Tomorrow, the Killing (Low Town 2)

by Polansky, Daniel

  ‘I keep a shiv in my asshole.’

  The friendly one hit me in the stomach hard enough to make me a ball on the floor. The unfriendly one kicked me in the head. That was why he was the unfriendly one.

  They pulled me to my feet. I fell back down. They pulled me up again, and held me steady. I blinked the light away, wished I could do the same with the blood.

  ‘That was my best shirt,’ I said, the red bloom adding contrast to the sweat stains.

  The friendly one looked ready to give me another, but the unfriendly one waved him off, cuffed me and led me out the door. I was thinking maybe I needed to switch their tags. The ride over was pretty similar to its predecessor, except that this time no one smiled, and every bump in the road splintered through my skull.

  Black House seemed much the way it had last time, though I was brought through it at a rapid clip so there wasn’t much opportunity for inspection. A few minutes and I was back in Guiscard’s windowed office, with a forced seat in an uncomfortable chair.

  He’d worn since I’d seen him last, which was a good sign that my work hadn’t been entirely in vain. My eyes had mostly swelled shut, and it hurt when I breathed, so I did my best not to.

  ‘You’ve dropped the ball, Warden. You were supposed to keep me apprised of the situation. I wake up today to find out there’s a smoking crater where an Association bureau used to be, and three bodies smoldering in the rubble.’

  ‘Four bodies,’ I said. ‘Don’t short the count.’

  A floorboard creaked behind me, and then my jaw struck against my chest. The unfriendly one, I figured. Six inches down he’d have snapped my neck, but he knew what he was doing. The correct method by which to hit a seated man was something you learnt coming up through the Black House ranks.

  ‘I’d have figured, after some of the things I’ve done for you lately, the least you’d do is keep me abreast of current events.’

  ‘In what fashion have I been remiss?’

  ‘What do you know about the Association hitting a shipment of the Giroies?’

  ‘I know they hit it.’

  ‘Then why didn’t I know that?’

  ‘I figured you’d get word eventually.’

  This time Guiscard didn’t delegate. He’d never have the raw talent of his subordinates, but it was a credible effort just the same. At that point though I hurt too much to feel anything else, and that gives a man a certain audacity. ‘Forgive me for crediting you with the wit to smell smoke.’

  ‘The house is on fire, is it?’

  ‘The whole city, soon enough.’

  ‘Because of Giroie?’

  I shook my head sadly. ‘You can’t really be as slow as you act.’

  Behind me I could hear my escort positioning himself for another blow.

  ‘Slip the cuffs,’ Guiscard said, ‘then split.’

  There was a pause, but with my head settled like it was I couldn’t figure what occurred during it. After a moment one of the dogs unbound my hands. I settled them together, pride keeping me from checking my injuries.

  ‘Keep out of trouble,’ the friendly one said on his way out.

  The door closed. ‘Got a cigarette?’ I asked.

  ‘I quit.’

  I smiled through loosened teeth. ‘You ain’t gonna pretend you don’t have a hold out stashed somewhere?’

  He sighed grudgingly, then opened a drawer and passed over a small leather pouch.

  ‘You ask them to work me over?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Just left it up to their discretion? You gotta be careful with that – they get enthusiastic and suddenly there’s no one left to interview.’ My fingers shook, and I made a mess of the tab. But Guiscard was off on his own, and he didn’t notice. They’d been kind enough to leave a book of matches in my pocket, and I struck one and used it.

  The sound seemed to bring Guiscard back to the immediate. ‘Have you spoken to Pretories?’

  ‘You ought to know the answer to that, if you’re a quarter competent.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘What do you think he said? He’s going to pay a visit to the Giroies, and . . .’ I brought my thumb against the table, like I was squashing a nit.

  ‘You holding something back from me, Warden? I wouldn’t recommend it. The Old Man wants this situation with the vets taken care of, and he doesn’t care how it happens. If you’re thinking about running a double-blind on me, then you’ve been huffing too much breath.’

  ‘I’ve certainly been doing the latter.’

  Guiscard ran his fingers up the bridge of his nose and between his eyes. ‘I don’t buy it. It isn’t in anyone’s interest to start trouble, least of all Pretories.’

  ‘Why? Because he’s in your pocket?’

  I’d been holding that one back for a while, and it was a spot of light to see it land. He didn’t roll with it well either – I mean, I’d done a better job with the tap he gave me. Though I’ve had more practice being hit. ‘How the hell do you know that?’

  ‘You think there are things you know that I don’t?’

  The silence spread too long, and he came on hard to compensate for it. Foolish – anyone could see we’d swapped chairs. ‘Then you should know it doesn’t line up. Pretories banks our checks. Has for ten years. He keeps the Association on the straight, makes sure none of his wilder members get to thinking any of their old master’s heresies, and we let him play the big man.’

  ‘And the rally?’

  ‘A sideshow – lets his boys blow off some steam.’

  ‘Is that what it is?’

  ‘We got a good arrangement going.’

  ‘You can’t buy a whore, Guiscard. Only rent one.’

  ‘Oversubtle, for a thug.’

  ‘Should I break it down for you further? Pretories’ interests aren’t your interests. They were for a while, now they ain’t.’

  He grated one line of perfect teeth against the other. ‘There’s nothing for him here. He knows what happens if he goes against the Crown.’

  ‘Your problem is that you’re a reasonable man, and you think everyone else is likewise.’

  ‘People tend to act to their own benefit.’

  ‘You’d be shocked at how little that’s true.’

  He opened up a few inches of his collar. ‘I hold no illusions about Pretories – if he’d betray his own people, he’d fold on us. But doing so wouldn’t get him anything. He’s been marching to our beat too long to go back to calling his own tunes.’

  ‘Yesterday, yesterday – yesterday y’all baked apple dumplings and played rat-in-a-hole. Today he’s murdering drug dealers in the streets, and tomorrow he marches on the palace with fifty thousand men. Wait around a week, he’ll be gang-raping your daughter and shitting in your kitchen.’ I huffed smoke and dropped my trump. ‘Maybe it’s time we brought in the Old Man.’

  No one likes being reminded they’re mid-list in the pecking order. ‘That won’t be necessary.’

  ‘It’s a lovely office, but we both know where the strings get pulled. A change in policy needs to be signed off on from upstairs.’

  ‘I am upstairs.’

  ‘We gonna argue semantics?’

  ‘I told you once before – I run this show.’

  ‘Then you’d best go ahead and fucking run it,’ I answered.

  That was that. He made with the contemplation, but I knew he’d bend in the breeze. It was a dull minute. My cigarette was mostly ash before he thought to pass over a tray.

  ‘You want a handkerchief?’

  I shook my head, regretting it immediately. ‘I’d rather bleed on your desk.’

  He snorted and started to twist himself a smoke.

  ‘So you’ve taken care of my little problem?’ I asked.

  ‘As of this morning there are a half-dozen Islanders rotting in cells in jail – and three taking up slabs in the morgue. I’m told Adisu is one of the latter.’

  ‘You’re a prince amongst men.’

 
; Guiscard didn’t answer, just sat there puffing away at the cigarette he’d rolled. I could have told him you never really quit, you just take a break while things are going easy. ‘You ever think about Crispin?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘I try not to.’

  ‘I guess he could have sat here, if he’d wanted to.’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘I guess he didn’t want to.’

  ‘Don’t let yourself get too down,’ I said, standing. ‘It ended well for me.’

  By the time I was outside my punch-drunk had worn off, and the orchestra in my head had gone from background noise to overture. Bile climbed up my throat, and it was only through sheer will that I forced it tumbling back. I must have been quite a sight – passers-by watched in horror, though none offered help.

  38

  Back at the Earl I sipped through a few ounces of liquor and passed out. When I woke the pain was worse, but the swelling had faded and I could see enough out of my right eye to be blinded by the afternoon light. It was late, and my day wasn’t over. A half-vial of breath reminded me of my duties. I palmed another into my satchel in case I got forgetful. Then I put a blade into my boot and slipped downstairs. The Earl was empty. Adolphus was off preparing for the evening rally, and Wren was probably with him. I had no idea where Adeline had disappeared to, but I was happy she’d done so – the longer I could put off explaining why my face looked like a mass of uncooked meat the happier I’d be.

  Walking through the Isthmus I was conscious of the fading hour, and that my injuries were an appeal to the worst instincts of the native element. But the heat hadn’t abated with the sun, and the air was thick as a smoker’s cough, and the cock-a-walks were largely absent, drinking in darkened juke-joints or trying to sleep through to night. I found my way to Mazzie’s without any trouble, and this time even managed to reach the entryway without faltering my step.

  She sat in the same position, down to the length of ash on her cigar. Even the oven working in the corner remained as it had been, the same pots bubbling rank on top of it. She waved at the open chair, but waited a while before starting.

  ‘What happened to your jaw?’

  ‘A brick wall hit me.’

  ‘And your eye?’

  ‘I couldn’t let the jaw go unanswered.’ I crinkled a trail of dreamvine in the hollow of a wrapper, then added a twist of tobacco for cover. ‘So. You set your eyes on him.’

  She bobbed the ebony sphere of her skull. ‘Did at that.’

  ‘What’s the verdict?’

  ‘He’s got talent. Should have long started his learning, but he’s got talent all the same.’

  ‘Then you’ll take him on?’

  She motioned with her shoulders in a fashion that indicated nothing one way or the other. ‘I figured, after your introduction, he must be kin to you.’

  ‘Ain’t got no kin.’

  ‘How’d you meet him?’

  ‘Let me think now – ah yes, the Duke of Courland introduced us over high tea. We needed a fifth for whist, and our Wren’s a deft hand at cards.’

  ‘He says he was a street child, and he begged you for a job.’

  I lit my spliff off one of the colored candles dripping wax onto the table. ‘That might have been it, now that you remind me.’

  ‘So it was his idea, coming in under your roof?’

  ‘Damn sure wasn’t mine.’

  There was something intoxicating about Mazzie that held your attention and wouldn’t let go. Every feature seemed amplified, overstated – her smile a slant that cut across the width of her face, nose broad as a bullock’s, eyes strong as rubbing alcohol. ‘Awful kind of you, putting up an orphan.’

  ‘I got a twenty-four karat heart. Market keeps going up on gold, I’m gonna cut it out and sell it.’

  ‘That’s what they say about the Warden. That he’s sweet as cane sugar and soft as sunshine.’

  ‘You gonna circle all night, or you gonna throw?’

  ‘What you want with the boy?’ she asked, all in the back of her throat, syllables hard against each other.

  I didn’t answer for a moment, holding in a chestful of violet smoke. ‘Questioning my motives, Mazzie?’

  ‘Just curious. Do you take in every stray child you meet, or just the ones of use?’

  ‘I’ve drowned puppies done more for me than that child.’

  ‘A homeless boy with the art – that’s pure flake. Course he’s smart, but you needn’t have known that at the time. They’re not all smart – one of the crews back in Miradin, they had a boy with a fair-strength spark, and a face beat in by his mother when he wasn’t but three. Couldn’t talk nothing, couldn’t barely think more than that, but he could light a fire without a match, anywhere you pointed, any size.’ She took a long draw off her cheroot, then pulled the exhaust in through her nostrils, each wide as a copper piece. ‘Kept him on a collar, made him eat off the floor.’

  ‘You’ve got the nicest friends.’

  ‘Your boy’s got too much steel for that, of course. And he’s got power too, waiting to be kindled but there just the same. He gets to bucking, he’ll break you straight in two.’

  ‘What’s it to you, Mazzie? The color of my ochre don’t change with my reasons.’

  ‘Won’t have no part in turning a child into a weapon.’

  ‘Mazzie of the Stained Bone, witch-woman of the Isthmus. Thrown out of Miradin for blasphemies unspeakable. The things that are darker than night whisper secrets in her ear, and the High Laws no more than chicken scratch. Don’t make any bargains you can’t keep, or she’ll snatch up your firstborn and leave a straw doll beneath the pillow. Didn’t figure you for a soft stomach.’

  ‘No more surprising than discovering the king of Low Town takes stragglers in beneath his roof.’

  ‘Everything they say about you true?’

  ‘Enough of it,’ she acknowledged. ‘Besides, it’s not about what I heard. I saw what you were from the first foot you stepped inside my house.’

  ‘It’s the spirits, then? They let you know the sort of man I am?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘The spirits got a line on tomorrow’s racket numbers?’

  She puffed silently at her cigar, eyes never leaving mine.

  ‘They never do, do they?’ The dreamvine was bright and potent, and I was enjoying the whole thing more than I should have.

  ‘You think you can live the kind of life you’ve lived, do the kind of things you do, and not have it leave any trace?’ she asked.

  ‘Is your own history so uncheckered that you can afford to pass judgment on mine? What would I see, if I had your gift? What does the mirror tell you, Mazzie, when you look into it?’

  There was nothing light or friendly in her smile, nothing of a smile at all really. Nothing but the form of the thing, her teeth crooked and white. ‘Don’t have one.’

  The spreading silence gave me time to recollect how much pain I was in, slowly but surely bleeding past the dreamvine. I’d need something stronger, and soon. The sunlight percolating in through the hole in the roof was fading fast, evening soon to plant itself on a city that was near boiling. The stove popped suddenly, a wet spot on a log flaring to life, but Mazzie didn’t jump, didn’t so much as move.

  ‘I figured you was coming by today. Decided to take your advice from last time, break out the shakers, give them a roll,’ she said.

  I leaned back in the stool and opened my arms wide. ‘Take your shot.’

  ‘You build a maze around you, and dare fools to walk through it.’

  ‘A fool don’t need any help taking a tumble.’

  ‘No merit in pushing them.’

  ‘I think of it as a public service.’

  ‘Corpses stand at your shoulder, and they wave at brothers ahead. The fuse is running fast, and when it sparks it’ll level more than you thinking, more than you plan. The blood you avenge will be repaid a dozen-fold, a hundred, repaid in rivers and torrents. You ain’t careful you’ll drown beneath it,
die with it choking your throat and filling your lungs.’

  ‘You finished?’

  ‘Just about.’

  Suddenly it didn’t seem so funny, didn’t seem funny at all, and I wanted to give her a shot straight on that false grin. ‘If that’s the best you got then your gift ain’t worth a tarnished copper. You see dead men in my past because I’ve put a string of bodies in the ground, and dead men in my future because I’ve got a list of motherfuckers waiting to join them. I don’t need your bones to know there’s trouble brewing – I’ve been arranging its arrival all week.’

  ‘The bones, they say one more thing – they say you running around in the dark, that the things you think true are false. They say the more you struggle, the tighter the bonds.’

  I swallowed that with the last of my joint, then dropped the butt to the floor. ‘The boy needs training or he’ll end up mad, or worse. If you’ve got any of the ethics you affect, you won’t leave him twisting in the wind. Far as the rest goes, you don’t know nothing about me, not where I been nor where I’m headed.’ I kicked over my stool and walked to the door. Her cackling followed me out into the street.

  Between the beating, and the dreamvine, and the day, and my life, I wasn’t in top shape. If they’d have been smarter they could have probably snatched me up with my back turned, and that would have been the end of it, or near enough. But a few blocks out from Mazzie’s I caught sight of someone tailing me, and if I didn’t put the whole thing together I was at least sharp enough to smell a threat.

  Not that there was much I could do to head it off. I was still deep in the Isthmus, miles away from a friendly face. I was too tired to run and anyway I didn’t know the geography enough to chance it. The best I could do was put myself in a position to meet them head on. An alley led off the road I was on, dead-ending after about twenty yards. I followed it, put my back against the wall, pulled the knife from my boot, and waited for the end.

  It wasn’t long coming. Adisu rounded the corner, the Muscle with him, both the worse for wear. A bandage was rolled around Zaga’s arm, saturated with crimson, though it only had the effect of emphasizing the width of his bicep. Adisu himself had an ugly scar marring a face not noted for its beauty. It was turning a color that suggested medical attention was in order.