She Who Waits (Low Town 3)

by Daniel Polansky

  ‘Don’t look now,’ I said, ‘but I think there might be some illegal activities going on around here.’

  ‘It’s clear you’ve kept your keen investigative sense.’

  ‘There wasn’t a free room in an abattoir you could rent?’

  ‘No one would think to look for me here.’

  The moaning from the other room increased in volume. ‘I wonder why?’

  Guiscard closed the folder he was looking at and gestured for me to sit. ‘I’m afraid there isn’t another chair – you’re welcome to a spot on the bed.’

  ‘I’ll stand, if it’s all the same.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t expected to see you again so soon. Fast progress, then?’

  ‘In fact, no – the situation with the Steps is more or less at a standstill.’

  ‘Just fancied a stroll?’

  ‘I guess I was wondering what the anus of the world looked like.’ I inspected the environs studiously. ‘I thought it would be cleaner.’

  ‘I’m surprised to find you so squeamish.’

  ‘Feather pillows and silver plates, that’s how I roll.’ The moaning rose suddenly, and I had to match it to make myself heard. ‘I had an interesting visit from an old friend yesterday,’ I nearly yelled.

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Perhaps “friend” is the wrong way to phrase it. Nemesis would be more accurate, though I think it gives the man too much credit. I’ll settle on a homicidal ape with a Crown’s Eye and a fervor to see me a corpse.’

  ‘You’re talking about Crowley?’

  ‘I hope that description doesn’t apply to anyone else you know.’ Though I was fairly certain it did. ‘He seemed quite knowledgeable about the range of activities you’ve engaged me in.’

  ‘I didn’t tell him anything.’

  ‘Well someone seems to have, cause he’s pretty well in the loop.’

  ‘The loop right now consists of you, me, and the Old Man. I haven’t broached the subject, and as far as the chief goes … he’s not exactly the loquacious type.’

  Guiscard didn’t have any reason to lie to me that I could think of. I thought harder.

  ‘What did he say to you?’

  ‘Suffice to say the effect was unfriendly.’

  ‘You did cut him up pretty good.’

  ‘Did I? I’d completely forgotten.’

  ‘I’d advise you not to underestimate the man – just because he came off second best during your last encounter isn’t a reason to forgo worrying about the next one.’

  ‘I don’t need to worry about him. You’re going to worry about him for me. It’s bad business to let your people get murdered by your own side.’

  Guiscard ran a hand over his scalp. ‘He might be a problem.’

  ‘I know he’s a problem. You’re the answer, that’s why I’m here yelling at you.’

  ‘I mean he might be a problem for me. Things at Black House are … loose right now.’

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘It means that an order from me might not be one that Agent Crowley chooses to obey.’

  ‘Are you the Old Man’s number two or not?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then you should be able to bring his number three to heel.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him.’

  ‘That’s not good enough – not near good enough. You’ll put him in line, or you’ll put him in the ground. The second would be wiser – and more certain.’

  ‘He seems to really hate you.’

  ‘We go back a ways.’

  ‘I mean that he might hate you more than he fears the Old Man.’

  That was a disturbing thought. ‘Then it’s up to you to remind him of what a frightening character he works for.’

  ‘I’ll have the Old Man speak to him. It might do some good.’

  ‘If overwhelming concern for my well-being isn’t enough motivation, bear in mind I can’t very well keep tabs on the Sons of Śakra with the ice dogging my every step.’ I rolled and lit a cigarette, hoping the tobacco might do something to block out the odor. It didn’t. I’d have been better off using my match on the bedding. ‘This is a shitty safe house.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘All the resources you’ve got, we couldn’t meet in the back of a nice coffee shop?’

  ‘I’ll try and arrange more comfortable surroundings next time.’

  ‘Or I could just swing by Black House. I’m all for secrecy, but at the rate we’re going I’m worried our next meeting will be in the side corner of a cesspool.’

  ‘I told you – so long as you’re bait for the Sons, we’re not going to risk them knowing we’re running you.’

  ‘The fanatics don’t have a plant on me. Besides, I learned to drop a tail when you were still sniffing your sister’s panties.’

  ‘What does it matter where we have our conversation?’

  ‘It matters if all the secrecy is because you can’t trust your own people.’ It was a shot in the dark, I was as shocked by his reaction as he was at my guess. ‘Śakra’s cock, that’s it – the Sons have people in Black House.’

  ‘The Sons have people everywhere,’ he said quietly.

  It was a sign of how much that shook me that the bed briefly seemed a comfortable spot to regain my equilibrium. ‘You shouldn’t have told me that.’

  ‘You figured it out yourself.’

  ‘I didn’t need it confirmed. How the hell did the Old Man let that happen?’

  ‘We think they inserted some of their people into the Academy, years back. They’ve been playing the long game, and playing it for a while now. The slots are mostly filled by nominations at this point, favors for people’s kids. The Steps count a lot of nobles in their ranks.’

  ‘Nepotism bears bitter fruit. What are you going to do about it?’

  ‘We’re running background checks on everybody,’ he gestured at the stack of papers on the desk and grimaced. ‘Everybody. It’s slow going – we don’t know who to trust to figure out who we can’t trust.’

  ‘How many rats you got in the house?’

  ‘We’re not sure – Egmont has two men that he knows we know about, and one we think he doesn’t. What’s your take on the Director of Security?’

  ‘Ten minutes ago I would have told you he’s out of his depth, but you guys don’t seem to be swimming so well yourselves.’ I was shocked to find there was some part of me that still associated with Black House enough to be horrified at the thought of it falling into such a state. ‘When I worked the shop, we tried to keep a pretty firm monopoly on the gathering of internal intelligence.’

  ‘They had outside help – funding, training.’

  ‘From?’

  ‘The Nestrians. They’re pretty pissed about our dialing down tensions with the Dren, and they know the Sons are strongly opposed to anything that smacks of rapprochement. A regime change would be in everyone’s interest.’

  ‘Probably not everyone.’ I didn’t want to go any further in this direction. Guiscard, predictably, was happy to drag me.

  ‘In fact, our source says they’ve gone ahead and sent along an adviser. The top of her craft. Something of a legend, I’m told, on their side of the pond. It’s a bit rich, you griping over our failures, when yours was the most celebrated leak in the history of the office.’

  ‘No point in being second best at anything.’

  ‘Don’t worry, we still keep the extent of the disaster under close wraps. There aren’t five men in all of Black House that know the truth of the matter. Even the Old Man was surprisingly coy about it. In fact, if I didn’t know him any better, I’d be inclined to think he found the whole situation regretful.’

  ‘The wolf regrets your death while gnawing on your shinbone.’

  ‘That was why I qualified it.’ Guiscard was pretty openly smirking now. In his smile I could see the man he’d been a half decade before, the man I’d disliked to the point of violence. ‘She must have been something extraordinary, t
o have played you with such facility. I mean that quite sincerely – I have the utmost regard for your talent.’

  ‘How kind.’

  ‘They say she was very beautiful.’

  I ground my cigarette into the floor. The Firstborn knew it wouldn’t make the place any worse. ‘It would be very much a mistake, Guiscard, if you were to imagine that our business association offers you any personal liberties. It might be the sort of mistake that ends with you getting your throat cut, bleeding out in a copper-an-hour whorehouse with cum on the carpet.’

  ‘I can’t imagine you’d do something so contrary to your own interests.’

  ‘It would be an even worse mistake to overrate my sense of self-preservation.’

  Guiscard bore the threat stoically. The moaning had stopped, replaced with the steady pounding of what I assumed was the next-door bed against our adjoining wall. The house was typical slum construction, the barrier between us and the happy couple about the width of a fingernail. It didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility that our overactive neighbor’s exertions might bring the whole place tumbling down. I decided the time had come to end our conversation, rather than face such a humiliating obituary. ‘Figure out your leak and plug it. I’d thought the Sons little more than amateurs, but at the moment they seem to be very much ahead of both of us.’

  Guiscard didn’t say anything on the way out. The proprietress had collapsed on a couch in the main room, staring at the wall as if somewhere in the warped wood was the secret of existence. I considered joining her, but decided against it. A man can only stand so much unvarnished truth, and I less than most.

  25

  ‘So you see, my young friend, she’s played you.’

  We were in the Old Man’s office, me, Crowley and the chief. The Old Man’s office is small even by the standards of Black House, famously so. That was part of the mystique, that he made the world run from a space the size of a noble’s shoe closet. It was cramped with the three of us – the Old Man and I at opposite ends of the desk, Crowley’s squat bulk wedged behind me. He didn’t need to be there, had little enough to add – it was an object lesson in humiliation, knocking me down a peg. All the way to the bottom, in fact.

  In front of me sat a folder containing the confessions of a handful of low- and mid-level Nestrian spies, stringers and feeders. I hadn’t had time to read it through in detail, but scanning them seemed to suggest that what the Old Man had said was true. As astonishing as it was to admit it, Crowley had been right. The Nestrians did have a man on the inside, a deep plant scanning the innermost secrets of Black House. Her name was Albertine, and we’d been fucking for nine months.

  I’m not usually one at a loss for words, but try as I might, nothing came. I pulled out the makings of a cigarette and got to making them. You weren’t allowed to smoke in the Old Man’s office, but I figured a little tobacco wouldn’t get me in any deeper than I already was. The Old Man didn’t call me on it, which was out of character verging on shocking. If nothing else, he was a stickler for the rules.

  ‘Pretty quiet now, ain’t you? Not so clever, all of a sudden?’ Crowley was enjoying this inordinately, seeing me in agony.

  The Old Man was a distinct contrast to his subordinate. He was not a sadist per se – the pain of others was a byproduct of his drive to maintain power, not a goal in and of itself. He watched both Crowley’s glee and my own sudden misery with that sense of detachment which was his defining quality. Both emotions were a bit too potent for his refined tastes. He cleared his throat and continued.

  ‘Initially we were quite concerned that perhaps the fair Ms Arden had co-opted your loyalty, that you were an active participant in her plot. That will, incidentally, explain the condition of your apartment, which I’m afraid suffered some … damage, during the search.’

  ‘I might have taken a shit in your bath,’ Crowley said, the height of wit as always.

  Crassness was something the boss could not abide, and Crowley’s love of it was one of the many things that would keep him from ever rising above enforcer, albeit of the first rank. ‘Agent,’ the Old Man said stiffly, ‘your good work is much appreciated, and would best be continued in your own office.’

  Crowley was so caught up in riding me that it took him a moment to recognize this as a dismissal. His face fell, and he shot the chief a pleading look, like a child hungry for more dessert. A wasted effort – the Old Man was not one to be swayed by sentiment. Crowley moved to the exit, pausing to blow me an air kiss before closing the door behind him.

  ‘An occasionally unpleasant individual,’ the Old Man said, ‘though he has his uses. As I was saying – initially there was some concern about your loyalty to the Throne, but our investigation revealed no evidence to that effect. Moreover, I put some … mild stock into my ability to read people – it’s clear from your reaction today that your involvement was … unintentional. I believe the correct word would be, dupe?’

  Dupe. Mark. Fool. There were different ways to put it.

  ‘Clearly this … Albertine is a cagey operator. In particular, our work with Coronet seems to be of common knowledge to our competitors across the bay.’

  I didn’t bring my work up in casual conversation, and certainly had never discussed any of the details of our operations with Albertine. It would have been the furthest thing from my mind – when I was with her, the point of being with her, was that I didn’t think about work. I did, however, often bring files back to my home office, left them there overnight, sometimes longer. I had a small safe built into one of the floorboards, kept a coffee table on top of it. I had imagined I was being very careful.

  ‘Still, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my time in this business, it’s that there is no misfortune that cannot be turned into an opportunity. Your Ms Arden would be a … treasure trove of information, I’m quite sure. Will be, once we have her in our safekeeping.’

  No doubt. Didn’t matter how tough a person was, no one stays quiet, not forever. A few hours, a day or two for the very strong. But the Questioners were skilled in what they did, had far more practice inflicting pain than anyone had in suffering it.

  ‘This is where you come in, my boy.’

  It took me a while to realize that this required a response. ‘What?’

  ‘We have to be careful not to spook her – no doubt she’s prepared a side exit for herself, and of course, if she had to she could take shelter at the Nestrian consulate. What’s required here is a light touch – the assistance of someone close to her. Your assistance, in fact.’

  I knew on some level that I ought to be listening to him very carefully, for the sake of my own immediate future. I was not listening to him, however, or at best only distantly.

  ‘You have made a terrible mistake, my young friend. A terrible mistake. But there is still the possibility for redemption, to in some way salvage what you have bungled. Crowley was … forceful in obtaining some of the confessions you’ve just read. I imagine we have about a half day before Ms Arden discovers her contacts have gone quiet. In that time, you will ensure she is delivered into our care. I leave it to you to determine the specifics.’

  There were other ways to do it, ways that didn’t involve me. Detailing a squad of men to grab her when she walked out from work would have been easier and more certain. No sadist, as I said, but still. Transgression required punishment.

  He got up to leave. ‘Take a few minutes,’ he said. ‘Calm yourself down, and figure out how you’re going to make this situation right.’ He draped his coat over his arm, and took his hat off a hook next to his chair. Then he hesitated – I remember it very distinctly because the Old Man didn’t hesitate, never balked or stuttered. He moved through life as if his path had been marked out by the Firstborn himself.

  ‘It’ll be fine, my boy – you’ll do it, and it’ll be done. And when it’s done you’ll understand, like I do. You’ll understand how … small a thing, are these affairs of the heart. You’ll understand what it is that really
matters. What really matters.’ He opened his mouth as if to say more, but seemed to think better about it. He put his face back on, nodded and stepped out of the room.

  Looking back, I think it was the only time I ever saw any evidence the Old Man and I were members of the same species.

  I’d rolled another cigarette before realizing the first still smoldered between my teeth. That seemed as good a sign as any that it was time to leave. The agent at the front desk gave me a respectful greeting. It would be the last time he’d have any reason to try and curry favor with me, though of course he didn’t know that at the time.

  The walk seemed to take place in between thoughts, one moment I was outside Black House and the next I was in front of my building. I owned a two-story row house in one of the nicer neighborhoods in the Old City, a few blocks from the Palace gardens. It had cost something, but then I’d had it to spend.

  As promised, it had been quite thoroughly wrecked. I made my way down a hallway littered with refuse and overturned furniture, up a stairwell with a broken bannister and into my bedroom. Inside, the shelves had been torn apart, books and knick-knacks scattered across the floor. Some portion of the ruin could be justified as part of a vigorous search, but most of it I chalked up to Crowley’s attempts at revenge. Though given what else I was going through it was hard to imagine what effect he hoped to produce by breaking my armoire into kindling.

  In fact, I was surprised at how little I was affected by the destruction of virtually the entirety of my possessions. I’d read the books already, and everything else was just shit to fill space in a house I was unlikely to be holding onto much longer. It turned out I could not count materialism amongst my vices. Megalomania, viciousness and blindness, however, I had in spades.

  I sat down on the bed we’d slept in the night before. I could smell her in the sheets, and the throw pillows she’d insisted I purchase though they seemed to be utterly without purpose. My cigarette was doing nothing to cut her scent. I ashed onto the quilt in absent-minded bitterness.

  Fragments of the last nine months ran through my mind, scraps of memory banging at the door. I was finding it very hard to breathe, though that didn’t stop me chain smoking with a determined single-mindedness, as if to fill the sudden hole I’d discovered had taken over the bottom half of my torso. It was more than humiliation at the discovery I’d been so easily deceived, that I’d been used without scruple. It was as if some fundamental underpinning of existence had been upended. Like I’d woken up to discover that fire had ceased to burn, ice to chill.