“He got me to pay fifty scales for his corpse. Isn’t that enough?”

“Not for me.”

She frowned at him for a long moment. That straight-ahead look that was already giving him the worries, somehow. “So you’re one of them, eh?”

“One o’ what?”

“One of those men that like reasons. That need excuses. You’re a dangerous crowd, you lot. Hard to predict.” She shrugged. “But if it helps. He killed my brother.”

Shivers blinked. Hearing those words, from her mouth, brought that day right back somehow, sharper than he’d remembered it for years. Seeing his father’s grey face, and knowing. Hearing his brother was killed, when he’d been promised mercy. Swearing vengeance over the ashes in the long hall, tears in his eyes. An oath he’d chosen to break, so he could walk away from blood and be a better man.

And here she was, out of nowhere, offering him another chance at vengeance. He killed my brother. Felt as if he would’ve said no to anything else. But maybe he just needed the money.

“Shit on it, then,” he said. “Give me the fifty.”

Six and One

The dice came up six and one. The highest dice can roll and the lowest. A fitting judgement on Friendly’s life. The pit of horror to the heights of triumph. And back.

Six and one made seven. Seven years old, when Friendly committed his first crime. But six years later that he was first caught, and given his first sentence. When they first wrote his name in the big book, and he earned his first days in Safety. Stealing, he knew, but he could hardly remember what he stole. He certainly could not remember why. His parents had worked hard to give him all he needed. And yet he stole. Some men are born to do wrong, perhaps. The judges had told him so.

He scooped the dice up, rattled them in his fist, then let them free across the stones again, watched them as they tumbled. Always that same joy, that anticipation. Dice just thrown can be anything until they stop rolling. He watched them turning, chances, odds, his life and the life of the Northman. All the lives in the great city of Talins turning with them.

Six and one.

Friendly smiled, a little. The odds of throwing six and one a second time were one in eighteen. Long odds, some would say, looking forward into the future. But looking into the past, as he was now, there was no chance of any other numbers. What was coming? Always full of possibilities. What was past? Done, and hardened, like dough turned to bread. There was no going back.

“What do the dice say?”

Friendly glanced up as he gathered the dice with the edge of his hand. He was a big man, this Shivers, but with none of that stringiness tall men sometimes get. Strong. But not like a farmer, or a labourer. Not slow. He understood the work. There were clues, and Friendly knew them all. In Safety, you have to reckon the threat a man poses in a moment. Reckon it, and deal with it, and never blink.