She Who Waits (Low Town 3) (33 page)

Five minutes closer to the grave and the door handle jiggled loudly. Egmont was having a great deal of trouble getting into his office. He managed it, finally, though it took him longer than it should have.

With the door at last open, Egmont entered briskly, took his seat at the opposite end of the table. Hume came in after him, but remained standing behind me.

‘It’s lovely to see you again Director, a real thrill. Thanks for providing it.’

Egmont grunted. He did not seem to return my enthusiasm. ‘Brother Hume tells me the two of you had something of an … adventure yesterday.’

‘That’s one way to describe it.’

‘I appreciate you ensuring that he made it back to us safely.’

‘Don’t worry about it. He’s kind of growing on me.’

‘Well,’ he said, pleasantries completed. ‘I’ve other duties to attend. Might we get straight into it?’

I saw no point in doing that. From inside my duster I pulled out my tobacco and started rolling a cigarette. ‘I went ahead and earned those five hundred ochres.’

‘Did you now?’

‘Figured out who’s selling red fever, figured out why. Shaded in all the blanks and whatnot.’

‘Don’t leave me in suspense.’

‘Coronet was a two-part operation. First, the subject was given a specialized narcotic. While they were under, we’d have one of our practitioners implant a command into their brain – a kill order on a specific target. The subject would wake up and not remember any of it. Continue about their business as normal. Then, one day, we’d have a man walk over to them, whisper a few words in their ear …’ I snapped my fingers. ‘The perfect sleeper agent. You can appreciate the enthusiasm the project engendered in Black House.’ I lit my cigarette, took a draw. ‘Except that it never quite worked. Something about the narcotic drove a small but not insubstantial portion of our test subjects crazy. Not the chase-butterflies-around-a-park kind of crazy either. The cut-up-your-neighbor-and-bath-in-their-blood kind of crazy.’

‘I follow.’

‘So we shut it down. The long-term goal of Coronet was that it could be used on potential enemies of the state – foreign dignitaries, belligerent nobles, that kind of thing. But its side effects made that impossible. If the chief ambassador of Miradin kills his wife and kids, people are going to start asking questions.’

‘I suppose they would.’

‘A month and a half ago, a crime lord named Uriel Carabajal started selling something called the red fever through a series of small-time dealers and middlemen. It’s become quite the hit. So far, no one has made the connection between its arrival and the sudden uptick in violent crime. Or if they have, they don’t much care.’

‘Yes, Hume told me. So far, I’m not hearing anything I didn’t already know.’

I ignored the rebuke. ‘Needless to say, this red fever is the same narcotic we were using for Coronet. So I took a meeting with Uriel, tried to rattle his cage a bit. It didn’t do much good – he’s not one to be rattled. But ever since I saw him I’ve had heat like you wouldn’t believe, Black House Agents stalking my every move.’

‘And you ascribe this attention to the inquiries you’ve made into red fever?’

‘Fits, doesn’t it?’

‘Not entirely. Why would Black House choose to put Coronet into the hands of this … black robe?’

‘I can only surmise.’

‘Have at it.’

‘We scrapped Coronet because we were losing too many test subjects. The Old Man’s not one to blink over a little collateral damage, but he loathes attention. Even Black House couldn’t keep a lid on it indefinitely.’

‘What changed?’

‘You all, if I had to take a guess. I imagine the Old Man started thinking that this would be an excellent time to have a secret weapon in his back pocket. So he thought it over, came up with an idea. There’s an entire population living south of the River Andel happy to pay for the privilege of consuming a substance that might kill them. No different than wyrm, or even breath, if you think about it. Why not offer them the opportunity to test out this exciting new narcotic? Once the great minds at Black House figure out a more stable version of the compound, they’ll stop selling it as a drug, and start using it as a weapon.’

A thin sheen of sweat beaded on Egmont’s broad forehead. He wiped himself down with a folded handkerchief, then put the handkerchief back in his breast pocket. ‘That’s a very interesting hypothesis. But it hardly amounts to firm evidence.’

‘What do you want? A signed confession from the Old Man? Whispers and innuendo, that’s the way this works. You piece it all together as best you can. Or are you too new at the business to understand that?’

‘If your goal is to insult me, you’re wasting your time.’

‘My goal is to live as long as possible. I assume that’s your goal as well, in which case I have to say, you’re doing a shit job. Do you understand what will happen once they get a functioning version of Coronet?’

‘Yes, of course I do.’

‘No, you obviously don’t, because if you did, Director, you wouldn’t be sitting calmly in that chair answering my questions.’

‘I pride myself on my composure.’

I turned my head and blew little circles of smoke over to Hume. ‘There’s a thin line between equanimity and torpor. Be careful not to straddle it. Coronet can turn anyone into an assassin.’ I pointed over at Hume. ‘A few drops of it in his drink, a whispered word from a cut-rate practitioner, he’d slit your throat and not stop smiling.’

‘I wouldn’t!’ Simeon protested, horrified even at the hypothetical.

‘You would. You’d hear the words, and you’d reach to your belt, and you’d pull out your dagger and you’d put it in the Director’s throat. Afterward, you’d look at the blood on your hands and on your shirt and you’d wonder, “how the hell did that get here?” You’d feel very, very bad about yourself, and the Director would still be very, very dead.’

We sat silently while Egmont decided whether or not to buy my line. A lot of what I’d said wasn’t true, but it was all plausible. Most importantly, it played into his preconceptions – the dastardly Asher, the Old Man masterminding it all.

Egmont started tapping a rhythm against the desk. His fingers were long, and his nails were polished. If all you’d seen were his fingers, you’d have thought him a woman, and a pretty one at that. ‘I’ll look into it,’ he said.

‘I looked into it. You should go ahead and do something about it.’

‘And what would you suggest I do?’

‘Fear,’ I said. ‘As a verb.’

‘That’s comforting.’

‘I’m not the Director of Security for the Sons of
Ś
akra. I’m a man hired to find out a specific piece of information. You’re the man who determines how that information is best used. My job is all but completed – perhaps it’s time you start taking care of your own.’

To judge by Egmont’s increasingly uneven beat, I’d shivered a little paranoia into him. I figured it was best to end on that note, hope that things played out the way I’d planned.

Hume opened the door but didn’t say anything to me, didn’t even look at me, which I thought was a little odd. There it was, I’d just about saved his life not two days back, and now we were all but strangers. Of course, I’d been the one who’d put him into danger, but he didn’t know that.

The receptionist sniffed and turned as I walked out. Either some of her anger at Hume’s fictitious transgressions had spilled over onto me, or she just had the good sense to recognize trouble when she saw it. I leaned against the desk until she finally deigned to notice me.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘I forgot to tell Brother Simeon – Joyanne keeps asking for him.’

‘You said his wife’s name was Sarah?’

‘His wife’s name
is
Sarah. Joyanne is his favorite whore.’

The woman who would never speak to Hume again opened her mouth wide enough to trap a spider, then closed it rapidly.

‘Was his favorite whore, I mean. She’s missed him these last weeks, talks my ear off on the subject, if I’m being honest. Sure, he was paying for it, but a man comes to see her twice a day every day for a month, she gets to expect something.’

‘Twice a day?’ she asked, horrified or excited.

‘Three times on Sundays,’ I said, then nodded and left.

Once you start tipping things over, it’s hard to stop.

T
he Step had been staring at me for about five minutes, trying to work up the nerve to approach. I was sitting on a bench near the docks, burning a twist of dreamvine and killing my way through the afternoon. It was chilly, turning towards cold, but what the sun refused in warmth it made up for by basking the wharfs in bright light, throwing every tiny detail into fine relief. Workers like ants marched off and on the anchored caravels and galleons. From a distance it gave the impression of happy industry, though that would have been dispelled at closer inspection. It was a fair enough substitute for my usual spot at the Earl, though Adolphus had a pretty strict no-proselytizing policy, which would mean the conversation I could see coming wouldn’t have happened.

He was young, a little older than Wren maybe, though in terms of life experience I suspected my adopted ward had a couple of decades on the rosy-cheeked child trying to entice passersby with the sheaf of fliers he held gingerly in one hand. He was having little enough luck, the pedestrians hustling back and forth from the wharf fixed on their business, in no mood to be derailed by an overeager missionary. Perhaps that was why he settled on me, at the very least a captive audience.

I studiously avoided eye contact, hoping that might be enough to earn a reprieve. No such luck. He took a deep breath, centered his crooked skullcap and crossed over to meet me.

‘Excuse me, Brother,’ he began in a tolerably earnest voice. ‘Do you have a moment to think about eternity?’

By his accent I took him to be fresh from the provinces, a farm boy who knew no more of Rigus than that it was the epicenter of all mankind’s sin. So we agreed on that much, at least. ‘I’ll have eternity to think about eternity, won’t I? There’s really no reason to get a jump on things.’

He worked through my addition. ‘By the time eternity comes, your fate will be settled. It’ll be too late to change it.’

‘How could it be too late? Eternity lasts forever. That’s what eternity means,’ I explained, puffing smoke into his direction. ‘Forever.’

‘No man knows when his last hour will be,’ he said worriedly, concern for my immortal soul etched onto his face. ‘Eternity can begin at any time!’

‘I’m rarely punctual,’ I admitted. Maybe it was the vine, or maybe it was that up close the poor boy seemed even younger, less capable, but some part of me felt bad for him. I nodded to the empty half of the bench and he plopped down onto it, happy for the meagerest slice of encouragement.

‘The Sons of
Ś
akra believe that all men are meant for salvation,’ he said, as if this information was both relevant and exciting.

‘What about the half-witted?’

He blinked rapidly. ‘What?’

‘The half-witted, the retarded, what about them? They can’t read the holy texts, can’t commit the prayers to memory. Some of the more unfortunate can’t even swallow the sacrament.’

He stuttered a while. ‘I suppose …’

‘What you’re saying is that objectively, the Firstborn is uninterested in the salvation of the retarded?’

‘I’m not sure,’ he said after a while. ‘I guess I never really thought about it.’

I shrugged accommodatingly. Some perverse instinct bade me offer him a toke off my joint, and I followed it down into the abyss.

He sniffed at it for a moment, then shook his head. ‘I don’t smoke tobacco.’

‘It’s your lucky day my friend, cause this isn’t tobacco.’

‘Oh,’ he said, crossing his eyes together. ‘What is it?’

‘An herbal concoction of my own making,’ I sort of lied. ‘Try it, you’ll like it.’ That at least was true.

He shrugged and took a little puff. He coughed it out immediately afterward, along with some of his lung.

‘The coughing means you’re doing it right,’ I said.

By the time Wren arrived I had pretty well convinced the poor fellow that there was no point in human existence, and his best plan of action was to give up his calling and become a professional catamite.

‘If the Firstborn didn’t want you fucking, you’d have a smooth patch of skin between your legs,’ I said. ‘And if he didn’t want us to hurt each other, he’d never have given us hands. Or pointed things. Or rocks. Think about it,’ I said, standing. ‘This has been great, really enlightening – thanks a lot. You ever fancy another hit of my special blend, stop by the Staggering Earl and ask for me,’ I said. ‘But don’t come at night – some of the locals are a little unfriendly.’

I left a very confused young man sitting there. He’d recover at some point, or at least he’d be more careful about approaching strangers on park benches, which is a good lesson to learn regardless.

‘Corrupting the youth?’ Wren asked.

‘Expanding my customer base.’

We walked north towards the Old City. At one point Wren started to say something but I shushed him quiet. It was better to get the whole report straight, in a situation where I could mull it over comfortably. I pulled into a bar a few blocks down, one of a line that had been spreading south these last few years, along with refurbished townhouses and overpriced grocers. Which is to say that in contrast to the drinking establishments a mile towards home the floor was not lined with sawdust, and the bartender didn’t keep a truncheon below the counter.

It also had a
maître d’
instead of a drunk passed out on the doorstep. The place was near empty, but he seemed little happy to see us just the same. ‘Dinner?’ he asked in a tone hinting it would be of little concern if we never ate another meal again.

‘Drinks,’ I said with equal good humor.

He sniffed and waved a hand towards the sea of open tables. ‘Take a seat.’

We grabbed two. After a longer wait than seemed appropriate given that there wasn’t anyone in the joint, a server came by, left again, came back a second time with a bottle of whiskey.

I poured Wren a shot, reward for the last several hours of work. He nodded thanks and drank it quickly. I let him finish before poking at him.