Joe Abercrombie - Red Country

‘You’re getting old for brawling, too, but I do hear tell you might be involving yourself in some bare-fist business we got coming to Crease.’

Lamb shrugged again. ‘I fought a bout or two in my youth.’

‘I see that,’ said Ring, with an eye on Lamb’s battered face, ‘but, keen devotee though I am of the brawling arts, I’d rather this fight didn’t happen at all.’

‘Worried your man might lose?’ asked Shy.

She really couldn’t drag Ring’s grin loose at all. ‘Not really. My man’s famous for beating a lot of famous men, and beating ’em bad. But the fact is I’d rather the Mayor packed up nice and quiet. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind seeing a little blood spilled. Shows people you care. But too much is awful bad for business. And I got big plans for this place. Good plans… But you don’t care about that, do you?’

‘Everyone’s got plans,’ said Shy, ‘and everyone thinks theirs are good. It’s when one set of good plans gets tangled with another things tend to slide downhill.’

‘Just tell me this, then, and if the answer’s yes I’ll leave you to enjoy your shitty breakfast in peace. Have you given the Mayor a certain yes or can I still make you a better offer?’ Ring’s eyes moved between them, and neither spoke, and he took that for encouragement, and maybe it was. ‘I may not have the graces but I’m always willing to deal. Just tell me what she’s promised you.’

Lamb looked up for the first time. ‘Grega Cantliss.’

Shy was watching him hard and she saw Ring’s smile slip at the name. ‘You know him, then?’ she asked.

‘He works for me. Has worked for me, at times.’

‘Was he working for you when he burned my farm, and killed my friend, and stole two children from me?’ asked Lamb.

Ring sat back, rubbing at his jaw, a trace of frown showing. ‘Quite an accusation. Stealing children. I can tell you now I’d have no part of that.’

‘Seems you got one even so,’ said Shy.

‘Only your word for it. What kind of a man would I be if I gave my people up on your say-so?’

‘I don’t care one fucking shit what kind of man y’are,’ snarled Lamb, knuckles white around his cutlery, and Ring’s men stirred unhappily, and Shy saw Savian sitting up, watchful, but Lamb took no notice of any of it. ‘Give me Cantliss and we’re done. Get in my way, there’ll be trouble.’ And he frowned as he saw he’d bent his knife at a right angle against the tabletop.

Ring mildly raised his brows. ‘You’re very confident. Given nobody’s heard of you.’

‘I been through this before. I got a fair idea how it turns out.’

‘My man ain’t bent cutlery.’

‘He will be.’

‘Just tell us where Cantliss is,’ said Shy, ‘and we’ll be on our way and out of yours.’

Papa Ring looked for the first time like he might be running short of patience. ‘Girl, do you suppose you could sit back and let me and your father talk this out?’

‘Not really. Maybe it’s my Ghost blood but I’m cursed with a contrary temperament. Folk warn me off a thing, I just start thinking on how to go about it. Can’t help myself.’

Ring took a long breath and forced himself back to reasonable. ‘I understand. Someone stole my children, there’d be nowhere in the Circle of the World for those bastards to run to. But don’t make me your enemy when I can every bit as easily be your friend. I can’t just hand you Cantliss. Maybe that’s what the Mayor would do but it ain’t my way. I tell you what, though, next time he comes to town we can all sit down and talk this out, get to the truth of it, see if we can’t find your young ones. I’ll help you every way I can, you got my word.’

‘Your word?’ And Shy curled back her lip and spat onto her cold bacon. If it was bacon.

‘I got no graces but I got my word.’ And Ring stabbed at the table with his thick forefinger. ‘That’s what everything stands on, on my side of the street. Folk are loyal to me ’cause I’m loyal to them. Break that, I got nothing. Break that, I am nothing.’ He leaned closer, beckoning like he had the killer offer to make. ‘But forget my word and just look at it this way—you want the Mayor’s help, you’re going to have to fight for it and, believe me, that’ll be one hell of a fight. You want my help?’ He gave the biggest shrug his big shoulders could manage, like even considering an alternative was madness. ‘All you got to do is not fight.’

Shy didn’t like the feel of this bastard one bit, but she didn’t like the feel of the Mayor much more and she had to admit there was something in what he was saying.

Lamb nodded as he straightened out his knife between finger and thumb and tossed it on his plate. Then he stood. ‘What if I’d rather fight?’ And he strode for the door, the queue for breakfast scurrying to part for him.

Ring blinked, brows drawn in with puzzlement. ‘Who’d rather fight?’ Shy got up without answering and hurried after, weaving between the tables. ‘Just think about it, that’s all I’m asking! Be reasonable!’

And they were out into the street. ‘Hold up there, Lamb! Lamb!’

She dodged through a bleating mass of little grey sheep, had to lurch back to let a pair of wagons squelch past. She caught sight of Temple, sitting high up astride a big beam, hammer in hand, the strong square frame of Majud’s shop already higher than the slumping buildings on either side. He raised one hand in greeting.

‘Seventy!’ she bellowed at him. She couldn’t see his face but the shoulders of his silhouette slumped in a faintly heartening way.

‘Will you hold up?’ She caught Lamb by the arm just as he was getting close to the Mayor’s Church of Dice, the thugs around the door, hardly to be told from the ones who’d come with Papa Ring, watching them hard-eyed. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘Taking the Mayor up on her offer.’

‘Just ’cause that fat fool rubbed you the wrong way?’

Lamb came close and suddenly it seemed that he was looming over her from quite the height. ‘That and ’cause his man stole your brother and sister.’

‘You think I’m happy about that?’ she hissed at him, getting angry now. ‘But we don’t know the ins and outs of it! He seemed reasonable enough, considering’

Lamb frowned back towards Camling’s. ‘Some men only listen to violence.’

‘Some men only talk it. Never took you for one of ’em. Did we come for Pit and Ro or for blood?’

She’d meant to make a point not ask a question but for a moment it looked like he had to consider the answer. ‘I’m thinking I might get all three.’

She stared at him for a moment. ‘Who the fuck are you? There was a time men could rub your face in the dung and you’d just thank ’em and ask for more.’

‘And you know what?’ He peeled her fingers from his arm with a grip that was almost painful. ‘I’ve remembered I didn’t like it much.’ And he stomped muddy footprints up the steps of the Mayor’s place, leaving Shy behind in the street.

Temple tapped a few more shavings from the joint, then nodded to Lamb and together they lowered the beam, tenon sliding snugly into mortise.

‘Hah!’ Lamb slapped Temple on the back. ‘Naught so nice as to see a job done well. You got clever hands, lad. Damn clever for a man washes up out of streams. Sort of hands you can turn to anything.’ He looked down at his own big, battered, three-fingered hand and made a fist of it. ‘Mine only ever really been good for one thing.’ And he thumped at the beam until it came flush.

Temple had expected carpentry to be almost as much of a chore as riding drag, but he had to admit he was enjoying himself, and it was getting harder every day to pretend otherwise. There was something in the smell of fresh-sawn timber—when the mountain breeze slipped into the valley long enough for one to smell anything but shit—that wafted away his suffocating regrets and let him breathe free. His hands had found old skills with hammer and chisel and he had worked out the habits of the local wood, pale and straight and strong. Majud’s hirelings silently conceded he knew his business and soon were taking his instructions without a second word, working at scaffold and pulleys with little skill but great enthusiasm, the frame sprouting up twice as fast and twice as fine as Temple had hoped.