The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,107

language again, where they both said one thing but meant another. They both knew it’d be a lot of effort. They both knew it’d be a hell of a risk.

“Maybe.” Broad pushed his lenses gently up his nose. Most of the Breakers he’d known in Valbeck had been left hanging from gibbets after the uprising, and the rest would be nursing deep grudges. Most of the Burners had been halfway mad to begin with. What he’d been doing for a living would not be at all popular in those quarters. Calling it labour relations wouldn’t fool anyone who’d lived in a cellar. “Maybe there’s still some folk in Valbeck who could put me on the right track…”

“All I ask is that you try.”

“My best, like always.” Meaning his worst, like always. It was his turn to look her in the eye. “Just promise me you’ll look after Liddy and May, while I’m gone.” And he offered her his hand.

Her grip was surprisingly strong. Brought a twinge to his aching knuckles. “As if they were my family.”

“You’re not even staying for dinner?” asked Liddy. She looked worried. They both did.

“Got to leave tonight,” said Broad, tossing a few things in a bag. “It’s urgent.”

“Where are you going?”

“Midderland.” He was getting a lot better at lying than he used to be. You have to come at it sideways. Just enough truth to answer the question. Not enough to actually tell ’em anything. If he’d said Valbeck, they’d probably have set to crying. Maybe he would’ve himself.

May watched him from the doorway, one hand fiddling with the silver necklace she wore these days. “It’s nothing dangerous, is it?”

“Working for a fine lady, like you always say. How dangerous could it be?” And he smiled at May, and she smiled back. Either he was getting a lot better at lying, or they just wanted to believe him. He hid it with a joke. “And don’t spend too much time with Zuri’s brother Rabik, I’ve seen how the two o’ you grin at each other.”

“Shut up, Da!” Giving him a shove and blushing at the same time.

He held them both close near the doorway. When he’d gone away to Styria, he’d barely even said goodbye. So keen to leave. Now he clung on tight. Too tight, maybe.

Liddy looked up at him as they broke apart. “You won’t be long, will you, Gunnar?”

“No, I won’t be long.” And he threw the bag over his shoulder. He’d always thought of himself as honest to a fault. Blunt as a hammer, ask anyone. But it occurred to him then he’d started speaking that private language with everyone. Saying one thing and meaning another. Only Liddy and May weren’t in on it. “Be back before you know it,” he said, and shut the door.

But he wondered if he would be. He wondered if he’d ever be back.

Old Friends

“You know you’re more beautiful than ever.”

Savine looked sideways at him, one long-lashed eye showing under the brim of her hat, rocking gently with the movement of her horse. “Are you flattering me, Your Grace?”

“I’m doing my bloody best,” said Leo. She rode well. What didn’t she do well? Perched elegantly side-saddle with her whip-hand resting on the slight swell of her belly, steering her horse with the same effortless confidence she steered everything else. But he still worried. “Sure you don’t want to go in the carriage, though?”

“In the jungles of Yashtavit, women hunt while eight months pregnant. Up in the North, they work in the fields until they give birth. Honestly, it’s much the same these days for the factory girls in Adua. A little ride will do no harm.”

“I reckon if a factory girl, a Northern peasant or a dusky huntress was offered a break in a carriage, they’d likely take it.”

“By all means, you can sit in it, then.” And she tapped her horse’s flank with her crop and moved ahead.

Perhaps there’d been a part of him that had hoped the rebellion would never happen. That it would come to nothing more than after-dinner bluster with the fellows from the Open Council. A part that had looked forward to Savine finding out, so she could give an indulgent sigh, and pat the back of his hand, and put a sensible stop to the whole business.

But to his amazement, she’d pounced on the scheme with the total lack of doubt she brought to everything and applied all her formidable powers to making it not only a reality, but a