The Great Leveller

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘And yet it has taken to this town like fire to tinder! I have heard half a dozen versions, none particularly close to my own remembrance. Most recently, I was told you shot the Ghost from a mile’s distance and with a stiff side wind.’

  ‘I heard you impaled him on the horns of an enraged steer,’ said Shy.

  ‘And in the newest version to reach my ear,’ said Temple, ‘you killed him in a duel over the good name of a woman.’

  Sweet snorted. ‘Where the hell do they get this rubbish? Everyone knows there’s no women o’ my acquaintance with a good name. This your plot?’

  ‘It is,’ said Majud.

  ‘It is a plot,’ said Crying Rock solemnly.

  ‘Majud has contracted me to build a shop upon it,’ said Temple.

  ‘More buildings?’ Sweet wriggled his shoulders. ‘Bloody roofs hanging over you. Walls bearing in on you. How can you take a breath in those things?’

  Crying Rock shook her head. ‘Buildings.’

  ‘A man can’t think of nothing when he’s in one but how to get back out. I’m a wanderer and that’s a fact. Born to be under the sky.’ Sweet watched Lamb drag another wriggling drunk from a tent one-handed and toss him rolling into the street. ‘Man has to be what he is, don’t he?’

  Shy frowned up. ‘He can try to be otherwise.’

  ‘But more often than not it don’t stick. All that trying, day after day, it wears you right through.’ The old scout gave her a wink. ‘Lamb taking up the Mayor’s offer?’

  ‘We’re thinking on it,’ she snapped back.

  Temple looked from one to the other. ‘Am I missing something?’

  ‘Usually,’ said Shy, still giving Sweet the eyeball. ‘If you’re heading on out of town, don’t let us hold you up.’

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’ The old scout pointed down the main street, busier with traffic as the day wore on, weak sun raising a little steam from the wet mud, the wet horses, the wet roofs. ‘We’re signed up to guide a Fellowship of prospectors into the hills. Always work for guides around Crease. Everyone here wants to be somewhere else.’

  ‘Not I,’ said Majud, grinning as Lamb kicked another tent over.

  ‘Oh no.’ Sweet gave the plot a final glance, smile lurking at the corner of his mouth. ‘You lot are right where you belong.’ And he trotted on out of town, Crying Rock at his side.

  Words and Graces

  Shy didn’t much care for pretension, and despite having crawled through more than her share was no high enthusiast for dirt. The dining room of Camling’s Hostelry was an unhappy marriage of the two uglier by far than either one alone. The tabletops were buffed to a prissy shine but the floor was caked with boot-mud. The cutlery had bone handles but the walls were spattered hip high with ancient food. There was a gilt-framed painting of a nude who’d found something to smirk about but the plaster behind was blistered with mould from a leak above.

  ‘State o’ this place,’ muttered Lamb.

  ‘That’s Crease for you,’ said Shy. ‘Everything upside down.’

  On the trail she’d heard the stream-beds in the hills were lined with nuggets, just itching for greedy fingers to pluck them free. Some lucky few who’d struck gold in Crease might’ve dug it from the earth but it looked to Shy like most had found a way to dig it out of other folks. It weren’t prospectors crowding the dining room of Camling’s and forming a grumpy queue besides, it was pimps and gamblers, racketeers and money lenders, and merchants pedalling the same stuff they might anywhere else at half the quality and four times the price.

  ‘A damn superfluity of shysters,’ muttered Shy as she stepped over a pair of dirty boots and dodged a careless elbow. ‘This the future of the Far Country?’

  ‘Of every country,’ muttered Lamb.

  ‘Please, please, my friends, do sit!’ Camling, the proprietor, was a long, oily bastard with a suit wearing through at the elbows and a habit of laying soft hands where they weren’t wanted which had already nearly earned him Shy’s fist in his face. He was busy flicking crumbs from a table perched on an ancient column top some creative carpenter had laid the floorboards around. ‘We try to stay neutral but any friend of the Mayor’s is a friend of mine, indeed they are!’

  ‘I’ll face the door,’ said Lamb, shifting his chair around.

  Camling drew out the other for Shy. ‘And may I say how positively radiant you are this morning?’

  ‘You can say it, but I doubt anyone’ll be taking your word over the evidence o’ their senses.’ She levered her way to sitting, not easy since the ancient carvings on the column were prone to interfere with her knees.

  ‘On the contrary, you are a positive ornament to my humble dining room.’

  Shy frowned up. A slap in the face she could take in good part but all this fawning she didn’t trust in the least. ‘How about you bring the food and hold on to the blather?’

  Camling cleared his throat. ‘Of course.’ And slipped away into the crowd.

  ‘That Corlin over there?’

  She was wedged into a shadowy corner, eyeing the gathering with her mouth pressed into that tight line of hers, like it’d take a couple of big men with pick and crowbar to get a word out.

  ‘If you say so,’ said Lamb, squinting across the room. ‘My eyes ain’t all they were.’

  ‘I say so. And Savian, too. Thought they were meant to be prospecting?’

  ‘Thought you didn’t believe they would be?

  ‘Looks like I was right.’

  ‘You usually are.’

  ‘I’d swear she saw me.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And she ain’t given so much as a nod.’

  ‘Maybe she wishes she hadn’t seen you.’

  ‘Wishing don’t make it so.’ Shy slipped from the table, having to make room for a big bald bastard who insisted on waving his fork around when he talked.

  ‘. . . there’s still a few coming in but less than we hoped. Can’t be sure how many more’ll turn up. Sounds like Mulkova was bad . . .’ Savian stopped short when he saw Shy coming. There was a stranger wedged even further into the shadows between him and Corlin, under a curtained window.

  ‘Corlin,’ said Shy.

  ‘Shy,’ said Corlin.

  ‘Savian,’ said Shy.

  He just nodded.

  ‘I thought you two were out digging?’

  ‘We’re putting it off a while.’ Corlin held Shy’s eye all the time. ‘Might leave in a week. Might be later.’

  ‘Lot of other folks coming through with the same idea. You want to claim aught but mud you’d best get into them hills.’

  ‘The hills have been there since great Euz drove the devils from the world,’ said the stranger. ‘I predict that they will persist into next week.’ He was an odd one, with bulging eyes, a long tangle of grey beard and hair and eyebrows hardly shorter. Odder yet, Shy saw now he had a pair of little birds, tame as puppies, pecking seed from his open palm.

  ‘And you are?’ asked Shy.

  ‘My name is Zacharus.’

  ‘Like the Magus?’

  ‘Just like.’

  Seemed a foolish sort of thing to take the name of a legendary wizard, but then you might have said the same for naming a woman after social awkwardness. ‘Shy South.’ She reached for his hand and an even smaller bird hopped from his sleeve and snapped at her finger, gave her the hell of a shock and made her jerk it back. ‘And, er, that’s Lamb over there. We rolled out from the Near Country in a Fellowship with these two. Faced down Ghosts and storms and rivers and an awful lot of boredom. High times, eh?’

  ‘Towering,’ said Corlin, eyes narrowed to blue slits. Shy was getting the distinct feeling they wanted her somewhere else and that was making her want to stay. ‘And what’s your business, Master Zacharus?’

  ‘The turning of ages.’ He had a trace of an Imperial accent, but it was strange somehow, crackly as old papers. ‘The currents of destiny. The rise and fall of nations.’

  ‘There a good living in that?�
��

  He flashed a faintly crazy smile made of a lot of jagged yellow teeth. ‘There is no bad living and no good death.’

  ‘Right y’are. What’s with the birds?’

  ‘They bring me news, companionship, songs when I am melancholy and, on occasion, nesting materials.’

  ‘You have a nest?’

  ‘No, but they think I should.’

  ‘Course they do.’ The old man was mad as a mushroom, but she doubted folk hard-headed as Corlin and Savian would be wasting time on him if that was the end of the story. There was something off-putting to the way those birds stared, heads on one side, unblinking. Like they’d figured her for a real idiot.

  She thought the old man might share their opinion. ‘What brings you here, Shy South?’

  ‘Come looking for two children stole from our farm.’

  ‘Any luck?’ asked Corlin.

  ‘Six days I been up and down the Mayor’s side of the street asking every pair of ears, but children ain’t exactly a common sight around here and no one’s seen a hair of them. Or if they have they ain’t telling me. When I say the name Grega Cantliss they shut up like I cast a spell of silence.’

  ‘Spells of silence are a challenging cloth to weave,’ mused Zacharus, frowning up into an empty corner. ‘So many variables.’ There was a flapping outside and a pigeon stuck its head through the curtains and gave a burbling coo. ‘She says they are in the mountains.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The children. But pigeons are liars. They only tell you what you want to hear.’ And the old man stuck his tongue in the seeds in his palm and started crunching them between his yellow front teeth.

  Shy was already minded to beat a retreat when Camling called from behind. ‘Your breakfast!’

  ‘What do you reckon those two are about?’ asked Shy as she slipped back into her chair and flicked away a couple of crumbs their host had missed.

  ‘Prospecting, I heard,’ said Lamb.

  ‘You ain’t been listening to me at all, have you?’

  ‘I try to avoid it. If they want our help I daresay they’ll ask. ’Til then, it ain’t our business.’

  ‘Can you imagine either of them asking for help?’

  ‘No,’ said Lamb. ‘So I reckon it’ll never be our business, will it?’

  ‘Definitely not. That’s why I want to know.’

  ‘I used to be curious. Long time ago.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Lamb waved his three-fingered hand at his scar-covered face.

  Breakfast was cold porridge, runny egg and grey bacon, and the porridge weren’t the freshest and the bacon may well not have derived from a pig. All whisked in front of Shy on imported crockery with trees and flowers painted into it in gilt, Camling with an air of smarmy pride like there was no finer meal to be had anywhere in the Circle of the World.

  ‘This from a horse?’ she muttered to Lamb, prodding at that meat and half-expecting it to tell her to stop.

  ‘Just be thankful it ain’t from the rider.’

  ‘On the trail we ate shit, but at least it was honest shit. What the hell’s this?’

  ‘Dishonest shit?’

  ‘That’s Crease for you. You can get fine Suljuk plates but only slops to eat off ’em. Everything back to bloody front . . .’ She realised the chatter had all faded, the scraping of her fork about the only noise. Hairs prickled on the back of her neck and she slowly turned.

  Six men were adding their boot-prints to the mud-caked floor. Five were the kind of thugs you saw a lot of in Crease, spreading out among the tables to find watchful places, each wearing that ready slouch said they were better’n you ’cause there were more of them and they all had blades. The sixth was a different prospect. Short but hugely wide and with a big belly on him, too, a suit of fine clothes bulging at the buttons like the tailor had been awful optimistic with the measurements. He was black-skinned with a fuzz of grey hair, one earlobe stretched out around a thick golden ring, hole in the middle big enough almost for Shy to have got her fist through.

  He looked pleased with himself to an untold degree, smiling on everything as though it was all exactly the way he liked it. Shy disliked him right off. Most likely jealousy. Nothing ever seemed to be the way she liked it, after all.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he boomed in a voice spilling over with good humour, ‘you can all keep on eating! If you want to be shitting water all day!’ And he burst out laughing, and slapped one of his men on the back and near knocked him into some fool’s breakfast. He made his way between the tables, calling out hellos by name, shaking hands and patting shoulders, a long stick with a bone handle tapping at the boards.

  Shy watched him come, easing a little sideways in her chair and slipping the bottom button of her vest open so the grip of her knife poked out nice and perky. Lamb just sat eating with eyes on his food. Not looking up even when the fat man stopped right next to their table and said, ‘I’m Papa Ring.’

  ‘I’d made a prediction to that effect,’ said Shy.

  ‘You’re Shy South.’

  ‘It ain’t a secret.’

  ‘And you must be Lamb.’

  ‘If I must, I guess I must.’

  ‘Look for the big fucking Northman with the face like a chopping block, they told me.’ Papa Ring swung a free chair away from the next-door table. ‘Mind if I sit?’

  ‘What if I said yes?’ asked Shy.

  He paused halfway down, leaning heavy on his stick. ‘Most likely I’d say sorry but sit anyway. Sorry.’ And he lowered himself the rest of the way. ‘I’ve got no fucking graces at all, they tell me. Ask anyone. No fucking graces.’

  Shy took the quickest glance across the room. Savian hadn’t even looked up, but she caught the faintest gleam of a blade ready under the table. That made her feel a little better. He didn’t give much to your face, Savian, but he was a reassurance at your back.

  Unlike Camling. Their proud host was hurrying over now, rubbing his hands together so hard Shy could hear them hiss. ‘Welcome, Papa, you’re very welcome.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘No reason, no reason at all.’ If Camling had rubbed his hands any faster he might’ve made fire. ‘As long as there’s no . . . trouble.’

  ‘Who’d want trouble? I’m here to talk.’

  ‘Talk’s how it always begins.’

  ‘Talk’s how everything begins.’

  ‘My concern is how it will conclude.’

  ‘How’s a man to know that ’til he’s talked?’ asked Lamb, still not looking up.

  ‘Exactly so,’ said Papa Ring, smiling like it was the best day of his life.

  ‘All right,’ said Camling, reluctantly. ‘Will you be taking food?’

  Ring snorted. ‘Your food is shit, as these two unfortunates are only now discovering. You can lose yourself.’

  ‘Now look, Papa, this is my place—’

  ‘Happy chance.’ Of a sudden Ring’s smile seemed to have an edge to it. ‘You’ll know just where to lose yourself.’

  Camling swallowed, then scraped away with the sourest of expressions. The chatter gradually came up again, but honed to a nervous point now.

  ‘One of the strongest arguments I ever saw for there being no God is the existence of Lennart Camling,’ muttered Ring, as he watched their host depart. The joints of his chair creaked unhappily as he settled back, all good humour again. ‘So how are you finding Crease?’

  ‘Filthy in every sense.’ Shy poked her bacon away, then tossed her fork down and pushed the plate away, too. There could never be too great a distance between her and that bacon, far as she was concerned. She let her hands flop into her lap where one just happened to rest right on her knife’s handle. Imagine that.

  ‘Dirty’s how we like it. You meet the Mayor?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Shy, ‘did we?’

  ‘I know you did.’

  ‘Why ask, then?’

  ‘Watching my manners, such as they are. Though I don’t deceiv
e myself they come close to hers. She’s got graces, don’t she, our Mayor?’ And Ring gently rubbed the polished wood of the table with one palm. ‘Smooth as mirror glass. When she talks you feel swaddled in a goose-down blanket, don’t you? The worthier folks around here, they tend to move in her orbit. Those manners. That way. The worthy folks lap that stuff up. But let’s not pretend you all are two of the worthy ones, eh?’

  ‘Could be we’re aspiring to be worthier,’ said Shy.

  ‘I’m all for aspiration,’ said Ring. ‘God knows I came here with nothing. But the Mayor won’t help you better yourselves.’

  ‘And you will?’

  Ring gave a chuckle, deep and joyful, like you might get from a kindly uncle. ‘No, no, no. But at least I’ll be honest about it.’

  ‘You’ll be honest about your dishonesty?’

  ‘I never claimed to do anything other than sell folk what they want and make no judgements on ’em for their desires. Daresay the Mayor gave you the impression I’m quite the evil bastard.’

  ‘We can get that impression all by ourselves,’ said Shy.

  Ring grinned at her. ‘Quick, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’ll try not to leave you behind.’

  ‘She do all the talking?’

  ‘The vast majority,’ said Lamb, out the side of his mouth.

  ‘Reckon he’s waiting for something worth replying to,’ said Shy.

  Ring kept grinning. ‘Well that’s a very reasonable policy. You seem like reasonable folks.’

  Lamb shrugged. ‘You ain’t really got to know us yet.’

  ‘That’s the very reason I came along. To get to know you better. And maybe just to offer some friendly advice.’

  ‘I’m getting old for advice,’ said Lamb. ‘Even the friendly kind.’

  ‘You’re getting old for brawling, too, but I do hear tell you might be involving yourself in some bare-fist business we got coming to Crease.’

  Lamb shrugged again. ‘I fought a bout or two in my youth.’

  ‘I see that,’ said Ring, with an eye on Lamb’s battered face, ‘but, keen devotee though I am of the brawling arts, I’d rather this fight didn’t happen at all.’

  ‘Worried your man might lose?’ asked Shy.