Tomorrow, the Killing

14

The Queen’s Palace was not the second, nor fit for the first. A flophouse a few blocks from the docks, ugly even by the standards of an ugly trade. Its clientele consisted mostly of streetwalkers renting love nests by the hour, and addicts one short rung above abject destitution.

I knew it all right. Better than I’d like to admit, well enough that I didn’t need to waste any time dancing with the clerk at the front desk. I plopped down an argent and tapped two fingers beside it, and my silver was replaced with the register. There wasn’t a real name to be found, but one from three days prior was so obviously made up that I felt certain I had my quarry. I took note of the room number and nodded to the receptionist. He placed the faded tome back beneath the counter and went back to not seeing anything. I slipped upstairs.

The lock on her door was nothing of the sort, a bit of tin I could have opened with my fingernail, though for appearance’s sake I slipped a thin spurt of metal out from my satchel and spent a few seconds teasing it open.

The door swung open on a small room, a largish closet really, barely big enough for a small bureau and a lumpy bed. She was sitting on this last, staring out at the alley below, but she turned when the hinges squeaked, pulling a small dagger from beneath the pillow. The hilt was burnished silver with a fire opal in the pommel, and she held it towards me, less a weapon than a talisman to ward away evil.

I closed the door after me. ‘Whatever you’re paying, it’s too much.’

‘What are you doing in my room?’ she hissed, torn between fury and relief that I wasn’t someone worse.

‘This is your room? I thought for sure it was the High Chancellor’s office.’

‘Stay away from me,’ she said, waving her blade about in an unbecoming moment of melodrama. ‘I’ll cut you if you come any closer.’

‘I wouldn’t. You’ll need to pawn that thing in a day or two, and bloodstains will bring down the value.’

Her shoulders dropped six inches, and she set the knife back on her bed. ‘What do you want?’

I took a seat on the edge of it. ‘A hundred thousand ochres and a country estate – but at the moment I’ll settle for you back up in Kor’s Heights where you belong.’

‘What made you think my answer would be any different than it was last night?’

‘I’d hoped another day of futility might slake your thirst.’

She brought her spine into perfect vertical alignment. ‘Then you didn’t understand who you’re dealing with.’

‘Better than you’d think, maybe. I’ve had some experience with the Montgomery stubbornness.’ A black stump of a candle flickered from the windowsill. It would be out soon, and the houseboy would gouge her for the replacement. ‘How are you so sure your brother’s death wasn’t what it looked like? You say Roland was a hero, fine. A hero ain’t a saint. So he sought the occasional release of a woman, and didn’t mind paying for it. There’s not so much sin in that.’

Her face turned the color of her hair, but she managed to keep her voice even. ‘My brother wasn’t some . . . whoremonger.’

‘You’d know that, at ten? Roland the sort of man to divulge bedroom peccadilloes to his little sister?’

‘I knew my brother.’

‘You didn’t, not really – and anyway, you’ve spent the last twelve years turning him into a saint. You’ve dismissed the most likely possibility because you don’t want it to be true, and you run around stirring up trouble because it’s more exciting than going home and living your life.’ The bed was the length of a coffin, and our faces nearly touched.

‘So that’s it then? Turn tail and head back to Daddy? Marry some callow noble, take up crochet and pump out children?’

‘You won’t find having your throat slit any more fulfilling.’

‘I’m getting closer.’

‘To an unmarked grave, maybe.’

She shook her head firmly. ‘I paid a visit to the Veterans’ Association this afternoon.’

‘I’m sure they were pleased to see you.’

‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? You’d think that Joachim Pretories would pay every courtesy to the sister of his dead commander, especially with Roland’s picture papering the walls.’

‘Thinking gets me into trouble. I avoid it whenever possible.’

‘He told me I didn’t have any business being there. He told me to go back home, and he told me it in a fashion I found rather aggressive.’

‘Joachim Pretories is a bad man to antagonize.’

‘Then you do think he was involved.’

‘I don’t think anything, I just told you that. But were I to break with habit, I’d tell you that whatever sins may or may not darken the man’s conscience, he can’t very well sit quiet while you knock about the city, all but accusing him of complicity in your brother’s murder.’

‘He’s hiding something; I saw that in his eyes. If I work on him hard enough, it’ll shake loose.’

‘Joachim Pretories has been playing the game since before you started to bleed – ten years threading the narrows, and you think he’ll break at a sharp word from you? Go home, Rhaine. You’ve had your adventure, gotten an eyeful of the slums you can chat up with your intimates. There’s a surplus of warm bodies growing cold in Low Town – we don’t need Kor’s Heights to start exporting them.’

She bared her teeth in a fashion that made me think of a wolf, or at least an unfriendly dog. ‘That’s all you think of me? That my leaving home was . . . a whim?’

‘I sure as hell hope so – if you planned things out this way, you’re more a fool than I’d supposed.’

I was sure that would spark her, but it seemed to do the opposite. She looked down at her lap, then gave a little smile, the first I think I’d seen of it. She reminded me very much of Roland at that moment. ‘Things haven’t gone . . . as I’d anticipated.’ Our legs brushed against each other. ‘I suppose you must not think much of me.’

‘I don’t know what to think of you. You’re a lot of things all at once. I’d like you to have time to figure out which of those to commit to.’

‘What I am is someone who needs justice for her brother. I can see that leaving Father like I did seems the product of impulse. But my coming here was not. I’ve thought about it every day since Roland . . .’

‘Yes.’

She didn’t say anything for a while, which seemed very rare for her. In the quiet I caught a view of the little root of misery that had blossomed into perpetual belligerence. ‘Roland’s death emptied out Father completely. Even as a child I could see the change. He was a great man, once. But after we got the news . . .’ she shrugged. ‘He turned to his histories, and his garden, and he withered away quietly. I began to shout just to be heard. It was . . . difficult.’ She turned hard, as if to pay me back for her unguarded moment. ‘You couldn’t understand.’

‘I had a sister, once. A mother, father – the whole set.’ It was hard not to hate them a little, these thin-skins from Kor’s Heights, for whom a single death was an unimaginable tragedy. ‘Bad things happen to us, Rhaine. The reasons don’t matter. You carry it as best you can.’

‘There wasn’t a reason behind Roland’s murder?’

‘Knowing it won’t make a difference.’

‘When I know the reason, I’ll know who’s to be held responsible.’

‘And?’

‘And I’ll bring him to justice.’

‘Where?’

‘What?’

‘To what court will you bring them?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Say that everything you think is true. Say that Roland’s murder was the result of some elaborate conspiracy. Let’s even go so far as to pretend that your amateur sleuthing is enough to sniff out the culprit, to find a trail twelve years fallow. Do you suppose the men who killed him are going to let you shout it from the rooftops?’ I shook my head. ‘They’ll stretch you out right along with your brother.’

‘The authorities . . .’

‘Roland was all but an enemy of the state – you think Black House will be in any hurry to chase after his murderer?’

‘My father is a powerful man. He’s got plenty of friends in high places.’

‘Your father sent me to hurry you on home – if you’re relying on him for backing, your thinking is crooked as an alleyway.’

It was easier to get angry than to admit to folly. So she got angry. ‘No one seems much interested in finding justice for my brother.’

‘Meaning?’

‘It means that rather than foil me at every turn, perhaps you should offer some help. Roland was your friend, after all.’

‘I keep hearing that.’

‘You were at his birthday party,’ she said, almost an accusation.

A pause. ‘I didn’t think you remembered.’

‘I remember everything about that night,’ she said. ‘It was the last time I saw him alive. He moved out of the house the next morning.’

I guess that argument with his father had been worse than I’d realized. ‘Roland didn’t have friends,’ I said. ‘He had followers. And if I was the latter, I’d sap you unconscious and drag you back home.’

‘You’ll need to, if you want to get me out of Low Town. I’ll learn the truth or die looking for it. There’s such a thing as justice.’ But I wasn’t sure if it was an assertion or a question.

‘Truth is what the man holding the whip says it is, and justice what the strong do to the weak. You think otherwise because you’ve lived your life in a bubble made of money – and you ought to get back there as soon as you can, before the world disabuses you of your innocence in brutal fashion.’

She looked away from me for a while. When she looked back it was clear nothing I’d said had made a difference. ‘Tell Father I’m going forward, with or without him, with or without you. My brother deserved better.’

‘Most of us do,’ I admitted. ‘And few of us get it.’

But she wasn’t listening – she’d gone back to staring out the window at the sordid landscape beneath us. I stood from the lumpy bed and moved to the exit, not exactly a trek. ‘It cost me five argents to find you,’ offering it as a parting shot. ‘It wouldn’t cost double to make sure no one ever finds you again.’

I took a last look at her as the door closed – I shouldn’t have, but I did.