08 A Little Hatred: Book One (The Age of Madness)

May nodded slowly. As if she guessed Savine’s thoughts. ‘Beautiful dresses. Horrible jellies. Different world, isn’t it? You asked me what I thought about the city.’

‘You were … very honest.’

‘Little too honest for my own good, I expect. Always been a problem of mine. You stood up for me, though. I listened at the keyhole, and you stood up for me.’

Savine cleared her throat. ‘Is that why you took me in?’

‘Wish I could say yes.’ May sat forward, thin hands dangling over her knees. ‘But that wouldn’t be entirely honest. Fact is, Vallimir’s whole house was buzzing with news of your visit. Everyone desperate to get a look at you. I know who you are, my lady.’

Savine twitched. ‘You don’t have to call me that.’

‘What should I call you? Savine?’

Savine flinched. ‘Best for both of us if you don’t call me that, either.’

May lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Lady Glokta, then?’

Savine grimaced. ‘Best not to even think the name.’ There was a long silence while they looked at each other. Next door, someone had started singing. Always happy songs, because there was misery enough here without singing up more. ‘Might I ask … whether you’re thinking of telling anyone?’

May sat back. ‘My father thinks you’re just some waif got lost. My mother guesses you’re somebody, but she’d never guess who. Best we keep it that way. If news got out …’ She left that hanging. It was nicely judged. There really was no need to say more. Savine remembered the crowd of men in her mill, all looking at her. The mob. The hate in their faces.

She carefully licked her lips. ‘I would … appreciate your discretion. It would put me … very much in your debt.’

‘Oh, I’m counting on it.’

Savine turned up the hem of her dress, heartbeat thud, thud, thudding in her ears, and dug down inside the fraying seam with a finger, hooking out the earrings she had been wearing the day of the uprising. First one, then the other, the unfamiliar gleam of gold in the shadows.

‘Take these.’ Her voice was far too eager for a negotiator of her experience. ‘They’re gold with—’

‘Don’t think they’d go with my ensemble.’ May’s eyes flicked down to her own threadbare dress, then back up to Savine. ‘You keep ’em.’

Silence stretched out. Clearly May had planned this. Waited for her moment and already set her price.

‘What is it you want?’ asked Savine.

‘I want my family taken care of. When this is over, there’ll be hell to pay.’

Savine closed her hand around the earrings and let it drop. ‘I expect so.’

‘I want no trouble with the Inquisition. A full pardon for my father. I want you to find somewhere for us to live, good jobs for my parents. That’s all I want. For you to keep us safe. The way we’ve kept you safe.’ May held her eye for a long time. Trying to judge whether she could be trusted. Just as Savine would have, in her worn-out shoes. ‘Can you do that?’

A refreshing change, to go into a negotiation holding none of the cards. ‘I think that is the very least I could do,’ said Savine.

May spat in her palm and offered it out. The room was so small, she barely had to lean forward. ‘Deal, then?’

‘Deal.’

And they shook.

The New Monument

‘Do you know how many peasant labourers died building King Casamir’s roads?’ asked Risinau.

He shaded his eyes against the angry sun to look up at the monument that dominated Casamir’s Square. Or its remains, anyway. All that was left on the eight-stride-high pedestal, cobwebbed with wobbly scaffolding, were a pair of enormous boots sheared off at the calf. Aropella’s famous statue of the legendary king himself, who’d defeated the Northmen and added Angland to the Union, lay in scarred chunks on the cobbles, daubed with messy slogans. A gleeful urchin was trying to prise His Majesty’s nose off with a crowbar.

Vick only broke a silence when she knew she could improve on it. Risinau was the sort of man who’d soon answer his own questions.

‘Thousands! Buried in the loam of Midderland in unmarked pits beside the roadways. And yet Casamir is remembered as a hero. A great king. And all those marvellous roads. What a gift to posterity.’ Risinau gave a snort of contempt. ‘How often have I walked through this square and gazed up at this paean to a tyrant, this symbol of oppression?’

‘No doubt it’s a stain on the Union’s past.’ Risinau turned somewhat reluctantly to Malmer, who stood behind them with Gunnar Broad looming at his shoulder. ‘But it’s the present that’s worrying me.’

Most of the Breakers still had the fervour of true believers, or at least pretended to, but Broad pushed his lenses up and frowned at the ruined monument as if he was harbouring some doubts. What happened when the rest began to doubt was anyone’s guess. Risinau didn’t seem worried, though. He was fixed on higher things.

‘And only look at what we have achieved today, brothers!’ He clapped Malmer and Broad on their shoulders as if he’d fold them in a great hug. ‘We have cast Casamir down! In his place we shall raise a new monument to the workers who died for his vainglory!’