All took no longer than Shy would’ve needed to take three good breaths, if she hadn’t been holding hers the while. She was hot now, and dizzy, and the world was too bright. She was blinking. Couldn’t quite get a hold on what had happened. She hadn’t moved. She didn’t move. No one did. Only Lamb, walking forward, eyes gleaming with tears and one side of his face black-dashed and speckled and his bared teeth glistening in his mad smile and each breath a soft growl in his throat like a lover’s.
Red Hair whimpered, ‘Fuck, fuck,’ and Shy pushed the flat of the knife harder into his neck and shushed him up again. He’d a big blade halfway to a sword tucked in his belt and with her free hand she slid that out. Then Lamb was looming over the shrinking pair of them, his head near brushing the low rafters, and he twisted a fistful of the lad’s shirt and jerked him out of Shy’s limp grip.
‘Talk to me.’ And he hit the lad across the face, open-handed but hard enough to knock him down if he hadn’t been held up.
‘I…’ muttered the lad.
Lamb slapped him again, the sound loud as a clap, the traders up the far end flinching at it but not a one moving. ‘Talk.’
‘What d’you—’
‘Who was in charge?’
‘Cantliss. That’s his name.’ The lad started blathering, words tumbling over each other all slobbery like he couldn’t say them fast enough. ‘Grega Cantliss. Didn’t know how bad a crew they was, just wanted to get from here to there and make a bit of money. I was in the ferrying business back east and one day the rain come up and the ferry got swep’ away and—’ Slap. ‘We didn’t want it, you got to believe—’ Slap. ‘There’s some evil ones in with ’em. A Northman called Blackpoint, he shot an old man with arrows. They laughed at it.’
‘See me laughing?’ said Lamb, cuffing him again.
The red-haired lad held up one useless, shaking hand. ‘I didn’t laugh none! We didn’t want no part of all them killings so we split off! Supposed to be just some robbing, Cantliss told us, but turned out it was children we was stealing, and—’
Lamb cut him off with a slap. ‘Why’d he take the children?’ And he set him talking with another, the lad’s freckled face cut and swelling down one side, blood smearing his nose.
‘Said he had a buyer for ’em, and we’d all be rich men if we got ’em there. Said they weren’t to be hurt, not a hair on their heads. Wanted ’em perfect for the journey.’
Lamb slapped him again, opening another cut. ‘Journey where?’
‘To Crease, he said, to begin with.’
‘That’s up at the head of the Sokwaya,’ said Shy. ‘Right the way across the Far Country.’
‘Cantliss got a boat waiting. Take him upriver… upriver…’
‘To Crease and then where?’
The red-haired lad had slumped in half a faint, lids fluttering. Lamb slapped him again, both sides, shook him by his shirt. ‘To Crease and then where?’
‘Didn’t say. Not to me. Maybe to Taverner.’ Looking towards the man nailed to the counter with the knife handle sticking out his back. Shy didn’t reckon he’d be telling any tales now.
‘Who’s buying children?’ asked Lamb.
Red Hair drunkenly shook his swollen head. Lamb slapped him again, again, again. One of the trader women hid her face. The other stared, standing rigid. The man beside her dragged her back down into her chair.
‘Who’s buying?’
‘Don’t know,’ words mangled and bloody drool dangling from his split lip.
‘Stay there.’ Lamb let the lad go and crossed to Tall Hat, his boots in a bloody puddle, reached around and unbuckled his sword, took a knife from his coat. Then he rolled Handsome over with his foot, left him staring wonky-eyed at the ceiling, a deal less handsome with his insides on the outside. Lamb took the bloody rope from his belt, walked to the red-haired lad and started tying one end around his neck while Shy just watched, numb and weak all over. Weren’t clever knots he tied, but good enough, and he jerked the lad towards the door, following along without complaint like a beaten dog.
Then they stopped. The Keep had come around the counter and was standing in the doorway. Just goes to show you never can quite figure what a man will do, or when. He was holding tight to his wiping cloth like it might be a shield against evil. Shy didn’t reckon it’d be a very effective one, but she’d some high respect for his guts. Just hoped Lamb didn’t end up adding them to Handsome’s, scattered bloody on the boards.
‘This ain’t right,’ said the Keep.
‘How’s you being dead going to make it any righter?’ Lamb’s voice flat and quiet like it was no kind of threat, just a question. He didn’t have to scream it. Those two dead men were doing it for him.
The Keep’s eyes darted around but no heroes leaped to his side. All looked scared as if Lamb was death himself come calling. Except the old Ghost woman, sat tall in her chair just watching, and her companion in the fur coat, who still had his boots crossed and, without any quick movements, was pouring himself another drink.
‘Ain’t right.’ But the Keep’s voice was weak as watered beer.
‘It’s right as it’s getting,’ said Lamb.
‘We should put a panel together and judge him proper, ask some—’
Lamb loomed forward. ‘All you got to ask is do you want to be in my way.’ The Keep shrank back and Lamb dragged the lad past. Shy hurried after, suddenly unfroze, passing Leef loose-jawed in the doorway.
Outside the rain had slacked to a steady drizzle. Lamb was hauling Red Hair across the mired street towards the arch of crooked timbers the sign hung from. High enough for a mounted man to pass under. Or for one on foot to dangle from.
‘Lamb!’ Shy hopped down from the tavern’s porch, boots sinking to the ankles. ‘Lamb!’ He weighed the rope then tossed it over the crossbar. ‘Lamb!’ She struggled across the street, mud sucking at her feet. He caught the loose end of the rope and jerked the slack out, the red-haired lad stumbling as the noose went tight under his chin, bloated face showing dumb like he hadn’t worked out yet where he was headed.
‘Ain’t we seen enough folk hanged?’ called Shy as she slopped up. Lamb didn’t answer, didn’t look at her, just wound the free end of the rope about one forearm.
‘It ain’t right,’ she said. Lamb took a sniff and set himself to haul the lad into the air. Shy snatched hold of the rope by the lad’s neck and started sawing at it with the short-sword. It was sharp. Didn’t take a moment to cut it through.
‘Get running.’
The lad blinked at her.
‘Run, you fucking idiot!’ She kicked the seat of his trousers and he sloshed a few steps and went over on his face, struggled up and floundered away into the darkness, still with his rope collar.
Shy turned back to Lamb. He was staring at her, stolen sword in one hand, loose length of rope in the other. But like he was hardly seeing her. Like he was hardly him, even. How could this be the man who’d bent over Ro when she had the fever, and sung to her? Sung badly, but sung still, face all wrinkled with care? Now she looked in those black eyes and suddenly this dread crept on her like she was looking into the void. Standing on the edge of nothing and it took every grain of courage she had not to run.
‘Bring them three horses over!’ she snapped at Leef, who’d wandered out onto the porch with Lamb’s coat and hat in his hands. ‘Bring ’em now!’ And he hopped off to do it. Lamb just stood, staring after the red-haired lad, the rain starting to wash the blood off his face. He took hold of the saddle bow when Leef led the biggest horse over, started to swing himself up and the horse shied, and kicked out, and Lamb gave a grunt as he lost his grip and went over backwards, stirrup flapping as he caught it with a clutching hand, splashing down hard in the mud on his side. Shy knelt by him as he struggled to his hands and knees.
‘You hurt?’
He looked up at her and there were tears in his eyes, and he whispered, ‘By the dead, Shy. By the dead.’ She did her best to drag him up, a bastard of a task since he was a corpse-weight of a sudden. When they finally got him standing he pulled her close by her coat. ‘Promise me,’ he whispered. ‘Promise me you won’t get in my way again.’
‘No.’ She laid a hand on his scarred cheek. ‘I’ll hold your bridle for you, though.’ And she did, and the horse’s face, too, and whispered calm words to it and wished there was someone to do the same to her while Lamb dragged himself up into the saddle, slow and weary, teeth gritted like it was an effort. When he got up he sat
