Джо Аберкромби - A Little Hatred - Book One (The Age of Madness)

Then he caught sight of Rikke, and found he was smiling in spite of himself.

She slouched in the saddle, squinting angrily up at the sun as though she was taking its shining personally. He wasn’t sure she’d changed a thing since getting out of his bed. Among that immaculately tailored, groomed and decorated company, he found her total lack of effort oddly attractive.

He had wanted to marry the best-dressed woman in the Circle of the World, after all, and look how that turned out.

‘Your Highness,’ she grunted as he dropped back towards her.

‘Your …’ Orso frowned. ‘What’s the term of address for an emissary from the Protectorate?’

‘Rikke?’

‘You don’t stand on ceremony up there, do you?’

‘We stomp all over it. What are you doing back here with the chaff? Not enough width on one street for two heads so swollen as yours and Leo dan Brock’s?’

‘I quite like him.’ Orso shrugged. ‘A great deal better than I like myself, at least. In which I think, for once, I am in tune with the public mood.’ Those commoners who looked in Orso’s direction did so, in the main, with hatred. ‘No doubt I deserve it, though.’

‘Unpopular at home, you came down here to work on overseas alliances. You’re not the self-obsessed rake I was expecting.’

‘I fear I’m even worse.’ He leaned towards her, dropping his voice. ‘There’s only one alliance I want to work on, and it’s the one between my prick and your—’

He caught sight of the man riding just behind Rikke. A towering old Northman with the most monstrous scar he had ever seen, a bright ball of metal gleaming in the midst of it. His other eye was fixed on Orso with an expression fit to freeze the blood. Though it must be hard to find warm expressions when you have a face like a murderer’s nightmare.

Orso swallowed. ‘Your friend has a metal eye.’

‘That’s Caul Shivers. Got a good claim to being the most feared man in the North.’

‘And he’s … your bodyguard?’

Rikke shrugged her bony shoulders. ‘Just a friend. But I guess he’s filling the role.’

‘And the woman?’

She watched Orso even more intently than Shivers, if anything, one hand blue with tattoos, her stony-hard face shifting rhythmically as she chewed at something. Without breaking eye contact, she turned her head and savagely spat.

‘That’s Isern-i-Phail. Reckoned most wise among the hillwomen. She knows all the ways. Even better’n her daddy did. She’s been helping me open the Long Eye. And to make of my heart a stone. With mixed results.’

‘So she’s … your tutor?’

Rikke shrugged again. ‘Just a friend. But I guess she’s filling the role.’

‘For an easy-going woman, you have some fearsome retainers.’

‘Don’t worry. You’re safe.’ She leaned close. ‘Long as you don’t let me down.’

‘Oh, I let everyone down.’ He grinned at her, and she grinned back, all the way across her wide mouth. It looked so wonderfully open and true, somehow, that he felt pleased with himself for having some part in it. He had proposed to the most manipulative woman in the Circle of the World, after all.

Look how that turned out.

No expense had been spared. They’d turned the Square of Marshals into an arena, like they did for the Summer Contest, banks of seating bursting with happy crowds. The buildings were decked with flags: the sun of the Union, the crossed hammers of Angland. Everyone wore their best, though their best varied depending on which end of the square you were at. Up at the other end it was jewels and silk, down here it was twice-turned jackets and a ribbon or two for the lucky ones.

Still, feeling is free, so there was no shortage of emotion as the glittering ranks tramped past. There was jealous admiration: of beggars for commoners, of commoners for gentry, of gentry for nobility, of nobility for royalty, all twisting their necks looking always up to what they didn’t quite have. There was warlike enthusiasm, mostly from those who’d never drawn a sword in their lives, since those used to swinging them tend to know better. There was patriotic fervour enough to drown an island full of foreign scum, and righteous delight that the Union made the best young bastards in the world. There was civic pride from the denizens of mighty Adua, City of White Towers, for no one breathed vapours so thick or drank water as dirty as they did, nor paid so much for rooms so small.

When it came to feeding the people, or housing them better than dogs, there were always harsh limits on what government could afford. But for a royal triumph, the Closed Council would find a way. Someone who’d starved in the camps, who’d lied her way into the hearts and beds of good people, who’d tricked and tortured to betray a cause she halfway believed in for the sake of one she didn’t at all, might’ve felt a little bitter at seeing all this money wasted.

But Vick had a harder heart than that, and for damn sure a harder head. Or so she told herself.

‘Been looking all over for you.’ Tallow was at her elbow. No need for him to shove through the crowds. He was that thin, he could just slip through the gaps like a breeze under a door. He’d brought a girl, wearing a best bonnet that even Vick, who’d never worn a bonnet in her life, could tell had been out of fashion a century ago. ‘This is my sister.’

Vick blinked. ‘The one who—’

‘I’ve only got the one.’

There was no telling how old she was. When children don’t get fed properly, sometimes they look far younger than they are, sometimes far older. Sometimes both at once. She had her brother’s big eyes but a face even thinner, so hers looked even bigger, like a tragic frog’s. Vick could see her own stern, distorted reflection in the damp corners of them, and didn’t much like the look of it, either.

‘Go on, then,’ said Tallow, nudging his sister with his elbow.

The girl swallowed, as if she was dragging up the words from a long way down. ‘Just wanted … to thank you. It’s a good place, I been living. Clean. And they feed me. Much as I can eat. Though I don’t eat much, I guess. Just … our parents died, you know. We never had anyone looking out for us before.’

Vick was hard. Ask anyone who’d tried to cross her in the camps. Ask anyone she’d sent to the camps since. Ask anyone unlucky enough to run across her. Vick was hard. But that stung. The girl was thanking her for being a hostage. Thanking her for using her as a tool to make her brother betray his friends.

‘What did Tallow tell you?’ muttered Vick.

‘Nothing really!’ Worried she’d get him into trouble. ‘Just that he was doing some work for you, and so you were looking after me while he was doing it.’ She glanced up, fearful. ‘Is the work done?’

‘The work’s never done,’ said Vick, and the girl perked up right away. Maybe she should’ve been happy that someone was happy about more work. But Vick had never been sure what being happy felt like. Maybe it had happened and she hadn’t noticed.

There was an ear-splitting fanfare, hundreds of boot heels crashing down together as the soldiers found their final places and brought the parade to an end. For a moment, all was still. Then someone rose from among the great men of the Closed Council, from beside the king, sunlight gleaming on the arcane symbols stitched into his shimmering robes. Bayaz, the First of the Magi.

‘My noble lords and ladies! My stout yeomen and women! My proud citizens of the Union! We stand at the site of a great victory!’ And he smiled out at the Square of Marshals. A place that was still being painstakingly rebuilt after he’d levelled it no more than thirty years ago. They said it would be better than ever when they were done. But things are always going to be better, or were better long ago. No politician ever got anywhere by telling people things are just right as they are.