the fruits. ‘God! What the hell’s it made of?’
‘I’ve decided it’s one of those questions you’re happier without an answer to. Like how much that finery o’ yours cost.’
‘I haggled hard,’ thumping at his chest as he tried to get his voice back. ‘You would’ve been proud.’
Shy snorted. ‘Pride ain’t common with me. And it still must’ve cost a fair sum for a man with debts.’
‘Debts, you say?’
Here was familiar ground, at least. ‘Last we spoke it was—’
‘Forty-three marks?’ Eyes sparkling with triumph, he held out one finger. A purse dangled from the tip, gently swinging.
She blinked at it, then snatched it from his finger and jerked it open. It held the confusion of different coinage you usually found in Crease, but mostly silver, and at a quick assay there could easily have been sixty marks inside.
‘You turned to thievery?’
‘Lower yet. To law. I put ten extra in there for the favour. You did save my life, after all.’
She knew she should be smiling but somehow she was doing just the opposite. ‘You sure your life’s worth that much?’
‘Only to me. Did you think I’d never pay?’
‘I thought you’d grab your first chance to wriggle out of it and run off in the night. Or maybe die first.’
Temple raised his brows. ‘That’s about what I thought. Looks like I surprised us both. Pleasantly, though, I hope.’
‘Of course,’ she lied, pocketing the purse.
‘Aren’t you going to count it?’
‘I trust you.’
‘You do?’ He looked right surprised about it and so was she, but she realised it was true. True of a lot of folk in that room.
‘If it ain’t all there I can always track you down and kill you.’
‘It’s nice to know that’s an option.’
They stood side by side, in silence, backs to the wall, watching a room full of their friends’ chatter. She glanced at him and he slowly looked sideways, like he was checking whether she was looking, and when he got there she pretended she’d been looking past him at Hedges all along. Tense having him next to her of a sudden. As if without that debt between them they were pressed up too close for comfort.
‘You did a fine job on the building,’ was the best she could manage after digging away for something to say.
‘Fine jobs and paid debts. I can think of a few acquaintances who wouldn’t recognise me.’
‘I’m not sure I recognise you.’
‘That good or bad?’
‘I don’t know.’ A long pause, and the room was getting hot from all the folk blathering in it, and her face was hot in particular, and she passed Temple the bottle, and he shrugged and took a sip and passed it back. She took a bigger one. ‘What do we talk about, now you don’t owe me money?’
‘The same things as everyone else, I suppose.’
‘What do they talk about?’
He frowned at the crowded room. ‘The high quality of my craftsmanship appears to be a popular—’
‘Your head swells any bigger you won’t be able to stand.’
‘A lot of people are talking about this fight that’s coming—’
‘I’ve heard more’n enough about that.’
‘There’s always the weather.’
‘Muddy, lately, in main street, I’ve observed.’
‘And I hear there’s more mud on the way.’ He grinned sideways at her and she grinned back, and the distance didn’t feel so great after all.
‘Will you say a few words before the fun starts?’ It was when Curnsbick loomed suddenly out of nowhere Shy realised she was already more’n a bit drunk.
‘Words about what?’ she asked.
‘I apologise, my dear, but I was speaking to this gentleman. You look surprised.’
‘Not sure which shocks me more, that I’m a dear or he’s a gentleman.’
‘I stand by both appellations,’ said the inventor, though Shy wasn’t sure what the hell he meant by it. ‘And as ex-spiritual advisor to this ex-Fellowship, and architect and chief carpenter of this outstanding edifice, what gentleman better to address our little gathering at its completion?’
Temple raised his palms helplessly as Curnsbick hustled him off and Shy took another swig. The bottle was getting lighter all the time. And she was getting less annoyed.
Probably there was a link between the two.
‘My old teacher used to say you know a man by his friends!’ Temple called at the room. ‘Guess I can’t be quite the shit I thought I was!’
A few laughs and some shouts of, ‘Wrong! Wrong!’
‘Not long ago I barely knew one person I could have called decent. Now I can fill a room I built with them. I used to wonder why anyone would come out to this God-forsaken arse of the world who didn’t have to. Now I know. They come to be part of something new. To live in new country. To be new people. I nearly died out on the plains, and I can’t say I would have been widely mourned. But a Fellowship took me in and gave me another chance I hardly deserved. Not many of them were keen to begin with, I’ll admit, but… one was, and that was enough. My old teacher used to say you know the righteous by what they give to those who can’t give back. I doubt anyone who’s had the misfortune to bargain with her would agree, but I will always count Shy South among the righteous.’
A general murmur of agreement, and some raised glasses, and he saw Corlin slapping Shy on the back and her looking sour beyond belief.
‘My old teacher used to say there is no better act than the raising of a good building. It gives something to those that live in it, and visit it, and even pass it by every day it stands. I haven’t really tried at much in life, but I’ve tried to make a good building of this. Hopefully it will stand a little longer than some of the others hereabouts. May God smile on it as He has smiled on me since I fell in that river, and bring shelter and prosperity to its occupants.’
‘And liquor is free to all!’ bellowed Curnsbick. Majud’s horrified complaints were drowned out in the stampede towards the table where the bottles stood. ‘Especially the master carpenter himself.’ And the inventor conjured a glass into Temple’s hand and poured a generous measure, smiling so broadly Temple could hardly refuse. He and drink might have had their disagreements, but if the bottle was always willing to forgive, why shouldn’t he? Was not forgiveness neighbour to the divine? How drunk could one get him?
Drunk enough for another, as it turned out.
‘Good building, lad, I always knew you had hidden talents,’ rambled Sweet as he sloshed a third into Temple’s glass. ‘Well hidden, but what’s the point in an obvious hidden talent?’
‘What indeed?’ agreed Temple, swallowing a fourth. He could not have called it a pleasant taste now, but it was no longer like swallowing red-hot wire wool. How drunk could four get him, anyway?
Buckhorm had produced a fiddle now and was hacking out a tune while Crying Rock did injury to a drum in the background. There was dancing. Or at least well-meaning clomping in the presence of music if not directly related to it. A kind judge would have called it dancing and Temple was feeling like a kind judge then, and with each drink—and he’d lost track of the exact number—he got more kind and less judging, so that when Luline Buckhorm laid small but powerful hands upon him he did not demur and in fact tested the floorboards he had laid only a couple of days before with some enthusiasm.
The room grew hotter and louder and dimmer, sweat-shining faces swimming at him full of laughter and damn it but he was enjoying himself like he couldn’t remember when. The night he joined the Company of the Gracious Hand, maybe, and the mercenary life was all a matter of good men facing fair risks together and laughing at the world and nothing to do with theft, rape and murder on an industrial scale. Lestek tried to add his pipe to the music, failed in a coughing fit and had to be escorted out for air. Temple thought he saw the Mayor, talking softly to
