Friendly Fire

by Dale Lucas

  “What’s all this?” Rem asked, casting about for an open bit of desk or an empty chair and finding neither.

  “Everyone was told to gather and wait,” Klutch whispered. “Both shifts. The prefects are still in the office, talking.”

  “Talking to who?” Torval asked. “About what?”

  “Visitors,” Djubal said, and nodded toward Ondego’s office.

  Rem was at a bad angle to see anything clearly through the prefect’s open door, but he could just make out a pair of figures milling about in there under Ondego’s watchful eye. One was a short, stocky man whose outfit offered a glint of chain mail and a length of crimson-gold-and-black surcoat. The other was massive—nearly a head taller than Rem, and far wider at the shoulders—with skin as smooth and dark as Djubal’s own. Rem felt his breath catch. He looked to Djubal and Klutch.

  “The city guard,” Rem breathed. A moment later he added, “And is that Black Mal?”

  Torval nodded, having lifted himself up on his tiptoes to try to get a gander.

  “The same,” the dwarf said. “And, between you and me, lad, seeing both our wardwatch commander and a city guardsman here, in our watchkeep, bodes not well.”

  Rem had known that instinctively, if not explicitly. As the wardwatch was tasked with keeping order in the streets, the city guard’s jurisdiction was the periphery of the city: the gates, the walls and guard towers, the outlying townships and settlements that existed under the protection of the Free Republic of Yenara. Rem had seldom interacted with the city guard during his six months in Yenara, speaking to them mostly as he passed in or out of the city gates. But he’d come to recognize—first by instinct, then through the embittered grumblings of his peers on the watch—that a deep and poisonous rivalry existed between every wardwatch in the city and the city guard. Some of it was, no doubt, related to funding and image. The city guardsmen, acting as the closest thing the city had to a standing army, were justly proud—even a little arrogant—about their stature and their impressive customs-funded armor and uniforms. They received better weaponry and more frequent and rigorous training, operated under a more strict system of command, and naturally drew a greater modicum of respect from casual passersby.

  The wardwatch, by contrast, seemed—to the uninitiated—a rather haphazard force composed of all sorts of men, women, elves, dwarves, and ne’er-do-wells, whose professional training could best be described as “hasty” (or simply nonexistent) and whose only uniform consisted of stinking old leather cuirasses that had probably been old and worm-nibbled even before Rem’s grandfather was born. To everyday citizens the city guard were knights in armor, shining protectors of the city, the wardwatch just a bunch of smelly, coin-grubbing roughnecks with whistles and sticks. Unless they were needed to bash a burglar or run down a sneak thief—then, miraculously, their disreputable trade and shabby appearance were gentled, if only temporarily, in the public’s collective eye.

  Never mind that many on the city guard only used their positions as stepping stones to seats on the Grand Council or a stake in a trade delegation. Further discount the ample evidence that city guards bearing witness to crimes unfolding anywhere but right beneath their gatehouses tended to ignore those crimes altogether, usually citing jurisdiction as the reason for their failure to act. No, in the minds and hearts of the people of Yenara, the city guard were resplendent guardians of law and order, swaddled in the city’s own proud colors, while the wardwatch were just a bunch of overpaid leg-breakers, probably in the pockets of merchants and thief princes, as prone to rob you as to come to your aid.

  So the presence of Torquin, captain of the city guard—for all intents and purposes no friend of the wardwatch—boded not well. That and the presence of Black Mal—the watch’s own chief magistrate and commander, who lorded over all the watchwardens of the city—made it clear that something terrible was afoot. Something bound to make all their lives a little more difficult for the foreseeable future.

  The six officers now emerged and strode along the edge of the chamber to the middle of the far wall. Hirk kept his eyes down, while Ondego looked like an embarrassed father preparing to watch his children get punished by his liege lord. Torala and her second stood apart, forced to bear witness to the censure about to come, but apparently not implicated in it. Captain Torquin stood, hands clasped behind him, looking down his long, rosacea-swollen nose at everyone in the room. Towering Black Mal scanned the crowd with his one good eye (the left—his right being clouded by a cataract of some sort) and frowned so darkly Rem thought he might spit at them in the next moment.

  “I trust these men need no introduction,” Ondego said to everyone present. “They’ll speak their piece, then be on their way. Hold your questions for after, when it’s just the lot of us.”

  As Ondego stepped back, Black Mal stepped forward. “It is my understanding,” he said, voice deep as a mountain chasm, “that there was a riot in the Warrens yesterday afternoon. Some said it was a protest gone awry. Others just an argument that escalated. Whatever its cause, there were injuries—possibly deaths, though we can’t seem to get any verification of that.”

  Rem thought of the elegies being sung at that very moment in the Stonemasons’ Guildhall.

  Mal threw a sour glare at Ondego, then turned to the room once more. “Your job—collectively—is to keep the people of your ward safe. You see violence, you stop it. You see bloodshed, you end it. You see trouble, you answer it. You cannot handle it, you call for help. You hear that call, you answer. I understand there were watchwardens present yesterday, but that they were unequal to containing what spilled through those streets.”

  Rem felt a strange flush come over him, making his face hot and his palms sweaty. It was embarrassment. He recalled how he had stood there and watched as things went insane, how all he’d done was blow his whistle and run—completely failing to join the fight, to enter the fray—all because he was more concerned about fleeing with Indilen than keeping the streets of his city safe. He was not exactly sorry … yet still, he felt that he’d failed somehow.

  “This was not a brawl got out of hand in some winesink,” Black Mal continued. “People bled—hundreds. Goods were ruined. Fortunes lost. Businesses wrecked beyond repair. That’s not just on the ones who answered the call and couldn’t gain control of the situation. It is also on every one of you who heard those whistles and did not answer. Or who heard those whistles and failed to blow your own, to spread the call far and wide. And I have not even broached the subject of last night’s fire, have I? A fire set right under our noses, when dozens of you were probably wandering on patrol just a street or two away.” His voice had risen, its thunder filling the chamber, making Rem feel—probably making them all feel—like a scolded, misbehaving child.

  Mal pressed on. “Any failure of law and order in this ward is a failure for you—the lot of you. And, by association, my failure. And I do not countenance failure.”

  “He really doesn’t,” Klutch whispered to Rem. “You should hear some of the stories.”

  Rem nodded, hoping Klutch would shut up. The last thing he wanted was to be seen whispering while the chief magistrate addressed them.

  “So,” Black Mal continued, “in light of what a spectacular clusterfuck you humps made of your own ward over the previous day and night, let me offer a little motivation. Hearing of what’s unfolded, the Council of Patriarchs sent Captain Torquin here to speak with me. He has been authorized, at any time, per his own discretion, to deploy his city guardsmen into these streets and maintain order if he thinks my watchwardens—all of you—cannot.”

  Captain Torquin sneered—quite smugly, Rem thought. Was the man really so eager to send his men into the streets? Or was he just delighted that the wardwatch were covered in mud and humiliated, making his own pack of colorfully liveried ruffians look shinier and more noble by comparison?

  “Effective immediately, any failure on the part of this wardwatch to maintain order will be seen as a failure of the enti
re wardwatch system, and Torquin’s boys in their pretty little surcoats will step in. Do I need to remind any of you how much the thought of others doing our jobs for us chaps my pimpled ass?”

  A few murmurs in answer. No, sir. Of course not, sir.

  “Do I need to remind any of you,” Black Mal barreled on, “that this is one of life’s most basic lessons: if you fail to uphold your vows and promises, there is always someone else ready to uphold them for you, and to snatch your pay purse in the bargain?”

  More voices now. No, sir.

  “Then do not fail me again,” Black Mal said. He nodded toward Ondego. “Do not fail your prefect again. And do not fail the people of this city again. Am I understood?”

  Understood, they all said.

  “Fine. We are done here.”

  Away he went, Torquin marching out in his wake like a conquering hero. Rem was quite amazed at how long the relative silence endured after their departure, as though everyone wanted to be absolutely sure that the sounds of their bootheels moving through the front vestibule and the creak and thud of the front door were heard, that the coast was clear. Finally Ondego stepped forward.

  “I’m doing the talking because the shift about to start is mine,” Ondego said, eyes sweeping over all those crowded into the room. “But you dayshifters better listen up, because I’m talking to you, too, with Prefect Torala’s gracious permission.”

  The lady prefect nodded her assent. Ondego carried on.

  “What you just witnessed was no small thing. Black Mal never comes down here, and no one can remember the last time anyone suggested the wardwatch needed the city guard to do its work for it—”

  “Complete shite,” one of the dayshifters suddenly spat. Rem recognized the man—hangdog face, icy blue eyes, receding hair—but could not recall his name. “That mess in the Warrens just caught us off guard. It’s never happened before and won’t happen again—”

  “Shut it,” Prefect Torala snapped. “Ondego wasn’t finished.”

  “But it’s not fair,” the man countered.

  Prefect Torala took a single step forward and tilted her chin upward. It was the smallest, simplest of gestures, but it worked. Under the weight of her glare, the dayshifter fell silent and raised his hands in surrender.

  Ondego resumed. “Leave fair for the little ones,” he said. “It’s our job to hold it all together. If it falls apart, we are the ones to blame—regardless of what’s fair.”

  “Do we know what started it?” someone asked.

  Ondego seemed to search the room for a moment. When he found Rem and Torval, over in their far corner, both doing their best to feign invisibility, he speared them with an inquisitive glare, then carried on. “We’re working on that,” he said, and Rem felt the weight of his prefect’s unspoken expectations. “Regardless, Black Mal’s order stands: from here on, we maintain the peace. If we fail, it could be the end of us—of our jobs, anyway.”

  Murmurs and whispered curses circled the room. Rem looked to Torval, Djubal, and Klutch—far more experienced than he, and so better able to put things into perspective. The dark glances shared by the three of them gave Rem no comfort.

  “Get out there and earn your andies. See anything or hear anything that may shed light on all this? Come to Hirk or me, no hesitation. Savvy?”

  Everyone agreed.

  Ondego nodded. “Very well, then. Eyes open, fists clenched, backs to the wall. Now fuck off.”

  As everyone started to disperse, Ondego and Hirk made for the office. Ondego shouted over his shoulder, without even looking in their direction, “Torval and the Bonny Prince! In my office!”

  Djubal and Klutch looked to Rem, faces wearing comedic masks of dread and delight, respectively. Rem rolled his eyes at their theatrics, even as they assailed him.

  “Punishments await!” Klutch said, sounding far too happy about it.

  “So young, so inexperienced,” Djubal said. “A shame he didn’t know any better. What are you staring at, Torval?”

  “Trying to decide which one of you looks more like my sluuk.”

  Djubal and Klutch burst out laughing, both delighted at the insult.

  “You can both go rutting with bugbears,” Rem said, shaking his head and making for the prefect’s office.

  Ondego barely let Rem and Torval make it through the door. “What have you got for me?”

  “More codswallop of the sort just witnessed,” Torval grumbled.

  “I must say,” Hirk chimed in from the corner of the room, “I thought it quite kind of them to actually warn us that they’re angling to do our jobs for us, instead of just showing up and telling us to sod off.”

  “Elaborate,” Ondego said, ignoring his second’s comment. “First, the dwarves.”

  “Belligerent,” Torval said.

  “To put it mildly,” Rem added.

  “That so?” Ondego asked.

  Torval nodded. “Eldgrim threatened to put his own house guards in the streets, on patrol, if we couldn’t keep his people safe.”

  “Honus Almighty,” Ondego sighed.

  “He means it, too,” Torval added. “I wouldn’t test him on it.”

  “We were already talking about setting up a swing shift,” Hirk offered. “Midday to midnight or some such.”

  “What good will that do?” Rem asked.

  “We increase our presence in the Warrens,” Ondego said. “We also provide armed escorts for the dwarves working at the temple site. Get them to and from work safely until we’ve unraveled all these knots.”

  “But that’s just spreading us thinner,” Torval said.

  Ondego shook his head and leaned forward, over his desk. “The Grand Council’s already cleared us to hire more. Pull back in some retirees. Grab a few trustworthy bouncers and bodyguards who know how we work. We can cover it. The important thing is that the people of the Fifth—especially that gods-damned Eldgrim—see more of us, and know we’re watching. What about the stonemasons?”

  “Just as bad,” Rem said. “Apparently they were holding an all-night vigil for one of their own. A young man. They say he got lost in the Warrens and ended up beaten bloody by a band of angry dwarves.”

  “Beaten bloody,” Ondego repeated. “Now dead.”

  “So they say,” Torval said. “We’ve no reason to disbelieve them.”

  “They were hostile to our inquiries,” Rem said. “And they made it clear that the whole neighborhood owed them and supported them. All but challenged us to come back in force, to see what would happen.”

  “Then maybe we should do just that,” Hirk said.

  “The fuck we should,” Ondego snapped. “Aemon’s bones, what a rotting shambles. What’s your take on them? Dirty? Guilty?”

  Rem looked to Torval. He felt unequal to making a judgment on that front. Torval’s pinched expression suggested the same.

  “It would make the most sense,” Rem said, “but that still doesn’t make it true. We can’t go raiding guildhalls and throwing working men in prison, just based on hunches and inference.”

  “The Bonny Prince is right,” Torval added. “You know I’m keen to bust heads, same as anyone hereabouts, Ondego … but it feels too soon, based on too little.”

  Ondego nodded. “And yet,” he said, “what happens next when someone steps on dwarvish toes? Or butchers some unlucky dwarf who crosses their path? Blood for blood and all that nasty business. Would you haul them in then?”

  Torval shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe it ends here,” Rem said. “The dwarves are on guard, and now these stonemasons know we’re onto them. If it was them, they’d be wise to stop now, before things get even worse.”

  Ondego offered a strange expression: an almost-smile that struck Rem as profoundly sad. “Ever the optimist,” he said, mordant gaze pinning Rem where he stood. “Tell me, Bonny Prince, you’ve been here six months now; how much wisdom do you see enacted on those streets every night?”

  The only answer, the honest answer, was
one Rem didn’t care to utter.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It was nigh on the wolf’s hour, past midnight but still a span before first light, when Valaric’s brothers in the guild ran out of songs to sing. They’d already been through “Reconciled and Renewed,” “Beyond the River,” “In the Maker’s Hands,” and “Any Port in a Storm.” A few of the men had tried to start serenades based on lesser-known hymns or the work of obscure bards, but no one knew those words, and so no one could join in. Schorr sang a few lovely lines as a soloist—he was a husky man, thick and tall and, to any casual passerby, a giant and an oaf—but when he sang he became the mouthpiece of angels. The men liked to hear him, and so, when he would begin a song that no one knew, they would not join in, but they would not stop him, either. In those moments Valaric could feel the palpable grief in the room, the sense of wrongness, of choked-off possibility. Grendan was too young to be dead; it was a plain, simple fact.

  When the men grieved, Valaric grieved with them.

  But it was in between, in the moments when their anguish gave way to frustration or restlessness, that made him far more uneasy. It was as if someone intermittently stoked the collective fires of their resolve, or whispered wicked words in their various ears. Cups were tossed and broken. Harsh words spewed like venom from the jaws of a spitting snake.

  “Someone should make them pay,” Valaric heard more than once.

  “Bloody half men,” Foelker said, during one communal winter of discontent. “What are they doing in our city, anyway? Haven’t they got mountains to live beneath? Their own bloody homelands to cultivate and defend?” He was Hrissif’s brother—as amiable and untroubling as Hrissif was crafty and dubious. Valaric had never known Foelker to be hateful or aggressive, in any fashion, but he was a good weather vane for the moods of the rest. If something came out of his mouth, it was probably because he’d heard the same words spoken, repeatedly, by those around him.