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

Vick had picked over her story a hundred times. Picked over Tallow’s, too, until the lies were like a second skin, more familiar than the truth. She had an answer for every question, a story for every suspicion, a set of excuses that left her looking good but not too good. The one thing she hadn’t been prepared for was the one thing she found.

‘The Breakers?’ said a boy-whore, not even bothering to lower his voice. ‘Expect you’ll find ’em meeting on that little alley off Ramnard Street.’ He called out to a girl-whore busy arranging the straps of her dress over a bare shoulder dotted with pox-marks. ‘What’s the name o’ that alley where the Breakers meet?’

‘Don’t know that it’s got a name.’ And she went back to smiling for the passing trade.

All careless as if the Breakers were a sewing circle rather than a mob of renegades ripping up the fabric of society. Old Sticks had called Superior Risinau a fat man prone to folly, with no imagination but plenty of loyalty. From the careless way folk spoke of treason here, he’d let things get far out of hand in Valbeck.

The whores nodded them towards a smirking pimp. After a little bargaining, the pimp pointed out a beggar with one arm. For a few bits, the beggar sent them to an out-of-work smith selling matches from a stall on wheels. The smith nodded them down an alleyway towards an old warehouse. A big man stood outside its door, light from an upstairs window reflected in a pair of round eye-lenses that looked tiny on his broad skull.

Vick knew right off he could be trouble. The size of him, yes, almost a head taller than her, and his threadbare jacket stretched tight over great brawny shoulders. But it was more the look he had when he saw her coming. Apologetic, almost. None of that peacock strut men who think themselves hard put on. That hint of guilt the really dangerous ones tend to have.

She knew it from the mirror, on her bad days.

And if she’d had any doubts, there was the tattoo on his fist, before he twisted it up into his sleeve. Axe and lightning, crossed over a shattered gatehouse. Blue stars on the knuckles. On all the knuckles. So he’d been a Ladderman. First up the walls in a siege. Front of the storming party. He’d done it five times and lived to tell the tales. Or, more likely, to never speak of it again.

It was a habit from the camps to think about how she’d bring a man down. This one you’d make sure was on your side. Or run away from him, fast as you could. Whole thing felt like a trap to Vick. But then everything did, and she told herself that was a good thing. It’s the moment you feel safe that you make your last mistake.

‘My name’s Vick. This is Tallow.’ The Breakers kept to first names, in the main.

The big man looked them over, those guilty eyes made small by his lenses. ‘I’m Gunnar.’

‘We’ve come from Adua.’ She leaned close to murmur, ‘We were friends of Collem Sibalt.’

‘All right.’ He looked more puzzled than suspicious, as if it wasn’t really his business. ‘Good for you.’

‘Aren’t you guarding the door?’

‘Just came out for some air. Getting too hot for me in there.’ And he tugged at his collar. ‘That Judge woman makes me …’ He paused, mouth open, like he couldn’t quite work out what this Judge woman made him. ‘Well, can’t say I like the way things are. Wouldn’t be here otherwise. But I can’t see her making ’em better.’

Vick leaned close to him, dropping her voice. ‘Aren’t you worried about the Inquisition?’

‘Must admit I am, but no one else seems to be.’ And he nudged the door open with his tattooed hand, and offered them the way.

Vick didn’t speak much, but that was a choice. Actually being lost for words was rare with her. All she could manage as she stepped over the threshold of that warehouse, though, was, ‘Shit.’

‘Aye.’ Tallow’s eyes had gone wider than ever. ‘Shit.’

Must’ve been five hundred people crowded close in there. It was hot as an oven and noisy as a slaughterhouse and it smelled of old tar, unwashed bodies and rage. It was ill-lit by torches and the flickering of fire lent everything an edge of madness. Against one wall, someone had unfurled a huge banner made from old bedsheets, the words Now or Never daubed across it.

Some children had climbed up to sit on the high rafters, legs dangling, and for a moment, Vick thought they had a row of hanged men below them. Then she saw they were straw dummies, with leering painted faces. The king and queen, with wooden crowns over their eyes. A bloated Lord Chancellor Gorodets, a twisted Arch Lector Glokta. The bald one with a stick in his hand she reckoned must be Bayaz, First of the Magi. The great and good of government, mocked in the open.

They’d drawn up an old wagon to serve as a stage, and a woman stood there now giving as wild a performance as any actress, one thin hand clutching at the rail while she tore at the air with the other.

Judge, Vick reckoned, and she had a sense for theatre. She wore an old, scarred breastplate rusty at the rivets over a ragged red dress that might once have been some noblewoman’s wedding gown. She had a mass of flame-red hair all braided and coiled and pinned into a mad tangle. Her eyes bulged, huge in her bony, blotchy face, black, and empty, catching the torch flames so it looked as if she had fire in her skull. Maybe she did at that.

‘The time for talk’s long past !’ she screamed in a wild, piercing voice that made Vick wince. ‘ Nothing was ever got with talk …’ Judge let it hang there a moment, head cocked to one side, a brittle smile quivering on her lips. ‘That couldn’t be got with fire .’

‘Burn ’em!’ someone shouted.

‘Burn the mills!’

‘Burn the owners!’

‘Burn it all!’ squealed one of the children from the rafters, so excited she nearly fell, and others took up the chant.

‘Burn it! Burn it! Burn it!’ Fists punched at the air, tattooed writing on bared forearms. Like the rebels in Starikland used to have. Treasonous slogans, proudly on display. Weapons, too, thrust up from the crowd in time with the chanting, and not just workmen’s tools sharpened for a show. Polearms. Swords. At least one flatbow. Soldiers’ weapons, made for killing.

‘What did I tell you?’ The man called Gunnar was standing next to her, shaking his head as he watched Judge prowl the stage, urging the crowd louder.

‘If I’d known it was fancy dress,’ murmured Vick, ‘I’d have made more effort.’

She could dig out a smart comment when she had to, but in truth she was way off balance. She’d been expecting the Breakers in Valbeck to be a dozen blowhard fools like Grise, hiding in a cellar and arguing over what colour to paint a fine new world that’d never come. Instead she found them armed and organised in numbers, preaching open rebellion. She was off balance, and she wasn’t used to it, and her mind raced to catch up.

‘Hold up, now!’ And an old man hauled himself onto the wagon beside Judge. ‘Hold up!’

‘That’s Malmer,’ said Gunnar, leaning down towards Vick’s ear. ‘He’s a good man.’

He was Judge’s opposite. Big and solid and dressed in plain work clothes, face lined from years of labour and his balding hair iron-grey, all ice-water calm to her burning fury. ‘You can always find folk keen to start fires,’ he said, turning to the sweltering warehouse. ‘Finding folk to build in the ashes is harder.’

Judge folded her arms across her battered breastplate and sneered at Malmer down her nose, but the rest of the crowd settled to hear him speak.

‘Everyone’s here ’cause they don’t care for the way things are,’ he said. ‘Who could?’ And Gunnar grunted and nodded along. ‘I was born in this city. Lived here all my life. You think I like the way it’s changed? Think I like the river running with filth or the streets knee deep in rubbish?’ With each phrase his voice grew louder, with each phrase an answering grumble swelled from the crowd. ‘Think I like to see good folk put out of work at the whim of some bastards born to privilege? Our rights stripped away for the sake o’ their greed? Good folk treated like cattle?’