Tomorrow, the Killing (Low Town 2)

by Polansky, Daniel

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘There ain’t but so much milk to go around.’

  As I’d mentioned, being cracked as an outhouse rodent didn’t stop Adisu from being right about most things. I’m not sure what exactly that says about the world. Nothing good, I don’t imagine.

  ‘All right,’ Adisu said, standing abruptly. The Muscle seemed caught off guard as well, because it took him a moment to do the same. ‘I said what I got to say. Twenty-five ochre by the day after tomorrow, or my gums start flapping with the wind. Whatever cakes you got baking, you sure as hell don’t need my crazy ass sticking a finger in the dough.’ He was back in good humor, smiling at me affectionately. ‘You be well. I’ll see you soon.’

  The Muscle waited a second, then gave a sort of half-shrug and disappeared after him.

  I finished off my cigarette and started on another, running over the last ten minutes. They didn’t look any better through the smoke. I had too much to worry about to add Adisu’s madness to the mix. And while the Bruised Fruit Mob were hardly considered reliable, there was enough truth in his story to get me killed by any number of people.

  Of course, there were other ways to fix the situation than the one he’d presented.

  The waitress came back to our table. On her shoulder was a tray. On the tray was enough food to feed a family of eight. ‘Where’d your friends go?’ she asked.

  ‘Weren’t never here,’ I said.

  She dropped her burden onto the table, rattling the plates and sending coffee spilling. ‘Well, who the hell is gonna pay for all this?’

  ‘He is,’ I said, pulling an argent out of my pocket. ‘He just doesn’t know it yet.’

  30

  The man at the front desk of Black House was not inclined towards letting me wander the halls unaccompanied.

  A day had passed since my meeting with Adisu, a day spent avoiding the sun and Adeline, holed up in my room burning through a half-ochre worth of dreamvine. In the city outside the seeds of my plot were beginning to sprout, soon to flower into chaos and violence. They’d require cultivation, but at that exact moment all they needed was a little bit of time. I went to bed early, and woke up the same, heading out to visit Guiscard before breakfast. I’d thought a lot about what I was going to say to him, but I’ll admit I hadn’t foreseen the possibility that said dialogue would never take place.

  Back when I’d worked in Black House the desk was occupied by an agent. I suppose there had been some sort of a change in policy, because their new doorman was nothing but that, a functionary with gray eyes and a soul to match. I didn’t blame him not letting me in. Keeping out the riff-raff was chief amongst his duties, and I certainly looked the part. I did, however, blame him for being snide, narrow of mind, and less capable of independent thought than a marching ant. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, not sounding like it. ‘But without an appointment there’s really nothing I can do.’

  ‘Just send someone up to tell him I’m here.’

  ‘There’s no one here but me – and if I go upstairs to give him a message, there would be no one left to watch the desk.’

  ‘I’ll stay here and watch it.’

  ‘I don’t . . .’ The introduction of an alternative confused him. ‘I don’t think that would work.’

  ‘Perhaps we could rig up some sort of machine which would pass the note along to him. Something with rigs and pulleys.’

  ‘I’m not very mechanically inclined,’ he admitted.

  ‘How about carrier pigeons? Do you have any of those?’

  He shrugged helplessly. He’d been well trained for his position. Mostly, organizations do not reward solving problems – they reward not fucking up, and the easiest way not to fuck up is to do nothing. But true inertia is a difficult state to reach, and after a few moments of silence an idea seemed to come to him. It was a rare thing, no doubt. It took him a while to recognize it, and longer still to give it voice. ‘Maybe if you told me what business you have with Agent Guiscard?’

  How to answer that one? That Agent Guiscard had forced me to act a double agent, setting up the downfall of a rebellious entity conceivably bent on the destruction of the Crown? Or that the above was false, that I was in fact engineering a conflict between Black House and the Association, and Agent Guiscard the unwitting instrument of my revenge? ‘I’m afraid he wouldn’t want me to divulge the specifics.’

  I heard the door open behind me and I tensed up slightly. There were still people walking the halls who remembered when I’d done the same, and I imagined they’d be quick to greet my return with violence.

  Turned out I didn’t need to worry. ‘Agent Guiscard,’ the doorman said.

  ‘Hello, Brunsford.’

  Guiscard pulled up next to me. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, but before I could answer he shook his head. ‘Nevermind – best discuss it in my office.’

  ‘One moment,’ I said, turning back to Brunsford. ‘If you knew he was out, then why did we have to go through all of this?’

  Brunsford shrugged, having difficulty seeing the connection. ‘You didn’t ask.’

  In a sense, I envied him. Few people are so well suited to their duties. I thanked him, then followed Guiscard upstairs.

  He took a seat, and I joined him. ‘How much do you like me?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Am I just some ten-copper trollop whom you pick up and use at your convenience? Or is what we have between us real?’

  ‘This is a rather tedious introduction to whatever you’re here for.’

  ‘Let me summate.’ I leaned back in my chair and propped my legs up onto his desk. ‘I need you to crush a bug for me.’

  He narrowed his eyes, stiffened one arm and pushed my boots back to the ground. ‘What kind of bug?’

  ‘Islander, early twenties, savagely insane. Goes by Adisu the Damned.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘When I had your job, Guiscard, I knew the name of every criminal who could command a blade from Grenmont to the docks.’

  ‘You don’t have my job anymore.’

  ‘And I still know the name of every criminal who can command a blade from Grenmont to the docks.’

  ‘This Adisu – what exactly has he done to you?’

  ‘At this exact moment, he hasn’t done anything. But if we wait around till tomorrow, he’ll make sure I’m not here to answer that question a second time.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ve done something to deserve it.’

  ‘We’ve all done something to deserve it.’

  ‘And what exactly would you like to have happen to your unfortunate adversary?’

  ‘The world would be a finer place without him crawling on its surface, but so long as he’s out of my way, I don’t really mind. The bay or the dungeon, your preference.’

  ‘I can’t just disappear a fellow without reason.’

  ‘In fact you can – that’s basically the point of being in Black House. You can pretty much do anything you want to anyone, and they can’t do anything back to you.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Say I could do it. Why would I?’

  ‘In exchange for the kindnesses I’m doing you.’

  ‘Awful presumptuous of you, thinking to cash in a chit you haven’t earned yet.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning for all your big talk about having Joachim Pretories’ ear, so far you’ve given me nothing more solid than broken wind.’

  ‘I don’t imagine I’ll be of any more help to you dead,’ I answered. ‘Try to think a few moves ahead, Guiscard. The Association and the Giroies will be at war soon enough. You’ll be happy to have me around when they do.’

  ‘So you’ve said – I’m still not sure I understand why Pretories would want to stir up violence against the Giroies.’

  ‘Same reason any leader goes to war – to divert attention from their own failures. Better to get everyone focusing on an enemy than have them mull over his inability to keep their pensions
inviolate.’

  ‘It doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘The world rarely does,’ I said. ‘You need to look past how you think things should work, and pay attention to how things actually do.’

  ‘Regardless,’ he said after a brief moment of thought, ‘I’m an Agent of the Crown, tasked with upholding the law and enforcing justice. Neither of those activities are served by what you’re asking.’

  ‘You never hit a suspect? Never set a man up for a fall he didn’t know was coming? Your past so lily white as all that?’

  ‘There’s a difference between bending the rules and bringing the full force of Black House to bear on a private struggle between two . . .’ he sputtered for a moment, trying to find a term to sufficiently convey his contempt, ‘. . . degenerate fucking drug dealers.’

  ‘You wound me. Like I said last time – I used to fill your seat. This pretense of decency is unnecessary.’

  ‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your career advice too closely, given that you were stripped of your rank.’

  ‘It’s a funny thing about my fall – it didn’t come about because of a moral lapse. Quite the opposite, in fact. And having come to ethics late in life, and to my own detriment, let me offer up a warning. Don’t risk it – you gave up the luxury of being a decent human being when they added the star to your collar. Things with the Association are going south fast. You need someone on the inside, who can give you a heads up beforehand. What’s that measured against the life of a handful of slum dwellers, and criminals at that?’

  I’d decided to have Guiscard remove Adisu for three reasons. The first was that I didn’t trust the Islander to keep his mouth shut. The second was, as a point of principle, I prefer not to let a man bend me backwards. Even if no one else ever finds out about it, you’ll still know it happened. Finally, I liked the idea of having Guiscard act as my cat’s-paw. It suited my sense of vanity. Moreover, it put some dirt on him, shifted the fundamental balance of our relationship. Guiscard would do violence to another man on my behalf, would lower himself into the muck along with me. Nothing binds two people like a shared sin.

  He stroked the bridge of his long nose, closed his eyes, in short, made quite a show of contemplation. ‘I’ll need something to hang on him,’ he said finally.

  ‘There’ll be enough narcotics stashed away to keep half the city high through Midwinter.’ I thought about the Bruised Fruit Mob’s headquarters, its stagnant smell and subterranean depths. ‘If you look hard enough, you’ll probably find a decomposing corpse or two, but the drugs alone should merit a ten-year stretch. Also, they’ll resist arrest.’

  ‘They sound like lovely folk. Where will I find them?’

  I gave him directions. ‘It needs to happen tonight, or early tomorrow. And it needs to be a clean sweep, make sure none of them are around to plague me later.’

  ‘I know my business,’ he said. ‘You just keep yourself close to Pretories. I want to know everything you know, and I want to know it as soon as you do.’

  I ticked a salute over a smug smile, happy to have played a part in Guiscard’s continuing education. My own enlightenment had come at a far higher cost – for me, and for a lot of other people.

  31

  I’d been waiting a solid hour when he came in, my back against the wall of a quiet cafe in the Old City, drinking wine by candlelight. I didn’t mind. Everyone had to wait to see the man. Not that his tardiness was meant as a slight – such vanity was beneath Roland Montgomery. But he was remaking the world, and that was a serious undertaking, one that left little time for social engagements.

  He looked apologetic at least, flanked by men who would have died for him happily during the war, now – it didn’t make a difference. They eyed my ice gray unhappily, even threateningly. Black House had replaced the Dren in the affections of the men of the Association. What with my time in the ranks I was worse than the average freeze even, a turncoat, a traitor.

  His bodyguards took seats at the counter, and Roland dropped himself across from me without affectation. ‘Lieutenant.’

  ‘Sir. I hope you don’t mind, I ordered a drink.’

  ‘Not at all.’ He took a moment to inspect me. ‘It’s been a long time. Longer than I’d have liked.’

  The war had changed everyone. From the scatter-eyed, stammering beggars on the docks, pawning tarnished medals and rattling their alms cups, to the young-old men from Kor’s Heights sitting alone at garden parties, sleeves pinned over stumps, flinching when champagne was uncorked. Those unlucky enough to need to work for a living took what they could find of it, back-to-back shifts at the mills, trading one line for another. Or they joined the thick squads of bullyboys selling service to the syndicates, peddling their hard-won practice to organizations more grateful than the Crown, or at least more remunerative.

  It had changed all of us, but it hadn’t changed Roland. His eyes were bright as they’d ever been, fever-bright, and he still spoke like he was trying to overawe artillery.

  I didn’t like it. The war was the war – I’d spent five years trying to get the hell away from it, I didn’t need it being dragged back onto home soil. Not everyone felt like that, of course. It had given a lot of empty men a purpose, and hollowed out a lot of men for whatever purpose they might have had. Spend a few years bunk-mates with She Who Waits Behind All Things, you find it hard to forget her. Whatever else you do starts to seem awful silly, writing out receipts in a general store somewhere, planting lines of potatoes in neat little rows. Roland’s men were like that – there was nothing in their eyes except what he gave them.

  ‘I’m still not used to seeing you in your new uniform. Congratulations, once again. It’s quite an honor, being made an Agent of the Crown at such a young age.’

  ‘I’m not so sure your boys would agree.’

  He flashed his entourage a quick smile. ‘They’re a mite protective.’

  The serving girl came by to take an order. Roland asked for a glass of what I was drinking, and when she came back he gave her a smile that won a convert for life. The other patrons, quiet, well civilized, their lives bound up inextricably with the establishment, their interests as far from Roland’s as you could get, took sidelong glances and thought up kindnesses they could do him.

  ‘You’ve been making a lot of waves, over in my neck of the woods,’ I said.

  ‘Would that be Black House, or Low Town?’

  ‘It would be both.’

  ‘Those are two very different places.’ Roland was too gracious to crow, but you could see he thought he’d scored a point.

  ‘They are indeed.’

  ‘Does it ever get confusing?’

  ‘I could ask you the same question.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Kor’s Heights is a lovely neighborhood. I’d think a fellow who grew up there wouldn’t be in such a hurry to burn it down.’

  ‘Not burn it down, Lieutenant, not at all. I only work to ensure its bounty is more equitably shared.’

  ‘And your father?’ The news had come out a few weeks back – General Edwin Montgomery had officially retired from public life, preferring a dignified solitude to the hustle and bustle of politics. A comfortable fiction cloaking the reality that it was quite impossible to put him in charge of the Empire while his son seemed to be doing his best to destroy it.

  For a moment, though a very brief one, regret showed through Roland’s assurance. It left quickly, as I said. ‘Filial piety is an important virtue. But it pales beside loyalty to one’s nation, and countrymen.’ He waved his hand in front of his face, as if batting away a fly. ‘I’ve made my choice – I’ve got no regrets.’

  ‘What was that choice, exactly?’

  He had an answer prepared for this very occasion, and was pleased to share it. ‘Shepherding tomorrow’s arrival.’

  ‘A morning Timory Half-hand won’t be around to see.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘One of the vice-peddlers your boys strung up.’

 
‘There’s a saying about omelettes that I think would be appropriate here.’

  ‘About eggs, not skulls.’

  He shrugged. There wasn’t much difference to him. ‘I would think you of all people would understand the importance of what we’re doing. Growing up where you did, coming from what you came from.’

  ‘You spend a lot of time in the slums?’

  ‘Haven’t had the pleasure.’

  ‘You ought to head down to the Isthmus one day, or take a stroll through the bleaker sections of Kirentown. They got these rows of tenements there, walls no thicker than the width of your hand, foundations held together with plaster that’s mostly rainwater. Thousands of people crammed in like rats. To look at them, you’d think they couldn’t stand. You’d think they’d have to collapse beneath their own weight.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But they do stand, General – and do you know why?’

  ‘Enlighten me,’ he said, and he even seemed to mean it.

  ‘Because they lean against each other. Any one of them, alone, would collapse in a stiff wind. But together? Together they’re solid enough to live in.’

  ‘Who’d want to?’

  ‘It beats the alternatives. The thing is, the balance is precarious. If you were to knock out a wall, move around a strut or two – the whole structure might tumble.’

  ‘I hadn’t known you were such a poet, Lieutenant.’

  ‘Your shot at the Giroies is having consequences you don’t see. The Tarasaighns are getting antsy, figuring maybe they ought to make a move on what the Rouenders still hold. The heretics watch them squad up and start worrying where their hammer is gonna fall. Across the city, knives are being sharpened and targets staked out.’

  ‘The rest of the syndicates can enjoy their temporary good fortune – I assure you, it won’t last. The Old Man and his ilk might be content allowing half of Rigus to be run by racketeers, but I’m afraid I’m not.’

  ‘Wipe them all away, will you?’

  ‘They’ll make a decent start.’

  ‘What comes then? Revolution?’

  ‘The revolution came. It came when hundreds of thousands of men stirred themselves from their villages, from their boroughs and sleeping hamlets, and traveled across the Thirteen Lands to bring death to strangers. You say I’m shaking the foundations, but you’re wrong – they’re already broken. I’m just the first one willing to admit it.’