Page 10 of Green City Wars

Skotch examines his claws. His nails. The indeterminate things at the ends of his humanised hands. “Sure you’re riding high now,” he notes. “You know there’ll come a time when the wind changes, and the Grays will be really glad of a friend in low places. Someone whose bridges they haven’t burned. Or maybe just one Gray.” It’s easy for the Graycoat Army to think it’s immortal and indomitable, so long as it keeps winning battles and taking territory. There are squirrel kits out there who don’t ever remember losing. But Springer is older than that. She should know better. Or perhaps it’s because she’s old. Perhaps she hopes that by the time the Grays overextend and get a mauling she’ll be gone.

Still, he sees her weigh his words. The fecund melting pot of the Grunstadt is always throwing up new factions. Wasn’t so long ago that nobody would have spared the Graycoats a moment’s worry, amongst Neuwien’s established interests. Maybe tomorrow some other pack of animals will be the city’s enfants terribles, and the squirrels will be on the back foot. Skotch has a few years left in him, if he doesn’t get himself killed. There’s a chance he’ll be of use to Springer or her heirs and assigns, should the whirligig of time bring its revenges in due course.

“What’s your angle, Skotch?” she asks him.

“Not working for the Reds. Not working against the Grays,” he says. “Just to get that right out there. Missing person. Very sad. Family want a reunion.”

“Spare me the sob stories,” Springer tells him. “Put up, Skotch. Who are you tracking and is it live or just the skin?”

“Area round here, in back of Alphonse and Franz-Ferdinand’s.” The exclusive club, the swanky restaurant. “Got any mice?”

Springer stares at him. Staying still too long with eyes open, she looks like she’s died. “Mice?” she bursts out in the end. “Who the hell cares about mice?”

“That a no?”

“You’re serious? How many mice?”

“Just one. One mouse.”

“Nobody goes to this trouble for one mouse,” Springer says disdainfully. “Nobody goes to any trouble for one mouse. Just wait. There’s always another one along in a second. Always more mice.”

Which is the puzzler, about this case. Skotch can only agree. Doesn’t change his brief, though. He shrugs. “So maybe I’ve got some rich cat, got buttons to spare. You got mice or you don’t got mice?”

“You don’t mean rats, now? Not losing your Furze?” In some argots—Espanimàl for example—there’s only the one word for both, and it’s the spin on how you say it that makes the difference. But US Furze and local Tiersprech are pretty clear about the species delineations. “Mice, as in, country matters?”

Skotch nods patiently. “Only a little bird told me,” he says, “how back of Franz-Ferdinand’s there was a whole kitchen of them making packed lunches.” Big business, high value, exactly the sort of thing the Grays would want to skim off. And it was a little dog, not a bird. Sly does business everywhere, and his big-eyed endearing doggies go begging even in the posh places.

Springer’s body language says he’s right and she doesn’t like it. Whatever the mouse community around here are into, it’s valuable enough she doesn’t want him making a mess of it.

“I’m not going into mass rodent smuggling. Just one mouse. One particular mouse. New on the scene. Won’t even have learned the ropes yet.”

She shrugs. “Who keeps track of individual mice?”

“You won’t miss one then, will you? Think of his poor mouse family, how happy they’ll be to know he’s safe and well.”

“You even pick him out of a crowd?” she asks doubtfully.

“Got his scent.”

Springer rolls her shoulders. “This is it, Skotch.” He sees she’s serious. It’s the last time he’s going to be pulling this particular string. “I walk you in. You grab your pet mouse. You walk out.”

“That’s what these feet were made for,” he agrees. A little sad, one more account emptied, and he doesn’t imagine that Uzco goodwill is going to come flooding in to fill the gap.

Springer finishes off her ration block. Flicks crumbs from her fingers. “It’s not this side of the block,” she says. “This kitchen with the mice, it’s the one at Franz-Ferdinand. It’s ours right now. As of yesterday.”

“Lucky me.” Again, Sly’s up-to-date info proving its worth. His dogs can smell what Strain of squirrel is scurrying about in the area, and they noticed a definite shift change.

She hops up, stalks off, slightly stiff, shaking out her legs. That tail wobbles, stiff and awkward. Not for balance so much as status. You don’t keep face as a squirrel without covering your ass with something. Walking carefully in her footsteps, Skotch follows. Moves carefully between the packs of other Grays, who stare suspiciously after him and finger their guns and knives.

5IT ALL KICKS OFF AT FRANZ-FERDINAND'S

It feels like there’s about a hundred different checkpoints between the goods lift where he met Springer and the green ceiling over Franz-Ferdinand’s. The Grays are guarding access to their newly acquired wealth. Down below, the last of the human diners are just settling the bill and finishing their liqueur coffees. Three-quarters of the tables are already vacant and the Gehirner—wearing their little waistcoats in the establishment’s red and white livery—are discreetly clearing away the last of the leftovers. Others are in the kitchens, emptying the trash, shuttling the crockery from dishwashers to cupboards. Franz-Ferdinand’s pays a premium to the city for the full service so its human employees can focus on the award-winning menu and famously snooty table service.

From the interwoven branches above the diners, they cross over the kitchens. The human kitchens, where the human staff work. They’ve mostly knocked off now—given that all the menial clear-up work is being done by little hands behind the scenes. The sous chef and the head sommelier share an ashtray that will itself be cleared off without a human having to break sweat over it. And, behind the scenes, red and gray squirrels will fight over the ashes.

If there’s trouble, Skotch knows it’ll come soon. When those last diners have paid up and looked big. When these two loiterers below have stubbed out their dog-ends and shrugged on their coats. When there aren’t humans around and nobody needs to worry about Rule One, that’s when the knives come out. Right now, Springer’s people own this turf. Meaning behind the walls, under the floor, the overhead of it. The parts where a human wouldn’t be able to fit more than a groping arm. A day ago this was Red turf and, given its value, they want it back. A constant back and forth of shed blood and ripped fur until one side counts the cost and makes the sensible decision. And all the while the other Gehirner, the contractors, the freelancers, can only duck and cover and hope it’s not their nook that the two squabbling armies will storm through on the next reversal.

“Speaking of country matters,” Skotch says to Springer’s scarred back, the stiff panache of her tail, “you hear of a stoat in the area?”