She Who Waits (Low Town 3) by Daniel Polansky Page B

both the Artists I knew are long dead.’ Though I could only claim one scalp between the pair. ‘Mazzie says we ought to look outside of the city. Maybe outside of the Empire.’
    ‘That might not be such a bad idea.’ Adeline was sharp, sharp enough that she didn’t feel compelled to show it off. But she saw what I did, had noticed the smell of smoke, had enough presence of mind to note the direction the city seemed to be running towards.
    ‘It might not.’
    One last smile, then she paced back to the kitchen. Another nice thing about Adeline – she didn’t belabor a point.
    ‘I might be able to get him something at a counting house,’ I said to her back. ‘There’s a merchant or two who owes me something – the boy’s a good haggler. It might do him good, get him out of Low Town.’
    ‘He wouldn’t take it. He wants to be you, you know.’
    ‘ Ś akra, that’s a depressing thought.’
    I went to pour myself a tipple, and remembered I was out of liquor. I thought about calling for Adeline but decided against it, opting instead to fill some paper with tobacco and leaven some dreamvine over the top of it – just enough to ease me into a nice stupor.
    So the boy wanted to be me, did he? Maybe it was time for him to see what that really meant.

10
    T he morning found me trudging through the east gate and out past the city limits. To the north and west the metropolis’s suburbs have started to devour the neighboring villages, and you could walk a long ways without seeing tilled earth or a tree worth the shade. But out this direction the land was worthless, low-lying swamps that flood in the spring, miles and miles of ground you could buy with a few spare copper. It was autumn, however, and the road was dry, and the sun still warm.
    For a different man it would have been a pleasant enough errand, a few hours constitutional in bucolic surroundings. Me, I go mad without the bustle. This was business, pure and simple. If my druthers meant anything, I’d have still been asleep. But then, they rarely mean much.
    After a mile or so the road turned to track, vague and increasingly ill-defined. Then that began to split, peeling up into the hills or down towards the water. I know the city better than the lines on my face, but this wasn’t the city, and I kept to the bit of turf that I was certain of. This wasn’t a place to get lost – the natives here weren’t any friendlier than in Low Town, and past the walls my name doesn’t carry much weight. Further on and the land itself started to seem foul, gnarled oaks embracing each other, knee-high weeds overgrowing the route. The whole country had been like this, back in the day, before the city’s founders had drained the swamp and erected the monument to greed and vanity known as Rigus. You got the sense it hadn’t quite forgiven the insult, was still waiting for the chance to repay it. I took a fork in the road, following it as it ascended into a steep ravine.
    The house was a misshapen thing that sprawled its way up the hill, additions like tumors grafted onto what had once been an oversized shack. A large hog pen extended off one side, crammed to overflow with humanity’s closest relative, squealing loud enough to break the dawn. There were a lot of people living in the house, but none seemed to be going to any great effort to see their trash was disposed of properly. What the pigs couldn’t eat lay strewn about at random, broken bottles and heaps of scrap metal, rotting cord wood and decayed stock. Amidst the squalor a man was chopping wood into kindling, and I stretched my legs to meet him.
    Calum was big for a Tarasaighn. Big for a Valaan, big for any creature not mythic. He had a red mane that circled his skull like a vertical halo, and blue eyes large even by the standards of his frame. His ax was about two-thirds the length of my body, but he swung it without difficulty, each movement methodical but not plodding. He was bare chested against the season,