You don’t know how it is. One day you’re something, so promising and full o’ dares, so big the world’s too small a place to hold you. Then, ’fore you know it, you’re old, and you realise all them things you had in mind you’ll never get to. All them doors you felt too big to fit through have already shut. Only one left open and it leads to nothing but nothing.’ He pulled his hat off and scrubbed at his white hair with his dirty nails. ‘You lose your nerve. And once it’s gone where do you find it? I got scared, Shy South. And once you get scared there ain’t no going back, there just ain’t no—’
Shy caught a fist of his fur coat and dragged him close. ‘I ain’t giving up this way, you hear me? I just ain’t
He blinked at her for a moment. ‘I hear you.’
‘Well? You want to get even with Cosca or you just want to swear about it?’
Crying Rock had brought her horse close. ‘Maybe do it for Leef,’ she said. ‘And those others buried on the plains.’
Sweet stared at her weather-beaten face for a long moment, for some reason with the strangest, haunted look in his eye. Then his mouth twitched into a smile. ‘How come after all this time you’re still so damn beautiful?’ he asked.
Crying Rock just shrugged, like facts were facts, and stuck her pipe between her teeth.
Sweet reached up and brushed Shy’s hand away. He straightened his fur coat. He leaned from his saddle and spat. He looked with narrowed eyes up towards Beacon and set his jaw. ‘If I get killed I’m going to haunt your skinny arse for life.’
‘If you get killed I doubt my life’ll be too long a stretch.’ Shy slipped down from her saddle and crunched stiff-legged to the wagon, stood looking down at her brother and sister. ‘Got something to take care of,’ she said, putting a gentle hand on each of them. ‘You go on with Majud. He’s a little on the stingy side but he’s one of the good ones.’
‘Where you going?’ asked Pit.
‘Left something behind.’
‘Will you be long?’
She managed to smile. ‘Not long. I’m sorry, Ro. I’m sorry for everything.’
‘So am I,’ said Ro. Maybe that was something. For sure it was all she’d get.
She touched Pit’s cheek. Just a brush with her fingertips. ‘I’ll see you two in Crease. You’ll hardly notice I’m gone.’
Ro sniffed, sleepy and sullen, and wouldn’t meet her eye, and Pit stared at her, face all tracked with tears. She wondered if she really would see them in Crease. Madness, like Sweet said, to come all this way just to let them go. But there was no point to long goodbyes. Sometimes it’s better to do a thing than live with the fear of it. That’s what Lamb used to say.
‘Go!’ she shouted at Majud, before she had the chance to change her mind. He nodded to her, and snapped the reins, and the wagon rolled on.
‘Better to do it,’ she whispered at the night sky, and she clambered back into her saddle, turned her horse about, and gave it her heels.
Answered Prayers
Temple drank. He drank like he had after his wife died. As if there was something at the bottom of the bottle he desperately needed. As if it was a race he had bet his life on. As if drinking was a profession he planned on rising right to the top of. Tried most of the others, hadn’t he?
‘You should stop,’ said Sworbreck, looking worried.
‘You should start,’ said Temple, and laughed, even if he’d never felt like laughing less. Then he burped and there was some sick in it, and he washed the taste away with another swallow.
‘You have to pace yourself,’ said Cosca, who was not pacing himself in the least. ‘Drinking is an art, not a science. You caress the bottle. You tease it. You romance it. A drink… a drink… a drink…’ kissing at the air with each repetition, eyelids flickering. ‘Drinking is like…
‘What the fuck do you know about love?’
‘More than I’d like,’ answered the Old Man, a faraway look in his yellowed eye, and he gave a bitter laugh. ‘Despicable men still love Temple. Still feel pain. Still nurse wounds. Despicable men most of all, maybe.’ He slapped Temple on the back, sent a searing swig the wrong way and induced a painful coughing fit. ‘But let’s not be maudlin! We’re rich, boy! All rich. And rich men need make no apologies. To Visserine for me. Take back what I lost. What was stolen.’
‘What you threw away,’ muttered Temple, quietly enough not to be heard over the racket.
‘Yes,’ mused Cosca. ‘Soon there’ll be space for a new captain general.’ He took in the noisy, crowded, sweltering room with a sweep of his arm. ‘All this will be yours.’
It was quite a scene of debauch to cram into a one-roomed hovel, lit by a single guttering lamp and hazy with chagga smoke, noisy with laughter and conversations in several languages. Two big Northmen were wrestling, possibly in fun, possibly with the intention of killing each other, people occasionally lurching out of their way. Two natives of the Union and an Imperial bitterly complained as their table was jogged in the midst of a card-game, bottles tottering on top. Three Styrians had shared a husk-pipe and were blissfully lounging on a burst mattress in one corner, somewhere between sleep and waking. Friendly was sitting with legs crossed and rolling his dice between them, over and over and over, frowning down with furious concentration as though the answers to everything would soon appear on their dozen faces.
‘Hold on,’ muttered Temple, his pickled mind only now catching up. ‘Mine?’
‘Who better qualified? You’ve learned from the best, my boy! You’re a lot like me, Temple, I’ve always said so. Great men march often in the same direction, did Stolicus say?’
‘Like you?’ whispered Temple.
Cosca tapped his greasy grey hair. ‘Brains, boy, you’ve got the brains. Your morals can be stiff at times but they’ll soon soften up once you have to make the tough choices. You can talk well, know how to spot people’s weaknesses, and above all you understand the
‘What about Brachio?’
‘Family in Puranti.’
‘Really?’ Temple blinked across the room at Brachio, who was in a vigorous embrace with a large Kantic woman. ‘He never mentioned them.’
‘A wife and two daughters. Who talks about their family with scum like us?’
‘What about Dimbik?’
‘Pah! No sense of humour.’
‘Jubair?’
‘Mad as a plum jelly.’
‘But I’m no soldier. I’m a fucking coward!’
‘Admirable thing in a mercenary.’ Cosca stretched forward his chin and scratched at his rashy neck with the backs of his yellowed nails. ‘I’d have done far better with a healthy respect for danger. It’s not as if you’ll be swinging the steel yourself. The job’s all talk. Blah, blah, blah and big hats. That and knowing when not to keep your word.’ He wagged a knobbly finger. ‘I was always too bloody emotional. Too bloody loyal. But you? You’re a treacherous bastard, Temple.’
‘I am?’
‘You abandoned me when it suited and found new friends, then when it suited you abandoned them and sauntered straight back without so much as a by-your-leave!’
Temple blinked at that. ‘I rather had the feeling you’d have killed me otherwise.’
Cosca waved it away. ‘Details! I’ve had you marked as my successor for some time.’
‘But… no one respects me.’
