‘But you know?’
He glances down, tucks his chin. ‘What she can do to me? Of course. We all walked out the south together. And my wife’s right up there.’
Shipwright glances up to the roofbeams, waves a line of smoke. ‘So why then? Why risk it? Crowkisser won’t hesitate, you know.’
Declan frowns, the plates of his face shifting slowly. ‘Because’ – he pauses, swallows – ‘because when she killed the gods, she took away the things that defined us. And then when she tried to takeour names, she hooked the things thatmakeus. And she doesn’t get that. Not from me. Not at any price.’
He smiles merrily. ‘Stupid fucking slit.’
Shipwright grins. ‘You’re such a fucking ass, Declan.’
The Lord of the Grey Towers pats her shoulder companionably, and lets rip a thunderous fart.
‘I know, I know. But you love me.’
16
Twice sang the mother to her pretty baby
Twice cried the baby in the crib so cold
Once came a rider, chasing bitter weather
Blood spilt and bones split, all for hate of gold
—Merryweather’s Lament
Some towns sat on the earth like they were ashamed to be there. Squat, ill-favoured things. Clusters of cottages and byres that had come together on soft Midlands soil for no other reason than water was available, or this was where the thin roads crossed, or this was where their founder had set down sword and shield, and fell to his bloody knees.
Quickfish was happy to see even the miserable ones. They weren’t in the Midlands proper yet, just hauling across the scattered roads and sighing grass that split the world that still lived from the devastation to the south.
A glance over his shoulder is enough. Something always burning against the sky, and the sky always the sullen colour of a bruise.
‘What’s even left to burn?’
Roofkeeper’s voice is shooting for cheerful, but dying before it gets there.
The weight of his arm on Quickfish’s shoulder is comforting; the smell of his body, the scratch of his shirt. Fish leans in and kisses a bicep lightly where it sits against his chest.
‘Plenty, I suppose. They say Kisser’s still hunting stragglers. Even after the border towns were burnt out.’
Roof scans the treeline, the sallow fringe of hills brooding to the south. ‘We should keep moving, we’re too exposed up here.Might get better shelter at the next town. There should be one just over the rise.’
Roofkeeper says this with a map in front of him. He turns and twists it as if that changes where the roads might lie.
‘Give me that,’ Quickfish says. ‘For a lad that spends most of his time on the tops of buildings you’re terrible on the ground.’
‘I hate the ground,’ Roof says. ‘I only come down for you.’
Quickfish raises an eyebrow. ‘Smooth today.’
‘I get one day a month. Come on. We really have to move.’ This said with a glance southwards. Distantly, a copse of trees coughs up a flock of feathers that wheel, and move towards the smoke colouring the sky. Evening is falling faster than he would like.
They turn and track up the next hill along a path carved by goats as much as people, twisting with a shepherd’s logic up the crown and turning underfoot at every chance. Stones skitter away down green flanks, pocked with rabbit warrens and their liberally gifted shit.
‘We’ll be lucky not to break a leg before we find a bed.’
And of course, as soon as he says it, his legs go, a strange dizziness rising to meet him, like the ground singing. The lines of the world fall away for a second, just enough to turn his ankle, and leave him teetering on the edge of the track.
