Daniel Polansky - Tomorrow, the Killing

The burgher standing behind the entrance held a carving knife forgotten in one hand, eyes saucer wide, any will to fight lost at the sight of the giant. Behind him stood his wife and daughter, meat-faced and wide-hipped, almost indistinguishable, clutching each other with terrified ferocity. Adolphus grabbed the man’s wrist, firmly but not cruelly. Steel clanged to the ground. I slipped past my partner and took a seat at a kitchen table that dominated the room. Private Gustav took the one across from me. ‘Food,’ I said in my pidgin Dren. ‘Drink.’

The matron sobbed piteously, a tune her progeny soon took up. I repeated my request to the old man, and after a moment he shook himself out of his shock and headed to the larder. Adolphus stared off at the wall with sad, dull eyes.

We spent the rest of the night like that, our host bringing us dark beer and what sundries were left in his pantry, the mother and daughter never letting go of each other, convinced at any moment we would break our repast and ravish them. Between the two of us we finished off half a keg, trying to get drunk enough to forget what was going on around us without passing so deeply into inebriation as to allow the old man a chance to slit our throats. It was a difficult task we set ourselves, and we didn’t quite meet it.

In the darkness outside, terrible things happened.

The pillage lasted three days, after which the men gradually formed back into that shape that distinguishes an army from a band of marauders. I daresay there were some men in my company who spent those days like Adolphus and I did; I daresay there weren’t many. I would have received a promotion for my role in the assault, but the second afternoon I got drunk and broke the jaw of a man who turned out to be my captain, and it was all Roland could do to keep me from being busted down in rank, or flogged.

35

I spent the evening in an apartment I own in Offbend. It’s an ugly apartment, in an ugly building, in an ugly borough in an ugly city. I could keep going. The neighbors do their best to live up to the surroundings, spiteful folk with bad skin and crossed eyes, but they didn’t know nobody and they never saw nothing. That was more or less the sole virtue of the dwelling, and it was worth the few coin a month I dropped on it.

Back at the Earl I changed clothes and undid the latch on the hidden shelf in my bureau, swapping a few vials from the professional stash into my personal. I noted sourly that it had been a lot more crowded a few days earlier.

A letter waited on my night table, a block ‘M’ sealed in wax on the back. I opened it and watched a leaf of paper flutter to the ground. The text was neat, ink pressed into muslin.

Lieutenant,

No doubt you’ve heard of my recent misfortune. Its arrival is to be laid at my feet, and mine alone – you owe me nothing. Indeed, it is I and my family who are in your debt, and while your refusal to accept payment does you credit, your services merit reward. Please take the enclosed as just recompense, and as a mark of esteem from an old man.

General Edwin Montgomery, (Ret.)

Recent misfortune. The general was a hard man, but then he’d have to be, having lost one already. And what could you expect? Tear stains in the margins, like a virgin’s love letter? I picked up the fallen slip of paper. It was a promissory note to be drawn at one of the city’s oldest banking establishments, the sort with ivy growing up stone walls, a sign too small to notice and a million ochres in the basement. It felt light in my palm. It had enough zeroes on it to weigh down a corpse. I tore it into slivers, then dropped the slivers into the trash.

The ball was already rolling; I’d be wise not to step in front of it. And besides, the general didn’t know what I owed him – if he did, he wouldn’t have been so quick to offer coin, or his esteem. I undid the cap on a vial of breath and let the pink vapor filter through a nostril. Rhaine Montgomery would get her due.

I folded the letter back up, then stopped and reopened it. The wax sigil had been reheated, ably, subtly, but noticeably, if you knew what to look for. I hadn’t been the first person to read the general’s missive, though I had a pretty good idea who was.

At some point while I was upstairs Wren had taken a spot at a front table. He was gouging out pieces of the wood with the tip of his dagger, and he didn’t react when I took the seat next to him.

‘I know the furnishings aren’t exactly in prime condition, but that’s not a reason to deteriorate them further.’

He didn’t answer, and he didn’t stop.

‘How’d your lesson go?’

He grunted.

‘I don’t speak surly adolescent. You’ll need to translate.’

‘It was fine,’ he said, sharp as the tip of his blade.

I put my hand on the hilt and settled it against the table. Then I put my face next to his, close enough to smell his breath. ‘You don’t feel like chatting, that’s fine, I’m in no mood for a confessional. But I’m going to see Mazzie later on today to start paying for the rest of your education, and I’d like to make sure I’m not getting cheated.’

I held him firmly in place for a long moment, then let go and reclined back into my seat. ‘She’s all right,’ he said after a while. ‘So far at least. We didn’t do much. She made tea, and we talked some. She told me I need to learn to make my mind hollow. It didn’t make much sense to me.’

That sounded about right. I didn’t suppose he’d be initiated into the higher mysteries on his first day. I picked up a splinter from Wren’s whittling and picked at my teeth. ‘It don’t need to make sense to you. She’s your teacher, it just needs to make sense to her. But like I said, you keep your head swiveling. Anything happens that don’t feel right to you, you let me know.’

He wasn’t in the mood to agree with me about anything, so in place of a nod he went back to picking out bits of the table. I left him to it long enough to get comfortable, then dropped the weight.

‘You aiming to take a spot with the ice?’

‘No,’ he said, confused.

‘Then why you been reading my mail?’

He left the knife sticking upright in the wood and opened his mouth to lie.

‘You drip a false syllable and I’m gonna beat you blue,’ I said, but my heart wasn’t in it, and it didn’t draw more from him than a shrug.

‘It seemed interesting.’

‘This what you learned beneath my roof? To gnaw at the hand that feeds you?’

A childhood spent picking pockets and running scams had mostly inured Wren to the effects of guilt. No doubt he’d earned a more physical manifestation of my displeasure, but it was awful hot to be getting hot.

‘What did you do for General Montgomery?’ Wren asked after it became clear there wouldn’t be immediate consequences for his misbehavior.

‘Very little of value, as it turned out.’

‘It have anything to do with that woman who came in here last week?’

By the Firstborn, he was smart. You had to sprint to keep ahead of him. ‘Yeah.’

‘How’d it turn out?’

‘Not particularly well.’

‘This General Montgomery,’ he began again, after a pause. ‘He Roland’s father?’

‘Not anymore.’

‘Adolphus says Roland was a legend. Says he gave his life trying to better his men’s.’

‘Death makes a fellow popular.’ My headache wasn’t going anywhere. I thought about rolling a spliff, but it was gonna be a long day, and I’d do better if I kept my edge.

‘You knew him?’

‘Yeah, I knew him.’

‘What was he like?’

A man like any other. A Daeva, straight from Chinvat. A mad dog in the street, best put down, and fast. ‘Depends on where you sat.’