Joe Abercrombie - Sharp Ends

The lad shrugged. ‘Disappointment’s part of life.’ And he held out a folded paper between two fingers.

‘Everyone’s a fucking philosopher.’ Shev opened the door wide enough to pluck it free, then shouldered it shut and turned the key. A letter, with Carcolf written on the front in a slanted hand. Something familiar about the writing. Something that picked at her.

She tossed it down on the scarred tabletop and frowned at it while Carcolf started singing in the bedroom. Bloody hell, she even sang well.

If you want to be a fine new person with a fine new life you’ve got to put the person you were behind you, like a snake sheds its skin. You’ve got to stop picking through your hoard of hurts and grievances like a miser with his coins, set ’em down and allow yourself to go free. You’ve got to forgive and you’ve got to trust, not because anyone else deserves it, but because you do.

Shev took a hard breath and turned away from the letter.

Then she turned back, snatched it up and slashed it wide open with the sword-eater.

No one changes that much. Not all at once.

She knew the hand, now she saw more of it. The same one that had written the note Horald the Finger had put his mark to. The note that had been left here in her ruined place. The note that had drawn her and Javre out to Burroia’s Fort.

Carcolf, my old friend

Just wanted to thank you again for your help. No one spins a story like you. Pleasure to watch you work, as always. If you come through Westport again I’ll have more for you, and well paid. I’ve always got things that need taking from here to there.

Hope it all went well with my father in Talins. I swear, you’re the one woman he holds in higher regard than me.

Stay careful,

Leanda

Shev’s eyes went wider and wider as she read, the cogs upstairs spinning at triple speed.

Leanda. Horald’s oh-so-competent daughter running things in Westport.

My old friend. Carcolf might know everyone, but these were tighter ties than she’d ever given a hint of.

Hope it all went well with my father in Talins. Shev looked up and saw Carcolf standing in the doorway in her underwear. A sight she would’ve swum oceans for once. It gave her scant happiness now.

Carcolf blinked from Shev’s stricken face to the letter, and back, and slowly held up a calming palm, as if Shev was a skittish pony that a sudden move might startle. ‘Now, listen to me. This isn’t what it looks like.’

‘No?’ Shev slowly turned the letter around. ‘Because it looks like you’re about as tight as can be with Horald and his family, and this whole fucking business was your idea!’

Carcolf gave a guilty little grin. A toddler caught with stolen jam all around her face. ‘Then, maybe … it is what it looks like.’

Shev just stood and stared. Again. The old violinist chose that moment to strike up in the square outside, overplaying the hell out of a plaintive little piece, but Shev didn’t feel like dancing to it, and like laughing at it even less. Seemed a fitting accompaniment to the collapse of her pathetic little self-deceptions. God, why did she insist on demanding from people what she knew they could never give her? Why did she insist on making the same mistakes over and over? Why was she fooled so easily, every time?

Because she wanted to be fooled.

You’ve got to be realistic, that old Northman on the farm near Squaredeal used to tell her. Got to be realistic. And she’d leaned on the fence with a stalk of grass in her teeth and nodded sagely along. And yet, in spite of all she’d seen and all she’d suffered, she was still the least realistic fool in the Circle of the World.

‘Look, Shevedieh …’ Carcolf’s voice was smooth and calm and reasonable, a politician explaining their great plans for the nation. ‘I can see how you might feel … a little bit deceived.’

‘A little bit?’ squeaked Shev, her voice going high with disbelief.

‘I just wanted …’ Carcolf looked down, prodding at a bent teaspoon with one pointed toe, and glanced up shyly under her lashes, trying on the innocent new bride for size, ‘… to know that you cared .’

Shev’s eyes went even wider. She positively goggled. ‘So … it was all a fucking test ?’

‘No! Well, yes. I wanted to know we’ve got something … that can last , is all. That didn’t come out right!’

‘How could that come out right ?’

‘Because you passed! You passed and then some!’ Carcolf padded towards her. That walk she had. God, that walk. ‘You came for me. I never thought you would. My hero, eh? Heroine. Whichever.’

‘You could’ve just asked me!’

Carcolf crushed her face up as she came closer. ‘But … you know … people say all kinds of things in bed that it’s probably not best to put to too hard a test later on-’

‘So I’m beginning to fucking see!’

Carcolf’s brows drew in a touch. An impatient mother, frustrated that her daughter’s tantrum won’t subside. ‘Look. I know it’s been a hard night for everyone but it all turned out for the best. Now you’re square with Horald, and I’m square with Horald, and we can-’

Shev felt a sudden cold twinge in her stomach. ‘What do you mean, you’re square with Horald?’

‘Well …’ A flicker of annoyance across Carcolf’s face that she’d let something slip, then she started flapping her hands around like a circus magician disguising a trick. ‘I had a little debt of my own, as it happens, and he had the debt to the High Priestess, so, you know, favours for favours, we could help each other out. It’s the Styrian way, Shev, isn’t it? But that’s not the point-’

‘So you sold my friend to settle your debt?’

If Shev had been hoping Carcolf would sag like a punctured wineskin with the weight of her shame, she was disappointed. ‘Javre’s a fucking menace!’ Carcolf stepped closer with a stabbing finger. ‘As long as she was here you’d just have got sucked back into her madness like you always do! You had to get free of her. We had to get free of her. You told me so, in this room!’

Shev winced. ‘But I didn’t mean it! I mean, I did mean it but … not this way-’

‘What way, then?’ asked Carcolf. ‘You were never going to do it. You know it now. You knew it then. That’s why you said it. I had to do it for you.’

‘So … you’ve done me a favour?’

‘I think so.’ Carcolf stepped closer. Fair now, humble, a merchant offering the deal of a lifetime. ‘And I think … when you’ve had time to think about it … you’ll think so, too.’

She smiled down, taller than Shev even without her shoes. A winning smile. Point proved. Argument won.

She took horrified silence for agreement, reached out and cupped Shev’s face in her hands. The sensitive lover, whose only joy was her partner’s happiness.

‘Just us,’ she whispered, leaning close. ‘Better than ever.’

Carcolf sucked at Shev’s top lip. Then she nipped the bottom one with her teeth, pulled it back, almost painful, and let it go with the faintest flapping sound. Shev’s head was full of that scent, but there was no sweetness in it any more. It was just sour. Gaudy. Sickening.

‘Now let me get dressed, and we’ll go have fun.’

‘Fun’s your middle name,’ whispered Shev, wanting to shove her off. To shove her off and punch her in the face besides.

Shev didn’t much like to be honest with herself. Who does? But if she accepted the pain of it for just a moment, it wasn’t Carcolf’s treachery that truly hurt. You can’t bed a snake then complain when you get bit. It was that Shev had suddenly realised there was no secret self hidden under Carcolf’s smirking mask. There was just another mask, and another. Whatever role it suited her to play. Whatever got her what she wanted. If Carcolf had anything underneath, it was hard and shiny as a flint.