Chapter 13
the power of the gun doesn’t lie in powder, barrel or stock
it fires from the flicker in your heart as you thumb the trigger.
—Drill Hall Maxims, Coglifter
They wait for him in a quiet room. It is unprepossessing, in the way that only men desperately concerned with status can make a room unprepossessing.
A servant closes the door behind him with a soft click. Even the latch doesn’t want to make a fuss.
Fallon wants to make a fuss, to ripple the water. Instead, he stands in the wan light from the bullseye glass that frames the hall and waits.
There is a low curved table and six chairs. The leather on some worn near to fading and on others, ruddy as blood. He marks the spacing between the chairs, marks the carving on their backs, and the less official marks where daggers and nails have scratched boredom into the wood.
They file in soon after. Two of them, hooded, and masked. Like he doesn’t know every line of them; he could tell them in the dark just by their stink; good targets for a little hard trading.
Hammershy squats on the far chair like a rookery gargoyle, thighs wide and hands clasped, the reek of the forges rolling off him, burnt hair and salver’s grease.
His eyes beneath the hood are wide, lucid.
A dangerous man, all peace and steadiness until the time comes to break bones and collect dues.
The face beneath the mask is a blunt thing, unworked ore thick with stubble.
He catches Fallon’s eye and grunts, lifts a finger. Somebody is feeling gracious today. A couple of seats down, Rookspit slides into a barely touched chair, thin bones hovering over the leather, like a little comfort might be caustic.
They have barely bothered with hood or mask.
The rind of their smile slips out from behind the cloth, and thin, soft hair spills like thistledown across the blistered bone of their cheeks.
The pale prince of catchpoles and thimbleriggers dances their toes on the threadbare carpet as if at the end of a gallows’ rope.
‘Gentlemen,’ Fallon says, and there’s barely any venom in it. ‘I have an offer.’
Hammershy snorts again, ‘Of course, Fallon. We have eyes and ears.’
Declan smiles, and he can feel the muscles in his face start to thrum as he holds them carefully, politely still. ‘I’m hoping you have brains, too, Shy. This war is turning the screws on us. Kisser’s turning the screws on us. We need money, we need bodies, and we need them fast.’
Hammershy leans back, a gold chain glinting in the thick net of hair that curls disrespectfully through the front of his robe. ‘You need money, Fallon. Your pretty wife’s sleeping, and you can’t dip her pockets no more.’
Rookspit snickers at this, and it turns into a snorting, hacking cough that flecks the table. ‘Do you miss dipping her pockets, Fallon?’
Declan feels a fire light in him. Decades on this earth and he’s never got any better at being talked down to. He lets it burn to ashes in his gut, because this is politics. This is what Arissa taught him to do.
‘I’ll keep it quick. You are both in deep with me. Shy, after that nonsense your crew pulled after-hours in the Dogloop foundry, you’ll be lucky if you see another contract before the winter snow.’
Hammershy opens his mouth, and Declan barrels on.
‘Yes, yes, I know. Exuberant lads, boys will be boys, but it takes months to chip slag off the bottom of the canals, and it’s my men doing it, and my waterways clogged with that idiot spill.
’ He turns to Rookspit, who is watching him rather like a frog might watch a windmill, wide-eyed and gormless.
‘And as for you, there are currently two ships short crew because you traded them in for bounties. The diggers outside of Twelvebarrow keep talking about ghosts, but I bloody know it’s you from the description, and you owe me at least six port bells which have “accidentally” fallen from their belfries and split into unstamped currency in your shoddy little clipping dens. ’
Rook twines a coil of hair around their finger, then pulls it loose with a hiss.
‘Sailors shouldn’t be misbehavin’ under the silver moon. And I am only a ghost when it is required of me. As for your bells,’ they shrug expressively. ‘I needed some quick cash, mighty Lord.’
Fallon paces. This was how they liked to play it. Hammershy the stolid obstacle, Rook all twists and lip. It was an act; two different coloured sheathes for two very sharp knives.
He glances at the window, thin light falling from the day. ‘I’ll keep this quick. I will scrub the debts you owe. Lock and stock, root and branch, and I will feign stupidity if I get any hard questions on that topic. Two nice clean slates.’
Hammershy has a poor poker face, on occasion. ‘And in exchange?’
‘In exchange I want your best. Men, and blades and enough coin to send them roving to the blasted arse of the world if required. Enough to split Crowkisser’s lip and buy us some time. Let’s say a two-month lease.’
The two guildmasters look at each other. A bluebottle plinks against the sun-warmed glass, before bumbling downwards to die.
Hammershy shifts, drums thick fingers together. ‘Well, that seems …’
Rookspit holds up a pale, loose hand. Amazingly, Hammershy stops and leans back, like his mother has just walked in to collect him from school.
Spit takes their time, lowers the hand, rolls their shoulders. Theatre, theatre, bloody theatre.
‘Got something you want to say, Spit?’ Fallon asks. A little push.
Rookspit’s eyebrows raise, pale as milk worms on the soft bone of their face. ‘Shall I, Hammer?’
Hammershy shrugs. ‘You are your own creature, Rook.’
Another laugh at that, limp and spidery. From the floor above, muffled voices. The thump of something heavy hitting the floor.
Hammershy glances up. ‘Pick it up Rook, we have other engagements.’
Fallon nods. ‘Like your colleague said, what’s on your mind Spit? It’s a good deal.’
Rookspit shrugs. Rookspit shuffles their feet. Rookspit leans forwards, runs an exploratory finger up a nostril.
‘Found a snail in my boot today, Fallon. Found him with my toe.’
Hammershy laughs despite himself. ‘How’d a snail get in your boots, Rook?’
The look Rookspit shoots him is pitying.
‘Left them behind when I was scurrying up by Teller’s Bell, didn’t I? Came back after I’d cut a slice or two from the Malker’s lot, and there he was tucked into the tip, quite the thing. Little idiot. Found him with my big toe, Fallon. My foot was the last thing he ever felt falling from on high.’
Their palm arcs toward the wood, miming. Rookspit cranes closer, their long lean fingers reaching over the table.
‘First the crunch of his little walls, then all the goo and juice of him spurting up between my toes.’
Hammershy grunts.
Rookspit laughs, thin and looping. ‘Too messy for you Hammer? Not enough steel and scorch, eh?’ One lean finger makes an obscene gesture, and even Fallon smiles.
The grin falls off Rookspit’s face like a dropped curtain.
‘I need to know if I’m the snail Fallon, no matter how much you’re offering.’
Hammershy straightens at this, listening.
‘Me and my broad-beamed associate here are holding up a lot of your precious city. Even if we have taken the odd liberty in the process. In fact, we’ve got it cupped top to bottom, roofs to rats, and so we have to be real careful.’
Their hands move fluidly, flicking a small ball of something unpleasant down the table. ‘Everything we move from one place, has to come from another place.’
Rook looks up, their eyes the green of pond scum.
‘Everything we give to you has to be paid for from somewhere else. I ain’t saying we don’t like what you’re offering.
You could swing our red columns black with a stroke of the pen, and starlings’ shins if that wouldn’t open up some options for me, never mind old Hambone over the table. ’
Hammershy snorts, but nods. ‘They’re right. Irritating, but right.’
‘But it ain’t just about the columns. We are committed, meat and bone and coin. Everything we have is going to keeping this old girl turning, because we are more easily shaved than we have ever been.’
Long fingers trace the grooves of the table, sharp nails picking at the joins.
‘All it takes is a promise from the little crowkissing girl, and a village that used to send piss to the tanners is singing holy holy shag-a-fishy. And what’s piss you say?
Well piss is money, and piss is half a walk towards armour, and armour keeps you half a step from death. ’
Hammershy opens his mouth, but Rook is in full flow.
Fallon watches their hands wave. ‘And sure, OK, you cuts my red columns in half and you gives me new black columns, but my pisspots are still empty, and the young lads that used to run scopes up on the Cheapskin way have left, and where are we going to find them?’
Spit’s eyes flash. ‘One of them puts on a grey hood and starlings’ tongues!
Now he’s singing shag-a-fishy with the rest of Crowkisser’s lot, and one of them, he runs west over the sea, and the last we see of him he’s lining the plushy guts of a whale.
And the last one, he steals my horse, my beautiful palfrey, the one with the white neck and he rides north towards Thell, and maybe there’s something in him that sets off those stone-lickers from the mountain.
Eyes a little too gold, or maybe he smiles when the sky is bare and they decide he is host-holding!
God-tainted! And bang, his ribs are split with a spear, neat as old Hammerhonk splits the withy and the steel. ’
Hammershy finally gets a word in edgeways. ‘What Rook is saying is that numbers are just numbers without bodies and matter underneath. We are running out of able bodies, and we are running out of material. Port’s not pulling like she used to and the land is dry. We can’t trade what we don’t have.’
Rookspit leans forwards and there is something lean in them now, like an alley cat. And Fallon remembers where this man came from, and who disappeared to get him there. Those green eyes flash, the skin at their sides flaking, pale.
‘Hammer’s right for his one allotted time per day, so listen up, we need more than promises. We can’t give you no more, because it’d be like taking blood from one lush organ to flush another. Heart thrums, lungs die. Lungs puff, guts shit. You follow me?’
Rookspit frowns. ‘Frankly, the others ain’t here because they already feel like you’re bouncing on our necks like a five-day rope, and they’re shit-sick of it.
’ They smile again, that wet rind of teeth.
‘But Hammer and I, we are practical and honest and we wanted you to know that it ain’t a no ’til the worms eat birds, it’s a no until you get some new blood into the system. ’
That sallow face is flat, serious. ‘Corpses or coin, meat or money, we need men and we need funds, Fallon. Get them from somewhere other than us, split sky above, because we are running out of time.’
‘And?’ Hammershy rumbles.
Rook looks at him like the interruption is a hot poker down the shirt. ‘And we don’t know enough about what’s going on.’
They lean further forwards still now, their knees brushing the edge of the table, feet on the chair, sticky boots neatly balanced.
‘This is weird shit, Dec. Weird shit. The Grey Lady’s gone and Hammer and I, we respect you, you know, in fact, I guess all the guilders do, but you ain’t her, and you weren’t born to it, you’re a … ’
‘Shepherd’s son,’ Hammer grumbles.
‘Sheep fucker,’ Rookspit finishes, smiling.
Fallon tries not to rise to it, but he feels the bile choke him. Same old story, like all of them weren’t a few steps down from pirates and vagabonds, vermin of the seas. But he was worse. He was land vermin, and he’d worked his way in through love, rather than at the point of a sword.
The room feels close, stuffy, the wan light washing over the thunder in his temples.
Maybe things could change. Maybe the sword diplomacy could start now.
No. Stupid. Ship and Shroud are depending on him.
Hesper depends on him. He breathes, long and ragged.
In through the nose, out through the mouth, like Arissa taught him.
As if reading the room, Hammer raises his hands. ‘Look, leadership or provenance disputes aside, it doesn’t change the brute facts. We need the bodies. We need the money. From outside Hesper. We need new blood.’
‘And,’ Rookspit says, eyes savage now, like flint struck on emerald. ‘And, I need to know if I’m the goddamn snail.’
Fallon snaps at that, steps forwards, and gods it’s good to see them both flinch. Even if it’s just a little, even if it’s quickly hidden.
‘What is your point, Spit?’
Rookspit steadies themself, those lean fingers adjusting a belt beneath that ragged robe. Their dangling mask swings now, the grey cut of his chin sharp as he speaks.
‘My point is, Fallon, that them as hides themselves away sometimes survives, and sometimes they get squashed by toes they never even imagined. My point is that I don’t know where the crow-witch gets her shit from.
It’s weird. My point is that there are bigger forces at play then we can even see.
And I’m wondering – is we the snail? Or is we the foot? ’
They crawl forwards on to the table until Fallon can smell them, the acrid snap of lockpicker’s acid, and the mildewed damp of hours spent on the belfries and roofs.
‘My point is are we the snail, or are we the toe? Because we sure as shit ain’t the boot.’
Hammershy says nothing, already standing. The meeting over for him. Fallon’s lost them both. Rookspit follows him, scampering along the table. They cast a look over their shoulder, a flash of sour green as the mask is drawn back below their eyes.
‘I need to know, Dec, I need to know what we’re dealing with. I’m not moving until I know the shape of the boot, and that’s the all of it.’
Hammershy holds open the door graciously for Rookspit, who tumbles off the table, and brushes themself down.
As he moves to pull the door closed, the forge-master catches Fallon’s eye, and the two huge men regard each other for a moment. Dust hangs in the yellow light.
‘New blood would mean a tighter grip, Fallon.’
Fallon nods.
‘You need a tighter grip, Fallon.’
Fallon nods.
Hammershy tips his head. ‘Otherwise, well.’ And he taps something at his hip beneath his robes that rings with steel. ‘Otherwise, we’ll forge something new.’
The door clicks softly closed.
Fallon walks to the bullseye window, to that yellow light, grubby and old with filth and flies in the corners, for all it seems grand. Beyond that, distant, like another smudge across the skyline, the great mountain kingdom. The unspoken weight pressing down everyone on both sides of this war.
His last benighted resort.
Thell.