Sharp Ends: Stories from the World of The First Law (10 page)

He raised his mace to strike, broad face twisted with rage.

‘Wait!’ she wailed, pointing over his shoulder.

It was amazing how often that worked. He jerked his head to look, pausing just long enough for her to knee him in the fruits with all her strength. He gasped, tottered, dropped to his knees, and she whipped out her dagger and stabbed him sharply at the meeting of his neck and his shoulder. He groaned, tried to stand, then sprawled on his face, welling blood.

‘Sorry,’ said Shev. ‘Damn it, I’m sorry.’ And she was, just as she always was. But it was better to be sorry than dead. Just as it always was. That lesson she had learned long ago.

No further fights presented themselves. Javre stood by the chandelier’s wreckage, her dirty white coat spotted with blood and the twisted bodies of a dozen thugs scattered about her. She had another bent over with his head wedged in the crook of one arm, and yet another pinned against a table by his neck at arm’s length, kicking and struggling to absolutely no effect.

‘Things must be going downhill.’ And with a twitch of her face and a flex of her muscular arm she snapped the first man’s neck and let his body flop to the floor. ‘The temple used to stretch to a better class of thug.’ She dipped her shoulder and flung the other one bodily through a window and into the street, tearing the shutters free, his despairing squeal cut off as his head tore a chunk from a supporting pillar with him.

‘The best I could find at short notice,’ said Weylen, reaching behind her back. ‘But it was always going to come to this.’ And she drew a curved sword, the long blade looking to Shev’s eye to be made of a writhing black smoke.

‘It need not,’ said Javre. ‘You have two choices, just as Hanama and Birke did. You can go back to Thond. Go back to the High Priestess and tell her I will be no one’s slave. Not ever. Tell her I am free.’

‘Free? Ha! Do you suppose the High Priestess will accept that answer?’

Javre shrugged. ‘Tell her you could not find me. Tell her whatever you please.’

Weylen’s mouth bitterly twisted. ‘And what would be my other—’

‘I show you the sword.’ There was a popping of joints as Javre shifted her shoulders, boots scraping into a wider stance, and from inside her coat she drew a bundle, long and slender, a thing of bandages and rags, but near the end Shev caught the glint of gold.

Weylen lifted her chin, and did not so much smile as show her teeth. ‘You know there is no choice for us.’

Javre gave a nod. ‘I know. Shevedieh?’

‘Yes?’ croaked Shev.

‘Close your eyes.’

She jammed them shut as Weylen sprang over a table with a fighting scream, high, harsh and horrible. She heard quick footsteps on the boards, rushing up with inhuman speed.

There was a ringing of metal and Shev flinched as a sudden bright light shone pink through her lids. A scraping, and a croaking gasp, and the light was gone.

‘Shevedieh.’

‘Yes?’ she croaked.

‘You can open them now.’

Javre still held the bundle in one hand, torn rags flapping about it. With the other she held Weylen up, her limp arms flopping back, steel-cased knuckles scraping the floor. There was a red stain on her chest, but she looked peaceful. Aside from the black blood pouring from her back to spatter on the boards in spurts and dashes.

‘They will find you, Javre,’ she whispered, blood specking her lips.

‘I know,’ said Javre. ‘And they each will have their choice.’ She lowered Weylen to the boards, into the spreading pool of her blood, and gently brushed her eyelids closed over her green, green eyes. ‘May the Goddess have mercy on you,’ she murmured.

‘May she have mercy on us first,’ muttered Shevedieh, wiping the blood from under her throbbing nose as she approached the counter, dagger at the ready, and peered over. The inn’s owner was cowering behind and cringed even further as he saw her. ‘Don’t kill me! Please don’t kill me!’

‘I won’t.’ She hid the dagger behind her back and showed him her open palm. ‘No one will. It’s all right, they’ve …’ She wanted to say ‘gone’ but, glancing around the wreckage of the inn, was forced to say, rather croakily, ‘died. You can get up.’

He slowly stood, peered over the counter, and his jaw dropped open. ‘By the—’

‘I must apologise for the damage,’ said Javre. ‘It looks worse than it is.’

Part of the far wall, riddled with cracks, chose that moment to collapse into the street, sending up a cloud of stone dust and making Shev step back, coughing.

Javre pushed her lips out and put one considering fingertip against them. ‘Perhaps it is exactly as bad as it looks.’

Shev heaved up an aching sigh. Not the first she’d given in the company of Javre, Lioness of Hoskopp, and she doubted it would be the last. She pulled the pouch from her shirt, undid the strings and let the jewel roll onto the split counter, where it sat glinting.

‘For your trouble,’ she said to the gawping innkeeper. Then she wiped her dagger on the jacket of the nearest corpse and slid it back into its sheath, turned without another word, stepped over the splintered remains of the door and out into the street.

Dawn was coming, the sun bringing the faintest grey smudge to the eastern sky above the ramshackle roofs. Shev took a long breath and shook her head at it. ‘Damn it, Shevedieh,’ she whispered to herself, ‘but a conscience is a hell of an encumbrance to a thief.’

She heard Javre’s heavy footsteps behind, felt her looming presence at her shoulder, heard her deep voice as she leaned to speak in Shev’s ear.

‘Would you like to skip town now?’

Shev nodded. ‘Yes, I think we’d better.’

Dagoska, Spring 576

T
emple ran.

It was hardly the first time. He had spent half his life running away from things and most of the rest running back towards them. But he had never run like this. He ran as though hell yawned at his back. It did.

The ground shook again. Light flared in the night, at the corner of Temple’s eye, and he flinched. A moment later came the thunderous boom, so loud it made his ears ring. Fire shot up above the buildings to his left, mad arms of it, reaching out and scattering liquid flame across the Upper City. A piece of stone the size of a man’s head thudded into the road just in front of him, bounced across his path and smashed through a wall in a cloud of dust. Smaller stones rained down, pinging and rattling.

Temple ran on, heedless. If Gurkish fire plunged from the heavens and ripped him to specks that could never be found, there was nothing he could do. Precious few would mourn him. One little drip in an ocean of tragedy. He could only hope God had chosen him for saving, even if he could not think of one good reason why.

There was not much he was certain of, but he knew he did not want to die.

He reeled to a stop against a wall, caught by a sudden coughing fit, his chest raw from breathing smoke. From days of breathing smoke. His eyes ran with tears. From the dust. From the fear. He looked back the way he had come. The walls of the Upper City, broken battlements cut out black against the fire. Men struggled there, tiny figures lit red.

It was hopeless. It had been hopeless for days. But still they fought. Perhaps to protect what was theirs. Their property, their family, their way of life. Perhaps they fought out of love. Perhaps out of hate. Perhaps there was nothing else left.

Temple had no idea what could make a man fight. He had never been much of a fighter.

He scuttled down a rubbish-strewn side street, tripped on a fallen beam and skinned his knees, staggered to the corner, one hand up as a feeble shield against the heat of a burning building, flames crackling, smoke roiling skywards into the night.

Fire, fire everywhere.
I have seen hell
, Verturio said,
and it is a great city under siege.
Dagoska had been like hell for weeks. Temple never doubted that he deserved to be there. He just didn’t remember dying.

He saw figures crowding about a door, a man swinging an axe, the sound of wood splintering. Gurkish troops somehow broken through the wall already? Or looters taking their chance to snatch something while there was something still to snatch? Temple supposed he could hardly blame them. He’d snatched plenty in his time. And what did blame mean now, anyway?

When there is no law, there is no crime.

He scurried on, keeping low, torn sleeve across his mouth. You would never have known that his acolyte’s robe had been pure white. It was as frayed and filthy now as the beggar’s rags he had worn before, stained with ash and dirt and blood, his own and that of those he had tried to help. Those he had failed to help.

Temple had lived in Dagoska all his life. Grown up on these streets. Known them like a child knows his mother’s face. But now he hardly recognised them. Houses were blackened shells, bare beams showing like the ribs of desert carcasses, trees scorched stumps, heaps of rubble spilled across the cracked roadways. He kept the rock ahead of him, the lights of the Citadel perched at its top, caught a glimpse of one of the Great Temple’s slender spires above a fallen roof, and hurried on.

Fire raged all across the city, but no more fell from the sky. That only made Temple more fearful. When the fire stopped falling, the soldiers came. Always he was running from soldiers. Before the Gurkish it had been the Union, before the Union it had been the Dagoskans themselves. Give a man a sword and he always acts the same, whatever the colour of his skin.

There had been a market here, where rich folk had bought meat. Only a few blackened arches of it remained. He had begged here, as a boy, hands stretching out. Older, he had stolen from a merchant. Older still, had kissed a girl at night beside a fountain. Now the fountain was cracked, choked with ashes. The girl? Who could say?

It had been a beautiful place. A proud street in a proud city. All gone, and for what?

‘Is this your plan?’ he whispered at the sky.

But God rarely speaks to beggar-boys. Even those educated at the Great Temple.

‘Help me,’ came a hissing voice. ‘Help me.’

A woman lay in the rubble beside him. He had almost stepped on her as he ran past. A fragment from a Gurkish bomb had struck her, or perhaps from a burning building. Her neck was scorched and blistered, some of her hair burned away. Her shoulder was a ruin, arm twisted behind her. He could not tell what was torn cloth and what torn flesh. She smelled like cooking meat. A smell that made Temple’s empty stomach growl and then made him want to be sick a moment later. Her throat clicked with every breath and something bubbled in her chest. Her eyes were wide and dark in her black-spattered face.

‘Oh, God,’ whispered Temple. He did not know where to begin. There was nowhere to begin.

‘Help me,’ she whispered again, clutching at him, her eyes on his.

‘There’s nothing I can do,’ croaked Temple. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, no, please—’

‘I’m sorry.’ He peeled her fingers away, tried not to look into her eyes. ‘God have mercy on you.’ Though it seemed plain that He had none. ‘I’m sorry!’ Temple stood. He turned away. He went on.

As her cries faded behind him, he tried to tell himself that this was not just the easy thing, but the right thing. There was nothing he could have done for her. She would not have lived. The Gurkish were too close. He could not outrun them carrying her. He had to warn the others, it was his duty. He could not save her. He could only save himself. Better one of them die than both, surely? God would understand that, wouldn’t he? God was made of understanding.

Times like these reveal a man for what he truly is. For a while Temple had convinced himself he was a righteous man, but it is easy to be virtuous before your virtue is put to the test. Like a camel turd baked in the sun, beneath the pious crust he was the same stinking, self-serving coward he had always been.

Conscience is that piece of Himself that God puts into everyone
, Kahdia would have said.
A splinter of the divine
.
There is always a choice.

He came to an uncertain halt, staring down at the bloody smears her fingers had made on his sleeve. Should he go back? He stood trembling, breathing hard, trapped between right and wrong, between sense and stupidity, between life and death.

Kahdia once told him he thought too much to be a good man.

He looked over his shoulder, back the way he had come. Flames, and buildings lit in the garish colours of flames, and against the flames he saw black shapes moving. The slender shadows of swords and spears, the tall helmets of Gurkish soldiers. And was it a trick of the shimmering haze, or could he see another figure there? A woman’s shape, tall and thin, swaggering forward in white armour, a glimpse of golden hair shining. Fear clutched at Temple’s throat and he fell, scrambled up, ran. The mindless impulse of the child grown up on the streets. Of the rabbit that sees the hawk’s shadow. He hardly knew what there was to live for, but he knew he did not want to die.

Wheezing, coughing, legs burning, he struggled up the cracked steps to the Great Temple. He felt a moment of relief as the familiar façade came into view, even though he knew it would not be long until Gurkish soldiers flooded into this square. Gurkish soldiers … or worse.

He hurried across to the looming gates, ashes whirling past, burning papers fluttering down on the hot wind, thumped at the door until his fist hurt, called out his name until his throat was raw. A small door within the door was pulled suddenly open and he scrambled through, the bar swung down behind him with a reassuring finality.

Safety. Even if only for a few moments. A man in the desert must take such water as he is offered, after all.

The first time Temple entered that glorious space and gazed upon the sparkling mosaics, and the filigree stonework, and the light pouring in through the star-shaped windows and making gleam the gilded letters of scripture written man-high upon the walls, he had felt the hand of God upon his shoulder.

He did not feel the presence of God now. Only a few lamps lit the vastness, the shadows of flames beyond the windows flickering across the ceiling. It stank of fear and death, echoed with the whimpers of the wounded, the endless low murmuring of hopeless prayers. Even the mosaic faces of the prophets which had once seemed moved by heavenly ecstacy seemed fixed in terror now.

The place was crowded with people – men and women, young and old, all filthy and desperate. Temple shouldered his way through the press, trying to swallow his fear, trying to think of nothing but finding Kahdia, finally saw him on the dais where the pulpit had once stood. One sleeve of his white robe he had torn off at the shoulder to make bandages. The other was blood-spotted to the elbow from working on the wounded. His eyes were sunken, cheeks hollow, but the more desperate the situation became, the calmer he appeared to grow.

What mighty strength must it take, Temple wondered, to carry the burden of all these people’s lives?

There were Union soldiers gathered about him and Temple hung back nervously on old instincts. A dozen of them, perhaps, swords sheathed out of respect for the holy ground but hands twitching always towards the hilts. General Vissbruck was among them, a long smear of ash down his sunburned face. He had been a plump man before the siege, but his uniform hung loose from him now. They all were thinner than they had been, in Dagoska.

‘Gurkish soldiers have flooded through the North Gate and into the Upper City.’ He spoke in the Union tongue, of course, but Temple understood it as well as any native of Midderland. ‘It will not be long until the wall is lost. We suspect treachery.’

‘You suspect Nicomo Cosca?’ asked Kahdia.

‘I have suspected him for some time, but – whatever else he is – Cosca is no fool. If he meant to sell the city he would have done it while there was still a good price to be had.’

‘What about his life?’ snapped the soldier with the sling.

Vissbruck snorted. ‘One thing on which he has never placed the slightest value. The man is an entire stranger to fear.’

Gods, what a blessing that must be. Temple’s fears had been his closest companions since before he could remember.

‘It makes no difference now, in any case,’ Vissbruck was saying. ‘Whether Cosca betrayed us or not, whether alive or dead, he is surely in hell now. Just like the rest of us. We are pulling back to the Citadel, Haddish. You should come with us.’

‘And when the Gurkish follow, where will you pull back to?’

Vissbruck swallowed, the sharp knobble bobbing in his throat, and spoke on as if Kahdia had said nothing. Something the people of the Union had proved themselves expert at ever since they came to Dagoska. ‘You have been a courageous leader and a true friend to the Union. You have earned a place in the Citadel.’

Kahdia gave a weary smile. ‘If I have earned any place it is here, in my temple, among my people. I am proud to take it.’

‘I knew you would say so. But I had to ask.’

Kahdia held out his hand. ‘It has been an honour.’

‘The honour is mine.’ The general started forward and embraced the priest. The Union man and the Dagoskan. The white-skinned and the dark. A strange sight. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, eyes shining with tears, ‘that I did not understand you until it was too late.’

‘It is never too late,’ said Kahdia. ‘I believe we may meet in heaven.’

‘Then I hope once again that your beliefs are true, and not mine.’ Vissbruck let Kahdia go, turned on his heel, and stopped. He looked back.

‘Superior Glokta warned me that a man might be better off killing himself than becoming a prisoner of the Gurkish,’ said Vissbruck. Kahdia blinked, and said nothing. ‘Whatever one thinks of our erstwhile leader, when it comes to being a prisoner of the Gurkish he must be considered an unchallengeable expert.’ Again, the Haddish did not speak. ‘Do you have any opinion on that matter?’

‘To kill oneself is reckoned an offence against God.’ Kahdia shrugged. ‘But at times like these, who can say what is right?’

Vissbruck slowly nodded. ‘We are cut loose. From the Union. From our families. From God. We all must find our own way now.’ And he marched swiftly towards the temple’s back entrance, his boot heels clicking against the marble as the press parted to let him and his soldiers through.

Temple started forward, grabbing Kahdia by the arm. ‘Haddish, you must go with them!’

Kahdia gently peeled Temple’s fingers from his wrist. Just as Temple had peeled away the fingers of the dying woman. ‘I am glad you are still alive, Temple. I was worried about you. But you are bleeding—’

‘It’s nothing! You must go to the Citadel.’

‘Must? We always have a choice, Temple.’

‘They are coming. The Gurkish are coming.’ He swallowed. Even now, he could not bring himself to raise his voice when he spoke the words. ‘The Eaters are coming.’

‘I know. That is why I must stay.’

Temple gritted his teeth. The old man’s calm was making him furious, and he knew why. Not for Kahdia’s sake, but for his own. He wanted the priest to run so that he could run with him. Even though there was no place safe from the Eaters. Nowhere in all the world, and certainly not in Dagoska. Even though taking refuge in the Citadel could only buy him days, and probably not that many.

The Haddish smiled. As though he saw it all. Saw it all, and forgave him even so.

‘I must stay,’ he said. ‘But you should go, Temple. If you feel you need my permission, I give it gladly.’

Temple cursed. He had been forgiven too often. He wanted to be raged at, to be blamed, to be beaten. He wanted a reason to take the easy way and run, but Kahdia would not let him take the easy way. It was why Temple had always loved him. There were tears in his eyes. He cursed. But he stayed.