Tomorrow, the Killing (29 page)

The slim hold Adisu had maintained on sanity was slipping fast. ‘I couldn’t do nothing to stop it,’ he said, almost pleading. ‘I wasn’t but four or five.’

The cheroot sparked to life. Zaga jumped about a foot and a half. ‘You fade away now, little bird,’ Mazzie said. ‘This is no place for you anymore.’

The mad are capable of depths of passion unknown to the sane, and during our association I’d seen most every emotion played in extremity across Adisu’s face. Fury, joy, despair. But I’d never seen fear. Now that was all there was, emanating out like a stench, enveloping the man he’d brought with him. He turned and broke without even glancing at me, so utterly had he forgotten his revenge in the terror of the moment. Zaga was close on his heels.

That was the last I ever saw of Adisu. They found him floating off the docks a week or so later. He’d been in there long enough that determining the cause of death was no longer possible, or so I was told. I figured he’d topped himself, but it didn’t seem at all impossible to imagine it was reparations from one of his boys, or payback from a competitor. Let’s just say there were a lot of dry eyes in Rigus, the day Adisu the Damned was pulled out of the harbor.

Mazzie watched them disappear, puffing her smoke, eyes gradually returning to their customary cocoa. ‘How you holding up, Warden?’ she asked.

‘Peachy keen,’ I said, then tumbled forward into the muck.

T
he first thing I saw on waking was a thick circlet of flies hovering above my head, tumbling over each other in excitement at the upcoming feast. It was a few moments before I had the strength to brush them away. Their buzzing seemed to intensify, as if angered to discover I wasn’t yet dead. I could empathize with their disappointment.

I was lying on a bed. It was lumpy and hard, but it wasn’t a shallow grave, so I didn’t have much cause to complain. Mazzie was in the opposite corner of the shack, hovering over her stove, spooning one of the pots. If she noticed I’d revived, she didn’t make any point of congratulating me on it. For my part, I was happy for the silence to go on indefinitely.

Only death goes on forever. After a while whatever task Mazzie had set herself seemed complete. She filled a brass cup from one of the kettles, then brought it over to me.

‘First thing to be said – if it was just a question of you being made a corpse, I wouldn’t have bothered to walk outside my house.’

‘All right.’

‘I don’t want you thinking that you matter to me.’

‘Not for a moment.’

‘But you were right when you said there’s something special in that boy. And you were right when you said it’ll ruin him if he doesn’t get help. I don’t just mean with the Art. He’s got wildness in him, and if it ain’t shaped he’ll get himself knifed in an alley even if I keep him from burning out his brain. He needs someone to look out for him, and the Firstborn seems to have decided that would be you.’

‘I understand,’ I said, and I did.

She nodded and shoved the cup into my hands. ‘Drink this.’

It was mostly cheap whiskey leavened with honey. What wasn’t cheap whiskey leavened with honey was the foulest rot I’d ever tasted.

‘Don’t you puke on my sheets,’ she said.

I managed to follow her directive, but it took some doing. ‘Is this going to fix me up?’

‘There’s no kind of medicine to fix your type of broken.’

I wasn’t in any position to argue with that. All the same I finished the rest of what was in my cup.

‘The drink will speed up your healing. In an hour, you’ll look like hell but won’t feel like it. In five, you won’t look like it. Least,’ she smiled nastily, ‘not because of the bruising.’

‘I’m grateful,’ I said.

‘You don’t need to be grateful – it’s like I said, I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for the boy.’

‘I’ll make sure he sends his thanks along as well.’ I slumped back into the bed. The thing I’d drunk felt worse in my stomach than it had going down, as if the substance itself conspired to ensure its release by tearing its way out through my intestinal tract.

‘You can stay here another quarter hour,’ Mazzie said, dropping herself into the chair with a sigh. ‘Then you have to leave.’

‘You got another appointment?’

‘No.’

After a few minutes the bubbling in my gut leavened out near as quick as it had come. A dull, warm glow fell over me. ‘The stuff you were saying before,’ I said. ‘About what was coming for me.’

‘Yeah?’

‘All that true?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I guess there’s nothing I can do to head it off?’

‘All sorts of things you could do,’ she said. ‘You could go down to the docks, book the first passage to the Free Cities. You could go to the man you fixing to do wrong to, tell him what you’re going to do, see how he treats you. You could stuff your pockets with rocks and go swimming in the bay.’ She tapped the ash off her cheroot. ‘But you’re not going to do any of those things, so why ask? The future isn’t set in stone – it’s you that can’t bring himself to change.’

I spent a few more of Mazzie’s promised fifteen minutes thinking about that. Then I pushed myself to my feet. ‘I’ll take my leave of you then, Mazzie of the Stained Bone. With appreciation for the hospitality, and hopes I won’t need to avail myself of it again for a while.’

‘Suit yourself,’ she said. ‘Send the boy around early part of next week, if you’re still alive by then.’

That last was an open bet, and not one I’d have wanted to give odds on.

B
y the time I made it to Low Town I was walking on a foot of cushioned air. Whatever the other merits of Mazzie’s concoction, it was the best anodyne I’d encountered in a long life of experimentation. I couldn’t feel anything. Not pain from my injuries, not fear at what was coming, not guilt at why I’d set it into motion. I was quits with the world. I could almost forgive the sun for shining.

My good humor scuffed some when I walked into the Earl and found Adeline at one of the tables, drinking a cup of tea and half-scowling. I figured I’d need something to buttress my well-being, and took it out the ale tap before sitting down across from her.

‘I’d hoped to avoid this conversation,’ I said.

‘We live in the same building. We were bound to run into each other sooner or later.’

‘The way things are going, I thought someone might off me before we had the chance.’

‘Sorry to disappoint you.’

‘That’s all right.’ I took a long draw off the ale.

‘Where you been?’

‘I paid a visit to Wren’s new governess, wanted to make sure she was still up to the task.’

‘Is she the reason your face looks like an open sore?’

‘Actually, Mazzie’s just about the only person I’ve met today that didn’t hit me.’

‘I haven’t hit you.’

My beer was nut brown, and sweet as lost youth. ‘But you’re making ready to.’

‘I’m not wasting any more time yelling – it just makes it easier for you to feel bad about yourself.’

Not quite the hardest shot I’d taken, but on a lot of other days, it would have been. ‘Damn noble of you,’ I said, because I had to say something.

‘I don’t need to know what you’re doing.’

‘That’s good. It would take too long to explain, and I only half understand it anyway.’

‘But maybe you could let me know why you’re doing it.’

‘Different reasons.’

‘She was pretty, that girl. And she seemed like she needed help.’

‘It’s not just the girl.’

‘No?’

‘I owe something to her father.’

‘To her brother, you mean?’

‘To all three of them, I suppose.’

‘So this scheme you’ve got going, it’s going to fix the things you made wrong?’

I didn’t answer.

‘Somehow I thought not.’ She shook a grimace side to side. ‘Do you so love corpses?’

‘What do you know about corpses, Adeline? I’ve seen more dead men than you’ve seen live ones. The plague, the war, what I done after.’ She’d overstepped, and I was happy to take her to task for it. Easier to be angry than it was to be anything else. ‘Made my fair share, too. A few more won’t tip the balance.’

‘You think you’re the only person who ever done anything they wish they hadn’t? It’s vanity, that’s all it is.’

‘We have to pay for the mistakes we’ve made.’

‘You can’t let yesterday poison tomorrow.’

At some point while I’d been busy talking, someone had run through and finished off all the ale in my tankard. I went and decanted a second. It seemed only fair, though Adeline’s hectoring look followed me as I came back to the table.

‘I wish you’d just figure out whether or not you’re going to kill yourself. These half measures are exhausting.’

‘Good to see you keep chilly, despite the heat.’

‘You want to wallow, you can do it without my help.’ But she was kinder than her words, and after a silent moment she offered just that. ‘We’re responsible for what comes to us. If you want things to go different, it’s on you to make sure they do.’

There was too much wisdom there to bear looking at. I was glad I didn’t have to. ‘You’re wasting your time. We’re past the midway point of this one – it’s too late to do anything.’

She threw her hands up, finally exasperated. ‘Of course it’s too late to do anything. You only get to thinking when it’s too late to do anything. Then you drink, and lament the world’s cruelty.’

Mazzie’s elixir, proof against fist, boot and chain, proved nothing against five minutes conversation with Adeline. Which is to say my headache had returned with something of a vengeance. I finished the rest of my beer in unhappy silence.

‘It’ll be done tomorrow,’ I said. ‘One way or the other.’

‘It won’t be done until you’re dead,’ she answered sadly, and to the wall, and I couldn’t think of a response.

I put my empty tankard on top of the counter, and grabbed a bottle from beneath it. The stairs to my room were more numerous than I’d remembered, but I managed them. The clothes went into the corner, the cork came out of the rotgut, sleep came deep and dreamless.

I
n general I rely on Adolphus and our patrons as my first line of nocturnal defense. Most nights, anyone wanting to make trouble for me would have to slip past the giant and a crew of gentlemen who, if they weren’t strongly inclined to lose their lives in defense of mine, at least enjoyed a little tussle for its own sake, especially against boys from outside the neighborhood.

But the bar was closed and I was drunk, and so I didn’t make anything out until they were almost up the stairs. I rolled off the bed and grabbed the dirk I keep stuck in the floorboards beneath it.

Three solid knocks at the door that I didn’t answer, then a pause and three solid more.

‘Who is it?’

‘Hroudland. Let me in.’

Fuck fuck fuck. ‘Now’s not a good time. I’ll see you at the rally.’ I tiptoed towards the window but knew it wasn’t an option. The drop was two stories, and these were competent men – they’d have someone down there waiting to finish me if the fall didn’t.

‘Tomorrow won’t do. The commander needs to see you. Now. Open up.’

They say a trapped wolf will gnaw off his paw and escape three-legged, take bleeding to death in the woods over being a skin above a fireplace. I can’t swear to it, not being a country sort myself. One thing I can own, however, is that a man is not a wolf. Face-to-face with the end, your average soul does not struggle – doesn’t kick and scream, doesn’t throw himself at his attacker. He makes peace with She Who Waits Behind All Things, takes her hand quietly, without fuss.

I pulled on my pants. I pulled on my shirt. I pulled my socks on, and my shoes. I unbarred the door.

Hroudland hustled in, Rabbit, Roussel and three others coming after him. I’d never had so many people in my room before. It was cramped. ‘You bring enough men?’ I said, trying to keep it casual.

‘Things are afoot.’

‘What kind of things?’

‘The commander will break it down for you.’

‘All right. Give me a minute to gear up.’

Hroudland shook his head. ‘We’ll sort you out at headquarters.’

And that was that. I nodded feeble acquiescence, my tongue thick in my throat.

Out of the Earl and they surrounded me, three ahead and three behind. I wondered what I’d done to tip them, where I’d run off the track. I’m not as smart as I think I am. I hoped they’d make it quick. A look over at Roussel and his vacant smile and I figured they probably wouldn’t.

No one said anything, but then they didn’t have to. That they hadn’t done me in my bedroom suggested the commander wanted a word, likely punctuated with a scream or two. Belatedly I realized that my facial swelling was gone – whatever Mazzie had given me had worked wonders. I savored what I felt confident would be my last few minutes without pain. Outside the temperature had nodded off a few degrees, and the stars were very bright. Under different circumstances, it would have been a pleasant walk. Rabbit whistled tunelessly. Pedestrians hurried away at our approach.

A pair of guards stationed outside of the main doors stiffened up when they saw us. It was late enough in the evening that there wasn’t much traffic, but still I was surprised to be going in through the front. I wondered how I’d go out, doubled into a pauper’s grave or chopped up fine and dumped in the harbor.

The main room was empty, and quiet. A dim row of torches illuminated the path ahead. Roland stared down at me from the wall. He seemed displeased. We continued past him, toward the cells reserved for the inner members of the organization. Hroudland put his hand on the door latch, then turned and nodded, the signal for his men to fall on me. ‘Here we go.’

I held my breath.

The back room was a bustle of motion, well-lit and hectic. A line of newly sharpened trench blades had been laid out on a long wooden table, along with a selection of similarly purposed tools, curved daggers and single-headed axes. A half-dozen veterans I knew by sight but not name were arming themselves, slipping sharp things into their belts, checking the sights on their crossbows, preparing themselves for violence. My escort broke around me, and started to do the same.