She Who Waits (Low Town 3) (31 page)

Touissant was as grossly vast as ever, though this time he wasn’t holding a cat. On his lap was a silver tea service, barely larger than his wide pelvis and thick, cordlike thighs. He sipped from a cup that seemed built for a doll in his hands, and a selection of brightly colored macaroons sat half eaten next to the pot.

I grabbed the seat in front of him. Craddock angled himself a few feet away, but off to my right, in the blurred region of my vision. I could hear pretty boy take up a spot behind me.

‘Warden,’ Touissant opened in his grating sing song, my
nom de guerre
four extended syllables by the time he was done with it. ‘To what do we’, pause to shove a cookie into his mouth, and lick one oversized digit clean of crumbs, ‘owe the pleasure.’

‘Tardiness.’

He laughed that awful little laugh of his, his moon face beaming down on all of us. Craddock laughed as well, the stump of his tongue wagging at me. Pretty boy was too pretty to laugh, though I thought I could feel him smirk.

‘I’d expected some sort of word from you by now, Touissant. A crack operator like yourself, four days and nothing?’

‘I told you it might be a while before I found anything out. It’s not a light matter that you’ve deputized me to look in on.’

‘Indeed – it’s a very serious matter, Touissant. Immensely serious. Critical, even.’

‘Then it’s a good thing you gave it to someone so capable.’

‘And trustworthy?’

Touissant was munching loudly, however, and couldn’t quite make it out. ‘What?’ he managed between bites.

‘I said, “and trustworthy”.’

He giggled like a schoolgirl and put another cookie into his mouth. ‘You look tired, old friend.’

‘It’s been a long few days. I had to get up and walk around some – standing really puts me in a foul mood, if you can appreciate it.’

‘I can!’ he said gleefully. ‘I can appreciate it exactly! And I’m very happy to report that this last trek, at least, was not a waste of your effort. I’ve just recently received some information that might interest you.’

‘I’m interested in information that might interest me.’

‘I’ve got a location on this Fourth Sorcerer Carroll that you mentioned.’

‘That’s lovely, Touissant. I’m happy to hear you’ve earned your pay.’

The feint towards relevance proved brief. ‘Do you like cats?’ Touissant asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not at all.’

‘Why not?’

‘I figure I feed something, I got a right to expect gratitude.’

‘Cats are too clever for loyalty. They don’t care about what you done for them, only what you can do. They’re like people that way.’

‘I don’t particularly like people either.’

He laughed uproariously, spewing pastry flakes into the ether and onto my leg.

‘Still waiting on that address,’ I said.

He crammed the rest of what was on the tray into his mouth, ground it down between the thick white squares of his smile. ‘I’ve done a lot of good for you, over the years, would you say?’

‘You’ve been well-compensated for your services.’

‘Fair enough, fair enough – but you’d agree at least that I’ve executed these tasks capably?’

‘I’ll give you that much.’

‘I appreciate it. And I was all set to deliver again for you on this one, really I was. But then I got to thinking.’

‘A dangerous pastime.’

‘It was just such a strange request. Why would the lord of Low Town want to dig up something so long buried? You never seemed to me the sort to obsess about the past.’

‘You’d be surprised.’

‘I’d always heard strange things about you from my people in Black House. That there was a no-touch order on you, straight from the top. It’s an open secret that you still have contact with the Old Man. Why, I could tell you some of the wild rumors I’ve heard – that you’d been planted into Low Town to assume control over the underworld, that your fall had been ginned up as cover. I know none of that’s true, of course – your impulse for self-destruction is too sharp to be anything but authentic.’

‘You’ve a keen insight.’

‘Thank you, yes. It’s a job requirement after all. Anyhow, something fascinating happened when I brought your name up to my friend at Black House. He’s very interested in you, my friend. Asked me to see if I couldn’t figure out from whence came your sudden interest in history. And what did I find? Would you believe what I found?’

‘Lay it on me.’

‘Treason!’ He shifted himself towards me, his excitement so great as to override his instinctive dislike of motion. ‘It seems that members of the Sons of
Ś
akra have been seen in your bar, openly discussing Crown policy!’

‘I guess those drunks were paying more attention than I’d thought.’

‘Even more shocking, you yourself have been seen at the Step’s chapter house. I must say – I’ve thought many things of you over the years, but I’d never have credited the suggestion that you’d work against the Throne.’ He shook a finger at me, the fat on the last joint wiggling up and down. ‘For shame.’

‘This man you have in Black House – he wouldn’t by any chance be named Crowley, would he?’

Touissant puffed out his baby cheeks and clapped his hands together. ‘Right in one!’

‘And you figured, while you were making money off me one way, why not see what you could get from another end?’

‘Don’t take it personal, Warden,’ he was near to giggling. ‘I’m not the sort to leave ochre on the table. I’d ask for a counteroffer, but we both know I wouldn’t hold to my promise.’

‘We do indeed!’ I said, a sudden moment of elation.

On paper it had been a mistake to allow myself to be buttressed by Touissant’s pair of heavies, but in practice allowing someone to think they have an advantage is sometimes worth putting yourself in a hole. Craddock had a smile to match the fat man’s, and it didn’t go anywhere, even after I’d set my knife into his skull, even as blood began to bubble from his ears. I’d palmed it out of my sleeve a few sentences earlier, a little thing, three slender inches, barely enough to reach his brain pan.

But barely would do it.

Touissant began to scream then and didn’t stop for a while – I guess those rumors about him being muscle back in the day weren’t based on much, or maybe he’d just gone soft in the chair. Regardless, once I heard him squeal I knew he wouldn’t be anything to worry about, and while Craddock opened and closed his mouth like a wriggling fish, I turned to deal with his partner.

Back during the war I saw every kind of hand weapon you could think of, and a fair number of things your imagination likely isn’t cruel enough to conceive. It’s all well and good to carry your claymore around on a pack animal when you’ve got the time to prepare for a battle – but all the steel in the world don’t mean shit if you can’t get it out its sheath. Pretty boy was realizing that now, fumbling at the jeweled hilt of his curved sword. When it came down to it, he wasn’t much – Touissant had chosen pretty boy for the same reason pretty boy had chosen that saber. It glittered, and was pleasant to stroke.

I had my hands wrapped around his shapely neck and I squeezed until little bubbles of blood erupted in his irises. There was another knife in my boot but once I got started it seemed best not to risk letting go. Craddock’s near-corpse continued its stream of babble and half-words, his brain slow to catch on to his demise. The whole thing took a while – I’ve killed men that way before, and it always surprises me just how long it takes. If Touissant had grabbed a weapon or just uprighted himself from his throne and fallen on me, things would have gone different. But he didn’t – he was cracked down through to the middle.

Once it was done I brought myself to my feet and readjusted my coat. Craddock’s eyes stared against the far wall unblinking, and though he’d lost the capacity for speech his mouth was still bobbing, open and shut, open and shut. I pulled my knife from his brow and he fell forward onto the table, like a marionette clipped of its strings. For some curious reason it was this event that finally quieted Touissant, who had been shrieking uninterrupted for a solid minute and a half.

I wiped Craddock’s blood off on Craddock’s shirt, then jammed the knife into the table. I had knocked my chair over in the commotion, and I turned it upright and sat down.

‘There’s something about the smell of death that puts me in need of a smoke,’ I began, and started rolling it.

By the time I was done Touissant had managed to mostly pull himself together, though his eyes were shot through with red, and snot pooled beneath his nostrils. He held his hands between the crook of his thighs, as if to keep them warm. The tray lay overturned on the ground next to him, broken pieces of his tea service scattered across the floor.

‘You ever feel that way?’ I asked, lighting my cigarette with a match.

He didn’t answer, but then the question was more or less rhetorical.

‘Last I remember you were telling me that I didn’t have much to offer you.’

His eyes had grown wide, each as big as an ochre piece, finally of size to fit his face. ‘I don’t see what’s changed,’ he answered.

‘Really?’ I asked. ‘Don’t see a change?’ I swiveled my head back and forth, taking long, deliberate looks at the two bodies I’d made. ‘I’m going to have to disagree with you there.’

‘Whatever I tell you, you’re gonna kill me.’

‘Things do seem to be shaping up that way,’ I agreed.

‘So there’s no point in giving you anything.’

‘But you’ve still got so much left to lose, Touissant, so much more than just your life. For starters – if you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’m going to find every kitty you’ve got in here, and I’m going to unpeel them and hang them from the rafters, one by one, if it takes all fucking day. And when I’m done killing the things you love, I’ll start on you. By that point, I’ll be well practiced.’ I pulled the knife I’d used on Craddock out of the wood, holding it in the air between us. ‘You’ll talk, Touissant – believe me, you’ll talk. It’s just a question of whether I’ll need to show you your insides before you do.’

I stepped out of the pawnshop a few moments later, Carroll’s address in my pocket, whistling into the brisk autumn air.

A
fter a bath and a strong cup of coffee I was standing at the location Touissant had died trying to keep from me. Seventy-eight Saint Paul Street was a lovely two-story stone house, unattached, in one of the less gaudy outskirts of Kor’s Heights. It was a pretty neighborhood, the sort of place you’d want to raise a family in, if for some reason that endeavor appealed to you. Looking at the rows of pleasant suburban hamlets made a fellow think about founding a dynasty. The yards were verdant, the autumn foliage rich above them. I heard the laughter of children from a block over, voices carrying in the early evening.

Carroll had been one of the worst people I’d ever met in my life. It made sense that he would rise to a position of prominence.

I wiped my feet on the mat, and knocked twice on the door. A fat woman with a pinched face opened it. She scowled at me, but I didn’t take it personal. I got the sense that she scowled at everybody.

‘Good evening – is Mr Carroll available?’

‘Fourth Sorcerer Carroll,’ she snapped.

I did my best impression of an ingratiating smile, but I’m an ugly person and I think I only succeeded in frightening her. ‘Fourth Sorcerer Carroll, of course, please forgive me. Is Fourth Sorcerer Carroll available?’

‘He just got home from work.’

‘The demands of such an important position – it’s regarding work that I’m here, in fact.’

‘Who’s calling?’

‘I’m afraid my name wouldn’t mean anything to him. Could you tell him it’s an old acquaintance from Black House?’

‘If you’re from Black House, why aren’t you in uniform?’

‘It’s at the cleaners,’ I said. ‘They only give us the one, you have to get it pressed every few days.’

She thought that over for a while. She had a pushed-in nose and a mouth that hung half open, like one of those fish that sift along the bottom of a riverbed. She also reeked of alcohol, bathed me in it when she exhaled.

‘I guess I’ll have to ask him,’ she said, as if hoping I would talk her out of it.

‘That would be extraordinarily generous.’

She grunted and slammed the door in my face.

A few moments passed while I inspected the garden. It was really quite lovely, the grass newly cut, the hedges appropriately trimmed. I imagined Carroll paid someone to do it. He’d seemed the sort of person who found physical effort somehow distasteful, and also I couldn’t see him lavishing care on anything living that wasn’t him. It was a quality I was sure had made him a fine father.

I heard the door open, but preferred the view of Carroll’s lawn to Carroll’s wife. ‘You can wait in the kitchen,’ she said, her tone indicating she felt this fact to be something close to a tragedy.

I took a wistful look at the evening I was about to leave, then followed her inside.

The kitchen was well-designed and infrequently used. On a table in the middle of the room a two-thirds empty bottle of wine sat next to a half-smoked cigarette. Mrs Carroll dropped into the seat next to them. There was an open chair, but she didn’t offer it and I didn’t ask. A single pot bubbled on the stove, emitting odors too bland to be actively unpleasant.

‘It’s a lovely home you have here,’ I said.

She made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a snarl, strangling a cigarette between thin lips. As it burned down near the end she reached into a drawer and grabbed another from a ready supply. One hand stubbed out the casualty while the other, in near synchronous union, fitted and lit its replacement. At no point did her dull, half-sober eyes leave their perch on the wall.

‘Is that table oak?’ I asked.

There is a creature they say exists in Low Town, an amalgamation of hundreds of rats bred in such fetid proximity that their tails become inextricably entangled, and they function as a single organism – the rat king, they call it, unimaginatively. My long association with the city’s rodent population has yet to confirm its existence, but it’s a potent image, one brought to mind with the sudden arrival of the Carroll children.