Back at the Earl I’d armed up, huffed pixie’s breath until I couldn’t feel my teeth, and headed out. The city was straight bedlam – I hadn’t seen anything like it for thirty years, since the worst days of the plague. The effects of what would come to be known as the Veterans’ Riot were felt far beyond where the fighting had taken place. Anyone lucky enough to have a barred door was huddled behind it. Gray storm clouds, swollen by the smoke, hovered just out of reach, pissing down on me with every step.
Whatever was coming, I wasn’t in any shape to see it through. The breath carried me along like a scrap of trash in the wind, but that wouldn’t last. When it was gone I wouldn’t have enough left in me to stand. But delay was a non-starter. Twelve years this had dragged on – it would end today, one way or the other.
Botha was in the drawing room. He’d stripped down to his undershirt and was shouldering the grand piano into the corner. He’d done the same with the rest of the furniture, the tea table set against the wall, a Kiren rug rolled on top of it. He saw me but didn’t stop what he was doing until the room was clear of obstructions. Then he picked up a wrapped parcel from amidst the clutter, held it against his shoulder and waited for me to begin.
I obliged him. ‘Expecting company?’
‘The last three days – I figured we’d see you after I did for Gilchrist.’
‘What was he going to tell me?’
‘I assume he was going to tell you that I stopped by the night before Rhaine died, got him to put us in touch. Don’t think too badly of him – he didn’t know what I intended.’
‘I guess he paid for it, either way.’
‘He did indeed.’
‘Did you miss with that bolt?’ I asked. ‘Or did you just prefer your backup silent?’
He shrugged, head bobbling on broad shoulders. ‘I guess I wasn’t so careful as I could have been.’
‘Who was he?’
‘Pretories’ man. I went to see the commander about Rhaine, make sure he understood what needed to be done. Commander insisted on detailing one of his thugs to follow along after me.’
‘The commander’s dead, you know.’
‘Pretories never meant nothing to me – I only follow one commander,’ he said proudly. ‘Only ever did.’
‘You willing to die for him?’
‘Willing to kill.’
‘You certain that’s how this ends?’
‘It’s how it always has.’
‘For me too.’
He smiled and pulled his weapon out from the bundle, an heirloom flamberge, two-handed with a wavy blade, treated metal glittering.
‘You did her yourself, didn’t you Botha?’ I asked, watching him wrap his hands around the pommel.
‘Pretories said he’d send a man, but I waved him off – the mistress was a stupid whore,’ the Vaalan said blankly. ‘She got what was coming.’
‘Like her brother?’
‘Roland was worse.’ Botha spat a wad of gunk on the floor. It was distinctly unbutler-like behavior, but I supposed we were past that. ‘Never appreciated what he had, spent his whole life trying to screw the man who gave it to him.’
‘I was worried you might end up being one of those people I have to murder because they’re standing in the way – and I sometimes feel bad about that afterward. It’s kind of you to make this personal.’
‘My weapon is half a millennium old,’ Botha said, holding it so the light scintillated off the edge. ‘It’s been bathed in the blood of far better men than you.’
‘It’ll fetch four ochre at a Pritt Street pawnshop,’ I said, pulling my trench blade from my belt. ‘And I’ll spend the money on drugs.’
Botha wasn’t big on chatter, nor one to cower at a cruel word. He widened his stance slightly, then motioned me to come forward.
I let the throwing knife ease out of the cuff of my shirt and into my palm, then brought my hand up casually – but either he saw what I was going for or he was stone-cold, because the square bulk of his body shifted downward, and the throw went high.
Not for the first time I wished I was as tough as I talked.
But it was too late for second-guessing, and I double-timed an advance, his reach being an advantage I knew I could only compensate for with speed. He knew the same thing and back-pedaled, meeting my advance with a swing of his weapon that I barely dodged.
Botha was stronger than me, and his earlier endeavors had given him a wide field to play with. The mismatch between our weapons meant that I couldn’t risk a straight parry, had to duck and flit out of his reach. But the downside to swinging a weapon four feet in length is that you have to keep swinging it, and that takes a lot out of a fellow, a lot out and quick. On the other hand he had not spent the last two days getting the shit kicked out of him, and thus had more by way of reserves.
All the same it wasn’t long before the both of us were feeling our exertions, the steady tango slowing to an uneven rhythm, punctuated by moments of pause. ‘Getting tired?’ I asked. ‘Feeling out of breath? Ain’t as easy as strangling a girl to death, is it?’
He sneered and made a fancy little play, feigning retreat then swiveling forward. I about half fell for it, not so far as to make myself cadaverous, but enough to get a chunk of flesh nicked out of my stomach.
I made like it didn’t hurt, made like I didn’t notice it, that part of my body which was no longer there. ‘Was it the money, Botha? Did you think with his children dead, the general would make you his heir?’
‘Never gave a shit about money,’ Botha said, his chest heaving, the tip of his sword following me as I circled around him.
I pulled my second knife from my belt. ‘Course not, you just wanted the pat on the head. What’s the matter, Daddy didn’t love you enough? You figured the general was a good substitute?’
I managed to survive this next exchange without losing any more flesh, but it was close. Botha held his flamberge down by his side, ready for the killing stroke.
‘Don’t matter how many of his kids you murder,’ I said, hoping to push him into it. ‘You won’t ever be his kin.’
He screamed in rage and brought his weapon up to halve me. I took a knee, felt the force of his swing sweep over the top of my skull, brought the knife in my left hand down into the bridge of his foot. He screamed again, in pain this time, and I rolled out of his reach.
It was over, though he was slow to realize it. I played it careful, circling him slowly, watching the hole I’d made flood crimson onto the floorboards. After a moment his eyes started to get that dull look that arrives when the head isn’t getting its requisite amount of ichor. I feinted forward and he went in with everything he had – but his movements were sluggish, and it was easy to dodge. He lacked the strength to halt the force of his stroke, and I countered with my own, taking his arm off at the elbow. The stump doused me with blood. His severed fist stayed clenched on the hilt of his weapon, along with its still functioning twin. Botha watched me like he couldn’t quite believe what was happening, open-mouthed, life draining out of his injured limb.
Ain’t right to play with a dying man, don’t matter who he is. Botha’s end wasn’t long in coming, nor any more painful than it had to be.
I pulled my trench blade out of his skull, cleaned it against the Kiren rug and looped it into my belt. Then I fell backward onto the grand piano, its cacophony echoing around me. The injury Botha had done me was ugly but not fatal. Added to everything else I’d suffered, however, I found I was having a hard time with it. I propped one fist firm against the wound and forced myself into the next room.
The general looked close enough to the end to make this whole errand seem awfully superfluous. He had remained at his desk despite the fighting, and he wouldn’t quite look at me.
I gave him a sharp salute with the hand that wasn’t holding in my intestines. It was a bit melodramatic, but I blame it on the blood loss.
He shriveled into his seat.
‘Forgive me for coming unannounced, General, and
in such inappropriate attire.’
It took him a long time to answer. ‘I suppose Botha is lying dead in the parlor?’
‘I wouldn’t expect to have your bed turned down.’
‘You’re here to kill me as well?’
‘Something like that.’
‘That suit you, murdering an old man?’
My legs were starting to buckle. I set my hand on the desk to steady myself. ‘After the last few days? A few more drops of blood won’t make any kind of difference.’
He met my eyes finally, and under different circumstances I might have admired his coolness. ‘Best get to it, then.’
‘We’ve got time,’ I said, though it wasn’t true. My wound needed looking at, and the general – well, the general didn’t have long to go either. ‘When you first sent for me, did you know about my part in Roland’s end?’
‘You did what you had to,’ he turned his withered head back down to the desk. ‘My son was mad – the war drove him mad. He’d have set the whole country to flame.’
‘That slips us both off the hook pretty easy, doesn’t it? Was I ever supposed to bring Rhaine home? Or did you just need a patsy to flush her out of hiding?’
‘I had hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. I had hoped she’d listen to reason.’
‘I don’t think you did. I think you hoped I’d take care of Rhaine for you – that I’d get worried she might find out the truth, arrange an accident on her behalf. When I didn’t, you had Botha call on Pretories, make sure the commander saw things the same way you did.’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t planned it out that way, it just happened.’ I wasn’t sure if I believed him – it was hard to tell, old and weak as he was, hard to read anything on a face so close to a corpse. ‘Joachim would have killed her anyway, after he found out she was sniffing around. Once she left for Low Town, there was nothing I could do.’
‘You could have come clean. Told her what happened. She’d have hated you, but she’d still be alive.’
He gave a slow smile, if you could call something so bitter a smile. ‘You could have done the same.’
The rain tapped on the windows – a pleasant, even pattern, and my pulse slowed to meet it. My legs suggested I stop standing on them, curl right up on the carpet like a collie. A short nap, or a long one, or the last one. ‘Tell me about Roland.’
‘I would have been a very good High Chancellor,’ Montgomery answered after a moment, though not to me particularly. ‘I could have helped our boys. Could have seen to it that they got what they deserved. I could have done great things.’
Strangely, I didn’t doubt any of that. ‘If only your son had fallen in line.’
‘It was all a game to him,’ Montgomery hissed, still furious at Roland’s misbehavior after twelve years and a definitive revenge. ‘He just did it to spite me.’
‘And one day the Old Man came to you, and he whispered things in your ear – reasonable things, quiet things, things you wanted to hear.’
‘He said there was still a chance to right the situation – for me to become Chancellor, for the Empire to avoid the horror my son seemed destined to inflict upon it. He asked me to contact Joachim, to see if we could squeeze Roland out before things went too far. He said it still might be possible to save Roland from his own folly.’
‘Did you believe him?’
‘I don’t know,’ Montgomery said, and seemed to mean it.
‘I’m not one to be surprised at the things men do. And I guess I can understand Roland – at least, I’m not in a position to judge. But I’d figure where you are now, the next generation would be all that mattered.’
‘Get on with it.’
‘Was she worth so little, that you’d strangle the root for a few months of peace?’
It’s easy to make a man a villain in your head, a creature undiluted by decency, as alien to you as night is to day. I’d done that on the way over, been doing it since the Old Man had tipped me to the general’s play. It was harder to hate him now – an almost corpse, preceded into the next world by everyone he’d ever loved. And I knew something of the way choices can start to carry their own weight, carry you further than you’d thought, further than you ever wanted to go.
‘You’ve no regrets?’ he asked finally.
‘A few here and there. But regret’s not enough – you have to pay for it.’
This seemed to spark something in him, some dying ember. His mutter became a shout, or the closest he could muster. ‘Have you paid for it, Lieutenant? Have you paid? You couldn’t save Rhaine, so you set the city awash in blood. I see the smoke from outside my window! How many did you kill for a girl you barely knew? You stand here and lecture me on morality, as if your hands weren’t red to the elbow! As if you had no role in leading Roland to the slaughter!’
‘I wasn’t his father.’ I pulled the locket he had given me that first day from my back pocket and sent it spinning across the desk. ‘Nor hers.’
That was enough. He opened the necklace with trembling hands, spent a while staring at Rhaine’s face.
I took a knife from my belt and flicked it into the wood. ‘Do it.’
He raised his eyes up to mine. ‘They’ll cover it up, won’t they?’
I nodded. ‘They’ll cover it up.’
They did. General Edward Montgomery died of a heart attack, unable to stand the loss of his second child. A few days later they laid him in the family crypt, there to spend eternity beside the bodies of his murdered kin.
48
It’s a sure thing, Warden. You know I wouldn’t steer you wrong.’
It was late afternoon, a week or so after the march. I was sitting at a table outside our front door, trying to move as little as possible, which demands more effort than you’d think. The rain had been coming down more or less constantly since it had started. Walking soaked a man to the skin in half a minute, and the streets had turned from dust to quagmire. It almost made one miss the heat – almost. The storm was finally showing signs of easing, but it hadn’t yet, and I was happy for the overhang that kept me from its reach. I’d been mixing whiskey with water since noon, and started doing away with the water not long after.
‘Ten ochres will get you a hundred in a month, month and a half at the outset. How’s that for a return?’
Tully the Hook was a choke head. If he had other characteristics I don’t remember them. He’d swung by a few minutes earlier, the storm nothing against the chance to fill his lungs with wyrm on my copper.
‘Now sure, I could take care of it myself, but then I figured, why not bring the Warden in on this one? There’s a man, I said, there’s a man what knows his business. There’s a man what knows an opportunity when he sees it, and if this ain’t an opportunity, I’ll eat my hat!’
He’d have eaten a turd wrapped in broken glass if he thought it would get him a pipeful of stem. On principle alone, I ought to have injured him – clearly my reputation was weak beer if a mutt like Tully thought he could waste my time and not risk violence. But every part of me still hurt – walking downstairs left me winded and bitter. I had a vial of breath in my pocket, the same one that had been there for four days, but for some damn fool reason I wouldn’t let myself use it.
‘The whole city’s off-balance – now’s the time to make a move. These Islander folks, all they need is a little push. They’ll do the lifting, dig?’
I took another swig of the whiskey, then set my head on the table. It was not soft. ‘Tully, you say one more word I’m going to kill you and leave your body in an alley. You know I’ll do it.’
There was a sputtering sound of disagreement, but it didn’t harden into speech. Maybe my name still hung together after all. Time passed. Half drunk with my eyes closed I wasn’t sure how much.
The muffled fall of steps alerted me to Tully’s return. Dumb motherfucker couldn’t figure when to make an exit. I pulled a knife out from my boot and slammed it in the table, brought my face up after it, trying t
o think of something threatening to say.
Wren stared back at me, little impressed. ‘That’s a nice knife.’
‘I . . . thought you were . . .’
‘Tully flitted out the back.’
I nodded uncomfortably, then waved at the opposite bench. Wren set himself into it but didn’t speak. The blade went back in my boot.
We stared at each other for a while. It wasn’t exactly riveting entertainment. The sky was a patchwork fabric of sunlight streaming through the clouds. My whiskey was almost gone. A long pull from the bottle and I lost my last reason for sticking around.
‘Rain’s letting up,’ I said.
‘Looks that way.’
‘I gotta run a thing over to a guy. Fancy a stroll?’
After a moment he nodded, and I pulled myself wearily to my feet, and we started off.
Walking pulled at the spot of stomach that I didn’t have anymore, and reminded me of the dozen other injuries I’d sustained the past week. I was too old to survive many more of these. I was surprised I’d survived this one, truth be told. Wren eased himself down to my pace. It was a while before I mustered the courage to say anything.
‘How’re the lessons going?’
‘All right.’
‘Mazzie doing right by you?’
‘She hasn’t cut me up and made me into a stew, if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘Yet,’ I said. ‘She hasn’t cut you up and made you into a stew, yet.’
He didn’t laugh. The welt on his face was faded but noticeable. I didn’t like looking at it, but wouldn’t let myself look away.
‘You learn to do anything beside spin colors?’
‘Learning to move things without touching them.’
‘I imagine that might be useful.’
The mud pulled at my boots – I had to tug them loose with every step. Despite the break in the weather, we were the only ones on the streets, hobbling down boulevards a dozen stout men could pass abreast. As we edged toward Offbend we started to pass the first signs of the riot, burned-out shells of houses, charred staircases ascending into nothingness, stone cellar skeletons of quaint A-frames. It had taken fifteen years, but the war had come to Rigus. I hoped this was its parting shot, and not the introductory rampage of a successor.
Tomorrow, the Killing lt-2 Page 29