Tomorrow, the Killing

12

It was no more temperate in the Earl than it was outside. But it was darker, and that was enough to pretend. I didn’t bother to spark a lantern, finding my way to a chair in the corner and lighting a twist of vine. Between that and my general laziness, sleep came quickly enough.

I was awakened by Adeline standing over me. More accurately, I awakened with Adeline standing over me. For all I knew she’d been waiting silently for three-quarters of an hour, counting the seconds until some unrelated incident brought me up from sleep.

‘Howdy darlin’,’ I began, blinking myself alert. ‘How’s the queen?’ Adeline was wide-hipped and plain, and looking at her you wouldn’t call her a pretty woman. But later on you’d remember her that way. Finding her was one of the few true pieces of luck Adolphus had ever received, and holding on to her evidence of greater wisdom than he sometimes displayed.

Her lips hinted at a smile, as if afraid to breach etiquette. ‘Staying cool?’ In keeping with the demeanor, her voice rarely rose above a murmur.

‘Trying to.’

‘I’ll bring you some lemonade.’

‘My angel.’

Despite the heat, Adeline didn’t sweat, seemed barely even to breathe. It was difficult to square this passivity with the fact that she oversaw virtually everything that was required for the continued functioning of the Earl, as well as the needs of her husband and adopted son. ‘I heard you had a talk with Wren.’

That was surprising – the boy was sullen in childhood, and even more loquacious youths tend to lose their taste for dialogue after entering adolescence. ‘I know, he shouldn’t be associating with such an unsavory element.’

‘He said you caught him practicing the Art.’

‘Is that what he was doing?’

‘He said you told him you’ll find him a teacher.’

‘He’s a chatty one, our Wren.’

‘He won’t sit on the shelf forever.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know.’

‘So you’re taking care of it.’ Not a question, though phrased as such.

‘I am.’

She nodded.

Talking to Adeline is like searching for meaning in the bottom of a tea cup, or the quivering in a line of fresh entrails. But near on fifteen years of practice had given me a feel for the hints which indicated movement beneath the waters. ‘What else you got?’

‘Adolphus.’

‘He’s a drag. What say the two of us ditch him and make for the coast, buy a little cottage and sleep the days away?’

She didn’t laugh. ‘I don’t like his new friends.’

‘Neither do I.’

‘Then you’ll speak to him?’

‘He ain’t Wren, Adeline.’

‘He listens to you.’

‘Not on this.’

She sighed unhappily, then disappeared, coming back after a few minutes with the promised glass of lemonade. Then she busied herself preparing for the evening trade, cleaning tables, sweeping the floor, activities that required illumination and thus made further repose impossible. I busied myself in the pages of a history tome I’d picked up a week earlier.

After a while a soot-faced boy came calling my name. I waved him over and he passed me a small slip of paper.

The Queen’s Palace.

I set in into my pocket, and dug out a tarnished bit of silver. ‘This is for you,’ I said, ‘for coming out here in the heat. Make sure Eloway keeps his greedy little hands off it.’ The runner smiled and disappeared.

‘Who was that?’ Wren asked from behind me. One thing he hadn’t lost since I’d fished him out the gutter was his preternatural capacity for quiet. He’d have been fierce at second-story work, though I supposed it was my job to keep him out of that sort of line.

‘Your replacement. I need someone working for me I can rely on not to disappear all day.’

‘Adolphus had me putting up fliers,’ he said, his face red from excitement and not just the heat.

‘Putting up fliers?’

‘For the Association. For the big rally they’re having next week. To remind the Throne of the sacrifices they made for the country, and to renew the bonds of fellowship too long allowed to remain fallow.’

He’d learned these last words that morning. I disliked hearing him parrot them. ‘And where’s the man himself?’

‘They’re having a meeting at the local chapter. They want to vote Adolphus chair.’ He puffed his chest out, proud of the giant’s accomplishments. Under different circumstances I would have found it rather touching. ‘They say he was a hero, that he held the line at Aunis all by himself.’

‘Did they now?’

‘They said I couldn’t stay. They said it was for veterans only.’ This slight appeared not to have bothered him. ‘They seem all right to me.’

There was no reason to be angry at Wren for following his father’s orders. I found that I was, all the same. ‘But then you don’t know anything, so your opinion isn’t worth as much as mine.’

It was a cheap shot, but it set him down a notch. ‘I was just doing what Adolphus told me.’

‘Adolphus is a grown man, and can make his own mistakes – you’re a child who eats off my sufferance. So long as that continues, what I say gets the last ring in your ears.’ I sipped through my lemonade, wishing it was liquor. ‘You see Yancey before you decided to enlist?’

He nodded, no longer smiling. ‘Said he’s got a gig in Brennock, at the Pig and Fiddle.’

‘He say when?’

‘After eight.’

‘If Adolphus is too busy playing soldier to take care of his responsibilities, then they fall on you. Go help Adeline with dinner. And don’t ever make me wait on a message again.’

He gave me a pretty good eye-fuck on the way to the back, but he went. It seemed like today was my day to be the prick. A lot of days are like that, if we’re being honest.

I took up a spot in the yard and re-lit the joint I’d fallen asleep over. When that wasn’t enough I rolled another, and when that wasn’t enough I figured nothing would be, and settled back to watch evening cross the cityscape.