Joe Abercrombie - Sharp Ends

She tipped her face towards him, probably expecting a kiss, but he did not have it in him, and fortunately their son was struggling now, eager to be fed. So instead he flashed a watery smile, and stepped out into the mouldy hallway, and pulled the door rattling to.

A problem left behind was just the same as a problem solved.

Wasn’t it?

Canto flung his ledger shut and started up from his desk, wriggling between a well-heeled merchant and her bodyguard and across the crowded banking floor. ‘Sir! Sir, might I-’

Mauthis’s cold stare flickered over him like a pawnbroker’s over a dead man’s chattels. ‘Yes, Silvine?’

‘Er …’ Canto was wrong-footed, if not to say somewhat flushed with pleasure, at the mere fact of Mauthis knowing who he was. And it was so damned hot in the banking hall today that he found himself quite flustered. His mouth ran away with him. ‘You know my name, sir-?’

‘I know the names of every man and woman employed by the Banking House of Valint and Balk in Styria. Their names, and their roles, and their salaries.’ He narrowed his eyes a fraction. ‘I dislike changes to any of them. What can I do for you?’

Canto swallowed. ‘Well, sir, the thing is …’ Sounds seemed to be echoing at him in a most distracting way. The scratching of clerks’ pens on paper and their rattling in inkwells; the hushed burbling of numbers, terms and rates; the clomp of a ledger being heaved shut felt loud as a door slamming. Nerves, was all, just nerves. He heard Mimi’s voice. You have to be a man about it. Everyone was looking at him, though, the senior clerks with their books held close, and two fur-trimmed merchants who Canto now realised he had interrupted. Have to be a man. He tugged at his collar, trying to get some air in. ‘The thing is-’

‘Time is money, Silvine,’ said Mauthis. ‘I should not have to explain to you that the Banking House of Valint and Balk does not look kindly upon wasted money.’

‘The thing is …’ His tongue felt suddenly twice its usual size. His mouth tasted strange.

‘Give him some air!’ somebody shouted, over in the corner, and Mauthis’s brows drew in, puzzled. Then almost pained.

‘The thing …’

And Mauthis doubled up as though punched in the stomach. Canto took a sharp step back, and for some reason his knee almost gave way. So hot in the banking hall. Like that foundry he once visited with his father.

‘Turn him over!’ came echoing from the back of the hall. Everyone was staring. Faces swimming, fascinated, afraid.

‘Sir? Sir?’ One of the senior clerks had caught his master’s elbow, was guiding him to the floor. Mauthis raised one quivering arm, one bony finger pointing, staring towards a woman in the press. A pale woman whose eyes burned bright behind black hair.

‘Muh,’ he mouthed. ‘Muh …’

He started to flop wildly about on the floor. Canto was troubled by the thought that, plainly, this was not routine. Mauthis had always been such a stickler for routine. Then he was bent over by a sudden and deeply unpleasant coughing fit.

‘Help!’

‘Some air, I said!’

But there was no air. No air in the room at all. Canto sank slowly to his knees, tearing at his collar. Too tight. He could hardly catch a proper breath.

Mauthis lay still, pink foam bubbling from his mouth, his wide eyes staring up unseeing at the black-haired woman while she stared back. Who would Canto talk to now about a raise? But perhaps that was the wrong thing to be worrying about?

‘Plague!’ somebody shouted. A desk crashed over. People were charging this way and that. Canto clawed at someone for help but his fingers would hardly work. A flying knee caught him in the back and he was flung down, face crunching against the tiles, mouth filling with salty blood.

He tried to get up but he could hardly move, everything rigid, shaking, as if he was one enormous cramp. He thought the time had probably come now to cry out, but all that came was a bubbling gurgle. Mimi was right. Even now, he was half a man.

He saw feet stamping, shuffling. A woman screamed as she fell beside him, and the sound seemed to echo from the end of a long tunnel.

Everything was growing blurry.

He found, to his great dismay, that he could not breathe.

Sipani, Spring 580

‘Don’t much like the look of these,’ muttered Onna, frowning as the entertainers strutted, danced, slouched into the courtyard of Cardotti’s House of Leisure.

Do this job a while, you get a sense when someone’s not right. When they’ve a slant towards violence. You still can’t avoid unpleasant surprises, of course. There are few worse jobs for unpleasant surprises. But you listen to your gut, if you’re sensible, and Onna’s gut was twitching now.

They might all be in gilded masks and merry motley but there was just something off about each and every one. A jaw muscle twitching on the stubbled side of a face. A set of eyes sliding suspiciously sideways through the eyeholes of a mask. A hand with scarred knuckles clenching and unclenching and clenching, over and over.

Onna shook her head. ‘Don’t like the look of these at all.’

Merilee blew out a plume of foul-smelling chagga smoke and sucked at her teeth. ‘If you want men you like the look of, you might want to pick a profession other than whoring.’

Jirry took a break from filing her nails to give that little titter of hers, grinning with those pointy teeth. She was a great one for tittering, Jirry.

‘We’re supposed to call ourselves hostesses,’ said Onna.

‘Course we are.’ Merilee could make her voice ooze so much sarcasm it was almost painful on the ears. ‘Hostesses who fuck.’

Jirry tittered again and Onna sighed. ‘You don’t have to be ugly about it.’

‘Don’t have to be.’ Merilee took another pull at her pipe and let the smoke curl from her nose. ‘But I find it helps. You’re too bloody nice for your own good. Read your book if you want pretty.’

Onna winced down at it. She was making slow progress, it had to be admitted. An overblown romance about a beautiful but bullied scullery girl she was reasonably sure would end up whisked away to a life of ease by the duke’s handsome younger son. You’d have thought the uglier life got, the more you’d crave pretty fantasies, but maybe Merilee was right, and pretty lies just made the ugly truth feel all the worse. Either way, she was too nice to argue. Always had been. Too nice for her own good.

‘Who are those two?’ asked Jirry, nodding over towards a pair of women Onna hadn’t seen before, slipping quietly indoors, already masked and dressed for entertaining. There was a set to the jaw of the dark-haired one that made Onna nervous, somehow. That, and when her leg slid out from her skirts, it looked like there was a long, red scar all the way up her thigh.

You need to be careful of strange hostesses. Strange hostesses attract strange guests. Onna shook her head. ‘Don’t like the looks of them, either.’

Merilee took the pipe from between her teeth long enough to snarl, ‘Fucking save us,’ at the sky.

‘Ladies.’ A fellow with waxed whiskers and a tall hat flicked out a bright handkerchief and gave a flourishing bow. There was a glint in his eye behind a mask sparkling with crystals. An ugly glint indeed. ‘A most profound honour.’ And he swaggered past, just the slightest bit trembly. A drinker, Onna reckoned.

‘Silly old cock,’ Merilee muttered out of the corner of her mouth in Northern, before wedging her pipe back between her teeth.

Onna gave her mask a little tweak, then plucked at her bodice under the armpits, trying to wriggle it up. However tight she asked one of the other girls to pull the laces, the damn thing always kept slipping. She was getting a little chafed from it, and cast an envious glance towards Bellit, who had the unimaginable luxury of straps on her dress. Straps, was that too much to ask? But off-the-shoulder was the fashion.