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

‘Why haven’t you just left me behind?’ she asked.

‘I gave my word to your da.’

‘Aye, but everyone says you’re the most untrustworthy bitch in the whole North.’

‘No one should know better than you what the things everyone says are worth. Truth is, I only care about keeping my word to folk I like. I seem untrustworthy because there are only seven of those outside the hills.’ She made a fist of her tattooed hand, trembling tight. ‘To those seven, I am a rock.’

Rikke swallowed. ‘You like me, then?’

‘Meh.’ Isern opened her blue fist and shook out the fingers with a clicking of knuckles. ‘About you, I remain to be convinced, but I like your father and I gave him my word. That I’d try to put an end to your fits and coax your Long Eye open and bring you back to him still breathing. The small matter of an invasion may have nudged him out of Uffrith, but the commitment still stands, far as I’m concerned, wherever Stour Nightfall’s bastards might’ve driven him off to.’ Her eyes flickered to Rikke, cunning as a fox that sees the coop unguarded. ‘But I’ll admit I’ve a selfish reason, too, which is a good thing for you, since selfish reasons are the only reasons you should trust.’

‘What reason?’

Isern opened her eyes very wide so they bulged from her filthy face. ‘Because I know there’s a better North waiting. A North free of the grip of Scale Ironhand, and the one who pulls his strings, Black Calder, and the one who pulls his strings even. A North free for everyone to choose their own way.’ Isern leaned close in the darkness. ‘And your Long Eye will pick out our path to it.’

Keeping Score

Sparks showered into the night, the heat a constant pressure on Savine’s smiling face. Beyond the yawning doorway, straining bodies and straining machinery were rendered devilish by the glow of molten metal. Hammers clattered, chains rattled, steam hissed, labourers cursed. The music of money being made.

One-sixth of the Hill Street Foundry, after all, belonged to her.

One of the six great sheds was her property. Two of the twelve looming chimneys. One in every six of the new machines spinning inside, of the coals in the great heaps shovelled in the yard, of the hundreds of twinkling panes of glass that faced the street. Not to mention one-sixth part of the ever-increasing profits. A flood of silver to put His Majesty’s mint to shame.

‘Best not to loiter, my lady,’ murmured Zuri, fires gleaming in her eyes as she glanced about the darkened street.

She was right, as always. Most young ladies of Savine’s acquaintance would have come over faint at the suggestion of visiting this part of Adua without a company of soldiers in attendance. But those who wish to occupy the heights of society must be willing to dredge the depths from time to time, when they see opportunities glitter in the filth.

‘On we go,’ said Savine, boot heels squelching as she followed their link-boy’s bobbing light into the maze of buildings. Narrow houses with whole families wedged into every room leaned together, a spider’s web of flapping washing strung between, laden carts rumbling beneath and showering filth to the rooftops. Where whole blocks had not been cleared to make way for the new mills and manufactories, the crooked lanes reeked of coal smoke and woodsmoke, blocked drains and no drains at all. It was a borough heaving with humanity. Seething with industry. And, most importantly, boiling over with money to be made.

Savine was by no means the only one who saw it. It was payday, and impromptu merchants swarmed about the warehouses and forges, hoping to lighten the labourers’ purses as they spilled out after work, selling small pleasures and meagre necessities. Selling themselves, if they could only find a buyer.

There were others hoping to lighten purses by more direct means. Grubby little cutpurses weaving through the crowds. Footpads lurking in the darkness of the alleys. Thugs slouching on the corners, keen to collect on behalf of the district’s many moneylenders.

Risks, perhaps, and dangers, but Savine had always loved the thrill of a gamble, especially when the game was rigged in her favour. She had long ago learned that at least half of everything is presentation. Seem a victim, soon become one. Seem in charge, people fall over themselves to obey.

So she walked with a swagger, dressed in the dizzy height of fashion, lowering her eyes for no one. She walked painfully erect, although Zuri’s earlier heaving on the laces of her corset gave her little choice. She walked as if it was her street – and indeed she did own five decaying houses further down, packed to their rotten rafters with Gurkish refugees paying twice the going rent.

Zuri was a great reassurance on one side, Savine’s beautifully wrought short steel a great reassurance on the other. Many young ladies had been affecting swords since Finree dan Brock caused a sensation by wearing one to court. Savine found that nothing lent one confidence like a length of sharpened metal close to hand.

The link-boy had stopped at a particularly wretched building, holding his torch up to the peeling sign above its lintel.

‘This really the place?’ he asked.

Savine gathered her skirts so she could squat beside him and look in his dirt-smeared face. She wondered if he sponged the muck on as artfully as her maids did her powder, to arouse just the right amount of sympathy. Clean children need no charity, after all.

‘This is the place. Our heartfelt thanks for your guidance.’ And Zuri slipped a coin into Savine’s gloved hand so she could hold it out.

She was not at all above sentimental displays of generosity. The whole point of squeezing one’s partners in private was so they could do the squeezing in public. Savine, meanwhile, could smile ever so sweetly, and toss coins to an urchin or two, and appear virtuous without the slightest damage to her bottom line. When it comes to virtue, after all, appearances are everything.

The boy stared at the silver as though it was some legendary beast he had heard of but never hoped to see. ‘For me?’

She knew that in her button and buckle manufactory in Holsthorm, smaller and probably dirtier children were paid a fraction as much for a long day’s hard labour. The manager insisted little fingers were best suited to little tasks, and cost only little wages, too. But Holsthorm was far away, and things in the distance seem very small. Even the sufferings of children.

‘For you.’ She did not go as far as ruffling his hair, of course. Who knew what might be living in it?

‘Such a nice boy,’ said Zuri, watching him hurry away into the gloom with the coin in one fist and his sputtering torch in the other.

‘They all are,’ said Savine. ‘When you have something they want.’

‘None more blessed, my scripture-teacher once declared, than those who light the way for others.’

‘Was that the one who fathered a child on one of his other pupils?’

‘That’s him.’ Zuri’s black brows thoughtfully rose. ‘So much for spiritual instruction.’

The grimy ale-hall fell silent as Savine swept in, as if some exotic jungle beast had wandered off the street.

Zuri whipped out a cloth and wiped down a vacant section of the counter, then, as Savine sat, she slipped out the pin and whisked away her hat without disturbing a hair. She kept it close to her chest, which was prudent. Savine’s hat was probably worth more than this entire building, including the clientele. At a brief assay, they only reduced its value.

‘Well, well.’ The man behind the counter was easing forwards, wiping his hands on his stained apron and giving Savine a lingering look up and down. ‘I’m tempted to say this is no place for a lady like you.’