The Broken Man

by Brandon Jones

  “No. Doctor Roetu sent him through the Pass to Sefti for ice earlier this evening. He hasn’t come back yet.”

  “I know where some is at home,” Josen said, an idea blossoming. Vale gave him a wary look. “Yallinseed oil, not ice. I’ll run for it. It will take me a few minutes—twenty at most.”

  Vale’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t think this means I’m not going to tell Mom that you were here, letting Grandpa fill you head with nonsense about . . . those people.”

  “Now, that’s hardly fair,” Grandpa Markise said. He walked to the corner of the room where jackets hung on a rack. “First, those people were some of the most brilliant people of our time, even if they didn’t put their intellects to particularly legal uses—”

  “They were thieves,” Vale hissed.

  “Which doesn’t mean there aren’t valuable lessons we can learn from them and apply to the myriad things we do that are not larcenous.” Grandpa Markise selected a leather-oiled jacket from the rack and handed it to Josen, who slipped it on and cinched it tight. He could see where Grandpa Markise was going with this and didn’t want to give Vale the chance to rebuild any more indignant momentum. The jacket fit perfectly.

  “Mom and Dad said you weren’t supposed to talk about that anymore,” Vale said, turning to Josen. “Not with Grandpa, not with anyone.”

  “Second,” Grandpa Markise continued as if Vale hadn’t spoken, “Josen is about to run twenty minutes through the cold rain to bring medicine for my sick wife, and your grandmother. Don’t you think that merits a bit of forgiveness?”

  Vale scowled. “What am I supposed to tell Mom? How would Josen know we needed the oil unless he were already here?”

  “Thank you, Vale,” Grandpa Markise said, folding her into a hug. “You leave your mother to me. Josen, there’s a pair of gloves and rope already anchored inside the window seat. Slip down and run fast. When you come back, tie a bag to the rope and put the oil inside it. Your mother never needs to know you were here.” He gave Vale a significant look, and she nodded reluctantly.

  Josen was already in motion, putting on the gloves—which also fit perfectly—and tossing the thin, light rope out the window. He tied a quick repelling knot and pushed himself backwards out the window, trusting his grandfather’s word on the rope.

  It held.

  Josen couldn’t help but admire his grandfather as he ran. He had been prepared, if not for this exact event, then something so similar that it made no difference. The jacket kept Josen warm and dry, except for his feet, but that was unavoidable. He wondered how his grandfather could have predicted Josen would need the jacket or the gloves. They couldn’t have been for anyone else. Grandpa Markise kept them just in case—just for Josen.

  He grinned at the thought. Whatever Grandpa said about Dania O’son being the smartest, Josen knew better. Grandpa Markise was the most brilliant person alive.

  Part 1: The Parose Job

  15 Years Later

  Chapter 1

  Josen left the well-lit street, preferring to duck into an alley before he started pulling off pieces of his face. He winced as he discarded his false nose and began peeling off the wiry eyebrows, tossing both among the trash lining the alley wall. He hated taking his face off in a hurry. Doing it like this—on the street, without the aid of solvents—hurt like hells, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He was late. At least the sweat from running through half the city had helped loosen things up a little.

  He turned a corner into the alley directly behind the Verolius, still breathing heavily as he scrubbed at his face, trying to make sure the glue and makeup was all gone. He should have been here twenty minutes ago, but the Pátince job had gone longer than they had estimated. Being late tonight was bad enough by all on its own, but if Saul were to hear that Josen was running jobs on the side as well…

  Josen’s foot caught on something soft as hurried heedlessly through the dark alley. He kept himself from falling, but only just barely. What the…

  Josen froze. Bodies littered the grimy alleyway all around him, unconscious and scattered as if they had been rolled down the alley like so many dice. He watched them for a minute, and then groaned, remembering where he was.

  “Starving hells,” he swore as he began picking his way through the bodies of young men and women, all dressed in fashionable finery. Morons.

  He recognized the effects of rub use even in the dimly lit alley—flushed and sweaty skin, heavy irregular breathing, and the telltale unconscious breaking.

  It was an effect of the drug. All around the stoned fools, things were changing, becoming temporarily something else. Most were simple, innocuous changes: wine bottles held limp in unconscious fingers changed colors or dissolved into piles of wet sand. Clothing changed subtly, wool breaking to cotton or linen before reverting back to the original wool.

  Some of the breaking was more abstract. Josen watched a dirty brick paver beneath one person’s hand turn slimy and dark. The paver held its brick shape for half a heartbeat before oozing outward, having been broken to something like tar. Seconds later it reverted, solidifying back into the dirty brick but retained its odd shape, like a piece of wax that had been half-melted in the sun.

  Josen picked his way through the bodies, trying not to step on anyone or in anything unpleasant. It was a difficult business, tiptoeing through a tangle of unconscious people without getting too close. Josen kicked a hand that strayed too close, eliciting a groan from the hand’s owner. Josen had dressed up for tonight’s rendezvous at the Verolius. The last thing he needed was his fine wool pants being broken to rotted silk at the touch of an addict. They would revert back to the original wool of course, but anything that crumbled away in those few moments would remain crumbled. Better to remain out of reach.

  Besides, these were his only good set of pants, made of the best wool from Pomay. The starving things had been expensive.

  It took Josen a dozen heartbeats to pick his way through the bodies. He made his way toward the end of the alleyway, grateful none of them had been awake and actively breaking. It was never a good idea to confront someone high on rub, especially alone in a dark alley.

  A dark heap shuddered as Josen moved to step over it. He jumped back, wary, as the lump he had mistaken for a pile of trash shifted and rolled over revealing a shuddering, unconscious young woman. She was part of the same group he had just passed judging by her age and dress. Just enough light spilled into this end of the alley to make her out clearly overdressed and spoiled, out for a night of fun gone too far.

  But she was dying.

  She was still breathing, but it was ragged and uneven. The muffled sound of music and laughter coming from the Verolius did nothing to drown out the wet death rattles. She was dead, whoever she was—she just hadn’t stopped breathing yet.

  With a grimace, Josen moved to step past her. Her eyes rolled wildly, unseeing, and her breathing halted for a moment as Josen passed her, then restarted with a painful gasp. Josen froze, staring down at her with a feeling of mingled disgust and pity. He nearly kept walking—there was nothing he could do for her, and plenty of things he was supposed to be doing. Rub overdose was a nasty way to die, and Josen had no desire to watch.

  The girl’s head rocked back and forth on the filthy ground, mouth opened in an expression of soundless agony, and in a moment of horrible lucidity her eyes focused and caught a hold of Josen.

  He paused and swallowed at the tight knot in his chest. The sounds of mirth and music drifting out of the nearby lounge sounded harsh and dissonant as he looked down at her. Her hands were torn and slick with blood from her palms to the tips of her once-delicate fingers. They were no longer healing themselves—a sure sign her body was shutting down. Josen held her bloody hands as he knelt next to her.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, knowing she would never answer. There was nothing he could do to help her, not when she was this far gone. But he could be with her.

  Her jaw clenched and her head con
tinued to roll, but her desperate eyes locked onto his, as if to physically hold him there.

  “I won’t leave,” he told her, and her head moved in something like a nod. “Promise.”

  She was younger than he was, he realized as he continued to hold her gaze. Probably barely twenty despite the elaborate makeup—trying look older to impress her friends or catch the eye of some boy. She looked so small lying there in the alley, terrified as she felt her body shutting down, organ by organ.

  Josen stroked her hair with one hand, and he felt her body begin to relax. He didn’t speak again. He didn’t tell her she would be all right as she tried desperately, unsuccessfully, to fight the convulsions. He didn’t patronize her by telling her to relax or breathe through the pain, that she would be fine despite the blood filling her lungs, flecking her tightly clenched teeth. She wouldn’t.

  There was nothing to say, so he didn’t. Josen held the girl’s hand, returning her gaze as her breathing grew more shallow and less ragged, and then stopped altogether.

  She felt too light when he picked her up in his arms, like her soul had made up a significant portion of her already slight frame. Without it, there was nothing really left—only this insubstantial shell, and the sick tightness in Josen’s chest. He moved her closer to the mouth of the alley, where she would be easier to find for whoever would come looking for her. He wiped his hands, slick with the girl’s blood, on her dress, then smoothed back her hair and kissed the dead girl on the forehead before leaving her behind.

  Josen made his way straight into the lounge of the Verolius—full of people entirely unaware a poor girl had died moments before just outside the building where they laughed and drank.

  With an effort, Josen pushed the girl out of his mind. He was glad he had sent Akelle straight home with the take from the Pátince—glad he hadn’t watched the girl die too. Akelle had no doubt seen the same and worse growing up on the streets of Kendai, but still...

  The Verolius was packed. Josen scanned the crowd, his mind automatically scanning for potential marks until he forced the instinct down. He wasn’t here to pick pockets.

  The Verolius was one of dozens of bars—or lounges, as they preferred to call themselves—the young, rich socialites of Ludon loved so much. The atmosphere was nothing like the more formal events and parties he was forced to attend in his youth—stuffy things full of pretense and posturing. He supposed, looking around at the men and women here, the difference wasn’t a lack of pretense—Josen saw plenty of pretentious peacocks swaggering around the various, dimly lit rooms as he passed them—but the pretense was different here. Everyone at home had been aware of the false faces and political doublespeak. They also pretended not to notice, like a mask worn to hide a deformity—plainly visible and politely ignored. Josen wasn’t sure if the formality of those social functions grew up around the frank pretenses, or if the pretenses developed in reaction to the formalities, but their mutual existence was never in question.

  Here in Ludon, pretenses were less like a mask and more like makeup applied so expertly that it was impossible to tell where paint ended and flesh began. There was something to be said for a more formal, straightforward sort of dishonesty, but Josen was fond of Ludon’s approach, which tended to involve less bowing and more laughing. Ludon was no less dangerous but it was more fun if you had the patience.

  The problem was that Josen wasn’t feeling all that patient tonight. He was itching to get something done. He had been coming to the Verolius nearly every night for two weeks now with nothing to show for it, all on the word of some secret informant Josen had never met. But he went where Saul told him to go and did as he was told. If Saul said the information was good, then it was.

  The overloud laughter and flushed faces told Josen that half of the socialites gathered at the Verolius this evening were so deep into their drink of choice, caught up in gambling games or bouts of loud boasting to their fellows, that Josen could have stolen anything but the drinks in their hands without being noticed. Josen’s fingers itched in his pockets, but he had been instructed —explicitly—to keep his hands from wandering on this job. He was gathering information, not lightening purses.

  Reluctantly, he wound through the crowd toward a table at the edge of the room with two chairs, taking a seat across from a pretty, dark-haired woman in a sleek grey dress, and all without stealing a single thing.

  “That looked almost painful,” Tori said as Josen settled himself into the soft, wide chair that would have looked more at home in a study than a bar. He smiled at her, a fellow thief and his partner on tonight’s job. He resisted the urge to shrug out of his jacket despite the smoky humidity weighing down the Verolius. That was a good way to lose things to other peoples’ itchy fingers, and Josen had a wealth of little tools and trinkets hidden in his pockets that he had no desire to lose. Not only would that be inconvenient, but the nature of some of those items could lead to uncomfortable questions.

  No one else had anything interesting hiding in their jackets it seemed, because Josen saw jackets hung across the backs of chairs in every corner of the lounge. They were practically begging to be robbed.

  “What?” Josen asked. “You mean you didn’t even notice when I picked this off the gentleman over there?” Josen asked, pulling a battered old watch from one of his pockets and made a show of checking the time.

  “Stupid boy,” Tori said, but she smirked. She snatched the watch from him with a quick motion and looked it over, taking in the elaborately etched front with the initials G. M. worked into the design. “This is the same old piece of junk you’ve been carrying around for ages,” she said, tossing it back at him.

  “Ah, so it is. My mistake.” Josen tucked it away in one of his many jacket pockets with a wink and a grin, and Tori smiled back, her brown eyes glinting. “I was good. Promise,” he said.

  “You aren’t supposed to sit here,” said Tori. She smiled her you’re-a-moron smile and opened her mouth to say something more but was interrupted.

  “Drink for you?” a waiter asked, approaching Josen before Tori could say whatever it was she was about to say.

  “Pomay Red, Belaria Valley,” Josen said.

  “We have the Belaria 23 and 29, if you wish, or in all the more recent vintages, of course.”

  “The 44 is fine,” Josen said. He held his thumb and forefinger about three inches apart. “Wine,” he said, then shortened the gap to half the size. “Water.” No need to impair himself any more than absolutely necessary, for the sake of appearances.

  “Sir,” he said with a nod, and disappeared into the vibrating mass of people to fetch Josen’s drink.

  Tori scowled at him. “Who orders drinks like that?”

  “Everyone here,” Josen said with a shrug. “What did you order?”

  “I don’t know.” Tori held her glass up, inspecting it. Ice spun lazily through the pale pink liquid inside. “Good though. I just pointed to one of the other guests and said, ‘I’ll have one of those.’”

  “Subtle as a summer breeze.”

  “Shut it. Also, you’re late. And you were supposed to sit behind me,” Tori said, nodding back at an empty table. Her eyes drifted past him and took in the room with a quick glance. “Just like every other time.”

  “Now Tori,” Josen said with a grin, “it would look odd for us to have sat so close so many nights in a row without saying hello.”

  Tori’s gaze returned, and she glared at him in silence, caught between conflicting emotions.

  “Besides,” Josen said, “it’s been two weeks, and I’m tired of sitting by myself. So, hello. How’s our favorite lounge doing tonight?”

  Tori looked for a moment like she might argue. Instead, she sighed and relaxed back in her chair. “Oh, you know,” she said. “Normal, more or less.”

  “Drunk and loud and—”

  “Full of unsuspicious people,” Tori finished for him.

  “Any sign of Aboran?” Josen asked.

  Tori pursed her lips an
d shook her head fractionally. Josen understood her frustration—he wasn’t used to this kind of job either—but Saul had tied their hands. Don’t draw attention, minimal mingling, and no interfering with business as usual at the Verolius. They were to observe and report, with no extra funny business mixed in.

  Josen understood, at least in theory. Like most of the successful criminal leaders in Ludon, Aboran was a name and a mystery. The best and most important figures of the criminal underground were always that way. The best disguise was, as Saul said, anonymity.

  But Aboran was new—the name had just started to surface in the last few months—and he was interfering with business. Still, Saul needed to be careful even when planning to move against an unknown like Aboran. He needed information, not a spooked rival gone to ground.

  But Josen was a thief, not a spy. He would do his best of course, but Saul would make do with what he got.

  Josen sat back and took a sip of his wine, wishing he had ordered something chilled. The room was too hot by far for Josen’s comfort. Still, he sat in silence, looking around the room, analyzing each person as best as he could without staring. One small group—three men and a pair of women—caught his eye, but Josen couldn’t pin down a reason, and moved on. And found nothing.

  Of course, he didn’t really know what he was looking for, so it was hard to say for sure. Well, even if they didn’t manage to spy anything interesting, the night hadn’t been a complete waste of time.

  “I found another one on my way here,” Josen said. Tori’s eyes snapped back to him, focused and alert. “A group of ten or twelve, all blasted out of their minds, in the alley behind the lounge.”

  “Starving hells,” Tori swore softly. “How bad?”

  “One of them died,” Josen said. “While I watched. While I held her bleeding hands.”

  Tori swore again. “That’s a problem.”