‘I appreciate the concern.’
The driver cracked the reins and we crawled forward.
‘This is the real thing,’ Roussel continued, pushing his leer into mine. ‘Not like running your mouth with the giant to prop you up.’
‘No?’
‘Men are gonna die tonight,’ he said. ‘Die ugly. Die bleeding. You ready for that?’
‘I’ve killed more men than you’ve fucked, Roussel. Near as many, at least.’
Rabbit laughed and put his hand on his confederate’s shoulder. ‘Lieutenant knows his business. He’s a solid one, you’ll see,’ he said, giving me an approving wink. It was nice to know I had his confidence.
Roussel felt differently. ‘You don’t see the smart ones when there’s trouble – you ever notice that, Rabbit? When red gets spilled, you can’t never find them.’
‘Shut the hell up, the three of you,’ Hroudland said from his perch at the front. ‘Keep your head on the mission.’
I suspected Roussel was hating me with his eyes, though it was too dark to be sure.
Half an hour later I watched the Hen and Harpy pass through the back flaps of the canvas tarp. It was closed and shuttered – I halfway hoped it was empty too, that Artur had given his men the night off and joined them in taking it. You can hope for anything – water in the desert, a fire in the night – but you can’t drink it and it won’t ward off a chill. Pretories had been too long an officer to be ignorant of the value of current intelligence. No doubt he’d had the joint cased before he’d sent us, no doubt he knew for a certainty there were people here worth killing. They’d pulled me in last minute to fuck with me, but this operation had been planned as competently as any Dren raid.
Our cart pulled to a stop in front of a side street leading to the back door. Hroudland struck a match, inspected us briefly in the dim light. ‘Everyone clear on their role?’
A chorus of low grunts, a synchronized bobbing of heads.
‘You’re with me,’ Roussel said, a threat if ever I heard one.
Hroudland tossed over a look like he expected me to object, but I nodded, and he shrugged. The men piled out the back in a line, and when it was my turn I followed them.
The lane was narrow, and we were near as crowded outside as we had been in the carriage. ‘Don’t be thinking of going faggot on us,’ Roussel whispered.
‘You look awful good in leather,’ I returned, but my heart wasn’t in it.
There’s rarely any great competition to be the first one through the door, but they had that down as well. The biggest of the group, a Vaalan with an egg-shaped head and a matching two-handed mace set the latter into the door. It quivered but didn’t break. He ripped his weapon free, carrying with it enough of the frame to offer entry, an opportunity he was quick to take.
There were eight men in before me, so I only caught the aftermath, two corpses on the floor, line cooks to judge by their white uniforms, part of the legitimate business of which Artur was so proud. Their killers hadn’t waited around, sprinting out through the three separate doors that led deeper into the complex.
Rabbit and Roussel broke down a hallway and I followed after them, up a flight of stairs and into another room. Four men were playing cards around a table, piles of small change glittering on the wood. Cheap toughs in expensive suits, bleary-eyed from liquor and bonhomie. They were as unprepared for what was coming as a newborn fresh from the womb.
The quickest of them shot up from his perch. ‘Who the fuck—’ he began but didn’t finish, cut off by the cleaver Rabbit put into his skull. By some curious reflex he stayed standing for a solid five count, eyes crossed at the piece of metal split between them, brain leaking down the bridge of his nose. Roussel was a bare second behind his partner, a trench blade in each hand, falling on two of them with all the enthusiasm of an amateur rhythm section. By the time he was finished there was blood on his shirt and in his hair, a spray painted across his wild eyes.
The last one was dead and knew it, his movements confused and uncoordinated. He tripped backward coming out of his chair, watching oblivion stalk towards him with quivering eyes and quivering mouth. Roussel wasn’t quite playing, but neither was he in any great hurry, a smile on his face and a bulge in his pants. I wanted to look away but didn’t. The thug finally thought to scream, then the steel dropped downward and he went silent.
I’d remained in the doorway, my trench blade limp at my side. It was not lost on me that my own life might well depend on the enthusiasm I mustered for the proceedings, but all the same I was having trouble forcing it. An hour ago I’d been sleeping off a drunk, now I was expected to play the savage. The transition was proving a little much for me to handle.
‘You’ll miss all the action if you’re not careful, Lieutenant,’ Rabbit said, near to beaming, his grin wide as the moon, dwarfing even his usual expression of good humor.
‘Told you he was talk,’ Roussel said, but it was leavened by the joy of his recent kill.
Rabbit slapped me on the shoulder – no harm, no harm – then sprinted ahead like a child on Midwinter morning. A few yards down, the hallway forked. Rabbit and Roussel exchanged glances, passing something between them.
‘Commander says you’re to paint your sword,’ Rabbit said, half-apologetic.
‘What color?’
‘He’ll get it wet,’ Roussel answered, ‘or I’ll wet it for him.’
Rabbit nodded, then gave me a thumbs-up sign and sprinted off to the right. Roussel and I headed left, down a corridor ending in front of a pair of doors. Roussel pointed at one, eyes brooking no disobedience, then set his foot against the opposite. It was a flimsy thing and it splintered without trouble, and Roussel was off, bringing his particular brand of succor to another set of waiting souls. Mine wasn’t locked, the latch turning smoothly. Roussel’s probably hadn’t been locked either, but he was having too much fun for that to stop him.
A pair waited for me, too well dressed to be help, but absent the dull violence of the men in the last room. Part of the organization, but not muscle. Cousins of Artur, maybe, or acquaintances, spoiled boys from Kor’s Heights, lives spent sucking at a silver spoon gilded by the suffering of the less fortunate. If I’d known them I’d have hated them, I didn’t doubt that for an eye blink. They carried thin dueling blades with jeweled hilts, never unsheathed in anger. Between the screams and the percussive clamor of black-powder bombs they must have known what was coming, but just the same they seemed utterly unprepared to resist. One of them fumbled for his weapon, catching the cross guard against his petticoat. The other let his eyes drop to the ground, waiting to be murdered.
A man is not a wolf, as I’ve previously noted. At least these punks weren’t, and then again, neither was I.
‘Fuck. Off,’ I said, two distinct sentences.
It took them a moment to go along with it. One nodded and grabbed the other, and they both disappeared through a back door. Maybe they’d make it down a side staircase and out into the street, if they were quick and lucky. Maybe they’d run into one of my compatriots and get turned into gristle. I’d done what I could do. I rolled a grenade off my bandolier and into the center of the room, slipping into the hallway before it detonated.
No civilian building is meant to withstand the sort of punishment the Hen and Harpy was enjoying – I was lucky my explosives didn’t bring the whole third story crashing down on us. The smoke took a while to dissipate, and when it did it left nothing but ruin, the furniture and decorations splintered into oblivion, a fair-sized segment of the wall scattered across the floor.
‘You need to blow the room?’ Roussel asked, coming up behind me in the corridor. I leaned away to let him pass, and he took a step into the wreckage.
‘Yeah, I did,’ I said, and whistled my trench blade across his throat. A jet of red spurted forward, but credit where it’s due, the bastard was so vicious he still made a play for me. His eyes wavered but stayed focused, even with most of his life fluid spilling out on the floor. He sputtered something through the hole in his neck, and tried to raise his weapon above his head. But it was a futile effort, and after a moment he pitched forward, knees first, then the rest of him.
I’d been looking for an opportunity to put Roussel down for a while, half because he was too loose to leave around to muck things up, half just on general principle. And with what I’d done I didn’t have another option – once the smoke cleared he would see the rubble wasn’t painted pink, and half the point of the night’s errand was to see me off someone. And he was too stupid to try and con, certain to resort to steel if he thought I was making a
