someone special here?"

"I might have been, once," I said. "But I abdicated."

"So what are you now?"

"I'm a private investigator," I said. "And a bloody good one."

She favoured me with another of her brief smiles, and then looked out at the traffic, thundering ceaselessly through the Nightside. There was a lot of it to look at. Vehicles of all kinds and natures flashed past, never slowing, never stopping, jockeying endlessly for position and dominance. Some of them carried goods and some of them carried people, and many of them carried things best not thought about at all. Most were just passing through, on their way to somewhere more interesting; mysteries and enigmas, never to be understood.

A horse-drawn diligence from the eighteenth century clattered past, overtaken by a lipstick red Plymouth Fury with a dead man grinning at the wheel. An articulated rig bore the logo of a local long-pig franchise, while a motorcycle gang of screaming skeletons burning forever in hellfire chased something very like a tank crossed with an armadillo. The Boggart On Stilts, one of the Lesser Atrocities, strode disdainfully down the middle of the road, while smaller vehicles nipped in and out of its tall bone stilts. A great black beauty of a car cruised past, driven by an Oriental in black leathers, and the man in the back in the green face mask and snap-brimmed hat nodded respectfully to me in passing. Liza turned and looked at me speechlessly, demanding an explanation.