I glanced at the mouth of the pipe. We’d been standing right in front of it, and talking a lot, for longer than was a good idea. I moved out of the channel, onto the at least dry-ish land at the bottom of the embankment – and out of line-of-sight of someone, say, inside the pipe.
Because Bradley was right again, or half right; it wasn’t technically a sewer. I waved him over to join me.
“Okay,” I said, “But I’m warning you now. This is perfectly logical.”
“So it won’t make sense, right?”
I hid my smile by scratching my chin. He thought he was joking. No such luck.
“With the Border sealed,” I told him, “He’s going to need to go to ground. Do you remember what he said about being glad to have a roof over his head?”
“He said it beat sleeping under a bridge.”
“I’m guessing that part of his patter was true,” I said. “But almost every bridge is the city is either staked out heavily by the Guard, or already claimed by other Fae. No joy there.”
He did that almost-smile lip-twitch again. “Let me guess. There’s another but.”
“But,” I said, “And most people don’t know this, there used to be dozens of rivers and streams crossing what became Toronto. Some got diverted, some dried up as their sources got paved over. And some,” I went on, “Got buried. They’re still there, but flowing through underground pipes. They still wind up in the lake,” I pointed to the mouth of the pipe, “Same as the stormwater drains.”
I could almost see the penny drop behind his eyes. “So this isn’t just a drain,” he said, “It’s a river. And a road that crosses a river is a bridge. Which means that every part of the city that’s above the drain…”
“Counts as a bridge,” I finished.
“But that doesn’t make any…” he stopped himself. He reflected, redirected and resumed, “I get what you’re saying, but the whole theory lives or dies by a freaking technicality.”
“Forget it, Bradley,” I said, “It’s Fairyland.”
He looked at me, and cocked his head.
“It’s Fairyland?” I repeated, “Don’t you…? I mean they have their own rules, and they stick to them. Yeah, we’re talking about a loophole, but it’s one they’re smart enough to exploit. And you,” I added, “Have no appreciation of the classics.”
He held up his hand. Oh, spurk, I thought, and listened.
Yeah, I heard it too. But it wasn’t coming from the tunnel, as I feared. It was coming from the top of the embankment, from the concrete blocks around and above the pipe. Something, or someone… no, more than one… was moving around up there, making an odd, sort of scraping sound, like…
I lost the thought when Bradley held up a hand again. He pointed at me, then traced an upwards arc that pointed behind me then to the top of the embankment.
I go back, up and come at them from the side, I thought. Made sense. I nodded.
He pointed to himself, then straight up.
Since he probably wasn’t trying to explain that he was Superman, I surmised that he meant he was going to take the direct approach.
That struck me as a Very Bad Idea, but before I could say so, I heard the scraping sound again. It was the sort of sound that makes your teeth tingle. It sounded like metal, scraping on the concrete. As if someone was creeping around up there wearing metal shoes.
Metal shoes oh spurking hell.
I pulled my gun and my Badge just as the little man in the red hat jumped on Bradley’s head.
To Be Continued
