Broad took off his lenses, and folded them, and slipped them into his jacket pocket. Then he stepped forwards across the suddenly blurry office, a loose board creaking under his new boot.
“I lost many things in Valbeck, Master Kort,” came Savine’s voice, from what sounded like a long way off. “Several investments and several partners, a lovely sword-belt and an irritating but very capable face-maid. I also lost my patience.”
Broad stepped so close to Kort that their knees touched. He leaned down and put his hands on the arms of Kort’s chair, their noses just a few inches apart, close enough that the blur of his face resolved into an expression of extreme fear.
“You displease me,” said Savine. “And I am in a mood to see things which displease me broken. Broken in such a way that they will not go back together.”
Broad gripped the chair so hard that every joint in it groaned, breathing through his nostrils, like a bull. Bull Broad, they used to call him. He acted like he was only just keeping a grip on himself. Maybe he was.
“Our agreement stands!” squealed Kort, face turned away and his eyes screwed shut. “Of course it does, Lady Savine, how could it be otherwise?”
“Oh, that is excellent news.” And the bright tone of Savine’s voice was like a hand letting go of Broad’s throat.
“You are the partner I always wanted!” blathered Kort. “Our deal is forged from iron, just like my bridge—”
“Your bridge?”
As Broad hooked his lenses back around his ears, Kort was giving a desperate, quivery smile. “Our bridge.”
“Marvellous.” Savine pulled on one of her gloves while Zuri slipped her hat back on with masterful precision and slid the hatpin home. “I would hate to have to send Master Broad to see you without my restraining influence. Who knows what might happen?”
Broad pulled shut the office door behind them with a gentle click. It was only when he took his hand from the knob he realised it was shaking.
Zuri leaned towards one of the clerks. “Master Kort may need a little help righting his desk.”
It seemed too bright outside as he followed Savine through the noise and bustle back to the carriage. “I’m not a coachman, am I?” he muttered.
“Much of what I do is to recognise talent,” said Savine as she watched the workers struggle in the diggings. “I saw yours the moment you saved me from those men, on the barricade in Valbeck. Employing you as a coachman would be like employing a great artist to whitewash cottages. But don’t you feel better for it?” She leaned close to murmur, “I know I do.” And she glided off towards the carriage as if the whole world belonged to her.
“You’re a natural at this, Master Broad.” Zuri pressed something into his palm. A gold coin. A twenty-mark piece. More than he’d been paid for a month’s work at the brewery in Valbeck. More than he’d been paid for the assault in Musselia.
Broad looked up at her. “You believe in God, right?”
“Oh, yes. Absolutely.”
“Thought he was dead set against violence?”
“If he was set that firmly against it…” And Zuri smiled as she closed his aching fist around the coin and gave it a fond pat. “Why would he make men like you?”
Good Times
Leo felt a bit of an outsider at his own party.
It was staged in the Hall of Mirrors, the most amazing room in a palace full of amazing rooms, silvered Visserine glass covering every wall so the richest, noblest and most beautiful the Union had to offer stretched away in every direction into the dim distance.
Certainly the introductions went on for ever. Damp hands were shaken and powdered cheeks kissed until Leo’s lips were chapped and his fingers raw. It was a flood of congratulations, admirations, well-wishes. An onslaught of long names and weighty titles scarcely heard and straight away forgotten.
The Ambassador from Here or There. The Over-Secretary for Whatever. The niece of Lord What’s-his-Face. Some bald old smirker someone might’ve called the First of the Magi, who blurted some magical nonsense about defeating Eaters in a Circle of salted iron being just like fighting Stour Nightfall in a Circle of grass. Leo assumed it was a joke, and not a very funny one. His cheeks ached from returning all the beaming smiles, the promises of never-ceasing friendship which ceased with the next breath.
This was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? To be fawned over by the greatest people in the realm? But close up, it all felt so false. He’d much rather have been in a barn with the Dogman, and his warriors, and his friends. He caught a glimpse of Jurand, standing on his own across the room, and Leo felt himself smile. He made it one step towards him before he was cut off.
“It’s an outrage, if you ask me,” murmured a tall man maybe ten years older than Leo, though his carefully swept hair was pure white.
“What is?” asked Leo, never able to resist the bait.
“That you must share your triumph with the crown prince. You bled for the nation. What did our half-Styrian heir do? Hang some peasants?”
It was like this white-haired fellow had peered into Leo’s skull and read out the contents. “I suppose taking credit for other men’s work is why we have royalty,” murmured Leo.
“I am Fedor dan Isher.” If you could know a man by his handshake, then Isher was firm, cool and careful. “These are my colleagues from the Open Council—Lords Barezin,” a heavy man stuffed into a braid-wreathed uniform, with pinking cheeks and a boyish riot of blond hair, “and Heugen.” Small and handsome with bright little eyes and sculpted moustaches around a pouty mouth.
“Good to meet you all.” It was pleasing to finally hear names Leo had heard before. These were the heads of three of Midderland’s most powerful noble families. Men with seats next to his on the front row of the Lords’ Round.
“My father knew your father well.” Barezin’s jowls shook with feeling. “Such a wonderful man, he was always telling me, such a man’s man, such an exemplar of the noble virtues! They were close friends.” As far as Leo could remember, his father had always written the Open Council off as a nest of vipers. But this was a new generation, and he reckoned you can never have too many friends.
“We all wish to thank you for the great service you did the Union,” droned Isher.
“It was a disgrace that you had to manage the business alone,” frothed Barezin. “A shameful business, awful!”
“New laws prevent us from keeping standing armies of our own.” Heugen spoke with great pace and precision while constantly shaking his head, as though nothing ever met his high standards. “Or we would have sprung to your aid ourselves.”
“Too kind,” said Leo. Though actual aid would’ve been even kinder.
“Our ancient rights and privileges are under constant attack,” said Isher, dropping his voice. “From Old Sticks and his cronies.”
Heugen nodded away like a chicken pecking at seed. “The Closed Council are—”
“A crowd of bureaucratic arseholes,” burst out Leo. He couldn’t hold it in. “The gall of that bastard Glokta! Then the chancellor! Grilling me about extra taxes after we bled ourselves white winning their war! Good men gave their lives. Folk in Angland’ll be…” He was about to say fucking incandescent, then realised how loud he was talking and settled for, “very displeased.”
Isher looked quite delighted, however. “The Open Council must present a united front. Especially with all this unrest among the lower orders.”
“Your place is with us,” said Barezin.
“As the foremost of us,” said Heugen.
“As our champion,” said Isher, languidly clenching a fist, “just as your grandfather was.”
“Really?” asked Leo, getting just a bit suspicious of their close-harmony flattery. “I heard he was a traitor.”
Isher wasn’t put off at all. He leaned closer to murmur, “I heard he was a patriot. He simply refused to be cowed by Bayaz.” And he nodded towards that bald man, deep in a murmured conversation with Lord Chancellor Gorodets, who did, it had
to be admitted, look thoroughly cowed.
“That actually is Bayaz?” asked Leo, baffled.
Isher’s lip curled. “During the last war, he promised my uncles that they would be chamberlain and chancellor, then, when he had the crown in his pocket, he snatched the rug from under them.”
“Loyalty is an admirable quality,” said Barezin. “Admirable. But it must cut both ways.”
“Loyalty to a corrupt regime,” added Heugen, “is foolishness. Worse. Cowardice. Worse! It’s disloyalty!”
Leo wasn’t sure he followed the logic. “It is?”
“We leading lights of the Open Council really must meet,” said Barezin.
“Discuss the advancement of our mutual interests,” said Heugen.
“To have a genuine hero among us would make all the difference,” said Isher.
“It would certainly make all the difference to me.” Leo looked around to find a very striking red-haired woman at his shoulder. “Your lordships really mustn’t hog the man of the moment. Since you haven’t the manners to introduce me…” Though she’d given them no chance and could clearly manage it herself. “I am Selest dan Heugen.” And she held her hand out.
“Charmed,” said Leo, bending to kiss it. And he really was charmed, as well. “The quality of the company’s looking up,” he said, and she gave a silvery laugh, and fanned herself, and he smiled, and she fanned him, and he laughed, and Isher, Barezin and Heugen melted away with a few grumbles about speaking later, but Leo wasn’t really paying much attention any more.
Selest. Had a nice ring to it. And she had this breathless way of acting as though every word he said was a delightful surprise.
“Have you been enjoying our city?” she asked.
“A lot more since you came over.”
“Why, Your Grace, I suspect you’re flattering me.” She brushed his wrist with her fingertips in a way that couldn’t have been accidental. Could it? She leaned towards him, voice slightly husky. “You really should take a tour of my new manufactory while you’re in Adua.” As if touring manufactories was a forbidden thrill. The way her eyes met his over the feathers of her fan made him wonder whether a tour of other things might be on offer.
“What do you—” His voice came as squeaky as Bremer dan Gorst’s, and he had to clear his throat and try again. “What do you make there?”
“Money.” She gave another giggle. “What else?”
Riding through Adua in a grand procession, Rikke had thought she couldn’t feel more out of place. Now she discovered her error.
It was like they’d had a contest to dream up the circumstances she’d feel most horribly small, twitchy and ugly in, and this right here had been the winning idea. All she needed to complete the horror was to have a fit and shit herself across the pristine tiled floor.
Everyone was so clean. Everyone smelled so good. Everyone’s shoes were so shiny. They all had these little smiles, worn like masks, so you’d no notion what they were really thinking. They all spoke in whispers, like everything was a secret meant only for particular ears and those ears certainly weren’t hers. At least the Long Eye was leaving her alone for now. The only ghosts in attendance were her own awkward reflections, wincing at her, profoundly unimpressed, from the mirrored walls of the hall.
She felt as if her own skin didn’t fit her, let alone her clothes. She wished she had some chagga to chew but she hadn’t brought any ’cause it hadn’t seemed the kind of place where you chewed chagga, and indeed it wasn’t. Where would you spit? Down someone else’s back? There were only a handful of people she knew in the whole vast room. Bayaz she could hardly call a friend, and the magus had as fine a suit of clothes as anyone, slipping through the crowds with bald pate gleaming, trading hushed secrets as though he belonged there. Jurand stood alone, apparently pining for Leo even worse than Rikke was, while the Young Lion himself was forever at the centre of a gaggle of fine new friends who’d no doubt stab him in the back the moment he turned it.
As if to rub salt in her still smarting wounds, some woman had floated up to him. Some pale and unearthly beautiful woman with hair redder than hair had any right to be, all scraped up with golden combs then swirling down her bare, freckled shoulders. Her tits looked on the point of popping out the whole time, but by some sorcery of tailoring never quite managed it. A fact which Leo was evidently not blind to. You’d have thought she had the secret of creation tucked in her cleavage, the way his eyes kept drifting back to it. She had a necklace of sparkling red stones, and a bracelet to match, and flashing crystals stitched into her bodice and by the dead, on her shoes, too.
Rikke had a ring through her nose, like a troublesome bull.
Summed it up. She wished she could pull the bloody thing out but there was no way to do it without ripping half her nose off. She doubted even that would’ve got anyone’s attention. She hadn’t the slightest notion how to play this intricate game of fans and eyelashes and hints dropped over the shoulder and not quite but oh-so-nearly out tits, let alone the tools to win.
She slurped down some more of the thin wine they’d given her. Didn’t taste of much but it was already having an effect. Namely making the tips of her ears feel hot and sinking her ever deeper into jealous depression. They tell you drink makes you happy, but what they mean is it makes happy folk happier. They don’t tell you that it makes unhappy folk more fucking unhappy than ever.
She gave an unpleasantly sweet burp and scraped her tongue on her teeth. “Men,” she muttered, helplessly.
“I know,” came a voice from beside her. “There’s no reasoning with them.”
By the dead, this one was even more beautiful than the other. Her skin had this sheen, like she wasn’t made of meat but some magic alloy of flesh and silver, every gesture finished off right to the tips of her long fingers like it was part of a dance, endlessly practised and utterly perfected.
“Shit,” breathed Rikke, unable to stop herself looking this woman up and down. “You have made some effort.”
“Honestly, my maids made most of it. I only had to stand there.”
“Maids? How many do you need?”
“Only four, if they know their business. I very much like your shirt. It looks so comfortable. I wish I could wear one.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Because there are a million different rules a lady of taste must observe. No one tells you what they are, but the penalties for breaking them can be most severe.”
“That sounds a pain in the arse.”
“You have no idea.”
“Must admit, I didn’t really know what to expect.” Rikke plucked at her shirt. It had stuck around her armpits with the heat of all these people lying to each other. “I got new boots, too. Even combed my hair.” She nervously twisted a stray tangle behind her ear. “But I slept out in a forest for a few weeks and it’s refused to behave ever since. How d’you get yours to do… all that?”
The woman leaned close. “It’s a wig.”
“Is it?” Rikke stared at those shining braids coiled and piled and swept up like a nest of spun gold. “Looks like hair, just… more so.”
“It is hair. It just isn’t mine.”
“Doesn’t yours grow?”
“I clip it off.”
“Or your maids do.”
“Well… yes. Most of the women here are wearing wigs. It’s the fashion.”
She said that word, fashion, like it was an explanation for any kind of madness. “Everyone knows that?”
“Everyone.”
“So why are we whispering?” whispered Rikke.
“Well… because everyone knows it, but no one admits it.”
“So… you shave your heads so you can wear a hat made of someone else’s hair, then lie about it?” Rikke puffed out her cheeks. “Puts my worries in some fucking perspective.”
“Not all of us have the courage for honesty.”
“Not all of us have the wit to lie.”
The woman narrowed her eyes at
Rikke. “I doubt you’re lacking wit.”
Rikke narrowed her eyes at the woman. “I doubt you’re lacking courage.”
She flinched a little, as if that somehow touched a sore spot, and changed the subject. “I very much like your necklaces, too.”
Rikke tucked her chin into her neck to peer down at the mass of charms she’d collected over the years. Some Gurkish ones, some Northern ones, some shaman’s teeth and this and that. She’d always felt you could never have too much good luck. Seemed a right lot of old junk now. She hooked the well-bitten dowel with her thumb and held it up. “This one’s to bite on if I have a fit. Hence the tooth marks.”
The woman raised her brows. “Beautiful and practical.”
“These are runes. My friend Isern-i-Phail carved ’em. Supposed to keep me safe. Year I’ve had, though, I doubt they work.”
“Well, they’re lovely, regardless. I never saw anything like them.”
She actually seemed to mean it, and she’d been kind, in a way. “Here.” Rikke took the runes off and slipped them gently over the woman’s head. “Maybe they’ll work better for you.”
“Thank you,” said Savine, and for once she meant it. It was such a simple, forthright gesture, she found herself disarmed. She could hardly remember the last time someone gave her something without expecting double the value in return.
“I can get another,” said the Northern girl, waving it away. “Looks much better on you. You’ve the shoulders for it.”
“Fencing.”
“What, sword-work?”
“It’s fine exercise. Keeps me focused—” She was caught off guard by a sudden memory of her sword punching through that man’s ribs, in Valbeck, in the gutter. The noise he made as she struggled to pull the blade out of him. She had to shake off an ugly shiver. “Though… perhaps playing with swords is a bad idea.”
A Little Hatred Page 50