She Who Waits (Low Town 3) (23 page)

He deserved to know the truth. I wouldn’t tell him the truth, of course, but he deserved to know it. ‘Albertine’s back in Rigus.’ It near choked me coming out.

He put a hand the size of my chest to a brow the size of my hand. ‘
Ś
akra’s swinging cock, how long you gonna hold a torch? She’s poison.’

‘I know.’

‘She’s wyrm.’

‘I know.’

‘You don’t truck with wyrm. It’s kind of your thing, as I remember.’ That was one thing about Adolphus – he could backhand you, but still cut it with sugar.

‘I don’t have any notions of reunion.’

‘Then what’s the point?’

That was a very good question. I really ought to have had an answer, at least one to give myself. Adolphus was kind enough not to push me on it.

‘It’s not about her,’ I said finally. ‘And it isn’t even about me. We’re heading towards a cliff, all of us, the city, the whole fucking Empire. A month, three, maybe six at the outside. But when it comes, it’s going to make the red fever look like tummy ache.’

‘You’re talking about civil war?’ He seemed faintly incredulous. Even the best of us don’t like to look at what’s in front of them. ‘Between Black House and the Steps?’

‘The Steps are a symptom of the rot – they aren’t the cause. What’s left propping up the edifice? Nationalism? That burned out in the war. Religion? Lip service aside, nobody important ever took the daevas serious, and that’s unlikely to change. Money is the glue that’s been holding us together. So long as the man on the street could afford a new coat, a new bed, a new house, he wasn’t much concerned with what had to happen for him to get them. You turn off the spigot, you see how quick he gets to counting his rights. And the well has run dry, my friend – we’ve gorged ourselves on the wealth of the colonies and reparations from the Dren for fifteen years, but that’s done with. People get angry when they can’t buy new shit, and they start looking around for things to break, and listening to anyone who gives them a decent excuse to do so.’

‘It’s not the first time that Black House crushed a revolt.’

What Adolphus had failed to mention was that he’d been a part of the last rebellion, and paid dearly for it. I, of course, saw no percentage in pointing out his oversight. ‘The Old Man isn’t infallible. Don’t no one retire from life undefeated.’

‘You think the Sons will win?’

‘I think we’ll lose.’

Adolphus settled back into his chair, the wood groaning uneasily at his bulk. He’d pushed aside his glass and moved straight to the bottle. I didn’t say anything, but it hurt my heart to see him absent-mindedly putting away whiskey that had cost me a full jar of daevas honey.

‘Where do we go?’

‘The Free Cities. The Empire doesn’t have much pull over there, and they’ll have less by the time things settle.’

‘Won’t be cheap, setting up a new life.’

‘I’ve got enough stashed away to take care of us for a while. It won’t be easy, but …’

‘Ain’t never been,’ Adolphus answered, then brought the neck of the bottle up to his lips, choking down the dregs. ‘When do we move?’

‘As soon as possible. This week, the next at the very latest.’

He shook his head. ‘That’s impossible – there’s no way in hell I can sell the bar that fast, not at any sort of a price.’

‘You won’t be selling the bar. You won’t be packing a bag, or telling a soul you’ll be going. You won’t be doing anything that would deviate from routine. Neither will Wren, or Adeline. Neither will I.’

‘I’ve got a life here,’ Adolphus protested. ‘Customers, suppliers. I can’t just disappear.’

‘Everyone that matters will be coming with us.’

Adolphus is well liked because he likes well, because he’s garrulous, and openhearted. Near twenty years behind the counter at the Earl, he’d raised a small army of well-wishers and half-friends. I’d been in the city twice as long, and could count my intimates on two hands with my thumbs down.

‘Believe me – they’ll have more to worry about than the whereabouts of their favorite publican. The way things are going, they’ll have a lot more to worry about. We wait around much longer and so will we.’

He thought this over for a while, then shrugged uncomfortable agreement. ‘We’ll need something to tide us through – pay our way out, set us up once we get there. I figured what we’d make off selling the Earl would be that. As it is, my hoard isn’t exactly what you’d call vast. I don’t fancy the idea of making it to the Free Cities and starting over as a fucking beggar.’

‘This should cover our initial expenses.’ I dropped the note I’d gotten from Egmont onto the table. Adolphus picked it up and whistled. ‘What are you doing for the Sons of
Ś
akra that’s worth five hundred ochres?’

‘Betrayal.’

‘Whose?’

‘That’s the question, isn’t it?’

W
ren slept in the back, on a bed by the fire that Adeline built for him every night and dutifully removed each morning. It was the warmest spot in the bar, and the most comfortable – a distinct cut above the small room I occupied on the second floor, which was drafty, cramped and had the tendency to leak rainwater onto my forehead. On the other hand, it afforded the boy little in the way of privacy, or protection from passersby. He’d come to adopt the sleeping habits of a wintering bear; without forcible interruption his repose often extended well into the center of the day.

Which is a very long way of explaining that I had to put a boot into his side to wake him, and even then it took a solid forty-five seconds for him to blink into consciousness.

‘What was that for?’ he said finally, shoving my toes out of his armpit.

‘I’m a mild sadist,’ I said.

‘Mild?’

I thought that was pretty cute given that he was still wiping sleep out of his eyes. ‘Get dressed. We’re going for a walk.’

‘Where to?’

‘Not to catch the early worm, I can tell you that much.’

‘What?’

‘We’re going to see Yancey,’ I said. ‘So put on some fucking pants.’

He nodded and waved me off – indeed seemed by all outward signs to be rousing himself to full attention. All the same, I spent another half hour sipping black coffee and scowling before he finally managed to make an appearance. And even then he was moving at something less than half-speed, yawning and scratching himself.

When Wren had joined our little commune, six years prior, it had taken three months to convince him to spend the night beneath our roof. For a long time after that he’d snap awake any time anyone passed by, wary of letting sleep get too firm a hold on him. I looked at the well-fed youth in front of me, trying to make out the ghost of the wild thing he’d been. There wasn’t much. A certain sharpness in the eyes, a speed of hand you rarely saw amongst the settled. But by and large he’d been pretty well domesticated.

For some reason that thought made me angry. ‘What time is it?’

‘I don’t know. Ten? Eleven?’

‘Twelve.’

‘If you knew the answer, why’d you bother to ask?’

‘A lot of things happened, during the first half of the day.’

‘Do tell.’

‘Adeline was eaten by a passing gang of cannibals. A giant eagle came for Adolphus, swooped down from the sky and carried him back to the nest. A cadre of courtesans slipped by looking to pleasure you, but they left when they found you asleep.’

‘Sounds like a busy morning.’

‘How the hell would you know? The building could have burned down around your ears, you’d have woken up in the next world, paying for your sins.’

‘Good thing I’ve led a life of such firm moral rectitude.’

I stretched my shirt down off my shoulder, revealing a patch of mottled pink skin, the scar long faded but still unpleasantly visible. ‘You see this?’

He leaned over to inspect it. ‘Yeah.’

‘One night, a long time ago, when I was a little younger than you, I found my hands on a bottle of rotgut. I guess I hadn’t had much experience with liquor by that point, because evening found me passed out beneath the Mast bridge.’

He chuckled.

‘A couple of the neighborhood fiends stumbled through, hopped up on choke, saw where I’d laid my head. Decided to have some fun.’ I pulled my shirt back up.

‘So what did you do?’

I didn’t answer for a while. ‘I suffered, Wren. I suffered.’

Now it was his turn to be silent. Not for long of course – you’d need to stuff a rag in his mouth to keep him quiet for more than half a minute. ‘I don’t imagine anyone’s going to knife me in the back room of the Staggering Earl,’ he said, as if to close the conversation.

I’ve often found the importance of a lesson can best be emphasized via some small display of physical violence. My fingertips found the pressure point in Wren’s shoulder and I pulled him in closer to me. ‘You think like that long enough, someone will come by and prove you wrong. And that’s the thing, boy – you only gotta be wrong once. You ain’t safe here. You ain’t going to be safe anywhere you ever find yourself, dig? Not till they wrap you in a shroud and set you in a box. This side of that, don’t ever get so comfortable that you let a man sneak up and touch you while you sleep.’

One thing about Wren – he’d stare back at you. Always had, even when he’d been a child weighing less than a solid bowel movement. ‘All right.’

I let my grip on him slacken, and went back to my coffee. ‘And quit sleeping till midday. You give the rest of the world a six-hour head start.’

‘All right,’ he said.

‘All right,’ I agreed. ‘Now make yourself something to eat, and let’s get to rolling.’

We left later than I would have liked, but one upside of my trade is that it doesn’t require a fixed schedule. The half-junkies that bought from me could wait a few hours. They didn’t think so, obviously. I’m usually a step removed from the real casualties, nails bitten to the quick, scratching themselves till their skin bled, but a fair few of my dealers were known on occasion to dip into their stash. Not that I was one to judge, mind you.

It wasn’t raining, but it was that sort of damp that got into your bones and your lungs, that made you cough up phlegm and chatter your teeth. Wren was overbundled in his winter coat, a thick woolen burden that would have kept him comfortable in a blizzard. I was wearing the duster I’d picked up shortly after I’d left Black House, a leather thing, black at one point, long turned the color of apathy. Its primary purpose was to offer some camouflage for the various illegal things I was carrying, and as insulation it had little to recommend it.

So I walked quickly, to try and keep myself warm. Wren, taller and lankier, kept pace without breaking sweat. ‘The other night,’ I started. ‘You were telling me that you wanted me to give you something real to do.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You still interested?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’re going to become intimately familiar with the nocturnal movements of Captain Kenneth Ascletin. Between leaving work and the sweet release of sleep, his life will be an open and well-thumbed tome.’

‘All right.’

‘It goes without saying that the good Captain will be unaware of your attentions.’

‘If it goes without saying, then why did you need to say it?’

‘Emphasis, my dear child. And because I savor the sound of my voice.’

‘That’s a lovely quality.’

The rest of the journey was made in relative silence, occasionally broken by the chattering of my teeth. I was happy enough to see Yancey’s house, and its promise of respite from the wind.

‘There was one other thing I wanted to mention to you,’ I said to the boy as we climbed the stoop.

‘Which was?’

I knocked twice, and waited to answer until I heard footsteps from inside. ‘We’re leaving Low Town at the end of the week, and we’re not ever coming back.’

The door opened in time with Wren’s mouth.

Ma Dukes was getting ready to call me what I was, but when she saw the boy she seemed to decide against it. This had been one of the reasons I’d brought him. ‘Been a long time since I seen you round here.’

‘He keeps me locked up in the basement, most days.’

She gave me a look which would have brought sleep to an injured man. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me.’

The house smelled of rot and endings. The drapes were closed, though little enough light would have entered anyway, given the weather. And it was cold, almost as cold as it had been outside. In my memories Yancey’s house had always been warm and loud, drum pulses rocking the walls, cooking smells wafting from the kitchen.

Mrs Dukes seemed to see me seeing these things, and bristled slightly. ‘I’ll make you some tea to warm you up,’ she said, aiming herself narrowly enough at Wren to make clear the offer was only to the one of us. ‘You know the way.’

In contrast to the rest of the house, Yancey’s bedchamber was hot to the point of stifling. The air was bad, saturated with the excreta of the room’s inhabitant. It seemed it was no longer possible to expose the Rhymer to a chill, even if doing so would cut the stench. A candle on the bedside table provided the sole source of illumination, flickering and feeble. All to the good. I didn’t need a better view of what was happening to my friend.

He had gotten closer to death in the last week. I suppose we all had, but with Yancey you could really make it out. He was paler, and respiration had ceased to come natural – he labored to breathe, willing each gasp of air in and out of his lungs. When he saw Wren though, he lit up a bit, even managed a weak smile. That had been the other reason I’d brought the boy.

It was months since they’d seen each other. I’d made no secret of Yancey’s illness, but it was one thing to hear about it and another thing to be confronted with its reality, with the way that the body can decay right in front of you, go from a tool that expresses your will to an anchor dragging you down to hell. To his credit, Wren didn’t grimace, made little outward show. But it ballooned up in his eyes, quick as he was to blink it away. ‘How you been handling yourself, Rhymer?’

‘Ain’t nothing to it,’ Yancey answered. ‘You here to protect him from Mom?’

‘I protect him from everything,’ Wren said, puffing out his chest dramatically. ‘If it wasn’t for me, he’d get knifed on the way to the outhouse.’