‘Wren’s your people. Adeline’s your people.’ I set my palm against his chest and shoved him, playing the frantic, though it wasn’t hard to fake it. His bulk barely wavered, but at least it got his attention. ‘I’m your fucking people.’
He didn’t have anything to say to that, but then he didn’t have to. Stalemate would kill us both – I needed to shock him into movement.
‘Pretories is a Black House plant,’ I said, loud enough to make sure our neighbors heard it.
A thunderclap echoed in the distance, and not the distant distance either. Adolphus took a quick look around, checking the audience for signs of threat, then hissed under his breath. ‘Don’t be tossing that kind of shit around.’
‘He’s been working for the Throne since he let Roland Montgomery get killed.’
‘That’s bullshit. You got no cause to talk like that.’ But his voice fluttered.
‘Pretories bit the Old Man’s gold and didn’t taste the lead.’
‘How do you know this?’ Adolphus asked, though I bet he could have made a solid guess.
‘Because I was the one behind it – it was my way into Special Ops. I thought Roland was crazy, or maybe I didn’t – it doesn’t matter now. I did it, and Joachim was in on it, and he hasn’t gotten any better in the last twelve years. This . . .’ I waved my hand at the mob that was beginning to show signs of movement. ‘It’s a pageant, a way for the veterans to loose some fury off aimlessly. Except it isn’t – the Old Man thinks Pretories has got too big and plans to put him down, and when he does things are going to get bad, real bad, bad for everyone here, understand? It’s too late for these people, but it’s not too late for us.’
His mouth hung open, condemnation or confusion, I never did find out. There was an explosion from somewhere in the back, and an uninterrupted half hour of screaming began.
I’d been expecting its arrival. The Old Man hadn’t bothered to divulge specifics of his set-up, but the easiest way to do anything is backwards. Who was to say there wasn’t an extreme contingent of the Association discontent with Joachim’s policy of non-violence? Who was to say they hadn’t brought in explosives, set them off at the outskirts as an exercise in nihilistic radicalism? No one, not after today.
The crowd was as unprepared as a virgin, and in the immediate aftermath reacted with stunned confusion – but stampede was in the air as certain as the storm. The guards semi-circled ahead of us, however, were not surprised, not at all – if one had a grim turn of mind, one might even imagine they’d known about it beforehand. They didn’t march forward so much as surge, a coiled spring unwound, wading into the front ranks and swinging their big, knobbed clubs.
Pretories had filled the first rank with war heroes, men like Adolphus, thinking their status would be certain proof against violence. He’d reckoned without the Old Man’s savagery – a curious error given their history. Two men holding a banner aloft found themselves the first casualties, their message inked over with blood. An amputee stumbled backward over his crutches trying to escape, a line of medals pinned across his chest. Having lost a leg for his country, he had perhaps thought he’d earned the right not to be beaten to death by men in its employ. It never pays to underestimate ingratitude.
Truth was even the Association’s muscle, Rabbit and Hroudland, the men who’d taken care of Giroie, hadn’t come prepared for a fight. The switch between civilization and barbarism isn’t a finger snap, even the most savage of motherfuckers needs a few minutes to get going. The line of marchers stretched well back into the horizon. Most of them couldn’t see what was going on, but those who did started moving backwards.
Pretories did his best to rally them, grabbing up a standard and waving it in the breeze. Last-minute heroics weren’t really his line, but he did all right. More than that, if I’m being honest. He moved with courage, and certainty. Roland himself couldn’t have done any better.
One of his boys, one I hadn’t ever thought to pay attention to, one who looked pretty much like the rest, lifted his hand up to his commander’s neck. There was a bright line of scarlet. The colors dropped into the dust. Pretories followed.
It was a quick few seconds, easy to miss. I doubted many saw it. That was how the Old Man got to be so old, you see – he always has a piece behind you. I wondered who’d get me, when the time came. I wouldn’t see it coming, of that I was sure.
Considering the trouble I’d gone through to see it happen, the death of Joachim Pretories provided me little pleasure. Watching his men trample his corpse in the dirt trying to escape, it was hard to hate him. All things considered, I’d met worse men. But then again, I’d killed better ones, so there wasn’t no point in getting sentimental.
With the loss of their leader any semblance of order collapsed completely. We were at life and death, and everyone realized it. Accordingly the knee-high barrier separating us from the thickest part of the throng stopped doing that, proving no impediment to the movement of fifty thousand angry, frightened men. The march had become a rout – I was a drop in a sea of flesh, and could do nothing but paddle with the current.
Adolphus had it easier – even the most scattered fellow will avoid running into a brick wall if he can help it. But I’m not much bigger than average, and the surge carried me along. Like any great body of people it moved without purpose or direction, mankind in the aggregate no brighter than in detail. The explosion had sent the men in the back sprinting forward, and the barbarity of the guards had sent the men in the front sprinting back. Adolphus and I made for the flanks accordingly, but it was like wading a swollen river. A river that’s screaming at you and shoving fingers into your eyes.
An errant blow from a passer-by sent me to my knees, my head spinning, the sheer press of men near to crushing me. An ugly way to go, and I managed to regain my footing with a few sharp hooks. By the time I got my head up Adolphus was gone, swept onward by the tide. Or perhaps he just hadn’t cared to wait – I got the sense that my well-being was not his foremost concern.
Chaos like that, there isn’t anything that distinguishes one man from another – survival comes down to drunken chance. I was in the front when it started, and I knew it was coming, so I had a better shot than most, but not much of one.
A packed squad of guardsmen hammered their way toward us, and the crowd surged backward like a wounded animal. I broke forward, figuring to take my chances against one fool with a weapon than ten thousand unarmed. A uniformed scab took a swing at me, and I ducked beneath it and took his legs out from under him. I wanted to stay there and beat on him a little, but there wasn’t time. I was off and sprinting as quick as I could muster.
Off the main boulevard I took my first full breath, lungs expanding into bruised bone and injured flesh. I wasn’t sure how long it had lasted, the mad press of bodies. Not as long as it had felt like, that was damn sure. The wind was scattering sparks of fire further into the city, and things were getting bad fast. Worse, I guess I should say. Still I turned to watch, climbed a few feet up the wall of the alley, finding footholds in parched ivy. I’d set the fuse – it seemed only right to stay till the end.
For once the Old Man had overreached. Most of the people in the crowd hadn’t seen violence in fifteen years, but that’s not never. Enough of it was coming back to them to make the comparatively tiny number of guards distinctly insufficient. The Ashers, ever prepared for combat, had formed into a tight square and were edging their way to safety, distinct by their outfits and discipline. Mostly the guards were smart enough to stay away from them, but occasionally one got too close and found himself pulled under, executed efficiently though not painlessly by men who’d made violence a religion.
They were the only knot of organization to be seen, but in chaotic remnants here and there once dangerous men recalled their powers. The guards were armed, and made savage by youth, but their opponents had earned degrees in brutality at the definitive institute in history. A Vaalan the size of an ox snapped a guard over his knee, back breaking
like a rotten tree branch. Further down the line a pair of Islanders had isolated one unfortunate, had him against the ground and were beating him to death with something akin to glee. Joachim had stipulated that no one was to carry a weapon, the better to head off this exact scenario – but amidst the tens of thousands some remnant had come with blade or bronzed knuckle. What had begun as blind flight was rapidly hardening into a battle, and I felt an incongruous moment of enthusiasm for my brothers-in-arms.
But the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Another explosion ricocheted through the crowd, then another and another, pops like fireworks, each signaling death, and whatever had braced the spirit of the mob was carried away by fear.
The drizzle had turned into a downpour, but it wasn’t doing anything to stem the spread of the flames. The second wave of explosions had dirtied the air, rendering further observation of the proceedings futile. The city was ripe as a tinderbox, the ground so dry a dropped cigarette would burn cobblestone. There was a burst of heat as the windows of a house a block over erupted, and I dropped from my perch and started off.
The smoke was in my eyes and in my throat and in my lungs, and I coughed my way through the alleys trying to get away from it. I wasn’t the only one hoping to make an escape – I passed a steady stream of veterans breaking out in any and every direction, so long as it was away, away, away. I was of the same desperate strain of mind, so it was a hell of a surprise to make a U-turn in a cul-de-sac and find myself face to face with a pair of old friends.
‘If it isn’t the lieutenant,’ Hroudland said, and for once Rabbit didn’t smile.
‘Thank the Firstborn you two survived! Where’s the commander?’
‘Commander’s dead,’ Hroudland said.
‘Heavens!’ I exclaimed. By that point I was pretty sure talking wasn’t going to square us.
‘What happened to Roussel, Lieutenant?’ Hroudland asked.
‘I might have killed him,’ I admitted, giving up the charade. ‘And I might have enjoyed it.’
Rabbit nodded, unsurprised. ‘As I will this.’
My interview with the Old Man had left me unarmed, and there hadn’t been time to make good the lack. Rabbit held a thin stiletto in his off hand, but he let it drop blade-first to the ground and gestured at me to come forward. I’d never had any great desire to engage the man in fisticuffs, but it didn’t do to show him that. I went in strong as I could, feinting a body shot and trying for an eye-level straight – but he just grinned that grin that I’d come to loathe and dipped his head, and I broke two knuckles off his cranium.
It was a short fight, and the rest of it went the same way. What little I landed might as well not have, and every one of Rabbit’s short, sharp punches found purchase on my own flesh. Soon I was on the ground and he was kicking me in the ribs, the beating somewhat superfluous given what I’d already suffered. Another moment of fun and he dropped down on top of me, pinned his knees against my shoulders and wrapped his fingers around my throat.
The smoke was thick as marmalade, and it seeped into my brain. The margins of my vision folded inward, narrowing on an impossibly wide grin, teeth as big as chess pieces, running together into eternity.
A palm reached out of the fog and wrapped itself around Rabbit’s skull, pulling it towards the wall and dragging the rest of his body along with it. The passageway was ruined brick, but all the same Rabbit’s bald head created a sizable indentation. He slumped slowly to the ground, leaving a streak of blood in his wake.
The hand attaches to an arm attaches to a body, and it’s Adolphus’s, and I am saved.
There are men who wouldn’t have hesitated then, but there aren’t many, and Hroudland wasn’t one of them. His jaw quivered and he held his knife loose in his hand. Adolphus slapped it away casually, the blade skittering off into the dirt. A second backhand rebounded Hroudland off the well, stunned him insensible, left him open for the finale. While I’m aware that it is not literally possible for a punch to knock a man’s head off, somehow that’s the only description that fits.
I lay motionless as my best friend approached me, wondering if perhaps he’d set his boot against my chest and make a clean go of everyone who’d fucked him. Instead he bent down and lifted me to my feet like I was a child.
‘Let’s go home,’ he said, and that’s what we did.
46
It only took Roland a moment to see he was going to die.
We were in a small safe house I had set up in Low Town. That much I had held to. But the men who sat at the table with me were, even at a glance, not the sort of people who would be sponsoring an internal coup d’état, even had there been such a faction within Black House. They were, very distinctly, the sort of people the Old Man keeps around to do evil things. I guess he kept me around for the same reason, though of a subtler kind.
You can learn everything you need to know about a person by how they react to their death, though of course you can’t do anything with the information afterward. Not that I had any doubts about Roland’s courage. He stopped short, just past the doorway. For a brief moment you could see him thinking about making a run for it, see it in the sudden tensing of his hands. But I’d put two men on the entrance he’d come through, and he must have realized there was no point.
He looked at me, then closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them he was smiling, and he strode towards us at a brisk pace and with no evident trace of concern. He took the seat I’d left for him. It was at the head of the table, as was well warranted.
‘This is it, then?’ he asked.
I nodded.
‘I suppose I should have seen it coming.’
I shrugged.
‘But then, your story sounded plausible. And with support from Black House I could have moved up my timetable by a year, maybe two. It was worth taking the shot.’
A lack of caution was always Roland’s weakness. I’d realized that the day I’d met him, been confident he’d fall into the snare. ‘No one with anything to lose wants you to win. You overstate the base of your support.’
‘Clearly,’ he deadpanned.
I stopped a chuckle. This was not really the time for levity, though you wouldn’t have been able to tell it from Roland’s demeanor. A bottle of whiskey sat on the table. It had been full when I’d set it there a half-hour prior. It wasn’t any longer. I poured the man a few fingers and passed it over.
He nodded thanks and knocked it down. ‘If you kill me,’ he said, after savoring the bite for a moment, ‘the country will go up in flames – my men won’t stand for it.’
‘If you live the country will go up in flames anyway. And I’m sorry to say so, but you’re wrong. The Association will mourn your death – but they will do so without violence. We’ve taken steps to make sure of that.’
‘Joachim?’ It was perhaps the first time in his life that Roland had even lost his composure. Certainly it was the first time I had ever seen it. He set his hands on the table, looked at them for a while without saying anything. I felt a sudden and very vivid pang of regret for revealing his best friend’s betrayal, somehow felt worse about it than my own. ‘I wouldn’t have thought it of him,’ he said.
I wouldn’t have thought it either, still had trouble believing it was true. But the Old Man had as much as confirmed it.
‘Was it money?’ Roland asked, mainly to himself. ‘The thought of taking over?’
Both, probably. Pretories came from that brand of nobility without two coppers to rub against each other. And no one likes looking over another man’s shoulder indefinitely. Though it could have been simple self-preservation – Joachim was no fool. Maybe he’d simply looked over the path Roland was marking out and seen the same thing I did, blood and ultimate failure. ‘I’m really not sure,’ I said. ‘I didn’t handle that side of it.’
‘Why did you do it?’
‘I tried talking you down.’
‘That’s hardly an excuse.’
‘It wasn’t meant to be – I gave
you my reasons the last time we spoke. All the death we’ve seen, all the bodies, five long years of it – and you’d see us dive back in again? Commit your veterans against the Crown, plunge the Empire into civil war?’
‘Better to die a free man than live as a slave.’
‘I can see you’ve never been a slave. It’s a funny thing about the downtrodden – they don’t want to burn the city to the ground, they want to own it.’
‘Then your actions are at that ideal intersection of morality and self-interest?’
‘I don’t apologize for my ambitions, any more than you do yours.’
‘But mine were very grand,’ he said. ‘And yours are small, and petty.’
‘You can tell a great man by the bodies he leaves in his wake.’
‘Nothing important was ever accomplished without sacrifice.’
I let the argument rest on that one. It had been foolish to get into it with him, you were never going to convince anyone of the necessity of their murder.
‘Is there anything you’d like me to do?’ I asked. ‘For your family, your people?’
He took a moment considering, then shook his head. ‘I have no regrets.’
‘Saints and fools say that. And you’re no saint.’
He laughed and poured himself another shot of liquor. ‘My name will echo on,’ he said, downing it. ‘There’s nothing more that a man can ask.’
You could ask for a long life spent in comfort, a wife to hold your hand as you passed, children to walk on ahead. But Roland wouldn’t get any of these things, and there was no point rubbing his nose in it.
One of the agents I’d posted outside slipped in, shutting the door behind him and approaching us quietly. I knew him a little, better than the other two thugs the Old Man had given me, both of whom I was sure had orders to do to me what we were about to do to Roland, if I had any signs of getting second thoughts.
I poured Roland another shot. When he reached out to take it I gave the man behind him a nod.
Tomorrow, the Killing (Low Town 2) Page 28
