Sharp Ends: Stories from the World of The First Law (3 page)

‘Sir?’

‘When this is all over I’ll require an officer or two who can tell his arse from a pair of melons.’ He directed a withering glance at Rews, who hitched his wrinkled trousers up a little. ‘Besides, I suspect that sister of yours will grow up to be quite a handful. Couldn’t rob her of your sobering influence, could I?’

‘But, Colonel, I should—’

‘Won’t hear of it, West. You’ll stay and that’s an order.’

West opened his mouth as if to speak, then smartly shut it, drew himself up and gave a rigid salute. Corporal Tunny did the same, the shimmering of a tear at the corner of his eye. Rews crept guiltily to follow suit, light-headed with horror and delight at the thought of a Glokta-less universe.

The colonel grinned at them, his full complement of perfect, brilliantly white teeth almost painful to look upon in the sun’s bright glare.

‘Come now, gentlemen, don’t be maudlin. I’ll be back before you know it!’

With a jerk on the reins he caused his horse to rear, frozen for an instant against the bright sky like one of those heroic statues, and Rews wondered if there could ever have been a more beautiful bastard.

Then the dust showered in his face as Glokta thundered down the hillside.

Down towards the bridge.

Westport, Autumn 573

W
hen Shev arrived to open up that morning, there were a pair of big, dirty, bare feet sticking out of the doorway of her Smoke House.

That might once have caused her quite the shock, but over the last couple of years Shev had come to consider herself past shocking.

‘Oy!’ she shouted, striding up with her fists clenched.

Whoever it was on their face in the doorway either chose not to move or was unable. She saw the long legs the feet were attached to, clad in trousers ripped and stained, then the ragged mess of a torn and filthy coat. Finally, wedged into the grubby corner against Shev’s door, a tangle of long red hair, matted with twigs and dirt.

A big man, without a doubt. The one hand Shev could see was as long as her foot, netted with veins, filthy and scabbed across the knuckles. There was a strange shape to it, though. Slender.

‘Oy!’ She jabbed the toe of her boot into the coat around where she judged the man’s arse to be. Still nothing.

She heard footsteps behind her. ‘Morning, boss.’ Severard turning up for the day. Never late, that boy. Not the most careful in his work but for punctuality you couldn’t knock him. ‘What’s this you’ve caught?’

‘A strange fish, all right, to wash up in my doorway.’ Shev scraped some of the red hair back, wrinkled her nose as she realised it was clotted with blood.

‘Is he drunk?’

‘She.’ It was a woman’s face under there. Strong-jawed and strong-boned, pale skin crowded with enough black scab, red graze and purple bruise to make Shev wince, even if she rarely saw anyone who wasn’t carrying a wound or two.

Severard gave a soft whistle. ‘That’s a lot of she.’

‘And someone’s given her a lot of a beating, too.’ Shev leaned close to put her cheek near the woman’s battered mouth, heard the faintest wheezing of breath. ‘Alive, though.’ Then she rocked away and squatted there, wrists on her knees and her hands dangling, wondering what to do. There’d been a time she just dived into whatever messes presented themselves without a backward glance, but somehow the consequences always lurked nearer to hand than they used to. She puffed her cheeks out and gave the weariest of sighs.

‘Well, it happens,’ said Severard.

‘Sadly, yes.’

‘Not our problem, is it?’

‘Happily, no.’

‘Want me to drag her into the street?’

‘Yes, I want that quite a lot.’ And Shev rolled her eyes skywards and gave another sigh, maybe even wearier than the last. ‘But we’d best drag her inside, I reckon.’

‘You sure, boss? You remember the last time we helped someone out—’

‘Sure? No.’ Shev didn’t know, after all the shit that had been done to her, why she still felt the need to do small kindnesses. Maybe
because
of all the shit that had been done to her. Maybe there was some stubborn stone in her, like the stone in a date, that refused to let all the shit that had been done to her make her into shit. She turned the key and elbowed the door wobbling open. ‘You get her feet.’

When you run a Smoke House you’d better get good at shifting limp bodies, but the latest recipient of Shev’s half-arsed charity proved quite the challenge.

‘Bloody hell,’ grunted Severard, eyes popping as they manhandled the woman down the stale-smelling corridor, her backside scuffing the boards. ‘What’s she made of, anvils?’

‘Anvils are lighter,’ groaned Shev through her gritted teeth, waddling from side to side under the dead weight of her, bouncing off the peeling walls. She gasped as she kicked open the door to her office – or the broom-cupboard she called an office. She strained with every burning muscle as she hauled the woman up, knocked her limp head on the doorframe as she wrestled her through, then tripped on a mop and with a despairing squawk toppled back onto the cot with the woman on top of her.

In bed under a redhead was nothing to object to, but Shev preferred them at least partly conscious. Preferred them sweeter-smelling, too, at least when they got
into
bed. This one stank like sour sweat and rot and the very end of things.

‘That’s where kindness gets you,’ said Severard, chuckling away to himself. ‘Wedged under a mighty weight of trouble.’

‘You going to giggle or help me out, you bastard?’ snarled Shev, slack springs groaning as she struggled from underneath, then hauled the woman’s legs onto the bed, feet dangling well off the end. It wasn’t a big bed, but it looked like a child’s with her on it. Her ragged coat had fallen open and the stained leather vest she wore beneath it had got dragged right up.

When Shev spent a year tumbling with that travelling show there’d been a strongman called himself the Amazing Zaraquon, though his real name had been Runkin. Used to strip to the waist and oil himself up and lift all kinds of heavy things for the crowd, though once he was offstage and towelled down you couldn’t get the lazy oaf to lift a thimble for you. His stomach had been all jutting knots of muscle as if beneath his tight-stretched skin he was made of wood rather than meat.

This woman’s pale midriff reminded Shev of the Amazing Zaraquon’s, but narrower, longer and even leaner. You could see all the little sinews in between her ribs shifting with each shallow breath. But instead of oil her stomach was covered in black and blue and purple bruises, plus a great red welt that looked like it had been left by a most unfriendly axe-handle.

Severard whistled softly. ‘They really did give her a beating, didn’t they?’

‘Aye, they did.’ Shev knew well enough what that felt like, and she winced as she twitched the woman’s vest down, then dragged the blanket up and laid it over her. Tucked it in a little around her neck, though she felt a fool doing it, and the woman mumbled something and twisted onto her side, matted hair fluttering over her mouth as she started to snore.

‘Sweet dreams,’ Shev muttered, not that she ever got any herself. Wasn’t as if she really needed a bed here, but when you’ve spent a few years with nowhere safe to sleep, you tend to make a bed in every halfway safe place you can find. She shook the memories off and herded Severard back into the corridor. ‘Best get the doors open. We aren’t pulling in so much business we can let it slip by.’

‘Folk really after husk at this time in the morning?’ asked Severard, trying to wipe a smear of the woman’s blood off his hand.

‘If you want to forget your troubles, why live with them till lunchtime?’

By daylight the smoking room was far from the alluring little cave of wonders Shev had dreamed of making when she bought the place. She planted her hands on her hips as she looked around and gave that weary sigh again. Fact was it bore more than a passing resemblance to an utter shit-hole. The boards were split and stained and riddled with splinters and the cushions greasy as a Baolish kitchen and one of the cheap hangings had come away to show the mould-blooming plaster behind. The Prayer Bells on the shelf were the only things that lent the faintest touch of class, and Shev gave the big one an affectionate stroke, then went up on tiptoe to pin the corner of that hanging back where it belonged, so at least the mould was hidden from her eyes even if her nose was still well aware of it, the smell of rotten onions all-pervasive.

Even a liar as practised as Shev couldn’t have convinced a fool as gullible as Shev that it wasn’t a shit-hole. But it was her shit-hole. And she had plans to improve it. She always had plans.

‘You clean the pipes?’ she asked as Severard stomped back from opening the doors, brushing the curtain aside.

‘The folk who come here don’t care about clean pipes, boss.’

Shev frowned. ‘
I
care. We may not have the biggest place, or the most comfortable, or the best husk –’ she raised her brows at Severard’s spotty face ‘– or the prettiest folk to light it for you, so what’s our advantage over our competitors?’

‘We’re cheap?’

‘No, no, no.’ She thought about that. ‘Well, yes. But what else?’

Severard sighed. ‘Customer service?’

‘Ding,’ said Shev, flicking the biggest Prayer Bell and making it give off that heavenly song. ‘So clean the pipes, you lazy shit, and get some coals lit.’

Severard puffed out his cheeks, patched with the kind of downy beard that’s meant to make a boy look manly but actually makes him look all the more boyish. ‘Yes, boss.’

As he went out the back Shev heard footsteps coming in the front, and she propped her hands on the counter – or the hacked-up piece of butcher’s block she’d salvaged off a rubbish heap and polished smooth – and put on her professional manner. She’d copied it from Gusman the carpet-seller, who was the best damn merchant she knew. He had a way of looking like a carpet was sure to be the answer to all your problems.

The professional manner slid off straight away when Shev saw who came strutting into her place.

‘Carcolf,’ she breathed.

God, Carcolf was trouble. Tall, blonde, beautiful trouble. Sweet-smelling, sweet-smiling, quick-thinking, quick-fingered trouble as subtle as the rain and as trustworthy as the wind. Shev looked her up and down. Her eyes didn’t give her much choice in the matter. ‘Well, my day’s looking better,’ she muttered.

‘Mine, too,’ said Carcolf, brushing past the curtain so the sunlight shone through her hair from behind. ‘It’s been too long, Shevedieh.’

The room looked vastly improved with Carcolf in it. You wouldn’t find a better ornament than her in any bazaar in Westport. Her clothes weren’t tight but they stuck in all the right places, and she had this way of cocking her hips. God, those hips. They went all over the place, like they weren’t attached to a spine like everyone else’s. Shev heard she’d been a dancer. The day she quit had been a loss to dancing and a gain to fraud, without a doubt.

‘Come for a smoke?’ asked Shev.

Carcolf smiled. ‘I like to keep a clear head. How can you enjoy life otherwise?’

‘Guess it depends whether your life’s enjoyable or not.’

‘Mine is,’ she said, prancing around the place like it was hers and Shev was a valued guest. ‘What do you think of Talins?’

‘Never liked it,’ muttered Shev.

‘I’ve got a job there.’

‘Always loved the place.’

‘I need a partner.’ The Prayer Bells weren’t all that low down. Even so, Carcolf bent over to get a good look at them. Entirely innocently, it would appear. But Shev doubted Carcolf ever did an innocent thing in her life. Especially bend over. ‘I need someone I can trust. Someone to watch my arse.’

Shev’s voice came hoarse. ‘If that’s what you want you’ve come to the right girl, but …’ And she tore her eyes away as her mind came knocking like an unwelcome visitor. ‘That’s not all you’re after, is it? I daresay it wouldn’t hurt if this partner of yours could pick a lock or a pocket, either.’

Carcolf grinned as if the idea had only just come to her. ‘It wouldn’t
hurt
. Be good if she could keep her mouth shut, too.’ And she drifted over to Shev, looking down at her, since she was a good few inches taller. Most people were. ‘Except when I wanted her mouth open, of course …’

‘I’m not an idiot.’

‘You’d be no use to me if you were.’

‘I go with you I’ll likely end up abandoned in some alley with nothing but the clothes I’m standing in.’

Carcolf leaned even closer to whisper, Shev’s head full of the scent of her, which was a far stretch more appealing than rotten onions or sweaty redhead. ‘I’m thinking of you lying down. And without your clothes.’

Shev made a squeak like a rusty hinge. But she forced herself not to grab hold of Carcolf like a drowning girl to a beautiful, beautiful log. She’d been thinking between her legs too long. Time to think between her ears.

‘I don’t do that kind of work any more. I’ve got this place to worry about. And Severard to look after, I guess …’

‘Still trying to set the world to rights, eh?’

‘Not all of it. Just the bit at my elbow.’

‘You can’t make every stray your problem, Shevedieh.’

‘Not every stray. Just this one.’ She thought of the great big woman in her bed. ‘Just a couple of ’em …’

‘You know he’s in love with you.’

‘All I did was help him out.’

‘That’s why he’s in love with you. No one else ever has.’ Carcolf reached out and gently brushed a stray strand of hair out of Shev’s face with a fingertip, and gave a sigh. ‘Is that boy knocking at the wrong gate, poor thing.’

Shev caught her wrist and guided it away. Being small didn’t mean you could let folk just walk all over you. ‘He’s not the only one.’ She held Carcolf’s eye, made her voice calm and level. ‘I enjoy the act. God knows I enjoy it, but I’d rather you stopped. If you want me just for me, my door’s always open and my legs shortly after. If you want me so you can squeeze me out like a lemon and toss my empty skin aside in Talins, well, no offence but I’d rather not.’

Carcolf winced down at the floor. Not so pretty as the smile, but a lot more honest. ‘Not sure you’d like me without the act.’

‘Why don’t we try it and see?’

‘Too much to lose,’ muttered Carcolf, and she twisted her hand free, and when she looked up the act was on again. ‘Well. If you change your mind … it’ll be too late.’ And with a smile over her shoulder deadly as a knife blade, Carcolf walked out. God, that walk she had. Flowing like syrup on a warm day. How did she get it? Did she practise in front of a mirror? Hours every day, more than likely.

The door shut, and the spell was broken, and Shev let go that weary sigh again.

‘Was that Carcolf?’ asked Severard.

‘It was,’ murmured Shev, all wistful, a trace of that heavenly scent still battling the mould in her nostrils.

‘I don’t trust that bitch.’

Shev snorted. ‘Fuck no.’

‘How do you know her?’

‘From around.’ From all around Shev’s bed and never quite in it.

‘The two o’ you seem close,’ said Severard.

‘Not half as close as I’d like to be,’ she muttered. ‘You clean the pipes?’

‘Aye.’

Shev heard the door again, turned with a smile stuck halfway between carpet-seller and needy lover. Maybe it was Carcolf come back, decided she wanted Shev just for Shev—

‘Oh, God,’ she muttered, face falling. Usually took her at least a little longer than that to regret a decision.