‘If you’re such a good friend you could try being happy for me.’
‘Happy to see you strung along by that golden-haired siren?’
‘Happy that I’ve found some little respite from the endless tide of shit my life has been!’ Shev winced, trying to find some position where her blowpipe wasn’t jabbing her in the armpit. ‘Did I complain when you were noisily enjoying your frequent dalliances?’
‘Did you complain?’ Javre snorted. ‘You, the baroness of bitching? The countess of carping? The princess of prating? The … er … the grand duchess of … of …’
‘I get the idea,’ snapped Shev, checking the trigger of her crossbow before she slid it into the holster under her coat.
‘Good, because apparently your memory is almost as short as you are. Complain, Shevedieh? You made my life a misery day in and day out for the past …’ Javre frowned up at the starry sky, moonlit lips moving as she counted. ‘Thirteen … no fourteen!’ She gave a long pause before her bleary eyes settled on Shev, then added in a weary drawl, ‘Fourteen fucking years.’
‘Fourteen years,’ muttered Shev. ‘Half my life, near as damn it.’ And she felt the back of her nose aching with the need to cry. For all those years wasted. For the ruin of their friendship, which for so long had been all she had. For the fact that it had still been there when she needed it. For the fact that it was still all she had.
Javre puffed out her scarred cheeks. ‘Small wonder we are … somewhat wearied.’
The blades of the oars feathered the water, trails of sparkling drops falling from their ends, then cut silently into the surface. The rowlocks creaked. The wind picked up and stirred Javre’s dirty hair.
‘I am happy for you,’ she said, softly. ‘I try to be, anyway.’
‘Well, I’m happy you’re happy.’
‘Good.’
‘Good.’
Another slow silence. ‘I am just sad for myself.’
Shev looked up, caught Javre’s eye. A wet gleam in the darkness. ‘I’m sorry you’re sad,’ she said.
‘Good.’
‘Good.’
‘Shit,’ mouthed Shev as she scrabbled about in the dark for a reliable toehold on that crumbling wall. Burroia’s damn fort was falling apart. But then it was a ruin. Bit like Shev’s hopes in that regard. ‘Bloody, bloody shit.’
Javre might’ve had a point about all the hardware. It was a hell of a weight for someone who’d built their reputation on a light tread. There were a couple of buckles she’d dragged too tight now threatening to cut off the blood to her legs, and a couple she hadn’t dragged tight enough, loose metal clinking and the garrotte knocking distractingly against her arse crack every time she pulled herself up.
What was she doing with a damn garrotte anyway? She’d never used a garrotte in her life, except once to cut a cheese and that was for a joke and hadn’t even ended up that funny. You can make an argument for a knife. Sometimes people just need a knifing. Like Crandall had. She shed no tears for him. But once you start garrotting people you can’t claim to stand with the righteous.
Garrottes simply are not part of God’s chosen path and although, through a combination of personal weakness, evil acquaintance and plain bad luck, Shev had to admit her feet had often left the chosen path behind, she liked to imagine she could at least still see it, in the distance, if she squinted.
She froze at a noise above, the latest of a volley of curses stopped cold on her lips.
Footsteps scraping. The tuneless humming of a person deeply bored and with no musical aptitude. Shev’s eyes went wide. A guard, on patrol. She wondered what the chances were of his not noticing the grapple wedged against the parapet. Not good, was her guess. She clung tight to the rope with one hand, jerked a dart out with the other and shoved it between her teeth.
It would’ve been the perfect end to her career of misadventures if she’d pricked herself in the cheek, lost consciousness and dropped off the rope into the sea. But Shev was blessed with a nimble tongue. Probably that was what Carcolf saw in her. God knows, there had to be something.
The humming stopped. Footsteps scuffed closer. She snatched out her blowpipe, raising it to her lips. Sadly, at that moment, her fingers were less nimble than her mouth. The blowpipe caught on a jutting stone, she fumbled it, juggled it desperately, almost let go of the rope in her confusion, then gave a despairing gasp of, ‘Thuck!’ around the dart in her teeth as she watched it tumble away.
Javre caught it, then peered up, puzzled. ‘What is this?’ she hissed.
Shev looked back to the parapet, helpless panic settling on her like snow on a sleeping tramp. A face suddenly appeared. The face of a big man with curly hair. His thick brows went sharply up when he saw her clinging to the rope with her feet against the wall, close enough to reach out and touch.
Her first bizarre instinct was to give him a hopeful smile, but with the dart between her teeth it was impossible.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said, and leaned out, lifting a spear.
Lucky that Shev had always been a quick thinker in a tight spot. Years of practice, maybe. She jerked herself up as if overpowered by a desire to kiss him and stuck him in the neck with the dart.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said again, but less angry this time, and more surprised. He tried to stab her but she was too close, his elbow caught on the battlements and the spear slid from his slack grip, dropping over Shev’s shoulder.
Fast-acting, that toxin. He flopped limp over the parapet with a sigh and Shev grabbed his belt and dragged herself up by it, rolling silently across his back and onto the walkway.
With rare good fortune, she found it empty. A stretch of stone maybe two strides wide, crumbling battlements to either side, a door leading into an ivy-throttled turret at the far end, faint torchlight showing around its edge. More lights twinkled further off in the windows of the old fortress. The place might be a ruin, but it was evidently far from abandoned.
She leaned over the slumbering guard to hiss at Javre. ‘Planning to fucking join me?’
The Lioness of Hoskopp was still fumbling drunkenly with the rope, her boots scuffing the wall no more than a stride above the boat. ‘Yes I am fucking planning on it!’ she hissed back.
Shev shook her head and padded on towards the door, allowing herself the slightest smile. Considering the mess with the blowpipe, that really couldn’t have gone much-
She frowned as she heard faint laughter, then the door flew open and a man walked out, holding a lamp high and chuckling over his shoulder to another. There were more behind them. At least two more. ‘We’ll finish that hand when Big Lom gets back and I’ll-’ His head turned and he saw her frozen with her mouth an apologetic O of surprise. He had a bent nose and absurd hair cut in a straight line across his forehead.
‘Horald told us to expect you.’ And he grinned as he drew his sword.
Shev had always hated fighting. She’d hidden from it, talked her way free of it, bought her way out of it. She’d dodged it, she’d ducked it and, with shameful frequency, she’d watched Javre do it for her.
But Horald the Finger had pushed her over the line, and she would be pushed no further.
She whipped out the little crossbow and levelled it. The eyes of Horald’s bent-nosed man went wide.
‘He tell you to expect this?’ she asked, and squeezed the trigger.
The string snapped with a ping and the bolt went twittering end-over-end sideways and was lost in the darkness above the water, leaving them staring at one another, all somewhat surprised.
‘Huh.’ Bent Nose cleared his throat. ‘I’m thinking-’
If she’d learned one thing from Javre, it was that when it came to fighting, the less thinking the better. She flung the crossbow at his head and it hit him just above the eye. He gasped, stumbling back into the man behind him, his lamp dropping to the stones and spraying burning oil across the walkway.