Joe Abercrombie: Red Country

She jerked her head up at a knock, wiped her eyes on her bandage. ‘Who’s there?’ Doing her best to sound like it was any other morning.

‘Your lawyer.’ Temple swung the door open, that earnest look on his face which she could never quite be sure was genuine. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’ve had easier years.’

‘Anything I can do?’

‘Guess it’s a little late to ask you to keep that wagon on the road.’

‘A little.’ He came and sat down on the bed next to her. Didn’t feel uncomfortable. You go through what they’d been through together, maybe uncomfortable goes off the menu. ‘The Mayor wants us gone. She says we’re bad luck.’

‘Hard to argue with her. I’m surprised she hasn’t killed you.’

‘I suppose she still might.’

‘Just need to wait a little longer.’ Shy grunted as she wormed her foot into her boot, trying to work out how bad the ankle hurt. Bad enough she stopped trying. ‘Just ’til Lamb comes back.’

There was a silence then. A silence in which Temple didn’t say, ‘Do you really think he’s coming back?’ Instead he just nodded, as if Lamb coming was as sure as tomorrow, and she was grateful for that much. ‘Then where are you heading?’

‘That’s a question.’ New lives out west didn’t look much different to the old ones. No short cuts to riches, leastways, or none a sane woman might want to take. And it was no place for children neither. She’d never thought farming would look like the comfortable option, but now she shrugged. ‘The Near Country for me, I reckon. It’s no easy life but I’ve spotted nothing easier.’

‘I hear Dab Sweet and Crying Rock are putting together a Fellowship for the trip back. Majud’s going along, aiming to make some deals in Adua. Lord Ingelstad too.’

‘Any Ghosts turn up his wife can frown ’em to death.’

‘She’s staying. I hear she bought Camling’s Hostelry for a song.’

‘Good for her.’

‘The rest will be heading east within the week.’

‘Now? ’Fore the weather breaks?’

‘Sweet says now’s the time, before the meltwater swells the rivers and the Ghosts get tetchy again.’

She took a long breath. Could’ve done with a year or two in bed but life hadn’t often served her what she ordered. ‘Might be I’ll sign up.’

Temple looked across from under his brows. Nervous, almost. ‘Maybe… I’ll tag on?’

‘Can’t stop you, can I?’

‘Would you want to?’

She thought about that. ‘No. Might need someone to ride drag. Or jump out of a window. Or drive a wagon full of gold off a road.’

He puffed himself up. ‘As it happens, I am expert in all three. I’ll talk to Sweet and let him know we’ll be joining up. I suppose it’s possible he won’t value my skills as highly as you do, though… I might have to buy my way in.’

They looked at each other for a moment. ‘You coming up a little short?’

‘You didn’t exactly give me time to pack. I’ve nothing but the clothes I’m wearing.’

‘Lucky for you I’m always willing to help out.’ She reached into her pocket and drew out a few of the ancient coins she’d taken while the wagon sped across the plateau. ‘Will that cover it?’

‘I’d say so.’ He took them between finger and thumb but she didn’t let go.

‘Reckon that’s about two hundred marks you owe.’

He stared at her. ‘Are you trying to upset me?

‘I can do that without trying.’ And she let go the coins.

‘I suppose a person should stick to what they’re good at.’ He smiled, and flicked one of the coins spinning up and snatched it from the air. ‘Seems I’m at my best in debt.’

‘Tell you what.’ She grabbed a bottle from the table by her bed and wedged it in her shirt pocket. ‘I’ll pay you a mark to help me downstairs.’

Outside a sleety drizzle had set in, falling brown around Curnsbick’s belching chimneys, his workmen struggling in the mush on the far side of the street. Temple helped her to the rail and she leaned against it, watching. Funny thing. She didn’t want to let go of him.

‘I’m bored,’ said Pit.

‘One day, young man, you will learn what a luxury it is to be bored.’ Temple offered him his hand. ‘Why not help me seek out that noted scout and frontiersman, Dab Sweet? There may even be gingerbread in it for you. I have recently come into some money.’

‘All right.’ Temple lifted the boy onto his shoulders and they set off down the rattling porches at half a jog, Pit laughing as he bounced.

He had a touch with the children, had Temple. More than she had, now, it seemed. Shy hopped to the bench against the front of the house and dropped onto it, stretched her hurt leg out in front of her and eased back. She grunted as she let her muscles go soft by slow degrees, and finally pulled the cork from her bottle with that echoing thwop that sets your mouth watering. Oh, the simple joy of doing nothing. Thinking nothing. She reckoned she could allow herself a rest.

It had been hard work, the last few months.

She lowered that bottle, looking up the street, liquor burning at the cuts in her mouth in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. There was a rider coming through the murk of smoke and drizzle. A particularly slouching rider coming at a slow walk, taking shape as he came closer—big, and old, and battered. His coat was torn, and dirtied, and ash-smeared. He’d lost his hat, short scrub of grey hair matted with blood and rain, face streaked with dirt, mottled with bruise, scabbed and grazed and swollen.

She took another sip from her bottle. ‘I was wondering when you’d turn up.’

‘You can stop,’ grunted Lamb, stopping himself, his old horse looking like it didn’t have another stride in it. ‘The children all right?’

‘They’re as well as they were.’

‘How about you?’

‘Don’t know when I was last all right, but I’m still just about alive. You?’

‘Just about.’ He clambered down from his horse, teeth gritted, not even bothering to tie it up. ‘Say one thing for me… say I’m a survivor.’ He held his ribs as he limped up the steps and onto the porch. He looked at the bench, then his sword, realised he wouldn’t be able to sit with it on, started struggling with the buckle on the belt, his knuckles scabbed raw and two of the fingers he still had bandaged together and held stiff.

‘By… the… fucking—’

‘Here.’ She leaned and flicked the buckle open and he pulled the sword off, belt dangling, cast about for somewhere to put it, then gave up and dropped it on the boards, sank down beside her and slowly, slowly stretched his legs out next to hers.

‘Savian?’ she asked.

Lamb shook his head a little. Like shaking it a lot would hurt him. ‘Where’s Cosca?’

‘Gone.’ She passed him the bottle. ‘Temple lawyered him off.’

‘Lawyered him?’

‘With a little help from the Mayor and a final performance of remarkable quality.’

‘Well, I never did.’ Lamb took a long swig and wiped his scabbed lips, looking across the street at Curnsbick’s manufactory. A couple of doors down, above an old card-hall, they were hauling up a sign reading Valint and Balk, Bankers. Lamb took another swallow. ‘Times sure are changing.’

‘Feel left out?’

He rolled one eye to her, half-swollen shut and all blown and bloodshot, and offered the bottle back. ‘For a while now.’

They sat there, looking at each other, like two survivors of an avalanche. ‘What happened, Lamb?’

He opened his mouth, as if he was thinking about where to start, then just shrugged, looking even more tired and hurt than she did. ‘Does it matter?’

If there’s nothing needs saying, why bother? She lifted the bottle. ‘No. I guess not.’