Joe Abercrombie - Red Country

Dimbik smoothed down his hair. ‘Times change.’

‘Here is justice, eh, Sworbreck? Here is loyalty! Take a good look, all of you, this is where charity gets you! The fruits of polite behaviour and thought for your fellow man!’

‘For pity’s sake, someone shut him up,’ snapped Lorsen, and Cog leaned from his saddle and stuffed a pair of socks in Cosca’s mouth.

Dimbik leaned closer to the Inquisitor. ‘It might be best if we were to kill them. Cosca still has friends among the rest of the Company, and—’

‘A point well made and well taken, but no. Look at him.’ The infamous mercenary did indeed present a most miserable picture, sitting hunched on horseback with hands manacled behind him, his torn and muddied cloak all askew, the gilt on his breastplate all peeling and rust showing beneath, his wrinkled skin blotchy with rash, one of Cog’s socks dangling from his mouth. ‘Yesterday’s man if ever there was one. And in any case, my dear Captain General…’ Dimbik stood tall and straightened his uniform at the title. He very much enjoyed the ring of it. ‘We need someone to blame.’

In spite of the profound pain in his stomach, the ache in his legs, the sweat spreading steadily under his armour, he remained resplendently erect upon the balcony, rigid as a mighty oak, until long after the mercenaries had filed away into the haze. Would the great Legate Sarmis, ruthless commander, undefeated general, right hand of the Emperor, feared throughout the Circle of the World, have allowed himself to display the least trace of weakness, after all?

It felt an age of agony before the Mayor stepped out onto the balcony with Temple behind her, and spoke the longed for words ‘They’re gone.’

Every part of him sagged and he gave a groan from the very bottom of his being. He removed that ridiculous helmet, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a trembling hand. He could scarcely recall having donned a more absurd costume in all his many years in the theatre. No garlands of flowers flung by an adoring audience, perhaps, as had littered the broad stage of Adua’s House of Drama after his every appearance as the First of the Magi, but his satisfaction was no less complete.

‘I told you I had one more great performance in me!’ said Lestek.

‘And so you did,’ said the Mayor.

‘You both provided able support, though, for amateurs. I daresay you have a future in the theatre.’

‘Did you have to hit me?’ asked Temple, probing at his split lip.

‘Someone had to,’ muttered the Mayor.

‘Ask yourself rather, would the terrible Legate Sarmis have struck you, and blame him for your pains,’ said Lestek. ‘A performance is all in the details, my boy, all in the details! One must inhabit the role entirely. Which occurs to me, do thank my little legion before they disperse, it was an ensemble effort.’

‘For five carpenters, three bankrupt prospectors, a barber and a drunk, they made quite an honour guard,’ said Temple.

‘That drunk scrubbed up surprisingly well,’ said Lestek.

‘A good find,’ added the Mayor.

‘It really worked?’ Shy South had limped up to lean against the door frame.

‘I told you it would,’ said Temple.

‘But you obviously didn’t believe it.’

‘No,’ he admitted, peering up at the skies. ‘There really must be a God.’

‘Are you sure they’ll believe it?’ asked the Mayor. ‘Once they’ve joined up with the rest of their Company and had time to think it over?’

‘Men believe what they want to,’ said Temple. ‘Cosca’s done. And those bastards want to go home.’

‘A victory for culture over barbarity!’ said Lestek, flicking the plume on the helmet.

‘A victory for law over chaos,’ said Temple, fanning himself with his worthless treaty.

‘A victory for lying,’ said the Mayor, ‘and only by the narrowest of margins.’

Shy South shrugged and said, with her talent for simplicity, ‘A win’s a win.’

‘All too true!’ Lestek took a long breath through his nose and, even with the pain, even though he knew he did not have long left, perhaps because he knew it, he breathed out with the deepest fulfilment. ‘As a young man I found happy endings cloying but, call me soppy, with age, I have come to appreciate them more and more.’

Shy scooped up water and splashed it on her face, and groaned at the cold of it, just this side of ice. She worked her fingertips into her sore eyelids, and her aching cheeks, and her battered mouth. Stayed there, bent over the basin, her faint reflection sent scattering by the drops from her face. The water was pink with blood. Hard to say where from exactly. The last few months had left her beaten as a prizefighter. Just without the prize.

There was the long rope-burn coiling around one forearm and the new cut down the other, blood spotted through the bandage. Her hands were ripped up front and back, crack-nailed and scab-knuckled. She picked at the scar under her ear, a keepsake from that Ghost out on the plains. He’d almost got the whole ear to remember her by. She felt the lumps and scabs on her scalp, the nicks on her face, some of them she couldn’t even remember getting. She hunched her shoulders and wriggled her spine and all the countless sores and grazes and bruises niggled at her like a choir of ugly little voices.

She looked down into the street and watched the children for a moment. Majud had found them some new clothes—dark suit and shirt for Pit, green dress with lace at the sleeves for Ro. Better than Shy had ever been able to buy them. They might’ve passed for some rich man’s children if it hadn’t been for their shaved heads, the dark fuzz just starting to grow back. Curnsbick was pointing to his vast new building, talking with big, enthusiastic gestures, Ro watching and listening solemnly, taking it all in, Pit kicking a stone about the mud.

Shy sniffed, and swallowed, and splashed more water on her face. Couldn’t be crying if her eyes were wet already, could she? She should’ve been leaping with joy. In spite of the odds, the hardships, the dangers, she’d got them back.

But all she could think of was the cost.

The people killed. A few she’d miss and a lot she wouldn’t. Some she’d even have called evil, but no one’s evil to themselves, are they? They were still people dead, could do no good now, could make no amends and right no wrongs, people who’d taken a lifetime to make, plucked out from the world and turned to mud. Sangeed and his Ghosts. Papa Ring and his crooks. Waerdinur and his Dragon People. Leef left under the dirt out on the plains, and Grega Cantliss doing the hanged man’s dance, and Brachio with the arrows in him, and—

She stuck her face in the cloth and rubbed, hard, like she could rub them all away, but they were stuck tight to her. Tattooed into her sure as the rebel slogans into Corlin’s arms.

Was it her fault? Had she set it all rolling when she came out here like the kicked pebble that starts the landslide? Or was it Cantliss’ fault, or Waerdinur’s, or Lamb’s? Was it everyone’s? Her head hurt from trying to pull apart the tapestry of everything happened and follow her own nasty little thread through it, sifting for blame like a fevered miner dredging at a stream-bed. No point picking at it any more than at a scab. But still, now it was behind her, she couldn’t stop looking back.

She limped to the bed and sat with a groaning of old springs, arms around herself, wincing and twitching at flashes of things happened like they were happening now.

Cantliss smashing her head against a table leg. Her knife sliding into flesh. Grunting in her face. Things she’d had to do. Wrestling with a crazy Ghost. Leef without his ears. Sangeed’s head coming off, thud. It had been them or her. Looking down at that girl she’d shot, not much older’n Ro. Arrow in a horse and the rider tumbling. No choice, she’d had no choice. Lamb flinging her against the wall, Waerdinur’s skull split, click, and she was flying from the wagon, and over, and over, and over—