The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,227

you’re Brodd Silent?”

“I am.”

“Good, good. I hear Black Calder’s gone off to suck some cocks up in the High Valleys and left you holding the baby. That right?”

Silence. Though what could you expect from a man called Silent?

“I’ll treat that like a yes.” Rikke nodded to the Nail, and he hefted the casket down off his shoulder and dropped it on the cobbles with a thump and a jingle. “So I’ve got… what have I got? Did you count it?”

Shivers shrugged. “I look like a banker to you?”

The Nail shrugged, too. “Once I get past fifteen I’m all over the place.”

“Well, let’s see…” Rikke squatted beside the box and opened it so everyone up there could get a good look at the contents. As luck would have it, the sun slipped out right then and lent the whole heap a pretty glitter. “I’ve got… quite a lot of silver. Two thousand pieces, maybe?” She rooted through it with that merry clinking that somehow only money makes. “There’s some Carleon coins here, and some Union, and some Styrian scales, and… what’s this?” She held a big coin up to the light. Had a head on both sides.

“Gurkish,” grunted Shivers. “Emperor on one side, Prophet on t’other.”

“A Gurkish coin, how about that? All the way from the sunny South!” She stood, brushing her knees off. “Anyway, this is for whoever opens the gates. How you split it is up to you. If Master Silent wants to open ’em, he can share it out, I guess.” She left a meaningful pause. “Or the rest of you could. Have yourselves a wrestling match over the Gurkish one. Your business. Long as someone lets us in.”

“You ain’t buying your way in here!” shouted Silent from up on the wall, but he sounded a little shrill over the possibility.

“Well,” she said, all innocence. “You’ve got another choice…”

The Nail did that trick of curling his lip and whistling with just his teeth, so loud it was almost painful, and armed men showed themselves between every building, at every door and window around the walls. Battle-hardened, well-armed men of Uffrith and the West Valleys. Dozens of ’em, and adding not one smile to the tally.

“Which is I give these bastards the money to come over the walls and draw the bolts from that side.” Rikke pressed a hand to her chest. “Now, I’ve naught but pride for how peaceful we’ve been so far, and when it comes to bloodshed I’d rather have a trickle than a flood. But I’ve seen myself sitting in Skarling’s Chair, with this banner behind.” She turned her left eye towards them and tapped at her tattooed cheek. “I’ve seen it, with the Long Eye, understand? So it’s happening. That’s a done deal. Whether you bastards end up rich or dead on the way, the cost’s about the same to—”

There was a breathy cry and something came flying off the battlements.

“Oh,” muttered Rikke, before Shivers dragged her back and down and stuck his shield in front of her.

The Nail didn’t shift a hair. He was one of those rare men goes beyond bravery to a kind of madness where there’s no regard for danger at all. He just watched whatever it was plummet down, hands on hips, and didn’t even flinch as it crashed into the cobbles a stride or two in front, spotting him with blood.

He peered at the mess with his brow a little wrinkled. “Who’s that, then?”

Shivers slowly stood, gently let go of Rikke. “Brodd Silent, I expect.”

“Hold on!” someone called from the battlements. “We’re coming down!”

“They didn’t think about that for long,” said the Nail, wiping the blood from his cheek.

Rikke got up, frowning at Silent’s twisted corpse, the side of his face that wasn’t squashed into the cobbles gawping wide-eyed with surprise.

She thought of the first time she saw a man killed. Those three she and Isern ran into in the woods the day Uffrith burned. Was it really only a year or two back? The cold shock as she let go the bowstring. The hurt look in that boy’s eyes. Still gave her a shiver. Then she thought of all the death she’d seen since. The murders and the battles and the duels. The last expressions, the last words, the last breaths, all blurred into one. The blood rolled off her now, like milk off a greased pan. Isern always said you have to make of your heart a stone.

She took a breath, and kicked the casket closed.

Rikke’s