Chapter 67
Two Sides of a Coin
The rip of paper was very clear in the quiet. Scraps fell from his fingers, some onto the gravel at his feet, some stuck to his boot. Someone in the crowd sucked in a breath. Someone took half a step back. The clerk behind the window came halfway out of his chair, then sat again, pinned there.
Margot didn't stop him. She only watched his hands, page after page, her face unchanged, like she'd seen worse.
"Destroying it only proves it was valid."
Eren rolled the last scrap off his fingertip and didn't brush it away. He let it drop into the dust. He took half a step in and stood at the wood lip of the window, an arm's length from Margot. Wind came through from the stacks and tugged his coat back.
"Lawyers… leftover junk. No use in this world at all. You know why, Miss Mard."
He dragged the name.
Margot's brow moved, very slight. "It's Margot."
Buckle held his breath off to the side and behind. His fingers had gone soft on the broken cigarette. A few loaders eased into the shadow of the stacks, like even half a body in the open was too much.
"No force behind it, law is just talk."
Lila glanced at him. She didn't pull him back.
"I believe Rusak Town has sufficient security."
She said it looking straight at him.
"That so. I don't," Eren said. "In ten years I haven't seen a place safe enough."
He didn't raise it.
"Anyone still standing here rolled through the end of the world." His eyes went past Margot's face in a half-circle, no names, and still took every one. "Even if they haven't got a body on them, most of them are thieves, bandits. Maybe a rapist or two."
Someone swallowed.
"That's Rusak. The real Rusak." Eren looked back at her. "So, counselor. How do you plan to make that law of yours work out here."
Margot's chin came up a fraction. She settled her coat collar. Her voice came sharper, steadier than before.
"Don't forget, Mr. Eren. I'm a survivor too."
She didn't take her eyes off him. Her weight shifted back a little.
Eren looked at her two seconds.
His left arm swelled against the old belt. He set his boot on the gravel, fine dirt and grit squeezing out at the edge, leaving a print a little deeper than the rest.
The workers closest took another half-step without thinking.
Eren nodded, slow. "You keep running this game. We'll see how long you 'survive.'"
Margot's lashes dropped a moment and came straight back up.
"Fine," she said. "I hope the next time we meet is in court."
Her voice cut back to business. "Until then, please leave. Keep crowding like this and I will report you to the town hall for disrupting lawful operations."
Eren flicked the last bit of paper off his fingers. The breath in his chest hadn't gone all the way down.
Meng Shoucheng tugged his arm, voice very low. "Eren, let's go. We talk it over back there."
Eren nodded once.
"We're going."
Lila turned first. The workers made a narrow lane without being asked. Some looked at their own boot tips. Nobody said they were with them. Nobody started up again.
Lila went two steps and looked back at Buckle.
He wouldn't meet it.
The three of them went out the gate. The man there didn't speak this time.
At the street Shoucheng fell a half-step behind.
"I have to come back this afternoon," he said.
Lila looked at him. Her mouth moved. In the end she said nothing.
An office on the second floor of the South Yard's rear building was a good deal quieter than the lot below.
Through the window you could still see people breaking apart. Now and then a scrap of paper slid along the glass in the wind.
A man in a proper suit had been standing at the window the whole time. However long the noise lasted below, he had watched it through the gap.
Margot Vale stood two steps from him.
"Margot. Any trouble?" The man asked it without hurry.
"Ethan, from a legal standpoint, I think their chance of winning is close to zero."
She tipped her head toward the window as she said it.
"But I have to warn you: we're still standing on wasteland. Don't forget what no-man's-land means just because you put a suit on. Rusak's the same."
She turned back to the man called Ethan. The professional edge had come off.
"No need to risk your neck for a little money. Not yours, not mine. Don't you think?"
Ethan touched a cufflink. "You think I should pay?"
He said "pay" like the sum had already been cut off his books. His mouth pulled down.
Margot let a breath out. "Safest way, if you ask me. We've seen the background. Besides Meng Shoucheng, the other two…"
Ethan lifted his chin at the window. "Hnh. Town's got the guard. Guild's got private troops. I don't believe two outsiders can kick up much of a wave."
"All right then. I'll stay on the case. If I'm actually in danger, I walk at once. That doesn't breach our agreement, or a lawyer's ethics."
Ethan looked at her, and at the end gave her one short, cold line. "Suit yourself."
The three of them didn't linger on the street after the yard. Shoucheng took them around into a strip of dead ground under the side wall, last night's wood chips underfoot, a dry scrape when they stepped. The shouting from the yard came through the dirt wall thin.
Shoucheng spoke first, still holding it down. "I want to go to the town hall. Put the papers in."
Eren looked at him. "Town hall and the Guild are in the same pocket. They only help people with money."
"I know," Shoucheng said. "I don't have another way. I'm not you. I can't go to war with them."
He stopped. His eyes dropped to the chips.
"We all came through those years. Living now is already hard. Rusak's a lot better than outside. I can't take Xiangyang and go. We go out, we may not live."
Eren was a while before he said, "All right. You need something, say. Don't put it all on the town hall, though. We'll find another way too."
At "another way," Lila turned to him.
"You planning to get rough?"
"Not yet."
He said it like any other line.
"A few of us isn't enough. I want to get the union. Have them help Little Meng."
Lila let a breath go. "And we need to get word to my people, remember? More people behind us, this town's nothing."
Eren answered. "I remember."
He knew she meant the revolutionaries.
Shoucheng's head was a mess. He didn't ask about Lila's "people."
They stood under the wall a little longer, then came out of the narrow lane and went their own ways.