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

‘A robbery.’ Risinau licked his lips as little purple jellies began to be delivered to the far end of the table. ‘A botched burglary, plain and simple.’ He leaned across to give Savine a reassuring pat on the forearm, enveloping her in his rosewater and sour-sweat scent. ‘We’ll ferret out the perpetrators, don’t worry about that .’

‘So … there are no Breakers in Valbeck?’

Every face turned towards Savine, then silence, the only movement the wobbling of those horrible little jellies.

‘Only a few weeks ago, a plot was foiled in Adua to blow up a foundry using Gurkish Fire,’ she went on. Mistress Sirisk pressed a hand to her chest and gasped. Less fear at the news, by the look of things, than near-sexual delight at the prospect of sharing it with her entire social circle by noon tomorrow. Savine gave her a conspiratorial wink. ‘I have some contacts in the Inquisition.’

‘Well,’ grumbled Vallimir, looking rather put out. He appeared to be one of those men who was put out whenever a woman opened her mouth. ‘We have no troubles of that kind here in Valbeck.’

‘None,’ frothed Risinau, dabbing a new sheen of sweat from his forehead. He was quite obviously hiding something. ‘There are no Breakers, no Burners—’

‘Burners?’ asked Savine.

Vallimir and his wife exchanged a worried glance. ‘Worse scum even than the Breakers,’ said the master of the house, reluctantly. ‘Madmen and fanatics, delighting in destruction. The Breakers desire …’ and he wrinkled his lip with disgust, ‘to reorder the Union. The Burners desire to destroy it.’

‘Even if you believe such monsters exist, you will find none here ,’ said Risinau. ‘The workers of Valbeck are without grievances.’

‘In my experience, workers can weave a grievance from the most unpromising thread,’ said Savine, ‘and you have a vast number of workers here. Can a city grow so fast without troubles?’

Lord Parmhalt jolted awake. Possibly as a result of Mistress Vallimir’s carefully applied elbow. ‘Great strides have been made, Lady Savine. Thanks in part to generous loans from the banking house of Valint and Balk. Recently opened a new branch in the city, you know.’ He shook himself, then began once more to sag towards slumber. ‘You should visit … the new part of town.’

‘New streets,’ said Vallimir.

‘ Model streets,’ said Risinau.

‘Closed-in drains,’ said the mayor, rousing himself for another heroic effort, ‘and running water to every house, and all manner … of innovations.’

‘In Gurkhul, they build temples,’ observed Savine, ‘in Styria, palaces. Here we build drains.’ There was a round of polite laughter. She glanced up at the maid, just manoeuvring a jelly into place before her with desperate concentration. ‘Might I ask your name, my dear?’

She blinked at Savine, then at Mistress Vallimir, then blushed bright pink and tidied a loose strand of hair behind her ear. ‘May, my lady. May Broad.’

‘Tell me, May, do you like Valbeck?’

‘Tolerably well, my lady. I’m still … getting used to the air.’

‘The air can be terribly harsh, away from the hill. Worse vapours even than in Adua.’

May swallowed. ‘So I’m told, my lady.’

‘Don’t worry, you can speak your mind,’ said Savine, ‘I insist on it. There’s really no point otherwise, is there?’

‘Well … my family have a good place on the slope of the hill, now. Very grateful for it.’

‘And what about the old town?’

May nervously cleared her throat. ‘We were there when we first arrived. The old town’s very full, begging your pardon. There are families of six to a cellar.’

‘Six to a cellar?’ Savine glanced at Vallimir, and he gave that wince again.

‘And the walls running with damp, and children playing in the open sewers, and pigs kept in the alleys, and the water from the pumps is far from healthy.’ She was warming to it now, waving her arms in jerky gestures. ‘More people come in every day, and there isn’t work for all of them, and prices for everything are high—’

Her hand caught Savine’s glass, sent it teetering. She shot her hand out as though jabbing with a short steel and caught it before it fell.

The maid stared down in horror. ‘I’m … I’m so sorry—’

‘No harm done. Thank you so much. You can go.’

‘Foolish, wayward girl,’ snapped Mistress Vallimir, the moment she had pulled the overpolished door shut, her fanning turned positively savage.

‘Nonsense,’ said Savine, ‘it was entirely my fault.’

‘Loose hands and a looser tongue. I will let her go in the morning.’

Savine’s voice had a sudden sharpness. ‘I would rather you did not.’

Mistress Vallimir bristled. ‘Pardon me, Lady Savine, but in my own house—’

‘A beautiful house in which I am honoured to be a guest. But I asked for honesty. I will not see her punished for it.’ The pain had quite ground away Savine’s patience. She set her smile aside for once, and made sure she held Vallimir’s eye. ‘Please don’t make me insist. Not when we are having such a lovely evening. If I had been punished every time I spoke truth to an investor, why, I would never have been able to make you so rich.’

There was a long silence, then Risinau leaned close to Savine and put his fat, moist hand on hers. It was like having one’s fingers smothered in old dough. ‘Lady Savine, I give you my personal guarantee, the workers are content and there is nothing to worry about.’

It was his bad luck that this patronising reassurance coincided with a particularly savage cramp, as if there was a fist clenching around her guts. Savine leaned towards him, cupping her mouth to keep anyone else from hearing, and whispered in his ear. ‘Touch me again and I will stab you with my fork. In your fat fucking neck. Do you understand?’

The Superior swallowed and carefully peeled his hand from hers. Savine looked back to Vallimir. ‘You said business is good at the mill?’

‘It is.’

‘Then I would very much like to look at the books. I so enjoy the successful ones.’

Vallimir gave that twitch again. ‘I will have them brought to you.’

‘Better if I go to them. Having come all this way, I must see the improvements you have made first hand.’

‘A visit in person …’ ventured Vallimir, wincing.

Risinau took up the challenge. ‘It might not be the best—’

‘You’ll hardly know I’m there.’ And their wanting her to stay away meant she absolutely had to go. ‘I find, when it comes to business, there is nothing like the personal touch.’ She took up the absurdly long spoon, delved deep into the jelly and slurped it through pursed lips with great relish.

‘My compliments, Mistress Vallimir, such a delicious jelly.’ It was a vile jelly. Perhaps the worst Savine had ever had the misfortune to consume. She weathered another stab in her belly and presented the gathering with her most glittering smile. ‘You simply must give my maid the recipe.’

Sinking Ships

They ate in an overpriced chophouse where the windows were thick with sooty grime and the plates hardly cleaner. Tallow wolfed his meat and gravy down then watched as Vick ate hers, only just short of drooling like a hungry dog. She didn’t like eating with those big sad eyes on her, but she took time cleaning her plate even so. Another habit from the camps. A habit from never having enough.

Relish every mouthful, it feels like it goes further.

They waited for dusk, though with the smoke over Valbeck it wasn’t much darker than day and felt even hotter, the sunset an angry, molten-metal smear behind the great chimneys they were building in the west. Then they worked their way into the teeming, steaming backstreets like rats into a dungheap, asking roundabout questions, trying to winkle out hints of where the Breakers might be.