A Drink Before We Die: A Low Town Short Read Online Free Page A

orders.”
    “I know—and like I said, I don't have any hard feelings. I can even see why you made the play. Armadal isn't happy about your ascension, but he's got too many years in the organization to cut him right out. So you figure, why not point him at Low Town? Worst case scenario, I take care of him and you're out a rival. Best case scenario, you've expanded the franchise, the Consortium gets to plant their flag on virgin soil. Am I right so far?”
    “You aren't wrong.”
    “But you didn't account for how much he hates you. I'll tell you something, Cosgrave, the voice of experience speaking through my mouth—don't never underestimate hate. Avarice, lust, ambition, can't none of them hold a candle to sheer rancor.”
    “I'll make a note of it.”
    “And a man like Armadal, he's always hungry. You think Low Town is going to be enough to satiate him?” I shook my head. “All you've done is given him a base of operations to use against you.”
    “He's been kicking up his fee honest enough.”
    “Cause he's still got me to worry about, because he hasn't stabilized things yet. You think that's going to last forever?”
    “What are you saying, exactly?”
    “What's Armadal? A hundred fifty a month?”
    “Something like that.”
    “I can give you two hundred flat out—and that's two hundred from someone you know won't ever end up being a rival. You make yourself some coin and you eliminate a threat, and if that's not two birds and a stone, then I've never murdered an avian.”
    Cosgrave looked at his hands for a while, and then at his guards. I looked upwards, towards the Firstborn and his angels.

6
    The agreement had been to meet at a warehouse near the docks at eight in the evening, me and Armadal and one other man a piece. I'd hand-written the message a few days after my meeting with Cosgrave, the script even, the words polite. Armadal took it as an offered throat, and had brought along six thugs equipped for battle, hatchets and knives and crossbows, one of them even dressed in the boiled leather armor we'd worn during the war, which I thought was overkill but fair enough. I did not like Armadal, I did not particularly respect Armadal, I sure as hell did not trust Armadal, but credit where due he understood the foremost rule of our business: a downed man exists to be kicked.
    I was sitting at a small table, and I'd been waiting a while. “Why, Armadal,” I said, sparking a match and bringing it to a cigarette liberally laced with dreamvine. “This hardly seems in keeping with our agreement.”
    “You know, Warden,” Armadal said, smirking as his men shook themselves out around me, “I admit, I'm a little disappointed.”
    “Oh?”
    “Everything they say about you, I'd never have imagined you'd roll so easy. Two months I've been stripping you of your territory, eating off your table, every day expecting some riposte.”
    “That's what makes this part so much fun,” I said, smiling as Cosgrave and his squad of men slipped out from the darkness behind me.
    To his credit, this reversal of circumstances did not unman Armadal, quite the opposite. Though his boss had brought ten in to deal with his six, he neither quivered nor begged. And you have to respect that in a man, in any man, if he can stare at She Who Waits Behind All Things without flinching. “What is this supposed to mean?” Armadal said.
    “I told you to expand our interests towards the docks,” Cosgrave said, “not settle Low Town as your own personal fiefdom.”
    “I been kicking up your end.”
    “You'll bite the hand that feeds you before long.”
    “Warden been telling you that?”
    Cosgrave laughed. “I don't need him to tell me you're a treacherous little snake who never knew his place.”
    “You're a spoon-fed fuckwit,” Armadal spat. “And my place is where you're sitting.”
    My job really isn't so difficult. Convincing violent people to do violent things? Like getting a cobbler to resole a shoe.
    Armadal was swift on