Daniel Polansky - Tomorrow, the Killing

Of said body itself, there was little enough to comment. Youth provides in humanity the widest conceivable stretch of offerings, but time wears down this disparate variety into a handful of basic archetypes. By which I mean Montgomery looked like an old man – wisps of white attached to a leathery crown, the bones of his arms sharp beneath his shirt, a mouth you might suspect occasionally lent itself to slobbering. He wore a dark suit, less gaudy and better fitting than my own, though like me he was sweating through it. For all that though, his eyes were cool and sharp, and I didn’t forget that sitting in front of me was a man whose word had once determined the fate of nations.

Botha closed the door behind me. Montgomery moved to stand, but I gestured him back into his chair and quickly took the seat across from him.

‘It’s been a very long time,’ he said. I wasn’t sure from his tone how he felt about it.

‘Quite a while.’

‘You look well,’ he said.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘You also.’

Two lies, and we weren’t even through the pleasantries. ‘Can I offer you anything?’ he continued. ‘A cup of coffee, perhaps? I don’t suppose Botha offered you any.’

‘He might have neglected that courtesy.’

‘He was a better soldier than he is a domestic. Not much for etiquette, but a real terror with a flamberge.’

‘I can imagine,’ I said, and I could.

There was a pause while he worked up an appropriate line of small talk. I didn’t envy his task – I’d done little in the time since we’d seen each other that was appropriately alluded to in casual conversation.

He settled on the basics. ‘Is there a wife to ask about?’

‘There is not.’

‘Children?’

‘None I’ll admit to.’

It was my turn to play interrogator, but I kept quiet. I had a pretty good idea how the general had been this last decade, and I had a pretty good idea who was responsible for his unhappiness. Or I thought I did, at least.

After a while he realized I wasn’t going to carry my end, and he stumbled forward banally. ‘Damnable weather isn’t it?’

‘The flies seem to enjoy it.’

‘Do you feel close kinship with the insects?’

I shrugged. ‘People are a lot like flies.’

‘How so?’

‘We both die easy.’

The general swallowed my ugliness in a well-rehearsed guffaw. It was one of the hallmarks of the upper class, the ability to laugh away discomfort. I was acting badly but couldn’t seem to stop myself. In preparation for this discussion I’d put away a half vial of pixie’s breath, the illicit upper that I dealt when I wasn’t using, but the buzz had long drained away. ‘Perhaps you could tell me what it is I can do for you, General.’

‘To the point, I can appreciate that. I’m sure you’ve got other things to do than sit in a hot room with an old man.’

Actually my plans for the rest of the day involved doing as little as humanly possible, a laborious exercise I intended to attempt with the aid of a suitable selection of narcotics. But he was correct in deducing that I wanted out as quickly as possible – of the neighborhood, the house, his presence.

There was an awkward pause while he inspected me with a queer and uncomfortable intensity, as if uncertain of my faithfulness. I wanted to tell him to go with this instinct, but before I could say anything he opened a drawer in his desk and took something out from the bottom of it.

‘This is my daughter,’ he said, sliding the object across the desk. ‘Her name is Rhaine, after her mother, who died bringing her into the world.’

It was a heart-shaped locket, a shell of gold wrapped around a thumbnail portrait. I snapped open the catch. Miniatures are a particularly inaccurate way to represent a fragment of reality. A square-inch oil, detail blurred to ambiguity by the requirements of size and the demands of an abstract notion of beauty. I thought it altogether unlikely that the subject of the sketch bore the slightest resemblance to the painting I held in my hand.

There was no great likeness between the general and his issue, but then the girl in the pendant must have been five decades younger than the man who sat across from me. And in fairness the dominating feature was her hair, red as the last moment of sunshine before evening, and time had long ago bleached the general’s own locks. Apart from that she looked like everyone looks in a portrait: pearl skin, a slender nose mimicking the arc of her neck. The one quality offering a nod to her ancestry was her striking blue eyes, evidently a Montgomery family trait.

‘She’s lovely,’ I said, though given the source I wasn’t altogether sure that was a welcome compliment.

‘She is indeed,’ he said. ‘She’s also vain, willful, spoiled – and missing.’

I figured the last the most pertinent. ‘How long?’

‘Two days.’

‘I notice you didn’t say taken.’

‘No, I didn’t. I have reason to believe she departed of her own accord.’

‘That would be?’

‘We had a . . . row, I suppose. We’ve had a lot of them lately, but I’m afraid this was the breaking point.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, General,’ I said. ‘But the young are as quick to rage as they are to reconcile. I’m sure she’ll show up soon.’ Though of course I wasn’t sure of that at all.

‘I don’t think so. She’s headstrong, like her father.’ Primed, he managed to continue without my assistance. ‘She finished her schooling six months ago – an education, I assure you, that was as expensive as it was irrelevant. The interim since her graduation has been . . . trying for the both of us. She’s not content to be married off, and while I don’t blame her, I’m not sure sleeping till mid-afternoon and shouting at the staff is a better substitute. Truth told, I’m not sure either of us knows what to do with each other.’

This was more information about the family Montgomery then I felt I needed. ‘Be that as it may, General, I’m not sure what part I could play in your domestic issues.’

He pulled himself up in his seat, not so easy a task, given his age. ‘I have reason to believe that she’s somewhere in Low Town, hiding out. I want you to find her, and I want you to tell her . . . I want you to ask her to return.’

I scratched at the beginnings of a beard. ‘What makes you think she’s in Low Town?’

‘If she had stayed within Kor’s Heights, within her old circle, I’d know about it. And the nature of our fight led me to believe that she had taken it upon herself to look into something in your borough.’

That was indecipherably vague, but upon consideration I didn’t think I wanted clarification. ‘I don’t work for the Crown any longer, General,’ I said.

‘So I’ve been informed.’

It wasn’t much of a secret – though I doubted the general had an exactly accurate conception of my new slate of duties, or he would have sought help from a more appropriate source. ‘And missing persons isn’t my bailiwick these days.’ Never was, really – even when I’d worn the gray I’d been more involved in making them disappear. ‘I’m sure if you contacted Black House, they’d be happy to help you with your problem.’

‘They would, they would indeed – they’d be happy as hell to help, to track down Fightin’ Ed’s wild daughter, and to remember it as long after as they’d need to.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve had enough dealings with the Old Man to last a lifetime.’

‘If it’s discretion you’re worried about, there are any number of firms who can offer it. I could give you the names of some reputable men.’

‘I don’t want discretion,’ he said, not quite testily, but with less friendliness than he’d been offering. ‘I want silence. I don’t want the whisper, the hint of this, ever to get out – I want it never to have happened, and none of the bigger operators can promise that.’ After a moment he cooled himself down a little, wiping at the flecks of spittle that had formed beside his mouth. ‘Besides, I’d heard that you were the man to speak to about what goes on in Low Town.’