‘Found a snail in my boot today, Fallon. Found him with my toe.’
Hammershy laughs despite himself. ‘How’d a snail get in your boots, Rook?’
The look Rookspit shoots him is pitying.
‘Left them behind when I was scurrying up by Teller’s Bell, didn’t I? Came back after I’d cut a slice or two from the Malker’s lot, and there he was tucked into the tip, quite the thing. Little idiot. Found him with my big toe, Fallon. My foot was the last thing he ever felt falling from on high.’
Their palm arcs toward the wood, miming. Rookspit cranes closer, their long lean fingers reaching over the table.
‘First the crunch of his little walls, then all the goo and juice of him spurting up between my toes.’
Hammershy grunts.
Rookspit laughs, thin and looping. ‘Too messy for you Hammer? Not enough steel and scorch, eh?’ One lean finger makes an obscene gesture, and even Fallon smiles.
The grin falls off Rookspit’s face like a dropped curtain.
‘I need to know if I’m the snail Fallon, no matter how much you’re offering.’
Hammershy straightens at this, listening.
‘Me and my broad-beamed associate here are holding up a lot of your precious city. Even if we have taken the odd liberty in theprocess. In fact, we’ve got it cupped top to bottom, roofs to rats, and so we have to be real careful.’
Their hands move fluidly, flicking a small ball of something unpleasant down the table. ‘Everything we move from one place, has to come from another place.’
Rook looks up, their eyes the green of pond scum. ‘Everything we give to you has to be paid for from somewhere else. I ain’t saying we don’t like what you’re offering. You could swing our red columns black with a stroke of the pen, and starlings’ shins if that wouldn’t open up some options for me, never mind old Hambone over the table.’
Hammershy snorts, but nods. ‘They’re right. Irritating, but right.’
‘But it ain’t just about the columns. We arecommitted, meat and bone and coin. Everything we have is going to keeping this old girl turning, because we are more easily shaved than we have ever been.’
Long fingers trace the grooves of the table, sharp nails picking at the joins. ‘All it takes is a promise from the little crowkissing girl, and a village that used to send piss to the tanners is singing holy holy shag-a-fishy. And what’s piss you say? Well piss is money, and piss is half a walk towards armour, and armour keeps you half a step from death.’
Hammershy opens his mouth, but Rook is in full flow. Fallon watches their hands wave. ‘And sure, OK, you cuts my red columns in half and you gives me new black columns, but my pisspots are still empty, and the young lads that used to run scopes up on the Cheapskin way have left, and where are we going to find them?’
Spit’s eyes flash. ‘One of them puts on a grey hood and starlings’ tongues! Now he’s singing shag-a-fishy with the rest of Crowkisser’s lot, and one of them, he runs west over the sea, and the last we see of him he’s lining the plushy guts of a whale. And thelastone, he steals my horse,mybeautiful palfrey, the one with the white neck and he rides north towards Thell, and maybe there’s something in him that sets off those stone-lickers fromthe mountain. Eyes a little too gold, or maybe he smiles when the sky is bare and they decide he is host-holding! God-tainted! And bang, his ribs are split with a spear, neat as old Hammerhonk splits the withy and the steel.’
Hammershy finally gets a word in edgeways. ‘What Rook is saying is that numbers are just numbers without bodies and matter underneath. We are running out of able bodies, and we are running out of material. Port’s not pulling like she used to and the land is dry. We can’t trade what we don’t have.’
Rookspit leans forwards and there is something lean in them now, like an alley cat. And Fallon remembers where this man came from, and who disappeared to get him there. Those green eyes flash, the skin at their sides flaking, pale.
‘Hammer’s right for his one allotted time per day, so listen up, we need more than promises. We can’t give you no more, because it’d be like taking blood from one lush organ to flush another. Heart thrums, lungs die. Lungs puff, guts shit. You follow me?’
Rookspit frowns. ‘Frankly, the others ain’t here because they already feel like you’re bouncing on our necks like a five-day rope, and they’re shit-sick of it.’ They smile again, that wet rind of teeth. ‘But Hammer and I, we are practical and honest and we wanted you to know that it ain’t a no ’til the worms eat birds, it’s a no until you get some new blood into the system.’
That sallow face is flat, serious. ‘Corpses or coin, meat or money, we need men and we need funds, Fallon. Get them from somewhere other than us, split sky above, because we are running out of time.’
‘And?’ Hammershy rumbles.
Rook looks at him like the interruption is a hot poker down the shirt. ‘Andwe don’t know enough about what’s going on.’
They lean further forwards still now, their knees brushing the edge of the table, feet on the chair, sticky boots neatly balanced. ‘This is weird shit, Dec.Weirdshit. The Grey Lady’s gone and Hammer and I, we respect you, you know, in fact, I guess all the guilders do, but you ain’t her, and you weren’t born to it, you’re a …’
‘Shepherd’s son,’ Hammer grumbles.
‘Sheep fucker,’ Rookspit finishes, smiling.
Fallon tries not to rise to it, but he feels the bile choke him. Same old story, like all of them weren’t a few steps down from pirates and vagabonds, vermin of the seas. But he was worse. He was land vermin, and he’d worked his way in through love, rather than at the point of a sword.
