This is what I wanted to do; what I was going to do. I wanted to run as far from this bullshit as modern transportation would take me. Grew up the pawn of my old man, played the game according to his rules, according to the rules of this little society we had formed on this godscursed river. And he played me, betrayed me, cut me off. Everything that man had ever done was meant to shape me into a tool for his name. And when I broke, when the tool fell clattering to the floor of his shop, he cast me aside and went looking for someone else.
And now he had no one else, and he was coming back to me. Reinstating me into the family would only do one thing, it would get me killed. So here I was, dragged back into the chaos of Council politics, into the backstabbing and the plotting. Into the game. And I was done playing.
Somewhere outside of Veridon there was a morning where I could wake up and not worry about whether my name was about to get me killed. There was a town that had never heard of the family Burn, never heard of the wastrel of a son who disappointed his scheming father. There was a place where I was a nobody, worth nothing. Not worth killing. I was going to find that place. Now.
To hell with this place. To hell with Veridon.
Outside, it was like a festival. The street was stuffed with people, some of them screaming, some of them laughing. All of them drunk. The gunfire was distant, the sirens howling over the crowd like a trumpet call. The air was crackling with a hot spring breeze. Flares had gone up, lining the clouds of an early season storm in unnatural pinks and reds. Lightning shuddered across the sky. Wilson was still smiling.
There was a line of officers of the Badge moving down the street, steadily compacting the revelers into tighter and tighter quarters. The gunshots came from them, firing their shortrifles into the air as they proceeded. Wilson and I went with the flow of traffic, rippling in the other direction. It felt as if we were being herded.
"So, whatever ghost voice talked to you through the girl," Wilson yelled into my ear — it was hard to hear anything over the crowd and the sirens — "do you think it was the Badge they were warning you about?"
"Nope," I answered. My shoulders were hunched tight under my jacket. I was getting pressed from all sides.
"Me neither," Wilson said. "Because it's pretty obvious that they're coming. Don't need to be warned away from that ruckus. Which leaves us with the interesting question."
"Which is?"
Wilson looked around at the crowd, then back to me.
"What's the real threat, and where are they?" He muscled an arm free of the press and used it to clear some space around us. "And how long before they stab us in the back, among all these idiots?"
"That's not a very interesting question," I said. "At least, I'm not interested in it."
"You're not?" He gave me a quizzical look. "Feeling suicidal?"
"No. I'm feeling finished." I pushed to the side of the crowd, against one of the walls. The shop behind me had been boarded up, in eerily accurate anticipation of the riot. The keep had clearly seen this kind of weather in the air before. I stood with my back against the boards, watching the Badge get closer. Wilson fought his way next to me and stared into my face.
"Finished? Just like that? You're giving up."
"I'm just getting out, Wilson. I'm sick of this. Sick of my father."
"Oh, your father," he nodded. "That's what this is about. That's all you care about, isn't it?"
"You're missing the point, buddy. That's all I don't care about. I'd like to keep myself alive, and I'd like him to stop getting in the way of that." The crowd was getting awfully tight. Wilson was pushed right up against me. I could feel the brace of knives in his vest, poking me in the ribs. "I tried doing it in the city. Stayed low. Got forgotten. And that worked for a while. Now it seems to have stopped working."
"Don't give me that shit, Jacob." He bared his hundred teeth at me, biting off each word with a snap. "He would have taken you back, but you didn't give him the chance. You took the path that went through every bar in Veridon, and half the whores. I know, Jacob, because I followed you through that path. That's what friends do."
"We're friends now? I thought you were waiting for me to start making mistakes again. Because it amuses you."
He shook his long, bald head at me and spat. The line of Badge was getting close. Wilson noticed and pushed me aside, then began prying off the boards on the shop door.
"So what's your plan, genius? Get arrested again?" He snapped a board in half and began working on the lock beneath. "Because that's what's going to happen if you don't get moving."
"Doesn't sound like a bad idea. Settle into a nice cell until this blows over."
"You think they're going to let you do that? Angela's already sprung you once. Who knows what would come for you this time!" The lock snapped open, and Wilson pulled the door wide, tearing the boards from the frame as he pulled. So it wasn't the best barricade job. The shopkeeper hadn't matched his prescience with good carpentry. You can't have everything. Wilson stood in the door, staring down at me.
"Stay out here and get arrested, or come through here with me. But if you follow me, by gods, you have to fight with me."
"What makes you so all-fire righteous all of a sudden, Wilson?" I demanded. "You can't tell me that you honestly care about what happens in the Council. Or to my father, for that matter."
He laughed.
"Don't care? It's all I care about, Jacob. You can go traipsing off into some pastoral fantasy about milkmaids and sleeping in and maybe doing a little fishing," he snarled, making the word 'milkmaids' sound particularly vicious. "But some of us are stuck here. Some of us can't drop everything and disappear."
"That's not my fault. That's not my responsibility. And what the hell is keeping you here, anyway? Not like you've got family obligations."
There was murder in his eyes. I had always been afraid of his teeth, and his iron hard fingers, and those knives, and the sharp talons of his spider hands. I added his eyes to the list.
"Oi, you there! You lads!" shouted one of the officers. "We'd like a word with you, if you have the time." As if we were standing in the street, loitering. Not in the middle of a riot.
Wilson stepped inside the shop, gave me a significant look. I shrugged and brushed past him, further into the darkness within. He turned to the line of officers who were struggling to get closer.
"I will thank you kind gentleman to do something about this rabble," Wilson shouted back. "I am a respectable citizen of the city, and the proprietor of this fine shop. Please remove these people from my doorstep and see that nothing is damaged. I have some very fine" — he paused to look around at the shelves nearest him — "some very fine pottery that must be protected at all costs. And what appears to be a hookah… never mind, thank you for your time."
And he slammed the door and threw the bolt, and then whirled on me.
"Let's say that it's not me who's stuck here. You clearly care nothing for me, or my feelings, so let's imagine it's someone else. Anyone else. What would have happened if you hadn't stepped up two years ago, huh? What would have happened to the city?"
"Maybe that was a mistake. Maybe I should have let Camilla have her heart back, and let the chips fall where they may."
"Really?" He stalked closer to me, backing me up against the very fine pottery. "Really, Jacob? You don't care that she would have burned a hole through this city a mile wide and two deep? All the people who would have died, all the tomorrows that would have been lost; that doesn't matter to you at all?"
"Maybe it doesn't matter to me anymore." I pushed him back a little, enough to get my footing. "Maybe I didn't do as much good as you think. Things could have turned out differently. Things could have turned out better."
"For who, Jacob? For you? For the Council? Who would be better off now, if you hadn't done what you did?"
And there it was, hanging between us in the air, the name neither of us would say. Would either of us dare play that name; did we care about this argument enough to tear open that wound?
Emily. Emily would be better off. But I couldn't say that. Couldn't even think it.
I retreated to the back of the shop, looking for another door. People were pounding on the bolted front of the shop, Badgemen or crushed rioters or maybe even the cogdead. Who could tell anymore? The silence and that name hung in the air like a thunderbolt.
"I don't know what good I did back then, Wilson, but I know what evil. I know how many men I've killed. How many women." I found a door and started fiddling with the lock. "I know how many lives I've ruined, how many bones I've crushed. Both for Valentine, and later for myself."
"But think about how many more would have died, Jacob." Wilson came over and put a hand on the door. Didn't matter. I couldn't get the damn lock to budge, anyway. "And how many more will die this time around. You can do something, out there."
I had to laugh. Put a hand on his arm and smiled.
"You're talking like I'm a fucking hero, Wilson. Let's not tell that lie, okay? My dad got me involved in this because he knows I'm not a hero. He knows I'm a coward, and a violent man, and I do violent things when I'm scared. And I don't want to be that man, not now. Maybe not ever." I pulled my hand away and crossed my arms over my chest. "But certainly not today, and certainly not for him."
Wilson pressed his lips into a thin, furious line. He pushed me aside and, with contemptuous ease, tumbled the lock and threw open the door.
"Fine, Jacob. Go. Hide. Leave us alone."
I stared at him for a dozen breaths, and then stepped out into the alley. It was quiet and dark, the shouts of the rioters and the Badge confined to the other side of the buildings. I put my hands in my pockets and hurried down the road. The clouds above grumbled menacingly, and the first heavy drops of a serious spring rain splattered to the cobbles around me. I hunched my shoulders, tucked my chin into my coat, and kept my eyes down. With luck I could be inside before it hit.
That was where I got unlucky. The day I decided to finally put this place behind me, to get out, shake the dust from my shoes and make a new life somewhere else, that was the day the Badge locked down the whole city with a strict curfew. Also, the rain started long before I got anywhere near shelter and as a final note, I had been awake for nearly twenty hours, and I had spent most of those hours either running for my life, fighting for my life, or drinking. It was beginning to show.
I didn't get more than two blocks before I had to turn around. I wanted to get to the zep docks, get a ticket and a cabin and a bed. But part of a curfew means locking the city down, and that means controlling the most common means of retreat. The entrances to the pneumatic train were guarded, and the main avenues of approach to the docks, the gates of the city and the massive bridge that led up to the Torchlight and the zep docks were all heavily patrolled. On top of that, there were roaming patrols of very curious and helpful Badgemen. A couple minutes after midnight the sirens stopped howling, the last of the rioters were tucked comfortably into padlocked carriages, and the Badge had the streets to themselves.
This was what I didn't understand. Why was the Badge locking the city down? I mean, I understood that it had been a pretty hectic day, what with the massacre on the docks. Still thought it was weird that the investigator who interviewed me this morning didn't know anything about that. Seemed to think it was some kind of fire that killed all those people. Angela knew, though. Figured.
Stop it, stop it, stop it. Stop thinking about this. Focus on getting out of the city. Or maybe to a decent bed, somewhere no one will come looking for you, and try again in the morning. But if I don't get out tonight, who's to say that I'll have the will to get out tomorrow? Tonight, and then sleep outside the city.
It was becoming increasingly difficult to stay out of the way of those patrols. Veridon was a labyrinth of alleys and streets and underground rivers, and there were only so many Badgemen on the payroll, but a lone pedestrian moving through the city at midnight, when the streets have been cleared, is going to draw the eye. Most of the honest citizens were in bed, cursing a siren at midnight for waking them up, and the dishonest citizens had gotten drunk and ended up in a riot. That just left the stragglers, like me and Wilson, folks who were up to serious mischief, and the truly determined drunks. There were pockets of these people lurking in alleyways, huddled around fire barrels, vigorously getting their bottles empty. I ducked into one such alley, its narrow walls high enough to block out all but the most direct rain. A group of drunks started when they saw me, drawing knives, until their bleary eyes figured out I wasn't there to arrest them. They stood in a tight ring around a fire barrel, sharing the heat and a bottle.
"Bad night for a walk, buddy," one of them said. He had a raincloak of slick leather, the hood pulled tight around his face. He turned away from me and clapped his hands over the smoldering barrel, but edged to one side to give me some room. I hunched my shoulders and squeezed in. The warmth was nice.
"Wasn't my plan," I said. "Out for a drink when all those sirens went off."
"Yeah," another one of my new companions said. I was surprised to see that it was a girl, young and thin and well groomed. She wore the kind of clothes that rich girls wore when they went slumming. "Badge is crawling around like lice tonight. Something has their hackles up."
"Nothing to do with us," the first one said. "Just an excuse to interrupt a perfectly good drunk."
I looked at the third member of their rain-soaked party. A boy, maybe a little younger than the girl. His eyes were glassy, and he swayed dangerously close to the fire. The girl saw my look of concern and laughed.
"Ricky's birthday today. He's a man now, aren't you Rick?"
Rick didn't answer. The older guy chuckled and passed the bottle to the girl. I took the bottle after her. Bitter and sharp in my mouth, its fire bursting through my chest. A couple shots rang out, far down the street. The girl winced and the man shook his head.
"Don't know what they're on about," he said. "Not like people need a reason to hate the Badge. Getting drunk in the rain shouldn't be a crime."
"Shouldn't it?" the girl asked, with a trill of mischief in her voice. "I'm feeling pretty damn criminal, I'll tell you."
I saw it in her, that childish glee at being in trouble. Being troublesome. I probably went to school with her mother, if the money in her bearing came from Founder stock rather than the industrialists. Did that matter, though? Which side of the Chamber her money came from? I imagined rich parents were just as overbearing, regardless of whether they'd earned their money or inherited it. The kids rebelled in the same predictable ways.
"You don't look like a pretty damn criminal to me," I said.
My two mostly sober new friends turned to me, a little uncomfortable.
"Now just you listen, bud," the man said, snatching the bottle from my hand. "There's no reason to be rude to the lady, just because we gave you a drink."
"Rude to the lady? We're standing in an alleyway, in the rain, drinking from a bottle of rotgut. And I suspect you brought her here, and got her brother drunk, and I suspect you had a good reason for doing that."
The man flushed and busied himself with the bottle. Who was he? An older friend? A servant? It wouldn't matter, in the end.
"What the hell are you talking about?" the girl said. "Jeremy is here at my request, and for my protection. It was Ricky's birthday, and I wanted the three of us to have a night out."
You could almost hear the pout in her voice. Jeremy didn't say anything.
"For your protection. Right." I took the bottle from Jeremy's loose hands and drank up. "Have some sense, girl, and get inside with the other good children. And take Ricky with you."
"Not every girl needs a hero, you know!" she shrilled.
The words hit me. An alley, when I was young and foolish, rushing to the aid of a girl I had only just met. Emily. That's what she said to me, when I thought to rescue her from an attacker, and she stood over his body, knife in hand. Not every girl needed a hero.
My hand was on the fire barrel, the pain barely getting to me through a wall of fuzzy numbness. I looked down at the smoldering cuff of my coat, then to the bottle, and up to the man in the hooded cloak. I was tired, sure, but not this tired. Back to the girl. Her eyes had gone wide, her hand to her face, gasping as she collapsed. Not every girl, no. But this girl does.
"You drugged us," I slurred. "You have no idea how bad that is."
"You should have stopped in a different alley," the man said. He batted the bottle from my hand. It shattered when it hit the cobbles, its tainted contents disappearing into the rain. "Or gotten properly drunk and gone to sleep, like everyone else."
Such a petty criminal. Such a stupid way for this stupid day to end. I backed into the wall, using it to hold me up. The man went to check on Ricky and the girl, both of whom were limp on the ground. Then he turned his attention to me.
"Look, I know what you're thinking," he said. Glanced at the girl, most of her leg exposed and muddy, back to me. "And I'd be lying if I said that didn't play a part. But mostly it's him. The boy's at the age of majority tonight, and that makes him an heir. Bad night to be an heir."
"I agree. Terrible night."My words were thick in my mouth. I blinked away the shadows that were clinging to my eyes, ran my hand across my face.
He gave me a funny look, then shrugged.
"Anyway. Bad luck for you, running into us. I hoped to have this all done before the curfew, but it's hard getting them away from crowds. Turned out that waiting until everyone was safely at home or tucked away in jail worked out. Other than you showing up. And that's your problem more than mine, honestly."
I steadied myself on the wall and tried to rub the drugged fatigue from my head. He chuckled, and when I looked up he was holding a knife. The barrel was still between us, and I probably could have gotten into the street. He might not have chased me, not with his two charges unconscious on the ground, but he seemed like the kind of guy who couldn't afford any witnesses. Didn't matter. I had my gun in my hand without really thinking of the consequences.
That surprised him. Maybe he was new to this business, or maybe victims who fought back weren't really his usual thing. He adapted well enough. Ducked behind the barrel, and when he came up it was with the girl's limp body under his arm, knife against her throat. Her head lolled over the blade, already drawing blood.
"How the hell does this happen to me?" I muttered. The damn gun was heavy in my hand. The poison was dragging me down. "What is it that I do to get in these situations?"
"This can still end well," he said. I don't think he knew what he was talking about. "You can just walk away. I promise you the girl isn't going to get hurt."
"Somehow I have trouble taking the word of the guy who drugged her in the first place." My sight was blurry, but I did my best to keep the barrel in the general direction of his head. Best if he thought I could pull off that shot, even if I knew better. "In fact the only way I see this ending is with blood. And it's not going to be mine, so you best start coming up with ways it doesn't have to be yours, either."
"Somehow I have trouble taking a threat from a man who can barely hold his head up." There was snide contempt in his voice. "So maybe you should start coming up with ways you walk out of this alive. Like, maybe if you just put the gun down, turn around and walk out."
"Let's figure that out, right after you stop hiding behind an unconscious girl."
He spat, but didn't move. Man, I love standoffs. Especially when I'm drunk, drugged and haven't slept in twenty hours. Best kind of standoffs. And no Wilson to pull my ass out of the fire.
"How about this," he said. "How about you take the girl, and I take young master Richard, and we just go our separate ways."
"I don't think I'd be a very good friend if I let you take her brother. How about you put that knife in your eye and save me the trouble of having to kill you."
"Whoa, whoa, no one said anything about killing." He pressed the knife more firmly against the girl's lolling head, just to make it clear that this whole conversation was, in fact, about killing. "What the hell do you care, anyway?"
"Well, at first I thought you meant to rape her, and I had it in my mind that I was going to be some kind of hero about it. But then you drugged me, and I take that kind of thing personally. Would have been okay if you'd just dropped the knife when I pulled iron. Instead you hide behind the girl, put your knife to her throat." The darkness in my head was closing in on me fast. Good thing I could talk in my sleep. Or at least, I could threaten in my sleep. "It offends me on a professional level."
"What would have been better is if you had drunk more and fallen asleep with the kids." He was edging around the barrel, putting it firmly between us. He straddled Ricky's unconscious form and hitched the girl further up, so her feet were off the ground. "Then everyone involved could have woken up tomorrow with a bad hangover, and you could have kept out of my business."
"You'd have slit my throat. Unless you're particularly bad at this job which, honestly, I'm beginning to think might be the case. Besides, you didn't put enough juice in that bottle to take down a man my size. You had to drink it, too, or the kids would have gotten suspicious."
"Listen to you, all clear-headed and analytical." He smiled grimly. "You know this kind of work. So why don't you just turn around and walk…"
He stopped talking and I stopped breathing, because we both heard it at the same time. Feet, lots of them, and the idle chatter of bored officers. Badge patrol. They weren't on our street, maybe on one of the cross streets, but certainly not more than a block or two away. They could turn and come this way, or they could wander off somewhere else. Tricky situation.
"Don't do it," he hissed. "Don't make a sound, don't call out, and don't fire that iron. Because if you do, I promise you, I promise, I'm going to cut this girl open and I'm going to run like hell. You think you can explain all this to the cops?"
"You think you can run faster than I can shoot you?" I asked, but I kept my voice down. I knew I couldn't run, and even if I could explain all this, I would still end up in custody and right back in the system. He gave me a sharp look and squeezed the girl for emphasis. I held up my hand.
They went the other way. Voices faded, footsteps became muffled. We stood staring at each other for two minutes after the last hint of their presence went away, then relaxed.
"See, this can still all be okay," he said, resting the girl against his knee and wiping his mouth with the back of the hand holding the knife. "We can work this out, you and me."
It was just enough of an opening, his tired arm resting, the girl folding limply forward, the knife away from her throat. Only opening I was going to get. I pushed the tension and fatigue from my mind and, loosely as I could, raised the revolver and squeezed two shots into his chest.
First one took him in the shoulder. He looked startled, dropped the knife, his eyes wide. He tried to hug the girl back to his body but I was already pulling the trigger on the second shot. Faster than him. Better than him. He dropped, and the girl dropped with him. I stumbled around the barrel, kicked her away from his bloody chest, kicked the knife down the alley, then took his shirt in my hand, knelt, and raised him off the ground.
"This was never a negotiation," I said. Then I punched him once, my hand wrapped around the cylinder of the revolver. Twice, teeth and blood across my knuckles. Three times, but he was already dead. I dropped him and turned to the girl.
She was still out, would be out for a while. A shout went up a couple streets over, then another. Patrol had heard the shot and was looking for the source. I didn't have a lot of time. I turned her so that she was on her side, in case something in the drug made her puke. Then I pulled her coat over her legs, made sure Ricky was comfortable, then turned back to the guy.
A bit of metal caught my eye. It was stuffed in an inner pocket of his coat, torn open by my shot. A familiar shape, stitched to a stiff black wallet. I picked it up.
Seal of the Badge, iron and pewter. My bullet had nicked the leather, biting a circle out of it. Why had he been scared of being found by the patrol, then? I looked down at the girl, at Ricky, at the dead man they trusted. The patrol was getting closer. Running out of time.
I pocketed the emblem, pulled my coat around my shoulders and trotted drunkenly down the alley. Just like a hero.