Low Town by Daniel Polansky Page B

of a legally empowered representative of the Crown.”
    “Your orders didn’t mean much to me when I was an agent, and a half decade out of the service hasn’t led me to rate them any higher.”
    Crispin reached over the table and rapped me on the chin, almost casually but with enough force that I struggled to maintain balance on the chair. Damn, but the man was still quick.
    I rubbed at a loose tooth with my tongue, nursing the pain and hoping it wouldn’t fall out. “Fuck you. I don’t owe you a thing.”
    “I spent the last forty-five minutes convincing the captain to keep you out of the hands of Special Ops. If it wasn’t for me, they’d be takingyou apart with a scalpel right now.” The sneer sat awkwardly on his face. Crispin was not by nature disposed to reveling in the misfortune of others. “You know how much those animals want you back under their care?”
    Quite badly, I imagined. I had been working for Special Operations toward the end of my time as an agent, the unit tasked with fixing issues that fell outside the normal purview of law enforcement. Their retirement package generally consisted of a violent death and an unmarked grave, and avoiding that unhappy fate had taken a good bit more luck than a wise man ought to count on twice. I owed Crispin for averting a reunion, and even my well-honed sense of ingratitude wasn’t sufficient to deny that.
    From inside his duster Crispin pulled out a document and sent it spinning across the table. “Here’s your statement. The illegal goods found in the alley are assumed to be Zhange Jue’s and will be destroyed according to official policy.” That was right; they must have found my satchel. I guess I owed Crispin for that too: ten ochres’ worth of breath will get you five years in a labor camp, three more than the average inmate survives. “Sign at the bottom,” he said, then leaned across the table and unlocked my cuffs.
    I spent a moment rubbing circulation back into my wrists. “Good to see the case wrapped up, justice pursued, righteousness restored and all that.”
    “I don’t like this any more than you do. If I had my way, we’d be tearing apart the Kiren’s house, and have half the force looking into your story. This …” He shook his head bitterly, and I saw the same young man I’d met ten years earlier, who fancied his service to the Crown was just that, service, and that what evil existed in the world could be defeated by the strong right arm of a virtuous man. “This isn’t justice.”
    For all his intellect and physical prowess, at the end of the dayCrispin wasn’t very good at his job. His fantasies of what it should be blinded him to what it was, and that had doomed him to the middle ranks even though his family was one of the oldest in Rigus and his service to the Crown noble and distinguished. Justice? I almost laughed. An agent doesn’t pursue justice, he maintains order.
    Justice—by the Lost One, what can you say to that?
    I didn’t have the energy to give him another civics lesson, and anyway this was a long-standing argument. Growing up surrounded by tapestries depicting his ancestors leading doomed charges against invincible odds had made him a sucker for words that didn’t mean anything. I signed my name at the bottom of the document with a flourish.
    “The Kiren got his, and I leave justice to the Firstborn. At the moment I’m more concerned with what happens when the thing that killed him comes back.”
    “If I were you, I’d hope it doesn’t—as of right now, you’re the only link. So long as it stays gone, no one gives a shit about you, not anymore. But if it starts popping up again, Special Ops will set you a spot in the basement, and there won’t be anything I can do about it.”
    That was as pleasant a note as any to leave on. “Until that happy day comes,” I said, giving him a nod of farewell.
    He didn’t return it, his eyes downcast, fixed without purpose on the center of the table.
    I left