A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness #1) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,85

from the head of the table.

‘Everything is delicious but, alas, as I get older, I must take ever greater pains over my figure.’

Risinau gurgled out a chuckle. ‘Not a consideration I trouble myself with!’

Savine plastered a smile over her disgust as she watched him slurp from his spoon like a hog from a trough. ‘How fortunate for you.’ And how repugnant for everyone else.

Lord Parmhalt, the city’s mayor, teetered on the verge of slumber. Mistress Vallimir pretended not to notice as he drifted towards her, in imminent danger of slumping into her lap. The draught from her fan had loosened some strands of grey hair previously plastered across his bald pate and they now floated from his head to an impressive height. For the tenth time that evening, Savine wished she had stayed in Adua. Probably curled up in an aching ball with the curtains closed, giving vent to a torrent of obscenities. But she flatly refused to be a slave to her tyrant of a womb. Business came first. Business always came first.

‘And how is business?’ she asked.

‘Positively booming,’ said Vallimir. ‘The third shed is up and running and the mill working at full capacity. Costs down, profits up.’

‘The very directions for costs and profits that I like.’

Vallimir gave something between a cough and a chuckle. He was a man with a fragile sense of humour. ‘All good news. As I told you in my letter. Nothing to worry about.’

‘Oh, I can always find something to keep me awake at night,’ said Savine. Even if it was only a constant grinding ache through her stomach and down the backs of her legs.

Perhaps it was her presence, but there was a nervous edge to the gathering. The talk too urgent, the laughter too shrill, the staff twitchy as they whisked the soups away. Savine’s eye was caught by the glint of metal at the window: a pair of guards patrolling the grounds. There had been four of them at the door when she arrived, accompanied by a sullen monster of a dog.

‘Are all the armed men really necessary?’ she asked.

She was gratified to note the twitch of dismay on Vallimir’s face. As if he had sat on a pin. ‘Given your position in society, given the envy that might be directed towards you, given … who your father is, I thought we could not be too careful.’

‘One can never be too careful,’ echoed Superior Risinau, leaning close to touch Savine’s shoulder with entirely too much familiarity. ‘But you need have no fear, Lady Savine.’

‘Oh, I am not easily intimidated. I receive at least a dozen threats a day. The most vivid fantasies of my degradation and violent murder. Angry competitors, jealous rivals, disgruntled workers, scorned business partners, disappointed suitors. If there was money in threats, I would be …’ She paused a moment to consider it. ‘Even richer, I suppose. I swear, I receive more venom even than my father. It has made me realise there is only one thing men hate more than other men.’

There was an expectant pause. ‘Which is?’ asked Mistress Vallimir.

‘Women,’ said Savine, shifting in her uncomfortable chair. If a man was struck in the balls during a fencing match, he would be expected to howl and weep and roll around, while his opponent gave him all the time he needed and the crowd murmured their sympathy. If, during days of monthly agonies, a woman once let her smile sour, it would be considered a disgrace. She forced her own smile wider while the sweat sprang out of her. ‘I suppose the bars on the windows were installed for my benefit, too?’

‘Here on the hill …’ Mistress Vallimir leaned around the nodding mayor, picking her words as carefully as mossy stepping stones on the way across a river, ‘we are all obliged to take great care over our security.’

‘Three weeks ago,’ squeaked Condine dan Sirisk, mousy wife of a mill owner kept away by business, ‘a factory owner was killed. Murdered in his own house!’

‘A robbery.’ Risinau licked his lips as little purple jellies began to be delivered to the far end of the table. ‘A botched burglary, plain and simple.’ He leaned across to give Savine a reassuring pat on the forearm, enveloping her in his rosewater and sour-sweat scent. ‘We’ll ferret out the perpetrators, don’t worry about that.’

‘So … there are no Breakers in Valbeck?’

Every face turned towards Savine, then silence, the only movement the wobbling of those horrible little jellies.

‘Only a few weeks