Low Town lt-1

by Daniel Polansky

  “Glory be to the Celestial Emperor, whose ways are subtle but certain, and who repays all evil in kind. Blessed are we who hold firm to the Empyreal Path, whose steps are watched by the Highest of His Ministers. May our words be uttered without deceit, and our actions redound to the glory of his Eternal Majesty.” Beat that, you stone-faced bastard.

  Ling Chi laughed, a brittle sound like the roar of a locust, and gestured to the corner. A young boy approached the throne with a long pipe, crafted to resemble an uncoiled dragon, and held it to his master’s mouth. Ling Chi took a drag and blew a foul concoction of tobacco and opiates into the air. He offered it to me with one crook of his long fingernails, but I shook my head and he waved the boy back into the shadows.

  “The piety of my associate is a source of perpetual inspiration. And yet…” His eyes grew doleful, tiny pupils ringed by black rouge. “Many are the demons of iniquity that wait on the road to enlightenment, and crooked is the trail. Nothing more pleases the Lords of Vice than to twist the workings of a righteous man to their own dark purposes.”

  “The words of my compatriot are dulcet to my ears, and ennobling to my spirit,” I said.

  His talons kept even time. “We are but a poor and benighted community, struggling to survive on alien soil. This foul business, the terrible doings of a dim and twisted mind… It threatens to disturb the delicate equilibrium between our tiny school and the sea of sharks in which we swim.”

  I didn’t respond, and after a moment he continued.

  “I am but an aged grandfather whose fellow countrymen, lost amid the chaos of your country, look to for guidance and protection. The small esteem I have gained would evaporate as dew on a summer morning were I unable to defend against the unwarranted attacks of their tormentors.”

  “Grateful we are that the murderer’s actions were discovered, and the threat to the children of the Emperor is over.”

  His nails ceased their tattoo. “It is not over,” he hissed, and I feared our interview was about to erupt into violence. But his break in composure was momentary, and so swift that I could barely be certain it had even happened. His claws resumed their cadence, and for a time all that could be heard was their echo against the shadowy fastness of the chamber. “Another child has been found. A terrible development. Already your fellows call for vengeance against the heretics. Already they call for reprisals.”

  I focused on looking inscrutable. The heretics are a useful target for the round eyes, but the threat of their abuse is part of what keeps Ling Chi’s people in line. What was he moaning about?

  Ling Chi beckoned to his attendant, who brought the pipe over a second time. He put his lips to the stem, then spewed out an impressive cloud of the dank vapor. “I was terribly concerned for my intimate’s safety today.”

  “It flatters me that one so exalted would consider my well-being worthy of notice.”

  “This morning I was informed by a wandering eye that my friend was arrested by agents of the Crown.” He clicked his tongue in a fashion meant to be taken as sorrowful-it was grotesque and unnatural, like a she wolf suckling a newborn. “Terrible was the despair in my household. I ordered my servants to dress themselves in white and to begin the forty days of mourning prescribed for the death of an esteemed companion.” He hung his head between his shoulders in feigned bereavement, observing a theoretical moment of silence.

  “Then something extraordinary happened!” A smile appeared on his lips, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “I received another message. My ally had exited the house of justice! Great was the joy with which the news of my brother’s survival was received! I ordered strings of burning chrysanthemums to be set off and a black rooster slaughtered in his honor.” He cocked his head contemplatively. “But in the midst of my unadulterated happiness, I could not divest myself of the pangs of curiosity. For though I have heard tell of many men being taken into the rooms beneath Black House, word has never reached my ears of one being allowed to leave.”

  “The visit from my former employers was a surprise, as was my release. Terrible are the workings of a government out of harmony with the heavens.”

  “Former employers…”

  “The delicacy of my associate’s hearing is matched only by the perfection of his understanding.”

  “Cunning are the servants of your Queen, unknowable their objectives. Great must be the concern of any who find themselves tangled in the intrigues of Black House.”

  The pieces clicked together and I finally realized the purpose of this interminable interrogation. He thought the Old Man moved against him, that the dead Kiren was his opening gambit, that I had been drafted into it and my arrest was a cover for a meeting. The impossibility of such a scheme would provide little defense against the blades of Ling Chi’s underlings should he decide to act on his suspicions. “What concern could honest citizens have for the doings of the lawful authorities, clouded though their sight may be?”

  “I am certain my brother has the truth of it. And yet… I am a simple man,” he said, pausing to give the absurdity time to diffuse amid the smoke. “So I speak to my revered brethren plainly. I do not know what trouble afflicts Low Town-but I cannot help but observe that since my associate’s intrusion the round eyes howl for the blood of my kinsmen, and Black House sniffs about my home.”

  There was no point in arguing further. “The words of my honorable ally are water on parched earth.”

  He closed his eyes and put his hand to his brow, his skills sufficient to carry the theatrics. “Truly, the concerns of parentage weigh heavy on my brow. Many are the days when I wonder how I shall carry on. Many are the nights that I wish for the Emperor to call me to his side. I take solace only in the knowledge that my ally offers aid to my feeble body, and comfort to my senescent mind.”

  “I watch after my mentor with vision that never clouds.”

  “And I would expect nothing less from so stalwart a friend. The goods are at the bar, and I will provide a quarter discount in exchange for the precious moments my brother has given me. As for the other matters…” He leaned his body forward in such a fashion as to allow the girl below to continue massaging his foot. “Remember what I said. I have no wish to antagonize Black House, but they cannot operate in my territory. I will be forced to meet any interference in a fashion”-he smiled, an ugly thing, jet-black teeth sharp even in the gloom-“most unfriendly.”

  I left Ling Chi’s den as rapidly as decorum would allow. The whole thing was too much, the smoke so thick in my lungs I thought I might vomit. At the bar the fat man handed me my package without a shift of his dead eyes. I headed out the door without looking back.

  By the time I made it back to the Earl, the dinner rush was in full swing. I took a free spot at the bar and managed to break Adolphus away from his role as host long enough to call for a plate of food and something dark to sit on top of it. It was warm, and the press of bodies and the loud hum of vitality were having a lethargic effect. I rubbed my forehead and tried to keep myself awake.

  Adeline came in from the back, a dish of meat and potatoes in one hand and a pull of good strong stout in the other. “Thanks,” I said.

  She nodded pleasantly. “Where’s Wren?”

  “He took off. Said he had something he wanted to take care of.”

  For all that I could trade half-truths and outright fabrications with the most dangerous Kiren in Rigus, I seemed utterly incapable of sliding a falsehood past Adeline’s plump face. “You chased him off, didn’t you?”

  “We had a disagreement about the relative merits of property rights. He’ll be back eventually.”

  She puffed herself up to something substantially larger than her diminutive span. “Eventually,” she repeated, not a question so much as a condemnation.

  “Lay off it, Adeline. He’s been sleeping on the street for most of his life. Another night won’t matter.”

  “And the child who was killed this morning?”

  “Wren ain’t my kid, Adeline, and he
ain’t yours neither. Better you don’t get too attached-he’s likely to bite your hand in the end.”

  “You unbelievable little shit,” she said, then whirled and headed back to the kitchen, as if she didn’t trust herself to be around me any longer.

  “Yeah,” I said to no one in particular. “Probably.”

  I tore through my chop steak and tried to force the pieces floating around my skull into a coherent picture. It wasn’t working. I could see Beaconfield as corrupt, venal, and sadistic-hell, I had settled on those three before I had even met him. But this didn’t fit. There weren’t many crimes that could disturb the position of a noble of the blood, but summoning a creature from the void, and using it to sacrifice children-that was one of them. If the Blade was caught, his name wouldn’t be enough to save him. He’d swing or swallow a draft of arsenic while awaiting trial. No doubt he had spent most of his life swimming in the noisome waters of court, trying to one-up his rivals with cheap intrigue and the occasional act of violence, but these were the common hobbies of the upper class, like adolescents and dry humping. The aristocracy are too comfortable with what they have to put it all in the pot-that’s what makes them easy to play. What could he be aiming for that warranted running such terrible risks?

  And if Beaconfield wasn’t involved, why had Celia’s talisman singed a hole halfway through my breast during our conversation? Was the duke damning his soul in some endeavor entirely unrelated to the one I was investigating?

  Maybe Ling Chi was right, and this was all an elaborate setup by the Old Man to try and break a potential threat to his power. But that didn’t add up either. I had no illusions about my former boss, but unleashing this abomination on the people of Low Town was an awful lot of trouble to go through just to crush a mid-level clique, even one run by someone as vicious as my revered brother. And if he had needed a life to snuff, he wouldn’t have had to go through all the trouble of snatching a child-he’d just walk into the dungeons and pick a motherfucker to disappear. Besides, the Old Man wouldn’t have been so foolish as to involve me in his operation-if he had set this ball of twine rolling, he wouldn’t want me following its trail.

  Maybe Ling Chi was pulling the strings, and the interview had been a ruse to throw me off his scent. The only person I could say for sure was involved in this whole thing had been a Kiren, and I’d heard plenty of rumors about the dark arts of the heretics, though in the past I’d chalked this up to general racial antipathy. Maybe it was another syndicate, or a player at court-hell, maybe it was some fiendish retaliation by the Dren.

  I downed the dregs of my ale and tried to get my head right. There was too much chaff in the air, and I couldn’t get a clear picture of the game, let alone the players. I’d been better at this, once, but I was long out of practice-being a successful criminal doesn’t require quite the same skill set as catching one. Nor did I suppose that a half decade of dipping into my stock had done wonders for my powers of deduction. Maybe Crispin was right, and I was too far gone to even be playing at any of this, my desperate gamble with the Old Man a fool’s bet, a rain check on the inevitable.

  I was seeping myself pretty thick in self-contempt when I was interrupted by two quick taps at my shoulder. Wren stood behind me, his face red from humiliation, or the cold. I was surprised and a little impressed. I’d figured it would take him a good day to work up the nerve to come back and take his medicine.

  Still, it wouldn’t do to let him off the hook quite yet. “Back to pick Adeline’s good china? It’s in the kitchen, you might get a few argents for it.”

  “You steal.”

  “Not ’cause I’m bored. Not ’cause I see something shiny and wish it was mine. Thievery’s a tactic, not a hobby. Not something I do because I’ve got a few spare minutes and feel like filling them. And never from a friend-never from anyone who did right by me.” His eyes slid away from mine. “Besides, it ain’t that you stole. It’s that you were stupid. Malfeasance I can accept, foolishness is reprehensible.”

  Like most people, Wren was happier to be thought immoral than incompetent. “Didn’t get caught.”

  “By which you mean you managed to get it out the front door. So what? He’s noticed now, and you’ve burned a bridge with one of the most powerful men in Rigus for pocket change. Stop thinking like a street kid-if you can’t learn to see past your next meal, you’ll wake up one morning with a full belly and a knife in it.”

  “I am a street kid.”

  “That’s something else we need to speak on. I’m going to start having more for you, and I can’t worry about tracking you down every time I need something handled. You’re to start sleeping in the bar from now on.”

  “What if I don’t want to?”

  “You ain’t a slave. You prefer a gutter over a bedroll, that’s your choice-but you make it and you get yourself unemployed as well. I’ve no use for an associate I gotta spend half the day hunting for.”

  There was a long pause. “All right,” he said finally.

  That should get Adeline off my back for a few hours. By the Firstborn, she was as bad as the Old Man. “Fine. Now run over to the Duke of Beaconfield’s estate.” I rattled off directions. “Tell the guard at the gate that I want to come by tonight to deliver the rest of what I promised.”

  He slipped out. I returned to my drink, wishing I could solve the rest of my problems as easily as I had these domestic concerns.

  I thought back to my first days as an agent, before I had gotten mired with Special Operations, when it was just me and Crispin, kicking down doors and following up leads. We were pretty good at it for a while-Crispin was sharp, very sharp, but I was better. I learned something back then, something about the nature of crime, and of the things people do that are meant to remain hidden. Solving a mystery isn’t about finding clues or getting lucky with a suspect-it’s about deciding what to look for, framing the narrative in your mind. If you can puzzle out the questions, the answers will come.

  Most crimes are the ill-born fruits of passion, and committed by an intimate of the victim. A husband comes home drunk and beats his wife with a claw hammer, a lifetime of discord between two brothers breaks out into violence. It’s terrible and tawdry but easy enough to investigate. If that wasn’t the case, if there wasn’t a clear suspect, then you already had your first question.

  Who benefited from this crime?

  But that wouldn’t help me here. The first child had been murdered by a monster, and there was no mystery about his motivations. Sexual satisfaction, the silencing of whatever mad voices echoed through his skull in the stillness of the night. As for this second one, if Marieke’s suspicions were right and the girl had been sacrificed, then the motive could be virtually anything.

  But that was something then, wasn’t it? This was a monstrous crime, demanding savage reprisal. Whoever was responsible must be in desperate straits to take such a chance.

  I didn’t know why they’d done it but at least I was forming an image of my quarry. If you can’t figure out motive, then you have to move on to opportunity: who is capable of committing the crime?

  Here I had a little more to work through. We weren’t dealing with a snatched purse or a slit throat, the kind of thing any sufficiently depraved soul could engineer. The abomination was big magic, heavy juju-summoning it was the act of a skilled artist. Better still, there was a limited pool of people capable of this particular working. Operation Ingress was a secret military project, and they wouldn’t have publicized its techniques.

  It all depended on Crispin. If he could get me a list of the participants, I could start making inquiries. If he didn’t, I’d be stuck stirring trouble and hoping that something I did shook out a decent lead. I started to wish I hadn’t worked so hard to antagonize my old partner.

  I lingered over each possibility, rather than deal with the news that shaded the rest of my thoughts. The thought of spending my final hours, long hours no doubt, days maybe, with a red-robed man poking about in my insides and Crowley sta
nding over me laughing was no small concern. But I can say without bravado that I’ve spent a good deal of my life with imminent demise a distinct possibility, and learned how to function despite it. But what Marieke had shown me-that was something that opened up doors in the back of my mind that I’d jammed shut and barred, the sort of fear that wakes you up in the middle of the night with your throat dry and your sheets wet. If the Red Fever had returned to Rigus, all the rest of this was no more than a sideshow, a sprinkle of rain to introduce the deluge that was coming.

  Were the Crane’s wards slipping? Was his fading health weakening the spells he had put in place to protect us? I thought that over, then dismissed it. Even if it was true, what were the odds of the dead child being the only one infected? I hadn’t heard about anyone else falling sick, and I knew I would have-all of Low Town lived in constant fear of the Fever. The plague spread like, well, the fucking plague-if it was out among the population, the whole city would be in an uproar. No, I didn’t imagine the Fever had returned to the general public, nor that Caristiona’s death was unrelated to her catching it. It was no coincidence, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out the connection.

  I signaled Adolphus for another pint of ale and thought about running upstairs to grab a quick nap, but Wren would be back soon and I’d be moving out not long after that. Adolphus topped me off and I nursed my brew and sucked over each nugget of information like a child with a piece of hard candy.

  A few minutes passed and I noticed that Wren had slipped into the Earl and was standing by my arm. By the Oathkeeper, the boy was quiet. Either that or my mind was further out of tune than I had thought. I decided to believe the first. “By the Oathkeeper, you’re quiet.”