Tomorrow, the Killing

38

Back at the Earl I sipped through a few ounces of liquor and passed out. When I woke the pain was worse, but the swelling had faded and I could see enough out of my right eye to be blinded by the afternoon light. It was late, and my day wasn’t over. A half-vial of breath reminded me of my duties. I palmed another into my satchel in case I got forgetful. Then I put a blade into my boot and slipped downstairs. The Earl was empty. Adolphus was off preparing for the evening rally, and Wren was probably with him. I had no idea where Adeline had disappeared to, but I was happy she’d done so – the longer I could put off explaining why my face looked like a mass of uncooked meat the happier I’d be.

Walking through the Isthmus I was conscious of the fading hour, and that my injuries were an appeal to the worst instincts of the native element. But the heat hadn’t abated with the sun, and the air was thick as a smoker’s cough, and the cock-a-walks were largely absent, drinking in darkened juke-joints or trying to sleep through to night. I found my way to Mazzie’s without any trouble, and this time even managed to reach the entryway without faltering my step.

She sat in the same position, down to the length of ash on her cigar. Even the oven working in the corner remained as it had been, the same pots bubbling rank on top of it. She waved at the open chair, but waited a while before starting.

‘What happened to your jaw?’

‘A brick wall hit me.’

‘And your eye?’

‘I couldn’t let the jaw go unanswered.’ I crinkled a trail of dreamvine in the hollow of a wrapper, then added a twist of tobacco for cover. ‘So. You set your eyes on him.’

She bobbed the ebony sphere of her skull. ‘Did at that.’

‘What’s the verdict?’

‘He’s got talent. Should have long started his learning, but he’s got talent all the same.’

‘Then you’ll take him on?’

She motioned with her shoulders in a fashion that indicated nothing one way or the other. ‘I figured, after your introduction, he must be kin to you.’

‘Ain’t got no kin.’

‘How’d you meet him?’

‘Let me think now – ah yes, the Duke of Courland introduced us over high tea. We needed a fifth for whist, and our Wren’s a deft hand at cards.’

‘He says he was a street child, and he begged you for a job.’

I lit my spliff off one of the colored candles dripping wax onto the table. ‘That might have been it, now that you remind me.’

‘So it was his idea, coming in under your roof?’

‘Damn sure wasn’t mine.’

There was something intoxicating about Mazzie that held your attention and wouldn’t let go. Every feature seemed amplified, overstated – her smile a slant that cut across the width of her face, nose broad as a bullock’s, eyes strong as rubbing alcohol. ‘Awful kind of you, putting up an orphan.’

‘I got a twenty-four karat heart. Market keeps going up on gold, I’m gonna cut it out and sell it.’

‘That’s what they say about the Warden. That he’s sweet as cane sugar and soft as sunshine.’

‘You gonna circle all night, or you gonna throw?’

‘What you want with the boy?’ she asked, all in the back of her throat, syllables hard against each other.

I didn’t answer for a moment, holding in a chestful of violet smoke. ‘Questioning my motives, Mazzie?’

‘Just curious. Do you take in every stray child you meet, or just the ones of use?’

‘I’ve drowned puppies done more for me than that child.’

‘A homeless boy with the art – that’s pure flake. Course he’s smart, but you needn’t have known that at the time. They’re not all smart – one of the crews back in Miradin, they had a boy with a fair-strength spark, and a face beat in by his mother when he wasn’t but three. Couldn’t talk nothing, couldn’t barely think more than that, but he could light a fire without a match, anywhere you pointed, any size.’ She took a long draw off her cheroot, then pulled the exhaust in through her nostrils, each wide as a copper piece. ‘Kept him on a collar, made him eat off the floor.’

‘You’ve got the nicest friends.’

‘Your boy’s got too much steel for that, of course. And he’s got power too, waiting to be kindled but there just the same. He gets to bucking, he’ll break you straight in two.’

‘What’s it to you, Mazzie? The color of my ochre don’t change with my reasons.’

‘Won’t have no part in turning a child into a weapon.’

‘Mazzie of the Stained Bone, witch-woman of the Isthmus. Thrown out of Miradin for blasphemies unspeakable. The things that are darker than night whisper secrets in her ear, and the High Laws no more than chicken scratch. Don’t make any bargains you can’t keep, or she’ll snatch up your firstborn and leave a straw doll beneath the pillow. Didn’t figure you for a soft stomach.’

‘No more surprising than discovering the king of Low Town takes stragglers in beneath his roof.’

‘Everything they say about you true?’

‘Enough of it,’ she acknowledged. ‘Besides, it’s not about what I heard. I saw what you were from the first foot you stepped inside my house.’

‘It’s the spirits, then? They let you know the sort of man I am?’

She didn’t answer.

‘The spirits got a line on tomorrow’s racket numbers?’

She puffed silently at her cigar, eyes never leaving mine.

‘They never do, do they?’ The dreamvine was bright and potent, and I was enjoying the whole thing more than I should have.

‘You think you can live the kind of life you’ve lived, do the kind of things you do, and not have it leave any trace?’ she asked.

‘Is your own history so uncheckered that you can afford to pass judgment on mine? What would I see, if I had your gift? What does the mirror tell you, Mazzie, when you look into it?’

There was nothing light or friendly in her smile, nothing of a smile at all really. Nothing but the form of the thing, her teeth crooked and white. ‘Don’t have one.’

The spreading silence gave me time to recollect how much pain I was in, slowly but surely bleeding past the dreamvine. I’d need something stronger, and soon. The sunlight percolating in through the hole in the roof was fading fast, evening soon to plant itself on a city that was near boiling. The stove popped suddenly, a wet spot on a log flaring to life, but Mazzie didn’t jump, didn’t so much as move.

‘I figured you was coming by today. Decided to take your advice from last time, break out the shakers, give them a roll,’ she said.

I leaned back in the stool and opened my arms wide. ‘Take your shot.’

‘You build a maze around you, and dare fools to walk through it.’

‘A fool don’t need any help taking a tumble.’

‘No merit in pushing them.’

‘I think of it as a public service.’

‘Corpses stand at your shoulder, and they wave at brothers ahead. The fuse is running fast, and when it sparks it’ll level more than you thinking, more than you plan. The blood you avenge will be repaid a dozen-fold, a hundred, repaid in rivers and torrents. You ain’t careful you’ll drown beneath it, die with it choking your throat and filling your lungs.’

‘You finished?’

‘Just about.’

Suddenly it didn’t seem so funny, didn’t seem funny at all, and I wanted to give her a shot straight on that false grin. ‘If that’s the best you got then your gift ain’t worth a tarnished copper. You see dead men in my past because I’ve put a string of bodies in the ground, and dead men in my future because I’ve got a list of motherfuckers waiting to join them. I don’t need your bones to know there’s trouble brewing – I’ve been arranging its arrival all week.’

‘The bones, they say one more thing – they say you running around in the dark, that the things you think true are false. They say the more you struggle, the tighter the bonds.’

I swallowed that with the last of my joint, then dropped the butt to the floor. ‘The boy needs training or he’ll end up mad, or worse. If you’ve got any of the ethics you affect, you won’t leave him twisting in the wind. Far as the rest goes, you don’t know nothing about me, not where I been nor where I’m headed.’ I kicked over my stool and walked to the door. Her cackling followed me out into the street.

Between the beating, and the dreamvine, and the day, and my life, I wasn’t in top shape. If they’d have been smarter they could have probably snatched me up with my back turned, and that would have been the end of it, or near enough. But a few blocks out from Mazzie’s I caught sight of someone tailing me, and if I didn’t put the whole thing together I was at least sharp enough to smell a threat.

Not that there was much I could do to head it off. I was still deep in the Isthmus, miles away from a friendly face. I was too tired to run and anyway I didn’t know the geography enough to chance it. The best I could do was put myself in a position to meet them head on. An alley led off the road I was on, dead-ending after about twenty yards. I followed it, put my back against the wall, pulled the knife from my boot, and waited for the end.

It wasn’t long coming. Adisu rounded the corner, the Muscle with him, both the worse for wear. A bandage was rolled around Zaga’s arm, saturated with crimson, though it only had the effect of emphasizing the width of his bicep. Adisu himself had an ugly scar marring a face not noted for its beauty. It was turning a color that suggested medical attention was in order.

He didn’t appear worried about it, though. In fact, he seemed positively giddy. ‘You seem surprised to see me.’

He was not wrong. I had a pretty long list of folk I’d like to have seen returned from the dead. Adisu the Damned was not on it. ‘Looks like you boys have been through some trouble.’

‘You could say that. A squad of boys from Black House came by and paid us a visit. Maybe you heard about that. Maybe you even heard they put me down,’ he laughed. ‘Probably the ice figure one Islander is as good as another.’

As someone familiar with their thought process, I could confirm that this was exactly how the ice figured. No doubt Guiscard had believed himself honest when he’d told me that Adisu would no longer be a problem. No doubt whatever heavy had told Guiscard that Adisu would no longer be a problem had believed himself honest as well.

‘I’m sure glad to hear you survived it,’ I said.

‘No, Warden, I don’t think you are.’

‘You’re not suggesting I had anything to do with your misfortune?’

‘Who the hell else would it be? I pay my taxes to the guard, same as everyone. And there isn’t anything I’m into that would get the ice looking my way. Nothing except you. I didn’t realize you still had pull with your old people.’

‘It took some talking,’ I admitted.

‘You look like you’ve had almost as rough a day as me,’ Adisu said.

‘It was a long morning.’

‘Who been beating on you?’

‘Black House, believe it or not.’

Adisu laughed. ‘You know something, Warden, I think you’re the most hated man I’ve ever met.’

‘It’s a talent,’ I agreed.

‘I’m glad they left something of you for us to play with. I’ll tell you honestly, I was pretty worried I wouldn’t get this chance. The ice only left the two of us, and I wasn’t about to head out your way, not with that tame giant you keep behind the bar. But then I remembered you’d been frequenting old Mazzie’s. I figure we’d wait around for a while, see if you’d show. It was a long shot, no question. I certainly didn’t think we’d nab you so quick. I guess I must have done something to please the Firstborn.’

‘More likely I did something to piss him off.’

‘Works out the same either way,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking about how I’m gonna kill you for the last ten hours, since I saw the ice break my cousin’s face into the ground. I’ve got all sorts of ideas.’

I flourished the knife in my hands, but it was mostly for show. I was as weak as a newborn kitten. After the tuning-up Guiscard and his boys had given me, I didn’t imagine I’d give a credible account of myself. Still, you never know. Maybe Adisu would decide to sprint forward and impale himself on my blade. I figured I’d at least give him the option. ‘You smell like you rolled in shit,’ I said. ‘And I find your grandiosity immensely tiring.’

He took the criticism with equanimity. ‘I’ll work on that,’ he said, and seemed even to mean it. Then he nodded at the Muscle. ‘Don’t rough him up too bad,’ Adisu said. ‘We’ve got all night for that.’

Zaga pulled a length of chain from his back pocket and came towards me, whirling the metal above his head in a steady loop. It was meant to fix my attention, so I ignored it, let it bounce down off my forehead and above my eye. It hurt like a motherfucker, hurt through what I’d already suffered, but it left me ready for Zaga’s follow up. He came in behind the lash and he met the edge of my knife, left off with a chunk of flesh missing from the hand he’d stretched out to grab me.

Adisu laughed and clapped twice ‘That was a nice move, Warden.’

Zaga seemed less enthused. This time he made no attempt at subtlety, just bull-rushed me back against the wall, pinning down my arms. I leaned into him, brought my mouth to where his neck met his shoulder, tore a chunk of flesh from it, tasted blood. He screamed and dropped me and scuttled backwards.

Our struggle seemed no longer to amuse Adisu. ‘Can’t you do a fucking thing I ask you?’ he said to his man, angrily. A knife appeared in his hands, and he started to circle around to my right.

He needn’t have bothered. The wounds I’d given Zaga had done more to enrage than slow him, and his bear hug had left me faint and short of breath. I wouldn’t last another pass. Black dots clouded my vision, like I’d been staring too long into a fire.

I guess that was why I missed her entrance, didn’t realize she was there till she spoke. I guess the others were pretty taken with the action in front of them, because they seemed as surprised as I was. ‘What you boys doing out here, with the sun so bright and your souls so dark?’

Mazzie leaned against the walls of a tenement. I’d only seen her sitting, and by candlelight, and she was shorter and uglier than I’d thought, bad skin and fat legs. Her calico dress was faded, and stuck to her flesh with sweat. But her words had been accompanied by a gust of wind, the first breeze in a fortnight. A cold one, too cold – it set the spine shivering, unsettled the mind.

Adisu felt it. A moment before he’d been as eager as a virgin in a whorehouse, but you could see him start to wither. ‘I got no quarrel with you, Auntie. This is between me and the man here.’

‘Little bird, little bird,’ Mazzie continued. ‘What you doing so far from home?’

‘This is my home,’ Adisu said, then gestured at me. ‘I’m dealing with a trespasser.’

‘This is my home, little bird. Your nest done burned. And your wings never quite grew like they should have. Why is that?’

‘He wasn’t breastfed,’ I said, but no one seemed to hear. I’d become a sideshow at my own execution.

‘You got no call to be here, witch,’ Adisu said. ‘Get going, before I set a man on you.’

It might have been a trick of the light but Mazzie’s eyes seemed black as ink, as a tomb, as the void. She spoke in the singsong she always used, with the same gentle lilt, but it was as threatening as cold steel. ‘I see it now, little bird. Poor, poor thing. Broken from the beginning, broken right from the egg. The things been done to you, you never had no kind of chance.’

‘I’m warning you, keep that fucking mouth shut!’

‘When he used to sneak into your room at night, the things he did. It comes back to you, don’t it? When you go under, when sleep comes. You can snort breath all you want, but you gotta drop down sometime. And he’s waiting when it does, isn’t he? Waiting for you, just like when you was a child.’

‘Shut her up,’ Adisu said to the muscle, his voice cracking.

‘Any hand you touch me with is gonna rot off before dusk,’ Mazzie answered, though she kept the sloe pools of her eyes on Adisu. ‘By tomorrow it’ll be in your other arm, then your legs and your ears and your tongue and your cock. By the full moon you’ll be wagging stumps at passers-by, and hoping they drop coin in your cup.’

Zaga looked at Mazzie for a long while. Then he took a small but distinct step backwards.

‘He set the crack in your mind, didn’t he? And it only gets wider, little bird, wider and darker. One day it’ll swallow you up, swallow you right up and there won’t be nothing left. You’ll do it yourself, I think, hoping it’ll get you free of him. But I’ve seen what comes next, little bird – and I’m sad to say it, but he’ll be waiting for you there too.’

The slim hold Adisu had maintained on sanity was slipping fast. ‘I couldn’t do nothing to stop it,’ he said, almost pleading. ‘I wasn’t but four or five.’

The cheroot sparked to life. Zaga jumped about a foot and a half. ‘You fade away now, little bird,’ Mazzie said. ‘This is no place for you anymore.’

The mad are capable of depths of passion unknown to the sane, and during our association I’d seen most every emotion played in extremity across Adisu’s face. Fury, joy, despair. But I’d never seen fear. Now that was all there was, emanating out like a stench, enveloping the man he’d brought with him. He turned and broke without even glancing at me, so utterly had he forgotten his revenge in the terror of the moment. Zaga was close on his heels.

That was the last I ever saw of Adisu. They found him floating off the docks a week or so later. He’d been in there long enough that determining the cause of death was no longer possible, or so I was told. I figured he’d topped himself, but it didn’t seem at all impossible to imagine it was reparations from one of his boys, or payback from a competitor. Let’s just say there were a lot of dry eyes in Rigus, the day Adisu the Damned was pulled out of the harbor.

Mazzie watched them disappear, puffing her smoke, eyes gradually returning to their customary cocoa. ‘How you holding up, Warden?’ she asked.

‘Peachy keen,’ I said, then tumbled forward into the muck.