“You don’t need to say that. You know I’d do anything for you.” Her eyes fluttered down my naked chest. “Anything.”
I pulled my shirt over my head and reached for my coat, the better to mask my inability to muster speech.
“What’s next?” Celia asked, all business.
“I’ve got a few ideas. I’ll come by in a day or two and let you know if anything’s panned out.”
“Do that. I’ll sound out some people I know at the Bureau of Magical Affairs, see if they’ve got anything they can tell me.”
The Crane broke his silence with another fit, and I decided it was time to take my leave. I thanked the Master, who threw me a quick wave between barks. Celia walked me to the door. “Pay attention to the jewel,” she said very gravely. “It’ll lead you to the culprit.”
I took a look back as I descended the stairs. The Crane’s coughing echoed down the blue stone, and Celia watched me from the landing, her face worried, her eyes dark.
Recent misadventures aside, I earn my meager living selling drugs, and it wouldn’t do much good to dodge the Crown if I lost my business in the process. Besides, after the day’s chaos, a simple spot of trafficking seemed just the thing to settle my mind. Yancey had asked me to show at the mansion of one of the nobles he spit for, said there was money in it. I stopped at an Islander cart near the docks and grabbed a quick plate of spiced chicken before beginning my trek.
Head straight north from downtown and you’ll come to Kor’s Heights, where the old families and the nouveaux riches have erected a paradise out of sight of the masses. Clean air replaces the stench of the iron foundries and the rot of the harbor, while constricted alleyways and compact buildings give way to wide thoroughfares and beautifully maintained manors. I never liked going there, any hoax worth his bribe knew I didn’t belong, but then I couldn’t very well ask whatever patrician wanted ten ochres’ worth of brain loss to meet me outside the Earl. I shoved my hands into my pockets and doubled my pace, trying not to look like I was engaged in an errand of dubious legality.
I stopped at the address Yancey had provided. Through a wrought-iron gate I could make out acres of manicured lawn, even the dim light of the evening sufficient to mark the dormant flower beds and groomed topiary. I followed the brick wall toward the back of the estate—gentlemen in my profession rarely go in through the front door. After a few hundred yards I came to the much smaller, much uglier servant’s entrance.
The guard next to it was a ruddy-looking Tarasaihgn with shocks of flame-red hair, uncommon among the swamp dwellers, extending in a roughly even circle from scalp to chin. His uniform was worn but well kept, and so was the man beneath it, pushing fifty but with little more to show for it than a modest protuberance above his belt. “I’m a friend of Yancey the Rhymer,” I said. “I don’t have an invitation.”
To my surprise he held his hand out in greeting. “Dunkan Ballantine, and I don’t have an invitation either.”
I took his palm. “I guess it’s not a prerequisite to stand guard.”
“It isn’t one to enter either, least not for someone Yancey’s vouched for.”
“He inside already?”
“Wouldn’t be a party without the Rhymer on hand to entertain the highborn.” He looked around with an exaggerated suggestion of secrecy. “Course between me and you, he saves his best stuff for between sets! You’ll probably find him outside, adding to the kitchen smoke.” He winked at me and I laughed.
“Thanks, Dunkan.”
“No problem, no problem. Maybe you’ll see me on the way out.”
I followed a pebble-lined path through the verdant lawn toward the back of the mansion. I could make out the sound of music and the familiar scent of dreamvine on the chill evening breeze. The first I assumed came from the party, but the second I attributed to the small, dark-skinned figure leaning against the shadow of the three-story brick estate and mumbling rhythmically.
Yancey passed me the twist he had been working on without interrupting his perfectly syncopated flow. The Rhymer’s vine was good, as always, a sticky blend but not unduly harsh, and I spiraled silvery indigo into the night.
His final bar hammered home. “Safe living.”
“And you, brother. Glad to see you made it out here. You’ve been a little shaky lately.”
“I’ve been taking a lot of naps. Did I miss your set?”
“First one, got the band on now. Ma says hey. She wants to know why you haven’t been coming round lately. I told her it’s because she keeps trying to catch you a wife.”
“Astute as always,” I said. “Who am I walking in on?”
His eyes narrowed and he took the joint from my outstretched hand. “You don’t know?”
“Your message just gave the address.”
“This the king ape himself, brother. Rojar Calabbra the Third, Duke of Beaconfield.” He grinned, white teeth sharp against his skin and the night behind it. “The Smiling Blade.”
I let out a low whistle, wishing now I hadn’t gotten high. The Smiling Blade—famed courtier, celebrated duelist, and enfant terrible. He was supposed to be strong with the Crown Prince, and he was supposed to be the deadliest swordsman since Caravollo the Untouched opened a vein after his boy lover died of the Red Fever twenty summers past. Mostly Yancey played for the younger sons of minor nobles and mid-level aristos slumming. He really was moving up in the world. “How’d you meet him?”
“You know my skills. The man saw me rhyme something somewhere, made himself an opening for me to fill.” Yancey was not given to undue humility. He exhaled a stream of smoke through his nostrils, and it pooled about his face, wreathing his skull in a spectral, sterling aurora. “The question is, why does he want to meet you?”
“I had assumed he wanted to buy some drugs, and you let him know I was the man to speak with. If he brought me up here for dancing lessons, I imagine he’ll be pissed with the both of us.”
“I dropped you the line, but I didn’t put you into play—they asked for you in particular. Tell truth, if I didn’t know I was a genius, I might suspect I’d been hired for just that purpose.”
This last revelation was enough to put paid to any good humor generated by the dreamvine. I didn’t know why the duke wanted to see me, didn’t know how he had even learned who I was—but if there was one thing thirty-five-odd years gripping the underbelly of Rigun society had taught me, it was never to draw the attention of the highborn. Best to remain another amid the uniform army of folk Śakra had birthed to serve their whims, a half-forgotten name supplied by another member of their anonymous coterie.
“Go wary on this one, brother,” said Yancey as he flicked out the end of the joint.
“Dangerous?”
He spoke with remarkable solemnity given our last five minutes’ recreation. “And not just the sword.”
The Rhymer led me through the back door and into a wide kitchen, a small army of cooks moving about frantically, each attending to an array of edibles as appetizing as they were delicate. I regretted filling up on spiced chicken, though on the other hand I probably wasn’t going to be offered a seat at the feast. Yancey and I waited for a gap in the traffic, then threaded our way into the main room.
I’d been to a lot of these little soirees courtesy of Yancey’s connections, and this was definitely one of the nicer ones. The guests were the sort of people who looked like they deserved to be out somewhere—that’s not always the case.
Although a lot of it was probably the architecture. The drawing room was three times as wide as the Earl, but apart from general scale, there was little else to compare with Adolphus’s modest establishment. Intricately carved wooden walls led up above elaborate Kiren carpets. A dozen grand glass chandeliers, each cupping a hundred wax candles, descended from a gilded ceiling. In the center of it all a circle of nobles amused themselves in the intricate patterns of a contra dance, moving in time to the band that had picked up after Yancey had stepped off. Radiating out from this core were s
mall knots of courtiers laughing and chatting. Around them, at once ever-present and innocuous, swarmed the servants, carrying finger food and drinks of all kinds.
Yancey leaned toward me. “I’ll let the big man know you arrived,” he said, moving off into the crowd.
I snatched a flute of champagne from a passing waiter who harrumphed with disdain. The degree of contempt underlings are willing to muster on behalf of their employers is a source of continual amusement to me. I sipped my bubbly and tried to remember the reasons I hated these people. It was hard going—they were beautiful and seemed to be having a great deal of fun, and I struggled to maintain class resentment amid the laughter and bright colors. The vine wasn’t helping either, its pleasant haze dulling my well-sharpened bitterness.
Among all the gild and glitter, the figure in the corner stuck out like a broken thumb on a manicured hand. He was short and stocky, runtlike, and what body he possessed he’d done little enough to care for. Rolls of fat sprayed over his belt buckle, and the broken red veins swelling his nose suggested more than a passing familiarity with drink. His clothing added another wrinkle to the mystery, for while I doubted very much the duke would employ an individual whose physique so clearly betrayed the poverty of his upbringing, I was certain he wouldn’t allow him to wear such an odd costume. It had been expensive once, though never fashionable, a black dress shirt and pants of the same hue, the cut and cloth the product of a master tailor. But their maker’s care had been betrayed by ill use, a sheen of mud on his leather boots that ran up the cuff, the tunic in little better shape.
If I hadn’t been invited to fulfill the function, I might have taken him as a member of my competition, combining as he did a seedy affluence with a hint of violence. Had I run into him in Low Town, I’d have assumed him a con man, or some low-level fixer, and never given him a second look—but here, surrounded by the cream of Rigun society, he demanded notice.
Also, he had been openly staring at me since I’d come through the door, a mocking little smile on his lips, like he knew some shameful secret of mine and was enjoying holding it over my head.
Whoever he was, I had no interest in responding to his scrutiny, so all these observations were made out of the corner of my eye. But still I kept enough focus to see him amble toward me awkwardly.
“Come here often?” he asked, and broke out into a chortle. He spoke in a thick brogue, and he had an ugly laugh, in keeping with everything else about him.
I gave him the half smile one adopts when refusing a vagrant’s request for coin.
“What’s the matter? I ain’t high-class enough to have a conversation with?”
“It’s not you personally. I’m a deaf-mute.”
He laughed again. In most people, jocularity is at least an innocuous quality, if not a pleasant one. But the stranger was of that kind whose cackling dug into your ears like rough canvas against a sore. “You’re a funny one. A real joker.”
“Always here to lighten up a party.”
He was younger than I’d initially thought, younger than I was—though bad living had aged him prematurely, graying his skin and sending lines out through his face and hands. These last were covered by an odd assortment of rings, silver interspersed with jewelry so bright and gaudy I knew them immediately to be fake, frippery that once again spoke of wealth spent without the benefit of taste. He kept his mouth unfastened, filtering air through a row of crooked teeth, stained yellow where they hadn’t been replaced with dull gold. His breath carried with it an unsavory combination of salted meat and vodka.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said.
“Then I hope you don’t take offense easily.”
“You’re thinking, how am I gonna get at any of the fine trim swimming around with this ugly bastard yelling in my ear?”
This was not, in fact, what I was thinking. I was here on business, and even if I hadn’t been, I doubted I’d find much amorous success, being what I was and looking like I did. That said, if I had hoped to find a companion, the tumor standing next to me probably wouldn’t have helped.
“But see, these cunts.” He wagged his index finger in front of my face like a disapproving schoolteacher. “They ain’t interested in folk like us. We ain’t good enough for them.”
Even by my standards, this was a whole mess of hideousness. The stranger and I were getting to the end of our conversation, one way or the other. “We got so much in common, you and me?”
“When it comes to women, we got a lot in common,” he said, speaking each word with a slow seriousness.
“This has been riveting,” I answered. “But if it’s all the same on your end, how about you do me a favor and step off.”
“Ain’t no cause to be disrespectful. I come over here and talk to you like a man, and you give me the brush-off. You ain’t no different from any of these pampered little bastards with their noses in the air. And here I was, thinking we might even get to be friends.”
We were reaching the point of being a spectacle, something one tries to avoid when one has entered another man’s home for the purposes of selling him drugs. “I’m all up on friends, stocked full with associates, and met my quota of acquaintances. The only openings I got left are for strangers and enemies. Make yourself the first, before you find yourself the second.”
Up until that point I had taken the man for harmless if offensive, and I figured he’d be easy enough to frighten off. But my words had little effect on him, except to draw a glint of menace to his bloodshot eyes. “That’s the way you want it? That’s fine by me. I been plenty of men’s enemies—though never for very long.”
I found myself wishing that I could run through the play again, but having thrown down the gauntlet there wasn’t much for it but to continue in the same vein. “You talk like a man that ain’t been smacked yet today,” I said, my eyes turned back on Yancey, who was now waving me over. “But now’s not the time to rectify the situation.”
“You’ll get yourself another chance!” he exclaimed to my back, loud enough to draw the attention of the surrounding guests. “Don’t you worry on that score!”
It was a disagreeable interlude, and one I had the sense presaged future unpleasantness—but I pushed it out of my mind as I slipped toward the duke, careful not to intrude on the groups of flirting patricians.
If the human race has ever invented an institution more effective in the propagation of intellectual and ethical cripples than the nobility, I have yet to stumble across it. Take the progeny of a half millennium of inbred idiots, first cousins, and hemophiliacs. Raise them via a series of bloated wet nurses, drink-addled confessors, and failed academics, because Śakra knows Mommy and Daddy are too busy diddling themselves at court to take a hand in the upbringing of a child. Ensure any youthful training they receive extends to nothing more practical than swordsmanship and the study of languages no longer spoken, grant them a fortune upon the attainment of their majority, place them outside the bounds of any legal system more developed than the code duello, add the general human instinct toward sloth, avarice, and bigotry, stir thoroughly and, voilà—you have the aristocracy.
At first glance Beaconfield looked every inch the product of this infernal social engine. His hair was coiffed in what I took for the newest fashion at court, and he smelled strongly of honey and rosewater. His rouged cheeks led to a goatee so perfectly manicured you would swear it had been painted on, and he was clothed in a brightly colored ensemble that was frilly to the point of being vaguely nauseating.
But there was something that wouldn’t allow me to dismiss him completely, a sharpness in his eyes that made me think the costume was half a put-on. Maybe it was the way his hand hovered about the hilt of his rapier, well used and surprisingly plain compared to the rest of his costume. Maybe it was the fact that beneath his lace there was a hard leanness that spoke of long hours bathed in sweat rather than perfume. Or maybe it was just the knowledge that the man in front of me had likely killed more men than the Crown’
s executioner.
His entourage, by contrast, were such definitive examples of their type as to be barely worthy of notice, each attired similarly to their chief, each narcotized a few shades short of oblivion.
Yancey shot me a look meant to remind me of his earlier warning, and broke into the exaggerated patois he affected for the rich and white. “This my partner, the one I was speaking on to you.”
“A pleasure it is to make your acquaintance, your grace,” I said, executing a bow that would prove acceptable in any court in the land. “And truly may I say it is an honor to be allowed entrance to an affair of such elegance. Surely the Daevas on Chinvat fete no better.”
“One of my lesser affairs, little more than a warm-up for next week’s gala.” He smiled, wide and winning, oddly natural even through the whore’s paint.
“Men of my caliber would find even the meanest of your diversions fit for the divine.” That was laying it on a little thick, but then I was speaking to a man wearing pancake makeup.
“I was told you were a man of many resources, but no mention was made of your charm.”
“Had I the arrogance to contradict your grace, I would deny such unwarranted praise—but being a timid soul, I can only thank your grace for his kindness.”
“Were you a teacher of court etiquette before you adopted your current profession?”
“I did many things before I adopted my current profession, your grace.” This was going on longer than it needed to. No doubt the guests were starting to wonder why their host was giving audience to an ugly man in a dirty coat. “And I do a great many things even now. Perhaps your grace might indicate to me which of them he finds it pleasing to command?”
There was a pause of substantial length while the Blade’s bright eyes rested on mine. I began to wonder if I had overrated the duke’s sobriety. “Perhaps one day we’ll discuss in more detail the range of assistance you might render me. But in the meantime Tucket here will fill you in on the details.” He gestured at a tight-lipped gentleman in a fine dark coat standing off to the side. “Do return shortly. A man of such wit and use is welcome in my demesne regardless of the occasion.”
Low Town: A Novel Page 10