The Trouble with Peace

by Joe Abercrombie

  “Stay close, Your Graces.” Broad went with fists clenched, frowning into the shadows. Shadows were one of the few things there was no shortage of in the Three Farms. In some of the narrower lanes, you would hardly have known it was day. “This is no place for wealthy folk to walk alone. Nor writers and artists neither.”

  “Never fear!” called out Sworbreck. “I learned well the value of a stout escort out in the wilds!”

  “Where did you find your man Broad?” murmured Leo.

  “In Valbeck. He and his family took me in. I’ve no doubt they saved my life.”

  “So you took them in.” Leo was grinning at her. “You do have a heart.”

  “A generous one, according to my friend Curnsbick. But settling one’s debts is simply good business. And the Broads are all useful people.”

  “No doubt. That’s a Ladderman’s tattoo on his hand, you know. First men onto the walls in a siege. Most deadly duty in the whole army. And four stars means he did it four times.” Leo glanced sideways at Broad. “That… is a dangerous man.”

  Savine remembered him facing down six Burners that first night in Valbeck and stomping their leader’s head into the cobbles. The fear she had felt. And the relief.

  “Calm,” Savine whispered, under her breath. “Calm, calm, calm.”

  “We live these days in a segregated society,” Sworbreck was burbling, nudging up his eye-lenses with the end of his pencil. “A stratified world where rich and poor rarely mingle! No, wait, mingle is weak…”

  They passed under the great chimney of a salt works, walls black with crusted soot. Flies buzzed around a dead horse. Three ragged children played in the gutter. Every other building here was a jerry shop, everyone at least halfway drunk, or so ill they looked drunk. Most of the rest were pawn shops, sad little fragments of broken lives priced low in their grubby windows.

  “The gap between rich and poor has never been wider. The chasm has never yawned so deep! But one woman dares to bridge the divide!” Sworbreck gave a delighted cackle. “Bridge the divide, that’s lovely. She, like few others among the wealthy and noble, goes forth among the people. She, like few others, understands their plight!”

  Savine did understand it. But if she truly went to a place of honesty, all she really felt was glad she was no longer one of these wretched ghosts. All she really wanted was to get back to her palatial rooms and her conscientious servants as soon as possible. That familiar smell of sweat, piss, damp and rot, mixed with the acrid scratch of the furnaces, was hard to ignore as they worked their way deeper into the gloomy maze of streets. Strange, how smells can bring memories back so sharply. She realised she had her box of pearl dust in her hand. Forced herself to push it back up her sleeve. She was free. She was safe. She told herself so, over and over.

  “Calm, calm, calm—”

  “These buildings…” Leo gazed up at the slumping offences against architecture crowding over them, blooms of green damp flaring from their leaking gutters.

  “The land is short-leased so it isn’t worth the landlords’ while to build well, or to repair what’s built badly. The houses fall apart with the families inside.” Who would know better than Savine? She owned dozens of similar buildings herself.

  “Why no window frames?”

  “The tenants tear them out in the cold months and burn them for firewood.”

  “By the dead…”

  Behind them, Sworbreck scratched on in his notebook. “We speak, of course, of none other than Her Grace—and grace is the right word, dear friends—Savine dan Brock! Wife to the Young Lion! Bride, maybe?”

  “Bride is youthful,” said Carmee Groom, plucking out one of the pencils shoved through her shambolic bun and causing half of it to collapse across her face. “Bride bursts with potential.”

  “Bride of the Young Lion and the new Lady Governor of Angland!”

  They had made it to the very heart of the slum, an unpaved square with stagnant water gathered in puddles, thick with scum and blooms of multicoloured oil. A strange building stood at one side, an ancient low house with a sagging, moss-covered roof.

  “What is that?” asked Leo.

  “One of the three farms,” said Savine, “that stood here before the city swallowed them.”

  “Hard to imagine anything ever grew here…”

  One pig screamed at another as they fought in a mound of filth. Someone shouted drunken abuse in a tongue she did not recognise. A cheap flute tooted hopelessly, blending with the mindless music of steam hammers in a foundry across the way.

  Zuri waited with Haroon and Rabik and two of Broad’s men. She had gathered a queue of the most wretched, a lot of dark faces among them. Refugees from the collapse of the Empire of Gurkhul, seeking safety and sanity and finding little of either.

  “Thank you, Zuri.” Savine swallowed her nausea. “You’ve done a miraculous job, as always.”

  “I fear there are no miracles down here.” Zuri frowned towards the procession of the desperate. It reminded Savine of the queues she had stood in for one of the few working pumps in Valbeck. The long walk back with the heavy buckets bruising her calves, water slopping at her legs, the unbearable aching in her shoulders with every step.

  “Calm, calm, fucking calm…”

  Rabik watchfully held her purse while she took coins from it and pressed them into filthy, calloused, broken hands. Hands missing fingers and thumbs from mishaps at machinery. Hands of beggars, children, whores and thieves.

  With Haroon’s help, Leo was handing out loaves from a cart, clapping people on the back, shaking his head at their thanks, throwing open his brimming heart and spraying well-wishes. Savine said nothing. She was worried if she opened her mouth she might drown the neighbourhood in spew.

  “As Lady Brock moves through those darkened streets, it is as if a lamp shines. No, a beacon! Lighting the way to a better life for these neglected unfortunates. As if the sun breaks through the smoke of the manufactories. She gives out bread, yes, she gives out comfort, surely, she gives out silver with an open hand, but more valuable than all, she gives out hope.”

  “Very nice,” murmured Carmee Groom, eyes flickering over the scene as she pinned her hair back up with a clip from her drawing board and began to sketch.

  “Isn’t it!” said Sworbreck. “All shrouded in secrecy, though, we must make that point. We have stumbled upon her anonymous generosity! She would blush to hear it spoken of. For she is the personification of humility… or modesty? Modesty or humility?”

  “Why not both?”

  “Is this what Valbeck was like?” Leo muttered at Savine.

  “Before the uprising, maybe. Then it got worse. We picked through the dung heaps for something we could eat.”

  “What can we do for them? I should’ve brought my purse. Never use the bloody thing.”

  He really did have a big heart. It made her strangely glad to know that someone did. A big heart, but not the biggest brain. Help to these people was a coin tossed in a pool. It might make a few ripples, but they would quickly vanish as though they had never been. The bread would be gone in one swallow. The money would be wasted on drink and husk, a moment of sweet oblivion. Perhaps, at best, some tatty heirloom temporarily reclaimed from the pawn shop.

  “Who, on account of her charity… no, selflessness… on account of her remarkable charity and selflessness, has become known among the common folk of Adua, as, hmmmm…”

  A little urchin with a scabby rash across her face gazed up as Savine pressed a coin into her palm. She felt crushed, like a swineherd being smothered by hungry pigs. “Do you need much more?” she snapped.

  “Almost there,” said Carmee Groom, freckled face wrinkled with concentration as she drew.

  “Benefactor?” mused Sworbreck. “The benefactor of the Three Farms?”

  “Too cold.”

  Savine flinched at a shower of sparks from an open shed door. She felt trapped in this stinking gloom. She felt almost as trapped as she had in Valbeck. She had to g
et out.

  “The… saint?” Sworbreck raised his brows high. “Of the hovels?”

  “Too religious. We’re not in Gurkhul.”

  “No, we are very much in the slums of Adua…”

  That girl with the rashy face had caught Savine’s skirts. Clutching at the only kindness that had ever been shown her, perhaps, no matter how much of a sham it was. Leo was watching with tears in his eyes. If they stayed much longer, he would probably adopt the little limpet. Savine’s greasy skin was crawling. She wanted nothing more than to kick the girl off into the gutter. Forced herself by a towering effort of will to keep the smile nailed to her face as Rabik tried to gently peel her dirty hands away.

  “How about…” Carmee Groom narrowed her eyes at the scene, scratching thoughtfully at the side of her nose with her pencil. “The darling… of the slums.”

  “Oh, my dear.” Sworbreck looked up wide-eyed from Carmee’s paper to Savine, holding up his hands as though framing a painting with her as its subject, that desperate orphan clinging to her feet. “You should be a writer!”

  Dead Wood, New Shoots

  It was a sunny spring morning when Rikke walked back into Uffrith.

  She used to feel a rush of warmth passing through those weather-pitted gates, hearing the gulls and the chatter, smelling the sea. She used to reap a happy harvest of smiles and waves on the way to her father’s hall. There goes Rikke—she’s mad as a shield made of bread, but we like her. Coming home. By the dead, she needed that feeling then.

  But things had changed since she went to the forbidden lake, and not just ’cause she kept getting surprised on her right-hand side. The left was full of sad shocks, too. Folk she’d have called friends stared as she passed like they saw the dead walk, slunk off and wouldn’t meet her one good eye. Folk who used to smile looked scared, shocked, disgusted even. One woman Rikke had never been able to shut up about the weather herded her three children inside at the sight of her and slammed the door.

  Till that moment, she’d been tricking herself that everything would drift back to normal, or as close to it as her life got. Five steps into town, it was clear no one would ever look at her the same again.

  Stung somewhat, but she wasn’t about to let it show. She buried her hurts, like grown-ups were meant to, and tried to walk the way she’d seen Savine dan Glokta walk. Shoulders back, chin up, making no apologies. Like Uffrith was hers and these bastards only got to live here ’cause she was in a good mood.

  She leaned close to Shivers without letting the knowing half-smile slip. “I look that bad?”

  “You look better’n me,” he said, which was scant encouragement.

  “They’ll get used to it,” said Isern.

  A scruffy little girl with a scruffy little dog gawped as she passed. The dog couldn’t take its shocked eyes off her, either. “People can get used to pretty much anything,” said Rikke.

  “That’s why they’ll get used to it.”

  “Rikke?”

  A boy stood with a half-eaten apple forgotten in his hand, his eyes big and round and fixed on her face. She squatted down to ruffle his scruffy hair.

  “You’ve changed some,” he said, still staring.

  “Aye.”

  “You used to be all twitchy.”

  She lifted her hand up and held it still. It was steady as the line between sea and sky. “Seems I’m cured of that,” she said.

  “You cured o’ smiling, too?”

  “I can still smile, you cheeky shrimp.” Though when she forced a grin out it felt strange on her face, the skin still raw where the tattoos were drawn.

  “Can you see all right?”

  “Can’t see at all with this eye.” She winked at him with the right, and it made no difference. She took a hard breath as she stood, watched the grey sea shifting. “But the other sees better than ever.”

  There were a lot of people gathered in front of her father’s hall. There were always folk wanting something from him. Always wanting more than he had to give, whether it was silver, or men, or reassurance, or favour. They’d drained him dry of all of them, down the years.

  Hardbread hastened up the cobbled road, his white hair wild. When he got close enough for his weak old eyes to get her measure he froze.

  “Hardbread,” she said, giving him a nod.

  “Rikke…” He sounded more’n a little sick. “That you?”

  “Aye. I cut my hair.”

  He stared at her some more. “Rikke, I have to tell you something.”

  “It’ll have to wait. Need to talk to my da.”

  “That’s the thing.”

  “What’s the thing?” she asked as she shoved the doors of the hall wide, and stopped, her weight all on one wobbling foot.

  “Oh, no.” And she sagged like a scarecrow had its pole ripped out. Caurib had warned her the Long Eye wouldn’t keep her safe from all life’s axes. “Oh, no.”

  Her father lay on the table, his old, notched sword on his chest. His hair and his beard were white. His face and his hands were white. His eyes were closed.

  “Oh, no.” Everyone watching her, silent, slipping out of her way as she walked up, like you might from someone had the plague. She stopped by the table, looking down at her father. Seemed he had the ghost of a smile about his mouth.

  “He never smiled enough,” she whispered.

  “Aye,” said Shivers, soft and low. “Those were the times he lived through.”

  “He done the best he could with ’em.”

  “None better,” said Isern, and she took a long breath and puffed it out, ragged. “Back to the mud.”

  Rikke put her fingertips on her father’s cheek. “Peace at last, eh, Da?” she whispered, and her right eye tickled and stung and leaked. Might not see any more, but it could cry, still.

  Her left stayed dry, though.

  Greenway reined in hard and slithered from his saddle, got his foot caught in one stirrup in his haste and nearly fell. “The Dogman’s dead!” he screeched.

  Silence, while a breeze blew up and whisked some fallen blossom across the road. Silence, while everyone wondered how Stour would take the news so they could take it the same way.

  Then the young king tipped back his head and roared with laughter, and as if that was permission given, they all set to chuckling, too. All of ’em except Clover. He weren’t really in the mood.

  “What was it Shama Heartless said?” asked Stour, wiping his wet eyes. “There’s only one kind of good news, and that’s dead enemies. Reckon those sorry bastards’ll be joining the North sooner than we hoped, eh, Clover?”

  “Prefer to eat the eggs I’ve got, my king, rather’n the ones still up in the tree.”

  “Good point, Clover, good point.” Stour grinned his wolf grin and with a snapping of cloth pulled his wolf cloak around his shoulders. “Let’s take nothing for granted. We’ll head straight into Uffrith, pay our respects. Or the lack of ’em. Then we can talk to Oxel. See how things stand.”

  “Oxel’s there,” said Greenway. “I seen him.”

  “Lovely.” Stour rubbed his palms together with a faint hissing. “That’s happy timing. Auspicious timing. Auspicious is the word, eh, Clover?”

  “It’s a word,” said Clover, under his breath.

  “How about Red Hat and Hardbread?”

  “Aye, they were there, with their long, grey faces, and I hear the Dogman’s daughter, too—”

  “Ha! You hear that, Clover? We’ve caught up to that fucking little bitch at last. This’ll be fun. Ain’t nothing prettier than a pretty girl crying, eh?”

  There really was nothing to be said to that.

  The sun was shining in Uffrith, but the place had a sullen feel. The Dogman had been loved, few men more, and it looked like his daughter weren’t the only one felt they’d lost a father. Mourners gathered in a long queue, grave gifts in their hands, but Stour strode grinning past ’em, lapping up their scowls and their curses. He was one of those men loves to be despised. That treats
loathing like gold, to be clawed for and hoarded up. He hadn’t learned yet that hate’s the one thing never runs out.

  There was quite the gathering inside the hall. Named Men, fussed up in their best, gold and jewels glittering in the gloom on helms and hilts. Oxel was there, as expected, and Red Hat and Hardbread, glaring at each other almost as much as at Stour. Caul Shivers, too, though his only finery was a blood-red stone on his little finger and the only glint on him was from his metal eye. Isern-i-Phail sat on a step, slowly chewing, long spear across her knees, and as Stour strode in she made a long sucking through the hole in her teeth that spoke her scorn louder than any words.

  Lots of weapons in that hall, lots of sorrow and lots of anger, and Clover made sure he knew where all the doors were. When a great man dies, those left over always take a moment working out where their loyalties are most fruitfully laid, and there’s a high risk of bloodshed in the meantime. He’d seen one funeral turn into several often enough.

  The Dogman himself lay pale on the long table, scarred shield under his feet, a hint of drama from a shaft of light falling on him through the smoke-hole. A woman stood over him in the shadows, back to the door. Her red-brown hair was clipped short and it made her neck look very long and very thin, blue veins standing stark up the side.

  Stour strode into the silent hall, steel toes on his boots scraping. “I just had to pay my respects!” Voice dripping contempt, not caring a shit, as usual, for anyone’s feelings but his own.

  Then the woman turned, and that shaft of light caught her smile, and Stour shuffled to an uncertain halt. So did his men. A dozen warriors always keen to advertise their courage, but they all checked at the sight of her, and Clover hardly blamed ’em.

  “By the dead,” muttered Greenway, taking a nervy step back and near tripping over his own sword.

  “The King of the Northmen!” she raised her arms in delight. “What a joy! The gates of Uffrith stand open to you, even though last time you visited you burned the place, eh? Eh? Eh?” The last eh? hissed through her gritted teeth, spit spraying.