Joe Abercrombie - Sharp Ends

It was dark by the time she slipped silently through her own open window, past the stirring drapes, and crept around her comfortable chair. Carcolf was asleep in it, one strand of yellow hair fluttering around her mouth as she breathed. She looked young with eyes closed and face relaxed, shorn of that habitual sneer she had for everything. Young, and very beautiful. Bless this fashion for tight trousers! The candle cast a faint glow in the downy hairs on her cheek, and Shev felt a need to reach up and lay her palm upon that face, and stroke her lips with her thumb-

But, lover of risks though she was, that would’ve been too great a gamble. So instead she shouted, ‘Boo!’

Carcolf leaped up like a frog from boiling water, crashed into a table and nearly fell, lurched around, eyes wide. ‘Bloody hell,’ she muttered, taking a shuddering breath. ‘Do you have to do that?’

‘Have to? No.’

Carcolf pressed one hand to her chest. ‘I think you might have opened the stitches.’

‘You unbelievable baby.’ Shev pulled the robe over her head and tossed it away. ‘It barely broke the skin.’

‘The loss of your good opinion wounds me more deeply than any blade.’

Shev unhooked the belts that held her thief’s tools, unbuckled her climbing pads and started to peel off her black clothes, acting as if it was nothing to her whether Carcolf watched or not. But she noted with some satisfaction that it was not until she was slipping on a clean gown that Carcolf finally spoke, and in a voice slightly hoarse besides.

‘Well?’

‘Well what?’

‘It has always been a dream of mine to see a Sister of the White disrobe before my eyes, but I was rather wondering whether you found the-’

Shev tossed over the package and Carcolf snatched it smartly from the air.

‘I knew I could rely on you.’ Carcolf felt a little dizzy with relief, not to mention more than a little tingly with desire. She’d always had a weakness for dangerous women.

Bloody hell, she really was turning into her father …

‘You were right,’ said Shev, dropping into the chair she had so recently frightened Carcolf out of. ‘Pombrine had it.’

‘I bloody knew it! That slime! So hard to find a good expendable decoy these days.’

‘It’s as if you can’t trust anyone.’

‘Still. No harm done, eh?’ And Carcolf lifted up her shirt and ever so carefully slid the package into the uppermost of her two cash belts.

It was Shev’s turn to watch, pretending not to as she poured herself a glass of wine. ‘What’s in the parcel?’ she asked.

‘It’s safer if I don’t tell you.’

‘You’ve no idea, have you?’

‘I’m under orders not to look,’ Carcolf was forced to admit.

‘Don’t you ever wonder, though? I mean, the more I’m ordered not to look, the more I want to.’ Shev sat forward, dark eyes glimmering in a profoundly bewitching way, and for an instant Carcolf’s head was filled with an image of the pair of them rolling across the carpet together, laughing as they ripped the package apart between them.

She dismissed it with difficulty. ‘A thief can wonder. A courier cannot.’

‘Could you be any more pompous?’

‘It would require an effort.’

Shev slurped at her wine. ‘Well, it’s your package. I suppose.’

‘No, it isn’t. That’s the whole point.’

‘I think I preferred you when you were a criminal.’

‘Lies. You relish the opportunity to corrupt me.’

‘True enough.’ Shev wriggled down the chair so her long, brown legs slid out from the hem of her gown. ‘Why don’t you stay a while?’ One searching foot found Carcolf’s ankle, and slid gently up the inside of her leg, and down, and up. ‘And be corrupted?’

Carcolf took an almost painful breath. ‘Damn, but I’d love to.’ The strength of the feeling surprised her, and caught in her throat, and for the briefest moment she almost choked on it. For the briefest moment, she almost tossed the package out of the window, and sank down before the chair, and took Shev’s hand and shared tales she had never told from when she was a girl. For the briefest moment. Then she was Carcolf again, and she stepped smartly away and let Shev’s foot clomp down on the boards. ‘But you know how it is, in my business. Have to catch the tide.’ And she snatched up her new coat and turned as she pulled it on, giving herself time to blink back any hint of tears.

‘You should take a holiday.’

‘With every job I say so, and when every job ends, I find I get … twitchy.’ Carcolf sighed as she fastened the buttons. ‘I’m just not made for sitting still.’

‘Huh.’

‘Let’s not pretend you’re any different.’

‘Let’s not pretend. I’ve been considering a move myself. Adua, perhaps, or back to the South-’

‘I’d much rather you stayed here,’ Carcolf found she had said, then tried to pass it off with a carefree wave. ‘Who else would get me out of messes when I visit? You’re the one person in this whole damn city I trust.’ That was a complete lie, of course, she didn’t trust Shev in the least. A good courier trusts no one, and Carcolf was the very best. But she was a great deal more comfortable with lies than with truth.

She could see in Shev’s smile that she understood the whole situation perfectly. ‘So sweet.’ She caught Carcolf’s wrist as she turned to leave with a grip that was not to be ignored. ‘My money?’

‘How silly of me.’ Carcolf handed her the purse.

Without even looking inside, Shev said, ‘And the rest.’

Carcolf sighed once more and tossed the other purse on the bed, gold flashing in the lamplight as coins spilled across the white sheet. ‘You’d be upset if I didn’t try.’

‘Your care for my delicate feelings is touching. I daresay I’ll see you next time you’re here?’ she asked as Carcolf put her hand on the lock.

‘I shall count the moments.’

Just then she wanted a kiss more than anything, but she was not sure her resolve was strong enough for only one, so though it was a wrench she blew a kiss instead and pulled the door to behind her. She slipped swiftly across the shadowed court and out through the heavy gate onto the street, hoping it would be a while before Shevedieh took a closer look at the coins inside the first purse. Perhaps a cosmic punishment was thus incurred, but it was worth it just for the thought of the look on her face.

The day had been a bloody fiasco, but she supposed it could have been a great deal worse. She still had ample time to make it to the ship before they lost the tide. Carcolf pulled up her hood, wincing at the pain from that freshly stitched scratch, and from that entirely unreasonable ulcer, and from that cursed chafing seam, then strode off through the misty night, neither too fast nor too slow, entirely inconspicuous.

Damn, but she hated Sipani.

Carleon, Summer 570

‘What’s peace, Father?’

Bethod blinked down at his older son. Eleven years, and Scale had scarcely seen peace in his lifetime. Moments of it, maybe. Glimpses through a haze of blood. As he struggled to answer, Bethod realised he hardly remembered what peace felt like himself any more.

How long had he been living in fear?

He squatted before Scale and thought of his own father squatting before him, twisted with sickness and old beyond his years. ‘Some men will break a thing just because they can,’ he had whispered. ‘But war must be a leader’s last resort. Fight a war, you’ve lost already.’

In spite of all his victories, all the odds beaten and the enemies put in the mud, all the ransoms claimed and the land taken, Bethod had been losing for years. He saw that now.