Daniel Polansky - Low Town

And I’d made a promise to Adeline.

The night was getting on and every minute that passed was another for Beaconfield to decide the best way out of this was to feed Wren to Brightfellow’s abomination. The ordnance in my satchel gave me a fighting chance, but not if someone saw me while I was setting up. I cursed the quirk of fate that had mandated the smiling watchman’s presence here, instead of by a fire sipping his whiskey-but there was nothing for it.

I closed my eyes briefly.

Then I was up, a stone flung against the outer wall drawing the unsuspecting sentry, ten yards, five yards and I was behind him and the loop pulled tight.

The garrote is quiet but slow, and Dunkan took a long time to die. First he grabbed at the wire, fingers scratching savagely at his swollen throat. After a while his arms dropped to his side and he ceased struggling. I held on till his skin turned purple, and he kicked his legs in one final spasm. Then I lowered him to the ground, behind the wall where no one could see him.

I’m sorry, Dunkan. I wish it had gone another way.

I closed the lantern above the open gate. The guards would notice the absence of light soon-I hoped the murder of my friend had bought me enough time.

I crept about the perimeter, securing what I needed for the thing to work out. No one noticed-security was lax. Beaconfield might just be dumb enough not to realize I was coming. I hoped so at least.

After everything was set I returned to the back door and picked the lock, not as expertly as the doctor perhaps but without any trouble. I started counting off the seconds in my head once I was inside, my back to the walls, stopping at every sound. The defenses were strangely delinquent, no patrols, not even anyone posted at the stairwell.

When I opened the door to the Blade’s study he was standing in front of the broad windows behind his desk, drinking and watching the falling snow. He whirled his head around with defined celerity. There was a moment of purest shock when he recognized me. Then a smile spread across his face, and he downed the rest of his liquor and set the glass on the table. “This is the second time you’ve come uninvited into my study.”

I closed the door behind me. “Just the first. I sent a man around yesterday.”

“Is that how friends behave? Taking advantage of hospitality to steal intimate correspondence?”

“We aren’t friends.”

He looked a little hurt. “No, I suppose we’re not-but that’s just circumstance, really. I think if things had worked out differently, you would have found me a very reasonable man. Affable, even.”

Two and a half minutes. “I don’t think so. You blue bloods are a little too bent for my tastes. At heart I’m a simple creature.”

“Yes, forthright and candid-that’s exactly how I would describe you.”

We were each waiting to see if the other would drop this pretense of amiability. Inside my skull the clock ticked away-three minutes.

The Blade lounged against his desk. “I have to admit, I’m surprised at how you’ve decided to play this.”

“This is a bit direct for my tastes, but then I didn’t have much of a choice.”

“The Old Man sent you, then? It shocks me the loyalty that madman instills. It won’t be his life taken on your suicide mission.”

“Not loyalty-I practically had to twist his arm.” A flicker of surprise crossed his face. “And what makes you so certain I’m the one who won’t be walking out of here?”

He burst out laughing. “No one’s calling you an incompetent, but-let’s not exaggerate your prowess.”

Three and a half minutes. “You tell that to the men you sent to kill me?”

His eyes filmed over, a rare show of regret. “That was Brightfellow’s idea-he wanted me to go after you from the beginning, and once Mairi let us know you were sniffing around… I had hoped we might be able to scare you or buy you off. I suppose you were more frightened of the Old Man than me.”

“You’re right about that,” I said. “Where is the practitioner, anyway?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. I haven’t seen him since the party. I suppose he scampered off. Not many have the stomach for the endgame.”

“Not many do,” I agreed, figuring him for a liar, figuring the sorcerer was holed up in the basement with his hands around Wren’s throat.

Beaconfield trailed his hand to the hilt of his sword. “We’re not so dissimilar as you pretend. We’re both warriors, children birthed in the screams of men and the flow of blood. There can be no dishonesty between us, no prevarication in the perfection of the thrust or the candor of the riposte. And so I speak to you as a brother. The men you killed, my friends-they were not the palest shadows of myself. No one is. There has never been anyone as good as me, not in the long ages leading back to when the first man struck the second with a rock. I am the perfect engine of death, the apex predator, an artist in the oldest and noblest of man’s activities.”

“You rehearse that in front of a mirror?”

“Watch your tone.”

“I’ve known your kind my whole life, punk boys who get a length of steel in their hand and decide it makes them men. You think you’re special ’cause your hand is a touch faster? I pass a dozen of you on my way to breakfast every morning-only difference between them and you is the cost of your coat.”

“Why are you keeping up your end of the conversation, if I’m of such little interest?”

“Why indeed.” That had to have been five minutes already. Sakra’s swinging cock, what the hell was taking so long? If Beaconfield wasn’t such a desperate megalomaniac, I’d be dead. I had no illusions on that score. “Why did you do it?” I asked. “I understand the events-I’m just trying to get some perspective.”

“What’s there to say? I needed money, they had it, or I thought they did. I never burned with the desire to betray the country, but then, like you said-things happen.”

I was counting the seconds desperately now. “I don’t care about your pathetic attempts at espionage. How did you get involved with Brightfellow-when did you start with the children?”

He looked at me with an expression of curious astonishment, and to my dawning horror I realized it wasn’t feigned. “What children?”

The floor below us erupted, kicking me backward into a wall.

I suspect the history of mass combat has never seen a more incompetent logistic corps than the one I suffered through during the war. For five years we struggled to make do without the most basic supplies-spare bandages, cob nails, faceblack. Two days in Donknacht and the flow of goods wouldn’t stop. Saddles for dead horses, armor no one had any idea how to put on, crates of wool socks, as if the war had multiplied our supply of limbs rather than diminishing them. When I mustered out I had enough small goods to start a general store, and one other item less commonly found stocking the shelves of local merchants-twenty-five pounds of black powder and the explosive components required to detonate it.

Part of it I had used while still wearing the gray. Part of it had gone to make my name after I left the Crown’s service. The remainder I was using to introduce the Smiling Blade to the joys of modern warfare.

The blast flung the two of us to opposite ends of the room, but I was expecting it and managed to get up first. I pulled a dagger from my boot and moved on Beaconfield with what speed I could muster. He was slumped in the corner, groggy but conscious. That wasn’t good-I’d hoped the discharge would put him out long enough for me to make sure he wasn’t a threat. I reversed my grip on the knife and leaped at him. His eyes fluttered, but he reacted with extraordinary speed, shifting out of the way of my blow and wrapping his fingers around my weapon hand.