“You alone are spared. Out, before I reconsider.”
The mumbling beggar dropped his cards, fled whimpering for the door and tumbled through it. Shenkt watched him go. A good thing, even to spare one.
As he turned back, Sajaam was swinging his chair over his head. It burst apart across Shenkt’s shoulder, broken pieces bouncing from the floor and clattering away. A futile gesture, Shenkt scarcely even felt it. The edge of his hand chopped into the man’s big arm, snapped it like a dead twig, spun him around and sent him rolling over and over across the floor.
Shenkt walked after him, his scuffed work boots making not the slightest sound as they found the gaps between the debris. Sajaam coughed, shook his head, started to worm away on his back, gurgling through gritted teeth, hand dragging behind him the wrong way up. The heels of his embroidered Gurkish slippers kicked at the floor, leaving stuttering trails through the detritus of blood, dust, feathers and splinters that had settled across the whole room like leaves across a forest floor in autumn.
“A man sleeps through most of his life, even when awake. You get so little time, yet still you spend it utterly oblivious. Angry, frustrated, fixated on meaningless nothings. That drawer does not close flush with the front of my desk. What cards does my opponent hold, and how much money can I win from him? I wish I were taller. What will I have for dinner, for I am not fond of parsnips?” Shenkt rolled a mangled corpse out of his way with the toe of one boot. “It takes a moment like this to jerk us to our senses, to draw our eyes from the mud to the heavens, to root our attention in the present. Now you realise how precious is each moment. That is my gift to you.”
Sajaam reached the back wall and propped himself up against it, worked himself slowly to standing, broken arm hanging limp.
“I despise violence. It is the last tool of feeble minds.” Shenkt stopped a stride away. “So let us have no more foolishness. Where is Monzcarro Murcatto?”
To give the man his due for courage, he made for the knife at his belt.
Shenkt’s pointed finger sank into the hollow where chest met shoulder, just beneath his collarbone. It punched through shirt, skin, flesh, and as the rest of his fist smacked hard against Sajaam’s chest and drove him back against the wall, his fingernail was already scraping against the inside surface of his shoulder blade, buried in his flesh right to the knuckles. Sajaam screamed, knife clattering from his dangling fingers.
“No more foolishness, I said. Where is Murcatto?”
“In Visserine the last I heard!” His voice was hoarse with pain. “In Visserine!”
“At the siege?” Sajaam nodded, bloody teeth clenched tight together. If Visserine had not fallen already, it would have by the time Shenkt got there. But he never left a job half-done. He would assume she was still alive, and carry on the chase. “Who does she have with her?”
“Some Northman beggar, called himself Shivers! A man of mine named Friendly! A convict! A convict from Safety!”
“Yes?” Shenkt twisted his finger in the man’s flesh, blood trickling from the wound and down his hand, around the streaks of gold dried to his forearm, dripping from his elbow, tap, tap, tap.
“Ah! Ah! I put her in touch with a poisoner called Morveer! In Westport, and in Sipani with a woman called Vitari!” Shenkt frowned. “A woman who can get things done!”
“Murcatto, Shivers, Friendly, Morveer… Vitari.”
A desperate nod, spit flying from Sajaam’s gritted teeth with every heaving, agonised breath.
“And where are these brave companions bound next?”
“I’m not sure! Gah! She said seven men! The seven men who killed her brother! Ah! Puranti, maybe! Keep ahead of Orso’s army! If she gets Ganmark, maybe she’ll try for Faithful next, for Faithful Carpi!”
“Maybe she will.” Shenkt jerked his finger free with a faint sucking sound and Sajaam collapsed, sliding down until his rump hit the floor, his shivering, sweat-beaded face twisted with pain.
“Please,” he grunted. “I can help you. I can help you find her.”
Shenkt squatted down in front of him, blood-smeared hands dangling on the knees of his blood-smeared trousers. “But you have helped. You can leave the rest to me.”
“I have money! I have money.”
Shenkt said nothing.
“I was planning on turning her in to Orso, sooner or later, once the price was high enough.”
More nothing.
“That doesn’t make any difference, does it?”
Silence.
“I told that bitch she’d be the death of me.”
“You were right. I hope that is a comfort.”
“Not much of one. I should have killed her then.”
“But you saw money to be made. Have you anything to say?”
Sajaam stared at him. “What would I say?”
“Some people want to say things, at the end. Do you?”
“What are you?” he whispered.
