“We can’t let the Master’s work have been in vain.”
“That won’t happen,” I said. “By the Firstborn, I’ll make sure of it.”
That seemed to calm her down some. She set one soft hand atop mine, and we sat like that for a long moment.
It was getting late, and the walk home wasn’t getting any shorter. “There was something else I wanted to ask you. I spoke to the mother of the last child. She said that he knew secrets without being told them-it reminded me of some of the things that let the Crane know you could be trained to the Art.”
Celia answered without looking at me. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Every child is special, to a parent.”
True enough. I gave her a last farewell and slipped out. It was early evening, and the chill winds that had oppressed my earlier travels had faded, leaving behind the thick blanket of gray fog. There was more I had wanted to do, business I needed to take care of, leads to follow. But in my weakened state it was all I could do to make it back to the Earl, swallow some burnt chuck, and pass out in my bed-which, I noted sourly, was far less comfortable than Celia’s.
I awoke the next morning with a bruise on my shoulder the size of an egg, but little else to show that I had come a fingernail from death not twenty-four hours prior. I had experienced curative magic before, but nothing that could compete with this. The Crane had taught Celia well.
Shaking off the last strands of sleep I opened the bottom drawer of my bureau and sprung the hidden latch, revealing the niche below. I took a few dozen vials of pixie’s breath out of my business stash, along with a handful of other chemicals, then sat down at my table and went to work. It was slow going, and forty-five minutes had passed before I could pull on my clothes and stow my weapons. I would need to hustle to make my meeting with the Blade.
Wren sat at a table below, listening to Adolphus bullshit about his youth. It was nice to walk downstairs without being subject to the news of some horrible tragedy, for a change.
“It’s true-I once ate an entire side of ham in a single sitting.”
“He did, I was there. It was as impressive as it was grotesque. He reeked of pig for the next month and a half. The Dren took to calling him the Varken van de duivel, and fainted at the smell of cooked bacon.” Adolphus bellowed a laugh and even Wren cracked a smile.
The “devil pig” stood and brushed off his pants. “You want me to tell Adeline to cook up some breakfast?”
“Afraid not. I’m late as it is.”
“I’ll get my coat,” Wren said.
“No need. It’s plenty warm in here.”
His eyes slanted angrily. “I’m coming along.”
“Interestingly, you aren’t-you’re staying here and keeping Adolphus company. Though it’s nice to see you have such an active imagination.” The scowl he shot me was wasted effort-I had too many people trying to kill me to worry much over the fury of an adolescent.
The previous day’s mist had evaporated, leaving in its wake the kind of crystal clear morning that prefaces snowfall. I turned north up Pritt Street and headed toward the Old City. I’d be a few minutes late for my requested audience with Beaconfield, but I could live with that-a little rudeness is good when dealing with blue bloods, reminds them you aren’t as interested in them as they are. Halfway there it started to snow, the flurries signaling a storm soon to come. I picked up my pace and tried to plot out the next hour in my head.
Seton Gardens is a lovely little park toward the outskirts of the city, near the old walls and just north of the Asher enclave. Stone avenues lead through a wooded preserve, a dollop of verdant green in a gray landscape, far enough from the slums to keep out the riffraff. In the center is a lovely granite fountain, and next to it a curiously tailored green-an awkward addition to the topography, and one that would have no meaning to the average picnicker. On most mornings it’s virtually empty, too far from the interior to see much use.
But on rare occasions the peaceful solitude of the gardens is interrupted by the flash of blades and the piercing of silk shirts. By long tradition the park has been designated the arena in which the city’s upper crust thin out their herd, and the short stretch of manicured turf had soaked up near as much blood as the plains of Gallia. Dueling is technically illegal in the Empire, though in practice the Crown is generally happy enough to overlook the occasional murder-in this way at least, the law treats the very high and low equally.
That was the main reason I didn’t want Wren following along. The Duke of Beaconfield hadn’t called me out for a morning stroll-he’d invited me to watch him kill someone. By my count it would be his fourth this week.
I entered the park and was soon engulfed by its beech trees. A few hundred yards along a smoothly cultivated path and the city’s noise was lost in the stillness of the morning. Farther in and that quiet was broken by the low commotion of a crowd. Apparently I wasn’t to be the only audience to the proceedings.
A small group had gathered in front of the dueling grounds, twenty or thirty men-friends or acquaintances of the participants, these things aren’t exactly advertised. I took shelter beneath an outlying tree and sucked at my teeth. I was in the presence of some old names. It had been a long time since I’d needed to be familiar with the court, but my tattered memory was sufficient to recognize two earls and a marquess who used to pass Black House information. Probably still did, come to think of it.
Opposite the audience were the combatants and their coteries, separated from each other by about twenty feet of lawn. Beaconfield sat on a small bench, lounging comfortably in a multihued tunic and a long black coat. He was surrounded by a half dozen of his usual crowd, dressed less extravagantly than at the ball but, by my own aesthetic, still in attire inappropriate to the business before us. They were enjoying themselves thoroughly, cavorting for the benefit of their captain, who smirked but didn’t laugh.
Across the way the atmosphere was quite different. The Blade’s opponent was alone save his second, and the pair showed little in the way of gaiety. The duelist sat on the bench, staring off into the distance, his eyes unfocused but hard. He was more middle-aged than young, not old but too old to be involved in this kind of nonsense. His man stood next to him, the bulge of his paunch stretching his overcoat, hands frittering nervously.
I never did find out what they were fighting over. Some fracture in etiquette, the kind of nebulous bullshit the upper classes love to spill red over. I suspected it was Beaconfield’s fault-people like to display what makes them exceptional, and the Smiling Blade’s forte rested on his hip.
The duke noticed me and gave a little half wave. Did he do this so often that he could work it in as an exclamation point to our own engagement? Sick motherfucker.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Beaconfield’s butler detach himself from the crowd. “Do you have the merchandise?” he asked, by way of greeting.
“I didn’t walk this far for my health,” I said, handing him a nondescript package containing a few ochres’ worth of dreamvine and pixie’s breath.
He slipped it into his waistband, then handed me a pouch that felt heavier than it ought to. Nobles love to throw money around, though if Mairi was right, Beaconfield didn’t have it to lose. Tucket seemed to think I was going to say something further. When he realized I wasn’t, he said, “I hope you appreciate what a privilege this is. You’ve been invited to witness an extraordinary spectacle.”
“I hate to break this to you, Tucket-but death isn’t that rare an occurrence. Nor murder, leastways not where I come from.”
He sniffed and walked back to the crowd. I rolled a smoke and watched snowflakes melt on my coat. A few minutes passed. The judge stepped to the center of the grounds and waved for the two seconds, who approached the battleground.
“I speak for Mr. Wilkes,” said the fat man, his voice steady enough not to embarrass him.
The Blade’s adjunct was not as bad as he might have been. To the best of my knowledge the code duello doesn’t require partici
pants to curl their hair, but at least he walked out instead of sauntering. “I speak for Rojar Calabbra the Third, the Duke of Beaconfield.”
Wilkes’s second spoke again, sweating despite the cold. “Can there be no resolution between the two gentlemen? My party, for his part, is willing to make an admission that his information was gained secondhand and does not amount to an exact transcription of the conversation.”
I couldn’t entirely decipher the legalese, but that seemed like a step toward reconciliation.
Beaconfield’s second responded haughtily. “My party is satisfied with nothing less than a complete retraction and an apology presented in a public forum.”
Apparently it wasn’t.
The fat man looked back at Wilkes, his eyes pleading and his face very pale. Wilkes didn’t look at him but jerked his head once in the negative. The fat man closed his eyes and swallowed hard before speaking. “Then the issue must proceed.”
The judge spoke again. “Gentlemen are to approach me with their weapons drawn but lowered. Combat is to continue until forfeiture or first blood.”
The Blade managed to extract himself from his mass of brightly colored partisans and moved toward the field. Wilkes pushed himself up from the bench and did the same. They met a few yards from each other. Beaconfield smirked, as was his wont. Wilkes’s face was impassive. Against my better judgment I found I was pulling for him.
“On my signal,” the judge said, stepping off the green. Wilkes snapped his blade to the ready. Beaconfield held the point of his weapon arrogantly off to the side.
“Begin.”
I learned early on that She Who Waits Behind All Things was an indiscriminate mistress, when the plague took broken old men and wellborn youths without distinction. The war reinforced the lesson, years watching thick Dren pikemen and Asher sword slaves die from well-placed artillery shells disabusing any lingering illusions as to the inviolability of flesh. No one is immortal. No one is so good that he can’t lose it to a rank amateur if the light is wrong or his foot gets caught in a divot. A couple hundred pounds of meat, a frame of bone not nearly as sturdy as it seems-we were not built for immortality.
That being said, I never saw anyone like Beaconfield. Not before and not since. He was faster than I thought a person could be, fast like a bolt from the ether. He fought with a heavy blade, something midway between a rapier and a long sword, but he wielded it like a razor. His technique and composure were astonishing. No movement was wasted, no drop of energy exhausted unnecessarily.
Wilkes was good, very good, and not just in the archaic and formalized style of the duel. He had killed men before, maybe in the war, maybe in one of these little tete-a-tetes the rich engage in rather than do any honest work, but he was no stranger to the spilling of blood. I wondered if I could take him and thought maybe, if I got a little lucky or if my style surprised him.
Regardless, he was absolutely outclassed, embarrassingly so. Watching the Blade play with him I wondered what in the name of Maletus could have convinced this poor bastard to draw steel with Beaconfield, what absurd point of honor could have necessitated so foolish a gesture.
In the midst of the melee the Blade’s eyes flashed up and locked on mine, a flourish that would have seen anyone else dead. Sensing an opening, Wilkes threw everything into his attack, surging forward, the tip of his weapon searching for flesh. The Blade deflected his opponent’s blows, parrying each thrust and cut by some preternatural instinct.
Then one eyelid winked shut and Beaconfield struck, a flash so quick that I couldn’t follow it, and Wilkes had a hole in his chest, one he stared at awkwardly before dropping his weapon and sinking to the ground.
I will admit I wondered, in an off moment here and there since I’d met him, the extent to which the Smiling Blade’s reputation rested on rumor and hearsay. I wouldn’t waste any more time. It’s an important thing to know your limitations, not to be blinded by pride or optimism as to what you’re capable of. I’d never be pretty. I’d never outwrestle Adolphus or beat a drum better than Yancey. I’d never get comeback on the Old Man, never be the kind of rich that lets you start your life over, never find a way out of Low Town.
And I would never, ever, be able to take Beaconfield in a fair fight. To draw a weapon against that man was suicide, as sure as swallowing widow’s milk.
Wilkes had gotten what he’d asked for I supposed-it doesn’t do to go around antagonizing someone with “blade” in their nickname. Still, the small crowd seemed unenthusiastic about the outcome. Beaconfield’s coup de grace had been bad form. It’s one thing for a combatant to die of sepsis from a gut wound, and another to be laid out deliberately with a killing stroke. There was a code of conduct about these things-first blood usually isn’t last as well. The Blade’s men offered the appropriate obeisance, of course, ruffled cuffs clapping against one another, but the rest of the gathering was in no great hurry to laud the victor. A medic rushed onto the field, followed closely by Wilkes’s second, but they couldn’t have had much hope, and if they did it was soon dashed. I could tell that wound was mortal at fifty paces.
The Blade had returned to his perch on the wooden bench, surrounded by his entourage of courtiers, fawning over themselves in congratulations at his ritualized slaughter. His shirt was unbuttoned below his neck and snowflakes were gathering in his dark hair. Apart from a lively flush there was little enough to show he’d been in an athletic contest of any kind-the bastard hadn’t even broken a sweat. He was laughing at something I couldn’t quite make out as I approached.
I greeted him with a bow. “May I say it was a pleasure to see your grace demonstrate his skills in the service of such a noble endeavor.”
He sneered slightly, and I was struck by how different he was in front of his lackeys. “I’m glad you had the opportunity to witness it. When you didn’t respond to my invitation, I wasn’t certain you’d be coming.”
“I remain your grace’s servant, in this as in all things.”
The sycophants took that as the obsequiousness due their leader, but the duke knew me well enough to appreciate the sarcasm. He rose and brushed off the parasites surrounding him. “Walk with me.”
I did as he directed, falling in beside him on one of the narrow stone paths that radiated from the fountain. The white sky shed light but no heat through the bare branches of the trees. The snow was coming down harder now and would only get worse. Beaconfield kept quiet until we were out of earshot of the rest of the assemblage, then pulled up in front of me. “I’ve considered our last discussion.”
“It flatters me to know I have a place in your graces’s thoughts.”
“Your words disturbed me.”
“Oh?”
“And more so your actions against me in the interim.”
“And what alterations to my behavior would satisfy your grace?”
“Cut the shit-I don’t find it amusing,” he said, coming on strong, swaggering like a cock now that he had a homicide under his belt. “Stop your investigation. Tell your superiors whatever they need to hear to get them off my back-I’ll make it worth your while. I have influence throughout the court, and I have money.”
“No, you haven’t.”
His face, bright red from his earlier exercise, blanched white, and he answered awkwardly, less practiced with his tongue than his weapon. “I’ve got other ways to settle my debts.”
“You waste a lot of vowels,” I said, “for a man holding trumps.”
He smiled a little, and I was reminded that there was something about him that didn’t quite fit in the archetype he sometimes chose to embody. “I responded in haste.” He swallowed hard, humility an unfamiliar taste in his mouth. “I’ve made some poor decisions, but I won’t let Black House use them to destroy me. It hasn’t gone too far-it’s not too late for forgiveness.”
I thought about Tara’s fractured body, and Crispin lying in the Low Town muck, and I disagreed. “I told you last time, Beaconfield-there’s no such thing.”
&
nbsp; “That makes me unhappy,” he said, drawing himself up imperiously. “And you’ve had ample evidence of what happens to those who earn my displeasure.”
As if I had forgotten the part of the morning where he’d murdered a man for my benefit. “You’re aptly named-but I won’t dress up for it, nor set a convenient time to be slaughtered. I didn’t make my reputation stabbing noblemen on shaped grass. I made it in the dark, in the streets, without a crew of courtiers clapping their support or a rule book to let me know procedure.” I bared my teeth in a bitter smile, happy to dispense with the dissimulation, happy to finally lay my simmering hatred of this monstrous fop on the table. “You come at me, you best start thinking crooked-and you best put your affairs in order.” I turned on my heel, not wanting to give him the chance for a last word.
He took it anyway. “Greet Wilkes when you see him!”
You’ll meet him first, you son of a bitch, I thought, heading east back to the city. You’ll meet him first.
I was hustling through Alledtown when I caught the flicker of Wren’s hideous woolen coat as he ducked behind an apple cart. I wondered if he’d been waiting for me outside the gardens, but dismissed it as unlikely. He must have been shadowing me since I’d left the Earl, all the way from Low Town, through the greenery, and now back into the city. That wasn’t an easy thing to do-I might have said impossible, if you’d asked me prior to him doing it.
After I was done swallowing my surprise I just got angry, real fucking pissed, the thought of that fool child dogging my footsteps, with Crowley, Beaconfield, and Sakra only knew who else doing their concerted best to end my existence near enough to send me apoplectic.
I hooked down a side street, following it around the back exit of a dive bar. Then I faded behind some packing crates and put my back to the stone, pulling the lapels of my coat up over the bottom half of my face and letting the shadows cover the rest.
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