Low Town lt-1

by Daniel Polansky

  By the time we got to the tower I wished I’d hired a coach, though the inclement weather at least eliminated the first barrier toward entering the Aerie, the snow spreading a low hummock over the maze. Wren stopped at the incline. “I didn’t know we were coming here,” he said.

  “I’ll only be a minute. I want to stop in and let Celia know what’s going on.”

  “Say hello to the Crane if you see him.”

  “You aren’t coming?”

  “I’ll wait here.”

  Waves of shaved ice came down on us like curtains. I set my hand on his shoulder. “Forget about the horn-I took care of it.”

  He pulled away. “I’ll wait here.”

  “Your pride’s gonna leave you frozen to death. Swallow it and get in the fucking tower.”

  “No,” he said simply and evenly.

  And that was the end of my willingness to debate the point. “You lose a digit from frostbite, don’t expect sympathy.” The Aerie’s guardian opened the door without comment. I found myself vaguely nostalgic for its quips.

  Celia was waiting for me on the top floor, sipping tea by the fire, steam rising around her bright face. “I hadn’t expected we’d see you today.”

  “I thought I’d check in on the two of you. How’s the Master?”

  “Better. He was up and about for a while this morning. He ate breakfast and watched the snow.”

  “That’s nice to hear,” I said. “I wanted to let you know I got your note. I’m going to pay the Duke of Beaconfield a visit tonight, take a look at what your working turned up. All goes well I’ll pass the information on to Black House sometime tomorrow.”

  She wrinkled her face in confusion, or perhaps disappointment. “I thought we agreed this is too important to let the law muck it up. I thought we agreed you’d handle it on your own.”

  “Unfortunately it’s still a crime to murder a noble. And anyway it wouldn’t square me with the freeze, not if I can’t show them why I did it. Besides, crossing out the Blade is something I’d just as soon leave to someone whose life isn’t as valuable to me as my own. Black House will handle it. With what I’ll give them, they’ll have enough to put the Question to him-after that it’s just a matter of time.”

  “And what if he moves on you first?”

  “He’s made his move. I’ll make mine while he’s recovering.” She rubbed her necklace between two fingers and didn’t respond. “When this is over, I’ll bring the boy around, and the four of us can build a snow fort, like when we were kids.”

  Her attention snapped back to me. “The boy?”

  “Wren.”

  There was another long pause, then the smile returned to her face. “Wren,” she said. “Yes of course.” She patted me lightly on the arm. “I can’t wait.”

  I headed downstairs in half a hurry. Whatever whim he was indulging, I wouldn’t let Wren wait long in the storm. Adeline would kill me if anything happened to him.

  Four hours later I stepped out of a carriage and onto a roll of crushed red velvet. Two guards in speckled livery flanked the doors of Beaconfield’s mansion, stiffly at attention despite the bitter frost. It was my first time entering through the front. I felt very important.

  In the parlor a servant with a roll of parchment guarded access to the delights on offer in the main hall. He gave me a deferential nod, but my pose as a member of the upper crust didn’t allow me to return it. I barked out my name and waited as he scanned for the corresponding entry.

  It would intrigue the Blade that I’d asked for a spot on the guest list after he had sent men to murder me, and curiosity alone is often enough to get in with a noble, desperate as they are for anything that breaks up the monotony of profligate hedonism. If his instinct for melodrama wasn’t enough, self-interest might be. Though he had pushed us into open warfare, I didn’t figure he had the steel to play at it for long. He would hope that my message signaled a desire for reconciliation, and would leap at any hint of a truce.

  That being said, it was one of the several potential hitches within my plan that I had not, in fact, been invited to the Duke of Beaconfield’s Midwinter party. It would be a chilly walk home if I’d played this wrong.

  But I hadn’t. The doorman waved me onward, and I brushed past him and headed down the hallway.

  Whatever else you wanted to say about the Blade, he knew how to throw a soiree. A cunningly wrought cage of filigreed silver hid the ceiling, giving the impression that we were carousing in the belly of some great beast. Baubles of glass and semiprecious stones trailed beneath it, drawing the eye with their cunning design. Closer inspection revealed every third of these was a tray of joints wrapped in brightly colored paper. The floor had been covered with glistening drifts of fake snow, ingeniously mimicking the genuine article. In the center of the room was a ten-foot-high ice sculpture of Sakra, his hand outstretched to bless the revelers below. The core of the sculpture had been filled with some sort of liquid light that permeated the chamber, reflecting off the ornaments and bathing everyone in a scintillating iris of color.

  If Beaconfield was broke, you couldn’t tell it from the spread.

  The decor was matched by the opulence of the guests, who filled the room with a low hum of festivity and amusement. Next to me a pudgy noble with bad skin and a cloak made of peacock feathers gestured flamboyantly to an anemic youth dressed in skintight, gold-threaded pants. To my left a middle-aged woman who might have been comely if she weren’t so desperate to appear youthful was wearing a choker with an emerald the size of a baby’s fist.

  A server came by, shockingly beautiful in a silver costume that exaggerated more than it concealed. On her tray were flutes of champagne and the vials of pixie’s breath I had sold to Beaconfield the day of the duel. She accompanied these two with a look that suggested there was a third option on offer. I took a glass of bubbly and declined the rest, and the vixen cycled onward. The champagne was very good, as would be expected.

  The woman with the choker slid over, inspecting me with all the subtlety of a dog in heat-it seemed she had no better taste in men than jewelry. Up close she looked like someone better seen from farther away. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” she began.

  “Are you mad? I had you last year at Lord Addington’s spring formal! We went behind his pagoda and I took you from the rear. You said I was the best you’d ever had!”

  The color drained from her face-clearly she didn’t find my scenario entirely implausible. Stammering an explanation she hurried off, leaving me to watch the celebration solo. I grabbed another glass of bubbly the next time a waitress came by.

  Beaconfield was standing across from the statue of Sakra, as befitted his status as host and his general self-importance. He waved me over as if he’d just noticed my presence, though in fact he’d been watching me since I’d come in.

  Up close the light was blinding, vivid orange-yellow washing away detail and nuance. The Blade had his arm tight around a perfect-looking Mirad woman, and smiled at me like we shared a joke. No reason to allow my slaughter of his associates to color our burgeoning friendship.

  “Darling, this is the man I was telling you about.” He made no move to introduce us.

  “Charmed,” I said, without taking my eyes off Beaconfield. “This is quite a party. It must have set you back a copper or two.”

  Beaconfield leaned toward me, champagne overrunning the lip of his glass. “What’s money?”

  “Nothing, if you got it. Wake up broke and you’ll start refiguring your scales.”

  He swallowed the rest of his drink. “I have to admit, I was surprised to hear you’d be joining us. I didn’t think you went in for this sort of tomfoolery.” His hand ran down the nape of the girl’s neck, her pleasant docility unaltered.

  “I couldn’t let the evening slip by without paying you the compliments of the season.”

  “I love Midwinter-the promise of rebirth and renewal, the past year forgotten, the new one yet ahead.”

  �
��If that’s how you look at it.”

  “And how do you look at it?”

  “As a distraction from the cold,” I said.

  The Blade turned hard. “The cold came early this year.”

  “Yes, it did.”

  Beaconfield’s woman broke the silence. “Do you have a resolution?”

  “I’m resolving to make it to next Midwinter,”

  I said. “That doesn’t sound too challenging.”

  “Some of us will have trouble with it.”

  I took the approach of another guest as an opportunity to make my exit. “Far be it for me to monopolize the attentions of our host,” I said. “And I’m afraid I need to find the powder room.” I bowed to Beaconfield and the slattern and made for an exit.

  A guard slumped against the main stairway, clearly not ecstatic about manning a post four rooms away from a budding orgy. I built a roll into my gait. “Say brother, which way to the head? I’m about to drain down my pants.” While he decided whether household security took priority over service to the master’s guests I brushed past him. He offered my back a belated grunt of agreement, and I took a side corridor and found my way to the servant’s entrance.

  Getting onto the mansion’s grounds wouldn’t be difficult for Kendrick, the defenses little more than a dozen acres of greenery protected by a tall hedge. Nor did I imagine he’d have much trouble with the lock, although it was new and well designed. But I’d been doing this too long to pass up an advantage, and I slid open the bolt and unfastened the bottom catch before heading back the way I’d come.

  The party was in full swing, the conviviality of the early evening giving way to an outright bacchanal. Multicolored clouds of smoke hovered above the congregation, and the once immaculate counterfeit snow drifts had been scattered about haphazardly. The hanging trays of dreamvine were distinctly depleted, a far cry from the cornucopia of narcotic delights they had once offered. Off in the corner I could see a fat man doing something with one of the servers which I understood to be frowned upon in polite society. The magical light emanating from the statue of Sakra had faded from a bright orange to a duller violet, rendering the proceedings at once malefic and chimerical.

  I’m not sure what it was that possessed me to speak to Brightfellow, our previous interactions not being so enjoyable as to strongly warrant sequel. When I’d seen him slip in earlier in the evening I was worried he’d attach himself to me, and I’d be stuck trading barbs all night. Instead he’d taken a seat in the back and downed every glass of booze that came within reach, supplementing it with frequent sips from a pocket flask.

  It made all the sense in the world to leave him alone. If Kendrick came through, and if Celia’s working was right, there was no point in shaking him down, not that the sorcerer had shown himself easily susceptible to intimidation. Maybe it was my innate drive toward making trouble. Maybe I just felt like killing time.

  But I think the truth was I relished the opportunity to give him a few solid kicks now that he was on the ground. He was an easy man to hate; indeed he almost seemed to cultivate it. It’s better not to feel that way about whoever you’re going up against, personal enmity clouds the mind-but then self-control was never my strong suit. I thought about the children, and Crispin, and then I was on my feet and heading over.

  He looked up as my shadow dropped over him, struggling to make me out against the kaleidoscopic backdrop. During our brief acquaintance I had yet to see Brightfellow sober-but neither had I really seen him drunk. He’d struck me as the sort of person who needed a shot or two to get through the day, who isn’t at peak condition until his blood reaches a few points proof.

  He was well clear of that point, at the end of an active effort to reach insensibility. His eyes were carmine dots surrounded by swelled flesh, thick beads of sweat trailing down the slant of his forehead and off his stubbed nose. At first he managed something of his usual bravado, sneering at me with a credible imitation of homicidal loathing. But it faded quickly, buried beneath the booze he’d been swilling, and his head sank back down to the ground.

  “Long night?” I asked, taking the seat next to him. His rank press leaked through the perfume he’d doused himself with.

  “The fuck you want?” he asked, forcing each syllable through an uncooperative maw.

  “You looked so pretty, I thought I’d ask for a dance.”

  He let that one pass. Indeed he seemed barely to register it.

  I sipped at my glass of champagne. It was my fourth or fifth, and the fizz was playing havoc with my stomach. “Really a bunch of hateful motherfuckers, aren’t they? To think that half the nobles in Rigus are here defiling themselves. I’d say they need religion, but I’m pretty certain that’s the First Abbot over there, passed out in the punch bowl.” The First Abbot was not passed out in the punch bowl-he was passed out next to the punch bowl, but it sounded better the way I said it.

  “I’d see every one of them rotting in the ground,” Brightfellow answered, and I nearly recoiled at the malice in his voice. “I’d put them there.”

  “Would the Blade get a pass?”

  “Not if I’m handing them out.”

  “Then what the hell was the point? When this thing falls, it’ll be the end of both of you.”

  “You know why you do everything you do?”

  “I can usually hazard a guess.”

  There was a long pause, so long I thought maybe the sorcerer had slipped full-on into stupor. Finally, with a great deal of effort, Brightfellow swung his eyes up to meet mine. “You were an agent,” he said. “And now you aren’t.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was that your choice?”

  “In a sense.”

  “Why’d you make it?”

  “A woman.”

  “That’s a pretty good answer,” he said, and turned back toward the blur of the crowd. “I didn’t think it would go this far. I didn’t want it to.”

  Something about Brightfellow’s self-pity reignited my fury. “Don’t mistake me for a priest-I’m not interested in your confession, and I’m not selling redemption. You dug your hole, now lie in it.” I sneered, though since he wasn’t looking, the effect was wasted. “I’ll tip the Blade in after, so you don’t get lonely.”

  I thought that was a pretty good shot and I thought it’d rattle him. But when he spoke, his voice was level, and he didn’t sound angry, just certain and sad. “You’re a fucking idiot.”

  I took a twist of colored dreamvine from a dish beside us. “You might just be right about that one.”

  He didn’t say anything else, and I got up and faded into the background, and after I finished my glass of champagne I didn’t grab another.

  Up front the Blade and his entourage were drinking and smoking and occasionally laughing uproariously. I wondered where he was getting his supply of cronies-I’d done for four of them two nights earlier, but he wasn’t having difficulty finding replacements, nor did the death of his previous coterie seem to weigh heavy on the duke’s soul. Every so often he would toss me what he thought was a threatening glance, though having been tutored in intimidation by the likes of Ling Chi and the Old Man, I found myself unimpressed.

  The doctor was in the building by this point. The night was only getting later, and my initial awe had given way to the generalized contempt I felt for my betters, sybarites so degenerate even their base pleasures were synthetic and hollow. The prospect of pawing at one of the servers was less than enticing, so I just sat alone, worrying what would happen if I’d misjudged Kendrick or if Celia’s working had rung false or if my alchemical skills hadn’t been up to the task.

  It happened without preamble. One of the servers dropped her tray and followed it soon after, huddled on the ground weeping-apparently she had dipped into the master’s stash a bit early. By coincidence the next to go was a young fop standing over her, who fell to his knees and soured the air with bile. Like a wave it passed through the crowd, groups of people overcome with nausea, clutching their
bellies and scanning desperately for an appropriate place to boot.

  Any fool can cut pixie’s breath with something that will kill a man-spite’s bloom or a few drops of widow’s milk-but to mix in something nonlethal is more difficult. And of course it wouldn’t have been possible if Beaconfield hadn’t run through the first cache of breath I had given him and demanded more for the party. But he had and I did, and here we were. Whatever the Blade thought, I hadn’t come to negotiate or to engage in another tete-a-tete. He wasn’t much of a sparring partner, all told, and it was a long trek up here to tell a man I hated that I hated him.

  I’d come to make sure the hour I had spent dropping three grains of mother’s bane into every vial of pixie’s breath I’d sold Beaconfield that day in the gardens hadn’t been wasted. I’d promised the doctor a distraction, after all.

  The duke hadn’t yet made the connection between me and the illness sweeping his guests, and I decided to head out before that changed. At least I could rest comfortably knowing I had done my part to make what would likely be the Blade’s final Midwinter party the most memorable one yet.

  I slipped out through the main door and started back toward Low Town. If Kendrick couldn’t find a way to break into Beaconfield’s study while the entirety of the party was violently ill, then his reputation was pretty damn far from earned. I took the joint from my pocket and put it to my lips, lighting it despite the snow. All in all, it had been a fine evening, clean as clockwork.

  So I couldn’t understand why I spent the walk home in anxious silence, unable to shake the nagging feeling I’d fucked myself sideways.

  The next morning I bundled up tight and headed out to meet the doctor, and against the storm there was a bounce in my step I hadn’t had for days. Unless my thief had completely blown his assignment, I’d be able to clear myself of the Old Man’s sentence with a solid day to spare, and that was enough to make me forget the snow for a few minutes.