The Great Leveller by Joe Abercrombie
‘Where the hell do you start?’ Shy heard Goldy asking her pimp. He had no answer.
The competition was humbling, all right. The women came in every shape, colour and age, lolling in the national undress of a score of different nations and displaying flesh by the acre. Gooseflesh, mostly, since the weather was tending chilly. Some cooed and simpered or blew kisses, others shrieked unconvincing promises about the quality of their services at the torchlit dark, still others abandoned even that much subtlety and thrust their hips at the passing Fellowship with the most warlike expressions. One let a pair of pendulous, blue-veined teats dangle over the rail of a balcony and called out, ‘What d’you think o’ these?’
Shy thought they looked about as appealing as a pair of rotten hams. You never can tell what’ll light the fire in some folk, though. A man looked up eagerly with one hand down the front of his trousers noticeably yanking away, others stepping around him like a wank in the street was nothing to remark upon. Shy blew out her cheeks.
‘I been to some low-down places and I done some low-down shit when I got there, but I never saw the like o’ this.’
‘Likewise,’ muttered Lamb, frowning about with one hand resting on the hilt of his sword. Seemed to Shy it rested there a lot these days, and had got pretty comfortable too. He weren’t the only one with steel to hand, mind you. The air of menace was thick enough to chew, gangs of ugly-faced and ugly-purposed men haunting the porches, armed past their armpits, aiming flinty frowns across at groups no better favoured on the other side of the way.
While they were stopped waiting for the traffic to clear, a thug with too much chin and nowhere near enough forehead stepped up to Majud’s wagon and growled, ‘Which side o’ the street you on?’
Never a man to be rushed, Majud considered a moment before answering. ‘I have purchased a plot on which I mean to site a business, but until I see it—’
‘He ain’t talking about plots, fool,’ snorted another tough with hair so greasy he looked like he’d dipped his head in cold stew. ‘He means are you on the Mayor’s side or Papa Ring’s side?’
‘I am here to do business.’ Majud snapped his reins and his wagon lurched on. ‘Not to take sides.’
‘Only thing on neither side o’ the street is the sewer!’ shouted Chinny after him. ‘You want to go in the fucking sewer, do you?’
The way grew wider and busier still, a crawling sea of muck, the columns even higher above it, the ruin of an ancient theatre cut from the hillside where the valley split in two ahead of them. Sweet was waiting near a sprawling heap of building like a hundred shacks piled on top of each other. Looked as if some optimist had taken a stab at it with whitewash but given up halfway and left the rest to slowly peel, like a giant lizard in the midst of moulting.
‘This here is Papa Ring’s Emporium of Romance, Song and Dry Goods, known locally as the Whitehouse,’ Sweet informed Shy as she hitched her horse. ‘Over yonder,’ and the old scout nodded across the stream that split the street in two, serving at once for drinking water and sewer and crossed by a muddle of stepping stones, wet planks and improvised bridges, ‘is the Mayor’s Church of Dice.’
The Mayor had occupied the ruins of some old temple – a set of pillars with half a moss-caked pediment on top – and filled in the gaps with a riot of planks to consecrate a place of worship for some very different idols.
‘Though, being honest,’ continued Sweet, ‘they both offer fucking, drink and gambling so the distinction is largely in the signage. Come on, the Mayor’s keen to meet you.’ He stepped back to let a wagon clatter past, showering mud from its back wheels over all and sundry, then set off across the street.
‘What shall I do?’ called Temple, still on his mule with a faceful of panic.
‘Take in the sights. Reckon there’s a lifetime of material for a preacher. But if you’re tempted by a sample, don’t forget you got debts!’ Shy forded the road after Lamb, trying to pick the firmest patches as the slop threatened to suck her boots right off, around a monstrous boulder she realised was the head of a fallen statue, half its face mud-sunk while the other still wore a pitted frown of majesty, then up the steps of the Mayor’s Church of Dice, between two groups of frowning thugs and into the light.
The heat was a slap, such a reek of sweltering bodies that Shy – no stranger to the unwashed – felt for a moment like she might drown in it. Fires were stoked high and the air was hazy with their smoke, and chagga smoke, and the smoke from cheap lamps burning cheap oil with a fizz and sputter, and her eyes set right away to watering. Stained walls half green wood and half moss-crusted stone trickled with the wet of desperate breath. Mounted in alcoves above the swarming humanity were a dozen sets of dusty Imperial armour that must’ve belonged to some general of antiquity and his guards, the proud past staring down in faceless disapproval at the sorry now.
‘It gets worse?’ muttered Lamb.
‘What gets better?’ asked Sweet.
The air rang with the rattle of thrown dice and bellowed odds, thrown insults and bellowed warnings. There was a band banging away like their lives were at stake and some drunken prospectors were singing along but didn’t know even a quarter of the words and were making up the balance with swears at random. A man reeled past clutching at a broken nose and blundered into the counter – gleaming wood and more’n likely the only thing in the place that came near clean – stretching what looked like half a mile and every inch crammed with clients clamouring for drink. Stepping back, Shy nearly tripped over a card-game. One of the players had a woman astride him, sucking at his face like he’d a gold nugget down his gullet and with just a bit more effort she’d get her tongue around it.
‘Dab Sweet?’ called a man with a beard seemed to go right up to his eyes, slapping the scout on the arm. ‘Look, Sweet’s back!’
‘Aye, and brought a Fellowship with me.’
‘No trouble with old Sangeed on the way?’
‘There was,’ said Sweet. ‘As a result of which he’s dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘No doubt o’ that.’ He jerked his thumb at Lamb. ‘It was this lad did—’
But the man with all the beard was already clambering up on the nearest table sending glasses, cards and counters clattering. ‘Listen up, all o’ you! Dab Sweet killed that fucker Sangeed! That old Ghost bastard’s dead!’
‘A cheer for Dab Sweet!’ someone roared, a surge of approval battered the mildewed rafters and the band struck up an even wilder tune than before.
‘Hold on,’ said Sweet, ‘Wasn’t me killed him—’
Lamb steered him on. ‘Silence is the warrior’s best armour, the saying goes. Just show us to the Mayor.’
They threaded through the heaving crowd, past a cage where a pair of clerks weighed out gold dust and coins in a hundred currencies and transformed it through the alchemy of the abacus to gambling chips and back. A few of the men Lamb brushed out of the way didn’t much care for it, turned with a harsh word in mind, but soon reconsidered when they saw his face. Same face that, slack and sorry, boys used to laugh at back in Squaredeal. He was a man much changed since those days, all right. Or maybe just a man revealed.
A couple of nail-eyed thugs blocked the bottom of the stairs but Sweet called, ‘These two are here to see the Mayor!’ and bundled them up with a deal of back-slappery, along a balcony overlooking the swarming hall and to a heavy door flanked by two more hard faces.
‘Here we go,’ said Sweet, and knocked.
It was a woman who answered. ‘Welcome to Crease,’ she said.
She wore a black dress with a shine to the fabric, long-sleeved and buttoned all the way to her throat. Late in her forties was Shy’s guess, hair streaked with grey. She must’ve been quite the beauty in her day, though, and her day weren’t entirely past either. She took Shy’s hand in one of hers and clasped it with the other one besides and said, ‘You must be Shy. And Lamb.’ She gave Lamb’s weathered paw the same treatment, and he thanked her too late in a creak
But the woman smiled like she’d never been treated to so gallant a gesture. She shut the door and with its solid click into the frame the madness outside was shut away and all was calm and reasonable. ‘Do sit. Master Sweet has told me of your troubles. Your stolen children. A terrible thing.’ And she had such pain in her face you’d have thought it was her babies had vanished.
‘Aye,’ muttered Shy, not sure what to do with that much sympathy.
‘Would either of you care for a drink?’ She poured four healthy measures of spirit without need for an answer. ‘Please forgive this place, it’s a struggle to get good furniture out here, as you can imagine.’
‘Guess we’ll manage,’ said Shy, even though it was about the most comfortable chair she’d ever sat in and about the nicest room besides, Kantic hangings at the windows, candles in lamps of coloured glass, a great desk with a black leather top just a little stained with bottle rings.
She’d real fine manners, Shy thought, this woman, as she handed out the drinks. Not that haughty, down-the-nose kind that idiots thought lifted you above the crowd. The kind that made you feel you were worth something even if you were dog-tired and dog-filthy and had near worn the arse out of your trousers and not even you could tell how many hundred miles of dusty plain you’d covered since your last bath.
Shy took a sip, noted the drink was just as far out of her class as everything else, cleared her throat and said, ‘We were hoping to see the Mayor.’
The woman perched herself against the edge of the desk – Shy had a feeling she’d have looked comfortable sitting on an open razor – and said, ‘You are.’
‘Hoping?’
‘Seeing her.’
Lamb shifted awkwardly in his chair, like it was too comfortable for him to be comfortable in.
‘You’re a woman?’ asked Shy, head somewhat scrambled from the hell outside and the clean calm in here.
The Mayor only smiled. She did that a lot but somehow you never tired of it. ‘They have other words for what I am on the other side of the street, but, yes.’ She tossed down her drink in a way that suggested it wasn’t her first, wouldn’t be her last and wouldn’t make much difference either. ‘Sweet tells me you’re looking for someone.’
‘Man by the name of Grega Cantliss,’ said Shy.
‘I know Cantliss. Preening scum. He robs and murders for Papa Ring.’
‘Where can we find him?’ asked Lamb.
‘I believe he’s been out of town. But I expect he’ll be back before long.’
‘How long are we talking about?’ asked Shy.
‘Forty-three days.’
That kicked the guts out of her. She’d built herself up to good news, or at least to news. Kept herself going with thoughts of Pit and Ro’s smiling faces and happy hugs of reunion. Should’ve known better but hope’s like damp – however much you try to keep it out there’s always a little gets in. She knocked back the balance of her drink, not near so sweet now, and hissed, ‘Shit.’
‘We’ve come a long way.’ Lamb carefully placed his own glass on the desk, and Shy noticed with a hint of worry his knuckles were white with pressure. ‘I appreciate your hospitality, no doubt I do, but I ain’t in any mood to fuck around. Where’s Cantliss?’
‘I’m rarely in the mood to fuck around either.’ The rough word sounded double harsh in the Mayor’s polished voice, and she held Lamb’s eye like manners or no she wasn’t someone to be pushed. ‘Cantliss will be back in forty-three days.’
Shy had never been one to mope. A moment to tongue at the gap between her teeth and dwell on all the unfairness the world had inflicted on her undeserving carcass and she was on to the what nexts. ‘Where’s the magic in forty-three days?’
‘That’s when things are coming to a head here in Crease.’
Shy nodded towards the window and the sounds of madness drifting through. ‘Strikes me they always are.’
‘Not like this one.’ The Mayor stood and offered out the bottle.
‘Why not?’ said Shy, and Lamb and Sweet were turning nothing down either. Refusing to drink in Crease seemed wrong-headed as refusing to breathe. Especially when the drink was so fine and the air so shitty.
‘Eight years we’ve been here, Papa Ring and I, staring across the street at each other.’ The Mayor drifted to the window and looked out at the babbling carnage below. She had a trick of walking so smooth and graceful it seemed it must done with wheels rather’n legs. ‘There was nothing on the map out here but a crease when we arrived. Twenty shacks among the ruins, places where trappers could see out the winter.’
Sweet chuckled. ‘You were quite a sight among ’em.’
‘They soon got used to me. Eight years, while the town grew up around us. We outlasted the plague, and four raids by the Ghosts, and two more by bandits, and the plague again, and after the big fire came through we rebuilt bigger and better and were ready when they found the gold and the people started coming. Eight years, staring across the street at each other, and snapping at each other, and in the end all but at war.’
‘You going to come near a point?’ asked Shy.
‘Our feud was getting bad for business. We agreed to settle it according to mining law, which is the only kind out here for the moment, and I can assure you people take it very seriously. We treated the town as a plot with two rival claims, winner takes all.’
‘Winner of what?’ asked Lamb.
‘A fight. Not my choice but Papa Ring manoeuvred me into it. A fight, man against man, bare-fisted, in a Circle marked out in the old amphitheatre.’
‘A fight in the Circle,’ muttered Lamb. ‘To the death, I daresay?’
‘I understand more often than not that’s where these things end up. Master Sweet tells me you may have some experience in that area.’
Lamb looked over at Sweet, then glanced at Shy, then back to the Mayor and grunted, ‘Some.’
There was a time, not all that long ago, Shy would’ve laughed her arse off at the notion of Lamb in a fight to the death. Nothing could’ve been less funny now.
Sweet was chuckling as he put down his empty glass, though. ‘I reckon we can drop the pretence, eh?’
‘What pretence?’ asked Shy.
‘Lamb,’ said Sweet. ‘That’s what. You know what I call a wolf wearing a sheep mask?’
Lamb looked back at him. ‘I’ve a feeling you can’t keep it to yourself.’
‘A wolf.’ The old scout wagged a finger across the room, looking quite decidedly pleased with himself. ‘I’d a crazy guess about you the moment I saw a big nine-fingered Northman kill the hell out o’ two drifters back in Averstock. When I saw you crush Sangeed like a beetle I was sure. I must admit it did occur when I asked you along that you and the Mayor might be the answer to each other’s problems—’
‘Ain’t you a clever little bastard?’ snarled Lamb, eyes burning and the veins suddenly popping from his thick neck. ‘Best be careful when you pull that mask off, fucker, you might not like what’s under there!’
Sweet twitched, Shy flinched, the comfortable room of a sudden feeling balanced on the brink of a great pit and that an awful dangerous place for a chat. Then the Mayor smiled as if this was all a joke between friends, gently took Lamb’s trembling hand and filled his glass, fingers lingering on his just a moment.
‘Papa Ring’s brought in a man to fight for him,’ she carried on, smooth as ever. ‘A Northman by the name of Golden.’
‘Glama Golden?’ Lamb shrank back into his chair like he’d been embarrassed by his own temper.
‘I’ve heard the name,’ said Shy. ‘Heard it’d be a fool who’d bet against him in a fight.’
‘That would depend who he was fighting. None of my men is a match for him, but you . . .’ She leaned forwards and the sweet whiff of perfume, rare as gold among the reeks of Crease, even got Shy a little warm under the collar. ‘Well, from what Swee
There was a time Shy would have laughed her arse off at that, too. Now, she wasn’t even near a chuckle.
‘Might be my best years are behind me,’ muttered Lamb.
‘Come, now. I don’t think either one of us is over the hill quite yet. I need your help. And I can help you.’ The Mayor looked Lamb in the face and he looked back like no one else was even there. Shy got a worried feeling, then. Like she’d somehow been out-bartered by this woman without prices even being mentioned.
‘What’s to stop us finding the children some other how?’ she snapped, her voice sounding harsh as a graveyard crow’s.
‘Nothing,’ said the Mayor simply. ‘But if you want Cantliss, Papa Ring will put himself in your way. And I’m the only one who can get him out of it. Would you say that’s fair, Dab?’
‘I’d say it’s true,’ said Sweet, still looking a little unnerved. ‘Fair I’ll leave to better judges.’
‘But you needn’t decide now. I’ll arrange a room for you over at Camling’s Hostelry. It’s the closest thing to neutral ground we have here. If you can find your children without my help, go with my blessing. If not . . .’ And the Mayor gave them one more smile. ‘I’ll be here.’
‘’Til Papa Ring kicks you out of town.’
Her eyes flickered to Shy’s and there was anger there, hot and sharp. Just for a moment, then she shrugged. ‘I’m still hoping to stay.’ And she poured another round of drinks.
Plots
‘It is a plot,’ said Temple.
Majud slowly nodded. ‘Undeniably.’
‘Beyond that,’ said Temple, ‘I would not like to venture.’
Majud slowly shook his head. ‘Nor I. Even as its owner.’
It appeared the amount of gold in Crease had been drastically over-stated, but no one could deny there had been a mud strike here of epic proportions. There was the treacherous slop that constituted the main street and in which everyone was forced to take their wading, cursing, shuffling chances. There was the speckly filth that showered from every wagon-wheel to inconceivable heights when it was raining, sprinkling every house, column, beast and person. There was an insidious, watery muck that worked its way up from the ground, leaching into wood and canvas and blooming forth with moss and mould, leaving black tidemarks on the hems of every dress in town. There was an endless supply of dung, shit, crap and night soil, found in every colour and configuration and often in the most unlikely places. Finally, of course, there was the all-pervasive moral filth.