Charity

Snow fell weighty on the slums. Wisps and flutters, dirty from the smoke of the furnaces, drifting grey into the corners of the windows, the doorways, the alleys.

The Burners’ slogans were everywhere, daubed in red paint across the houses. All Equal and Death to the Royalists and Sacrifice Everything. The fury of Sworbreck and his ilk at the world and everything in it had spread like a sickness from books, to newsbills, to pamphlets, until the poorly printed tantrums were pasted everywhere directly onto the sooty walls, today’s rant against those who would drag the Union back into the past splattered on top of yesterday’s, torn paper fluttering.

A snatch of song floated across the frozen street. A man staggered by, sucking at a bottle. Someone screamed with laughter from an upstairs window and Savine flinched. Laughing in Adua these days felt as grimly inappropriate as laughing at a funeral. At an execution.

“I hope you are well, Citizen Vallimir.”

“I am alive, Citizeness Brock, and my wife is alive, which, after the events we endured in Valbeck, I consider to be remarkable good fortune.”

“Your fortunes otherwise?” She could see those at a glance. Vallimir had always been lean, but he looked positively skeletal now, frayed clothes carefully darned. “I still fondly remember that jelly you served at your house in Valbeck.”

Vallimir snorted. “There have been no jellies lately. I was employed as a foreman in a textile mill for a while, but following the Great Change… the price of coal… the place shut down. My wife takes in laundry. I have been carving toys. Soldiers are always popular.” He leaned close to murmur, “Providing they sport no royalist symbols.”

“These are difficult times for everyone.”

There were hawkers everywhere, struggling to turn a few bits from matches, ribbons, apples, shoestrings. Beggars, too, offering up their wounds, their diseases, their misery for inspection, knowing that despite the poverty, people here were more generous than in the richer parts of town. People here understood what it was to have nothing. Most of them were only one payday away from it.

Prostitutes stood shivering on a corner in the same tall shoes and slit skirts they had worn when King Jezal was on the throne. The Great Change had not changed much for them. It took a brave woman now to show a bare leg to the freezing winter, but they tried their best, pale gooseflesh and pinched faces chapped pink from the cold, breath smoking as they whined hopeless come-ons to the uncaring chill. Then there were the footpads and tricksters, circling anyone who looked as if they might have a coin. There had been a time when Savine counted on her father’s name to keep her safe on these streets. Now she never stepped out of doors without Haroon and a few well-armed men.

“You know I have the highest regard for you as a woman of business.” Vallimir cleared his throat. His voice had an ill crackle to it. “But prominent connections are not the safest thing these days. Might I ask why you sent for me?”