She Who Waits (Low Town 3) (27 page)

I didn’t bring my work up in casual conversation, and certainly had never discussed any of the details of our operations with Albertine. It would have been the furthest thing from my mind – when I was with her, the point of being with her, was that I didn’t think about work. I did, however, often bring files back to my home office, left them there overnight, sometimes longer. I had a small safe built into one of the floorboards, kept a coffee table on top of it. I had imagined I was being very careful.

‘Still, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my time in this business, it’s that there is no misfortune that cannot be turned into an opportunity. Your Ms Arden would be a … treasure trove of information, I’m quite sure. Will be, once we have her in our safekeeping.’

No doubt. Didn’t matter how tough a person was, no one stays quiet, not forever. A few hours, a day or two for the very strong. But the Questioners were skilled in what they did, had far more practice inflicting pain than anyone had in suffering it.

‘This is where you come in, my boy.’

It took me a while to realize that this required a response. ‘What?’

‘We have to be careful not to spook her – no doubt she’s prepared a side exit for herself, and of course, if she had to she could take shelter at the Nestrian consulate. What’s required here is a light touch – the assistance of someone close to her. Your assistance, in fact.’

I knew on some level that I ought to be listening to him very carefully, for the sake of my own immediate future. I was not listening to him, however, or at best only distantly.

‘You have made a terrible mistake, my young friend. A terrible mistake. But there is still the possibility for redemption, to in some way salvage what you have bungled. Crowley was … forceful in obtaining some of the confessions you’ve just read. I imagine we have about a half day before Ms Arden discovers her contacts have gone quiet. In that time, you will ensure she is delivered into our care. I leave it to you to determine the specifics.’

There were other ways to do it, ways that didn’t involve me. Detailing a squad of men to grab her when she walked out from work would have been easier and more certain. No sadist, as I said, but still. Transgression required punishment.

He got up to leave. ‘Take a few minutes,’ he said. ‘Calm yourself down, and figure out how you’re going to make this situation right.’ He draped his coat over his arm, and took his hat off a hook next to his chair. Then he hesitated – I remember it very distinctly because the Old Man didn’t hesitate, never balked or stuttered. He moved through life as if his path had been marked out by the Firstborn himself.

‘It’ll be fine, my boy – you’ll do it, and it’ll be done. And when it’s done you’ll understand, like I do. You’ll understand how … small a thing, are these affairs of the heart. You’ll understand what it is that really matters. What really matters.’ He opened his mouth as if to say more, but seemed to think better about it. He put his face back on, nodded and stepped out of the room.

Looking back, I think it was the only time I ever saw any evidence the Old Man and I were members of the same species.

I’d rolled another cigarette before realizing the first still smoldered between my teeth. That seemed as good a sign as any that it was time to leave. The agent at the front desk gave me a respectful greeting. It would be the last time he’d have any reason to try and curry favor with me, though of course he didn’t know that at the time.

The walk seemed to take place in between thoughts, one moment I was outside Black House and the next I was in front of my building. I owned a two-story row house in one of the nicer neighborhoods in the Old City, a few blocks from the Palace gardens. It had cost something, but then I’d had it to spend.

As promised, it had been quite thoroughly wrecked. I made my way down a hallway littered with refuse and overturned furniture, up a stairwell with a broken bannister and into my bedroom. Inside, the shelves had been torn apart, books and knick-knacks scattered across the floor. Some portion of the ruin could be justified as part of a vigorous search, but most of it I chalked up to Crowley’s attempts at revenge. Though given what else I was going through it was hard to imagine what effect he hoped to produce by breaking my armoire into kindling.

In fact, I was surprised at how little I was affected by the destruction of virtually the entirety of my possessions. I’d read the books already, and everything else was just shit to fill space in a house I was unlikely to be holding onto much longer. It turned out I could not count materialism amongst my vices. Megalomania, viciousness and blindness, however, I had in spades.

I sat down on the bed we’d slept in the night before. I could smell her in the sheets, and the throw pillows she’d insisted I purchase though they seemed to be utterly without purpose. My cigarette was doing nothing to cut her scent. I ashed onto the quilt in absent-minded bitterness.

Fragments of the last nine months ran through my mind, scraps of memory banging at the door. I was finding it very hard to breathe, though that didn’t stop me chain smoking with a determined single-mindedness, as if to fill the sudden hole I’d discovered had taken over the bottom half of my torso. It was more than humiliation at the discovery I’d been so easily deceived, that I’d been used without scruple. It was as if some fundamental underpinning of existence had been upended. Like I’d woken up to discover that fire had ceased to burn, ice to chill.

Snap out of it, you can wallow after you take care of the situation at hand. Emotion is a luxury, not to be rashly indulged. Now wasn’t the time for the past – I needed to deliver Albertine into the Old Man’s clutches in the next few hours, or say goodbye to everything I’d built, and my skin along with it.

She worked at one of the Nestrian trading houses, oversaw a fleet of merchant ships plying the channel. No, I reminded myself, in fact she did not work at one of the Nestrian trading houses, did not oversee a fleet of merchant ships plying the channel – she worked as the chief of Nestria’s intelligence service here in Rigus. Also, her name was almost certainly not Albertine. Also, she had never loved me.

This woman who was not named Albertine and who had never loved me nonetheless kept a tight cover at one of the Nestrian trading houses, and as part of that cover she’d still be at the office for another hour. Or perhaps she wouldn’t, perhaps the times I’d met her at work had been nothing but an elaborate put on. Perhaps she stopped off in the morning and filtered out at night, and in between was running an identical scam on a half dozen other men as foolish as me, bankers and parliamentarians, merchants and naval officers.

I realized I’d crushed my cigarette between my fingers. I tossed it away and rolled another.

I’d picked her up at her office before, she’d still be there unless something had happened to tip her. If it had then she was long out of the country and I was dead in the water, so it was best to assume she hadn’t. We were supposed to meet after work at a little Nestrian joint near the house. Our favorite, in fact, family-run, the owner from the same province Albertine had been born in. Said she’d been born in. They’d chatter away in their native tongue, and I’d listen to the rhythm and watch her blue eyes in the candlelight.

That didn’t matter, stop thinking like that. Best to keep our appointment, lead her out the door and into the waiting arms of the ice. She wouldn’t suspect anything – no doubt she’d begun her work with the utmost care, vigilant for any hint that her cover had been penetrated. But no one stays like that forever, after nearly a year of wrapping me around her pinkie she’d have dropped her guard. It would be easy.

The closet had been ransacked, a line of my suits thrown onto the floor. I’d given her a shelf a few months back – we’d laughed about it, like it had meant something. They’d tipped those over as well, black lace panties pushed into the carpet. The thought of Crowley’s animals running through her underthings made me want to hit someone.

If for some reason I didn’t meet Albertine for dinner, of course, she would be spooked. No matter how complacent she’d grown, still my absence would be enough to at least get her thinking. She’d stop by my house next, I’d given her a set of keys six months back, longer maybe, almost as soon as I’d met her. A peek in the window would reveal the devastation, and from there she’d be off.

So I needed to meet her for dinner.

They would be cruel to her in Black House. The questioners were cruel men. The thought of Albertine at their mercy, of Crowley laughing and watching over it all – I felt my stomach seize, swallowed the urge to spill my lunch onto the carpet.

But what was there to do? I’d get the same if I didn’t offer her up. My conduct amounted to the most extreme negligence, and in a position as important as mine failure was tantamount to treason.

And why did I care what happened to her? There wasn’t anything between us, it was a con. I’d allowed myself to buy into it but the truth was clear now. I ought to have been grateful to the Old Man. He’d be doing me a favor.

The Old Man was right. I thought about that for a while. What that meant, if the Old Man was right.

They found me about six hours later, passed out beneath the table of a Low Town dive bar. I woke up in a cell beneath Black House from a bucket of cold toilet water, and Crowley was very quick to take advantage of my sudden reversal. The next few days were … long.

But the Old Man hated me too much to kill me. After it was over, after they’d beaten me raw and shattered my Eye, they dumped me into an alley and left me to it. I’d planned on being dead by that point, and had struggled to figure out what to do upon discovering I’d been granted a reprieve. I guess I’ve been struggling ever since.

M
y second visit to the Gitts’ domain was a good deal less enjoyable than the first, and I’d taken no particular joy in that one. Sipping my morning coffee and looking out the window, it was clear we’d see rain – but I had hoped it might hold off until my return. What’s there to say? I’m city-bred. I can tell which end of Low Town I’m in by the stray graffiti on the walls, know how to get from Brennock to Estroun without using a main road and can cuss a fellow out in six separate languages, but my weather sense is for shit.

I hadn’t left sight of the walls before the clouds decided to empty themselves. The roads, far from excellent under the best of circumstances, quickly became practically impassable. After a half mile of trudging through mud the likes of which I hadn’t seen since I’d left the trenches, I gave up and flagged the next wagon that went by, slipped the driver an argent to let me ride beside him. It was something resembling robbery, but I was happy to pay it.

Not even the offer of another silver, however, was sufficient to convince him to take me to the Gitts’ doorway, such was their reputation for petty vandalism and unwarranted violence. I had to hoof it the last quarter mile, up the winding track, cursing the mire which had coated my boots and the lower third of my pants.

Calum’s pigs were loving it, however, rooting about loudly enough to drown out the falling rain. Our reaction to mud is one of the few differences between our two species – though looking at the handful of Gitts’ children sitting on the uncovered stoop, pale flesh and black grime, it was hard to grant even that distinction.

‘Is your father-uncle-cousin in?’ I asked the eldest.

He crinkled up his face in confusion. ‘What?’

‘Nevermind,’ I said, stepping through the knot of unwashed bodies.

Boyd sat on the couch inside – sat suggests more effort than he was putting forth. Draped would be more accurate. His eyes were open but they didn’t see anything, and his breathing had that even, rhythmic quality that generally accompanies sleep. A long-handled wyrm pipe sat on the table, and explained its owner’s condition. I was debating the wisdom of trying to wake him when Cari came in from one of the side quarters and saved me the trouble.

‘Boyd!’ she screamed. ‘We got company!’

This was enough to bring the man awake, though it was another twenty seconds before he managed to fix his eyes on me in a way that betrayed recognition. I’d have to wait around a hell of a lot longer if I hoped for anything resembling intelligence.

‘Hey, Warden,’ he said finally. ‘We ain’t been expecting you.’

I hoped if he had, he wouldn’t have smoked himself into a coma to celebrate my arrival. ‘Don’t trouble yourself to stand, Boyd,’ I said, though he had done nothing to worry me on that account. ‘I’m just here to have a few words with Calum.’

‘He’s around,’ Cari said warily. ‘I’m sure he’ll be in eventually. You can tell me what you need to in the meantime.’

I didn’t say anything to that, but my eyes registered disapproval. There was no reason to outright explain to Cari that she was no more running this ship than I am the back side of the moon. But nor was I going to waste my time discussing the situation twice. ‘I’ll wait.’

Cari dropped down beside Boyd. Hers was an ample posterior – I feared for the structural integrity of the sofa. It held, but barely.

Time passed. I got the impression I was not so welcome as I had been last time. Boyd at least forewent promising future sexual liaisons with members of his immediate family. For her part, Cari went at her wyrm pipe for the better part of ten minutes without offering a puff. I was insulted – really hurt.

Calum arrived finally, filtering in from a side room. Artair followed in his wake. The bulge of his esophagus had not shrunk since last we’d spoken.

‘Hello, Calum,’ I said.

‘Howdy.’ This time he didn’t offer me his hand.

‘I’m sorry to drop in uninvited like this – I figured it would be better if we spoke sooner, rather than later.’

‘You always welcome out here,’ Boyd hiccuped from his perch on the coach. ‘Y’all know that.’

Calum didn’t bother to agree. ‘It’s a long walk,’ he said.

‘Ain’t short.’

‘And in the rain at that.’

‘Is it raining?’

‘I don’t suppose this is a casual visit.’

‘I’m not a casual person,’ I said.