Low Town Read Free

for me, I’m going to come looking for you. Understand?” I tightened my grip.
    He didn’t flinch. “I ain’t bent.” His voice surprised me with its cool confidence. I had picked the right urchin.
    “Off with you then.” I released the bag and he sprinted around the corner.
    I went back into the alley and smoked a cigarette while I waited for the hoax to show up. They were longer than I thought they’d be, given the gravity of the situation. It’s disturbing to discover your low opinion of law enforcement is still unduly appreciative. Two burnt tabs later the first boy returned, a pair of guardsmen in tow.
    I knew them vaguely. One was fresh, new to the force six months, but the second I’d been paying off for years. We’d see how much good that would do if things curdled. “Hello, Wendell.” I held my hand out. “Good to see you again, even under these circumstances.”
    Wendell shook it vigorously. “You as well,” he said. “I had hoped the boy was lying.”
    There wasn’t much to say to that. Wendell knelt beside the body, his chain coat dragging in the mud. Behind him his younger counterpart was turning the shade of white that prefaces vomiting. Wendell shouted a reproach over his shoulder. “None of that. You’re a damn guardsman—show some spine.” He turned back to the corpse, unsure of his next move. “Guess I should call for an agent, then,” he half asked me.
    “Guess so.”
    “Run back to headquarters,” Wendell ordered his subordinate, “and tell them to send for a chill. Tell them to send for two.”
    The guard enforce the customs and laws of the city—when they aren’t paid to look the other way—but investigating crime is more or less beyond them. If a murderer isn’t standing over the corpse with a bloody knife, they’re not of much use. When there’s a crime that matters to someone who counts, an agent of the Crown is sent, officially deputized to carry out the Throne’s Justice. The frost, the cold, the snowmen, or the gray devils, call them what you want but bow your head when they pass and answer prompt if they ask you something, ’cause the chill ain’t the guard, and the only thing more dangerous than an incompetent constabulary is a competent one. Normally, a dumped body in Low Town doesn’t warrant their attention—a fact that does wonders for the murder rate—but this wasn’t a drunk drowned in a puddle or a knifed junkie. They’d send an agent for this.
    After a few minutes, a small squad of guardsmen arrived. A pair of them began cordoning off the area. The remainder stood around looking important. They weren’t doing a great job of it, but I didn’t have the heart to tell them.
    Bored of waiting, or wanting to impress the newcomers, Wendell decided to take a stab at police work. “Probably some heretic,” he said,scratching at his double chins. “Passing through the docks on the way to Kirentown, saw the girl and …” He gestured sharply.
    “Yeah, I hear there’s a lot of that going around.”
    His partner chimed in, baby face spouting poison, choked-back bile heavy on his breath. “Or an Islander. You know how they are.”
    Wendell nodded sagely. He did indeed know how they were.
    I’d heard that in some of the newer mental wards they set the mad and congenitally stupid to rote tasks, having them sew buttons onto mounds of fabric, the futile labor working as a salve to their broken minds. I wonder sometimes whether the guard is not an extension of this therapy on a far grander scale, an elaborate social program meant to give the low functioning an illusion of purpose.
    But it wouldn’t do to spoil it for the inmates. This burst of insight seemed to exhaust Wendell and his second, and they lapsed into silence.
    The autumn eve chased the last shreds of daylight across the skyline. The sounds of honest commerce, as much as such a thing exists in Low Town, were replaced by a jittery quiet. In the surrounding tenements someone had a fire going,