“Here.” He snatched hold of the pipe and sucked at it, greedy as a drunkard at the bottle. He hardly even marked the smoke biting, just heaved in air until his lungs were full, and all the while she held him, arms tight around him, rocking him back and forwards. The darkness was full of colours, now. Covered with glittering smears. The pain was a step away, ’stead of pressed burning against him. His breathing had softened to a whimper, aching body all washed out.
She helped him up, dragging him to his feet, pipe clattering from his limp hand. The open window swayed, a painting of another world. Hell maybe, red and yellow spots of fire leaving long brushstrokes through the dark. The bed came up and swallowed him, sucked him down. His face throbbed still, pulsed a dull ache. He remembered, remembered why.
“The dead…” he whispered, tears running down his other cheek. “My eye. They burned my eye out.”
“Shhhh,” she whispered, gently stroking the good side of his face. “Quiet now, Caul. Quiet.”
The darkness was reaching for him, wrapping him up. Before it took him he twisted his fingers clumsily in her hair and dragged her face towards his, close enough almost to kiss his bandages.
“Should’ve been you,” he whispered at her. “Should’ve been you.”
Other People’s Scores
T hat’s his place,” said the one with the sore on his cheek. “Sajaam’s place.”
A stained door in a stained wall, pasted with fluttering old bills decrying the League of Eight as villains, usurpers and common criminals. A pair of caricature faces stared from each one, a bloated Duke Salier and a sneering Duke Rogont. A pair of common criminals stood at the doorway, scarcely less caricatures themselves. One dark-skinned, the other with a heavy tattoo down one arm, both sweeping the street with identical scowls.
“Thank you, children. Eat, now.” Shenkt pressed a scale into each grubby hand, twelve pairs of eyes wide in smudged faces to have so much money. Once a few days had passed, let alone a few years, he knew it would have done them little good. They were the beggars, thieves, whores, early dead of tomorrow. But Shenkt had done much harm in his life, and so he tried, wherever possible, to be kind. It put nothing right, he knew that. But perhaps a coin could tip the scales of life by that vital degree, and one among them would be spared. It would be a good thing, to spare even one.
He hummed quietly to himself as he crossed the street, the two men at the door frowning at him all the way. “I am here to speak to Sajaam.”
“You armed?”
“Always.” He and the dark-skinned guard stared at each other for a moment. “My ready wit could strike at any moment.”
Neither one of them smiled, but Shenkt had not expected them to, and did not care into the bargain. “What’ve you got to say to Sajaam?”
“ ‘Are you Sajaam?’ That shall be my opening gambit.”
“You mocking us, little man?” The guard put one hand on the mace hanging at his belt, no doubt thinking himself fearsome.
“I would not dare. I am here to enjoy myself, and have money to spend, nothing more.”
“Maybe you came to the right place after all. With me.”
He led Shenkt through a hot, dim room, heavy with oily smoke and shadows. Lit blue, green, orange, red by lamps of coloured glass. Husk-smokers sprawled around it, pale faces twisted with smiles, or hanging slack and empty. Shenkt found that he was humming again, and stopped himself.
A greasy curtain pushed aside into a large back room that smelled of unwashed bodies, smoke and vomit, rotten food and rotten living. A man covered in tattoos sat cross-legged upon a sweat-stained cushion, an axe leaning against the wall beside him. Another man sat on the other side of the room, digging at an ugly piece of meat with a knife, a loaded flatbow beside his plate. Above his head an old clock hung, workings dangling from its underside like the intestines from a gutted corpse, pendulum swinging, tick, tick, tick.
Upon a long table in the centre of the room were the chattels of a card game. Coins and counters, bottles and glasses, pipes and candles. Men sat about it, six of them in all. A fat man at Shenkt’s right hand, a scrawny one at the left, stuttering out a joke to his neighbour.
“… he fuh, fuh, fucked her!”
Harsh laughter, harsh faces, cheap lives of cheap smoke, cheap drink, cheap violence. Shenkt’s guide walked around to the head of the table, leaned down to speak to a broad-shouldered man, black-skinned, white-haired, with the smile of comfortable ownership on his lined face. He toyed with a golden coin, flipping it glinting across the tops of his knuckles.
“You are Sajaam?” asked Shenkt.
He nodded, entirely at his ease. “Do I know you?”
“No.”
“A stranger, then? We do not entertain many strangers here, do we, my friends?” A couple of them grinned half-heartedly. “Most of my customers are well known to us. What can Sajaam do for you, stranger?”
“Where is Monzcarro Murcatto?”
