The Great Leveller by Joe Abercrombie
A rump steak, then, thick-cut and pan-fried. He always carried a special mix of Suljuk four-spice with him, crushed to his taste, and the oil native to the region around Puranti had a wonderful nutty flavour. Then salt, and crushed pepper. Good meat was all in the seasoning. Pink in the centre, but not bloody. Shenkt had never been able to understand people who liked their meat bloody, the notion disgusted him. Onions sizzling alongside. Perhaps then dice the shank and make stew, with roots and mushrooms, a broth from the bones, a dash of that old Muris vinegar to give it . . .
‘Zing.’
He nodded to himself, carefully wiped the sickle clean, shouldered the bag, turned for the door and . . . stopped.
He had passed a baker’s earlier, and thought what fine, crusty, new-baked loaves they had in the window. The smell of fresh bread. That glorious scent of honesty and simple goodness. He would very much have liked to be a baker, had he not been . . . what he was. Had he never been brought before his old master. Had he never followed the path laid out for him, and had he never rebelled against it. How well that bread would be, he now thought, sliced and thickly smeared with a coarse pate. Perhaps with a quince jelly, or some such, and a good glass of wine. He drew his knife again and went in through Lucky Nim’s back for her liver.
After all, it was no use to her now.
Heroic Efforts, New Beginnings
The rain stopped, and the sun came out over the farmland, a faint rainbow stretching down from the grey heavens. Monza wondered if there was an elf-glade where it touched the ground, the way her father used to tell her. Or if there was just shit, like everywhere else. She leaned from her saddle and spat into the wheat.
Elf shit, maybe.
She pushed her wet hood back and scowled to the west, watching the showers roll off towards Puranti. If there was any justice they’d dump a deluge on Faithful Carpi and the Thousand Swords, their outriders probably no more than a day’s ride behind. But there was no justice, and Monza knew it. The clouds pissed where they pleased.
The damp winter wheat was spattered with patches of red flowers, like smears of blood across the tawny country. It would be ready to harvest soon, except there’d be no one here to do the reaping. Rogont was doing what he was best at – pulling back, and the farmers were taking everything they could carry and pulling back with him towards Ospria. They knew the Thousand Swords were coming, and knew better than to be there when they did. There were no more infamous foragers in the world than the men Monza used to lead.
Forage, Farans wrote, is robbery so vast that it transcends mere crime, and enters the arena of politics.
She’d lost Benna’s ring. She kept fussing at her middle finger with her thumb, endlessly disappointed to find it wasn’t there. A pretty piece of rock hadn’t changed the fact Benna was dead. But still it felt as if she’d lost some last little part of him she’d managed to cling on to. One of the last little parts of herself worth keeping.
She was lucky a ring was all she’d lost back in Puranti, though. She’d been careless, and it had nearly been the end of her. She had to stop smoking. Make a new beginning. Had to, and yet she was smoking more than ever. Each time she woke from sweet oblivion she told herself it would have to be the last, but a few hours later and she’d be sweating desperation from every pore. Waves of sick need, like an incoming tide, each one higher than the last. Each one resisted took a heroic effort, and Monza was no hero, however the people of Talins might once have cheered for her. She’d thrown her pipe away, then in a sticky panic bought another. She wasn’t sure how many times she’d hidden the dwindling lump of husk down at the bottom of one bag or another. But she’d found there’s a problem with hiding a thing yourself.
You always know where it is.
‘I do not care for this country.’ Morveer stood from his swaying seat and peered out across the flat land. ‘This is good country for an ambush.’
‘That’s why we’re here,’ Monza growled back. Hedgerows, the odd stand of trees, brown houses and barns alone or in groups away across the fields – plenty of hiding places. Scarcely a thing moved. Scarcely a sound but for the crows, the wind flapping the canvas on the cart, the wheels rattling, splattering through an occasional puddle.
‘Are you sure it is prudent to put your faith in Rogont?’
‘You don’t win battles with prudence.’
‘No, one plans murders with it. Rogont is notoriously untrustworthy even for a grand duke, and an old enemy of yours besides.’
‘I can trust him as far as what’s in his own interest.’ The question was all the more irritating as it was one she’d been asking herself ever since they left Puranti. ‘Small risk for him killing Faithful Carpi, but a hell of a pay-off if I can bring him the Thousand Swords.’
‘But it would hardly be your first miscalculation. What if we are marooned out here in the path of an army? You are paying me to kill one man at a time, not fight a war single—’
‘I paid you to kill one man in Westport, and you murdered fifty at a throw. I need no lessons from you in taking care.’
‘Scarcely more than forty, and that was due to too much care to get your man, not too little! Was your butcher’s bill any shorter at Cardotti’s House of Leisure? Or in Duke Salier’s palace? Or at Caprile, for that matter? Forgive me if I have scant faith in your ability to keep violence contained!’
‘Enough!’ she snarled at him. ‘You’re like a goat that won’t stop bleating! Do the job I pay you for, and that’s the end of it!’
Morveer pulled up the cart suddenly with a haul on the reins and Day squawked as she nearly fumbled her apple. ‘Is this the thanks I get for your timely rescue in Visserine? After you so pointedly ignored my sage advice?’
Vitari, sprawling among the supplies on the back of the cart, stuck up one long arm. ‘That rescue was as much my doing as his. No one’s thanked me.’
Morveer ignored her. ‘Perhaps I should find a more grateful employer!’
‘Perhaps I should find a more obedient fucking poisoner!’
‘Perhaps . . . ! But wait.’ Morveer held up a finger, squeezing his eyes shut. ‘But wait.’ He puckered his lips and sucked in a deep breath, held it for a moment, then slowly blew it out. And again. Shivers rode up, raised his one eyebrow at Monza. One more breath, and Morveer’s eyes came open, and he gave a chuckle of sickening falseness. ‘Perhaps . . . I should most sincerely apologise.’
‘What?’
‘I realise I am . . . not always the easiest company.’ A sharp burst of laughter from Vitari and Morveer winced, but carried on. ‘If I seem always contrary it is because I want only the best for you and your venture. It has ever been a failing of mine to be too intransigent in my pursuit of excellence. There is no more important characteristic than pliability in a man who must, perforce, be your humble servant. Can I entreat you to make with me . . . a heroic effort? To put this unpleasantness behind us?’ He snapped the reins and moved the cart on, still smiling thinly over his shoulder. ‘I feel it! A new beginning!’
Monza caught Day’s eye as she passed, rocking gently on her seat. The blonde girl lifted her brows, stripped her apple to the last fragment of stalk and flicked it away into the field. Vitari was on the back of the cart, just pulling off her coat and sprawling out on the canvas in the sunlight. ‘Sun’s coming out. New beginning.’ She pointed across the country, one hand pressed to her chest. ‘And aaaaaaaw, a rainbow! You know, they say there’s an elf-glade where it touches the ground!’
Monza scowled after them. Seemed more likely they’d stumble on an elf-glade than that Morveer would make a new beginning. She trusted this sudden obedience even less than his endless carping.
‘Maybe he just wants to be loved,’ came Shivers’ whispery voice as they set off again.
‘If men can change like that.’ And Monza snapped her fingers in his face.
‘That’s the only way they do change, ain’t it?’ His one eye stayed on her. ‘If things change enough around ’em? Men are brittle,
Burned into them, maybe. ‘How’s your face?’ she muttered.
‘Itchy.’
‘Did it hurt, at the eye-maker’s?’
‘On a scale between stubbing your toe and having your eye burned out, it was down near the bottom.’
‘Most everything is.’
‘Falling down a mountain?’
‘Not that bad, as long as you lie still. It’s when you try to get up it starts to sting some.’ That got a grin from him, though he was grinning a lot less than he used to. Small surprise after what he’d been through, maybe. What she’d put him through. ‘I suppose . . . I should be thanking you for saving my life, again. It’s getting to be a habit.’
‘What you’re paying me for, ain’t it, Chief? Work well done is its own reward, my father always used to tell me. Fact is I’m good at it. As a fighter I’m a man you need to respect. As anything else I’m just a big shiftless fuck wasted a dozen years in the wars, with nothing to show for it but bloody dreams and one less eye than most. I’ve got my pride, still. Man’s got to be what he is, I reckon. Otherwise what is he? Just pretending, no? And who wants to spend all the time they’re given pretending to be what they ain’t?’
Good question. Luckily they crested a rise, and she was spared having to think of an answer. The remains of the Imperial road stretched away, an arrow-straight stripe of brown through the fields. Eight centuries old, and still the best road in Styria. A sad comment on the leadership since. There was a farm not far from it. A stone house of two storeys, windows shuttered, roof of red tiles turned mossy brown with age, a small stable-block beside. A waist-high wall of lichen-splattered drystone round a muddy yard, a couple of scrawny birds pecking at the dirt. Opposite the house a wooden barn, roof slumping in the middle. A weather vane in the shape of a winged snake flapped limply on its leaning turret.
‘That’s the place!’ she called out, and Vitari stuck her arm up to show she’d heard.
A stream wound past the buildings and off towards a mill-house a mile or two distant. The wind came up, shook the leaves on a hedgerow, made soft waves in the wheat, drove the ragged clouds across the sky, their shadows flowing over the land beneath.
It reminded Monza of the farm where she was born. She thought of Benna, a boy running through the crop, just the top of his head showing above the ripening grain, hearing his high laughter. Long ago, before their father died. Monza shook herself and scowled. Maudlin, self-indulgent, nostalgic shit. She’d hated that farm. The digging, the ploughing, the dirt under her nails. And all for what? There weren’t many things you worked so hard at to make so little.
The only other one she could think of right off was revenge.
Since his earliest remembrances, Morveer seemed always to have had an uncanny aptitude for saying the wrong thing. When he meant to contribute, he would find he was complaining. When he intended to be solicitous, he would discover he was insulting. When he sought earnestly to provide support, he would be construed as undermining. He wanted only to be valued, respected, included, and yet somehow every attempt at good fellowship only made matters worse.
He was almost starting to believe, after thirty years of failed relationships – a mother who had left him, a wife who had left him, apprentices who had left, robbed or attempted to kill him, usually by poison but on one memorable occasion with an axe – that he simply was not very good with people. He should have been glad, at least, that the loathsome drunk Nicomo Cosca was dead, and indeed he had at first felt some relief. But the dark clouds had soon rolled back to re-establish the eternal baseline of mild depression. He found himself once more squabbling with his troublesome employer over every detail of their business.
Probably it would have been better if he had simply retired to the mountains and lived as a hermit, where he could injure nobody’s feelings. But the thin air had never suited his delicate constitution. So he had resolved, once more, to make a heroic effort at camaraderie. To be more compliant, more graceful, more indulgent of the shortcomings of others. He had taken the first step, therefore, while the rest of the party were out surveying the land for signs of the Thousand Swords, by pretending at a headache and preparing a pleasant surprise, in the form of his mother’s recipe for mushroom soup. Perhaps the only tangible thing which she had left her only son.
He nicked his finger while slicing, singed his elbow upon the hot stove, both of which events almost caused him to forsake his new beginning in a torrent of unproductive rage. But by the time he heard the horses returning to the farm, just as the sun was sinking and the shadows in the yard outside were stretching out, he had the table set, two stubs of candle casting a welcoming glow, two loaves of bread sliced and the pot of soup at the ready, exuding a wholesome fragrance.
‘Excellent.’ His rehabilitation was assured.
His new vein of optimism did not survive the arrival of the diners, however. When they entered, incidentally without removing their boots and therefore treading mud across his gleaming floor, they looked towards his lovingly cleaned kitchen, his carefully laid table, his laboriously prepared potage with all the enthusiasm of convicts being shown the executioner’s block.
‘What’s this?’ Murcatto’s lips were pushed out and her brows drawn down in even deeper suspicion than usual.
Morveer did his best to float over it. ‘This is an apology. Since our number-obsessed cook has returned to Talins, I thought I might occupy the vacuum and prepare dinner. My mother’s recipe. Sit, sit, pray sit!’ He hurried round dragging out chairs and, notwithstanding some uncomfortable sideways glances, they all found seats.
‘Soup?’ Morveer advanced on Shivers with pan and ladle at the ready.
‘Not for me. You did, what do you call it . . .’
‘Paralyse,’ said Murcatto.
‘Aye. You paralysed me that time.’
‘You mistrust me?’ he snapped.
‘Almost by definition,’ said Vitari, watching him from under her ginger brows. ‘You’re a poisoner.’
‘After all we have been through together? You mistrust me, over a little paralysis?’ He was making heroic efforts to repair the foundering ship of their professional relationship, and nobody appreciated it one whit. ‘If my intention was to poison you, I would simply sprinkle Black Lavender on your pillow and lull you to a sleep that would never end. Or put Amerind thorns in your boots, Larync on the grip of your axe, Mustard Root in your water flask.’ He leaned down towards the Northman, knuckles white around the ladle. ‘There are a thousand thousand ways that I could kill you and you would never suspect the merest shadow of a thing. I would not go to all the trouble of cooking you dinner!’
Shivers’ one eye stared levelly back into his for what seemed a very long time. Then the Northman reached out, and for the briefest moment Morveer wondered if he was about to receive his first punch in the face for many years. But instead Shivers only folded his big hand round Morveer’s with exaggerated care, tipping the pan so soup spilled out into his bowl. He picked up his spoon, dipped it in his soup, blew delicately on it and slurped up the contents. ‘It’s good. Mushroom, is it?’
‘Er . . . yes, it is.’
‘Nice.’ Shivers held Morveer’s eye a moment longer before letting go his hand.
‘Thank you.’ Morveer hefted the ladle. ‘Now, does anyone not want soup?’
‘Me!’ The voice barked out of nowhere like boiling water squirted in Morveer’s ear. He jerked away, the pan tumbling, hot soup flooding out across the table and straight into Vitari’s lap. She leaped up with a screech, wet cutlery flying. Murcatto’s chair went clattering over as she lurched out of it, fumbling for her sword. Day dropped a half-eaten slice of bread as she took a shocked step back towards the door. Morveer whipped around, dripping ladle clutched pointlessly in one fist—
A Gurkish woman stood smiling beside him, arms folded. Her skin was smooth as a child’s, flawless as dark glass,
‘Wait!’ barked Murcatto, one hand up. ‘Wait. She’s a friend.’
‘She’s no friend of mine!’ Morveer was still desperately trying to understand how she could have appeared from nothing in such a manner. There was no door near her, the window was tightly shuttered and barred, the floor and ceiling intact.
‘You have no friends, poisoner,’ she purred at him. Her long, brown coat hung open. Underneath, her body seemed to be swaddled entirely in white bandages.
‘Who are you?’ demanded Day. ‘And where the hell did you come from?’
‘They used to call me the East Wind.’ The woman displayed two rows of utterly perfect white teeth as she turned one finger gracefully round and round. ‘But now they call me Ishri. I come from the sun-bleached South.’
‘She meant—’ began Morveer.
‘Magic,’ murmured Shivers, the only member of the party who had remained in his seat. He calmly raised his spoon and slurped up another mouthful. ‘Pass the bread, eh?’
‘Damn your bread!’ he snarled back. ‘And your magic too! How did you get in here?’
‘One of them.’ Vitari had a table-knife in her fist, eyes narrowed to deadly slits as the remains of the soup dripped from the table and tapped steadily on the floor. ‘An Eater.’
The Gurkish woman pushed one fingertip through the spilled soup and curled her tongue around it. ‘We must all eat something, no?’
‘I don’t care to be on the menu.’
‘You need not worry. I am very picky about my food.’
‘I tangled with your kind before, in Dagoska.’ Morveer did not fully understand what was being said, a sensation which was among his least favourite, but Vitari seemed worried, and that made him worried. She was by no means a woman prone to high-blown fancies. ‘What deals have you been making, Murcatto?’
‘The ones that needed making. She works for Rogont.’
Ishri let her head fall to one side, so far that it was almost horizontal. ‘Or perhaps he works for me.’