She let him go but he didn’t move, just stared at her with those big eyes that were so like her brother’s. ‘You’re not coming?’
‘Someone has to try to handle this mess. Go.’ She shoved him away, watched him totter towards the door.
Vick wanted to follow. Badly. But she had to get to the hill and find Savine dan Glokta, maybe there was still time to put out a warning—
‘This must be Victarine dan Teufel!’ She froze at that strangely prim voice. ‘I had heard you were in Valbeck.’ Risinau came smiling through the crowd, dabbing his shining face with a handkerchief, Judge at one shoulder, Malmer at the other.
There was a hollow feeling in Vick’s guts as dozens of pairs of hard eyes turned towards her. Like that moment in the mines, in the dark, the day her sister drowned. When she hissed for quiet, and heard the water rushing, far off.
They had her. She was done.
Risinau wagged one plump finger. ‘Collem Sibalt told me all about you.’
Her heart was thudding so hard she could hardly breathe. Hardly see. The children had pulled down the dummy of Bayaz and were beating it with its own staff, straw flying. She couldn’t believe how calm her voice sounded. Like someone else’s. Someone who knew exactly what they were doing. ‘Good things, I hope.’
‘All good things. He said you were a woman with a hard heart and a level head. A woman as committed to our cause as any. A woman who could keep her wits on a sinking ship.’ And Risinau stepped forward and folded her in a smothering hug while she stood there, damp with cold sweat and her flesh creeping. ‘Collem Sibalt was a dear friend. Any friend of his is a friend of mine.’
Judge was staring at her with those black, empty eyes, head dropped to one side. Vick couldn’t tell whether she was putting on a hell of an act or if she really was as mad as she looked.
‘I don’t trust this one,’ she growled.
‘You don’t trust anyone,’ grunted Malmer.
‘Yet folk still disappoint me.’
Risinau held Vick out at arm’s length, smiling. ‘You’ve come at just the right moment, sister.’
‘Why?’ asked Vick. ‘We on a sinking ship?’
‘By no means.’ The Superior-turned-revolutionary threw an arm around her shoulders. ‘We are aboard a ship embarking for shores of prosperity, shores of equality, shores of freedom! A ship headed for a Great Change! But the voyage will not be easy. At midday tomorrow, our fair city will pass through quite the storm. Yes, my friends!’ He turned towards the crowded warehouse, throwing up his hands. ‘Tomorrow is the day!’
And the Breakers and Burners broke into thunderous applause.
Welcome to the Future
The spike-topped wall seemed better suited to a prison than a manufactory, and Savine felt far from comfortable stepping through its iron-faced gate. Her monthly agonies had dwindled to a nagging ache, but the summer heat was more oppressive even than yesterday, and her sense of unease had been steadily growing all the way through Valbeck from the hill as her carriage clattered down murky streets strangely empty, oddly quiet, towards the river.
The three towering sheds were unlovely buildings of soot-streaked brickwork with few windows and no adornments. Even through the thick-soled boots she had chosen, Savine could feel the cobbles of the yard buzz with the movement of the great machines inside. Men slouched sullen about the yard, loading and unloading wagons, grey-clothed and grey-skinned, hard eyes turned rudely towards the new arrivals. Savine met the stare of one and he made a great show of spitting. She was reminded of the charming reception Queen Terez received on her rare appearances before the commoners. At least no one was screaming Styrian cunt! at her. But only, she suspected, because she was not Styrian.
‘The workers appear less than delighted by my visit,’ murmured Savine.
Vallimir snorted. ‘If there is a way to delight the workers, I have yet to find it. Managing soldiers was considerably more straightforward.’
‘One can have perfectly cordial relationships with one’s competitors, but rarely with one’s employees.’ Savine glanced over her shoulder at the ten armoured guards filing through the gate after them, fingers tickling their weapons. It did nothing for her nerves that heavily armed men looked even more nervous than she did. ‘Do we really need such a conspicuous escort?’
‘Merely a precaution,’ said Vallimir as he led Savine, Lisbit and the rest of their party across the yard. ‘Superior Risinau suggested you have a dozen Practicals about you at all times.’
‘That seems … excessive.’ Even for the daughter of the Union’s most hated man.
‘I felt their presence would only inflame tensions. In order to make the mill profitable, certain … efficiencies have been necessary. Longer hours and shorter breaks. Reductions in the budgets for food and living quarters. Punishments for talking or whistling.’
Savine nodded approvingly. ‘Sensible economies.’
‘But several of the older hands banded together to oppose them and had to be laid off. There was some violence. It became necessary to forbid any organising among the workers, though that was made easier by the king’s new laws against congregation.’ Savine’s father’s new laws, in fact, which she had taken a personal hand in drafting. ‘Then the new methods instituted in our third shed have caused …’ Vallimir frowned towards the newest of the three buildings, longer, lower and with even narrower windows in its already grubby walls. ‘Considerable ill will.’
‘I often find the more effective the method, the more ill will it causes. Perhaps we should begin our tour there.’
Vallimir winced. ‘I am not sure you would be … comfortable inside. It is extremely noisy. Very warm. Not at all a suitable place for a lady of your standing.’
‘Oh, come now, Colonel,’ she said, already striding towards it, ‘on my mother’s side, I am from tough common stock.’
‘I am aware. I knew your uncle.’
‘Lord Marshal West?’ The man had died before she was born, but her mother sometimes spoke of him. If you counted the sentimental platitudes one used about family long in their grave.
‘He once challenged me to a duel, in fact.’
‘Really?’ Her interest piqued by that flash of an honest recollection. ‘Over what?’
‘Rash words I have often regretted. You remind me of him, in a way. He was a very driven man. Very committed.’ Vallimir glanced towards her as he produced a key and unlocked the door. ‘And he could be quite terrifying.’ The hum of machinery became a roar as he pushed it wide.
Inside, the whole place shook with the endless anger of the engines. The slap of belts, the clatter of cogs, the rattle of shuttles, the shrieking of metal under furious pressure. The manufactory floor was dug deep into the ground so they stood at a kind of balcony. Savine stepped to the rail, frowning down at the workers, and paused, wondering if there was some trick of perspective.
But no.
‘They are children.’ She let no emotion enter her voice at the word. Hundreds of children, lean and filthy, gathered in long rows about the looms, darting among the machines, rolling spindles of yarn as tall as they were, bent under bolts of finished cloth.
‘If Valbeck has one commodity in abundance,’ shouted Vallimir in her ear, ‘it is orphaned and abandoned children. Paupers, serving only as a burden to the state. Here we provide them with useful occupation.’ He gave a grim smile. ‘Welcome … to the future.’
In one corner of the shed there were large shelves, five or six high, equipped with sliding ladders but holding only rags. As Savine watched, a tangle-haired girl crawled from one. Their beds, then. They lived in this place. The smell was nauseating, the heat crushing, the noise thunderous, the combination positively hellish.