by Neil Clarke
“Shevedieh?”
Decidedly not a man, but very definitely strong. Even with hair clipped close, there was no mistaking her.
“Javre? What the hell are you doing here?”
She raised a brow at the naked bodies entwined about her. “Is that not obvious?”
Shev was brought to her senses by the rattle of guards in the street below. “You never saw me!” And she slid down the rope, hemp hissing through her gloves, hit the ground hard and sprinted off just as a group of men with weapons drawn came barrelling around the corner.
“Stop thief!”
“Get him!”
And, particularly shrill, Pombrine desperately wailing, “My package!”
Shev jerked the cord in the small of her back and felt the pouch split, the caltrops scattering in her wake, heard the shrieks as a couple of the guards went tumbling. Sore feet they’d have in the morning. But there were still more following.
“Cut him off!”
“Shoot him!”
She took a sharp left, heard the flatbow string an instant later, the twitter as the bolt glanced from the wall beside her and away into the night. She peeled off her gloves as she ran, one smoking from the friction, and flung them over her shoulder. A quick right, the route well-planned in advance, of course, and she sprang up onto the tables outside Verscetti’s, bounding from one to the next with great strides, sending cutlery and glassware flying, the patrons floundering up, tumbling in their shock, a ragged violinist flinging himself for cover.
“What a runner,” she whispered, and leaped from the last table, over the clutching hands of a guard diving from her left and a reveler from her right, catching the little cord behind the sign that said Verscetti’s as she fell and giving it a good tug.
There was a flash like lightning as she rolled, an almighty bang as she came up, the murky night at once illuminated, the frontages of the buildings ahead picked out white. There were screams and squeals and a volley of detonations. Behind her, she knew, blossoms of purple fire would be shooting across the street, showers of golden sparks, a display suitable for a baron’s wedding.
“That Qohdam certainly can make fireworks,” she whispered, resisting the temptation to stop and watch the show and instead slipping down a shadowy snicket, shooing away a mangy cat, scurrying on low for three dozen strides and ducking into the narrow garden, struggling to keep her quick breath quiet. She ripped open the packet she had secured among the roots of the dead willow, unfurling the white robe and wriggling into it, pulling up the cowl and waiting in the shadows, the big votive candle in one hand, ears sifting at the night.
“Shit,” she muttered. As the last echoes of her fiery diversion faded she could hear, faintly, but coming closer, the calls of Pombrine’s searching guards, doors rattling as they tried them one by one.
“Where did he go?”
“I think this way!”
“Bloody firework burned my hand! I’m really burned, you know!”
“My package!”
“Come on, come on,” she muttered. To be caught by these idiots would be among the most embarrassing moments of her career. That time she’d been stuck in a marriage gown half way up the side of the Mercers guildhall in Adua, with flowers in her hair but no underwear and a steadily growing crowd of onlookers below, would take some beating, but still. “Come on, come on, come—”
Now, from the other direction, she heard the chanting, and grinned. The Sisters were always on time. She heard their feet now, the regular tramping blotting out the shouting of Pombrine’s guards and the wailing of a woman temporarily deafened by the fireworks. Louder the feet, louder the heavenly song, and the procession passed the garden, the women all in white, all hooded, lit candles held stiffly before them, ghostly in the gloom as they marched by in unison.
“What a priestess,” Shev whispered to herself, and threaded from the garden, jostling her way into the midst of the procession. She tipped her candle to the left, so its wick touched that of her neighbor. The woman frowned across and Shev winked back.
“Give a girl a light, would you?”
With a fizzle it caught, and she fell into step, adding her own joyous note to the chant as they processed down Caldiche street and over the Fintine bridge, the masked revelers parting respectfully to let them through. Pombrine’s place, and the increasingly frantic searching of his guards, and the furious growling of a pair of savagely arguing Northmen dwindled sedately into the mists behind.
It was dark by the time she slipped silently through her own open window, past the stirring drapes, and crept around her comfortable chair. Carcolf was asleep in it, one strand of yellow hair fluttering around her mouth as she breathed. She looked young with eyes closed and face relaxed, shorn of that habitual sneer she had for everything. Young, and very beautiful. Bless this fashion for tight trousers! The candle cast a faint glow in the downy hairs on her cheek, and Shev felt a need to reach up and lay her palm upon that face, and stroke her lips with her thumb—
But, lover of risks though she was, that would have been too great a gamble. So instead she shouted, “Boo!”
Carcolf leaped up like a frog from boiling water, crashed into a table and nearly fell, lurched around, eyes wide. “Bloody hell,” she muttered, taking a shuddering breath. “Do you have to do that?”
“Have to? No.”
Carcolf pressed one hand to her chest. “I think you might have opened the stitches.”
“You unbelievable baby.” Shev pulled the robe over her head and tossed it away. “It barely broke the skin.”
“The loss of your good opinion wounds me more deeply than any blade.”
Shev unhooked the belts that held her thief’s tools, unbuckled her climbing pads, and started to peel off her black clothes, acting as if it was nothing to her whether Carcolf watched or not. But she noted with some satisfaction that it was not until she was slipping on a clean gown that Carcolf finally spoke, and in a voice slightly hoarse besides.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“It has always been a dream of mine to see a Sister of the White disrobe before my eyes, but I was rather wondering whether you found the—”
Shev tossed over the package and Carcolf snatched it smartly from the air.
“I knew I could rely on you.” Carcolf felt a little dizzy with relief, not to mention more than a little tingly with desire. She had always had a weakness for dangerous women.
Bloody hell, she really was turning into her father . . .
“You were right,” said Shev, dropping into the chair she had so recently frightened Carcolf out of. “Pombrine had it.”
“I bloody knew it! That slime! So hard to find a good expendable decoy these days.”
“It’s as if you can’t trust anyone.”
“Still. No harm done, eh?” And Carcolf lifted up her shirt and ever so carefully slid the package into the uppermost of her two cash belts.
It was Shev’s turn to watch, pretending not to as she poured herself a glass of wine. “What’s in the parcel?” she asked.
“It’s safer if I don’t tell you.”
“You’ve no idea, have you?”
“I’m under orders not to look,” Carcolf was forced to admit.
“Don’t you ever wonder, though? I mean, the more I’m ordered not to look, the more I want to.” Shev sat forward, dark eyes glimmering in a profoundly bewitching way, and for an instant Carcolf’s head was filled with an image of the pair of them rolling across the carpet together, laughing as they ripped the package apart between them.
She dismissed it with an effort. “A thief can wonder. A courier cannot.”
“Could you be any more pompous?”
“It would require an effort.”
Shevslurped at her wine. “Well, it’s your package. I suppose.”
“No it isn’t. That’s the whole point.”
“I think I preferred you when you were a criminal.”
“Lies. You relish the
opportunity to corrupt me.”
“True enough.” Shev wriggled down the chair so her long, brown legs slid out from the hem of her gown. “Why don’t you stay a while?” One searching foot found Carcolf’s ankle, and slid gently up the inside of her leg, and down, and up. “And be corrupted?”
Carcolf took an almost painful breath. “Damn, but I’d love to.” The strength of the feeling surprised her, and caught in her throat, and for the briefest moment she almost choked on it. For the briefest moment, she almost tossed the package out of the window, and sank down before the chair, and took Shev’s hand and shared tales she had never told from when she was a girl. For the briefest moment. Then she was Carcolf again, and she stepped smartly away and let Shev’s foot clomp down on the boards. “But you know how it is, in my business. Have to catch the tide.” And she snatched up her new coat and turned as she pulled it on, giving herself time to blink back any hint of tears.
“You should take a holiday.”
“With every job I say so, and when every job ends, I find I get . . . twitchy.” Carcolf sighed as she fastened the buttons. “I’m just not made for sitting still.”
“Huh.”
“Let’s not pretend you’re any different.”
“Let’s not pretend. I’ve been considering a move myself. Adua, perhaps, or back to the South—”
“I’d much rather you stayed,” Carcolf found she had said, then tried to pass it off with a carefree wave. “Who else would get me out of messes when I come here? You’re the one person in this whole damn city I trust.” That was a complete lie, of course, she didn’t trust Shev in the least. A good courier trusts no one, and Carcolf was the very best. But she was a great deal more comfortable with lies than with truth.
She could see in Shev’s smile that she understood the whole situation perfectly. “So sweet.” She caught Carcolf’s wrist as she turned to leave with a grip that was not to be ignored. “My money?”
“How silly of me.” Carcolf handed her the purse.
Without even looking inside, Shev said, “and the rest.”
Carcolf sighed once more, and tossed the other purse on the bed, gold flashing in the lamplight as coins spilled across the white sheet. “You’d be upset if I didn’t try.”
“Your care for my delicate feelings is touching. I daresay I’ll see you next time you’re here?” she asked as Carcolf put her hand on the lock.
“I shall count the moments.”
Just then she wanted a kiss more than anything, but she was not sure her resolve was strong enough for only one, so though it was a wrench, she blew a kiss instead and pulled the door to behind her. She slipped swiftly across the shadowed court and out the heavy gate onto the street, hoping it was a while before Shevedieh took a closer look at the coins inside the first purse. Perhaps a cosmic punishment was thus incurred, but it was worth it just for the thought of the look on her face.
The day had been a bloody fiasco, but she supposed it could have been a great deal worse. She still had ample time to make it to the ship before they lost the tide. Carcolf pulled up her hood, wincing at the pain from that freshly stitched scratch, and from that entirely unreasonable ulcer, and from that cursed chafing seam, then strode off through the misty night, neither too fast nor too slow, entirely inconspicuous.
Damn, but she hated Sipani!
First published in Rogues,
edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, 2014.
About the Author
Joe Abercrombie is one of the fastest-rising stars in fantasy today, acclaimed by readers and critics alike for his tough, spare, no-nonsense approach to the genre. He’s probably best-known for his First Law trilogy, the first novel of which, The Blade Itself, was published in 2006; it was followed in subsequent years by Before They Are Hanged and Last Argument of Kings. He’s also written the related First Law World trilogy, Best Served Cold, The Heroes, and Red Country. His most recent novels are a new trilogy, Half a King, Half the World, and Half a War. Coming up is a collection, Sharp Ends. In addition to writing, Abercrombie is also a freelance film editor, and lives and works in London.
A Heap of Broken Images
Sunny Moraine
“Odette nodded at my notebook, where I was writing as she spoke. ‘Do the people in America really want to read this? People tell me to write these things down, but it’s written inside of me. I almost hope for the day when I can forget.’ ”
―Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families
“Are you going to take a picture?”
I ask it because it seems like a sensible question. The shorter of the two humans has brought his camera with him and since we entered the houses of the dead he has held it in his hands and a little close to his chest, as though he’s afraid that someone might snatch it away from him, or that he might drop it and it might shatter.
I ask it because I am their guide and it is my task to show them what they ask to see, and I am wondering, now, if they really wish to see this.
The shorter man—I have been told that his name is Jacob but the syllables feel strange in my mouth and I have to struggle with them a little—looks at me as though he is only just now seeing me. He nods once. He lifts the camera to his face and I hear the soft whir of its processor. And then, as though he performed the act entirely for my benefit, he shows me the image he has captured.
Here: It’s not well framed. He clearly gave little thought for the arrangement of it. Half a skull takes up the lower left-hand corner, pushed most of the way under a desk. The fractured curve of a broken spine extends into the middle-foreground, disappearing into a fold of old blue cloth from which ribs protrude. On the right, a severed arm stretches into the frame as if reaching for the skull and the spine. It clearly isn’t from the same corpse. It’s much too small. Draped and tangled over everything, heavy flowers in brilliant red and pink, green vines, and dried skin of no color whatsoever.
There are other bodies. Look closer and you will see that the floor is nothing but bodies. That you can’t see the floor at all. That you cannot, in fact, be absolutely sure that the floor is even there. If you walk into this room, you’ll walk on the dead. So we don’t invite them to walk inside, and without invitation they never do. We all stand in the doorway and I deliver the information I have to share about this place, and then there is silence.
I feel their discomfort. I was raised in the jodenja klimenji—the Way of Welcoming. It is our highest calling to give comfort to a guest, to put them at ease. But it is also our highest calling to give them whatever they ask for, within reason. And if they ask to come here, I cannot do anything for what I know they must feel. I cannot unmurder the murdered. I cannot change who did the murdering. And I cannot tell them how they should feel, a generation after the fact. There are things I wish I could say, things I would say if everything were different, but I also cannot change who I am. So we stand in silence, and the dead are also silent, and I wait for one of the living to speak.
The first sun is low and tosses our shadows out in a long diagonal across the room. The second sun is rising behind us. The light is shifting and strange, and it makes it difficult to be sure just how big the room is. How much death it can hold.
The taller one—I think his name is Aaron—points to a stack of crates in one corner next to a row of bookshelves. Another corpse is slumped against it, scraps of dried paper skin, the head gone. “Shairoven, what are those?”
“Goods,” I say. “Clothes, probably. Foodstuffs. They thought that they could buy their lives from their attackers. You must understand that such things are not strange to us; in our culture there is an idea of a blood price. Life has monetary value.”
“Why didn’t the colonists take them?”
I shrug—it is a very human gesture but I can’t help it. Five full cycles as a klimenjiani—what I have heard them call a tour guide—and I have adopted many human habits. “There are many things about what was done in t
hose months that we do not understand.”
What I do not say is that I suspect that the killing distracted them. It must have been very distracting. It must have been very tiring, also. It’s said that all throughout the time of killing, the rank and file were urged on by overseers of death with bullhorns and amplifiers. They were given rhythms by which to work, to make it easier for their bodies to move without the burden of thought.
I have tried to understand this. When I run I think of the beating of my own heart. But then I think of blood and falling bodies and my imagination fails me. How can they be the same?
How could they have done it? Were they blind?
The flowers nod in the breeze that comes in through the open windows. It should not be as lovely as it is—all those long bones. The large, elongated skulls. The vines and the blossoms. Graceful and clean. Even the faded blood on the walls looks like an abstract mural in dark swoops and swirls. I have heard the humans say that our people are beautiful. I wonder if that is a truth that is not always true.
“We should go,” I say gently. At my sides, my hands are clenched into fists. I hope they will not see. It would shame me. “You will be late for supper at the hotel.”
Much like the killing itself, it remains a puzzle to us, that the humans come to Lejshethra for this. Why they come. Why they want to look. These are not their dead. They pay no respects, they make no offerings. They just stare with their tiny eyes, and I can never say for sure what they’re thinking.
They have told us that there are entire pathways of schooling back on Earth that deal with nothing but the killing, that try to pull it apart like a corpse and understand how it happened, why so much murderous hate could arise so suddenly in the human colonists. I have heard that they believe that it was not sudden. That it built over years, that there was tension where my people could perceive none. Two cycles ago when I first heard of this I took it to my body-sire and told her of it, and I think I was lucky to escape the back of her hand.