the shoulder, all flushed and grinning now at the thought of glory. Wonderful reached out and flicked the pommel of the Father of Swords with a fingernail. ‘Besides, you don’t need a great weapon to win yourself a name. Got yours with your teeth, didn’t you, Craw?’
‘Bite someone’s throat out, did you?’ asked Drofd.
‘Not quite.’ Craw had a faraway look for a moment, firelight picking out the lines at the corners of his eyes. ‘First full battle I was in we had a real red day, and I was in the midst. I had a thirst, back then. Wanted to be a hero. Wanted myself a name. We was all sat around the fire-pit after, and I was expecting something fearsome.’ He looked up from under his eyebrows. ‘Like Red Beck. Then when Threetrees was considering it, I took a big bite from a piece of meat. Drunk, I guess. Got a bone stuck in my throat. Spent a minute hardly able to breathe, everyone thumping me on the back. In the end a big lad had to hold me upside down ’fore it came loose. Could barely talk for a couple of days. So Threetrees called me Craw, on account of what I’d got stuck in it.’
‘Shoglig said …’ sang Whirrun, arching back to look into the sky, ‘I would be shown my destiny … by a man choking on a bone.’
‘Lucky me,’ grunted Craw. ‘I was furious, when I got the name. Now I know the favour Threetrees was doing me. His way of trying to keep me level.’
‘Seems like it worked,’ croaked Shivers. ‘You’re the straight edge, ain’t you?’
‘Aye.’ Craw licked unhappily at his teeth. ‘A real straight edge.’
Scorry gave the straight edge of his latest knife one last flick with the whetstone and picked up the next. ‘You met our latest recruit, Shivers?’ Sticking his thumb sideways. ‘Red Beck.’
‘I have.’ Shivers stared across the fire at him. ‘Down in Osrung. Yesterday.’
Beck had that mad feeling Shivers could see right through him with that eye, and knew him for the liar he was. Made him wonder how none of the others could see it, writ across his face plain as a fresh tattoo. Cold prickled his back, and he pulled his blood-crusted cloak tight again.
‘Quite a day yesterday,’ he muttered.
‘And I reckon today’ll be another.’ Whirrun stood and stretched up tall, lifting the Father of Swords high over his head. ‘If we’re lucky.’
Still Yesterday
The blue skin stretched as the steel slid underneath it, paint flaking like parched earth, stubbly hairs shifting, red threads of veins in the wide whites near the corners of his eyes. Her teeth ground together as she pushed it in, pushed it in, pushed it in, coloured patterns bursting on the blackness of her closed lids. She could not get that damned music out of her head. The music the violinists had been playing. Were playing still, faster and faster. The husk-pipe they had given her had blunted the pain just as they said it would, but they had lied about the sleep. She twisted the other way, huddling under the blankets. As though you can roll over and leave a day of murder on the other side of the bed.
Candlelight showed around the door, through the cracks between the slats. As the daylight had showed through the door of the cold room where they were kept prisoner. Kneeling in the darkness, plucking at the knots with her nails. Voices outside. Officers, coming and going, speaking with her father. Talking of strategy and logistics. Talking of civilisation. Talking of which one of them Black Dow wanted.
What had happened blurred with what might have, with what should have. The Dogman arrived an hour earlier with his Northmen, saw off the savages before they left the wood. She found out ahead of time, warned everyone, was given breathless thanks by Lord Governor Meed. Captain Hardrick brought help, instead of never being heard from again, and the Union cavalry arrived at the crucial moment like they did in the stories. Then she led the defence, standing atop a barricade with sword aloft and a blood-spattered breastplate, like a lurid painting of Monzcarro Murcatto at the battle of Sweet Pines she once saw on the wall of a tasteless merchant. All mad, and while she spun out the fantasies she knew they were mad, and she wondered if she was mad, but she did it all the same.
And then she would catch something at the edge of her sight, and she was there, as it had been, on her back with a knee crushing her in the stomach and a dirty hand around her neck, could not breathe, all the sick horror that she somehow had not felt at the time washing over her in a rotting tide, and she would rip back the blankets and spring up, and pace round and round the room, chewing at her lip, picking at the scabby bald patch on the side of her head, muttering to herself like a madwoman, doing the voices, doing all the voices.
If she’d argued harder with Black Dow. If she’d pushed, demanded, she could have brought Aliz with her, instead of … in the darkness, her blubbering wail as Finree’s hand slipped out of hers, the door rattling shut. A blue cheek bulged as the steel slid underneath it, and she bared her teeth, and moaned, and clutched at her head, and squeezed her eyes shut.
‘Fin.’
‘Hal.’ He was leaning over her, candlelight picking out the side of his head in gold. She sat up, rubbing her face. It felt numb. As if she was kneading dead dough.
‘I brought you fresh clothes.’
‘Thank you.’ Laughably formal. The way one might address someone else’s butler.
‘Sorry to wake you.’
‘I wasn’t asleep.’ Her mouth still had a strange taste, a swollen feeling from the husk. The darkness in the corners of the room fizzed with colours.
‘I thought I should come … before dawn.’ Another pause. Probably he was waiting for her to say she was glad, but she could not face the petty politeness. ‘Your father has put me in charge of the assault on the bridge in Osrung.’
She did not know what to say. Congratulations. Please, no! Be careful. Don’t go! Stay here. Please. Please. ‘Will you be leading from the front?’ Her voice sounded icy.
‘Close enough to it, I suppose.’
‘Don’t indulge in any heroics.’ Like Hardrick, charging out of the door for help that could never come in time.
‘There’ll be no heroics, I promise you that. It’s just … the right thing to do.’
‘It won’t help you get on.’
‘I don’t do it to get on.’
‘Why, then?’
‘Because someone has to.’ They were so little alike. The cynic and the idealist. Why had she married him? ‘Brint seems … all right. Under the circumstances.’ Finree found herself hoping that Aliz was all right, and made herself stop. That was a waste of hope, and she had none to spare.
‘How should one feel when one’s wife has been taken by the enemy?’
‘Utterly desperate. I hope he will be all right.’
‘All right’ was such a useless, stilted expression. It was a useless, stilted conversation. Hal felt like a stranger. He knew nothing about who she really was. How can two people ever really know each other? Everyone went through life alone, fighting their own battle.
He took her hand. ‘You seem…’
She could not bear his skin against hers, jerked her fingers away as though she was snatching them from a furnace. ‘Go. You should go.’
His face twitched. ‘I love you.’
Just words, really. They should have been easy to say. But she could not do it any more than she could fly to the moon. She turned away from him to face the wall, dragging the blanket over her hunched shoulder. She heard the door shut.
A moment later, or perhaps a while, she slid out of bed. She dressed. She splashed water on her face. She twitched her sleeves down over the scabbing chafe marks on her wrists, the ragged cut up her arm. She opened the door and went through. Her father was in the room on the other side, talking to the officer she saw crushed by a falling cupboard yesterday, plates spilling across the floor. No. A different man.
‘You’re awake.’ Her father was smiling but there was a wariness to him, as if he was expecting her to burst
