The crowd was as unprepared as a virgin, and in the immediate aftermath reacted with stunned confusion – but stampede was in the air as certain as the storm. The guards semi-circled ahead of us, however, were not surprised, not at all – if one had a grim turn of mind, one might even imagine they’d known about it beforehand. They didn’t march forward so much as surge, a coiled spring unwound, wading into the front ranks and swinging their big, knobbed clubs.
Pretories had filled the first rank with war heroes, men like Adolphus, thinking their status would be certain proof against violence. He’d reckoned without the Old Man’s savagery – a curious error given their history. Two men holding a banner aloft found themselves the first casualties, their message inked over with blood. An amputee stumbled backward over his crutches trying to escape, a line of medals pinned across his chest. Having lost a leg for his country, he had perhaps thought he’d earned the right not to be beaten to death by men in its employ. It never pays to underestimate ingratitude.
Truth was even the Association’s muscle, Rabbit and Hroudland, the men who’d taken care of Giroie, hadn’t come prepared for a fight. The switch between civilization and barbarism isn’t a finger snap, even the most savage of motherfuckers needs a few minutes to get going. The line of marchers stretched well back into the horizon. Most of them couldn’t see what was going on, but those who did started moving backwards.
Pretories did his best to rally them, grabbing up a standard and waving it in the breeze. Last-minute heroics weren’t really his line, but he did all right. More than that, if I’m being honest. He moved with courage, and certainty. Roland himself couldn’t have done any better.
One of his boys, one I hadn’t ever thought to pay attention to, one who looked pretty much like the rest, lifted his hand up to his commander’s neck. There was a bright line of scarlet. The colors dropped into the dust. Pretories followed.
It was a quick few seconds, easy to miss. I doubted many saw it. That was how the Old Man got to be so old, you see – he always has a piece behind you. I wondered who’d get me, when the time came. I wouldn’t see it coming, of that I was sure.
Considering the trouble I’d gone through to see it happen, the death of Joachim Pretories provided me little pleasure. Watching his men trample his corpse in the dirt trying to escape, it was hard to hate him. All things considered, I’d met worse men. But then again, I’d killed better ones, so there wasn’t no point in getting sentimental.
With the loss of their leader any semblance of order collapsed completely. We were at life and death, and everyone realized it. Accordingly the knee-high barrier separating us from the thickest part of the throng stopped doing that, proving no impediment to the movement of fifty thousand angry, frightened men. The march had become a rout – I was a drop in a sea of flesh, and could do nothing but paddle with the current.
Adolphus had it easier – even the most scattered fellow will avoid running into a brick wall if he can help it. But I’m not much bigger than average, and the surge carried me along. Like any great body of people it moved without purpose or direction, mankind in the aggregate no brighter than in detail. The explosion had sent the men in the back sprinting forward, and the barbarity of the guards had sent the men in the front sprinting back. Adolphus and I made for the flanks accordingly, but it was like wading a swollen river. A river that’s screaming at you and shoving fingers into your eyes.
An errant blow from a passer-by sent me to my knees, my head spinning, the sheer press of men near to crushing me. An ugly way to go, and I managed to regain my footing with a few sharp hooks. By the time I got my head up Adolphus was gone, swept onward by the tide. Or perhaps he just hadn’t cared to wait – I got the sense that my well-being was not his foremost concern.
Chaos like that, there isn’t anything that distinguishes one man from another – survival comes down to drunken chance. I was in the front when it started, and I knew it was coming, so I had a better shot than most, but not much of one.
A packed squad of guardsmen hammered their way toward us, and the crowd surged backward like a wounded animal. I broke forward, figuring to take my chances against one fool with a weapon than ten thousand unarmed. A uniformed scab took a swing at me, and I ducked beneath it and took his legs out from under him. I wanted to stay there and beat on him a little, but there wasn’t time. I was off and sprinting as quick as I could muster.
Off the main boulevard I took my first full breath, lungs expanding into bruised bone and injured flesh. I wasn’t sure how long it had lasted, the mad press of bodies. Not as long as it had felt like, that was damn sure. The wind was scattering sparks of fire further into the city, and things were getting bad fast. Worse, I guess I should say. Still I turned to watch, climbed a few feet up the wall of the alley, finding footholds in parched ivy. I’d set the fuse – it seemed only right to stay till the end.
For once the Old Man had overreached. Most of the people in the crowd hadn’t seen violence in fifteen years, but that’s not never. Enough of it was coming back to them to make the comparatively tiny number of guards distinctly insufficient. The Ashers, ever prepared for combat, had formed into a tight square and were edging their way to safety, distinct by their outfits and discipline. Mostly the guards were smart enough to stay away from them, but occasionally one got too close and found himself pulled under, executed efficiently though not painlessly by men who’d made violence a religion.
They were the only knot of organization to be seen, but in chaotic remnants here and there once dangerous men recalled their powers. The guards were armed, and made savage by youth, but their opponents had earned degrees in brutality at the definitive institute in history. A Vaalan the size of an ox snapped a guard over his knee, back breaking like a rotten tree branch. Further down the line a pair of Islanders had isolated one unfortunate, had him against the ground and were beating him to death with something akin to glee. Joachim had stipulated that no one was to carry a weapon, the better to head off this exact scenario – but amidst the tens of thousands some remnant had come with blade or bronzed knuckle. What had begun as blind flight was rapidly hardening into a battle, and I felt an incongruous moment of enthusiasm for my brothers-in-arms.
But the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Another explosion ricocheted through the crowd, then another and another, pops like fireworks, each signaling death, and whatever had braced the spirit of the mob was carried away by fear.
The drizzle had turned into a downpour, but it wasn’t doing anything to stem the spread of the flames. The second wave of explosions had dirtied the air, rendering further observation of the proceedings futile. The city was ripe as a tinderbox, the ground so dry a dropped cigarette would burn cobblestone. There was a burst of heat as the windows of a house a block over erupted, and I dropped from my perch and started off.
The smoke was in my eyes and in my throat and in my lungs, and I coughed my way through the alleys trying to get away from it. I wasn’t the only one hoping to make an escape – I passed a steady stream of veterans breaking out in any and every direction, so long as it was away, away, away. I was of the same desperate strain of mind, so it was a hell of a surprise to make a U-turn in a cul-de-sac and find myself face to face with a pair of old friends.
‘If it isn’t the lieutenant,’ Hroudland said, and for once Rabbit didn’t smile.
‘Thank the Firstborn you two survived! Where’s the commander?’
‘Commander’s dead,’ Hroudland said.
‘Heavens!’ I exclaimed. By that point I was pretty sure talking wasn’t going to square us.
‘What happened to Roussel, Lieutenant?’ Hroudland asked.
‘I might have killed him,’ I admitted, giving up the charade. ‘And I might have enjoyed it.’
Rabbit nodded, unsurprised. ‘As I will this.’
My interview with the Old Man had left me unarmed, and there hadn’t been time to make good the lack. Rabbit held a thin stiletto in his off hand, but he let it drop
blade-first to the ground and gestured at me to come forward. I’d never had any great desire to engage the man in fisticuffs, but it didn’t do to show him that. I went in strong as I could, feinting a body shot and trying for an eye-level straight – but he just grinned that grin that I’d come to loathe and dipped his head, and I broke two knuckles off his cranium.
It was a short fight, and the rest of it went the same way. What little I landed might as well not have, and every one of Rabbit’s short, sharp punches found purchase on my own flesh. Soon I was on the ground and he was kicking me in the ribs, the beating somewhat superfluous given what I’d already suffered. Another moment of fun and he dropped down on top of me, pinned his knees against my shoulders and wrapped his fingers around my throat.
The smoke was thick as marmalade, and it seeped into my brain. The margins of my vision folded inward, narrowing on an impossibly wide grin, teeth as big as chess pieces, running together into eternity.
A palm reached out of the fog and wrapped itself around Rabbit’s skull, pulling it towards the wall and dragging the rest of his body along with it. The passageway was ruined brick, but all the same Rabbit’s bald head created a sizable indentation. He slumped slowly to the ground, leaving a streak of blood in his wake.
The hand attaches to an arm attaches to a body, and it’s Adolphus’s, and I am saved.
There are men who wouldn’t have hesitated then, but there aren’t many, and Hroudland wasn’t one of them. His jaw quivered and he held his knife loose in his hand. Adolphus slapped it away casually, the blade skittering off into the dirt. A second backhand rebounded Hroudland off the well, stunned him insensible, left him open for the finale. While I’m aware that it is not literally possible for a punch to knock a man’s head off, somehow that’s the only description that fits.
I lay motionless as my best friend approached me, wondering if perhaps he’d set his boot against my chest and make a clean go of everyone who’d fucked him. Instead he bent down and lifted me to my feet like I was a child.
‘Let’s go home,’ he said, and that’s what we did.
46
It only took Roland a moment to see he was going to die.
We were in a small safe house I had set up in Low Town. That much I had held to. But the men who sat at the table with me were, even at a glance, not the sort of people who would be sponsoring an internal coup d’état, even had there been such a faction within Black House. They were, very distinctly, the sort of people the Old Man keeps around to do evil things. I guess he kept me around for the same reason, though of a subtler kind.
You can learn everything you need to know about a person by how they react to their death, though of course you can’t do anything with the information afterward. Not that I had any doubts about Roland’s courage. He stopped short, just past the doorway. For a brief moment you could see him thinking about making a run for it, see it in the sudden tensing of his hands. But I’d put two men on the entrance he’d come through, and he must have realized there was no point.
He looked at me, then closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them he was smiling, and he strode towards us at a brisk pace and with no evident trace of concern. He took the seat I’d left for him. It was at the head of the table, as was well warranted.
‘This is it, then?’ he asked.
I nodded.
‘I suppose I should have seen it coming.’
I shrugged.
‘But then, your story sounded plausible. And with support from Black House I could have moved up my timetable by a year, maybe two. It was worth taking the shot.’
A lack of caution was always Roland’s weakness. I’d realized that the day I’d met him, been confident he’d fall into the snare. ‘No one with anything to lose wants you to win. You overstate the base of your support.’
‘Clearly,’ he deadpanned.
I stopped a chuckle. This was not really the time for levity, though you wouldn’t have been able to tell it from Roland’s demeanor. A bottle of whiskey sat on the table. It had been full when I’d set it there a half-hour prior. It wasn’t any longer. I poured the man a few fingers and passed it over.
He nodded thanks and knocked it down. ‘If you kill me,’ he said, after savoring the bite for a moment, ‘the country will go up in flames – my men won’t stand for it.’
‘If you live the country will go up in flames anyway. And I’m sorry to say so, but you’re wrong. The Association will mourn your death – but they will do so without violence. We’ve taken steps to make sure of that.’
‘Joachim?’ It was perhaps the first time in his life that Roland had even lost his composure. Certainly it was the first time I had ever seen it. He set his hands on the table, looked at them for a while without saying anything. I felt a sudden and very vivid pang of regret for revealing his best friend’s betrayal, somehow felt worse about it than my own. ‘I wouldn’t have thought it of him,’ he said.
I wouldn’t have thought it either, still had trouble believing it was true. But the Old Man had as much as confirmed it.
‘Was it money?’ Roland asked, mainly to himself. ‘The thought of taking over?’
Both, probably. Pretories came from that brand of nobility without two coppers to rub against each other. And no one likes looking over another man’s shoulder indefinitely. Though it could have been simple self-preservation – Joachim was no fool. Maybe he’d simply looked over the path Roland was marking out and seen the same thing I did, blood and ultimate failure. ‘I’m really not sure,’ I said. ‘I didn’t handle that side of it.’
‘Why did you do it?’
‘I tried talking you down.’
‘That’s hardly an excuse.’
‘It wasn’t meant to be – I gave you my reasons the last time we spoke. All the death we’ve seen, all the bodies, five long years of it – and you’d see us dive back in again? Commit your veterans against the Crown, plunge the Empire into civil war?’
‘Better to die a free man than live as a slave.’
‘I can see you’ve never been a slave. It’s a funny thing about the downtrodden – they don’t want to burn the city to the ground, they want to own it.’
‘Then your actions are at that ideal intersection of morality and self-interest?’
‘I don’t apologize for my ambitions, any more than you do yours.’
‘But mine were very grand,’ he said. ‘And yours are small, and petty.’
‘You can tell a great man by the bodies he leaves in his wake.’
‘Nothing important was ever accomplished without sacrifice.’
I let the argument rest on that one. It had been foolish to get into it with him, you were never going to convince anyone of the necessity of their murder.
‘Is there anything you’d like me to do?’ I asked. ‘For your family, your people?’
He took a moment considering, then shook his head. ‘I have no regrets.’
‘Saints and fools say that. And you’re no saint.’
He laughed and poured himself another shot of liquor. ‘My name will echo on,’ he said, downing it. ‘There’s nothing more that a man can ask.’
You could ask for a long life spent in comfort, a wife to hold your hand as you passed, children to walk on ahead. But Roland wouldn’t get any of these things, and there was no point rubbing his nose in it.
One of the agents I’d posted outside slipped in, shutting the door behind him and approaching us quietly. I knew him a little, better than the other two thugs the Old Man had given me, both of whom I was sure had orders to do to me what we were about to do to Roland, if I had any signs of getting second thoughts.
I poured Roland another shot. When he reached out to take it I gave the man behind him a nod.
It was very quick – that was the least I could do. The Agent brought a blade across his throat, one quick movement. Blood sprayed onto the table, though I was far enough away to avoid the spill. Roland’s eyes seemed locked on mine. After a few sec
onds the light went out of them.
‘Wrap up the body,’ I said, getting up from the table. ‘Dump it where I showed you. And for the love of the Firstborn, don’t let anyone see you.’
The investigation would be brief and perfunctory. Roland’s corpse was found outside a whorehouse in a part of Low Town that even I avoided, a part where a man could die easily and for no particular reason. The sordid quality of his demise did little to blemish his reputation. The Association had a mass funeral, beat their breasts and rent their clothes, called for investigations into Roland’s murder, demanded a raise in the pension fund. What they didn’t call for was open violence. Joachim Pretories kept up his end.
And the Old Man kept his. In exchange for my act of betrayal, I was made a member of Special Operations, fast-tracked into the halls of power. In a year I was the Old Man’s second-in-command, practically speaking one of the five or ten most powerful people in the Empire. In three I was back in Low Town, dealing breath to meet my ends.
You grow up reading stories, and you start to think your life is one. Every punchline has a set-up; every action a motive. But that’s horseshit – we’re all just stumbling about blind. You do something and decide why you did it afterward. Roland was mad – beautiful, and noble, but mad as well, mad as only a man with a dream can be. I was no dreamer. Roland’s life had taught him that anything is possible. Mine had taught me that you hold on to what you have with both hands.
At least that’s what I tell myself, when I think about it late at night and early in the morning. I never quite manage to believe it, though.
47
Edwin Montgomery’s door was unlocked. Not a good sign – it meant they knew I was coming, and weren’t concerned.
Tomorrow, the Killing lt-2 Page 28