you just need a patsy to flush her out of hiding?’
‘I had hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. I had hoped she’d listen to reason.’
‘I don’t think you did. I think you hoped I’d take care of Rhaine for you – that I’d get worried she might find out the truth, arrange an accident on her behalf. When I didn’t, you had Botha call on Pretories, make sure the commander saw things the same way you did.’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t planned it out that way, it just happened.’ I wasn’t sure if I believed him – it was hard to tell, old and weak as he was, hard to read anything on a face so close to a corpse. ‘Joachim would have killed her anyway, after he found out she was sniffing around. Once she left for Low Town, there was nothing I could do.’
‘You could have come clean. Told her what happened. She’d have hated you, but she’d still be alive.’
He gave a slow smile, if you could call something so bitter a smile. ‘You could have done the same.’
The rain tapped on the windows – a pleasant, even pattern, and my pulse slowed to meet it. My legs suggested I stop standing on them, curl right up on the carpet like a collie. A short nap, or a long one, or the last one. ‘Tell me about Roland.’
‘I would have been a very good High Chancellor,’ Montgomery answered after a moment, though not to me particularly. ‘I could have helped our boys. Could have seen to it that they got what they deserved. I could have done great things.’
Strangely, I didn’t doubt any of that. ‘If only your son had fallen in line.’
‘It was all a game to him,’ Montgomery hissed, still furious at Roland’s misbehavior after twelve years and a definitive revenge. ‘He just did it to spite me.’
‘And one day the Old Man came to you, and he whispered things in your ear – reasonable things, quiet things, things you wanted to hear.’
‘He said there was still a chance to right the situation – for me to become Chancellor, for the Empire to avoid the horror my son seemed destined to inflict upon it. He asked me to contact Joachim, to see if we could squeeze Roland out before things went too far. He said it still might be possible to save Roland from his own folly.’
‘Did you believe him?’
‘I don’t know,’ Montgomery said, and seemed to mean it.
‘I’m not one to be surprised at the things men do. And I guess I can understand Roland – at least, I’m not in a position to judge. But I’d figure where you are now, the next generation would be all that mattered.’
‘Get on with it.’
‘Was she worth so little, that you’d strangle the root for a few months of peace?’
It’s easy to make a man a villain in your head, a creature undiluted by decency, as alien to you as night is to day. I’d done that on the way over, been doing it since the Old Man had tipped me to the general’s play. It was harder to hate him now – an almost corpse, preceded into the next world by everyone he’d ever loved. And I knew something of the way choices can start to carry their own weight, carry you further than you’d thought, further than you ever wanted to go.
‘You’ve no regrets?’ he asked finally.
‘A few here and there. But regret’s not enough – you have to pay for it.’
This seemed to spark something in him, some dying ember. His mutter became a shout, or the closest he could muster. ‘Have you paid for it, Lieutenant? Have you paid? You couldn’t save Rhaine, so you set the city awash in blood. I see the smoke from outside my window! How many did you kill for a girl you barely knew? You stand here and lecture me on morality, as if your hands weren’t red to the elbow! As if you had no role in leading Roland to the slaughter!’
‘I wasn’t his father.’ I pulled the locket he had given me that first day from my back pocket and sent it spinning across the desk. ‘Nor hers.’
That was enough. He opened the necklace with trembling hands, spent a while staring at Rhaine’s face.
I took a knife from my belt and flicked it into the wood. ‘Do it.’
He raised his eyes up to mine. ‘They’ll cover it up, won’t they?’
I nodded. ‘They’ll cover it up.’
They did. General Edward Montgomery died of a heart attack, unable to stand the loss of his second child. A few days later they laid him in the family crypt, there to spend eternity beside the bodies of his murdered kin.
48
It’s a sure thing, Warden. You know I wouldn’t steer you wrong.’
It was late afternoon, a week or so after the march. I was sitting at a table outside our front door, trying to move as little as possible, which demands more effort than you’d think. The rain had been coming down more or less constantly since it had started. Walking soaked a man to the skin in half a minute, and the streets had turned from dust to quagmire. It almost made one miss the heat – almost. The storm was finally showing signs of easing, but it hadn’t yet, and I was happy for the overhang that kept me from its reach. I’d been mixing whiskey with water since noon, and started doing away with the water not long after.
‘Ten ochres will get you a hundred in a month, month and a half at the outset. How’s that for a return?’
Tully the Hook was a choke head. If he had other characteristics I don’t remember them. He’d swung by a few minutes earlier, the storm nothing against the chance to fill his lungs with wyrm on my copper.
‘Now sure, I could take care of it myself, but then I figured, why not bring the Warden in on this one? There’s a man, I said, there’s a man what knows his business. There’s a man what knows an opportunity when he sees it, and if this ain’t an opportunity, I’ll eat my hat!’
He’d have eaten a turd wrapped in broken glass if he thought it would get him a pipeful of stem. On principle alone, I ought to have injured him – clearly my reputation was weak beer if a mutt like Tully thought he could waste my time and not risk violence. But every part of me still hurt – walking downstairs left me winded and bitter. I had a vial of breath in my pocket, the same one that had been there for four days, but for some damn fool reason I wouldn’t let myself use it.
‘The whole city’s off-balance – now’s the time to make a move. These Islander folks, all they need is a little push. They’ll do the lifting, dig?’
I took another swig of the whiskey, then set my head on the table. It was not soft. ‘Tully, you say one more word I’m going to kill you and leave your body in an alley. You know I’ll do it.’
There was a sputtering sound of disagreement, but it didn’t harden into speech. Maybe my name still hung together after all. Time passed. Half drunk with my eyes closed I wasn’t sure how much.
The muffled fall of steps alerted me to Tully’s return. Dumb motherfucker couldn’t figure when to make an exit. I pulled a knife out from my boot and slammed it in the table, brought my face up after it, trying to think of something threatening to say.
Wren stared back at me, little impressed. ‘That’s a nice knife.’
‘I . . . thought you were . . .’
‘Tully flitted out the back.’
I nodded uncomfortably, then waved at the opposite bench. Wren set himself into it but didn’t speak. The blade went back in my boot.
We stared at each other for a while. It wasn’t exactly riveting entertainment. The sky was a patchwork fabric of sunlight streaming through the clouds. My whiskey was almost gone. A long pull from the bottle and I lost my last reason for sticking around.
‘Rain’s letting up,’ I said.
‘Looks that way.’
‘I gotta run a thing over to a guy. Fancy a stroll?’
After a moment he nodded, and I pulled myself wearily to my feet, and we started off.
Walking pulled at the spot of stomach that I didn’t have anymore, and reminded me of the dozen other injuries I’d sustained the past week. I was too old to survive many more of these. I was surprised I’d survived this one, truth be told. Wren eased himself down to my pace. It was a while before I mustered the courage to say anything.
‘How’re the lessons going?’
