history of violence left me slack-jawed. Rare amongst the population of the Empire, the coming of the war had been a singular blessing for the young Rouender. It was one shared by the stray dogs of his neighborhood, which, prior to his enlisting, had occasion to find themselves strung up and dissected, intestines stretched along the sidewalk and sweetmeats poked at with thin instruments of metal. The business of the front meant that Roussel had become a killer before his sixteenth birthday, but he wouldn’t have lasted a virgin much longer even in civilian life. And though he came up barely to my shoulders, and had the blue eyes and pinked cheeks of a china doll, still he was the one I watched. The fact that Hroudland outranked him wouldn’t mean anything if he got it in his head to hurt someone.
Rabbit was, by contrast, basically what you’d expect in a one-time infantryman and present-day thug. A series of wooden blocks stacked atop each other, the topmost a mass of scar tissue and tattered cartilage. Beaming through that last was a smile which held firm in sunshine or storm, when cutting a throat or disposing of a body. His nickname was a product of the sort of caustic humor common in the ranks, for if ever there was a man who bore less resemblance to the gentle lapin, I had trouble imagining him.
‘What’s with the monkey suit, Lieutenant?’ he asked.
‘On Sundays your wife and I have dinner, and I like to look my best.’
Rabbit laughed, belly juggling on his sturdy frame. ‘I never married.’
‘That’s too bad. Everybody should have a wife. Then again, I suppose long years of barracks living, cheek and jowl with the creamy bud of Rigun manhood, might have given you an aversion to the fairer sex.’
Roussel started at that, mad eyes inching their way toward trouble, but Rabbit stole his thunder by laughing again, laughing and shaking his head in a friendly sort of way. ‘I forgot how funny you are, Lieutenant.’
‘Only when you’re around. Once you leave I go back to drinking myself silent. While we’re on the subject, mayhap you could enlighten me as to when exactly to expect your retreat. The bar isn’t open yet, and anyway we keep a pretty exclusive entrance policy.’
‘Come on now,’ Hroudland said. ‘We’re all soldiers.’
‘Did the High Chancellor start another war while I wasn’t looking?’ I smiled something that wasn’t that. ‘Either way, I think I’ve put in my time – which means whatever the hell you may be, Hroudland,
This was too much for Roussel. He tightened his fingers around the hilt of the short sword he had thus far, through an astonishing act of will, managed to keep sheathed.
‘None of that,’ Hroudland said, having spent enough time with the boy-sized lunatic to know without looking he was trending towards violence. ‘The lieutenant was only joking. He likes a good joke, the lieutenant, and we like the lieutenant, so we don’t mind. The lieutenant’s a smart man, real smart – and he knows we’re looking out for him and his interests, knows without the Association to make sure the Crown played straight, they’d strip us of everything we got, and see us out in the street.’
‘I’m not sure I’m so savvy as you think.’
‘Then it’s a good thing we stopped by to educate you,’ and for the first time a hint of steel edged itself into his voice.
‘That reminds me, Hroudland. I’m behind on my dues.’ I reached into a back pocket and came out with a tarnished bit of copper, then flipped it to him. ‘That ought to cover it – in perpetuity. Don’t imagine there’ll be a need to come round again.’
Hroudland looked at it for a moment, deciding whether or not to push his play, but whatever their purpose was in coming here, it hadn’t been to start a quarrel. And anyway, between me and Adolphus he probably figured he didn’t have the brawn to chance it. So he closed his hand around the coin and put it away with a smile. ‘We weren’t here to see you, Lieutenant – that was just a happy accident. We’re here to see the chief.’ He gave Adolphus a friendly nod. ‘And the Hero of Aunis knows he’s welcome at a meeting anytime he chooses to show.’
He gestured to his boys and they followed him out. Rabbit had the same steady grin he’d worn the entire time, that he’d have continued to wear if things had gone in another, less amiable direction. Roussel looked like a child who’d dropped his sucker, sad to have lost what would likely be the day’s best chance to make something bleed.
I rolled up the cigarette I hadn’t been able to smoke at the general’s, and added in a little dreamvine for wise measure. Adolphus stood mute, his face red and anxious. For someone I had once seen break a man’s back between his hands, he had a real dread of interpersonal conflict.
‘What the fuck were they doing here?’ I asked finally.
‘Just checking in. Wanted to see what I thought about this new bill the Throne’s jammed down our throats.’
‘Is that what they told you?’
‘You don’t believe it?’
‘If Hroudland told me we’d see sun tomorrow, I’d take my winter coat out from storage.’
‘They aren’t all bad. Rabbit’s a friendly enough fellow.’
‘He get those scars being friendly?’
‘They’re soldiers,’ Adolphus said, imbuing the last word with a reverence that turned my stomach. ‘Just like us.’
‘Spare me the brothers-in-arms bullshit. They impressed a fifth of the population – you think maybe a few bad apples crept in?’
He shrugged, not wanting to argue the point, but I wasn’t willing to let it go. ‘You remember what happened the last time the Association had any power?’
This was enough to calcify his vague sense of dissent. ‘Roland Montgomery was a good man.’
‘With some bad ideas.’ It was an unfortunate coincidence that had brought him to my mind twice in the span of as many hours – or so I thought to myself at the time.
‘He was right about standing up for ourselves, not letting them take advantage of us,’ Adolphus said. ‘The Throne’s got no business trying to tax our pensions.’
The war ended and a couple of hundred thousand men were dumped unceremoniously onto the streets of Rigus. Men wounded in mind and body, lacking practical skills beyond ditch-digging and murder. Some turned to crime, more to rattling tin cups on street corners. It started to look bad, the capital choked with the broken bodies of ex-heroes. Perhaps the wiser amongst the ministers began to wonder what would happen if their one time army decided to take up their old trade – a concern stoked when Roland Montgomery founded the Veterans’ Association, in large part to convince his former comrades to do just that. Reparations were starting to come in, for once the Crown’s treasuries were flush. It seemed prudent to give some modest percentage of the Dren’s money to the men who had won it.
And thus was born the Private’s Silver, half from guilt, half from fear. A half ochre a month for every man who’d served until such time as they weren’t alive to claim it. Not enough to start a business or buy a house or feed a family. Just enough to die slowly, two to a bed in a slum tenement, out of sight of passers-by. I thought it was a pretty crap exchange for what we’d given, and generally didn’t bother to go down to the tax office and claim it. But for most of my comrades it was near sacrosanct, weighed out of all proportion to its actual value.
In the grand tradition of shortsightedness, the Crown had not bothered to consider what would happen when the war indemnity ran out, as it had some years back. With our coffers near to empty, the High Chancellor had started to call for taxing the Private’s Silver as regular income, a rather impressive bit of legerdemain by which the Throne would take back with one hand what it gave with the other.
‘The government fucks people – that’s what governments do. You shouldn’t need that explained.’
Adolphus shrugged with a petulance inappropriate to his age and bulk. ‘Ain’t right that they forgot us so quick.’
‘First taxes, now time? What’s your encore? You going to track death to her lair, wrestle her into submission?’
Adolphus dipped his head warily. ‘Shouldn’t blaspheme like that. She Who Waits Behind might be listening.’
‘She’s always listening, Adolphus – and she sets her own pace.’ I trampled my cigarette into the floor. It meant work for Adeline but it accentuated my point. ‘Course, you go mucking about with the Association and you might get her to double time it.’
