‘He is, in his way. He’s building a house, over on the other side of the street.’
‘That new one I’ve seen going up?’
‘Majud and Curnsbick’s Metalwork.’
‘That’s a good building. And that’s a rare thing around here. Hard to see how it’ll find your young ones, though.’
‘He’s trusting someone else to help with that.’
‘Who?’
Normally she’d have kept her cards close, so to speak, but something in his manner brought her out. ‘The Mayor.’
He took a long suck of breath. ‘I’d sooner trust a snake with my fruits than that woman with anything.’
‘She sure is a bit too smooth.’
‘Never trust someone who don’t use their proper name, I was always told.’
‘You haven’t told me your name yet.’
The big man gave a weary sigh. ‘I was hoping to avoid it. People tend to look at me different, once they know what it is.’
‘One o’ those funny ones, is it? Arsehowl, maybe?’
‘That’d be a mercy. My name’ll make no one laugh, sad to say. You’d never believe how I worked at blowing it up bigger. Years of it. Now there ain’t no getting out from under its shadow. I’ve forged the links of my own chain and no mistake.’
‘I reckon we’re all prone to do that.’
‘More’n likely.’ He stopped and offered one huge hand, and she took it, her own seeming little as a child’s in its great warm grip. ‘My name’s—’
‘Glama Golden!’
Shy saw the big man flinch a moment, and his shoulders hunch, then he slowly turned. A young man stood in the street behind. A big lad, with a scar through his lips and a tattered coat. He had an unsteady look to him made Shy think he’d been drinking hard. To puff his courage up, maybe, though folk didn’t always bother with a reason to drink in Crease. He raised an unsteady finger to point at them, and his other hand hovered around the handle of a big knife at his belt.
‘You’re the one killed Stockling Bear?’ he sneered. ‘You’re the one won all them fights?’ He spat in the mud just near their feet. ‘You don’t look much!’
‘I ain’t much,’ said the big man, softly.
The lad blinked, not sure what to do with that. ‘Well… I’m fucking calling you out, you bastard!’
‘What if I ain’t listening?’
The lad frowned at the people on the porches, all stopped their business to watch. He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, not sure of himself. Then he looked over at Shy, and took one more stab at it. ‘Who’s this bitch? Your fucking—’
‘Don’t make me kill you, boy.’ Golden didn’t say it like a threat. Pleading, almost, his eyes sadder’n ever.
The lad flinched a little, and his fingers twitched, and he came over pale. The bottle’s a shifty banker—it might lend you courage but it’s apt to call the debt in sudden. He took a step back and spat again. ‘Ain’t fucking worth it,’ he snapped.
‘No, it ain’t.’ Golden watched the lad as he backed slowly off, then turned and walked away fast. A few sighs of relief, a few shrugs, and the talk started building back up.
Shy swallowed, mouth suddenly dried out and sticky-feeling. ‘You’re Glama Golden?’
He slowly nodded. ‘Though I know full well there ain’t much golden about me these days.’ He rubbed his great hands together as he watched that lad lose himself in the crowd, and Shy saw they were shaking. ‘Hell of a thing, being famous. Hell of a thing.’
‘You’re the one standing for Papa Ring in this fight that’s coming?’
‘That I am. Though I have to say I’m hopeful it won’t happen. I hear the Mayor’s got no one to fight for her.’ His pale eyes narrowed as he looked back to Shy. ‘Why, what’ve you heard?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, trying her best to smile and failing at it. ‘Nothing at all.’
Blood Coming
It was just before dawn, clear and cold, the mud crusted with frost. The lamps in the windows had mostly been snuffed, the torches lighting the signs had guttered out and the sky was bright with stars. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, sharp as jewels, laid out in swirls and drifts and twinkling constellations. Temple opened his mouth, cold nipping at his cheeks, turning, turning until he was dizzy, taking in the beauty of the heavens. Strange, that he had never noticed them before. Maybe his eyes had been always on the ground.
‘You reckon there’s an answer up there?’ asked Bermi, his breath and his horse’s breath smoking on the dawn chill.
‘I don’t know where the answer is,’ said Temple.
‘You ready?’
He turned to look at the house. The big beams were up, most of the rafters and the window and door- frames, too, the skeleton of the building standing bold and black against the star-scattered sky. Only that morning Majud had been telling him what a fine job he was doing, how even Curnsbick would have considered his money well spent. He felt a flush of pride, and wondered when he had last felt one. But Temple was a man who abandoned everything half-done. That was a long-established fact.
‘You can ride on the packhorse. It’s only a day or two into the hills.’
‘Why not?’ A few hundred miles on a mule and his arse was carved out of wood.
Over towards the amphitheatre the carpenters were already making a desultory start. They were throwing up a new bank of seating at the open side so they could cram in a few score more onlookers, supports and cross- braces just visible against the dark hillside, bent and badly bolted, some of the timbers without the branches even properly trimmed.
‘Only a couple of weeks to the big fight.’
‘Shame we’ll miss it,’ said Bermi. ‘Better get on, the rest of the lads’ll be well ahead by now.’
Temple pushed his new shovel through one of the packhorse’s straps, moving slower, and slower, then stopping still. It had been a day or two since he’d seen Shy, but he kept reminding himself of the debt in her absence. He wondered if she was out there somewhere, still doggedly searching. You could only admire someone who stuck at a thing like that, no matter the cost, no matter the odds. Especially if you were a man who could never stick at anything. Not even when he wanted to.
Temple thought about that for a moment, standing motionless up to his ankles in half-frozen mud. Then he walked to Bermi and slapped his hand down on the Styrian’s shoulder. ‘I won’t be going. My bottomless thanks for the offer, but I’ve a building to finish. That and a debt to pay.’
‘Since when do you pay your debts?’
‘Since now, I suppose.’
Bermi gave him a puzzled look, as if he was trying to work out where the joke might be. ‘Can I change your mind?’
‘No.’
‘Your mind always shifted with the breeze.’
‘Looks like a man can grow.’
‘What about your shovel?’
‘Consider it a gift.’
Bermi narrowed his eyes. ‘There’s a woman involved, isn’t there?’
‘There is, but not in the way you’re thinking.’
‘What’s she thinking?’
Temple snorted. ‘Not that.’
