“Not Cudber. He wouldn’t.”
“Not even when they put the irons to his daughter?” Grise had nothing to say to that, shock gradually wiping the anger off her face. “Whatever names they knew, they’ll have given up. Lots of other names, too, ’cause once you run out of truth, you start spilling lies.”
Moor shook his big lump of a head. “Not Reed.”
“Yes, Reed, Cudber, his daughter, yes, you or me or anyone. The Inquisition’ll come for whoever they knew about, and soon. So who did they know about?”
“Just me.” Sibalt looked at her calm and level. “I made sure of it.”
“Then you have to get out of Adua. For your sake, for the sake of the cause.”
“Who the fuck are you to give orders?” Grise leaned down over her with a stabbing finger. “You’re newest here!”
“So maybe I’m thinking most clearly.” Vick let her hand lie on her belt buckle where her brass knuckles were hidden. She didn’t rate Grise much of a threat, for all her bulk. People who shout a lot tend to take a while working up to more. But Vick was ready to put her down if she had to. And when Vick put someone down, she made sure they went down hard.
Lucky for Grise, Sibalt laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and eased her back. “Vick’s right. I have to get out of Adua. Just as soon as we strike our blow.” And Moor slid out a dirty paper and unrolled it across the table. A map of the city. Sibalt tapped a spot in the Three Farms. Not far from where they’d started building that new canal. “The Hill Street Foundry.”
“Though Hill Street’s gone,” said Moor, in that plodding way he had, “since they pulled it down to build the Foundry.”
“They’re fitting new engines there,” said Sibalt.
Tallow nodded. “I passed ’em on the way. Engines that’ll put two hundred men and women out of work, I hear.”
“And what?” muttered Vick, frowning. “We’re going to break ’em?”
“We’re going to blow the lot to hell,” said Grise. “With Gurkish Fire.”
Vick blinked at her. “How much have you got?”
“Three barrels,” said Sibalt. “That be enough, you think?”
“In the right places, maybe. You know how to use it?”
“Not really.” Sibalt grinned at her. “But you do. Used it in the mines, didn’t you? In Angland.”
“I did.” Vick narrowed her eyes at him. “Where did you get it?”
“What do you care?” snapped Grise.
“I care that your source is reliable. I care that it’s going to work. I care that it’s not going to pop too early and shower bits of us all over the Three Farms.”
“Well, you can stop worrying, ’cause it comes straight from Valbeck,” said Grise, smug as a king’s tailor. “Straight from the Weaver himself—”
“Shush,” hissed Sibalt. “Best if no one knows more than they have to. Don’t worry, the powder’s good.”
Grise slapped her fist into her palm. “A blow for the common man, eh, brothers?”
“Aye,” said Moor, slowly nodding his big head. “We’ll strike a spark.”
“And the spark’ll start a fire,” said Sibalt.
Vick sat forward. “If we do this, people get hurt. People get killed.”
“Only those that deserve it,” said Grise.
“Once the killing starts, it rarely sticks to those who deserve it.”
“You scared?”
“If you’re not scared, you’re mad or stupid, and there’s no place for either on a task like this. We need to plan every detail.”
“I got a job there labouring,” said Moor. “I can map it out.”
“Good,” said Vick. “More plans mean fewer risks.”
Grise sneered her disgust. “All you ever fucking talk about is the risks!”
“Someone needs to. This has to be something we choose, not something we blunder into ’cause we’re sore and can’t think of anything better to do with ourselves.” She looked around those four faces, strange in the flickering light of the cellar. “This is what you all want, is it?”
“It’s what I fucking want,” said Grise.
“It’s what I want,” said Sibalt.
“Aye,” rumbled Moor.
She looked at Tallow last. He couldn’t be older than fifteen himself, and might only have had three good meals in that whole stretch. Reminded her of her brother, a little. Those skinny wrists sticking from frayed sleeves just a touch too short. Trying to put a hard face on but beaming fears and doubts out like a lighthouse through those big damp eyes.
“There’s a Great Change coming,” he said, finally. “That’s what I want.”
Vick smiled a grim smile. “Well, if I learned one thing in the camps, it’s that talking isn’t enough.” She realised she’d closed her fingers to make a fist. “You want a thing, you have to fight for it.”
She stayed straddling him for a while afterwards, his chest pressed against hers with each snatched breath. Kissing at his lip. Biting at it. Then with a grunt, she slid off him, rolled onto her side next to him on the narrow bed, dragging the blankets up over her bare shoulder. It felt chill now they were done, frost showing in the smudges of lamplight at the corners of the little window.
They both lay silent, he staring at the ceiling, she staring at him. Outside the carts clattered by, and the traders offered their wares, and that drunk on the corner roared his meaningless pain and fury at nothing and no one. At everything and everyone.
Finally, he turned towards her. “Sorry I couldn’t step in with Grise—”
“I can look after myself.”
Sibalt snorted. “No one better. I’m not sorry ’cause I think you need my help. I’m sorry I can’t give it. Better if they don’t know we’re…” He slipped his hand up onto her ribs, rubbing at that old burn on her side with his thumb, trying to dig up the right word for what they were. “Together.”
“In here, we’re together.” She jerked her head towards the warped door in the warped frame. “Out there…” Out there, everyone stood on their own.
He frowned at the little gap of coarse sheet between them as if it was a great divide that could never be crossed. “Sorry I can’t tell you where the Gurkish Fire comes from.”
“Best if no one knows more than they have to.”
“It’ll work.”
“I believe you,” she said. “I trust you.” Vick trusted no one. She’d learned that in the camps, along with how to lie. Learned to lie so well, she could take one tiny sliver of truth and beat it out, like the goldsmiths beating a nugget of gold into leaf, till it could cover a whole field of lies. Sibalt didn’t doubt her for a moment.
“I wish I’d met you sooner,” he said. “Things might be different.”
“You didn’t and they’re not. So let’s take what we can get, eh?”
“By the Fates, you’re a hard case, Vick.”
“We’re none of us hard as we seem.” She slipped her hand around the back of his head, through the dark hair scattered with grey, held it firm, looked him in the eye and asked one more time. “You’re sure, Collem? You’re sure this is what you want?”
“Don’t really matter what we want, does it? Bigger things than our future to consider. We can strike a spark that’ll set a fire burning. One day, there’ll be a Great Change, Vick. And folk like you and me will get our say.”
“A Great Change,” she said, trying to sound like she believed it.
“When this is done, I’ll have to get out of Adua.”
She kept silent. Best thing to do when you’ve nothing to say.
“You should come with me.”
She should’ve kept silent on that, too. Instead, she found she’d asked, “Where would we go?”
A grin spread across his face. Seeing it made her smile. Her first in a while. Hardly felt like her mouth should bend that way.
The frame groaned as he reached down beside the bed and came back up with a battered old book. The Life of Dab Sweet by Marin Glanhorm.<
br />
“This again?” asked Vick.
“Aye, this.” It fell open at an etching across both pages. As though it was often opened there. A rider alone, staring out across a sweep of endless grass and endless sky. Sibalt held that drawing at arm’s length as if it was a view spread out in front of them, whispered the words like a magic spell. “The Far Country, Vick.”
“I know,” she grunted. “It says under the picture.”
“Grass for ever.” He was half-joking. But that made him half-serious. “A place where you can go as far as your dreams can take you. A place where you can make yourself anew. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Aye, I guess.” She realised she’d reached towards that drawing with one hand, as if she might touch anything there but paper, and snatched it back. “But it’s a made-up drawing in a book full o’ lies, Collem.”
“I know,” he said, with a sad smile, like thinking about it was a fun game to play, but just a game. He flipped the book shut and tossed it back down on the boards. “Guess there comes a time you have to give up on what you want and make the best of what you’re given.”
She rolled over, pressing her back into his belly. They both lay silent, warm under the blankets, while the world went on outside, and the light of the furnaces across the street flickered orange beyond the misty windowpanes.
“When we strike that spark,” he murmured, voice loud in her ear, “it’ll change everything.”
“No doubt,” said Vick.
Another silence. “It’ll change everything between us.”
“No doubt,” said Vick, and she slipped her fingers through his and pressed his hand tight to her chest. “So let’s take what we can get. If I learned one thing in the camps, it’s that you shouldn’t look too far ahead.”
Chances are you’ll see nothing good there.
The Answer to Your Tears
Sometimes you wake from a nightmare, and there’s a wonderful wash of relief as you realise the horrors you saw were just ghosts, and you’re safe in your own warm bed.
For Rikke, it happened the other way around.
She’d been dreaming of something happy, somewhere happy, burrowing into feathers with a smile on her face. Then she felt the cold, creeping into her heart however tight she huddled. Then the aching in her sore legs as she shifted on the pitiless ground. Then the hunger, nagging at her gut, and it came back in a rush where she was, and she woke with a groan.
It was with great reluctance she opened her eyes, saw the cold, grey sky through branches creaking with the wind, and something swinging—
“Shit!” she squawked, scrambling from her clammy cloak. A man had been hanged from the tree right above where she’d been sleeping. If she’d stood up tall, she could’ve touched his dangling feet. When she lay down, it’d been too dark to see her own hands, let alone a corpse hung overhead. But there was no missing him now.
“There’s a dead man,” Rikke squeaked, pointing a trembling finger.
Isern barely spared him a glance. “On balance, I’d rather be surprised by dead men than living. Here.” She pressed something into Rikke’s cold hand. A soggy heel of loaf and a handful of those horrible bitter berries that left your teeth purple. “Breakfast. Savour it, for that is all the food it has pleased the moon to give us.” She cupped her blue hand and her white and blew into them, ever so gently, like even breath was a resource to be rationed. “My da used to say you can see all the beauty in the world in the way a hanged man swings.”
Rikke bit off damp bread, chewed it in her sore mouth, eyes creeping back to that slowly turning body. “Can’t say I’m seeing it.”
“Nor me, I will admit.”
“Should we cut him down?”
“Doubt he’ll thank us.”
“Who is he?”
“Honestly, he’s not had much to say for himself. Could be one of your father’s men, hanged by Stour Nightfall’s. Could be one of Stour Nightfall’s, hanged by your father’s. Not much difference now. The dead fight for no one.”
One of her father’s men? Had Rikke known him, then? How many folk she knew were killed, these last few days? She felt the ache of tears at the back of her nose, sniffed it up hard.
“How much more of this can we take?” And she knew her voice was getting shrill and cracked but couldn’t stop herself.
“Can I take?” asked Isern. “I was six when my da first sent me to cut arrows from the dead. I can take as much as there is. Can you take? If you fall down and can’t get up, we’ll have riddled out your limit. Until then…” She looked off through the trees, picking at her berry-stained teeth with a fingernail. “We can’t sit still. Nor make it up into the hills to my people. So we must find the Union, or your father’s men, and they’re all backing off towards the Whiteflow quick as goats before a wolf. We have to move faster than they are, and the enemy are between us and them, so the further we go, the more dangerous it gets. We’ll be marching for days, still. Weeks, even.”
Weeks of marching through bog and bramble, dodging bitter enemies, eating worms and sleeping under hanged men. Rikke felt her shoulders slump.
She thought of her father’s hall in Uffrith. The faces carved in the rafters and the meat dripping gravy into the firepit. The hounds begging with their sad eyes and their chins on her knee. The songs sung of high deeds done in the sunny valleys of the past. Her father getting dewy-eyed at every mention of Threetrees, and Thunderhead, and Black Dow, even, raising his cup when a voice rumbled out the name of the Bloody-Nine.
She thought of the Named Men ranged along both sides of the firepit. All smiling at some joke of hers. Some song of hers. That Rikke, she’s a funny one. You wouldn’t want your own daughter wrong in the head, but she’s funny.
She thought of wandering comfortably drunk into her room, and her own warm cot with the blanket her mother made, and the pretty things she’d found placed nicely on the shelf, and the pretty clothes all dry and beautiful in the chest.
She thought of the steep streets of Uffrith, cobbles shining from the rain, and the boats on the grey harbour, and the people gabbling in the market, and the fish sliding glistening from the nets as the catch came in.
She knew she’d been unhappy there. She’d said it so often, even she was tired of her moaning. Now she rubbed at the torn and stinking fur on her cloak and wondered how she could’ve been so hurt by cold words and sharp looks. Seemed foolish and childish and weak. But that’s what growing up is, maybe. Realising what a fucking arse you’ve been.
By the dead, she wanted to go back to the safe and warm, and instead of being hunted just be scorned, but Rikke had seen Uffrith burn. It might be that the Long Eye can peek into the past, but of one thing there’s no doubt—you can never go there. The world she’d known was gone and wasn’t coming back any more than that dead man dangling, and the world she was left with was bitter chill and a mean bully besides.
She couldn’t help herself. So hungry and cold and sore and scared and with more of the same the best she could hope for. She stood with her numb hands dangling, and her shoulders shaking, and the tears silently trickled down her face and dripped from her nose and brought the faint taste of salt to her waggling lower lip.
She felt Isern step close. Put a gentle hand on her shoulder. Take her chin, and tip it up, and speak in a softer voice than she’d ever heard her use before. “D’you know what my da would say, whenever I cried?”
“No,” warbled Rikke, slobbery with snot.
With a sharp and shocking smack, Isern slapped her across the face.
Rikke blinked, jaw hanging open, putting one hand to her burning cheek. “What the—”
“That’s what he would say.” Isern shook her, hard. “And when that is the answer to your tears, you soon learn to stop mewling and attend to what has to be done.”
“Ow,” muttered Rikke, her whole face throbbing.
“Yes, you’ve had hardships. The sickness and the fits, and the being thought mad and blah, blah, blah. But you were al
so born with all your limbs and a fine set of teeth in your pretty face, the only child of a powerful chief, with no mother and a hall full of soft-headed old warriors doting upon you.”
“That’s not bloody fair—”
She gasped as Isern slapped her again, even harder, hard enough that salt blood joined salt tears on her lips.
“You are used to twisting the old men around your fingers. But if Black Calder gets his hands upon you, he will twist you around his. He will twist you until you are all broken apart and you will have no one but yourself to blame. You have been coddled, Rikke. You are soft as pig fat.” And that merciless finger poked Rikke painfully in her tit again. “Lucky for you, I am here, and I will pare the fat away and leave the iron which I see beneath well sharpened.” Poke, poke, in the same old bruise. “Lucky for you, because out here that softness will kill you, and that iron can save you.” Poke, poke. “It may be just a needle now, but one day we might make a dagger—”
“You cunt!” screeched Rikke and punched Isern in the mouth. It was a decent punch, snapping her head back and sending specks of spit flying. Rikke had always reckoned herself weak. More a weeper than a fighter. Now a fury she never knew she had boiled up in her. It was a fine, strong feeling. The first flicker of warmth she’d felt in days.
She raised her fist again but Isern caught her wrist, caught her hair, too, and wrenched her head back, made her squawk as she was pinned against the tree with fearsome strength.
“There’s that iron!” Isern grinned, showing teeth blood- as well as berry-stained. “Perhaps it is a dagger after all. One day, we might forge a sword from it that strong men will cower at and the moon itself will smile upon.” She let go of Rikke’s hair. “Now, are you warmed up and ready to dance with me westwards?” Her eyes rolled upwards to the dangling body. “Or would you prefer to dance beside our friend?”
Rikke took a long, ragged breath and blew it smoking out into the chill air. Then she held up her empty hands, one now painfully throbbing across the knuckles to add to her woes. “I’m all packed.”
Young Heroes
A Little Hatred Page 6