realized there was no point.
He looked at me, then closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them he was smiling, and he strode towards us at a brisk pace and with no evident trace of concern. He took the seat I’d left for him. It was at the head of the table, as was well warranted.
‘This is it, then?’ he asked.
I nodded.
‘I suppose I should have seen it coming.’
I shrugged.
‘But then, your story sounded plausible. And with support from Black House I could have moved up my timetable by a year, maybe two. It was worth taking the shot.’
A lack of caution was always Roland’s weakness. I’d realized that the day I’d met him, been confident he’d fall into the snare. ‘No one with anything to lose wants you to win. You overstate the base of your support.’
‘Clearly,’ he deadpanned.
I stopped a chuckle. This was not really the time for levity, though you wouldn’t have been able to tell it from Roland’s demeanor. A bottle of whiskey sat on the table. It had been full when I’d set it there a half-hour prior. It wasn’t any longer. I poured the man a few fingers and passed it over.
He nodded thanks and knocked it down. ‘If you kill me,’ he said, after savoring the bite for a moment, ‘the country will go up in flames – my men won’t stand for it.’
‘If you live the country will go up in flames anyway. And I’m sorry to say so, but you’re wrong. The Association will mourn your death – but they will do so without violence. We’ve taken steps to make sure of that.’
‘Joachim?’ It was perhaps the first time in his life that Roland had even lost his composure. Certainly it was the first time I had ever seen it. He set his hands on the table, looked at them for a while without saying anything. I felt a sudden and very vivid pang of regret for revealing his best friend’s betrayal, somehow felt worse about it than my own. ‘I wouldn’t have thought it of him,’ he said.
I wouldn’t have thought it either, still had trouble believing it was true. But the Old Man had as much as confirmed it.
‘Was it money?’ Roland asked, mainly to himself. ‘The thought of taking over?’
Both, probably. Pretories came from that brand of nobility without two coppers to rub against each other. And no one likes looking over another man’s shoulder indefinitely. Though it could have been simple self-preservation – Joachim was no fool. Maybe he’d simply looked over the path Roland was marking out and seen the same thing I did, blood and ultimate failure. ‘I’m really not sure,’ I said. ‘I didn’t handle that side of it.’
‘Why did you do it?’
‘I tried talking you down.’
‘That’s hardly an excuse.’
‘It wasn’t meant to be – I gave you my reasons the last time we spoke. All the death we’ve seen, all the bodies, five long years of it – and you’d see us dive back in again? Commit your veterans against the Crown, plunge the Empire into civil war?’
‘Better to die a free man than live as a slave.’
‘I can see you’ve never been a slave. It’s a funny thing about the downtrodden – they don’t want to burn the city to the ground, they want to own it.’
‘Then your actions are at that ideal intersection of morality and self-interest?’
‘I don’t apologize for my ambitions, any more than you do yours.’
‘But mine were very grand,’ he said. ‘And yours are small, and petty.’
‘You can tell a great man by the bodies he leaves in his wake.’
‘Nothing important was ever accomplished without sacrifice.’
I let the argument rest on that one. It had been foolish to get into it with him, you were never going to convince anyone of the necessity of their murder.
‘Is there anything you’d like me to do?’ I asked. ‘For your family, your people?’
He took a moment considering, then shook his head. ‘I have no regrets.’
‘Saints and fools say that. And you’re no saint.’
He laughed and poured himself another shot of liquor. ‘My name will echo on,’ he said, downing it. ‘There’s nothing more that a man can ask.’
You could ask for a long life spent in comfort, a wife to hold your hand as you passed, children to walk on ahead. But Roland wouldn’t get any of these things, and there was no point rubbing his nose in it.
One of the agents I’d posted outside slipped in, shutting the door behind him and approaching us quietly. I knew him a little, better than the other two thugs the Old Man had given me, both of whom I was sure had orders to do to me what we were about to do to Roland, if I had any signs of getting second thoughts.
I poured Roland another shot. When he reached out to take it I gave the man behind him a nod.
It was very quick – that was the least I could do. The Agent brought a blade across his throat, one quick movement. Blood sprayed onto the table, though I was far enough away to avoid the spill. Roland’s eyes seemed locked on mine. After a few seconds the light went out of them.
‘Wrap up the body,’ I said, getting up from the table. ‘Dump it where I showed you. And for the love of the Firstborn, don’t let anyone see you.’
The investigation would be brief and perfunctory. Roland’s corpse was found outside a whorehouse in a part of Low Town that even I avoided, a part where a man could die easily and for no particular reason. The sordid quality of his demise did little to blemish his reputation. The Association had a mass funeral, beat their breasts and rent their clothes, called for investigations into Roland’s murder, demanded a raise in the pension fund. What they didn’t call for was open violence. Joachim Pretories kept up his end.
And the Old Man kept his. In exchange for my act of betrayal, I was made a member of Special Operations, fast-tracked into the halls of power. In a year I was the Old Man’s second-in-command, practically speaking one of the five or ten most powerful people in the Empire. In three I was back in Low Town, dealing breath to meet my ends.
You grow up reading stories, and you start to think your life is one. Every punchline has a set-up; every action a motive. But that’s horseshit – we’re all just stumbling about blind. You do something and decide why you did it afterward. Roland was mad – beautiful, and noble, but mad as well, mad as only a man with a dream can be. I was no dreamer. Roland’s life had taught him that anything is possible. Mine had taught me that you hold on to what you have with both hands.
At least that’s what I tell myself, when I think about it late at night and early in the morning. I never quite manage to believe it, though.
47
Edwin Montgomery’s door was unlocked. Not a good sign – it meant they knew I was coming, and weren’t concerned.
Back at the Earl I’d armed up, huffed pixie’s breath until I couldn’t feel my teeth, and headed out. The city was straight bedlam – I hadn’t seen anything like it for thirty years, since the worst days of the plague. The effects of what would come to be known as the Veterans’ Riot were felt far beyond where the fighting had taken place. Anyone lucky enough to have a barred door was huddled behind it. Gray storm clouds, swollen by the smoke, hovered just out of reach, pissing down on me with every step.
Whatever was coming, I wasn’t in any shape to see it through. The breath carried me along like a scrap of trash in the wind, but that wouldn’t last. When it was gone I wouldn’t have enough left in me to stand. But delay was a non-starter. Twelve years this had dragged on – it would end today, one way or the other.
Botha was in the drawing room. He’d stripped down to his undershirt and was shouldering the grand piano into the corner. He’d done the same with the rest of the furniture, the tea table set against the wall, a Kiren rug rolled on top of it. He saw me but didn’t stop what he was doing until the room was clear of obstructions. Then he picked up a wrapped parcel from amidst the clutter, held it against his shoulder and waited for me to begin.
I obliged him. ‘Expecting company?’
