And yet, he owes them, whether it sits in his guts like a goose egg or not. He’d bet rats to ribbons that Quick has come to collect, even if the boy doesn’t know it.
Whatever he wants, it’s going to pull Thell back into Hesper’s orbit, and back into Crowkisser’s shortly after that.
Kinghammer shivers again. Bitter, bitter cold. It’ll get worse before it gets better. The morning sun hauling itself across the mountain takes a long time to bounce its way down into the dark.
He can feel the stubble speckling his jaw like spoil in the field – fuck it, a shave at least, a good way to start.
Right, feet on the cold stone. Chipped nails and blue veins. Old man’s feet, his grandfather’s legs stuck on his own aching hips. It’s a miracle he can talk anyone into warming his bed.
He stands, and makes a noise like an old bellows, and a few other noises that don’t bear mentioning. He steps to the bowl, the polished bronze of the mirror. There’s enough of the man he recognises in the reflection to take the edge off. The Kinghammer still looks back at him, shoulders as broad as an ox, ribs like temple beams, and all the scars of all the wars he’s ever fought and won.
Thell’s free now, but it’s freedom balances on the thump of a skittish heart, and he knows that better than most. Fretting. Pointless.
A shave then; the badger-hair brush, and the soap that Ice gave him, all sharp herbs and something musky beneath. She must have traded a pretty penny for that, listening to tattles and twits down in the Still Market.
He splinters the crust of ice in the bowl with the back of the brush, watching the little floes disappearing as he dips and soaps. The blade itself is the same one he’s had for a long, long time. It’s shaved a lot of throats, and slit a few too, in the early days. When he was desperate, before he’d properly learnt to fear the spilling of blood.
A pull, a scrape. The dipping of the blade. The movement of the ice. Water sliding across water. Silence rising to fill the room, threading the great cracks that lead to the mountain and the high ice.
Peace. Water splashed across the face. Bitter cold. Fingers through his hair, shivers along the scalp. Peace.
He hears her coming before she arrives, but it’s still not enough time to prepare.
‘You absolute feral little stoat! Give it back.’
Nigh enters a scuttling length ahead of her sister and positions herself neatly behind Kinghammer’s legs. He ruffles her hair affectionately, accidentally dripping soap on her head. Icecaller is a beat behind, red-faced, wheezing.
She skids to a stop and glares at Nigh, who leans around her dad’s thighs and shakes a necklace clutched in one grubby fist.
Kinghammer laughs. ‘Morning, girls.’
Icecaller hisses. ‘Dad, she … I … that littlerat.’ She stops, takes in the scene. ‘Father dearest, everything in the shop front’s on display.’
He grunts. ‘Wasn’t expecting company this early, was I? I should know better with you too.’
He slopes to the bed, dragging Nigh with him on one leg like a lead weight. Militantly slips some breeches on by unpeeling her fingers one by one, freeing the necklace at the same time and tossing it back to Ice.
‘Thank youverymuch’, she grins, sticking a tongue out at Nigh. Kinghammer lifts the little girl to sit next to him on the bed. ‘Get me her brush would you, Ice? She looks like she’s been wrestling a fox.’
Icecaller pulls the brush from a drawer, a pretty little tortoiseshell thing, with a stylised dog on it.
‘Good fucking luck with that tangle of vines.’ She sits next to Nigh on the bed and taps a few quick gestures on her shoulders and hands, laughs and kisses her neck as she coories in to her sister.
Kinghammer smiles. ‘You two friends again?’
Ice nods. ‘Aye, for now. A truce with the stoat.’
‘Thank all that’s good. I have enough fracturing alliances today without adding one more to the list’.
He brushes Nigh’s hair with all the practice of years. ‘Stone’s teeth, Nigh, this is like wire.’
She giggles, and he pulls her to sit in his lap. ‘Prison for you until you look more presentable.’
Ice laughs. ‘You not gonna do mine, Da?’ She tilts her shaved scalp towards him.
‘Spit and polish would do you, you scruff.’ He puts his free arm around her and squeezes.
‘So, what are they like?’
