A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness #1) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,94

empress upon her slaves.

The colonel bowed stiffly as he offered her the way up. ‘Take as long as you need.’ He turned to frown at the scores of sullen workmen. ‘Though perhaps no longer.’

The door was fitted with two locks and a heavy bar, so sturdy it was an effort for Savine to swing it shut. She tore open the hook at the collar of her jacket, trying to flap some air onto her sweaty neck, but the atmosphere in the office was hardly less stifling than on the manufactory floor, the nerve-shredding chatter of the machines hardly less oppressive.

A loose board groaned under her boot as she made her way to Vallimir’s desk and its cargo of ledgers. She hated to see anything shoddily made, especially in a building she had helped pay for, but at that moment she had larger worries. She slipped past the desk to the window, one hand rubbing at her throat where the worry had become an almost painful pressure.

The street outside was deserted. All at work, of course, and what but work would bring anyone to this lane of spiked walls and barred gates, of towering mills and rumbling machinery? Yet there was something wrong about the quiet. A weight on the air, like the calm before a thunderstorm. Savine frowned out at the empty lane, biting at her lip, wondering if she could leave now without—

A man slipped around the brick corner of the next mill. Others followed, a group of twenty or more. Working men in colourless clothes, much like the ones Savine had seen in Holsthorm, in Adua, in all the cities of the Union. Much like the ones at work below, but moving furtively, as if they were one animal with one purpose.

Then she caught a glint of bright steel and became aware, with a strange shiver, that they were all armed. Some carried sticks beside their legs, some heavy tools. The leader had what was quite clearly an old sword. He knocked at a gate in the wall; it swung open as if by prior arrangement and the men rushed inside.

She spun around at a shout from the shed behind her, then more, and louder. A commotion even over the roar of the engines. She crept to the door, put a tentative hand to the latch, wanting to open it, fearing to open it.

‘Back!’ she heard Vallimir roar as she eased it open. ‘Back, damn you!’

The workers had abandoned their tasks and crowded towards that end of the mill, a solid mass of men all facing her, faces twisted with anger, tools, iron bars and stones gripped in their fists. Her jaw dropped.

Vallimir’s guards were holding them back in a desperate crescent at the bottom of the steps but they were outnumbered twenty-to-one. Savine’s eyes darted in horror over that ugly swarm. That mob.

Vallimir stood facing them on the balcony, the back of his neck turning red as he bellowed at them. ‘Step away at once!’

A man in a stained vest whose arms looked like they were made from old rope pointed at Vallimir with a club and screamed, ‘You step away, you old fucker!’

Things began to flicker up from the crowd: thrown stones, thrown tools, thrown bits of machinery, bouncing from the walls of the office, clattering from the guards’ armour.

Something knocked Vallimir’s hat off and he sank down with his hand clapped to his bloody scalp. A bottle shattered next to the door and Savine heaved it shut, dropped the heavy bar and backed into the room. In spite of the stifling heat, she felt cold to her shaved scalp. She had expected an ugly scene on the way out, perhaps, insults hurled and surly men dragged to the cells while she glided back to luxury, unruffled. How could she have expected this? An armed insurrection!

She could hear her own snatched breath. The breath of a hunted animal. Foolishly, with fumbling fingers, she drew her sword. That was what one was supposed to do when one’s life was in danger. Was her life in danger? The noise was louder outside, closer. Over the endless whirr of the machinery she heard screaming, swearing, mindless growling, the clash of steel. A long, high shrieking started which would not stop.

She needed to piss, needed to piss terribly. The sword’s grip was slippery in her suddenly sweaty palm. Her eyes darted to the windows. Fitted with heavy grates. To the furniture. Nowhere to hide she would not be found in