The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,28

and Tallow jerked back from a cage, would’ve fallen if Vick hadn’t caught him. There was a damn tiger inside. She’d never seen one before, could hardly believe the size of it, the power of it, the weight of bright fur and muscle, twisting angrily with its huge teeth bared.

“Bloody hell,” squeaked Tallow as Vick dragged him up by one wrist. It was an animal market. A screeching, hooting, snarling menagerie. A boy shook a sad little monkey in Vick’s face and she brushed it out of her way.

“Fuck you, then!” he spat in a thick accent, and was gone among the faces.

Vick bent down, trying to catch sight of Shudra through the forest of legs, then up on tiptoe. She waved towards a rooftop. One of her hired men was on a scaffold there, pretending to work at a crumbling chimney. He caught her eye, nodded at an alley.

“This way.” Vick swung towards it, making sure not to run. Between the high buildings it was suddenly dark, slogans daubed on walls topped with rusted spikes. Eyes gleamed in doorways, watching them hurry past. A sunburned Northman slumped in a heap of rubbish shouted something, waving a bottle after them.

Down steps three at a time, fetid water splashing with each footfall, the alley so narrow Vick had to turn sideways to slip through. Chanting echoed from up ahead, then a babble of raised voices, then they burst out onto an expanse of worn paving.

The Great Temple of Westport rose up at one side, six tall turrets like the Valbeck chimneys, but capped with golden spikes rather than plumes of smoke.

Platforms were scattered in front. Stages where men and women stood in robes, in rags, festooned with talismans and beads or brandishing books and staffs. Wailing in broken voices to little crescents of curious onlookers, tearing at the air with their hands, pointing skywards with clawing fingers, eyes popping with passion and certainty, promising salvation and threatening damnation. Each insisting all the rest were frauds, and they alone were the one with all the answers.

Vick scorned them, pitied them, but underneath, well hidden, she envied them, too. Wondered what it would be like, to believe in something that much. Enough to die for it. Like Sibalt had. Like Malmer had. Like her brother had. How wonderful it must feel, to be certain. To know you stand on the right side, instead of just the winning one. But you can’t just choose to believe, can you?

“What the hell is this place?” muttered Tallow.

“Another market,” said Vick, staring around for Shudra and his men.

“What are they selling?”

“God.”

Now she saw him, gently nodding as he listened to one of the calmer prophets, his bodyguards distracted, unwary.

“This is the place,” said Vick. Just crowded enough. Plenty of escape routes. But so much confusion that a little more would hardly raise a brow. Not until it was far too late.

She started towards Shudra, not too fast, not too slow, not looking right at him, no one to remark upon, easing one hand into her pocket. She strode past a woman stripped to her waist on a platform, on her knees in front of a crudely lettered sign, eyes brimming with ecstasy as she whipped herself, bare back a mass of new scratches and old scars.

“Repent!” she was screeching with every crack of the whip. “Repent!” She twisted around, raised a trembling finger. “Repent, sister!”

“Later,” said Vick as she strode past.

And now she saw the hooded figure. Just where she’d guessed he’d be. Walking towards Shudra, not too fast, not too slow, not looking right at him, no one to remark upon.

“There,” she hissed.

“He doesn’t look like much,” said Tallow.

“He’d be a poor assassin if he stood out.” She cut sideways through the crowd then around a platform where a blistered old man was yelling at the heavens.

She fell in behind the hooded figure, keeping pace as he slipped towards Shudra. Hoods are good for hiding you from others, but they hide them from you, too. She eased her brass knuckles on, feeling the reassuring tickle of cold metal between her fingers.

She saw the flash of steel as the hooded man pulled something from his pocket, held it down beside his leg, half-hidden in the folds of his clothes.

She quickened her pace, closing on him as he closed on Shudra, heart thumping hard now and her breath coming fast as she thought out how she’d do it.

Shudra clapped as the prophet finished his sermon, turned smiling to