For all that I would never speak it aloud, for all that it shamed me to even think it, I couldn’t lie-I missed that fucking outfit.
Crispin recognized me from about a block away, and his face hardened but his step didn’t slow. Five years hadn’t done much to alter his appearance. The same highborn face stared at me beneath the fold of his hat, the same upright carriage bore mute witness to a youth spent in the tutelage of dance masters and teachers of etiquette. His brown hair had retreated from its former prominence, but the curve of his nose still trumpeted the long history of his blood to anyone who cared to look. I knew he regretted me being here, just as I regretted him being called.
The other one I didn’t recognize-he must have been new. Like Crispin he had the Rouender nose, long and arrogant, but his hair was so blond as to be nearly white. Apart from the platinum mane he seemed the archetypal agent, blue eyes inquisitorial without being discerning, the body beneath his uniform hard enough to convince you of his menace, assuming you didn’t know what to look for.
They stopped at the entrance to the alleyway. Crispin’s gaze darted across the scene, resting briefly on the covered corpse before settling on Wendell, who stood stiffly at attention, doing his best impression of a law enforcement official. “Guardsman,” Crispin said, nodding sharply. The second agent, still unnamed, offered not even that, his arms firmly crossed and something like a smirk on his face. Sufficient attention paid to protocol, Crispin turned toward me. “You found her?”
“Forty minutes ago, but she’d been here a while before that. She was dumped here after he finished with her.”
Crispin paced a slow circle around the scene. A wooden door led into an abandoned building halfway down the alley. He paused and put his hand against it. “You think he came through here?”
“Not necessarily. The body was small enough to be concealed-a small crate, maybe an empty cask of ale. At dusk, this street doesn’t get much traffic. You could dump it and keep walking.”
“Syndicate business?”
“You know better than that. An unblemished child goes for five hundred ochres in the pens of Bukhirra. No slaver would be foolish enough to ruin his profit-and if he was, he’d know a better way to dispose of the corpse.”
This was too much deference shown to a stranger in a tattered coat for Crispin’s second. He sauntered over, flushed with the arrogance that comes from having one’s hereditary sense of superiority cemented by the acquisition of public office. “Who is this man? What was he doing when he found the body?” He sneered at me. I had to admit he knew how to sneer. For all its ubiquity it isn’t an expression that just anyone can master.
But I didn’t respond to it, and he turned to Wendell. “Where are his effects? What was the result of your search?”
“Well, sir,” Wendell started, his Low Town accent thickening. “Seeing as how he reported it, we figured… that’s to say…” He wiped his nose with the back of his fat hand and coughed out a response. “He hasn’t been searched, sir.”
“Is this what passes for an investigation among the guard? A suspect is found standing beside a murdered child and you converse cordially with him over the corpse? Do your job and search this man!”
Wendell’s dull face blushed. He shrugged apologetically and moved to pat me down.
“That won’t be necessary, Agent Guiscard,” Crispin interrupted. “This man is… an old associate. He is above suspicion.”
“Only in this matter, I assure you. Agent Guiscard, is it? By all means, Agent Guiscard, search me. You can never be too careful. Who’s to say I didn’t kidnap the child, rape and torture her, dump her body, wait an hour, then call the guard?” Guiscard’s face turned a dull shade of red, a strange contrast to his hair. “Quite a prodigy, aren’t we? I guess that set of smarts came standard with your pedigree.” Guiscard balled his fist. I swelled out my grin.
Crispin cut between the two of us and began barking orders. “None of that. There’s work to be done. Agent Guiscard, return to Black House and tell them to send a scryer, if you double-step it there might still be time for him to pick something up. The rest of you, set up a perimeter. There’s going to be half a hundred citizens here in ten minutes and I don’t want them mucking up the crime scene. And for the love of Sakra, one of you find this poor child’s parents.” Guiscard glared at me ineffectually, then stomped off. Wendell and the rest of the guardsmen fanned out.
I shook some leaf out of my pouch and started to roll a smoke. “New partner’s quite a handful. Whose nephew is he?”
Crispin gave a half smile. “The Earl of Grenwick’s.”
“Good to see nothing’s changed.”
“He’s not as bad as he looks. You were pushing him.”
“He was easy to push.”
“So were you, once.”
He was probably right about that. Age had mellowed me, or at least I liked to think so. I offered the cigarette to my ex-partner.
“I quit-it was ruining my wind.”
I wedged it between my lips. Years of friendship stretched out awkwardly between us.
“If you discover something, you’ll come to me. You won’t do anything yourself,” Crispin said, somewhere between an inquiry and a demand.
“I don’t solve crimes, Crispin, because I’m not an agent.” I struck a match against the wall and lit my smoke. “You made sure of that.”
“You made sure of that. I just watched while you fell.”
This had gone on too long. “There was an odor on the corpse. It might be gone by now, but it’s worth checking.” I couldn’t bring myself to wish him luck.
A crowd of onlookers was forming as I left the cover of the alleyway, the specter of human misery always a popular draw. The wind had picked up. I pulled my coat tight and hurried my steps.
Back at the Staggering Earl the weekend trade was in full swing. Adolphus’s greeting echoed off the walls as I fought my way through the tight ranks of patrons and took a seat at the bar. He poured a glass of beer and leaned in as he handed it to me. “The boy arrived with your package. I put it in your room.”
Somehow I had expected the urchin would come through.
Adolphus stood there awkwardly, a look of concern on his mangled face. “He told me what you found.”
I took a sip of my drink.
“If you want to talk…”
“I don’t.”
The ale was thick and dark, and I made my way through a half-dozen drafts trying to get the sight of twisted hands and pale, bruised skin out of my head. The crowd surged around me, factory workers finished with their shifts and bravos planning the night’s escapades. We were doing the kind of business that reminded me why I was part owner, but the mass of amiable lowlifes imbibing cheap liquor were poor company for my mood.
I drained my cup and stood. Adolphus waved away a customer and came over. “You leaving?”
I grunted assent. The look on my face must have betokened violence, because he put one huge paw on my arm as I turned away.
“You need a blade? Or company?”
I shook my head, and he shrugged and returned to chatting up patrons.
I had been saving a visit to Tancred the Harelip since I saw one of his runners moving dreamvine on my territory a half month prior. Tancred was a small-time operator who had managed to claw his way to minor prominence by an unsavory combination of cheap violence and low cunning, but he wouldn’t be able to hold on to it for more than a few seasons. He’d underpay his boys, or try to cheat the guard out of their percentage, or piss off a syndicate and die in an alley with a poniard in his vitals. I hadn’t ever seen any great need to hasten his appointment with She Who Waits Behind All Things, but mistakes don’t get made in our business. Selling on my territory was sending me a message, and etiquette demanded a response.
Harelip had carved a thin slice of turf west of the canal, near Offbend, and he ran his operations from a dump of a bar called the Bleeding Virgin. He made most of his money from the trades that were too small or ugly for the syndicate boys to touch, moving wyrm and bleeding protection money out of whatever neighboring merchants were
