Daniel Polansky - Low Town

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!”