degenerate fucking drug dealers.’
‘You wound me. Like I said last time – I used to fill your seat. This pretense of decency is unnecessary.’
‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your career advice too closely, given that you were stripped of your rank.’
‘It’s a funny thing about my fall – it didn’t come about because of a moral lapse. Quite the opposite, in fact. And having come to ethics late in life, and to my own detriment, let me offer up a warning. Don’t risk it – you gave up the luxury of being a decent human being when they added the star to your collar. Things with the Association are going south fast. You need someone on the inside, who can give you a heads up beforehand. What’s that measured against the life of a handful of slum dwellers, and criminals at that?’
I’d decided to have Guiscard remove Adisu for three reasons. The first was that I didn’t trust the Islander to keep his mouth shut. The second was, as a point of principle, I prefer not to let a man bend me backwards. Even if no one else ever finds out about it, you’ll still know it happened. Finally, I liked the idea of having Guiscard act as my cat’s-paw. It suited my sense of vanity. Moreover, it put some dirt on him, shifted the fundamental balance of our relationship. Guiscard would do violence to another man on my behalf, would lower himself into the muck along with me. Nothing binds two people like a shared sin.
He stroked the bridge of his long nose, closed his eyes, in short, made quite a show of contemplation. ‘I’ll need something to hang on him,’ he said finally.
‘There’ll be enough narcotics stashed away to keep half the city high through Midwinter.’ I thought about the Bruised Fruit Mob’s headquarters, its stagnant smell and subterranean depths. ‘If you look hard enough, you’ll probably find a decomposing corpse or two, but the drugs alone should merit a ten-year stretch. Also, they’ll resist arrest.’
‘They sound like lovely folk. Where will I find them?’
I gave him directions. ‘It needs to happen tonight, or early tomorrow. And it needs to be a clean sweep, make sure none of them are around to plague me later.’
‘I know my business,’ he said. ‘You just keep yourself close to Pretories. I want to know everything you know, and I want to know it as soon as you do.’
I ticked a salute over a smug smile, happy to have played a part in Guiscard’s continuing education. My own enlightenment had come at a far higher cost – for me, and for a lot of other people.
31
I’d been waiting a solid hour when he came in, my back against the wall of a quiet cafe in the Old City, drinking wine by candlelight. I didn’t mind. Everyone had to wait to see the man. Not that his tardiness was meant as a slight – such vanity was beneath Roland Montgomery. But he was remaking the world, and that was a serious undertaking, one that left little time for social engagements.
He looked apologetic at least, flanked by men who would have died for him happily during the war, now – it didn’t make a difference. They eyed my ice gray unhappily, even threateningly. Black House had replaced the Dren in the affections of the men of the Association. What with my time in the ranks I was worse than the average freeze even, a turncoat, a traitor.
His bodyguards took seats at the counter, and Roland dropped himself across from me without affectation. ‘Lieutenant.’
‘Sir. I hope you don’t mind, I ordered a drink.’
‘Not at all.’ He took a moment to inspect me. ‘It’s been a long time. Longer than I’d have liked.’
The war had changed everyone. From the scatter-eyed, stammering beggars on the docks, pawning tarnished medals and rattling their alms cups, to the young-old men from Kor’s Heights sitting alone at garden parties, sleeves pinned over stumps, flinching when champagne was uncorked. Those unlucky enough to need to work for a living took what they could find of it, back-to-back shifts at the mills, trading one line for another. Or they joined the thick squads of bullyboys selling service to the syndicates, peddling their hard-won practice to organizations more grateful than the Crown, or at least more remunerative.
It had changed all of us, but it hadn’t changed Roland. His eyes were bright as they’d ever been, fever-bright, and he still spoke like he was trying to overawe artillery.
I didn’t like it. The war was the war – I’d spent five years trying to get the hell away from it, I didn’t need it being dragged back onto home soil. Not everyone felt like that, of course. It had given a lot of empty men a purpose, and hollowed out a lot of men for whatever purpose they might have had. Spend a few years bunk-mates with She Who Waits Behind All Things, you find it hard to forget her. Whatever else you do starts to seem awful silly, writing out receipts in a general store somewhere, planting lines of potatoes in neat little rows. Roland’s men were like that – there was nothing in their eyes except what he gave them.
‘I’m still not used to seeing you in your new uniform. Congratulations, once again. It’s quite an honor, being made an Agent of the Crown at such a young age.’
‘I’m not so sure your boys would agree.’
He flashed his entourage a quick smile. ‘They’re a mite protective.’
The serving girl came by to take an order. Roland asked for a glass of what I was drinking, and when she came back he gave her a smile that won a convert for life. The other patrons, quiet, well civilized, their lives bound up inextricably with the establishment, their interests as far from Roland’s as you could get, took sidelong glances and thought up kindnesses they could do him.
‘You’ve been making a lot of waves, over in my neck of the woods,’ I said.
‘Would that be Black House, or Low Town?’
‘It would be both.’
‘Those are two very different places.’ Roland was too gracious to crow, but you could see he thought he’d scored a point.
‘They are indeed.’
‘Does it ever get confusing?’
‘I could ask you the same question.’
‘Oh?’
‘Kor’s Heights is a lovely neighborhood. I’d think a fellow who grew up there wouldn’t be in such a hurry to burn it down.’
‘Not burn it down, Lieutenant, not at all. I only work to ensure its bounty is more equitably shared.’
‘And your father?’ The news had come out a few weeks back – General Edwin Montgomery had officially retired from public life, preferring a dignified solitude to the hustle and bustle of politics. A comfortable fiction cloaking the reality that it was quite impossible to put him in charge of the Empire while his son seemed to be doing his best to destroy it.
For a moment, though a very brief one, regret showed through Roland’s assurance. It left quickly, as I said. ‘Filial piety is an important virtue. But it pales beside loyalty to one’s nation, and countrymen.’ He waved his hand in front of his face, as if batting away a fly. ‘I’ve made my choice – I’ve got no regrets.’
‘What was that choice, exactly?’
He had an answer prepared for this very occasion, and was pleased to share it. ‘Shepherding tomorrow’s arrival.’
‘A morning Timory Half-hand won’t be around to see.’
‘Who?’
‘One of the vice-peddlers your boys strung up.’
‘There’s a saying about omelettes that I think would be appropriate here.’
‘About eggs, not skulls.’
He shrugged. There wasn’t much difference to him. ‘I would think you of all people would understand the importance of what we’re doing. Growing up where you did, coming from what you came from.’
‘You spend a lot of time in the slums?’
‘Haven’t had the pleasure.’
‘You ought to head down to the Isthmus one day, or take a stroll through the bleaker sections of Kirentown. They got these rows of tenements there, walls no thicker than the width of your hand, foundations held together
