The Great Leveller

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘I suppose they’ve always been popular—’

  ‘All finished!’ howled Lestek at the sky.

  ‘Shut the fuck up!’ someone roared from an upstairs window.

  Temple took the actor by the arm. ‘Let me take you back to Camling’s—’

  ‘Camling!’ Lestek tore free, waving his bottle. ‘That cursed maggot! That treacherous cuckoo! He has ejected me from his Hostelry! I! Me! Lestek! I will be revenged upon him, though!’

  ‘Doubtless.’

  ‘He will see! They will all see! My best performance is yet ahead of me!’

  ‘You will show them, but perhaps in the morning. There are other hostelries—’

  ‘I am penniless! I sold my wagon, I let go my props, I pawned my costumes!’ Lestek dropped to his knees in the filth. ‘I have nothing but the rags I wear!’

  Temple gave a smoking sigh and looked once more towards the star-prickled heavens. Apparently he was set on the hard way. The thought made him oddly pleased. He reached down and helped the old man to his feet. ‘I have a tent big enough for two, if you can stand my snoring.’

  Lestek stood swaying for a moment. ‘I don’t deserve such kindness.’

  Temple shrugged. ‘Neither did I.’

  ‘My boy,’ murmured the actor, opening wide his arms, tears gleaming again in his eyes.

  Then he was sick down Temple’s shirt.

  Shy frowned. She’d been certain Temple was about to get on that packhorse and ride out of town, trampling her childish trust under hoof and no doubt the last she’d ever hear of him. But all he’d done was give a man a shovel and wave him off. Then haul some shit-covered old drunk into the shell of Majud’s building. People are a mystery there’s no solving, all right.

  She was awake a lot in the nights, now. Watching the street. Maybe thinking she’d see Cantliss ride in – not that she even had the first clue what he looked like. Maybe thinking she’d catch a glimpse of Pit and Ro, if she even recognised them any more. But mostly just picking at her worries. About her brother and sister, about Lamb, about the fight that was coming. About things and places and faces she’d rather have forgotten.

  Jeg with his hat jammed down saying, ‘Smoke? Smoke?’ and Dodd all surprised she’d shot him and that bank man saying so politely, ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you,’ with that puzzled little smile like she was a lady come for a loan rather’n a thief who’d ended up murdering him for nothing. That girl they’d hanged in her place whose name Shy had never known. Swinging there with a sign around her twisted neck and her dead eyes asking, why me and not you? and Shy still no closer to an answer.

  In those slow, dark hours her head filled with doubts like a rotten rowboat with bog water, going down, going down for all her frantic bailing, and she’d think of Lamb dead like it was already done and Pit and Ro rotting in the empty somewhere and she’d feel like some kind of traitor for thinking it, but how do you stop a thought once it’s in there?

  Death was the one sure thing out here. The one fact among the odds and chances and bets and prospects. Leef, and Buckhorm’s sons, and how many Ghosts out there on the plain? Men in fights in Crease, and folk hung on tissue-paper evidence or dead of fever or of silly mishaps like that drover kicked in the head by his brother’s horse yesterday, or the shoe-merchant they found drowned in the sewer. Death walked among them daily, and presently would come calling on them all.

  Hooves in the street and Shy craned to see, a set of torches flickering, folk retreating to their porches from the flying mud of a dozen horsemen. She turned to look at Lamb, a big shape under his blanket, shadow pooled in its folds. At the head-end she could just see his ear, and the big notch out of it. Could just hear his soft, slow breathing.

  ‘You awake?’

  He took a longer breath. ‘Now I am.’

  The men had reined in before the Mayor’s Church of Dice, torchlight shifting over their hard-used, hard-bitten faces, and Shy shrank back. Not Pit or Ro and not Cantliss either. ‘More thugs arrived for the Mayor.’

  ‘Lots of thugs about,’ grunted Lamb. ‘Don’t take no reader of the runes to see blood coming.’

  Hooves thumped on by in the street and a flash of laughter and a woman shouting then quiet, with just the quick tap-tap of a hammer from over near the amphitheatre to remind them that the big show was on its way.

  ‘What happens if Cantliss don’t come?’ She spoke at the dark. ‘How do we find Pit and Ro then?’

  Lamb slowly sat up, scrubbing his fingers through his grey hair. ‘We’ll just have to keep looking.’

  ‘What if . . .’ For all the time she’d spent thinking it she hadn’t crossed the bridge of actually making the words ’til now. ‘What if they’re dead?’

  ‘We keep looking ’til we’re sure.’

  ‘What if they died out there on the plains and we’ll never know for sure? Every month passes there’s more chance we’ll never know, ain’t there? More chance they’ll just be lost, no finding ’em.’ Her voice was turning shrill but she couldn’t stop it rising, wilder and wilder. ‘They could be anywhere by now, couldn’t they, alive or dead? How do we find two children in all the unmapped empty they got out here? When do we stop, is what I’m asking? When can we stop?’

  He pushed his blanket back, padded over and winced as he squatted, looking up into her face. ‘You can stop whenever you want, Shy. You come this far and that’s a long, hard way, and more’n likely there’s a long, hard way ahead yet. I made a promise to your mother and I’ll keep on. Long as it takes. Ain’t like I got better offers knocking my door down. But you’re young, still. You got a life to lead. If you stopped, no one could blame you.’

  ‘I could.’ She laughed then, and wiped the beginnings of a tear on the back of her hand. ‘And it ain’t like I got much of a life either, is it?’

  ‘You take after me there,’ he said, pulling back the covers on her bed, ‘daughter or not.’

  ‘Guess I’m just tired.’

  ‘Who wouldn’t be?’

  ‘I just want ’em back,’ as she slid under the blankets.

  ‘We’ll get ’em back,’ as he dropped them over her and laid a weighty hand on her shoulder. She could almost believe him, then. ‘Get some sleep now, Shy.’

  Apart from the first touch of dawn creeping between the curtains and across Lamb’s bedspread in a grey line, the room was dark.

  ‘You really going to fight that man Golden?’ she asked, after a while. ‘He seemed all right to me.’

  Lamb was silent long enough she started to wonder whether he was asleep. Then he said, ‘I’ve killed better men for worse reasons, I’m sorry to say.’

  The Sleeping Partner

  In general, Temple was forced to concede, he was a man who had failed to live up to his own high standards. Or even to his low ones. He had undertaken a galaxy of projects. Many of those any decent man would have been ashamed of. Of the remainder, due to a mixture of bad luck, impatience and a shiftless obsession with the next thing, he could hardly remember one that had not tailed off into disappointment, failure or outright disaster.

  Majud’s shop, as it approached completion, was therefore a very pleasant surprise.

  One of the Suljuks who had accompanied the Fellowship across the plains turned out to be an artist of a roofer. Lamb had applied his nine digits to the masonry and proved himself more than capable. More recently the Buckhorms had shown up in full numbers to help saw and nail the plank siding. Even Lord Ingelstad took a rare break from losing money to the town’s gamblers to give advice on the paint. Bad advice, but still.

  Temple took a step back into the street, gazing up at the nearly completed façade, lacking only for balusters to the balcony and glass in the windows, and produced the broadest and most self-satisfied grin he had entertained in quite some time. Then he was nearly pitched on his face by a hearty thump on the shoulder.

  He turned, fully expecting to hear Shy grate out the glacial progress of his debt to her, and received a second surprise.<
br />
  A man stood at his back. Not tall, but broad and possessed of explosive orange sideburns. His thick eyeglasses made his eyes appear minute, his smile immense by comparison. He wore a tailored suit, but his heavy hands were scarred across the backs by hard work.

  ‘I had despaired of finding decent carpentry in this place!’ He raised an eyebrow at the new seating haphazardly sprouting skywards around the ancient amphitheatre. ‘But what should I find, just at my lowest ebb?’ And he seized Temple by the arms and pointed him back towards Majud’s shop. ‘But this invigorating example of the joiner’s craft! Bold in design, diligent in execution and in a heady fusion of styles aptly reflecting the many-cultured character of the adventurers braving this virgin land. And all on my behalf! Sir, I am quite humbled!’

  ‘Your . . . behalf?’

  ‘Indeed!’ He pointed towards the sign above the front door. ‘I am Honrig Curnsbick, the better half of Majud and Curnsbick!’ And he flung his arms around Temple and kissed him on both cheeks, then rooted in his waistcoat pocket and produced a coin. ‘A little something extra for your trouble. Generosity repays itself, I have always said!’

  Temple blinked down at the coin. It was a silver five-mark piece. ‘You have?’

  ‘I have! Not always financially, not always immediately, but in goodwill and friendship which ultimately are beyond price!’

  ‘They are? I mean . . . you think they are?’

  ‘I do! Where is my partner, Majud? Where is that stone-hearted old money-grubber?’

  ‘I do not believe he is expecting your arrival—’

  ‘Nor do I! But how could I stay in Adua while . . . this,’ and he spread his arms wide to encompass swarming, babbling, fragrant Crease, ‘all this was happening without me? Besides, I have a fascinating new idea I wish to discuss with him. Steam, now, is the thing.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘The engineering community is in an uproar following a demonstration of Scibgard’s new coal-fired piston apparatus!’

  ‘Whose what?’

  Curnsbick perched eyeglasses on broad forehead to squint at the hills behind the town. ‘The results of the first mineral investigations are quite fascinating. I suspect the gold in these mountains is black, my boy! Black as . . .’ He trailed off, staring up the steps of the house. ‘Not . . . can it be . . .’ He fumbled down his eyeglasses and let fall his jaw. ‘The famous Iosiv Lestek?’

  The actor, swaddled in a blanket and with several days’ grey growth upon his grey cheeks, blinked back from the doorway. ‘Well, yes—’

  ‘My dear sir!’ Curnsbick trotted up the steps, caused one of Buckhorm’s sons to fumble his hammer by flicking a mark at him, seized the actor by the hand and pumped it more vigorously than any piston apparatus could have conceived of. ‘An honour to make your acquaintance, sir, a perfect honour! I was transported by your Bayaz on one occasion back in Adua. Veritably transported!’

  ‘You do me too much kindness,’ murmured Lestek as Majud’s ruthlessly pleasant partner steered him into the shop. ‘Though I feel sure my best work still lies ahead of me . . .’

  Temple blinked after them. Curnsbick was not quite what he had been led to expect. But then what was in life? He stepped back once again, losing himself again in happy contemplation of his building, and was nearly knocked onto his face by another slap on the shoulder. He rounded on Shy, decidedly annoyed this time.

  ‘You’ll get your money, you bloodsucking—’

  A monstrous fellow with a tiny face perched on an enormous bald head stood at his back. ‘The Mayor . . . wants . . . to see you,’ he intoned, as though they were lines for a walk-on part badly memorised.

  Temple was already running through the many reasons why someone powerful might want him dead. ‘You’re sure it was me?’ The man nodded. Temple swallowed. ‘Did she say why?’

  ‘Didn’t say. Didn’t ask.’

  ‘And if I would rather remain here?’

  That minuscule face crinkled smaller still with an almost painful effort of thought. ‘Wasn’t an option . . . she discussed.’

  Temple took a quick glance about but there was no help in easy reach and, in any case, the Mayor was one of those inevitable people. If she wanted to see him, she would see him soon enough. He shrugged, once more whisked helpless as a leaf on the winds of fate, and trusted to God. For reasons best known to Himself, He’d been coming through for Temple lately.

  The Mayor gazed across her desk in thoughtful silence for a very long time.

  People with elevated opinions of themselves no doubt delight in being looked upon in such a manner, mentally listing the many wonderful characteristics the onlooker must be in dumbstruck admiration of. For Temple it was torture. Reflected in that estimating gaze he saw all his own disappointment in himself, and wriggled in his chair wishing the ordeal would end.

  ‘I am hugely honoured by the kind invitation, your . . . Mayor . . . ness,’ he ventured, able to bear it no longer, ‘but—’

  ‘Why are we here?’

  The old man by the window, whose presence was so far a mystery, gave vent to a crackly chuckle. ‘Juvens and his brother Bedesh debated that very question for seven years and the longer they argued, the further away was the answer. I am Zacharus.’ He leaned forward, holding out one knobbly-knuckled hand, black crescents of dirt ingrained beneath the fingernails.

  ‘Like the Magus?’ asked Temple, tentatively offering his own.

  ‘Exactly like.’ The old man seized his hand, twisted it over and probed at the callus on his middle finger, still pronounced even though Temple had not held a pen in weeks. ‘A man of letters,’ said Zacharus, and a group of pigeons perched on the window sill all at once reared up and flapped their wings at each other.

  ‘I have had . . . several professions.’ Temple managed to worm his hand from the old man’s surprisingly powerful grip. ‘I was trained in history, theology and law in the Great Temple of Dagoska by Haddish Kahdia—’ The Mayor looked up sharply at the name. ‘You knew him?’

  ‘A lifetime ago. A man I greatly admired. He always preached and practised the same. He did what he thought right, no matter how difficult.’

  ‘My mirror image,’ muttered Temple.

  ‘Different tasks need different talents,’ observed the Mayor. ‘Do you have experience with treaties?’

  ‘As it happens, I negotiated a peace agreement and trimmed a border or two last time I was in Styria.’ He had served as a tool in a shameful and entirely illegal land-grab, but honesty was an advantage to carpenters and priests, not to lawyers.

  ‘I want you to prepare a treaty for me,’ said the Mayor. ‘One that brings Crease, and a slab of the Far Country around it, into the Empire and under its protection.’

  ‘Into the Old Empire? The great majority of the settlers come from the Union. Would that not be the natural—’

  ‘Absolutely not the Union.’

  ‘I see. Not wishing to talk myself into trouble – I do that rather too often – but . . . the only laws people seem to respect out here are the ones with a point on the end.’

  ‘Now, perhaps.’ The Mayor swept to the window and looked down into the swarming street. ‘But the gold will run out and the prospectors will drift off, and the fur will run out and the trappers will drift off, then the gamblers, then the thugs, then the whores. Who will remain? The likes of your friend Buckhorm, building a house and raising cattle a day’s ride out of town. Or your friend Majud, whose very fine shop and forge you have been chafing your hands on these past weeks. People who grow things, sell things, make things.’ She gracefully acquired a glass and bottle on the way back. ‘And those kinds of people like laws. They don’t like lawyers much, but they consider them a necessary evil. And so do I.’

  She poured out a measure but Temple declined. ‘Drink and I have had some long and painful conversations and found we simply can’t agree.’

  ‘Drink and I can’t agree either.’ She shrugged and tossed it down herself. ‘But we keep on having the
argument.’

  ‘I have a rough draft . . .’ Zacharus rummaged in his coat, producing a faint smell of musty onions and a grubby sheaf of odd-sized papers, scrawled upon with the most illegible handwriting imaginable. ‘The principal points covered, as you see. The ideal is the status of a semi-independent enclave under the protection of and paying nominal taxes to the Imperial government. There is precedent. The city of Calcis enjoys similar status. Then there is . . . was . . . what’s it called? Thingy. You know.’ He screwed up his eyes and slapped at the side of his head as if he could knock the answer free.

  ‘You have some experience with the law,’ said Temple as he leafed through the document.

  The old man waved a dismissive and gravy-stained hand. ‘Imperial law, a long time ago. This treaty must be binding under Union law and mining traditions also.’

  ‘I will do the best I can. It will mean nothing until it is signed, of course, by a representative of the local population and, well, by the Emperor, I suppose.’

  ‘An Imperial Legate speaks for the Emperor.’

  ‘You have one handy?’

  Zacharus and the Mayor exchanged a glance. ‘The legions of Legate Sarmis are said to be within four weeks’ march.’

  ‘I understand Sarmis is . . . not a man anyone would choose to invite. His legions even less so.’

  The Mayor gave a resigned shrug. ‘Choice does not enter into it. Papa Ring is keen for Crease to be brought into the Union. I understand his negotiations in that direction are well advanced. That cannot be allowed to happen.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Temple. That their escalating squabble had acquired an international dimension and might well escalate further still. But escalating squabbles are meat and drink to a lawyer. He had to confess some trepidation at the idea of going back to that profession, but it certainly looked like the easy way.

  ‘How long will it take you to prepare the document?’ asked the Mayor.

  ‘A few days. I have Majud’s shop to finish—’