this impression was a lie.
‘Never too busy for the Crown.’
‘That’s good to hear. You’d be shocked to discover how many of your neighbors feel otherwise.’
‘Spare the details, please. I’ve got a weak heart.’
‘I don’t suppose your sense of duty would extend to a trip to Black House?’
‘What kind of patriot would I be otherwise?’ I asked, standing. They walked me to the small carriage waiting outside, opened the door for me even. Then they took seats across from me, smiling and unsmiling, respectively. I wondered if they ever switched roles. It gets boring being yourself all the time.
Black House is the center point of the Empire, where the decisions get made – we just keep the palace around so tourists have something to look at. From inside its soot-colored walls a few hundred uniformed men work diligently to fetter the hands and bind the eyes of some millions of their fellows. I don’t like going there, and not just because the last few times I’d arrived in cuffs. A life like mine, most lives really, you’re better off not looking back – my years in Black House belonged to a different epoch, a distant and best-forgotten age.
Still, if I had to pay a visit, it was nice not to have a sentence of death hanging over my head. We stopped in front of the entrance, a footman arriving swiftly to help us alight. Then the gray-clad pair escorted me down the front hallway and into the back, up a flight of stairs and through the door of a corner office where I had the first legitimate shock of the day.
‘Hello, Warden,’ Guiscard said. ‘Grab yourself a seat. There are some things I’d like to run past you.’
It had been three years since I’d seen him, but time is a malleable thing and well more than that had passed on his end. He’d been a pretty little peacock when I’d known him, eye candy for the heiresses and perfumed fairies at court, but he wasn’t any longer. There was a gauntness to his face that accentuated the beak-like turn of his nose. His hair was still a striking shade of white-blond, but it had receded over his temples and he’d trimmed what remained to stubble, a far cry from the curls he’d once sported. His uniform was spotless but faded – it seemed his coxcombry had gone the way of his hair.
Or maybe he just didn’t have the time to keep up a fashionable exterior. The fact that he had men to order about had tipped me, but the five-pointed star on his lapel confirmed it – Guiscard was a member of Special Operations. The last I’d seen him, when he’d treasoned me out to the Old Man, he was still slumming it with the rest of the freeze, chasing down murderers and rapists. Now he was a member of the elite, and stopping crime beneath him. His new duties tended towards spy craft, counter-intelligence, preemptive assassination – that wide variety of unsavory activities that ensure those in power remain so.
I guess selling my secrets had earned him the seat. I didn’t blame him. The Firstborn knew I’d done worse to get there.
‘Nice digs,’ I said.
‘Thanks.’
‘Normally when I get called down here, it’s to see the chief. I’m feeling a little unloved.’
‘Don’t take it too hard. The Old Man’s delegated me to look in on you. He’s not as young as he used to be.’
‘He was never young.’
‘No, I suppose he wasn’t.’ Guiscard waved again at the chair. ‘Have a seat.’
‘I’ll stand.’
The agents stirred behind me. ‘You really gonna buck at the offer of a chair?’
‘You really gonna muscle me into one?’
‘Yeah.’
I sat. I’d been expecting to be doing this with the Old Man, but the fact that Guiscard was point would make the whole thing easier. I wondered how much he knew of Black House’s past history with the Association, and about Roland’s murder in particular. Less than he supposed, I was sure. The Old Man didn’t like anyone to know anything. Better to have a subordinate ruin an operation through ignorance than weaken his own position internally.
Guiscard nodded at the two agents. They closed the door on their way out, and the rumble of the building dulled away.
‘Word is you and Joachim Pretories have been having a lot of meetings.’
‘That the word?’
‘That you’ve thrown your hand in with the Association.’
‘What do you think?’
‘You never struck me as a man inclined toward nostalgia.’
‘You’d be wrong there. I still have the rocking horsey I got for my fifth name day.’
‘Nor someone apt to end up on the losing side of things.’
‘You’re definitely wrong there.’
‘So that’s it then? You and the commander, arm-in-arm?’
‘I dunno about any of that. Maybe I just felt like paying a call on a fellow veteran. Talk about old times, relive our youths.’
‘Whatever you may think, Joachim Pretories isn’t a man to be trusted.’
I laughed.
‘You disagree?’
‘No, not at all – it’s just funny to be on the other side of this conversation.’
‘Then why would you set yourself up as his pawn?’
I had to play this tight. Black House needed to think they were running me, and not the other way around. ‘I’m a small-timer these days, Agent – I job with whoever offers it.’
‘And you aren’t overly concerned with who your patron is?’
‘I used to work here, didn’t I?’
‘Fair point,’ he admitted.
The Guiscard I knew had been brash, youth and high status inclining him towards playing the bull. But he’d picked up a trick or two since then. Best to let a man come to you, not to force it. You don’t need to force it if you’ve got the leverage, and Black House always had the leverage.
‘So you called me in here because you were worried I was hanging with a rough crowd. I’m touched. I’ll make a point to mend my ways in the future.’
‘That wasn’t exactly what we were hoping.’
‘Subtlety makes my head hurt.’
‘You say you’ve got the commander’s ear. Maybe you could stick around, let us know what falls into yours.’
‘I don’t know – I really took that warning you gave me about Pretories to heart.’
‘It would be in the interests of the Crown.’
‘I’m not that interested in your interests.’
He shrugged, then threaded his fingers through one another. ‘How’s the Earl?’
‘It runs. Come by sometime – I’ll spit in a glass of ale for you.’
‘How’s Adolphus? And the boy?’
I smiled unpleasantly. ‘Let me give you a lesson in making threats, Guiscard – start small, ’cause you can’t go backwards. It don’t mean anything to tell a man with a slit throat that you’re gonna break his kneecaps. Threatening my people . . . that’s as heavy as it gets. So now, when I tell you to go fuck yourself, you got no cards left to play. You’ll just have to sit there like an impotent faggot, moaning at my impertinence.’
‘There’s no reason this needs to turn sour. Believe it or not, I didn’t call you in to muscle you. I’m hoping the two of us can help each other out.’
‘You offered me help on something once before, I remember – what was it again?’ I snapped my fingers theatrically. ‘Yes, of course – you promised to help find the man who murdered our ex-partner, then you turned around and sold me to the Old Man.’
‘Look, Warden. You sat where I’m sitting once, and you had the same conversation we’re about to have. This is Black House. We own the city. We own the country. We own the sea and the skies. If there’s a place you go to when you die, we own that too. We spin the shuttlecock of your fate – the woof can go easy, or it can go hard.’
