‘It is hard to see eye to eye with someone a foot shorter than you. She looks like a snake, moves like a snake, thinks like a snake. She saw you coming, Shevedieh, just like she always does, and she thought dinner. In spite of all the wrongs she has made you lick up down the years, she only had to swagger that round arse past you once and you were hooked all over again. She sank that ship with you on it, lest we forget!’
‘It’s different this time,’ muttered Shev, not sure whether the words hurt so much because they were false, or because they were true.
‘It is never different. Nothing ever is. How can a woman as clever as you not see it?’
‘I do fucking see it!’ screamed Shev, thumping the table and making the bottles rattle. ‘But I don’t care any more! I have to make the best of it. I have to have … something, before it’s too late!’ She felt tears stinging her eyes, her voice going high and warbly, but she couldn’t stop it. ‘I can’t run any more, Javre! I can’t run. I’m tired, and I need your help. Please. Help me.’
Javre stared at her for a long moment. Then she jerked up, barging the table over and sending its cargo of glasses, pots, bottles, pipes scattering, shattering, clattering across the filthy floor.
‘Cunt of the Goddess, Shevedieh, you know you only had to ask!’ She stabbed Shev painfully in the tit with one inept finger. ‘My sword is yours, always!’ Her brow knitted with puzzlement, then she stared wildly around. ‘Where is my sword?’
Shev sighed and nudged it from under Javre’s chair with the toe of her boot.
It was dark, down on this quietest part of the docks. The sea flapped and slopped at the mossy stones of the quay, and the warped supports of the wharves, and the slimy flanks of the moored boats. The reflections of the few lamps, torches and candles that still burned danced and broke in the restless water.
A gust of wind fluttered the ragged papers on the warehouse wall. Bills celebrating young King Jappo’s coronation pasted over bills celebrating the victory at Sweet Pines pasted over bills condemning Union aggression pasted over bills revelling in the ascension of Monzcarro Murcatto pasted over bills announcing the death of Monzcarro Murcatto pasted over bills trumpeting victories and defeats of enemies and rulers long forgotten. Probably it was only the ancient crust of bills that kept the warehouse standing.
Shev frowned out across the bay. In the distance she could just see a few faint points of light, flickering ghostly.
‘Carp Island,’ muttered Javre, planting a hand on her hip and nearly missing, she was that drunk.
Shev puffed out her cheeks. ‘And on Carp Island, Burroia’s Fort.’
‘And in Burroia’s Fort, Horald the Finger.’
‘And with Horald the Finger …’ Shev trailed off. God, she hoped Carcolf was still alive.
‘Once we are there,’ murmured Javre, leaning close enough that Shev almost gagged on the boozy reek of her breath, ‘what’s your plan?’
She wished she had time to get Javre sober. Or at least clean. But she did not. ‘Rescue Carcolf. Kill Horald. Don’t get killed ourselves.’
A pause, while Javre pushed the greasy hair out of her face then flicked something that had been stuck in it off her fingers. ‘I think you will agree that it is lacking detail.’
Shev took a glance up and down the quay. The thief’s glance, which looks without seeming to look. ‘You never complained about charging into the jaws of death before. Without plans, without weapons … without clothes, on more than one occasion.’
‘On clothes I am ambivalent, as you know, but I have always hated plans.’
‘Then why are you worried now?’
‘Because I always knew you would have one.’
‘Welcome to my life of constant doubt, anxiety and occasional sudden and unpredictable horror, Javre. I hope you enjoy your fucking visit.’ And she walked across the empty quay and down the steps to the nearest wharf. The thief’s walk, neither striding boldly nor scurrying crouched. The walk of someone forgettable going about their boring business. A walk that raises no eyebrows and no alarms.
A good thief goes unseen. A truly great one merely goes unnoticed.
She stopped by a boat that suited, checked the oars were in the bottom, then winced at a loud clatter, turned to see that Javre had stumbled into a set of fishing nets on a frame and was now tangled with them, desperately trying to stop them falling. She finally got them settled, shrugged at Shev, then strode down the wharf towards her, about the most conspicuous woman who ever drew breath.
‘Could you be any louder?’ hissed Shev.
‘Undoubtedly,’ said Javre, turning back towards the nets. ‘Shall I demonstrate?’
‘No, no, that’s fine!’ With some effort Shev steered her towards the boat, unshouldered her bag and tossed it in, then followed it silently across the flapping water.
‘You will simply steal it?’
‘The one upside of being a thief,’ Shev muttered through tight lips, ‘is that you can make free with things that don’t belong to you. It’s practically a requirement of the job.’
‘I understand the principle, but this is some poor bastard’s livelihood. Some family of righteous, honourable, hardworking bastards, maybe. There might be a dozen little weeping children depending on it.’
‘Better to rob the righteous,’ muttered Shev as she slipped the oars silently through the rowlocks. ‘Evil people tend to be suspicious and vengeful.’
Javre made her voice go piping high. ‘Oh, Daddy, whatever shall the twelve of us eat now that the boat is gone?’
‘For God’s sake, Javre, do I tell you how to start fights, suck cocks, destroy my property or ruin my life? No! I trust to your unchallengeable fucking expertise! Now let me steal the boat I judge appropriate! We can bring it back when we’re done!’
‘When do we ever do that? At the very least we bring it back smashed.’
‘You bring it back smashed!’
Javre snorted. ‘You remember that cart we borrowed in—’
‘Might I remind you we have something of a demanding schedule?’ Shev pressed her fingers to her temples and gave a growl of frustration. ‘All the bloody arguing over every little bloody thing, it’s exhausting!’ She stabbed at the rower’s seat with a finger. ‘Just get in the fucking boat!’
‘Could you be any louder?’ Javre grumbled as she tossed the mooring rope in, followed it with the ragged bundle that contained her sword and clambered unsteadily after, the whole thing rocking alarmingly under her considerable weight. ‘You are the one always telling me I should give more thought to consequences,’
‘The consequence that’s preying on my mind is the love of my life with her fucking throat cut!’
Javre blinked as she dropped heavily between the oars. ‘Love of your life?’
‘Well, I mean …’ Shev hadn’t meant to say that. Hadn’t meant to admit it, even to herself. ‘You know what I mean! Exaggerating, for effect.’
‘I have heard you exaggerate a hundred million times, Shevedieh. I know how it sounds. That was the much rarer sound of you letting slip the truth.’
‘Shut up and row,’ grumbled Shev as she shoved the boat away from the slimy wharf.
Javre leaned to the oars, great muscles in her bare arms twitching and bulging with each stroke, the boat sliding smoothly out onto the calm, dark waters of the harbour. Shev undid the buckles on her bag and unrolled it, metal rattling.
Javre whistled softly as she peered down at all those gleaming tools. ‘Going to war?’
‘If need be.’ Shev buckled the sword-eater onto her thigh. ‘A wise man once told me you can never have too many knives.’
‘Sure you’ll be able to climb with all that weight of steel?’
‘We’re not all built like bulls.’ Shev slid the throwing blades one by one into the strapping inside her coat. ‘Some of us need an edge.’
‘Be careful the edge does not cut your head off, Shevedieh.’ She watched as, ever so gently, Shev slid a little vial of green liquid from her bag and into the fleece-lined loop on her belt. ‘Is that what I think it is?’
‘Depends what you think it is.’
‘I think it is as likely to blow she who throws it to hell as to blow those it’s thrown at to heaven.’
‘Fancy that, you’re not the only one who can go down in a fireball.’
‘You are more or less the only friend I have not been obliged to kill. I am concerned for your welfare.’
‘If you’re such a good friend you could try being happy for me.’
‘Happy to see you strung along by that golden-haired siren?’
‘Happy that I’ve found some little respite from the endless tide of shit my life has been!’ Shev winced, trying to find some position where her blowpipe wasn’t jabbing her in the armpit. ‘Did I complain when you were noisily enjoying your frequent dalliances?’
‘Did you complain?’ Javre snorted. ‘You, the baroness of bitching? The countess of carping? The princess of prating? The … er … the grand duchess of … of …’
‘I get the idea,’ snapped Shev, checking the trigger of her crossbow before she slid it into the holster under her coat.
‘Good, because apparently your memory is almost as short as you are. Complain, Shevedieh? You made my life a misery day in and day out for the past …’ Javre frowned up at the starry sky, moonlit lips moving as she counted. ‘Thirteen … no fourteen!’ She gave a long pause before her bleary eyes settled on Shev, then added in a weary drawl, ‘Fourteen fucking years.’
‘Fourteen years,’ muttered Shev. ‘Half my life, near as damn it.’ And she felt the back of her nose aching with the need to cry. For all those years wasted. For the ruin of their friendship, which for so long had been all she had. For the fact that it had still been there when she needed it. For the fact that it was still all she had.
Javre puffed out her scarred cheeks. ‘Small wonder we are … somewhat wearied.’
The blades of the oars feathered the water, trails of sparkling drops falling from their ends, then cut silently into the surface. The rowlocks creaked. The wind picked up and stirred Javre’s dirty hair.
‘I am happy for you,’ she said, softly. ‘I try to be, anyway.’
‘Well, I’m happy you’re happy.’
‘Good.’
‘Good.’
Another slow silence. ‘I am just sad for myself.’
Shev looked up, caught Javre’s eye. A wet gleam in the darkness. ‘I’m sorry you’re sad,’ she said.
‘Good.’
‘Good.’
‘Shit,’ mouthed Shev as she scrabbled about in the dark for a reliable toehold on that crumbling wall. Burroia’s damn fort was falling apart. But then it was a ruin. Bit like Shev’s hopes in that regard. ‘Bloody, bloody shit.’
Javre might’ve had a point about all the hardware. It was a hell of a weight for someone who’d built their reputation on a light tread. There were a couple of buckles she’d dragged too tight now threatening to cut off the blood to her legs, and a couple she hadn’t dragged tight enough, loose metal clinking and the garrotte knocking distractingly against her arse crack every time she pulled herself up.
What was she doing with a damn garrotte anyway? She’d never used a garrotte in her life, except once to cut a cheese and that was for a joke and hadn’t even ended up that funny. You can make an argument for a knife. Sometimes people just need a knifing. Like Crandall had. She shed no tears for him. But once you start garrotting people you can’t claim to stand with the righteous.
Garrottes simply are not part of God’s chosen path and although, through a combination of personal weakness, evil acquaintance and plain bad luck, Shev had to admit her feet had often left the chosen path behind, she liked to imagine she could at least still see it, in the distance, if she squinted.
She froze at a noise above, the latest of a volley of curses stopped cold on her lips.
Footsteps scraping. The tuneless humming of a person deeply bored and with no musical aptitude. Shev’s eyes went wide. A guard, on patrol. She wondered what the chances were of his not noticing the grapple wedged against the parapet. Not good, was her guess. She clung tight to the rope with one hand, jerked a dart out with the other and shoved it between her teeth.
It would’ve been the perfect end to her career of misadventures if she’d pricked herself in the cheek, lost consciousness and dropped off the rope into the sea. But Shev was blessed with a nimble tongue. Probably that was what Carcolf saw in her. God knows, there had to be something.
The humming stopped. Footsteps scuffed closer. She snatched out her blowpipe, raising it to her lips. Sadly, at that moment, her fingers were less nimble than her mouth. The blowpipe caught on a jutting stone, she fumbled it, juggled it desperately, almost let go of the rope in her confusion, then gave a despairing gasp of, ‘Thuck!’ around the dart in her teeth as she watched it tumble away.
Javre caught it, then peered up, puzzled. ‘What is this?’ she hissed.
Shev looked back to the parapet, helpless panic settling on her like snow on a sleeping tramp. A face suddenly appeared. The face of a big man with curly hair. His thick brows went sharply up when he saw her clinging to the rope with her feet against the wall, close enough to reach out and touch.
Her first bizarre instinct was to give him a hopeful smile, but with the dart between her teeth it was impossible.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said, and leaned out, lifting a spear.
Lucky that Shev had always been a quick thinker in a tight spot. Years of practice, maybe. She jerked herself up as if overpowered by a desire to kiss him and stuck him in the neck with the dart.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said again, but less angry this time, and more surprised. He tried to stab her but she was too close, his elbow caught on the battlements and the spear slid from his slack grip, dropping over Shev’s shoulder.
Fast-acting, that toxin. He flopped limp over the parapet with a sigh and Shev grabbed his belt and dragged herself up by it, rolling silently across his back and onto the walkway.
With rare good fortune, she found it empty. A stretch of stone maybe two strides wide, crumbling battlements to either side, a door leading into an ivy-throttled turret at the far end, faint torchlight showing around its edge. More lights twinkled further off in the windows of the old fortress. The place might be a ruin, but it was evidently far from abandoned.
She leaned over the slumbering guard to hiss at Javre. ‘Planning to fucking join me?’
The Lioness of Hoskopp was still fumbling drunkenly with the rope, her boots scuffing the wall no more than a stride above the boat. ‘Yes I am fucking planning on it!’ she hissed back.
Shev shook her head and padded on towards the door, allowing herself the slightest smile. Considering the mess with the blowpipe, that really couldn’t have gone much—
She frowned as she heard faint laughter, then the door flew open and a man walked out, holding a lamp high and chuckling over his shoulder to another. There were more behind them. At least two more. ‘We’ll finish that hand when Big Lom gets back and I’ll—’ His head turned and he saw her frozen with her mouth an apologetic O of surprise. He had a bent nose and absurd hair cut in a straight line across his forehead.
‘Horald told us to expect you.’ And he grinned as he drew his sword.
Shev had always hated fighting. She’d hidden from it, talked her way free of it, bought her way out of it. She’d dodged it, she’d ducked it and, with shameful frequency, she’d watched Javre do it for her.
But Horald the Finger had pushed her over the line, and she would be pushed no further.
She whipped out the little crossbow and levelled it. The eyes of Horald’s bent-nosed man went wide.
‘He tel
l you to expect this?’ she asked, and squeezed the trigger.
The string snapped with a ping and the bolt went twittering end-over-end sideways and was lost in the darkness above the water, leaving them staring at one another, all somewhat surprised.
‘Huh.’ Bent Nose cleared his throat. ‘I’m thinking—’
If she’d learned one thing from Javre, it was that when it came to fighting, the less thinking the better. She flung the crossbow at his head and it hit him just above the eye. He gasped, stumbling back into the man behind him, his lamp dropping to the stones and spraying burning oil across the walkway.
‘Shit!’ another shouted, slapping at the flames that had suddenly sprung up his trouser leg.
Shev charged, popping the thong from the hilt of her sword-eater as Bent Nose righted himself, whipping it from the sheath as his hard eyes focused on her, jerking it up just as he flailed his sword down. Steel squealed as blade slid into serrated jaws and she snarled, twisting her wrist. Bent Nose’s outraged bellow turned to a squawk of shock as his sword snapped just above the hilt and left him staggering forwards. He did not have to stagger far, however, before Shev’s fist thudded into his gut and doubled him up, wheezing. She clubbed him on the back of the head with the pommel of the sword-eater so hard it went flying out of her hand and skittered down the walkway.
She saw a heavy mace swinging at her, ducked it on an instinct, the wind of it tearing at her hair, spun away as it whipped past and crashed into the parapet, kept spinning, giving a scream, lifting her leg in a raking kick. Her heel could not have connected more sweetly with the fat man’s head if they’d rehearsed the whole thing. It snatched him off his feet, blood and teeth spraying spectacularly from his face, turned him over in the air and sent him tumbling from the walkway, a satisfying series of crashes below strongly suggesting that he had fallen onto, then through, the fragile roof of a lean-to in the yard.
A flash of metal and Shev jerked back. A skinny man with a birthmark around one eye stabbed at her and she dodged again. He was wearing a ridiculous swashbuckler’s three-cornered hat, no doubt reckoning himself quite the master swordsman now he’d slapped out the flames on his leg. Shev thought it always wise to play to the pretensions of an opponent, so as he brought his sword whistling over she shrank into a crouch, the helpless victim, thrusting her fist into a pouch at her belt, lifting her other arm despairingly as if to block the blow. She saw his rotten teeth as he smiled, sure the blade would strike her hand straight off. It was most satisfying to see him grimace as it clanged instead against the steel rods under her sleeve and scraped clear. She stepped past him as he lurched off balance, ripped her fist free, opened her palm and blew the dust in his face.
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