Anger

“If it isn’t Inspector Teufel.” Gunnar Broad hadn’t got any smaller. And he still had the lenses and the Ladderman’s tattoo. But he looked harder, somehow. Or maybe hard times had ground the softness off and revealed the man beneath.

“If it isn’t Captain Broad.”

He peered unhappily at the badges of rank on his sleeve. “No notion how that particular folly came about.”

“You could say the same for most things these days.” She planted her hands on her hips, pressed her thumb-tip into the stiff one and frowned out across the bridge. She couldn’t see them yet, but she could hear them. That familiar sound of anger on its way. “Seems we keep meeting. And in shitty circumstances.”

“They’re the only kind I get.” Broad wiped his lenses, then hooked them carefully back over his ears. “But no worse’n I deserve, I guess.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re not holding a grudge.” Vick thought of the last time she saw him, with the Brocks, before the Battle of Stoffenbeck. Noblemen fighting against a king. Seemed a different world. “Last time we met, you called me a traitor.”

“Aye, well, I’ve said a lot of shit in my time that didn’t add up to much.”

She could see the people now, tramping out of the murk on the other side of the bridge. Protest, strike or riot, it was hard to say. Harder than ever. They were armed, in a way. Tools and planks and bars. One had a pick with a string of sausages hanging from it. Not weapons of war, exactly, but tell that to someone who gets clubbed over the head with a shaping hammer. Looked like a lot of them were drunk, but then a lot of folk were these days. Drink was the one thing still cheap.

“Let’s remember they’re just people, eh?” Vick called over her shoulder. “Try not to kill anyone.”

“You reckon they’ve had the same orders?” muttered Broad, sliding his shield onto his arm and gripping the handle. Vick doubted it. Lot of them wore red. Red hats, red sleeves, coats spattered with red paint. Burners, then. Or at any rate expressing preferences in the Burning direction. You saw more and more of it. People’s patience was wearing thin. Who could blame them?

“There’s a lot o’ the bastards,” muttered Tallow, peering around Vick’s shoulder. He’d got a Constable’s uniform and a Constable’s stick, but it was hard to imagine him doing much good with either one as he gazed across the bridge with those big, sad eyes.

“Stay behind Captain Broad,” she snapped at him. Honestly, behind Captain Broad was looking a pretty appealing place to her right then.

“They look bloody angry,” squeaked Tallow.

Hard to say exactly what they were angry about. No doubt they all had their own recipe. Price of bread. Price of housing. Price of fuel as the weather got colder. Wages too low, hours too high, too many laws or too few. Pike had taught them a lesson—if enough people got angry enough, they could change things. Now anger was the answer to everything.