Tomorrow, the Killing by Daniel Polansky Read Free Book Online

folded. ‘She asked me about her brother. She said she wanted to know about what he was doing before he died.’
    ‘And what did you tell her?’
    ‘Not much. I didn’t know much. I told her to go down and see the boys at the Association – they were the ones to talk to.’
    The anger that I had been feigning flared to life. I tamped down on it. Getting hot never helps anything. ‘You sent her to see the vets?’
    I must not have done an absolutely successful job of keeping myself calm because his tongue seemed stuck in its depression, and it was a while before he stuttered out confirmation. ‘Yeah.’
    ‘By the Lost One, Gilchrist, sometimes I forget how fucking stupid you really are.’
    I guess there wasn’t much could be said to that. At least, nothing he could think of, or had the courage to speak.
    ‘When did this interview take place?’ I asked.
    ‘Yesterday evening. I didn’t think it would do any harm. Roland was the head of the Veterans’ Association before he died, and Joachim Pretories was always his truest friend.’
    I had no interest in setting Iomhair straight about the nature of the Association’s activities, nor the character of their current commander. ‘Where is she sleeping?’
    ‘I don’t know – I swear, she wouldn’t tell me. You know I’d never lie to you.’ As if he hadn’t spent most of the conversation doing just that.
    ‘Then I guess you’ll need to find out.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘That’s the nice part about not being a pawn, Gilchrist – you get to tell people what to do without working out how they’ll do it.’
    The truth was I didn’t have much to hold over the man if he refused me – but he wouldn’t, conditioned as he was to do the bidding of anyone who raised their voice. ‘There isn’t any need to let the general know I saw Rhaine, is there? I was going to tell him, really, I just didn’t get the chance yet.’
    ‘If you aren’t going to smoke that,’ I finished, nodding at his unlit cigar, ‘you’d best put it back in its box.’
    He looked down at the fat five inches trembling in his hand, and I bobbed on out.
5
    T he air in the Earl was so stale you could cube it and stack the pieces. I headed to the courtyard to draw myself a pint of water from our pump.
    Wren sat cross-legged against the back wall, eyes closed as if in slumber. He had grown since I’d taken him off the street three years prior. As a child he had been lean and quick, light-skinned, dark-haired, and subtle as the night. As a youth he had turned gawky, and, cruel as it was to point out, acne-ridden. Though he ate three square meals and incessantly between them, he was as thin as he had been the day I’d found him loitering in an alleyway, and it sat worse on him than it once had. His limbs seemed overlong, like they were intended for a full-grown man but had been mislaid. I figured he’d grow into them, if someone didn’t kill him first.
    And someone might, for a lot of reasons. Because he had a sharp mouth and opened it around people who repaid insult with iron. Because despite my best efforts he still had only a dubious respect for the concept of personal property. But primarily because of the small blue light that swirled around his outstretched palm – speaking more accurately, because of his ability to produce it.
    Most folk live and die without ever having any direct experience with the Art. They come to think of it like it is in fairy tales, rings that turn you invisible, incantations that make a man fly or transform shit to gold. Maybe during the harvest festival they give a hoarded argent to a traveling conjuror in exchange for a charm or a palm reading. Almost certainly, they gave their money to a con man, and are lucky to have found themselves cheated.
    Because there is far more terror in the Art than wonder, and even as a child, when I’d counted amongst my closest friends perhaps the most powerful and certainly the most decent practitioner the realm had ever produced,