The Collected Joe Abercrombie (277 page)

‘They put the good locks where the money is.’

‘And we’re not here to steal.’

‘Oh no, no, we are rare thieves indeed. We leave gifts behind us.’ He padded around Mauthis’ monstrous desk and swung the heavy ledger open, taking care not to move it so much as a hair from its position. ‘The solution, if you please.’

She handed him the jar, full almost to the brim with thin paste, and he carefully twisted the cork out with a gentle thwop. He used a fine paintbrush for the application. The very tool for an artist of his incalculable talents. The pages crackled as he turned them, giving a flick of the brush to the corners of each and every one.

‘You see, Day? Swift, smooth and precise, but with every care. With every care, most of all. What kills most practitioners of our profession?’

‘Their own agents.’

‘Precisely so.’ With every care, therefore, he swung the ledger closed, its pages already close to dry, slid the paintbrush away and pressed the cork back into the jar.

‘Let’s go,’ said Day. ‘I’m hungry.’

‘Go?’ Morveer’s smile widened. ‘Oh no, my dear, we are far from finished. You must still earn your supper. We have a long night’s work ahead of us. A very long . . . night’s . . . work.’

‘Here.’

Shivers nearly jumped clean over the parapet, he was that shocked, lurched round, heart in his mouth. Murcatto crouched behind, grinning, breath leaving a touch of smoke about her shadowy face.

‘By the dead but you gave me a scare!’ he hissed.

‘Better than what those guards would’ve given you.’ She crept to the iron ring and tugged at the knot. ‘You made it up there, then?’ More’n a touch of surprise in her voice.

‘You ever doubt I’d do it?’

‘I thought you’d break your skull, if you even got high enough to fall.’

He tapped his head with a finger. ‘Least vulnerable part o’ me. Shake our friends off?’

‘Halfway to bloody Lord Sabeldi Street, I did. If I’d known they’d be that easily led I’d have hooked them in the first place.’

Shivers grinned. ‘Well, I’m glad you hooked ’em in the end, or they’d most likely have hooked me.’

‘Couldn’t have that. We’ve still got a lot of work to do.’ Shivers wriggled his shoulders, uncomfortable. It was easy to forget at times that the work they were about was killing a man. ‘Cold, eh?’

He snorted. ‘Where I come from, this is a summer day.’ He dragged the cork from the bottle and held it out to her. ‘This might help keep you warm.’

‘Well, that’s very thoughtful of you.’ She took a long swallow, and he watched the thin muscles in her neck shifting.

‘I’m a thoughtful man, for one out of a gang of hired killers.’

‘I’ll have you know that some hired killers are very nice people.’ She took another swig, then handed the bottle back. ‘None of this crew, of course.’

‘Hell, no, we’re shits to a man. Or woman.’

‘They’re in there? Morveer and his little echo?’

‘Aye, a while now, I reckon.’

‘And Friendly with them?’

‘He’s with them.’

‘Morveer say how long he’d be?’

‘Him, tell me anything? I thought I was the optimist.’

They crouched in cold silence, close together by the parapet, looking across at the dark outline of the bank. For some reason he felt very nervy. Even more than you’d expect going about a murder. He stole a sideways glance at her, then didn’t look away quite quick enough when she looked at him.

‘Not much for us to do but wait and get colder, then,’ she said.

‘Not much, I reckon. Unless you want to cut my hair any shorter.’

‘I’d be scared to get the scissors out in case you tried to strip.’

That brought a laugh from him. ‘Very good. Reckon that earns you another pull.’ He held out the bottle.

‘I’m quite the humorist, for a woman who hires killers.’ She came closer to take it. Close enough to give him a kind of tingle in the side that was near her. Close enough that he could feel the breath in his throat all of a sudden, coming quick. He looked away, not wanting to make a fool of himself any more than he’d been doing the last couple of weeks. Heard her tip the bottle, heard her drink. ‘Thanks again.’

‘Not a worry. Anything I can do, Chief, just let me know.’

When he turned his head she was looking right at him, lips pressed together in a hard line, eyes fixed on his, that way she had, like she was working out how much he was worth. ‘There is one other thing.’

Morveer pushed the last lips of lead into position with consummate delicacy and stowed his glazing tools.

‘Will that do?’ asked Day.

‘I doubt it will deflect a rainstorm, but it will serve until tomorrow. By then I suspect they will have considerably greater worries than a leaking window.’ He rolled the last smudges of putty away from the glass, then followed his assistant across the rooftop to the parapet. Friendly had already negotiated the cord, a squat shape on the other side of a chasm of empty air. Morveer peered over the edge. Beyond the spikes and the ornamental carvings, the smooth stone pillar dropped vertiginously to the cobbled lane. One of the groups of guards slogged past it, lamps bobbing.

‘What about the rope?’ Day hissed once they were out of earshot. ‘When the sun comes up someone will—’

‘No detail overlooked.’ Morveer grinned as he produced the tiny vial from an inside pocket. ‘A few drops will burn through the knot some time after we have crossed. We need only wait at the far side and reel it in.’

As far as could be ascertained by darkness, his assistant appeared unconvinced. ‘What if it burns more quickly than—’

‘It will not.’

‘Seems like an awful chance, though.’

‘What do I never take, my dear?’

‘Chances, but—’

‘You go first, then, by all means.’

‘You can count on it.’ Day swung quickly under the rope and swarmed across, hand over hand. It took her no longer than a count of thirty to make it to the other side.

Morveer uncorked the little bottle and allowed a few drops to fall onto the knots. Considering it, he allowed a few more. He had no desire to wait until sunup for the cursed thing to come apart. He allowed the next patrol to pass below, then clambered over the parapet with, it had to be admitted, a good deal less grace than his assistant had displayed. Still, there was no need for undue haste. Caution first, always. He took the rope in his gloved hands, swung beneath it, hooked one shoe over the top, lifted the other—

There was a harsh ripping sound, and the wind blew suddenly cold about his knee.

Morveer peered down. His trouser-leg had caught upon a spike bent upwards well above the others, and torn almost as far as his rump. He thrashed his foot, trying to untangle it, but only succeeded in entrapping it more thoroughly.

‘Damn it.’ Plainly, this had not been part of the plan. Faint smoke was curling now from the balustrade around which the rope was knotted. It appeared the acid was acting more swiftly than anticipated.

‘Damn it.’ He swung himself back to the roof of the bank and perched beside the smoking knot, gripping the rope with one hand. He slid his scalpel from an inside pocket, reached forwards and cut the flapping cloth away from the spike with a few deft strokes. One, two, three and it was almost done, neat as a surgeon. The final stroke and—

‘Ah!’ He realised with annoyance, then mounting horror, that he had nicked his ankle with the blade. ‘Damn it!’ The edge was tainted with Larync tincture and, since the stuff had always given him a swell of nausea in the mornings, he had allowed his resistance to it to fade. It would not be fatal. Not of itself. But it might cause him to drop off a rope, and he had developed no immunity to a flailing plunge onto hard, hard cobblestones. The irony was bitter indeed. Most practitioners of his profession were killed, after all, by their own agents.

He pulled one glove off with his teeth and fumbled through his many pockets for that particular antidote, gurgling curses around the leather, swaying this way and that as the chill wind gusted up and spread gooseflesh all the way down his bare leg. Tiny tubes of glass rattled against his fingertips, each one etched with a mark that enabled him to identify it by touch.

Under the circumstances, though, the operation was still a testing one. He burped and felt a rush of nausea, a sudden painful shifting in his stomach. His fingers found the right mark. He let the glove fall from his mouth, pulled the phial from his coat with a trembling hand, dragged the cork out with his teeth and sucked up the contents.

He gagged on the bitter extract, spluttered sour spit down onto the faraway cobbles. He clung tight to the rope, fighting dizziness, the black street seeming to tip round and around him. He was a child again, and helpless. He gasped, whimpered, clung on with both hands. As desperately as he had clung to his mother’s corpse when they came to take him.

Slowly the antidote had its effect. The dark world steadied, his stomach ceased its mad churning. The lane was beneath him, the sky above, back in their customary positions. His attention was drawn sharply to the knots again, smoking more than ever now and making a slight hissing sound. He could distinctly smell the acrid odour as they burned through.

‘Damn it!’ He hooked both legs over the rope and set off, pitifully weak from the self-administered dose of Larync. The air hissed in his throat, tightened now by the unmistakable grip of fear. If the cord burned through before he reached the other side, what then? His guts cramped up and he had to pause for a moment, teeth gritted, wobbling up and down in empty air.

On again, but he was lamentably fatigued. His arms trembled, his hands shuffled, bare palm and bare leg burning from friction. Well beyond halfway now, and creeping onwards. He let his head hang back, sucking in air for one more effort. He saw Friendly, an arm out towards him, big hand no more than a few strides distant. He saw Day, staring, and Morveer wondered with some annoyance if he could detect the barest hint of a smile on her shadowy face.

Then there was a faint ripping sound from the far end of the rope.

The bottom dropped out of Morveer’s stomach and he was falling, falling, swinging downwards, chill air whooshing in through his gaping mouth. The side of the crumbling building plunged towards him. He started to let go a mad wail, just like the one he made when they tore him from his mother’s dead hand. There was a sickening impact that drove his breath out, cut his scream off, tore the cord from his grasping hands.

There was a crashing, a tearing of wood. He was falling, clawing at the air, mind a cauldron of mad despair, eyes bulging sightless. Falling, arms flailing, legs kicking helplessly, the world reeling around him, wind rushing at his face. Falling, falling . . . no further than a stride or two. His cheek slapped against floorboards, fragments of wood clattering down around him.

‘Eh?’ he muttered.

He was shocked to find himself snatched around the neck, dragged into the air and rammed against a wall with bowel-loosening force, breath driven out in a long wheeze for the second time in a few moments.

‘You! What the fuck?’ Shivers. The Northman was, for some reason still obscure, entirely naked. The grubby room behind him was dimly lit by some coals banked up in a grate. Morveer’s eyes wandered down to the bed. Murcatto was in it, propped up on her elbows, rumpled shirt hanging open, breasts flattened against her ribs. She peered at him with no more than a mild surprise, as if she’d opened her front door to see a visitor she had not been expecting until later.

Morveer’s mind clicked into place. Despite the embarrassment of the position, the residual pulsing of mortal terror and the tingling scratches on his face and hands, he began to chuckle. The rope had snapped ahead of time and, by some freak but hugely welcome chance, he had swung down in a perfect arc and straight through the rotten shutters of one of the rooms in the crumbling house. One had to appreciate the irony.

‘It seems there is such a thing as a happy accident after all!’ he cackled.

Murcatto squinted over from the bed, eyes somewhat unfocused. She had a set of curious scars, he noticed, following the lines of her ribs on one side.

‘Why you smoking?’ she croaked.

Morveer’s eyes slid to the husk-pipe on the boards beside the bed, a ready explanation for her lack of surprise at the unorthodox manner of his entrance. ‘You are confused, but it is easy to see why. I believe it is you that has been smoking. That stuff is absolute poison, you realise. Absolute—’

Her arm stretched out, limp finger pointing towards his chest. ‘Smoking, idiot.’ He looked down. A few acrid wisps were curling up from his shirt.

‘Damn it!’ he squeaked as Shivers took a shocked step back and let him fall. He tore his jacket off, fragments of glass from the shattered acid bottle tinkling to the boards. He scrabbled with his shirt, the front of which had begun to bubble, ripped it open and flung it on the floor. It lay there, smoking noticeably and filling the grubby chamber with a foul reek. The three of them stared at it, by a turn of fate that surely no one could have anticipated, all now at least half-naked.

‘My apologies.’ Morveer cleared his throat. ‘Plainly, this was not part of the plan.’