The Great Leveller by Joe Abercrombie
‘They say she cannot be killed.’
‘Do . . . they . . . indeed?’ Orso’s red-rimmed eyes swivelled to Morveer. ‘What do you say, poisoner?’
‘Your Excellency,’ and he plunged down into the lowest of bows once more, ‘I have fashioned a successful career upon the principle that there is nothing that lives that cannot be deprived of life. It is the remarkable ease of killing, rather than the impossibility of it, that has always caused me astonishment.’
‘Do you care to prove it?’
‘Your Excellency, I humbly entreat only the opportunity.’ Morveer swept out another bow. It was his considered opinion that one could never bow too much to men of Orso’s stamp, though he did reflect that persons of huge ego were a great drain on the patience of bystanders.
‘Then here it is. Kill Monzcarro Murcatto. Kill Nicomo Cosca. Kill Countess Cotarda of Affoia. Kill Duke Lirozio of Puranti. Kill First Citizen Patine of Nicante. Kill Chancellor Sotorius of Sipani. Kill Grand Duke Rogont, before he can be crowned. Perhaps I will not have Styria, but I will have revenge. On that you can depend.’
Morveer had been warmly smiling as the list began. By its end he was smiling no longer, unless one could count the fixed rictus he maintained across his trembling face only by the very greatest of efforts. It appeared his bold gambit had spectacularly oversucceeded. He was forcibly reminded of his attempt to discomfort four of his tormentors at the orphanage by placing Lankam salts in the water, which had ended, of course, with the untimely deaths of all the establishment’s staff and most of the children too.
‘Your Excellency,’ he croaked, ‘that is a significant quantity of murder.’
‘And some fine names for your little list, no? The rewards will be equally significant, on that you can rely, will they not, Master Sulfur?’
‘They will.’ Sulfur’s eyes moved from his fingernails to Morveer’s face. Different-coloured eyes, Morveer now noticed, one green, one blue. ‘I represent, you see, the Banking House of Valint and Balk.’
‘Ah.’ Suddenly, and with profound discomfort, Morveer placed the man. He had seen him talking with Mauthis in the banking hall in Westport but a few short days before he had filled the place with corpses. ‘Ah. I really had not the slightest notion, you understand . . .’ How he wished now that he had not killed Day. Then he could have noisily denounced her as the culprit and had something tangible with which to furnish the duke’s dungeons. Fortunately, it seemed Master Sulfur was not seeking scapegoats. Yet.
‘Oh, you were but the weapon, as you say. If you can cut as sharply on our behalf you have nothing to worry about. And besides, Mauthis was a terrible bore. Shall we say, if you are successful, the sum of one million scales?’
‘One . . . million?’ muttered Morveer.
‘There is nothing that lives that cannot be deprived of life.’ Orso leaned forwards, eyes fixed on Morveer’s face. ‘Now get about it!’
Night was falling when they came to the place, lamps lit in the grimy windows, stars spilled out across the soft night sky like diamonds on a jeweller’s cloth. Shenkt had never liked Affoia. He had studied there, as a young man, before he ever knelt to his master and before he swore never to kneel again. He had fallen in love there, with a woman too rich, too old and far too beautiful for him, and been made a whining fool of. The streets were lined not only with old pillars and thirsty palms, but with the bitter remnants of his childish shame, jealousy, weeping injustice. Strange, that however tough one’s skin becomes in later life, the wounds of youth never close.
Shenkt did not like Affoia, but the trail had led him here. It would take more than ugly memories to make him leave a job half-done.
‘That is the house?’ It was buried in the twisting backstreets of the city’s oldest quarter, far from the thoroughfares where the names of men seeking public office were daubed on the walls along with their great qualities and other, less complimentary words and pictures. A small building, with slumping lintels and a slumping roof, squeezed between a warehouse and a leaning shed.
‘That’s the house.’ The beggar’s voice was soft and stinking as rotten fruit.
‘Good.’ Shenkt pressed five scales into his scabby palm. ‘This is for you.’ He closed the man’s fist around the money then held it with his own. ‘Never come back here.’ He leaned closer, squeezed harder. ‘Not ever.’
He slipped across the cobbled street, over the wall before the house. His heart was beating unusually fast, sweat prickling his scalp. He crept across the overgrown front garden, old boots finding the silent spaces between the weeds, and to the lighted window. Reluctant, almost afraid, he peered through. Three children sat on a worn red carpet beside a small fire. Two girls and a boy, all with the same orange hair. They were playing with a brightly painted wooden horse on wheels. Clambering onto it, pushing each other around on it, pushing each other off it, to faint squeals of amusement. He squatted there, fascinated, and watched them.
Innocent. Unformed. Full of possibilities. Before they began to make their choices, or had their choices made for them. Before the doors began to close, and sent them down the only remaining path. Before they knelt. Now, for this briefest spell, they could be anything.
‘Well, well. What have we here?’
She was crouching above him on the low roof of the shed, her head on one side, a line of light from a window across the way cutting hard down her face, strip of spiky red hair, red eyebrow, narrowed eye, freckled skin, corner of a frowning mouth. A chain hung gleaming down from one fist, cross of sharpened metal swinging gently on the end of it.
Shenkt sighed. ‘It seems you have the better of me.’
She slid from the wall, dropped to the dirt and thumped smoothly down on her haunches, chain rattling. She stood, tall and lean, and took a step towards him, raising her hand.
He breathed in, slow, slow.
He saw every detail of her face: lines, freckles, faint hairs on her top lip, sandy eyelashes crawling down as she blinked.
He could hear her heart beating, heavy as a ram at a gate.
Thump . . . thump . . . thump . . .
She slid her hand around his head, and they kissed. He wrapped his arms about her, pressed her thin body tight against him, she tangled her fingers in his hair, chain brushing against his shoulders, dangling metal knocking lightly against the backs of his legs. A long, gentle, lingering kiss that made his body tingle from his lips to his toes.
She broke away. ‘It’s been a while, Cas.’
‘I know.’
‘Too long.’
‘I know.’
She nodded towards the window. ‘They miss you.’
‘Can I . . .’
‘You know you can.’
She led him to the door, into the narrow hallway, unbuckling the chain from her wrist and slinging it over a hook, cross-shaped knife dangling. The oldest girl dashed out from the room, stopped dead when she saw him.
‘It’s me.’ He edged slowly towards her, his voice strangled. ‘It’s me.’ The other two children came out from the room, peering around their sister. Shenkt feared no man, but before these children, he was a coward. ‘I have something for you.’ He reached into his coat with trembling fingers.
‘Cas.’ He held out the carved dog, and the little boy with his name snatched it from his hand, grinning. ‘Kande.’ He put the bird in the cupped hands of the littlest girl, and she stared dumbly at it. ‘For you, Tee,’ and he offered the cat to the oldest girl.
She took it. ‘No one calls me that any more.’
‘I’m sorry it’s been so long.’ He touched the girl’s hair and she flinched away, he jerked his hand back, awkward. He felt the weight of the butcher’s sickle in his coat as he moved, and he stood sharply, took a step back. The three of them stared up at him, carved animals clutched in their hands.
‘To bed now,’ said Shylo. ‘He’ll still be here tomorrow.’ Her eyes were on him, hard lines across the freckled bridge of her nose. ‘Won’t you, Cas?’
She brushed their complaints away, pointed to the stairs. ‘To bed.’ They filed up slowly, step by step, the boy yawning, the younger girl hanging her head, the other complaining that she wasn’t tired. ‘I’ll come sing to you later. If you’re quiet until then, maybe your father will even hum the low parts.’ The youngest of the two girls smiled at him, between the banisters at the top of the stairs, until Shylo pushed him into the living room and shut the door.
‘They got so big,’ he muttered.
‘That’s what they do. Why are you here?’
‘Can’t I just—’
‘You know you can, and you know you haven’t. Why are you . . .’ She saw the ruby on his forefinger and frowned. ‘That’s Murcatto’s ring.’
‘She lost it in Puranti. I nearly caught her there.’
‘Caught her? Why?’
He paused. ‘She has become involved . . . in my revenge.’
‘You and your revenge. Did you ever think you might be happier forgetting it?’
‘A rock might be happier if it was a bird, and could fly from the earth and be free. A rock is not a bird. Were you working for Murcatto?’
‘Yes. So?’
‘Where is she?’
‘You came here for that?’
‘That.’ He looked towards the ceiling. ‘And them.’ He looked her in the eye. ‘And you.’
She grinned, little lines cutting into the skin at the corners of her eyes. It took him by surprise, how much he loved to see those lines. ‘Cas, Cas. For such a clever bastard you’re a stupid bastard. You always look for all the wrong things in all the wrong places. Murcatto’s in Ospria, with Rogont. She fought in the battle there. Any man with ears knows that.’
‘I didn’t hear.’
‘You don’t listen. She’s tight with the Duke of Delay, now. My guess is he’ll be putting her in Orso’s place, keep the people of Talins alongside when he reaches for the crown.’
‘Then she’ll be following him. Back to Talins.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Then I will follow them. Back to Talins.’ Shenkt frowned. ‘I could have stayed there these past weeks, and simply waited for her.’
‘That’s what happens if you’re always chasing things. Works better if you wait for what you want to come to you.’
‘I was sure you’d have found another man by now.’
‘I found a couple. They didn’t stick.’ She held out her hand to him. ‘You ready to hum?’
‘Always.’ He took her hand, and she pulled him from the room, and through the door, and up the stairs.
VII
TALINS
‘Revenge is a dish best served cold’
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Rogont of Ospria was late to the field at Sweet Pines, but Salier of Visserine still enjoyed the weight of numbers and was too proud to retreat. Especially when the enemy was commanded by a woman. He fought, he lost, he ended up retreating anyway, and left the city of Caprile defenceless. Rather than face a certain sack, the citizens opened their gates to the Serpent of Talins in the hope of mercy.
Monza rode in, but most of her men she left outside. Orso had made allies of the Baolish, convinced them to fight with the Thousand Swords under their ragged standards. Fierce fighters, but with a bloody reputation. Monza had a bloody reputation of her own, and that only made her trust them less.
‘I love you.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘I love you, but keep the Baolish out of town, Benna.’
‘You can trust me.’
‘I do trust you. Keep the Baolish out of town.’
She rode three hours as the sun went down, back to the rotting battlefield at Sweet Pines, to dine with Duke Orso and learn his plans for the close of the season.
‘Mercy for the citizens of Caprile, if they yield to me entirely, pay indemnities and acknowledge me their rightful ruler.’
‘Mercy, your Excellency?’
‘You know what it is, yes?’ She knew what it was. She had not thought he did. ‘I want their land, not their lives. Dead men cannot obey. You have won a famous victory here. You shall have a great triumph, a procession through the streets of Talins.’
That would please Benna, at least. ‘Your Excellency is too kind.’
‘Hah. Few would agree with that.’
She laughed as she rode back in the cool dawn, and Faithful laughed beside her. They talked of how rich the soil was, on the banks of the Capra, watching the good wheat shift in the wind.
Then she saw the smoke above the city, and she knew.
The streets were full of dead. Men, women, children, young and old. Birds gathered on them. Flies swarmed. A confused dog limped along beside their horses. Nothing else living showed itself. Empty windows gaped, empty doorways yawned. Fires still burned, whole rows of houses nothing but ash and tottering chimney stacks.
Last night, a thriving city. This morning, Caprile was hell made real.
It seemed Benna had not been listening. The Baolish had begun it, but the rest of the Thousand Swords – drunk, angry, fearing they would miss out on the easy pickings – had eagerly joined in. Darkness and dark company make it easy for even half-decent men to behave like animals, and there were few half-decent men among the scum Monza commanded. The boundaries of civilisation are not the impregnable walls civilised men take them for. As easily as smoke on the wind, they can dissolve.
Monza flopped down from her horse and puked Duke Orso’s fine breakfast over the rubbish-strewn cobbles.
‘Not your fault,’ said Faithful, one big hand on her shoulder.
She shook him off. ‘I know that.’ But her rebellious guts thought otherwise.
‘It’s the Years of Blood, Monza. This is what we are.’
Up the steps to the house they’d taken, tongue rough with sick. Benna lay on the bed, fast asleep, husk pipe near one hand. She dragged him up, made him squawk, cuffed him one way and the other.
‘Keep them out of town, I told you!’ And she forced him to the window, forced him to look down into the bloodstained street.
‘I didn’t know! I told Victus . . . I think . . .’ He slid to the floor, and wept, and her anger leaked away and left her empty. Her fault, for leaving him in charge. She could not let him shoulder the blame. He was a good man, and sensitive, and would not have borne it well. There was nothing she could do but kneel beside him, and hold him, and whisper soothing words while the flies buzzed outside the window.
‘Orso wants to give us a triumph . . .’
Soon afterwards the rumours spread. The Serpent of Talins had ordered the massacre that day. Had urged the Baolish on and screamed for more. The Butcher of Caprile, they called her, and she did not deny it. People would far rather believe a lurid lie than a sorry string of accidents. Would far rather believe the world is full of evil than full of bad luck, selfishness and stupidity. Besides, the rumours served a purpose. She was more feared than ever, and fear was useful.
In Ospria they denounced her. In Visserine they burned her image. In Affoia and Nicante they offered a fortune to any man who could kill her. All around the Azure Sea they rang out the bells to her shame. But in Etrisani they celebrated. In Talins they lined the streets to chant her name, to shower her with flower petals. In Cesale they raised a statue in her honour. A gaudy thing, smothered with gold leaf that soon peeled. She and Benna, as they never looked, seated on great horses, frowning boldly towards a noble future.
That was the difference between a hero and a villain, a soldier and a murderer, a victory and a crime. Which side of a river you called home.
Return of the Native
Monza was far from comfortable. Her legs ached, her arse was chafed raw from riding, her shoulder had stiffened up again so she was constantly twisting her head to one side like a demented owl in a futile attempt to loosen it. Whenever one source of sweaty agony would ease for a moment, another would flare up to plug the gap. Her prodding joke of a little fin
Rogont had her dressed up like some simpleton’s notion of the Goddess of War, an unhappy collision of shining steel and embroidered silk that offered the comfort of full plate and the protection of a nightgown. It might all have been made to measure by Rogont’s own armourer, but there was a lot more room for chest in her gold-chased breastplate than there was a need for. This, according to the Duke of Delay, was what people wanted to see.
And enough of them had turned out for the purpose.
Crowds lined the narrow streets of Talins. They squashed into windows and onto roofs to catch a glimpse of her. They packed into the squares and gardens in dizzying throngs, throwing flowers, waving banners, boiling over with hope. They shouted, bellowed, roared, squealed, clapped, stamped, hooted, competing with each other to be the first to burst her skull with their clamour. Sets of musicians had formed at street corners, would strike up martial tunes as she came close, brassy and blaring, clanging away behind her, merging with the off-key offering of the next impromptu band to form a mindless, murderous, patriotic din.
It was like the triumph after her victory at Sweet Pines, only she was older and even more reluctant, her brother was rotting in the mud instead of basking in the glory and her old enemy Rogont was at her back rather than her old friend Orso. Perhaps that was what history came down to, in the end. Swapping one sharp bastard for another was the best you could hope for.
They crossed the Bridge of Tears, the Bridge of Coins, the Bridge of Gulls, looming carvings of seabirds glaring angrily down at the procession as it crawled past, brown waters of the Etris sluggishly churning beneath them. Each time she rounded a corner another wave of applause would break upon her. Another wave of nausea. Her heart was pounding. Every moment, she expected to be killed. Blades and arrows seemed more likely than flowers and kind words, and far more deserved. Agents of Duke Orso, or his Union allies, or a hundred others with a private grudge against her. Hell, if she’d been in the crowd and seen some woman ride past dressed like this, she’d have killed her on general principle. But Rogont must have spread his rumours well. The people of Talins loved her. Or loved the idea of her. Or had to look like they did.