The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,84

and the warriors muttered and shifted, a dozen big men edging back fearful from one girl thin as a birch sapling.

“Fucking witch,” muttered one who came from over the Crinna, making a holy sign across his chest. “Should be burned.”

Rikke smiled at him, pointing with one thin finger. “But it’s you who’ll die by fire!” She smiled at Greenway. “You on the water! And ’cause I’ve told you so, all the days you have left, you’ll go in fear of streams and boats and wells and cups and every drop of dew shall be a terror.” She wagged that finger at him. “But the water will find you out. It will leak in through the cracks in your life no matter how you try to caulk ’em up. I see the Great Leveller coming, and there are no bargains made with him.” She stared at Stour, and took a necklace of green stones she wore and dragged them back until they made a noose, cutting into her thin neck. “But it’s steel for most of you. It takes no Long Eye to see that.” She dropped the necklace and laughed again. “Stay! You’re all welcome. Stay, and I can tell you more.”

“Not me,” muttered Greenway, who should’ve been called Whiteway he’d turned so pale. He blundered to the door, and saw a bucket there put under a leak, and he shrank away from it, then scrambled out into the daylight. The rest of Stour’s big men weren’t far behind him. Seemed this hadn’t turned out quite the fun he’d promised.

The Great Wolf himself stayed to give the room a wet-eyed scowl. “We’ll be back,” he barked out. “See that, witch!” And he shoved past Clover and stalked from the hall.

“How rude.” Rikke’s pale eye and her red eye slid across to Clover. “You I know.”

“We met once,” he said. “In the woods.” And she’d come a long way from the stringy little scrap who fell at his feet then. She’d come a long, hard way by a crooked road, he reckoned.

“I remember,” she said. “Do you want to hear what’s coming, Jonas Clover?”

“Reckon I’d rather not.” Wasn’t easy to meet those strange eyes, one seeming too shallow and one too deep. But he made himself do it. “Just wanted to say I’m sorry about your father. Didn’t know him well, but I wish I’d known him better. Ain’t many left in the North you could say that much for.”

“Why don’t you stay?” she asked, raising one brow. Seemed the other got shaved off when the tattooing was done. “We can talk about what’s coming.”

“D’you know? I wish I could.” And it was true. He’d rather have stayed with the witches and the dead than gone back out to Stour and his bastards. “But I am what I am.” Nightfall had the power. More even than before, with the Dogman back to the mud. And Clover was done with losing sides. So he nodded to Isern-i-Phail, and nodded to Rikke, too. Then he turned for the door.

Shivers stood in his path, that metal eye glinting in the shadows. “We still need to have that talk.”

“We do.” Clover thought about giving Shivers a clap on the arm or something, but he didn’t really seem the arm-clapping type. “More’n ever.”

Then he left.

It was raining when they put him in the mud. Thin rain, making the whole world damp. Soft as a maiden’s kiss, as he used to say. Seemed right, somehow, for the occasion. The gulls and the sea and the sad voices deadened. Everything deadened, like the world was wrapped in a shroud.

Usually, when a man goes in the ground, there are a few words said. Words from his chief or his family. How good they were, how strong, how brave. How much missed they’ll be by those staggering on. But today, it seemed everyone in Uffrith had words. The little garden beside the hall was packed shoulder to shoulder, mourners spilling out into the wet lanes around.

One by one they took their turn at the head of the fresh-turned earth, shuffling up to speak their piece till the whole plot was boot-mashed. Till the whole plot looked like a grave. Everyone had a story. Some kindness done. Some wisdom offered. Some little piece of courage that’d given them courage. Soft words spoke with smoking breath. Tears lost in the drizzle.

They said he’d been the best of his kind. The last straight edge. Closest friend to the Bloody-Nine, worst enemy to Black