Dried blood was caked below my nose. “Not interested in taking your turn?”
“The dead man-he was responsible for the girl?”
I nodded.
“How did you know?”
“Everybody knew,” I said. “We just weren’t telling you about it.”
He rolled his eyes and stomped out.
I spent about an hour and a half in the chair, wincing from the pain in my skull and trying to figure out how many of my ribs were broken. Three was my best guess, but without the use of my hands it was tough to be sure. I thought about slipping my chains as a fuck you to Crispin and the rest of his crew, but it seemed a petty sort of revenge and one likely to earn another beating.
Eventually the door opened and Crispin entered, a dark look on his face. He took the seat opposite me.
“They won’t touch it,” he said.
If I was a little slow on the uptake, it was understandable given the circumstances. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that as far as Black House is concerned, this matter is closed. Zhange Jue, mill worker and occasional hired thug, was the murderer of Tara Potgieter and several other girls, identities to be determined. He was killed by person or persons unknown in a manner that has yet to be established. You came across the person or persons engaged in the murder but were knocked unconscious before you could ascertain their identity or identities.”
“Person or persons unknown? Are you out of your fucking mind? You think the Kiren was stabbed to death? You know as well as I do this reeks of the Art.”
“I know.”
“Even the brass can’t be so stupid as to think otherwise.”
“They aren’t.”
“Then what are you talking about, ‘the matter is closed’?”
Crispin rubbed at his temples as if to alleviate some hidden pain. “You worked here long enough-do I have to spell it out for you? No one’s looking to get himself involved in something this ugly, not on the say-so of a drug dealer. The Kiren killed Tara, and now he’s dead. End of story.”
It had been a long time since I’d come across an outrage I was insufficiently jaded to accept. “I get it-no one cares about the dead child. Why would they? She’s just another slum kid. But there’s something loose in Low Town that was spat out from the heart of the void. People need to know.”
“No one’s ever going to know. They’ll burn the body and you’ll keep your mouth shut and after a while it’ll disappear.”
“If you think this thing is done, then you’re as stupid as your superiors.”
“You know so much?”
“I knew enough to find Tara’s murderer while the rest of you were up here holding your dicks.”
“And why don’t you tell me how exactly that happened-or am I to believe you were wandering through the back alleys of Kirentown and bumped into the man responsible for the body you found two days ago?”
“No, Crispin, obviously I was tracking him down. I assumed that being a member of an elite investigative organization, you wouldn’t need the situation spelled out to you like a damn child.”
His upper lip twitched below his beaked nose. “I told you not to go looking for him.”
“I chose to ignore your suggestion.”
“It wasn’t a suggestion, it was the command of a legally empowered representative of the Crown.”
“Your orders didn’t mean much to me when I was an agent, and a half decade out of the service hasn’t led me to rate them any higher.”
Crispin reached over the table and rapped me on the chin, almost casually but with enough force that I struggled to maintain balance on the chair. Damn, but the man was still quick.
I rubbed at a loose tooth with my tongue, nursing the pain and hoping it wouldn’t fall out. “Fuck you. I don’t owe you a thing.”
“I spent the last forty-five minutes convincing the captain to keep you out of the hands of Special Ops. If it wasn’t for me, they’d be taking you apart with a scalpel right now.” The sneer sat awkwardly on his face. Crispin was not by nature disposed to reveling in the misfortune of others. “You know how much those animals want you back under their care?”
Quite badly, I imagined. I had been working for Special Operations toward the end of my time as an agent, the unit tasked with fixing issues that fell outside the normal purview of law enforcement. Their retirement package generally consisted of a violent death and an unmarked grave, and avoiding that unhappy fate had taken a good bit more luck than a wise man ought to count on twice. I owed Crispin for averting a reunion, and even my well-honed sense of ingratitude wasn’t sufficient to deny that.
From inside his duster Crispin pulled out a document and sent it spinning across the table. “Here’s your statement. The illegal goods found in the alley are assumed to be Zhange Jue’s and will be destroyed according to official policy.” That was right; they must have found my satchel. I guess I owed Crispin for that too: ten ochres’ worth of breath will get you five years in a labor camp, three more than the average inmate survives. “Sign at the bottom,” he said, then leaned across the table and unlocked my cuffs.
I spent a moment rubbing circulation back into my wrists. “Good to see the case wrapped up, justice pursued, righteousness restored and all that.”
“I don’t like this any more than you do. If I had my way, we’d be tearing apart the Kiren’s house, and have half the force looking into your story. This…” He shook his head bitterly, and I saw the same young man I’d met ten years earlier, who fancied his service to the Crown was just that, service, and that what evil existed in the world could be defeated by the strong right arm of a virtuous man. “This isn’t justice.”
For all his intellect and physical prowess, at the end of the day Crispin wasn’t very good at his job. His fantasies of what it should be blinded him to what it was, and that had doomed him to the middle ranks even though his family was one of the oldest in Rigus and his service to the Crown noble and distinguished. Justice? I almost laughed. An agent doesn’t pursue justice, he maintains order.
Justice-by the Lost One, what can you say to that?
I didn’t have the energy to give him another civics lesson, and anyway this was a long-standing argument. Growing up surrounded by tapestries depicting his ancestors leading doomed charges against invincible odds had made him a sucker for words that didn’t mean anything. I signed my name at the bottom of the document with a flourish.
“The Kiren got his, and I leave justice to the Firstborn. At the moment I’m more concerned with what happens when the thing that killed him comes back.”
“If I were you, I’d hope it doesn’t-as of right now, you’re the only link. So long as it stays gone, no one gives a shit about you, not anymore. But if it starts popping up again, Special Ops will set you a spot in the basement, and there won’t be anything I can do about it.”
That was as pleasant a note as any to leave on. “Until that happy day comes,” I said, giving him a nod of farewell.
He didn’t return it, his eyes downcast, fixed without purpose on the center of the table.
I left Black House with all possible speed, hoping to avoid both the pull of memory and any former comrades intent on displaying dissatisfaction with my career path via physical assault. I was more successful with the second than the first, and by the time I hit the streets my mood had plunged into something approaching outright despair. I walked home wishing I still had my stash, and could take a quick dip into it.
When I got back to the Earl I drank a flagon of ale and slept for about a day and a half, waking only to give Adolphus a quick blow-by-blow over a plate of eggs. I kept vague on what exactly had done the Kiren-the less anyone knew, the better for everyone. He was suitably impressed.
For the next week I went about my business with a tight watch, backtracking and setting false trails in case anyone was shadowing me, but best as I could tell, I was on my own. No ethereal spirits, no dark apparitions hovering out the corners of
my eye-just the boil on the ass of Rigus that is Low Town, stewing in all its fetid glory.
So for a while I assumed that would be pretty much it. I had some long nights thinking about the monstrosity, but even had I been interested in tracking it down, I had nothing to work from. And, truth be told, I’d had my fill of playing detective-pretending I was an agent had turned out to be even less satisfying than actually being one.
Then the Shattered Dagger Mob went to war with a clique of Islanders from near the docks, and I didn’t have time to think about anything other than the day-to-day survival of my enterprise. Spending my afternoons explaining to stone-faced heretics why I owed them no tax on my operations and my evenings convincing a crew of drug-addled rude boys that I was too crazy to muscle didn’t leave much room for extracurricular activities.
As far as the rest of Rigus was concerned, the important people considered the matter forgotten, and the unimportant people didn’t count. The ice kept a pretty tight lid on the whole thing. There were rumors of black magic and demons hiding in the shadows, and for a while there was a boom in the sale of defensive charms of dubious effectiveness, especially among the Kiren, by nature a superstitious people. But Low Town is a busy place, and as autumn gave way to early winter, the murder of Tara Potgieter sunk into the realm of dim memory.
I thought about heading back to the Aerie to clue the Crane in on what had happened; I figured I owed him that much. But then I figured I owed him a hell of a lot more, and since I’d never be able to repay the full amount, I decided to write off this last debt as well. He’d understand, even if Celia wouldn’t. Scratch a scab long enough and it’ll start to run. That part of my life was over-as far as I was concerned our reunion was an isolated incident.
Despite the best efforts of Adeline, Wren refused to spend a full night within the walls of the Earl. Like a half-trained version of his namesake, he’d flit in to snatch a few crumbs of food, then fly out again without a word. Once I caught him swiping something from a neighborhood stall, and he disappeared for a full week, leaving Adeline sick with worry and furious at me-but then he showed up again one evening, slipping through the back door like nothing had happened.
Though reticient to take to settled life, he was there when I needed him and became an aid if not an asset to my operations. I kept him out of anything serious and never let him hold any weight, but his fresh legs were useful when I needed a message carried, and I found myself acclimatizing to his laconic presence, one of those few individuals unencumbered by the need to fill the air with rhetoric.
Adolphus offered to teach the boy to box, and much as it galled him to admit there might be a skill he’d yet to master, he had the good sense to take the giant up on his offer. He showed a talent for it, and I enjoyed wasting the occasional hour watching the two spar, burning a twist of dreamvine while Adolphus demonstrated basic footwork with his gargantuan frame. It was this idle enterprise I was engaged in late one afternoon when Adeline unknowingly set my feet upon the path of ruin.
“You can take five blows to the chest easier than one to your head,” Adolphus was saying, his fat face thick with sweat as his wife entered the courtyard. “Always keep your hands up,” he continued, Wren aping his actions in miniature beside him.
So soft is Adeline’s voice that on those rare occasions when she magnifies it beyond a whisper it has the effect of a shriek. “Another girl’s gone missing.”
I reminded myself to exhale a chest full of smoke. Adolphus dropped his hands to his sides, his voice low and guttural. “When? Who?”
“Last night. Anne from the bakery told me. They’ve got guardsmen out looking now. I don’t know the girl. Anne said her father is a tailor near the canal.”
Adolphus shot me a grim look, then turned to Wren. “Training is over. Wash up and help Adeline.” I could see the boy was unhappy to be excluded, but Adolphus can be a heavy character, and Wren kept his tongue resting in its cavity.
We waited until they were both inside before continuing. “What do you think?” Adolphus asked.
“Maybe she got lost playing rat-in-a-hole. Maybe she caught the eye of a slaver and is stuffed in a barrel on her way east. Maybe her father beat her to death and hid her body somewhere. It could be a lot of things.”
His one eye flickered across my face, performing double duty as always. “It could be a lot of things, fine. Is it them?”
It’s usually best to assume the worst and work from there.
“Probably.”
“What will you do?”
“I’ll keep my nose clean and stay out of it.” Though I doubted I’d have that option. If this was the work of the same crew that got the last girl, there’d be trouble-the Crown would make sure of that. They might not care about the dead child of a Low Town dockworker but they sure as shit would want to know who was summoning otherworldly entities. Only the Crown gets to dabble in the dark arts-it’s a privilege they preserve with great rigor. As of right now I was the only connection to whatever had killed the Kiren, and that alone was enough to merit me a session below Black House.
“Will the ones that killed the girl come after you?” Adolphus asked.
“I’m done playing lawman.”
“And will your former comrades let you off so easily?”
I said nothing. Adolphus knew the answer.
“I’m sorry that I pushed you to do this.” I found myself very conscious of the gray hairs that speckled his beard, and of the sparse patches in his mane.
“I’m going to head over to the Aerie, see if I can’t get a better handle on the situation.” I left Adolphus in the courtyard and went upstairs to grab my satchel. I considered taking a blade, but thought better of it. If the girl turned up floating in the canal I was sure to get a visit from the law, and if that happened I’d never see anything I was carrying again. Besides, from what I could tell, steel wouldn’t do much against the abomination I had seen. I exited the bar and set out on a brisk walk, my mind drawn back to what I had long assumed would be my first and only encounter with the thing that had killed the Kiren.
The war was almost over-we hovered at the precipice of victory. Everywhere the Dren whore was on her back, her defenses breached, her castles defended by old men with bent pikes and boys too young to shave. Of the seventeen territories that had once made up the United Provinces, only four remained in Dren possession, and once we took Donknacht these remaining holdouts were sure to fold as well. My five long years of service, killing and bleeding and pushing for a hundred yards a day, were almost over. We’d all be spending Midwinter at home, drinking hot toddies by a roaring fire. At that very moment, Wilhelm van Agt, chief Steadholder of the Republic, was considering an armistice as prelude to complete capitulation.
Unfortunately it seemed the news of our conflict’s resolution had not yet reached the Dren themselves, who stood outside their capital city like lions, roaring defiance in the face of Allied might. A half decade of preparation and a mastery of siege tactics had enabled them to create what was likely the most perfect defensive perimeter in mankind’s long history of violence. It seemed they hadn’t heard of the famine and disease afflicting their forces, of the terrible losses they’d suffered at Karsk and Lauvengod, of the generally hopeless nature of their cause-or if they had, it had done nothing to weaken their resolve.
It was this collective intransigence, intransigence which bordered on outright foolishness, that I blamed for forcing me out of bed in the middle of the night to go on a covert mission. It was the stupidity of our own brass, however, that I blamed for the logistical failure that was to leave me and my squad absent appropriate camouflage during the operation.
Inwardly, at least. Outwardly, officers don’t grumble about these little administrative mishaps, even if they’re of the sort likely to get them killed.
Private Carolinus had no such qualms. “Lieutenant, how are we expected to go on a mission at night with no faceblack?” he asked angrily, as if I had an explanation or a vat of the s
tuff hidden beneath my sleep roll. Carolinus was red haired and ruddy cheeked, a northern Rouender, one of that peculiar breed of men whose ancestors had invaded Vaal three centuries prior and never left. As squat and hard as the coal he had grown up mining, he was nearly as quick to complain as he was to go over the top. He had become, frankly, a constant source of annoyance, but with Adolphus invalided home he was the only man I thought capable of taking over if I caught a stray bolt. “Lieutenant, the Dren have eyes like owls. We’ll be porcupined for sure if we aren’t inked.”
I cinched tight the straps of my leather armor, making sure my weapons were in place and my trench blade hung loose at my side. “They aren’t expecting you to do anything, Private. I, however, am ordering you to shut that flapping cunt mouth of yours and gear up, because you’re going over the wall in a quarter hour whether you’re butt-fucking naked or covered in soot. And don’t worry about the enemy, from what I hear they only fire at men.”
The others laughed and even Carolinus smirked, but their humor was forced and so was mine. It wasn’t just the absence of faceblack-I hadn’t even known we were on until forty minutes earlier, when an aide to the company commander had roughly woken me from the first decent night’s sleep I’d had in a week, telling me to grab a crew of my finest and report to the major.
Truth was, none of it felt right. Donknacht the Unbowed was the capital of the Dren States, and for a millennium and a half it had stood free of foreign yoke. When the rest of the Dren provinces had been swallowed up by their neighbors, Donknacht alone had remained a free city. And when the surge of Dren nationalism seventy years past had unified these disparate states into one mighty confederacy, Donknacht had been the pivot around which the commonwealth had formed.
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