A Drink Before We Die: A Low Town Short

A DRINK

BEFORE WE DIE

A Low Town Short

Daniel Polansky

Copyright © 2014 by Daniel Polansky

All rights reserved.

Cover Design: Patrick Tuoti

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Chris Kepner

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1

Common wisdom affirms against the drinking of whiskey during daylight hours, and while I can see the merits of the argument, it is not one to which I hold. True, a few fingers of liquor, or even a wide-stretched palm, impairs your ability to cope with the world's troubles, miseries and horrors; but it also makes you less concerned about this failure, and since the world is certain to throw more at you than you can handle regardless, I think it a more than equitable transaction.

People call me the Warden. People call me a lot of things, but the Warden is the only one you could say inside a church.

The Staggering Earl was just shy of empty. Most of the rest of Rigus has better sense than me, at least in terms of the appropriate time to imbibe alcohol. I'd have noticed him even in a crowd, though. He was too clean, and he moved with a purpose that most of our clientele, hardened inebriates and bitter old sots, rarely muster. When I'd been coming up, when the first waves of Tarasaighn were arriving from their marshy homeland and making trouble for the entrenched interests, the Swamp Dwellers had seemed all but another species. They muttered strange oaths in incomprehensible accents, they lived ten in a room in their own section of town, they dressed absurdly and stank of garlic and fried liver. A generation in Rigus had bred all that out of them, left them indistinguishable from the men they'd overthrown. It made you wonder why anyone bothers with open warfare—just wait a decade or so and everything gets ground to banality by the steady march of progress.

This was what I was thinking as my new nemesis took a seat next to me. I was, as mentioned, fairly deep in the bag.

He didn't say anything for a while. I tried to fix on some unique feature, some peculiarity that would distinguish him from the rest of his breed. To no use. It was like he'd been cast from a mold at one of the new foundries—criminal, executive class.

Adolphus came over from the other end of the counter. I could say a lot of things about Adolphus, but in the interests of brevity I'll mention only that he owns the other half of the bar, stands six feet at the shoulder, lost an eye during the War, and is a better friend than I deserve. “What can I get you?” he asked the newcomer.

“Whatever my friend here is having, and one more for him as well.”

“Much appreciated,” I said. Owning the bar meant I didn't pay for my own drinks, so the courtesy was not that at all, but still—no reason to be uncivil.

Adolphus left to fetch our order, and the man turned towards me. “I don't believe we've been formally introduced.”

“I imagine that's about to change.”

“Armadal Kinnaird,” he said, extending his hand, “here on behalf of the  Ballafleur Consortium."

The Ballafleur Consortium was a mid-level syndicate headquartered near the palace. They sold choke and they owned whores and they leaned on butchers and store owners and small merchants. They hobnobbed with princelings and traded jests with bankers and gave money to rebuild the Cathedral of Prachetas after the steeple had burned down the year before. They had no monopoly on hypocrisy, nor malfeasance. They had about thirty men directly on their pay roll, maybe twice as many associates, small-time dealers and cut throats kicking a percentage upstream.

“A pleasure.”

“Mine entirely,” Armadal corrected.  A light fencing blade hung from his belt, shorter than a rapier. I was confident he was skilled with it, and certain I'd get the chance to find out either way. He was dressed well, not just expensively, which is rare given our profession. Speaking broadly, the only person dressed worse than a cheap thug is a rich one.

“This is a lovely place you've got,” he said.

It wasn't. The Staggering Earl was a dive bar, and had no pretensions of being anything else. For a dive bar it was fine, I guess. Adolphus had laid a fresh layer of sawdust over last night's vomit, though that didn't help much with the smell.

“A man needs a place to hang his hat.”

“Bartender seems friendly enough.”

“Adolphus? He can pour a glass of beer I suppose, so long as it’s only one at a time.” This was a lie, though a believable one. People looked at Adolphus, saw he was ugly and oversized and thought him stupid as well. I was ugly too, but the clever, mean type of ugly, not the amiable, sweet-natured sort.

“Good man to have behind you if things get rough.”

“Less than you'd think. The bolt that took the one eye left him mostly blind in the other, and all that muscle he's got he don't know what to do with. I just keep him around to intimidate the drunks.”  This was also a lie—even running towards fat and without any depth perception Adolphus was just about as dangerous an individual as you'd ever not want to meet. But it was important to make clear to my new best friend that my old one wasn't a part of my organization. Of course, if it came down to it Adolphus would back my play without thinking twice—but I'd never ask him. It was Adolphus's job to run the bar. It was my job to run Low Town.

“I suppose you're wondering why I'm stopping by,” Armadal said, sipping at his whiskey and trying not to grimace. It seemed the brand of liquor we swilled was not to his rarefied tastes.

“I'd assumed you were just passing through, thought you'd grab a quick drink before heading back north.”

“I'm afraid this isn't primarily a social call.” Armidal was the sort of person who never stopped smiling, and he didn't stop smiling then. “The Ballafleur Consortium has recently acquired some interests running in Talabous, just on the other side of the river.”

When I was a child Talabous had been the country, and lesser nobles too impoverished to enjoy their own preserve would hunt for deer beneath its knotted oaks. Thirty years down the line and the city had swallowed it whole, the only hunters left were the sort that make a living off the bounty on sewer rats—two coppers a head, if you're interested, but they're big suckers and they like to bite. Anyway, crime-wise it was nothing but small-timers and savages, just the sort of spot that would attract an ambitious group of up-and-comers like the Consortium.

“I didn't realize you were looking to expand.”

“A falling plum,” Armadal said. “Veiss the Twice-Hung wanted out of the game, and we found his operations coming to us at an attractive price.”

And where did he get off to, I wondered? Miradin? The Free Cities? A shallow grave? “I hope Veiss enjoys his retirement.”

“I'm sure he will,” Armadal said, Veiss's fate of no very great importance to either of us. “The main thing we want to make clear is that we've got no designs on Low Town.”

To get to Low Town you shuffle out of the gates of the palace and head south, over the Andel, down through Brennock and it's iron foundries and stink, stopping just before you reach the docks. If you come, though, you might want to make sure you aren't dressed too well, or wearing any jewelry, or have much money on you. And you might want to carry a knife, or a sword, or walk along in the company of a handful of men so equipped, or maybe more than a handful. Because the locals are unfriendly, unfriendly by the standards of an unfriendly city in an unfriendly world, and the local guard know better than to waste their time trying to police the place, like a doctor knows better than to bandage a corpse.

One more thing about Low Town—the most important thing, really, though you'd be shocked at how many of these argent-a-head thugs forget—it's mine. The broken cobblestones and the
graffitied
walls and the shit-swollen canals, the silk-shirted pimps and the half-hard razor boys and the wyrm dealers and the crooked guards and even those few poor souls mad or foolish enough to try and eke out an honest living.

“Of course not,” I said.

“We're not here to try and cheat you out of what's yours.”

“Perish the thought.”

“Our interests in Talabous end at the river, and we've got no intentions of moving them beyond that. The way the Consortium sees it, there's enough out there for everyone. Bloodshed is antithetical to profit, and profit is what we're all interested in.”

“An enlightened attitude,” I commented. “Who is we, exactly?”

He smiled a little wider. “Cosgrave Melrose.”

“Old Alistair's nephew?”

And wider still. “The very same.”

“You make sure to give him my regards,”  I said. “All the respect and admiration I have for that family, for everything they've done for the city. Well, like I said, you make sure and give him my regards.”

I would not have pissed on Alistair Melrose had he been set on fire and placed amidst a nest of my most treasured possessions. I'd never met his nephew, but I felt confident my feelings would be similar. It was gratifying, however, to see Armadal's eyes get a little blacker at the praise I was heaping on his boss. “I'll send them along.”

“Much appreciated.”

“And in the meantime, if there's anything else that I can do to personally assure you of our good intentions, please don't hesitate to contact me.”

“Not for a moment.”

Armadal nodded and stood and left an argent on the table, which was more than the cost of the liquor but less than what he was looking to take from me. I made a vague feint in the direction of walking him out, but he waved me back down, thanked me again and slipped neatly into the daylight.

“Who was that?” Adolphus asked, coming round after a moment.

“That was Armadal Kinnaird.”

“What did he want?”

“To steal everything I own and then murder me,” I said. “Can I get a refill on that whiskey?”

2

“I don't know what to tell you,” Henri de Montmortancy was saying. “It's been a slow week.”

There are all sorts of benefits to my current avenue of employment. I set my own hours, I don't have a boss to answer to, I get to give something back to the community. But of course it has its downsides like anything else. That's why they call it work, rather than play. And for me personally the biggest drawback of being a dealer of narcotics, which is my main profession though I've been known to cadge a clipped copper in other ways as well, is that you have to spend time with people who buy and sell drugs; a subsection of the population even slightly more duplicitous and self-serving than the rest.

“No one's buying breath?” I asked.

He shrugged, an honest man despairing. “Not from me,” he lamented.

I'm sure you're busy, so to save us both some time all I'll tell you about Henri de Montmortancy was that no one called him Henri de Montmortancy, they called him the Wind Cock, and they called him that because he was inconstant as an autumn storm. I supplied him with breath and in exchange he gave me seventy percent of what he got, as well as a premium for not beating him to death out of sheer pique.

He was supposed to, anyway. Though looking down at the three ochre he had set in front of me, the entirety of my take for last month, apparently, I was starting to wonder if maybe the Wind Cock was living up to his name.

“Hell, Henri,” I said. “I'm sorry to hear that.”

He brightened up a bit. “Thanks, Warden.  It's this trade war we've got going with Nestria. If there ain't no cargo to unload, then the dockworkers ain't got no money, and if the dockworkers ain't got no money—”

“Then you don't have any either. I get it, I get it.” I wondered how much of my pixie's breath had been required to give the Wind Cock the courage to lie to my face. Half a vial, was my not entirely inexperienced assessment. His eyes were pinpoint pricks, and he was doing that thing where you sniffle and blink at the same time. Frankly it was embarrassing—I'd put away the same amount myself an hour earlier, just on general principle, and the only evidence of it was that I kept ticking my fingers off of the table, and struggled not to break my rhythm and wrap them around his throat. “I understand, don't worry about it. I'm sure things will pick up next month.”

“Absolutely, absolutely,” he said. It was clear he didn't think I'd last that long.

“I appreciate you coming out here,” I stuttered then and almost used his nickname, “Henri. Seems like a lot of my old friends are finding themselves busy these days. Don't even have time to come in and chat. Plenty of time to talk with Armadal Kinnaird, though.”

“Who?”

“No, no, you don't need to pretend. I'm sure he's approached you, just like he's been approaching most of my people these last weeks.”

“He might have sent someone by,” grimacing as he said it, the taste of honesty foreign on his tongue.

Most of my distributors and middle-men had been willing enough to flip over to the Ballafleur Consortium, in exchange (I assumed) for a slightly larger cut of the proceeds, and because the Consortium had muscle and wouldn't hesitate to make trouble for them. Presumably they didn't understand that the Consortium would raise their rents as soon as the issue was firmly settled, and also that all by my lonesome I was a hundred times more dangerous than Armadal and every murderer he could put together.

But at least the rest of my former associates had not seen fit to insult my intelligence by stopping by and pretending they weren't queued up for my buggering. That level of stupidity was reserved for the Wind Cock alone.

“Some of my people,” I said, wrapping a few tufts of tobacco around a length of dreamvine, then sealing rolling paper around both, “have gotten it into their heads that I'm yesterday’s broadsheet, that a new head holds up the crown.” I lit the joint off a candle on the table, then handed it over to Henri. “It's a funny thing, people's memories.”

“Sure, yeah, funny,” he said, puffing the joint between fat lips.

“It's not that people forget the kindnesses you've done them—loans extended or forgiven, pressure exerted or withdrawn...”

“All those nice things you done them.”

“I don't expect gratitude.”

“Can't expect gratitude.”

“This is a monologue,” I clarified. Henri opened his mouth before hearing what I'd said, but he managed to close it just before his first words escaped. “The point being I don't expect loyalty. This is a cruel business in a nasty world. All I expect, Henri, is for a man to abide by a reasonable sense of self-interest. That's as much as I could ever hope for, hope for and in vain. I've been the chief in Low Town for almost five years now, and not for lack of other claimants. The Two-Fists, Ling Chi and his Kirens, that crew of Islanders from by the docks—and that's just the last nine months. You'd think people would start to realize how unhealthy an occupation it is, coming after me. It's not that I'm such a kind friend, Henri—but I'm a hell of an enemy.”

“You'd think,” he said, too stoned or just generally stupid to notice that my last words could apply to him. He took the joint out of his mouth and handed it back to me.

“I guess not everyone's so smart as you.” I looked at the smoke, thought about the Wind Cock, his hygiene and habits, then returned it to him.

“I don't know about that,” Henri said, going back to the dreamvine with barely a pause. “I just know what I know, that's all. Keep my head down, hold to my agreements, don't make no waves.”             

“Can I tell you something, Henri? In strictest confidence?”

“Course you can, Warden—hell, you know me. My mind's a vault.”

“Without a door,” I muttered.

“What?”

“I'm not the only one unhappy about Armadal's expansion.”

I watched coins stack themselves behind Henri's eyes, thick golden ochres and tarnished silver argents. “You got something planned?”

I gave a slow look round, making sure that the only people within earshot were comprehensively untrustworthy inebriates happy to sell their mother's wooden leg for a shot of rum. “I'm not the only one getting concerned about the Ballafleur Confederation. You know the Seven Brothers?”

“Course. Serious bunch of bruisers,” Armadal said.

“They've got interests based out of Offbend, and they're not so keen on seeing them get eaten up. If I was Armadal Kinnaird,” I said, raising my voice for the proper noun, “I'd start getting my affairs in order. The Brothers are vicious sorts, not the sort to be talked into anything.”

It took the Wind Cock a twenty count to figure out that what I'd just told him could be turned into money, five more for him to smile at the thought of it, and another ten to remember that he was sitting in front of the man he was planning to betray. He wiped away the nasty grin that had dropped down over his face, but his eyes were mischief-bright. “That's good to hear, Warden. Sounds like you've got the situation well in hand. Not that I ever figured otherwise, of course.”

“Of course,” I said. “Thanks for stopping by, Henri.”

“A pleasure, a pleasure,” he said, standing. I was so committed to my ruse that I even went ahead and shook his hand, an unpleasant second and a half which left me looking around for a towel or a bucket of lye.

Adolphus came over. He seemed worried. Adolphus seemed worried a lot these days. Some people, a sunny day is only cause to start prophesying clouds. “Far be it for me to tell you your job,” he said, out of the crooked corner of his mouth, “but were you planning on making any effort to defend your territory?”

“I just did.”