She Who Waits (Low Town 3)

by Daniel Polansky

  Snap out of it, you can wallow after you take care of the situation at hand. Emotion is a luxury, not to be rashly indulged. Now wasn’t the time for the past – I needed to deliver Albertine into the Old Man’s clutches in the next few hours, or say goodbye to everything I’d built, and my skin along with it.

  She worked at one of the Nestrian trading houses, oversaw a fleet of merchant ships plying the channel. No, I reminded myself, in fact she did not work at one of the Nestrian trading houses, did not oversee a fleet of merchant ships plying the channel – she worked as the chief of Nestria’s intelligence service here in Rigus. Also, her name was almost certainly not Albertine. Also, she had never loved me.

  This woman who was not named Albertine and who had never loved me nonetheless kept a tight cover at one of the Nestrian trading houses, and as part of that cover she’d still be at the office for another hour. Or perhaps she wouldn’t, perhaps the times I’d met her at work had been nothing but an elaborate put on. Perhaps she stopped off in the morning and filtered out at night, and in between was running an identical scam on a half dozen other men as foolish as me, bankers and parliamentarians, merchants and naval officers.

  I realized I’d crushed my cigarette between my fingers. I tossed it away and rolled another.

  I’d picked her up at her office before, she’d still be there unless something had happened to tip her. If it had then she was long out of the country and I was dead in the water, so it was best to assume she hadn’t. We were supposed to meet after work at a little Nestrian joint near the house. Our favorite, in fact, family-run, the owner from the same province Albertine had been born in. Said she’d been born in. They’d chatter away in their native tongue, and I’d listen to the rhythm and watch her blue eyes in the candlelight.

  That didn’t matter, stop thinking like that. Best to keep our appointment, lead her out the door and into the waiting arms of the ice. She wouldn’t suspect anything – no doubt she’d begun her work with the utmost care, vigilant for any hint that her cover had been penetrated. But no one stays like that forever, after nearly a year of wrapping me around her pinkie she’d have dropped her guard. It would be easy.

  The closet had been ransacked, a line of my suits thrown onto the floor. I’d given her a shelf a few months back – we’d laughed about it, like it had meant something. They’d tipped those over as well, black lace panties pushed into the carpet. The thought of Crowley’s animals running through her underthings made me want to hit someone.

  If for some reason I didn’t meet Albertine for dinner, of course, she would be spooked. No matter how complacent she’d grown, still my absence would be enough to at least get her thinking. She’d stop by my house next, I’d given her a set of keys six months back, longer maybe, almost as soon as I’d met her. A peek in the window would reveal the devastation, and from there she’d be off.

  So I needed to meet her for dinner.

  They would be cruel to her in Black House. The questioners were cruel men. The thought of Albertine at their mercy, of Crowley laughing and watching over it all – I felt my stomach seize, swallowed the urge to spill my lunch onto the carpet.

  But what was there to do? I’d get the same if I didn’t offer her up. My conduct amounted to the most extreme negligence, and in a position as important as mine failure was tantamount to treason.

  And why did I care what happened to her? There wasn’t anything between us, it was a con. I’d allowed myself to buy into it but the truth was clear now. I ought to have been grateful to the Old Man. He’d be doing me a favor.

  The Old Man was right. I thought about that for a while. What that meant, if the Old Man was right.

  They found me about six hours later, passed out beneath the table of a Low Town dive bar. I woke up in a cell beneath Black House from a bucket of cold toilet water, and Crowley was very quick to take advantage of my sudden reversal. The next few days were … long.

  But the Old Man hated me too much to kill me. After it was over, after they’d beaten me raw and shattered my Eye, they dumped me into an alley and left me to it. I’d planned on being dead by that point, and had struggled to figure out what to do upon discovering I’d been granted a reprieve. I guess I’ve been struggling ever since.

  26

  My second visit to the Gitts’ domain was a good deal less enjoyable than the first, and I’d taken no particular joy in that one. Sipping my morning coffee and looking out the window, it was clear we’d see rain – but I had hoped it might hold off until my return. What’s there to say? I’m city-bred. I can tell which end of Low Town I’m in by the stray graffiti on the walls, know how to get from Brennock to Estroun without using a main road and can cuss a fellow out in six separate languages, but my weather sense is for shit.

  I hadn’t left sight of the walls before the clouds decided to empty themselves. The roads, far from excellent under the best of circumstances, quickly became practically impassable. After a half mile of trudging through mud the likes of which I hadn’t seen since I’d left the trenches, I gave up and flagged the next wagon that went by, slipped the driver an argent to let me ride beside him. It was something resembling robbery, but I was happy to pay it.

  Not even the offer of another silver, however, was sufficient to convince him to take me to the Gitts’ doorway, such was their reputation for petty vandalism and unwarranted violence. I had to hoof it the last quarter mile, up the winding track, cursing the mire which had coated my boots and the lower third of my pants.

  Calum’s pigs were loving it, however, rooting about loudly enough to drown out the falling rain. Our reaction to mud is one of the few differences between our two species – though looking at the handful of Gitts’ children sitting on the uncovered stoop, pale flesh and black grime, it was hard to grant even that distinction.

  ‘Is your father-uncle-cousin in?’ I asked the eldest.

  He crinkled up his face in confusion. ‘What?’

  ‘Nevermind,’ I said, stepping through the knot of unwashed bodies.

  Boyd sat on the couch inside – sat suggests more effort than he was putting forth. Draped would be more accurate. His eyes were open but they didn’t see anything, and his breathing had that even, rhythmic quality that generally accompanies sleep. A long-handled wyrm pipe sat on the table, and explained its owner’s condition. I was debating the wisdom of trying to wake him when Cari came in from one of the side quarters and saved me the trouble.

  ‘Boyd!’ she screamed. ‘We got company!’

  This was enough to bring the man awake, though it was another twenty seconds before he managed to fix his eyes on me in a way that betrayed recognition. I’d have to wait around a hell of a lot longer if I hoped for anything resembling intelligence.

  ‘Hey, Warden,’ he said finally. ‘We ain’t been expecting you.’

  I hoped if he had, he wouldn’t have smoked himself into a coma to celebrate my arrival. ‘Don’t trouble yourself to stand, Boyd,’ I said, though he had done nothing to worry me on that account. ‘I’m just here to have a few words with Calum.’

  ‘He’s around,’ Cari said warily. ‘I’m sure he’ll be in eventually. You can tell me what you need to in the meantime.’

  I didn’t say anything to that, but my eyes registered disapproval. There was no reason to outright explain to Cari that she was no more running this ship than I am the back side of the moon. But nor was I going to waste my time discussing the situation twice. ‘I’ll wait.’

  Cari dropped down beside Boyd. Hers was an ample posterior – I feared for the structural integrity of the sofa. It held, but barely.

  Time passed. I got the impression I was not so welcome as I had been last time. Boyd at least forewent promising future sexual liaisons with members of his immediate family. For her part, Cari went at her wyrm pipe for the better part of ten minutes without offering a puff. I was insulted – really hurt.

  Calum arrived finally, filtering in from a side room. Artair followed in his wake. The bulge of his
esophagus had not shrunk since last we’d spoken.

  ‘Hello, Calum,’ I said.

  ‘Howdy.’ This time he didn’t offer me his hand.

  ‘I’m sorry to drop in uninvited like this – I figured it would be better if we spoke sooner, rather than later.’

  ‘You always welcome out here,’ Boyd hiccuped from his perch on the coach. ‘Y’all know that.’

  Calum didn’t bother to agree. ‘It’s a long walk,’ he said.

  ‘Ain’t short.’

  ‘And in the rain at that.’

  ‘Is it raining?’

  ‘I don’t suppose this is a casual visit.’

  ‘I’m not a casual person,’ I said.

  Calum nodded. ‘Me neither.’

  There had been another couple of chairs when last I’d visited, but they were gone now, broken up for kindling or for the simple joy that accompanies destruction. Except for Calum’s rocking chair, of course, which sat untouched in the corner. Even the Gitts’ renowned sense of recklessness wasn’t enough to do any damage to the throne. Calum worked himself into it with a barely audible sigh. Artair dropped down onto the ground, apparently unconcerned that he now rested in the grime tracked in from outside. He took a wavy, wide-bladed knife from his waistband and started gouging flecks out of the floorboards with an enthusiasm that seemed to indicate personal enmity.

  ‘You here to talk about Kitterin Mayfair?’ Calum asked.

  ‘I’m here to talk about what he means.’

  ‘He means the black robes know we ain’t gonna bend over and take it,’ Artair said.

  ‘Last time I warn you to be quiet,’ Calum responded promptly, though with seeming dispassion.

  ‘And yet he isn’t altogether wrong. Mayfair’s unfortunate fate, not to mention the wreckage you made of Uriel’s gambling house, has indeed caused something of a furor out near the Enclave.’

  ‘Some days,’ Calum said slowly, ‘I find you really tiring.’

  ‘Imagine how I feel.’

  ‘I don’t see what the big fucking problem is,’ Artair said, still picking away at his home. ‘The Asher are flesh and blood, they die the same as anyone.’

  Calum wasn’t exactly a quick man, and he had to get up from his chair to throw the punch. So Artair could see the blow coming, even managed to let go the knife and raise his hands in a rough defensive posture. It didn’t do a copper worth of good of course. He could have had a week to prepare, built a barricade and covered it with wire, and it wouldn’t have mattered. Calum’s fist busted the right side of the boy’s face, sent him sprawling into the center of the room.

  Cari and Boyd looked in opposite directions. It wasn’t the first time one Gitt had slugged another. If Calum decided to go further, break the little runt’s head into the ground with a few treads of his boots, they might speak up. Or not. It wouldn’t have been the first time one Gitt had killed another, either.

  ‘I warned you once – you keep your fucking mouth shut when grown folks are speaking,’ Calum said. ‘All you want to do is talk and talk and fucking talk, show everybody what a big man you is. If you wasn’t my sister’s boy I’d put you in the ground myself, dig the hole and dump dirt on you while you was still wriggling.’

  Artair groaned something that could have been taken as an apology. After a moment he spat a tooth straight up into the air, like a fountain. I suppose that could have been taken as an apology also.

  Though his nephew had been the subject of the lesson, I wasn’t so slow as to miss who it had really been aimed at. Calum was breathing like he’d run a marathon, his sunken passivity washed away in a tide of fury. He seemed to realize how far gone he was, blinked twice and forced himself back into his chair. Almost reflexively his hands went about cutting a hunk of chew, but his eyes were still wild, and I decided to wait for him to start.

  ‘I hate the taste of pork,’ he said finally, after he’d worked his way through half the plug. ‘Did you know that?’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘Can’t abide it. Makes me sick. So why do you think I keep hogs?’

  ‘I look forward to finding out.’

  ‘Cause they eat anything you put in front of them.’

  ‘I’ve heard rumors to that effect.’

  ‘Ate Kiren, back in the third syndicate war. Ate Islander and Valaan. I imagine, it comes to it, they’ll eat Asher just as easy.’ He spat onto the floor, near enough to Artair to splatter his supine body. ‘This been Gitts territory since my daddy’s grandaddy came up from Kinterre. I’ll be damned if some trumped up black robe is gonna take it out from under me.’

  Like I said before – we are what we are, no point in hiding it. Calum was bigger than his people, stronger and smarter. But blood tells, you wait long enough – and Calum was a Gitt down to the white of his bones.

  ‘I wasn’t operating under the impression you made your money through livestock – but there’s still time to see this end without any more violence. Uriel says this whole thing is a misunderstanding. Wants a sit down, wants to clear things up.’

  ‘All due respect, Warden. I think we’re past conversating.’

  ‘Don’t let the fact that they haven’t responded to Mayfair lull you. These are not soft men.’

  ‘I’m not underestimating Uriel,’ Calum said. ‘It’s cause he’s dangerous that he’s got to be taken care of now, while it’s just him and his brother and a handful of others. In a year they’ll have enough men on the rolls to swamp us outright – with what they must be making selling that fever, they could hire half the Enclave. I don’t step into this lightly – I didn’t go after Uriel because I’m hell bent on puffing out my chest, like my idiot nephew.’ He nodded towards the boy on the floor. Artair hadn’t moved in a while. Either he was sleeping or he was on his last sleep. No one else seemed concerned about it. I wasn’t particularly concerned about it either, if we were being honest. ‘I did it because if we don’t fix the Unredeemed now, they’ll swallow us outright in eighteen months.’

  Calum was not wrong. Uriel was only getting stronger. It made sense to step on them now, before they swelled their ranks. But it didn’t make sense for me, so I kept on talking. ‘You think about the war much, Calum?’

  ‘I try not to.’

  ‘A wise policy. Still, there are lessons to be learned, unpleasant though they may be to remember. Were you at Anquirq?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So was I – we held a stretch of trench next to a company of Asher. Three long months, until the Dren rolled us back.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘I say us, but of course, I don’t include the Asher when I speak of our retreat. I was one of the last there – too stupid to get moving, I guess. You know how certain moments are clear as day, no matter how long ago they happened? You can bring them up in your eye, like you was staring at a portrait.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘That’s one for me, one burned into the back of my head good and permanent. Cause the Asher didn’t run, Calum. Not while the trenches around them were emptying of soldiers like worms after the rain. Just stood there, still as statues, swords unsheathed, identical rows waiting for the slaughter. When we retook that segment we found a thousand rotting Asher corpses. You know what else we found?’

  I waited a while for him to answer. When he didn’t I continued ahead anyway.

  ‘Dren. We found a hell of a lot more Dren than we did Asher, Calum. You think on that, when you eat dinner tonight. You look around at your family, and you think about how many are going be sitting there in a month, if you go to war with Uriel and his people.’

  Calum cut out a plug of tobacco big as a child’s heart and set it into one corner of his mouth, chewing over it slowly. For once Cari and Boyd had the good sense to keep quiet. Artair kept quiet too, though he had less choice in the matter. ‘Where’d we be sitting down at?’

  ‘My turf. I’ll handle security, make sure things stay square. There’s still time for an amicable resolution – nothing that’s gone dow
n between the two of you can’t yet be squashed.’

  He nodded slowly, acknowledging my words but not agreeing with them. ‘I got no interest in blood for blood’s sake,’ he said finally. ‘If this can be cleared up without making bodies, I’m all for that. But if it can’t …’ He spat a stream of juice out onto the floor. ‘Them hogs is always hungry.’

  27

  ‘The Director is very concerned. He needs to know what progress you’ve been making. It’s important you get your hands on something concrete, as soon as possible.’

  Brother Hume and I were huddled together in a back booth at Edgar’s, which was a shitty little diner in Offbend. The coffee was cold and the pie was stale, our waitress looked a few years shy of her centennial and someone had ashed a cigarette into the bowl of stew I’d ordered. For years I’d been trying to figure out what Edgar’s was a front for, if they were moving choke out the back or if it was a tax dodge for one of the syndicates. Eventually I’d come to realize that it was just, in fact, a shitty little diner, and the incompetence and hostility of the help not cover for anything. By that point I’d grown sort of attached to the place, and I patronized it more than it warranted, particularly when I was with people I didn’t much care for.

  Not that Hume gave any signs of being unhappy with the quality of the fare. He’d consumed the greater portion of the mutton sandwich he’d ordered, though our conversation had lasted all of about five minutes. A piece of wilted lettuce rested unnoticed on the lapel of his shirt, would remain there in all likelihood until the next time he changed clothes. At least the faded greenery wasn’t staining the dark brown robes he normally wore – he’d taken my earlier admonishment to heart. It had been wise counsel, though almost everything else I’d been telling him was sheerest bullshit.