Low Town lt-1

by Daniel Polansky

  “Go wary on this one, brother,” said Yancey as he flicked out the end of the joint.

  “Dangerous?”

  He spoke with remarkable solemnity given our last five minutes’ recreation. “And not just the sword.”

  The Rhymer led me through the back door and into a wide kitchen, a small army of cooks moving about frantically, each attending to an array of edibles as appetizing as they were delicate. I regretted filling up on spiced chicken, though on the other hand I probably wasn’t going to be offered a seat at the feast. Yancey and I waited for a gap in the traffic, then threaded our way into the main room.

  I’d been to a lot of these little soirees courtesy of Yancey’s connections, and this was definitely one of the nicer ones. The guests were the sort of people who looked like they deserved to be out somewhere-that’s not always the case.

  Although a lot of it was probably the architecture. The drawing room was three times as wide as the Earl, but apart from general scale, there was little else to compare with Adolphus’s modest establishment. Intricately carved wooden walls led up above elaborate Kiren carpets. A dozen grand glass chandeliers, each cupping a hundred wax candles, descended from a gilded ceiling. In the center of it all a circle of nobles amused themselves in the intricate patterns of a contra dance, moving in time to the band that had picked up after Yancey had stepped off. Radiating out from this core were small knots of courtiers laughing and chatting. Around them, at once ever-present and innocuous, swarmed the servants, carrying finger food and drinks of all kinds.

  Yancey leaned toward me. “I’ll let the big man know you arrived,” he said, moving off into the crowd.

  I snatched a flute of champagne from a passing waiter who harrumphed with disdain. The degree of contempt underlings are willing to muster on behalf of their employers is a source of continual amusement to me. I sipped my bubbly and tried to remember the reasons I hated these people. It was hard going-they were beautiful and seemed to be having a great deal of fun, and I struggled to maintain class resentment amid the laughter and bright colors. The vine wasn’t helping either, its pleasant haze dulling my well-sharpened bitterness.

  Among all the gild and glitter, the figure in the corner stuck out like a broken thumb on a manicured hand. He was short and stocky, runtlike, and what body he possessed he’d done little enough to care for. Rolls of fat sprayed over his belt buckle, and the broken red veins swelling his nose suggested more than a passing familiarity with drink. His clothing added another wrinkle to the mystery, for while I doubted very much the duke would employ an individual whose physique so clearly betrayed the poverty of his upbringing, I was certain he wouldn’t allow him to wear such an odd costume. It had been expensive once, though never fashionable, a black dress shirt and pants of the same hue, the cut and cloth the product of a master tailor. But their maker’s care had been betrayed by ill use, a sheen of mud on his leather boots that ran up the cuff, the tunic in little better shape.

  If I hadn’t been invited to fulfill the function, I might have taken him as a member of my competition, combining as he did a seedy affluence with a hint of violence. Had I run into him in Low Town, I’d have assumed him a con man, or some low-level fixer, and never given him a second look-but here, surrounded by the cream of Rigun society, he demanded notice.

  Also, he had been openly staring at me since I’d come through the door, a mocking little smile on his lips, like he knew some shameful secret of mine and was enjoying holding it over my head.

  Whoever he was, I had no interest in responding to his scrutiny, so all these observations were made out of the corner of my eye. But still I kept enough focus to see him amble toward me awkwardly.

  “Come here often?” he asked, and broke out into a chortle. He spoke in a thick brogue, and he had an ugly laugh, in keeping with everything else about him.

  I gave him the half smile one adopts when refusing a vagrant’s request for coin.

  “What’s the matter? I ain’t high-class enough to have a conversation with?”

  “It’s not you personally. I’m a deaf-mute.”

  He laughed again. In most people, jocularity is at least an innocuous quality, if not a pleasant one. But the stranger was of that kind whose cackling dug into your ears like rough canvas against a sore. “You’re a funny one. A real joker.”

  “Always here to lighten up a party.”

  He was younger than I’d initially thought, younger than I was-though bad living had aged him prematurely, graying his skin and sending lines out through his face and hands. These last were covered by an odd assortment of rings, silver interspersed with jewelry so bright and gaudy I knew them immediately to be fake, frippery that once again spoke of wealth spent without the benefit of taste. He kept his mouth unfastened, filtering air through a row of crooked teeth, stained yellow where they hadn’t been replaced with dull gold. His breath carried with it an unsavory combination of salted meat and vodka.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said.

  “Then I hope you don’t take offense easily.”

  “You’re thinking, how am I gonna get at any of the fine trim swimming around with this ugly bastard yelling in my ear?”

  This was not, in fact, what I was thinking. I was here on business, and even if I hadn’t been, I doubted I’d find much amorous success, being what I was and looking like I did. That said, if I had hoped to find a companion, the tumor standing next to me probably wouldn’t have helped.

  “But see, these cunts.” He wagged his index finger in front of my face like a disapproving schoolteacher. “They ain’t interested in folk like us. We ain’t good enough for them.”

  Even by my standards, this was a whole mess of hideousness. The stranger and I were getting to the end of our conversation, one way or the other. “We got so much in common, you and me?”

  “When it comes to women, we got a lot in common,” he said, speaking each word with a slow seriousness.

  “This has been riveting,” I answered. “But if it’s all the same on your end, how about you do me a favor and step off.”

  “Ain’t no cause to be disrespectful. I come over here and talk to you like a man, and you give me the brush-off. You ain’t no different from any of these pampered little bastards with their noses in the air. And here I was, thinking we might even get to be friends.”

  We were reaching the point of being a spectacle, something one tries to avoid when one has entered another man’s home for the purposes of selling him drugs. “I’m all up on friends, stocked full with associates, and met my quota of acquaintances. The only openings I got left are for strangers and enemies. Make yourself the first, before you find yourself the second.”

  Up until that point I had taken the man for harmless if offensive, and I figured he’d be easy enough to frighten off. But my words had little effect on him, except to draw a glint of menace to his bloodshot eyes. “That’s the way you want it? That’s fine by me. I been plenty of men’s enemies-though never for very long.”

  I found myself wishing that I could run through the play again, but having thrown down the gauntlet there wasn’t much for it but to continue in the same vein. “You talk like a man that ain’t been smacked yet today,” I said, my eyes turned back on Yancey, who was now waving me over. “But now’s not the time to rectify the situation.”

  “You’ll get yourself another chance!” he exclaimed to my back, loud enough to draw the attention of the surrounding guests. “Don’t you worry on that score!”

  It was a disagreeable interlude, and one I had the sense presaged future unpleasantness-but I pushed it out of my mind as I slipped toward the duke, careful not to intrude on the groups of flirting patricians.

  If the human race has ever invented an institution more effective in the propagation of intellectual and ethical cripples than the nobility, I have yet to stumble across it. Take the progeny of a half millennium of inbred idiots, first cousins, and hemophiliacs. Raise them via a series of bloated wet nurs
es, drink-addled confessors, and failed academics, because Sakra knows Mommy and Daddy are too busy diddling themselves at court to take a hand in the upbringing of a child. Ensure any youthful training they receive extends to nothing more practical than swordsmanship and the study of languages no longer spoken, grant them a fortune upon the attainment of their majority, place them outside the bounds of any legal system more developed than the code duello, add the general human instinct toward sloth, avarice, and bigotry, stir thoroughly and, voila-you have the aristocracy.

  At first glance Beaconfield looked every inch the product of this infernal social engine. His hair was coiffed in what I took for the newest fashion at court, and he smelled strongly of honey and rosewater. His rouged cheeks led to a goatee so perfectly manicured you would swear it had been painted on, and he was clothed in a brightly colored ensemble that was frilly to the point of being vaguely nauseating.

  But there was something that wouldn’t allow me to dismiss him completely, a sharpness in his eyes that made me think the costume was half a put-on. Maybe it was the way his hand hovered about the hilt of his rapier, well used and surprisingly plain compared to the rest of his costume. Maybe it was the fact that beneath his lace there was a hard leanness that spoke of long hours bathed in sweat rather than perfume. Or maybe it was just the knowledge that the man in front of me had likely killed more men than the Crown’s executioner.

  His entourage, by contrast, were such definitive examples of their type as to be barely worthy of notice, each attired similarly to their chief, each narcotized a few shades short of oblivion.

  Yancey shot me a look meant to remind me of his earlier warning, and broke into the exaggerated patois he affected for the rich and white. “This my partner, the one I was speaking on to you.”

  “A pleasure it is to make your acquaintance, your grace,” I said, executing a bow that would prove acceptable in any court in the land. “And truly may I say it is an honor to be allowed entrance to an affair of such elegance. Surely the Daevas on Chinvat fete no better.”

  “One of my lesser affairs, little more than a warm-up for next week’s gala.” He smiled, wide and winning, oddly natural even through the whore’s paint.

  “Men of my caliber would find even the meanest of your diversions fit for the divine.” That was laying it on a little thick, but then I was speaking to a man wearing pancake makeup.

  “I was told you were a man of many resources, but no mention was made of your charm.”

  “Had I the arrogance to contradict your grace, I would deny such unwarranted praise-but being a timid soul, I can only thank your grace for his kindness.”

  “Were you a teacher of court etiquette before you adopted your current profession?”

  “I did many things before I adopted my current profession, your grace.” This was going on longer than it needed to. No doubt the guests were starting to wonder why their host was giving audience to an ugly man in a dirty coat. “And I do a great many things even now. Perhaps your grace might indicate to me which of them he finds it pleasing to command?”

  There was a pause of substantial length while the Blade’s bright eyes rested on mine. I began to wonder if I had overrated the duke’s sobriety. “Perhaps one day we’ll discuss in more detail the range of assistance you might render me. But in the meantime Tucket here will fill you in on the details.” He gestured at a tight-lipped gentleman in a fine dark coat standing off to the side. “Do return shortly. A man of such wit and use is welcome in my demesne regardless of the occasion.”

  I bowed, once toward him and once toward his assemblage. Neither returned the gesture, though Yancey shot me a quick nod as I backed away. The Blade’s servant led me out of the main room and into a small corridor beyond.

  Up close Tucket smelled like ink and the civil service. Clucking his tongue unpleasantly he took out a sheet of paper from his breast pocket, unfolded it, and handed it to me. “This details the items the Master wishes to procure.”

  I tried not to look surprised at the volume and variety. “The dreamvine and pixie’s breath I can do now. The rest of it I can get in a day or two. Except this last one. I don’t truck wyrm. You’ll need to find someone else for that.”

  “I didn’t realize men in your line of work could afford to be so particular.”

  “I’m happy to have helped further your education.”

  He bristled and tried to think of something smart to say. I waited a few seconds to provide him with an opportunity. When it was clear he wasn’t going to take it, I spoke up again. “I assume you’ve been provided with payment?”

  He passed over a fat purse, handing it to me with an awfully high-toned manner, given that we were completing a narcotics transaction. There was more than there needed to be. A lot more.

  “The duke is very kind.”

  “His grace is buying your silence, and your loyalty.”

  “Tell him the first is free, but the second isn’t for sale.” I put the purse into my satchel and handed him most of my remaining stash.

  He took it with an impressively choreographed air of disdain. “Follow this hallway to the garden. A path will take you to the side gate.”

  “The gentleman I was talking to earlier,” I interrupted, “who was he?”

  “Believe it or not, sir”-he laid on the last syllable thick enough to let me know he didn’t think me entitled to it-“I hadn’t made a point of following your every movement.”

  “You know who I’m talking about. He was out of place.”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but I assume you’re speaking of Sorcerer Brightfellow.”

  If there was one thing I hadn’t taken Tubby for, it was the Queen of Ostarrichi-but if there was a second, it was an artist. I let that piece fall into place while I found my way out into the night air.

  All in all, the evening was not much different from a hundred others, a gathering of bored blue bloods happy to exchange inherited wealth for alchemical happiness, and I equally happy to be the agent of their deliverance. Business as usual really, par for the course-save one detail, one minor particular that I’d barely had time to consider till I was walking back to the Earl.

  From the moment I had begun speaking to Beaconfield till I had left his sight, the sapphire in my chest had burned like the sting of a wasp. I rubbed at it as I headed home, thinking that I might just be seeing the Blade sooner than he expected.

  I awoke to Adolphus’s fat face leering over mine, huge hands shaking me roughly from my repose. “They found the girl.”

  It was clear he didn’t mean alive. I brushed him off and sat up.

  “Are the chill here?”

  “Not yet.”

  We didn’t have long. I grabbed my satchel from the chair and handed it to him. “Tell Wren to run this over to Kid Mac. And give him something to do that’ll get him out of the bar for a few hours.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Just don’t make trouble when they come in. Let them up and don’t get hot. I’ll handle it.”

  He swallowed hard and left.

  I pulled on my clothes and boots, then lay back down on the bed. At least I wouldn’t be naked when they came for me, that was about all the preparation I could manage. Adolphus was right to be nervous-Crispin was one thing; whatever was between us he knew I wasn’t out there killing children. But they wouldn’t be sending Crispin after me, because Crispin went after murderers and criminals, and no one important cared about the dead girl. They cared about the practitioner who had likely killed her, and that meant Special Operations, and Special Operations was a whole new kettle of worms.

  The Empire is a great machine, a massive engine, millions of gears churning, and nothing that complex operates perfectly. When it breaks down, when a speck of dust dirties a lens or a cog refuses to turn, someone needs to be in place to repair it. This is the purpose of Special Operations-to keep the wheels spinning swiftly and smoothly, and to make sure anyone caught between them gets ground fine enough
that they aren’t noticed.

  I sighed ruefully. I had been the shining star of that outfit at one point. Life is strange, sometimes.

  When they came, they came hard. I could hear the door downstairs kicked open and obscene threats being shouted. I hoped Adolphus wouldn’t do anything foolish-all that fat and good humor hid a man capable of extraordinary violence. If things went bad, they’d need to kill him to get him down, and at the end the blood on the floor wouldn’t be his alone.

  But I didn’t hear the sounds of shattered glass and broken furniture that would accompany the loss of my friend’s temper, so I assumed he was following my orders. Footsteps echoed up the stairs and then the door flew open and I was staring down the wrong end of a crossbow at a young agent yelling at me to get on the ground. Following close on his heels was a pair of apish-looking gentlemen that made sure I followed through on the first’s command.

  I was facedown on the floor, my hands chained and a knee in my back, when I heard a half-forgotten voice. “I always knew if I stuck around long enough I’d get another crack at you. I just didn’t think it would be such a good one.”

  The pressure eased off my spine and rough hands pulled me to my feet. Greeting me was a blunt face set atop a thick tun of gristle, broad muscle, and scarred flesh.

  “Hello, Crowley. Good to see stupidity is no barrier to a lasting career in the service of the Crown.”

  “Still quick with that tongue, aren’t we, boy?” He laughed, dull beady eyes set above a pug nose flaring in anticipation. His fist shot forward and I was back on my knees, trying not to vomit and wishing I had the last ten seconds to do over. Crowley laughed and leaned in close to me. “I’ve got you, boy. I’ve got you by the balls.”

  I wheezed out a response. “You always were fascinated with my junk.” It was a juvenile attempt at humor, and I regretted it even before Crowley sunk another fat paw into my chin.