‘He’s hiding something; I saw that in his eyes. If I work on him hard enough, it’ll shake loose.’
‘Joachim Pretories has been playing the game since before you started to bleed – ten years threading the narrows, and you think he’ll break at a sharp word from you? Go home, Rhaine. You’ve had your adventure, gotten an eyeful of the slums you can chat up with your intimates. There’s a surplus of warm bodies growing cold in Low Town – we don’t need Kor’s Heights to start exporting them.’
She bared her teeth in a fashion that made me think of a wolf, or at least an unfriendly dog. ‘That’s all you think of me? That my leaving home was . . . a whim?’
‘I sure as hell hope so – if you planned things out this way, you’re more a fool than I’d supposed.’
I was sure that would spark her, but it seemed to do the opposite. She looked down at her lap, then gave a little smile, the first I think I’d seen of it. She reminded me very much of Roland at that moment. ‘Things haven’t gone . . . as I’d anticipated.’ Our legs brushed against each other. ‘I suppose you must not think much of me.’
‘I don’t know what to think of you. You’re a lot of things all at once. I’d like you to have time to figure out which of those to commit to.’
‘What I am is someone who needs justice for her brother. I can see that leaving Father like I did seems the product of impulse. But my coming here was not. I’ve thought about it every day since Roland . . .’
‘Yes.’
She didn’t say anything for a while, which seemed very rare for her. In the quiet I caught a view of the little root of misery that had blossomed into perpetual belligerence. ‘Roland’s death emptied out Father completely. Even as a child I could see the change. He was a great man, once. But after we got the news . . .’ she shrugged. ‘He turned to his histories, and his garden, and he withered away quietly. I began to shout just to be heard. It was . . . difficult.’ She turned hard, as if to pay me back for her unguarded moment. ‘You couldn’t understand.’
‘I had a sister, once. A mother, father – the whole set.’ It was hard not to hate them a little, these thin-skins from Kor’s Heights, for whom a single death was an unimaginable tragedy. ‘Bad things happen to us, Rhaine. The reasons don’t matter. You carry it as best you can.’
‘There wasn’t a reason behind Roland’s murder?’
‘Knowing it won’t make a difference.’
‘When I know the reason, I’ll know who’s to be held responsible.’
‘And?’
‘And I’ll bring him to justice.’
‘Where?’
‘What?’
‘To what court will you bring them?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Say that everything you think is true. Say that Roland’s murder was the result of some elaborate conspiracy. Let’s even go so far as to pretend that your amateur sleuthing is enough to sniff out the culprit, to find a trail twelve years fallow. Do you suppose the men who killed him are going to let you shout it from the rooftops?’ I shook my head. ‘They’ll stretch you out right along with your brother.’
‘The authorities . . .’
‘Roland was all but an enemy of the state – you think Black House will be in any hurry to chase after his murderer?’
‘My father is a powerful man. He’s got plenty of friends in high places.’
‘Your father sent me to hurry you on home – if you’re relying on him for backing, your thinking is crooked as an alleyway.’
It was easier to get angry than to admit to folly. So she got angry. ‘No one seems much interested in finding justice for my brother.’
‘Meaning?’
‘It means that rather than foil me at every turn, perhaps you should offer some help. Roland was your friend, after all.’
‘I keep hearing that.’
‘You were at his birthday party,’ she said, almost an accusation.
A pause. ‘I didn’t think you remembered.’
‘I remember everything about that night,’ she said. ‘It was the last time I saw him alive. He moved out of the house the next morning.’
I guess that argument with his father had been worse than I’d realized. ‘Roland didn’t have friends,’ I said. ‘He had followers. And if I was the latter, I’d sap you unconscious and drag you back home.’
‘You’ll need to, if you want to get me out of Low Town. I’ll learn the truth or die looking for it. There’s such a thing as justice.’ But I wasn’t sure if it was an assertion or a question.
‘Truth is what the man holding the whip says it is, and justice what the strong do to the weak. You think otherwise because you’ve lived your life in a bubble made of money – and you ought to get back there as soon as you can, before the world disabuses you of your innocence in brutal fashion.’
She looked away from me for a while. When she looked back it was clear nothing I’d said had made a difference. ‘Tell Father I’m going forward, with or without him, with or without you. My brother deserved better.’
‘Most of us do,’ I admitted. ‘And few of us get it.’
But she wasn’t listening – she’d gone back to staring out the window at the sordid landscape beneath us. I stood from the lumpy bed and moved to the exit, not exactly a trek. ‘It cost me five argents to find you,’ offering it as a parting shot. ‘It wouldn’t cost double to make sure no one ever finds you again.’
I took a last look at her as the door closed – I shouldn’t have, but I did.
15
There’s nothing half so foul as a body that’s spent some time in the water, and I’ve seen enough of the world’s unpleasantness to be something of an authority on the subject. The flesh takes on this viscous, wormy color between curdled cream and bone, and the eyes swell and bloat. After a day of immersion the skin starts to slough, peels right off the leg like a stocking, toenails and all. Plus the canal isn’t exactly fresh water, so you can garnish that description with the stench common to anything that’s been marinating in the main thoroughfare for the city’s waste, ripe feces and acrid urine. Vile as it was, our man hadn’t been swimming long, and it was easy enough to make out his identity. I nodded at Crispin, and he nodded at the guard, and he tossed the sheet over the corpse.
It was four or five months after Roland’s birthday party. I hadn’t seen him since, but then I’d been busy. He’d been busy as well, as the rancid meat in front of me evidenced.
I lit a cigarette to drown out the smell. Crispin did the same. ‘Did you know him?’ my partner asked.
‘Timory Half-hand,’ I said, pointing to the appendage left dangling out from beneath the thin cloth with which he’d been inexpertly covered. It was malformed, three stubby sticks of flesh, a defect of birth rather than the product of accident or violence, nature being crueler than either. ‘He moved dreamvine and the occasional clipped argent. Don’t know why anyone would go to the trouble of killing him.’
‘Yes, you do,’ Crispin responded.
I nodded and we walked off.
‘They’re getting bolder,’ Crispin said, threading his way around a beggar calling for alms against the alley wall. ‘That’s the third one this month.’
‘Small fish, though. Unaffiliated with the syndicates, unprotected by any of the major powers.’
‘They’re flexing their muscles. Not even bothering to hide it. You see that broadsheet they posted last week? That the Hand of the Firstborn would wipe the poison dealers from the streets, make Rigus a paradise for the working man?’
‘I had someone read it to me.’
We paused for a moment at an intersection, the crowd breaking around us like a swift-moving river. In a ditch next to us a street dog was happily consuming a fresh turd, deposited there by some member of the citizenry fussy enough to avoid doing their business in the street.
