‘No!’ snapped Majud, dragging him on. ‘We shouldn’t.’
Mercy, along with all the trappings of civilised behaviour, was a luxury they could ill afford. Majud tore out the key to their shop and thrust it into Curnsbick’s trembling hand while he faced the street, sword up.
‘Oh my,’ the inventor was saying as he struggled with the lock, ‘oh my.’
They spilled inside, into the still safety, the darkness of the shop flickering with slashes of orange and yellow and red. Majud shouldered the door shut, gasped with relief as he felt the latch drop, spun about when he felt a hand on his shoulder and nearly took Temple’s head off with his flailing sword.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ A strip of light wandered across one half of Temple’s stricken face. ‘Who won the fight?’
Majud put the point of his sword on the floor and leaned on the pommel, breathing hard. ‘Lamb tore Golden apart. Literally.’
‘Oh my,’ whimpered Curnsbick, sliding down the wall until his arse thumped against the floor.
‘What about Shy?’ asked Temple.
‘I’ve no idea. I’ve no idea about anything.’ Majud eased the door open a crack to peer out. ‘But I suspect the Mayor is cleaning house.’
The flames on Papa Ring’s side of the street were lighting the whole town in garish colours. The Whitehouse was ablaze to its top floor, fire shooting into the sky, ravenous, murderous, trees burning on the slopes above, ash and embers fluttering in the rain.
‘Shouldn’t we help?’ whispered Temple.
‘A good man of business remains neutral.’
‘Surely there’s a moment to cease being a good man of business, and try to be merely a good man.’
‘Perhaps.’ Majud heaved the door shut again. ‘But this is not that moment.’
Old Friends
‘Well, then!’ shouted Papa Ring, and he swallowed, and he blinked into the sun. ‘Here we are, I guess!’ There was a sheen of sweat across his forehead, but Temple could hardly blame him for that. ‘I haven’t always done right!’ Someone had ripped the ring from his ear and the distorted lobe flopped loose as he turned his head. ‘Daresay most of you won’t miss me none! But I’ve always done my best to keep my word, at least! You’d have to say I always kept my—’
Temple heard the Mayor snap her fingers and her man booted Ring in the back and sent him lurching off the scaffold. The noose jerked tight and he kicked and twisted, rope creaking as he did the hanged man’s dance, piss running from one of his dirty trouser-legs. Little men and big, brave men and cowards, powerful men and meagre, they all hang very much the same. That made eleven of them dangling. Ring, and nine of his henchmen, and the woman who had been in charge of his whores. A half-hearted cheer went up from the crowd, more habit than enthusiasm. Last night’s events had more than satisfied even Crease’s appetite for death.
‘And that’s the end of that,’ said the Mayor under her breath.
‘It’s the end of a lot,’ said Temple. One of the ancient pillars the Whitehouse had stood between had toppled in the heat. The other loomed strangely naked, cracked and soot-blackened, the ruins of the present tangled charred about the ruins of the past. A good half of the buildings on Ring’s side of the street had met the same fate, yawning gaps burned from the jumble of wooden shack and shanty, scavengers busy among the wreckage.
‘We’ll rebuild,’ said the Mayor. ‘That’s what we do. Is that treaty ready yet?’
‘Very nearly done,’ Temple managed to say.
‘Good. That piece of paper could save a lot of lives.’
‘I see that saving lives is our only concern.’ He trudged back up the steps without waiting for a reply. He shed no tears for Papa Ring, but he had no wish to watch him kick any longer.
With a fair proportion of the town’s residents dead by violence, fire or hanging, a larger number run off, a still larger number even now preparing to leave, and most of the rest in the street observing the conclusion of the great feud, the Mayor’s Church of Dice was eerily empty, Temple’s footsteps echoing around the smoke-stained rafters. Dab Sweet, Crying Rock and Corlin sat about one table, playing cards under the vacant gaze of the ancient armour ranged about the walls.
‘Not watching the hanging?’ asked Temple.
Corlin glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and treated him to a hiss of contempt. More than likely she had heard the story of his naked dash across the street.
‘Nearly got hanged myself one time, up near Hope,’ said Sweet. ‘Turned out a misunderstanding, but even so.’ The old scout hooked a finger in his collar and dragged it loose. ‘Strangled my enthusiasm for the business.’
‘Bad luck,’ intoned Crying Rock, seeming to stare straight through her cards, half of which faced in and the other half out. Whether it was the end of Sweet’s enthusiasm, or his near-hanging, or hanging in general that was bad luck she didn’t clarify. She was not a woman prone to clarification.
‘And when there’s death outside is the one time a man can get some room in here.’ Sweet rocked his chair back on two legs and deposited his dirty boot on the table. ‘I reckon this place has turned sour. Soon there’ll be more money in taking folk away than bringing ’em in. Just need to round up a few miserable failures desperate to see civilisation again and we’re on our way back to the Near Country.’
‘Maybe I’ll join you,’ said Temple. A crowd of failures sounded like ideal company for him.
‘Always welcome.’ Crying Rock let fall a card and started to rake in the pot, her face just as slack as if she’d lost. Sweet tossed his hand away in disgust. ‘Twenty years I been losing to this cheating bloody Ghost and she still pretends she don’t know how to play the game!’
Savian and Lamb stood at the counter, warming themselves at a bottle. Shorn of hair and beard the Northman looked younger, even bigger, and a great deal meaner. He also looked as if he had made every effort to fell a tree with his face. It was a misshapen mass of scab and bruise, a ragged cut across one cheekbone roughly stitched and his hands both wrapped in stained bandages.
‘All the same,’ he was grunting through bloated lips, ‘I owe you big.’
‘Daresay I’ll find a way for you to pay,’ answered Savian. ‘Where d’you stand on politics?’
‘These days, as far away from it as I can…’
They shut up tight when they saw Temple. ‘Where’s Shy?’ he asked.
Lamb looked at him, one eye swollen nearly shut and the other infinitely tired. ‘Upstairs in the Mayor’s rooms.’
‘Will she see me?’
‘That’s up to her.’
Temple nodded. ‘You’ve got my thanks as well,’ he said to Savian. ‘For what that’s worth.’
‘We all give what we can.’
Temple wasn’t sure whether that was meant to sting. It was one of those moments when everything stung. He left the two old men and made for the stairs. Behind him he heard Savian mutter, ‘I’m talking about the rebellion in Starikland.’
‘The one just finished?’
‘That and the next one…’
He lifted his fist outside the door, and paused. There was nothing to stop him letting it drop and riding straight out of town, to Bermi’s claim, maybe, or even on to somewhere no one knew what a disappointing cock he was. If there was any such place left in the Circle of the World. Before the impulse to take the easy way could overwhelm him, he made himself knock.
Shy’s face looked little better than Lamb’s, scratched and swollen, nose cut across the bridge, neck a mass of bruises. It hurt him to see it. Not as much as if he’d taken the beating, of course. But it hurt still. She didn’t look upset to see him. She didn’t look that interested. She left the door open, limping slightly, and showed her teeth as she sank down on a bench under the window, bare feet looking very white against the floorboards.
‘How was the hanging?’ she asked.
He stepped inside and gently pushed the door to. ‘Very much like they always are.’
