opened and closed in a reasonable imitation of speech, but I couldn’t make anything out.
‘Talk louder!’ someone yelled from the audience.
‘Some of you know me,’ he began again, shouting.
Laughter rippled through the crowd. My best friend blushed uncomfortably, and I joined him.
‘Some of you know me,’ he said a third time, striking an appropriate middle ground.
‘The Hero of Aunis!’ a voice amended, most likely a plant.
He shook his head. ‘Sergeant Adolphus Gustav, of the First Capital Infantry – that’s good enough for me.’
A rumble of agreement from the audience.
‘Good enough for any man,’ he ad-libbed, and the mass cheered, and he was off.
I wouldn’t have thought Adolphus much of a public speaker, but he did all right. The wound helped, and his size – everyone looking up at him knew that this was a man who had fought for the Empire, fought hard and suffered for it.
But there was more than that. He believed what he was saying, and it came through. No paid herald mouthing another man’s words. He spoke slowly and simply, and after a few sentences he stopped looking at his notes. He knew the story well enough, after all. A boy from the provinces who’d never been ten miles from his village, who’d signed up to serve his country and found himself holding a pike in a foreign land. Who’d done his duty and been called a hero for it. Who didn’t resent his loss, who was just happy to have been able to come back home when so many others hadn’t. Who’d never asked for anything more than his due, but who owed it to the fallen to demand what was due to them.
It was a good speech. Most of it was even true.
‘Will we let them turn their backs on our brothers, dead in a foreign land? Their families, desperate for a few crusts of bread?’
The chorus answered in the negative.
‘Is it time to remind them of our sacrifice?’
Enthusiastic agreement.
‘The day after tomorrow, I’m going over the top – and I hope to the Firstborn you’ll all be coming with me!’
Five thousand men screamed their support, threw their fists in the air, climbed over each other in excitement. One kept silent, and in the tumult that followed, he forced himself out from the ranks and made his way home.
33
Back at the Earl I opened every window and propped the door. In the alley outside the corpse of a mule was starting to rot, and flies were trickling in with the stench. Apart from their fetid buzzing it was a quiet afternoon, languid even. Wren was at Mazzie’s, or damn well should have been. Adeline was running errands. I took a seat at the bar and set to rectify my sobriety with workmanlike diligence.
I’d more or less accomplished my task by the time Adolphus came through the door, chest out and whistling. He dropped himself at my table with a grunt, his uneven grin wide enough to swallow a calf. Half of me was happy to see him so, and half of me wanted to bust my glass against his melon.
I wasn’t shocked to find my lesser nature winning out. ‘That was quite a speech.’
‘You were there?’
‘Joachim . . .’ I corrected myself. ‘The commander and I had business.’
A glancing blow, insufficient to snuff out his good humor. Maybe there was some part of him hoping I’d changed my mind about the whole thing, decided to support the vets honestly. Adolphus always was a desperate optimist. ‘What did you think?’
‘The war sounds like lots of fun. I’m sorry I missed it.’
‘That wasn’t funny.’
‘Maybe I’m losing my touch.’ I pulled out a vial of breath and held it to my nose.
‘You been going at that awful hard lately.’
Fifteen seconds went by, then I brought it back to my side. ‘I’ve got a thing or two on my mind.’
‘That help?’
‘Doesn’t hurt.’
He chewed over his cud lips but didn’t say anything. ‘Too bad the boy couldn’t see it. Then again, I suppose it’s time he started his learning.’
It was an olive branch, but I wasn’t in the mood to take it. ‘That what we think now? Time to start his learning?’
‘I’ll bring him along next time,’ he said. An aside, but meant to be noticed.
‘What does that mean, next time?’
‘The commander asked me to speak again tomorrow. Wants me to help rally some of the other Low Town vets. Even asked me to take a spot in the front line for the march.’
I took a last snoot, then put the bottle back into my satchel. ‘Sakra’s cock, Adolphus, when are you gonna give this up?’
He squared his shoulders. ‘When the Crown holds to their obligations.’
‘When the Firstborn comes to claim us, you mean? I’d bring a book.’
‘We’re owed,’ he said, his voice gravel and not easily dismissed.
‘Come off it, Adolphus. A ten percent tax on your pension won’t break your back. This has nothing to do with money. It’s more fun for you to play hero than it is to tend bar.’
I’d struck a nerve. His eye narrowed. ‘You think so little of me?’
‘This isn’t a game. What’s the Crown going to do when they see the Association making trouble?’
‘We got the right to peaceful assembly.’
‘You got every right in the world, till they decide to start taking them from you.’
‘We’re not the sort to melt in the rain – the Dren discovered that. Black House wants trouble, they’ll learn the same.’
‘That was what Roland Montgomery thought,’ I said. ‘It’ll get you what it got him.’
‘General Montgomery was assassinated while fighting for the rights of his country and his men. I’d be proud to fall the same way.’ Hours spouting rhetoric were affecting his judgment. ‘There’s such a thing as right and wrong.’
‘No, Adolphus – there’s just alive and dead. The war should have taught you that.’
‘Maybe we learned different things.’
‘Maybe you don’t remember your lessons.’
‘Quit telling me what I believe!’ he bellowed suddenly, bull chest straining his shirt, face red. He gave himself a moment to deflate before continuing, but it didn’t seem to help. ‘You know what I think?’
‘Waiting to hear it.’
‘I think you don’t like to see me being cheered for. I think you got used to me being your lapdog, watching your back while you play the big man.’
‘That’s what you think? That your celebrity offends my ego?’
‘Fifteen years carrying your water. Fifteen years being your second. I guess it’s natural you’d get jealous, try and work your way in with the commander.’
It was strange to discover this vein of rancor amidst such well-trammeled territory, like finding a torture chamber hidden in the kitchen closet. How many other conversations had this echoed through, I wondered? ‘It’s not like that,’ I said feebly, knowing there was nothing I could say that would close a wound so long festered. ‘What I got going with Joachim . . . it ain’t about you.’
But he didn’t seem to be listening. ‘I strike out on my own, and you do everything you can to strangle it.’
‘Make sure your jaunt doesn’t carry you off a cliff.’
He shook his head, then fell into silence. Mulling over swallowed insults, arguments that I didn’t remember but that had taken purchase in my best friend’s soul. Strange, what a man carries with him, that you don’t see.
