Tomorrow, the Killing

33

Back at the Earl I opened every window and propped the door. In the alley outside the corpse of a mule was starting to rot, and flies were trickling in with the stench. Apart from their fetid buzzing it was a quiet afternoon, languid even. Wren was at Mazzie’s, or damn well should have been. Adeline was running errands. I took a seat at the bar and set to rectify my sobriety with workmanlike diligence.

I’d more or less accomplished my task by the time Adolphus came through the door, chest out and whistling. He dropped himself at my table with a grunt, his uneven grin wide enough to swallow a calf. Half of me was happy to see him so, and half of me wanted to bust my glass against his melon.

I wasn’t shocked to find my lesser nature winning out. ‘That was quite a speech.’

‘You were there?’

‘Joachim . . .’ I corrected myself. ‘The commander and I had business.’

A glancing blow, insufficient to snuff out his good humor. Maybe there was some part of him hoping I’d changed my mind about the whole thing, decided to support the vets honestly. Adolphus always was a desperate optimist. ‘What did you think?’

‘The war sounds like lots of fun. I’m sorry I missed it.’

‘That wasn’t funny.’

‘Maybe I’m losing my touch.’ I pulled out a vial of breath and held it to my nose.

‘You been going at that awful hard lately.’

Fifteen seconds went by, then I brought it back to my side. ‘I’ve got a thing or two on my mind.’

‘That help?’

‘Doesn’t hurt.’

He chewed over his cud lips but didn’t say anything. ‘Too bad the boy couldn’t see it. Then again, I suppose it’s time he started his learning.’

It was an olive branch, but I wasn’t in the mood to take it. ‘That what we think now? Time to start his learning?’

‘I’ll bring him along next time,’ he said. An aside, but meant to be noticed.

‘What does that mean, next time?’

‘The commander asked me to speak again tomorrow. Wants me to help rally some of the other Low Town vets. Even asked me to take a spot in the front line for the march.’

I took a last snoot, then put the bottle back into my satchel. ‘Śakra’s cock, Adolphus, when are you gonna give this up?’

He squared his shoulders. ‘When the Crown holds to their obligations.’

‘When the Firstborn comes to claim us, you mean? I’d bring a book.’

‘We’re owed,’ he said, his voice gravel and not easily dismissed.

‘Come off it, Adolphus. A ten percent tax on your pension won’t break your back. This has nothing to do with money. It’s more fun for you to play hero than it is to tend bar.’

I’d struck a nerve. His eye narrowed. ‘You think so little of me?’

‘This isn’t a game. What’s the Crown going to do when they see the Association making trouble?’

‘We got the right to peaceful assembly.’

‘You got every right in the world, till they decide to start taking them from you.’

‘We’re not the sort to melt in the rain – the Dren discovered that. Black House wants trouble, they’ll learn the same.’

‘That was what Roland Montgomery thought,’ I said. ‘It’ll get you what it got him.’

‘General Montgomery was assassinated while fighting for the rights of his country and his men. I’d be proud to fall the same way.’ Hours spouting rhetoric were affecting his judgment. ‘There’s such a thing as right and wrong.’

‘No, Adolphus – there’s just alive and dead. The war should have taught you that.’

‘Maybe we learned different things.’

‘Maybe you don’t remember your lessons.’

‘Quit telling me what I believe!’ he bellowed suddenly, bull chest straining his shirt, face red. He gave himself a moment to deflate before continuing, but it didn’t seem to help. ‘You know what I think?’

‘Waiting to hear it.’

‘I think you don’t like to see me being cheered for. I think you got used to me being your lapdog, watching your back while you play the big man.’

‘That’s what you think? That your celebrity offends my ego?’

‘Fifteen years carrying your water. Fifteen years being your second. I guess it’s natural you’d get jealous, try and work your way in with the commander.’

It was strange to discover this vein of rancor amidst such well-trammeled territory, like finding a torture chamber hidden in the kitchen closet. How many other conversations had this echoed through, I wondered? ‘It’s not like that,’ I said feebly, knowing there was nothing I could say that would close a wound so long festered. ‘What I got going with Joachim . . . it ain’t about you.’

But he didn’t seem to be listening. ‘I strike out on my own, and you do everything you can to strangle it.’

‘Make sure your jaunt doesn’t carry you off a cliff.’

He shook his head, then fell into silence. Mulling over swallowed insults, arguments that I didn’t remember but that had taken purchase in my best friend’s soul. Strange, what a man carries with him, that you don’t see.

The breath buzzed around my skull, muting my semi-constant headache. I started rolling up a tab. ‘Bitterness is the prerogative of middle age – have at it. But you’ve got a family, a real one. You want to leave Adeline a widow? Wren half an orphan?’

‘What kind of father would I be to the boy if I didn’t stand up for myself? If I didn’t stand up for the memory of the fallen?’

‘You want to pretend piss is whiskey, that’s on you. But don’t go filling my glass. You’re doing this for yourself. Same with the war. It’s only after the killing’s done that anyone starts to think up a reason for it.’

‘You talk about the war like it was nothing, like we just wasted our time.’

‘Masturbation is a waste of time. The war was a cancer.’

‘We were defending our homeland.’

‘My homeland is Low Town, and no one who’s ever seen it would think it worth the corpse of a single infantryman. The Dren didn’t have anything to do with me, with us. We died so rich men could get richer.’

‘I’m not talking about the brass. I’m not talking about the nobles, or the Crown – I’m talking about us. Whatever poison you’ve got in your stomach, I won’t hear you badmouth the ranks.’

‘Take a boy out from his home, out from everything that makes him what he is. Give him a weapon, soak him in blood – that sound like a recipe for sainthood to you?’

‘That’s all you’ve got for the men you fought with? Who fought for you? Makes me sick to hear you talk like that, to think I got passed over for a man who doesn’t care about his brothers.’

‘That rankle so? That you never got your second bar?’

‘I was a better soldier than you.’

‘You were a better soldier than me,’ I agreed. ‘You weren’t ever a better killer.’

Adolphus’s sneer sat uneasily on his wide face. ‘And you’re proud of that?’

‘No, I’m not, but that’s all it was. Don’t let the way they dressed it up make you forget. It was murder, plain and simple. That we did a lot of it doesn’t make it any better.’

‘That’s not true!’ he said. Our conversation had enlivened him enough that the twist of his bull neck sent droplets of sweat into my hair. ‘We did what was called of us. War ain’t pretty, but I’ve got nothing I’m ashamed of.’

I stuck my cigarette into a grimace. ‘You weren’t ashamed at Zwollen?’

That shut him up so quick I almost felt bad about saying it. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked away.

‘We weren’t heroes, my friend,’ I said. ‘At best we were victims.’

He shrugged his shoulders, unwilling to concede the point but unable to counter it either.

That was the end of the conversation, and since Adolphus looked pretty stable where he was, it was left to me to split out. I didn’t mind – it was hot as hell in there anyway. It wasn’t till I was out the door and the sun was beating on my head that I realized I didn’t have anywhere to go.