Music was drifting from somewhere as she ducked beneath a flaking archway. A violinist either tuning up or of execrable quality. Neither would have surprised her. Papers flapped and rustled on a wall sprouting with moss, ill-printed bills exhorting the faithful citizenry to rise up against the tyranny of the Snake of Talins. Carcolf snorted. Most of Sipani’s citizens were more interested in falling over than rising up, and the rest were anything but faithful.
She twisted about to tug at the seat of her trousers, but it was hopeless. How much did you have to pay for a new suit of clothes before you avoid a chafing seam in the very worst place? She hopped along a narrow way beside a stagnant section of canal, long out of use, gloopy with algae and bobbing rubbish, plucking the offending fabric this way and that to no effect. Damn this fashion for tight trousers! Perhaps it was some kind of cosmic punishment for her paying the tailor with forged coins. But then Carcolf was considerably more moved by the concept of local profit than that of cosmic punishment, and therefore strove to avoid paying for anything wherever possible. It was practically a principle with her, and her father always said that a person should stick to their principles-
Bloody hell, she really was turning into her father.
‘Ha!’
A ragged figure sprang from an archway, the faintest glimmer of steel showing. With an instinctive whimper Carcolf stumbled back, fumbling her coat aside and drawing her own blade, sure that death had found her at last. The Quarryman one step ahead? Or was it Deep and Shallow, or Kurrikan’s hirelings … but no one else showed themselves. Only this one man, swathed in a stained cloak, unkempt hair stuck to pale skin by the damp, a mildewed scarf masking the bottom part of his face, bloodshot eyes round and scared above.
‘Stand and deliver!’ he boomed, somewhat muffled by the scarf.
Carcolf raised her brows. ‘Who even says that?’
A slight pause, while the rotten waters slapped the stones beside them. ‘You’re a woman?’ There was an almost apologetic turn to the would-be robber’s voice.
‘If I am, will you not rob me?’
‘Well … er …’ The thief deflated somewhat, then drew himself up again. ‘Stand and deliver anyway!’
‘Why?’ asked Carcolf.
The point of the robber’s sword drifted uncertainly. ‘Because I have a considerable debt to … that’s none of your business!’
‘No, I mean, why not just stab me and strip my corpse of valuables, rather than giving me the warning?’
Another pause. ‘I suppose … I hope to avoid violence? But I warn you I am entirely prepared for it!’
He was a bloody civilian. A mugger who had blundered upon her. A random encounter. Talk about chance being a bastard. For him, at least. ‘You, sir,’ she said, ‘are a shitty thief.’
‘I, madam, am a gentleman.’
‘You, sir, are a dead gentleman.’ Carcolf stepped forward, weighing her blade, a stride-length of razor steel lent a ruthless gleam by a lamp in a window somewhere above. She could never be bothered to practise, but nonetheless she was beyond passable with a sword. It would take a great deal more than this stick of gutter trash to get the better of her. ‘I will carve you like-’
The man darted forward with astonishing speed, there was a scrape of steel and before Carcolf even thought of moving, the sword was twitched from her fingers and skittered across the greasy cobbles to plop into the canal.
‘Ah,’ she said. That changed things. Plainly her attacker was not the bumpkin he appeared to be, at least when it came to swordplay. She should have known. Nothing in Sipani is ever quite as it appears.
‘Hand over the money,’ he said.
‘Delighted.’ Carcolf plucked out her purse and tossed it against the wall, hoping to slip past while he was distracted. Alas, he pricked it from the air with impressive dexterity and whisked his sword-point back to prevent her escape. It tapped gently at the lump in her coat.
‘What have you got … just there?’
From bad to much, much worse. ‘Nothing, nothing at all.’ Carcolf attempted to pass it off with a false chuckle but that ship had sailed and she, sadly, was not aboard, any more than she was aboard the damn ship still rocking at the wharf for the voyage to Thond. She steered the glinting point away with one finger. ‘Now, I have an extremely pressing engagement, so if-’ There was a faint hiss as the sword slit her coat open.
Carcolf blinked. ‘Ow.’ There was a burning pain down her ribs. The sword had slit her open, too. ‘Ow!’ She subsided to her knees, deeply aggrieved, blood oozing between her fingers as she clutched them to her side.
‘Oh … oh no. Sorry. I really … really didn’t mean to cut you. Just wanted, you know …’
‘Ow.’ The item, now slightly smeared with Carcolf’s blood, dropped from the gashed pocket and tumbled across the cobbles. A slender package perhaps a foot long, wrapped in stained leather.
‘I need a surgeon,’ gasped Carcolf, in her best I-am-a-helpless-woman voice. The grand duchess had always accused her of being overdramatic, but if you can’t be dramatic at a time like this, when can you? It was likely she really did need a surgeon, after all, and there was a chance the robber would lean down to help her and she could stab the bastard in the face with her knife. ‘Please, I beg you!’
He loitered, eyes wide, the whole thing plainly gone further than he had intended. But he edged closer only to reach for the package, the glinting point of his sword still levelled at her.
A different and even more desperate tack, then. She strove to keep the panic out of her voice. ‘Look, take the money, I wish you joy of it.’ Carcolf did not, in fact, wish him joy, she wished him rotten in his grave. ‘But we will both be far better off if you leave that package!’
His hand hovered. ‘Why, what’s in it?’
‘I don’t know. I’m under orders not to open it!’
‘Orders from who?’
Carcolf winced. ‘I don’t know that either, but-’
Kurtis took the packet. Of course he did. He was an idiot, but not so much of an idiot as that. He snatched up the packet and ran. Of course he ran. When didn’t he?
He tore down the alleyway, heart in mouth, jumped a burst barrel, caught his foot and went sprawling, almost impaled himself on his own drawn sword, slithered on his face through a slick of rubbish, scooping a mouthful of something faintly sweet before staggering up, spitting and cursing, snatching a scared glance over his shoulder-
There was no sign of pursuit. Only the mist, the endless mist, whipping and curling like a thing alive.
He slipped the packet, now somewhat slimy, into his ragged cloak and limped on, clutching at his bruised buttock and still struggling to spit that rotten-sweet taste from his mouth. Not that it was any worse than his breakfast had been. Better, if anything. You know a man by his breakfast, his fencing master always used to tell him.
He pulled up his damp hood with its faint smell of onions and despair, plucked the purse from his sword and slid blade back into sheath as he slipped from the alley and insinuated himself among the crowds, that faint snap of hilt meeting clasp bringing back so many memories. Of training and tournaments, of bright futures and the adulation of the crowds. Fencing, my boy, that’s the way to advance! Such knowledgeable audiences in Styria, they love their swordsmen there, you’ll make a fortune! Better times, when he had not dressed in rags, or been thankful for the butcher’s leftovers, or robbed people for a living. He grimaced. Robbed women. If you could call it a living. He stole another furtive glance over his shoulder. Could he have killed her? His skin prickled with horror. Just a scratch. Just a scratch, surely? But he had seen blood. Please, let it have been a scratch! He rubbed his face as though he could rub the memory away, but it was stuck fast. One by one, things he had never imagined, then told himself he would never do, then that he would never do again, had become his daily routine.