“Don’t you want to know what I saw?” she asked. “Everyone always wants to know what’s ahead of them.”
“People are fools. You don’t need a prophet to tell the future. Look at yesterday, then look at today. Tomorrow is likely to be the same, and the day after.”
It was time to leave. Wren was outside in the cold, and I had a ways left to go before I’d earn my day’s rest. I took a long look at Avraham. He’d be the last, I told myself, one way or another.
Marieke interrupted my thoughts. “Did you survive it, the first time?”
“It killed me,” I said. “Can’t you tell?”
She blushed a little, and rushed forward. “I meant did you…”
“I know what you meant,” I said. “And yeah, I survived it.”
“What was it like?”
People asked me that sometimes, if they knew I’d been in Low Town during the worst of it. “Tell me about the plague,” like it was some piece of neighborhood gossip or the outcome of a prizefight. And what could you tell them, and what did they want to hear?
Tell them about the first days, when it didn’t look to be any worse than every other summer-one or two from a block, the old and the very young. How the sick marks on the houses began to grow, to spawn and multiply till there was scarcely a shack or tenement that didn’t have an X scrawled on its front door. About the government men who came to burn them, that sometimes they weren’t so careful to make sure everyone inside was dead or to contain the flames.
Tell them about the second night after they put Momma and Papa on the wagons, when the neighbors ransacked our house, just walked in, not happy about it but not ashamed either, leaving with the few argents my father had managed to save, giving me a blow to the face when I tried to stop them. The same neighbors we borrowed sugar from and sang hymns with at Midwinter. And who could blame them, really, because nothing anyone did mattered anymore.
Tell them about the cordons around Low Town, the fat-faced guards who gorged themselves on bribes but didn’t let a single poor bastard out, ’cause as far as they were concerned we were scum, best kept from decent folk by the head of a pike. That I kept my eyes open for years and years afterward, looking to even the score, that I keep my eyes open today.
Tell them about Henni’s face when I came back without food the third day in a row, not angry, not sad even, just resigned-my poor little sister putting her hand on my shoulder and telling me it would be all right, that I’d have better luck tomorrow, and her voice so sweet and her face so thin that it broke your heart, just broke your fucking heart.
I guess I could have told her a lot of things.
“It wasn’t no big deal,” I said, and for once Marieke had the good sense to keep her damn fool mouth shut.
And by that point it was time to leave, leave before I did something I shouldn’t, and I gave Marieke a last quick nod-and I guess I looked hot because she tried to offer some sort of apology-a powerful show of contrition by her lights-but I ignored it and headed into the cold and sent Wren home with a curt dismissal. And even though I was too near downtown for it to be safe I jammed a vial of breath beneath my nose and pulled from it until my head was so filled with the buzz that there wasn’t room for much else, and I leaned myself against a wall until I felt steady enough to start the long walk home.
I holed up at the Earl for a few hours, drinking coffee with cinnamon while the storm buried the city under a solid layer of white. Toward the end of the afternoon I smoked a joint of dreamvine and watched Adolphus and Wren build a snow fort based upon what was, in my estimation, a lack of sound architectural principles. My concerns proved valid when a portion of the east wall collapsed, offering a decisive avenue of entry for an invading force.
They were enjoying themselves. I was having more trouble getting into the spirit of the season. The way I figured it there was at least one group of people trying to kill me, and possibly as many as three. Beyond that, the certainty of the Old Man’s deadline loomed omnipresent, a hum settled an inch behind my eyes. I couldn’t stop running over the math-seven days minus three days is four days, seven minus three days is four days, four days, four days.
Worse come to worst I could flee the city-I had made contingencies in case of similar circumstances, lives I had set up in remote regions that I could wrap myself up in and never return. But with the Old Man involved I couldn’t be certain any of them would last-nowhere in Rigus would be deep enough if he put his mind to smoking me out. I might have to flip, offer what I could to Nestria or the Free Cities and have them settle me in some distant province. I still knew where enough dirt was buried to be of interest to someone, I hoped. But that would mean I’d have to make provisions for Adolphus and Adeline-and Wren now too. I couldn’t leave them to catch my heat.
Deal with that when it comes, I told myself and started going over it all again, hoping to catch something different this time. I laid out the pieces in my head, one at a time, running over how Beaconfield had gone from a dilettante to a mass murderer.
He wakes up one day and realizes he doesn’t have enough ready coin to shortchange his tailor, and starts thinking of a way to rectify the situation. Probably Brightfellow wasn’t his first option, probably he’d had a few false starts. At some point he gets in touch with the sorcerer, and the two start talking. He wasn’t always a hack, doing chicanery for the upper crusts-he was a real practitioner, and he might have a way out, a happy ending on tap, so long as the duke isn’t squeamish about the means. The duke is not. They contract out Tara to a Kiren, some acquaintance of Brightfellow’s, but they pick wrong: their man botches the job and they have to kill him before he can be followed up the chain. They put the operation on ice for a few months and retool-no more freelance work, all the kidnappings are to be done in-house. First Caristiona goes, than Avraham, stolen and sacrificed, then dumped where their bodies couldn’t be traced.
It was thin, damn thin. I had motive and means, but no more. What connected the children? Why had the last two been infected with the plague? Too many questions and damn little in the way of concrete evidence. Brightfellow’s name on a slip of paper that I didn’t even have anymore, lost during my tumble in the canal. A few threats during a conversation that the Blade would deny having. I knew Beaconfield was guilty, but a hunch wouldn’t be good enough for the Old Man, and moving on the duke wouldn’t do me any good if I couldn’t square myself with Black House.
Now I wished I had taken the opportunity to pump more out of the Blade during our last conversation, rather than use it to score points. The Old Man used to give me shit about it, back during my stint under his tutelage-that I couldn’t quite control my temper. He said that was why I’d never be as good as him, because I let the hatred get through my teeth. He was a sick motherfucker, but he was probably right.
I needed to speak to Guiscard, needed to find Afonso Cadamost, needed to figure out what I was up against. I wasn’t too concerned about the men Beaconfield could muster, but what about Brightfellow and his blasphemous pet? Could it be targeted on me? From what distance? How could I defend myself against it, and most critically, how the hell did I kill it?
These were all questions I wished I had answered before declaring open warfare on the Smiling Blade.
I was sitting in front of the fire, reading from Elliot’s History of the Third Isocrotan Campaign, when a messenger boy entered, dressed in a heavy coat and calling my name. I waved him over and he handed me his letter.
“Bad out there?” I asked.
“Getting worse.”
“It usually is.” I tossed him an argent as tip-I figured I probably wouldn’t need it to buttress my retirement fund. He nearly pumped my arm out of my socket thanking me.
The envelope was made of fine pink parchment, with a stylized capital M on the back flap. I found our first conversation so captivating that I endeavored to undertake what actions I needed to tempt you to a second. Suffice to say, I have acquired further information that may be of interest to you. Shall you return to my abode, say, eleven? Impatiently awaiting your arrival, Mairi
I read it over twice more, then consigned it to the flames, watching the rose-colored vellum curl up and dissipate with a quick pop. Apparently Mairi thought whatever she had to tell me would go better after hours. I returned to Elliot and the foolishness of great men.
The crowd at the Earl stayed small for most of the night, the storm heavy enough to keep out even the neighborhood traffic. I took my usual from Adolphus’s tap, eating away the time, trying not to think of Mairi’s tan flesh and dark eyes, my success mixed at best.
I headed out around ten, making sure Adeline and the boy were in the back room. Two minutes under the falling sleet and I was certain that this was a mistake. I was no youth to go tramping through the snow at the whiff of quim, whatever Mairi had to tell me could wait till morning. But having begun I was too stubborn to turn back, though the weather was so awful I resolved to cut straight through Brennock, rather than follow the canal north.
I was halfway there when I heard them, easy enough as they made no attempt at stealth. Probably they figured their numbers were sufficient advantage, though more experience might have taught them never to offer succor to the enemy, however certain the contest may seem.
Apart from their childlike exuberance they had set the ambush quite professionally. By the time the pair behind me had drawn my attention, their comrades had already circled around to my front. A quick glance was enough to let me know I wasn’t being jumped by a gang of street toughs braving the cold-beneath their thick black cloaks I caught flashes of bright cashmere. Each of them wore a half mask the same color as their capes, masquerade style, fashioned to cover the lower half of the face with that of a wild animal.
I hadn’t been paying much attention because of the snow, thinking that and the irregularity of my hours would be sufficient protection. Was the invitation fake, I wondered now, ginned up by the Blade to lure me out of hiding? It hadn’t looked like it, nor did it strain credulity to think of Mairi and her cool black eyes turning around and selling me off the moment her door had slammed shut.
I filed that in the growing stack of things I would think about if I survived the next five minutes and ducked into an alleyway, sprinting through the treacherous snow. Behind me I could hear them whooping, hounds running a quarry to ground. The buildings in the area were all garment factories in the new style, long rows of laborers at unforgiving machines, closed since last year’s trade war with Nestria. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a side entrance to one of them and threw my shoulder into it, smashing through whatever rotted lock had been holding it shut.
I entered a cavernous structure a good hundred yards across, broken windows offering enough light to navigate the huge sewing contraptions decaying in the interior. Against the back wall I saw a steep metal staircase and above it a pair of long-abandoned offices, and I sprinted up the steps. The gangway led toward a second stairwell and another locked door, the latter proving no greater impediment than its brother below.
I scrambled forward onto a flat roof, the wood warped and treacherous. The cityscape spread out ahead of me, a panorama of civic rot broken up by the huge industrial smokestack that crowned the factory. My subterfuge had gained me only a few seconds, and I drew my blade to deal with the one coming up behind me.
His mask was carved into a narrow beak, like a finch’s, and he was laughing, laughing and drawing his blade, a thin fencer’s epee that looked more like a child’s toy than the means to commit murder. He started to say something, but I didn’t have time for pleasantries and I closed quickly, hoping to put him down and continue my escape.
He was fast, and younger than me by a good ten years, but a lifetime of fencing was poor preparation for the business at hand. The powdery snow fouled up his footwork, and his style, honed in less lethal circumstances, bespoke the natural tendency toward offense one adopts when the worst a miscalculation promises is the loss of a match. I’d have him in a moment.
But I didn’t have a moment. I could hear his compatriots on the stairwell and I knew if I didn’t finish him quickly I’d learn how difficult breathing becomes with a foot of steel in your innards. After his next pass I feigned a stumble, dropping forward on one knee, hoping he’d take the bait.
The thought of tagging me proved irresistible, and he pushed forward for a killing stroke. I ducked lower, so low my face was nearly touching the roof, and his rapier passed over my shoulder harmlessly. Bracing my left arm against the frozen wood I surged upward, swiping with my trench blade and cleaving his arm at mid-joint. He shrieked and I spent a quick quarter second in astonishment at the high pitch of his voice before my follow-up severed his neck to the spine. Conscious of the men close behind, I sprinted over his corpse and made my way forward.
I climbed the cast-iron ladder ten feet to the top of the chimney. Reaching the summit I sprang to my feet and looked down at my pursuers, the thought occurring to me that if any of them had brought a crossbow I was as good as dead. None had. Two stood staring back at me, swords clutched tightly in their hands, while the third checked on his dead friend. I laughed, filled with the exhilaration that accompanies violence. “Blue blood spills like any other!” I shouted, my trench blade dripping ichor. “Come get me if you’ve got the stones!”
I took three quick steps and leaped into the air, bracing myself as I smashed through the glass panes of the adjacent building. I tumbled as I fell, awkwardly and not without injury. Stumbling to my feet I rushed into the room beyond and took up position in the black interior, hoping my pursuers were foolish enough to follow the way I had come.
A half minute went by, and then I heard a boyish yell and saw two of them hit the floor, their cloaks apparently not proving a critical impediment to the maneuver. The jump didn’t put either of my pursuers down for long. They charged after me, cognizant of the danger that hesitation posed.
I tossed a dagger at the first one through the door, aiming at his chest but throwing high, the blade burying itself in his throat-a rare dividend of incompetence. He dropped to the ground, his last few seconds painful. I wasted no time mourning his loss, and pressed on to the one behind him. Between the death of his comrade and the bad light, he didn’t last long. There was a moment of terror as I maneuvered him back toward the broken windows, and I put him down with a flurry of blows.
I stood at the edge and thought about going over, dropping the two stories and heading out into the night, but I wasn’t sure if my ankle could take another fall. And truth be told, I wanted the last one, wanted to see his face as he realized I’d done for the other two, wanted to put my hands on someone after days of running around in the dark.
So I sprinted down the second-floor landing, just in time to see him break through the front door. Somewhere along the line he had dropped his cowl, but he retained the jet-black muzzle that obscured his identity. He was larger than his comrades, and in place of the thin dueling blades they had sported, he held a long saber with a thick bronze guard.