‘Go!’ she shouted at Majud, before she had the chance to change her mind. He nodded to her, and snapped the reins, and the wagon rolled on.
‘Better to do it,’ she whispered at the night sky, and she clambered back into her saddle, turned her horse about, and gave it her heels.
Answered Prayers
Temple drank. He drank like he had after his wife died. As if there was something at the bottom of the bottle he desperately needed. As if it was a race he had bet his life on. As if drinking was a profession he planned on rising right to the top of. Tried most of the others, hadn’t he?
‘You should stop,’ said Sworbreck, looking worried.
‘You should start,’ said Temple, and laughed, even if he’d never felt like laughing less. Then he burped and there was some sick in it, and he washed the taste away with another swallow.
‘You have to pace yourself,’ said Cosca, who was not pacing himself in the least. ‘Drinking is an art, not a science. You caress the bottle. You tease it. You romance it. A drink… a drink… a drink…’ kissing at the air with each repetition, eyelids flickering. ‘Drinking is like… love.’
‘What the fuck do you know about love?’
‘More than I’d like,’ answered the Old Man, a faraway look in his yellowed eye, and he gave a bitter laugh. ‘Despicable men still love Temple. Still feel pain. Still nurse wounds. Despicable men most of all, maybe.’ He slapped Temple on the back, sent a searing swig the wrong way and induced a painful coughing fit. ‘But let’s not be maudlin! We’re rich, boy! All rich. And rich men need make no apologies. To Visserine for me. Take back what I lost. What was stolen.’
‘What you threw away,’ muttered Temple, quietly enough not to be heard over the racket.
‘Yes,’ mused Cosca. ‘Soon there’ll be space for a new captain general.’ He took in the noisy, crowded, sweltering room with a sweep of his arm. ‘All this will be yours.’
It was quite a scene of debauch to cram into a one-roomed hovel, lit by a single guttering lamp and hazy with chagga smoke, noisy with laughter and conversations in several languages. Two big Northmen were wrestling, possibly in fun, possibly with the intention of killing each other, people occasionally lurching out of their way. Two natives of the Union and an Imperial bitterly complained as their table was jogged in the midst of a card-game, bottles tottering on top. Three Styrians had shared a husk-pipe and were blissfully lounging on a burst mattress in one corner, somewhere between sleep and waking. Friendly was sitting with legs crossed and rolling his dice between them, over and over and over, frowning down with furious concentration as though the answers to everything would soon appear on their dozen faces.
‘Hold on,’ muttered Temple, his pickled mind only now catching up. ‘Mine?’
‘Who better qualified? You’ve learned from the best, my boy! You’re a lot like me, Temple, I’ve always said so. Great men march often in the same direction, did Stolicus say?’
‘Like you?’ whispered Temple.
Cosca tapped his greasy grey hair. ‘Brains, boy, you’ve got the brains. Your morals can be stiff at times but they’ll soon soften up once you have to make the tough choices. You can talk well, know how to spot people’s weaknesses, and above all you understand the law. The strong-arm stuff’s all going out of fashion. I mean, there’ll always be a place for it, but the law, Temple, that’s where the money’s going to be.’
‘What about Brachio?’
‘Family in Puranti.’
‘Really?’ Temple blinked across the room at Brachio, who was in a vigorous embrace with a large Kantic woman. ‘He never mentioned them.’
‘A wife and two daughters. Who talks about their family with scum like us?’
‘What about Dimbik?’
‘Pah! No sense of humour.’
‘Jubair?’
‘Mad as a plum jelly.’
‘But I’m no soldier. I’m a fucking coward!’
‘Admirable thing in a mercenary.’ Cosca stretched forward his chin and scratched at his rashy neck with the backs of his yellowed nails. ‘I’d have done far better with a healthy respect for danger. It’s not as if you’ll be swinging the steel yourself. The job’s all talk. Blah, blah, blah and big hats. That and knowing when not to keep your word.’ He wagged a knobbly finger. ‘I was always too bloody emotional. Too bloody loyal. But you? You’re a treacherous bastard, Temple.’
‘I am?’
‘You abandoned me when it suited and found new friends, then when it suited you abandoned them and sauntered straight back without so much as a by-your-leave!’
Temple blinked at that. ‘I rather had the feeling you’d have killed me otherwise.’
Cosca waved it away. ‘Details! I’ve had you marked as my successor for some time.’
‘But… no one respects me.’
‘Because you don’t respect yourself. Doubt, Temple. Indecision. You simply worry too much. Sooner or later you have to do something, or you’ll never do anything. Overcome that, you could be a wonderful captain general. One of the greats. Better than me. Better than Sazine. Better than Murcatto, even. You might want to cut down on the drinking, though.’ Cosca tossed his empty bottle away, pulled the cork from another with his teeth and spat it across the room. ‘Filthy habit.’
‘I don’t want to do this any more,’ Temple whispered.
Cosca waved that away, too. ‘You say that all the time. Yet here you are.’
Temple lurched up. ‘Got to piss.’
The cold air slapped him so hard he nearly fell against one of the guards, sour-faced from having to stay sober. He stumbled along the wooden side of Superior Pike’s monstrous wagon, thinking how close his palm was to a fortune, past the stirring horses, breath steaming out of their nosebags, took a few crunching steps into the trees, sounds of revelry muffled behind him, shoved his bottle down in the frozen snow and unlaced with drunken fingers. Bloody hell, it was cold still. He leaned back, blinking at the sky, bright stars spinning and dancing beyond the black branches.
Captain General Temple. He wondered what Haddish Kahdia would have thought of that. He wondered what God thought of it. How had it come to this? He’d always had good intentions, hadn’t he? He’d always tried to do his best.
It’s just that his best had always been shit.
‘God?’ he brayed at the sky. ‘You up there, you bastard?’ Perhaps He was the mean bully Jubair made Him out to be, after all. ‘Just… give me a sign, will you? Just a little one. Just steer me the right way. Just… just give me a nudge.’
‘I’ll give you a nudge.’
He froze for a moment, still dripping. ‘God? Is that you?’
‘No, fool.’ There was a crunch as someone pulled his bottle out of the snow.
He turned. ‘I thought you left.’
‘Came back.’ Shy tipped the bottle up and took a swig, one side of her face all dark, the other lit by the flickering bonfire in the camp. ‘Thought you’d never come out o’ there,’ she said, wiping her mouth.
‘Been waiting?’
‘Little while. Are you drunk?’
‘Little bit.’
‘That works for us.’
‘It works for me.’
‘I see that,’ she said, glancing down.
He realised he hadn’t laced-up yet and started fumbling away. ‘If you wanted to see my cock that badly, you could just have asked.’
‘No doubt a thing o’ haunting beauty but I came for something else.’
‘Got a window needs jumping through?’
‘No. I might need your help.’
‘Might?’
‘Things run smooth you can just creep back to drowning your sorrows.’