Free A Drink Before We Die: A Low Town Short by Daniel Polansky

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    Common wisdom affirms against the drinking of whiskey during daylight hours, and while I can see the merits of the argument, it is not one to which I hold. True, a few fingers of liquor, or even a wide-stretched palm, impairs your ability to cope with the world's troubles, miseries and horrors; but it also makes you less concerned about this failure, and since the world is certain to throw more at you than you can handle regardless, I think it a more than equitable transaction.
    People call me the Warden. People call me a lot of things, but the Warden is the only one you could say inside a church.
    The Staggering Earl was just shy of empty. Most of the rest of Rigus has better sense than me, at least in terms of the appropriate time to imbibe alcohol. I'd have noticed him even in a crowd, though. He was too clean, and he moved with a purpose that most of our clientele, hardened inebriates and bitter old sots, rarely muster. When I'd been coming up, when the first waves of Tarasaighn were arriving from their marshy homeland and making trouble for the entrenched interests, the Swamp Dwellers had seemed all but another species. They muttered strange oaths in incomprehensible accents, they lived ten in a room in their own section of town, they dressed absurdly and stank of garlic and fried liver. A generation in Rigus had bred all that out of them, left them indistinguishable from the men they'd overthrown. It made you wonder why anyone bothers with open warfare—just wait a decade or so and everything gets ground to banality by the steady march of progress.
    This was what I was thinking as my new nemesis took a seat next to me. I was, as mentioned, fairly deep in the bag.
    He didn't say anything for a while. I tried to fix on some unique feature, some peculiarity that would distinguish him from the rest of his breed. To no use. It was like he'd been cast from a mold at one of the new foundries—criminal, executive class.
    Adolphus came over from the other end of the counter. I could say a lot of things about Adolphus, but in the interests of brevity I'll mention only that he owns the other half of the bar, stands six feet at the shoulder, lost an eye during the War, and is a better friend than I deserve. “What can I get you?” he asked the newcomer.
    “Whatever my friend here is having, and one more for him as well.”
    “Much appreciated,” I said. Owning the bar meant I didn't pay for my own drinks, so the courtesy was not that at all, but still—no reason to be uncivil.
    Adolphus left to fetch our order, and the man turned towards me. “I don't believe we've been formally introduced.”
    “I imagine that's about to change.”
    “Armadal Kinnaird,” he said, extending his hand, “here on behalf of the  Ballafleur Consortium."
    The Ballafleur Consortium was a mid-level syndicate headquartered near the palace. They sold choke and they owned whores and they leaned on butchers and store owners and small merchants. They hobnobbed with princelings and traded jests with bankers and gave money to rebuild the Cathedral of Prachetas after the steeple had burned down the year before. They had no monopoly on hypocrisy, nor malfeasance. They had about thirty men directly on their pay roll, maybe twice as many associates, small-time dealers and cut throats kicking a percentage upstream.
    “A pleasure.”
    “Mine entirely,” Armadal corrected.  A light fencing blade hung from his belt, shorter than a rapier. I was confident he was skilled with it, and certain I'd get the chance to find out either way. He was dressed well, not just expensively, which is rare given our profession. Speaking broadly, the only person dressed worse than a cheap thug is a rich one.
    “This is a lovely place you've got,” he said.
    It wasn't. The Staggering Earl was a dive bar, and had no pretensions of being anything else. For a dive bar it was fine, I guess. Adolphus had laid a fresh layer of sawdust over last night's vomit, though that