A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness #1) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,45

they get stuck to you, there’s no getting free of them. They won’t be satisfied until they own the sun and can charge the world interest for letting it rise every morning. Promise me you’ll never take a bit from the bastards!’

‘I promise. I’ll stay well away.’ Though it was not always easy. Like a greedy old willow tree, the twisted roots of that particular banking house burrowed into everything. ‘We’re not talking about much. I already took a controlling share in the armoury in Ostenhorm at a price you would scarcely believe.’

‘Swords are always a good investment,’ admitted the Arch Lector as he watched her swat Gorst’s away with her own.

‘I’m told these fire-tubes are the future. These cannons.’

‘We had mixed results with them in Styria.’

‘But they’re getting smaller all the time, more portable and more powerful.’ She stepped nimbly around a limp jab. ‘They’ve developed an exploding cannon-stone now.’

‘Explosions are always a good investment, too.’

‘Especially if I can arrange a contract or two with the King’s Own.’

‘Oh? Do you know anyone with influence?’

‘As it happens, I have arranged a little soirée with Asil dan Roth and a few other military wives. Her husband was recently appointed Master of the King’s Armouries, I believe.’

‘What good fortune,’ murmured her father, drily.

Gorst’s next lunge was positively belittling. ‘I’m not made of glass, either,’ said Savine, flicking irritably at the point of his steel. ‘Come at me like you mean it.’

She had been fencing all her life, after all. As a girl, she had dreamed of winning the Contest disguised as a man, whipping off her cap to reveal her golden tresses to an ecstatic crowd. Then wigs had come into fashion and she had shaved her tresses off, which, honestly, had been a rather unprepossessing brown in any case. Then she had learned men never cheer for a woman who beats them at their own games, so she had left the fencing circle to the cocks and decided to count her victories at the bank.

She parried two efforts which were scarcely stronger than before and, this time, stepped neatly around the lazy cut that followed and gave Gorst a shove with the basketwork of her short steel. ‘Do you hit like a woman as well as talk like one?’

Gorst’s eye gave the faintest twitch. ‘Ouch!’ called her father. ‘A touch to the lady.’

‘I want to know how it feels to be attacked by a dangerous man who means it.’ Savine set herself again, confident in her stance, confident in her grip, confident in her abilities. ‘Otherwise what’s the point?

Gorst glanced at her father. The Arch Lector pressed his lips thoughtfully together, then gave the faintest shrug. ‘She is here to learn.’ There was a hardness on his face she was not used to seeing. ‘Teach her.’

There was something ever so slightly different in the way Gorst took his mark, the way he twisted his feet into the faintly creaking boards, the way he worked his great shoulders and gripped his notched steels. His flat face hardly showed emotion, but it was as if a door had opened a chink, and beyond it Savine glimpsed something monstrous.

It is easy to smile at the bull you know is chained. When you realise of a sudden the chain is off, and its horns towards you, and its hoof scraping at the dust, the bull looks an entirely different animal.

She half-opened her mouth to say, ‘Wait.’

‘Begin.’

She had been ready for his strength. It was his speed that shocked her. He was on her before she could draw a breath. Her eyes went wide as his long steel whipped down and she had just the presence of mind to sidestep, bringing up her short steel to parry.

She had not been ready for his strength after all. The force of it numbed her arm from fingertips to shoulder, rattled the teeth in her head. She stumbled back, gasping, but his short steel was already coming at her, crashing into her long, ripping it from her numb fingers and sending it skittering across the floor. She flapped blindly with her short, all training and technique forgotten, saw a flash of metal—

His long steel thudded into her padded jacket and drove her breath out in a burning wheeze, nearly lifted her off her feet and sent her tottering sideways. A moment later, his shoulder rammed into her body. Her head snapped forward, her face crunched against something. The blunt top of his skull, maybe.

Was she in the air?

The wall