Sharp Ends: Stories from the World of The First Law (24 page)

It was Javre, dragging herself over the still-slumbering guard on the parapet, catching her foot on his head, tripping, stumbling up bleary-eyed and breathing hard, rag-wrapped sword clutched in one hand.

‘Huh.’ She stared at the crumpled bodies and slowly straightened. ‘What did you need me for?’

‘Someone had to row me out here.’ Shev slid her sword-eater back into the sheath, stepping over Big Lom’s slumbering form and towards the steps. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Here!’ hissed Shev, leaning close to the door and beckoning Javre up behind her.

Voices burbled on the far side, suddenly clear as she pressed her ear to the lock.

‘She won’t come for me. You’re wasting your time!’

‘Oh, I’ve got time.’

The voice might’ve been soft, cheerful, even, but it sent the chills prickling down Shev’s sweaty back regardless. The voice of a man who’d order a family murdered as easily as wiping his arse. A man ruthless as the plague and with a conscience no bigger than a speck of salt. The voice of Horald the Finger.

‘Don’t underestimate your charms, Carcolf. Shev will be along, I’m sure of it, and her friend, too. In the meantime, here, have some more!’

‘No!’

Harsh, ugly laughter, and a clinking that sounded like chains. ‘You’ll take some more if I say you’ll take some more!’

‘No!’ Carcolf’s voice, gone shrill now, agonised. ‘No more, you evil bastard! No more, please!’

Shev raised her boot and kicked the door open with a scream. It flew back, almost as if it wasn’t locked at all, bounced from the wall beyond and gave her a jarring blow in the shoulder as she dived through, spinning her around and almost knocking the sword-eater from her hand. She struggled to keep her balance while giving a war cry that ended up more than half a howl of pain and—

She tottered to an uncertain stop in the middle of a ruined courtyard, its crumbling walls coated with dead creeper.

Carcolf sat in a chair. Horald the Finger leaned over her.

But the terrifying scourge of Styria’s underworld held no hideous instrument of torture. Only a bottle of wine, tipped as if to pour. His smile, far from being a twisted murderer’s leer, was good-natured and fatherly. Carcolf, meanwhile, sat apparently unmolested and unrestrained, her usual sleek and beautiful self, legs calmly crossed with one pointed boot swinging comfortably back and forth, holding her hand over a glass.

As if to say
no more
.

‘See?’ Horald positively beamed as he threw up his free hand in delight. ‘She
did
come!’

Carcolf sprang up. She walked to Shev, their eyes never leaving each other. That walk she had, that Shev couldn’t look away from, even now. Shock, anger, fear, all swept aside by a heady wave of relief so strong her knees almost buckled from it.

‘You’re hurt.’ Carcolf winced as she pressed Shev’s cut eyebrow with her thumb. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Ow! About as good as you could hope for, considering I just fought five thugs!’

‘Don’t worry about it.’ Horald shrugged as he sat, charging his own glass. He was a good deal older than when Shev last saw him, of course, but a good deal more prosperous-looking, too. You could have taken him for a well-heeled merchant if it wasn’t for the tattoos on his neck, the scars on his knuckles and a certain flinty hardness about the eyes. ‘If I’ve discovered one thing during my career, it’s that there are always more thugs.’

‘You came for me.’ If Shev hadn’t known better she might’ve fancied there was a little torchlit shimmer at the corners of Carcolf’s eyes.

Shev snapped out the letter and flung it at Horald, and it fluttered to the worn flagstones between them. ‘I was rather under the impression you were about to be
murdered if I didn’t
.’

‘I must admit,’ and Javre nudged the door open and stepped through, ‘that was my understanding, too.’

Carcolf nervously cleared her throat, edging slightly closer to Shev. ‘Javre.’

Javre narrowed her eyes. ‘Carcolf. Horald.’

‘Javre!’ He grinned as he raised his glass. ‘The Lioness of Hoskopp, who walks where she pleases! Now we’ve got a party.’

‘Party?’ snapped Shev, shaking her sword-eater at him. ‘I should bloody kill you!’ It was hard to maintain her fury with Carcolf standing uninjured beside her, still smelling as wonderfully sharp and sweet as ever, but she took her best stab at it. ‘You gave your word, Horald!’

‘Imagine that,’ said Javre as she took a cautious circuit of the yard, kicking loose stones out of her way. ‘Styria’s most infamous criminal mastermind being untrustworthy.’

‘Now hold on just a moment,’ said Horald, all offended innocence. ‘I haven’t broken my word in thirty years and I’m not about to start. I said neither you nor your associates would be harmed and neither you nor your associates have been. As you can see, Carcolf is in fine, if not to say superb, fettle. I’d never hurt her. Not after she saved my life that time in Affoia.’

‘Saved your …’ Shev stared at Carcolf. ‘You never told me about that.’

‘What kind of a mysterious beauty would I be without any mysteries?’ Carcolf tipped Shev’s head back and started dabbing the blood from her cut head with a handkerchief. ‘It was nothing heroic. Just the right word in the right ear.’

‘Right words in right ears change the world! They’re the only things that can.’ Horald held up the bottle. ‘You’re sure you won’t have some more?’

Carcolf sighed. ‘Oh, go on then, you evil bastard!’

‘You killed my place!’ snapped Shev.

‘Your place?’ Horald shook his head as he poured. ‘Come now, Shevedieh, it’s just things. You can always get new ones. Had to make it look good, didn’t I? I mean, you’d hardly have come if I just asked. And there was nothing in that paper about tea sets.’ He twisted the bottle to let the drips fall just the way an Osprian cellar-master might’ve. ‘I made sure of it. Checked the wording.’

‘You and your bloody wording,’ muttered Shev.

‘It pains me to say it,’ said Horald, ‘but my son Crandall was a nasty fucking idiot. Had my doubts over his parentage, if I’m honest. Want a glass of wine, Shev? It’s the good stuff. Osprian. Older than you are.’

Shev felt like she was drunk already. Waved it away.

‘I will take one,’ said Javre, plucking the bottle from Horald’s hand and peering down at him as she upended it in her bandaged fist, thick throat shifting as she swallowed, a little running down her neck and into her filthy collar.

‘By all means,’ he said, holding up his palms in a peaceable gesture. ‘Look, I’ve no doubt it all happened the way Carcolf always said. You defending yourself against some undeserved meanness on Crandall’s part.’

‘The way you always said?’ muttered Shev, peering sideways at Carcolf.

‘I’ve been pleading your case for years.’ And, evidently satisfied with her doctoring, she tucked the handkerchief into Shev’s pocket and gave it a pat.

‘I’m no fool,’ said Horald. ‘I always knew Crandall would make things difficult for me, sooner or later. More than likely you spared me the trouble of killing him myself.’

Shev stared. ‘Eh?’

‘I’ve got eleven other children, after all. You ever meet my eldest daughter, Leanda?’

‘Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.’

‘Oh, you’d like her. Got her running things in Westport now and she’s ten times the man Crandall ever was. When you’re in my position, you have to maintain an implacable image.’ His stare went so hard for a moment that Shev took a little shuffling step back. Then he broke out in a smile again. ‘But between you and me, I forgave you for killing him years ago.’

‘You might have fucking said so!’

‘Had to get something out of it, didn’t I? And, more importantly, had to be
seen
to get something out of it. Reputation’s everything in our game, Shev. Who’d know that better than the best bloody thief in Styria?’

‘Then …’ She stared from Horald, to Carcolf, and back, sluggish mind only now starting to grope past the present moment. ‘What the hell is this about?’

‘Oh. Yes. Sorry. This isn’t about you at all, Shev. Nor Carcolf, neither, much though it’s been a pleasure to see you again, my dear.’ And he and Carcolf gave each other a respectful little nod, as of two champion squares players just fought a testing game to a draw. ‘The two of you are incidental in all this. As am I, really.’ Horald grinned up at Javre, who was looking back at him with a sad little smile on her bruised face.

She tossed the empty wine bottle away and it clattered across the courtyard and into a corner. ‘It is about me.’

Horald spread his palms. ‘A man simply can’t prosper in business without owing debts to someone.’

Shev felt her relief being overcome by an uneasy queasiness. ‘Who do you owe?’

‘Among other people …’ Horald licked his teeth as though he was far from happy about it. ‘The High Priestess of the Great Temple of Thond.’

Shev’s eyes went wide. ‘Javre, get—’ She spun towards the door they had come through, but there was a woman standing there. A tall, lean woman with a hard face and a shaved head and a long sword in her tattooed fist. Another woman, huge as a house, was already ducking under the lintel to join her. Shev caught Carcolf’s sleeve and took a step towards a door at the far side of the yard. It swung gently open and a heavy-muscled woman stepped through, her thumbs tucked in a great belt from which two curved swords hung. Another with her white hair gathered into a hundred tiny braids followed grinning after, arms folded across her chest.

A shrill whistle came from above and a figure flashed down from the top of the wall, turning over, landing with hardly a sound in a ready crouch and standing tall, taller even than Javre, fine blonde hair shifting in the breeze across her face, so all Shev could see was the gleam of one eye and the glisten of her perfect teeth as she smiled. She plucked a spear from the air as it was tossed down to her without even looking, its long blade shining, blinding, mirror-bright.

Shev swallowed as she glanced about, trying to make it the thief’s glance that hardly seems to look at all but probably failing. She usually did fail, when it came down to it, for all her boasting. Some best bloody thief in Styria, while she was playing at the hero she’d blundered straight into a trap and dragged the one real friend she had into it with her.

There were two more women on the walls above, a pair of twins with great bows draped across their shoulders like milkmaids’ yokes, wrists hooked over them as they smiled blandly down. Seven in all, and each, Shev had no doubt, a Templar of the Golden Order, and far beyond her fighting skills even if she hadn’t used half her tricks on those fools upstairs.

‘Fuck,’ she said, simply. Sometimes no other word will cover it.

Horald shifted somewhat nervously as he glanced at the scarred, sinewy, tattooed, heavily armed women now surrounding him on every side. They looked deadly, and Shev knew they were a lot deadlier than they looked. ‘Have to say I feel a little outnumbered,’ he muttered.

Javre gave a weary nod, ran her tongue around her mouth and spat. ‘I, too.’

‘Javre,’ came a deep voice.

As if it was a spoken command, the Templars all bowed their heads as one. Another woman stepped through the door. A big, broad-shouldered woman in a sleeveless white robe, moving with such wonderful poise she appeared to glide more than walk. ‘It has been too long.’

A great string of beads was looped around and around her thick neck until it covered half her chest. Grey showed in the orange stubble on her shaved scalp, her sharp-boned face with deep lines in the cheeks and about the eyes. And what eyes they were. Calm and blue as deep water. Bright as stars. Hard as hammered iron. And ruthless as a backstreet knifing.

Javre watched her sit at the table opposite Horald. ‘Never would have been too soon for me, Mother.’

Shev cleared her throat. ‘I’m guessing “mother” in this case is a term of respect due to the High Priestess of—’

‘Javre is my daughter.’ The woman raised one brow. ‘And she has never been all that interested in terms of respect.’

Shev stared. She found herself doing that a lot, lately. There was indeed a strong resemblance, if only in the muscle that squirmed in the woman’s arms as she crossed them over those rattling beads. ‘So we’ve been chased across the breadth of the Circle of the World for fourteen years by … your mother?’

‘She can be extremely stubborn,’ said Javre.

‘So that’s where you get it from,’ murmured Shev. ‘I finally see the upside of being an orphan.’

There was a tense, quiet moment, then. A couple of dry leaves chased each other across the cracked flagstones as the wind swirled around the yard. The High Priestess pursed her lips as she looked her wayward daughter up and down. Fourteen years, Shev and Javre had been running, and now they stood before the two people who had done the chasing. After that long, it was bound to be something of an anticlimax.

‘You look …’

‘Like shit?’ ventured Javre.

‘I would have tried to be more diplomatic.’

‘I fear the time for diplomacy between us is long past, Mother.’

‘Like
shit
, then. Never was a woman more blessed by the Goddess than you. It grieves me to see you treat her gifts with such scant respect. Did you really run away from me … for this?’

‘I left so I could choose my own path.’

Javre’s mother slowly shook her head. ‘And you chose to wallow in your own filth?’

‘Having murderers chasing you every hour of your life does rather limit your options,’ snapped Shev.

She felt Carcolf’s hand on her shoulder, gently drawing her back into the shadows. She shook her off, moved instead to stand beside Javre. If she was about to die, that was where she chose to do it.

The blue, blue eyes of the High Priestess slid over to her. ‘Who is this … person?’

Javre drew herself up to her full height then, puffing up her chest, and put her hand on Shev’s shoulder. ‘She is Shevedieh, the greatest thief in Styria.’

Shev might have had a foot less height and about a quarter of the chest that Javre did, but she drew up and puffed out what she had. ‘And I am proud to be Javre’s sidekick.’

‘Partner,’ said Javre, and gently guided her back. ‘But leave her out of it.’