Defort sat with his chair tilted backward against the wall, drinking coffee from a chipped mug. His communications satchel rested beneath the table beside one boot. A folded antenna protruded from it like the leg of some long dead insect.
He saw Koldin and let the chair fall forward.
“Ying-man.”
Koldin kept walking.
“Koldin,” Defort said, rising. “You doing alright? Heard some shit went wrong at a liquor store.”
“Someone stole a bottle.”
“That the shit?”
“Zhat was zhe whole shit.”
Defort nodded with grave satisfaction.
“Sweet.”
He finished his coffee and placed the mug on the table. The cafe owner watched from the doorway as if concerned that Defort might leave without paying, or perhaps that he might remain.
“I’m supposed to join you for the rest of the patrol,” Defort said.
“I know.”
“You sound happy.”
“I slept.”
“That explains it.”
Koldin looked at the submachine gun.
“Why are you carrying zhat?”
“Readiness.”
“It’s empty.”
“Safe readiness.”
“You have no magazines.”
Defort patted one of the chest pouches.
“Got magazines.”
Koldin waited.
Defort opened the pouch and revealed two wrapped sandwiches.
“Different pouch.”
He closed it.
The teasing did not bother Koldin greatly. Defort called him ying-man in the manner of somebody testing a term repeatedly for signs of offense and finding none sufficient to make it interesting. There were people from whom the same words would have carried something else. Koldin had lived long enough to know that language changed weight according to the person speaking it. Defort always meant it as a harmless tease.
“Let’s get on it,” Koldin said.
Defort slung the communications satchel over one shoulder.
“You lead on then, ying-man.”
Koldin started toward the southern road. Defort paid the cafe owner with two local guilders and followed.
They walked abreast where the road allowed it. Where the ruts narrowed, Defort went ahead because his boots tolerated mud better than Koldin’s footwraps and because he had no golok scabbard striking against his leg. The human moved with the loose, forward-leaning gait of somebody always expecting either a conversation or gunfire and uncertain which would arrive first.
“Anything else?” Defort asked.
“Freight yard.”
“What happened?”
“Nozhing.”
“You say that like it was disappointing.”
“It took 'zhree hours.”
“That’s the job.”
“I know.”
Defort glanced at him.
“You’re conversational today.”
Koldin flicked one ear at an insect.
The water stand lay beyond the junction beside a shallow canal choked with reeds and refuse. It consisted of a low plank shack with a serving counter built into the front and a storage shed attached at the rear by a roofed passage. Several empty glass bottles stood upside down in wooden racks. Others had been packed into straw-lined crates beneath the awning. A hand-painted board announced water by the bottle, case, or household jar in trade speech and Tilmuhlan.
The previous prices had been painted over.
The new ones were written above them in chalk.
A pair of women stood near the counter arguing quietly over the cost of a large ceramic jug. One finally paid. The other walked away carrying nothing.
Defort read the board.
“Ah.”
Koldin looked at him.
“That may be the complaint,” Defort said.
“No one explained it coherently.”
“They rarely do when money’s involved.”
The serving window was closed. Koldin went around the side of the shack and found a narrow door beneath a corrugated overhang. He knocked.
Something fell inside.
A moment later bolts were drawn back and the door opened.
The man who appeared was old without seeming weakened by it. His skin had been reddened and toughened by decades of sun, and his white hair stood in several damp formations around his head. He wore a loose yellow shirt open at the throat and trousers held up by suspenders. His expression possessed an almost uninterrupted cheerfulness, the sort that could have belonged either to a generous host or to a man about to convince somebody to purchase something unnecessary.
“Hello, hello,” he said. “Do you need anything?”
“Just a word about somezhing.”
“Ah. Excellent.”