A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness #1) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,130

angrier. ‘When you’re fighting for your life, you don’t leave your best sword on the mantelpiece and charge in with a bread knife!’

‘There are other men in this army who can fight.’ She spoke with icy calm, but there was an angry colour spreading across her face. ‘Experienced men who understand the value of caution, and planning, and of doing as they’re bloody told. You’re reckless, Leo. I can’t risk it.’

‘No!’ he snarled, thumping the crumbling battlements with his fist and sending stones clattering down the wall. ‘I’ll be lord governor soon! I’m not a boy any more—’

‘Then fucking act like it!’ she snarled, with such violence he shrank back a little. ‘This isn’t a negotiation! You’ll stay with the reserves, and that’s the end of it! Your father’s dead! He’s dead, and I can’t lose you, too, do you understand?’ She turned her back on him to look into the valley. ‘I can’t lose you, too.’

There was the slightest quaver in her voice, and somehow that cut him down more sharply than any sword blow. He stood staring, suddenly guilty and ashamed and feeling an utter fool. She’d carried him, when his father died and he fell all to pieces. She’d stood dry-eyed and stern by the grave, and through his tears Leo had thought how heartless she was. But he saw now she’d stayed strong because someone had to. She’d been carrying them all, ever since. Instead of being grateful, being a good son, helping her lift this impossible weight, he’d moped, and whined, and picked at her as if there was nothing bigger at stake than his pride.

He had to blink back tears himself, and he stepped up and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘You won’t lose me, Mother,’ he said. ‘You’ll never lose me.’

She laid her hand on his. An old hand, it seemed, suddenly, frail, the skin on the back wrinkled around the knuckles.

‘I’ll lead the reserves,’ he said.

They stood together in the wind, looking down into the valley.

The Party’s Over

The clatter of the handle, the gurgle of filthy water as it surged into the bucket, the slop and trickle as she lifted it, breath wheezing, legs, arms, shoulders trembling, and passed it to May, and took an empty bucket from the old man on her left, handle clattering, and bent to the water again.

She stood hunched, up to her knees in the river, soaked dress rolled and tucked into a belt made from knotted rope, all thought of propriety long gone. All thought of propriety had gone the moment she staggered from this sewer of a river the first time, shivering in her drawers.

Clatter, gurgle, slop and trickle. How long had she been filling buckets now? It felt like hours. As blue evening turned to grey twilight turned to mad darkness lit by the glow of fires. As the distant tang of burning became a tickling reek then an endless scratching of smoke that even with a wet rag across her face made her want to choke with every breath. How long had she been filling buckets now? It felt like days. It felt as if she had always been filling buckets, and always would be.

The women made a chain, passing slopping pails, cans, pots from hand to hand up the shore, children darting back through the rubbish with the empties so Savine could take them and fill them again, clatter, gurgle, slop and trickle.

On the other side of the river, mills were burning, flames towering into the night, the great chimneys black fingers against the brilliance, their reflections wriggling in the slow-flowing water. Burning things drifted from the sky into the streets, onto the beach, into the river, little flaming birds that sputtered and popped, dancing lights floating on the black mirror for a moment before they were gone.

Up among the burning buildings, at the end of the chain of buckets, men struggled with the fires, shouting, bellowing, yelling at one another. Anger, maybe. Desperation, maybe. Encouragement, maybe. Savine was too tired to tell the difference. So tired she could hardly remember how to speak. How to think. She had become a machine herself. A machine for filling buckets. What would her important connections at the Solar Society think if they could see her now? She gave a weary snort that caught in her throat and nearly made her retch. Serve the arrogant bitch right, more than likely.

The clatter of the handle, the gurgle of water as it filled, the