Watching the regulars dance for her made a nice change, she had to admit, and she wasn’t the least bit arsed if the bank turned to ashes, but there was a worry looming about who was going to pay for her broken door. And a bigger worry looming behind that one. If they burned all the regulars, who’d pay for anything tomorrow?
“The Great Change!” The squinty bastard caught Mally by the arm, painfully tight, almost dragged her over. Funny how, whenever men talked about freedom, they never really meant for the women. “What a day, eh?” he shrieked in her face, blasting her with foul breath.
“Aye,” she said, smiling as she twisted her arm free. “The Great Change.”
Was it a change for the better, though? That was her concern. Maybe she’d wake tomorrow and the world would suddenly have turned sane, and someone would’ve fixed her broken lock, too. She had her considerable doubts. But what could she do but smile through it and hope for the best? Least at that she had plenty of practice.
She saw Sparks watching her. Felt like she had to do something cruel, show she was one of them. The naked lawyer blundered past and she stuck out a boot and tripped him. He tumbled over, rolling in the dirt, and she pointed at him and howled with forced laughter.
She didn’t like it any, but a choice between getting hurt and doing the hurting weren’t no choice at all. She’d sat at the shitty end o’ that see-saw often enough.
“Up, pig!” someone snarled.
Randock staggered to his feet, clutching at his side, trying to hold up a weak hand and dance at the same time. He’d never been much of a dancer. Even with his clothes on. And he was exhausted now, sweating like a hog in spite of his nakedness, the old dyspepsia burning up his throat. But dyspepsia was the least of his worries.
That girl Mally had tripped him, he thought. Now she was pointing, screeching with laughter. He could not understand it. He had helped her, often. Financial assistance, from the good of his heart. That was why he kept coming here. To help these poor girls, driven into lives of debauchery by the harsh times. If they wished to express their natural gratitude, he would not demean them by refusing. He had a strong social conscience. And this was how they repaid him, the ingrate bitches. Fucking filthy whores, the lot of them!
He lumbered past the hill of documents they were heaping up around that poor fellow in the cheap suit, tied to a stake like some heretic by fanatics in the savage South. Perhaps there were some of Randock’s cases in the pyre, ready to be sent up in smoke. The waste of it. The folly! He had given his life to the law. More charity, on his part. He had sweated on behalf of his clients. So conscientious! You’re in good hands with Randock! He had built a reputation on it. Thus the thriving partnership of Zalev, Randock and Crun. Zalev died some years ago, of course, taken by the grip in that cold winter, but Randock wasn’t paying for a new sign just on his account, and Crun was away doing patents. Lot of money in patents these days.
With paper and ink one could level mountains, he had always said, if given the time and appropriate connections about the Courthouse. Nothing was stronger than the law! Now it seemed that fire was stronger still. Law alone, without enforcement, is just breath. He flinched as part of the bank’s roof sagged inwards, flames spurting up, sparks whirling. Never cross Valint and Balk, Zalev had told him the day he entered the law. Never. By the Fates, if they with all their wealth and secrets and power could be burned, what was safe? The fire was already spreading towards the narrow building where his own offices were located.
He had spent his life’s work on that firm. Built it up with his own hands. Well, his and Zalev’s and Crun’s, he supposed, but mostly his, since Zalev had died and Crun was concentrating on patents.
He lurched to a halt, wheezing, groaning, bending over with hands on knees as the horrible music sawed on, and the whores pointed and laughed and drank. The injustice! He came here to help these girls. He was their benefactor. Their patron. A father figure! Well, no, more a kindly uncle. He was loved in this neighbourhood. And now they mocked him while he blundered about naked. Like a sad bear he once saw with a travelling show.
Still, it could have been worse. It could have been him tied to the stake with all that legal kindling about his ankles. He put a hand over his mouth, trying to swallow his dyspepsia.
Someone hit him and he squealed in agony. A line of fire across his bare buttocks.
“Please!” he wheezed, holding up that desperate hand. “Please!”
A little fellow with a nasty squint leered at him, held up a coachman’s whip.
“Dance, you fat shit!” he snarled. “Or you’ll be the one in the fire!”
Randock danced.
“What a day!” screamed Moth, ’cause the Great Change had finally come and everything was turned upside down, and the folk who’d been on the bottom all their lives were suddenly on top, the scum made lords, and all the things he’d wanted but knew he’d never get he could just reach out and take. Who’d stop him? “What a day!”
And he lashed at the lawyer again with his whip and caught him across the thighs, made him stagger, fall on his knees, the fat bastard. Fat bastard who’d barely even looked sideways at him when he’d asked for a coin a few days before. Like he was an insect. Who was the insect now, eh? He knew ’em all. He saw ’em, even if they didn’t see him. He had a tally of all the slights they’d given him and today was the day to pay the bill.
“Dance, you fat shit!” And he kicked the lawyer in the jaw as he tried to stagger up and knocked him on his back, threw the whip down and snatched up a hammer in both hands, started beating at the statue again.
“Fuck yourself!” he snarled at it. Some king, some big man. “Not so big now!” He smashed a bit of the inscription away. He’d no idea what it said. There’d be no need for letters after the Great Change.
“Give me some o’ that!” Ripping a bottle from Framer’s hand while he was in the middle of trying to drink and making him spill spirits all over that stupid cap of his.
“You bastard,” said Framer, wiping his face, but Moth just laughed and took another swig. He saw a little girl in a doorway, watching at him. A little brown girl with great dark eyes, tear tracks glistening on her face.
He shoved the bottle in the air and laughed. “What a day!”
Hessel turned away from the madness in the square. It scared her too much. She shuffled back into the doorway, where her father was lying.
“Father,” she whispered, tugging at his arm. “Please wake up!”
He wobbled with her shaking, but he did not wake. One of his eyes was a little open, just a slit of white showing. But he did not wake.
Once when they were out walking in the public gardens in Bizurt, where the Emperor Solkun was said to have planted ten thousand palms, her father had told her it was always wise to carry a cloth, to keep oneself clean and presentable. She pulled hers out now, and licked it, and tried to dab the blood from his forehead, but the more she dabbed, the more there was. The cloth turned red with it. His grey hair turned black with it.
“Oh God,” she whispered as she dabbed, not sure if she was swearing or praying. In spite of the priests’ long efforts at instruction, she had never quite been able to tell the difference. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”
He had said things would be better here. Dawah was not safe any more. First, the emperor’s soldiers had been driven out of the town, and there was chaos, and that had been very bad. Then the Eaters had come, to bring back order, and that had been far worse. She had seen one of them, in the main street, at sunset. A terrible light had shone from it. She still saw it, in her dreams, the black eyes, and the empty smile, and the blood on its fine robes. So they had fled from Dawah. Her father had said things would be better here.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God…”
But things had not been better here. There was no work. People spat at them in the street. They had gone from one town to another, and the little money that had not been stolen from them by the sailors on the voyage had gradually lea
ked away. They had heard there was work in Valbeck, so they had banded together with a dozen other Kantics for safety on the road. It had been a hard journey, only to find there was no work in Valbeck, either. Not for pale faces, let alone for dark. People looked at them like they were rats. And now everything had gone mad. She did not understand what had happened. She did not even know who had hit her father, or why.
“Oh God, oh God…”
The priests said if she prayed every morning and every night and was pure within then good things would happen. She had prayed every night and every morning. Had she done it wrong? Was she rotten inside, that God should punish her?
“Oh God,” she whimpered, shaking her father’s shoulder. “Please wake up!”
She did not know what to do. There was no one here she knew. They had taken her father’s shoes. His shoes, God help her, his bare feet flopped out sideways, and she touched one of them gently with a trembling hand, tears in her eyes.
“Oh God,” she whispered. What should she do?
She heard scraping footsteps. Someone had edged around the wall into the doorway, hunched over in a ragged coat missing an arm, staring fearfully out into the square where figures writhed and lurched to the deranged music.
Hessel crouched, showing her teeth, not sure whether to fight or to cry. Sometimes, the priests had said, one must rely on the kindness of strangers.
“Please,” she said. It came out a desperate squeak.
The beggar spun about. It was a woman. A pale woman with a shaved head. She looked mad. Streaks of dried blood from a scab on her scalp, dark paint smeared from one staring, red-rimmed eye.
“My father… won’t wake up,” said Hessel, the unfamiliar words clumsy in her mouth.
“I’m sorry.” The woman’s bloody neck shifted as she swallowed. “There’s nothing I can do.”
“Please!”
“You have to be quiet!” hissed the woman, eyes sliding terrified towards the square.
“Please!” shouted Hessel, grabbing at her bare arm. “Please! Please!” She started to scream it, louder and louder, she could not stop herself. She was not even sure if she was saying it in the Union tongue or the Kantic.
The beggar pulled away, dragging Hessel after her.
“Please! Please! Please!”
“Shut your mouth!” shrieked the woman, and flung her against the wall, and Hessel heard her scramble away, out into the square.
She picked herself up, rubbing at the sore spot where her head had struck the stone. She crawled over to her father and touched him gently on the arm.
“Father,” she begged. “Please wake up.”
Something of Ours
Savine stumbled from the alleyway. Behind her, the child was still wailing.
The music had screeched to a halt. The dancing, too. Eyes turned towards her. Black eyes, glinting with flames in the darkness.
She saw the outline of the tall man with the tall hat, a burning torch in one hand, his other raised to point at her.
“Bring me that one!”
She fled, forcing her trembling legs to another effort, ducked down a side street, slid in filth, went over in the gutter and scrambled up again. She plunged past a staring old woman, through a court crammed between tiny houses, a great heap of ash and dung and bones piled in the midst, crawling with vermin.
Shouts behind her, jagged shouts and jagged laughter, slapping footfalls echoing off the peeling walls. She flung herself desperately at doors as she passed, locked, locked, locked, then one flew open and she tumbled through the guts of a squalid building.
A room with a sagging ceiling where rags were heaped, people stretched out sleeping. Drunk, husk-addled, half-dressed, mouths hanging heedlessly open, spilling drool. The stench was indescribable. Someone had broken a hole in the floor and used it for a privy, flies crawling. Savine retched as she staggered between the bodies, hand over her mouth, blundered through a door at the back and into an alleyway.
“There you are.” Two men ahead of her. She reeled away, boots skittering on the cobbles, and found herself facing a dead end. A blank wall of mouldy brick, not even a door to try. She slowly turned, breath crawling in her throat. They closed in with the cocky swagger of men who know they’ve won. One had an ugly squint and a stick with a nail through it. The other had a cap drawn low over a bent face.
“Get back!” hissed Savine, holding up her hand. It might have been more impressive had it not been trembling so badly.
“It’s a woman,” said Squinty, starting to grin.
The one with the cap peered down his bent nose at her coat, held tight over her sword. “What’re you hiding?”
“None of your business.” Savine tried to make her voice effortlessly confident, the way it used to be. Sound in command, you’re halfway to being there. It came out a quavering croak. But her accent was plain, even so.
Squinty’s smile spread further. “Not just a woman. A real lady.” And he slapped his stick gently into his palm, fingered at that nail through it. “Fallen on hard times?”
“Lot of ladies have, today,” said the one with the cap, easing forwards.
Savine shuffled back in a crouch, eyes darting between them. “I’m warning you—”
Squinty had turned thoughtful. “Might be it’s her.”
“Her? Who her?”
“Savine dan—”
“Shut your mouth!” she shrieked. Her eyes went wide. She realised she had run him neatly through the chest with her sword. A textbook lunge Bremer dan Gorst could have been proud of.
“Fuck,” said the one with the cap, stepping back, eyes wide.
Squinty gave a strangled cough, dropped his stick and pawed at his chest where the blade was. He tried to say something but had no breath.
She pulled the sword back and it sliced a deep gash through the side of his hand. Blood welled, a black stain spreading down his jacket.
The one with the cap reeled away and Savine darted forward, slashing him across the back of the thigh. She fumbled the sword and it caught him with the flat, didn’t even cut through his ragged trousers, but it was enough to make him stumble and he sprawled in the gutter.
“Please!” he squeaked, wriggling up onto his hands, staring over his shoulder, as scared as Savine had been a moment before. “Please!”
He gave a little whoop as the blade punched through his ribs, arched back, squirmed over, face twisting in agony. Savine knelt on top of him, trying to drag her sword free, but it was stuck right through him and he was wriggling, groaning, wriggling. She heard shouting up the street. Echoing footfalls.
She let go of her sword and ran, every muscle aching now, her lungs on fire. She snatched a look back. Figures in the murk, huge, distorted. Whoops and laughter, like huntsmen after a fox. A great shape loomed ahead, a monster with a thousand bristling limbs, and she skittered to a halt. A barricade, thrown up across the street, the limbs the legs of chairs, and desks, and tangled timbers. A man stood on it. A huge man with hardly any neck, hair clipped to stubble, features hidden but for lenses flashing orange, the new kind, mounted in thin wire, tiny on his heavy, stubbled face.
“Help me!” Holding out her bloody hand, her voice a desperate squeak. “I’m begging you!”
He folded Savine’s wrist in an irresistible grip. For a terrible moment, she wondered if she had made the worst mistake of her life.
He hoisted her effortlessly up beside him. She saw torch flames bobbing, could hardly breathe for fear, hardly move for it. She shrank down trembling behind a broken chest of drawers, clung to a chair leg.
Her pursuers slowed as they came close. Six of them, breathing hard from their run, sticks and clubs and torches in their clenched fists, and at the front the tall one swaggered forward, tall hat skewed at a rakish angle.
“That’s far enough,” said the big man. A calm voice, very deep, very slow. How could he be calm? How could anyone be calm ever again?
“Nice wall you’ve built,” said Tall Hat, sneer acro
ss a sweat-beaded, pockmarked face, his eyes wild, wide, burning with the reflected fire of his torch as he held it high.
“Thanks,” said the big man, “but I’ll ask you to admire it from a distance.” He unhooked his lenses from his ears and ever so carefully folded them. “I’ll ask nicely.” He rubbed at the bridge of his nose with finger and thumb. “But I’ll only ask once.”
“Can’t.” Tall Hat gave a big grin. “You’ve got something of ours.”
The big man pushed his folded lenses into Savine’s limp hand and gently curled her fingers shut around them. He sounded almost sad. “Believe me, there’s naught here you want.”
“Give her up!” barked Tall Hat, voice turned suddenly so sharp, Savine flinched at it.
The big man hopped down from the barricade and walked forward, not worried, not hurried. Savine could hardly understand what he was doing.
Tall Hat had his doubts, too. He raised his torch. “I’m not scared o’—”
The big man darted at him, caught the swinging torch on his shoulder and shrugged it off in a shower of sparks. His fist sank into Tall Hat’s side, a short, quick blow, but Savine heard the thud of it, felt the force of it. It folded Tall Hat over and left him tottering.
The big man took him by the coat and jerked him off his feet. Lifted him high, as if he was no more than a sack of rags, then flung him down on the cobbles so hard his hat bounced off.
He gave a shuddering groan, stretched out a quivering hand, and the big man calmly lifted his big boot and stomped his face into the road.
Savine stared, hardly breathing.
The big man looked up at Tall Hat’s companions, brushing a few embers from his shoulder. They stood in a shocked half-circle. Five men, but none of them had moved the whole time.
“We can have him,” said one, though he sounded far from certain. He licked his lips, took a hesitant step forward.
“Ah.” A second man had climbed up onto the barricade. Or maybe he’d been there all along, so still Savine hadn’t noticed. A stringy man with a drooping moustache. He held a loaded flatbow, something drawn on the back of the hand on the trigger. Tattooed. “Ah, I said.” He eased towards them, pointing the bow with more intent, head of the bolt gleaming. “Don’t you bastards understand fucking ah?”
A Little Hatred Page 27