‘Your arse looks excellent if you … ask …’ Shev cleared her throat as Vitari narrowed her eyes. ‘Thief will do, I suppose.’ She began reading again. ‘For any and all offences towards me, including but not limited to the cowardly murder of my son Crandall … Cowardly? The only bloody cowardly thing about it was him turning up with four men to kill me! I axed him in the front, which was better than he bloody deserved, I can-’
‘Wording, Shevedieh, let the man have his wording.’ Vitari waved it away, heavy-lidded. ‘It doesn’t do to get worked up over trifles.’
‘Fair point.’ Shev took a breath as she looked back to the document. ‘I hereby give up any right to vengeance or recrimination and do solemnly swear, in the absence of any further significant offence, not to cause personal harm to the aforementioned Shevedieh or any of her associates.’ She scanned down to the bottom, peered closely and gave a snort. ‘The awe-inspiring Horald the Finger makes a mark?’
‘Awe-inspiring or not, that bastard can’t write any more than I can sing.’
‘You can’t sing?’
‘I used to torture people for a living, but I’d never be heartless enough to sing to them.’
‘And this is binding?’
‘This is flimflam. But Horald gave his word to the grand duchess. That is binding, or he will become another debt to be paid. He’s no fool. He understands.’
Shev closed her eyes, and took a long breath, and felt herself smiling. ‘I’m free,’ she whispered. Could it be? After all these years? ‘I’m free,’ she said, blinking back tears, and she felt her knees weaken and had to flop down in the nearest chair. She just sat, eyes shut, thinking about how she could just sit, eyes shut, not glancing over her shoulder, not startling at every noise, not picking over the routes of escape, not planning where she’d run to next.
God, she was free.
‘So …’ She opened her eyes. ‘That’s it?’
Vitari was pouring another glass of wine. ‘Unless you don’t want that to be it? I can always find work for the best … acquisitions specialist in Styria.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Shev, rolling up the scroll and turning for the door. ‘From here on, it’s the quiet life for me.’
‘I tried the quiet life.’ Vitari held her wine up to the light, a splash of blood-red across her frown as the sun shone through it. ‘For about a week. I was bored as hell.’
‘God, to be bored!’ Shev had to shout over another world-shaking wave of applause for the young King Jappo. ‘I can’t wait!’
She took the steps two at a time, footfalls clattering in the echoing, flaking, mould-stained stairwell. She clutched the paper with Horald’s mark at the bottom as if it was a pass to a brave new life – which indeed it was – smiling so wide her face hurt as she wove pleasing fantasies of all the fine things that’d happen when she burst through the door and Carcolf looked up.
‘I’m done,’ Shev would cry, breathless and appealingly tousled.
One of those golden brows would arch, just so. ‘Done with this job?’
‘Done with all of them. Horald the Finger gave his word. I’m out. I’m free.’ She’d saunter over, their eyes never leaving each other. ‘We’re free.’
She thought of the happy lines around Carcolf’s eyes when she smiled, the creases at the corners of her mouth. The pattern of them, each one scored into her memory like a prayer learned by heart.
‘We’re free.’
Carcolf would plant her hands on her hips, her tongue in her cheek, and beckon Shev over with a flick of her head, and they’d fall into each other’s arms, Shev’s face full of that scent – loitering on the edge of too sour but somehow all the better for it. God, Shev could almost smell it now, tickling at her nose. Maybe they’d tickle their noses with some pearl dust and dance together, Shev leading even if she was half a head shorter, both laughing at the melancholy sawing of that violinist playing for coppers in the square outside.
Maybe there’d be a serious moment as they looked into each other’s eyes, and Shev would coax her out with just the right soft words like you coax a nervous cat through a gap in a fence. Carcolf would tell her stories of who she really was, and what she really felt, and she’d let that smirking mask slip and give a glimpse of the beautiful, vulnerable secret self that Shev had always been sure was in there. Maybe she’d even whisper her first name. A special name, which only Shev would get to use. Didn’t seem likely, but what’s the point of likely fantasies?
Then they’d kiss, of course, nudging to begin with, nuzzling, nipping, feeling each other out like a pair of master swordsmen fencing. Then hungrily, messily, tongues and teeth, Shev tangling her fingers in Carcolf’s hair and dragging her face down to hers. She was getting pleasantly warm in the trousers thinking about it. The kissing would lead to fumbling, and the fumbling would lead by a trail of shed clothes to the bed, and they’d stay in the bed until the room smelled of fucking, making up for all those wasted years, only getting up for a pinch more dust and maybe to make tea naked with Shev’s very fine tea set, and in the morning …
Her eager hand froze halfway to the doorknob, smile slowly fading and the warmth in her trousers with it.
In the morning, the grey, early morning, while Shev was still sprawled snoozing in the sticky sheets, Carcolf would slip out, pulling the hood down over her smile, probably with Shev’s very fine tea set in a bag over her shoulder – along with any other easily transported valuables – and vanish into the mists, never to be heard from again. Until she needed something.
Shev didn’t much like to be honest with herself. Who does? But if she accepted the pain of it for a moment, that was how things had gone between them down the years. Carcolf had jumped into her arms often enough but just as quickly slipped through her fingers. Usually leaving Shev with a hell of a mess to run away from or, on one memorable occasion, swim away from as a medium-sized merchant vessel capsized behind her.
She swallowed as she frowned down at the doorknob.
This wasn’t fantasies, it was life. And life had a habit of kicking her in the cunt.
But what were her choices? If you want to be a fine new person with a fine new life you’ve got to put the person you were behind you, like a snake sheds its skin. You’ve got to stop picking through your hoard of hurts and grievances like a miser through his coins, set ’em down and allow yourself to go free. You’ve got to forgive and you’ve got to trust, not because anyone else deserves it, but because you do.
So Shev took a deep breath, and forced a smile over her nerves, and shoved the door wide.
‘I’m-’
Her place was a ruin.
The furniture was shattered and axe-hacked, the hangings torn-down and knife-slashed. The shelves had been tipped over, scattering the lovely books that Shev hadn’t read but which made her look quite cultured. Lumps had been knocked from the marble fireplace with a hammer. Carcolf had always insisted that painting of the smirking woman with the ample bosom she’d hung over it was an original Aropella. Shev had always harboured considerable doubts. It was a moot point now, though, as someone had slashed it to flapping shreds, bosom and all.
They hadn’t just flipped the tea set over, they’d made sure every cup was individually broken, every spoon individually bent. Someone had smashed the spout and the handle off the pot and then, it appeared, pissed in it.
Shev’s skin prickled with horror as she walked across the room, splinters crunching under her boots, and pushed back the gouged bedroom door.
Carcolf lay slumped on the floor.
Shev gave a whooping gasp, dashing to her, dropping on her knees-
Just her clothes. Just her clothes dragged from her broken chest, tipped over on its side with the contents spilling out like the offal from a gutted corpse. The false bottom was smashed open, and the false bottom in the false bottom ripped out, forged documents scattered, fake jewels gleaming darkly in the shadows.