How had it come to this, eh? The usual refrain. He drifted across the street like he’d nothing in mind but a coin for his music, letting the notes spill out into the murk. Across past the pie stall, the fragrance of cheap meat making his stomach grumble, and he stopped playing to offer out his cap to the queue. There were no takers, no surprise, so he headed on down the road to Verscetti’s, dancing in and out of the tables on the street and sawing out an Osprian waltz, grinning at the patrons who lounged there with a pipe or a bottle, twiddling thin glass-stems between gloved fingertips, eyes leaking contempt through the slots in their mirror-crusted masks. Jervi was sat near the wall, as always, a woman in the chair opposite, hair piled high.
‘A little music, darling?’ Hove croaked out, leaning over her and letting his coat dangle near Jervi’s lap.
Jervi slid something out of Hove’s pocket, wrinkling his nose at the smell of the old soak, and said, ‘Fuck off, why don’t you?’ Hove moved on, and took his horrible music with him, thank the Fates.
‘What’s going on down there?’ Riseld lifted her mask for a moment to show that soft, round face well powdered and fashionably bored.
There did indeed appear to be some manner of commotion up the street. Crashing, banging, shouting in Northern.
‘Damn Northmen,’ he murmured. ‘Always causing trouble, they really should be kept on leads like dogs.’ Jervi removed his hat and tossed it on the table, the usual signal, then leaned back in his chair to hold the package inconspicuously low to the ground beside him. A distasteful business, but a man has to work. ‘Nothing you need concern yourself about, my dear.’
She smiled at him in that unamused, uninterested way which for some reason he found irresistible.
‘Shall we go to bed?’ he asked, tossing a couple of coins down for the wine.
She sighed. ‘If we must.’
And Jervi felt the package spirited away.
Sifkiss wriggled out from under the tables and strutted along, letting his stick rattle against the bars of the fence beside him, package swinging loose in the other. Maybe Old Green had said stay stealthy but that weren’t Sifkiss’s way any more. A man has to work out his own style of doing things and he was a full thirteen, weren’t he? Soon enough now he’d be passing on to higher things. Working for Kurrikan, maybe. Anyone could tell he was marked out special – he’d stole himself a tall hat that made him look quite the gent about town – and if they were dull enough to be entertaining any doubts, which some folk sadly were, he’d perched it at quite the jaunty angle besides. Jaunty as all hell.
Yes, everyone had their eyes on Sifkiss.
He checked he weren’t the slightest bit observed then slipped through the dewy bushes and the crack in the wall behind, which honestly was getting to be a bit of a squeeze, into the basement of the old temple, a little light filtering down from upstairs.
Most of the children were out working. Just a couple of the younger lads playing with dice and a girl gnawing on a bone and Pens having a smoke and not even looking over and that new one curled up in the corner and coughing. Sifkiss didn’t like the sound o’ those coughs. More’n likely he’d be dumping her off in the sewers a day or two hence but, hey, that meant a bit more corpse money for him, didn’t it? Most folk didn’t like handling a corpse but it didn’t bother Sifkiss none. It’s a hard rain don’t wash someone a favour, as Old Green was always saying. She was way up there at the back, hunched over her old desk with one lamp burning, her long grey hair all greasy-slicked and her tongue pressed into her empty gums as she watched Sifkiss come up. Some smart-looking fellow was with her, had a waistcoat all silver leaves stitched fancy, and Sifkiss put a jaunt on, thinking to impress.
‘Get it, did yer?’ asked Old Green.
‘Course,’ said Sifkiss with a toss of his head, knocked his hat against a low beam and cursed as he fumbled it back into place. He tossed the package sourly down on the tabletop.
‘Get you gone, then,’ snapped Green.
Sifkiss looked surly, like he’d a mind to answer back. He was getting altogether too much mind, that boy, and Green had to show him the knobby-knuckled back of her hand ’fore he sloped off.
‘So here you have it, as promised.’ She pointed to that leather bundle in the pool of lamplight on her ancient table, its top cracked and stained and its gilt all peeling but still a fine piece of furniture with plenty of years left. Like to Old Green in that respect, if she did think so herself.
‘Seems a little thing for such a lot of fuss,’ said Fallow, wrinkling his nose, and he tossed a purse onto the table with that lovely clink of money. Old Green clawed it up and clawed it open and straight off set to counting it.
‘Where’s your girl Kiam?’ asked Fallow. ‘Where’s little Kiam, eh?’
Old Green’s shoulders stiffened but she kept counting. She could’ve counted through a storm at sea. ‘Out working.’
‘When’s she getting back? I like her.’ Fallow came a bit closer, voice going hushed. ‘I could get a damn fine price for her.’
‘But she’s my best earner!’ said Green. ‘There’s others you could take off my hands. How’s about that lad Sifkiss?’
‘What, the sour-face brought the luggage?’
‘He’s a good worker. Strong lad. Lots of grit. He’d pull a good oar on a galley, I’d say. Maybe a fighter, even.’
Fallow snorted. ‘In a pit? That little shit? I don’t think so. And he’d need some whipping to pull an oar, I reckon.’
‘Well? They got whips, don’t they?’
‘Suppose they do. I’ll take him if I must. Him and three others. I’m off to the market in Westport tomorrow week. You pick, but don’t give me none o’ your dross.’
‘I don’t keep no dross,’ said Old Green.
‘You got nothing but dross, you bloody swindler. And what’ll you tell the rest o’ your brood, eh?’ Fallow put on a silly la-di-da voice. ‘That they’ve gone off to be servants to gentry, or to live with the horses on a farm, or adopted by the fucking Emperor of Gurkhul or some such, eh?’ Fallow chuckled, and Old Green had a sudden urge to make that knife of hers available, but she’d better sense these days, all learned the hard way.
‘I tell ’em what I need to,’ she grunted, still working her fingers around the coins. Bloody fingers weren’t half as quick as they once were.
‘You do that, and I’ll come back for Kiam another day, eh?’ And Fallow winked at her.
‘Whatever you want,’ said Green, ‘whatever you say.’ She was bloody well keeping Kiam, though. She couldn’t save many, she wasn’t fool enough to think that, but maybe she could save one, and on her dying day she could say she done that much. Probably no one would be listening, but she’d know. ‘It’s all there. Package is yours.’
Fallow picked up the luggage and was out of that stinking fucking place. Reminded him too much of prison. The smell of it. And the eyes of the children, all big and damp. He didn’t mind buying and selling ’em, but he didn’t want to see their eyes. Does the slaughterman want to look at the sheep’s eyes? Maybe the slaughterman don’t care. Maybe he gets used to it. Fallow cared too much, that’s what it was. Too much heart.
His guards were lounging by the front door and he waved them over and set off, walking in the middle of the square they made.
‘Successful meeting?’ Grenti tossed over his shoulder.
‘Not bad,’ grunted Fallow, in such a way as to discourage further conversation. Do you want friends or money? he’d once heard Kurrikan say and the phrase had stuck with him.
Sadly, Grenti was by no means discouraged. ‘Going straight over to Kurrikan’s?’
‘Yes,’ said Fallow, sharply as he could.