Koldin and Defort eventually finished patrolling the last of the market. Koldin saw someone dismantled a stall made of three doors laid across barrels. The market remained loud, but the sound had lost its morning expectancy and acquired the exhaustion of something that had been arguing with itself since sunrise.
Koldin checked the map of the town in his breast pocket to double-check what remained.
He already knew what remained. Still, he looked at it.
Defort appeared from the next aisle carrying nothing except the equipment he had started with and a paper cone filled with roasted seeds.
Koldin folded the map.
“Last place we’ve got to patrol is zhe airport's perimeter, but zhat’s-”
“Other side of town.”
“Yeah.”
Defort ate another seed and spat the husk delicately onto the ground.
“Not a big deal, ying-man. Catch a bus. Or get a teamster to drive us over if we compensate him.”
Koldin looked toward the road beyond the market.
“Right.”
Walking would have taken most of the remaining afternoon and accomplished nothing except teaching his feet additional facts about Lenkerk.
They went looking for transport.
A bus presented itself before they had gone two streets.
It stood beside the road coughing smoke from beneath its rear bodywork while three men loaded crates onto a rack welded to the roof. Great bundles of green pigang followed, wrapped in coarse netting and tied down with rope. The leaves protruded in every direction until the upper half of the vehicle resembled something agricultural that had accidentally grown wheels.
The bus itself was narrow, tall, and painted a yellow that had survived mostly in protected corners. Mud obscured the lower panels. Several windows had been replaced with mismatched glass. The front destination board contained four names, two crossed out and one painted over by hand.
People were already climbing aboard.
Koldin watched a woman push a basket through the door before herself.
“Let’s get on.”
Defort squinted at the route board.
“You know where it goes?”
“It goes somewhere past zhe airport.”
“You sure?”
“No.”
“Good enough.”
They joined the line, Defort giving the paper cone with seeds to someone who was hanging around the bus stop but not actually getting on.
The driver sat behind a wheel large enough to belong to a truck and accepted their fares without looking directly at them. Koldin counted several loose Olissingse guilder coins into the metal tray. Defort did the same. The driver struck a lever with his palm and two paper tickets emerged with a mechanical cough.
Inside there was nowhere for comfort to establish itself.
The aisle was narrow. The seats had been designed for people smaller than Defort and perhaps for people who sweated less than anybody in Tilmuhl. The bus smelt of hot vinyl, engine fumes, fruit, human stench, yinglet stench, wet cloth, tobacco, and whatever animal had recently occupied the rear bench.
Koldin found a seat beside an open window.
Defort squeezed in beside him and immediately became apologetic by shape alone, drawing his knees together, setting his communications satchel on his lap, and attempting to reduce the width of his shoulders through moral effort.
His submachine gun became trapped between the seat and his ribs.
He pulled it free.
“Shit.”
Koldin sat back.
“Careful.”
“I am being careful.”
“You’re fighting zhe seat.”
“Seat started it.”
Koldin looked at him. Defort grinned.
The bus filled around them.
A human woman carrying a sleeping child sat across the aisle. Behind her two mine workers spoke quietly in Tilmuhlan. Somewhere toward the back a yinglet complained that somebody was standing on his tail and somebody else insisted that he was not.
The driver started the engine properly. The bus vibrated from one end to the other.
Koldin folded his arms.
Defort noticed.
“You sleeping?”
“Yeah.”
“We just got on.”
“I know.”
“You slept after the freight yard.”
“I know.”
Defort looked toward the ceiling as if appealing to whatever authority had designed yinglet physiology.
“Wake me when we’re zhere.”
“Assuming I know where there is.”
“You’ll figure it out.”
Koldin settled farther back.
The seat was too deep for him and the upper edge pressed against the base of his ears. He shifted once, found an arrangement that produced the fewest complaints from his spine, crossed his arms, and closed his eyes.
Sleep did not come immediately.
The market still existed inside his head for a little while. The blind yinglet. The dog. The revolver. The impact traveling through his leg. The slight ache left behind in his foot.
Then those things lost sequence.
The bus lurched forward. The gearbox produced a metallic howl as the driver searched for second.
Koldin did not open his eyes. The vehicle gathered speed.
Wind entered through the window and moved the fur along his cheek. The engine roared beneath the floor. Wooden crates shifted overhead. Somebody laughed when the bus struck a pothole hard enough to lift several passengers from their seats.
None of it reached him in the form of a problem.
Yinglets had slept beneath weather, beneath branches, in crowded nests, closets, warehouses, wagons, military barracks, factories, tenements, ships. Eight centuries of change had introduced many improvements to the arrangement, but the underlying requirement never changed.
The mind learned what noises mattered.