Free She Who Waits (Low Town 3) by Daniel Polansky

sword was too long to comfortably run with, he had to hold it back so it wouldn’t trip him up. It was an awkward sort of locomotion, and it wasn’t improved when he came around the corner and saw me waiting for him – near enough jumped out of his coat.
    ‘Fancy running into you here,’ I said.
    It was the first chance I got to look at him up close. I wasn’t impressed. His skull was prominent beneath his face, the hair above it cut to flat stubble. His limbs were long and fleshless – indeed from heel to brow you’d have been hard pressed to carve an ounce of fat from his frame. Give me a fat man any day, at least it means he enjoys something. In the scheme of things, gluttony is a pretty mild evil.
    Wrath is a far more serious one, and he was moving quickly towards it before I cut him off. ‘Don’t do anything stupid – I didn’t lead you here to offer a convenient spot to be stabbed. The man I’ve got waiting on the rooftop yonder with a crossbow is a paranoid sort, and if you were to make any move he were to interpret as threatening – pull your blade say, or maybe just come any closer to me – well, I couldn’t vouch for your safety.’
    Despite my warning, he went ahead and put his hand on his basket-hilt, though what good he imagined the sword would do against a bolt I can’t imagine. ‘You’re bluffing,’ he said, but he said it the way people say things they wish were true.
    ‘You’re welcome to die thinking that.’
    His eyes stayed angry, but he eased his hand away from his weapon. ‘What are you doing here, and why do you have my purse?’
    ‘I’m here because I live here. Lived here my whole life, nearly. Might even say I belong here. On the other hand you, my friend, look about as out of place as a whore in church.’
    He let out a quick hiss of breath, like I’d landed a punch. ‘I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. I’ve got business to attend to at the docks, I was just cutting through the market to save time.’
    I smiled a little, ate another piece of my apple. ‘I’m trying not to let myself get insulted, friend, but you’re making it awful difficult. It’s one thing to follow me around like a border collie, a person could have all sorts of reasons for doing that. But now you’re standing there telling me that black is white and up is down and toenail tastes like taffy. It’s rude – it suggests you think me an idiot. No one likes being called an idiot.’
    I watched him consider and discard a series of lies. ‘All right,’ he confessed. ‘I was following you. But I’m not here looking for trouble.’
    ‘Then you picked the wrong neighborhood to go strolling in.’
    ‘I was hoping the two of us might have a talk.’
    ‘We’re talking right now. And I have to admit, thus far it’s been less than entertaining. And when I get bored I get grumpy, and when I get grumpy my man gets fretful. And when that happens people have a way of falling down and not getting back up.’
    ‘I don’t know who you think I am,’ he began, drawing himself up to his full height, hand back on the hilt of his blade.
    ‘I think you’re very far from home,’ I finished for him. ‘And I think I’d knock off the bluster if I wanted to ever get back there.’
    I put a little edge on that last one, and he seemed to feel it. He relaxed his grip on his weapon, and he even tried to force a smile, an awkward, fluttering thing that died stillborn on his narrow lips. ‘This wasn’t the way I’d intended our conversation to go. Perhaps I went about finding you the wrong way – but I assure you, my attentions are entirely peaceful. My name is Simeon Hume,’ he said. ‘And I’m here on behalf of—’
    ‘The Sons of Ś akra,’ I finished. ‘Yeah, I know.’
    An unexpected shot of truth hits harder than a fist to the gut, if you can time it right. The unconvincing smile on Hume’s face became an altogether honest look of shock.
    ‘It’s an amateur mistake, frankly,’ I