Tomorrow, the Killing (8 page)

For a while it had been something else. But then things used to be different all over, back in the day.

They headquartered in an old banking house in Offbend, a few stones’ throw from the Old City, or one really good throw for those well practiced in throwing stones. It was a beautiful structure, four floors of white brick on a cobblestone square. A wooden platform had been erected in the middle of the arcade, a focal point for their frequent rallies. A handful of men stood stiffly outside the entrance, their attempts at loitering spoiled by too many years in the ranks. They nodded at my escort and allowed us inside.

‘I’ll tell the commander you’re here,’ Hroudland said, disappearing into the back. I took the time to inspect my surroundings.

The entrance hall was big enough to hold a few hundred people, though at present there were barely a dozen occupying it – apart from me and Rabbit, there were a handful of men seated at a long wooden table, waiting to cater to the needs of paying members. Trophies of our conflict hung on the wall, captured pennants and Dren weaponry, tapestries depicting major battles. I spent a moment inspecting these last, though I had trouble recognizing myself in the ranks of proud spearmen chasing the fleeing enemy into the distance, or in the mounted officers leading the charge. Hung over a huge fireplace was a portrait of the Association’s founder, staring down at his children, blue eyes stern but supportive.

His father’s name could have earned him a spot away from the front line and the dangers of combat, but that hadn’t been Roland’s way. Indeed, no promotion seemed sufficient to force him back from the front. By the time I’d met him he was well on his way from man to myth, and if the first had ended three years after the armistice, face down in the Low Town mud, the second had only continued to grow. A decade on and his was still a name to conjure with amongst anyone who’d ever served in the ranks.

Hroudland opened the back door and waved at us. Rabbit and I followed him down a narrow corridor, up a flight of stairs and past several more watchmen, stopping in front of the commander’s quarters. ‘Through here,’ Hroudland said. ‘When you’re done we’ll take you back to your bar.’

‘Rough neighborhood like this, I need someone to protect my virtue.’

Hroudland shook his head, glad to have me off his hands. He opened the door and I headed inside.

Soldiering is not a profession that lends itself toward the glorification of violence, nor of those who practice it. The flux kills more men in an hour than the most skilled warrior could account for in the entirety of his bloody existence, and no amount of bravery or strength is proof against a stray artillery shot. Afterward, trying to impress a girl in a tavern, you might spin a yarn about some squadmate who could down a dozen Dren single-handed, might even say that squadmate was you. But at the time, while it mattered, you knew all that was nonsense. One sword doesn’t swing the outcome of a battle – there were too damn many of us for any particular individual to play much import. A man was either solid – which was to say if he was next in line when you went over the top, you didn’t check to make sure he followed – or he wasn’t, in which case you hoped he’d die soon and leave the rest of the squad his rations. Anything beyond that was fodder for the broadsheets back home.

Even so, Pretories had acquired a reputation not simply for being a solid man, but an excellent one. I could remember Roland waxing poetic as to the number of times his life had been saved by the uncanny ability of his second-in-command that he feared for nothing so long as Joachim Pretories stood behind him. But then, Roland had said a lot of things.

Credit due, Joachim had kept himself together, a trim forty, the touch of gray in his hair offering an appropriate note of distinction. Of course that didn’t mean the core hadn’t rotted. Ten years playing politics is like five spent smoking wyrm, and though the grip he held out to me was attached to a sizable bicep, he had the smile of a man who grinned for a living.

‘Lieutenant, good to see you again,’ he said, walking me to his desk. ‘Would you like some whiskey?’

‘I’ve recently turned teetotal.’

‘Water?’

‘I’ve sworn that off as well.’

He took a seat across from me and poured a few fingers of liquor into his own glass. ‘Hroudland said you weren’t happy to have the boys round your place.’

‘But you called me anyway. Guess that makes you a real glutton for punishment.’

‘I’ve been called worse.’

‘I’m sure that hurt your feelings. What is it you want me for, Colonel?’

‘Commander,’ he corrected.

‘I didn’t realize the Crown promoted decommissioned soldiers.’

‘I’m the Supreme Commander of the Great War Veterans’ Association, by the will of my brother soldiers.’

‘I voted myself Emperor of Miradin, but ain’t no one sending me any rents.’

‘I’m having trouble figuring where this animosity comes from – I hadn’t thought I’d done you any particular harm.’

‘The world has been cruel to me, Joachim – I take it out on whomever I can.’

He backed off my abuse with a laugh, more evidence he’d turned politician. The man I’d known would have dropped me over half of what I’d offered. Or tried to. ‘I’d hoped we could keep this conversation civil, but as it seems you’re too busy for simple courtesy, I’ll get right to the meat of it.’ He poured whiskey through a forced grin, then set the glass back down on the table. ‘Rhaine Montgomery,’ he said.

Cold fingers ran up the base of my back, but they didn’t show on my face. ‘You’ll need to add a verb for that to count as a full sentence.’

‘I’m told she’s in Low Town.’

‘Were you?’

‘And I’m told you’re looking for her.’

‘You’re well informed.’

‘Look, Lieutenant, there’s no reason for you to play coy. I know that the general asked you to try and find his daughter and persuade her to come home. I know this because he told me. He told me because we’ve known each other most of my life, because his son was the closest friend I’ve ever had and the best man there ever was. We all want the same thing here.’

‘Which is?’

‘Rhaine out of Low Town. Back home, in Kor’s Heights. Safe and free of trouble.’

That was certainly what I wanted, though I was unprepared to speak for anyone else. ‘Who’d make trouble for her?’

‘The world is a dangerous place.’

‘I sometimes have that inkling.’

‘Rhaine is . . . an impressive young woman. But she’s out of her element, as would be obvious to any cutpurse who happens upon her.’

‘So you’re concerned that she might be mugged on the way to market?’

‘This conversation would go much quicker if you stopped pretending to be a fool. Roland Montgomery was murdered by powerful men, men who feared his crusade would bring them to ruin. I don’t imagine they’ve forsworn violence in the twelve years since his death, and I’m quite certain they’d happily send Rhaine to meet her brother, rather than see her make them any trouble.’

‘On that at least, we very much agree.’

He nodded firmly. ‘I called you here today to let you know that the Association stands ready to assist you in your task.’

‘And what exactly is it you think you can help me with?’

‘Have you met Rhaine?’

No point in being honest. ‘I haven’t yet had the pleasure.’

‘She can be rather . . . single-minded in her thinking.’

‘I’m getting that impression.’

‘The point being, if you do find her, I’m not at all certain she’ll listen to what you have to say. And if she doesn’t, if you can’t get her home, I’d like you to come back and tell me.’

‘What would you do that I couldn’t?’

‘We’re not entirely lacking numbers. The very least I can do is detail a few men to look after her. The greatest tragedy of my life was my failure to keep Roland safe. By the Firstborn and all his kin, I won’t make the same mistake with Rhaine.’

Prevarication is not an easy thing to do competently, for all that most of us get plenty of practice. We blink, look away, scuff at suddenly discovered flecks of grime. And that’s just with little things – ‘I was at the bar with Seinfreid all last night. I’ll have those five coppers for you tomorrow.’ Try lying for your life sometime, feel how tight your collar wraps around your throat, that desperate itch on the palms of your hands. Even people who are professionally dishonest usually don’t have any particular talent for it, getting by on balls and vigor.

To do it right, I mean to do it really well, you’ve gotta believe. You’ve gotta wrap your arms around it, hold it with both hands, take it as a lover. You’ve gotta build the rest of yourself around this false core, till it’s as automatic as breathing. Till if someone shook you awake in the middle of the night your first words would confirm white as black. Credit where it’s due, Pretories had it down to a two-step. If I hadn’t known otherwise, I’d have trusted him. It was impressive, in a certain amoral way.

But then, I wasn’t exactly an amateur when it came to deceit. ‘If it’s all the same, I think I’d like that glass of whiskey now,’ I said.

‘Of course,’ he smiled, and poured me a few fingers.

I drank it slowly, making a show of my concern. ‘I didn’t want this gig, Commander,’ I said.

He nodded sympathetically.

‘I’ve got my own work in front of me, and it doesn’t include sprinting after a self-destructive heiress.’

‘I don’t imagine.’

‘But the general needed something from me, and I told him I’d do what I could.’

‘You’re an honorable man.’

The bullshit was waist high and rising. ‘The point being, I’m happy to let someone more competent take over, if I thought they could handle it.’

‘Go on.’

‘I’ve made some inquiries into Rhaine’s whereabouts.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing yet, but something will shake out. In truth, I don’t imagine finding her to be the problem. Convincing her to return – or protecting her if she won’t go – that’s going to be the sticky part. And I wouldn’t turn up my nose at help, if it comes to that.’

‘We’ll be here to offer it,’ he said, shaking my hand firmly and leading me to the door.

I stopped in the front hall for a moment, preparing to face the heat and staring up at Roland’s portrait. It was life-sized, but somehow I remembered him as being bigger. One of the men milling about noticed my attention, propped himself up from where he’d been sitting, and approached me. No easy task, as he was amidst that unfortunate but sadly not uncommon coterie of veterans that had come back from Nestria with less body than they’d left. He took the hat off his head with the hand that wasn’t crippled and held it to his chest. ‘Hell of a man, wasn’t he?’

I rolled my eyes and hurried out.

T
he first time I had met Roland Montgomery he had come very close to killing me.

It was a year after the disaster at Beneharnum had proved the futility of waging warfare in ranked formation even to the most hidebound traditionalist. Tactics had developed accordingly – trenches were miserable, cramped and cold, but they kept you out of sight of any practitioners that might be waiting, and they were moderately effective against cannon. We’d long settled into the steady attritional warfare that had come to characterize the conflict, an endless succession of raids and counter-raids, of static lines and fighting rats for food.

Those of us in the ranks, that is – the brass still dreamed of a break out, of a sudden puncture to the Dren lines that would allow us to roll them back all the way to Donknacht. It was a fantasy which would take a long time to die, and would carry a hell of a lot of men with it.

My hopes of advancement had proved prescient, though I attributed that less to any particular genius on my part than to the decimation of the officer class during the opening phase of the conflict. If things continued at this rate they’d be making drummer boys into brigadier generals inside of six months. Even with my rapid rise through the ranks, my presence at the meeting was out of the ordinary. Calling a meeting of officers before committing troops to battle was a common enough activity, including anyone so far down the pole as myself was most certainly not.

But then, Roland Montgomery was no ordinary officer.

This was early on in his career, before his glorious charge at Gravotte carried the field, before he withstood seven weeks besieged in the Matz salient absent of outside support. The legend was in its infancy, but it was easy enough to see the seed. He was, first and foremost, strikingly handsome. It was the worst kept secret in the Thirteen Lands that the brass was thick with buggerers, and looking around at my fellow officers, there were no fair few gazing at the colonel with something more akin to adoration than respect. But even amongst those of us for whom a well-toned buttock was no particular object of affection, it was hard to miss the fact that Roland Montgomery seemed to have been hewn from marble rather than pushed out a womb. He radiated health and good cheer, no small feat given that he was effectively in the midst of an inconceivably vast infirmary, and we lost a hundred men a day to the flux. Added to that was his heritage, that he was the latest in a long line of Montgomerys that had pursued the Crown’s enemies in foreign lands, that his father even then was held with something resembling reverence by large swathes of the ranks.

All of these were secondary, however, to the indefinable aura of certainty that he carried with him like a heavy winter cloak. Every motion he made and every word he uttered seemed to carry with it a sense of profound meaning, as if the Firstborn himself had decreed that, at this exact moment, Roland was to smile or shake his head or greet you. He was, in short, a man of destiny. You strained to listen when he spoke, pushed past friends to approach him, found yourself held captive by the deep blue of his eyes and the unshaken strength of his convictions.

So contradicting the plan he had just put forth – suggesting that it might even be possible to contradict it, that he was capable of error even in theory – took a bit of firmness on my part. ‘I’m afraid I have a concern, sir.’

It was also not an activity likely to gain me any friends. As befit my relatively lowly rank, I was in the back of the twenty or so soldiers clustered about the colonel. The front row was made up of men most similar to Montgomery, in background, position and pedigree. The terrible casualties we’d suffered had allowed a few of us to ascend to the middle rungs of the military hierarchy, but the upper echelons were still composed exclusively of aristocrats.