She Who Waits (Low Town 3) (37 page)

The subterranean level made what we’d seen so far seem quaint, even homey by comparison. Strange sounds echoed through the heavy stone, distorted and off-putting. The hallway was dark and narrow, not enough room to walk abreast. We moved in silent single file, and didn’t bother with conversation till we reached the next door.

‘This is where we keep our more … difficult cases,’ Sister Agnes said. ‘It would be best to prepare yourselves.’

The chamber was bigger than a coffin, though not much. A small cot took up most of the room. The man inside seemed quite harmless, to the degree that a stone is harmless, or a tree stump. All the same he was weighed down with heavy chains, thick links of iron attaching from the wall to a collar at his throat, and to cuffs on his arms and legs.

‘I do so hate to keep him bound,’ she said. ‘But the last time we removed them, he chewed off two of his own fingers. Didn’t make a sound, poor dear. Would have bled to death if we hadn’t come by with dinner.’

The Sister’s voice seemed to bring him out of his stupor. His eyes darted manically about the room, then locked on the three of us in the doorway. With surprising speed for a madman who’d been living in a box for fifteen years, he broke to his feet and launched himself in our direction, atrophied muscles firing into motion. There was a snap as he reached the ends of his bonds and was slammed backwards against the ground. He lay there for a moment, then began to laugh, loudly and hysterically. Or perhaps it was weeping. I wasn’t sure.

Agnes closed the door with a sigh. ‘There are three more with quarters down here,’ she said. ‘Mr Hammond here is the most stable. I don’t think it’ll do them any good to see you,’ she said, then turned and nodded back the way we came. ‘I don’t suppose you’d mind if we called the tour short.’

Neither Guiscard nor I minded. We followed the Sister back down the corridor, up the stairs and towards the exit.

‘As I said, anything your organization could do would be greatly appreciated. Our stipend covers the monthly costs, but nothing on top of it – it would be very fine if we could refurbish the interior, the foundations in particular are in a quite hideous state. Perhaps even buy them new clothing, bedding …’ She trailed off, as if even these modest hopes were too audacious.

‘I’ll let you know as soon as I can,’ I said, shamed to think that she’d never hear from me again. Though in the grand scheme of things it was far from the worst act I’d ever done – today had reminded me of that very clearly.

‘Good day to you then, Mr Chamberlain. Agent.’ She nodded.

Next to the door was a small alcove with an alms box inside. I put two ochres into it. Guiscard surprised me by doing the same, before stumbling outside. The Sister smiled her thanks, and closed the door behind us.

Guiscard took a seat on a low stone wall across from the asylum. It offered a pleasant view of the city below. I rolled a cigarette, lit it and handed it to him. He took it without saying thanks, puffing rapidly but without enthusiasm, eyes lost on the horizon. I started rolling another.

‘It was Carroll’s idea to use volunteers,’ I said. ‘Normally we test these things on criminals first, but he was worried that their tendency towards violence might skew the results. Honest citizens is what we were looking for. Upright, law-abiding. I believe we paid an ochre a head – quite reasonable for a few hours’ work. Enough to buy a year’s worth of books for a hard-pressed student. Or Midwinter’s gifts for a single mother. Gave them a cup of tea with two drops of our house brew in it, had a practitioner come by while they were stoned near catatonia to give them their commands. They wouldn’t remember any of that of course, not until they’d been given the command word. Then …’ I snapped my fingers. ‘They’d take care of whoever you wanted. We never did get to that part, truth be told. They took the drug, went home, and woke up a few days later broken as a spiked cannon. Not all of them, but enough.’ I lit my smoke. ‘The stipend must come from the Old Man. I’m surprised he remembers.’

I wasn’t sure if Guiscard heard me. The cigarette I’d given him had gone out in his hand. To judge by his pallor, he seemed close to vomiting. I made sure to move a few feet away from the potential blast radius before asking my next question.

‘Why haven’t you moved on the Sons?’

Guiscard blinked twice, then looked up at me. ‘What?’

‘Why haven’t you moved on the Sons?’

‘We can’t very well cut off the head of anyone who doesn’t like the Prime Minister, can we? A certain amount of opposition is required for the system to function.’

‘An illusory opposition – an opposition you can control. I’m afraid the Steps have long since grown beyond that. For the last few months I’ve been watching them take shots at you and wondering, why doesn’t the Old Man crush them? What is he waiting for? It’s a measure of my … respect for him that the obvious answer didn’t seem so.’

‘Meaning?’

‘His position isn’t strong enough. He no longer holds the reins.’

‘The King doesn’t like him,’ Guiscard said after a long pause. ‘Never did.’

‘That speaks well of our Alfred, though I hardly see why it’s relevant. The dirt he must have accumulated all these years? It was a cottage industry, back when I first joined Special Operations – you spent a month following around the Crown Prince’s latest paramour, see what humiliations she got him into.’

‘We’ve got more filth on the King than you could find knee deep in a sewer, but what would we possibly want to do with it? Alfred doesn’t like the Steps any more than we do, thank the Firstborn. If we weaken his position, we weaken ours along with it.’

‘Where does the army stand?’

‘Hard to say. They’re generally not for change of any kind, but they’re damn unhappy about the rapprochement we’ve been working towards with the Dren.’

‘Of course they are – if we’re not expecting to go to war with the Dren, there’s no reason to maintain their third of the annual budget.’ I smiled toothily. ‘And I don’t suppose your having killed the leader of the Veteran’s Organization enamored them to you particularly.’

‘Perhaps not.’

That had been my doing, though Guiscard had never realized it. ‘Still, you don’t get four stars on your lapel by rocking the boat. They’ll probably stand aside until they figure out who is going to win.’ I started working it out in my head. ‘The city will declare for the Steps – not because they’re actually for them, but because they hate Black House, and they’re bored easily, and they like to riot. You’ll have the provinces though, I imagine, and if you can hold out the few weeks it’ll take them to raise the militia, you might be able to weather the storm.’

Guiscard’s silence suggested he’d followed along with my prediction.

‘Of course, that’s if the King stays with you.’

‘Why wouldn’t he?’

‘Why would he? He’d have the chance to throw off the yoke his mother accepted, perhaps rule on his own, rather than as a cat’s paw for the Old Man.’

‘You think Monck has any intention of allowing him to make policy? He’d be trading one master for another.’

‘Then maybe he just prefers brown.’

Guiscard sniffed. ‘Did you bring me here, show me this – just to soften me up for interrogation?’

‘That was part of it,’ I admitted. ‘But not everything. I wanted you to see what you’re fighting to prop up. I wanted to give you that opportunity. It’s easy to lose sight of it from where you are – I know that better than anybody.’

He waved backwards at the asylum. ‘This isn’t everything there is.’

‘Of course not – there’s also mansions in Kor’s Heights, and humming factories in Brennock, and fat, happy, smiling children getting presents on Midwinter morning. But this is what it rests on, Guiscard, and don’t you ever forget it.’

‘Coronet was your project.’

‘And I’ll burn in hell for it.’

‘It isn’t on me. I didn’t know it existed until last week.’

‘And what did you do about it?’

‘What?’

‘When I told you about the connection between red fever and Coronet, what did you do? Did you try and shut it down? Did you make sure that no more of this poison leaked out into the city?’

He didn’t answer, or if he did it was too quiet to make out.

‘No, you did the opposite. You traced the leak to Carroll, and you made sure that he knew that the
status quo
was to continue unabated.’

‘It was the Old Man’s decision. We needed to keep you close to the Steps, and that was only possible if Carroll’s operation was still a go.’

‘Today, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, someone is going to wake up from a stupor and discover they’ve killed their parents, or their kids, or both.’ I tossed my smoke into the gutter. ‘And that will be on you, Guiscard, have no single illusion on that score. Every day this continues means another patient for Sister Agnes.’

Guiscard turned and looked back at the hospital facade. ‘I’ll take care of it.’

‘Carroll shrugs off this life of toil and pain, and he does so in the immediate future.’

‘Carroll dies,’ he agreed, then went back to staring out over the skyline.

Our vantage point provided an impressive view of Rigus – the crystalline towers of the Palace, the winding stone streets of the Old City. Evening was descending, and far below people were hurrying out of work, quick to get home or to their favorite bar. From up high they looked like ants. Sometimes they look like ants to me even from close in.

‘The Old Man,’ Guiscard said finally. ‘He’s going to screw you. He knows about your safe houses. The apartment in Brennock, the one above the tea shop in Offbend, that hovel near the docks.’

‘How?’

‘He’s got someone in your camp, whispering your next moves.’

‘Who?’

‘He wouldn’t say.’

‘As it happens, I have a piece of relevant information for you as well.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I picked up a secure communication from Egmont’s desk last time I was in there. It detailed the operators he’s planted inside Black House.’

This was enough to break Guiscard out of the lethargy that had overtaken him since we’d left the asylum. He leaped to his feet, ran his hand over the stubble on his scalp. ‘You didn’t think this was something you should have mentioned to me earlier?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s bunk,’ I said. ‘You’re being played. We all are.’

L
ater that evening I was watching Wren smoke a cigarette across the street from an old stone building in the seedier section of Brennock. If you weren’t paying particular attention you’d have just said he was smoking a cigarette on the street in the seedier section of Brennock, but we’d been doing this long enough that I could read his shorthand. I didn’t like that he’d taken up tobacco, but then I wasn’t in a situation to say much about it. I’d be happy if it was the worst of my vices he’d adopted. I made myself quiet in an alley a block or so back from where he waited and burned my own. When it was done I pulled up the collar of my coat and went to join him.

‘He’s in there?’

Wren nodded. ‘What’s the plan?’

‘Follow in after me, and try to look tougher than you are.’

The door was neither unlocked, nor made of tissue paper. But you can break anything if you know where to aim. I planted the center of my boot a few inches from the handle and it flew open.

There was a glimpse of pale flesh beneath silk covers, but Captain Ascletin was up from the bed with admirable celerity, moving for a chair in the corner where he’d hung his sword and neatly folded his pants. I had a steady lead on him though, and it was easy enough to hook his foot and send him sprawling. I regretted the violence – it would only put his back up. But then I couldn’t very well let him make it to his blade. The gentleman below him hadn’t Kenneth’s reflexes, nor his nerve, and his best attempt at resistance was to pull a corner of the sheet up over his face.

I waited a minute for it to sink in, happy I’d gotten lucky with the timing – they were deep enough in to be incriminating, but not so far along as to make things awkward. Kenneth spent the interval scraping himself up off the ground. I hoped the fall hadn’t bruised any of his more tender areas.

Wren was damn near as surprised as the Captain. I’m not altogether clear on what he thought we were busting in on, but it apparently wasn’t this. He watched the spectacle with something close to revulsion, as if Kenneth’s dalliance was the worst thing he’d yet to lay eyes on. In some ways he was still a child.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Kenneth demanded once he finally managed to get himself to his feet. He maintained an impressive degree of imperiousness, given that he wasn’t wearing any pants.

‘The question isn’t what I’m doing here, Captain, because no one cares about me. I’m a small-time hustler from Low Town. You, on the other hand, are one of the shining stars of the city guard, a man with promise, a man with a future. Your whereabouts would be of concern to any number of people. Your superiors at the watch, as an example. Your family would also, I imagine, have concerns about what brings you to such a disreputable part of town at so late an hour.’

The spirit went out of him pretty quick at that point, not that I blamed him. It was a lot to take in.

‘Sit down, Captain. Let’s chat.’

‘Let me get dressed at least.’

I shook my head. The thing worked better with him flaccid and cringing. ‘We’re all adults here. No reason to get modest.’ I gestured at the foot of the bed. There was a pause during which he examined his options, determined correctly he had none, and went ahead and followed my command. I took a chair from the other end of the room, turned it towards him and sat as well.

‘You know, it’s a funny thing,’ I began, carefully shaking out a smoke. ‘What people care about. If I’d broken in here and found you knee deep in a half dozen Kiren prostitutes, it wouldn’t have meant nothing to nobody. If I’d come in here and found you say, beating a suspect with a length of pipe, that wouldn’t get an eyelash batted neither. But the suggestion that Captain Kenneth Ascletin, stout of heart and broad of chest, gets his jollies playing rat-in-a-hole with a clean-limbed stranger …’