Above His Proper Station

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “What?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  A hundred voices called out questions, but Doz raised his hands for silence.

  “We are going to tear down those damned arches,” he said. “If the watch wants to come talk to us, they can come on the streets, like anyone else.”

  For a second there was silence; then a cheer broke out, like the roar of a mighty beast.

  “Tear them down! Tear them down!”

  “Put the watch on the streets!”

  “Tear them down!”

  The crowd scattered, searching for anything that could be used to smash or pry. Anrel hesitated for a only a moment, then looked at the sword in his hand. It was a shame to ruin the blade, but it wasn’t a very good one to begin with; he turned and began chipping at the mortar of the staircase.

  “Not here,” Doz said, catching his arm. “We start with the ones that connect the quarter to the outside; once those are down, we can hammer at these at our leisure.”

  “Of course,” Anrel said, feeling slightly foolish. “Of course.”

  Ten minutes later he and a dozen other men were attacking the base of the arch above the Duty Street Gate, a few feet inside the barricade that closed off that portion of the Pensioners’ Quarter from the adjoining neighborhood of Catseye. Decades of neglect had made their task relatively easy; the ancient mortar crumbled away after only a few blows, giving room to set axes and crowbars solidly in place. Half a dozen men throwing their weight onto an iron bar was then enough to shift even the larger stones.

  It was hard, heavy labor, nonetheless, and before long every man present was sweating and stripped down to just breeches and boots—at least, those who had boots. Some wrapped their blouses and shirts around the handles of their tools, to protect their hands, while others simply flung the unwanted garments aside.

  Women and children did not try to join in the actual demolition, but they did fetch water for the men, and cart away stones to make room for the work to continue.

  An hour or so after the Emperor’s Watch had withdrawn Anrel heard the grinding of stone on stone when no one was pushing, and looked up to see the top of the arch starting to move.

  “Get back!” he shouted. “Get away!”

  He took his own advice, scrambling back up Duty Street with his ruined sword in hand. Then he turned to watch as the arch, which he knew had stood for at least a hundred years, broke apart and collapsed.

  Ancient stone shattered and tumbled with a crash and a roar, and as the sound of that destruction began to subside a cheer went up.

  “There are five more,” a woman’s voice called, but just then came a roar and a cheer from blocks away.

  “Four,” a man said, and most of the crowd laughed.

  Anrel did not laugh; he looked at the rubble and regretted his part in bringing down this piece of history. This would make it more difficult for the emperor’s men to enter the Pensioners’ Quarter, but it might also make them more determined to do so. It wasn’t as bad as killing the wounded watchmen would have been, but it would certainly not help mollify anyone.

  “Come on!” someone shouted. “The arch by Twilight Square is still standing!”

  With a cheer, most of the crowd ran in that direction, tools waving, but Anrel did not join them; instead he watched them go, then turned and marched toward the old hospital, wiping away sweat as he walked. He intended to speak with the captured watchmen to gauge their mood.

  He pulled his blouse back on, and the rest of his clothes, along the way; he wanted to look like a civilized man when he questioned the captives.

  He found them laid out in the courtyard of the hospital ruins. Most of them were sitting up now, their heads bandaged; a few had their arms in slings or other signs of injury. A faint scent of corruption told Anrel that some of the wounds were already infected; that was not good, but perhaps the witches might attend to it.

  Several Pensioner women were gathered in the courtyard, tending to the wounded. Anrel stepped up behind one.

  “Excuse me,” Anrel said. “Might I have a word?”

  Mother Baba looked up from the watchman she was tending. “With me?” she asked.

  “No, with him.”

  She looked up at Anrel, looked back at the watchman, then shrugged. “If you want,” she said. “This one’s skull is cracked, but if he’s careful he’ll be fine.” She stepped away to check on the next man.

  Anrel knelt beside the watchman, who looked at him warily.

  “Good day,” Anrel said. “My name is Dyssan. Can you speak?”

  “I can talk,” the watchman replied. He gave no name.

  “Good, good! I trust you have been well cared for?”

  “I suppose.”

  “I’m afraid I have a favor to ask.”

  The man did not reply; he just stared at Anrel through slightly clouded eyes.

  “Yes, well,” Anrel said. “I was hoping you might give me some idea what you intend to tell your superiors when you see them.”

  “I wasn’t planning to tell them anything,” the man said.

  “But won’t they ask you about how you were treated? How you came to be injured?”

  “They can ask, but I can’t tell them anything. I don’t remember what happened. I was up on the walks, and the sergeant started us toward the stair, and the next thing I know I was here, with a girl feeling the side of my head.” He put a hand to the area in question. “Right here.”

  “Ah,” Anrel said.

  “That happens when you get hit hard on the head. I’ve seen it before. Helps if you’re drunk at the time, but I wasn’t, and I still can’t remember it.”

  “I see.” Anrel looked around. “Do you think anyone here does remember the fighting?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I see. Well, thank you, and I hope your recovery will be swift.” He patted the man on the shoulder, then turned to the next man in the row of wounded.

  That one was only semiconscious, and apparently delirious. Anrel grimaced, and proceeded to the next.

  “I heard what you asked him,” this third man said. “I remember just fine; I didn’t get a brick to the head the way he did, I got my leg broken.” He gestured toward his right leg, which was bandaged and splinted from thigh to ankle.

  “I’m sorry for your injury, sir,” Anrel said.

  “Not as sorry as I am.”

  Anrel sighed. “Probably not,” he admitted.

  “So what did you want?”

  “I was hoping to avoid further conflict,” Anrel said. “We are all loyal Walasians, faithful subjects of the empire; we should not be fighting.”

  “Those people should have thought of that before you started throwing rocks.”

  “Sir, innocent citizens were threatened and abused, falsely accused of theft and other crimes. It was very unfortunate that someone lost his temper and began throwing missiles, I fully admit that, but you can’t deny there was provocation.”

  “What did they expect, hauling those sacks of bread through the streets? Did you really think anyone would believe that people in the Pensioners’ Quarter came by them honestly? They’re all thieves and beggars and whores—you know it and we know it. We don’t bother them in the ordinary way of things, but when they parade all that food past hungry people…!”

  “But we did come by them honestly!”

  “‘We’? Who are you?”

  Anrel realized that the man had taken him for an outsider, perhaps an investigator sent by some local official. He grimaced. “I am a resident of the Pensioners’ Quarter, sir, and Master Graun earned that bread honestly.”

  The watchman looked at Anrel’s clothes, which were reasonably clean and new and not at all typical of the Pensioners’ Quarter, and shrugged. “So you say.”

  “Ask the baker!”

  “And what do you think he’ll say, if he’s the one who spoiled it all? You think he’ll admit he tried to palm off bad bread on you?”

  That had not
occurred to Anrel. He did not have a ready reply.

  “Besides,” the watchman continued, “what does it matter now? What’s done is done, and nothing you or I might do is going to change that.”

  “I was not hoping to change the past, I assure you, but I do hope to prevent further conflict.”

  The watchman shook his head. “Too late for that,” he said. “I suppose you people don’t know it, but for years now the emperor has been looking for an excuse to rid the city of you once and for all. He doesn’t want your sort of people in his capital. Up until now the watch always said it wasn’t worth it, that trying to clean out the quarter would be too expensive and too dangerous, and that some of you weren’t criminals, just poor. Now, though—you attacked us. You’ve sealed your own doom.”

  Anrel wanted to argue with that, to suggest alternatives, but he could not. Tearing down the arches was a fine gesture, but it wasn’t going to stop the emperor’s men from retaliating. They would find some way into the quarter whether the arches were there or not.

  “I had hoped I might convince you and your compatriots to speak on our behalf,” Anrel said. “We could have killed you all, if we really considered you our enemies, but instead we have done our best to care for you. Cannot that earn us some forgiveness?”

  The watchman snorted. “We could speak until we can’t breathe. It wouldn’t help. They won’t listen to us any more than they would listen to you. The Emperor’s Watch was chased out of a part of the emperor’s own city; that can’t be allowed to stand. It doesn’t matter how it happened, or why, or who was right, or who was wrong. All that matters is that the emperor’s authority must be upheld.”

  Anrel bit his lip, nodding. “You’re right,” he said. “That’s how the sorcerers think.”

  “It’s how the emperor thinks.”

  “I’ve never met the emperor, but I’ve known sorcerers,” Anrel said. He frowned. “Tell me, if you would—how long do you think we have before they come?”

  “Not long, I’d guess. No longer than it takes for them to prepare.”

  “Do you think they’ll come for you and the other wounded first?”

  The watchman’s expression changed. He had already been pale with the pain of his broken leg, but now what little color had remained drained from his face. He had been almost sneering as he spoke, but now his expression became one of wide-eyed fear.

  “No,” he said very quietly. “They won’t. They probably take it for granted that we’re all dead, that you slit our throats as we lay in the street.” He looked around wildly. “We could be killed before they know we’re here.”

  “If they have already reported your deaths, well—they might not want those reports proven wrong,” Anrel suggested.

  “You’re right,” the watchman said, grabbing at Anrel’s sleeve. “You’re right!”

  “I’ll send a note,” Anrel said, pulling his arm away. “I’ll tell them where you are.”

  The watchman looked up at him, and didn’t say anything more, but Anrel could guess what he was thinking.

  Would it matter if the Emperor’s Watch knew these men were still alive? They were all too badly injured to return to active duty any time soon; perhaps it would be less of an embarrassment, more convenient, if they all simply vanished.

  The watch might not in fact be that ruthless, that heartless, that careless of the lives of its own men—but what did it say about them, that this watchman was not certain of that?

  And what did it say about the emperor’s government, that the watch might be so ruthless?

  “Rest,” Anrel told the injured watchman. “You’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

  Then he turned and walked away, wishing he believed the lie he had just told.

  9

  In Which the Emperor’s Watch Asserts Itself

  The last of the arches connecting the walkways of the Pensioners’ Quarter with the rest of the city came down while the sun was hiding behind the rooftops to the west, painting the sky above with crimson and gold. There was, as yet, no sign of the retaliation that Anrel saw as inevitable, but he had no doubt it was coming.

  The watching archers had fled before the last connection fell, leaving the arches over Tranquillity and Reward and Peace deserted. A few members of the Emperor’s Watch were spotted on the walkways outside the Pensioners’ Quarter, observing the demolition, but they merely watched, and made no attempt to prevent the destruction of the arches. This inaction did not ease Anrel’s worries.

  He had written a note explaining that the wounded watchmen were in the hospital ruins, and had dispatched young Po to the watch house beside Executioner’s Court to deliver it. He had no idea what effect, if any, it might have; if it served to ameliorate the coming attack in the slightest, then it was worth doing.

  He had told Po not to come back that night. There was no reason for him to be involved in whatever might be coming. He made sure that others heard him give these instructions; perhaps those others would also see fit to leave the quarter and avoid disaster.

  That done, he had returned home long enough to change his clothing, choosing to wear some of his best in hopes of impressing his compatriots, and then went to confer with Doz and Queen Bim and the rest of the quarter’s leaders.

  They accepted his warnings of a coming attack with equanimity.

  “Let them come,” Bim said. “We can handle it.”

  “You can’t fight them forever,” Anrel said. “They’ll keep coming until you’re defeated. They need to, to assert the emperor’s authority.”

  “They can’t defeat us,” Bim insisted. “We can just hide until they give up and go home.”

  “Hide where?”

  “Everywhere,” Bim said with a sweeping gesture that took in the entire Pensioners’ Quarter. “If they find women and children cowering in their homes, what will they do to us? Most of us are innocent bystanders, so far as they know.”

  Anrel stared at her.

  Did she honestly think the Emperor’s Watch cared about whether anyone in the quarter was guilty or innocent of any specific crimes, real or imagined? From the watch’s point of view, the entire quarter had risen against them, and therefore against the emperor’s own authority. Any such uprising had to be decisively put down, as quickly as possible, and anyone in the quarter was going to be treated as a rebel.

  He was not sure whether women and children cowering here would be beaten, or killed, or hauled off in chains, but Anrel did not think they would be allowed to go unmolested.

  He tried to explain this, but the others did not accept it.

  “We have lived with the watch all our lives,” the Judge said. “They know us and tolerate us, and in exchange we keep ourselves within certain limits. Today we exceeded those limits, so they will punish us, but then everything will be as it always has been.”

  “I don’t think so,” Anrel said. He started to repeat what the wounded watchman had told him, but the Judge cut him off with a gesture.

  “You’re young,” Bim said with a shrug. “You’ll learn, if you live long enough.”

  “We have the streets barricaded, the gates closed, and men at every barricade and gate,” Doz said. “When they come we’ll turn them back, at least at first, and we’ll ask to parley. We’ll offer apologies, we’ll return the bread—we don’t want to eat that foul stuff, after all, not unless we’re starving. Maybe we’ll let them arrest a few of our worst. And then it’ll be over.”

  “We brought down the arches!”

  “We’re tired of their spying,” Bim said.

  “But …” Anrel groped unsuccessfully for words.

  He had initially supported the idea of tearing down the arches, and had enthusiastically helped with the first one, at Duty Street, but now he realized it had been a mistake. Attacking the watch’s own structures had been too blatant an act of resistance, and it would bring the empire’s wrath down on them all.

  He was certainly familiar with this sort of experience. He had made a habit
of doing things on the spur of the moment, only to regret them later—most spectacularly, his speech from the First Emperor’s statue in Naith. There were times when defiance of the empire and its sorcerers seemed a moral necessity, but these always came at a high cost, and when righteous outrage had subsided and a sense of practicality had returned, he always regretted having incurred that cost—but he knew he would do the same thing again, should the situation somehow repeat itself.

  Still, there was no need to pay that bill with interest. The damage was inevitable, but it could be minimized. He had not stayed around Naith or Beynos to be hanged, and he did not want to stay in the Pensioners’ Quarter, either—but he could not simply abandon these people who had made him welcome for so long.

  “Can’t you at least suggest that as many of us as possible should seek shelter elsewhere until the attack is over?” he asked, pleading. “The watch may not be in any mood for caution. Innocents may be hurt.”

  “There are no innocents here,” Queen Bim said.

  “That’s what the watch believes, certainly,” the Judge said.

  Doz started to say something, to protest, but before he could finish a word a distant scream distracted them all.

  “What was that?” someone asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “The watch! It must be the watch!”

  “They’re attacking! To the barricades!”

  With that, the debate was at an end, and Anrel found himself running toward the sounds of fighting—or rather, toward the sounds of whatever was happening.

  It did not actually sound like fighting. There was no grunting, no shouting, no clash of steel; instead there were screams, many of them, from men as well as women and children, and the roar of shattering stone and tumbling brick, the sharp sound of breaking glass, the crackle of flame.