Low Town (29 page)

I came up for air twice more before the cold got to be too much, and then I swam to the west embankment and hauled myself over the side of the canal. For a few seconds I lay prostrate on the dirty cobblestones, willing myself to move, my injured body unsympathetic to my demands. The thought of what would happen if Crowley and his men found me—that is to say the looming threat of torture and death—provided sufficient energy for me to pull myself to my feet.

Another afternoon it wouldn’t have worked—they’d have seen me climbing up out of the water and run me down—but the fog was thick off the bay, walling off anyone unlucky enough to be caught in it and rendering pursuit almost impossible. Crowley had swallowed my deception—in the distance I could hear them yelling to one another, trying to figure out where they’d lost me.

I knew I’d never make it back to the Earl—I didn’t even try. I just turned down a side alley and moved as fast as I could. The wind whirled heavy about my face, and I could feel the peculiar sensation of my hair freezing to my scalp—if I didn’t get out of these wet clothes
and in front of a fire soon, the cold would do what Crowley had been unable to—less painfully perhaps, but just as permanent.

The narrow streets twisted and turned, my vision blurring in and out of focus and a terrible ache rising up from my chest. I only had a few blocks to go—I figured it was even money if I’d make it.

My jog became a half jog, then a slow walk, then a sort of awkward stumble.

Another step.

Another.

I climbed the white stone hedges with an appalling lack of dignity, banging my knees as I did so, even those low walls proving difficult to negotiate with my frozen limbs. I tripped over the last one, landing headfirst in front of the tower. I fumbled inside my shirt for Crispin’s Eye, belatedly thinking I might burst the Aerie’s defenses, but my fingers wouldn’t work, and anyway I knew I’d never be able to muster the concentration its powers required. Pulling myself to my feet I banged futilely against the door, my pleas for entry lost amid the wind.

The gargoyle remained silent, a mute witness, as I slumped to the ground.

In high summer of my nineteenth year Rigus came down with war fever. The streets were abuzz with the failure of the Hemdell Conference and the news that our continental allies, Miradin and Nestria, had mobilized to defend their borders against the Dren menace. High Chancellor Aspith had called for an initial commitment of twenty thousand men, then the largest collection of soldiers the Empire had ever assembled. Little did anyone appreciate that this first sacrifice would prove to be no more than kindling for the conflagration that would ravage the continent.

In the years since it ended, I’ve heard a lot of different reasons as to why we went to war. When I first signed up, I was told we were dying to uphold the treaties we had sworn with our comrades in arms—though what conceivable interest I had in ensuring the territorial integrity of the aging Mirad Empire and their degenerate Priest-King, or of helping the Nestrianns avenge the injuries the young Dren commonwealth had done them fifteen years prior was beyond my understanding, then or now. Not that it mattered—the powers that be jettisoned that one pretty quick once our eternal allies capitulated two years into the conflict. After that I started to hear that my presence hundreds of miles from home was needed to protect the
Throne’s interests overseas, to stop the Dren from gaining a warm-water port that would allow them to threaten the scattered jewels of our Empire. A professor I knew, a client of mine, once tried to explain that the war was the inevitable by-product of what he called the “expanding role of the oligarchic financial interests.” We were pretty cooked on breath at the time, though, and I was having trouble following him. I’ve heard a lot of explanations—hell, half of Low Town still blames the whole thing on the Islander banking houses and their preternatural influence at court.

But I remember the buildup before the war and the packed lines at the recruitment centers. I remember the chants—“The Dren, the slaves, we’ll lay them in their graves!”—you could hear bellowing out from every bar in the city any time of the day or night. I remember the lightning in the air and the lovers bidding good-bye in the streets, and I can tell you what I think. We went to war because going to war is fun, because there’s something in the human breast that trills at the thought, although perhaps not the reality, of murdering its fellows in vast numbers. Fighting a war ain’t fun—fighting a war is pretty miserable. But starting a war? Hell, starting a war is better than a night floating on Daeva’s honey.

As for me—well, spending your childhood fighting the rats for fresh trash doesn’t do much to inculcate the middle-class virtues of nationalism and xenophobia that make one leap at the thought of killing people you’ve never seen. But a stint in the army beat another day at the docks, or at least that was how I figured it. The recruiter said I’d be back in six months and gave me a sharp suit of leather armor and a kettle cap that didn’t quite fit my skull. There was little in the way of training—I didn’t so much as see a pike till we had disembarked in Nestria.

I signed up with the first wave of recruits, the Lost Children they would euphemistically call us when our casualties during those first
terrible months ran three in four and four in five. Most of the boys I went in with wouldn’t live another twelve weeks. Most of them died screaming, a crossbow bolt in the gut or a sharp spray of shrapnel.

But that was all in the future. That summer I walked around Low Town in my crisp uniform, and old men shook my hand and tried to buy me ale, and pretty girls blushed in the street when I passed.

I was never the sociable sort, and I doubted the rest of the men at the docks would weep at my absence, so I didn’t have much in the way of an elaborate farewell. But two days before I was required to take passage to the front, I went to see the only two people living that I figured might conceivably mourn my demise.

When I came in the Crane had his back to me, a fresh breeze filtering through the open window. I knew the guardian had already alerted him to my arrival, but even so I was slow to greet him. “Master,” I said.

His smile was broad but his eyes were sad. “You look like a soldier.”

“One of our side, I hope. Wouldn’t do to get knifed on the transport ship over there.”

He nodded with an unnecessary seriousness. The Crane was not generally concerned with politics, tending like many of his kind toward more esoteric interests. Despite the status conferred upon him as a Sorcerer of the First Rank, he rarely went to court and had little influence. But he was a man of great wisdom, and I think he understood what the rest of us didn’t—that what was about to come wouldn’t be over in time for Midwinter, that once unleashed this beast called war would not prove easy to again cage.

He didn’t say any of this to me, of course—I was going either way. But I could read the concern on his face. “Celia will be off to the academy in the fall. I have a feeling the Aerie will be very cold this winter, without her here. And without your visits, infrequent though they’ve lately become.”

“You’ve decided to send her?”

“The invitation was not styled as a request. The Crown aims to consolidate the nation’s practitioners into its own sphere of influence. No more puttering about in towers on windswept moors. I’m not ecstatic about it but … there’s little enough one old man can do against the future. It’s for the greater good, or so I’m told. It seems a great many things these days are to be sacrificed to that nebulous ideal.” Perhaps realizing his condemnation could apply to my situation as well, he brightened his tone. “Besides, she’s excited about it. It will be a good thing for her to spend more time with people her age—she’s been alone too long with her studies. There are times I worry …” He shook his head, as if wiping away ill thoughts. “I never planned on being a father.”

“You’ve adapted well enough.”

“It isn’t so easy, you know. I think perhaps I treated her too much as an adult. When I realized she had a talent for the Art … Sometimes I wonder if I didn’t take her as an apprentice too early. I was twelve when I went to live with Roan, twice her age and a boy besides. There are things she learned, things she was exposed to …” He shrugged. “It was the only way I knew to raise her.”

I had never heard the Crane so openly speak of his concerns—it was disturbing, and I had enough to worry about already. “She turned out fine, Master. She’s become a fine young woman.”

“Of course she is, of course.” He nodded with exaggerated vigor. A moment passed while he gnawed at his mustache. “Has she ever told you what happened before you found her? What became of her family, how she lasted on the streets?”

“I never asked. A child that young, and a girl?” I left it at that, preferring not to answer the question, nor to consider the matter too closely.

He nodded, thinking the same grim thoughts. “You’ll see her before you leave?”

“I will.”

“Be kind. You know of her feelings for you.”

It was not a question, and I didn’t answer it.

“I wish I could guarantee your safety with my Art, but I’m no battle mage—I can’t imagine my whirligig that spins unassisted would be of much use in a fight.”

“Can’t imagine.”

“Then I suppose I have nothing to offer but my blessing.” Without practice, our embrace was awkward. “Be careful,” he whispered. “For the love of Śakra, be careful.”

I left without responding, not trusting myself to speak.

I headed down the stairs to Celia’s bedroom, and stopped in front of the door. My knuckles rapped against the wood. A soft voice answered, “Enter.”

She was sitting on the corner of her bed, a gigantic, mauve monstrosity incongruously strewn with her small menagerie of stuffed animals. She had been crying but was doing her best not to show it. “You did it then? You enlisted?”

“It was a precondition to getting the uniform.”

“Do you … do you have to go?”

I nodded. “I signed a contract. It’s Nestria or the gaol.”

Her eyes flooded and I thought she would weep, but she blinked twice and pressed on. “Why?”

How to answer that question? How to compress a thousand wasted nights staring up at a slum house ceiling, crowded three to a bed, elbows jabbing at your sides, sleep endlessly disturbed by the labored snoring of the half idiot beside you? How to describe the realization that the world is quite happy to see you exhaust your strength in another man’s service, kill your spirit building a fortune you’ll never see? How to explain that the deck is stacked, and if you play straight you’ll end up broke?

“This is my chance. War changes things—it shakes up the order.
Here I’m nothing, trash washed away in the rain. Over there?” I shrugged. “They’ll have to raise enlisted men to officer—there won’t be enough who can afford to buy their way in. I’ll make lieutenant—you can double down on that. And afterward? There’s room in the world for a man who can keep an eye open for his future.”

By the time I’d finished, Celia’s eyes were puppy-dog wide, and I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. It didn’t do to feed her infatuation. “I know you will. You’ll be a general before the war is out.” She blushed and leaped up from her bed. “I’ve loved you since the moment I saw you, shining fierce in the dark.” I was very conscious of her nearness, and the thin gauze of cloth that separated her body from mine. “I’ll wait for you—I’ll wait for you as long as I need to.” Her words broke through like water over a dam, syllables tumbling out one after another. “Or, if you don’t want to wait …” She wrapped her arms around me. “You have no lady—I know you’ve been saving yourself.”

I patted her on the back awkwardly. Best to do this quickly, one sharp moment of misery. “When I was thirteen I paid a dock whore two argents to take me behind an outhouse. That I’ve never brought a woman to meet you doesn’t mean what you think.”

I could not have created a more pronounced effect if I had struck her. She took a long moment to collect herself, then threw her body against mine once again. “But I love you. I’ve always loved you—we’re the same, you and I, don’t you see?”

Her face was buried in my chest and her slender arms were wrapped tight across my ribs. I put my finger beneath her chin and raised her eyes to meet mine. “You aren’t like me. You aren’t anything like me.” Her skin was slick with tears. I combed her dark hair with my fingers. “I gave you to the Crane that night to make sure of that.”

She pushed me away and ran weeping to her bed. It was better this way. She would hurt, for a time. But she was young, and it would fade, and in the years to come the memory would be nothing more than a faint embarrassment.

As quietly and swiftly as I could, I sprinted down the steps and out into the afternoon. Then it was back to my flophouse and two days of drinking and whoring, making sure to waste every copper of the meager bonus the Crown had distributed in recognition of my future service. When I stumbled to the docks forty-eight hours later I was piss broke and had a headache like a mule kick to the temple. It was an inauspicious beginning to an unprofitable enterprise.