A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness #1) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,36

down beside Seldom’s corpse on the wagon’s seat, all weak and shaky. Spots on his vision. Blood, he realised, on his lenses. He fumbled them off, turned the world to a smear.

Liddy didn’t say anything. Neither did he.

What was there to say?

A Sea of Business

‘Welcome, one and all, to this thirteenth biannual meeting of Adua’s Solar Society!’

Honrig Curnsbick, the great machinist, resplendent in a waistcoat embroidered with golden leaves, threw up his broad hands. The applause was the most enthusiastic this theatre could have heard since Iosiv Lestek gave his final performance on its stage.

‘With thanks to our distinguished patrons – the Lady Ardee, and her daughter Lady Savine dan Glokta!’ Curnsbick gestured towards Savine’s box and she smiled over her fan as though her delicate feelings could hardly stand the attention. There were whoops, and calls of, ‘Hear, hear.’ From members who particularly wanted her money, she imagined.

‘We never dreamed, when nine of us first met in Lady Savine’s parlour, that only eight years later, the Solar Society would have more than four hundred members throughout the Union and beyond!’ Curnsbick might not have, but Savine had always dreamed big. ‘We are living in bold new times! Times when only the lazy need be poor. When only the small-minded need be dissatisfied. Times when the world can be changed by the ingenuity and endeavour of a single man!’ Or even, Fates help us, a single woman.

‘Only yesterday, here in Adua, Dietam dan Kort completed a bridge made entirely of iron – of iron, mark you – that will bring a canal through Casamir’s Wall and into the heart of the city.’ More applause, and down in the audience, Kort was clapped on the back by his peers. A back covered by a fine new coat paid for with Savine’s money, as it happened. ‘With it will come boundless access to raw materials. Will come new industry and new commerce. Will come better jobs and better goods and better lives for the masses.’ Curnsbick flung his arms wide with a showman’s flourish, eye-lenses flashing. ‘Will come prosperity for all!’ But especially for Savine, it hardly needed to be said. What is the point in prosperity, after all, if everyone has it?

‘And now to business! The business of progress! Our first address shall be by Kaspar dan Arinhorm, on the application of the Curnsbick Engine to the pumping of water from iron mines.’

Savine rose to leave while Arinhorm was on his way to the lectern. The truth was she had never been very interested in the inventions. Her obsession was how they could be turned into money. And that particular alchemy was practised in the foyer.

A considerable crowd had already gathered beneath the three great chandeliers, buzzing with excited chatter, seething with prospects and proposals. Knots of soberly dressed gentlemen broke and re-formed, drawn into dizzying swirls and eddies, ladies’ dresses bright dots of colour bobbing on the flood. Here and there, one could even spot the fabulous robes of some relic of the old merchant guilds. Savine’s practised eye picked out those with money or connections, those without sucked spinning after them like rowing boats in the wake of great ships, desperate for patronage, involvement, investment.

It was a sea of business. Dangerous waters, swept by unpredictable storms, where fortunes could founder, enterprises be lost with all hands, reputations sink beneath the waves, but where a navigator with sufficient vision could be borne to spectacular success on the hidden currents of wealth and influence.

‘God works for those who work themselves,’ murmured Zuri, checking her watch.

She was ever at Savine’s shoulder, ready to guide the chaff away or, on occasion, make a note in her book for an informal meeting, perhaps an invitation to tea for the truly promising. Often at those pleasant interviews, she would make some passing observation about night-time habits, or questionable pasts, or illegitimate offspring, and how this or that scandal revealed might leave a promising career in ruins. There was almost no one worth noticing without a secret kept somewhere in her book. A dash of blackmail, tastefully administered, could always be relied upon to shift prices in the right direction. To win at this game, you had to keep one foot in the ballroom and the other knee-deep in the sewer.

‘To work, then.’ Savine put on her most radiant smile, snapped out her fan and glided down the steps into the melee.

‘Have you considered my proposal? Lady Savine? A new design for coal boats, if