Daniel Polansky - Low Town

“On my signal,” the judge said, stepping off the green. Wilkes snapped his blade to the ready. Beaconfield held the point of his weapon arrogantly off to the side.

“Begin.”

I learned early on that She Who Waits Behind All Things was an indiscriminate mistress, when the plague took broken old men and wellborn youths without distinction. The war reinforced the lesson, years watching thick Dren pikemen and Asher sword slaves die from well-placed artillery shells disabusing any lingering illusions as to the inviolability of flesh. No one is immortal. No one is so good that he can’t lose it to a rank amateur if the light is wrong or his foot gets caught in a divot. A couple hundred pounds of meat, a frame of bone not nearly as sturdy as it seems-we were not built for immortality.

That being said, I never saw anyone like Beaconfield. Not before and not since. He was faster than I thought a person could be, fast like a bolt from the ether. He fought with a heavy blade, something midway between a rapier and a long sword, but he wielded it like a razor. His technique and composure were astonishing. No movement was wasted, no drop of energy exhausted unnecessarily.

Wilkes was good, very good, and not just in the archaic and formalized style of the duel. He had killed men before, maybe in the war, maybe in one of these little tete-a-tetes the rich engage in rather than do any honest work, but he was no stranger to the spilling of blood. I wondered if I could take him and thought maybe, if I got a little lucky or if my style surprised him.

Regardless, he was absolutely outclassed, embarrassingly so. Watching the Blade play with him I wondered what in the name of Maletus could have convinced this poor bastard to draw steel with Beaconfield, what absurd point of honor could have necessitated so foolish a gesture.

In the midst of the melee the Blade’s eyes flashed up and locked on mine, a flourish that would have seen anyone else dead. Sensing an opening, Wilkes threw everything into his attack, surging forward, the tip of his weapon searching for flesh. The Blade deflected his opponent’s blows, parrying each thrust and cut by some preternatural instinct.

Then one eyelid winked shut and Beaconfield struck, a flash so quick that I couldn’t follow it, and Wilkes had a hole in his chest, one he stared at awkwardly before dropping his weapon and sinking to the ground.

I will admit I wondered, in an off moment here and there since I’d met him, the extent to which the Smiling Blade’s reputation rested on rumor and hearsay. I wouldn’t waste any more time. It’s an important thing to know your limitations, not to be blinded by pride or optimism as to what you’re capable of. I’d never be pretty. I’d never outwrestle Adolphus or beat a drum better than Yancey. I’d never get comeback on the Old Man, never be the kind of rich that lets you start your life over, never find a way out of Low Town.

And I would never, ever, be able to take Beaconfield in a fair fight. To draw a weapon against that man was suicide, as sure as swallowing widow’s milk.

Wilkes had gotten what he’d asked for I supposed-it doesn’t do to go around antagonizing someone with “blade” in their nickname. Still, the small crowd seemed unenthusiastic about the outcome. Beaconfield’s coup de grace had been bad form. It’s one thing for a combatant to die of sepsis from a gut wound, and another to be laid out deliberately with a killing stroke. There was a code of conduct about these things-first blood usually isn’t last as well. The Blade’s men offered the appropriate obeisance, of course, ruffled cuffs clapping against one another, but the rest of the gathering was in no great hurry to laud the victor. A medic rushed onto the field, followed closely by Wilkes’s second, but they couldn’t have had much hope, and if they did it was soon dashed. I could tell that wound was mortal at fifty paces.

The Blade had returned to his perch on the wooden bench, surrounded by his entourage of courtiers, fawning over themselves in congratulations at his ritualized slaughter. His shirt was unbuttoned below his neck and snowflakes were gathering in his dark hair. Apart from a lively flush there was little enough to show he’d been in an athletic contest of any kind-the bastard hadn’t even broken a sweat. He was laughing at something I couldn’t quite make out as I approached.

I greeted him with a bow. “May I say it was a pleasure to see your grace demonstrate his skills in the service of such a noble endeavor.”

He sneered slightly, and I was struck by how different he was in front of his lackeys. “I’m glad you had the opportunity to witness it. When you didn’t respond to my invitation, I wasn’t certain you’d be coming.”

“I remain your grace’s servant, in this as in all things.”

The sycophants took that as the obsequiousness due their leader, but the duke knew me well enough to appreciate the sarcasm. He rose and brushed off the parasites surrounding him. “Walk with me.”

I did as he directed, falling in beside him on one of the narrow stone paths that radiated from the fountain. The white sky shed light but no heat through the bare branches of the trees. The snow was coming down harder now and would only get worse. Beaconfield kept quiet until we were out of earshot of the rest of the assemblage, then pulled up in front of me. “I’ve considered our last discussion.”

“It flatters me to know I have a place in your graces’s thoughts.”

“Your words disturbed me.”

“Oh?”

“And more so your actions against me in the interim.”

“And what alterations to my behavior would satisfy your grace?”

“Cut the shit-I don’t find it amusing,” he said, coming on strong, swaggering like a cock now that he had a homicide under his belt. “Stop your investigation. Tell your superiors whatever they need to hear to get them off my back-I’ll make it worth your while. I have influence throughout the court, and I have money.”

“No, you haven’t.”

His face, bright red from his earlier exercise, blanched white, and he answered awkwardly, less practiced with his tongue than his weapon. “I’ve got other ways to settle my debts.”

“You waste a lot of vowels,” I said, “for a man holding trumps.”

He smiled a little, and I was reminded that there was something about him that didn’t quite fit in the archetype he sometimes chose to embody. “I responded in haste.” He swallowed hard, humility an unfamiliar taste in his mouth. “I’ve made some poor decisions, but I won’t let Black House use them to destroy me. It hasn’t gone too far-it’s not too late for forgiveness.”

I thought about Tara’s fractured body, and Crispin lying in the Low Town muck, and I disagreed. “I told you last time, Beaconfield-there’s no such thing.”

“That makes me unhappy,” he said, drawing himself up imperiously. “And you’ve had ample evidence of what happens to those who earn my displeasure.”

As if I had forgotten the part of the morning where he’d murdered a man for my benefit. “You’re aptly named-but I won’t dress up for it, nor set a convenient time to be slaughtered. I didn’t make my reputation stabbing noblemen on shaped grass. I made it in the dark, in the streets, without a crew of courtiers clapping their support or a rule book to let me know procedure.” I bared my teeth in a bitter smile, happy to dispense with the dissimulation, happy to finally lay my simmering hatred of this monstrous fop on the table. “You come at me, you best start thinking crooked-and you best put your affairs in order.” I turned on my heel, not wanting to give him the chance for a last word.

He took it anyway. “Greet Wilkes when you see him!”

You’ll meet him first, you son of a bitch, I thought, heading east back to the city. You’ll meet him first.