The Great Leveller

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘Huh. I know that feeling.’

  ‘Then you have my sympathy.’

  ‘The dead know I could do with some.’

  ‘You can have all mine, for what that’s worth. You’re just as much a piece in this sordid little game as I am, no? And you’ve lost even more than I. Your eye. Your face.’

  She didn’t seem to move, but she seemed to keep getting closer. Shivers hunched his shoulders. ‘I reckon.’

  ‘Duke Rogont is an old acquaintance. A somewhat unreliable man, though undoubtedly a handsome one.’

  ‘I reckon,’ he managed to grate out.

  ‘I was forced to throw myself upon his mercy. A hard landing, but some succour, for a while. Though it seems he has found a new diversion now.’

  ‘Monza?’ The fact he’d been thinking it himself all night didn’t help any. ‘She ain’t like that.’

  Carlot dan Eider gave a disbelieving snort. ‘Really? Not a treacherous, murdering liar who’ll use anyone and anything to get her way? She betrayed Nicomo Cosca, no, and stole his chair? Why do you think Duke Orso tried to kill her? Because it was his chair she was planning to steal next.’ The drink had made him half-stupid, he couldn’t think of a thing to say to it. ‘Why not use Rogont to get her way? Or is she in love with someone else?’

  ‘No,’ he growled. ‘Well . . . how would I know—Fucking no! You’ve got it twisted!’

  She touched one hand to her pale chest. ‘I have it twisted? There’s a reason why they call her the Snake of Talins! A snake loves nothing but itself!’

  ‘You’d say anything. She used you in Sipani. You hate her!’

  ‘I’d shed no tears over her corpse, that’s true. The man who put a blade in her could have my gratitude and more besides. But that doesn’t make me a liar.’ She was halfway to whispering in his ear. ‘Monzcarro Murcatto, the Butcher of Caprile? They murdered children there.’ He could almost feel her breath on him, his skin tingling with having her so near, anger and lust all mangled hot together. ‘Murdered! In the streets! She wasn’t even faithful to her brother, from what I hear—’

  ‘Eh?’ Shivers wished he’d drunk less, the hall was getting some spin to it.

  ‘You didn’t know?’

  ‘Know what?’ An odd mix of curiosity, and fear, and disgust creeping up on him.

  Eider laid one hand on his arm, close enough that he caught another waft of scent – sweet, dizzying, sickening. ‘She and her brother were lovers.’ She purred the last word, dragging it out long.

  ‘What?’ His scarred cheek was burning like he’d been slapped.

  ‘Lovers. They used to sleep together, like husband and wife. They used to fuck each other. It’s no kind of secret. Ask anyone. Ask her.’

  Shivers found he could hardly breathe. He should’ve known it. Few things made sense now had tripped him at the time. He had known it, maybe. But still he felt tricked. Betrayed. Laughed at. Like a fish tickled from a stream and left choking. After all he’d done for her, after all he’d lost. The rage boiled up in him so hot he could hardly keep hold of himself.

  ‘Shut your fucking mouth!’ He flung Eider’s hand off. ‘You think I don’t see you goading me?’ He was up from his bench somehow, standing over her, hall tipping around him, blurred lights and faces swaying. ‘You take me for a fool, woman? D’you set me at nothing?’

  Instead of cringing back she came forwards, pressing against him almost, eyes seeming big as dinner plates. ‘Me? You’ve made no sacrifices for me! Am I the one who’s cut you off? Am I the one who sets you at nothing?’

  Shivers’ face was on fire. The blood was battering at his skull, so hard it felt like it might pop his eye right out. Except it was burned out already. He gave a strangled sort of a yelp, throat closed up with fury. He staggered back, since it was that or throttle her, lurched straight into a servant, knocking his silver tray from his hands, glasses falling, bottle shattering, wine spraying.

  ‘Sir, I most humbly—’

  Shivers’ left fist thudded into his ribs and twisted him sideways, right crunched into the man’s face before he could fall. He bounced off the wall and sprawled in the wreckage of his bottles. There was blood on Shivers’ fist. Blood, and a white splinter between his fingers. A piece of tooth. What he wanted, more’n anything, was to kneel over this bastard, take his head in his hands and smash it against the beautiful carvings on the wall until his brains came out. He almost did it.

  But instead he made himself turn. Made himself turn and stumble away.

  Time crawled.

  Monza lay on her side, back to Shivers, at the very edge of the bed. Keeping as much space between them as she possibly could without rolling onto the floor. The first traces of dawn were creeping from between the curtains now, turning the room dirty grey. The wine was wearing through and leaving her more nauseous, weary, hopeless than ever. Like a wave washing up on a dirty beach that you hope will wash it clean, but only sucks back out and leaves a mass of dead fish behind it.

  She tried to think what Benna would have said. What he’d have done, to make her feel better. But she couldn’t remember what his voice had sounded like any more. He was leaking away, and taking the best of her with him. She thought of him a boy, long ago, small and sickly and helpless. Needing her to take care of him. She thought of him a man, laughing, riding up the mountain to Fontezarmo. Still needing her to take care of him. She knew what colour his eyes had been. She knew there had been creases at their corners, from smiling often. But she couldn’t see his smile.

  Instead the faces that came to her in all their bloodied detail were the five men she’d killed. Gobba, fumbling at Friendly’s garrotte with his great bloated, ruined hands. Mauthis, flapping around on his back like a puppet, gurgling pink foam. Ario, hand to his neck as black blood spurted from him. Ganmark, grinning up at her, stuck through the back with Stolicus’ outsize sword. Faithful, drowned and dripping, dangling from his waterwheel, no worse than her.

  The faces of the five men she’d killed, and of the two she hadn’t. Eager little Foscar, barely even a man himself. And Orso, of course. Grand Duke Orso, who’d loved her like a daughter.

  Monza, Monza, what would I do without you . . .

  She tore the blankets back and swung her sweaty legs from the bed, dragged her trousers on, shivering though it was too hot, head pounding with worn-out wine.

  ‘What you doing?’ came Shivers’ croaky voice.

  ‘Need a smoke.’ Her fingers were trembling so badly she could hardly turn the lamp up.

  ‘Maybe you should be smoking less, think of that?’

  ‘Thought of it.’ She fumbled with the lump of husk, wincing as she moved her ruined fingers. ‘Decided against.’

  ‘It’s the middle of the night.’

  ‘Go to sleep, then.’

  ‘Shitty fucking habit.’ He was sitting up on the side of the bed, broad back to her, head turned so he was frowning out of the corner of his one good eye.

  ‘You’re right. Maybe I should take up knocking servants’ teeth out instead.’ She picked up her knife and started hacking husk into the bowl of the pipe, scattering dust. ‘Rogont wasn’t much impressed, I can tell you that.’

  ‘Wasn’t long ago you weren’t much impressed with him, as I recall. Seems your feelings about folk change with the wind, though, don’t it?’

  Her head was splitting. She’d no wish to talk to him, let alone argue. But it’s at times like those people bite each other hardest. ‘What’s eating at you?’ she snapped, knowing full well already and not wanting to hear about it either.

  ‘What d’you think?’

  ‘You know what, I’ve my own problems.’

  ‘You leaving me, is what!’

  She’d have jumped at the chance. ‘Leaving you?’

  ‘Tonight! Down with the shit while you sat up there lording it with the Duke of Delay!’

  ‘You think I was in charge of the fucking seating?’ she sneered at him. ‘He put me there to make him look good, is all.�
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  There was a pause. He turned his head away from her, shoulders hunching. ‘Well. I guess looking good ain’t something I can help with these days.’

  She twitched – awkward, annoyed. ‘Rogont can help me. That’s all. Foscar’s out there, with Orso’s army. Foscar’s out there . . .’ And he had to die, whatever the costs.

  ‘Vengeance, eh?’

  ‘They killed my brother. I shouldn’t have to explain it to you. You know how I feel.’

  ‘No. I don’t.’

  She frowned. ‘What about your brother? Thought you said the Bloody-Nine killed him? I thought—’

  ‘I hated my fucking brother. Folk called him Skarling reborn, but the man was a bastard. He’d show me how to climb trees, and fish, nick me under the chin and laugh when our father was there. When he was gone, he used to kick me ’til I couldn’t breathe. He said I’d killed our mother. All I did was be born.’ His voice was hollow, no anger left in it. ‘When I heard he was dead, I wanted to laugh, but I cried instead because everyone else was. I swore vengeance on his killer and all the rest ’cause, well, there’s a form to be followed, ain’t there? Wouldn’t want to fall short. But when I heard the Bloody-Nine nailed my bastard of a brother’s head up, I didn’t know whether I hated the man for doing it, or hated that he’d robbed me o’ the chance, or wanted to kiss him for the favour like you’d kiss . . . a brother, I guess . . .’

  For a moment she was about to get up, go to him, put her hand on his shoulder. Then his one eye moved towards her, cold and narrow. ‘But you’d know all about that, I reckon. Kissing your brother.’

  The blood pounded suddenly behind her eyes, worse than ever. ‘What my brother was to me is my fucking business!’ She realised she was stabbing at him with the knife, tossed it away across the table. ‘I’m not in the habit of explaining myself. I don’t plan to start with the men I hire!’

  ‘That’s what I am to you, is it?’

  ‘What else would you be?’

  ‘After what I’ve done for you? After what I’ve lost?’

  She flinched, hands trembling worse than ever. ‘Well paid, aren’t you?’

  ‘Paid?’ He leaned towards her, pointing at his face. ‘How much is my eye worth, you evil cunt?’

  She gave a strangled growl, jerked up from the chair, snatched up the lamp, turned her back on him and made for the door to the balcony.

  ‘Where you going?’ His voice had turned suddenly wheedling, as if he knew he’d stepped too far.

  ‘Clear of your self-pity, bastard, before I’m sick!’ She ripped the door open and stepped out into the cold air.

  ‘Monza—’ He was sitting slumped on the bed, the saddest sort of look on his face. On the half of it that still worked, anyway. Broken. Hopeless. Desperate. Fake eye pointing off sideways. He looked as if he was about to weep, to fall down, to beg to be forgiven.

  She slammed the door shut. It suited her to have an excuse. She preferred the passing guilt of turning her back on him to the endless guilt of facing him. Much, much preferred it.

  The view from the balcony might well have been among the most breathtaking in the world. Ospria dropped away below, a madman’s maze of streaky copper roofs, each one of the four tiers of the city surrounded by its own battlemented walls and towers. Tall buildings of old, pale stone crowded tight behind them, narrow-windowed and striped with black marble, pressed in alongside steeply climbing streets, crooked alleys of a thousand steps, deep and dark as the canyons of mountain streams. A few early lights shone from scattered windows, flickering dots of sentries’ torches moved on the walls. Beyond them the valley of the Sulva was sunk in the shadows of the mountains, only the faintest glimmer of the river in its bottom. At the summit of the highest hill on the other side, against the dark velvet of the sky, perhaps the pinpricks of the campfires of the Thousand Swords.

  Not a place for anyone with a fear of heights.

  But Monza had other things on her mind. All that mattered was to make nothing matter, and as fast as she could. She crabbed down into the deepest corner, hunched jealously over her lamp and her pipe like a freezing man over a last tongue of fire. She gripped the mouthpiece in her teeth, lifted the rattling hood with trembling hands, leaned forwards—

  A sudden gust came up, swirled into the corner, whipped her greasy hair in her eyes. The flame fluttered and went out. She stayed there, frozen, staring at the dead lamp in achy confusion, then sweaty disbelief. Her face went slack with horror as the implications fumbled their way into her thumping head.

  No flame. No smoke. No way back.

  She sprang up, took a step towards the parapet and flung the lamp out across the city with all her strength. She tilted her head back, taking a great breath, grabbed the parapet, rocked forwards and screamed her lungs out. Screamed her hatred at the lamp as it tumbled down, at the wind that had blown it out, at the city spread out below her, at the valley beyond it, at the world and everyone in it.

  In the distance, the angry sun was beginning to creep up behind the mountains, staining the sky around their darkened slopes with blood.

  No More Delays

  Cosca stood before the mirror, making the final adjustments to his fine lace collar, turning his five rings so the jewels faced precisely outwards, adjusting each bristle of his beard to his satisfaction. It had taken him an hour and a half, by Friendly’s calculation, to make ready. Twelve passes of the razor against the sharpening strap. Thirty-one movements to trim away the stubble. One tiny nick left under his jaw. Thirteen tugs of the tweezers to purge the nose hairs. Forty-five buttons done up. Four pairs of hooks and eyes. Eighteen straps to tighten and buckles to fasten.

  ‘And all is ready. Master Friendly, I wish you to take the post of first sergeant of the brigade.’

  ‘I know nothing about war.’ Nothing except that it was madness, and threw him out of all compass.

  ‘You need know nothing. The role would be to keep close to me, to keep silent but sinister, to support and follow my lead where necessary and most of all to watch my back and yours. The world is full of treachery, my friend! The odd bloody task too, and on occasion to count out sums of money paid and received, to take inventory of the numbers of men, weapons and sundries at our disposal . . .’

  That was, to the letter, what Friendly had done for Sajaam, in Safety then outside it. ‘I can do that.’

  ‘Better than any man alive, I never doubt! Could you begin by fastening this buckle for me? Bloody armourers. I swear they only put it there to vex me.’ He jerked his thumb at the side strap on his gilded breastplate, stood tall and held his breath, sucking in his gut as Friendly tugged it closed. ‘Thank you, my friend, you are a rock! An anchor! An axle of calm about which I madly spin. Whatever would I do without you?’

  Friendly did not understand the question. ‘The same things.’

  ‘No, no. Not the same. Though we are not long acquainted, I feel there is . . . an understanding between us. A bond. We are much alike, you and I.’

  Friendly sometimes felt he feared every word he had to speak, every new person and every new place. Only by counting everything and anything could he claw by his fingernails from morning to night. Cosca, by sharp contrast, drifted effortlessly through life like blossom on the wind. The way that he could talk, smile, laugh, make others do the same seemed like magic as surely as when Friendly had seen the Gurkish woman Ishri form from nowhere. ‘We are nothing alike.’

  ‘You see my point exactly! We are entire opposites, like earth and air, yet we are both . . . missing something . . . that others take for granted. Some part of that machinery that makes a man fit into society. But we each miss different cogs on the wheel. Enough that we may make, perhaps, between the two of us, one half-decent human.’

  ‘One whole from two halves.’

  ‘An extraordinary whole, even! I have never been a reliable man – no, no, don’t try to deny it.’ Friendly had not. ‘But you, my friend, are constant, clear-sighted, single-minded. You are . . . honest en
ough . . . to make me more honest.’

  ‘I’ve spent most of my life in prison.’

  ‘Where you did more to spread honesty among Styria’s most dangerous convicts than all the magistrates in the land, I do not doubt!’ Cosca slapped Friendly on his shoulder. ‘Honest men are so very rare, they are often mistaken for criminals, for rebels, for madmen. What were your crimes, anyway, but to be different?’

  ‘Robbery the first time, and I served seven years. When they caught me again there were eighty-four counts, with fourteen murders.’

  Cosca cocked an eyebrow. ‘But were you truly guilty?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He frowned for a moment, then waved it away. ‘Nobody’s perfect. Let’s leave the past behind us.’ He gave his feather a final flick, jammed his hat onto his head at its accustomed rakish angle. ‘How do I look?’

  Black pointed knee-boots set with huge golden spurs in the likeness of bull’s heads. Breastplate of black steel with golden adornments. Black velvet sleeves slashed with yellow silk, cuffs of Sipanese lace hanging at the wrists. A sword with flamboyant gilded basketwork and matching dagger, slung ridiculously low. An enormous hat, its yellow feather threatening to brush the ceiling. ‘Like a pimp who lost his mind in a military tailor’s.’

  Cosca broke out in a radiant grin. ‘Precisely the look I was aiming at! So to business, Sergeant Friendly!’ He strode forwards, flung the tent flap wide and stepped through into the bright sunlight.

  Friendly stuck close behind. It was his job, now.

  The applause began the moment he stepped up onto the big barrel. He had ordered every officer of the Thousand Swords to attend his address, and here they were indeed; clapping, whooping, cheering and whistling to the best of their ability. Captains to the fore, lieutenants crowding further back, ensigns clustering at the rear. In most bodies of fighting men these would have been the best and brightest, the youngest and highest born, the bravest and most idealistic. This being a brigade of mercenaries, they were the polar opposite. The longest serving, the most steeped in vice, the slyest back-stabbers, most practised grave-robbers and fastest runners, the men with fewest illusions and most betrayals under their belts. Cosca’s very own constituency, in other words.