Prince of Fools (The Red Queen's War 1)

Our ale arrived, smacked down in earthenware cups and frothing over the sides. They were poorly fashioned, made in a hurry for the lowest cost, the sort of cups that expected to get broken. I sipped from mine—bitter stuff—and wiped away the white moustache. Across the room, through smoke and past the to-and-fro of bodies, a huge man was giving me the evil eye. He had the kind of blunt weapon of a face you could imagine breaking through a door, and he sat head and shoulders above the men beside him. To the giant’s left a man who seemed too fat to be dangerous but somehow managed to look scary anyway, with a patchy beard straggling down over multiple chins, piggy eyes assessing the crowd whilst he chomped the meat off a bone. To the right was the only normal-sized man of the trio, looking somehow ridiculous in their shadow, and yet I’d be giving him the widest of berths. Everything about him said warrior. He ate and drank with an intensity that unnerved me, and if a man can unnerve you across a crowded room just by cutting his beef, then you probably don’t want to see him draw steel.

“You know, I really think we’d be better off at the Red Dragon down the street,” I said, putting down my cup half-empty. “This is obviously a private party . . . I don’t think it’s safe here.”

“Of course it isn’t.” Snorri gave me that same worrying grin he had offered on the mountain. “That’s why I like it.” He raised his cup, coming dangerously near to splattering another of the band with foam, this one a moustachioed fellow with an unlikely number of knives bound about his person. “Meat! Bread! And more ale!” I could imagine him now in the mead-hall of his jarl at a gathering of the clans, grasping a drinking horn. He looked more relaxed than I’d seen him since the blood pits in Vermillion.

I caught sight of the ugly giant throwing me another dirty look. “I’ll be back.” I struggled up between bench and table and went out the front to relieve myself. If my admirer across the tavern had stood and come over to make trouble I probably would have wet myself, so getting out of his eyeline to answer nature’s call seemed a good move.

The Falling Angel turned out not to be entirely without class. They had a decent purpose-built wall to piss against and a little gutter running down into the street gutter to carry away the used beer. Although the fact that someone was lying facedown in the street gutter and leaking blood into it did detract somewhat from the otherwise pleasant scene of life flowing through the less salubrious arteries of Crath City. Beyond him, bravos and labourers, goodwives with their goodhusbands, vendors of food on sticks, all came and went, glimpsed in the light of one lantern, lost, then seen again in the light of another, passing by the purveyors of affection on the street corner and lost again never to return.

I finished up and went back in.

“—think that but you’d be wrong.”

I’d been outside for two minutes, three at the most, and returned to find Snorri flanked by mercenaries and swapping stories like old friends. “No,” Snorri continued, back half-turned to me. “I’m telling you he’s not. I mean, you might think it to look at him, granted. But I hauled him out of this place, they had him tied to a table, wanted some information and the knives were out. And we’re not talking a gentle jabbing here—they were about to cut off the kind of bits you’d miss.” Snorri drained off the last of his ale. “Know what he said to them? Roared at them he did. I heard it out in the corridor. ‘I won’t ever tell!’ Shouted it in their faces. ‘Get the pincers out if you like. Heat them in the coals. I ain’t talking.’ Now that’s the kind of man who’s got fire in his belly. Might look like there’s nothing behind the bluster, but you can’t trust your gut with this one. Brave man. Charged an unborn all by himself. Thing must have been twelve foot of grave-horror, had me disarmed, and in came Jal swinging a sword—” Snorri glanced my way. “Jal! I was just talking about you.” He gestured across the table. “Make a hole!” And they did, two mean-eyed thugs sliding apart so I could wedge in. “These fine fellows are Brother Sim”—he pointed out the slight lad—“Brother Elban, Brother Gains . . .” He indicated the old man and a tow-haired bully. “Well, they’re all brothers. It’s like a holy order of the road, only without any ‘holy.’” He waved his half-gnawed bone down the line. “Brothers Grumlow, Emmer, Roddat, Jobe . . .” The knife-man, a stern close-shaved fellow, and two younger men, both sallow, one scar-cheeked, the other pockmarked. “More beer!” And he thumped the table hard enough to make everything on it jump.