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

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘How long will it take you to prepare the document?’ asked the Mayor.

  ‘A few days. I have Majud’s shop to finish—’

  ‘Make this a priority. Your fee will be two hundred marks.’

  ‘Two . . . hundred?’

  ‘Is that sufficient?’

  Most definitely the easy way. Temple cleared his throat and said in a voice slightly hoarse, ‘That will be adequate but . . . I must complete the building first.’ He surprised himself with that even more than the Mayor had surprised him with the fee.

  Zacharus nodded approvingly. ‘You are a man who likes to see things through.’

  Temple could only smile. ‘The absolute opposite but . . . I’ve always liked the idea of being one.’

  Fun

  They were all in attendance, more or less. The whole Fellowship reunited. Well, not Leef, of course, or the others left in the dirt out there on the flat and empty. But the rest. Laughing and backslapping and lying about how well things were going now. Some misting up at rose-tinted remembrances of the way things had been on the trail. Some observing what a fine building the firm of Majud and Curnsbick had to work with. Probably Shy should’ve been joshing away with the rest. How long since she had some fun, after all? But she’d always found fun was easier talked of and looked forward to than actually had.

  Dab Sweet was complaining about the faithlessness of those prospectors he’d guided into the mountains and who’d stiffed him on the payment before he could stiff them. Crying Rock was nodding along and grumbling, ‘Mmm,’ at all the wrong moments. Iosiv Lestek was trying to impress one of the whores with tales of his heyday on the stage. She was asking whether that was before the amphitheatre got built, which by most estimates was well over a thousand years ago. Savian was swapping grunts with Lamb in one corner, tight as if they’d known each other since boys. Hedges was lurking in another, nursing a bottle. Buckhorm and his wife still had a fair old brood running about folks’ legs despite the ones they’d lost in the wilderness.

  Shy gave a sigh and drank another silent toast to Leef and the rest who couldn’t be there. Probably the company of the dead suited her better right then.

  ‘I used to ride drag behind an outfit like this!’

  She turned towards the door and got quite the shock. Temple’s more successful twin stood there in a new black suit, all tidy as a princess, his dusty tangle of hair and beard barbered close. He’d come upon a new hat and a new manner besides, swaggering in more like owner than builder.

  Wasn’t until she felt a sting of disappointment to see him so unfamiliar that she realised how much she’d been looking forward to seeing him the same.

  ‘Temple!’ came the merry calls and they crowded round to approve of him.

  ‘Who’d have thought you could fish such a carpenter from a river?’ Curnsbick was asking, an arm around Temple’s shoulders like he’d known him all his life.

  ‘A lucky find indeed!’ said Majud, like he was the one did the fishing and lent the money and Shy hadn’t been within a dozen miles at the time.

  She worked her tongue around, reflecting that it surely was hard to get even the little credit you deserved, leaned to spit through the gap in her teeth, then saw Luline Buckhorm watching her with a warning eyebrow up and swallowed it instead.

  Probably she should’ve been glad she’d saved a man from drowning and steered him to a better life, her faith justified against all contrary opinion. Let ring the bells! But instead she felt like a secret only she’d enjoyed was suddenly common knowledge, and found she was brooding on how she might go about spoiling it all for him, and then was even more annoyed that she was thinking like a mean child, and turned her back on the room and took another sour pull at her bottle. The bottle never changed unexpectedly, after all. It always left you equally disappointed.

  ‘Shy?’

  She made sure she looked properly surprised, like she’d no idea he’d be in the room. ‘Well, if it ain’t everyone’s favourite chunk o’ driftwood, the great architect himself.’

  ‘The very same,’ said Temple, tipping that new hat.

  ‘Drink?’ she asked him, offering the bottle.

  ‘I shouldn’t.’

  ‘Too good to drink with me these days?’

  ‘Not good enough. I can never stop halfway.’

  ‘Halfway to where?’

  ‘Face down in the shit was my usual destination.’

  ‘You take a sip, I’ll try and catch you if you fall, how’s that?’

  ‘I suppose it wouldn’t be the first time.’ He took the bottle, and a sip, and grimaced like she’d kicked him in the fruits. ‘God! What the hell’s it made of?’

  ‘I’ve decided it’s one of those questions you’re happier without an answer to. Like how much that finery o’ yours cost.’

  ‘I haggled hard,’ thumping at his chest as he tried to get his voice back. ‘You would’ve been proud.’

  Shy snorted. ‘Pride ain’t common with me. And it still must’ve cost a fair sum for a man with debts.’

  ‘Debts, you say?’

  Here was familiar ground, at least. ‘Last we spoke it was—’

  ‘Forty-three marks?’ Eyes sparkling with triumph, he held out one finger. A purse dangled from the tip, gently swinging.

  She blinked at it, then snatched it from his finger and jerked it open. It held the confusion of different coinage you usually found in Crease, but mostly silver, and at a quick assay there could easily have been sixty marks inside.

  ‘You turned to thievery?’

  ‘Lower yet. To law. I put ten extra in there for the favour. You did save my life, after all.’

  She knew she should be smiling but somehow she was doing just the opposite. ‘You sure your life’s worth that much?’

  ‘Only to me. Did you think I’d never pay?’

  ‘I thought you’d grab your first chance to wriggle out of it and run off in the night. Or maybe die first.’

  Temple raised his brows. ‘That’s about what I thought. Looks like I surprised us both. Pleasantly, though, I hope.’

  ‘Of course,’ she lied, pocketing the purse.

  ‘Aren’t you going to count it?’

  ‘I trust you.’

  ‘You do?’ He looked right surprised about it and so was she, but she realised it was true. True of a lot of folk in that room.

  ‘If it ain’t all there I can always track you down and kill you.’

  ‘It’s nice to know that’s an option.’

  They stood side by side, in silence, backs to the wall, watching a room full of their friends’ chatter. She glanced at him and he slowly looked sideways, like he was checking whether she was looking, and when he got there she pretended she’d been looking past him at Hedges all along. Tense having him next to her of a sudden. As if without that debt between them they were pressed up too close for comfort.

  ‘You did a fine job on the building,’ was the best she could manage after digging away for something to say.

  ‘Fine jobs and paid debts. I can think of a few acquaintances who wouldn’t recognise me.’

  ‘I’m not sure I recognise you.’

  ‘That good or bad?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ A long pause, and the room was getting hot from all the folk blathering in it, and her face was hot in particular, and she passed Temple the bottle, and he shrugged and took a sip and passed it back. She took a bigger one. ‘What do we talk about, now you don’t owe me money?’

  ‘The same things as everyone else, I suppose.’

  ‘What do they talk about?’

  He frowned at the crowded room. ‘The high quality of my craftsmanship appears to be a popular—’

  ‘Your head swells any bigger you won’t be able to stand.’

  ‘A lot of people are talking about this fight that’s coming—’

  ‘I’ve heard more’n enough about that.’

  ‘There’s always the weather.’

  ‘Muddy, lately, in main street, I�
�ve observed.’

  ‘And I hear there’s more mud on the way.’ He grinned sideways at her and she grinned back, and the distance didn’t feel so great after all.

  ‘Will you say a few words before the fun starts?’ It was when Curnsbick loomed suddenly out of nowhere Shy realised she was already more’n a bit drunk.

  ‘Words about what?’ she asked.

  ‘I apologise, my dear, but I was speaking to this gentleman. You look surprised.’

  ‘Not sure which shocks me more, that I’m a dear or he’s a gentleman.’

  ‘I stand by both appellations,’ said the inventor, though Shy wasn’t sure what the hell he meant by it. ‘And as ex-spiritual advisor to this ex-Fellowship, and architect and chief carpenter of this outstanding edifice, what gentleman better to address our little gathering at its completion?’

  Temple raised his palms helplessly as Curnsbick hustled him off and Shy took another swig. The bottle was getting lighter all the time. And she was getting less annoyed.

  Probably there was a link between the two.

  ‘My old teacher used to say you know a man by his friends!’ Temple called at the room. ‘Guess I can’t be quite the shit I thought I was!’

  A few laughs and some shouts of, ‘Wrong! Wrong!’

  ‘Not long ago I barely knew one person I could have called decent. Now I can fill a room I built with them. I used to wonder why anyone would come out to this God-forsaken arse of the world who didn’t have to. Now I know. They come to be part of something new. To live in new country. To be new people. I nearly died out on the plains, and I can’t say I would have been widely mourned. But a Fellowship took me in and gave me another chance I hardly deserved. Not many of them were keen to begin with, I’ll admit, but . . . one was, and that was enough. My old teacher used to say you know the righteous by what they give to those who can’t give back. I doubt anyone who’s had the misfortune to bargain with her would agree, but I will always count Shy South among the righteous.’

  A general murmur of agreement, and some raised glasses, and he saw Corlin slapping Shy on the back and her looking sour beyond belief.

  ‘My old teacher used to say there is no better act than the raising of a good building. It gives something to those that live in it, and visit it, and even pass it by every day it stands. I haven’t really tried at much in life, but I’ve tried to make a good building of this. Hopefully it will stand a little longer than some of the others hereabouts. May God smile on it as He has smiled on me since I fell in that river, and bring shelter and prosperity to its occupants.’

  ‘And liquor is free to all!’ bellowed Curnsbick. Majud’s horrified complaints were drowned out in the stampede towards the table where the bottles stood. ‘Especially the master carpenter himself.’ And the inventor conjured a glass into Temple’s hand and poured a generous measure, smiling so broadly Temple could hardly refuse. He and drink might have had their disagreements, but if the bottle was always willing to forgive, why shouldn’t he? Was not forgiveness neighbour to the divine? How drunk could one get him?

  Drunk enough for another, as it turned out.

  ‘Good building, lad, I always knew you had hidden talents,’ rambled Sweet as he sloshed a third into Temple’s glass. ‘Well hidden, but what’s the point in an obvious hidden talent?’

  ‘What indeed?’ agreed Temple, swallowing a fourth. He could not have called it a pleasant taste now, but it was no longer like swallowing red-hot wire wool. How drunk could four get him, anyway?

  Buckhorm had produced a fiddle now and was hacking out a tune while Crying Rock did injury to a drum in the background. There was dancing. Or at least well-meaning clomping in the presence of music if not directly related to it. A kind judge would have called it dancing and Temple was feeling like a kind judge then, and with each drink – and he’d lost track of the exact number – he got more kind and less judging, so that when Luline Buckhorm laid small but powerful hands upon him he did not demur and in fact tested the floorboards he had laid only a couple of days before with some enthusiasm.

  The room grew hotter and louder and dimmer, sweat-shining faces swimming at him full of laughter and damn it but he was enjoying himself like he couldn’t remember when. The night he joined the Company of the Gracious Hand, maybe, and the mercenary life was all a matter of good men facing fair risks together and laughing at the world and nothing to do with theft, rape and murder on an industrial scale. Lestek tried to add his pipe to the music, failed in a coughing fit and had to be escorted out for air. Temple thought he saw the Mayor, talking softly to Lamb under the watchful eyes of a few of her thugs. He was dancing with one of the whores and complimenting her on her clothes, which were repugnantly garish, and she couldn’t hear him anyway and kept shouting, ‘What?’ Then he was dancing with one of Gentili’s cousins, and complimenting him on his clothes, which were dirt-streaked from prospecting and smelled like a recently opened tomb, but the man still beamed at the compliment. Corlin came past in stately hold with Crying Rock, both of them looking grave as judges, both trying to lead, and Temple near choked on his tongue at the unlikeliness of the couple. Then suddenly he was dancing with Shy and to his mind they were making a pretty good effort at it, quite an achievement since he still had a half-full glass in one hand and she a half-empty bottle.

  ‘Never thought you’d be a dancer,’ he shouted in her ear. ‘Too hard for it.’

  ‘Never thought you’d be one,’ her breath hot against his cheek. ‘Too soft.’

  ‘No doubt you’re right. My wife taught me.’

  She stiffened then, for a moment. ‘You’ve got a wife?’

  ‘I did have. And a daughter. They died. Long time ago, now. Sometimes it doesn’t feel so long.’

  She took a drink, looking at him sideways over the neck of the bottle, and there was something to that glance gave him a breathless tingle. He leaned to speak to her and she caught him around the head and kissed him quite fiercely. If he’d had time he would’ve reasoned she wasn’t the type for gentle kisses but he didn’t get time to reason, or kiss back, or push her off, or even work out which would be his preference before she twisted his head away and was dancing with Majud, leaving him to be manhandled about the floor by Corlin.

  ‘You think you’re getting one from me you’ve another think coming,’ she growled.

  He leaned against the wall, head spinning, face sweating, heart pounding as if he had a dose of the fever. Strange, what sharing a little spit can do. Well, along with a few measures of raw spirits on a man ten years sober. He looked at his glass, thought he’d be best off throwing the contents down the wall, then decided he put more value on the wall than himself and drank them instead.

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘She kissed me,’ he muttered.

  ‘Shy?’

  Temple nodded, then realised it was Lamb he’d said it to, and shortly thereafter that it might not have been the cleverest thing to say.

  But the big Northman only grinned. ‘Well, that’s about the least surprising thing I ever heard. Everyone in the Fellowship saw it coming. The snapping and arguing and niggling over the debt. Classic case.’

  ‘Why did no one say anything?’

  ‘Several talked of nothing else.’

  ‘I mean to me.’

  ‘In my case, ’cause I had a bet with Savian on when it would happen. We both thought a lot sooner’n this, but I won. He can be a funny bastard, that Savian.’

  ‘He can . . . what?’ Temple hardly knew what shocked him more, that Shy kissing him came as no surprise, or that Savian could be funny. ‘Sorry to be so predictable.’

  ‘Folk usually prefer the obvious outcome. Takes bones to defy expectation.’

  ‘Meaning I don’t have any.’

  Lamb only shrugged as though that was a question that hardly needed answering. Then he picked up his battered hat.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Temple.

  ‘Ain’t I got a right to my own fun?’ He put a hand o
n Temple’s shoulder. A friendly, fatherly hand, but a frighteningly firm one, too. ‘Be careful with her. She ain’t as tough as she looks.’

  ‘What about me? I don’t even look tough.’

  ‘That’s true. But if Shy hurts you I won’t break her legs.’

  By the time Temple had worked that one out, Lamb was gone. Dab Sweet had commandeered the fiddle and was up on a table, stomping so the plates jumped, sawing away at the strings like they were around his sweetheart’s neck and he had moments to save her.

  ‘I thought we were dancing?’

  Shy’s cheek had colour in it and her eyes were shining deep and dark and for reasons he couldn’t be bothered to examine but probably weren’t all that complicated anyway she looked dangerously fine to him right then. So, fuck it all, he tossed down his drink with a manly flick of the wrist then realised the glass was empty, threw it away, snatched her bottle while she grabbed his other hand and they dragged each other in amongst the lumbering bodies.

  It was a long time since Shy had got herself properly reeling drunk but she found the knack came back pretty quick. Putting one foot in front of the other had become a bit of a challenge but if she kept her eyes wide open on the ground and really thought about it she didn’t fall over too much. The hostelry was way too bright and Camling said something about a policy on guests and she laughed in his face and told him there were more whores than guests in this fucking place and Temple laughed as well and snorted snot down his beard. Then he chased her up the stairs with his hand on her arse which was funny to begin with then a bit annoying and she slapped him and near knocked him down the steps he was that surprised, but she caught him by the shirt and dragged him after and said sorry for the slap and he said what slap and started kissing her on the top landing and tasted like spirits. Which wasn’t a bad way to taste in her book.

  ‘Isn’t Lamb here?’

  ‘Staying at the Mayor’s place now.’

  Bloody hell things were spinning by then. She was fumbling in her trousers for the key and laughing and then she was fumbling in his trousers and they were up against the wall and kissing again her mouth full of his breath and his tongue and her hair then the door banging open and the two of them tumbling through and across the dim-lit floorboards. She crawled on top of him and they were grunting away, room reeling, and she felt the burn of sick at the back of her throat but swallowed it and didn’t much care as it tasted no worse than the first time and Temple seemed to be a long way from complaining or probably even noticing either, he was too busy struggling with the buttons on her shirt and couldn’t have been making harder work of it if they’d been the size of pinheads.