Damn!

Damn Drakon and Chesnes and Morés and all the rest!

Somewhere above my head, lost in the clouds, the Loop rattled by. I could have taken it, could be warm and dry and nearing the office by now, where a bottle of McGrady’s finest cider, hard enough to drive nails with, awaited me. I could have. But to do so would mean pressing up against the churning masses of people within—and this wasn’t the night for it. I didn’t want to be a person tonight. I didn’t want to face it, the murky, half-lit city where always the wrong thing happens and never the right.

Round and round I go—and who am I doing it all for? Who am I cutting my throat for? Drakon didn’t deserve my help, and probably he didn’t need it. But that rat bastard would never do anything himself he didn’t have to, and I’d been his all-too-willing puppet for a hundred ninety plus expenses. But I couldn’t have turned him down, could I? Not if I valued my body without bullet holes in it.

And there’s where I lose a little more of myself. I could have done something more. I saw the writing on the wall as soon as Chesnes walked in the door but the prospect of a little spending money was just too good to pass up. I knew Bianca and Vincente Morés were doomed as soon as it was a question of loyalty, as soon as they became a challenge to Drakon’s myth. But I pretended. I pretended to myself and to them that if I walked away with that little notebook in my pocket then they could save themselves.

And what about it? Was that my business? Well? Was it ever my business? Bianca didn’t deserve my help. No matter how she waved it off she had Nicholson’s blood on her hands, fire and blood behind that neat little stutter. And then she died for it, and she didn’t deserve that either.

Round and round the story goes. No one deserves what they get and they’ll take it all the same. And what is there to it? What can I do but keep walking down this dark and empty road and hope that next time it’ll go better? Round and round the wheel spins, and whether it lands on red or black the house always wins. Golden-eyed Drakon knows the routine well enough to do it in his sleep, and he has the guns and money to do it forever. The cops can’t touch him. Hexel can’t touch him. Bianca believed the notebook could rattle him and look where that got her.

Neon lights sizzled and popped against the rain, reflecting upside-down in the rippling puddles which lined the sidewalks. The footprints I made dissolved back into the water only a second after I passed, and then there was no record I’d ever walked this street. I lit a cigarette, just to take some of the edge off the night, and a howling wind ripped it from my fingers before I could light it.

Damn!

Drakon had burned the notebook. He couldn’t have been clearer that it was dangerous to him.

I leaned against one of the buildings, the slight marble overhang providing half a foot’s cover from the rain. I took off my hat, shook the raindrops from the brim, and dug my fingers into the lining. Bianca had been right. She’d always been right. If you deal with someone like Drakon, you need an insurance policy. The big men with guns keep him safe from you; an equivalent force must keep you safe from him. But Bianca had gone about it all wrong, and—well, I knew how that ended.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

So as soon as I’d got the notebook, as soon as I’d left Bianca’s rundown little hideout, I took my own insurance. All it took was a couple of seconds and I had the first three pages. I didn’t stop to look at them—in fact, it was probably better I didn’t know what they were if Drakon asked. And then he’d burned it. He’d burned it and he’d said nothing of whether he’d checked between the covers and he’d let me go at the end of it all. I peered out into the night to confirm I was well and truly alone, that I hadn’t picked up any opportunistic hangers-on from Drakon. Nobody I could see.

I unfurled the pages. The first was blank, except where Bianca had scrawled her name in thick pen across it, staking out her claim. Proof that she had existed, if nothing else.

The second and third were filled with names, dates, and balances of repayments. Customers. I recognized some of these names, most only by name: Crynar and Ollstein, doctors and city officials, a concentration of wealth and power you’d normally only see at a high-society gala. There must have been fifty of them, and this only from the notebook’s beginning—complete, it would be a roster of a thousand names or more. The handwriting was neat and blocky, and I idly tried to guess if it was Drakon’s himself or one of his more literate underlings.

This could hurt Drakon, indeed. All those guns, all that muscle, all that clockwork shipping at the Outscape harbor, was nothing without money behind it. And not all of these people were untouchable like Drakon. In the right hands—not mine—these names could start to chip away at his empire.

I shook my head. More rain fell from my hair. I wasn’t some honorable sap who felt some burning desire to carry on Bianca’s work, who would throw my life away on the same foolish pursuit. I wasn’t some doe-eyed kid who thought the world was a storybook.

All the same… I pulled Bella from her holster, still stained with Bianca’s blood. I pried open the barrel and confirmed my suspicions: not a single bullet was missing from the chamber. Then I held the gun out into the rain, watching as, in streaks and droplets, the downpour stole her away and pooled into the gutters. She’d never deserved my help. But perhaps she deserved a little bit of parting vengeance, the final shot that she hadn’t had the chance to take. I could do that. I could give her that much, and maybe it’d make me feel human again for doing it.

I folded the pages and kept walking. And after a while, I ended up at an apartment block somewhere along Hyencinth Street, where all the doors were painted blue. A set of empty jars was set out on one of the porches, all of them wrapped together with a belt. Someone had placed their potted noxalant plant out in the rain, and its indigo-red flowers were splayed out to catch as many drops as possible. Counterfeiters liked them for the dye from their petals, close enough to the color of the hundred-talent bill to fool the untrained eye. But this one was legitimate. Its owner worked in the mayor’s office, helped administer the Outscape. She’d no need to counterfeit anything.

I frowned, remembering. Well…maybe semi-legitimate.

Next to the door, there was a mailbox. The letters MZ were stuck onto its side at irregular angles, the original brass tarnished and corroded. A mailbox which had seen better days, just like its owner. But I hoped both could still be of use.

I tucked the pages into a corner of the mailbox and let the lid slam shut. Then I walked away, back into the night, wondering if the city would be any different when I woke.