The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (boyxboy)

CHAPTER 3

Varez | Present Day

Like the dog in the field just let off the leash, Az doesn't waste a second once his feet hit the dock.

Even with one of Slade's sentries hiding just out of sight, off the ship he has a certain degree of freedom. He can go where he likes and do what he wants for the most part. Providing he can justify himself to Slade later of course, depending on how detailed a report his babysitter chooses to give. In the past, Slade has indulged his wanderlust. He's not sure how true that holds now, but he has the whole town to hunt through for this Enriqué, and that's better than a food storage room.

He follows the docks closer to the harbour where the wood becomes a stone road, then a long promenade that curves along the entire length of the shore as far as he can see. Some way along the age-smoothed stones, the path diverges to the right, up a wide main thoroughfare which surely leads to the town's centre. It's this pavement he follows, peering through the shop windows that line the sides as if inspiration is hiding within.

Varez isn't a place Az has ever been to before. He's not sure he could even say if "Varez" is the name of the town or the country, but he does know it's somewhere vaguely southwestern on a map. Growing up in a desert town, it's not the stifling heat that bothers him, it's the humidity. He's barely a few steps up the main road before his hair starts to stick to his forehead and his nose feels clogged with the moisture in the air.

Once at the top of the cobblestoned hill, the road widens into an open space with stalls set up in almost every available cranny. The street is packed with both buyers and sellers. Az can hear people haggling, merchants beckoning, and the sound of a baby crying.

If Enriqué Molina is home for his child's birth, there's a chance he or someone who knows him could be here, perusing one of the stalls that sells baby wares.

It's too crowded for Az to tell if any of these vendors have something like that, so he steels himself and squeezes into the bustling market. Inside the throng, it's unbearably clammy, he can't breathe without brushing against someone, yet Az feels right at home.

Back when he'd lived and slept on the streets of Albahri, masses like these made it so much easier to survive. And Az had gotten maybe just as good as anyone at pickpocketing unsuspecting shoppers. In the beginning, thieving had been necessary. He'd grown up in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere and had learnt nothing that could have prepared him for life on the busy streets of a port town like Albahri. He had watched, hungry in the shadows between buildings, as children younger than him freed passersby of their valuables with ease and a clean conscience. Of all the talents he could have been born with, of course something dishonest is his calling.

Yes, it had started as necessity. Then it had become a bit of a game. Who could steal the fastest? Who could be the most obvious and still get away? Who could steal enough to buy everyone a filling meal that night? And once it became a game, it was one of the only ways he could entertain himself.

Az is hesitant even these days to label the homeless children of Albahri gangs considering they hadn't exactly been fighting for territory or mugging each other, but they'd tended to stick to their own social groups. They had operated mostly together and only for those within those groups. The majority shared sleeping spaces: safer than sleeping alone when the streetwalkers came out, though Az had found it wasn't the workers you had to watch out for, it was usually their bosses.

Sandwiched between customers now with the smell of fresh sweat in his nose, Az feels a sort of itch in his hands and has to remind himself that's not what he's here for.

So instead, he acts like everyone else. He browses through jewellery and trinkets, appraising them all with an eye that Slade trained personally, listening to those closest for hints or clues. He pauses at a stall selling vibrant silks and idly wonders if he'd be able to get away with a large bolt of the purple stuff even in a horde like this.