‘Bad men, these, with no scruple,’ he went on. ‘They been stealing children all across the Near Country and leaving folk hanging in their wake. Might be a dozen I’ve buried the last few days.’
‘How many of the bastards?’
‘About twenty.’
‘Do we need to get a band up and seek ’em out?’ Though the Keep looked like he’d far rather stay and wipe his cups some more, and who could blame him?
Lamb shook his head. ‘No point. They’ll be long gone.’
‘Right. Well. Reckon justice’ll be catching up with ’em, sooner or later. Justice is always following, they say.’
‘Justice can have what’s left when I’m done.’ Lamb finally had his sleeves rolled how he wanted and turned sideways, leaning easy against the counter, looking straight at those three men at its far end. Shy hadn’t known what to expect, but not this, not Lamb just grinning and chatting like he’d never known a worry. ‘When I said they’ve gone that ain’t quite all the truth. Three broke off from the rest.’
‘That a fact?’ Tall Hat spoke up, snatching the conversation from the Keep like a thief snatching a purse.
Lamb caught his eye and held it. ‘A certainty.’
‘Three men, you say?’ Handsome’s fussing hand crept round his belt towards his axe. The mood of the place had shifted fast, the weight of coming violence hanging heavy as a storm cloud in that little room.
‘Now look,’ said the Keep, ‘I don’t want no trouble in my—’
‘I didn’t want no trouble,’ said Lamb. ‘It blew in anyway. Trouble’s got a habit that way.’ He pushed his wet hair out of his face, and his eyes were wide open and bright, bright, mouth open too, breathing fast, and he was smiling. Not like a man working his way up to a hard task. Like a man enjoying getting to a pleasant one, taking his time about it like you might over a fine meal, and of a sudden Shy saw all those scars anew, and felt this coldness creeping up her arms and down her back and every hair on her standing.
‘I tracked those three,’ said Lamb. ‘Picked up their trail and two days I’ve followed it.’
Another breathless pause, and the Keep took a step back, cup and cloth still limp in his hands, the ghost of a smile still clinging to his face but the rest all doubt. The three had turned to face Lamb, spreading out a little, backs to Shy, and she found herself easing forwards like she was wading through honey, out of the shadows towards them, tingling fingers shifting around the knife’s handle. Every moment was a drawn-out age, breath scratching, catching in every throat.
‘Where’d the trail lead?’ asked Tall Hat, voice cracking at the end and tailing off.
Lamb’s smile spread wider. The smile of a man got exactly what he wanted on his birthday. ‘The ends o’ your fucking legs.’
Tall Hat twitched his coat back, cloth flapping as he went for his sword.
Lamb flung the big mug at him underhand. It bounced off his head and sent him tumbling in a shower of beer.
A chair screeched as the farmer tried to stumble up and ended tripping over it.
The red-haired lad took a step back, making room or just from shock and Shy slipped her knife around his neck and pressed the flat into it, folding him tight with the other arm.
Someone shouted.
Lamb crossed the room in one spring. He caught Handsome’s wrist just as he pulled his axe free, wrenched it up and with the other hand snatched the knife from his fancy belt and rammed it in his groin, dragging up the blade, ripping him wide open, blood spraying the pair of them. He gave a gurgling scream appalling loud in that narrow space and dropped to his knees, eyes goggling as he tried to hold his guts in. Lamb smashed him across the back of the head with the pommel of the knife, cut his scream off and laid him out flat.
One of the trader women jumped up, hands over her mouth.
The red-haired one Shy had a hold of squirmed and she squeezed him tighter and whispered, ‘Shush,’ grinding the point of her knife into his neck.
Tall Hat floundered up, hat forgotten, blood streaming from the gash the mug had made across his forehead. Lamb caught him around the neck, lifting him easily as if he was made of rags, and smashed his face into the counter, again with a crunch like a breaking pot, again head flopping like a doll’s, and blood spotted the Keep’s apron, and the wall behind him, and the ceiling, too. Lamb lifted the knife high, flash of his face still stretched wide in that crazy grin, then the blade was a metal blur, through the man’s back and with an almighty crack left a split down the length of the bar, splinters flying. Lamb left him nailed there, knees just clear of the floor and his boots scraping at the boards, blood tip-tapping around them like a spilled drink.
All took no longer than Shy would’ve needed to take three good breaths, if she hadn’t been holding hers the while. She was hot now, and dizzy, and the world was too bright. She was blinking. Couldn’t quite get a hold on what had happened. She hadn’t moved. She didn’t move. No one did. Only Lamb, walking forward, eyes gleaming with tears and one side of his face black-dashed and speckled and his bared teeth glistening in his mad smile and each breath a soft growl in his throat like a lover’s.
Red Hair whimpered, ‘Fuck, fuck,’ and Shy pushed the flat of the knife harder into his neck and shushed him up again. He’d a big blade halfway to a sword tucked in his belt and with her free hand she slid that out. Then Lamb was looming over the shrinking pair of them, his head near brushing the low rafters, and he twisted a fistful of the lad’s shirt and jerked him out of Shy’s limp grip.
‘Talk to me.’ And he hit the lad across the face, open-handed but hard enough to knock him down if he hadn’t been held up.
‘I…’ muttered the lad.
Lamb slapped him again, the sound loud as a clap, the traders up the far end flinching at it but not a one moving. ‘Talk.’
‘What d’you—’
‘Who was in charge?’
‘Cantliss. That’s his name.’ The lad started blathering, words tumbling over each other all slobbery like he couldn’t say them fast enough. ‘Grega Cantliss. Didn’t know how bad a crew they was, just wanted to get from here to there and make a bit of money. I was in the ferrying business back east and one day the rain come up and the ferry got swep’ away and—’ Slap. ‘We didn’t want it, you got to believe—’ Slap. ‘There’s some evil ones in with ’em. A Northman called Blackpoint, he shot an old man with arrows. They laughed at it.’
‘See me laughing?’ said Lamb, cuffing him again.
The red-haired lad held up one useless, shaking hand. ‘I didn’t laugh none! We didn’t want no part of all them killings so we split off! Supposed to be just some robbing, Cantliss told us, but turned out it was children we was stealing, and—’
Lamb cut him off with a slap. ‘Why’d he take the children?’ And he set him talking with another, the lad’s freckled face cut and swelling down one side, blood smearing his nose.
‘Said he had a buyer for ’em, and we’d all be rich men if we got ’em there. Said they weren’t to be hurt, not a hair on their heads. Wanted ’em perfect for the journey.’
Lamb slapped him again, opening another cut. ‘Journey where?’
‘To Crease, he said, to begin with.’
‘That’s up at the head of the Sokwaya,’ said Shy. ‘Right the way across the Far Country.’
‘Cantliss got a boat waiting. Take him upriver… upriver…’
‘To Crease and then where?’
The red-haired lad had slumped in half a faint, lids fluttering. Lamb slapped him again, both sides, shook him by his shirt. ‘To Crease and then where?’