The Great Leveller by Joe Abercrombie
Something told him they were going to leave more than two corpses behind tonight.
The corpses of the two guards lay beside the door. One was sitting up, staring at the ceiling. The other lay on his face. They hardly looked dead. Just sleeping. Monza slapped her own face, tried to shake the husk out of her head. The door wobbled towards her and a hand in a black glove reached out and grabbed the knob. Damn it. She needed to do that. She stood there, swaying, waiting for the hand to let go.
‘Oh.’ It was her hand. She turned it and the door came suddenly open. She fell through, almost pitched on her face. The room swam around her, walls flowing, melting, streaming waterfalls. Flames crackled, sparkling crystal in a fireplace. One window was open and music floated in, men shouting from down below. She could see the sounds, happy smears curling in around the glass, reaching across the changing space between, tickling at her ears.
Prince Ario lay on the bed, stark naked, body white on the rumpled cover, legs and arms spread out wide. His head turned towards her, the spray of feathers on his mask making long shadows creep across the glowing wall behind.
‘More?’ he murmured, taking a lazy swallow from a wine bottle.
‘I hope we haven’t . . . tired you out . . . already.’ Monza’s own voice seemed to boom out of a faraway bucket as she padded towards the bed, a ship tossing on a choppy red sea of soft carpet.
‘I daresay I can rise to the occasion,’ said Ario, fumbling with his cock. ‘You seem to have the advantage of me, though.’ He waved a finger at her. ‘Too many clothes.’
‘Uh.’ She shrugged the fur from her shoulders and it slithered to the floor.
‘Gloves off.’ He swatted with his hand. ‘Don’t care for them.’
‘Nor me.’ She pulled them off, tickling at her forearms. Ario was staring at her right hand. She held it up in front of her eyes, blinked at it. There was a long, pink scar down her forearm, the hand a blotchy claw, palm squashed, fingers twisted, little one sticking out stubbornly straight.
‘Ah.’ She’d forgotten about that.
‘A crippled hand.’ Ario wriggled eagerly down the bed towards her, his cock and the feathers sprouting from his head waggling from side to side with the movements of his hips. ‘How terribly . . . exotic.’
‘Isn’t it?’ The memory of Gobba’s boot crunching down across it flashed through her mind and snatched her into the cold moment. She felt herself smile. ‘No need for this.’ She took hold of the feathers and plucked the mask from his head, tossed it away into the corner.
Ario grinned at her, pink marks around his eyes where the mask had sat. She felt the glow of the husk leaking from her mind as she stared into his face. She saw him stabbing her brother in the neck, heaving him off the terrace, complaining at being cut. And here he was, before her now. Orso’s heir.
‘How rude.’ He clambered up from the bed. ‘I must teach you a lesson.’
‘Or maybe I’ll teach you one.’
He came closer, so close that she could smell his sweat. ‘Bold, to bandy words with me. Very bold.’ He reached out and ran one finger up her arm. ‘Few women are as bold as that.’ Closer, and he slipped his other hand into the slit in her skirts, up her thigh, squeezing at her arse. ‘I almost feel as if I know you.’
Monza took hold of the corner of her mask with her ruined right hand as Ario drew her closer still. ‘Know me?’ She slid her other fist gently behind her back, found the grip of one of the knives. ‘Of course you know me.’
She pulled her mask away. Ario’s smile lingered for a moment longer as his eyes flickered over her face. Then they went staring wide.
‘Somebody—!’
‘A hundred scales on this next throw!’ Crescent Moon bellowed, holding the dice up high. The room grew quiet as people turned to watch.
‘A hundred scales.’ It meant nothing to Friendly. None of it was his money, and money only interested him as far as counting it went. Losses and gains were exactly the same.
Crescent Moon rattled the dice in his hand. ‘Come on, you shits!’ The man flung them recklessly across the table, bouncing and tumbling.
‘Five and six.’
‘Hah!’ Moon’s friends whooped, chuckled, slapped him on the back as though he had achieved something fine by throwing one number instead of another.
The one with the mask like a ship threw his arms in the air. ‘Have that!’
The one with the fox mask made an obscene gesture.
The candles seemed to have grown uncomfortably bright. Too bright to count. The room was very hot, close, crowded. Friendly’s shirt was sticking to him as he scooped up the dice and tossed them gently back. A few gasps round the table. ‘Five and six. House wins.’ People often forgot that any one score is just as likely as any other, even the same score. So it was not entirely a shock that Crescent Moon lost his sense of perspective.
‘You cheating bastard!’
Friendly frowned. In Safety he would have cut a man who spoke to him like that. He would have had to, so that others would have known not to try. He would have started cutting him and not stopped. But they were not in Safety now, they were outside. Control, he had been told. He made himself forget the warm handle of his cleaver, pressing into his side. Control. He only shrugged. ‘Five and six. The dice don’t lie.’
Crescent Moon grabbed hold of Friendly’s wrist as he began to sweep up the counters. He leaned forwards and poked him in the chest with a drunken finger. ‘I think your dice are loaded.’
Friendly felt his face go slack, the breath hardly moving in his throat, it had constricted so painfully tight. He could feel every drop of sweat tickling at his forehead, at his back, at his scalp. A calm, cold, utterly unbearable rage seared through every part of him. ‘You think my dice are what?’ he could barely whisper.
Poke, poke, poke. ‘Your dice are liars.’
‘My dice . . . are what?’ Friendly’s cleaver split the crescent mask in half and the skull underneath it wide open. His knife stabbed the man with the ship over his face through his gaping mouth and the point emerged from the back of his head. Friendly stabbed him again, and again, squelch, squelch, the grip of the blade turning slippery. A woman gave a long, shrill scream.
Friendly was vaguely aware that everyone in the hall was gaping at him, four times three times four of them, or more, or less. He flung the dice table over, sending glasses, counters, coins flying. The man with the fox mask was staring, eyes wide inside the eyeholes, spatters of dark brains across his pale cheek.
Friendly leaned forwards into his face. ‘Apologise!’ he roared at the very top of his lungs. ‘Apologise to my fucking dice!’
‘Somebody—!’
Ario’s cry turned to a breathy wheeze of an in-breath. He stared down, and she did too. Her knife had gone in the hollow where his thigh met his body, just beside his wilting cock, and was buried in him to the grip, blood running out all over her fist. For the shortest moment he gave a hideous, high-pitched shriek, then the point of Monza’s other knife punched in under his ear and slid out of the far side of his neck.
Ario stayed there, eyes bulging, one hand plucking weakly at her bare shoulder. The other crept trembling up and fumbled at the handle of the blade. Blood leaked out of him thick and black, oozing between his fingers, bubbling down his legs, running down his chest in dark, treacly streaks, leaving his pale skin all smeared and speckled with red. His mouth yawned, but his scream was nothing but a soft farting sound, breath squelching around the wet steel in his throat. He tottered back, his other arm fishing at the air, and Monza watched him, fascinated, his white face leaving a bright trace across her vision.
‘Three dead,’ she whispered. ‘Four left.’
His bloody thighs slapped against the windowsill and he fell, head smashing against the stained glass and knocking the window wide. He tumbled through and out into the night.
The club came over, a blow that could’ve smashed in Shivers’ skull like an egg. But it was tired, sloppy, left Greyloc
‘How’d they do that?’
Then Greylock started squealing like he’d caught his foot in a door. ‘Fuck! It hurts! Ah! Ah! What’s my . . . by the—’
He reached around with the one hand he had left, fumbling at the gash in his side, dark mush bulging out. He lurched forwards onto one knee, head tipping back, and started to scream. Until Shivers’ sword hit his mask right in the forehead and made a clang that cut his roar off dead, left a huge dent between the eyeholes. The big man crashed over on his back, his boots flew up in the air, then thumped down.
And that was the end of the evening’s entertainment.
The band spluttered out a last few wobbly notes, then the music died. Apart from some vague yelling leaking from the gaming hall, the yard was silent. Shivers stared down at Greylock’s corpse, blood bubbling out from beneath the stoved-in mask. His fury had suddenly melted, leaving him only with a painful arm, a scalp prickling with cold sweat and a healthy sense of creeping horror.
‘Why do things like this always happen to me?’
‘Because you’re a bad, bad man,’ said Cosca, peering over his shoulder.
Shivers felt a shadow fall across his face. He was just looking up when a naked body crashed down headfirst into the circle from above, showering the already gaping crowd with blood.
That’s Entertainment
All at once, things got confused. ‘The king!’ someone squealed, for no reason that made any sense. The blood-spattered space that had been the circle was suddenly full of stumbling bodies, running to nowhere. Everyone was bawling, wailing, shouting. Men’s voices and women’s, a noise fit to deafen the dead. Someone shoved at Shivers’ shield and he shoved back on an instinct, sent them sprawling over Greylock’s corpse.
‘It’s Ario!’
‘Murder!’ A guest started to draw his sword, and one of the band stepped calmly forwards and smashed his skull apart with a sharp blow of a mace.
More screams. Steel rang and grated. Shivers saw one of the Gurkish dancers slit a man’s belly open with a curved knife, saw him fumble his sword as he vomited blood, stab the man behind him in the leg. There was a crash of tinkling glass and a flailing body came flying through one of the windows of the gambling hall. Panic and madness spread like fire in a dry field.
One of the jugglers was flinging knives, flying metal clattering about the yard, thudding into flesh and wood, just as deadly to friends as enemies. Someone grabbed hold of Shivers’ sword arm and he elbowed them in the face, lifted his sword to hack at them and realised it was Morc, the pipe player, blood running from his nose. There was a loud whomp and a glare of orange through the heaving bodies. The screaming went up a notch, a mindless chorus.
‘Fire!’
‘Water!’
‘Out of my way!’
‘The juggler! Get the—’
‘Help! Help!’
‘Knights of the Body, to me! To me!’
‘Where’s the prince? Where’s Ario?’
‘Somebody help!’
‘Back!’ shouted Cosca.
‘Eh?’ Shivers called at him, not sure who was howling at who. A knife flickered past in the darkness, rattled away between the thrashing bodies.
‘Back!’ Cosca sidestepped a sword-thrust, whipped his cane around, a long, thin blade sliding free of it, ran a man through the neck with a swift jab. He slashed at someone else, missed and almost stabbed Shivers as he lurched past. One of Ario’s gentlemen, mask like a squares board, nearly caught Cosca with a sword. Gurpi loomed up behind and smashed his lute over the man’s head. The wooden body shattered, the axe blade inside split his shoulder right down to his chest and crushed his butchered wreckage into the cobbles.
Another surge of flame went up, people stumbled away, shoving madly, a ripple through the straining crowd. They suddenly parted and the Incredible Ronco came thrashing straight at Shivers, white fire wreathing him like some devil burst out of hell. Shivers tottered back, smashed him away with his shield. Ronco reeled into the wall, bounced off it and into another, showering globs of liquid fire, folk scrambling away, steel stabbing about at random. The flames spread up the dry ivy, first a crackle, then a roar, leaped to the wooden wall, bathing the heaving courtyard in wild, flickering light. A window shattered. The locked gates clattered as men clutched at ’em, screaming to be let out. Shivers beat the flames on his shield against the wall. Ronco was rolling on the ground, still burning, making a thin screech like a boiling kettle, the flames casting a crazy glare across the bobbing masks of guests and entertainers – twisted monsters’ faces, everywhere Shivers looked.
There was no time to make sense of any of it. All that mattered was who lived and who died, and he’d no mind to join the second lot. He backed off, keeping close to the wall, shoving men away with his scorched shield as they grabbed at him.
A couple of the guards in breastplates were forcing their way through the press. One of ’em chopped Barti or Kummel down with his sword, hard to say which, caught one of Ario’s gentlemen on the backswing and took part of his skull off. He staggered round, squealing, one hand clapped to his head, blood running out between his fingers, over his golden mask and down his face in black streaks. Barti or Kummel, whichever was left, stabbed a knife into the top of the swordsman’s head, right up to the hilt, then hooted as the point of a blade slid out of the front of his chest.
Another armoured guard shouldered his way towards Shivers, sword held high, shouting something, sounded like the Union tongue. Didn’t much matter where he was from, he had a mind for killing, that was clear, and Shivers didn’t plan on giving him the first blow. He snarled as he swung, full-blooded, but the guard lurched back out of the way and Shivers’ sword chopped into something else with a meaty thwack. A woman’s chest, just happened to be stumbling past. She fell against the wall, scream turning to a gurgle as she slid down through the ivy, mask half-torn off, one eye staring at him, blood bubbling from her nose, from her mouth, pouring down her white neck.
The courtyard was a place of madness, lit by spreading flames. A fragment of a night-time battlefield, but a battle with no sides, no purpose, no winners. Bodies were kicked around under the panicking crowd – living, dead, split and bloodied. Gurpi was flailing, all tangled up with the wreckage of his lute, not even able to swing his axe for the broken strings and bits of wood. While Shivers watched, one of the guards hacked him down, sent blood showering black in the firelight.
‘The smoking hall!’ hissed Cosca, chopping someone out of their way with his sword. Shivers thought it might’ve been one of the jugglers, there was no way of telling. He dived through the open doorway after the old mercenary, together they started to heave the door shut. A hand came through and got caught against the frame, clutching wildly. Shivers bashed at it with the pommel of his sword until it slithered back trembling through the gap. Cosca wrestled the door closed and the latch dropped, then he tore the key around and flung it jingling away across the boards.
‘What now?’
The old mercenary stared at him, eyes wild. ‘What makes you think I’ve got the fucking answers?’
The hall was long and low, scattered with cushions, split up by billowing curtains, lit by guttering lamps, smelling of sweet husk-smoke. The sounds of violence out in the yard were muffled. Someone snored. Someone else giggled. A man sat against the wall opposite, a beaked mask and a broad smile on his face, pipe dangling from his hand.
‘What about the others?’ hissed Shivers, squinting into the half-light.
‘I think we’ve reached the point of every man for himself, don’t you?’ Cosca was busy
‘They’ll get in by the gaming hall, no? Won’t they—’ Something crashed against a window and it burst inwards, spraying twinkling glass into the room. Shivers shuffled further into the murk, heart thumping hard as a hammer at the inside of his skull. ‘Cosca?’ Nought but smoke and darkness, flickering light through the windows, flickering lamps on tables. He got tangled with a curtain, tore it down, fabric ripping from the rail above. Smoke was scratching at his throat. Smoke from the husk in here, smoke from the fire out there, more and more. The air was hazy with it.
He could hear voices. Crashing and screaming on his left like a bull going mad in the burning building. ‘My dice! My dice! Bastards!’
‘Help!’
‘Somebody send for . . . somebody!’
‘Upstairs! The king! Upstairs!’
Someone was beating at a door with something heavy, he could hear the wood shuddering under the blows. A figure loomed at him. ‘Excuse me, could you—’ Shivers smashed him in the face with his shield and knocked him flying, stumbled past, a vague idea he was after the stairs. Monza was upstairs. Top floor. He heard the door burst open behind him, shifting light, brown smoke, writhing figures began to pour through into the smoking hall, blades shining in the gloom. One of ’em pointed at him. ‘There! There he is!’
Shivers snatched a lamp up in his shield hand and flung it, missed the man at the front and hit the wall. It burst apart, showering burning oil across a curtain. People scattered, one of them screaming, arm on fire. Shivers ran the other way, deeper into the building, half-falling as cushions and tables tripped him in the darkness. He felt a hand grab his ankle and hacked at it with his sword. He staggered through the choking shadows to a doorway, a faint chink of light down the edge, shouldered it open, sure he’d get stabbed between the shoulder blades any moment.