“Haven’t even dropped yet.”
Dain was always a sour bastard, but never more than in winter. The long white hair of his, those dark brows, they jerked down as he placed his arms on the table.
“Never gonna at this rate.”
Lorien picked through the leftovers on the table, sorting the edible from the inedible and then divvied them up between us. A crunch of stale bread, a bit of gristly meat washed down witha mouthful of flat ale, and I was starting to feel more like myself again.
“Can I take your plates, gentle…?”
We looked up when a barmaid approached, a tub propped on one hip. Rosie was stuck clearing the tables tonight, and she blinked when she saw us.
“If it’s not our Rosie.”
Lorien grinned rakishly, fluttering those too-long eyelashes, but Rosie wasn’t one to be swayed by smiles. She was from Coalbottom, just like the rest of us, the dankest, darkest part of Blackreach. The city might be the capital of the duchy of Harlston, but our part of it may as well be in Hell.
“Don’t you ‘our Rosie’ me, Lorien Lightfingers,” she hissed, then glanced around the tavern. “Don’t you remember what Madam Margaret said the last time you came sniffing around here?”
“Margaret…” Dain sniffed, shaking his head.
She might be prancing around Lackluck Row now as Madam Margaret, but everyone in Coalbottom knew her as Peggy when she was running one of the cesspits down at the docks. Named for the wooden leg she stumped around on, she wasn’t above giving cheeky patrons a boot in the arse in response.
“Don’t come back here ever again,” I said, repeating the woman’s directions back, word perfect. It was a curse of mine, able to remember some details all too vividly. “On pain of death.”
“Don’t think that was an empty threat.” Rosie stared at each of us, wide eyed. “I’ve seen the Executioner in her office often enough.”
Any other threat and we’d have waved Rosie off. She was growing soft, living outside of Coalbottom, but one mention ofhisname… We all stiffened, then looked at each other. None ofus were bound together by blood. We called each other brother because we were all the family we had.
But we had others.
Men that rutted with our mothers, then left her to deal with the consequences. Rich men, powerful men, who used and abused Coalbottom women as if they were nothing more than the rats they described us as. But there was a rat catcher. The Executioner came behind the Duke of Harlston and all the other toffs, offering women herbs to get rid of their babes in the womb.
Or worse, if he didn’t arrive soon enough.
My fingers flexed around the butter knife on the table, for want of a real weapon, and my eyes flicked around the tavern, as if that would summon him. That craggy face, that sombre grimace, I knew it well, because his face haunted my nightmares.
He was the man who killed my mother.
A glance at my brothers and I saw their equally sour expressions. Each one of us bore a grudge against the Executioner, but we had to make it to manhood to get revenge.
“We’ll be out of here before Peggy even notices,” I told Rosie.
“Don’t call her that!”
She looked over her shoulder, as if someone was eavesdropping.
“We need food, Rosie.” Dain used words like a miser did coins, begrudgingly. He leaned forward, and that had her focussing back on us. “Times are tough.” She went to protest, but he continued, “You know we’d never step foot in here unless we had to.”
When we were smaller, Lorien used to beg professionally. Those big brown eyes, that expressive face, he could wring the toffs’ hearts like the best of them. It was a long time since we were forced to beg on street corners, but Lorien still knew howto win over women. A mournful look from him and she was shaking her head in frustration.
“I’ll get you a bowl of stew from the kitchens,” she said.
“Each?”
Lorien’s eyes widened, fairly shining in the candlelight.
“Each,” she snapped, putting the dirty dishes on our table into the tub with undue vehemence.
“And some bread?”
