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

‘It’s true one must be careful who one is seen with.’ Savine opened her eyes very wide as the carriage rattled to a halt. ‘My mother likes to tell me a lady’s reputation is all she has. Ironic, really. Her reputation is dismal.’

‘Sometimes you don’t value a thing till you’ve thrown it away,’ muttered Vick.

Valbeck was hidden behind the hills to the north as she hopped down into the rutted mud, but she could see the smoke from the city’s thousands of chimneys, spreading on the breeze to make a great dark smudge across the sky. Maybe she could smell it, too. Just an acrid tickle at the back of her throat.

‘Is that all your luggage?’ asked Savine as Tallow dragged their stained bags down from the mass of boxes on the roof.

‘We travel light,’ said Vick, pulling on her battered coat and giving her shoulders the labourer’s hunch that went with it.

‘I envy you that. It sometimes seems I can’t leave the house without a dozen trunks and a hat stand.’

‘Wealth can be quite a burden, eh?’

‘You’ve no idea,’ said Savine as Lisbit swung the door shut.

‘Thanks for the sweet, my lady,’ croaked out Tallow.

‘Such wonderful manners deserve a reward.’ And Savine tossed the box through the window.

Tallow gave a little gasp as he caught it, fumbled it, managed to stop it falling and finally clasped it tight to his chest. ‘Don’t know what to say,’ he breathed.

Savine smiled. Open, and easy, and full of opulently polished pearly teeth. ‘Then silence is probably your best option.’ It nearly always was, in Vick’s opinion. Savine touched her fan to the brim of her perfect little hat. ‘Happy hunting.’

Fan snapped, whip cracked and the carriage lurched on towards Valbeck. Tallow watched it go in sad silence, shading his eyes against the midday glare. Vick shook her hair out, stuck her hand in the ditch beside the road and made sure she combed dirty water through to the ends.

‘You really have to do that?’ asked Tallow.

‘We’re among the desperate now, boy,’ she said, putting some labourer’s gravel in her voice. ‘Need to look like it.’ And she reached out and smeared mud down his cheek.

He sighed as Savine’s carriage was lost behind some trees, that fancy box still clasped tight.

‘Never met anyone like her,’ he whispered.

‘No.’ Vick slapped some life into her stiff leg, sniffed, hawked and spat on the road. Then she snapped her fingers at Tallow. ‘Give us one of those sweets, then.’

Friends Like These

The Vallimir residence, high on the hill where most of the affluent citizens of Valbeck had their houses, was a lesson in the dangers of excessive wealth and inadequate taste. Everything – furniture, cutlery and guests most of all – was too weighty, too fancy, too shiny. Mistress Vallimir’s dress was a misjudged purple, the curtains a garish turquoise, the soup a lurid yellow. The colour of urine with a taste not far removed.

‘I’ve never known such a hot spell!’ clucked the lady of the house, fanning herself ever more vigorously.

‘Oppressive,’ said Superior Risinau, head of Valbeck’s Inquisition, dabbing a dewy sweat from his plump cheeks that instantly sprang back. ‘Even for the season.’

It was very far from helping that Savine’s menses were now in full and particularly brutal first-day flow. Drawers like a battlefield, as her mother delighted in saying. Even bundled in a triple napkin, she would not have been at all surprised, on getting up, to find she had left a great bloody smear across the Vallimirs’ tasteless upholstery. A contribution to the party to live long in the memory. She had to suppress a wince at a particularly sharp pang, set down her overembellished spoon and slid her bowl away.

‘Not hungry, Lady Savine?’ asked Colonel Vallimir, peering down from the head of the table.

‘Everything is delicious but, alas, as I get older, I must take ever greater pains over my figure.’

Risinau gurgled out a chuckle. ‘Not a consideration I trouble myself with!’

Savine plastered a smile over her disgust as she watched him slurp from his spoon like a hog from a trough. ‘How fortunate for you.’ And how repugnant for everyone else.

Lord Parmhalt, the city’s mayor, teetered on the verge of slumber. Mistress Vallimir pretended not to notice as he drifted towards her, in imminent danger of slumping into her lap. The draught from her fan had loosened some strands of grey hair previously plastered across his bald pate and they now floated from his head to an impressive height. For the tenth time that evening, Savine wished she had stayed in Adua. Probably curled up in an aching ball with the curtains closed, giving vent to a torrent of obscenities. But she flatly refused to be a slave to her tyrant of a womb. Business came first. Business always came first.

‘And how is business?’ she asked.

‘Positively booming,’ said Vallimir. ‘The third shed is up and running and the mill working at full capacity. Costs down, profits up.’

‘The very directions for costs and profits that I like.’

Vallimir gave something between a cough and a chuckle. He was a man with a fragile sense of humour. ‘All good news. As I told you in my letter. Nothing to worry about.’

‘Oh, I can always find something to keep me awake at night,’ said Savine. Even if it was only a constant grinding ache through her stomach and down the backs of her legs.

Perhaps it was her presence, but there was a nervous edge to the gathering. The talk too urgent, the laughter too shrill, the staff twitchy as they whisked the soups away. Savine’s eye was caught by the glint of metal at the window: a pair of guards patrolling the grounds. There had been four of them at the door when she arrived, accompanied by a sullen monster of a dog.

‘Are all the armed men really necessary?’ she asked.

She was gratified to note the twitch of dismay on Vallimir’s face. As if he had sat on a pin. ‘Given your position in society, given the envy that might be directed towards you, given … who your father is, I thought we could not be too careful.’

‘One can never be too careful,’ echoed Superior Risinau, leaning close to touch Savine’s shoulder with entirely too much familiarity. ‘But you need have no fear, Lady Savine.’

‘Oh, I am not easily intimidated. I receive at least a dozen threats a day. The most vivid fantasies of my degradation and violent murder. Angry competitors, jealous rivals, disgruntled workers, scorned business partners, disappointed suitors. If there was money in threats, I would be …’ She paused a moment to consider it. ‘Even richer, I suppose. I swear, I receive more venom even than my father. It has made me realise there is only one thing men hate more than other men.’

There was an expectant pause. ‘Which is?’ asked Mistress Vallimir.

‘Women,’ said Savine, shifting in her uncomfortable chair. If a man was struck in the balls during a fencing match, he would be expected to howl and weep and roll around, while his opponent gave him all the time he needed and the crowd murmured their sympathy. If, during days of monthly agonies, a woman once let her smile sour, it would be considered a disgrace. She forced her own smile wider while the sweat sprang out of her. ‘I suppose the bars on the windows were installed for my benefit, too?’

‘Here on the hill …’ Mistress Vallimir leaned around the nodding mayor, picking her words as carefully as mossy stepping stones on the way across a river, ‘we are all obliged to take great care over our security.’

‘Three weeks ago,’ squeaked Condine dan Sirisk, mousy wife of a mill owner kept away by business, ‘a factory owner was killed . Murdered in his own house!’