The Great Leveller: Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘Worried your man might lose?’ asked Shy.

  She really couldn’t drag Ring’s grin loose at all. ‘Not really. My man’s famous for beating a lot of famous men, and beating ’em bad. But the fact is I’d rather the Mayor packed up nice and quiet. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind seeing a little blood spilled. Shows people you care. But too much is awful bad for business. And I got big plans for this place. Good plans . . . But you don’t care about that, do you?’

  ‘Everyone’s got plans,’ said Shy, ‘and everyone thinks theirs are good. It’s when one set of good plans gets tangled with another things tend to slide downhill.’

  ‘Just tell me this, then, and if the answer’s yes I’ll leave you to enjoy your shitty breakfast in peace. Have you given the Mayor a certain yes or can I still make you a better offer?’ Ring’s eyes moved between them, and neither spoke, and he took that for encouragement, and maybe it was. ‘I may not have the graces but I’m always willing to deal. Just tell me what she’s promised you.’

  Lamb looked up for the first time. ‘Grega Cantliss.’

  Shy was watching him hard and she saw Ring’s smile slip at the name. ‘You know him, then?’ she asked.

  ‘He works for me. Has worked for me, at times.’

  ‘Was he working for you when he burned my farm, and killed my friend, and stole two children from me?’ asked Lamb.

  Ring sat back, rubbing at his jaw, a trace of frown showing. ‘Quite an accusation. Stealing children. I can tell you now I’d have no part of that.’

  ‘Seems you got one even so,’ said Shy.

  ‘Only your word for it. What kind of a man would I be if I gave my people up on your say-so?’

  ‘I don’t care one fucking shit what kind of man y’are,’ snarled Lamb, knuckles white around his cutlery, and Ring’s men stirred unhappily, and Shy saw Savian sitting up, watchful, but Lamb took no notice of any of it. ‘Give me Cantliss and we’re done. Get in my way, there’ll be trouble.’ And he frowned as he saw he’d bent his knife at a right angle against the tabletop.

  Ring mildly raised his brows. ‘You’re very confident. Given nobody’s heard of you.’

  ‘I been through this before. I got a fair idea how it turns out.’

  ‘My man ain’t bent cutlery.’

  ‘He will be.’

  ‘Just tell us where Cantliss is,’ said Shy, ‘and we’ll be on our way and out of yours.’

  Papa Ring looked for the first time like he might be running short of patience. ‘Girl, do you suppose you could sit back and let me and your father talk this out?’

  ‘Not really. Maybe it’s my Ghost blood but I’m cursed with a contrary temperament. Folk warn me off a thing, I just start thinking on how to go about it. Can’t help myself.’

  Ring took a long breath and forced himself back to reasonable. ‘I understand. Someone stole my children, there’d be nowhere in the Circle of the World for those bastards to run to. But don’t make me your enemy when I can every bit as easily be your friend. I can’t just hand you Cantliss. Maybe that’s what the Mayor would do but it ain’t my way. I tell you what, though, next time he comes to town we can all sit down and talk this out, get to the truth of it, see if we can’t find your young ones. I’ll help you every way I can, you got my word.’

  ‘Your word?’ And Shy curled back her lip and spat onto her cold bacon. If it was bacon.

  ‘I got no graces but I got my word.’ And Ring stabbed at the table with his thick forefinger. ‘That’s what everything stands on, on my side of the street. Folk are loyal to me ’cause I’m loyal to them. Break that, I got nothing. Break that, I am nothing.’ He leaned closer, beckoning like he had the killer offer to make. ‘But forget my word and just look at it this way – you want the Mayor’s help, you’re going to have to fight for it and, believe me, that’ll be one hell of a fight. You want my help?’ He gave the biggest shrug his big shoulders could manage, like even considering an alternative was madness. ‘All you got to do is not fight.’

  Shy didn’t like the feel of this bastard one bit, but she didn’t like the feel of the Mayor much more and she had to admit there was something in what he was saying.

  Lamb nodded as he straightened out his knife between finger and thumb and tossed it on his plate. Then he stood. ‘What if I’d rather fight?’ And he strode for the door, the queue for breakfast scurrying to part for him.

  Ring blinked, brows drawn in with puzzlement. ‘Who’d rather fight?’ Shy got up without answering and hurried after, weaving between the tables. ‘Just think about it, that’s all I’m asking! Be reasonable!’

  And they were out into the street. ‘Hold up there, Lamb! Lamb!’

  She dodged through a bleating mass of little grey sheep, had to lurch back to let a pair of wagons squelch past. She caught sight of Temple, sitting high up astride a big beam, hammer in hand, the strong square frame of Majud’s shop already higher than the slumping buildings on either side. He raised one hand in greeting.

  ‘Seventy!’ she bellowed at him. She couldn’t see his face but the shoulders of his silhouette slumped in a faintly heartening way.

  ‘Will you hold up?’ She caught Lamb by the arm just as he was getting close to the Mayor’s Church of Dice, the thugs around the door, hardly to be told from the ones who’d come with Papa Ring, watching them hard-eyed. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Taking the Mayor up on her offer.’

  ‘Just ’cause that fat fool rubbed you the wrong way?’

  Lamb came close and suddenly it seemed that he was looming over her from quite the height. ‘That and ’cause his man stole your brother and sister.’

  ‘You think I’m happy about that?’ she hissed at him, getting angry now. ‘But we don’t know the ins and outs of it! He seemed reasonable enough, considering’

  Lamb frowned back towards Camling’s. ‘Some men only listen to violence.’

  ‘Some men only talk it. Never took you for one of ’em. Did we come for Pit and Ro or for blood?’

  She’d meant to make a point not ask a question but for a moment it looked like he had to consider the answer. ‘I’m thinking I might get all three.’

  She stared at him for a moment. ‘Who the fuck are you? There was a time men could rub your face in the dung and you’d just thank ’em and ask for more.’

  ‘And you know what?’ He peeled her fingers from his arm with a grip that was almost painful. ‘I’ve remembered I didn’t like it much.’ And he stomped muddy footprints up the steps of the Mayor’s place, leaving Shy behind in the street.

  That Simple

  Temple tapped a few more shavings from the joint, then nodded to Lamb and together they lowered the beam, tenon sliding snugly into mortise.

  ‘Hah!’ Lamb slapped Temple on the back. ‘Naught so nice as to see a job done well. You got clever hands, lad. Damn clever for a man washes up out of streams. Sort of hands you can turn to anything.’ He looked down at his own big, battered, three-fingered hand and made a fist of it. ‘Mine only ever really been good for one thing.’ And he thumped at the beam until it came flush.

  Temple had expected carpentry to be almost as much of a chore as riding drag, but he had to admit he was enjoying himself, and it was getting harder every day to pretend otherwise. There was something in the smell of fresh-sawn timber – when the mountain breeze slipped into the valley long enough for one to smell anything but shit – that wafted away his suffocating regrets and let him breathe free. His hands had found old skills with hammer and chisel and he had worked out the habits of the local wood, pale and straight and strong. Majud’s hirelings silently conceded he knew his business and soon were taking his instructions without a second word, working at scaffold and pulleys with little skill but great enthusiasm, the frame sprouting up twice as fast and twice as fine as Temple had hoped.

  ‘Where’s Shy?’ he asked, offhand, as though it was no part of a plan to dodge his latest payment. It was getting to be a game between them. One he nev
er seemed to win.

  ‘She’s still touring town, asking questions about Pit and Ro. New folk coming in every day to ask. Probably she’s trying Papa Ring’s side of the street by now.’

  ‘Is that safe?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you stop her?’

  Lamb snorted as he pushed a peg into Temple’s fishing hand. ‘Last time I tried to stop Shy she was ten years old and it didn’t stick then.’

  Temple worked the peg into its hole. ‘Once she has a destination in mind, she isn’t one to stop halfway.’

  ‘Got to love that about her.’ Lamb had a trace of pride in his voice as he passed the mallet. ‘She’s no coward, that girl.’

  ‘So why are you helping me not her?’

  ‘’Cause I reckon I’ve found a way to Pit and Ro already. I’m just waiting for Shy to come round to the cost.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘The Mayor wants a favour.’ There was a long pause, measured out by the tapping of Temple’s mallet, accompanied by the distant sounds of other hammers on other more slovenly building sites scattered about the town. ‘She and Papa Ring bet Crease on a fight.’

  Temple looked around. ‘They bet Crease?’

  ‘They each own half the town, more or less.’ Lamb looked out at it, crammed thoughtlessly into both sides of that winding valley like the place was an almighty gut, people and goods and animals squeezing in one end and shit and beggars and money squirting out the other. ‘But the more you get the more you want. And all either one o’ them wants is the half they haven’t got.’

  Temple puffed out his cheeks as he twisted at the next peg. ‘I imagine one of them is sure to be disappointed.’

  ‘At least one. The worst enemies are those that live next door, my father used to tell me. These two have been squabbling for years and neither one’s come out on top, so they’re putting on a fight. Winner takes all.’ A group of half-tame Ghosts had spilled from one of the worse whorehouses – the better ones wouldn’t let them in the door – and had knives out, taunting each other in common, knowing no words but swearing and the language of violence. That was more than enough to get by on in Crease. ‘Two men in a Circle,’ murmured Lamb, ‘more’n likely with a considerable audience and a fair few side bets. One comes out alive, one comes out otherwise, and everyone else comes out thoroughly entertained.’

  ‘Shit,’ breathed Temple.

  ‘Papa Ring’s brought in a man called Glama Golden. A Northman. Big name in his day. I hear he’s been fighting for money in pits and pens all across the Near Country and done a lot of winning, too. The Mayor, well, she’s been searching high and low for someone to stand up for her . . .’ He gave Temple a long look and it was easy enough to guess the rest.

  ‘Shit.’ It was one thing to fight for your life out there on the plains when the Ghosts were coming at you and offering no alternatives. Another to wait weeks for the moment, choose to step out in front of a crowd and batter, twist and crush the life from a man with your hands. ‘Have you had any practice at . . . that sort of thing?’

  ‘As luck would have it – my luck being what it is – more’n a little.’

  ‘Are you sure the Mayor’s on the right side of this?’ asked Temple, thinking of all the wrong sides he had taken.

  Lamb frowned down at the Ghosts, who had evidently resolved their differences without bloodshed and were noisily embracing. ‘In my experience there’s rarely such a thing as a right side, and when there is I’ve an uncanny knack of picking out the other. All I know is Grega Cantliss killed my friend and burned my farm and stole two children I swore to protect.’ Lamb’s voice had a cold edge on it as he shifted his frown to the Whitehouse, cold enough to bring Temple out in gooseflesh all over. ‘Papa Ring’s standing by him, so he’s made himself my enemy. The Mayor’s standing against him, and that makes her my friend.’

  ‘Are things ever really that simple?’

  ‘When you step into a Circle with the intention of killing a man, it’s best if they are.’

  ‘Temple?’ The sun was low and the shadow of one of the great columns had fallen across the street below, so it took a moment to work out who was calling from the swirling traffic. ‘Temple?’ Another moment before he placed the smiling face tipped towards him, bright-eyed and with a bushy yellow beard. ‘That you up there?’ Still a third before he connected the world in which he knew that man to the world he lived in now, and recognition washed over him like a bucket of ice-water over a peaceful sleeper.

  ‘Bermi?’ he breathed.

  ‘Friend of yours?’ asked Lamb.

  ‘We know each other,’ Temple managed to whisper.

  He slipped down the ladder with shaky hands, all the time tingling with the rabbit’s urge to run. But where to? He had been beyond lucky to survive the last time he fled the Company of the Gracious Hand and was far from sure his divine support would stretch to another effort. He picked his way to Bermi with reluctant little steps, plucking at the hem of his shirt, like a child that knows he has a slap coming and more than likely deserves it.

  ‘You all right?’ asked the Styrian. ‘You look ill.’

  ‘Is Cosca with you?’ Temple could hardly get the words out he felt that sick. God might have blessed him with clever hands but He’d cursed him with a weak stomach.

  Bermi was all smiles, though. ‘I’m happy to say he’s not, nor any of those other bastards. I daresay he’s still floundering about the Near Country bragging to that bloody biographer and searching for ancient gold he’ll never find. If he hasn’t given up and gone back to Starikland to get drunk.’

  Temple closed his eyes and expelled a lungful of the most profound relief. ‘Thank heaven.’ He put his hand on the Styrian’s shoulder and leaned over, bent nearly double, head spinning.

  ‘You sure you’re all right?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’ He grabbed Bermi around the back and hugged him tight. ‘Better than all right!’ He was ecstatic! He breathed free once again! He kissed Bermi’s bearded cheek with a noisy smack. ‘What the hell brings you to the arse of the world?’

  ‘You showed me the way. After that town – what was the name of it?’

  ‘Averstock,’ muttered Temple.

  Bermi’s eyes took on a guilty squint. ‘I’ve done things I’m not proud of, but that? Nothing else but murder. Cosca sent me to find you, afterwards.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘Said you were the most important man in the whole damn Company. Other than him, of course. Two days out I ran into a Fellowship coming west to mine for gold. Half of them were from Puranti – from my home town, imagine that! It’s as if God has a purpose!’

  ‘Almost as if.’

  ‘I left the Company of the Fucking Finger and off we went.’

  ‘You put Cosca behind you.’ Cheating death once again had given Temple a faintly drunken feeling. ‘Far, far behind.’

  ‘You a carpenter now?’

  ‘One way to clear my debts.’

  ‘Shit on your debts, brother. We’re heading back into the hills. Got a claim up on the Brownwash. Men are just sieving nuggets out of the mud up there!’ He slapped Temple on the shoulder. ‘You should come with us! Always room for a carpenter with a sense of humour. We’ve a cabin but it could do with some work.’

  Temple swallowed. How often on the trail, choking on the dust of Buckhorm’s herd or chafing under the sting of Shy’s jibes, had he dreamed of an offer just like this? An easy way, unrolling before his willing feet. ‘When do you leave?’

  ‘Five days, maybe six.’

  ‘What would a man need to bring?’

  ‘Just some good clothes and a shovel, we’ve got the rest.’

  Temple looked for the trick in Bermi’s face but there was no sign of one. Perhaps there was a God after all. ‘Are things ever really that simple?’

  Bermi laughed. ‘You’re the one always loved to make things complicated. This is the new frontier, my friend, the land of opportunities. You got anything kee
ping you here?’

  ‘I suppose not.’ Temple glanced up at Lamb, a big black shape on the frame of Majud’s building. ‘Nothing but debts.’

  Yesterday’s News

  ‘I’m looking for a pair of children.’

  Blank faces.

  ‘Their names are Ro and Pit.’

  Sad shakes of the head.

  ‘They’re ten and six. Seven. He’d be seven now.’

  Sympathetic mumbles.

  ‘They were stole by a man named Grega Cantliss.’

  A glimpse of scared eyes as the door slammed in her face.

  Shy had to admit she was getting tired. She’d near worn her boots through tramping up and down the crooked length of main street, which wormed longer and more crooked every day as folk poured in off the plains, throwing up tents or wedging new hovels into some sliver of mud or just leaving their wagons rotting alongside the trail. Her shoulders were bruised from pushing through the bustle, her legs sore from scaling the valley sides to talk to folk in shacks clinging to the incline. Her voice was a croak from asking the same old questions over and over in the gambling halls and husk-dens and drinking sheds until she could hardly tell them apart one from another. There were a good few places they wouldn’t let her in, now. Said she put off the customers. Probably she did. Probably Lamb had the right of it just waiting for Cantliss to come to him, but Shy had never been much good at waiting. That’s your Ghost blood, her mother would’ve said. But then her mother hadn’t been much good at waiting either.

  ‘Look here, it’s Shy South.’

  ‘You all right, Hedges?’ Though she could tell the answer at a glance. He’d never looked flushed with success but he’d had a spark of hope about him on the trail. It had guttered since and left him greyed out and ragged. Crease was no place to make your hopes healthier. No place to make anything healthier, far as she could tell. ‘Thought you were looking for work?’