Tomorrow, the Killing

21

Wren was out back, hunched up in the thin line of shade provided by the wall. His spindly legs straddled an empty beer crate, and he was flipping a knife into the ground.

I reached down and picked it up. Double-edged, four solid inches – standard issue during the war, though I’d long lost track of mine. Another gift from Adolphus, or his Association chums. ‘Say thank you.’

My back was against the sun, and he squinted up at me. ‘For what?’

‘For providing you with a roof, and food while you sit beneath it.’

‘Thanks,’ he said, but I didn’t think he really meant it.

‘Thank me again.’

‘I think once was enough.’

‘I got you a tutor.’

Wren was not prone to strong displays of emotion. Frankly, it was one of the things I liked about him. But still I was expecting something more than nothing, which was pretty much what I got. ‘Yeah?’

‘She’s an Islander, supposed to know her craft. Name of Mazzie.’

‘Mazzie of the Stained Bone?’ he asked, suddenly wary.

‘You’ve got your first meeting with her in four days.’

‘The veterans are having a big rally, getting ready for their march. I told Adolphus I’d come along and help out.’

‘When I first picked you up, you couldn’t pass an apple cart without knocking it over – now you’re happy playing regimental mascot.’

‘He’s going to give a speech.’

I hadn’t expected that. ‘A speech?’

Wren nodded.

‘I’ve heard that man stutter through his name. What’s it on?’

‘The war.’

‘It’s over. We won. Sorry to spoil it.’ The glare reflected off everything, off the windows and the ground and the clouds. I envied Wren his cover. ‘You been bugging me about this for years – don’t tell me your feet have gone cold all of a sudden.’

He ran his hand through an ungainly mess of hair. ‘I’ve . . . heard things about Mazzie.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Those things weren’t nice.’ It was as close as the boy would get to admitting he was nervous.

‘You like it here?’

‘Well enough.’

‘You think you’d prefer a spot in the Academy, locked up for the next ten years, brainwashed till you walk in lockstep?’

‘No.’

‘Then we’ve got a limited slate of options. Whatever else Mazzie is, she’s not working for the Crown, and that’s the most important thing. Listen to what she has to say, follow her directions, and don’t offer no lip – but keep your ears open and your eyes up. She does anything that seems off, don’t be slow telling me.’

‘And?’

I tossed the knife into the dust. ‘And I’ll handle it.’

I guess that was enough for him, ’cause he nodded and went back to his game. Like I said, Wren wasn’t big on histrionics.

My room was hot as an oven, stagnant even with the windows open. I’d have given ten ochres for a fresh breeze, had there been someone to accept the offer. I stripped off my shirt and tried to catch a few hours of sleep, but between the day and the breath I wasn’t having much luck. I pinched a spread of dreamvine across a layer of tobacco and puffed it into the sour air. When it was out I rolled another. It wasn’t quite slumber I fell into, more a state of pleasant catatonia, but I was happy enough to have found it just the same. Time slumped against itself. It was late afternoon when a rumbling from the floor below brought me up from my stupor. After a few wasted minutes trying to recover it I put my shirt back on and descended to the kitchen.

Adolphus was down to his skivvies, restocking supplies we didn’t need, a happy pretext by which to cause a great deal of commotion.

‘You can stop. I’m here.’

He turned a scowl on me. Above it his one eye leered angrily. Normally he bowed to etiquette with a stretch of cloth over his empty socket, but today he hadn’t. It’s not such an easy thing to argue with a man while you’re staring at the inside of his head, and I’d come off second best on more than one conversation because of it. I think he planned it that way – Adolphus was better at guile than he liked to let on. ‘Gotta get ready for tonight.’

‘Yeah, I’m sure we’ll have a run on sherry. You gonna tell me what’s wrong, or I am going to have to guess?’

He grunted but kept to his work.

‘You miss your mother. You lost your half of the bar at dice. You’ve fallen in love with a dancing boy and want to run off to the Free Cities. Stop me if I’m close.’

He set a half-keg of cider on the ground, then turned to me. ‘Wren says you’re sending him to see some darkie witch-woman.’

‘You got the broad strokes down.’

‘Since when do you make that kind of decision without me?’

‘You’re a tough man to get a finger on these days, Adolphus, what with all this running about pretending that you’re still a soldier.’

‘I’ve got a right to know what’s going on with him.’

‘And now you do.’

‘You’re gonna send him down to the Isthmus, let some hag teach him to read the future in a pig’s entrails?’

‘It’s Mazzie’s lack of qualifications you object to? I knew a First Sorcerer once, but he’s dead. Course, if you’ve got a suggestion, you’re welcome to throw it into the ring.’

‘I don’t see what the point is. He’ll grow into it.’

‘It’s not a pair of trousers – either we teach him to handle it or we wait until it burns out his mind. And while we’re on the subject of Wren’s future, what are you doing trying to turn him into a drummer boy?’

A back the length of a half-pike rose and fell. ‘He likes it.’

‘He’d like it if you spiked his tea with ouroboros root, but we’re not going to fucking do it. It’s our job to make sure he does what’s smart, not what he enjoys.’

‘Isn’t like I took him to a recruitment center.’

‘You’re setting a bad example. He’s a boy – he likes blood and loud noises and the naked threat of force. There’s no need to encourage him.’

‘That wasn’t all it was.’

‘I shortened it for the sake of brevity. Since you’ve got me going, I don’t like him hanging around with the crew of miscreants you’ve decided to make your new best friends.’

‘You deal with worse people.’

‘I’m a drug dealer, so that’s not much of a recommend-ation.’ I discovered my pouch of dreamvine was still in my pocket. I thought about rolling up a spliff but thought better of it. Then I thought better of that and went ahead and started on it. ‘Your man Joachim Pretories, Roland Montgomery’s successor, the Private Soldier’s best friend. How much you think he’s worth?’

Adolphus’s eye got shifty. ‘I never thought about it.’

I pinched shut the paper and lit it with a match. ‘I got time.’

‘I guess he gets a stipend. The dues they collect go to the wounded, and to the widows and children.’

‘Every penny, I’m sure, but you haven’t answered my question. What is Joachim Pretories worth?’

‘I dunno. I’m not his banker.’

‘He can lay hand on twenty thousand ochres, or I’m a nun.’

‘Bullshit. Joachim Pretories is an honest man.’

‘A unique specimen, then – we ought to frame him and mount him on the wall.’

‘You jape like a monkey, but I’ve yet to hear any evidence.’

‘Close your eyes tight enough, you’ll miss the sunrise. Pretories is no different than the head of any other mob. He’s got his base, and he’s got his muscle.’

‘The Association isn’t a syndicate,’ he growled, close enough to savage to be a warning, for all that I didn’t heed it.

‘How many men you think Roussel’s killed since he mustered out? I bet it’s more than he ever did in uniform.’

‘You’re no saint yourself.’

‘And I recognize my own.’

‘If you hate them so much, why’d you throw in with them?’

I ashed the joint onto the floor. ‘You heard about that, huh?’

‘I did.’ And he didn’t seem happy about it.

‘I’m in an ugly line of work, Adolphus. I have to spend time with a lot of ugly people.’

‘This is some . . . some scheme of yours?’ he asked, horrified and bewildered, like I’d spat on a statue of the Firstborn.

‘Not at all. I woke up this morning and remembered how much I loved soldiering, and the joy that would stir in my breast to find myself once again in the ranks.’

‘I don’t want to know about it,’ he said, waving his hand as if to ward me away, fat jiggling around the white of his undershirt.

‘That fits well with my plan of not telling you.’ But I continued just the same. ‘These men aren’t who you think they are – tell me you’re not so desperate to relive your youth that you’ve blinded yourself to that fact.’

‘Not everyone’s as crooked as you.’

‘Sure they are – they just go through more effort to hide it.’

There was a lot of nastiness floating around the bar, and with evening falling I had an errand that excused my quick absence. Upstairs I pulled a long black trunk from below my bed. Inside was a cache of weapons I don’t generally need for day-to-day work. I put a knife in my sleeve and in my boot. Then I tied a trench blade to my belt, the short, wide-edged cutting swords that had been universal on both sides during the war. They weren’t enough for what was coming, but they were all I had.