Daniel Polansky - Tomorrow, the Killing

‘Who knows why anyone does anything?’

He nodded sagely, as if I’d passed along some bit of profundity. ‘Indeed. As a particular, I’ve been racking my brain to discover what exactly determined your willingness to play the tattle.’

‘Didn’t have a choice in the matter.’

‘Our little Guiscard frightened you so, did he?’

‘Terrified.’

‘I’m sure.’ He took a sip of his tea and made a face, then added another lump of sugar. ‘So none of this had anything to do with the unfortunate demise of the youngest Montgomery?’

If I hadn’t already been sweating, I would have started. ‘Who?’

‘Have it your way.’

Another long pause. He raised his cup to his mouth, pinky finger elaborately extended, but his late summer eyes never left my own. ‘Do you know what the most important requirement of my position is?’

‘A dazzling smile?’

‘Facility with numbers.’ He set the cup down on the table. ‘People don’t like numbers – they like people, and they get confused when the first becomes the second. But I don’t get confused. For a while, I thought you were the sort who didn’t get confused either. But of course, that wasn’t true at all – you’re as bad with sums as anyone I’ve ever met.’ He lifted a thumb from out a fist. ‘There was Iomhair – no great loss, we might agree, but a tick mark just the same. The five Giroie boys guarding that wyrm shipment. Artur’s retaliation took the lives of four men – veterans, like yourself. They’re still pulling bodies out of the Hen and Harpy, so it’s too early for an exact count, but let’s say a dozen for ease.’ He’d been tallying them on his fingers, sharp flutters of movement, but this last addition overran his count and he tossed up his hands as if to acknowledge it. ‘That’s twenty-two souls, and we haven’t seen the end of it yet. Twenty-two men. Not sprung from the earth, I wouldn’t imagine, but bred in the regular way. Mothers and fathers. Siblings. Wives and children, perhaps. A strange sort of debt, don’t you think, which needs to be repaid two dozen times over?’

I scratched at the back of my neck. ‘That was a really long monologue.’

He snickered and folded his hands, clearing the ledger. ‘Doesn’t matter now, not really. The line has been crossed. Whatever his motivations, Pretories’ usefulness has ended. Of course, if this was all revenge for Rhaine Montgomery, I’m surprised you let a conspirator remain unpunished – knowing your, shall we say, rather savage sense of justice.’

It didn’t do to admit ignorance in front of the Old Man, but it slipped out before I could say anything. ‘What are you talking about? Pretories didn’t want Rhaine throwing mud on him, weakening his position before the big march. He arranged to have a man kill her.’

He looked at me strangely. ‘There’s a reason Joachim Pretories couldn’t achieve his position honestly. He’s too weak a reed to do what’s needed, not without long consultation. It was the same when we took care of Roland – you can’t imagine how long he dragged his feet before acquiescing in our designs. I’m not sure he’d have gone along with it at all, if I hadn’t had help persuading him.’

A pit was opening up beneath my chair, a dawning sense of horror at my own extraordinary foolishness.

Something of this must have shown in my face. ‘You never put it together, did you? The identity of our silent partner?’ I’d heard the Old Man laugh before, but always as part of his façade, as a tactic to lull the unwary into the delusion that he was human. But I’m not sure, before that moment, I’d ever heard an honest expression of levity cross his lips. A line of goose pimples ran up my arm.

‘You’re lying,’ but even as I said it I knew it was off – the Old Man didn’t lie. He never told the truth either, but he didn’t lie. You bluff with a weak hand, and the head of Black House held four aces and hid two extra up his sleeve.

‘I assure you, I very much am not. At the time of Roland’s death, his father was a hair from being High Chancellor. Even I couldn’t kill the scion of such an esteemed house without fear of repercussions. Happily, the general appreciated the necessity of curbing his son’s misbehavior. He was my back channel to Pretories, him and that Vaalan who laps after him.’

Pieces began to slip into place, pieces I’d overlooked or ignored. The fight I’d overheard the night of Roland’s birthday party. The general’s palpable misery the second time I’d been to see him, as if he already knew that Rhaine was dead.

The Old Man began to laugh again, laugh until his blue eyes swelled with tears. ‘Oh my dear boy,’ he started between chortles. ‘My dear stupid, stupid child. You set all this in motion, and you never even knew? Rather than risk having anyone learn of his filicide, Montgomery sent his daughter to join his son.’ He set one palm against the table to steady himself and raised his other against his brow. ‘You aren’t the architect of this stratagem – you’re the mark.’

45

I started hitting crowds at Broad Street, a good half-mile from the epicenter. I didn’t know what count Pretories had been hoping for when he’d put this shindig together, but whatever it had been he’d blown through it. There were contingents of veterans from throughout the Empire, from every corner of the Three Kingdoms: Tarasaighns from Kinterre in brightly colored outfits, piss drunk despite the hour; lines of Ashers with clipped black hair and clipped black eyes, eternally solemn, taking no part in the festivities; Islanders strolling in full naval regalia, red velvet coats and gilded thread, grinning in the heat. Groups had been piling into the city all week, setting up makeshift shelters at the march site. They milled about happily near their lean-tos, swapping lies about the war, buying food from passing vendors, catching up on regimental gossip.

Joachim’s logistical abilities hadn’t faded – it was a masterpiece of planning, executed with extraordinary precision. I’d say military precision, but having been in the service I know that to be an oxymoron. Everything so far was legal as sea salt. The Throne couldn’t refuse permission for a march by the men who had guaranteed its survival. What they could do, and indeed had done, was surround the protesters by a cordon of hard-looking men in dark brown uniforms, carrying thick-headed clubs of the same color. Not city boys either, the hoax were too smart to let themselves get pulled into this mess. Levies from the provinces if I had to guess, bumpkins culled from the fields and brought south. Fifteen years earlier they’d have been called out to fight the Dren. They were the nephews and sons of the men they would soon be attacking, though it would have been too much to ask of them to realize it.

It was a vast host, too thick a chunk of humanity to comfortably force down. I hadn’t seen its like since the war itself. Reminded me of the war in a lot of ways, looking at the faces of men soon to die and knowing nothing can be done to stop it. At least during the war everyone was aware of the possibility of imminent demise. But the atmosphere at the march was anything but tense, self-righteous certainty buttressed by the joyous folly of the crowd. They’d have thought me mad if I’d tried to tell them what I knew, or taken me for a provocateur and lynched me from the nearest pole. Nobody likes being told they’re walking in the wrong direction, even if the trail ends at a cliff.

I struggled my way through the tightening mass, conscious of the hour’s steady beat. Closer to the front progress choked to a standstill, and I started throwing elbows and getting them back in return. The storm rumbled from a few blocks over, but from where I stood the sun was bright as it had been the last week. Too bright, you had to squint against it. Sometimes that’s how close it is, the line between the two.