Tomorrow, the Killing Read Free Page B

frequent sips from his tap had wilted him into something more believably a member of the human species. But he still looked like he could toss a cow over a wall, if for some reason he had been inclined to do so.
    He was laughing when I came in, dominating the three men surrounding him as much by his brio as his size. It took me a moment to place them. Once I did, it took considerably less time for a scowl to work its way across my face.
    ‘Hello, Lieutenant,’ Hroudland began, quick with the pleasantries. ‘It’s been a while.’ He held out his hand. After a moment of looking foolish, he put it away.
    ‘Has it? I hadn’t realized. I suppose I don’t find myself thinking much about you.’
    Hroudland nodded sadly, like he had hoped for better from me but had learned not to expect it. ‘An unfortunate state of events. Because we at the Veterans’ Association are thinking about you, you and all our other brothers, whose services to Throne and Country are being forgotten by the current administration.’
    Hroudland was the very prototype of a mid-ranking officer, more an abstract ideal than a fully realized human being. Give him a problem to solve and he’d solve it, and never waste a moment’s thought on why it needed to be solved. He had a sharp enough mind, but he kept it in its case unless ordered otherwise. I didn’t much care for him, but compared to his fellows I’d have been happy to cut my hand and swear a blood oath, kiss him on the cheek and call him brother.
    Ten unfortunate years I’d known Roussel, and still the incongruity between his boyish face and his long history of violence left me slack-jawed. Rare amongst the population of the Empire, the coming of the war had been a singular blessing for the young Rouender. It was one shared by the stray dogs of his neighborhood, which, prior to his enlisting, had occasion to find themselves strung up and dissected, intestines stretched along the sidewalk and sweetmeats poked at with thin instruments of metal. The business of the front meant that Roussel had become a killer before his sixteenth birthday, but he wouldn’t have lasted a virgin much longer even in civilian life. And though he came up barely to my shoulders, and had the blue eyes and pinked cheeks of a china doll, still he was the one I watched. The fact that Hroudland outranked him wouldn’t mean anything if he got it in his head to hurt someone.
    Rabbit was, by contrast, basically what you’d expect in a one-time infantryman and present-day thug. A series of wooden blocks stacked atop each other, the topmost a mass of scar tissue and tattered cartilage. Beaming through that last was a smile which held firm in sunshine or storm, when cutting a throat or disposing of a body. His nickname was a product of the sort of caustic humor common in the ranks, for if ever there was a man who bore less resemblance to the gentle lapin, I had trouble imagining him.
    ‘What’s with the monkey suit, Lieutenant?’ he asked.
    ‘On Sundays your wife and I have dinner, and I like to look my best.’
    Rabbit laughed, belly juggling on his sturdy frame. ‘I never married.’
    ‘That’s too bad. Everybody should have a wife. Then again, I suppose long years of barracks living, cheek and jowl with the creamy bud of Rigun manhood, might have given you an aversion to the fairer sex.’
    Roussel started at that, mad eyes inching their way toward trouble, but Rabbit stole his thunder by laughing again, laughing and shaking his head in a friendly sort of way. ‘I forgot how funny you are, Lieutenant.’
    ‘Only when you’re around. Once you leave I go back to drinking myself silent. While we’re on the subject, mayhap you could enlighten me as to when exactly to expect your retreat. The bar isn’t open yet, and anyway we keep a pretty exclusive entrance policy.’
    ‘Come on now,’ Hroudland said. ‘We’re all soldiers.’
    ‘Did the High Chancellor start another war while I wasn’t looking?’ I smiled