“Why do I need a house? I spend all my time in the saddle.”
“You’ve a big heart, Leo.” His mother squatted down before him. “Too big, I sometimes think.” Her pale hands looked tiny in his gauntleted fists, but they were the stronger then. “You have it in you to be a great man, but you cannot let yourself be swept off by whatever emotion blows your way. Battles may sometimes be won by the brave, but wars are always won by the clever. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” he whispered.
“Good. Give orders to leave the farm and pull back towards the west before Stour Nightfall arrives in force.”
“But if we fall back… Ritter died for nothing. If we fall back, how will that look?”
She stood. “Like womanly weakness and indecision, I hope. Then perhaps the rash heads on the Northmen’s side will prevail and pursue us with manly smiles on their manly faces, and when the king’s soldiers finally arrive, we’ll cut them to pieces on ground of our choosing.”
Leo blinked at the floor and felt the tears on his cheeks. “I see.”
She had her soft voice, now. “It was rash, it was reckless, but it was brave, and… for better or worse, men do look up to a certain kind of man. I won’t deny we all need something to cheer for. You gave Stour Nightfall a bloody nose, and great warriors are quick to anger, and angry men make mistakes.” She pressed something into his limp hand. The standard with Nightfall’s wolf on it. “Your father would have been proud of your courage, Leo. Now make me proud of your judgement.”
He trudged to the tent flap, shoulders drooping under armour that felt three times heavier than when he arrived. Ritter was gone, and never coming back, and had left his weak-chinned wife weeping at the fireside. Killed by his own loyalty, and Leo’s vanity, and Leo’s carelessness, and Leo’s arrogance.
“By the dead.” He tried to rub the tears away with the back of his hand but couldn’t do it with his gauntlets on. He used the hem of the captured standard instead.
In battle, a man discovers who he truly is.
He froze as he stepped into the daylight. What looked like a whole regiment had gathered in a crescent, looking up towards his mother’s tent.
“A cheer for Leo dan Brock!” roared Glaward, catching Leo’s wrist in his ham of a fist and hoisting it high. “The Young Lion!”
“The Young Lion!” bellowed Barniva as a rousing cheer went up. “Leo dan Brock!”
“I tried to warn you.” Jurand leaned over to mutter in his ear. “She give you a roasting?”
“Nothing I didn’t deserve.” But Leo managed to smile a little, too. Just for the sake of morale. No one could deny they all needed something to cheer for.
It grew louder as he raised that rag of a standard, and Antaup swaggered forwards, throwing up his arms for more noise. One of the men, no doubt drunk already, dragged down his trousers and showed his bare arse to the North, to widespread approval. Then he fell over, to widespread laughter. Glaward and Barniva caught Leo and bundled him high into the air on their shoulders while Jurand planted his hands on his hips and rolled his eyes.
The rain had slackened off and the sun shone on polished armour, and sharpened blades, and smiling faces.
It was hard not to feel much better.
Guilt Is a Luxury
The snow had all melted and left the world cold and comfortless. The icy slop that stood for ground seeped into Rikke’s boots and spattered up her sodden trousers. Cold dew dripped endlessly from the black branches, through her sopping hair, onto her soggy cloak and down her chafed back. The wet from above met the wet from below around her belt, which she’d been obliged to tighten on account of having hardly eaten anything in the three days since she killed a boy and watched her home burn.
At least it couldn’t get any worse. Or so she told herself.
“Would be a fine thing to be on a road,” she grumbled as she tried to tear her foot free of a tangle of clutching bramble and only succeeded in grazing herself worse.
Isern had an unnatural trick of finding only the dry parts of a bog to put her feet on. Rikke swore she could’ve danced across a pond on the lily pads and never got her feet wet. “Who else might be tiptoeing down the roads now, do we suppose?”
“Stour Nightfall’s men,” said Rikke, sulkily.
“Aye, and his uncle Scale Ironhand’s, and his father Black Calder’s. The thorns may scratch your downy-soft skin, but a lot shallower than their swords would.”
Rikke cursed as the clutching mud near sucked her boot right off. “We could make for some high ground, at least.”
Isern rubbed at the bridge of her nose like she never heard such folly. “Who else is having a high time on the high ground now, do you imagine?”
Rikke pushed her chagga pellet sourly from her top lip to her bottom. “Stour Nightfall’s scouts.”
“And Scale Ironhand’s, and Black Calder’s. And since they’re there, swarming on the roads and the hills like lice on a log, where should we be?”
Rikke slapped an insect dead on the greasy back of her hand. “Down here in the valley bottom, with the brambles, and the mud, and the bloody shitty biters.”
“It’s almost like an unfriendly army swarming over your land is an inconvenience in all kinds o’ ways. You’re used to reckoning the world your playground. Beset by dangers now, girl. Time to act like it.” Isern slipped on through the thicket as quick and silent as a snake, leaving Rikke to struggle after, pointlessly cursing.
She liked to think of herself as quite the rugged outdoorswoman, but in this company she was a towny oaf. Isern-i-Phail knew all the ways, that was the rumour. Even better’n her daddy had. Rikke had learned more from watching her the last couple of weeks than she had from that fool Union tutor in Ostenhorm in a year. How to build a shelter from ferns. How to set rabbit traps, even if they hadn’t worked. How to reckon your course from the way the moss grew on the tree trunks. How to tell a man from an animal in the forest just by their footfalls.
Some folk said Isern was a witch, and no doubt she’d a witchy look and a witch’s temper, but even she couldn’t magic food out of rocks and bogwater at the arse-end of winter. Sadly.
As the sun sank behind the hills and left the valleys colder than ever, they wriggled like worms into a crack between boulders, pressed together for warmth, while outside the wind picked up and the slow drizzle turned to a stinging sleet.
“Reckon you could find a stick in this whole valley dry enough to take a flame?” whispered Rikke, rubbing her cold-fish hands together in her smoking breath then wedging them in her pits where, rather than getting warmed themselves, they only served to chill her whole body.
Isern hunched over the pack that held their dwindling supplies like a miser over his gold. “Even if I could, the smoke might bring hunters.”
“Guess we’ll stay cold, then,” said Rikke in a small voice.
“That’s the birth of spring for you, when your enemies have stole your daddy’s hall so you’ve got no nice warm firepit to curl up beside.”
Rikke knew what folk said about her, and maybe her head didn’t have the right parts in the right places, but she’d always had a sharp eye for things. So in spite of the gloom and Isern’s nimble fingers, Rikke saw the hillwoman only ate half as much as she handed over. She saw it, and was thankful for it, and wished she had the bones to insist on fair shares, but she was just so damn hungry. She stuffed her shred of dry meat down so quickly she swallowed her chagga pellet too without even noticing.
While she licked the wondrous taste of stale bread from her teeth, she found she was thinking of that lad she shot. That bit of dyed cloth around his scrawny neck, like mothers give sons to keep the cold off. That hurt, confused look he’d had. The same look she used to have, maybe, when the other children laughed at her twitching.
“I killed that lad.” And she sniffed up a noseful of cold snot and spat it away.
“Aye.” Isern trimmed off a chagga pellet and stuck it behind her lip. “You kill
ed him all to bits, and robbed everyone who knew him, and cut all the good he might ever do out of the world.”
Rikke blinked. “Well, you’re the one split his skull!”
“That was a mercy. He’d have drowned on your arrow for sure.”
Rikke found she was rubbing at her back, trying to get her thumb up to where that shaft had been, but she couldn’t quite reach. No more than that boy had been able to. “Don’t reckon he deserved it, really.”
“Deserving won’t make much difference to an arrow. The best defence against arrows is not a life nobly lived but to be the one who shoots them, d’you see?” Isern sat back against her, smelling of sweat and earth and chewed chagga. “They were your father’s enemies. Our enemies. Wasn’t as if there was any other choice.”
“Not sure I even made a choice.” Rikke picked at her sore fingernails as she picked at the memory, over and over. “Just fumbled the string. Just a stupid mistake.”
“You could as well name it a happy accident.”
Rikke hunched into her cold cloak and her bleak mood. “No justice, is there? For him or for me. Just a world that looks the other way and doesn’t care a shit about either one of us.”
“Why should it?”
“I killed that lad.” Rikke’s foot twitched, and the twitch became a quiver up her leg, and the quiver became a shiver all over. “However I turn it around… just doesn’t feel right.”
She felt Isern’s hand firm on her shoulder, and was grateful for it. “If killing folk ever starts to feel right, you’ve a worse kind of problem. Guilt can sting, but you should be thankful for it.”
“Thankful?”
“Guilt is a luxury reserved for those still breathing and with no unbearable pain, cold or hunger demanding all their fickle attention. Long as guilt’s your big problem, girl…” Rikke saw the faint gleam of Isern’s teeth in the gathering darkness. “Things can’t be that bad.”
She slapped Rikke’s thigh and gave a witchy cackle, and maybe there was some magic in it after all because Rikke cracked her first smile in a day or two, and that made her feel just a bit better. Your best shield is a smile, her father always said.
“Why haven’t you just left me behind?” she asked.
“I gave my word to your da.”
“Aye, but everyone says you’re the most untrustworthy bitch in the whole North.”
“No one should know better than you what the things everyone says are worth. Truth is, I only care about keeping my word to folk I like. I seem untrustworthy because there are only seven of those outside the hills.” She made a fist of her tattooed hand, trembling tight. “To those seven, I am a rock.”
Rikke swallowed. “You like me, then?”
“Meh.” Isern opened her blue fist and shook out the fingers with a clicking of knuckles. “About you, I remain to be convinced, but I like your father and I gave him my word. That I’d try to put an end to your fits and coax your Long Eye open and bring you back to him still breathing. The small matter of an invasion may have nudged him out of Uffrith, but the commitment still stands, far as I’m concerned, wherever Stour Nightfall’s bastards might’ve driven him off to.” Her eyes flickered to Rikke, cunning as a fox that sees the coop unguarded. “But I’ll admit I’ve a selfish reason, too, which is a good thing for you, since selfish reasons are the only reasons you should trust.”
“What reason?”
Isern opened her eyes very wide so they bulged from her filthy face. “Because I know there’s a better North waiting. A North free of the grip of Scale Ironhand, and the one who pulls his strings, Black Calder, and the one who pulls his strings even. A North free for everyone to choose their own way.” Isern leaned close in the darkness. “And your Long Eye will pick out our path to it.”
Keeping Score
Sparks showered into the night, the heat a constant pressure on Savine’s smiling face. Beyond the yawning doorway, straining bodies and straining machinery were rendered devilish by the glow of molten metal. Hammers clattered, chains rattled, steam hissed, labourers cursed. The music of money being made.
One-sixth of the Hill Street Foundry, after all, belonged to her.
One of the six great sheds was her property. Two of the twelve looming chimneys. One in every six of the new machines spinning inside, of the coals in the great heaps shovelled in the yard, of the hundreds of twinkling panes of glass that faced the street. Not to mention one-sixth part of the ever-increasing profits. A flood of silver to put His Majesty’s mint to shame.
“Best not to loiter, my lady,” murmured Zuri, fires gleaming in her eyes as she glanced about the darkened street.
She was right, as always. Most young ladies of Savine’s acquaintance would have come over faint at the suggestion of visiting this part of Adua without a company of soldiers in attendance. But those who wish to occupy the heights of society must be willing to dredge the depths from time to time, when they see opportunities glitter in the filth.
“On we go,” said Savine, boot heels squelching as she followed their link-boy’s bobbing light into the maze of buildings. Narrow houses with whole families wedged into every room leaned together, a spider’s web of flapping washing strung between, laden carts rumbling beneath and showering filth to the rooftops. Where whole blocks had not been cleared to make way for the new mills and manufactories, the crooked lanes reeked of coal smoke and woodsmoke, blocked drains and no drains at all. It was a borough heaving with humanity. Seething with industry. And, most importantly, boiling over with money to be made.
Savine was by no means the only one who saw it. It was payday, and impromptu merchants swarmed about the warehouses and forges, hoping to lighten the labourers’ purses as they spilled out after work, selling small pleasures and meagre necessities. Selling themselves, if they could only find a buyer.
There were others hoping to lighten purses by more direct means. Grubby little cutpurses weaving through the crowds. Footpads lurking in the darkness of the alleys. Thugs slouching on the corners, keen to collect on behalf of the district’s many moneylenders.
Risks, perhaps, and dangers, but Savine had always loved the thrill of a gamble, especially when the game was rigged in her favour. She had long ago learned that at least half of everything is presentation. Seem a victim, soon become one. Seem in charge, people fall over themselves to obey.
So she walked with a swagger, dressed in the dizzy height of fashion, lowering her eyes for no one. She walked painfully erect, although Zuri’s earlier heaving on the laces of her corset gave her little choice. She walked as if it was her street—and indeed she did own five decaying houses further down, packed to their rotten rafters with Gurkish refugees paying twice the going rent.
Zuri was a great reassurance on one side, Savine’s beautifully wrought short steel a great reassurance on the other. Many young ladies had been affecting swords since Finree dan Brock caused a sensation by wearing one to court. Savine found that nothing lent one confidence like a length of sharpened metal close to hand.
The link-boy had stopped at a particularly wretched building, holding his torch up to the peeling sign above its lintel.
“This really the place?” he asked.
Savine gathered her skirts so she could squat beside him and look in his dirt-smeared face. She wondered if he sponged the muck on as artfully as her maids did her powder, to arouse just the right amount of sympathy. Clean children need no charity, after all.
“This is the place. Our heartfelt thanks for your guidance.” And Zuri slipped a coin into Savine’s gloved hand so she could hold it out.
She was not at all above sentimental displays of generosity. The whole point of squeezing one’s partners in private was so they could do the squeezing in public. Savine, meanwhile, could smile ever so sweetly, and toss coins to an urchin or two, and appear virtuous without the slightest damage to her bottom line. When it comes to virtue, after all, appearances are everything.
The boy stared at the silver as though it was some
legendary beast he had heard of but never hoped to see. “For me?”
She knew that in her button and buckle manufactory in Holsthorm, smaller and probably dirtier children were paid a fraction as much for a long day’s hard labour. The manager insisted little fingers were best suited to little tasks, and cost only little wages, too. But Holsthorm was far away, and things in the distance seem very small. Even the sufferings of children.
“For you.” She did not go as far as ruffling his hair, of course. Who knew what might be living in it?
“Such a nice boy,” said Zuri, watching him hurry away into the gloom with the coin in one fist and his sputtering torch in the other.
“They all are,” said Savine. “When you have something they want.”
“None more blessed, my scripture-teacher once declared, than those who light the way for others.”
“Was that the one who fathered a child on one of his other pupils?”
“That’s him.” Zuri’s black brows thoughtfully rose. “So much for spiritual instruction.”
The grimy ale-hall fell silent as Savine swept in, as if some exotic jungle beast had wandered off the street.
Zuri whipped out a cloth and wiped down a vacant section of the counter, then, as Savine sat, she slipped out the pin and whisked away her hat without disturbing a hair. She kept it close to her chest, which was prudent. Savine’s hat was probably worth more than this entire building, including the clientele. At a brief assay, they only reduced its value.
“Well, well.” The man behind the counter was easing forwards, wiping his hands on his stained apron and giving Savine a lingering look up and down. “I’m tempted to say this is no place for a lady like you.”
“We’ve only just met. You really have no idea what kind of lady I am. Why, you could be taking your life in your hands just talking to me.”
“Reckon I’m brave enough if you are.” By his squinty grin, he had somehow convinced himself he held some appeal to the fairer sex. “What’s your name?”
A Little Hatred Page 3