Sharp Ends: Stories from the World of The First Law (29 page)

Borfero took a sharp breath. ‘Tough times all over.’

‘Ain’t they, though?’ And Deep stood, and swept the package up in one big paw.

The cool air caught Deep like a slap as they stepped out into the evening. Sipani, none too pleasant when it was still, had a decided spin to it of a sudden.

‘I have to confess,’ he said, clearing his throat and spitting, ‘to being somewhat on the drunk side of drunk.’

‘Aye,’ said Shallow, burping as he squinted into the mist. At least that was clearing somewhat. As clear as it got in this murky hell of a place, anyway. ‘Probably not the bestest notion while at work, mind you.’

‘You’re right.’ Deep held the baggage up to such light as there was. ‘But who expected this to just drop in our laps?’

‘Not I, for one.’ Shallow frowned. ‘Or for … not one?’

‘It was meant to be just a tipple,’ said Deep.

‘One tipple does have a habit of making itself into several.’ Shallow wedged on that stupid bloody hat. ‘A little stroll over to the bank, then?’

‘That hat makes you look a fucking dunce.’

‘You, brother, are obsessed with appearances.’

Deep passed that off with a long hiss.

‘They really going to score out that woman’s debts, d’you think?’

‘For now, maybe. But you know how they are. Once you owe, you always owe.’ Deep spat again and, now the alley was a tad steadier, tottered off with the baggage clutched tight in his hand. No chance he was putting it in a pocket where some little scab could lift it. Sipani was full of thieving bastards. He’d had his good socks stolen last time he was here and worked up an unpleasant pair of blisters on the trip home. Who steals socks? Styrian bastards. He’d keep a good firm grip on it. Let the little fuckers try to take it
then
.

‘Now who’s the dunce?’ Shallow called after him. ‘The bank’s this way.’

‘Only we ain’t going to the bank,
dunce
,’ snapped Deep over his shoulder. ‘We’re to toss it down a well in an old court just around the corner here.’

Shallow hurried to catch up. ‘We are?’

‘No, I just said it for the laugh, y’idiot.’

‘Why down a well?’

‘Because that’s how he wanted it done.’

‘Who wanted it done?’

‘The boss.’

‘The little boss, or the big boss?’

Even drunk as Deep was, he felt the need to lower his voice. ‘The bald boss.’

‘Shit,’ breathed Shallow. ‘In person?’

‘In person.’

A short pause. ‘How was that?’

‘It was even more than usually terrifying, thanks for reminding me.’

A long pause, with just the sound of their boots on the wet cobbles. Then Shallow said, ‘We better hadn’t do no fucking up of this.’

‘My heartfelt thanks,’ said Deep, ‘for that piercing insight. Fucking up is always to be avoided when and wherever possible, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Y’always aim to avoid it, of course you do, but sometimes you run into it anyway. What I’m saying here is we’d best not run into it.’ Shallow dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘You know what the bald boss said last time.’

‘You don’t have to whisper. He ain’t here, is he?’

Shallow looked wildly around. ‘I don’t know. Is he?’

‘No, he ain’t.’ Deep rubbed at his temples. One day he’d kill his brother, that was a foregone conclusion. ‘That’s what I’m saying.’

‘What if he was, though? Best to always act like he might be.’

‘Can you shut your mouth just for a fucking
instant
?’ Deep caught Shallow by the arm and stabbed the baggage in his face. ‘It’s like talking to a bloody—’

He was greatly surprised when a dark shape whisked between them and he found his hand was suddenly empty.

Kiam ran like her life depended on it. Which it did, o’ course.

‘Get after him, damn it!’

And she heard the two Northmen flapping and crashing and blundering down the alley behind, and nowhere near far enough behind for her taste.

‘It’s a girl, y’idiot!’

Big and clumsy but fast they were coming, boots hammering and hands clutching and if they once caught a hold of her …

‘Who fucking cares? Get the thing back!’

And her breath hissing and her heart pounding and her muscles burning as she ran.

She skittered around a corner, rag-wrapped feet sticking to the damp cobbles, the way wider here, lamps and torches making muddy smears in the mist and people busy everywhere. She ducked and wove, around them, between them, faces looming up and gone. The Blackside night-market, stalls and shoppers and the cries of the traders, full of noise and smells and tight with bustle. Kiam wriggled under a wagon limber as a ferret, plunged between buyer and seller in a shower of fruit then slithered over a stall laden with slimy fish while the trader shouted and snatched at her, caught nothing but air, and she stuck one foot in a basket and was off, kicking cockles across the street. Still she heard the yells and growls as the Northmen knocked folk flying in her wake, crashes as they flung the carts aside, as though a mindless storm was ripping apart the market behind her. She dived between the legs of a big man, rounded another corner and took the greasy steps two at a time, along the narrow path by the slopping water, rats squeaking in the rubbish and the sounds of the Northmen now loud, louder, cursing her and each other. Her breath whooping and cutting in her chest and running desperate, water spattering and spraying around her with every echoing footfall.

‘We’ve got her!’ The voice so close at her heels. ‘Come here!’

She darted through that little hole in the rusted grate, a sharp tooth of metal leaving a burning cut down her arm, and for once she was plenty glad that Old Green never gave her enough to eat. She kicked her way back into the darkness, keeping low, lay there clutching the package and struggling to catch her breath. Then they were there, one of the Northmen dragging at the grating, knuckles white with force, flecks of rust showering down as it shifted, and Kiam stared and wondered what those hands would do to her if they got their dirty nails into her skin.

The other one shoved his bearded face in the gap, a wicked-looking knife in his hand, not that someone you just robbed ever has a nice-looking knife. His eyes popped out at her and his scabbed lips curled back and he snarled, ‘Chuck us that baggage and we’ll forget all about it. Chuck us it now!’

Kiam kicked away, the grate squealing as it bent.

‘You’re fucking dead, you little piss! We’ll find you, don’t worry about that!’

She slithered off, through the dust and rot, wriggled through a crack between crumbling walls.

‘We’ll be coming for you!’ echoed from behind her.

Maybe they would as well, but a thief can’t spend too much time worrying about tomorrow. Today’s shitty enough. She whipped her coat off and pulled it inside out to show the faded green lining, stuffed her cap in her pocket and shook her hair out long, then slipped onto the walkway beside the Fifth Canal, walking fast, head down.

A pleasure boat drifted past, all chatter and laughter and clinking of glass, people moving tall and lazy on board, strange as ghosts seen through that mist, and Kiam wondered what they’d done to deserve that life and what she’d done to deserve this, but there never were no easy answers to that question. As it took its pink lights away into the fog she heard the music of Hove’s violin. Stood a moment in the shadows, listening, thinking how beautiful it sounded. She looked down at the package. Didn’t look much for all this trouble. Didn’t weigh much, even. But it weren’t up to her what Old Green put a price on. She wiped her nose and walked along close to the wall, music getting louder, then she saw Hove’s back and his bow moving, and she slipped behind him and let the package fall into his gaping pocket.

Hove didn’t feel the drop, but he felt the three little taps on his back, and he felt the weight in his coat as he moved. He didn’t see who made the drop and he didn’t look. He just carried on fiddling, that Union march with which he’d opened every show during his time on the stage in Adua, or under the stage, at any rate, warming up the crowd for Lestek’s big entrance. Before his wife died and everything went to shit. Those jaunty notes reminded him of times past, and he felt tears prickling in his sore eyes, so he switched to a melancholy minuet more suited to his mood, not that most folk around here could’ve told the difference. Sipani liked to present itself as a place of culture but the majority were drunks and cheats and boorish thugs, or varying combinations thereof.

How had it come to this, eh? The usual refrain. He drifted across the street like he’d nothing in mind but a coin for his music, letting the notes spill out into the murk. Across past the pie stall, the fragrance of cheap meat making his stomach grumble, and he stopped playing to offer out his cap to the queue. There were no takers, no surprise, so he headed on down the road to Verscetti’s, dancing in and out of the tables on the street and sawing out an Osprian waltz, grinning at the patrons who lounged there with a pipe or a bottle, twiddling thin glass-stems between gloved fingertips, eyes leaking contempt through the slots in their mirror-crusted masks. Jervi was sat near the wall, as always, a woman in the chair opposite, hair piled high.

‘A little music, darling?’ Hove croaked out, leaning over her and letting his coat dangle near Jervi’s lap.

Jervi slid something out of Hove’s pocket, wrinkling his nose at the smell of the old soak, and said, ‘Fuck off, why don’t you?’ Hove moved on, and took his horrible music with him, thank the Fates.

‘What’s going on down there?’ Riseld lifted her mask for a moment to show that soft, round face well powdered and fashionably bored.

There did indeed appear to be some manner of commotion up the street. Crashing, banging, shouting in Northern.

‘Damn Northmen,’ he murmured. ‘Always causing trouble, they really should be kept on leads like dogs.’ Jervi removed his hat and tossed it on the table, the usual signal, then leaned back in his chair to hold the package inconspicuously low to the ground beside him. A distasteful business, but a man has to work. ‘Nothing you need concern yourself about, my dear.’

She smiled at him in that unamused, uninterested way which for some reason he found irresistible.

‘Shall we go to bed?’ he asked, tossing a couple of coins down for the wine.

She sighed. ‘If we must.’

And Jervi felt the package spirited away.

Sifkiss wriggled out from under the tables and strutted along, letting his stick rattle against the bars of the fence beside him, package swinging loose in the other. Maybe Old Green had said stay stealthy but that weren’t Sifkiss’s way any more. A man has to work out his own style of doing things and he was a full thirteen, weren’t he? Soon enough now he’d be passing on to higher things. Working for Kurrikan, maybe. Anyone could tell he was marked out special – he’d stole himself a tall hat that made him look quite the gent about town – and if they were dull enough to be entertaining any doubts, which some folk sadly were, he’d perched it at quite the jaunty angle besides. Jaunty as all hell.

Yes, everyone had their eyes on Sifkiss.

He checked he weren’t the slightest bit observed then slipped through the dewy bushes and the crack in the wall behind, which honestly was getting to be a bit of a squeeze, into the basement of the old temple, a little light filtering down from upstairs.

Most of the children were out working. Just a couple of the younger lads playing with dice and a girl gnawing on a bone and Pens having a smoke and not even looking over and that new one curled up in the corner and coughing. Sifkiss didn’t like the sound o’ those coughs. More’n likely he’d be dumping her off in the sewers a day or two hence but, hey, that meant a bit more corpse money for him, didn’t it? Most folk didn’t like handling a corpse but it didn’t bother Sifkiss none. It’s a hard rain don’t wash someone a favour, as Old Green was always saying. She was way up there at the back, hunched over her old desk with one lamp burning, her long grey hair all greasy-slicked and her tongue pressed into her empty gums as she watched Sifkiss come up. Some smart-looking fellow was with her, had a waistcoat all silver leaves stitched fancy, and Sifkiss put a jaunt on, thinking to impress.

‘Get it, did yer?’ asked Old Green.

‘Course,’ said Sifkiss with a toss of his head, knocked his hat against a low beam and cursed as he fumbled it back into place. He tossed the package sourly down on the tabletop.

‘Get you gone, then,’ snapped Green.

Sifkiss looked surly, like he’d a mind to answer back. He was getting altogether too much mind, that boy, and Green had to show him the knobby-knuckled back of her hand ’fore he sloped off.

‘So here you have it, as promised.’ She pointed to that leather bundle in the pool of lamplight on her ancient table, its top cracked and stained and its gilt all peeling but still a fine piece of furniture with plenty of years left. Like to Old Green in that respect, if she did think so herself.

‘Seems a little thing for such a lot of fuss,’ said Fallow, wrinkling his nose, and he tossed a purse onto the table with that lovely clink of money. Old Green clawed it up and clawed it open and straight off set to counting it.

‘Where’s your girl Kiam?’ asked Fallow. ‘Where’s little Kiam, eh?’

Old Green’s shoulders stiffened but she kept counting. She could’ve counted through a storm at sea. ‘Out working.’

‘When’s she getting back? I like her.’ Fallow came a bit closer, voice going hushed. ‘I could get a damn fine price for her.’

‘But she’s my best earner!’ said Green. ‘There’s others you could take off my hands. How’s about that lad Sifkiss?’

‘What, the sour-face brought the luggage?’

‘He’s a good worker. Strong lad. Lots of grit. He’d pull a good oar on a galley, I’d say. Maybe a fighter, even.’

Fallow snorted. ‘In a pit? That little shit? I don’t think so. And he’d need some whipping to pull an oar, I reckon.’

‘Well? They got whips, don’t they?’

‘Suppose they do. I’ll take him if I must. Him and three others. I’m off to the market in Westport tomorrow week. You pick, but don’t give me none o’ your dross.’