She Who Waits (Low Town 3) (36 page)

Crowley’s instinct, as always, was to move straight to violence. It was one of the things that made him good at his job, actually – that the line for him was so thin that he didn’t need any time to force himself into action. But even Crowley’s disproportionate self-respect couldn’t convince him he stood a chance in hell of going toe-to-toe with Adolphus, and drawing open steel would be tantamount to starting a riot.

‘I won’t forget this,’ he said.

Adolphus leaned in close to Crowley’s face, but didn’t say anything. Just gazed at him, running his one eye back and forth over the smaller man. Then there was the sound of a thunder clap, and Crowley was spinning backwards, on his feet but barely.

‘Not now.’

It always amazed me how good Adolphus was with his hands. Blood trickled from the corner of Crowley’s mouth that still functioned, and he seemed dazed, slow to move. When he finally managed to shake it off his eyes were little pinpricks of rage, and his hand trembled near the hilt of his sword. But that was as far as it went. After a moment, he wiped crimson off his scowl and dipped out the exit. The rest of his boys followed him, and not slowly either.

At bottom, Crowley was hollow, as the scar I’d given him proved. The very embodiment of the void when he was on top, weak-kneed and piss-yellow once his stack got low.

A handful of times in my life I’d come face to face with She Who Waits Behind All Things, made my peace with the thought of entering the next world. A handful of times I’d been brought back from the brink, given another chance to make the same mistakes. And in those first moments, as you stutter back from the edge, things look different – not better, but more vivid, the muted wood of the walls brighter, the smells wafting in from the kitchen more pungent.

‘Drinks are on me,’ I said, and the place erupted, the mood swift to turn from homicidal to jubilant. Adolphus and I were all but carried back to the counter, the crowd overwhelmed by our victory and the promise of free booze. I managed to get a word in to my partner before he was forced to the taps.

‘You shouldn’t have done that.’

Adolphus shrugged. ‘A man only gets but so far on wisdom alone. Besides, we won’t be around long enough to pay for it.’

‘Pray you’re right – Crowley isn’t one to forget an insult.’

‘I’ll keep my eye out,’ he said.

That last was all but lost by the swelling chorus, our patrons excited to get to the drinks that I’d pay for and Adolphus would serve. I had to yell to make myself heard over the commotion. ‘I figure it would make sense for me to sleep somewhere else tonight.’

‘Sounds wise.’

‘Adeline and the boy ought to do the same. Send Wren over to Mazzie’s for a couple of days, and stash Adeline somewhere.’

‘I’ll do that.’

‘You’d be smart to lie low as well.’

Adolphus’s grin was uneven and about as wide as my fist. ‘I’ve got customers to serve.’

I figured as much – Adolphus wasn’t one to back down from a fight, not with victory fresh under his belt. ‘I’ll be back around in a few days, to pick y’all up and get the hell out of here.’

‘Watch yourself till then.’

‘I will.’

I was about to leave, Adolphus turning to the tap, accepting the backslaps and good wishes of a crew of roughnecks that had been willing to die, or at least kill, for him a moment past. Before he was lost completely I stepped back and put a hand on his shoulder, made sure to get his attention. Once I had it though, oddly, it took me a few seconds to say anything.

‘Thanks,’ I said finally. It wasn’t enough, wouldn’t ever be, but it was all I had to give him, and I think he understood.

Adolphus winked his one eye – homely, fat, the best man I’d ever known. ‘Don’t mention it.’

E
arlier that morning I had decided to eschew all this cloak-and-dagger nonsense, just sent Guiscard a message consisting of an address, a time, and one extra word –
urgent
. Despite that last exhortation he was late, unhappy to have arrived at all, and not slow to let me in on his feelings. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said, wind whipping at his gray duster, ‘why we couldn’t have had this conversation somewhere else.’

‘It’s not a whorehouse, but I thought you might enjoy the fresh air.’

‘It’s raining.’

‘It’s drizzling.’

‘Water is falling on me,’ he said rather testily. ‘Can we get to it?’

‘You got somewhere to be?’

‘Beyond the weather, and the fact that it seems unwise to risk the chance of us being seen together, you are not, in fact, my day’s sole concern.’

‘Do tell.’

‘Last night the High Chancellor resigned his badge of office.’

I whistled. ‘Two weeks, huh? Gotta be some kind of record.’

‘Monck’s block no-confidenced him on the tariff bill.’

‘Gosh.’

‘That’s all you’ve got to say?’

‘Golly?’

‘That means he can stop the nomination of the next one as well, leave us without a rudder. It means he can cause a crisis whenever he wants, use it as a pretext to raise the city.’

‘I can see why that would be of some concern to you,’ I said.

He scowled. ‘Where the hell are we?’

We were in Wyrmington’s Shingle, well north of the Old City, in the foothills where Kor’s Heights begin. That was obviously not what he meant, however. ‘I thought you might want to know before I gave word to the Steps – I found the end result of Coronet.’

He took a longer look up at the building that was sheltering us from the wind. It was old, and had been pretty once, though it was hard to make out when. The stone facade was crumbling and weather beaten. It was also a frequent target of vandalism, graffiti stretching across it in layers. A patient excavator could have discovered a decade plus of abuse from neighborhood wits. ‘Here?’

I banged loudly on the door in answer. It was a while before the eye slit opened. ‘The blessing of Prachetas upon you this morning,’ a woman’s voice said. ‘Mr Chamberlain, I presume?’

‘That’s me.’

The panel closed. After a moment the door opened. ‘Sister Agnes, at your service.’

Sister Agnes was homely and old. The gray habit she wore was too big, seemed to swallow her up. Only her hands and face showed, and these were mottled, the result of some sort of skin condition. She looked tired – she looked like she had been tired for a very long time. Still, her eyes were clear, and they didn’t blink as they looked us over.

She didn’t offer her hand – her order had strict rules regarding physical contact between the sexes. I inclined my head in substitute. ‘Forgive our lateness – my associate had some difficulty finding the place.’

‘Not at all,’ she said, stepping aside to allow us entry. ‘With lunch out of the way, there’s little enough to occupy us.’

The corridor was made of the same stone as the front, though it had been cleaned more recently. ‘Welcome to the Children of Prachetas Sanctuary, gentlemen.’ She seemed to belatedly recognize Guiscard’s garb, and thus his importance, and she stood up straighter. ‘Good afternoon, Agent.’

He nodded respectfully. ‘Sister.’

She turned back towards me. ‘I’m afraid your message didn’t specify what organization you’re representing.’

‘I’m head of the Low Town Business Association.’ And had such a thing existed, I probably would have been. ‘With Midwinter approaching we’re considering what charitable institution to sponsor in the coming year. One of our members brought your asylum to our attention.’

For a moment her face showed something that might have been pride, but she chewed that down into the steady solemnity that was her constant expression. It was one that allowed for neither excitement nor satisfaction, that expected disappointment and prepared to meet it without regret. ‘We’re a small facility, dedicated to the care of only a few poor souls, their numbers dwindling every year. All the same, any kindness you could do for us would be greatly appreciated.’

‘Who keeps the lamps lit?’

‘The Order provides what assistance it can,’ she said. ‘But there are many in the land that need the help they can offer. We are primarily funded by a private endowment. It’s enough to pay for our food, though sadly little else.’

‘Provided by?’

She shook her head. ‘The endowment is anonymous, granted to provide care for our wards. I don’t suppose you remember, it’s been so long, but it was quite a scandal at the time. Two dozen souls, seemingly healthy, all going mad within the span of a few days. The broadsheets had a field day of course, blaming it on one thing or another. After a while they lost interest, as they tend to.’

We kept to Sister Agnes’s speed, which is to say it took us about five minutes to make it out of the entrance way. Finally, we stopped at a heavy wooden security door, a little brass bell hanging on the wall next to it. Sister Agnes tapped the ringer lightly. The pleasant chimes that echoed out were discordant, laughter at a funeral.

‘Since Sister Rajel passed, Mr Amar and I are the only full-time staff. A novice used to stop by from time to time and read stories, but …’ She looked more than normally regretful. ‘There was an incident.’

I didn’t press her on the specifics. It was another moment before I heard the sound of the locks on the other side being undone.

The man who opened the door was an Islander of advanced age, snow white hair and jet black skin. He was a large man with soft eyes. I supposed those were the most important traits for someone in his position. The strength to sit a patient down when you had to, and the decency not to enjoy it.

‘Thank you, Mr Amar,’ Sister Agnes said.

Mr Amar gave Guiscard and me a clean once over, weighing our intentions and hinting at theoretical consequences. Then he nodded languidly and dropped back into his chair.

‘This way, please,’ Sister Agnes said, leading us onward at her interminable pace.

As a youth I’d done a stint in a reform school run by the Order, after I was stupid enough to get caught doing something I’d done a thousand times before. During my brief stay one of the Sisters had taken badly to my lack of manners and poured a half-pot of tea over my upper arm. I had found it unpleasant, if memory serves. That pretty much soured me on both public education and the church.

It was hard to hold any of that against Agnes. I’ve found that people who work in institutions tend to do so because they find their charges easy victims, incapable of escape or retaliation. Clearly the Sister did not fall into this category. It was difficult to square with my general worldview, the idea that a human being might dedicate themselves to another without hope of gain.

‘I must warn you gentlemen – our wards can be … difficult for outsiders to see.’

‘Agent Guiscard and I are not easily disturbed.’

‘Nor am I certain as to how our patients will react to your presence – should it upset them, I’m afraid we’ll have to end your visit early.’

‘Of course. The last thing we want is to cause any trouble.’

Sister Agnes looked at me for a time, into me I might say. One advantage of the frock is that certain basic social conventions – for instance, the prohibition against staring at someone for an unbroken thirty-five seconds – can be comfortably ignored. I wasn’t so foolish as to ascribe any particular prescience to the Sister, and it had been a long time since I’d thought of the daevas as being more than names to curse by. All the same, I was happy when she turned and opened the door.

A dozen-odd folk sat in varying positions inside the room, some on hard wooden chairs, some crouched down against the wall. Two of them were playing cards, or more accurately with cards, the arrangement betraying no sense of order that I could perceive. Some were knitting, sewing strips of cloth together. Most seemed incapable of even these activities, staring at the walls and chewing their lips like cud.

‘This is where we keep the quiet ones,’ she said. ‘We try to give them something to do, to take the mind off their … situation. The Order frowns on games of chance, but I can’t see the harm in it.’ Though to judge by the vague sense of shame she seemed to exude, she wasn’t certain. ‘You don’t see any harm in it, do you Agent?’

It took Guiscard a beat before he realized the question had been addressed to him. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not at all.’

I thought it humorous, under the circumstances, that Sister Agnes thought of a member of Black House as having some sort of moral authority.

‘We used to allow dice, but the rattling agitated some of the more nervous ones. The knitting is a recent introduction of my own, gives them something to do. Of course, you have to be careful with the needles.’

A very thin man with wild eyes stood up from his post and approached us. ‘Mother? Mother, is that you?’ For some reason he fixed his attention on Guiscard, took his duster between both hands. ‘Mother? You’ve come back to see me?’

Guiscard turned his face towards the wall.

Sister Agnes gently hushed the man into silence, then led him back over to his spot. ‘He was a student, back before the madness took him,’ she explained. ‘I brought a book in once, to see if it would trigger anything. He tore the paper up and ate the binding.’

We stood there for a while, though it was little enough edifying. Eventually I stopped looking at them, just sort of rested in my peripherals. Sister Agnes didn’t follow my lead, however. The entire time we were in there she kept her eyes on her charges. That she’d been doing it for fifteen years and could still see them, that they remained people to her, rather than bipedal cattle, well – let’s just say I found myself admiring the Sister enough to wish my pretext for the visit wasn’t entirely fraudulent.

‘I’ll be back around in a little while,’ she said eventually. ‘Dinner is sausage and onion pie.’

One of the men fiddling with the cards looked up at her, eyes tight, trying to make out what this message could mean. Failing, he shrugged and went back to his deck, rapidly turning four cards face up, then back over, then face up again. The rest remained silently fixated on whatever was directly in front of them.

Sister Agnes closed and locked the door behind us, then headed further down the hallway. It was grimier than the entrance. The mortar in the brick walls was green and thin, and I could hear the steady drip of water coming from the ceiling. At the end of the corridor a spiral staircase descended to a lower level. It was narrow and crooked, and I found myself worried that Sister Agnes might trip, though of course this journey was one she’d done ten thousand times before.