‘Shevedieh.’ Javre patted her hand and gently peeled her fingers away. ‘When you have only one choice, there is no purpose waiting to make it. I accept.’
‘Well, then.’ Shev glanced over at Carcolf and gave a long, shuddering, painful sigh, her puffed chest rapidly collapsing. ‘Guess I’ll be stealing a thing off a wizard.’
Javre had a little smile at the corner of her mouth as she glanced down at her. ‘You and I, side by side?’
‘That’s where a sidekick belongs, no? You can do the fighting, I can do the complaining.’
‘Just the way it has always been.’
‘How else would it be?’
Javre’s smile curled up a little further. ‘I appreciate the offer, Shevedieh. It means … more than you can know. But you have earned the chance at something better. Some things one has to do alone.’
‘Javre-’
‘If I die, drowned in some bog, or spitted by some guard, or roasted by some wizard’s Art, well, it will be some consolation to know that my partner lived to be old and shrivelled, still telling tall tales of our high adventures together.’
Shev blinked. Strange, how a day before all she could think of were the bad times. The thousand hurts, the million arguments, the nights spent on the stony ground. Now all the good came up at once and choked her. The laughter, the songs, the knowing there was always, always someone at her back. She tried to smile but her sight was swimming. ‘It’s been something, though, hasn’t it?’
‘It has,’ said Javre, glancing over to Carcolf. ‘Look after her.’
Carcolf swallowed. ‘I’ll try.’
‘Fail, and there will be no place in the Circle of the World where you will be safe from me.’ She laid that great, heavy, comforting hand on Shev’s shoulder one more time. ‘Fare you well, my friend.’ And she turned away, towards her mother.
‘Fare you well,’ whispered Shev, wiping her eyes.
Carcolf took her gently by the shoulders from behind and drew her close. ‘Let’s go home.’
‘You should come talk to me!’ called Horald after her. ‘I can always find work for the best thief in-’
‘Go fuck yourself, Horald,’ said Shev.
When they got back there, her place was still killed.
‘Nothing broken that can’t be fixed.’ Carcolf righted Shev’s ruined table and brushed some broken plaster off it with the back of her hand. ‘We’ll get it all put right in no time. I know people.’
‘Seems you know everyone,’ muttered Shev, numbly, tossing down her bag.
‘We’ll take a trip. Just you and me. Change of scene.’ Carcolf had hardly stopped talking since they rowed away from Carp Island. As if she was worried by what might be said if she left a gap. ‘Jacra, maybe. Or the Thousand Isles? I’ve never been. You always said the Isles are beautiful.’
‘Javre thought so,’ muttered Shev.
Carcolf paused, then pressed on as if the name hadn’t been mentioned at all. ‘When we get back it’ll all be so much better. You’ll see. Let me change. Then we’ll go out. We’ll do something fun.’
‘Fun.’ Shev flopped onto the one intact chair. She was the one who really needed to change but she couldn’t be bothered. She hardly had the strength to stand.
‘You remember what it is?’
Shev forced out a weak grin. ‘Maybe you can remind me.’
‘Of course I can.’ Carcolf smiled. ‘Fun’s my middle name.’
‘Oh? So it’s just your first name I’m missing.’
‘What kind of a mysterious beauty would I be without any mysteries?’ And Carcolf consummately acted the part of a mysterious beauty over her shoulder as the bedroom door swung shut.
Shev winced, bruised side aching as she squirmed out of her coat, tools clattering as it dropped to the floor, a loose smoke bomb rolling free through the mess. She slumped down, elbows on her knees, chin on her hands.
Javre was out of her life. Carcolf was in it. She was square with Horald the Finger. Everything she’d wanted, wasn’t it?
So why did she feel so bloody miserable?
There was a soft knock at the door and Shev frowned as she looked up. Another knock. She slid out her sword-eater, held it down by her right side as she stood, and with her left hand nudged the door open a crack.
There was a twitchy youth out in the stairwell with big ears and a rash of spots around his mouth.
‘You Carcolf?’ He squinted through the gap. ‘You’re shorter than I thought you’d be.’
‘I’m shorter than I hoped I’d be,’ snapped Shev. ‘Reckon my height’s a disappointment to us both.’
The lad shrugged. ‘Disappointment’s part of life.’ And he held out a folded paper between two fingers.
‘Everyone’s a fucking philosopher.’ Shev opened the door wide enough to pluck it free, then shouldered it shut and turned the key. A letter, with Carcolf written on the front in a slanted hand. Something familiar about the writing. Something that picked at her.
She tossed it down on the scarred tabletop and frowned at it while Carcolf started singing in the bedroom. Bloody hell, she even sang well.
If you want to be a fine new person with a fine new life you’ve got to put the person you were behind you, like a snake sheds its skin. You’ve got to stop picking through your hoard of hurts and grievances like a miser with his coins, set ’em down and allow yourself to go free. You’ve got to forgive and you’ve got to trust, not because anyone else deserves it, but because you do.
Shev took a hard breath and turned away from the letter.
Then she turned back, snatched it up and slashed it wide open with the sword-eater.
No one changes that much. Not all at once.
She knew the hand, now she saw more of it. The same one that had written the note Horald the Finger had put his mark to. The note that had been left here in her ruined place. The note that had drawn her and Javre out to Burroia’s Fort.
Carcolf, my old friend
Just wanted to thank you again for your help. No one spins a story like you. Pleasure to watch you work, as always. If you come through Westport again I’ll have more for you, and well paid. I’ve always got things that need taking from here to there.
Hope it all went well with my father in Talins. I swear, you’re the one woman he holds in higher regard than me.
Stay careful,
Leanda
Shev’s eyes went wider and wider as she read, the cogs upstairs spinning at triple speed.
Leanda. Horald’s oh-so-competent daughter running things in Westport.
My old friend. Carcolf might know everyone, but these were tighter ties than she’d ever given a hint of.
Hope it all went well with my father in Talins. Shev looked up and saw Carcolf standing in the doorway in her underwear. A sight she would’ve swum oceans for once. It gave her scant happiness now.
Carcolf blinked from Shev’s stricken face to the letter, and back, and slowly held up a calming palm, as if Shev was a skittish pony that a sudden move might startle. ‘Now, listen to me. This isn’t what it looks like.’
‘No?’ Shev slowly turned the letter around. ‘Because it looks like you’re about as tight as can be with Horald and his family, and this whole fucking business was your idea!’
Carcolf gave a guilty little grin. A toddler caught with stolen jam all around her face. ‘Then, maybe … it is what it looks like.’
Shev just stood and stared. Again. The old violinist chose that moment to strike up in the square outside, overplaying the hell out of a plaintive little piece, but Shev didn’t feel like dancing to it, and like laughing at it even less. Seemed a fitting accompaniment to the collapse of her pathetic little self-deceptions. God, why did she insist on demanding from people what she knew they could never give her? Why did she insist on making the same mistakes over and over? Why was she fooled so easily, every time?