The Collected Joe Abercrombie (273 page)

‘What must?’

‘Thinking you know all the answers . . .’ He trailed off as a woman walked past with a man on a lead. A big, dark man with a collar of shiny metal, carrying a sack in either hand, his eyes kept on the ground. ‘You see that?’

‘In the South most men either own someone or are owned themselves.’

‘That’s a bastard custom,’ muttered Shivers. ‘I thought you said this was part o’ the Union, though.’

‘And they love their freedom over in the Union, don’t they? You can’t make a man a slave there.’ She nodded towards some more, being led past meek and humble in a line. ‘But if they pass through no one’s freeing them, I can tell you that.’

‘Bloody Union. Seems those bastards always want more land. There’s more of ’em than ever in the North. Uffrith’s full of ’em, since the wars started up again. And what do they need more land for? You should see that city they’ve got already. Makes this place look a village.’

She looked sharply across at him. ‘Adua?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘You’ve been there?’

‘Aye. I fought the Gurkish there. Got me this mark.’ And he pulled back his sleeve to show the scar on his wrist. When he looked back she had an odd look in her eye. You might almost have called it respect. He liked seeing it. Been a while since anyone looked at him with aught but contempt.

‘Did you stand in the shadow of the House of the Maker?’ she asked.

‘Most of the city’s in the shadow of that thing one time o’ day or another.’

‘What was it like?’

‘Darker’n outside it. Shadows tend to be, in my experience.’

‘Huh.’ The first time Shivers had seen anything close to a smile on her face, and he reckoned it suited her. ‘I always said I’d go.’

‘To Adua? What’s stopping you?’

‘Six men I need to kill.’

Shivers puffed out his cheeks. ‘Ah. That.’ A surge of worry went through him, and he wondered afresh just why the hell he’d ever said yes. ‘I’ve always been my own worst enemy,’ he muttered.

‘Stick with me, then.’ Her smile had widened some. ‘You’ll soon have worse. We’re here.’

Not all that heartening, as a destination. A narrow alley, dim as dusk. Crumbling buildings crowded in, shutters rotten and peeling, sheets of plaster cracking away from damp bricks. He led his horse after the cart and through a dim archway while Murcatto swung the creaking doors shut behind them and shot the rusted bolt. Shivers tethered his horse to a rotting post in a yard strewn with weeds and fallen tiles.

‘A palace,’ he muttered, staring up towards the square of grey sky high above, the walls all round coated with dried-up weeds, the shutters hanging miserable from their hinges. ‘Once.’

‘I took it for the location,’ said Murcatto, ‘not the décor.’

They made for a gloomy hall, empty doorways leading into empty chambers. ‘Lot of rooms,’ said Shivers.

Friendly nodded. ‘Twenty-two.’

Their boots thump, thumped on the creaking staircase as they made their way up through the rotten guts of the building.

‘How are you going to begin?’ Murcatto was asking Morveer.

‘I already have. Letters of introduction have been sent. We have a sizeable deposit to entrust to Valint and Balk tomorrow morning. Sizeable enough to warrant the attention of their most senior officer. I, my assistant and your man Friendly will infiltrate the bank disguised as a merchant and his associates. We will meet with – then seek out an opportunity to kill – Mauthis.’

‘Simple as that?’

‘Seizing an opportunity is more often than not the key in these affairs, but if the moment does not present itself, I will be laying the groundwork for a more . . . structured approach.’

‘What about the rest of us?’ asked Shivers.

‘Our employer, obviously, is possessed of a memorable visage and might be recognised, while you,’ and Morveer sneered back down the stairs at him, ‘stand out like a cow among the wolves, and would be no more useful than one. You are far too tall and far too scarred and your clothes are far too rural for you to belong in a bank. As for that hair—’

‘Pfeeesh,’ said Day, shaking her head.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Exactly how it sounded. You are simply far, far too . . .’ Morveer swirled one hand around. ‘North.’

Murcatto unlocked a flaking door at the top of the last flight of steps and shoved it open. Muddy daylight leaked through and Shivers followed the others out blinking into the sun.

‘By the dead.’ A jumble of mismatched roofs every shape and pitch stretched off all round – red tiles, grey slates, white lead, rotting thatch, bare rafters caked with moss, green copper streaked with dirt, patched with canvas and old leather. A tangle of leaning gables, garrets, beams, paint peeling and sprouting with weeds, dangling gutters and crooked drains, bound up with chains and sagging washing lines, built all over each other at every angle and looking like the lot might slide off into the streets any moment. Smoke belched up from countless chimneys, cast a haze that made the sun a sweaty blur. Here and there a tower poked or a dome bulged above the chaos, the odd tangle of bare wood where some trees had beaten the odds and managed to stick out a twig. The sea was a grey smudge in the distance, the masts of ships in the harbour a far-off forest, shifting uneasily with the waves.

From up here the city seemed to make a great hiss. Noise of work and play, of men and beasts, calls of folk selling and buying, wheels rattling and hammers clanging, splinters of song and scraps of music, joy and despair all mixed up together like stew in a great pot.

Shivers edged to the lichen-crusted parapet beside Murcatto and peered over. People trickled up and down a cobbled lane far below, like water in the bottom of a canyon. A monster of a building loomed up on the other side.

Its wall was a sheer cliff of smooth-cut pale stone, with a pillar every twenty strides that Shivers couldn’t have got both arms around, crusted at the top with leaves and faces carved out of stone. There was a row of small windows at maybe twice the height of a man, then another above, then a row of much bigger ones, all blocked by metal grilles. Above that, all along the line of the flat roof, about level with where Shivers was standing, a hedge of black iron spikes stuck out, like the spines on a thistle.

Morveer grinned across at it. ‘Ladies, gentlemen and savages, I give you the Westport branch . . . of the Banking House . . . of Valint and Balk.’

Shivers shook his head. ‘Place looks like a fortress.’

‘Like a prison,’ murmured Friendly.

‘Like a bank,’ sneered Morveer.

The Safest Place in the World

T
he banking hall of the Westport office of Valint and Balk was an echoing cavern of red porphyry and black marble. It had all the gloomy splendour of an emperor’s mausoleum, the minimum light necessary creeping in through small, high windows, their thick bars casting cross-hatched shadows across the shining floor. A set of huge marble busts stared smugly down from on high: great merchants and financiers of Styrian history, by the look of them. Criminals made heroes by colossal success. Morveer wondered whether Somenu Hermon was among them, and the thought that the famous merchant might indirectly be paying his wages caused his smirk to expand by the slightest margin.

Sixty clerks or more attended identical desks loaded with identical heaps of papers, each with a huge, leather-bound ledger open before him. All manner of men, with all colours of skin, some sporting the skullcaps, turbans or characteristic hairstyles of one Kantic sect or other. The only prejudice here was in favour of those who could turn the fastest coin. Pens rattled in ink bottles, nibs scratched on heavy paper, pages crackled as they were turned. Merchants stood in clumps and haggles, conversing in whispers. Nowhere was a single coin in evidence. The wealth here was made of words, of ideas, of rumours and lies, too valuable to be held captive in gaudy gold or simple silver.

It was a setting intended to awe, to amaze, to intimidate, but Morveer was not a man to be intimidated. He belonged here perfectly, just as he did everywhere and nowhere. He swaggered past a long queue of well-dressed supplicants with the air of studied self-satisfaction that always accompanied new money. Friendly lumbered in his wake, strongbox held close, and Day tiptoed demurely at the rear.

Morveer snapped his fingers at the nearest clerk. ‘I have an appointment with . . .’ He consulted his letter for effect. ‘One Mauthis. On the subject of a sizeable deposit.’

‘Of course. If you would wait for one moment.’

‘One, but no more. Time and money are the same.’

Morveer inconspicuously studied the arrangements for security. It would have been an understatement to call them daunting. He counted twelve armed men stationed around the hall, as comprehensively equipped as the King of the Union’s bodyguard. There had been another dozen outside the towering double-doors.

‘The place is a fortress,’ muttered Day under her breath.

‘But considerably better defended,’ replied Morveer.

‘How long is this going to take?’

‘Why?’

‘I’m hungry.’

‘Already? For pity’s sake! You will not starve if you—Wait.’

A tall man had emerged from a high archway, gaunt-faced with a prominent beak of a nose and thinning grey hair, arrayed in sombre robes with a heavy fur collar. ‘Mauthis,’ murmured Morveer, from Murcatto’s exhaustive description. ‘Our intended.’

He was walking behind a younger man, curly haired and with a pleasant smile, not at all richly dressed. So unexceptional, in fact, he would have had a fine appearance for a poisoner. And yet Mauthis, though supposedly in charge of the bank, hurried after with hands clasped, as though he was the junior. Morveer sidled closer, bringing them within earshot.

‘. . . Master Sulfur, I hope you will inform our superiors that everything is under complete control.’ Mauthis had, perhaps, the very slightest note of panic in his voice. ‘Absolute and complete—’

‘Of course,’ answered the one called Sulfur, offhand. ‘Though I rarely find our superiors need informing as to how things stand. They are watching. If everything is under complete control, I am sure they will already be satisfied. If not, well . . .’ He smiled wide at Mauthis, and then at Morveer, and Morveer noticed he had different-coloured eyes, one blue, one green. ‘Good day.’ And he strode away and was soon lost in the crowds.

‘May I be of assistance?’ grated Mauthis. He looked as if he had never laughed in his life. He was running out of time to try it now.

‘I certainly hope you may. My name is Reevrom, a merchant of Puranti.’ Morveer tittered inwardly at his own joke, as he did whenever he utilised the alias, but his face showed nothing but the warmest bonhomie as he offered his hand.

‘Reevrom. I have heard of your house. A privilege to make your acquaintance.’ Mauthis disdained to shake it, and kept a carefully inoffensive distance between them. Evidently a cautious man. Just as well, for his sake. The tiny spike on the underside of Morveer’s heavy middle-finger ring was loaded with scorpion venom in a solution of Leopard Flower. The banker would have sat happily through their meeting, then dropped dead within the hour.

‘This is my niece,’ continued Morveer, not in the least downhearted by his failed attempt. ‘I have been entrusted with the responsibility of escorting her to an introduction with a potential suitor.’ Day looked up from beneath her lashes with perfectly judged shyness. ‘And this is my associate.’ He glanced sideways at Friendly and the man frowned back. ‘I do him too much credit. My bodyguard, Master Charming. He is not a great conversationalist, but when it comes to bodyguarding, he is . . . barely adequate in truth. Still, I promised his old mother that I would take him under my—’

‘You have come here on a matter of business?’ droned Mauthis.

Morveer bowed. ‘A sizeable deposit.’

‘I regret that your associates must remain behind, but if you would care to follow me we would, of course, be happy to accept your deposit and prepare a receipt.’

‘Surely my niece—’

‘You must understand that, in the interests of security, we can make no exceptions. Your niece will be perfectly comfortable here.’

‘Of course, of course you will, my dear. Master Charming! The strongbox! ’ Friendly handed the metal case over to a bespectacled clerk, left tottering under its weight. ‘Now wait here, and get up to no mischief!’ Morveer gave a heavy sigh as he followed Mauthis into the depths of the building, as though he had insurmountable difficulties securing competent help. ‘My money will be safe here?’

‘The bank’s walls are at no point less than twelve feet in thickness. There is only one entrance, guarded by a dozen well-armed men during the day, sealed at night with three locks, made by three different locksmiths, the keys kept by three separate employees. Two parties of men constantly patrol the exterior of the bank until morning. Even then the interior is kept under watch by a most sharp-eyed and competent guard.’ He gestured towards a bored-looking man in a studded leather jerkin, seated at a desk to the side of the hallway.

‘He is locked in?’

‘All night.’

Morveer worked his mouth with some discomfort. ‘Most comprehensive arrangements.’