Then it was time for Wren. My mouth was dry and I had a pretty bad headache, the pixie’s breath the cause and the remedy. Wren was watching me with an intensity that made me want to look away, so I didn’t look away, I looked back at him, harder, till he slid his eyes off mine. I reached my hand out. He took it after a moment, squeezed it harder than was really necessary. ‘Look after yourself,’ I said.
They weren’t much for last words, but they were all I could find right then. I left by the back exit, flinching when the door closed.
44
I huffed breath till my head was the size of a watermelon, then went to kill a man. A lot of men, most likely.
The address Guiscard had given me was in the far east corner of Offbend, a half hour’s walk through some of the city’s less savory boroughs. I had daggers in my belt and my boot, and my trench blade swinging at my side. The crossbow hung on my back, more bolts than I’d need in my pouch. I moved at a rapid clip, steel rattling with every step. The carnivores looked away as I passed, made sure to give me a wide berth.
One-forty-three Stamford Avenue was a detached two-story wooden house at the end of a street of slum tenements. It was bigger than I had anticipated, which was worrisome. Crowley had brought six men when he’d come looking for me last time, minus the two Adolphus had taken care of meant four that I knew about for certain. It was best to assume there were more, that he’d re-upped after the fiasco at the Earl, that he knew I was coming for him and was well prepared.
It didn’t matter. Crowley could have had a dozen men in there, two dozen, a hundred. The end was imminent, and I was bringing it to them.
I needed to get the attention of the men on the inside, focus them in my direction. A warning maybe, except that I didn’t want any of them taking heed of it and making a break. I settled for a statement of fact, though if you didn’t know better you might have mistook it for a threat. ‘Every man here is a corpse!’ I screamed. No one said anything, but from inside I could hear the bustle of movement.
I never had much use for crossbows. They break easy and they’re slow to reload, and they’re inaccurate as hell, or at least I am with them. But they’re powerful – a bolt will go through an oak door like it was paper, and come out the other end bloody. It was a good opening, which was why I’d taken it out from my stash.
I’d taken something else out as well, a cloudy jewel in a silver setting. Crispin’s Eye, the same one I took from his body after I’d gotten him killed six years earlier.
But first things come first. I nocked a quarrel to the crossbow and settled along the sights. This was one of the newer versions, a simple trigger as the firing mechanism. I hadn’t used one since the war, was unprepared for the kick against my shoulder that would swell into a bruise if I survived the next few minutes. The bolt spiraled towards the door, and I quickly forgot about it.
The Eye was warm in my off hand, warmer than a normal stone would be, and I concentrated on that warmth, let it roll through my palm and down my arm. Let it go deeper, coasting with my blood as it pumped into my body, down into my chest and somewhere deeper still. Swam in it, let it overtake me, breathed it down in place of air. It felt like I was under forever, though I knew from previous experience that it had lasted only a fraction of a second.
When I opened my eyes it was on a new world. A horsefly fastened around the discharge of a nearby outhouse, and I could count the beat of its tiny wings. The bolt I’d just fired spun lazily through the ether, and if I wanted I could have numbered each bristle of its feathers. I could have reached out and grabbed it in flight, sprinted ahead and beat it to the target.
Instead I dropped the crossbow, its descent slow as a feather’s, then sprinted around the back. By the time the bolt reached its destination I had reached mine, though I heard its effects with uncanny clarity – heard it puncture wood and rupture flesh, heard the sharp intake of breath and the scream that followed.
I made the second-floor terrace in a single leap, grabbing the balcony with an outstretched hand and swinging myself up after – an impossible feat, but then I wasn’t human any longer. The back door was locked and barred. I touched it with the palm of my hand and it burst like a ripe blister, splintering wood through the interior.
Inside were two men, very much not expecting to die. Their heads were turning towards me, swiveling in surprise or terror, it was never quite clear, because before sentiment could manifest on their faces I did for both of them, two strikes with my trench blade, the hardened steel cutting through flesh as easily as air.
I was into the next room before their bodies bounced off the ground. An injured man lay groaning on a bed in the corner. His face was wrapped tight with cloth, Adolphus’s handiwork presumably, and I took a thin sort of pride in thinking of my old friend’s strength. I finished what he had started, one quick severing stroke doing for the man’s body and the bunk he lay on top of.
Three down in less time than it took to finish a sentence, four if you counted the one downstairs, screaming his short way to death. I was burning through my future quickly now, sunny afternoons in the shade and cool autumn evenings, but I didn’t expect I’d ever see them so there wasn’t any point in being miserly. There were more men than I’d thought there would be, I could hear them shuffling below – but what did numbers matter? Stack the deck all you want, I had the high card stuffed into my cuff.
Down the steps and there was one in front of me, and then there were just parts of him – a hand clutching a sword in the corner, a half-shorn head in the other, lips still quivering. The next one was faster, or maybe the buff was starting to wear off, whatever it was he got his sword up to parry. My movements were too swift for the steel to take it any longer, and my blade shattered, fragments flying off in all directions. I was too quick for this also, ducking beneath the shrapnel, but my opponent was just a man, and he screamed as the cloud of metal entered his face and his neck, leaving him blind and disfigured and well on the way to death.
I thought about grabbing a weapon off a corpse, but decided there wasn’t any point. My hands were a personal introduction to She Who Waits Behind All Things. In the front room a man rolled on the ground with my bolt stuck in his chest, two others standing over top of him. The first had his back turned and I could hear his spine shatter as I set my foot against it, internal organs rupturing into pulp. The second had his sword out, a long saber that he tried to keep between us, an admirable if useless tactic. I slipped past his guard like he was a stone statue, brought my fist up to his cheek, watched his head rotate halfway around his spine.
There was a noise from behind me and I whirled in time to catch Crowley burst through the door. It took me a second – not really a second, it felt like a second but it wasn’t that, wasn’t a tenth of that – to realize that we were moving at the same speed. It made sense – we’d both gone all in at this point. He started to draw his weapon, the gleaming, beautiful short sword that’s the second most valuable object an agent possesses, and I wound up and kicked him in the crotch hard enough to ensure whatever bastards he had running around wouldn’t walk right for a solid week. A blow like that would have put a normal man out of action, hell, a blow like that would have outright killed most men, but Crowley and I were both well beyond that.
Still, it was enough to stun him for whatever fraction of a moment we were both operating in, and while it lasted I knocked the weapon from his hand. I had a selection of daggers about my person and I was damn sure Crowley had the same, but neither of us went for them. We went for each other, our hate so pure as to allow no intermediary.
I’m not sure what it would have looked like to someone peeking in through the window – flashes of color, vague kinetic bursts, each individual movement taking place far too quickly to make out. We were both spending our future at a tremendous pace, years, decades, there was no way of knowing. Whichever one of us survived this would come out an old man.
There was no art to our combat, just two people wailing on each other
and waiting to see who dropped. He hit me in the chest with a punch that would have fractured stone, but it barely knocked the wind out of me. I returned it, three quick shots to his face, but on the third I broke a knuckle, could feel it crack against the bent cartilage of Crowley’s nose.
I could feel myself losing the buff, my motions getting laggard, the honey-sweet spot that had kept me superhuman impossible to maintain. Crowley hadn’t been under as long, or maybe he wanted it more than I did. Regardless, he was quick to take advantage of my weakness, wrapping both hands around my throat and squeezing with admirable intensity.
I fought back as best I could, short, savage blows against his face. My broken hand screamed at me every time I connected, begged me to stop, but I ignored it and kept throwing. Crowley’s face was a haunch of raw meat, an open wound above a fat neck. But he didn’t slacken his grip, indeed he strengthened it against the pain. I reared back and threw everything into one final blow, and it collapsed the socket of his eye, breaking the cavity, off-white ooze running down his face.
But still he wouldn’t let go. At bottom, I think I was not the hater that Crowley was.
The gem fell from my hand, hit the floor and rolled into a corner. Crowley dropped down into normal time, smiling through a broken jaw filled with broken teeth, his one good eye jubilant.
Things went dark, the scope of my sight closing inward. The last time this had happened Adolphus had been there to save me. I’d let him die and I’d failed to avenge him, and I deserved what was coming.
The pain started to go away. The pain is always the last thing to go away, but I held onto it as long as I could.
Then the pressure on my throat eased, and the light came back. The boy was standing there, amidst the corpses. He had his hands positioned strangely, fingers interlaced as if to throw shadows against the wall. Crowley seemed not to recognize Wren, he was so caught up in the thrill of a fresh homicide. He started to say something, but never finished.
Wren reshuffled his hands. There was a very bright glow, like staring at the sun if the sun decided to come down and say hello. The pressure on my throat eased away. It was the only thing keeping me in place, and I collapsed onto the ground.
Crowley collapsed next to me. The skin and flesh on his torso were burned away, I could count each organ, watch his gray lungs heaving, his heart beat its last. His one good eye centered on me. I watched it flutter to a close.
It was less fulfilling than I had anticipated.
I lay there a while. I would have lain there a while longer, if I could have. I think I would have lain there till the end. Wren wouldn’t let me though, that little bastard. Picked me up off the ground, steadied me against the wall. My legs collapsed beneath me. Wren helped me up again, and that time I managed to stay steady as he wrapped my arm around his shoulder and dragged me out of the abattoir and into the street.
45
We found ourselves in a bar just off the main quay called the Homeward Winds. It was a quiet little dump owned by an old comrade of mine, name of Lumiere. I used to slip in there on nights when the Earl was too busy for my tastes, when I wanted a little bit of quiet. The Winds had that in spades. Lumiere ran the bar as well as owning it, and he was a cold, unfriendly fellow, who seemed to have more of a taste for hitting people than he did speaking with them. He really had no business owning a bar, but it wasn’t my place to tell him that.
Wren disappeared for a few minutes, ostensibly to the toilet, in actual fact to pull himself together. He’d well earned some time to himself. While he was gone I put enough breath into my body to allow it to forget some portion of its injuries. Then I had a quiet few words with Lumiere. He was nodding when the boy came back in.
I was up at the counter, but I walked him to a table in the corner. ‘You hanging on?’ I asked.
‘I’m fine.’ His face made a lie of his bravado. I signaled Lumiere for two draughts of ale. We waited silently until it came.
‘To your father,’ I said.
Wren drank it quickly. I didn’t look into his eyes, but if I had I’d have noticed they were wet.
‘Then Adolphus is …’ Wren trailed off.
‘Yeah.’
‘And that man I …’
‘Better you’d never learned what it felt like to put a fellow away,’ I said. ‘But since you had to – I’m glad it was him.’
Wren nodded, but he didn’t seem to take much comfort in it. I watched him down his beer, trying to wash away the memory of the life he’d snuffed. A lot of them take to it, the young ones especially. I saw plenty of that in the war, quiet boys gone loud with their first taste of blood. Dangerous in anyone, doubly so for someone with the Art. But I could see from his eyes that Wren wouldn’t go in that direction. He looked miserable, and lost.
I felt so damn proud of him, just then. He was maybe the only thing I ever got right in a long life of foolishness and barbarity.
We drank a while in silence.
‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked.
‘My mother.’
‘I thought she died when you were a kid.’
‘Doesn’t mean I can’t think about her.’
‘What do you remember?’
‘Small things,’ I said. ‘There was a song she used to sing, to me and Henni. She was half-Islander, they’ve all got a touch of minstrel in them.’
‘You never told me that.’
‘Father was an Asher, I think. Unredeemed of course.’
‘They must have cared for each other.’
‘I suppose.’
‘What did she look like?’
‘I can’t remember,’ I said, which wasn’t true.
We finished off our drinks, and I signaled Lumiere to bring us two more.
‘What happens now?’ Wren asked.
‘The plan hasn’t changed,’ I said. ‘You and Adeline are off to Kinterre at dawn. I’ll be following you when I can.’
‘It’s a little late in the day to be squaring me out of accounts.’
‘It’s a little late in the day, period.’
‘I’m part of this now, like it or not. I killed a man tonight.’
‘Let’s quit while you still feel bad about it.’
‘You don’t feel bad about it.’
‘I am what I am. I’d like to see you be more.’
Lumiere had a mirror behind the bar, though it took me a while to realize who it was reflecting. My hair had been dun with streaks of gray in it two hours earlier. Now it was white as bone. How many years had that stunt with the Eye cost me? Ten? Twenty? I pawed at the fresh wrinkles on my face, lines like a gnarled oak. I hadn’t ever been a vain man – I’d never had anything to be vain about – but still, it was a hell of a thing, sitting there and seeing what I’d sacrificed.
I was grateful for the boy’s interruption. ‘What’s your plan, then?’
‘Crowley wasn’t the only one I owe something to.’
‘You’re going after the Old Man?’
I nodded.
‘Then I’m with you. Adolphus was my father; he deserves that much.’
‘You think he’d want you dead?’
‘What he wants don’t much matter anymore, does it?’
‘Of course it does,’ I said. ‘It matters now more than ever.’
Wren looked into his beer a while. ‘I got a right to make my own mind up on this one.’
‘You do. You’re a man, and I’m proud as hell to think I’ve had a hand in you becoming one. I’m not telling you to go – I’m asking you.’
He stared off into space for a while, thinking it over, bitter and confused and young, mostly just young. ‘I won’t leave you here to face it alone,’ he said finally. ‘I can’t.’
‘You’re sure?’
Wren nodded firmly.
‘All right.’ I waved to Lumiere. He reached beneath the bar, filled two shot glasses and brought them over to us on a tray.
I took the one nearest me, handed Wren the other. We touched them agai
nst each other, then drank them in turn. Mine was strong whiskey, and it burned happily on its way down.
Wren set his own back on the table, frowning and licking his lips. After a moment he swirled his finger into the dregs, coming up with an unpleasant black slick. It took him another second to put it all together.
‘Mother’s Helper,’ I said. ‘A few grains of that will knock out a bull.’
He stood up from his seat, then promptly collapsed backwards. Lumiere was waiting to catch him, eased him slowly down to the floor. An unpleasant fellow, Lumiere, but reliable.
‘Be easy, be easy,’ I said, climbing out of my chair and kneeling down beside Wren. ‘You fight you’re only gonna give yourself a headache.’ Actually, either way he was going to wake up in eight hours with the most awful fucking pain in his skull that you could imagine, but there was no reason to let him know that in advance. ‘You look out for Adeline – she’s already figured about Adolphus, but it’ll take her a day or two to admit it. There’s coin waiting for you in the Free Cities, enough to get a solid start at least. They say the practitioners there operate in the open, unregulated – you find the best one you can and you convince him to take you on. You want to do something for Adolphus, for me, that’s what you’ll do. Make every fucking drop you got in you count.’
He was too far gone to speak, but his eyes were furious, little dots of rage gradually swirling into unconsciousness.
‘You’ll forgive me at some point. At least you’ll be alive to try.’
I waited another moment, then gave him a solid poke in the shoulder. He didn’t react. Lumiere was standing over us silently, waiting for the nod. I gave it to him, along with the name of the boat he was to drop the boy’s body off on.
She Who Waits (Low Town 3) Page 34