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

‘That’s enough.’ Marsh nudged his horse forward with his heels. Nudged her between Broad and the chopping block, where the axe was. A good horseman. He sat high on his saddle with the sky bright behind so Broad had to squint up at him. ‘Lord Isher’s going to have his valley one way or another. No point being stubborn. Better for you to leave with a little money in your pocket.’

‘Better than what?’

Marsh took a heavy breath through his nose. ‘Be a shame if this lovely house o’ yours were to catch fire one night.’

His hand crept down. Not towards the peeling gilt basketwork of that fancy sword. To a knife, most likely. Thought he’d goad Broad into rashness, then he could just lean over and stab him, cut through a problem with one bit of sharp metal that a lot of talk couldn’t seem to unravel. Maybe that’d worked for him before. Worked a lot of times.

‘Catch fire, you say?’ Funny thing was, Broad didn’t feel angry. Such a relief to be able to let go, even for a moment, that he almost smiled.

‘That’s right.’ Marsh leaned down towards him. ‘Be a shame … if your lovely wife and daughter was—’

Broad caught his boot and flung him out of his saddle. Marsh gave a shocked grunt, flailed at the air as he went tumbling down.

He was snarling curses as Broad walked around the horse, trying to scramble up, but he had one foot still snarled in the stirrup.

Broad caught his wrist before he could right himself and twisted it up, forced his head down onto the chopping block. Marsh screamed as his elbow popped apart, knife dropping in the dirt, but only till Broad lifted one boot and smashed his face into the scarred wood with all his weight, bone crunching one, two, three times.

Able half-stood from the wagon’s seat, eyes starting, fumbling with the string of his bow. Most men need time to act. Broad had the opposite problem. He was always loaded. Always.

Able had no time to draw the string as Broad strode to the wagon. No time to reach for a bolt, even.

He managed to swing the bow but Broad brushed it away with his forearm, caught Able by the front of his jacket. He gave a little hoot as Broad jerked him into the air and rammed him head first into the old gatepost, blood speckling the side of the wagon. He flopped down with one arm wedged through that creaky wheel, smashed skull bent all the way backwards.

Broad hopped up onto the seat while Seldom stared, reins still in his limp hands.

‘Gunnar—’ He tried to get up but Broad shoved him back down with his knee.

Wasn’t sure how many times he hit him, fist up and fist down, fist up and fist down, but when he stopped, Seldom’s face was just a mess of glistening red.

Broad blinked down at him, a bit out of breath. Wind blew up cold on his sweaty forehead.

Broad blinked over at Liddy. She was staring, hand clapped over her mouth.

Broad blinked at his fists. Took a painful effort to uncurl the red fingers, and he started to realise what had happened.

He sat down beside Seldom’s corpse on the wagon’s seat, all weak and shaky. Spots on his vision. Blood, he realised, on his lenses. He fumbled them off, turned the world to a smear.

Liddy didn’t say anything. Neither did he.

What was there to say?

A Sea of Business

‘Welcome, one and all, to this thirteenth biannual meeting of Adua’s Solar Society!’

Honrig Curnsbick, the great machinist, resplendent in a waistcoat embroidered with golden leaves, threw up his broad hands. The applause was the most enthusiastic this theatre could have heard since Iosiv Lestek gave his final performance on its stage.

‘With thanks to our distinguished patrons – the Lady Ardee, and her daughter Lady Savine dan Glokta!’ Curnsbick gestured towards Savine’s box and she smiled over her fan as though her delicate feelings could hardly stand the attention. There were whoops, and calls of, ‘Hear, hear.’ From members who particularly wanted her money, she imagined.

‘We never dreamed , when nine of us first met in Lady Savine’s parlour, that only eight years later, the Solar Society would have more than four hundred members throughout the Union and beyond!’ Curnsbick might not have, but Savine had always dreamed big. ‘We are living in bold new times! Times when only the lazy need be poor. When only the small-minded need be dissatisfied. Times when the world can be changed by the ingenuity and endeavour of a single man!’ Or even, Fates help us, a single woman.

‘Only yesterday, here in Adua, Dietam dan Kort completed a bridge made entirely of iron – of iron , mark you – that will bring a canal through Casamir’s Wall and into the heart of the city.’ More applause, and down in the audience, Kort was clapped on the back by his peers. A back covered by a fine new coat paid for with Savine’s money, as it happened. ‘With it will come boundless access to raw materials. Will come new industry and new commerce. Will come better jobs and better goods and better lives for the masses.’ Curnsbick flung his arms wide with a showman’s flourish, eye-lenses flashing. ‘Will come prosperity for all !’ But especially for Savine, it hardly needed to be said. What is the point in prosperity, after all, if everyone has it?

‘And now to business! The business of progress ! Our first address shall be by Kaspar dan Arinhorm, on the application of the Curnsbick Engine to the pumping of water from iron mines.’

Savine rose to leave while Arinhorm was on his way to the lectern. The truth was she had never been very interested in the inventions. Her obsession was how they could be turned into money. And that particular alchemy was practised in the foyer.

A considerable crowd had already gathered beneath the three great chandeliers, buzzing with excited chatter, seething with prospects and proposals. Knots of soberly dressed gentlemen broke and re-formed, drawn into dizzying swirls and eddies, ladies’ dresses bright dots of colour bobbing on the flood. Here and there, one could even spot the fabulous robes of some relic of the old merchant guilds. Savine’s practised eye picked out those with money or connections, those without sucked spinning after them like rowing boats in the wake of great ships, desperate for patronage, involvement, investment.

It was a sea of business. Dangerous waters, swept by unpredictable storms, where fortunes could founder, enterprises be lost with all hands, reputations sink beneath the waves, but where a navigator with sufficient vision could be borne to spectacular success on the hidden currents of wealth and influence.

‘God works for those who work themselves,’ murmured Zuri, checking her watch.

She was ever at Savine’s shoulder, ready to guide the chaff away or, on occasion, make a note in her book for an informal meeting, perhaps an invitation to tea for the truly promising. Often at those pleasant interviews, she would make some passing observation about night-time habits, or questionable pasts, or illegitimate offspring, and how this or that scandal revealed might leave a promising career in ruins. There was almost no one worth noticing without a secret kept somewhere in her book. A dash of blackmail, tastefully administered, could always be relied upon to shift prices in the right direction. To win at this game, you had to keep one foot in the ballroom and the other knee-deep in the sewer.

‘To work, then.’ Savine put on her most radiant smile, snapped out her fan and glided down the steps into the melee.

‘Have you considered my proposal? Lady Savine? A new design for coal boats, if you recall? Both keels and colliers! We’ll put coal in every household, however humble. Coal is the future!’

‘My surveys show the hills near Rostod are riddled with copper, Lady Savine – why, you could scoop it up with your hands! Metals are the future!’