Shivers had some pride still, and this prick's sniggering was starting to grate on it. He'd have liked to just knock him off his cart with an axe. But he was trying to do better, so he leaned over instead and spoke in Northern, nice and careful. "I think you've got a head full of shit, which is no surprise because your face looks like an arse. You little men are all the same. Always trying to prove how clever y'are so you've something to be proud of. But it don't matter how much you laugh at me, I've won already. You'll never be tall." And he grinned right round his face. "Seeing across a crowded room will always be a dream to you."
Morveer frowned. "And what is that jabber supposed to mean?"
"You're the fucking scientist. You work it out."
Day snorted with high laughter until Morveer caught her with a hard glance. She was still smiling, though, as she stripped the apple core to the pips and tossed it away. Shivers dropped back and watched the empty fields slither by, turned earth half-frozen with a morning frost. Made him think of home. He gave a sigh, and it smoked out against the grey sky. The friends Shivers had made in his life had all been fighters. Carls and Named Men, comrades in the line, most back in the mud, now, one way or another. He reckoned Friendly was the closest thing he'd get to that in the midst of Styria, so he gave his horse a nudge in the flanks and brought it up next to the convict.
"Hey." Friendly didn't say a word. He didn't even move his head to show he'd heard. Silence stretched out. Looking at that brick wall of a face it was hard to picture the convict a bosom companion, chuckling away at his jokes. But a man's got to clutch at some hope, don't he? "You were a soldier, then?"
Friendly shook his head.
"But you fought in battles?"
And again.
Shivers ploughed on as if he'd said yes. Not much other choice, now. "I fought in a few. Charged in the mist with Bethod's Carls north of the Cumnur. Held the line next to Rudd Threetrees at Dunbrec. Fought seven days in the mountains with the Dogman. Seven desperate days, those were."
"Seven?" asked Friendly, one heavy brow twitching with interest.
"Aye," sighed Shivers. "Seven." The names of those men and those places meant nothing to no one down here. He watched a set of covered carts coming the other way, men with steel caps and flatbows in their hands frowning at him from their seats. "Where did you learn to fight, then?" he asked, the smear of hope at getting some decent conversation drying out quick.
"In Safety."
"Eh?"
"Where they put you when they catch you for a crime."
"Why keep you safe after that?"
"They don't call it Safety because you're safe there. They call it Safety because everyone else is safe from you. They count out the days, months, years they'll keep you. Then they lock you in, deep down, where the light doesn't go, until the days, months, years have all rubbed past, and the numbers are all counted down to nothing. Then you say thank you, and they let you free."
Sounded like a barbaric way of doing things to Shivers. "You do a crime in the North, you pay a gild on it, make it right. That, or if the chieftain decides, they hang you. Maybe put the bloody cross in you, if you've done murders. Lock a man in a hole? That's a crime itself."
Friendly shrugged. "They have rules there that make sense. There's a proper time for each thing. A proper number on the great clock. Not like out here."
"Aye. Right. Numbers, and that." Shivers wished he'd never asked.
Friendly hardly seemed to hear him. "Out here the sky is too high, and every man does what he pleases when he likes, and there are no right numbers for anything." He was frowning off towards Westport, still just a sweep of hazy buildings round the cold bay. "Fucking chaos."
They got to the city walls about midday, and there was already a long line of folk waiting to get in. Soldiers stood about the gate, asking questions, going through a pack or a chest, poking half-hearted at a cart with their spear-butts.
"The Aldermen have been nervous since Borletta fell," said Morveer from his seat. "They are checking everyone who enters. I will do the talking." Shivers was happy enough to let him, since the prick loved the sound of his own voice so much.
"Your name?" asked the guard, eyes infinitely bored.
"Reevrom," said the poisoner, with a massive grin. "A humble merchant from Puranti. And these are my associates—"
"Your business in Westport?"
"Murder." An uncomfortable silence. "I hope to make a veritable killing on the sale of Osprian wines! Yes, indeed, I hope to make a killing in your city." Morveer chuckled at his own joke and Day tittered away beside him.
"This one doesn't look like the kind we need." Another guard was frowning up at Shivers.
Morveer kept chuckling. "Oh, no need to worry on his account. The man is practically a retard. Intellect of a child. Still, he is good for shifting a barrel or two. I keep him on out of sentiment as much as anything. What am I, Day?"
"Sentimental," said the girl.
"I have too much heart. Always have had. My mother died when I was very young, you see, a wonderful woman—"
"Get on with it!" someone called from behind them.
Morveer took hold of the canvas sheet covering the back of the wagon. "Do you want to check—"
"Do I look like I want to, with half of Styria to get through my bloody gate? On." The guard waved a tired hand. "Move on."
The reins snapped, the cart rolled into the city of Westport, and Murcatto and Friendly rode after. Shivers came last, which seemed about usual lately.
Beyond the walls it was crushed in tight as a battle, and not much less frightening. A paved road struck between high buildings, bare trees planted on either side, crammed with a shuffling tide of folk every shape and colour. Pale men in sober cloth, narrow-eyed women in bright silks, black-skinned men in white robes, soldiers and sell-swords in chain mail and dull plate. Servants, labourers, tradesmen, gentlemen, rich and poor, fine and stinking, nobles and beggars. An awful lot of beggars. Walkers and riders came surging up and away in a blur, horses and carts and covered carriages, women with a weight of piled-up hair and an even greater weight of jewellery, carried past on teetering chairs by pairs of sweating servants.
Shivers had thought Talins was rammed full with strange variety. Westport was way worse. He saw a line of animals with great long necks being led through the press, linked by thin chains, tiny heads swaying sadly about on top. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, but when he opened them the monsters were still there, heads bobbing over the milling crowd, not even remarked upon. The place was like a dream, and not the pleasant kind.
They turned down a narrower way, hemmed in by shops and stalls. Smells jabbed at his nose one after another—fish, bread, polish, fruit, oil, spice and a dozen others he'd no idea of—and they made his breath catch and his stomach lurch. Out of nowhere a boy on a passing cart shoved a wicker cage in Shivers' face and a tiny monkey inside hissed and spat at him, near knocking him from his saddle in surprise. Shouts battered at his ears in a score of different tongues. A kind of a chant came floating up over the top of it, louder and louder, strange but beautiful, made the hairs on his arms bristle.
A building with a great dome loomed over one side of a square, six tall turrets sprouting from its front wall, golden spikes gleaming on their roofs. It was from there the chanting was coming. Hundreds of voices, deep and high together, mingling into one.
"It's a temple." Murcatto had dropped back beside him, her hood still up, not much more of her face showing than her frown.
If Shivers was honest, he was more'n a bit feared of her. It was bad enough that he'd watched her break a man apart with a hammer and give every sign of enjoying it. But he'd had this creeping feeling afterwards, when they were bargaining, that she was on the point of stabbing him. Then there was that hand she always kept a glove on. He couldn't remember ever being scared of a woman before, and it made him shamed and nervous at once. But he could hardly deny that, apart from the glove, and the hammer, and the sick sense of danger, he liked the looks of her. A lot. He wasn't sure he didn't like the danger a bit more than was healthy too. All added up to not knowing what the hell to say from one moment to the next.