‘Well, it happens,’ said Severard.
‘Sadly, yes.’
‘Not our problem, is it?’
‘Happily, no.’
‘Want me to drag her into the street?’
‘Yes, I want that quite a lot.’ And Shev rolled her eyes skywards and gave another sigh, maybe even wearier than the last. ‘But we’d best drag her inside, I reckon.’
‘You sure, boss? You remember the last time we helped someone out-’
‘Sure? No.’ Shev didn’t know, after all the shit that had been done to her, why she still felt the need to do small kindnesses. Maybe because of all the shit that had been done to her. Maybe there was some stubborn stone in her, like the stone in a date, that refused to let all the shit that had been done to her make her into shit. She turned the key and elbowed the door wobbling open. ‘You get her feet.’
When you run a Smoke House you’d better get good at shifting limp bodies, but the latest recipient of Shev’s half-arsed charity proved quite the challenge.
‘Bloody hell,’ grunted Severard, eyes popping as they manhandled the woman down the stale-smelling corridor, her backside scuffing the boards. ‘What’s she made of, anvils?’
‘Anvils are lighter,’ groaned Shev through her gritted teeth, waddling from side to side under the dead weight of her, bouncing off the peeling walls. She gasped as she kicked open the door to her office – or the broom-cupboard she called an office. She strained with every burning muscle as she hauled the woman up, knocked her limp head on the doorframe as she wrestled her through, then tripped on a mop and with a despairing squawk toppled back onto the cot with the woman on top of her.
In bed under a redhead was nothing to object to, but Shev preferred them at least partly conscious. Preferred them sweeter-smelling, too, at least when they got into bed. This one stank like sour sweat and rot and the very end of things.
‘That’s where kindness gets you,’ said Severard, chuckling away to himself. ‘Wedged under a mighty weight of trouble.’
‘You going to giggle or help me out, you bastard?’ snarled Shev, slack springs groaning as she struggled from underneath, then hauled the woman’s legs onto the bed, feet dangling well off the end. It wasn’t a big bed, but it looked like a child’s with her on it. Her ragged coat had fallen open and the stained leather vest she wore beneath it had got dragged right up.
When Shev spent a year tumbling with that travelling show there’d been a strongman called himself the Amazing Zaraquon, though his real name had been Runkin. Used to strip to the waist and oil himself up and lift all kinds of heavy things for the crowd, though once he was offstage and towelled down you couldn’t get the lazy oaf to lift a thimble for you. His stomach had been all jutting knots of muscle as if beneath his tight-stretched skin he was made of wood rather than meat.
This woman’s pale midriff reminded Shev of the Amazing Zaraquon’s, but narrower, longer and even leaner. You could see all the little sinews in between her ribs shifting with each shallow breath. But instead of oil her stomach was covered in black and blue and purple bruises, plus a great red welt that looked like it had been left by a most unfriendly axe-handle.
Severard whistled softly. ‘They really did give her a beating, didn’t they?’
‘Aye, they did.’ Shev knew well enough what that felt like, and she winced as she twitched the woman’s vest down, then dragged the blanket up and laid it over her. Tucked it in a little around her neck, though she felt a fool doing it, and the woman mumbled something and twisted onto her side, matted hair fluttering over her mouth as she started to snore.
‘Sweet dreams,’ Shev muttered, not that she ever got any herself. Wasn’t as if she really needed a bed here, but when you’ve spent a few years with nowhere safe to sleep, you tend to make a bed in every halfway safe place you can find. She shook the memories off and herded Severard back into the corridor. ‘Best get the doors open. We aren’t pulling in so much business we can let it slip by.’
‘Folk really after husk at this time in the morning?’ asked Severard, trying to wipe a smear of the woman’s blood off his hand.
‘If you want to forget your troubles, why live with them till lunchtime?’
By daylight the smoking room was far from the alluring little cave of wonders Shev had dreamed of making when she bought the place. She planted her hands on her hips as she looked around and gave that weary sigh again. Fact was it bore more than a passing resemblance to an utter shit-hole. The boards were split and stained and riddled with splinters and the cushions greasy as a Baolish kitchen and one of the cheap hangings had come away to show the mould-blooming plaster behind. The Prayer Bells on the shelf were the only things that lent the faintest touch of class, and Shev gave the big one an affectionate stroke, then went up on tiptoe to pin the corner of that hanging back where it belonged, so at least the mould was hidden from her eyes even if her nose was still well aware of it, the smell of rotten onions all-pervasive.
Even a liar as practised as Shev couldn’t have convinced a fool as gullible as Shev that it wasn’t a shit-hole. But it was her shit-hole. And she had plans to improve it. She always had plans.
‘You clean the pipes?’ she asked as Severard stomped back from opening the doors, brushing the curtain aside.
‘The folk who come here don’t care about clean pipes, boss.’
Shev frowned. ‘I care. We may not have the biggest place, or the most comfortable, or the best husk -’ she raised her brows at Severard’s spotty face ‘- or the prettiest folk to light it for you, so what’s our advantage over our competitors?’
‘We’re cheap?’
‘No, no, no.’ She thought about that. ‘Well, yes. But what else?’
Severard sighed. ‘Customer service?’
‘Ding,’ said Shev, flicking the biggest Prayer Bell and making it give off that heavenly song. ‘So clean the pipes, you lazy shit, and get some coals lit.’
Severard puffed out his cheeks, patched with the kind of downy beard that’s meant to make a boy look manly but actually makes him look all the more boyish. ‘Yes, boss.’
As he went out the back Shev heard footsteps coming in the front, and she propped her hands on the counter – or the hacked-up piece of butcher’s block she’d salvaged off a rubbish heap and polished smooth – and put on her professional manner. She’d copied it from Gusman the carpet-seller, who was the best damn merchant she knew. He had a way of looking like a carpet was sure to be the answer to all your problems.
The professional manner slid off straight away when Shev saw who came strutting into her place.
‘Carcolf,’ she breathed.
God, Carcolf was trouble. Tall, blonde, beautiful trouble. Sweet-smelling, sweet-smiling, quick-thinking, quick-fingered trouble as subtle as the rain and as trustworthy as the wind. Shev looked her up and down. Her eyes didn’t give her much choice in the matter. ‘Well, my day’s looking better,’ she muttered.
‘Mine, too,’ said Carcolf, brushing past the curtain so the sunlight shone through her hair from behind. ‘It’s been too long, Shevedieh.’
The room looked vastly improved with Carcolf in it. You wouldn’t find a better ornament than her in any bazaar in Westport. Her clothes weren’t tight but they stuck in all the right places, and she had this way of cocking her hips. God, those hips. They went all over the place, like they weren’t attached to a spine like everyone else’s. Shev heard she’d been a dancer. The day she quit had been a loss to dancing and a gain to fraud, without a doubt.