A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness #1) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,107

see him. He had a tally of all the slights they’d given him and today was the day to pay the bill.

‘Dance, you fat shit!’ And he kicked the lawyer in the jaw as he tried to stagger up and knocked him on his back, threw the whip down and snatched up a hammer in both hands, started beating at the statue again.

‘Fuck yourself!’ he snarled at it. Some king, some big man. ‘Not so big now!’ He smashed a bit of the inscription away. He’d no idea what it said. There’d be no need for letters after the Great Change.

‘Give me some o’ that!’ Ripping a bottle from Framer’s hand while he was in the middle of trying to drink and making him spill spirits all over that stupid cap of his.

‘You bastard,’ said Framer, wiping his face, but Moth just laughed and took another swig. He saw a little girl in a doorway, watching at him. A little brown girl with great dark eyes, tear tracks glistening on her face.

He shoved the bottle in the air and laughed. ‘What a day!’

Hessel turned away from the madness in the square. It scared her too much. She shuffled back into the doorway, where her father was lying.

‘Father,’ she whispered, tugging at his arm. ‘Please wake up!’

He wobbled with her shaking, but he did not wake. One of his eyes was a little open, just a slit of white showing. But he did not wake.

Once when they were out walking in the public gardens in Bizurt, where the Emperor Solkun was said to have planted ten thousand palms, her father had told her it was always wise to carry a cloth, to keep oneself clean and presentable. She pulled hers out now, and licked it, and tried to dab the blood from his forehead, but the more she dabbed, the more there was. The cloth turned red with it. His grey hair turned black with it.

‘Oh God,’ she whispered as she dabbed, not sure if she was swearing or praying. In spite of the priests’ long efforts at instruction, she had never quite been able to tell the difference. ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God.’

He had said things would be better here. Dawah was not safe any more. First, the emperor’s soldiers had been driven out of the town, and there was chaos, and that had been very bad. Then the Eaters had come, to bring back order, and that had been far worse. She had seen one of them, in the main street, at sunset. A terrible light had shone from it. She still saw it, in her dreams, the black eyes, and the empty smile, and the blood on its fine robes. So they had fled from Dawah. Her father had said things would be better here.

‘Oh God, oh God, oh God …’

But things had not been better here. There was no work. People spat at them in the street. They had gone from one town to another, and the little money that had not been stolen from them by the sailors on the voyage had gradually leaked away. They had heard there was work in Valbeck, so they had banded together with a dozen other Kantics for safety on the road. It had been a hard journey, only to find there was no work in Valbeck, either. Not for pale faces, let alone for dark. People looked at them like they were rats. And now everything had gone mad. She did not understand what had happened. She did not even know who had hit her father, or why.

‘Oh God, oh God …’

The priests said if she prayed every morning and every night and was pure within then good things would happen. She had prayed every night and every morning. Had she done it wrong? Was she rotten inside, that God should punish her?

‘Oh God,’ she whimpered, shaking her father’s shoulder. ‘Please wake up!’

She did not know what to do. There was no one here she knew. They had taken her father’s shoes. His shoes, God help her, his bare feet flopped out sideways, and she touched one of them gently with a trembling hand, tears in her eyes.

‘Oh God,’ she whispered. What should she do?

She heard scraping footsteps. Someone had edged around the wall into the doorway, hunched over in a ragged coat missing an arm, staring fearfully out into the square where figures writhed and lurched to the deranged music.

Hessel crouched, showing her teeth, not sure whether