She Who Waits (Low Town 3)

by Daniel Polansky

  ‘It’s interesting that you bring that up, actually. Your … extensive experience, I mean.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘To me at least. There’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you.’

  ‘I quiver in suspense.’

  ‘Mad Edward – did they call him that because he was angry, or crazy?’

  ‘Both, most of the time.’

  ‘All my life, I’ve been hearing these stories about Mad Edward – what a savage, frightening character he was. How he killed off his own line to take over Low Town. That he once cut a man’s throat for bringing him coffee without cream. It’s fascinating to be able to have a conversation with someone old enough to remember him.’

  ‘So few people these days have an appreciation for history.’

  ‘History – yes, exactly. Ancient history. And now that we’re on the subject, there’s actually something else that I’ve always wanted to ask you.’

  ‘Anything I can help you with.’

  ‘What happened to Edward? There are so many … rumors, and so little in the way of hard facts.’

  ‘He joined a cloister, if memory serves.’

  ‘He’s a monk?’

  ‘Or he might just have taken a vow of silence. At the very least, you won’t be hearing from him.’

  Uriel laughed his cocktail party laugh. It was perhaps the one expression that he’d yet to master, there was something false and cloying about it. ‘It was bound to happen at some point, right? I mean, no one sticks around forever. You get old, you get slow, you can’t keep what you have. Best to get out while the going’s good, I imagine. Leave the game to people young enough to play it.’

  I did my best to match the gleam of his smile, though I have fewer teeth, and the ones left are yellowed with age. ‘Good advice, indeed.’

  ‘A fraction of the wisdom I’ve received through your tutelage.’

  ‘It swells my heart to think I’ve had some role in mentoring the next generation,’ I said, standing. ‘I’ll send a message over in a day or two with specifics on the meet.’

  ‘Assuming you can convince my counterpart.’

  ‘I convinced you, didn’t I?’

  ‘You did indeed,’ Uriel said, rising to bid me farewell.

  Qoheleth didn’t bother to move from his seat, just dirtied up his grimace and eyeballed me down the stairs. Out front the two guards eyeballed me out to the main thoroughfare. The passing Asher eyeballed me back to Low Town, not for any particular reason so much as an expression of the general contempt everyone has for people that don’t look exactly like them. By the time I was out of sight of the Enclave I was getting pretty damn sick of eyeballs.

  Still, the whole business was wrapping up well enough. And it had been nice of Uriel to give me that warning. I could have passed him one in return, if I was as kind. Never give notice that you’re going after someone. You plan on killing a man, you’d best aim for his back.

  20

  At fifteen the substantive core of my being had already more or less hardened into the shape it would remain – which is to say that I was abrasive in speech, quick to violence though slow to anger, unattractive and little inclined towards honesty. A melange that would have landed me in prison amongst the middle classes, this was a cocktail in high demand in Low Town, and I was thought of as something of an up-and-comer, a bright youth of which great things were to be expected. If by great things you meant thuggery and petty crime – which was more or less the neighborhood’s working definition.

  This was nine or ten years after the plague, and Low Town had stumbled back to about where it had been before the red fever turned it into something little better than a charnel house. Trash lined the roads, the roads were dirt tracks, the guards didn’t give a shit about anything and the only law was enforced by those outside of it. But at least there were people there to fill the damn place – for years after I’d been orphaned a turn off the main streets would take you past rows and rows of empty houses, rotting wood floors and broken windows, burned-out husks where families had once lived.

  In time though, folk trickled back in. Immigrants mostly, hicks from the provinces and that smattering of foreigners so desperate to leave their own country that they were willing to risk months on a ship to come to what was widely considered the most horrible spot in the Empire. There weren’t many still around that could remember the place as it had been. Those the plague had spared were not, understandably I suppose, in any hurry to return.

  With the gradual influx of newcomers came the syndicates, like rats in a grain barge. Low Town never had any money, but if you owned it you owned the docks, and if you owned the docks you could move anything you wanted in and out of the city proper. More or less worthless by itself, this fact alone made it of interest to the rest of the city’s powers. Back then Low Town was still in play, and there were four or five major syndicates with a finger in the pie, all looking to snap up the whole pastry if given half a chance. The Rouenders were hanging on, albeit by their fingernails. Big Noel still owned most of the whorehouses and cribbed protection money from whoever he could force to pay. The Islanders held to their spot at the Isthmus, but they tended to fight too much amongst themselves to expand effectively. The heretics weren’t major players yet, it would be another ten years before Ling Chi managed to break the back of his fellow countrymen and reforge them into a force to be feared. The Tarasaighns were the top dogs. They had more or less tossed the Rouenders out during the First Syndicate War some years prior, a particularly brutal affair which had seen the swamp-dwellers expand their holdings at the cost of everyone else. They controlled most of the docks, and the greater share of the bookmaking trade. Choke wasn’t yet the moneymaker it would come to be in later years, but they controlled that to.

  Even by Low Town’s standards, it was a violent time to be walking around. When you’ve got one guy sitting on top, however ugly he may be, things tend to run well enough. Small crimes, random acts of violence, these are rare and swiftly punished – it’s in the big man’s interest to make sure that the rules run clear, and that he and his are the only ones who get to break them. The trouble comes when no one knows who to answer to, when every half-wit with a rusted knife gets to thinking he might make himself king. One of the many things my childhood taught me – any order is preferable to none.

  Still, the chaos made it wide open for a young man of talent. At that point I’d gig for whoever paid me, and they all did. Not much, I was still too untested to be given anything serious, but I had a talent for making myself valuable. I kept my ears open and my mouth shut, and that’s the sort of thing that will endear you to anyone.

  Christiaan Theron was just one of a half dozen would-be neighborhood tyrants, kingpins of a few square blocks. But he’d been that for a long time, had owned his territory before the fever, and returned once the Blue Crane’s great working ensured he wouldn’t end his days choking on a line of lesions running up his throat. He was short and fat. At one point he’d been stocky, powerful even, but now he was mostly just fat. He’d always been short, of course. Christiaan had something of the old guard about him – he used to pay widow’s rents, pass out candy to children, that sort of thing. It was all bullshit of course, whatever coppers he gave out he was cutting from the ochres he’d stolen, but it was more than his successors would ever provide. And he seemed to enjoy it, liked to think of himself as a man of the people. He had a certain superficial good humor to him, but that was as far as it went. He wasn’t decent, or upright, or honest. He was just friendly, and in the grand scheme of things that barely passes for a virtue.

  Christiaan had set up operations in the back corner of a sweet shop, a small table that he sat at for ten or twelve hours a day, drinking strong coffee and eating through his stock. It was a pretty terrible confectionery, nothing but stale caramels and day-old croissants, but it was the only game in Low Town, Christiaan having encouraged any potential competitors to enter a less cut-throat enterprise, like selling wyrm. I
’d brought him a message from somebody over something, and he’d taken a pause from waiting around for people to bring him money to spend a few minutes boring the shit out of me.

  ‘When I got it back to Low Town,’ he was saying, ‘I sold it for a full eight ochres.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said.

  ‘Damn right wow!’

  ‘That’s quite a story, Mr Theron.’ Actually it was an incredibly tedious story, had been the first time I’d heard it, and hadn’t improved with repetition.

  Christiaan hemmed and hawed, as if I’d had to pull the monologue out of his nose, rather than sit still while it was spewed on me. ‘I thought you might learn something from it. If you keep your eyes open, check for the angles, you can make money anywhere.’

  It is astonishing the degree to which people are not listening to you. I remember I’d known that even then. No one cares about your opinion, they’re just waiting for the opportunity to offer theirs. Once you understand that, it’s pretty easy to make someone like you – give them free reign to discuss themselves until they tire of it, and you’ve won a friend for life. It’s a simple enough trick to master. Mostly it demands nothing beyond your presence, and even then only physically. Should some encouragement be required, just repeat their last few words back at them in question form.

  ‘Of course the Islanders love me, always did,’ Christiaan continued.

  ‘Love you, do they?’

  ‘I’ve been good friends to them over the years. Some people, they’ll tell you they don’t trust the darkies, won’t do business with them. But I don’t hold with that.’

  ‘Don’t hold with it, huh?’

  ‘Cause it takes all kinds, you see. You need all kinds.’

  ‘That right? All kinds?’

  ‘That’s the glorious thing about Low Town,’ he said, waving one pudgy hand expansively. ‘Seems like a rough place, don’t it?’

  ‘Seems that way.’

  ‘But there’s more to her than that – you look after her, you treat her right, she’ll give it back to you. But then, I’ve lived in Low Town my whole life,’ he laughed. ‘The old girl owes me something!’

  ‘Not your whole life.’ It was out before I realized I’d said it.

  Christiaan seemed equally surprised by my interruption. And maybe there was something in my eyes that I shouldn’t have let show, because he cleared his throat and straightened up in his chair. ‘That’s right – you were here during the plague, weren’t you?’

  I made a noise in my throat that could have been taken as confirmation, or denial, or anything else that suited your fancy.

  ‘Must have been a rough time.’

  My pitch varied, but the meaning stayed the same.

  ‘Go grab me another shot of coffee, will you?’ His cup was still half full, but he wanted to remind me of where I stood in the pecking order.

  ‘Sure, Mr Theron,’ I said. I always said sure to Mr Theron. I grabbed his mug and went into the small kitchen in the back of his shop. The water had grown cold during our chat, so I set it back on the stove and stoked the fire, waiting around for it to warm. The chime above the front door rang, and I heard the footfalls of a small group of men – three, I thought, but wasn’t certain. ‘Good morning, Uncle,’ a voice said.

  ‘Edward,’ I heard Christiaan say with deliberate, perhaps exaggerated, enthusiasm. ‘What a pleasure. Sit down, sit down. Can I get you something? We’ve got some fresh jelly doughnuts, just out the oven.’

  There was a long pause, longer than it should have taken for Edward to decide he didn’t want any fried fat. Something told me to keep quiet. I went ahead and listened to it.

  ‘I’m not really in a doughnut mood, Uncle,’ Edward said finally.

  ‘Maybe some hard candy? Or a sweet roll?’

  One of the men snickered.

  ‘I’m not in a sweet roll mood either,’ Edward said.

  I crept to the edge of the doorway and chanced a peek. My ears had not deceived me. Three men stood in a rough semi-circle around the still-seated Christiaan. Two of them I’d never seen before. The third would, after that day, come to claim the sobriquet Mad Eddie.

  Edward was ugly, acne-scarred and balding, but he made up for it, or thought he did, by dressing himself in the latest fashions of the Old City, gem-encrusted rings on his fingers, a scarlet coat lined with ermine fur. If he’d been wiser he’d have known that fashion is a tool to make the beautiful more so. The plain, and in particular the homely, are better off considering dress as a form of camouflage, avoiding anything that draws attention – it won’t improve your chances of getting laid, but at least no one will point and laugh.

  But then, Edward wasn’t wise, only clever. Though, in fairness, he had enough of this last to have expanded on his uncle’s holdings substantially, and at an impressive rate. Indeed, it was Edward’s moves these last few months – brutal, sudden, and with little concern for any implicit or spoken arrangements which had heretofore curbed violence in the area – that had led to his Uncle’s preeminence amongst the small group of petty criminals that claimed Low Town as their turf.

  ‘Fine, fine,’ Christiaan said too loudly. ‘Sit down then, we’ve got business to discuss.’

  But Edward didn’t sit. The difference in size between them, substantial had they stood back to back, seemed vast. ‘Of course, Uncle.’

  ‘I want you to pay a call on Samhael Eirrson,’ Christiaan said, naming one of his direct competitors, a Valaan based out of the east corner of Offbend. ‘Word is he’s trying to set up a choke house on Alisanne Street.’ Christiaan slammed a fist against the table. His arm fat jiggled. ‘That’s our territory, and you damn well need to let him know it.’

  ‘I paid him a call last night, Uncle,’ Edward answered in a quiet voice.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We had a long discussion. He’ll make sure to keep to his own end in the future.’

  ‘That’s … excellent,’ Christiaan said, though something in his voice seemed to indicate he wasn’t entirely certain this was the case. ‘Very good,’ he turned to face the others. ‘The perfect deputy – you know what I need without me even asking it.’

  Neither of Eddie’s boys laughed. That was one of the ways you could tell they were Eddie’s boys, and not Christiaan’s.

  Eddie didn’t laugh either, but his smile should have given his uncle pause. ‘You know, I think I’ve changed my mind – actually, there is something I’d like.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ Christiaan said. He gestured towards the display case and started to stand. ‘Whatever you want.’

  Edward put a hand on his uncle’s shoulder and settled him back into his chair. ‘I don’t want a pastry.’

  Uncle licked his lips. ‘What then?’

  ‘Everything,’ Edward said in a quiet voice. ‘I want you to give me everything.’

  Looking back now, I don’t think Christiaan ever had the grit to keep his hands on what was his. What he had he had because he’d gotten in early, taken his cut of Low Town before the bigger players realized there was a meal to be made. And he should have seen what was growing in Edward, it wasn’t hard. No one likes being second on the chain, not when they’re doing the work to be first. Perhaps it was familial loyalty which had kept Christiaan from recognizing the viper at his breast, but I suspected it was just age. No one keeps an edge indefinitely.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Christiaan said finally, though at this point he should have, and probably did.

  ‘What you have,’ Eddie began, still speaking in his low, soothing, serpent voice, ‘I want. Protection, the whorehouses, your share of the rackets. The breath and vine you’ve been bringing in from the docks. Even this shitty little sweetshop – I want it. I want it all.’

  There was, obviously, very little to say to that. If it had been me sitting there I’d have gone for Eddie’s throat, done my best to bring him down before his associates sent me to meet She Who Waits Behind All Things. But it had been a long time since Christiaan had
done his own work. He’d lost the spark of violence that a man on the wrong side of the law needs to keep forever nursed. ‘I’ve been … meaning to make some changes to the organization. Do something to recognize all the valuable work you’ve been putting in. Maybe deal you a percentage.’

  Edward still had his hand on his uncle’s shoulder. Seen from afar there was something intimate in it, even paternal. He leaned over as if to whisper something, but when he spoke it was loud enough for me to hear. ‘Don’t embarrass yourself.’

  The fat man’s jowls trembled. ‘What happens to me?’

  Eddie shrugged and stood back up, letting his hand drop to his side. ‘What happens to all of us.’

  ‘You don’t mean …’

  ‘I do mean it, Uncle. I mean it very much indeed.’

  ‘You wouldn’t …’

  ‘I would.’

  ‘It’s not necessary. I’ll disappear – I’ll leave tonight, right now. You’ll never see me again. I won’t be a problem.’

  ‘Where would you go? Who would want you? You’re a fat old fuck who talks too much and drools when he eats. And besides – Low Town needs to know I’m serious.’

  Most people, at the last gasp, when they see they don’t have a way out, react to their imminent demise with some last surge of nerve. The rest break completely, weeping and smearing snot on your boots. Christiaan, at least, was one of the former. ‘You’re a vile son of a bitch,’ he said. ‘You always were.’

  Eddie put one hand to his breast, as if shocked by the profanity. ‘That’s your sister you’re talking about,’ he said. Then he nodded to one of the boys.

  I turned away.

  There was a wet sound, an ugly sound. Then a few short seconds of burbling as the life leaked out of Christiaan Theron. Then silence.

  The whistle of the kettle broke it, and spurred me into motion. The best thing to do was to play it strong, bull right on out of the place. Edward wasn’t trying to keep what he’d done quiet – on the contrary, he wanted word of his ruthlessness to carry. There wasn’t any reason to do to me what he’d done to Christiaan, so long as I didn’t give him one.