Clover took a sip from his own cup. “Don’t ever let me drift along on past glories, Wonderful.”
She gave a grunt. “You’d have to have some glories to do that.”
“Tell me how you beat Stranger-Come-Knocking one more time!” roared Scale. He was one of those men couldn’t say anything quietly. “By the dead, I wish I could’ve been there!” And he knocked his iron hand against the table with a clonk. “Where’s that girl? Fill a cup for my heir!”
Stour sat back and flung one boot up on the table. “Well, Uncle, when I crossed the Crinna with a thousand Carls, I knew we were far outnumbered…”
Wonderful rubbed at her temples. “Must’ve heard this story ten times the last ten weeks.”
“Aye,” said Clover, “and every telling makes Stour a bigger hero. Soon he’ll be beating a thousand barbarians with his hands behind his back and his sword tied to his cock.”
“Warriors.” Sulfur gave a heavy sigh, as if at a spell of bad weather. “It seems the Great Wolf is in no mood to discuss the future of the North tonight.”
“No, Master Sulfur!” If it had been any other man, Clover would’ve called the note in Black Calder’s voice a wheedle. “Like all storms, he’ll soon blow himself out.”
“Alas, I have so much other business.” Sulfur’s eyes shifted to Clover for a moment. Different-coloured eyes, he noticed, as they glittered in the torchlight. “Never the slightest peace, eh, Master Steepfield?”
“I reckon not,” muttered Clover, no idea who this bastard was or how he knew his old name, but judging it always wise to agree with a dangerous man. And any man Black Calder feared was a dangerous man, whether he wore a sword or not. “They call me Clover these days, though.”
“Calling a wolf a cow will not make him give milk. The same could be said of calling chaos order.” Sulfur put aside his cup and stood, looking down at Calder. “My master appreciates that we must sometimes have a little chaos if a better order is to emerge. There can be no progress without pain, no creation without destruction. That is why he has indulged this little war of yours.” He looked up as Scale roared with laughter at some new flourish of Stour’s, and the warriors about them competed with each other to blast the spittiest peels of merriment. “My master loves to see the earth ploughed, from time to time.”
Calder nodded. “That’s all I’m trying to do.”
“Provided the soil settles quickly and a new seed is sown. Otherwise how can he reap a harvest?”
“Tell him this war will be done soon,” said Calder, “and the harvest richer than ever. We’ll win. He’ll win.”
“Whoever wins, he wins. You know that. But too much chaos is bad for everyone’s business.” Sulfur plucked his staff from the wall. “It is often the doom of men blessed with greatness that they are cursed with short memories. Your father, for instance. I advise you to keep that pit always in your mind. The one outside Osrung.” And Sulfur smiled as he turned away. A toothy little bright-eyed smile, but it seemed to Clover there was somehow a threat in it.
He leaned close to Wonderful. “Everyone serves someone, I reckon.”
“Looks that way,” she said as she watched Sulfur slip from the hall. “And they’re usually a prick.”
The moment he was gone, Calder thumped furiously at the table. “By the fucking dead!” He glared over at his son, still boasting to his king’s great delight. “He’s worse than ever and my brother only encourages him! Didn’t I tell you to keep him on the right path?”
Clover helplessly spread his hands. “There’s only so much even the best shepherd can do with a wilful ram, Chief.”
“At this rate, he’ll end up as mutton! What did Stolicus say? Never fear your enemy, but always respect him? This Brock woman’s for damn sure no fool and the Dogman’s for damn sure no coward.”
“Reckon they’re just waiting for their moment.” Clover sighed. “Sooner or later, they’ll be setting a trap for us.”
“And at this rate, these two heroes will be blundering right into it.” Calder frowned harder than ever at his son. “How did he end up with so little of me in him?”
“Never had to face hard times,” said Wonderful, softly.
Clover wagged a finger at her. “There speaks the stern voice of experience. Defeats do men far more good than victories.” And he reached up and scratched gently at his scar. “Best gift I was ever given. Taught me humility.”
“Humility,” scoffed Calder. “Can’t think of a man with a higher opinion of himself than you.”
Clover raised his cup to Magweer, who’d picked him out for another dose of glaring as Stour’s manly legend reached its climax. “The world’s brimming with folk keen to break me down. Don’t see any reason to do their work for ’em.”
“You don’t see any reason to do any work at all.”
There was no point denying it. Luckily for Clover, the King of the Northmen chose that moment to struggle up, raising his iron hand for silence.
“Here comes the wisdom,” murmured Black Calder, without much relish.
“My father, Bethod!” Scale roared at the gathering, swaying from good ale and bad knees. “Made himself King of the Northmen! He built cities, and bound them with roads. He forced the clans together, and carved out a nation where there was none before.” No mention of the thirty years of bloodshed that had got it done. But that’s the nice thing about looking backwards. You can pick out the bits that suit your story and toss the unhappy truths to the wind.
Scale was frowning down into the firepit now. “My father was betrayed. My father was struck down! His kingdom torn up like meat between greedy dogs.” His dewy eyes rolled up, and he pointed to Stour with his good hand. “But we’ll put right the wrongs of the past. We’ll finish the Dogman’s fucking Protectorate! We’ll drive the bloody Union out of the North! Stour Nightfall, my nephew and my heir, will rule supreme from the Whiteflow to the Crinna and beyond!” And he held up his cup, ale slopping over the rim and spattering down his front. “Bethod’s dream lives on in his grandson! The Great Wolf!”
And all raised their drinks and competed with each other to roar out Stour’s name the loudest, and Clover and Wonderful raised theirs just as high as anyone else.
“Still say he’s a prick,” whispered Clover, smiling wide.
“More so with each day,” forced Wonderful through clenched teeth, and they tapped their cups together and took a swallow, because Clover had never worried much over what he drank to, as long as he drank.
Calder didn’t join the toast. Just frowned at his brother as he sagged back down on his bench and bellowed for more ale. “Some men never learn,” he murmured.
“We all learn.” Clover watched those old warriors and those young, and ever so gently scratched at his scar. “Just some of us have to learn hard.”
A Deal
“You promised me, Gunnar.” Liddy’s voice came muffled through the flimsy wall, but easily understood. “You promised me you’d stay out of trouble.”
“I’ve tried, Liddy. I haven’t looked for it, it’s just… it’s found us out.”
“Trouble has a habit of finding you out.”
Savine looked across the little room at May, light from outside the ill-fitting window catching her clenched jaw, head turned away from her parents’ voices as if to pretend she could not hear them.
“I’m just trying to get from one day to the next,” came Gunnar’s voice. “Trying to keep things together.”
Keeping things together was no easy task in Valbeck. The riots might mostly have stopped but the heat, and the anger, and the fear hung over the city thick as the vapours had when the furnaces were still lit. Fear of violence. Fear of hunger. Fear of what would happen when the authorities returned. Fear that they might not. Who was in charge depended on who you asked, which part of town you were in, whether it was day or night. If there was any plan in all this madness, all this destruction, Savine could not see it. No one was safe in Valbeck now. Perhaps no one ever truly was.
Perhaps safety was a lie people told themselves so they could carry on.
She closed her eyes, and thought of the feeling as she stabbed that squinting man through the chest. As she ran the one with the cap through the back. A slight pressure in her palm. A slight tugging at the grip of the sword. So shockingly easy, to kill a man. She told herself they had given her no choice. And yet she saw their faces whenever she closed her eyes, and felt her breath coming fast, the sweat prickling, her heart thumping the way it had then, rubbing over and over at her itchy, greasy neck with her fingertips.
“So you’re a Breaker now?” came Liddy’s voice through the wall.
“Malmer’s doing the best he can for folk so I’m doing the best I can for him. Stand on the barricades. Hand some food out. I’m not a soldier no more. I’m not a herder no more. What should I be?”
“My husband. May’s father.”
“I know. That’s all that matters, but… what should I do?” It was strange to hear that wheedling, almost tearful note in the voice of a man Savine knew to be so very dangerous. “I can’t just sit and do nothing, can I, while people are getting hurt?”
There was no weakness in Liddy’s voice. Her strength amazed Savine, the way she kept going, working, smiling, making the best of this nightmare. “It’s a fine line, Gunnar, between helping people and hurting ’em. You’re prone to wander all over it.”
“I’m trying to do the right thing, it’s just… the right thing ain’t always easy to know.” And their voices dropped to a soft burble, lost as someone started shouting outside. A fight, maybe. Savine shrank back until it drifted off down the street and was gone.
She licked her lips as the silence pressed in on her. She did not want to speak. But it was better than seeing those faces again. “My parents used to argue, sometimes.”
May’s eyes met hers. “What about?”
“My father’s work. My mother’s drinking. Me. I was always their favourite argument.” Were they arguing about her even now? Savine looked down at the cheap boards, full of splits and splinters. It was better not to think about her old life. Better to pretend to be a new person, who belonged where she was. Who knew she was lucky to be here.
Liddy had given her a dress, if you could call it that. A shapeless bag of coarse cloth, carefully mended and smelling of cheap soap, and she was grateful for it. Gunnar had found her a mattress, or some scratchy sacking that the straw poked through. Savine had no doubt it swarmed with lice, and she was grateful for it. She shared a room with May no bigger than a cupboard in her house in Adua, with laths showing through the cracked plaster and a bloom of mould about the flaking window frame. She scarcely ever had a moment to herself, but she was grateful for that, too. When she was alone, the things she had seen and done the day of the uprising rushed into her mind, like filthy water into a holed boat, and dragged her down so quickly she felt she was drowning.
She had thought of trying to get out of the city, but the truth was she scarcely had the courage to look out of the window, let alone to risk the streets again. She found she had a great deal less courage altogether than she had smugly supposed while blackmailing investors, or choosing a wig, or pronouncing social death sentences in the salons of Adua. She had always reckoned herself such a gambler. No more audacious woman in the Union. Now she realised the games had always been rigged in her favour. She never had to gamble with her life before, and the stakes had risen suddenly far too high for her taste.
They had a candle the first few nights but now it was gone, and the only light came from distant fires, always burning somewhere in the city. Everything was running out. The shops had been looted, the rich houses stripped back to the rafters. The Breakers brought some food around, but every day there was less.
She had always known life was hard in these slums, but if she had thought about it at all, she had pictured a romantic version. A version that was easy to live with. Pretty children, giggling as they frolicked in the gutters. Old women cackling as they boiled bones in a pot. Strapping men slapping one another on the back, singing good old work songs in harmony as they sat around a fire made from their last sticks of furniture. Oh, the sisterhood, the spirit, the nobility of poverty!
It turned out there was nothing romantic about shitting in a bucket while someone else watched. Nothing spirited about hoarding the bones from the chicken for tomorrow’s dinner. Nothing sisterly about the women who tore at each other over scraps scavenged on the great rubbish heaps. Nothing noble in the cramps you got from rotten water at the pump, or the lice you picked from your armpits, or being endlessly cold, endlessly hungry, endlessly scared.
And yet living this way did not make Savine sorry for the people who were forced to do it every day. Who did it in the many buildings just like this one she profited from all across the Union. It only made her desperate never to live this way herself again. Perhaps that made her selfish. Wicked. Evil, even. While she fled whimpering through the city on the day of the uprising, she had sworn to a God she did not believe in that she would be good, if it meant she could live.
Now she was happy to be evil, if it meant she could be clean.
“You were in Colonel Vallimir’s house,” said May. Savine stared at her, caught off balance and failing to hide it, the constant nagging ache of fear turned suddenly, terribly sharp.
“What?” she croaked.
“The night before the uprising.” May could not have looked calmer. “I served you jelly.”
Savine’s eyes slunk to the door. But there was no way out of this room without going through the other. Where a man she had seen stomp another man’s head into the road was arguing with his wife. “Horrible jelly,” she muttered.
“I was trying to work out how much your dress cost,” said May. Far more than this room. Probably more than this whole building. “Your hair was different.” She glanced up at the mousy fuzz starting to grow back on Savine’s scalp. “A wig?”
“Lots of us wear them. In Adua.” So she knew who Savine was. She had always known. But she had not told. Savine took a deep breath, trying not to let the fear show. Trying to think. The way she used to in a meeting with partners. A negotiation with rivals.
May nodded slowly. As if she guessed Savine’s thoughts. “Beautiful dresses. Horrible jellies. Different world, isn’t it? You asked me what I thought about the city.”
“You were… very honest.”
“Little too honest for my own good, I expect. Always been a problem of mine. You stood up for me, though. I listened at the keyhole, and you stood up for me.”
Savine cleared her throat. “Is that why you took me in?”
“Wish I could say yes.” May sat forward, thin hands dangling over her knees. “But that wouldn’t be entirely honest. Fact is, Vallimir’s whole house was buzzing with news of your visit. Everyone desperate to get a look at you. I know who you are, my lady.”
Savine twitched. “You don’t have to call me that.”
“What should I call you? Savine?”
Savine flinched. “Best for both of us if you don’t call me that, either.”
May lowered her voice to a whisper. “Lady Glokta, then?”
Savine grimaced. “Best not to even think the name.” There was a long silence while they looked at each other. Next door, someone had started singing. Always happy songs, because there was misery enough here without singing up more. “Might I ask… whether you’re thinking of telling anyone?”
May sat back. “My father thinks you’re just some waif got lost. My mother guesses you’re somebody, but she’d never guess who. Best we keep it that way. If news got out…” She left that hanging. It was nicely judged. There really was no need to say more. Savine remembered the crowd of men in her mill, all looking at her. The mob. The hate in their faces.
She carefully licked her lips. “I would… appreciate your discretion. It would put me…very much in your debt.”
“Oh, I’m counting on it.”
Savine turned up the hem of her
dress, heartbeat thud, thud, thudding in her ears, and dug down inside the fraying seam with a finger, hooking out the earrings she had been wearing the day of the uprising. First one, then the other, the unfamiliar gleam of gold in the shadows.
“Take these.” Her voice was far too eager for a negotiator of her experience. “They’re gold with—”
“Don’t think they’d go with my ensemble.” May’s eyes flicked down to her own threadbare dress, then back up to Savine. “You keep ’em.”
Silence stretched out. Clearly May had planned this. Waited for her moment and already set her price.
“What is it you want?” asked Savine.
“I want my family taken care of. When this is over, there’ll be hell to pay.”
Savine closed her hand around the earrings and let it drop. “I expect so.”
“I want no trouble with the Inquisition. A full pardon for my father. I want you to find somewhere for us to live, good jobs for my parents. That’s all I want. For you to keep us safe. The way we’ve kept you safe.” May held her eye for a long time. Trying to judge whether she could be trusted. Just as Savine would have, in her worn-out shoes. “Can you do that?”
A refreshing change, to go into a negotiation holding none of the cards. “I think that is the very least I could do,” said Savine.
May spat in her palm and offered it out. The room was so small, she barely had to lean forward. “Deal, then?”
“Deal.”
And they shook.
The New Monument
“Do you know how many peasant labourers died building King Casamir’s roads?” asked Risinau.
He shaded his eyes against the angry sun to look up at the monument that dominated Casamir’s Square. Or its remains, anyway. All that was left on the eight-stride-high pedestal, cobwebbed with wobbly scaffolding, were a pair of enormous boots sheared off at the calf. Aropella’s famous statue of the legendary king himself, who’d defeated the Northmen and added Angland to the Union, lay in scarred chunks on the cobbles, daubed with messy slogans. A gleeful urchin was trying to prise His Majesty’s nose off with a crowbar.
A Little Hatred Page 30