‘And who’d you hear that from?’ I asked. I had trouble believing the general spent much time in rooms where my name was bandied about.
‘Iomhair Gilchrist,’ he said, and smiled at my reaction. ‘You don’t much care for old Iron Stomach?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. If the Creator hadn’t given us dung beetles, we’d have to spend a lot more time cleaning our shoes.’
‘He’s not a regular at Sunday dinner. But his avarice makes him easy to predict. I’m rich, he knows it, and that keeps him in my stable.’
‘All the money in the world wouldn’t buy him a spine – he’s a coward, and useless in a pinch. Even if you could trust him not to screw you, you still couldn’t trust him not to screw up.’
He nodded, not like he agreed with me, but like it didn’t matter. ‘Whatever else he is, he knows his business, and his business is knowing people, and he says you know yours.’
That was quite a little play on words, though I figured it was best not to call him on it. ‘As flattering as it is to hear Iron Stomach thinks so highly of me, the fact remains, finding lost children isn’t my line.’
I got the impression that Montgomery had expected this conversation to go easier. He took a long breath and rocked back in his chair, marshaling his forces before returning to battle. ‘You never met Rhaine, did you?’
I had perspired through my shirt. I figured if I sat here much longer I’d soak my way through the overcoat as well. ‘Not that I recall.’
‘When last you and I met she would have been a child. In many ways I suppose she’s still a child now. Roland quite doted on her. So did I. There were times when it seemed it was the only thing the two of us could agree on. And of course she returned his affection. After his death I fear it turned to adoration. The longer he’s been gone the more closely he resembles a saint.’
I concentrated firmly on the window behind the general, dull with dust and the glare of the sun.
‘He always spoke highly of you, Roland. Even when he had little good to say of the Crown, of Black House in particular – he always spoke very highly of you.’
‘That’s nice to hear,’ I said. It was the least definite statement I could think of.
‘Yesterday I asked Iomhair for the names of three men who were solid enough to find my girl, and whom I could expect not to put my business out into the street. When yours came back at the head of that list, I must admit that . . .’ he groped silently for words. It was clear the general was not one generally given to strong displays of emotion – I found myself wishing he’d hewn closer to his traditional habit of restraint.
‘I’m not a religious man, you understand. But somehow when I saw your name I couldn’t help but feel that the Daevas had some hand in it, in bringing you back into my life after such a long absence.’
I was far more keen to see the hand of the infernal in our renewed acquaintance than the divine. ‘Roland was a friend,’ I said. The fact that this was one of the few truths I’d bothered to tell over the course of the conversation was not lost on me. ‘And if I thought I could help you, I wouldn’t hesitate. But I’m not the sort to promise something I can’t deliver, and I can’t deliver this. I don’t know Rhaine, don’t know her habits, associates, don’t know anything about her. Low Town is a big place, and even I don’t have ears in all of it. And say I found her, what then? I’ve no leverage to force her to return, and cruel though it may be, the law wouldn’t allow me to drop her in a sack and carry her here by force.’ Laying them out like that they seemed like good excuses, not excuses even, explanations. I hoped he’d take them. ‘I’m sorry, sir – but there just isn’t anything I can do for you.’
He settled his antique body back into his chair, his face a shadow of what it had been a scant moment earlier. Nothing like breaking an old man’s heart before lunch. ‘Of course,’ he said, his voice indistinct. ‘I understand. Forgive me for wasting your time.’
‘It was no trouble,’ I returned, and then, wanting to say something to steady him, ‘It was good seeing you again, General. I have . . . fond memories of you, and your son.’ We were back to lies. I did have happy memories of Roland – but they were mixed evenly with some very terrible ones.
He didn’t seem to hear me, which was just as well. The leather seat stuck to my ass as I stood. ‘I’ll take my leave of you, then.’
He nodded a farewell, lost in thoughts far from happy.
The palm of my hand was settled against the brass door handle when the image of a man flashed through my mind. A man who looked something like the general, but with the same shock of auburn hair as the woman in the locket I’d left lying on the table. His eyes were bright as a torch, the kind of eyes you’d follow anywhere – wild eyes, dangerous eyes, eyes that promised you things you shouldn’t believe in.
‘I could keep my ears open,’ said the idiot in the badly tailored suit. ‘I’m not promising anything, but . . .’
Montgomery shot up from the table, nearly sprinting towards me, forgetting his age in the excitement. ‘Damn decent of you, damn decent of you!’ He pressed the locket into my hand, and his grip was firm. ‘I’ll pay you anything you need, you don’t worry about that. Just send me a bill and I’ll cover it, double it – anything you need.’
At that moment I needed to get the hell out of his house, and I was about to do so when something occurred to me. ‘One more thing, General,’ I said. ‘What was the fight about?’
The happy set of his face flushed away. ‘It was about her brother,’ he answered. ‘And the circumstances of his murder.’
I left without saying anything further, through the parlor and past Botha’s scowl, out the long hallway that led to the front room, through the gilded door and into the street. The sun shone down on a man who wished he’d had the last five minutes to do over again. Wished he’d had more than that, really, but who’d have settled for the last five minutes.
2
It was hotter back in the old neighborhood than it had been at the general’s, hot enough to dry up what little legitimate commerce existed and throw a pretty good dent in the illegitimate businesses as well. I managed to make it all the way back from Kor’s Heights with nothing more than a half-hearted catcall from a fabulously decrepit whore. I gave her an argent and told her to get out of the sun.
I felt a brief moment of relief as I slipped into the confines of the Staggering Earl. There wasn’t much to be said about the establishment of which I was half-owner. It was an unexceptional neighborhood bar in an unexceptional section of Low Town – ugly, threadbare, and catering to a class of customer straddling that narrow line between rough and outright criminal. But it was cool, and that was something. Actually, with the weather hot enough to bake bread, it was a lot.
It might have been enough if Adolphus, my partner and the nominal head of our enterprise, had been around to pour me a draft of ale. But he wasn’t. Nor was Adeline, his wife and the person actually responsible for the bar’s solvency. The common room was empty, rows of rough-hewn tables leading to a long counter and the private area behind. After a moment I heard voices wafting in from the back, and, curious, followed them to their source.
When I’d first met him, back during the half-decade we’d spent murdering people in the service of our country, Adolphus had been as impressive a physical specimen as one could have put eyes on. Well enough over six feet that there was no point in measuring him, with a pair of arms the size of a thick man’s legs and a back broad enough to run a cart over. Admittedly, his face was acne-scarred and homely, but the head it was attached to was set so far in the air that you barely noticed. He’d mustered out looking much the same, though now absent an eye courtesy of a Dren crossbow. Thirteen years of soft living and frequent sips from his tap had wilted him into something more believably a member of the human species. But he still looked like he could toss a cow over a wall, if for some reason he had been inclined to do so.
He was laughing when I came in, dominating the three men su
rrounding him as much by his brio as his size. It took me a moment to place them. Once I did, it took considerably less time for a scowl to work its way across my face.
‘Hello, Lieutenant,’ Hroudland began, quick with the pleasantries. ‘It’s been a while.’ He held out his hand. After a moment of looking foolish, he put it away.
‘Has it? I hadn’t realized. I suppose I don’t find myself thinking much about you.’
Hroudland nodded sadly, like he had hoped for better from me but had learned not to expect it. ‘An unfortunate state of events. Because we at the Veterans’ Association are thinking about you, you and all our other brothers, whose services to Throne and Country are being forgotten by the current administration.’
Hroudland was the very prototype of a mid-ranking officer, more an abstract ideal than a fully realized human being. Give him a problem to solve and he’d solve it, and never waste a moment’s thought on why it needed to be solved. He had a sharp enough mind, but he kept it in its case unless ordered otherwise. I didn’t much care for him, but compared to his fellows I’d have been happy to cut my hand and swear a blood oath, kiss him on the cheek and call him brother.
Ten unfortunate years I’d known Roussel, and still the incongruity between his boyish face and his long history of violence left me slack-jawed. Rare amongst the population of the Empire, the coming of the war had been a singular blessing for the young Rouender. It was one shared by the stray dogs of his neighborhood, which, prior to his enlisting, had occasion to find themselves strung up and dissected, intestines stretched along the sidewalk and sweetmeats poked at with thin instruments of metal. The business of the front meant that Roussel had become a killer before his sixteenth birthday, but he wouldn’t have lasted a virgin much longer even in civilian life. And though he came up barely to my shoulders, and had the blue eyes and pinked cheeks of a china doll, still he was the one I watched. The fact that Hroudland outranked him wouldn’t mean anything if he got it in his head to hurt someone.
Rabbit was, by contrast, basically what you’d expect in a one-time infantryman and present-day thug. A series of wooden blocks stacked atop each other, the topmost a mass of scar tissue and tattered cartilage. Beaming through that last was a smile which held firm in sunshine or storm, when cutting a throat or disposing of a body. His nickname was a product of the sort of caustic humor common in the ranks, for if ever there was a man who bore less resemblance to the gentle lapin, I had trouble imagining him.
‘What’s with the monkey suit, Lieutenant?’ he asked.
‘On Sundays your wife and I have dinner, and I like to look my best.’
Rabbit laughed, belly juggling on his sturdy frame. ‘I never married.’
‘That’s too bad. Everybody should have a wife. Then again, I suppose long years of barracks living, cheek and jowl with the creamy bud of Rigun manhood, might have given you an aversion to the fairer sex.’
Roussel started at that, mad eyes inching their way toward trouble, but Rabbit stole his thunder by laughing again, laughing and shaking his head in a friendly sort of way. ‘I forgot how funny you are, Lieutenant.’
‘Only when you’re around. Once you leave I go back to drinking myself silent. While we’re on the subject, mayhap you could enlighten me as to when exactly to expect your retreat. The bar isn’t open yet, and anyway we keep a pretty exclusive entrance policy.’
‘Come on now,’ Hroudland said. ‘We’re all soldiers.’
‘Did the High Chancellor start another war while I wasn’t looking?’ I smiled something that wasn’t that. ‘Either way, I think I’ve put in my time – which means whatever the hell you may be, Hroudland, we aren’t anything at all.’
This was too much for Roussel. He tightened his fingers around the hilt of the short sword he had thus far, through an astonishing act of will, managed to keep sheathed.
‘None of that,’ Hroudland said, having spent enough time with the boy-sized lunatic to know without looking he was trending towards violence. ‘The lieutenant was only joking. He likes a good joke, the lieutenant, and we like the lieutenant, so we don’t mind. The lieutenant’s a smart man, real smart – and he knows we’re looking out for him and his interests, knows without the Association to make sure the Crown played straight, they’d strip us of everything we got, and see us out in the street.’
‘I’m not sure I’m so savvy as you think.’
‘Then it’s a good thing we stopped by to educate you,’ and for the first time a hint of steel edged itself into his voice.
‘That reminds me, Hroudland. I’m behind on my dues.’ I reached into a back pocket and came out with a tarnished bit of copper, then flipped it to him. ‘That ought to cover it – in perpetuity. Don’t imagine there’ll be a need to come round again.’
Hroudland looked at it for a moment, deciding whether or not to push his play, but whatever their purpose was in coming here, it hadn’t been to start a quarrel. And anyway, between me and Adolphus he probably figured he didn’t have the brawn to chance it. So he closed his hand around the coin and put it away with a smile. ‘We weren’t here to see you, Lieutenant – that was just a happy accident. We’re here to see the chief.’ He gave Adolphus a friendly nod. ‘And the Hero of Aunis knows he’s welcome at a meeting anytime he chooses to show.’
He gestured to his boys and they followed him out. Rabbit had the same steady grin he’d worn the entire time, that he’d have continued to wear if things had gone in another, less amiable direction. Roussel looked like a child who’d dropped his sucker, sad to have lost what would likely be the day’s best chance to make something bleed.
I rolled up the cigarette I hadn’t been able to smoke at the general’s, and added in a little dreamvine for wise measure. Adolphus stood mute, his face red and anxious. For someone I had once seen break a man’s back between his hands, he had a real dread of interpersonal conflict.
‘What the fuck were they doing here?’ I asked finally.
‘Just checking in. Wanted to see what I thought about this new bill the Throne’s jammed down our throats.’
‘Is that what they told you?’
‘You don’t believe it?’
‘If Hroudland told me we’d see sun tomorrow, I’d take my winter coat out from storage.’
‘They aren’t all bad. Rabbit’s a friendly enough fellow.’
‘He get those scars being friendly?’
‘They’re soldiers,’ Adolphus said, imbuing the last word with a reverence that turned my stomach. ‘Just like us.’
‘Spare me the brothers-in-arms bullshit. They impressed a fifth of the population – you think maybe a few bad apples crept in?’
He shrugged, not wanting to argue the point, but I wasn’t willing to let it go. ‘You remember what happened the last time the Association had any power?’
This was enough to calcify his vague sense of dissent. ‘Roland Montgomery was a good man.’
‘With some bad ideas.’ It was an unfortunate coincidence that had brought him to my mind twice in the span of as many hours – or so I thought to myself at the time.
‘He was right about standing up for ourselves, not letting them take advantage of us,’ Adolphus said. ‘The Throne’s got no business trying to tax our pensions.’
The war ended and a couple of hundred thousand men were dumped unceremoniously onto the streets of Rigus. Men wounded in mind and body, lacking practical skills beyond ditch-digging and murder. Some turned to crime, more to rattling tin cups on street corners. It started to look bad, the capital choked with the broken bodies of ex-heroes. Perhaps the wiser amongst the ministers began to wonder what would happen if their one time army decided to take up their old trade – a concern stoked when Roland Montgomery founded the Veterans’ Association, in large part to convince his former comrades to do just that. Reparations were starting to come in, for once the Crown’s treasuries were flush. It seemed prudent to give some modest percentage of the Dren’s money to the men who had won it.
And thus was born the Private’s Silver, half from guilt, half from fear. A half ochre a month for every man who’d served until such time as they weren’t alive to claim it. Not enough to start a business or buy a house or feed a family. Just enough to die slowly, two to a bed in a slum tenement, out of sight of passers-by. I thought it was a pretty crap exchange for what we’d given, and generally didn’t bother to go down to the tax office and claim it. But for most of my comrades it was near sacrosanct, weighed out of all proportion to its actual value.
In the grand tradition of shortsightedness, the Crown had not bothered to consider what would happen when the war indemnity ran out, as it had some years back. With our coffers near to empty, the High Chancellor had started to call for taxing the Private’s Silver as regular income, a rather impressive bit of legerdemain by which the Throne would take back with one hand what it gave with the other.
‘The government fucks people – that’s what governments do. You shouldn’t need that explained.’
Adolphus shrugged with a petulance inappropriate to his age and bulk. ‘Ain’t right that they forgot us so quick.’
‘First taxes, now time? What’s your encore? You going to track death to her lair, wrestle her into submission?’
Adolphus dipped his head warily. ‘Shouldn’t blaspheme like that. She Who Waits Behind might be listening.’
‘She’s always listening, Adolphus – and she sets her own pace.’ I trampled my cigarette into the floor. It meant work for Adeline but it accentuated my point. ‘Course, you go mucking about with the Association and you might get her to double time it.’
It was as good a line as any other to end the conversation on, and besides I had a full enough day left ahead of me. I left Adolphus to consider the error of his ways, or more likely why he had chosen to go into business with a gibbering asshole, and threaded the narrow stairway up to my grim, dingy room. Once there I changed back into my regular get up, and took a spare moment to fill my skull with pixie’s breath before heading back out into the street.
Tomorrow, the Killing (Low Town 2) Page 2