Roil by Trent Jamieson Read Free Book Online

when I say this doesn’t even begin to square the debt, perhaps it even adds to it.”
    To David this wasn’t much of an answer. “What would square the debt then?”
    “I hope you never have to find out.” Cadell stood up, dropped his hat on the bed and walked to a cabinet near the mirror. He splashed something in a glass, swallowed it down in a gulp. Grimaced. “I should have warned him, more than I did. More forcefully, should have kept a closer eye on your house.”
    “He knew this was coming?” A dark bitterness rose in him and raged. Why hadn’t he fled? Why had his father risked both their lives?
    Cadell nodded his head. “He knew that as soon as he crossed the floor of Parliament, soon as he joined the Confluents, something was coming. He just didn’t expect it to be this. Thought they were all working towards the same thing. Stade proved him wrong. Oh, lad, there are secrets that layer Mirrlees and Shale, sediments of madness and lies more damning than you could believe. Missteps, and murders, from the First Ships down.” Cadell lifted his empty hands in the air. “There’s blood on these, as much as Stade, more.” Cadell stopped. “I’m sorry, David.”
    “People die, Mr Cadell,” David said, and his voice was colder than even the Carnival could account for. “People die.”
    And that was all he allowed himself.
    Cadell took his time in responding. “But you’re not dead.”
    David didn’t argue the point, but he knew Cadell was wrong. Something inside him was dead. Not too long ago, a few years no more, he’d been maybe fourteen or fifteen he had woken in the middle of the night, and realised that he was going to die, that the night was smothering him. He’d started screaming then.
    His parents had rushed into the room. His mother had held him, and he had told her, that he didn’t want to die, that he didn’t want any of them to die. She’d kissed his brow, and assured him that he had a very long time indeed before he needed to worry about such things.
    Well, it had turned out that they hadn’t had that long at all. The next day the rain fell, and it really hadn’t stopped. His mother was dead six months later, his father increasingly obsessive and cold. Was it any wonder he had succumbed to addiction by his seventeenth year?
    “Stuffy in here,” Cadell muttered and opened a window, the rain had picked up a notch, it cooled the air but a fraction.
    Better than nothing , David thought.
    “I’m sorry, lad. Not least of all that I’m all you’ve got. You’re right there; people die, and most of your father’s allies died with him last night. The Engineers have played their dissolution and rule Parliament now. And the Vergers have taken sides. These are desperate times, and Stade really thinks he’s doing the right thing. But he isn’t.”
    David was thirsty. He found a glass and filled it with water from a jug. A revolver sat on a bench nearby. He looked at it a long time, then considered the broad back of Cadell. Carnival made all things possible, steadied the shakiest hand, if he moved quick he could avenge at least one death in his family.
    “Well, are you going to shoot me, Mr Milde?”
    David shook his head. Something about Cadell changed then, and even though David could only see his back, he knew the Old Man was grinning. “Do you even know what I am, David. Did your father ever tell you that particular secret?”
    “My father never told me anything. All we did was fight.”
    “I guess that was all he knew at the end. How to fight. He told you I killed your uncle, but he never explained the circumstances. Oh, where to begin?” Cadell turned from the window, the rainy city behind him, dark and streaming, and him sharing some of that darkness.
    Perhaps David should have used the revolver.
    Cadell walked over to the table and flipped open the revolver’s drum, no bullets. “Never leave a loaded gun where an enemy might use it. Of course, we aren’t enemies. Have you