A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness #1) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,87

been able to make you so rich.’

There was a long silence, then Risinau leaned close to Savine and put his fat, moist hand on hers. It was like having one’s fingers smothered in old dough. ‘Lady Savine, I give you my personal guarantee, the workers are content and there is nothing to worry about.’

It was his bad luck that this patronising reassurance coincided with a particularly savage cramp, as if there was a fist clenching around her guts. Savine leaned towards him, cupping her mouth to keep anyone else from hearing, and whispered in his ear. ‘Touch me again and I will stab you with my fork. In your fat fucking neck. Do you understand?’

The Superior swallowed and carefully peeled his hand from hers. Savine looked back to Vallimir. ‘You said business is good at the mill?’

‘It is.’

‘Then I would very much like to look at the books. I so enjoy the successful ones.’

Vallimir gave that twitch again. ‘I will have them brought to you.’

‘Better if I go to them. Having come all this way, I must see the improvements you have made first hand.’

‘A visit in person …’ ventured Vallimir, wincing.

Risinau took up the challenge. ‘It might not be the best—’

‘You’ll hardly know I’m there.’ And their wanting her to stay away meant she absolutely had to go. ‘I find, when it comes to business, there is nothing like the personal touch.’ She took up the absurdly long spoon, delved deep into the jelly and slurped it through pursed lips with great relish.

‘My compliments, Mistress Vallimir, such a delicious jelly.’ It was a vile jelly. Perhaps the worst Savine had ever had the misfortune to consume. She weathered another stab in her belly and presented the gathering with her most glittering smile. ‘You simply must give my maid the recipe.’

Sinking Ships

They ate in an overpriced chophouse where the windows were thick with sooty grime and the plates hardly cleaner. Tallow wolfed his meat and gravy down then watched as Vick ate hers, only just short of drooling like a hungry dog. She didn’t like eating with those big sad eyes on her, but she took time cleaning her plate even so. Another habit from the camps. A habit from never having enough.

Relish every mouthful, it feels like it goes further.

They waited for dusk, though with the smoke over Valbeck it wasn’t much darker than day and felt even hotter, the sunset an angry, molten-metal smear behind the great chimneys they were building in the west. Then they worked their way into the teeming, steaming backstreets like rats into a dungheap, asking roundabout questions, trying to winkle out hints of where the Breakers might be.

Vick had picked over her story a hundred times. Picked over Tallow’s, too, until the lies were like a second skin, more familiar than the truth. She had an answer for every question, a story for every suspicion, a set of excuses that left her looking good but not too good. The one thing she hadn’t been prepared for was the one thing she found.

‘The Breakers?’ said a boy-whore, not even bothering to lower his voice. ‘Expect you’ll find ’em meeting on that little alley off Ramnard Street.’ He called out to a girl-whore busy arranging the straps of her dress over a bare shoulder dotted with pox-marks. ‘What’s the name o’ that alley where the Breakers meet?’

‘Don’t know that it’s got a name.’ And she went back to smiling for the passing trade.

All careless as if the Breakers were a sewing circle rather than a mob of renegades ripping up the fabric of society. Old Sticks had called Superior Risinau a fat man prone to folly, with no imagination but plenty of loyalty. From the careless way folk spoke of treason here, he’d let things get far out of hand in Valbeck.

The whores nodded them towards a smirking pimp. After a little bargaining, the pimp pointed out a beggar with one arm. For a few bits, the beggar sent them to an out-of-work smith selling matches from a stall on wheels. The smith nodded them down an alleyway towards an old warehouse. A big man stood outside its door, light from an upstairs window reflected in a pair of round eye-lenses that looked tiny on his broad skull.

Vick knew right off he could be trouble. The size of him, yes, almost a head taller than her, and his threadbare jacket stretched tight over great brawny shoulders. But it was more the look he had