Shev stared. She found herself doing that a lot, lately. There was indeed a strong resemblance, if only in the muscle that squirmed in the woman’s arms as she crossed them over those rattling beads. ‘So we’ve been chased across the breadth of the Circle of the World for fourteen years by … your mother?’
‘She can be extremely stubborn,’ said Javre.
‘So that’s where you get it from,’ murmured Shev. ‘I finally see the upside of being an orphan.’
There was a tense, quiet moment, then. A couple of dry leaves chased each other across the cracked flagstones as the wind swirled around the yard. The High Priestess pursed her lips as she looked her wayward daughter up and down. Fourteen years, Shev and Javre had been running, and now they stood before the two people who had done the chasing. After that long, it was bound to be something of an anticlimax.
‘You look …’
‘Like shit?’ ventured Javre.
‘I would have tried to be more diplomatic.’
‘I fear the time for diplomacy between us is long past, Mother.’
‘Like shit, then. Never was a woman more blessed by the Goddess than you. It grieves me to see you treat her gifts with such scant respect. Did you really run away from me … for this?’
‘I left so I could choose my own path.’
Javre’s mother slowly shook her head. ‘And you chose to wallow in your own filth?’
‘Having murderers chasing you every hour of your life does rather limit your options,’ snapped Shev.
She felt Carcolf’s hand on her shoulder, gently drawing her back into the shadows. She shook her off, moved instead to stand beside Javre. If she was about to die, that was where she chose to do it.
The blue, blue eyes of the High Priestess slid over to her. ‘Who is this … person?’
Javre drew herself up to her full height then, puffing up her chest, and put her hand on Shev’s shoulder. ‘She is Shevedieh, the greatest thief in Styria.’
Shev might have had a foot less height and about a quarter of the chest that Javre did, but she drew up and puffed out what she had. ‘And I am proud to be Javre’s sidekick.’
‘Partner,’ said Javre, and gently guided her back. ‘But leave her out of it.’
The eyes of the High Priestess drifted towards her daughter. ‘Believe it or not, and in spite of all the pointless bloodshed between us, I have never wished to harm anyone.’
Javre stretched her neck out one way and the other, then put her bandaged hand on the rag-wrapped grip of her sword. ‘I will tell you what I told Hanama, and Birke, and Weylen, and Golyin, and all your other lapdogs. I will be no one’s slave. Not even yours.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Especially not yours. I would sooner die than go back with you.’
‘I know.’ Javre’s mother wearily puffed out her cheeks in just the way Javre did when she and Shev had their endless theological debates. ‘If the last fourteen years have taught me anything, it is that. Even as a girl you were stubborn beyond belief. All my efforts to make you bend, with smiles, with entreaties, with threats, with blows, and finally with blades, have done nothing but temper you. There are some wearying patterns to life that, try as we might, we never can seem to escape.’
Shev could hardly deny that. Here she was, outnumbered and facing death once again. How many bloody times now? She made a show of holding up one hand, as if to check her fingernails, and slipped the other towards that vial at her belt. One lucky throw might blow two of those Templars to the hereafter they were so fond of and maybe bring one of the towers down to boot. A spectacular note to end on, if nothing else …
‘The Goddess teaches us to embrace them.’ The High Priestess glanced towards Shev. ‘You can leave that vial alone, my child. I have another choice for your partner. There is something that I need.’
Javre snorted. ‘You have never been one to bridle at taking what you want.’
‘This thing is not easily taken. It is in the possession of …’ And Javre’s mother worked her mouth as though there was a sour taste there. ‘A wizard. A Magus of the Old Time.’
Shev leaned close to Javre. ‘I don’t much like the sound of—’
‘Shush,’ she said.
‘Deliver this thing to me, Javre, and you are free. I, and the guards of my temple, will pursue you no longer.’
‘That is all?’ asked Javre.
‘That is all.’
Shev caught her by her big bare arm. ‘Javre! We don’t know what this thing is, or where it’s kept, and I really don’t like the sound of this whole Magus of the Old Time business—’
‘Shevedieh.’ Javre patted her hand and gently peeled her fingers away. ‘When you have only one choice, there is no purpose waiting to make it. I accept.’
‘Well, then.’ Shev glanced over at Carcolf and gave a long, shuddering, painful sigh, her puffed chest rapidly collapsing. ‘Guess I’ll be stealing a thing off a wizard.’
Javre had a little smile at the corner of her mouth as she glanced down at her. ‘You and I, side by side?’
‘That’s where a sidekick belongs, no? You can do the fighting, I can do the complaining.’
‘Just the way it has always been.’
‘How else would it be?’
Javre’s smile curled up a little further. ‘I appreciate the offer, Shevedieh. It means … more than you can know. But you have earned the chance at something better. Some things one has to do alone.’
‘Javre—’
‘If I die, drowned in some bog, or spitted by some guard, or roasted by some wizard’s Art, well, it will be some consolation to know that my partner lived to be old and shrivelled, still telling tall tales of our high adventures together.’
Shev blinked. Strange, how a day before all she could think of were the bad times. The thousand hurts, the million arguments, the nights spent on the stony ground. Now all the good came up at once and choked her. The laughter, the songs, the knowing there was always, always someone at her back. She tried to smile but her sight was swimming. ‘It’s been something, though, hasn’t it?’
‘It has,’ said Javre, glancing over to Carcolf. ‘Look after her.’
Carcolf swallowed. ‘I’ll try.’
‘Fail, and there will be no place in the Circle of the World where you will be safe from me.’ She laid that great, heavy, comforting hand on Shev’s shoulder one more time. ‘Fare you well, my friend.’ And she turned away, towards her mother.
‘Fare you well,’ whispered Shev, wiping her eyes.
Carcolf took her gently by the shoulders from behind and drew her close. ‘Let’s go home.’
‘You should come talk to me!’ called Horald after her. ‘I can always find work for the best thief in—’
‘Go fuck yourself, Horald,’ said Shev.
When they got back there, her place was still killed.
‘Nothing broken that can’t be fixed.’ Carcolf righted Shev’s ruined table and brushed some broken plaster off it with the back of her hand. ‘We’ll get it all put right in no time. I know people.’
‘Seems you know everyone,’ muttered Shev, numbly, tossing down her bag.
‘We’ll take a trip. Just you and me. Change of scene.’ Carcolf had hardly stopped talking since they rowed away from Carp Island. As if she was worried by what might be said if she left a gap. ‘Jacra, maybe. Or the Thousand Isles? I’ve never been. You always said the Isles are beautiful.’
‘Javre thought so,’ muttered Shev.
Carcolf paused, then pressed on as if the name hadn’t been mentioned at all. ‘When we get back it’ll all be so much better. You’ll see. Let me change. Then we’ll go out. We’ll do something fun.’
‘Fun.’ Shev flopped onto the one intact chair. She was the one who really needed to change but she couldn’t be bothered. She hardly had the strength to stand.
‘Y
ou remember what it is?’
Shev forced out a weak grin. ‘Maybe you can remind me.’
‘Of course I can.’ Carcolf smiled. ‘Fun’s my middle name.’
‘Oh? So it’s just your first name I’m missing.’
‘What kind of a mysterious beauty would I be without any mysteries?’ And Carcolf consummately acted the part of a mysterious beauty over her shoulder as the bedroom door swung shut.
Shev winced, bruised side aching as she squirmed out of her coat, tools clattering as it dropped to the floor, a loose smoke bomb rolling free through the mess. She slumped down, elbows on her knees, chin on her hands.
Javre was out of her life. Carcolf was in it. She was square with Horald the Finger. Everything she’d wanted, wasn’t it?
So why did she feel so bloody miserable?
There was a soft knock at the door and Shev frowned as she looked up. Another knock. She slid out her sword-eater, held it down by her right side as she stood, and with her left hand nudged the door open a crack.
There was a twitchy youth out in the stairwell with big ears and a rash of spots around his mouth.
‘You Carcolf?’ He squinted through the gap. ‘You’re shorter than I thought you’d be.’
‘I’m shorter than I hoped I’d be,’ snapped Shev. ‘Reckon my height’s a disappointment to us both.’
The lad shrugged. ‘Disappointment’s part of life.’ And he held out a folded paper between two fingers.
‘Everyone’s a fucking philosopher.’ Shev opened the door wide enough to pluck it free, then shouldered it shut and turned the key. A letter, with Carcolf written on the front in a slanted hand. Something familiar about the writing. Something that picked at her.
She tossed it down on the scarred tabletop and frowned at it while Carcolf started singing in the bedroom. Bloody hell, she even sang well.
If you want to be a fine new person with a fine new life you’ve got to put the person you were behind you, like a snake sheds its skin. You’ve got to stop picking through your hoard of hurts and grievances like a miser with his coins, set ’em down and allow yourself to go free. You’ve got to forgive and you’ve got to trust, not because anyone else deserves it, but because you do.
Shev took a hard breath and turned away from the letter.
Then she turned back, snatched it up and slashed it wide open with the sword-eater.
No one changes that much. Not all at once.
She knew the hand, now she saw more of it. The same one that had written the note Horald the Finger had put his mark to. The note that had been left here in her ruined place. The note that had drawn her and Javre out to Burroia’s Fort.
Carcolf, my old friend
Just wanted to thank you again for your help. No one spins a story like you. Pleasure to watch you work, as always. If you come through Westport again I’ll have more for you, and well paid. I’ve always got things that need taking from here to there.
Hope it all went well with my father in Talins. I swear, you’re the one woman he holds in higher regard than me.
Stay careful,
Leanda
Shev’s eyes went wider and wider as she read, the cogs upstairs spinning at triple speed.
Leanda. Horald’s oh-so-competent daughter running things in Westport.
My old friend. Carcolf might know everyone, but these were tighter ties than she’d ever given a hint of.
Hope it all went well with my father in Talins. Shev looked up and saw Carcolf standing in the doorway in her underwear. A sight she would’ve swum oceans for once. It gave her scant happiness now.
Carcolf blinked from Shev’s stricken face to the letter, and back, and slowly held up a calming palm, as if Shev was a skittish pony that a sudden move might startle. ‘Now, listen to me. This isn’t what it looks like.’
‘No?’ Shev slowly turned the letter around. ‘Because it looks like you’re about as tight as can be with Horald and his family, and this whole fucking business was your idea!’
Carcolf gave a guilty little grin. A toddler caught with stolen jam all around her face. ‘Then, maybe … it is what it looks like.’
Shev just stood and stared. Again. The old violinist chose that moment to strike up in the square outside, overplaying the hell out of a plaintive little piece, but Shev didn’t feel like dancing to it, and like laughing at it even less. Seemed a fitting accompaniment to the collapse of her pathetic little self-deceptions. God, why did she insist on demanding from people what she knew they could never give her? Why did she insist on making the same mistakes over and over? Why was she fooled so easily, every time?
Because she wanted to be fooled.
You’ve got to be realistic, that old Northman on the farm near Squaredeal used to tell her. Got to be realistic. And she’d leaned on the fence with a stalk of grass in her teeth and nodded sagely along. And yet, in spite of all she’d seen and all she’d suffered, she was still the least realistic fool in the Circle of the World.
‘Look, Shevedieh …’ Carcolf’s voice was smooth and calm and reasonable, a politician explaining their great plans for the nation. ‘I can see how you might feel … a little bit deceived.’
‘A little bit?’ squeaked Shev, her voice going high with disbelief.
‘I just wanted …’ Carcolf looked down, prodding at a bent teaspoon with one pointed toe, and glanced up shyly under her lashes, trying on the innocent new bride for size, ‘… to know that you cared.’
Shev’s eyes went even wider. She positively goggled. ‘So … it was all a fucking test?’
‘No! Well, yes. I wanted to know we’ve got something … that can last, is all. That didn’t come out right!’
‘How could that come out right?’
‘Because you passed! You passed and then some!’ Carcolf padded towards her. That walk she had. God, that walk. ‘You came for me. I never thought you would. My hero, eh? Heroine. Whichever.’
‘You could’ve just asked me!’
Carcolf crushed her face up as she came closer. ‘But … you know … people say all kinds of things in bed that it’s probably not best to put to too hard a test later on—’
‘So I’m beginning to fucking see!’
Carcolf’s brows drew in a touch. An impatient mother, frustrated that her daughter’s tantrum won’t subside. ‘Look. I know it’s been a hard night for everyone but it all turned out for the best. Now you’re square with Horald, and I’m square with Horald, and we can—’
Shev felt a sudden cold twinge in her stomach. ‘What do you mean, you’re square with Horald?’
‘Well …’ A flicker of annoyance across Carcolf’s face that she’d let something slip, then she started flapping her hands around like a circus magician disguising a trick. ‘I had a little debt of my own, as it happens, and he had the debt to the High Priestess, so, you know, favours for favours, we could help each other out. It’s the Styrian way, Shev, isn’t it? But that’s not the point—’
‘So you sold my friend to settle your debt?’
If Shev had been hoping Carcolf would sag like a punctured wineskin with the weight of her shame, she was disappointed. ‘Javre’s a fucking menace!’ Carcolf stepped closer with a stabbing finger. ‘As long as she was here you’d just have got sucked back into her madness like you always do! You had to get free of her. We had to get free of her. You told me so, in this room!’
Shev winced. ‘But I didn’t mean it! I mean, I did mean it but … not this way—’
‘What way, then?’ asked Carcolf. ‘You were never going to do it. You know it now. You knew it then. That’s why you said it. I had to do it for you.’
‘So … you’ve done me a favour?’
‘I think so.’ Carcolf stepped closer. Fair now, humble, a merchant offering the deal of a lifetime. ‘And I think … when you’ve had time to think about it … you’ll
think so, too.’
She smiled down, taller than Shev even without her shoes. A winning smile. Point proved. Argument won.
She took horrified silence for agreement, reached out and cupped Shev’s face in her hands. The sensitive lover, whose only joy was her partner’s happiness.
‘Just us,’ she whispered, leaning close. ‘Better than ever.’
Carcolf sucked at Shev’s top lip. Then she nipped the bottom one with her teeth, pulled it back, almost painful, and let it go with the faintest flapping sound. Shev’s head was full of that scent, but there was no sweetness in it any more. It was just sour. Gaudy. Sickening.
‘Now let me get dressed, and we’ll go have fun.’
‘Fun’s your middle name,’ whispered Shev, wanting to shove her off. To shove her off and punch her in the face besides.
Shev didn’t much like to be honest with herself. Who does? But if she accepted the pain of it for just a moment, it wasn’t Carcolf’s treachery that truly hurt. You can’t bed a snake then complain when you get bit. It was that Shev had suddenly realised there was no secret self hidden under Carcolf’s smirking mask. There was just another mask, and another. Whatever role it suited her to play. Whatever got her what she wanted. If Carcolf had anything underneath, it was hard and shiny as a flint.
She had no first name to learn.
A few hours ago Shev had been willing to kill for this woman. Willing to die for her. Now she didn’t feel love, or lust, or even much anger. She just felt sad. Sad and bruised and so, so disappointed.
She made herself smile. ‘All right.’ She made herself put her hand on Carcolf’s cheek, brush a strand of golden hair back behind her ear. ‘You get dressed. But I promise you it won’t be for long.’
‘Oh, promises make me nervous.’ Carcolf brushed the tip of Shev’s nose with her fingertip as she let her go. ‘I never know whether to trust them.’
‘You’re the one who lies for a living. I just steal for one.’
Carcolf grinned back at her from the bedroom doorway, calm and beautiful as ever. ‘True enough.’
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