08 A Little Hatred: Book One (The Age of Madness)

My answer must be no. I would ask you not to contact me again. Ever.

Savine.

That was all.

His first feeling was stunned disbelief. Could she have turned him down? How could she have turned him down? He had been so sure this was what they both wanted.

He read it again. And then a third time. My answer must be no.

And now came a stab of hot fury. Did she have to do it so fucking rudely? So savagely? With a note? With a line? He had offered her everything he had, everything he was, and she had trodden on his cock while she kicked his guts out. He crushed the note up in his trembling fist.

‘Bad news?’ asked his mother.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ he somehow heard himself saying in the usual bored drawl.

And now came a flood of cold loss. Like that, all his dreams were ruined. It was a note that left no room for hope. No room for wheedling, even by a veteran wheedler like him. I would ask you not to contact me again. Ever. There would never be another woman who understood him the way she did. There would never be another woman like her at all. She had never felt so dazzlingly desirable as she did now he could never have her.

‘Is there a reply?’ asked Hildi, frowning.

‘No,’ he managed to say, ‘no reply.’ What reply could there be to that?

And now came the slow welling up of self-hatred, steadily becoming a flood of utter disgust. Familiar, at least. As the foul waters closed over his head, he did not even struggle. What was the point? He had been so sure this was what he wanted, he had hardly stopped to consider her desires. Everyone said he was epically self-centred, after all. It was no great surprise that everyone turned out to be right. Why would a woman like her want a man like him? Why would any woman? Aside from a crown, some bad jokes and a shitty reputation, what did he really have to offer?

‘We must plan a grand triumph for you!’ His mother’s eyes sparkled at the thought of how right she would finally be proved in the eyes of the world. ‘The nation shall bear witness to the vindication of our family. I shall make sure of it.’

And now he slid into a bog of depression. Savine had been the approaching dawn, and now the sun was snuffed out and he was plunged into eternal gloom. He watched the rain thicken outside. It wasn’t only her that he had lost, but the better man he could have been with her beside him, the better Union they might have forged together. He felt himself wilting, melting down his chair into a sagging slump. He scarcely had the energy to lift his head. Scarcely had the energy to breathe.

He had tried, too little and too late, to make something of himself. The result was two hundred corpses gibbetted on the road to Valbeck and a dismissive note.

‘And then we have a wedding to plan. As soon as we can find someone of your type.’

Why did he bother? Why did he bother with anything?

He drained his glass. The best Osprian, but it was sawdust on his tongue. He heaved up a sigh that actually hurt.

He wanted to cry.

‘Pour me another, would you?’ he murmured.

Questions

‘It’s me,’ said Tallow, with his flair for stating the obvious. Vick had known it would be him. Wasn’t as if she got a lot of visitors.

She took his shoulder and slipped him past into the narrow hall. Not much room but she was thinner even than usual after Valbeck and Tallow had always been a scrap of nothing. She glanced around the ill-lit yard outside. A habit from the camps, kept ever since the camps. But there was no one watching. The only sound was the dripping from a broken gutter, high above.

‘You all right?’ she asked Tallow as she shouldered the door shut and slid both the heavy bolts.

‘You were the one stuck in the city,’ he said.

‘Don’t worry about me.’

‘’Course not,’ he said, giving his shoes a sad grin. ‘You’re carved out o’ wood. Nothing touches you.’

He was more like her brother every time she saw him. Or maybe it was her memory that was changing. Making her brother more like Tallow. So she could save him this time around, maybe. How pathetic would that be? Memory could betray you, she’d seen it a hundred times. Chop things about until they suited you better. You have to be on guard all the time. Against everyone else. Against yourself.

She turned away, making sure he didn’t catch any hint of what she was thinking. Show them a weakness, they’ll find a way to use it.

‘You see your sister?’ she asked as she led him from the cramped hall into the cramped dining room.

‘I saw her.’

‘She’s well?’

Tallow nodded in a way that seemed to say no thanks to you. Or maybe she just thought it did. She nudged a chair out with her boot and he slipped into it, around the squares board. Wasn’t easy, even thin as he was.

‘What’s this?’