Tomorrow, the Killing

8

I awoke the next morning stewed in my own sweat, and well past breakfast.

I didn’t mind. It was too hot to eat, too hot to do anything but lie in bed and be too hot. Sadly I didn’t have that luxury, so I stretched myself into yesterday’s shirt and dropped down the stairs.

Wren was hung over a table, naked from the waist up.

‘I’ve got a message I need run.’

‘Can it wait till the afternoon?’ he asked. ‘It’s hot as hell out.’

‘It’ll only get hotter,’ I said, and he pulled himself up off the wood sulkily. ‘I need you to find Yancey. Ask him what he’s got going on this evening. Tell him I’d like to pay him a visit.’

He smiled. He liked the Rhymer. Everybody liked the Rhymer. ‘Where are you going?’

‘I gotta make my tithe.’

He nodded sympathetically and went back to not moving. I watched him enviously, then slipped out the back.

The job of the city guard, contrary to popular belief, is not to stop crime. They do stop crime, albeit rarely and mostly by accident, but doing so is not their primary function. The guard’s job, like the job of every other organism, singular or collective, is to maintain its existence – to do the bare minimum required to continue doing the bare minimum.

I’m in the same general racket, which is why once a week I nip over and toss the hoax a cut of my enterprises. Not a big one, but not a small one either. Enough for them to leave me alone and let me know if anyone is planning to do otherwise. Everybody in my line does, everybody who isn’t a fool, everybody who wants to keep at it for more than a fortnight. Because while as a general rule the guard don’t seriously concern themselves with catching criminals, they’re apt to rediscover their zeal if they hear of anyone keeping too much of their own money.

Low Town headquarters is, befitting its inhabitants, derelict and unimpressive. Very little of the guard’s earnings, from the official budget or that provided by me and my ilk, seemed to be going towards its upkeep. A sentry milled aimlessly about in the shadow of its three stone stories, a pair of which could comfortably have been removed without affecting life in the borough. A stoop led to a set of double doors, one to walk into with high hopes, and one to walk out of disappointed. I skirted the main entrance and went through the back, up a short flight of steps and straight to the Captain of the Watch, nodding at the duty officer on the way in.

Galliard’s position required him to collect money and not rock the boat, and he was well suited to both. On a bad day he ate two meals between breakfast and lunch. Today was a good day, and he was polishing off a plate of smoked ham when I came in.

‘Morning, Warden. Good to see you. Take a load off.’

I dropped into the stool opposite him. ‘Captain.’

He pointed at the buffet, finger-fat jiggling. ‘Fancy a bite?’

‘It’s a little hot for salted meat.’

‘Not for me,’ he said, lowering a sinew of pink-white muscle into the bulge of his neck. ‘How you been?’

‘Standing.’ I took a pouch of ochres out from my satchel and set it on top of the table. ‘You?’

‘Sitting,’ he acknowledged. He weighed the purse expertly in his hand, then tossed it onto his desk. When I was gone he’d redistribute it accordingly, slivers of my wealth going to the men above and beneath him, food for children and jewelry for whores. ‘You hear the Giroies wiped out the James Street Boys? I didn’t figure them for the balls to make that kind of play.’

The Giroies were an old school Rouender syndicate, had their fingers in some pies out near Offbend. In recent years they’d been struggling to keep themselves stable, their forces weakened after they went a round with the Association during the Second Syndicate War. ‘Since Junior took over they’ve been thinking they’re big time. You gonna do anything to convince them otherwise?’

He shrugged, though it was more effort than he was used to. ‘Why?’

Why indeed. ‘There’s muttering that two Islanders got sent to Mercy of Prachetas with a rash that looked like the plague.’

He batted aside the suggestion with a wave of his flipper. ‘Idle gossip. I talked to a man at the desk, said it was just another case of the flux. The seafarers need to stop drinking from fouled wells, though what with the heat I can hardly blame them.’ Surprising thing about the hoax, they knew more than you’d credit them with. They just never bothered to do anything with the information. ‘Course the plague ain’t the only plague. There’s been a buzz coming from the Association these last few weeks. They’ve got a rally scheduled next week over this thing with the pensions, gonna pull out all the stops.’

‘I never understood the big deal about marching. I walk places all the time, no one gives me any credit.’

‘Word is they told a crew of Courtland Savages to stop moving vine through their neighborhood. You know the Savages got Giroie backing.’ Galliard slapped a pad of butter over a crust of brown bread, then expunged both with three quick bites. ‘You were in the army, weren’t you, Warden?’

‘They wouldn’t let me in, on account of I only got one arm.’

‘If you’re close with anyone over there, you ought to let them know they’re starting to draw attention.’

‘I don’t have any friends left in the Association.’

‘We’ve been getting feelers out from Black House.’

‘I don’t have any friends left there either,’ I said, and that was an understatement. ‘The vets been respectable a long time – they don’t have the teeth to make trouble.’

‘Maybe, maybe not. I don’t imagine they’ve forgotten which end of the knife to hold, even if they’ve kept it sheathed the last few years.’

‘Joachim Pretories ain’t Roland Montgomery.’

‘Let’s hope he knows it,’ Galliard said. From the open window I could hear two street children arguing over something. A brief scuffle decided the issue, the loser running off squealing. Galliard wiped his mouth with a napkin tucked into his collar. ‘Maybe it’s just the heat. Seems like the whole city’s gone crazy the last few weeks. We picked another hooker out of the canal this morning. Third one this month.’ He rubbed his hands against each other, crumbs falling to the floor, tits jiggling beneath his shirt. ‘Things will get worse before they get better.’

‘People say that – but in my experience things usually just get worse.’

Galliard chortled, then fell silent.

I stood to leave. ‘Well then, I’ve my duties to attend to, as I imagine you’ve yours.’

The captain lifted his corpulent buttocks from his chair and shook my hand. ‘Quite right, quite right. See you next week.’

‘Next week,’ I agreed, and found myself out.