Joe Abercrombie - Sharp Ends

The last of the guards exchanged a brief glance with Fallow, then tossed his axe away and sprinted off.

‘Huh,’ said the woman, with a slight wrinkling of disappointment about her red brows. ‘Just so you know, if you run I will catch you in …’ She narrowed her eyes and pushed out her lips, looking Fallow appraisingly up and down. The way he might have appraised the children. He found he didn’t like being looked at that way. ‘About four strides.’

He ran.

She caught him in three and he was suddenly on his face with a mouthful of dirty cobblestone and his arm twisted sharply behind his back.

‘You’ve no idea who you’re dealing with, you stupid bitch!’ He struggled but her grip was iron, and he squealed with pain as his arm was twisted even more sharply.

‘It is true I am no high-thinker.’ Her voice showed not the slightest strain. ‘I like simple things well done and have no time to philosophise. Would you like to tell me where the parcel is, or shall I beat you until it falls out?’

‘I work for Kurrikan!’ he gasped.

‘I am new in town. Names work no magic on me.’

‘We’ll find you!’

She laughed. ‘Of course. I am no hider. I am Javre, First of the Fifteen. Javre, Knight Templar of the Golden Order. Javre, Breaker of Chains, Breaker of Oaths, Breaker of Faces.’ And here she gave him a blinding blow on the back of the head which, he was pretty sure, broke his nose against the cobbles and filled the back of his mouth with the salt taste of blood. ‘To find me, you need only ask for Javre.’ She leaned over him, breath tickling at his ear. ‘It is once you find me that your difficulties begin. Now, where is that parcel?’

A pinching sensation began in Fallow’s hand. Mildly painful to begin with, then more, and more, a white-hot burning up his arm that made him whimper like a dog. ‘Ah, ah, ah, inside pocket, inside pocket!’

‘Very good.’ He felt hands rifling through his clothes but could only lie limp, moaning as the jangling of his nerves gradually subsided. He craned his neck around to look up at her and curled back his lips. ‘I swear on my fucking front teeth-’

‘Do you?’ As her fingers found the hidden pocket and slid the package free. ‘That’s rash.’

Javre pressed finger against thumb and flicked Fallow’s two front teeth out. A trick she had learned from an old man in Suljuk and, as with so many things in life, all in the wrist. She left him hunched in the road struggling to cough them up.

‘The next time we meet I will have to show you the sword!’ she called out as she strode away, wedging the package down behind her belt. Goddess, these Sipanese were weaklings. Was there no one to test her any more?

She shook her sore hand out. Probably her fingernail would turn black and drop off, but it would grow back. Unlike Fallow’s teeth. And it was scarcely the first fingernail she had lost. Including that memorable time she had lost the lot and toenails, too, in the tender care of the Prophet Khalul. Now there had been a test. For a moment, she almost felt nostalgic for her interrogators. Certainly she felt nostalgic for the pleasure of shoving their chief’s face into his own brazier when she escaped. What a sizzle he had made!

But perhaps this Kurrikan would be outraged enough to send a decent class of killer after her. Then she could go after him. Hardly the great battles of yesteryear, but something to wile away the evenings.

Until then Javre walked, swift and steady with her shoulders back. She loved to walk. With every stride she felt her own strength. Every muscle utterly relaxed yet ready to turn the next step in a split instant into mighty spring, sprightly roll, deadly strike. Without needing to look she felt each person about her, judged their threat, predicted their attack, imagined her response, the air around her alive with calculated possibilities, the surroundings mapped, the distances known, all things of use noted. The sternest tests are those you do not see coming, so Javre was the weapon always sharpened, the weapon never sheathed, the answer to every question.

But no blade came darting from the dark. No arrow, no flash of fire, no squirt of poison. No pack of assassins burst from the shadows.

Sadly.

Only a pair of drunk Northmen wrestling outside Pombrine’s place, one of them snarling something about the bald boss. She paid them no mind as she trotted up the steps, ignoring the several frowning guards, who were of a quality inferior even to Fallow’s men, down the hallway and into the central salon, complete with fake marble, cheap chandelier and profoundly unarousing mosaic of a lumpy couple fucking horse-style. Evidently the evening rush had yet to begin. Whores of both sexes and one Javre was still not entirely sure about lounged bored upon the overwrought furniture.

Pombrine was busy admonishing one of his flock for overdressing, but looked up startled when she entered. ‘You’re back already? What went wrong?’

Javre laughed full loud. ‘Everything.’ His eyes widened, and she laughed louder yet. ‘For them.’ And she took his wrist and pressed the parcel into his hand.

Pombrine gazed down at that unassuming lump of animal skin. ‘You did it?’

The woman thumped one heavy arm about his shoulders and gave them a squeeze. He gasped as his bones creaked. Without doubt she was of exceptional size, but even so the casual strength of it was hardly to be believed. ‘You do not know me. Yet. I am Javre, Lioness of Hoskopp.’ She looked down at him and he had an unpleasant and unfamiliar sensation of being a naughty child helpless in his mother’s grasp. ‘When I agree to a challenge I do not shirk it. But you will learn.’

‘I keenly anticipate my education.’ Pombrine wriggled free of the crushing weight of her arm. ‘You did not … open it?’

‘You told me not to.’

‘Good. Good.’ He stared down, the smile half-formed on his face, hardly able to believe it could have been this easy.

‘My payment, then.’

‘Of course.’ He reached for the purse.

She held up one calloused hand. ‘I will take half in flesh.’

‘In flesh?’

‘Isn’t that what you peddle here?’

He raised his brows. ‘Half would be a great quantity of flesh.’

‘I get through it. And I mean to stay a while.’

‘Lucky us,’ he muttered.

‘I’ll take him.’

‘An excellent choice, I-’

’And him. And him. And her.’ Javre rubbed her rough palms together. ‘She can get the lads warmed up, I am not paying to wank anyone off myself.’

‘Naturally not.’

‘I am a woman of Thond and have grand appetites.’

‘So I begin to see.’

‘And for the sun’s sake someone draw me a bath. I smell like a heated bitch already, I dread to imagine the stink afterward. I will have every tomcat in the city pursuing me!’ And she burst out laughing again.

One of the men swallowed. The other looked at Pombrine with an expression faintly desperate as Javre herded them into the nearest room.

‘… you, remove your trousers. You, get the bandages off my tits. You would scarcely credit how tightly I have to strap this lot down to get anything done …’

The door snapped mercifully shut.

Pombrine seized Scalacay, his most trusted servant, by the shoulder and drew him close.

‘Go to the Gurkish temple off the Third Canal with all haste, the one with the green marble pillars. Do you know it?’

‘I do, Master.’

‘Tell the priest who chants in the doorway that you have a message for Ishri. That Master Pombrine has the item she was asking after. For Ishri, do you understand?’

‘For Ishri. Master Pombrine has the item.’

‘Then run to it!’

Scalacay dashed away leaving Pombrine to hurry to his office with hardly less haste, the package clutched in one sweaty hand. He fumbled the door shut and turned the key, the five locks closing with a reassuring metallic clatter.