She Who Waits (Low Town 3) (28 page)

Calum nodded. ‘Me neither.’

There had been another couple of chairs when last I’d visited, but they were gone now, broken up for kindling or for the simple joy that accompanies destruction. Except for Calum’s rocking chair, of course, which sat untouched in the corner. Even the Gitts’ renowned sense of recklessness wasn’t enough to do any damage to the throne. Calum worked himself into it with a barely audible sigh. Artair dropped down onto the ground, apparently unconcerned that he now rested in the grime tracked in from outside. He took a wavy, wide-bladed knife from his waistband and started gouging flecks out of the floorboards with an enthusiasm that seemed to indicate personal enmity.

‘You here to talk about Kitterin Mayfair?’ Calum asked.

‘I’m here to talk about what he means.’

‘He means the black robes know we ain’t gonna bend over and take it,’ Artair said.

‘Last time I warn you to be quiet,’ Calum responded promptly, though with seeming dispassion.

‘And yet he isn’t altogether wrong. Mayfair’s unfortunate fate, not to mention the wreckage you made of Uriel’s gambling house, has indeed caused something of a furor out near the Enclave.’

‘Some days,’ Calum said slowly, ‘I find you really tiring.’

‘Imagine how I feel.’

‘I don’t see what the big fucking problem is,’ Artair said, still picking away at his home. ‘The Asher are flesh and blood, they die the same as anyone.’

Calum wasn’t exactly a quick man, and he had to get up from his chair to throw the punch. So Artair could see the blow coming, even managed to let go the knife and raise his hands in a rough defensive posture. It didn’t do a copper worth of good of course. He could have had a week to prepare, built a barricade and covered it with wire, and it wouldn’t have mattered. Calum’s fist busted the right side of the boy’s face, sent him sprawling into the center of the room.

Cari and Boyd looked in opposite directions. It wasn’t the first time one Gitt had slugged another. If Calum decided to go further, break the little runt’s head into the ground with a few treads of his boots, they might speak up. Or not. It wouldn’t have been the first time one Gitt had killed another, either.

‘I warned you once – you keep your fucking mouth shut when grown folks are speaking,’ Calum said. ‘All you want to do is talk and talk and fucking talk, show everybody what a big man you is. If you wasn’t my sister’s boy I’d put you in the ground myself, dig the hole and dump dirt on you while you was still wriggling.’

Artair groaned something that could have been taken as an apology. After a moment he spat a tooth straight up into the air, like a fountain. I suppose that could have been taken as an apology also.

Though his nephew had been the subject of the lesson, I wasn’t so slow as to miss who it had really been aimed at. Calum was breathing like he’d run a marathon, his sunken passivity washed away in a tide of fury. He seemed to realize how far gone he was, blinked twice and forced himself back into his chair. Almost reflexively his hands went about cutting a hunk of chew, but his eyes were still wild, and I decided to wait for him to start.

‘I hate the taste of pork,’ he said finally, after he’d worked his way through half the plug. ‘Did you know that?’

‘I did not.’

‘Can’t abide it. Makes me sick. So why do you think I keep hogs?’

‘I look forward to finding out.’

‘Cause they eat anything you put in front of them.’

‘I’ve heard rumors to that effect.’

‘Ate Kiren, back in the third syndicate war. Ate Islander and Valaan. I imagine, it comes to it, they’ll eat Asher just as easy.’ He spat onto the floor, near enough to Artair to splatter his supine body. ‘This been Gitts territory since my daddy’s grandaddy came up from Kinterre. I’ll be damned if some trumped up black robe is gonna take it out from under me.’

Like I said before – we are what we are, no point in hiding it. Calum was bigger than his people, stronger and smarter. But blood tells, you wait long enough – and Calum was a Gitt down to the white of his bones.

‘I wasn’t operating under the impression you made your money through livestock – but there’s still time to see this end without any more violence. Uriel says this whole thing is a misunderstanding. Wants a sit down, wants to clear things up.’

‘All due respect, Warden. I think we’re past conversating.’

‘Don’t let the fact that they haven’t responded to Mayfair lull you. These are not soft men.’

‘I’m not underestimating Uriel,’ Calum said. ‘It’s cause he’s dangerous that he’s got to be taken care of now, while it’s just him and his brother and a handful of others. In a year they’ll have enough men on the rolls to swamp us outright – with what they must be making selling that fever, they could hire half the Enclave. I don’t step into this lightly – I didn’t go after Uriel because I’m hell bent on puffing out my chest, like my idiot nephew.’ He nodded towards the boy on the floor. Artair hadn’t moved in a while. Either he was sleeping or he was on his last sleep. No one else seemed concerned about it. I wasn’t particularly concerned about it either, if we were being honest. ‘I did it because if we don’t fix the Unredeemed now, they’ll swallow us outright in eighteen months.’

Calum was not wrong. Uriel was only getting stronger. It made sense to step on them now, before they swelled their ranks. But it didn’t make sense for me, so I kept on talking. ‘You think about the war much, Calum?’

‘I try not to.’

‘A wise policy. Still, there are lessons to be learned, unpleasant though they may be to remember. Were you at Anquirq?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So was I – we held a stretch of trench next to a company of Asher. Three long months, until the Dren rolled us back.’

‘I remember.’

‘I say us, but of course, I don’t include the Asher when I speak of our retreat. I was one of the last there – too stupid to get moving, I guess. You know how certain moments are clear as day, no matter how long ago they happened? You can bring them up in your eye, like you was staring at a portrait.’

‘Sure.’

‘That’s one for me, one burned into the back of my head good and permanent. Cause the Asher didn’t run, Calum. Not while the trenches around them were emptying of soldiers like worms after the rain. Just stood there, still as statues, swords unsheathed, identical rows waiting for the slaughter. When we retook that segment we found a thousand rotting Asher corpses. You know what else we found?’

I waited a while for him to answer. When he didn’t I continued ahead anyway.

‘Dren. We found a hell of a lot more Dren than we did Asher, Calum. You think on that, when you eat dinner tonight. You look around at your family, and you think about how many are going be sitting there in a month, if you go to war with Uriel and his people.’

Calum cut out a plug of tobacco big as a child’s heart and set it into one corner of his mouth, chewing over it slowly. For once Cari and Boyd had the good sense to keep quiet. Artair kept quiet too, though he had less choice in the matter. ‘Where’d we be sitting down at?’

‘My turf. I’ll handle security, make sure things stay square. There’s still time for an amicable resolution – nothing that’s gone down between the two of you can’t yet be squashed.’

He nodded slowly, acknowledging my words but not agreeing with them. ‘I got no interest in blood for blood’s sake,’ he said finally. ‘If this can be cleared up without making bodies, I’m all for that. But if it can’t …’ He spat a stream of juice out onto the floor. ‘Them hogs is always hungry.’

‘T
he Director is very concerned. He needs to know what progress you’ve been making. It’s important you get your hands on something concrete, as soon as possible.’

Brother Hume and I were huddled together in a back booth at Edgar’s, which was a shitty little diner in Offbend. The coffee was cold and the pie was stale, our waitress looked a few years shy of her centennial and someone had ashed a cigarette into the bowl of stew I’d ordered. For years I’d been trying to figure out what Edgar’s was a front for, if they were moving choke out the back or if it was a tax dodge for one of the syndicates. Eventually I’d come to realize that it was just, in fact, a shitty little diner, and the incompetence and hostility of the help not cover for anything. By that point I’d grown sort of attached to the place, and I patronized it more than it warranted, particularly when I was with people I didn’t much care for.

Not that Hume gave any signs of being unhappy with the quality of the fare. He’d consumed the greater portion of the mutton sandwich he’d ordered, though our conversation had lasted all of about five minutes. A piece of wilted lettuce rested unnoticed on the lapel of his shirt, would remain there in all likelihood until the next time he changed clothes. At least the faded greenery wasn’t staining the dark brown robes he normally wore – he’d taken my earlier admonishment to heart. It had been wise counsel, though almost everything else I’d been telling him was sheerest bullshit.

‘As soon as possible.’ I shook my head back and forth in slow bewilderment. ‘Does the Director imagine my task an easy one, Simeon? Does he think it’s just a question of strolling into Black House, knocking on the Old Man’s door and asking him to reveal state secrets?’

‘I’m … I’m sure the Director doesn’t think that.’

‘I’ve got heat on me like you wouldn’t believe. Half the city is trying to kill me, and I’m getting chewed out because I’m not moving fast enough?’

‘You’re not getting chewed out,’ Hume was quick to tell me. ‘The Director is impressed with your work. We all are,’ he added. ‘He just wants to make sure that you’re proceeding with reasonable haste.’

‘Haste and carelessness go hand in hand. This isn’t a game we’re playing.’

He nodded solemnly. He’d remembered that much from our last go round.

The one big unknown in this whole situation was what exactly the Sons thought they were getting out of me – this Coronet thing stank to high heaven, and I didn’t buy Hume as anything other than a convenient dupe. I needed to get another crack at Egmont, and to do that I needed to work Simeon into a tizzy sufficient for him to kick me further up the line. I was considering how to stir the pot further when I saw Crowley peering in through the windows which took up most of Edgar’s front wall.

My first reaction was shock, and something in the direction of distress. But that faded quickly – nothing ever goes the way you think it will. You’ve gotta be ready for unexpected eventualities, and willing to roll with them. And in fact, following on the heels of surprise, so closely they’re almost intertwined, is excitement. Opportunity is the flip side of disaster. Crowley might be just the thing I needed to convince Simeon of the seriousness of our situation.

I played off my initial instinct, let my jaw drop, my face go pale. Even Hume, no great observer of the human condition, managed to figure out that this didn’t indicate anything positive. He dropped the remains of his sandwich onto his plate, and contorted his neck in the direction that I was looking. I grabbed his lapel and jerked him back to face me.

‘Stand up, follow me out the back, and don’t say a fucking word,’ I said, with all the gravity I could muster.

‘But—’

I cut him off. ‘Not a fucking word.’

He’d swallowed the hook deep enough at this point not to argue, though he looked far from happy. I deliberately stumbled over my chair as I stood. It gave Crowley an extra second to identify me, and he took it. I watched his grin widen, heard him shout something I couldn’t make out, threats or directions to whomever he’d brought with him. Filtered through the glass he seemed more than usually monstrous, his mouth oversized and distorted, strange flickers of color mottling his face.

The alley outside was cluttered with refuse from the restaurant, half-eaten scraps and the rats that feasted on them. It was not an environment which encouraged discussion, which was all to the good as we were in quite a hurry.

‘That’s Agent Crowley,’ I said after we’d reached the main thoroughfare, answering the question Hume had been repeating non-stop since I’d pulled him out of his chair. ‘The Old Man’s bulldog, maybe the most dangerous man in the Empire. He can follow a salmon upriver, track a gray wolf across a hundred miles of snow-covered tundra.’ I’d never seen the tundra, nor a wolf, nor did I think that Crowley could actually do any of these things. But the spirit was moving through me, and Hume didn’t object to the pastoral imagery. ‘If he’s on our tail, we must really be on to something serious.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Somewhere that Agent Crowley isn’t,’ I said, stepping up the pace.

‘I’ve never run from anyone in my life,’ Hume said, indignant but still moving.

‘Then this should be very exciting for you.’

The streets were quiet – the portion of the population making their living honestly were still engaged in doing so, while the portion of the population making their living stealing off the first generally don’t shake out of their holes till nightfall. It was easy for Crowley to follow us given the lack of cover, and easy for us to make him out, him and a handful of boys moving at a brisk pace a short ways back. Every so often I’d make a quick detour, but always within sight of our pursuers. Despite what I’d told Hume, Crowley’s play had actually been surprisingly weak. He’d blown the trap early, hadn’t even been sharp enough to station anyone outside the restaurant. I figured I could lose him, even with Simeon in tow. But it was important to give Brother Hume a good scare, let him see who we were playing with, hope he’d pass it to his bosses.

After a few blocks I came up with what I figured was a pretty good means of satisfying both of these requirements, wearing away at Hume’s nerves while giving Crowley something to occupy his time, and I broke north through an alleyway, Hume close on my heels.

In the square outside of the Enclave the full body of the Asher had congregated, perhaps ten thousand strong, a sea of black robes and unsmiling faces. The men were short, stocky and vicious looking. The women were dowdy, dark-haired and dark-eyed, not pretty and not trying to look so. Scrupulous attention to hygiene is not a characteristic of the Asher – it displays an attachment to the physical which is frowned on by their god. Most things are frowned on by their god, as far as I was able to tell.