She Who Waits (Low Town 3) (12 page)

‘Their silver spends like anybody else’s,’ Cari responded, still thinking things over. Calum leaned towards an overflowing spittoon and added a short dash from between his teeth. He nodded slightly at his aunt and went back to rocking.

Cari stroked at the ash-blonde hairs that stubbed her chin, unsure if I’d seen Calum’s signal and anxious to give the impression that it was still her decision that mattered. ‘You tell that slant-eyed old bastard, he brings double the money to the next meet, he’ll leave with double the product.’

‘If it’s all the same, I’ll paraphrase it.’

Boyd laughed and stubbed out the end of the joint.

‘What the hell did you go and do that for?’ Cari asked angrily, all thought of our business forgotten.

‘Weren’t nothing left but the nub,’ Boyd answered.

‘A nub will get you high, won’t it?’ Cari pulled said butt out from the dirty ashtray and spent a few moments trying to relight it. Boyd had been right, there wasn’t much left. A lesser addict would have given up, but Cari managed the feat at the cost of a few wasted matches and a burned lip. ‘When does the heretic want his next batch?’

‘He’ll let you know, I imagine.’

‘And what’s your cut gonna be out of this, Warden?’ the unnamed youth asked. He’d been eyeballing me the last few minutes, though I wasn’t sure if he was offering insult or just cross-eyed.

‘You’re here to listen, Artair,’ Calum rumbled. It was his first words since he’d entered, and for a moment the room came to a halt. ‘You ain’t here to speak.’

Artair mumbled something disagreeable, but had the good sense not to buck outright.

‘Ain’t no ill in a man seeing to his end,’ Cari said, half-soothingly. ‘You could learn something from him, a respectable type like that.’ Only in comparison to the Gitts could I possibly be considered respectable. Deciding the joint was well and truly done, Cari dropped it onto the floor and ground it beneath an unshod foot. ‘I was about to roast up some bacon,’ she said, turning back to me. ‘You got time for a plate?’

‘We aren’t done with business yet, Auntie,’ Calum said quietly. He always spoke quietly, and everyone always listened.

Cari cocked her head. ‘No? That true, Warden?’

I smiled. ‘It is indeed – I had ulterior motives in dropping by.’

‘Did you now?’ Cari asked, the vocabulary beyond her. ‘You had ulterior motives?’

‘I’m hearing stories in Low Town.’

‘Is it the one about King Albert’s cock ring?’ Boyd snickered.

Calum blinked his eyes slowly, swallowing his temper. If he lost it every time his uncle made an ass of himself, there would be very little left of the house.

‘That one’s funny,’ I said. ‘The ones I’ve been hearing ain’t.’

Calum nodded and waited for me to continue. I was talking straight to him now, dispensing with pretense.

‘They concern you and the Asher.’

The mention of the Unredeemed unsettled everyone in the room below six-four. Uncle’s eyes, blood-rimmed and vacant, fluttered unbecomingly. The youth snarled and dribbled tobacco juice into the spittoon. Auntie started to roll another joint.

Only Calum stayed steady. ‘And what do these stories say?’

‘That you’ll be killing each other in a few weeks’ time.’

Calum had this slow way of starting a sentence, like he was building towards something critical. He took a shallow breath, then a deeper one, his chest swelling. ‘Your concern is appreciated.’

‘I’m not here pretending we’re brothers to the bone. You’ve got your people and I’ve got mine – but neither of them are served by bloodshed.’

‘Then you ought to go and tell them black robes to keep the hell on their side of the line.’ Cari had lost most of her teeth, but she’d kept her bite.

‘I did tell them. I told them yesterday.’

‘We should head over there and tell them ourselves,’ Artair said.

‘I don’t want to hear you talk anymore,’ Calum told his cousin, though without bothering to look at him. ‘If Uriel’s so interested in keeping the peace, why is he selling red fever in our territory?’

It doesn’t do to underestimate anyone. I thought I had a fair idea of Calum’s abilities, but it was clear I was wrong. ‘You figured that out, did you?’

Calum shrugged. ‘You aren’t the only one with a pair of eyes in their head.’

‘Regardless, I spoke to the man about that in particular. Conveyed that you lot would be less than pleased about the development.’

‘And?’

‘A mistake, he says. One Uriel will make sure isn’t repeated. No fever will get sold in your territory. I have his word.’

‘You trust him?’

‘I don’t trust anyone. But then I don’t quite not trust him either. At the very least, it’d be worth waiting a while before doing anything rash.’

‘Do I strike you as a rash person?’

‘No,’ I said honestly. ‘You don’t.’

‘If I do something, it’ll be because it ought to be done,’ Calum said. ‘But until then – so long as the Asher stay out of Glandon, we’ll keep the peace.’

‘All I ask,’ I said, rising and reaching out my hand. It disappeared inside of Calum’s, though to his credit he didn’t squeeze.

‘Don’t be so long in dropping by, you hear?’ Boyd said. ‘Why don’t you come over Sunday, we’re gonna roast up a hog. Plenty of fine-looking women around here, even for two old farts like us!’

Stretch-marked slatterns to whom you’re directly related, but that was no objection so far as Boyd was concerned. ‘I’ll have to take you up on that soon,’ I said, nodding and seeing myself out.

On the stoop sat two children playing with a broken whiskey bottle. The boy was towheaded, and seemingly well fed. The girl ran more to the Gitts’ norm, bony and blank-eyed. Her dress was a re-purposed cotton sack. It also looked like a hand-me-down. My arrival upended their game, though they took a moment to stare at me before speaking.

‘Say, mister?’ the boy asked.

‘Yeah?’

‘You got a spare copper?’

‘No.’

They looked at each other for a moment, then the boy turned back up to me. ‘Well, fuck you then!’

‘Yeah.’

The girl giggled as I walked off.

T
hat night was another busy one. A lot of busy nights lately, it seemed. The ale flowed quickly, and the talk was loud and meaningless. The more obvious it is things are collapsing, the more desperate folk get to ignore it. I guess there’s no point in pinching copper when the world’s about to catch fire.

The man who came over to sit next to me was near faceless, successfully cultivating anonymity. If he’d punched me and run off, I couldn’t have given a description beyond his sex, and even that I wouldn’t have been a hundred percent on. I was fairly certain who he was working for, but I figured I’d wait for him to prove me right.

It didn’t take long. ‘I’ve got something to show you,’ he began.

‘You aren’t gonna flash me, are you? Cause I know what a dick looks like.’

He held his hand open below the table, and I took a peek. Nestled in his palm was a sky blue jewel in sterling silver. A beautiful thing, the setting alone worth more than an honest tradesman would see in a year. Of course, you couldn’t have found a pawnbroker to take it, not the most crooked back-alley fence, not for two coppers on the ochre.

Because what the man was holding was only a piece of jewelry in form – in function it was the power of the Throne made manifest, and only those deputized by it have the right to hold one. The Crown’s Eye, they call it, the foremost possession of every Black House Agent. They aren’t easy to make – there’s a handful of Artists who have a permanent commission, laboring for six months or a year on each piece. Using it isn’t easy either, but that’s another story.

They’d broken mine when I’d been cast out of Black House, smashed it with a hammer, held me down and made me watch. At first there was a flash of pain like I couldn’t imagine, and I’ve been stabbed before. Then there was nothing – not nothing, the absence of something, a void I could feel around the edges for months after. I still thought about it, sometimes.

I shook the past away and faced the present. ‘Yeah?’

‘The boss wants to see you,’ the agent said before slipping the eye back into his pocket.

‘I don’t want to see him.’

He looked tired, shopworn. This was a waste of both of our time, but I figured I had more of that to spend than he did. ‘What you want don’t really enter into it. He would prefer this was done quiet, but he’s insistent it be done. I can walk back to Black House, gather a couple of savages, bust up your bar and jail anyone in here with a warrant – which is everyone, I suspect. And you’ll end up talking to him just the same.’

I knew all of that. The Old Man got whatever he wanted – but you have to give the ice a certain level of pushback or they start to think they can muscle you just for fun, and that’s a slippery slope to being a straight snitch. I finished what I was drinking, put on my coat and followed him out.

We walked in silence for a couple of blocks. As a child I’d loved the fall, the smell of rotting leaves, the colors. Lately autumn seemed to get squeezed tighter and tighter between the moist unpleasantness of summer and winter’s bitter chill. ‘This isn’t the way to Black House,’ I said, after that fact became clear.

‘We’re not going to Black House.’

‘Why not?’

‘You’ll know if he wants you to know,’ said the agent. He was a good time-server, a happy, or at least willing, fixture in the machine – just like the Old Man liked them.

We stopped at a two-story building in one of the duller neighborhoods near Brennock. It was the architectural equivalent of the man who’d guided me there, utterly without distinguishing features. The agent tapped twice on the door, paused, then tapped once more. It opened in response.

Two agents stood in the doorway, heavy men with dull eyes, eyes that weren’t impressed with your reputation or how hard you thought you were. They patted me down with a thoroughness that came close to violating basic rules of hygiene.

The corridor was dark, the only light coming from a small sconce. In its distant glare I could make out the curve of a staircase. ‘He’s upstairs,’ the faceless one said.

I had something pithy on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it. I’d need everything I had for the fellow at the top of the steps.

The room was almost identical to his office in Black House, which was to say, dismal near barren. A worn table, two chairs, a bookshelf largely empty. All furniture of the institutional sort, to be found across the breadth of the Empire wherever an owner doesn’t much care what fills his space. The walls were a soulless sort of gray, more the absence of color than a color in and of itself. No, you couldn’t say there was anything particularly noteworthy about the setting. It was the man that gave it character, and that character was unpleasant to the point of terrifying.

The first time I’d met the Old Man I’d decided I was going to become him. He’d never forgiven me for changing my mind. There was no one else in the room, which was unexpected. We’d only spoken a handful of times since I’d been cast out of Black House, but in the past he’d preferred to have someone standing near by, implicitly offering violence. Or, often, explicitly. I wasn’t sure what to make of this development, or the change of venue.

‘My boy,’ he began. ‘What a fond pleasure it is to see you again. Please,’ he said, pointing at a chair opposite him, ‘take a seat.’

I’d known the Old Man for most of my adult life, since I’d come back from the war and joined Black House. The line you heard about him as a rookie – that he was the chief architect of the Empire, that he molded souls like clay, that he knew your next step before you got around to standing – did not seem to hold when you met him. He looked like someone’s grandpa, as if at any moment he’d reach out to tussle your hair. He had bright blue eyes, eyes that smiled whatever the rest of his face did. He had salt and pepper hair in a neat but not severe cut. He had strong hands with long fingers. He had a vacant spot somewhere down inside him, where a person was supposed to be.

It was one of the Old Man’s many strengths that he did not appear to be what he was. And what he was was evil, pure and undiluted. I’ve broken cultists on the rack, tracked serial killers to their workspace and sat down with every syndicate heavy worth his carving knife, and never have I met anyone to come within pissing distance of the Old Man. He was one of a kind, and you can thank the daevas for not making any more.

I was used to all that, of course. I’d known what he was even when I’d worked for him, and it had been a long time since I’d had a reason to pretend he was anything else. But there was something new, and it took me a moment to put my finger on it. The Old Man looked old – he’d always looked old, but old like an oak, ancient when you were born but sure to outlive you. Now he just looked regular old, not quite feeble but far from whole. Like a man past his date, over the final hill.

I guess nobody’s immortal – though I wouldn’t give odds to anyone trying to prove it on the Old Man.

And indeed, when he spoke it was with the same easy lilt he’d always had, like the issue at hand was barely a passing concern. ‘I appreciate you seeing me on such short notice. No doubt you were in the middle of some sort of pressing business, for which I do apologize.’

‘Why aren’t we in Black House?’

‘I wanted a change of scenery.’

‘A man gets called in by the chief himself, he expects a certain amount of formality.’

‘We own everything, my boy,’ he said, taking a moment to inspect his nails. They were very clean. ‘This house, your inn, the Old City, the Palace. The mountains, the ocean and the sky. There is no spot of ground in the Empire which is any less mine than is Black House.’

‘That’s not an explanation.’

‘It doesn’t have to be. I don’t have to explain the things I do.’

He did not. I took out my makings and started rolling a cigarette.

‘I’d prefer if you didn’t smoke.’

‘But I’m going to anyway.’

‘That’s rather petty.’

‘I take what pleasures are available.’

He thought about this for a moment. ‘I suppose we all have to.’