Daniel Polansky - Tomorrow, the Killing

I wasn’t in any position to argue with that. All the same I finished the rest of what was in my cup.

‘The drink will speed up your healing. In an hour, you’ll look like hell but won’t feel like it. In five, you won’t look like it. Least,’ she smiled nastily, ‘not because of the bruising.’

‘I’m grateful,’ I said.

‘You don’t need to be grateful – it’s like I said, I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for the boy.’

‘I’ll make sure he sends his thanks along as well.’ I slumped back into the bed. The thing I’d drunk felt worse in my stomach than it had going down, as if the substance itself conspired to ensure its release by tearing its way out through my intestinal tract.

‘You can stay here another quarter hour,’ Mazzie said, dropping herself into the chair with a sigh. ‘Then you have to leave.’

‘You got another appointment?’

‘No.’

After a few minutes the bubbling in my gut leavened out near as quick as it had come. A dull, warm glow fell over me. ‘The stuff you were saying before,’ I said. ‘About what was coming for me.’

‘Yeah?’

‘All that true?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I guess there’s nothing I can do to head it off?’

‘All sorts of things you could do,’ she said. ‘You could go down to the docks, book the first passage to the Free Cities. You could go to the man you fixing to do wrong to, tell him what you’re going to do, see how he treats you. You could stuff your pockets with rocks and go swimming in the bay.’ She tapped the ash off her cheroot. ‘But you’re not going to do any of those things, so why ask? The future isn’t set in stone – it’s you that can’t bring himself to change.’

I spent a few more of Mazzie’s promised fifteen minutes thinking about that. Then I pushed myself to my feet. ‘I’ll take my leave of you then, Mazzie of the Stained Bone. With appreciation for the hospitality, and hopes I won’t need to avail myself of it again for a while.’

‘Suit yourself,’ she said. ‘Send the boy around early part of next week, if you’re still alive by then.’

That last was an open bet, and not one I’d have wanted to give odds on.

40

By the time I made it to Low Town I was walking on a foot of cushioned air. Whatever the other merits of Mazzie’s concoction, it was the best anodyne I’d encountered in a long life of experimentation. I couldn’t feel anything. Not pain from my injuries, not fear at what was coming, not guilt at why I’d set it into motion. I was quits with the world. I could almost forgive the sun for shining.

My good humor scuffed some when I walked into the Earl and found Adeline at one of the tables, drinking a cup of tea and half-scowling. I figured I’d need something to buttress my well-being, and took it out the ale tap before sitting down across from her.

‘I’d hoped to avoid this conversation,’ I said.

‘We live in the same building. We were bound to run into each other sooner or later.’

‘The way things are going, I thought someone might off me before we had the chance.’

‘Sorry to disappoint you.’

‘That’s all right.’ I took a long draw off the ale.

‘Where you been?’

‘I paid a visit to Wren’s new governess, wanted to make sure she was still up to the task.’

‘Is she the reason your face looks like an open sore?’

‘Actually, Mazzie’s just about the only person I’ve met today that didn’t hit me.’

‘I haven’t hit you.’

My beer was nut brown, and sweet as lost youth. ‘But you’re making ready to.’

‘I’m not wasting any more time yelling – it just makes it easier for you to feel bad about yourself.’

Not quite the hardest shot I’d taken, but on a lot of other days, it would have been. ‘Damn noble of you,’ I said, because I had to say something.

‘I don’t need to know what you’re doing.’

‘That’s good. It would take too long to explain, and I only half understand it anyway.’

‘But maybe you could let me know why you’re doing it.’

‘Different reasons.’

‘She was pretty, that girl. And she seemed like she needed help.’

‘It’s not just the girl.’

‘No?’

‘I owe something to her father.’

‘To her brother, you mean?’

‘To all three of them, I suppose.’

‘So this scheme you’ve got going, it’s going to fix the things you made wrong?’

I didn’t answer.

‘Somehow I thought not.’ She shook a grimace side to side. ‘Do you so love corpses?’

‘What do you know about corpses, Adeline? I’ve seen more dead men than you’ve seen live ones. The plague, the war, what I done after.’ She’d overstepped, and I was happy to take her to task for it. Easier to be angry than it was to be anything else. ‘Made my fair share, too. A few more won’t tip the balance.’

‘You think you’re the only person who ever done anything they wish they hadn’t? It’s vanity, that’s all it is.’

‘We have to pay for the mistakes we’ve made.’

‘You can’t let yesterday poison tomorrow.’

At some point while I’d been busy talking, someone had run through and finished off all the ale in my tankard. I went and decanted a second. It seemed only fair, though Adeline’s hectoring look followed me as I came back to the table.

‘I wish you’d just figure out whether or not you’re going to kill yourself. These half measures are exhausting.’

‘Good to see you keep chilly, despite the heat.’

‘You want to wallow, you can do it without my help.’ But she was kinder than her words, and after a silent moment she offered just that. ‘We’re responsible for what comes to us. If you want things to go different, it’s on you to make sure they do.’

There was too much wisdom there to bear looking at. I was glad I didn’t have to. ‘You’re wasting your time. We’re past the midway point of this one – it’s too late to do anything.’

She threw her hands up, finally exasperated. ‘Of course it’s too late to do anything. You only get to thinking when it’s too late to do anything. Then you drink, and lament the world’s cruelty.’

Mazzie’s elixir, proof against fist, boot and chain, proved nothing against five minutes conversation with Adeline. Which is to say my headache had returned with something of a vengeance. I finished the rest of my beer in unhappy silence.

‘It’ll be done tomorrow,’ I said. ‘One way or the other.’

‘It won’t be done until you’re dead,’ she answered sadly, and to the wall, and I couldn’t think of a response.

I put my empty tankard on top of the counter, and grabbed a bottle from beneath it. The stairs to my room were more numerous than I’d remembered, but I managed them. The clothes went into the corner, the cork came out of the rotgut, sleep came deep and dreamless.

41

In general I rely on Adolphus and our patrons as my first line of nocturnal defense. Most nights, anyone wanting to make trouble for me would have to slip past the giant and a crew of gentlemen who, if they weren’t strongly inclined to lose their lives in defense of mine, at least enjoyed a little tussle for its own sake, especially against boys from outside the neighborhood.

But the bar was closed and I was drunk, and so I didn’t make anything out until they were almost up the stairs. I rolled off the bed and grabbed the dirk I keep stuck in the floorboards beneath it.

Three solid knocks at the door that I didn’t answer, then a pause and three solid more.

‘Who is it?’

‘Hroudland. Let me in.’

Fuck fuck fuck. ‘Now’s not a good time. I’ll see you at the rally.’ I tiptoed towards the window but knew it wasn’t an option. The drop was two stories, and these were competent men – they’d have someone down there waiting to finish me if the fall didn’t.