“Did I?”
“Not, of course, that I’m unhappy to see you.”
I repulsed this concern with a theatrical wave of my hand.
“What is this about?”
“Maybe I just wanted to pop in and give a quick salute to my former commander,” I said. “Don’t you ever feel like reliving old times with your brother officers?”
“Of course I do, of course,” he said, willing to agree to anything I put in front of him.
“Then how come you never return the courtesy? Have you risen so high you’ve forgotten your old subordinate?”
He sputtered something halfway between an apology and an excuse before lapsing into silence.
I let that hang awkwardly between us for about fifteen seconds, trying hard not to laugh. “As it happens, though, and since you’ve so kindly offered, there is something you might be able to help me with-though I hesitate to ask, given that you’ve done so much already.”
“Think nothing of it,” he said coldly.
“Remember that operation outside Donknacht, the day before the armistice?”
“Vaguely.”
“Yes, I’m sure it was only of trifling interest to one so far up the chain of command. Dealing with key strategic and logistical issues, it might be easy to forget the skirmishes that fill the memories of the lower ranks.”
He didn’t respond.
“I need to know the name of every sorcerer involved in that project-everyone who carried it out, and anyone who might have trained them. The Ministry of War will have kept a record.”
“Not for something like that,” he answered, immediately and without thinking. “It was off the books.”
“They have it.”
He scrambled for some excuse to avoid acting the pawn. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to access them. They wouldn’t be held in the general library with the rest of the documents from the war. If they’re anywhere, they’d be under lock and key in the restricted section.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem for an Undersecretary of the Army.”
“They’ve changed protocol,” he insisted. “It isn’t like the old days. I can’t just walk into the archives and walk out with the documents under my arm.”
“It’ll be as easy as it’ll be. Or as difficult. But either way, it’ll get done.”
“I… can’t guarantee anything.”
“There aren’t any guarantees in life,” I responded. “But you’ll try, won’t you, Colonel? You’ll try very, very hard.”
He drained the rest of the glass and set it on the table, then pushed his weasel face toward mine. The liquor was kicking in, flooding him with courage he could never muster sober. “I’ll do what I can,” he said, and the tone of his voice did not fill me with confidence in the outcome of his errand. “And then we’re square. No more of these surprise visits. We’re done.”
“Funny-you said the same thing the last time I was here.” I stubbed my cigarette into his desk, grinding the ash into the finish, then stood and grabbed my coat. “Be seeing you soon, Colonel.”
The door shut on a man barely deserving of the title.
His secretary-a pretty, stupid young thing who had allowed me to talk my way into Grenwald’s office with a lie about the war-smiled up at me sweetly. “Was the colonel able to help with your pension problem?”
“It won’t be easy, but he’ll come through for me. You know the colonel-nothing’s more important than his men. He ever tell you about the time he carried me three miles across enemy lines, after I took a bolt in the thigh? Saved my life that night.”
“Really?” she asked, wide-eyed and bubbly.
“No, of course not-none of that was true,” I replied, leaving her more than usually befuddled as I walked out.
I left Grenwald’s office and the boy fell in alongside me without speaking. The meeting had been a waste-Grenwald was a spineless fool, and I couldn’t trust him to come through, not with something this important, not with the consequences I would suffer if it didn’t pan out. That meant I had to move on to plan B; and as far as plan B went, there was a reason it hadn’t taken priority.
Because plan B meant Crispin, he was the only contact I had left high enough to get the information and who I thought might have a chance in hell of saying yes. After our last meeting the thought of asking him for help was faintly nauseating, but pride comes second to survival, so I swallowed mine and started walking to where the child’s body had been found.
My reverie was broken by a voice that I only belatedly realized was Wren’s. I think it was the first time I had heard him speak without prompting.
“What happened when they took you to Black House?”
I thought about how to answer that question for a quarter of a block. “I rejoined the Crown’s service.”
“Why?”
“They made an appeal to my patriotism. I’d do anything for Queen and country.”
He swallowed this soberly, then spat out a response. “I don’t really care about the Queen.”
“Honesty is an overrated virtue. And we all love the Queen.”
Wren nodded sagely as we crossed the canal, the crime scene a bustle of motion a few dozen yards to the west.
The area was swarming with lawmen, and in contrast to their general tradition of incompetence, they seemed to be taking this one seriously. Crispin stood in the center of the chaos next to the child’s body, taking down observations and issuing instructions. Our eyes met, but he returned to his duties without giving any indication he had noticed me. I could see Guiscard canvassing witnesses at an intersection in the distance, and some of the boys who had given me a working over last time were milling about as well, more comfortable causing violence than investigating it.
“Stay here.”
Wren took a seat on the railing. I crossed into the maelstrom, ducking beneath the cordon and approaching my old partner.
“ ’Lo, agent.”
He responded without looking up, jotting down notes in a black leather-bound journal. “Why are you here?”
“Ain’t you up on the news? I missed you so damn much that I went to the Old Man and begged for my old job.”
“Yeah, I heard. Crowley sent a runner over an hour ago. I figured you’d use whatever time your bullshit bought you with Special Operations to get the hell out of town.”
“You never had enough faith in me.”
Suddenly the notebook was on the ground and Crispin had my lapel in his grip, the loss of temper striking in someone normally so self-possessed. “I don’t care what twisted agreement you made with the Old Man. This is my case, and I’m not letting your hatreds get dragged into it.”
My hand shot up and tore his paw off my shoulder. “I’ve had enough of being manhandled by law enforcement officials for one day. And as gratifying as it is to watch the Crown discover they have a population south of the River Andel, in our last go-round your assistance proved less than efficacious. Far as I can tell, most of your job is to stand around corpses and look distraught.”
It seemed unfair after I said it, but it eased him back down a notch. “What do you want from me?” he asked.
“For starters, why don’t you go ahead and run down the scene.”
“There’s little enough to run down. The body was found by a fish seller on his way to the docks. He reported it to the guard; they reported it to us. Judging by the state of the body, the girl was killed last night and dumped here early this morning.”
I knelt down beside the child and removed her wrapping. She was young, younger than the first one had been. Her hair looked very dark spread over her skin.
“Was the body… abused?”
“Clean, not like the last one. The only injury is the one that killed her, a straight line across the throat.”
I hid her corpse beneath the covering and stood back to my full height. “What does your scryer say?”
“Nothing yet. She wants some time to work with the body.”
“I’d
like to speak with her.”
He mulled this over unhappily, but his permission was a formality and both of us knew it. The Old Man wanted me in on this, and the Old Man’s word is natural law. “Guiscard is supposed to stop by the Box later in the afternoon. I suppose you could join him.”
“That’s number one,” I said. “Here’s number two. I need you to get your hands on a list of every sorcerer detailed to take part in Operation Ingress, in Donknacht just before the end of the war. They’ll be buried deep but they’ll be around.” I shook my head ruefully. “The army can’t stand to throw anything out.”
He stared at me, then down at the ground. “Those are military records. As an agent of the Crown I don’t have access to them.”
“Maybe not directly. But you’ve got ten years of contacts and all the draw the blue blood pumping through your veins provides. Don’t tell me you can’t figure something out.”
When he looked back up at me, his eyes were clear as glass. “Why are you here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why are you here? Why are you at this crime scene, right now, trying to find the killer of this girl?” The moment of anger was gone, and now he just seemed weary. “What business is this of yours?”
“You think I’m a volunteer? The Old Man was getting ready to bleed me-this was my only out.”
“Run. Get out of Low Town. If it’s the Old Man you’re afraid of, run, run and don’t look back. I’ll make sure there are no reprisals against your people. Just… disappear.”
I dug at a loose stone with my boot.
“What? Nothing clever? No witty retort?”
“What’s your point?”
“Is this just to show how much smarter you are than the rest of us? Is there some scheme of yours I’m not seeing? Get out of here. You aren’t an agent. So far as I can tell, you’re the furthest thing from it. In case you’ve missed the last five years, let me condense them-you’re a junkie and a crime lord, you string out fathers and mothers, and you cut up anyone who gets in the way. You’ve become everything you ever hated, and I don’t need you fucking up my investigation.”
“I was the best detective the service ever had, and I’d still be thinking circles around you and everyone else if I hadn’t pissed off the brass.”
“Don’t pretend your failure was a choice. Everyone else might buy your bullshit, but I know why you aren’t an agent, and it isn’t because you weren’t willing to toe the line.”
I thought about how much fun it would be to scuff up that spotless gray uniform. “I haven’t forgotten, don’t worry. I remember you standing in judgment with the rest of them, when they struck my name from the record and shattered my Eye.”
“There was nothing for it. I warned you not to join Special Operations, and I warned you double not to get involved with that woman.”
“Cautious, responsible Crispin. Don’t make any waves, don’t see anything you aren’t supposed to. You’re worse than Crowley-at least he’s honest about what he is.”
“It was easier to run off. You never needed to put in the work, never needed to make any hard decisions. I stuck it out-it isn’t perfect, but I’ve done more good as a cogwheel than you have selling poison.”
I could feel my fists clench at my sides and had to resist the urge to go for Crispin’s face, and to judge from the black look in his eyes he was thinking the same. “Fifteen years cleaning up shit,” I said. “They oughta strike you a medal.”
We eyeballed each other, waiting to see if our dialogue wasn’t about to end in violence. He broke first. “Enough-I’ll get you the list and then we’re through. I don’t owe you anything. You ever see me on the street, you act like you would with any other agent.”
“Spit on the ground?”
He rubbed his forehead but didn’t answer.
“Send the list to the Earl when you get it.” I walked back to the bridge and ripped Wren off the rail. “Let’s go.”
We were halfway over when the boy displayed another example of his recent loquaciousness. “Who was that?”
“My old partner.”
“Why was he yelling at you?”
“Because he’s kind of an asshole.”
Wren had to double-time it but his legs kept pace with mine. “Why were you yelling at him?”
“Because I’m kind of an asshole too.”
“Is he going to help us?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“You were better company when you didn’t talk as much,” I said.
I took a last look at Crispin, now bent over the body, puzzling out some detail. I figured I had said some things I regretted. I figured I’d have the opportunity to apologize, out of practice at it though I was. I was wrong about that. I’ve been wrong about a lot of things, but that’s one that hurts.
I’d been on the streets about four years the night I found Celia. I would have been ten or so, maybe a little older-birthdays tend to fall by the wayside without a family to celebrate them. This was after the Crane enacted his wards, so the bodies of the fever victims weren’t piled like cordwood in the streets, but no one could rightly place Low Town too many steps above unadulterated anarchy. At night the guard retreated to the boundaries and didn’t return except in force. Even the syndicates didn’t much trouble with us, likely because there wasn’t much worth taking.
Back then the borough had a haunted, lonely quality to it. It took almost a decade for the population to recover to what it had been before the Fever, and for years after there were still parts of the neighborhood where you could walk for half an hour and never see a living soul. It made finding a place to sleep easy-just stumble down an empty block, throw a stone through a window, and crawl inside. If you were lucky, the owners had run off or died somewhere outside their residence. If you weren’t, you had to share a room with a corpse. Either possibility beat a night in the cold.
I would never again live my life with such mad abandon as I did during those early years on the streets. I needed nothing-Low Town provided. Food I stole, my other small needs I satisfied by force or cunning. I grew hard as a kettle and dog wild. At night I ranged the streets, watching the city’s detritus scuttle about in the dark. That was how I found her-heard her first, really-her frightened cries drawing me from my back alley wanderings.
There were two of them, wyrm addicts, thick with it. The first was ancient, a stutter step from the abyss, rotting gums attesting to the frequency of his habit, worn rags thick with urban fauna. His protege was a few years older than I but preternaturally thin, sparse red hair spurting out over uncomfortably wide eyes. Both were fixated on the small child between them, her shallow weeping quieter now, fear stealing her voice.
Years sharing territory had initiated me in the secrets of the cockroach and the rat, and I moved in a fashion more closely resembling their scurry than the saunter of most children my age. Between that and the darkness I was practically invisible, though the pair ahead of me were so focused on the girl that nothing short of a marching band could have drawn their attention. I hugged tight against the alley wall and slunk toward them, more out of curiosity than anything else, careful to stay outside the arc of the moonlight.
“Three or four stems at least we’ll get for her, three or four stems at least!” the old one said, running his gnarled fingers through the child’s hair. “Just give her straight to the chief heretic and tell him to send on over a pipe of his rawest choke.” The target of his glee stood mute, his sallow, idiot features betraying little evidence of comprehension.
“I’ll buy her from you.” It was out before I could take it back. I did things like that a lot in those days-no sooner did a stray thought flicker across my mind than its consequences echoed at me from the firmament.
The younger one turned, his awkward frame and clouded senses robbing his movement of grace or much speed. The older one was quicker, snatching the girl across the shoulder, his grip almost protective. For a moment her whimpering was the onl
y thing to be heard. Then the elder laughed, the sound rolling over a thick veneer of rheum.
“Have we intruded upon your hunting grounds, gentle sir? Worry not, we won’t be here long.” He was one of those junkies who had been something of substance before the wyrm had hollowed him out, a professor or a lawyer, and though his mind had long been reduced to its basest urges, still he retained a certain incongruous ability for fine speech.
I reached down to my boot and pulled out my stash, three argents I’d found or thieved and an ochre Rob One-Eye had given me for serving as lookout when he’d knocked off the old Light Street bank. “There’s yellow in here. It’s a fair trade.” I didn’t know what the price of a child was exactly, but there were too damn many wandering the streets of the city for it to be worth much more than that.
The two stared at each other numbly, their slow reptile minds trying to process this new development. Given enough time, one of them was going to realize that it was easier to kill me and take what I had than meet my demands-better not to allow them the opportunity.
I held the small packet of coins in my off hand, and with the other opened the straight razor I had pulled out with it. “I’m taking the girl,” I said. “You have your choice of payment-gold or steel.”
The younger one moved forward threateningly. But I caught his eyes and he stopped short. The purse jangled.
“Gold or steel. Take your pick.”
Another sharp laugh from the one holding the child. That sound was grating on me, and I had the urge to throw in the towel on this negotiation business and see what the insides of this lice-ridden degenerate looked like.
“We’ll take it,” he said. “Saves us the trouble of bringing her to the docks.”
The other seemed less certain, so I threw the pouch on the ground in front of him. He reached down to grab it and I thought about going for his face with my blade, a few quick swipes then on to his senior partner-but the old one still held the girl firmly, and I had no doubt he’d do her without blinking an eye. Better to play it straight and hope they’d do the same. The loss of my coin stung, though. I wouldn’t see another ochre for a long time, not with poor Rob doing twenty in Old Farrow for cutting up a priest in a bar fight.
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