It took six hours, not counting sleep, for Therazine to learn Anton Carlaca’s address. He was a local gent, still living in West Celedin after most of the wealthy had moved out east. In nine hours she had found his work schedule, his favorite local pub, and the underground boxing ring where he kept himself fit and vented the animalistic aggression that society injected into all of its citizens. In twenty hours she found him.
Anton Carlaca had been a lieutenant with the West Celedin Constabulary until two years ago. He was 35, athletic, and had no red marks, so his swift departure from the WCC stuck out to Therazine. Brief contact and sweet lies to the local department revealed that Carlaca’s family were farmers up north, and that they had been killed in a rebel attack. Carlaca had quit the service “to grieve,” she had been told, and was given a pension that was to last him an entire year. Such munificence was unheard of in this city, which led Therazine to believe that Carlaca must have been an exceptional officer and that the Constabulary wanted to make sure he came back.
But he never did. The year passed and Carlaca’s income ceased. He retained his apartment near Presidium Park and continued to go to all of his local haunts. He still jogged, he still shopped down on Ivy Street. His habits remained the same. It took Therazine locating an ex-girlfriend of his to determine why exactly he hadn’t gone back to the force.
Therazine played the role of recently scorned lover when she contacted Vivian Moroa by telephone. She claimed that she wanted to get vengeance on Carlaca, and that she was hoping Vivian would have some dirt on him.
Vivian’s voice was sugary and almost obnoxiously high-pitched. Therazine could practically see her through the static of the phone lines: straight-backed and smooth-fingered, pale and gasping for breath through her corset, wearing a gown and a half a pound of makeup even at midday. But Vivian’s testimony was nothing but favorable. She seemed to still pine for Carlaca, and said that their breakup was understandable if not mutual. Anton’s family had been slaughtered by those horrendous insurgents the previous year—for him to wish to be alone to rediscover himself was perfectly human.
That was how Vivian described Carlaca. Perfectly human.
What Therazine did learn from the woman, however, was that he was a compassionate man who cared deeply for the plight of the people living in the underbelly of this city. During and after his time with the WCC he witnessed the atrocious conditions that most of the people of West Celedin were forced to live in. Once free of his commitment to the Constabulary, he supposedly split his free time between fitness, drinking, and volunteering at local shelters. Shelters for wirehead and the homeless were few and far between—neither the government nor the Order of Prevalistics invested into institutions to house and feed the millions living on the streets of Celedin. To fight against poverty in this city was to spit into an oncoming tidal wave. But Carlaca sought to help where he could, and according to Vivian he made quite a dent in the suffering of local transients.
Therazine very much doubted this. Shortly after her talk with Vivian she discovered that Anton Carlaca had officially put in his bid to run for Deputy Administrator six months ago. He had the support of the Constabulary and many of the trade houses and docks along the shore. He ran on a platform of reform and hope—his slogan was, ‘For a Brighter Celedin.’ Therazine had no doubt that many of the merchants along Ivy Street would also have been lending Carlaca their votes if they weren’t squarely under the boot of the Kettle family.
As to his current whereabouts, Anton Carlaca was soon attending a fundraiser in his honor at a lodge down near the edge of the Dregs, hosted by the Fraternal Order of Ravens. It seemed to Therazine an obvious move, if a safe one. The FOR was a community service organization that consisted almost entirely of retired whalers and veterans, two groups who Administrator Threlin and Deputy Administrator Kettle had actively denied public assets to in the last decade. Four years prior, after the sewer plague had transformed the Dregs into a nearly uninhabitable swamp at the water’s edge, a whalers’ union had petitioned the government for aid. Quarantine tents, trained doctors, Prevalist priests, and guns were all necessary if the plague was to be contained. Magistrate Denvos had denied them. No deficit or alternative plan had been proposed. The denial had simply traveled down the rungs of the social ladder until it had reached the desperate ears of the whalers’ union. The plague ran its course. Hundreds died or were transformed into throbbing, hungering polyps, and the government of West Celedin didn’t even notice.
If Carlaca was running against Kettle, he certainly had the vote of the people of the Dregs. By speaking at the Ravens lodge he was assuring that all of those who had been discarded by the Deputy Administrator would know that he existed, and that he was fighting for them.
When he stepped up to deliver his first speech of the night he was met with resounding silence. The creek of the planks from old ships that made up the stage upon which he stood were louder than anything else in the lodge, save for the persistent humming of the dim orange sodium lamp that hung in one corner of the room. The audience was filled with old men in ragged military uniforms bearing polished brass badges and empty holsters, or else whalers and fishermen in oilskins. The room smelled of piss and salt, with the occasional waft of sour beer. Somewhere in the back room a cook was listening to indecipherable music on a tinny radio.
Carlaca received a tepid round of applause after his first speech. No doubt cooler than he had hoped, but the buzz across the room started immediately afterwards. Three or four uniformed men approached him and shook his hand, mumbling words about support and curiosity. You’ve got massive balls to run against that fat bull Kettle.
Therazine sat near the back. She had been careful not to take any of the seats along the back wall—as the only woman in the room she did not need to stand out any more than she already did. Women were forbidden from joining the lodge’s ranks. That alone made her a curiosity. Her hair was done up in a knot under a newsboy cap and she had a heavy black raincoat over her shoulders. Vexxer had decided that entering a small room full of disgruntled Javadoan War vets was not the wisest plan. Therazine had gone in alone. She had received a few inquiring glances upon first entering the lodge, but after Carlaca had taken the stage all eyes left her.
She sipped delicately from a cup of coffee. Carlaca took the stage once more. This time there was a small tremor of clapping. A sailor woofed like a dog. Carlaca smiled wide and waved into the shadowed crowd where the grunt had come from. It was a warm, genuine expression—or at least it appeared that way.
“Thank you,” Carlaca said. “Thank you, really. I was wondering if I’d get a second chance up here. Was worried I bored you all so much in the first round that I’d just be asked firmly to leave.”
A light chuckle in the crowd. Carlaca smiled again. He cleared his throat and smoothed back a strand of his oiled black hair. There wasn’t a hint of unease about him. He reminded Therazine of a bartender back in Nalak—a charming young man whom Kohl had once told to fuck off for speaking too kindly to her.
“Now. I’ve told you who I am and what I’m about. Why I’m running. Not just the office, but what I am running for. I’d be lying if I told you that the Dregs, or even the Wharf District, was my biggest concern. Now don’t get me wrong—your plight here is some of the most tragic that I’ve ever seen. But like many of you I’ve lived in this city my entire life, and what happens here happens everywhere across Celedin. Not just here, not just in West Celedin, but across the entire world. The Bureau of Realside Accounting tells us that easing the vast amount of suffering across our city is logistically impossible, that there are simply too many people to treat everyone fair and right. They tell us that resources are spread too thin as it is. They tell us that industry can only do so much, that there are only so many jobs, that there is only so much glit, so much medicine, so much clean water, so much basic human dignity.”
Carlaca said this last word with venom, and his tone shifted. He gripped both sides of the knotted podium and gritted his teeth.
“They tell us this at the same time that we occupy new worlds. They tell us this as we settle infinite frontiers. They say there is no food, and yet farmers on Erukesh grow enough to feed the Real three times over. Tell me, friends: what results do you see from the Commonwealth’s distribution of resources? Is it cleaner skies? Is it purified, uninfected roadways? Is it peace in North Celedin? Medical innovations? No. This city is the same as it was before the war. You fought and died to claim Javadoa for the Commonwealth and yet you see none of it. When you signed up to conquer in the name of the Holy Emperor, what did they promise you? Glory? Mere reprieve?”
An angered grumbling came from the crowd. A pair of gloved hands made a wet, languished clapping.
“I ask you,” Carlaca said, “what reprieve have you been awarded? Is your life any better since the war?”
“Fuck no,” two old men said at once.
“You have suffered. You have bled, you have watched friends die, and you have been given nothing in return. This city has discarded you, because they say that you are logistically impossible to help. There is no relief from this life, is what they are selling. Everyone suffers. Bear that in mind the next time you see Deputy Administrator Patrick Kettle step out of his chrome-plated Zephyr for a dinner reservation at the Spire Lounge, with his fat sons in tow.”
A howl of anger came from behind Therazine. Fists went up.
“Patrick Kettle won’t save the Dregs from plague,” Carlaca said. “He thinks he has power over you. Invulnerability. He thinks that he deserves everything he’s got. But ask him if he’s ever lost a friend to war or sickness. Yes. You.”
A man stood up in the crowd. His jagged, blotchy face was hidden beneath a tattered wool cap and an unkempt beard.
“What are you gonna do about it?” the man asked. “What makes you any better than those pigshits?”
Carlaca nodded. “A fair question. And I’ll tell you exactly what I’ll do—When I’m in Patrick Kettle’s place as Deputy Administrator, I will hold Magistrate Denvos personally responsible for every crime Kettle has ever committed.”
“Easy to say,” the bearded man spat out.
“Easy to say, yes. And easy to do, too. Kettle has held the position of DA for fifteen years now. On the force I saw exactly the kind of horrors he got away with every day. The prostitution, the smuggling, the extortion rackets—I’m not going to call what he peddles ‘protection,’ because who exactly is he protecting you from? His own boys? I saw firsthand the monstrous things that he and his Corbie Club do. By all that’s Real, I’ve felt what they do.”
Carlaca undid the top button of his vest and pulled down the collar of his shirt. On pale skin he exposed a pink and white scar about three inches in length at the base if his throat. Therazine recognized it as a scar from extreme blunt trauma—a crowbar, she imagined. Or perhaps a fire poker. She visualized his shattered collarbone; he likely had trouble raising his right arm these days. Whoever had inflicted that on Carlaca had been looking to kill him. An inch or so higher and they would’ve succeeded.
Therazine also noticed the edges of a tattoo on his right breast. The spokes of a stylized sun, and the corner of an eye.
So Carlaca was a good Prevalist boy, as well. Therazine was impressed that he hadn’t revealed that bit of information yet—these old war vets all had soft spots for the faithful. A result of the indoctrination that the Order used to convince these sorry bastards that their wars were worth fighting.
“They don’t like me,” Carlaca said, and that received a hoot. “Which is good. I don’t want them to like me. They know I’m gunning for them. They know that I can’t stomach the way they treat the people below them—because I am one of those people. I’ve been stepped on by Denvos and Kettle my entire life, and now I have the power to do something about it. With me biting at his heals, Denvos won’t have any choice but to tread the path of righteousness.”
There it was. The tiniest hint of scripture. Therazine remembered Kohl reading the Writ of Becoming to her one time early in their relationship. The Aether pulls at your hair — at your skin — at your tongue — Surrender not to its claws — do not gaze into its Pale eyes — keep thy feet straight — and tread only the path of righteousness.
The crowd cheered. Therazine was impressed. Carlaca had appealed to these people like an artist, using heavy obvious strokes but nonetheless painting the picture they’d wanted to see. Now they were prepared to pay him for his work. A few men stood to clap, but most were too old and fat and stayed seated. Nevertheless she saw how they stared at Anton Carlaca, their eyes glazed in a mix of hope and possible justice. Some actually looked like they believed this young hopeful could make a difference.
This was her moment. The Calm overcame her.
Everything slowed down. The hazy light from the sodium lamps became bright and sterile. The clapping became muffled, the distant kitchen music faded away entirely. She saw Carlaca breath in heavily, slowly, and smile. All eyes were on him.
Her plan executed itself perfectly in her mind. With her right boot already on the edge of a chair she lept up onto the neighboring table and threw open her long raincoat. In an instant she’d drawn a long-barreled pistol—a sliver and dull brown piece from Madeline Rhines’ own masterful hands. The hammer was drawn back, the seven-round harmonica clip already slid into position. She merely settled the glowing radium sights on Carlaca’s forehead and pulled the trigger. She felt the magnificent kick of the gun, saw the room light up white like the Aether had breached a hole into the Real. Carlaca’s skull cratered inward, and black and red matter exploded across the faded raven painted on the back wall. There was no time for anyone to stop her, no time for Carlaca to even stop smiling before his handsome face was obliterated.
She saw this all in her mind’s eye. Even felt the twitch in her right leg as she was about to jump up. But she didn’t move.
Carlaca’s grin was filled with teeth more perfect than she had ever seen. But his expression was not one of victory, not one of accomplishment. He smiled at the ugly old men who approached him in earnest thanks and encouragement. He smiled to them, and for them. And they ate it up. She remembered Chestin Kettle smiling at her the day before, when he thought that he had her and Vexxer at a disadvantage. That had been the vacuous grin of a viper, of a predator circling its prey. This was different. Carlaca gave the smile of a friend.
Therazine’s moment passed without her doing anything, and veterans and sailors piled around Carlaca to clap him on the back and shake his hand.They chanted encouragement and exaltation, shouted for the destruction of Patrick Kettle and Magistrate Denzos. One signaled for the bartender to pour drinks, and shortly beer and shots were being passed around the room.
The Calm fled from Therazine as quickly as it had come, and she suddenly felt ice in her blood. She hadn’t done it. She hadn’t pulled the gun out, let alone pulled the trigger. She felt immediate shame at her hesitation, but she circled that and put it down. No. She had not failed. The Calm had given her clarity. If she desired it, Carlaca would be dead now. No one here could have stopped that.
She had actively decided not to kill him. This revelation hit her like a crashing wave, and threatened to pull her out into the raging seas of her self-doubt. She clawed at the shores and kept herself there, telling herself that she had done this on purpose. In that moment she had juxtaposed Anton Carlaca and the men who had told her to kill him, and she had made the choice to disobey.
This was not weakness, she told herself. This was—
Time slipped by. Seconds, minutes. Everyone was drinking, singing. Carlaca was smiling and making merry along with the rest of them, his slick black hair dangling into his face again. Carlaca, who had almost been brutally murdered and didn’t even realize it.
She stood up, clattered her chair back. An old man behind her grunted in anger. She strode forward, pushed through the crowd. Faces turned as she slid through the bodies. Beards mottled with milky foam pulled away from their pints to gawk at the woman pushing past them. She shoved aside a hunched man in a a grey oilskin and found herself face to face with the ex-lieutenant.
“Anton Carlaca,” she said, pulse pounding.
Voices around her went quiet. No one had expected to hear a woman speak in the lodge. Carlaca chuckled at some joke, and turned to her. He skillfully masked his surprise—his eyebrows stayed firm, his smile stayed fixed. But she saw the gleam in his eyes and the horripilation on his neck when she approached.
“I need to speak to you,” she said.
“Who let you in here?” came a slurred voice from her right. Someone stepped closer.
Carlaca’s eyes flitted around him. “Of course,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve met. Who am I addressing?”
“I need to speak to you in private,” Therazine said.
A laugh somewhere behind her. Then a whistle. “Who hired the blonde?” someone shouted.
Carlaca ignored them. His eyebrows lowered and he held Therazine’s gaze. He looked as if he was about to speak, and then simply nodded.
“Of course,” he said. He handed his beer to the nearest sailor, said that he’d return shortly. “The next round is on me.” Another cheer went up. Glasses clinked. Then he stepped up to Therazine.
She turned and led him through the crowd. Carlaca received a few more claps on the back and hoots from various drunken old men. Another whistled. A hand came out toward Therazine, fingers spread wide and lecherous. She avoided the assault with ease and only resisted breaking the hand through sheer will. She had no time to punish some drunk idiot. She pushed faster through the crowd and to the front door.
They stepped out into a cold mist. A rot crow flapped its oily wings and flew away into the dark, cawing in a watery, angry voice as it abandoned its putrid meal by the steps of the lodge. A foghorn blared. Carlaca closed the door behind them, entombing them in the sludgy darkness of the Wharf District at night.
Therazine breathed in deep of the caustic mist. Her heart raced.
“Alright,” Carlaca said. He stepped away from the lodge and stood beside her. They gazed out into the fog.
She looked at him. He was tall, like Kohl. Two wrinkles furrowed his brow, but otherwise he looked unconcerned. His hands were thrust into his pockets and the top button of his vest was still undone.
“Who are you?”
She swallowed. “That’s not important.”
“Okay. So what is important?”
“I was sent here to kill you.”
She expected him to run at that. To shout, or fight her. But his hands remained in his pockets. One of his eyebrows went up.
“That’s not surprising. You don’t look like one of Kettle’s boys. Where did he hire you from?”
“You expected this.”
“From the moment you walked in carrying that cannon under your arm. I’m still a constable at heart, ma’am. But I’m thinking you meant to kill me inside and not out here, yeah?”
Therazine blinked. This was not a conversation she had ever had before. For over ten years she had killed men for money. Never once had she chosen to talk to them instead. Oh, sometimes they would grovel. Threaten her, try to bribe her. But those were never conversations.
“You’re in Kettle’s sights.”
“I know that.”
She frowned. “Then why are you doing this?”
“Why am I doing what?”
She gestured to the lodge. “This. Why provoke him? Why so publicly, when you know who he is and what he will do to you?”
Carlaca smiled. By all that’s Real, was he handsome.
“No problems have ever been fixed by running from them, ma’am.”
Therazine felt her gut tighten.
Footsteps in the darkness. Carlaca’s eyes widened, and Therazine turned to see Vexxer Roz standing in the gloom. He towered over both of them, draped in black leathers and climbing gear. A glistening cloak hung from his shoulders—it was slick with rainwater, and camouflaged perfectly to the general grey and brown of the Dregs. His Darnull hung openly at his side. A scoped rifle was strapped across his back.
“What’s going on here?”
Carlaca breathed in heavily and looked Vexxer up and down.
“You people are professionals,” he said. “Kettle went all out. Are you Bloodletters?”
Vexxer ignored the man and stared at Therazine. “What is this? What happened?”
Therazine licked her dry lips. She shook her head. “He’s… we can’t follow through on this one.”
Vexxer grimaced. “What?”
“This isn’t happening,” she said. “We… we can’t.”
“You didn’t kill him.”
“No,” Therazine said quietly. That shame bloomed within her again, and she swallowed hard to beat it back down. “No, I didn’t.”
“What went wrong?”
“Nothing went wrong. Everything’s wrong.”
Vexxer was silent. Therazine looked back and forth between him and Carlaca. The ex-constable’s hands were out of his pockets now, rain tracing down his fists.
“Thera, you didn’t follow through.”
“Names,” Therazine said.
“It’s alright,” Carlaca said. “I won’t repeat anything I hear.”
Vexxer glanced at Carlaca briefly, without emotion, and then back to Therazine.
“Thera, what is happening here?”
“We can’t do this one. It’s not right.”
Vexxer bit his lip. “That’s not what we are.”
“It is now—”
“No,” Vexxer said. His voice deepened. “You’re feeling the Quandary. You’re not seeing straight. I’m sorry to say that, but it’s true. You’ve been out for a long time, which I understand has shifted your persepctive. But we are not arbitrators or constables. We are not in the business of morality. We are—”
“I’m not feeling the Quandary,” Therazine said sharply. But was that true?
“You are. No one ever notices it when they feel it, but you are. Which is understandable. You’ve been out for a long—”
“Vex, I am not feeling the Quandary. The people we were hired by, the bastards who want Carlaca dead… they’re bad people.”
“Doesn’t change anything. That’s not our—”
“It does. It does, damn you. This isn’t just a… just a political killing. This man is actually trying to help people.”
“Thera.”
“Did you see Maddy’s face the other day? The bruise on her eye? That was Kettle’s thugs. I’d put glit on it being Chestin Kettle himself. We can’t help them.”
“Thera, that is not our call to make. Do you remember your training at all?”
She took a step towards him. “Don’t you dare question my abilities. This is not me feeling sentimental. This is right and wrong.”
Vexxer bit his lip again. He turned away briefly before responding to her.
“Thera,” he said, voice low, “you have a reputation to uphold. As do I. We have—we had—a perfect record. I’ve maintained that throughout all the years since you left.”
“I don’t give a shit about records. They don’t matter.”
“Thera.”
“No,” she said. She looked at Carlaca. His eyes were wide, but his fists had uncurled. He listened intently, rivulets of acid rain streaking down his cheekbones.
“Listen,” she said to Carlaca. “Kettle hired us to kill you.”
“I picked up on that.”
“You have to run. Once they realize we aren’t going to finish the job, he will send someone else. You have to leave West Celedin—leave the world, in fact. They will find you.”
Carlaca shook his head. “As I said, no problem was ever fixed by running from it. I can’t do that.”
Therazine ground her teeth. “Obstinance won’t protect you from a stranglewire in a back alley. You have to trust me, and you have to run.”
“Thera,” Vexxer said.
“Stop calling me that.”
“Therazine,” Vexxer said with a growl.
She paused and looked at him.
“You have forgotten yourself,” Vexxer said. “Jobs do not go unfinished. It is not our way. We do not judge, we do not falter. We finish what we started. If you remember anything from your training with the Society—”
“I am no longer a Bloodletter,” Therazine shouted.
“I am,” Vexxer said. In one motion he drew his Darnull, cocked the hammer, and shot Carlaca in the head.
The muzzle of the revolver flared like dynamite. Carlaca’s jaw exploded in teeth and meat, and the back of his skull burst in a show of brain matter. His arms went up briefly before his whole body toppled into the sticky mud on the street corner.
Therazine shouted like an animal. No words, simply a gutteral rejection. Her feet quivered as her nerves fought between thelping Carlaca or attacking Vexxer. But Carlaca was a bleeding corpse and Vexxer was already moving. He holstered his Darnull and picked up Carlaca’s body. He threw it over his shoulder, ragged pieces of jawbone and a distended tongue slapping on his slick cloak. Vexxer marched the few steps to the lodge and hurled Carlaca through the oily window.
There were screams as the glass shattered inward over the bartop. Therazine caught a brief glimpse of Carlaca’s mangled body splattered over a table and knocking over an old man before Vexxer turned and blocked her view.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Therazine stood transfixed. Her cap was soaked with rain, he hair poking out and obscuring her sight. Shouts and more screams from within the lodge. She heard the door open behind Vexxer.
He placed a hand on her shoulder, gently. She shook her head, looked up at him.
“We need to leave,” he said.
Her heart pounded against her ribs. Rain stained her vision as she looked up at him. She wanted to scream, to fight. Instead she just nodded and the two of them disappeared into the fog.
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