‘She thinks I’m in the privy.’
‘A budding criminal genius.’
‘I don’t want to be a criminal,’ she said.
‘Most don’t.’ I very much had the urge to smoke a cigarette, but decided it was better not to offer the pubescent an opportunity to feel morally superior to me. We stared at each other for a while.
‘Do you want to sit down?’ I asked.
‘Will you tell Father that I’m out of bed?’
‘I won’t.’
‘Do you promise?’
‘I promise.’
She rolled over the worth of my word. ‘I shouldn’t believe you,’ she said. ‘But I will.’ She plopped herself next to me on the sofa.
‘That’s very kind.’
We sat quietly while the familial dispute worsened.
‘My brother’s a hero,’ she said suddenly, as if expecting me to contradict her.
‘I’ve heard that.’
‘My father too.’
‘That’s the word.’
There was the sound of something breaking. One of the participants had thrown something against a wall. I assumed it was Edwin. He’d something of a reputation as a firebrand, despite his age.
‘They fight a lot,’ she said. ‘I’m not supposed to know that.’
‘I don’t think either of us are.’
‘If they’re both heroes,’ she asked, ‘then why do they fight so much?’
‘Heroes can’t disagree with each other?’
‘Of course not,’ she snapped. ‘Being a hero means you always know what the right thing to do is.’
‘What if there’s more than one?’
‘There’s only ever one right thing to do,’ she said, the final moral authority on the subject.
‘Often not even that.’
What little enthusiasm I’d managed to inspire in the girl dissipated quickly. She all but leapt up from her seat. ‘I don’t think I like you,’ she said.
‘A popular sentiment.’
She lifted her chin till it pointed at the ceiling, turned imperiously and marched back the way she’d come.
Free of the possible censure of a child, I smoked a cigarette and said a silent prayer for those poor fools who’d chosen to personally ensure the continuation of the species. It must be exhausting, having to pretend you had the answers. My position within Black House required a rather casual relationship with the truth, but even I wasn’t forced to uphold such an absurd fiction every moment of the day.
I never ended up seeing Roland. A few minutes after Rhaine went to her bed I decided to head to my own. It had been a long trek to Kor’s Heights, with little enough to show for it.
When the general had asked me if I’d met his daughter, I’d lied and said I hadn’t. At the time I hadn’t seen any point in mentioning our initial conversation, brief and meaningless as it was. Having had a follow up, I wasn’t so sure. There seemed to be a great deal of the child I’d met in the woman whose life I was trying to save.
8
I awoke the next morning stewed in my own sweat, and well past breakfast.
I didn’t mind. It was too hot to eat, too hot to do anything but lie in bed and be too hot. Sadly I didn’t have that luxury, so I stretched myself into yesterday’s shirt and dropped down the stairs.
Wren was hung over a table, naked from the waist up.
‘I’ve got a message I need run.’
‘Can it wait till the afternoon?’ he asked. ‘It’s hot as hell out.’
‘It’ll only get hotter,’ I said, and he pulled himself up off the wood sulkily. ‘I need you to find Yancey. Ask him what he’s got going on this evening. Tell him I’d like to pay him a visit.’
He smiled. He liked the Rhymer. Everybody liked the Rhymer. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I gotta make my tithe.’
He nodded sympathetically and went back to not moving. I watched him enviously, then slipped out the back.
The job of the city guard, contrary to popular belief, is not to stop crime. They do stop crime, albeit rarely and mostly by accident, but doing so is not their primary function. The guard’s job, like the job of every other organism, singular or collective, is to maintain its existence – to do the bare minimum required to continue doing the bare minimum.
I’m in the same general racket, which is why once a week I nip over and toss the hoax a cut of my enterprises. Not a big one, but not a small one either. Enough for them to leave me alone and let me know if anyone is planning to do otherwise. Everybody in my line does, everybody who isn’t a fool, everybody who wants to keep at it for more than a fortnight. Because while as a general rule the guard don’t seriously concern themselves with catching criminals, they’re apt to rediscover their zeal if they hear of anyone keeping too much of their own money.
Low Town headquarters is, befitting its inhabitants, derelict and unimpressive. Very little of the guard’s earnings, from the official budget or that provided by me and my ilk, seemed to be going towards its upkeep. A sentry milled aimlessly about in the shadow of its three stone stories, a pair of which could comfortably have been removed without affecting life in the borough. A stoop led to a set of double doors, one to walk into with high hopes, and one to walk out of disappointed. I skirted the main entrance and went through the back, up a short flight of steps and straight to the Captain of the Watch, nodding at the duty officer on the way in.
Galliard’s position required him to collect money and not rock the boat, and he was well suited to both. On a bad day he ate two meals between breakfast and lunch. Today was a good day, and he was polishing off a plate of smoked ham when I came in.
‘Morning, Warden. Good to see you. Take a load off.’
I dropped into the stool opposite him. ‘Captain.’
He pointed at the buffet, finger-fat jiggling. ‘Fancy a bite?’
‘It’s a little hot for salted meat.’
‘Not for me,’ he said, lowering a sinew of pink-white muscle into the bulge of his neck. ‘How you been?’
‘Standing.’ I took a pouch of ochres out from my satchel and set it on top of the table. ‘You?’
‘Sitting,’ he acknowledged. He weighed the purse expertly in his hand, then tossed it onto his desk. When I was gone he’d redistribute it accordingly, slivers of my wealth going to the men above and beneath him, food for children and jewelry for whores. ‘You hear the Giroies wiped out the James Street Boys? I didn’t figure them for the balls to make that kind of play.’
The Giroies were an old school Rouender syndicate, had their fingers in some pies out near Offbend. In recent years they’d been struggling to keep themselves stable, their forces weakened after they went a round with the Association during the Second Syndicate War. ‘Since Junior took over they’ve been thinking they’re big time. You gonna do anything to convince them otherwise?’
He shrugged, though it was more effort than he was used to. ‘Why?’
Why indeed. ‘There’s muttering that two Islanders got sent to Mercy of Prachetas with a rash that looked like the plague.’
He batted aside the suggestion with a wave of his flipper. ‘Idle gossip. I talked to a man at the desk, said it was just another case of the flux. The seafarers need to stop drinking from fouled wells, though what with the heat I can hardly blame them.’ Surprising thing about the hoax, they knew more than you’d credit them with. They just never bothered to do anything with the information. ‘Course the plague ain’t the only plague. There’s been a buzz coming from the Association these last few weeks. They’ve got a rally scheduled next week over this thing with the
