When Lamb faltered, she could do what needed doing. Done it before, hadn’t she, with lighter reasons and to men less deserving? She checked her knife would slip clear of her wet sleeve all right, heart thumping in her skull. She could do it again. Had to do it again.
The tavern looked a broke-down hovel from outside and a step indoors revealed no grand deception. The place made Shy come over nostalgic for Stupfer’s Meat House—a state of mind she’d never thought to entertain. A sorry tongue of fire squirmed in a hearth blackened past the point of rescue, a sour fragrance of woodsmoke and damp and rank bodies unknown to soap. The counter was a slab of old wood full of splits, polished by years of elbows and warped up in the middle. The Tavern-Keep, or maybe in this place the Hovel-Keep, stood over it wiping out cups.
Narrow and low, the place was still far from full, which on a night foul as this was a poor showing. A set of five with two women in the group Shy took for traders, and not prosperous ones, hunched about some stew at the table furthest from her. A bony man sat alone with only a cup and a wore-out look for company. She recognised that from the black-spotted mirror she used to have and figured him for a farmer. Next table a fellow slumped in a fur coat so big it near drowned him, a shock of grey hair above, a hat with a couple of greasy feathers in the band and a half-empty bottle on the wood in front of him. Opposite, upright as a judge at trial, sat an old Ghost woman with a broken sideways nose, grey hair all bound up with what looked like the tatters of an old Imperial flag, and a face so deep-lined you could’ve used it for a plate rack. If your plates hadn’t all been burned up along with your mirror and everything else you owned, that is.
Shy’s eyes crawled to the last members of the merry company like she wanted to pretend they weren’t there at all. But they were. Three men, huddled to themselves. They looked like Union men, far as you could tell where anyone was born once they were worn down by a few seasons in the dirt and weather of the Near Country. Two were young, one with a mess of red hair and a twitchy way like he’d a fly down his back. The other had a handsome shape to his face, far as Shy could tell standing to his side, a sheepskin coat cinched in with a fancy metal-studded belt. The third was older, bearded and with a tall hat, weather-stained, cocked to the side like he thought a lot of himself. Which most men do, of course, in proportion inverse to their value.
He had a sword—Shy saw the battered brass tip of the sheath poking out the slit in his coat. Handsome had an axe and a heavy knife tucked in his belt along with a coil of rope. Red Hair’s back was to her so she couldn’t tell for certain, but no doubt he was entertaining a blade or two as well.
She could hardly believe how ordinary they were. How everyday and dirty humdrum and like a thousand other drifters she’d seen floating through Squaredeal. She watched Handsome slide his hand back and tuck the thumb in that fancy belt so his fingers dangled. Just like anyone might, leaning against a counter after a long ride. Except his ride had led right through her burned-out farm, right through her smashed-up hopes, and carried her brother and sister off into who knew what darkness.
She set her jaw hard and eased into the room, sticking to the shadows, not hiding exactly but making no spectacle of herself neither. Wasn’t hard, because Lamb was doing the opposite, much against his usual grain. He’d strolled up to the other end of the counter and was leaning over it with his big fists bunched on the split wood.
‘Nice night you’ve laid on for us,’ he was saying to the Tavern-Keep, shedding his hat and making a fuss of flapping the water off it so anyone with a mind to look up was watching him. Only the old Ghost’s deep-set eyes followed Shy as she slunk around the walls, and she’d nothing to say about it.
‘Little on the rainy side, no?’ said the Keep.
‘Comes down any harder you could have a sideline in a ferry across the street.’
The Keep eyed his guests with scant delight. ‘I could do with some sort o’ business turns a profit. Hear tell there’s crowds coming through the Near Country but they ain’t crowding through here. You looking for a drink?’
Lamb pulled his gloves off and tossed them careless on the counter. ‘I’ll take a beer.’
The tender reached for a metal cup polished bright by his wiping.
‘Not that one.’ Lamb pointed at a great pottery mug, old-fashioned and dusty on a high shelf. ‘I like something I can feel the heft on.’
‘We talking about cups or women now?’ asked the Keep as he stretched up to fetch it.
‘Why not both?’ Lamb was grinning. How could he smile, now? Shy’s eyes flickered to the three men down the other end of the counter, bent quiet over their drinks.
‘Where you in from?’ asked the Keep.
‘East.’ Lamb shrugged his sodden coat off. ‘North and east, near Squaredeal.’
One of the three men, the one with the red hair, looked over at Lamb, and sniffed, and looked away.
‘That’s a distance. Might be a hundred mile.’
‘Might be more, the route I’ve took, and on a bloody ox-cart, too. My old arse is ground to sausage-meat.’
‘Well, if you’re thinking of heading further west I’d think again. Lots of folks going that way, gold-hungry. I hear they’ve got the Ghosts all stirred up.’
‘That a fact?’
‘A certainty, friend,’ threw out the man in the fur coat, sticking his head up like a tortoise from its shell. He’d about the deepest, most gravel-throated voice Shy ever heard, and she’d given ear to some worn-down tones in her time. ‘They’s stirred up all across the Far Country like you trod on an ant’s nest. Riled up and banded up and out looking for ears, just like the old days. I heard Sangeed’s even got his sword drawed again.’
‘Sangeed?’ The Keep wriggled his head around like his collar was too tight.
‘The Emperor of the Plains his self.’ Shy got the sense the old bastard was quite enjoying his scaremongering. ‘His Ghosts massacred a whole fellowship o’ prospectors out on the dusty not two weeks ago. Thirty men, maybe. Took their ears and their noses and I shouldn’t wonder got their cocks besides.’
‘What the hell do they do with them?’ asked the farmer, staring at the old Ghost woman and giving a shudder. She didn’t comment. Didn’t even move.
‘If you’re fixed on going west I’d take plenty of company, and make sure that company has a little good humour and a lot o’ good steel, so I would.’ And the old-timer sank back into his fur coat.
‘Good advice.’ Lamb lifted that big mug and took a slow swallow. Shy swallowed with him, suddenly desperate for a beer of her own. Hell, but she wanted to get out of there. Get out or get on with it. But somehow Lamb was just as patient now as when he did the ploughing. ‘I ain’t sure yet exactly where I’m headed, though.’
‘What brought you this far?’ asked the Keep.
Lamb had started rolling up his damp shirtsleeves, thick muscles in his grey-haired forearms squirming. ‘Followed some men out here.’
Red Hair looked over again, a flurry of twitches slinking through his shoulder and up his face, and this time he kept looking. Shy let the knife slide from her sleeve, out of sight behind her arm, fingers hot and tacky round the grip.
‘Why’d you do that?’ asked the Keep.
‘They burned my farm. Stole my children. Hanged my friend.’ Lamb spoke like it wasn’t much to comment on, then raised his mug.
The place had fallen so silent of a sudden you could hear him swallow. One of the traders had turned to look over, brow all crinkled up with worry. Tall Hat reached for his cup and Shy saw the tendons start from the back of his hand, he was gripping on so tight. Leef picked out that moment to ease through the door and hover on the threshold, wet and pale and not knowing what to do with himself. But everyone was too fixed on Lamb to pay him any mind.