Tomorrow, the Killing by Daniel Polansky Page A

increase in volume suggested her anecdote had reached its climax. I shook free of my thoughts long enough to catch the last sentence. ‘It’s just so hard to find a decent servant these days.’
    ‘A constant struggle,’ I agreed.
    ‘You have no idea. And if you are lucky enough to find someone who knows what they’re doing, good luck keeping her! I had the sweetest little girl, a half-Islander who could do the most amazing things with my hair. Five years I had her, and then one day she just disappeared, shipped out to the Free Cities with some . . . man she’d married.’
    ‘After everything you’d done for her.’
    ‘Exactly!’
    Foremost what is hateful about the aristocracy is their fundamental meaninglessness – they do nothing and thus are nothing. On some dim level they seem to be aware of it, hence their refuge in petty intrigues and expensive narcotics, in nightly soirées and the occasional bloody duel. There’s a frantic quality to their play, more distraction than recreation. If things ever stopped spinning long enough for them to take a look at themselves, half would end up taking a midnight dip in the bay.
    ‘How exactly do you know Roland?’
    ‘I served beneath him.’
    She set one hand on my chest. ‘We all so appreciate your sacrifice,’ she said, blinking her eyelashes as if shooing away a fly.
    I would never be categorized as handsome – a lifetime of scraps had been effective in defacing a physiognomy that would not originally have been mistaken for attractive. But there was a certain type of woman that seemed to find my alley-mutt face alluring, at least as a curiosity. And the uniform helped – the rich had no greater love of Black House than any other cohort of the population, but it was at least evidence that I had a real job, which I supposed made me something of a novelty.
    ‘Is it true what they say about him, our Roland?’
    I thought about that for a while. ‘Yeah, it pretty much is.’
    ‘What an honor it must have been for you, to be a part of his command.’
    ‘Every moment a joy.’
    ‘Tell me, what was it like? The war, I mean?’
    I finished off what was in my cup. ‘It was like something that you never feel like talking about.’
    Her face turned from pink to bright red. The pink had been make-up, but the red seemed authentic.
    ‘Where is the guest of honor, anyway?’ I asked. I’d seen Roland briefly on the way in, he’d pumped my hand and told me we’d talk soon. That had been two hours prior, and so far his promise had been unfulfilled.
    ‘I’m . . . not sure,’ she said, eyes fluttering about the party for someone else to speak with.
    ‘Perhaps I’ll see if I can’t run him down,’ I said, disengaging.
    Buffy or Minnie made no particular effort to dissuade me.
    Somewhere in the vast estate surrounding me there was a fully stocked bar, but it was not in view, nor did the various waitstaff seem inclined to provide directions. This left me trying to get drunk on the house punch, a syrupy concoction ill-suited to my mood, which was bored trending towards bitter. It filled my bladder long before offering any sort of a decent buzz. As watering the greenery seemed likely to betray my upbringing, I found my way towards the powder room.
    Business concluded, I detoured away from the party, bright lights and dull people. This was my second visit to the Montgomery Manse. The first had been several months earlier, a dinner party to which I’d been invited. I’d sat at the far end of the table from Roland and his father, said little and enjoyed myself less. But it had given me a passing familiarity with the layout, one I put to good use in avoiding the gathering outside.
    I wasn’t exactly trying to snoop, but then I wasn’t exactly trying not to either. As a member of the secret police I figured I had at least the license, if not the obligation, to figure out what everyone else was doing. And given the sensitive nature of the conversation, General Montgomery