“Come in looking like that, you need to show coin before you say a word,” he said.
“That’s fair. Just a minute.” I dug out my last coin, which was hidden in my boot, which I had to take off to get to. He silently watched me struggle, and his face said he had seen everything there was to see in the world and had never been fairly compensated. Finally, I got the gold mark out and slapped it on the bar.
“A jug of Best, please. Also, lots of people will be showing up soon to kill me, so maybe you should round up all the pissheads and clear out.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I’m serious.”
“Doubtless. Two days ago, a man came in and told me Gorm was resurrected out in the Spindles, and very unhappy, and would destroy the city by noon. He was a very serious fellow, too, and he wasn’t even torn up and blood-splattered.” He put the jug and a bowl in front of me and took the coin.
“Look, I see your point, but the people who got me looking this way will be coming around to finish the job. I’m not lying and I’m not crazy.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Whatever. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I’ll take my chances,” he said while making my change. “In the meantime, why don’t you put your boot back on? I’ve passed by tanneries that smelled better.”
“Now that’s just unkind, that is.”
“Not as unkind as what you’re putting me through.”
I gave him a cutting glare, which failed to even nick, and put my boot back on, with difficulty. You try it with a bad thigh and a bad shoulder. But I didn’t want to go out half-shod; that would just be pathetic. Also, he wasn’t lying. Twice in the Ose with no chance to clean my boots properly was doing my feet no favors. I’d have to burn the socks.
Assuming I lived that long.
By the time I sat back up he’d moved on and was wiping things down, as far from me as he could get and still be behind the bar. I poured out a bowl of vinegar and let it claw its way down my throat. Despite what I’d told Kettle, there were times when sipping just didn’t cut it.
That first bowl went down in about three heartbeats. Only a little escaped my wine-hole. I considered slowing down for the second, and told myself to not be an idiot.
I’d just poured the third into the bowl when Mister Hope strolled in, dapper as ever. That he looked as fresh as he did felt like a personal affront.
He brought a lot of evil looking fuckers with him, too. They were dressed for nasty business, though, not a fancy dinner. Not that it made me feel better. I counted a dozen as they filed in.
“Amra,” Hope said with a nod.
“Dickhead,” I nodded back. “You want a drink before the blood? I’m buying. But just for you, mind. Not your mob. I’m not made of money.”
After a moment’s consideration he sat down next to me, a bemused expression on his face. I knew he would. People like him, they had to show they were in control. That they were the masters of any and every situation they found themselves in. That they existed in an unperturbable bubble. That they feared nothing, not even sitting next to and drinking with someone who had every reason to want them dead and a history that included violence.
“Barkeep. ‘Nother bowl. Also, I told you so.”
The barkeep brought the bowl. He no longer looked jaundiced. He looked scared. Probably it was the dozen cutthroats that surrounded us in a half-moon.
“Really,” I told him, “If there’s anybody out in the garden, you should get them the fuck out of here.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Mister Hope said. “The only one likely to come to harm this morning is her.”
A strange little chuckle bubbled up from deep inside me, unbidden.
“You find that amusing,” he said, with a confident grin.
“In a fucked-up way, yeah. You think you’re the only one set to do me harm today.”
“I’m not?”
“No. I’m hosting a bloodbath, Hope. You’re just the first guest to arrive.”
“You’ll forgive me if I take that with a grain of salt.”
“I won’t forgive you for shit. Drink.”
Somewhere during the back and forth, the barkeep had made himself scarce. Maybe he’d gone to drag the drunkards out, and maybe not. I’d done what I could.
Hope lifted his bowl of swill, self-assure smirk still plastered on his face. Why wouldn’t it be? He had half a dozen knives at my back.
The urge to do to him what I’d done to Rashy Ghent was almost overpowering. I could see it perfectly in my mind – pulling out my knife and burying it in his neck while his hand was full of the bowl. I knew with perfect certainty that I could do it, that nobody would be quick enough to stop me.
What would happen next was a little fuzzier, but it involved a lot of knives in my back, and it was just as certain if less clear.
He put his bowl down and looked at me. “I was wondering if you’d go for it,” he said.
“I don’t hate you enough. Besides, it wouldn’t solve any of my problems. Especially not the dozen right behind me.”
“You’re smarter than you look.”
“Just fucking spit it out already.”
“What?”
“If you’re jawing instead of having me poked full of holes, it means you have something to discuss. Get to the point.”
“You’re a lot smarter than you look.”
“Eat shit.”
He smirked. “Fengal Daruvner has prevailed upon my employers to cut you a certain amount of slack. He is a persuasive man, when he wishes to be. We are here to escort you to the docks, where we will make sure you will board the first ship going anywhere that is not here. Needless to say, you will never come back if you know what’s good for you.”
“Oh, that was nice of Baldy. What’s the catch?”
Hope snapped his fingers and one of the goons handed him a leather folder and a scribe’s case. He opened the folder, revealing a short stack of official-looking documents. He slid it over to me.
I could see at a glance that they were deeds of property, and deeds of transference. I looked closer and saw that the property deeds were mine. All of them, including the Promenade land.
“The price of freedom,” Hope said.
“You got these from Kinnick?”
“Who else?”
“Kerf’s sweaty nut sack. I’m going to fire that pudgy fuck. Right after I cut his useless balls off.”
“No time for that, I’m afraid. First you sign, then you sail. No stops in between, as amusing as that would be to watch.”
“And why should I trust you? What’s to stop you from karking me right after I sign these?”
“Not a gods-damned thing, obviously. But if you’re worried that I’m making up Daruvner’s part in all this, he told me to tell you to think of this as another bottle of Mother Harm – brutal but necessary.” He opened up the scribe case and started taking out ink and quill and sand and wax.
“Don’t you need a crown notary to witness these?” I asked, and in response he pulled a seal ring from his finger.
“Never fear. I am a man of many talents.”
“Fucking hells,” I muttered, and looked away from the documents and Hope. I glanced aimlessly out the open doorway, to the street.
And locked eyes – well, eye, since one was swollen shut – with Gammond. Bloody-faced and staggering a little, she was crossing the street, coming straight towards Tambor’s. The rest of her might have been wobbly, but the hand she raised when she saw me was rock-steady.
“Fucking hells!” I said again, with a lot more volume this time, and threw myself off the stool and down to the floor.
I didn’t see exactly what she did, ending up sideways on the sticky floorboards with my face next to the bar, but I caught the tail end of it. It was like she’d shot a thousand glowing needles from some unimaginable crossbow. She sprayed the room with them. The magic was silent. The screams were not. I was now at the feet of a lot of men
who had suddenly sprouted a lot of holes. It was chaos. I got stomped on the back and kicked in the ass. From what I could tell, some of the hard boys charged her, and some just fell down and screamed. Or went about dying in their individual ways.
Hope toppled off his stool and fell on me, but by that point he was already dead. Or at least I was pretty sure he was. Not sure how somebody could keep going with that many holes in them, but I didn’t wholly put it past him. Fucker was still smirking; I’ll give him that.
I pushed him off of me and started crawling away from the carnage. Ahead of me was the doorway to the wine garden. Behind me the screams grew even more intense. From the agonized tones, I guessed Gammond was doing her ‘you are now on fire’ trick. By the way they abruptly cut off, one by one, I assumed she was following it up with a more mundane ‘your throat is now cut’ move. It’s just a guess; I was more intent on getting out than confirming suspicions.
I didn’t get to where I was going before all the screaming stopped.
“Stand up and turn around. Unless you want to get it in the back.”
I was right at the open doorway to the wine garden. I stopped crawling. Let out a long sigh. Then I worked my way to my feet using the doorpost, and turned around.
She looked like shit. She wasn’t wasting any of her magic on making herself look better. Old wounds and new ravaged her face, but her one visible eye was bright and keen. Behind her, hard men writhed and screamed. Or cooled and leaked. Tambor’s now smelled of blood and piss and shit.
“Dead gods, you’re hard to kill,” I said. But of course she was. She was Hardside, after all.
Gammond held up a bloody, dripping knife, an ugly scrap of metal with a bone handle. It was all point. I’d seen many like it growing up; we’d called them Hardside toothpicks. Gammond held it like she knew what she was about.
“Hey now. Just a reminder. If you kill me, I can’t tell you where Holgren is.”
“If I kill you,” she slurred, “he’ll come find me himself. You had your chance.”
“Why the knife, Gammond? Used up all your magic on those fuckwits?” I knew enough about magic to know she had to be close to exhausting her well of it. Holgren would’ve been hard-pressed to keep going, magically speaking, if he’d had the kind of night and morning Gammond had just endured, and he was the second-most powerful mage I’d ever met. If Gammond kept pushing, odds were she’d pass out. I didn’t think I’d be able to goad her into doing it, but it didn’t hurt to try. No one gets in a knife fight if they can help it. No one sane, anyway.
But if she wanted one, I was pretty sure I could take her. As battered as I was, she was in worse shape.
She smiled, which was just a horrible, offensive affair. It also made me a touch less confident about taking her. She’d also learned her lesson back at the Plague Keep. She was out of lunging range.
“Don’t fret,” she said. “I made sure to put a little aside, just for you.”
“Well that makes me feel special,” I replied, pulling my own knife. “Let’s have it, then.”
She raised her hand and I lunged – away from her, out the doorway and into the trellised wine garden. The magic she’d put aside for me ate through the door post at head level the same way I’d once seen Kettle demolish a slice of cake – blink and you missed it.
My thigh betrayed me yet again. My lunge turned into a stumble, which quickly became a fall. I knocked myself a good one to the temple on the corner of a bench. I ended up on the absolutely filthy flagstones, seeing stars and cursing. But I kept going at a crawl, because Gammond sure as hells wasn’t going to wait for me to get my shit together.
“We neither of us are spry, exactly,” she said behind and above me, “but I’m moving a mite quicker than you.” She punctuated her sentence with a kick in the ribs. It wasn’t the worst I’d ever gotten, but I was already wobbly. It put me on my right side, my back against the leg of a table. My knife hand was closest to the ground, which was not optimal. But the stars had cleared.
She was already crouched over me, and her knife was coming down. I got my left arm up in time, and took the point on the forearm. I didn’t bother supressing the scream. I did bother to get my own knife into the side of her calf.
Call it a draw.
After that it was a mad fucking scramble, not a knife fight. She got a knee on my sternum and I got my free hand on the wrist of her knife hand. She tried to do the same and I took her pinkie most of the way off, more by chance than anything. She screamed and bled and pushed her knife down with furious strength towards the hollow of my throat, and my stitched-up shoulder wasn’t up to keeping that from happening. Pinned by her knee and her body weight, I couldn’t twist away. But my knife hand was free, and a lot faster than hers. I buried it in her armpit just as the point of her blade penetrated my skin. Then I twisted.
The strength left her arm. She didn’t make a sound. I pulled my knife out and a torrent of blood followed.
She lost her grip on the knife and slumped forward onto me, dead weight. I pushed her to the side and she sprawled out on the flagstones. She took a few shuddering breaths as the crimson puddle slowly spread. And then she didn’t take any more breaths.
Somebody started clapping.
TWENTY-FIVE
MAR STOOD IN THE VINE-fringed street entrance to the wine garden, half-in the dappled shade provided by the pergola, gloved hands slow clapping. Behind her were Balthaz and Eyebrow. All of them looked the worse for wear. Their smart suits were dusty, bloody and torn, and only Balthaz still had his hat. But they were still in far better shape than me. They looked that stage of beat-up that makes you angry and hateful instead of just exhausted and hurting. No-name was nowhere to be seen; maybe Gammond had done for him.
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen a scrap like that,” said Mar. “Properly vicious, that was.”
“Our poppet has teeth, and no mistake,” Eyebrow offered.
Mar nodded. “I admit I was looking forward to killing that cunt myself. I was counting on it, in fact. But I find myself satisfied.” She turned to the big man. “Are you good with that, Bal?”
He nodded.
She looked at Eyebrow. “How about you, Vin?”
“Yeah, I’m good. It’s not like it can be undone, anyway.”
She looked back at me. “We are all alright with that bitch’s death.”
“I’m so fucking pleased to hear it.” I stood to face them. I needed the table to do it, and to stay on my feet once it was done, but I did it. I still had my blooded knife in hand, and I’d picked up Gammond’s toothpick on my way up, to fill the other. I spat, and it went out bloody. I hadn’t even realized I’d done something to my mouth, but it seemed the inside of my cheek had got torn up somewhere along the way. I took a deep breath through my nose, and let it out slow.
“Who’s next, then?” I asked.
Mar snorted. “You can barely stand.”
“Oh, don’t worry about me, Mar. You I could do lying down.”
Eyebrow grinned. “Damned if I’m not having all sorts of imaginings right now.”
I cocked my head at him. “I thought you preferred men.”
He shrugged. “I do. But any sort of dirty gets my attention, honestly.”
“Button your idiot lips, Vin,” Mar told him, never looking away from me. “Amra, put your blades down. You’re in no fit state and you know it.”
“What I know is that you lot aren’t any better than this evil bitch was. You’ll ask your question until you get your answer, or until you realize you won’t be getting shit. Either way, there’s no good end for me. So take out your knife, Mar, and let’s have a dance.”
She didn’t. “We aren’t going to ask you anything, Amra. You’ve demonstrated your aversion to cooperation, and frankly I can’t be arsed to bother anymore. We’re going to take you back to Coroune, all pleasant-like and civilized, and there we will wait for your lover to come calling. I think it’s a safe bet he will. Either way, there’s no reaso
n for you to take any further punishment.”
I pointed my blade at her. “You stuck a knife in me. My own fucking knife. This knife right here, as it happens. There’s definitely reason, shitheel.”
Mar smiled. “Fine then. Come.”
“Why don’t you come here?”
“Because I want to watch you shamble a bit before I put you on the ground.”
I wasn’t going to do that. Like as not I’d end up on my face before I reached her, and wouldn’t that be embarrassing.
“Well I guess we can stand here and glare at each other, then, until you realize you’ll have to make me move. Ah. By the way. The governor isn’t happy with you lot. He’ll be even less happy when he finds out you tried to yank me from the cell that I was occupying on his order. Which he will, if he hasn’t already.”
Mar put on a patently false impressed face. “The lord governor is an important man, second only to the king. Thankfully, it’s the king that we work for. Now put your pig stickers on the table and come along quiet, you mouthy bitch. I’m tired of talking.”
“I’d bet gold the king has no idea what you’re about. In fact, I’d bet heavy you’re Tuyet’s lackeys, bought and paid for. Morno certainly seemed to think so.”
I had no idea who Tuyet was, of course, but Morno certainly had, and hearing the name hadn’t made him smile. Mar didn’t smile either.
“Put the fucking knives on the table, Amra, nice and easy. It’s time to go.”
“Lick my notional balls.”
“Last chance. You can put down your blades and we’ll assist you, or you can continue being stupid, get your ass beaten to a pulp, and then we can drag you.”
“You talk too much, Mar.”
She let out a small sigh. “Vin, go get me this daft, stubborn whore. No need to be gentle about it.”
Vin smiled at me and shrugged. He took off his coat, then rolled his head around, stretched his neck and strolled toward me with his hands open and low. I put myself in a guard position as best I could, which was not very well. I had to lean against the table for support, and I couldn’t raise my left arm up even to my head. He didn’t slow as he got into knife range, and I went for a belly thrust, which he batted away with ease with one hand while he punched me dead in the face with the other. Right between the fucking eyes. I rocked back and almost fell, but got Gammond’s toothpick up quick enough to dissuade him from following through. A ring he was wearing had split the skin on my forehead, and blood slithered down instantly, fouling my right eye.
The Thief Who Went to War Page 16
