The Collected Joe Abercrombie (77 page)

‘Where is everyone?’ demanded Brother Longfoot. ‘Where is my illustrious employer? Where is Master Ninefingers? Where is the charming lady, Maljinn?’

Jezal looked around. The sickly apprentice was sunk too deep in self-centred gloom to answer. ‘I don’t know about the other two, but Bayaz is in the bath.’

‘I swear, I never came upon a man more attached to bathing than he. I hope the others will not be long. All is prepared, you know! The ship is ready. The stores are loaded. It is not my way to delay. Indeed it is not! We must catch the tide, or be stuck here until—’ The little man paused, staring up at Jezal with a sudden concern. ‘You seem upset, my young friend. Troubled, indeed. Can I, Brother Longfoot, be of any assistance?’

Jezal had half a mind to tell him to mind his own business, but he settled for an irritated, ‘No, no.’

‘I’d wager that there is a woman involved. Would I be right?’ Jezal looked up sharply, wondering how the man could have guessed. ‘Your wife, perhaps?’

‘No! I’m not married! It’s nothing like that. It’s er, well,’ he fumbled for the words to describe it, and failed. ‘It’s nothing like that is all!’

‘Ah,’ said the Navigator, with a knowing grin. ‘Ah, a forbidden love then, a secret love is it?’ Much to his annoyance, Jezal found that he was blushing. ‘I am right, I see it! There is no fruit so sweet as the one you cannot taste, eh, my young friend? Eh? Eh?’ He waggled his eyebrows in what Jezal felt was a most unsavoury fashion.

‘I wonder what’s keeping those two?’ Jezal didn’t care in the least, but anything to change the subject.

‘Maljinn, and Ninefingers? Hah,’ laughed Longfoot, leaning towards him. ‘Perhaps they’ve become involved, eh, in a secret love like yours? Perhaps they’ve crept off somewhere, to do what comes naturally!’ He nudged Jezal in the ribs. ‘Can you imagine, those two? That’d be something wouldn’t it? Hah!’

Jezal grimaced. The hideous Northman he already knew for an animal, and from what little he’d seen of that evil woman she might well be worse. All he could imagine coming naturally to them was violence. The idea was perfectly revolting. He felt soiled just thinking about it.

The roofs seemed to go on forever. Up one, down another. Creeping along the peaks, one slippery foot on either side, edging across ledges, stepping over crumbling bits of wall. Sometimes Logen would look up for a moment, get a dizzying view across the tumbling mass of damp slates, pitted tiles, ancient lead, to the distant wall of the Agriont, sometimes even the city far beyond. It might almost have been peaceful if it wasn’t for Ferro, fast-moving, sure-footed, cursing at him and pulling him on, giving him no time to think about the view, or the nerve-wracking drops they skirted, or the black figures, surely still seeking for them below.

One of her sleeves had been torn half off some time in the fighting, flapping around her wrist, getting in the way as they climbed. She snarled and ripped it away at the shoulder. Logen smiled to himself as he recalled the efforts Bayaz had gone to in getting her to change her old stinking rags for new clothes. Now she was filthier than ever, shirt sweated through, spotted with blood and caked with grime from the roof-tops. She looked over her shoulder and saw him watching her. ‘Move, pink,’ she hissed at him.

‘You see no colours, right?’ She clambered on, ignoring him, swinging around a smoking chimney and slithering across the dirty slates on her belly, sliding down onto a narrow ledge between two roofs. Logen scrambled down behind her. ‘No colours at all.’

‘So?’ she threw over her shoulder.

‘So why do you call me pink?’

She looked round. ‘Are you pink?’

Logen peered at his forearms. Aside from the mottled bruises, red scratches, blue veins, they were sort of pink, it had to be said. He frowned.

‘Thought so.’ She scurried away between the roofs, right to the end of the building, and peered down. Logen followed her, leaned out gingerly over the edge. A couple of people were moving around in the lane below. Far below, and there was no way down. They’d have to go back the way they came. Ferro had already moved away behind him.

Wind flicked at the side of Logen’s face. Ferro’s foot slapped against the edge of the roof, and then she was in the air. His jaw hung open as he watched her fly away, back arched, arms and legs flailing. She landed on a flat roof, grey lead streaked with green moss, rolled once then came up smoothly to her feet.

Logen licked his lips, pointed at his chest. She nodded. The flat roof was ten feet below, but there might have been twenty feet of empty air between him and it, and it was a long way down. He backed away slowly, giving himself a good run-up. He sucked in a couple of deep breaths, closed his eyes for a moment.

It would be perfect, in a way, if he fell. No songs, no stories. Just a bloody smear on a road somewhere. He started running. His feet thumped on the stone. The air whistled in his mouth, plucked at his torn clothes. The flat roof came flying up towards him. He landed with a shuddering impact, rolled once just as Ferro had done, stood up beside her. He was still alive.

‘Hah!’ he shouted. ‘What d’you think of that?’

There was a creaking sound, then a cracking, then the roof gave way under Logen’s feet. He grabbed despairingly at Ferro as he fell and she slid through after him, helpless. He tumbled in the air for a sickening moment, wailing, hands clutching at nothing. He crashed down on his back.

Logen coughed on choking dust, shook his head, shifted painfully. He was in a room, inky dark after the brightness outside. Dust was filtering down through the light from the ragged hole in the roof above. There was something soft under him. A bed. It had half collapsed, leaning at an angle, blankets covered in broken plaster. There was something across his legs. Ferro. He snorted a gurgling laugh to himself. In bed with a woman again, at last. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite what he’d been hoping for.

‘Stupid fucking pink!’ she snarled, scrabbling off him and over to the door, bits of wood and plaster sliding off her dusty back. She hauled on the doorknob. ‘Locked! It’s—’ Logen crashed past her, ripping the door off its hinges and sprawling out into the corridor beyond.

Ferro sprang over him. ‘Up, pink, up!’ A handy-looking length of wood had split from the edge of the door, a couple of nails sticking out of the end. Logen snatched it up in his hand. He struggled to his feet, stumbled down the corridor a few paces, came to a junction. A shadowy hallway stretched away to either side. Small windows cast sharp pools of light on the dark matting.

No way to tell which way Ferro had gone. He turned right, towards a flight of stairs.

There was a figure moving carefully down the dim corridor towards him. Long and thin like a black spider in the darkness, balanced on the balls of its feet. A chink of light shone on bright red hair.

‘You again,’ said Logen, weighing the length of wood in his hand.

‘That’s right. Me.’ There was a jingling sound, a flash of metal in the dark. Logen felt the piece of wood ripped out of his fingers and he saw it fly over the woman’s shoulder and clatter away down the corridor. Unarmed again, but she didn’t give him long to worry about it. There was something in her hand, something like a knife, and she threw it at him. He ducked out of the way and it hissed past his ear, then she jerked her other arm and something slashed him across the face, just under his eye. He lurched back against the wall, trying to understand what kind of magic he was facing.

It was like a metal cross, the thing in her hand, three curved blades, one with a hook on the end. A chain looped from a ring on the handle and disappeared up her sleeve.

The knife-thing darted out, missed Logen’s face by an inch as he bobbed away, struck a shower of sparks as it ripped back along the wall and slapped smoothly back into her hand. She let it drop, swinging gently from its chain, rattling against the floor, jumping and dancing towards him as she edged forward. She jerked her wrist and the thing shot out at Logen again, slashed across his chest as he tried to get away, spattering drops of blood against the wall.

He dived at her but his outspread arms caught nothing. There was a rattle and he felt his foot dragged from under him, his ankle snapped round painfully, caught by the chain as she ducked by. He sprawled out on his face, started to push himself up. The chain snaked under his neck. He just got his hand behind it before it snapped taut. The woman was on top of him, he could feel her knee pressing into his back, could hear her breath hissing through her mask as she pulled, the chain growing tighter and tighter, cutting into the palm of his hand.

Logen grunted, scrabbling to his knees, lumbering unsteadily to his feet. The woman was still on his back, all her weight bearing down on him, pulling at the chain as hard as she could. Logen flailed around with his free hand but he couldn’t get at her, couldn’t throw her off – she was like a barnacle stuck fast to him. He could hardly breathe now. He tottered forward a few steps, then dropped over backwards.

‘Uurgh,’ whispered the woman in his ear as his weight crushed her into the floor. The chain went slack enough for Logen to drag it clear and slither out from under it. Free. He rolled over and grabbed the woman’s neck with his left hand, started squeezing. She kneed at him, dug at him with her fists, but his weight was across her and the blows were weak. They snarled and gasped and croaked at each other, animal sounds, faces only inches apart. A couple of spots of blood dripped from the cut on his cheek and pattered on her mask. Her hand came up and started fumbling with his face, pushing his head back. Her finger forced its way up his nose.

‘Aargh!’ he screamed. Pain stabbed up into his head. He let go of her and staggered up, one hand clasped to his face. She scrambled away, coughing, landed a kick in his ribs that bent him over, but he still had a grip on the chain and he yanked on it with all his weight. Her arm snapped out and she yelped and flew straight into him, his knee sinking into her side, crushing the breath out of her. Logen grabbed hold of the back of her shirt, half lifted her off the floor and flung her down the stairs.

She rolled and flopped and bounced her way down, slid to a stop on her side near the bottom. Logen was half-tempted to follow her down and finish the job, but he had no time. There’d be more where she came from. He turned and hobbled back the other way, cursing his twisted ankle.

Sounds crept up on him from all around, echoing down the corridor from who knew where. Distant rattling and banging, shouts and cries. He stared into darkness, limping, running with sweat, one hand on the wall to steady himself. He leaned round a corner, trying to see if it was clear. He felt something cold across his neck. A knife.

‘Still alive?’ whispered a voice in his ear. ‘You don’t die easy, eh, pink?’ Ferro. He slowly pushed her arm away.

‘Where d’you get the knife?’ He wished he had one.

‘He gave it me.’ There was a crumpled shape in the shadows by the wall, the matting all round soaked with dark blood. ‘This way.’

Ferro crept off down the corridor, keeping low in the darkness. He could still hear the sounds, beneath them, beside them, all around them. They crept down a flight of stairs, out into a dim hallway panelled with dark wood. Ferro ducked from shadow to shadow, moving fast. Logen could do no more than limp after her, dragging his leg, trying not to squeal with pain whenever he put his weight on it.

‘There! It’s them!’ Figures in the dim corridor behind. He turned to run, but Ferro held her arm out. There were more, coming the other way. There was a big door on his left, standing open a crack.

‘In here!’ Logen shoved his way through and Ferro darted in after him. There was a heavy piece of furniture beside it, a big cupboard thing with shelves on top, covered in plates. Logen grabbed hold of one end and dragged it across in front of the doors, a couple of the plates dropping off and smashing on the floor. He pressed his back against it. That should hold them for a moment, at least.

A big room with a high vaulted ceiling. Two huge windows took up most of one wood-panelled wall, a big stone fireplace facing them. A long table stood between, ten chairs on either side, set for eating with cutlery and candlesticks. A big dining room, and there was only one way in. Or out.

Logen heard muffled shouting beyond the door. The big cupboard wobbled against his back. Another plate clattered from its shelf, bounced off his shoulder and smashed on the stone flags, scattering fragments across the floor.

‘Nice fucking plan,’ snarled Ferro. Logen’s feet slid as he strained to hold the teetering cupboard up. She dashed over to the nearest window, fumbled at the metal frames round the little panes, prising with her fingernails, but there was no way out.