Whatever else could be said about the town watch of Etissa, their officers were undoubtedly long-suffering, something that Galen was slowly coming to appreciate. Ever since Zana had inserted herself into the murder case of Sapan's most notorious reporter and human-rights activist, she had lost their most important survival tool: respect for an officer of the watch.
"You cannot be serious!" she snapped at the chief of police, a fat, elderly Chimpanzee who had the bad luck of working his shift when he and Zana had stormed into his office. Well, actually Zana had done the storming; Galen had tried to hold her back and calm her down, but could as well have tried to stop a winter gale.
"I found this in the gutter of Skinner Street!" Zana pushed Peet's pendant under the Chief's nose. "It was torn from my human's neck, see here? How dare you suggest that he just ran off into the mountains?"
"Because it wouldn't have been the first time, ma'am," the Chief said, and gently pushed her hand away. "Them servants run away all the time, and yours even had money to spend. Have to tell you like it is, you won't see your human nor you money again."
"He didn't run away," Zana said through clenched teeth, and Galen found it prudent to step in.
"It's highly unlikely that our human just ran off," he said calmly, and paused until the Chimp finally averted his gaze from Zana and made eye contact with him. "He's trained as a bodyguard, and he's been thoroughly broken in. He's incapable of even thinking of rebellion."
Great Cesar, that must be the biggest string of lies I've ever told.
The chief scratched his jaw, obviously not convinced. "Well, suppose 'twas like you said," he conceded, "then I have to wonder what business your bodyguard had in Skinner Street. It's in a bad part of town, especially for a human."
"What do you mean?" Galen exchanged a worried look with Zana.
The chief swayed his head, as if he was already regretting his words. "We have a bit of a problem with illegal manfighting in this area," he admitted. "We had some success with rooting out the smaller businesses..."
"Businesses?" Zana asked, flabberghasted.
The chief shrugged. "Well, it's illegal business, of course, but make no mistake, they make a lot of money with those fights." He gestured at a poster behind him that promised a reward of ten thousand sembles for any ape who provided substantial aid in bringing down the organized manfighting crime in Etissa. "We're still trying to get a hold of some of the big players."
He heaved his considerable weight out of the chair. "If we come across your human in the course of our investigations, we'll return him to you. So as I said," he walked towards the door of his office, "we're looking into the matter." He opened the door, a clear hint that their audience was over.
Galen took Zana by the arm and dragged her out of the room before she could jump at the burly chief's throat. "We appreciate your, ah, dedication to the case," he said, and quickly shoved her towards the main entrance.
"Keep moving," he said under his breath, smiling and nodding at the officers in passing, "or do you want to spend the night in a prison cell? That won't help Peet at all." He could feel her trembling with fury in his grip, but she kept her mouth shut until they were safely outside the watch house.
"These... these incompetent, lazy, arrogant, smug, cold-hearted... insufferable baboons!" Zana shook off his hand and marched two steps away, then stopped, fists clenched at her sides. "He didn't care in the least about what could happen to Peet! And he'll do absolutely nothing to find him!"
She spun around and hurried back to him. "We need to go back to Skinner Street and start asking around. Someone there must have seen something!"
"Zana... Zana." Galen snatched her arm when she moved to turn away again, and pulled her around to him. "Zana, I promise, we will find Peet. But it's madness to go into that part of town unprepared, and at this time of day..." He gestured vaguely up to the sky. "It's already getting dark again, and as much as I like Peet, there is no way in all the white wastes that I'll let you go there at night. We'd vanish as completely as Peet, and there'd be no-one left to go looking for us."
"This is the second night he's gone, Galen," Zana said in a strained voice. "Mothers only know what they've already done to him... what they're doing to him now..."
"Don't," Galen snapped. "Don't drive yourself crazy with these fantasies," he added, more calmly. "They won't help him, and they'll just impair your capacity to think clearly - and that is our most important weapon right now. - Let's call it a day for now. We're both exhausted, and we need to make a new plan." He linked arms with her and they began to slowly walk back to the inn.
"Look at it this way," he tried to console Zana. "We found out Peet's last whereabouts, and the chief gave us some important new information. We did achieve something today. And Peet isn't one of your toddlers - he survived Urko's interrogation, for weeks. He'll take care of himself. And he'll know we'll come for him."
Zana merely nodded, but she didn't say a single word until the yellow light of the inn's door lamp lapped against their robes.
"I hope you're right about Peet," she murmured as she pushed open the heavy gate to the inn's yard. "But he never really recovered from what Urko inflicted on him. He wouldn't be able to endure this kind of treatment for weeks anymore."
They were at Skinner Street before sunrise, hand guns strapped to their bodies; Galen had insisted on bringing Betsy along, too, as a visible deterrent for any enterprising inhabitant of the neighbourhood, and stood now behind her like a bodyguard, scowling at everyone who so much as glanced at them.
Zana thought that this also prevented her from getting close enough to anyone to ask them if they had seen Peet, but said nothing. For her own part, she was carrying a bag that contained a bottle of hot tea and something to eat, and a collection of bandages and wound dressings, in case Peet needed some first aid when they found him.
She scoured every inch of Skinner Street, several times, as well as all its surrounding alleys, and even the small paths between houses that stank of urine and other things she didn't want to think about, but came up empty-handed.
"Whoever attacked Peet did it at the spot where I found the horse pendant," she said to Galen while they were sharing the bottle of tea. The hot liquid soothed her frazzled mind and relaxed her body enough that she could nibble at a piece of nut bread.
"They must've outnumbered him, and taken him by surprise, because I didn't find any blood stains on the stones," she continued, and thoughtfully chewed on a dried apricot. "And considering what an excellent fighter Peet is - and that he was armed with a knife - I find that remarkable. And disturbing."
Galen took the tea flask from her hand. "Do you think this was planned? That they were waiting for him?"
Zana swallowed heavily. "I got in a bit of a scuffle just outside the Tipsy Goat," she admitted. "Three thugs tried to rob me when I went out to buy some tea, and Peet came back from the stables and jumped right in. He... he killed all three of them, in mere moments."
Galen raised his brows at that. "He killed three apes? And that didn't result in a lynch mob?"
Zana shook her head. "No, on the contrary - I saw money changing hands. They bet on the fight. After what the chief of police told us yesterday, I'm thinking that someone might've gotten the idea that Peet could make them a lot more money that way..."
"Phew." Galen stared straight ahead, the flask forgotten in his hand. "Do you realize what we're up against here? Not even the police has been able to catch these people."
"Well, now I'm relieved," Zana deadpanned. "For a moment, I thought you'd say that competent people were on the case. But with the Etissan police as our yardstick, I'm really optimistic that we'll find Peet." She popped the last morsel of nut bread into her mouth and chewed furiously. "And then I'll burn their establishment to the ground, and walk those baboons to the watch, at gunpoint, and then I'll call out that lazy bum of a chief..."
"I like that plan," Galen said hastily, "but let's focus on finding Peet first, shall we?"
Since their search for physical clues had been exhausted, the second part of Zana's plan consisted in finding witnesses. She soon gave up on the apes - none of them cared about humans in general, or her human in particular, except maybe to bet on them. Zana suspected that many, if not all inhabitants of this quarter sought to make some money with betting in those illegal fights. They had no reason to talk to her - and maybe every reason to alert the organizer of these fights to change their hiding place.
She turned to the street humans instead.
This turned out to be even less successful, even after Galen had tried to hide Betsy under his robe. Finally, she spotted a flock of cubs - of children - that retreated into a blind alley when she and Galen walked towards them. She had Galen wait at the mouth of the alley - "Don't let them out before I tell you" - and slowly approached the little humans who were huddled against the wall at the end of the street.
"I mean you no harm," she said, and turned her palms up and outward. "I just want to ask you a few questions."
The tallest of the children - a boy just shy of entering puberty, though it was hard to say with these starved individuals - began to give the smaller children a leg-up, pushing them upwards so they could grab the crown of the wall and climb over it. He was hoisting up his little comrades at an amazing speed, and they were crawling over the wall as agilely as little monkeys; Zana couldn't help but admire both the boy's strength, and the other children's speed during that maneuver. When she had reached the boy, he already had brought all his charges to safety.
"That was really impressive," she said to the boy, who was waiting for her in a slightly crouched stance, staring fixedly at her. Looking for any sudden movements that would telegraph an attack, Zana realized. "But I really mean you no harm. I'm looking for a friend who was abducted by apes. He's a human, like you."
The boy neither moved, nor said a word. Zana suddenly realized that he had taken up the same position as Peet did when he prepared to strike, and cautiously took a step back. She had no idea if this human was armed, but there was a good chance that he was. Life on these streets made it almost inevitable for a human to learn to fight - and she suspected that those who were good enough to survive on the streets would end up in the fighting pits of the apes.
"I'm afraid for his life," she tried again. "If you saw anything, if you can tell me where they took him, I'll be very grateful. You'll get a reward - lots of food, warm clothes, whatever you need-"
Suddenly, the boy lunged at her. Zana threw herself to the side, and a flash of metal grazed her sleeve. Behind her, Galen shouted something unintelligible, and then a loud crack thundered in her ears.
"Galen, no!" she shouted, keeping her eyes glued to the boy who had frozen at the sound, knife still in his hand. She stared at it, then at the boy - feral and frightened, and absolutely unreachable for her.
She straightened. "Let him go."
Behind her, she heard Galen work Betsy's lever. "He tried to kill you."
Not taking her eyes off the boy, Zana repeated, "Let him go. He's just a child, and he was frightened for his life. - You can go now," she added towards the boy. "My friend won't shoot you." She slowly walked backwards until she bumped into Galen, and pushed down the barrel of his gun. "Go."
The boy moved so quickly that she wasn't sure if she would've been able to dodge another attack. But he just raced past them and vanished into another alley.
Behind her, Galen drew a deep breath. "I wasn't going to shoot him," he said, his voice a bit unsteady. "Just frighten him. But Cesar, Zana, he would've killed you in a heartbeat!"
Zana turned around to face him. "I know. It's how he survived this long. Galen, we need Alan, and we need him today. None of these humans is going to talk to either of us, and we need to follow this trail as long as it's still fresh."
Galen frowned at her. "You found Peet's pendant yesterday, and Peet has been gone for three days now. We don't have a fresh trail."
Zana grabbed his robe. "Yes, we have! The knife that this boy brandished at me - that was Peet's knife."