She Who Waits (Low Town 3) (38 page)

‘No one would believe it,’ he hissed.

‘Of course they’ll believe it – people like believing things about other people. Hell, they’d believe it even if it was a lie. That it’s true is just icing on the cake.’

His shoulders slumped. He seemed to sink further into his perch. His lover reached out to touch him but Kenneth snapped his shoulder away. ‘I’ve never done this sort of thing before,’ he said, all of a sudden quite desperate to convince me of this obvious falsehood. ‘It’s … I’m not …’

I waved that away. ‘You don’t need to sell me on nothing, Captain. As far as I’m concerned this little assignation barely ranks as vice. But then, as we’ve already established, I don’t matter – and the rest of the world is, sadly, a good deal less understanding.’

‘I thought we were friends.’

‘We’re still friends. We’re better friends. We’re such good friends that I’m going to raise your take an extra two ochres a month – how’s that for friendship? And now that we’re so close, I feel comfortable asking for a small favor.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I want an active civic presence in your area – I want the brave men of the guard to perform the noble duties demanded of them by their position. In particular, I want the brave men of the city guard to perform their noble duties tomorrow morning at nine, in a warehouse at the corner of Classon and Brand.’

Kenneth was a sharp enough character, but this was a little hard to follow for a man who’d been mid-
coitus
less than five minutes earlier. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘At the intersection of Classon and Brand, you’ll find a warehouse. Tomorrow morning, at nine, a squadron of men under your command are going to enter that building. In the basement, they’re going to find a laboratory making red fever. They’ll destroy said laboratory, and any of the drug they find. They’ll be very thorough – I think a small fire wouldn’t be out of order.’

‘Classon and Brand? That’s Uriel’s territory.’

‘You know, I think you just might be right.’

Something clicked behind his eyes. ‘This trouble between the Asher and the Gitts – you’re behind it, aren’t you?’

‘I wouldn’t go that far. Two groups of homicidal criminals, each bumping up against the other. The powder was already dry, if you get my meaning. I just struck the match.’

‘I won’t do it,’ he said. ‘No two-copper slinger is going to come in here and muscle me into submission.’

‘I admire your spunk. But you will do it – if you take a moment to think about it, you’ll realize that you will do it. Because the Gitts don’t mean anything to you, and neither do the Asher – not anything against your future, against your reputation. You’d weigh your own good against a whole pile of strangers’ corpses and not need to double check the scale.’ I waved off his protest with the hand that wasn’t rolling a smoke. ‘Don’t take offense – I’d do the same. Everyone would. And once you realize that, you’ll realize that the only thing that’s stopping you is pride. Nothing wrong with a little pride – keeps a man’s spine upright, keeps his walk steady.’

I offered him the cigarette. He refused it. I stuck it between my teeth, and turned my head back on Wren. ‘What did I say – pride.’

Wren didn’t respond. He didn’t seem to be enjoying this as much as I was.

I rounded on the Captain. ‘Just don’t take pride’s counsel too closely. Right now it’s telling you to buck – throw a punch, tell me to go fuck myself. But pride will be cold comfort in two weeks when you’re busted down to private for suspicion of buggery, I can assure you of that.’

Kenneth was smart, and angry – but anger goes away after a while, and smart sticks around. He muttered something that I knew to be assent, but I needed him to say it to me straight. ‘What was that?’

‘I said all right, damn it.’

‘I knew you’d do the smart thing.’

There was no point in hanging around and humiliating the man any further – in truth I did like the Captain. On some level I regretted getting him involved in this, though that part of me that felt bad for using people was pretty well atrophied. I signaled to Wren, and he slid out into the darkness. Then I got up from where I’d been sitting and went to join him. Kenneth made a frantic dash for his pants, pulling them on with impressive speed.

‘No reason to sprint out so soon,’ I said. ‘The damage is done, you might as well enjoy yourself.’ I stopped in the doorway. ‘But don’t get too wrapped up in your recreation. Business comes first, after all, and you’ve got responsibilities to take care of – tomorrow at nine.’

‘Tomorrow at nine,’ he agreed, everything that made him what he was drained out onto the floor.

‘Good man,’ I said, and stepped into the night.

W
e walked a few blocks east in silence, then moved into a small bar, taking a seat in the corner. Wren was holding back bile, but it had soaked out on to his face, plain as print. He’d need to control himself better if he wanted to follow in my footsteps. But then, after the night’s work, I didn’t think that was in the cards.

I ordered a bottle of whiskey. The bartender took a long time bringing it over, but that was fine. I wasn’t particularly excited to begin the conversation that was coming.

‘You didn’t need me for that,’ Wren said.

‘Not really,’ I admitted.

‘Why’d you take me along?’

‘Ain’t you been asking to take a step up in the ranks? Tricks of the trade, my young apprentice.’ I poured us both a shot, clinked my glass off his and threw back the shot. ‘Cheers.’

Wren kept his hands at his sides, didn’t touch the drink in front of him.

‘Don’t make yourself ill over it. No real harm done. The Captain is better off in my pocket than he was out there all alone, stirring up trouble.’

‘He seemed real appreciative,’ Wren said.

‘Some people have trouble displaying gratitude.’

‘You’ve never said anything bad about the Captain.’

‘I’ve cut the throats of men I liked more than Captain Ascletin,’ I said honestly. ‘Wasn’t anything personal in what we did tonight.’

‘What you did.’

‘What we did,’ I repeated. ‘I’d never have found him if it wasn’t for your capable shadowing. And if you think he’ll forget the face of one of the men that broke him, I can assure you, you’re thinking is incorrect. No, my young friend – morally and practically, we split culpability straight down the center.’

Wren took a while to swallow that, and he needed the assistance of the whiskey I’d poured for him. ‘Tomorrow the Gitts and the Asher will go to war.’

‘Looks like it.’

‘Gonna be a lot of bodies.’

‘Couldn’t happen to a nicer set of people.’

‘You’re always saying that violence is bad for business.’

‘I do say that.’

‘That only amateurs solve problems with a weapon.’

‘And I stick by it. Professionals solve their problems with other people’s weapons.’

‘That was why you had me run that stash of fever over to Kitterin Mayfair.’

‘Calum knew Uriel was behind the red fever. If he found someone selling it on his territory … You didn’t need to be a Scryer to anticipate a reaction.’

‘If there’s open war in Glandon, it’ll filter into Low Town.’

‘Won’t be the first war I’ve lasted through.’

‘Why’d you do it?’

At the table in the corner, two amateurs were engaging in a very thinly veiled drug transaction. Alledtown wasn’t the sort of place where the guard were likely to go about hassling anyone, but all the same, it offended my sense of professional pride. I took another swig of whiskey. ‘I didn’t raise a fool. You can’t put the pieces together when they’re all laid out, I got no help for you.’

He sat with uncompromising stillness for several slow heartbeats. Then he ashed his cigarette onto the floor. ‘Uriel,’ he said finally.

I gave him a slow clap, though he seemed not to enjoy the attention. ‘How long before he and his boys look my way and start seeing a meal? This gives them something to think about for a while. And as far as the Gitts go – the world sees no shortage of hillbilly wyrm-junkies, so far as I know.’

‘Who’s going to win?’

I smiled something that might have been savage. ‘I will. I always win.’

‘If you wanted them to get going, why’d you set up this peace conference? Why work so hard to try and head it off?’

‘Because it makes me look reasonable. The guards say to themselves, that Warden, he’s a decent character, the sort of person you can talk to. And the other powers, they tell themselves that Warden’s a good bloke, not interested in more than he’s got, and he’s just the one fellow, and we could take it from him if we really wanted. I’m the best-liked criminal in the city, and my hands are clean as a nursemaid’s.’

‘That’s … horrible.’

I made as if to pick something out of my ear. ‘A stake in the enterprise, if I remember your words correctly. What did you think that meant? You think it’s just vialing breath, tossing out a few sticks of dreamvine?’ I knocked back the shot and poured another. ‘How do you think I hold onto what I got, me all by my lonesome? The world’s full of hard men, razor boys hopped up on breath, heretics who’d slit their mothers’ throats and walk over the corpse. You can’t never be tougher than everyone – but by the Firstborn, you can be meaner.’

‘That’s what you are, then?’

‘Damn right. Low Town is mine – bought with my blood and sin. I’ll hold on to it till I’m propping up dirt, and I’ll put any man to sleep who gets to thinking otherwise. Put him to sleep before he gets to thinking it. That’s the job – you talk fools into killing each other. They generally don’t require much persuasion.’

Wren was looking at me like he hadn’t never looked at me before, bitter and disappointed. That what I’d said wasn’t exactly true, that maybe I had better reasons for lighting fires than just to see things burn – there wasn’t any point in him knowing that. This was an object lesson – let him see it isn’t a game, let him see what he’d be in for if he kept going the way he was.

But still, it hurt to have him look at me like that.

‘Ain’t so pretty, is it boy? This is what pays for the clothes on your back, lessons with Mazzie. You want to eat the meat, you gotta skin the buck.’ I put the shot to my lips, then slammed the glass against the counter. ‘Now get the fuck out of here. You’re breathing my air.’

He left a copper on the counter. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. After that I got very drunk. It was a short walk back to my flophouse, but I barely made it.

‘I
t smells like a set-up,’ Mad Edward said, about five minutes before I killed him.

‘It’s too late to back out now – Hayyim is already in there. We don’t show he’ll figure we played him, and then it’s back to knives in the alleyways.’

It was a quiet night in early spring, the first quiet night Low Town had seen in a while. We were in a side street towards the northernmost end of the docks, surrounded by row after row of bleak warehouses, all shuttered windows and boarded up doors. I was trying to convince Eddie to walk into one of them.

He was nervous. He had reason to be. ‘Who says we aren’t still at open war? Who says he doesn’t have a handful of thugs waiting to introduce me to She Who Waits Behind All Things?’

‘I’ve been over every inch of it myself. It’s him and two of his people, and they’re not carrying, just like we agreed.’

He sniffed petulantly. ‘Still smells like a set-up.’

My feelings about Mad Edward, or Eddie as we called him – his nickname was strictly to be whispered, lest he reaffirm its origins on your person – had remained steady since I’d known him as a child. The fifteen years since he’d come to power hadn’t done much to make him any worse, but then there wasn’t much room to fall. Of course, my not liking him had nothing to do with his imminent demise – we could have nursed from the same bosom and I’d still be doing what I was doing. He was in my way, that was as far as it went.

‘None of this makes a damn bit of sense,’ he said. ‘Ten years I’ve split Low Town with Hayyim, ten years and no serious trouble. They had their ends and we had ours, and if there were any problems we settled them without going to steel.’

‘Then it should be easy to get back to the
status quo
.’

‘What made them start up in the first place?’

‘I wouldn’t hazard a guess,’ I said. ‘And anyway, it don’t matter – we are where we are, and where we are is the end of our fucking rope.’

I was five months out of Black House, and they’d been busy ones. The last three, anyway – I’d spent the first tumbling my way into a vat of alcohol, and the second climbing my way out of it. But you can only go at self-destruction for so long. At some point you’ve gotta open a vein or move on. Once I decided not to do the first, there was nothing for it but to go out and find myself a job. Five years in the army and five more with Black House hadn’t prepared me for anything more productive than killing people and causing trouble. Happily for me, though perhaps less so for the city and world, this was a skill set in high demand.

Eddie didn’t appreciate the suggestion that the last several weeks of slaughter had been anything less than an unbroken series of victories. ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’

‘Go wherever you like, just don’t expect to have anyone following you, cause they’re all fucking dead. We don’t have the muscle to keep this up any longer. We lost Amos and Niklaas when they raided our wyrm den last week. Obadiah is still filling a bed at Mercy of Lizben Hospital – whoever spiked his pixie’s breath knew what they were doing. If he ever wakes up again, it’ll be too damn late to do us much good. Of course you know what happened to Deneys …’

Eddie smashed his hand against his palm. ‘I still can’t believe that bastard sold us out!’

It had come as some surprise to Deneys as well. ‘He paid for it. Not worth putting any more thought towards.’

It hadn’t taken me long to work myself into Eddie’s good graces. I was a local boy – that didn’t mean anything to Eddie, parochial loyalty was one of the many virtues he lacked, but still it looked good to the rest of the neighborhood. More important was I’d been someone in the real world, and it made Eddie feel special to have me getting his coffee. His last lieutenant had been cut down in the early days of the conflict we were about to bring to an end, cornered in the street and sliced apart by a team of Hayyim’s heavies – a calamity, real tragic. I’d sent flowers to the funeral and taken over the responsibilities he could no longer fulfill. Once I’d gotten my in with Eddie, it was no great effort to gain the ear of his rival. Hayyim was quick to believe that Eddie was waiting to pounce, and quicker to recognize the virtue of striking first, especially with me pointing out easy targets. After that, the whole thing ran pretty predictably.