Low Town (24 page)

“Eloquent, but untrue. I made a decision, once. If the consequences were worse than I had anticipated … that’s because it was a bad decision.”

“But that’s my point, you see. How can you know which choices matter and which choices don’t? There are decisions I have made that I regret, that were—that were not who I am. There are decisions I would unmake, were it possible to do so.”

By the Lost One, he was worse than the heretics. What was he admitting to? The children were dead—there was no do-over coming on that. Or was I reading subtlety where none existed? Was Beaconfield the sort of patrician who likes to reminisce with us low folk about the difficult and forlorn nature of human existence? “One way or the other, we pay what we owe.”

“Then there is no hope for any of us?”

“None.”

“You’re a cold man.”

“It’s a cold world. I’ve adjusted to the temperature.”

His jaw tightened. “Quite right, quite right. We play our hands out to the end.”

Beaconfield began radiating something that might have been threatening or might have been just general aristocratic disdain—it was tough to tell. I was relieved when a knock signaled the end of our meeting.

We both rose and moved toward the exit. The Blade opened the door, and Tucket muttered a few words to his master before disappearing.

“Thank you for your services,” Beaconfield began. “It occurs to me I may need to make use of them in the future, perhaps before Midwinter. You’re still at the Staggering Earl, then, with your comrade from the war and his wife?” he asked, the threat obvious and unanticipated.

“A man’s home is his castle.”

He smiled. “Indeed.”

It had been a long day, as long a day as I could remember, and as I headed back the way I’d come part of me hoped that I’d be able to make the exit without running into the duke’s next appointment. But the rest figured that he was worth taking another run at, and this latter portion was gratified when I reached the top of the steps and saw Brightfellow seated on a bench below, looking every bit as prepossessing as he had during our first meeting. He pushed himself up to his feet and broke into a broad grin, and so numerous were Beaconfield’s parlor steps that I got to spend a good fifteen seconds staring at it as I descended.

I hadn’t expected Brightfellow to have transformed himself into
a respectable member of the human race in the day since we’d seen each other, and he’d been kind enough not to refute my assumption. If he wasn’t wearing the same soiled black suit as when we’d met, he was in a close enough cousin to make my confusion reasonable.

But there was something about the man that struck me, something that I’d noticed earlier but hadn’t been able to square with the rest of him. A lot of men affect hardness, fortifying themselves with dreams of their potential menace like it was sack wine. It was something of a local pastime in Low Town, rent boys and bumblefucks leaning against crumbling brick walls, convincing one another that they were deadlier than an untreated wound, that their reputation kept passersby on the far side of the street. After a while they become part of the scenery. There are some things a man can’t fake, and lethality is one of them—a lapdog might learn to howl, even bare its teeth on occasion, but that don’t make it a wolf.

The real ones don’t put on airs. You can feel what they are in the bottom of your stomach. Brightfellow was a killer. Not like the Kiren who’d taken Tara, not a maniac—just a murderer, an everyday sort of fellow who’d put a few members of his species in the ground and not felt any particular way about it. I set that thought squarely in my mind as I went to meet him—that the buffoonish exterior was only part of who he was, and maybe not a big part either, a sliver he’d ballooned up to cover the rest.

I pulled out my tobacco pouch, rolling up the cigarette I’d wanted to light from the moment I’d stepped inside the Blade’s mansion, figuring the smoke might do something to cover up Brightfellow’s unwashed meat. He held his cap in hand, and his uneven teeth formed a false smile.

“Well, if it ain’t the funny man himself. How you doing, funny man?”

“Tell me something, Brightfellow—do you make a point of eating
liver before you see me, or is it such a regular part of your schedule as to make the coincidence unavoidable?”

He laughed nastily, grinding his yellowed ivories against one another. “Caught my name, did you, funny man? Nice to see I’ve gained a little renown—sometimes I think all my hard work goes unappreciated.”

“And what exactly is it you do?”

“What do you think I do?”

“I figure that most of the people around here are employed to clean off whatever shit the duke finds himself stepping in. And since you smell distinctly of a latrine, I figured you for being in that same general line.”

Brightfellow barked out another ugly chuckle. That laugh was a real weapon—it let him slip blows and keep coming. “I have the honor of being the Duke of Beaconfield’s court mage, and I strive daily to be worthy of it,” he said, doing a pretty good impression of the butler, though with enough of his toothy smile to make clear it wasn’t more than that.

“And what exactly does a court magician do, other than occupy the lowest rung to which an artist can descend, short of selling love potions at traveling fairs?”

“I guess it must not seem like much—but then we can’t all sell drugs for a living.”

“I’m going to cut you off there, because I wouldn’t want your attempts at banter to get in the way of a last shot at saving your ass. I know you and the duke are up to something. You give me your side now and I might be able to swing it so you don’t catch all the weight—it doesn’t take a candle to see you aren’t running the show.” The tip of a match flared to life against the wood of the banister, and I brought it to my cigarette. “But if you put me to the trouble of sniffing it all out, you’ll get nothing, hear? The chips will fall where they fall.” I took
a quick huff of smoke. “Think it over, but do it quick—the clock is running, and if you suppose the blue blood is going to have your back when shit crumbles, you’re dumber than you look—and you don’t look like no genius.”

I hadn’t expected him to crack, but I’d hoped for some sort of a reaction beyond a repeat of that grating laugh he was always giving me. That was what I got, though, and for the second time I had the unpleasant impression that I’d misplayed it, that as far as Brightfellow and I were concerned, he was up two nil.

I could hear Tucket making his way down the stairs, and figured that was as good a time as any to make my exit, out the servant’s entrance and through the back gate. Dunkan was gone, replaced by a grim-faced counterpart who discharged his duties without comment. It was just as well—I wasn’t in the mood to deal with the Tarasaihgn’s exuberance. I rubbed the skin around Celia’s talisman, its heat only now beginning to diminish, and headed back to the Earl, hoping to make it to bed before I passed out.

I spent half the night tossing and turning through the haze of dreamvine I’d immolated before going to bed, and woke the next morning later than I’d meant to. Later than I should have, given that, as things stood, I’d only have six more opportunities to sleep in. The sun peering through the window was halfway to its zenith by the time I pulled on my pants.

The bar was empty, usual for this time of day, and Adolphus was sitting at the counter, his jowls dragged down in sorrow. Adeline was dusting under a table and nodded when she saw me.

I took a seat next to Adolphus. “What’s wrong?”

He made an attempt to cover his grimace with an unconvincing smile. “Nothing—why would you ask that?”

“Fifteen years and you still operate under the misconception that you can lie to me?”

For a moment his smile was real, if slight. Then it went away. “Another child is missing,” he said. Adeline stopped sweeping.

Another one, Śakra. I hadn’t expected it to stop, but I had hoped for more time between this one and the last. I tried not to think about how this would affect the Old Man’s deadline, or if the neighborhood toughs would take the opportunity to make trouble in Ling Chi’s territory. “Who is it?”

For an unhappy second I was afraid he would start to blubber outright. “It’s Meskie’s son, Avraham.”

A bad day got worse. Meskie was our washing woman, a sweet-natured Islander who raised a brood of children with methods equal parts loving and severe. I didn’t know Avraham particularly, except as one of the mass of amiable youths that surrounded their matriarch.

Adeline ventured a question. “Do you think he might still be …” She trailed off, not wanting to form the thought in its entirety.

“There’s always a chance,” I said.

There was no chance. Black House wasn’t going to find him—it was me or no one. And I couldn’t move on the Blade, not with what I had. Hell, he might not have even done it. Maybe something would break open soon, maybe I’d get lucky, but these were hopes, not expectations, and I’m not an optimist. The child was as good as dead. It was ten thirty and already I needed a hit of breath.

Adeline nodded, her round face looking very old. “I’ll bring you breakfast,” she said.

Adolphus and I sat there for a while, neither bothering to fill the air with conversation. “Where’s Wren?” I asked eventually.

“He’s off at the market—Adeline needed some things for supper.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. “This came for you before you woke.”

I opened it. Five words scrawled in black ink, the letters sharply drawn against the parchment:

He was quicker than I had expected, although it didn’t figure him wanting to set a meeting when he could have just sent over the list. Maybe he wanted to apologize for our earlier exchange, though
I thought it more likely he expected me to grovel a bit before he coughed up his information. I lit a match off the bar and held it to the paper, letting the ashes drop to the ground.

“Adeline will have to clean that,” Adolphus said.

“We’re all cleaning up somebody’s shit.”

Halfway through breakfast, Wren returned with a sack of goods. Adolphus’s face perked up a bit. “How much did you save me?”

“Two argents and six coppers,” he said, spilling the change on the counter.

Adolphus slapped his leg. “He don’t say much, but you’re looking at the best damn haggler in Low Town! You sure there ain’t no Islander blood in you, boy?”

“Dunno. Maybe.”

“Doesn’t miss a trick, this one! Sees everything, everything there is to see.”

“You hear about Meskie’s son?” I asked, interrupting Adolphus’s praise.

Wren looked down at his feet.

“Head over and make sure the ice are finished with whatever perfunctory investigation they managed to pull together.”

“What does ‘perfunctory’ mean?”

I drained my cup of coffee. “Not serious.”

I went upstairs to grab my armaments and snatch a hit of pixie’s breath. A boy this time. What was the connection? Three children, different sexes, different races—all from Low Town, but that didn’t tell me anything except that it’s a lot easier to grab a street urchin than a noble. I thought back on my interview last night with Beaconfield. Had that sick son of a bitch finished our meeting, then turned around and snatched up a kid? Was Avraham hidden in some corner of the Blade’s mansion, tied to a chair weeping, waiting for the torment that was to come?

I took another snort and tried to clear my head. I didn’t have anything on the duke yet, and if I tipped my hand and was wrong, I didn’t imagine the Old Man would have much sympathy. Better to follow the trail than ruin the scent by trying to jump ahead.

I took one last bump and put the rest of the vial into the bag. I had always liked Meskie, to the limited extent we had interacted. I wasn’t wild about the idea of intruding on her grief, even for the purpose of making sure she was the last weeping mother.

The breath shook me out of my morning torpor. My mind felt clean again—it was time to get it dirty. I grabbed my coat and headed downstairs.

Wren waited at the foot of the steps, tense as a muscle. “She’s alone. The law came and went.” I nodded and he followed me out.

Low Town in winter is pretty miserable. Not quite as bad as summer, when the air is stale with soot and whatever doesn’t rot bakes in the hot sun, but pretty miserable just the same. Most days the smog from the factories congeals into a miasma that hovers at about throat level, and between that and the cold your lungs have to work double just to keep up.

But once in a while a strong southern wind comes off the hills and sweeps the city clear of the haze enshrouding it. The sun radiates that particularly perfect blend of light it offers sometimes in place of heat, and it seems like you can see all the way down to the docks, and it even seems like you might want to. I’d been a child on days like that, and every wall had stood to be climbed, and every vacant structure demanded exploration.

“Did you know him?” Wren asked.

That was right, we weren’t out on a morning stroll, were we? “Not really. Meskie has a clutch of children,” I said by way of explanation.