Joe Abercrombie - The Blade Itself

Her face appeared above him, yellow eyes staring down, teeth bared in a snarl. “You stupid, heavy pink bastard!”

She turned away, shaking her head, stalked to a wall and started climbing, hauling herself up fast towards a low-pitched roof above. Logen winced as he watched her. Did she never get tired? His arms were battered, bruised, scratched all over. His legs ached, his nose had started bleeding again. Everything hurt. He turned and looked down. One mask was staring at him from the edge of the benches, twenty strides away. A few more were scurrying around below, looking for some way up. Far below, in the yellow circle of grass, he could see a thin black figure with red hair, pointing around, then up at him, giving orders.

Sooner or later they would find a way up. Ferro was perched on the peak of the roof above him, a ragged dark shape against the bright sky. “Stay there if you want,” she barked, then turned and disappeared. Logen groaned as he stood up, groaned as he shuffled to the wall, sighed as he began to search for a handhold.

“Where is everyone?” demanded Brother Longfoot. “Where is my illustrious employer? Where is Master Ninefingers? Where is the charming lady, Maljinn?”

Jezal looked around. The sickly apprentice was sunk too deep in self-centred gloom to answer. “I don’t know about the other two, but Bayaz is in the bath.”

“I swear, I never came upon a man more attached to bathing than he. I hope the others will not be long. All is prepared, you know! The ship is ready. The stores are loaded. It is not my way to delay. Indeed it is not! We must catch the tide, or be stuck here until—” The little man paused, staring up at Jezal with a sudden concern. “You seem upset, my young friend. Troubled, indeed. Can I, Brother Longfoot, be of any assistance?”

Jezal had half a mind to tell him to mind his own business, but he settled for an irritated, “No, no.”

“I’d wager that there is a woman involved. Would I be right?” Jezal looked up sharply, wondering how the man could have guessed. “Your wife, perhaps?”

“No! I’m not married! It’s nothing like that. It’s er, well,” he fumbled for the words to describe it, and failed. “It’s nothing like that is all!”

“Ah,” said the Navigator, with a knowing grin. “Ah, a forbidden love then, a secret love is it?” Much to his annoyance, Jezal found that he was blushing. “I am right, I see it! There is no fruit so sweet as the one you cannot taste, eh, my young friend? Eh? Eh?” He waggled his eyebrows in what Jezal felt was a most unsavoury fashion.

“I wonder what’s keeping those two?” Jezal didn’t care in the least, but anything to change the subject.

“Maljinn, and Ninefingers? Hah,” laughed Longfoot, leaning towards him. “Perhaps they’ve become involved, eh, in a secret love like yours? Perhaps they’ve crept off somewhere, to do what comes naturally!” He nudged Jezal in the ribs. “Can you imagine, those two? That’d be something wouldn’t it? Hah!”

Jezal grimaced. The hideous Northman he already knew for an animal, and from what little he’d seen of that evil woman she might well be worse. All he could imagine coming naturally to them was violence. The idea was perfectly revolting. He felt soiled just thinking about it.

The roofs seemed to go on forever. Up one, down another. Creeping along the peaks, one slippery foot on either side, edging across ledges, stepping over crumbling bits of wall. Sometimes Logen would look up for a moment, get a dizzying view across the tumbling mass of damp slates, pitted tiles, ancient lead, to the distant wall of the Agriont, sometimes even the city far beyond. It might almost have been peaceful if it wasn’t for Ferro, fast-moving, sure-footed, cursing at him and pulling him on, giving him no time to think about the view, or the nerve-wracking drops they skirted, or the black figures, surely still seeking for them below.

One of her sleeves had been torn half off some time in the fighting, flapping around her wrist, getting in the way as they climbed. She snarled and ripped it away at the shoulder. Logen smiled to himself as he recalled the efforts Bayaz had gone to in getting her to change her old stinking rags for new clothes. Now she was filthier than ever, shirt sweated through, spotted with blood and caked with grime from the roof-tops. She looked over her shoulder and saw him watching her. “Move, pink,” she hissed at him.

“You see no colours, right?” She clambered on, ignoring him, swinging around a smoking chimney and slithering across the dirty slates on her belly, sliding down onto a narrow ledge between two roofs. Logen scrambled down behind her. “No colours at all.”

“So?” she threw over her shoulder.

“So why do you call me pink?”

She looked round. “Are you pink?”

Logen peered at his forearms. Aside from the mottled bruises, red scratches, blue veins, they were sort of pink, it had to be said. He frowned.

“Thought so.” She scurried away between the roofs, right to the end of the building, and peered down. Logen followed her, leaned out gingerly over the edge. A couple of people were moving around in the lane below. Far below, and there was no way down. They’d have to go back the way they came. Ferro had already moved away behind him.

Wind flicked at the side of Logen’s face. Ferro’s foot slapped against the edge of the roof, and then she was in the air. His jaw hung open as he watched her fly away, back arched, arms and legs flailing. She landed on a flat roof, grey lead streaked with green moss, rolled once then came up smoothly to her feet.

Logen licked his lips, pointed at his chest. She nodded. The flat roof was ten feet below, but there might have been twenty feet of empty air between him and it, and it was a long way down. He backed away slowly, giving himself a good run-up. He sucked in a couple of deep breaths, closed his eyes for a moment.

It would be perfect, in a way, if he fell. No songs, no stories. Just a bloody smear on a road somewhere. He started running. His feet thumped on the stone. The air whistled in his mouth, plucked at his torn clothes. The flat roof came flying up towards him. He landed with a shuddering impact, rolled once just as Ferro had done, stood up beside her. He was still alive.

“Hah!” he shouted. “What d’you think of that?”

There was a creaking sound, then a cracking, then the roof gave way under Logen’s feet. He grabbed despairingly at Ferro as he fell and she slid through after him, helpless. He tumbled in the air for a sickening moment, wailing, hands clutching at nothing. He crashed down on his back.

Logen coughed on choking dust, shook his head, shifted painfully. He was in a room, inky dark after the brightness outside. Dust was filtering down through the light from the ragged hole in the roof above. There was something soft under him. A bed. It had half collapsed, leaning at an angle, blankets covered in broken plaster. There was something across his legs. Ferro. He snorted a gurgling laugh to himself. In bed with a woman again, at last. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite what he’d been hoping for.

“Stupid fucking pink!” she snarled, scrabbling off him and over to the door, bits of wood and plaster sliding off her dusty back. She hauled on the doorknob. “Locked! It’s—” Logen crashed past her, ripping the door off its hinges and sprawling out into the corridor beyond.

Ferro sprang over him. “Up, pink, up!” A handy-looking length of wood had split from the edge of the door, a couple of nails sticking out of the end. Logen snatched it up in his hand. He struggled to his feet, stumbled down the corridor a few paces, came to a junction. A shadowy hallway stretched away to either side. Small windows cast sharp pools of light on the dark matting.