‘We’ve got her!’ The voice so close at her heels. ‘Come here!’
She darted through that little hole in the rusted grate, a sharp tooth of metal leaving a burning cut down her arm, and for once she was plenty glad that Old Green never gave her enough to eat. She kicked her way back into the darkness, keeping low, lay there clutching the package and struggling to catch her breath. Then they were there, one of the Northmen dragging at the grating, knuckles white with force, flecks of rust showering down as it shifted, and Kiam stared and wondered what those hands would do to her if they got their dirty nails into her skin.
The other one shoved his bearded face in the gap, a wicked-looking knife in his hand, not that someone you just robbed ever has a nice-looking knife. His eyes popped out at her and his scabbed lips curled back and he snarled, ‘Chuck us that baggage and we’ll forget all about it. Chuck us it now!’
Kiam kicked away, the grate squealing as it bent.
‘You’re fucking dead, you little piss! We’ll find you, don’t worry about that!’
She slithered off, through the dust and rot, wriggled through a crack between crumbling walls.
‘We’ll be coming for you!’ echoed from behind her.
Maybe they would as well, but a thief can’t spend too much time worrying about tomorrow. Today’s shitty enough. She whipped her coat off and pulled it inside out to show the faded green lining, stuffed her cap in her pocket and shook her hair out long, then slipped onto the walkway beside the Fifth Canal, walking fast, head down.
A pleasure boat drifted past, all chatter and laughter and clinking of glass, people moving tall and lazy on board, strange as ghosts seen through that mist, and Kiam wondered what they’d done to deserve that life and what she’d done to deserve this, but there never were no easy answers to that question. As it took its pink lights away into the fog she heard the music of Hove’s violin. Stood a moment in the shadows, listening, thinking how beautiful it sounded. She looked down at the package. Didn’t look much for all this trouble. Didn’t weigh much, even. But it weren’t up to her what Old Green put a price on. She wiped her nose and walked along close to the wall, music getting louder, then she saw Hove’s back and his bow moving, and she slipped behind him and let the package fall into his gaping pocket.
Hove didn’t feel the drop, but he felt the three little taps on his back, and he felt the weight in his coat as he moved. He didn’t see who made the drop and he didn’t look. He just carried on fiddling, that Union march with which he’d opened every show during his time on the stage in Adua, or under the stage, at any rate, warming up the crowd for Lestek’s big entrance. Before his wife died and everything went to shit. Those jaunty notes reminded him of times past, and he felt tears prickling in his sore eyes, so he switched to a melancholy minuet more suited to his mood, not that most folk around here could’ve told the difference. Sipani liked to present itself as a place of culture but the majority were drunks and cheats and boorish thugs, or varying combinations thereof.
How had it come to this, eh? The usual refrain. He drifted across the street like he’d nothing in mind but a coin for his music, letting the notes spill out into the murk. Across past the pie stall, the fragrance of cheap meat making his stomach grumble, and he stopped playing to offer out his cap to the queue. There were no takers, no surprise, so he headed on down the road to Verscetti’s, dancing in and out of the tables on the street and sawing out an Osprian waltz, grinning at the patrons who lounged there with a pipe or a bottle, twiddling thin glass-stems between gloved fingertips, eyes leaking contempt through the slots in their mirror-crusted masks. Jervi was sat near the wall, as always, a woman in the chair opposite, hair piled high.
‘A little music, darling?’ Hove croaked out, leaning over her and letting his coat dangle near Jervi’s lap.
Jervi slid something out of Hove’s pocket, wrinkling his nose at the smell of the old soak, and said, ‘Fuck off, why don’t you?’ Hove moved on, and took his horrible music with him, thank the Fates.
‘What’s going on down there?’ Riseld lifted her mask for a moment to show that soft, round face well powdered and fashionably bored.
There did indeed appear to be some manner of commotion up the street. Crashing, banging, shouting in Northern.
‘Damn Northmen,’ he murmured. ‘Always causing trouble, they really should be kept on leads like dogs.’ Jervi removed his hat and tossed it on the table, the usual signal, then leaned back in his chair to hold the package inconspicuously low to the ground beside him. A distasteful business, but a man has to work. ‘Nothing you need concern yourself about, my dear.’
She smiled at him in that unamused, uninterested way which for some reason he found irresistible.
‘Shall we go to bed?’ he asked, tossing a couple of coins down for the wine.
She sighed. ‘If we must.’
And Jervi felt the package spirited away.
Sifkiss wriggled out from under the tables and strutted along, letting his stick rattle against the bars of the fence beside him, package swinging loose in the other. Maybe Old Green had said stay stealthy but that weren’t Sifkiss’s way any more. A man has to work out his own style of doing things and he was a full thirteen, weren’t he? Soon enough now he’d be passing on to higher things. Working for Kurrikan, maybe. Anyone could tell he was marked out special – he’d stole himself a tall hat that made him look quite the gent about town – and if they were dull enough to be entertaining any doubts, which some folk sadly were, he’d perched it at quite the jaunty angle besides. Jaunty as all hell.
Yes, everyone had their eyes on Sifkiss.
He checked he weren’t the slightest bit observed then slipped through the dewy bushes and the crack in the wall behind, which honestly was getting to be a bit of a squeeze, into the basement of the old temple, a little light filtering down from upstairs.
Most of the children were out working. Just a couple of the younger lads playing with dice and a girl gnawing on a bone and Pens having a smoke and not even looking over and that new one curled up in the corner and coughing. Sifkiss didn’t like the sound o’ those coughs. More’n likely he’d be dumping her off in the sewers a day or two hence but, hey, that meant a bit more corpse money for him, didn’t it? Most folk didn’t like handling a corpse but it didn’t bother Sifkiss none. It’s a hard rain don’t wash someone a favour, as Old Green was always saying. She was way up there at the back, hunched over her old desk with one lamp burning, her long grey hair all greasy-slicked and her tongue pressed into her empty gums as she watched Sifkiss come up. Some smart-looking fellow was with her, had a waistcoat all silver leaves stitched fancy, and Sifkiss put a jaunt on, thinking to impress.
‘Get it, did yer?’ asked Old Green.
‘Course,’ said Sifkiss with a toss of his head, knocked his hat against a low beam and cursed as he fumbled it back into place. He tossed the package sourly down on the tabletop.
‘Get you gone, then,’ snapped Green.
Sifkiss looked surly, like he’d a mind to answer back. He was getting altogether too much mind, that boy, and Green had to show him the knobby-knuckled back of her hand ’fore he sloped off.
‘So here you have it, as promised.’ She pointed to that leather bundle in the pool of lamplight on her ancient table, its top cracked and stained and its gilt all peeling but still a fine piece of furniture with plenty of years left. Like to Old Green in that respect, if she did think so herself.
‘Seems a little thing for such a lot of fuss,’ said Fallow, wrinkling his nose, and he tossed a purse onto the table with that lovely clink of money. Old Green clawed it up and clawed it open and straight off set to counting it.
‘Where’s your girl Kiam?’ asked Fallow. ‘Where’s little Kiam, eh?’
Old Green’s shoulders stiffened but she kept counting. She could’ve counted through a storm at sea. ‘Out working.’
&nb
sp; ‘When’s she getting back? I like her.’ Fallow came a bit closer, voice going hushed. ‘I could get a damn fine price for her.’
‘But she’s my best earner!’ said Green. ‘There’s others you could take off my hands. How’s about that lad Sifkiss?’
‘What, the sour-face brought the luggage?’
‘He’s a good worker. Strong lad. Lots of grit. He’d pull a good oar on a galley, I’d say. Maybe a fighter, even.’
Fallow snorted. ‘In a pit? That little shit? I don’t think so. And he’d need some whipping to pull an oar, I reckon.’
‘Well? They got whips, don’t they?’
‘Suppose they do. I’ll take him if I must. Him and three others. I’m off to the market in Westport tomorrow week. You pick, but don’t give me none o’ your dross.’
‘I don’t keep no dross,’ said Old Green.
‘You got nothing but dross, you bloody swindler. And what’ll you tell the rest o’ your brood, eh?’ Fallow put on a silly la-di-da voice. ‘That they’ve gone off to be servants to gentry, or to live with the horses on a farm, or adopted by the fucking Emperor of Gurkhul or some such, eh?’ Fallow chuckled, and Old Green had a sudden urge to make that knife of hers available, but she’d better sense these days, all learned the hard way.
‘I tell ’em what I need to,’ she grunted, still working her fingers around the coins. Bloody fingers weren’t half as quick as they once were.
‘You do that, and I’ll come back for Kiam another day, eh?’ And Fallow winked at her.
‘Whatever you want,’ said Green, ‘whatever you say.’ She was bloody well keeping Kiam, though. She couldn’t save many, she wasn’t fool enough to think that, but maybe she could save one, and on her dying day she could say she done that much. Probably no one would be listening, but she’d know. ‘It’s all there. Package is yours.’
Fallow picked up the luggage and was out of that stinking fucking place. Reminded him too much of prison. The smell of it. And the eyes of the children, all big and damp. He didn’t mind buying and selling ’em, but he didn’t want to see their eyes. Does the slaughterman want to look at the sheep’s eyes? Maybe the slaughterman don’t care. Maybe he gets used to it. Fallow cared too much, that’s what it was. Too much heart.
His guards were lounging by the front door and he waved them over and set off, walking in the middle of the square they made.
‘Successful meeting?’ Grenti tossed over his shoulder.
‘Not bad,’ grunted Fallow, in such a way as to discourage further conversation. Do you want friends or money? he’d once heard Kurrikan say and the phrase had stuck with him.
Sadly, Grenti was by no means discouraged. ‘Going straight over to Kurrikan’s?’
‘Yes,’ said Fallow, sharply as he could.
But Grenti loved to flap his mouth. Most thugs do, in the end. All that time spent doing nothing, maybe. ‘Lovely house, though, ain’t it, Kurrikan’s? What do you call those columns on the front of it?’
‘Pilasters,’ grunted one of the other thugs.
‘No, no, I know pilasters, no. I mean to say the name given to that particular style of architecture, with the vine-leaves about the head there?’
‘Rusticated?’
‘No, no, that’s the masonry work, all dimpled with the chisel, it’s the overall design I’m discussing— Hold up.’
For a moment, Fallow was mightily relieved at the interruption. Then he was concerned. A figure was occupying the fog just ahead. Occupying the hell out of it. The beggars and revellers and scum scattered around these parts had all slipped out of their way like soil around the plough ’til now. This one didn’t move. He was a tall bastard, tall as Fallow’s tallest guard, with a white coat on, hood up. Well, it weren’t white no more. Nothing stayed white long in Sipani. It was grey with damp and black-spattered about the hem.
‘Get him out of the way,’ he snapped.
‘Get out of the fucking way!’ roared Grenti.
‘You are Fallow?’ The man pulled his hood back.
‘It’s a woman,’ said Grenti. And indeed it was, for all her neck was thickly muscled, her jaw angular and her red hair clipped close to her skull.
‘I am Javre,’ she said, raising her chin and smiling at them. ‘Lioness of Hoskopp.’
‘Maybe she’s a mental,’ said Grenti.
‘Escaped from that madhouse up the way.’
‘I did once escape from a madhouse,’ said the woman. She had a weird accent, Fallow couldn’t place it. ‘Well … it was a prison for wizards. But some of them had gone mad. A fine distinction, most wizards are at least eccentric. That is beside the point, though. You have something I need.’
‘That so?’ said Fallow, starting to grin. He was less worried now. One, she was a woman, two, she obviously was a mental.
‘I know not how to convince you for I lack the sweet words – it is a long-standing deficiency. But it would be best for us all if you give it to me willingly.’
‘I’ll give you something willingly,’ said Fallow, to sniggers from the others.
The woman didn’t snigger. ‘It is a parcel, wrapped in leather, about …’ She held up one big hand, thumb and forefinger stretched out. ‘Five times the length of your cock.’
If she knew about the luggage, she was trouble. And Fallow had no sense of humour about his cock, to which none of the ointments had made the slightest difference. He stopped grinning. ‘Kill her.’
She struck Grenti somewhere around the chest, or maybe she did, it was all a blur. His eyes popped wide and he made a strange whooping sound and stood there frozen, quivering on his tiptoes, sword halfway drawn.
The second guard – a Union man big as a house – swung his mace at her but it just caught her flapping coat. An instant later there was a surprised yelp and he was flying across the street upside down and crashing into the wall, tumbling to the ground in a shower of dust, sheets of broken plaster dropping from the shattered brickwork on top of his limp body.
The third guard – a nimble-fingered Osprian – whipped out a throwing knife but before he could loose it, the mace twittered through the air and bounced from his head. He dropped soundlessly, arms outstretched.
‘They are called Anthiric columns.’ The woman put her forefinger against Grenti’s forehead and gently pushed him over. He toppled and lay there on his side in the muck, still stiff, still trembling, still with eyes bulgingly focused on nothing.
‘That was with one hand.’ She held up the other big fist, and had produced from somewhere a sheathed sword, gold glittering on the hilt. ‘Next I draw this sword, forged in the Old Time from the metal of a fallen star. Only six living people have seen the blade. You would find it extremely beautiful. Then I would kill you with it.’
The last of the guards exchanged a brief glance with Fallow, then tossed his axe away and sprinted off.
‘Huh,’ said the woman, with a slight wrinkling of disappointment about her red brows. ‘Just so you know, if you run I will catch you in …’ She narrowed her eyes and pushed out her lips, looking Fallow appraisingly up and down. The way he might have appraised the children. He found he didn’t like being looked at that way. ‘About four strides.’
He ran.
She caught him in three and he was suddenly on his face with a mouthful of dirty cobblestone and his arm twisted sharply behind his back.
‘You’ve no idea who you’re dealing with, you stupid bitch!’ He struggled but her grip was iron, and he squealed with pain as his arm was twisted even more sharply.
‘It is true I am no high-thinker.’ Her voice showed not the slightest strain. ‘I like simple things well done and have no time to philosophise. Would you like to tell me where the parcel is, or shall I beat you until it falls out?’
‘I work for Kurrikan!’ he gasped.
‘I am new in town. Names work no magic
on me.’
‘We’ll find you!’
She laughed. ‘Of course. I am no hider. I am Javre, First of the Fifteen. Javre, Knight Templar of the Golden Order. Javre, Breaker of Chains, Breaker of Oaths, Breaker of Faces.’ And here she gave him a blinding blow on the back of the head which, he was pretty sure, broke his nose against the cobbles and filled the back of his mouth with the salt taste of blood. ‘To find me, you need only ask for Javre.’ She leaned over him, breath tickling at his ear. ‘It is once you find me that your difficulties begin. Now, where is that parcel?’
A pinching sensation began in Fallow’s hand. Mildly painful to begin with, then more, and more, a white-hot burning up his arm that made him whimper like a dog. ‘Ah, ah, ah, inside pocket, inside pocket!’
‘Very good.’ He felt hands rifling through his clothes but could only lie limp, moaning as the jangling of his nerves gradually subsided. He craned his neck around to look up at her and curled back his lips. ‘I swear on my fucking front teeth—’
‘Do you?’ As her fingers found the hidden pocket and slid the package free. ‘That’s rash.’