I wasn’t sure I believed that either. Rajel was nowhere to be seen on the way out, but the bouncer gave me a sullen nod as I approached the exit.
“Fun place to work?” I asked as I grabbed my coat from the rack.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Three weeks of the month.”
I nodded sympathetically and left.
I was heading south when I saw him, a bony runt shadowing me from the opposite side of the street, a half block back in my wake. He could have picked me up anytime after I left Mairi’s-it would have been easy to slip out from a back alley in the thick fog.
I stopped at a corner stall run by an aged Kiren and inspected his wares. “Duoshao qian?” I asked, angling a chipped bracelet up to the dull winter light as a pretext for scanning behind me. The vendor quoted me a price ten or twelve times what the junk was worth, and I feigned disappointment and dropped the bauble into a bin. He snatched it up quickly and shoved it back into my face, streaming forth a broken monologue as to the exceptional merits of his goods. By this point my tail had drawn close enough to make out some detail. I couldn’t see the Blade hiring the brand of cheap thug this hooligan epitomized, and he obviously wasn’t a heretic, so Ling Chi was out. Of course, there were plenty of other people scattered about the city who wouldn’t mind seeing me fall on something sharp, some dealer I’d wronged or slumlord who thought I threatened his business. We’d find out soon enough.
I hadn’t tooled up before going to visit Mairi, seemed like a bad way to make an impression, but I wouldn’t need a weapon to get the jump on this skinny little bastard. The only thing better than ambushing a motherfucker is ambushing the motherfucker who thinks he’s ambushing you. I slipped past the merchant, heading down a side alley, cutting around the corner, accelerating slightly as I made the turn-
Then I was on the ground, the strange sensation of light and heat that accompanies a strong blow to the head distorting my vision, so much so that the figure standing above me was, for a moment, unrecognizable.
But only for a moment.
“Hey, Crowley.”
“Hey, faggot.”
I made a play for his ankles, but my movements were slow and clumsy, and Crowley shut down any hopes of escape with a booted toe to my ribs.
I slumped back against the wall, hoping that last shot hadn’t broken a bone, the agony in my side suggesting such optimism was unfounded. My lungs worked to fill themselves properly, a pause during which Crowley was kind enough to resist beating on me, making do with an excessively unfriendly grin. I managed to cough out a few sentences. “Having trouble with your arithmetic? I’ve got five days, Crowley. Five days. If big numbers confuse you, take your shoes off and count on your toes.”
“Didn’t I tell you how funny he was?” Crowley said to someone behind him, and now I realized that Crowley hadn’t come alone. He was backed by three men, not agents I didn’t think, but hard folk, syndicate muscle maybe- regardless, unfriendly in the extreme. They stared at me with expressions that ran the gamut from outright boredom to sadistic glee.
I had been played like a rank amateur. The first one had let himself be seen, drawing my attention while Crowley and his crew lay in wait. By the Scarred One, how had I been so stupid?
“You see a uniform on me, punk?” Crowley asked. “This ain’t got nothing to do with the Crown or the Old Man.” He accentuated this last point with a kick to my shoulder. I winced and bit my tongue. “Today’s my day off.”
“So running into me was just a quirk of fate?” My mouth was full of copper and I could feel blood dribbling down my chin.
“I wouldn’t chalk it all up to chance. Might have something to do with me thinking you’ve long outlived your usefulness. Another body showed up earlier today-a boy this time.”
Poor Avraham Mayana. “Don’t pretend you give a shit about the victims.”
“You’re right. This isn’t about them.” He shoved his brutish face into mine, hot breath filtering rank across my nose. “It’s you. I fucking hate you. I’ve hated you for ten years, ever since you second-guessed me on the Speckled Band case. When the Old Man gave the orders to bring you in last week, I almost did a jig I was so happy. Then when we let you go…” He shook his head and spread his arms wide. “Ten years waiting to close your book, and you get another pass because of that slick mouth of yours? I know they say you shouldn’t bring work home with you, but… what can I say? Maybe I’m just too devoted a civil servant.”
“What do you think the Old Man will say when he finds out you aced me?”
He laughed, a guffaw that was no less threatening for being clownish. “When I leave this alleyway, you’ll be alive and kicking.” He dabbed a fat finger in the gusher coming from my nose, bringing it back wet with a red sheen that he inspected carefully, almost tenderly. “Course, I can’t speak for these gentlemen. Untrained, you know, but full of enthusiasm. Besides, I wouldn’t count too firm on your patron’s good humor. Last I checked, you ain’t done much to curb violence in your little ghetto. We found that boy in the river today-and I assume you heard about your old partner’s unfortunate demise.”
Something hot flared up in my stomach. “Don’t talk about Crispin, you sodomitic gorilla.”
The toe of his boot clipped my forehead, and my skull rang against the wall. “You’re pretty feisty for a man about to get a long look at his insides.” One of his boys, a whip-thin Mirad with the ritualized facial scarring they use to mark criminals in that unfortunate theocracy, shook a poinard out of his oversize coat and said something I couldn’t make out. Crowley took his eyes off me to snarl at him, his face mad dog with hate. “Not yet, you fucking degenerate. I told you-he bleeds first.”
This was as good a chance as any. I cocked back my right foot and shot it at Crowley’s kneecap. Something was still up with my vision though, and it went wide, catching his shin.
It was enough, barely. He howled and backed up a step and I leaped to my feet. I guess Crowley had figured that first knock would keep me down longer. Dumb motherfucker-he’d known me a decade and still hadn’t learned to compensate for the thickness of my cranium.
I turned a corner and heard the distinct thunk of metal on stone indicating the Mirad’s blade had missed its mark. Then I was putting one foot ahead of the other with as much alacrity as my battered frame could muster, making west for the canal with every drop of energy I had left.
The alleys in that part of Low Town ring the main thoroughfares like a cobweb spun by a drunken spider, weaving back and forth irregularly. Even I don’t know them all that well, a fact reinforced when once or twice I stumbled back through previously traversed intersections. But if I was having trouble, I could tell Crowley and his gang weren’t doing any better-the gray walls echoed with the angry shouts of my pursuers, providing an unneeded impetus to my movements.
I broke cover through the warren of passageways and into the wide boulevard that skirts the canal. Here the channel broadens to its widest point, just south of the River Andel, Rupert’s Trestle covering its shoulders. I broke into a dead sprint, reaching the foot of the bridge and ascending its limestone arch. On a normal day this area would be bustling with travelers hurtling toward their destinations and picnickers taking in the view, but with the weather I was the only one in sight. At first, anyway.
Coming across from the other side, a long, curved knife held backward against his arm, was the man I’d first seen following me, and he looked a lot bigger than before. Behind me the scarred Mirad slipped from the mouth of the alley, his features dim in the heavy mist.
I stopped at the zenith of Rupert’s, working desperately to figure out a plan. I debated making a break for it through the goon rapidly narrowing the distance between us, but unarmed as I was he’d hold me up long enough for the rest of his gang to cut me apart. From over my shoulder I heard Crowley cursing my lineage and promising gratuitous punishment. A quick look revealed him hot on the tail of the Mirad, who slowed up, waiting for his pack before coming against me.
Sometimes success is about complex stratagems-a sacrificed pawn or a cornered bishop. More often, though, it’s about speed and surprise. Crowley would never be mistaken for a genius, but I wasn’t the first poor bastard he’d trailed through the streets of Rigus. With a few more seconds to think he would have known I’d rather take a bath than go toe-to-toe with his goons. But as he rounded the corner he hadn’t yet processed the possibility and was left flat-footed as I climbed the railing and took a swan dive into the canal below.
The ice wasn’t as thin as it looked from the bridge, and I bruised my shoulder pretty good going through. I didn’t feel the injury for long, the cold water anesthetizing me straight through to the bone. Righting myself, I
