Joe Abercrombie - Sharp Ends

Shev held her empty palms up. ‘Well, I’ve offered no succour, that I promise you. I like a succouring just as much as the next girl, if not a good deal more, but Javre?’ She worked her hand gently, making sure the mechanism was engaged, hoping that it looked like nothing more than an expressive gesture. ‘No offence to her, I daresay she’ll make several men a wonderful husband some day, but she’s not my type at all.’ Shev raised her brows at Weylen who, it had to be said, was much closer to her type, those eyes of hers really were something. ‘And, you know, not wanting to blow my own horn, but once I offer succour? I generally get all the succouring one woman can-’

‘She means help,’ said Javre.

‘Eh?’

‘Succour. It is not a sexual thing.’

‘Oh.’

‘Kill them,’ said Weylen.

The flatbowman raised his weapon, candlelight glinting on the sharpened tip of the loaded bolt, as several other thugs burst from the shadows brandishing a selection of unpleasant-looking weapons. Though what weapons look pleasant, Shev reflected, when brandished at you?

Shev twisted her wrist and the throwing knife sprang into her hand. Unfortunately, the spring was wound too tight, and it shot straight through her clutching fingers and thudded into the ceiling, neatly cutting the rope that held the chandelier. Pulleys whirred and the huge thing began to plummet towards them.

The flatbowman smiled as he squeezed the trigger, aiming straight at Shev’s heart. A thug raised a huge axe above his head. Then a great weight of wood, glass and wax crashed down upon him, crushing him flat, the flatbow bolt shuddering into the side of the chandelier an instant before it hit the ground with a shattering impact, taking two more thugs with it and sending dust, splinters, shards and candles flying.

‘Shit,’ whispered Shev, stunned and blinking as the echoes faded. She and Javre stood together in the centre of the chandelier’s circular wreckage, apparently entirely unhurt.

Shev gave a whoop of triumph which turned, as many of her triumphant whoops did, into a gurgle of horror as an uncrushed thug sprang over the ruins of the chandelier with his sword a blur of hard-swung steel. She leaped back, tripped over a table, fell over a chair, rolled, saw a blade flash past, scrambled under another table, dust filtering around her as someone beat it with an axe. She heard crashes, clashes, loud swearing and all the familiar noise of a fight in an inn.

Bloody hell, Shev hated fights. Hated them. Considering how much she hated them, she got into a lot of them. Partnering up with Javre had not helped her record in that regard or, at a brief assay, any other. She slid out from under the table, sprang up, was punched in the face and sprawled painfully against the counter, spluttering and wobbling and trying to blink the tears from her eyes.

A snarling thug came at her overhand with a knife and she jerked back at the waist, steel flashing by her and thunking into the counter. She jerked forward and butted him in the face, knocked him staggering with his hands to his nose, snatched his knife from the wood and sent it whirling through the air in one smooth motion, burying itself in the flatbowman’s forehead as he levelled his reloaded weapon. His eyes rolled up and he toppled off the balcony and onto a table below, sending bottles and glasses flying.

‘What a knife-thrower,’ Shev muttered to herself, ‘I could have- Urgh!’ Her smugness was knocked out of her along with her breath as a man cannoned into her side and sent her reeling.

He was a big man of surpassing ugliness, swinging this way and that with a mace almost as big and ugly as he was, smashing glasses and furniture, filling the air with splinters. Shev whimpered every curse she could think of as she weaved and dodged, scrambling and jumping desperately, not even getting the chance to look for an opening, running steadily out of space and time as she was herded towards a corner.

He raised his mace to strike, broad face twisted with rage.

‘Wait!’ she wailed, pointing over his shoulder.

It was amazing how often that worked. He jerked his head to look, pausing just long enough for her to knee him in the fruits with all her strength. He gasped, tottered, dropped to his knees, and she whipped out her dagger and stabbed him sharply at the meeting of his neck and his shoulder. He groaned, tried to stand, then sprawled on his face, welling blood.

‘Sorry,’ said Shev. ‘Damn it, I’m sorry.’ And she was, just as she always was. But it was better to be sorry than dead. Just as it always was. That lesson she had learned long ago.

No further fights presented themselves. Javre stood by the chandelier’s wreckage, her dirty white coat spotted with blood and the twisted bodies of a dozen thugs scattered about her. She had another bent over with his head wedged in the crook of one arm, and yet another pinned against a table by his neck at arm’s length, kicking and struggling to absolutely no effect.

‘Things must be going downhill.’ And with a twitch of her face and a flex of her muscular arm she snapped the first man’s neck and let his body flop to the floor. ‘The temple used to stretch to a better class of thug.’ She dipped her shoulder and flung the other one bodily through a window and into the street, tearing the shutters free, his despairing squeal cut off as his head tore a chunk from a supporting pillar with him.

‘The best I could find at short notice,’ said Weylen, reaching behind her back. ‘But it was always going to come to this.’ And she drew a curved sword, the long blade looking to Shev’s eye to be made of a writhing black smoke.

‘It need not,’ said Javre. ‘You have two choices, just as Hanama and Birke did. You can go back to Thond. Go back to the High Priestess and tell her I will be no one’s slave. Not ever. Tell her I am free.’

‘Free? Ha! Do you suppose the High Priestess will accept that answer?’

Javre shrugged. ‘Tell her you could not find me. Tell her whatever you please.’

Weylen’s mouth bitterly twisted. ‘And what would be my other-’

‘I show you the sword.’ There was a popping of joints as Javre shifted her shoulders, boots scraping into a wider stance, and from inside her coat she drew a bundle, long and slender, a thing of bandages and rags, but near the end Shev caught the glint of gold.

Weylen lifted her chin, and did not so much smile as show her teeth. ‘You know there is no choice for us.’

Javre gave a nod. ‘I know. Shevedieh?’

‘Yes?’ croaked Shev.

‘Close your eyes.’

She jammed them shut as Weylen sprang over a table with a fighting scream, high, harsh and horrible. She heard quick footsteps on the boards, rushing up with inhuman speed.

There was a ringing of metal and Shev flinched as a sudden bright light shone pink through her lids. A scraping, and a croaking gasp, and the light was gone.

‘Shevedieh.’

‘Yes?’ she croaked.

‘You can open them now.’

Javre still held the bundle in one hand, torn rags flapping about it. With the other she held Weylen up, her limp arms flopping back, steel-cased knuckles scraping the floor. There was a red stain on her chest, but she looked peaceful. Aside from the black blood pouring from her back to spatter on the boards in spurts and dashes.

‘They will find you, Javre,’ she whispered, blood specking her lips.

‘I know,’ said Javre. ‘And they each will have their choice.’ She lowered Weylen to the boards, into the spreading pool of her blood, and gently brushed her eyelids closed over her green, green eyes. ‘May the Goddess have mercy on you,’ she murmured.

‘May she have mercy on us first,’ muttered Shevedieh, wiping the blood from under her throbbing nose as she approached the counter, dagger at the ready, and peered over. The inn’s owner was cowering behind and cringed even further as he saw her. ‘Don’t kill me! Please don’t kill me!’