Tomorrow, the Killing

11

By the time I left the Association headquarters the sun had clouded over like it was going to rain – it wasn’t, but it looked like it, and the day was that much hotter for the hope. I threaded my way back through Low Town, south past the Earl, skirting the docks, stopping midway down a side street a few blocks from Kirentown. At my feet a homeless man with a cloth wrapped around the top half of his face begged alms in monotone.

‘Hello, Eloway.’ I dropped a coin into his tin cup.

‘Hello, Warden,’ he said, his spidery rambling replaced by a healthy tenor. ‘Anyone around?’

A couple of corner boys lounged at the intersection. ‘Nobody that matters.’

Eloway breathed a sigh of relief and pulled the stained cloth above his brow, revealing a pair of eyes that showed no immediate evidence of dysfunction. ‘By the Lost One, it gets hot in there.’

‘I don’t understand why you still bother with this get up.’

‘Force of habit, I suppose. Besides, you’d be amazed how much I hear sitting against alley walls – people tend to think the blindfold means I’m deaf as well.’

Eloway the Blind was not a beggar. He dressed like a beggar, looked like one even, a too-thin forty with bad skin and worse teeth. And he begged, a mewling patter that brought in more coin than a day of honest labor at the mills. But he was not a beggar, and in fact any reasonable audit of his finances would have placed him at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Eloway the Blind was the executive of the most efficient system of spies, plants and spotters operating anywhere within the city proper. The shiftless youth outside your window sent word to him on what you ate for breakfast, and the ten-penny whore you slummed with last night reported every nasty itch you asked her to scratch. His army was the dispossessed, the unwanted and unnoticed. Probably Black House could best him in the suburbs, though more than one underpaid serving boy cribbed their meager earnings selling scraps from their master’s table. And of course his tendrils didn’t reach outside of the capital into the countryside, or to foreign shores. But south of the Old City he knew everything there was to know, and if you needed to find a man or take a peek at his journal, Eloway was whom you spoke to.

Assuming you had the coin – though he asked for it, Eloway didn’t run a charity.

‘You got my cigarette?’ he asked.

‘Are you seriously trying to shake me down?’

Eloway tapped at his rags. ‘Pockets kill the effect.’

‘Śakra’s cock, you think maybe you take this charade a little far?’ But I rolled one up for him anyway.

He took it with a smile. ‘What did Joachim Pretories want?’

Everything worth knowing, like I said. ‘Trying to run me, Eloway?’

‘What do you cost?’

‘More than you could afford,’ I said, though it wasn’t true. ‘I’m looking for a woman.’

‘A clean one should run you a couple of argents, but this part of town you could get serviced for half that, if you ain’t particular.’

‘Name’s Rhaine Montgomery, though she won’t be using it. Early twenties, red hair, blue eyes. Top crust and trying to hide it. She overpaid for lodgings, and she’s probably been took by half the clip men on whatever street she’s holed up in.’

‘Montgomery? As in Edwin Montgomery’s daughter?’

Facility with names was a requirement of Eloway’s position. ‘Yeah.’

He ashed my cigarette on the ground next to him. ‘I’m a patriot, Warden,’ he said, impressively dignified given that his costume included a smattering of fresh dog shit. ‘And not interested in causing the general any harm.’

‘He’s the one asked me to find her,’ I said. ‘Does that mean I get a discount?’

‘I’m not that much of a patriot. When do you need it by?’

‘What time is it?’

‘Round two.’

‘I’d like it before one-thirty.’

He chuckled and quoted a price. I quoted a lesser one. We reached an agreement, and I counted it out and handed it to him. One of the boys slipped over and took it, then ran off. ‘Send word to the Earl?’ he asked.

I nodded and he pulled his rag back over his eyes. As I left the cover of the alleyway a passing merchant looked Eloway over sadly and slipped an argent into his cup. Eloway’s patter turned grateful, though I suspected beneath the blindfold he was winking.