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

Bloody brown witch had everyone convinced she knew best. And now she was bringing her brothers back, too. And Lady Savine had just said, ‘Bring ’em in! Let ’em live here, where the decent folk have to live!’ Lisbit couldn’t believe it. As if there weren’t enough of them in Midderland already. She wanted to be kind. She was a generous person. Big-hearted, ask anyone. Always giving bits to the tramps when she had one spare. But there had to be a limit. Folk in the Union had their own problems, without a crowd of brown bastards flooding in and bringing more. They were everywhere now in Adua! There were places in the city a decent person hardly dared tread.

She slipped her little mirror out to check her face. This damn heat was the worst thing for powder. While she was tutting at the colour in her cheeks, she caught a glimpse through the window of some beggar limping up the street, making right for the carriage. Some beggar in a filthy coat with one sleeve missing, scrawny arm sticking out. She thought it might be a woman, and her lip curled with disgust. Filthy, she was, stubble hair caked with shit and blood and who knew what else. She looked diseased. The last thing Lisbit needed when Lady Savine got back was some sick cripple with her hand out.

She snapped the window down and snarled, ‘Get the fuck away from here!’

The beggar woman’s red eyes slid sideways, and she veered away from the carriage and hobbled off, hunching down.

A moment later, there was a clatter as the door on the other side of the carriage was ripped open. A man ducked in. A big man in worn work clothes with a great smear of soot down the side of his face. Barging into Lady Savine’s carriage, bold as you please.

‘Get out!’ snapped Lisbit, furious. But he didn’t get out. More men crowded in behind him, leering faces at the windows, dirty hands reaching for her.

‘Help!’ she shrieked, cringing against the door. ‘Help!’ And she kicked furiously at the one with the sooty face, caught him a good one on the jaw, but one of the others grabbed her ankle and they dragged her shrieking right out of the carriage and into the gutter and all of a sudden it was like she was drowning in a clutching, stomping sea of hands and boots and furious faces.

‘Where is she?’

‘Old Sticks’ daughter?’

‘Where’s that Glokta bitch?’

‘I’m just the face-maid!’ she squealed, no idea what was happening. A robbery! A riot! They’d dragged the driver down from his seat and were kicking him, kicking him while he huddled on the ground with his bloody hands over his head.

‘We’ll give you one chance—’

‘I’m just—’

Someone hit her. The dull thud of it and her head cracked the pavement, blood in her mouth. Someone pulled her up by her hair. Rip of stitching. The arm of her jacket was half torn off, lace dangling. Someone was rooting through her bag, flinging the pretty pots of paint and powder away, stomping her brushes into the pavement.

‘Get her inside, we’ll soon find out what she knows.’

‘No!’ she squealed, watch chain scraping her face as someone tore it off. ‘No!’ They were laughing as they started to drag her through the gate. ‘No!’ She tried to cling to the frame, but one had her left arm, another her right, a third her left ankle. ‘No!’ Her right shoe kicked helplessly at the ground. Such a nice shoe. She’d been so proud to put it on.

‘I’m just the face-maid!’ she shrieked.

‘Stop!’ roared Kurbman, shoving one man out of his way, then another. ‘Stop!’ He grabbed one lad, who’d eagerly stuck his hand up the girl’s torn skirt, by the throat and threw him to the ground. ‘Have you forgotten who we are? We’re not animals! We’re Breakers!’

In that moment, as their maddened faces turned towards him, he had his doubts. But he kept on shouting anyway. What else could he do?

‘We done this so we wouldn’t be victims. Not so we could make victims o’ them. We’re better’n that, brothers!’ And he tore at the air with his hands, trying to make ’em see. ‘We done this to bring the Great Change! For justice, remember?’

He knew better, o’ course. Some done it for justice, some for vengeance, some for profit and some for the chance to run riot, and it wasn’t like there was no room for a mixture. At a time like this, all flushed with victory and violence, even the better ones could turn dark. Still, there were just enough o’ the first group to get some doubts going.

‘You thinking to let ’er go?’ someone asked.

‘No one’s letting anyone go,’ said Kurbman. ‘They’ll be judged with the others. Judged fair. Judged proper.’

‘I’m just the face-maid,’ gasped the girl, her powder streaked with tears.

At that moment, two of the others came out dragging Vallimir between them, his clothes torn and his face bloody and his eyes barely open. One of the lads spat on him. ‘Fucking bastard!’ growled another.

Kurbman stepped in front of him, hands up. ‘Easy, brothers. Let’s not do anything we’ll regret.’

‘I’ll be regretting nothing,’ snapped someone.

‘And I ain’t your brother,’ said another.

‘If you’ve not got the guts for this, leave it to those who do,’ said a third, like making yourself part of a mob was quite the act o’ courage.

Things might’ve turned ugly then, or uglier, at any rate, if it hadn’t been for some prisoners brought rattling up the street. Two dozen, maybe, a lot of fine clothes in disarray and a lot of proud faces bruised, shocked and tear-tracked, shackled in pairs to a great length of chain. Five Breakers minding ’em, home-made manacles hanging from their belts, a hard-faced old bastard at the front Kurbman knew from meetings, though he didn’t think he’d ever heard him talk.

‘Brother Lock!’ he shouted, and the man held up his shuffling column. ‘You taking these to the Courthouse?’

‘I am.’

‘Got two more for you.’ Kurbman pulled the girl free and, in spite of the grumbling from his comrades, gave her over to a man with a blond beard who started shackling her to the chain. Bloody hell, but one of the prisoners was Self, the foreman from the third shed at Resling’s Glassworks, eyes down and a great bloody welt on his cheek. He was a good man, Self. Always done his best for his people. Kurbman swallowed. Getting these folk shackled was the best he could do. Getting anyone unshackled would more’n likely see him dead.

‘I’m just the face-maid,’ whimpered the girl as they chained Vallimir beside her, head lolling and his hair matted with blood.

Kurbman turned back to the workers, his voice cracking. ‘We’ve a chance to make a better world, brothers! A better world, you understand? But we have to do it right .’

With a jerk on the chain, Resling and the rest were set marching again. Or stumbling, tottering, weeping and groaning, anyway, watched over by half a dozen sinewy men in workmen’s clothes, sticks in their dirty fists.

‘Bastards,’ he muttered to himself.

He was Karlric dan Resling, and he would see them all hanged.

They were dragged past the burning shell of a carriage. Rubbish scattered the street. Broken timbers, broken glass. He flinched as something burst from an upstairs window – a great desk, tumbling down and shattering, papers spilling across the cobbles.

Some men stood near it, watching. One ate an apple. Another laughed. A shrill, nervous kind of laughter.

They had burst onto the bridge. His office, that was, but he called it the bridge. He’d always loved a maritime metaphor. ‘Get out, damn you!’ Shouting always made them lower their eyes. ‘Get out !’ But not this time. He had not believed it! He still could not! He was the admiral! He was Karlric dan Resling!