off.’
‘Except the moustache.’ Golden gathered up the sheet so he could stroke at his top lip with huge thumb and forefinger. ‘Had that all my life and it’s going nowhere.’
‘A most resplendent article of facial hair,’ said Faukin, though in truth he could see more than a few grey hairs despite the poor light. ‘To remove it would be a deep regret.’
In spite of being the undoubted favourite in the coming contest, Golden’s eyes had a strange, haunted dampness as they found Faukin’s in the mirror. ‘You got regrets?’
Faukin lost his blank, bland, professional smile for a moment. ‘Don’t we all, sir?’ He began to cut. ‘But I suppose regrets at least prevent one from repeating the same mistakes.’
Golden frowned at himself in that cracked mirror. ‘I find however high I stack the regrets, I still make the same mistakes again and again.’
Faukin had no answer for that, but the barber holds the advantage in such circumstances: he can let the scissors fill the silence. Snip, snip, and the yellow cuttings scattered across the boards in those tantalising patterns that looked to hold some meaning one could never quite grasp.
‘Been over there with the Mayor?’ called Papa Ring from the window.
‘Yes, sir, I have.’
‘How’d she seem?’
Faukin thought about the Mayor’s demeanour and, more importantly, about what Papa Ring wanted to hear. A good barber never puts truth before the hopes of his clients. ‘She seemed very tense.’
Ring stared back out of the window, thick thumb and fingers fussing nervously behind his back. ‘I guess she would be.’
‘What about the other man?’ asked Golden. ‘The one I’m fighting?’ Faukin stopped snipping for a moment. ‘He seemed thoughtful. Regretful. But fixed on his purpose. In all honesty… he seemed very much like you.’ Faukin did not mention what had only just occurred.
That he had, in all likelihood, given one of them their last haircut.
Bee was mopping up when he passed by the door. She hardly even had to see him, she knew him by his footsteps. ‘Grega?’ She dashed out into the hall, heart going so hard it hurt. ‘Grega!’
He turned, wincing, like hearing her say his name made him sick. He looked tired, more’n a little drunk, and sore. She could always tell his moods. ‘What?’
She’d made up all kinds of little stories about their reunion. One where he swept her into his arms and told her they could get married now. One where he was wounded and she’d to nurse him back to health. One where they argued, one where they laughed, one where he cried and said sorry for how he’d treated her.
But she hadn’t spun no stories where she was just ignored.
‘That all you got to say to me?’
‘What else would there be?’ He didn’t even look her in the eye. ‘I got to go talk to Papa Ring.’ And he made off up the hall.
She caught his arm. ‘Where are the children?’ Her voice all shrill and bled out from her own disappointment.
‘Mind your own business.’
‘I am. You made me help, didn’t you? You made me bring ’em!’
‘You could’ve said no.’ She knew it was true. She’d been so keen to please him she’d have jumped in a fire on his say-so. Then he gave a little smile, like he’d thought of something funny. ‘But if you must know, I sold ’em.’
She felt cold to her stomach. ‘To who?’
‘Those Ghosts up in the hills. Those Dragon fuckers.’
Her throat was all closed up, she could hardly talk. ‘What’ll they do with ’em?’
‘I don’t know. Fuck ’em? Eat ’em? What do I care? What did you think I was going to do, start up an orphanage?’ Her face was burning now, like he’d slapped her. ‘You’re such a stupid sow. Don’t know that I ever met anyone stupider than you. You’re stupider than—’
And she was on him and tearing at his face with her nails and she’d probably have bitten him if he hadn’t hit her first, just above the eye, and she tumbled into the corner and caught a faceful of floor.
‘You mad bitch!’ She started to push herself up, all groggy, that familiar pulsing in her face, and he was touching his scratched cheek like he couldn’t believe it. ‘What did you do that for?’ Then he was shaking out his fingers. ‘You hurt my fucking hand!’ And he took a step towards her as she tried to stand and kicked her in the ribs, folded her gasping around his boot.
‘I hate you,’ she managed to whisper, once she was done coughing.
‘So?’ And he looked at her like she was a maggot.
She remembered the day he’d chosen her out of all the room to dance with and nothing had ever felt so fine, and of a sudden it was like she saw the whole thing fresh, and he seemed so ugly, so petty and vain and selfish beyond enduring. He just used people and threw them away and left a trail of ruin behind him. How could she ever have loved him? Just because for a few moments he’d made her feel one step above shit. The rest of the time ten steps below.
‘You’re so small,’ she whispered at him. ‘How did I not see it?’
He was pricked in his vanity then and he took another step at her, but she found her knife and whipped it out. He saw the blade, and for a moment he looked surprised, then he looked angry, then he started laughing like she was a hell of a joke.
‘As if you’ve got the bones to use it!’ And he sauntered past, giving her plenty of time to stab him if she’d wanted to. But she just knelt there, blood leaking out her nose and tapping down the front of her dress. Her best dress, which she’d worn three days straight ’cause she knew he’d be coming.
Once the dizziness had passed she got up and went to the kitchen. Everything was trembling but she’d taken worse beatings and worse disappointments, too. No one there so much as raised a brow at her bloody nose. The Whitehouse was that kind of place.
‘Papa Ring said I need to feed that woman.’
‘Soup in the pot,’ grunted the cook’s boy, perched on a box to look out of a high little window where all he got was a view of boots outside.
So she put a bowl on a tray with a cup of water and carried it down the damp-smelling stair to the cellar, past the big barrels in the darkness and the bottles on the racks gleaming with the torchlight.
The woman in the cage uncrossed her legs and stood, sliding her tight-bound hands up the rail behind her, one eye glinting through the hair tangled across her face as she watched Bee come closer. Warp sat in front at his table, ring of keys on it, pretending to read a book. He loved to pretend, thought it made him look right special, but even Bee, who weren’t no wonder with her letters, could tell he had it upside down.
‘What d’you want?’ And he turned a sneer on her like she was a slug in his breakfast.
‘Papa Ring said to feed her.’
She could almost see his brain rattling around in his big fat head. ‘Why? Ain’t like she’ll be here much longer.’
‘You think he tells me why?’ she snapped. ‘But I’ll go back and tell Papa you wouldn’t let me in if you—’
‘All right, get it done, then. But I’ve got my eye on you.’ He leaned close and blasted her with his rotting breath. ‘Both eyes.’
He unlocked the gate and swung it squealing open and Bee ducked inside with her tray. The woman watched her. She couldn’t move far from the rail, but even so she was backed up tight against it. The cage smelled of sweat and piss and fear, the woman’s and all the others’ who’d been kept in here before and no bright futures among ’em, that was a fact. No bright futures anywhere in this place.
Bee set the tray down and took the cup of water. The woman sucked at it thirstily, no pride left in her if she’d had any to begin with. Pride don’t last long in the Whitehouse, and especially not down here. Bee leaned close and whispered.
‘You asked me about Cantliss before. About Cantliss and the children.’
The woman stopped swallowing and her eyes flickered over to Bee’s, bright and wild.
‘He sold the children to the Dragon People. That’s what he said.’ Bee looked over her shoulder but Warp was
