‘What gets better?’ asked Sweet.
The air rang with the rattle of thrown dice and bellowed odds, thrown insults and bellowed warnings. There was a band banging away like their lives were at stake and some drunken prospectors were singing along but didn’t know even a quarter of the words and were making up the balance with swears at random. A man reeled past clutching at a broken nose and blundered into the counter—gleaming wood and more’n likely the only thing in the place that came near clean—stretching what looked like half a mile and every inch crammed with clients clamouring for drink. Stepping back, Shy nearly tripped over a card-game. One of the players had a woman astride him, sucking at his face like he’d a gold nugget down his gullet and with just a bit more effort she’d get her tongue around it.
‘Dab Sweet?’ called a man with a beard seemed to go right up to his eyes, slapping the scout on the arm. ‘Look, Sweet’s back!’
‘Aye, and brought a Fellowship with me.’
‘No trouble with old Sangeed on the way?’
‘There was,’ said Sweet. ‘As a result of which he’s dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘No doubt o’ that.’ He jerked his thumb at Lamb. ‘It was this lad did—’
But the man with all the beard was already clambering up on the nearest table sending glasses, cards and counters clattering. ‘Listen up, all o’ you! Dab Sweet killed that fucker Sangeed! That old Ghost bastard’s dead!’
‘A cheer for Dab Sweet!’ someone roared, a surge of approval battered the mildewed rafters and the band struck up an even wilder tune than before.
‘Hold on,’ said Sweet, ‘Wasn’t me killed him—’
Lamb steered him on. ‘Silence is the warrior’s best armour, the saying goes. Just show us to the Mayor.’
They threaded through the heaving crowd, past a cage where a pair of clerks weighed out gold dust and coins in a hundred currencies and transformed it through the alchemy of the abacus to gambling chips and back. A few of the men Lamb brushed out of the way didn’t much care for it, turned with a harsh word in mind, but soon reconsidered when they saw his face. Same face that, slack and sorry, boys used to laugh at back in Squaredeal. He was a man much changed since those days, all right. Or maybe just a man revealed.
A couple of nail-eyed thugs blocked the bottom of the stairs but Sweet called, ‘These two are here to see the Mayor!’ and bundled them up with a deal of back-slappery, along a balcony overlooking the swarming hall and to a heavy door flanked by two more hard faces.
‘Here we go,’ said Sweet, and knocked.
It was a woman who answered. ‘Welcome to Crease,’ she said.
She wore a black dress with a shine to the fabric, long-sleeved and buttoned all the way to her throat. Late in her forties was Shy’s guess, hair streaked with grey. She must’ve been quite the beauty in her day, though, and her day weren’t entirely past either. She took Shy’s hand in one of hers and clasped it with the other one besides and said, ‘You must be Shy. And Lamb.’ She gave Lamb’s weathered paw the same treatment, and he thanked her too late in a creaky voice and took his battered hat off as an afterthought, sparse hair overdue for a cut left flapping at all angles.
But the woman smiled like she’d never been treated to so gallant a gesture. She shut the door and with its solid click into the frame the madness outside was shut away and all was calm and reasonable. ‘Do sit. Master Sweet has told me of your troubles. Your stolen children. A terrible thing.’ And she had such pain in her face you’d have thought it was her babies had vanished.
‘Aye,’ muttered Shy, not sure what to do with that much sympathy.
‘Would either of you care for a drink?’ She poured four healthy measures of spirit without need for an answer. ‘Please forgive this place, it’s a struggle to get good furniture out here, as you can imagine.’
‘Guess we’ll manage,’ said Shy, even though it was about the most comfortable chair she’d ever sat in and about the nicest room besides, Kantic hangings at the windows, candles in lamps of coloured glass, a great desk with a black leather top just a little stained with bottle rings.
She’d real fine manners, Shy thought, this woman, as she handed out the drinks. Not that haughty, down- the-nose kind that idiots thought lifted you above the crowd. The kind that made you feel you were worth something even if you were dog-tired and dog-filthy and had near worn the arse out of your trousers and not even you could tell how many hundred miles of dusty plain you’d covered since your last bath.
Shy took a sip, noted the drink was just as far out of her class as everything else, cleared her throat and said, ‘We were hoping to see the Mayor.’
The woman perched herself against the edge of the desk—Shy had a feeling she’d have looked comfortable sitting on an open razor—and said, ‘You are.’
‘Hoping?’
‘Seeing her.’
Lamb shifted awkwardly in his chair, like it was too comfortable for him to be comfortable in.
‘You’re a woman?’ asked Shy, head somewhat scrambled from the hell outside and the clean calm in here.
The Mayor only smiled. She did that a lot but somehow you never tired of it. ‘They have other words for what I am on the other side of the street, but, yes.’ She tossed down her drink in a way that suggested it wasn’t her first, wouldn’t be her last and wouldn’t make much difference either. ‘Sweet tells me you’re looking for someone.’
‘Man by the name of Grega Cantliss,’ said Shy.
‘I know Cantliss. Preening scum. He robs and murders for Papa Ring.’
‘Where can we find him?’ asked Lamb.
‘I believe he’s been out of town. But I expect he’ll be back before long.’
‘How long are we talking about?’ asked Shy.
‘Forty-three days.’
That kicked the guts out of her. She’d built herself up to good news, or at least to news. Kept herself going with thoughts of Pit and Ro’s smiling faces and happy hugs of reunion. Should’ve known better but hope’s like damp—however much you try to keep it out there’s always a little gets in. She knocked back the balance of her drink, not near so sweet now, and hissed, ‘Shit.’
‘We’ve come a long way.’ Lamb carefully placed his own glass on the desk, and Shy noticed with a hint of worry his knuckles were white with pressure. ‘I appreciate your hospitality, no doubt I do, but I ain’t in any mood to fuck around. Where’s Cantliss?’
‘I’m rarely in the mood to fuck around either.’ The rough word sounded double harsh in the Mayor’s polished voice, and she held Lamb’s eye like manners or no she wasn’t someone to be pushed. ‘Cantliss will be back in forty-three days.’
Shy had never been one to mope. A moment to tongue at the gap between her teeth and dwell on all the unfairness the world had inflicted on her undeserving carcass and she was on to the what nexts. ‘Where’s the magic in forty-three days?’
‘That’s when things are coming to a head here in Crease.’
Shy nodded towards the window and the sounds of madness drifting through. ‘Strikes me they always are.’
‘Not like this one.’ The Mayor stood and offered out the bottle.
‘Why not?’ said Shy, and Lamb and Sweet were turning nothing down either. Refusing to drink in Crease seemed wrong-headed as refusing to breathe. Especially when the drink was so fine and the air so shitty.
‘Eight years we’ve been here, Papa Ring and I, staring across the street at each other.’ The Mayor drifted to the window and looked out at the babbling carnage below. She had a trick of walking so smooth and graceful it seemed it must done with wheels rather’n legs. ‘There was nothing on the map out here but a crease when we arrived. Twenty shacks among the ruins, places where trappers could see out the winter.’
Sweet chuckled. ‘You were quite a sight among ’em.’
‘They soon got used to me. Eight years, while the town grew up around us. We outlasted the plague, and four raids by the Ghosts, and two more by bandits, and the plague again, and after the big fire came through we rebuilt bigger and better and were ready when they found the gold and the people started coming. Eight years,
