Tomorrow, the Killing (36 page)

You could ask for a long life spent in comfort, a wife to hold your hand as you passed, children to walk on ahead. But Roland wouldn’t get any of these things, and there was no point rubbing his nose in it.

One of the agents I’d posted outside slipped in, shutting the door behind him and approaching us quietly. I knew him a little, better than the other two thugs the Old Man had given me, both of whom I was sure had orders to do to me what we were about to do to Roland, if I had any signs of getting second thoughts.

I poured Roland another shot. When he reached out to take it I gave the man behind him a nod.

It was very quick – that was the least I could do. The Agent brought a blade across his throat, one quick movement. Blood sprayed onto the table, though I was far enough away to avoid the spill. Roland’s eyes seemed locked on mine. After a few seconds the light went out of them.

‘Wrap up the body,’ I said, getting up from the table. ‘Dump it where I showed you. And for the love of the Firstborn, don’t let anyone see you.’

The investigation would be brief and perfunctory. Roland’s corpse was found outside a whorehouse in a part of Low Town that even I avoided, a part where a man could die easily and for no particular reason. The sordid quality of his demise did little to blemish his reputation. The Association had a mass funeral, beat their breasts and rent their clothes, called for investigations into Roland’s murder, demanded a raise in the pension fund. What they didn’t call for was open violence. Joachim Pretories kept up his end.

And the Old Man kept his. In exchange for my act of betrayal, I was made a member of Special Operations, fast-tracked into the halls of power. In a year I was the Old Man’s second-in-command, practically speaking one of the five or ten most powerful people in the Empire. In three I was back in Low Town, dealing breath to meet my ends.

You grow up reading stories, and you start to think your life is one. Every punchline has a set-up; every action a motive. But that’s horseshit – we’re all just stumbling about blind. You do something and decide why you did it afterward. Roland was mad – beautiful, and noble, but mad as well, mad as only a man with a dream can be. I was no dreamer. Roland’s life had taught him that anything is possible. Mine had taught me that you hold on to what you have with both hands.

At least that’s what I tell myself, when I think about it late at night and early in the morning. I never quite manage to believe it, though.

E
dwin Montgomery’s door was unlocked. Not a good sign – it meant they knew I was coming, and weren’t concerned.

Back at the Earl I’d armed up, huffed pixie’s breath until I couldn’t feel my teeth, and headed out. The city was straight bedlam – I hadn’t seen anything like it for thirty years, since the worst days of the plague. The effects of what would come to be known as the Veterans’ Riot were felt far beyond where the fighting had taken place. Anyone lucky enough to have a barred door was huddled behind it. Gray storm clouds, swollen by the smoke, hovered just out of reach, pissing down on me with every step.

Whatever was coming, I wasn’t in any shape to see it through. The breath carried me along like a scrap of trash in the wind, but that wouldn’t last. When it was gone I wouldn’t have enough left in me to stand. But delay was a non-starter. Twelve years this had dragged on – it would end today, one way or the other.

Botha was in the drawing room. He’d stripped down to his undershirt and was shouldering the grand piano into the corner. He’d done the same with the rest of the furniture, the tea table set against the wall, a Kiren rug rolled on top of it. He saw me but didn’t stop what he was doing until the room was clear of obstructions. Then he picked up a wrapped parcel from amidst the clutter, held it against his shoulder and waited for me to begin.

I obliged him. ‘Expecting company?’

‘The last three days – I figured we’d see you after I did for Gilchrist.’

‘What was he going to tell me?’

‘I assume he was going to tell you that I stopped by the night before Rhaine died, got him to put us in touch. Don’t think too badly of him – he didn’t know what I intended.’

‘I guess he paid for it, either way.’

‘He did indeed.’

‘Did you miss with that bolt?’ I asked. ‘Or did you just prefer your backup silent?’

He shrugged, head bobbling on broad shoulders. ‘I guess I wasn’t so careful as I could have been.’

‘Who was he?’

‘Pretories’ man. I went to see the commander about Rhaine, make sure he understood what needed to be done. Commander insisted on detailing one of his thugs to follow along after me.’

‘The commander’s dead, you know.’

‘Pretories never meant nothing to me – I only follow one commander,’ he said proudly. ‘Only ever did.’

‘You willing to die for him?’

‘Willing to kill.’

‘You certain that’s how this ends?’

‘It’s how it always has.’

‘For me too.’

He smiled and pulled his weapon out from the bundle, an heirloom flamberge, two-handed with a wavy blade, treated metal glittering.

‘You did her yourself, didn’t you Botha?’ I asked, watching him wrap his hands around the pommel.

‘Pretories said he’d send a man, but I waved him off – the mistress was a stupid whore,’ the Vaalan said blankly. ‘She got what was coming.’

‘Like her brother?’

‘Roland was worse.’ Botha spat a wad of gunk on the floor. It was distinctly unbutler-like behavior, but I supposed we were past that. ‘Never appreciated what he had, spent his whole life trying to screw the man who gave it to him.’

‘I was worried you might end up being one of those people I have to murder because they’re standing in the way – and I sometimes feel bad about that afterward. It’s kind of you to make this personal.’

‘My weapon is half a millennium old,’ Botha said, holding it so the light scintillated off the edge. ‘It’s been bathed in the blood of far better men than you.’

‘It’ll fetch four ochre at a Pritt Street pawnshop,’ I said, pulling my trench blade from my belt. ‘And I’ll spend the money on drugs.’

Botha wasn’t big on chatter, nor one to cower at a cruel word. He widened his stance slightly, then motioned me to come forward.

I let the throwing knife ease out of the cuff of my shirt and into my palm, then brought my hand up casually – but either he saw what I was going for or he was stone-cold, because the square bulk of his body shifted downward, and the throw went high.

Not for the first time I wished I was as tough as I talked.

But it was too late for second-guessing, and I double-timed an advance, his reach being an advantage I knew I could only compensate for with speed. He knew the same thing and back-pedaled, meeting my advance with a swing of his weapon that I barely dodged.

Botha was stronger than me, and his earlier endeavors had given him a wide field to play with. The mismatch between our weapons meant that I couldn’t risk a straight parry, had to duck and flit out of his reach. But the downside to swinging a weapon four feet in length is that you have to keep swinging it, and that takes a lot out of a fellow, a lot out and quick. On the other hand he had not spent the last two days getting the shit kicked out of him, and thus had more by way of reserves.

All the same it wasn’t long before the both of us were feeling our exertions, the steady tango slowing to an uneven rhythm, punctuated by moments of pause. ‘Getting tired?’ I asked. ‘Feeling out of breath? Ain’t as easy as strangling a girl to death, is it?’

He sneered and made a fancy little play, feigning retreat then swiveling forward. I about half fell for it, not so far as to make myself cadaverous, but enough to get a chunk of flesh nicked out of my stomach.

I made like it didn’t hurt, made like I didn’t notice it, that part of my body which was no longer there. ‘Was it the money, Botha? Did you think with his children dead, the general would make you his heir?’

‘Never gave a shit about money,’ Botha said, his chest heaving, the tip of his sword following me as I circled around him.

I pulled my second knife from my belt. ‘Course not, you just wanted the pat on the head. What’s the matter, Daddy didn’t love you enough? You figured the general was a good substitute?’

I managed to survive this next exchange without losing any more flesh, but it was close. Botha held his flamberge down by his side, ready for the killing stroke.

‘Don’t matter how many of his kids you murder,’ I said, hoping to push him into it. ‘You won’t ever be his kin.’

He screamed in rage and brought his weapon up to halve me. I took a knee, felt the force of his swing sweep over the top of my skull, brought the knife in my left hand down into the bridge of his foot. He screamed again, in pain this time, and I rolled out of his reach.

It was over, though he was slow to realize it. I played it careful, circling him slowly, watching the hole I’d made flood crimson onto the floorboards. After a moment his eyes started to get that dull look that arrives when the head isn’t getting its requisite amount of ichor. I feinted forward and he went in with everything he had – but his movements were sluggish, and it was easy to dodge. He lacked the strength to halt the force of his stroke, and I countered with my own, taking his arm off at the elbow. The stump doused me with blood. His severed fist stayed clenched on the hilt of his weapon, along with its still functioning twin. Botha watched me like he couldn’t quite believe what was happening, open-mouthed, life draining out of his injured limb.

Ain’t right to play with a dying man, don’t matter who he is. Botha’s end wasn’t long in coming, nor any more painful than it had to be.

I pulled my trench blade out of his skull, cleaned it against the Kiren rug and looped it into my belt. Then I fell backward onto the grand piano, its cacophony echoing around me. The injury Botha had done me was ugly but not fatal. Added to everything else I’d suffered, however, I found I was having a hard time with it. I propped one fist firm against the wound and forced myself into the next room.

The general looked close enough to the end to make this whole errand seem awfully superfluous. He had remained at his desk despite the fighting, and he wouldn’t quite look at me.

I gave him a sharp salute with the hand that wasn’t holding in my intestines. It was a bit melodramatic, but I blame it on the blood loss.

He shriveled into his seat.

‘Forgive me for coming unannounced, General, and in such inappropriate attire.’

It took him a long time to answer. ‘I suppose Botha is lying dead in the parlor?’

‘I wouldn’t expect to have your bed turned down.’

‘You’re here to kill me as well?’

‘Something like that.’

‘That suit you, murdering an old man?’

My legs were starting to buckle. I set my hand on the desk to steady myself. ‘After the last few days? A few more drops of blood won’t make any kind of difference.’

He met my eyes finally, and under different circumstances I might have admired his coolness. ‘Best get to it, then.’

‘We’ve got time,’ I said, though it wasn’t true. My wound needed looking at, and the general – well, the general didn’t have long to go either. ‘When you first sent for me, did you know about my part in Roland’s end?’

‘You did what you had to,’ he turned his withered head back down to the desk. ‘My son was mad – the war drove him mad. He’d have set the whole country to flame.’

‘That slips us both off the hook pretty easy, doesn’t it? Was I ever supposed to bring Rhaine home? Or did you just need a patsy to flush her out of hiding?’

‘I had hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. I had hoped she’d listen to reason.’

‘I don’t think you did. I think you hoped I’d take care of Rhaine for you – that I’d get worried she might find out the truth, arrange an accident on her behalf. When I didn’t, you had Botha call on Pretories, make sure the commander saw things the same way you did.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t planned it out that way, it just happened.’ I wasn’t sure if I believed him – it was hard to tell, old and weak as he was, hard to read anything on a face so close to a corpse. ‘Joachim would have killed her anyway, after he found out she was sniffing around. Once she left for Low Town, there was nothing I could do.’

‘You could have come clean. Told her what happened. She’d have hated you, but she’d still be alive.’

He gave a slow smile, if you could call something so bitter a smile. ‘You could have done the same.’

The rain tapped on the windows – a pleasant, even pattern, and my pulse slowed to meet it. My legs suggested I stop standing on them, curl right up on the carpet like a collie. A short nap, or a long one, or the last one. ‘Tell me about Roland.’

‘I would have been a very good High Chancellor,’ Montgomery answered after a moment, though not to me particularly. ‘I could have helped our boys. Could have seen to it that they got what they deserved. I could have done great things.’

Strangely, I didn’t doubt any of that. ‘If only your son had fallen in line.’

‘It was all a game to him,’ Montgomery hissed, still furious at Roland’s misbehavior after twelve years and a definitive revenge. ‘He just did it to spite me.’

‘And one day the Old Man came to you, and he whispered things in your ear – reasonable things, quiet things, things you wanted to hear.’

‘He said there was still a chance to right the situation – for me to become Chancellor, for the Empire to avoid the horror my son seemed destined to inflict upon it. He asked me to contact Joachim, to see if we could squeeze Roland out before things went too far. He said it still might be possible to save Roland from his own folly.’

‘Did you believe him?’

‘I don’t know,’ Montgomery said, and seemed to mean it.

‘I’m not one to be surprised at the things men do. And I guess I can understand Roland – at least, I’m not in a position to judge. But I’d figure where you are now, the next generation would be all that mattered.’

‘Get on with it.’

‘Was she worth so little, that you’d strangle the root for a few months of peace?’

It’s easy to make a man a villain in your head, a creature undiluted by decency, as alien to you as night is to day. I’d done that on the way over, been doing it since the Old Man had tipped me to the general’s play. It was harder to hate him now – an almost corpse, preceded into the next world by everyone he’d ever loved. And I knew something of the way choices can start to carry their own weight, carry you further than you’d thought, further than you ever wanted to go.