I mimicked his amity, wishing I didn’t have to place my survival in the hands of this dilettante. “What’s your fee?”
He was too much the artist to enjoy discussing money. “Usually I get cut in on a percentage, but I assume this isn’t for sale.” He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Twenty ochres?”
Absurdly low for the job at hand, but I wasn’t about to complain. “There’s one more thing I ought to tell you,” I said. “The man you’re stealing from, the things you’re stealing—if you’re caught, the hoax will be the least of your worries.”
“Good thing I don’t get caught.”
“Good thing,” I responded, hoping he was as skilled as he was confident.
He extended his hand and stood. “I’ve got to get back to the hospital—my shift starts in twenty minutes. I’ll take a look at the place later on this evening. You’ll hear from me the day after tomorrow.”
“Contact me if you need anything.”
“I won’t.” He slipped on his coat. “Who’s that kid you’re here with?”
Kor’s Bellows, he was sharp. I hadn’t realized I’d made any sign. “He’s sort of my ward. I was hoping if I brought him by, you could give him some career advice.”
“On which one?”
“Which do you prefer?”
“Thieving,” he answered confidently.
“Maybe we’d best skip the pep talk.”
He laughed and strutted out. After a moment Wren came over. “That all for the afternoon? Weather’s getting worse.”
“Not quite. I’ve got someone to see, and you’ve got another message to run. I need you to pay a visit to the Blade. Tell the guard at the front gate that I’ll be attending tomorrow’s party.”
“I didn’t know you’d been invited.”
“Neither does the Duke of Beaconfield.”
Wren waited for a follow-up, but when it didn’t come, he headed out. I took his lead a minute or two thereafter.
I was halfway to Tolk Street when I made Crowley’s scarred Mirad following about a block behind me. I didn’t have time for this nonsense. I needed to look in on Cadamost, see what he could tell me about Brightfellow—but then I didn’t imagine Crowley would be sensitive to the complexities of my situation. Slipping the tail wasn’t an option either, my ex-colleague was a tenacious motherfucker and things were getting too busy to leave any loose ends floating around.
So I decided to do something I’d been thinking about since taking a dip in the canal two days prior. Stopping abruptly to let him know I’d seen him, I took a sharp turn down a side alley and headed south toward Kirentown. I moved fast but not too fast, making sure Crowley and his boys didn’t lose me in the dark. They played along, sharp enough to stay on my trail but too blunt to run me down. Fifteen minutes later I was standing beneath the standard of the Blue Dragon, and another second after that I was through the door.
The bar was crowded, and I ignored the unfriendly stares that greeted me. At the front counter the whale was chatting to a customer, but when he saw me he stopped and assumed the vacant pose he adopted whenever we did business. There wasn’t time to do this with any subtlety, so I forced my way to the front.
I leaned in close, conscious of the odor wafting from his excess flesh. “I need to see Ling Chi. Immediately.” He gave no indication that he heard me, weighing his options, keenly aware of Ling Chi’s policy on lenient doormen. “In three years, have I ever wasted the man’s time?”
He nodded toward the door, and I headed through the back and into the antechamber beyond. If the two guards inside were surprised to see me, they didn’t show it—whatever setup the fat man had going to alert them was apparently both silent and effective. I tossed my weapons on the table and went through a quick patdown before being ushered inside to see the man himself.
I still had my suspicions about the authenticity of Ling Chi’s costume, but if he was putting on a show, he could set it up pretty damn quick. His attire was impeccable, from the silvery-white diadem atop his head to the beauty mark that accented his maquillage. He held his hands prayerlike before his chest, the yellow gold of his false fingernails replaced today by a set of green jade. “The joy that stirs in my breast at the unanticipated arrival of my companion is almost too much for my aged heart to bear.”
I bowed low, accepting the rebuke. “It is a blot on my honor that I am forced to intrude upon the tranquility of my mentor, one that I will work tirelessly to expunge.”
He waved away my concern, happy to begin the discussion from a position of strength. “The worries of my beloved friend do credit to his sense of principle. But what need have we of ceremony, we who are closer than brothers? Gleefully do I order the unbarring of any gate that separates us—with all haste I command the doors of my sanctum opened to the twin of my heart.”
“Happiness beyond measure is the lot of your servant, to know that I am granted consideration by one whose word is law and whose hand shelters his children.”
He blinked twice, the shift in his placid countenance impossible to miss. “Shelter …”
“Well does my protector know that innocence is no guard against the wolf, and actions born of amity are like to destroy us.”
“The Celestial Emperor sets upon no man’s back more weight than he might carry.”
“Endless may he reign,” I intoned.
“Endless may he reign.”
“Great men stand before the ocean and command the very waves, while we small folk struggle to avoid the rocks.”
“All are bound by the will of the Emperor,” he said guardedly.
“Spoken truly—and yet where the wise find patterns in the Celestial Order, we lowly creatures struggle to discern the road set before us. I fear, in my haste to be of service to my companion, I have become a target for those who would work against him.”
“That is unfortunate,” he said, his sympathy less than palpable. “And who are these men who seek the injury of my dearest cousin?”
“It saddens me to report the corruption of those tasked with upholding the laws of our land, and of their mistaken crusade against myself and my brother.”
His eyes grew cold as a late-season frost, and I began to worry I’d made a mistake in coming. “Great as my love is for my ally, I cannot interfere with the representatives of the Throne.”
“The men who follow me are on no sanctioned business of Black House, nor, save one, have been adopted officially into its service.”
“Save one?”
“A deputy of the head of Black House, whose iniquities are manifold and beyond dispute. Perhaps you are familiar with him, an Agent Crowley?”
A snarl played across his stony features. “Our paths have crossed.”
I had hoped as much—Crowley had a particular talent for engendering hatred. “To the shame of my ancestors, there was once a time when the agent and I had dealings. Not knowing of our ties as brothers, Agent Crowley hoped to use my services to bring harm to the house of Ling Chi. Briefly, so briefly did I pretend to aid this duplicitous official that I might gain his trust and knowledge of his movements. But the veneer of a traitor cannot gild the core of a righteous man, and my deception has been discovered.”
Ling Chi beat a steady pulse with his jade fingernails, sifting through the bullshit for nuggets of fact. Crowley’s corruption was deep and long-standing—I could name a dozen criminal enterprises he made money off, and there were probably a hundred more of which I had no idea. The Old Man was aware of some of them, more than he let on to Crowley I’m sure, but the Old Man wasn’t the sort to toss aside a good tool just because it occasionally worked without his direction.
Most important, it fit into Ling Chi’s overarching paranoia, a justified mania born of a lifetime of betrayal and deceit. He could well believe that I’d sell him out to Crowley, only to switch sides once things got too hot. It was the kind of thing he would have done—had done, and would do again.
“The cat is unaware of the workings of its paw?
” he asked.
“Who can say what secrets are possessed by the master of Black House? He may know of his lieutenant’s doings—he does not support them.”
The tapping slowed, then stopped altogether. “So dear was my well-being to my brother that he jeopardized his safety and reputation in hopes of thwarting a plot against it. How could I, Ling Chi, be expected to do any less?” He smiled savagely, and I was grateful I was not the target of his anger. “Harmony is to be prized above all other possessions—but should my associate discover that the men who plot our destruction have no ear for the words of reconciliation, he may rest comfortably, knowing that what meager force I can offer is at his disposal.”
I bowed deeply, almost to the ground, and left. Rearming myself from the bench outside, I scurried into the bar and took an empty table in the corner. Four Kirens slipped in from the back room, hard men, as distinct from the other patrons as a wolf is from a dog. They approached the table next to mine, and the workers seated there vacated their spot without comment. One of the four, a thickset man with an elaborate dragon tattoo spiraling across his face, looked over and nodded at me. I nodded back. Then I flagged down a serving boy and told him to send over some kisvas.
After a few minutes the front door opened and Crowley walked in, backed by the three boys he’d introduced me to earlier. The bar fell silent and Crowley met the sea of heretic faces with a look of undisguised contempt. He saw me and whispered something to his men. They split off to the counter, and Crowley ambled toward my table.
He stopped behind the chair opposite mine, flush with petty glee. The tavern had returned to something that resembled normality, if you weren’t paying much attention. Crowley wasn’t. “I thought maybe we’d lost you,” he said.
“Just having a drink.” I kicked the seat toward him. “Take a load off. I know it’s been a little bit of a walk.”
“We’re here though, aren’t we,” he responded, dropping his oversize frame onto the beat-up wooden stool.
“It might be more of a contest now that I’m armed.”
“If you thought anything of your chances, you wouldn’t have run.”
“You always had trouble grasping the concept of a tactical retreat.”
“Yeah, I’m an ogre and you’re a genius—but where’s all your smarts gonna get you? Dead in a ditch on a winter night.” His thick bulk shifted back into his chair. “Doesn’t sound so fucking bright to me.”
“Not when you put it that way,” I agreed.
“Course, if you were smart you wouldn’t be here. If you were smart, you’d be head of Special Ops by now. That’s why the Old Man hates you so much, you know—’cause you disappointed him.”
“Daily I lament my failure to live up to his expectations.”
“I tell you, he was shocked as hell when you did what you did. It was the only time I ever saw the bastard get hot.” He flashed his ugly grin, formed as a child when he first pulled the wing off a fly, perfected throughout the long years since by daily acts of cruelty. “What was her name again?”
“Albertine.”
“Right, Albertine,” he said. “Let me ask you, was she worth it? Because as far as I’m concerned, one piece of cunt’s the same as another.”
I let that seep in through my pores, rubbed at it like a sore tooth, saving it up so I could pay it back.
The serving boy came by for an order, but Crowley waved him away. “Why the hell did you pick here to hide? Fucking Kirens.” He looked about disgustedly. “They’re like insects.”
“Ants,” I said. “They’re like ants.”
He pointed one thick finger at me. “Every one of these motherfuckers that bows and calls you master would put his foot on your neck if you gave him half a chance.”
“Either they’re playing at tyrants or cringing like slaves.”
“Exactly! Not like us. No sense of pride, that’s the problem.”
“Not like us,” I agreed. Behind Crowley, Ling Chi’s men were getting restless, understanding enough to be insulted.
“And that monkey talk!” Crowley slapped his knee. “Speak Rigun, you slant-eyed bastards!”
“It’s not that hard, once you get the hang of it. Here, we’ll practice.” I drained the last of my kisvas. “Shou zhe cao ni ma,” I said.
“Zou ze ca nee maa,” he repeated, then chuckled at his own awkwardness. “What does that mean?”
The tattooed Kiren said something in his native tongue. I nodded at him. “It means, ‘End this motherfucker.’ ”
I swear Crowley was so dumb it took him three or four seconds to put that together. Realization finally dawned on his face and he tried to stand, but I caught him flush against the face and he stumbled backward.
The bar erupted into violence. The men who first moved on Crowley were in Ling Chi’s employ, but it wasn’t long till the crowd got in on the action, happy to provide the arrogant round eyes in their midst a permanent comeuppance. Crowley’s boys went quick. The bartender, whose value I generally rated closer to lichen than mammal, pulled a cleaver from beneath the counter and took the head off a well-built Vaalan with a dispassion suggesting this was not the first time he’d decapitated a patron. The scarred Mirad managed to draw his knife before being swallowed, screaming as the press of men beat him senseless to the ground with whatever makeshift weapons they could find.
After that, I decided it was best to pull toward the back—we didn’t want the heretics getting confused on whom they were supposed to be killing, and anyway the cuff I’d given Crowley had torn at the wound I’d gotten the night earlier. My ex-colleague put up what resistance he could, rocking one of Ling Chi’s henchmen with a left hook before the tattooed Kiren sapped him to the ground. I stepped in then, waving off the heretic before he could draw a razor across Crowley’s throat. I wanted him alive. His friends I didn’t so much care about.
The Kiren were unprofessional and overzealous, but they were thorough. After five minutes there was nothing to reveal that three white men had just been murdered, the corpses removed to be disposed of in one of the myriad ways Ling Chi had devised to eliminate evidence of his frequent executions. Crowley lay on the ground, two of Ling Chi’s men taking turns booting him when he squirmed. I nodded toward a side door, and they dragged him outside by his arms.
There was a break in the storm, and the evening light reflected bright off the snow. Crowley’s knees left a line in the fresh powder, the trail inset with red leaking down from his scalp. We stopped in a cul-de-sac behind the bar, the henchmen holding my old nemesis firmly, their support the only thing keeping him from collapsing. I pulled out my tobacco pouch and rolled a tab, waiting for him to come to.
It was no small joy watching him awake to my ugly mug square against his own. “Back with us?”
He cursed something fierce and inventive.
I pulled a throwing knife from my shoulder holster and held it lightly in my left hand. One of the Kiren said something to his counterpart too rapidly for me to catch. “Crowley, look at me.”
I laid the knife to his throat. To his credit, he neither flinched nor pissed himself. “I could do you right now, Crowley, and the heretics would make your body disappear, and there wouldn’t be a single person in the Thirteen Lands who’d care.” His skin twitched against the cold metal.
I let the weapon fall to my side. “But I’m not going to fade you—I’m gonna let you walk. And I want you to remember, from now until the day I decide to kill you, this act of kindness. I am your benefactor, agent—and every sunny afternoon, every fuck and full stomach, you owe to me.” He blinked twice, confused. I smiled broadly. “But just in case you get forgetful.” My dagger opened a wound from the bottom of his forehead down through his cheek, and he screamed and went limp.
I watched him bleed for a moment, then nodded at the tattooed Kiren. He and the other exchanged quizzical looks—apparently there was no tradition of last-minute reprieves among the heretics. I nodded again and they released Crowley, who slumped to t
he ground, motionless except for the hemorrhaging.
The Kirens walked back inside the bar, laughing at the absurd customs of this alien country. As for me, I ducked down the alley and headed back to the Earl. It was too late to follow up with Cadamost—I’d have to hope this side errand wouldn’t end up costing me more than it had been worth. Still, walking home I had to struggle to keep a smile off my lips at the thought of the permanent one I’d given Crowley.
I woke up early, and sneaked out of the bar. The address Guiscard had given me was deep in Kirentown, the part of the city where you could walk five blocks without seeing anyone who wasn’t a faithful subject of the Celestial Emperor. Of course, three days into the storm of the century you could walk five blocks without seeing anyone period. By the time I arrived beneath the sign of the Gray Lantern my boots were soaked straight through, and I found myself wondering whether the Old Man might give me an extension on account of the weather.
Inside was a comically small store, maybe eight feet from the front door to the back. The shelves were stocked with a disparate variety of general goods—pots and pans, needles and spools of thread, consistent only in the layer of accumulated dust. Very little effort was being put forth to maintain the facade that this was a functioning enterprise, but then I supposed so far into Kiren territory the hoax didn’t show up much and were easy to bribe when they did. A pinched-face heretic sat on a stool and stared at me with an expression that made me want to teach him the basics of customer relations with my fists. He nodded curtly and I slid past him, happy to have gotten through so easily but disturbed that I was apparently indistinguishable from a common junkie.
Against the back wall an iron fence had been erected, long stalks of wyrm hanging from the top of the cage, ready to be cut up and sold as needed. Inside, a young Kiren girl sat ready to trade a few hours of oblivion for whatever coin one could muster. She watched me open-mouthed. I wasn’t sure if she was high or just stupid. The rest of the room was occupied by all manner of tables and booths, acquired without the slavish desire for uniformity or cleanliness that tends to plague legitimate businesses. Wafting over everything was the unmistakable mélange of the drug itself, noxious and enticing, like baked goods and burnt flesh.
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