The Devils (The Devils, #1)

by Joe Abercrombie

brown teeth. God, they were a sight. If you had that grin, at least clean your teeth, and if you had those teeth, at least don’t grin.

He had a kind face, she thought, but then she could put on a very kind face and she was a thieving bitch, ask anyone.

Alexia Pyrogennetos, long-lost daughter of the Empress Irene and rightful heir to the Serpent Throne of Troy.” Bostro must’ve heard every trick, lie, excuse, and sob story you could imagine, but this one lifted even his eyebrows. He squinted at Alex as if someone had told him the turd he’d just watched squeezed from a goat’s arse was actually a gold nugget. All she could do was shrug her shoulders very high. She’d been called a scammer, a fleecer, a cheat, a thief, a bitch, a thieving bitch, a ferrety fuck, a lying weasel, and those were only the ones she’d taken as compliments. She’d never, far as she could remember, been called a princess. Not even in the least funny jest.

Duke Michael considered Alex, hanging there like a cheap rug halfway through its annual beating. “I will admit she does not appear … terribly princessy. But she is what she is and we’ll all have to live with it. I must therefore insist that you unhand her royal person.”

He put a couple back, then tossed the rest onto the dirty cobbles. “For your trouble.” Bostro peered down, scarcely more impressed than he had been by the dirt in Alex’s purse. “Thought she was a fucking princess?” “When announced by a herald it is typically without the fucking, but yes.” “And that’s what her life’s worth?” “Oh, no,” said Duke Michael. His servant sank gracefully to one knee beside him, pulled open his coat, and produced a large sword, its stained sheath chased with shining wire, its battered gold pommel tilted towards his master. The duke rested one fingertip upon it. “That’s what your lives are worth.”

She was an onion made of only skins with nothing at the centre.

“The Almighty tends against killing,” said Duke Michael, “if I remember my scripture.” “Far as I can tell he makes all manner of exceptions.” “God has that luxury, he’s unlikely to get knifed in a fish market.” “You had a sword.” “If I’ve learned one thing in all my years of using one, it’s that men with swords die every bit as easily as other men, and usually much sooner. Besides, I couldn’t risk Eusebius. New dukes can be made with a word, but good servants are rare treasures. May I come in?”

“I expect you have … some questions.” Duke Michael eased himself into the room. “One or two.” She fixed his eye, businesslike. “First off, is all this a sex thing?” He burst out laughing. “No. God, no. By no means.” “All right. Good.” She tried not to show her relief. No need to discuss the terms she’d been considering if it had been a sex thing.

Alex had been told where she belonged a few times. In prison. In a sewer. In a shallow grave. In hell, depending who you asked. This

“Why below?” “Partly for their protection.” “Mostly for everyone else’s,” said Baptiste, taking up a candelabrum with three flickering candles.

“He looks after the devils,” said Brother Diaz, in a kind of whimper. “But he’s from England.” Jakob of Thorn ushered him over the threshold. “They’re all devils there.”

“He is an infamous practitioner of Black Art,” said Baptiste, “pursued by the Witch Hunters for nine years and found guilty as hell by the Celestial Court.” “Don’t they tend to … a little bit…” Brother Diaz cleared his throat, “burn people for that?”

“There was the matter of the dancing corpses,” grated Jakob of Thorn. “And the bargaining with demons,” added Baptiste. Balthazar threw up his hands. “You bargain with one demon and that’s all anyone talks about!”

“Manners might seem like magic in this company,” grunted the vampire. “The two are not so far apart as some would prefer to believe. Rather like good and evil, in that regard.”

He was a young man, too young for this, with one of those wispy moustaches young men grow, thinking it makes them look older when really it makes them look younger than ever. But Jakob tried not to judge people for their poor choices. He’d made a lifetime of them, after all.

But you reach a certain age, everything reminds you of something.

She heard the words but couldn’t make the bastards mean anything.

The sorceress raised her hands. “Then burn.” “Does it have to be fire?” squealed Balthazar, shrinking from another wash of heat and holding his trembling palms even higher, playing for time as he stretched his will, ever so subtly, towards the two dead guardsmen. “It has never been my strong suit!” The shimmering around her hands had become even more intense. He could see her bones, glowing like red-hot metal within the flesh. “Do you have a strong suit?” she sneered, stepping between the smoking cadavers. “Well, since you ask…” Balthazar began subtly to move his fingers, threading through the familiar incantations in his mind, feeling out the joints, pinching up the sinews, stroking the fluids into motion. “It’s corpses.”

But Jakob had stood unflinching before worse horrors than overgrown livestock.

He flopped sideways, mute testament to the greatest fighting technique of all: a friend behind your enemy.

“Where did these things come from?” hissed Baptiste. Jakob wiped blood from under his throbbing nose. “Troy, maybe?” “Your nose is broken.” “Hardly the first time.” “We’re in trouble.” “Hardly the first time.” “I should’ve quit after Barcelona!” “We should all have quit after Barcelona.”

One of the copies no one was meant to know about till she got to Troy.

Duke Michael was dead. The Pope’s guards were dead. Jakob of Thorn was, if not dead, then certainly on the way. Brother Diaz hunched in the mud, hands clasped and faintly rocking, probably dead but not realised yet. To be fair, he hadn’t seemed much use at the best of times.

Jakob of Thorn was, as Baptiste had put it, dead as fuck. He still had the bloody rent in his gambeson that Marcian’s mortal thrust had left, not to mention two arrows sticking through his body.

Jakob’s idea. So anyone else sent to murder her might think she was dead. That was her highest ambition, right now.

The man was more scar than man.

“I was cursed by a witch, and I cannot die. God knows I’ve tried—gah!”

“Saving wounded men?” Baptiste cocked an eyebrow at Balthazar as she knelt beside the duke. “Didn’t have you down as the type.” “Far from my typical modus operandi.” The magician glared at the red mark on his wrist. “But Her Holiness said we had to be nice.”

Alex pressed his hand, and he pressed hers. Wasn’t much more she could do. Nothing needed stealing, and no one needed lying to, and it was hard to see how losing at cards would help, so that was her whole skillset exhausted.

Princess Alexia, who rode beside him with a perpetual drip on the tip of her nose and all the royal dignity of a drowned cat’s carcass.

“It only came about through a bad throw at dice. I admit I started with some romantic notions, but they were soon shattered, I can tell you. The thing you don’t realise, is…” She gave an elaborate shrug. “Pirates are fucking horrible.” Princess Alexia raised her dewy brows. “You don’t say?” “They’re just really, really horrible thieves on the sea. They’re not funny, they’re not charming, the food is awful. If someone offers you the chance to be a pirate, tell them you’re busy. That’s my advice.” “I probably will be busy,” said Alexia. “Being Empress of the East. Or, more likely, dead. Those are the two options I’m looking at, really, long term.”

“The Church does love paperwork,” observed Balthazar, hunching bedraggled in his saddle with a stretch of dripping tarp held over his head. “Even more than God.” “The Church is not that keen on God, in my experience,” said Baron Rikard. “They think of him much as a lawyer thinks of the law. Something to be got around.”

“Pescara’s awful anyway,” threw in Baron Rikard. “Wouldn’t be caught dead in Pescara.” “You are dead,” said Vigga. “But I wouldn’t be caught.”

Jakob ignored him. “Anyone know people in Venice?” “I know people everywhere,” said Baptiste. “I can’t promise they like me—” “Does anyone like you?” asked Balthazar. “They’re lukewarm at best. And yet I’m the most popular among us by far.” The baron swept the group with a scornful eye. “The definition of a low bar…”

“Venice,” said Jakob, turning his horse. “We’ll find a ship there to take us on.” “But the Serene Republic is at daggers drawn with the Papacy!” blurted Brother Diaz. “The Dogeressa’s been excommunicated! Twice!” “Some very fine people have been excommunicated,” said Balthazar. “It’s well known she poisoned her husband!” “Some very fine people have poisoned their husbands,” murmured Baptiste. “The place is a pit of vice!” Vigga pushed her hood back again, one brow raised. “That a fact?”

“I’d rather get her to Troy late and alive than quick and in bits,” said Jakob.

“Another bloody shrine,” echoed the baron, a picture of suave disdain. “I would pray for God to have mercy upon us, but I fear he takes little note of the entreaties of vampires.” “I fear he is equally deaf to necromancers,” grunted Balthazar. “I fear he is equally deaf to everyone. Will you be queuing up to view the relics?”

one case levelled a wicked-looking crossbow. Most likely no crossbows look nice when they’re pointed right at you.

but she is the Mother of the Church!” An odd phrase applied to a ten-year-old, but the thought only threw fuel on the fire of his righteous fury. “She doesn’t suit you? The arrogance. The insolence. The self-serving hubris! Bishop, cardinal, or King of fucking Araby, you don’t get to choose a Pope.” He stabbed at the sky with a finger. “That choice is for God!” “Think Brother Diaz found his balls,” murmured Vigga.

knew you’d be back. Like a fox at the bins.” Baptiste shrugged. “I’ve been called worse.” “Stick around,” said Frigo. “You will be.”

“My granddaughter,” said Frigo, nodding towards her. “Best judge of character I know. I’m teaching her the family business.” “Baker or crime lord?” asked Baptiste. “Why can’t I be both?” sneered the girl. “I hear you’re a liar and a thief.” Baptiste’s smile wasn’t even dented. “And those are just my hobbies,” she said.

“That it should come to this,” murmured Balthazar bitterly. “Running errands for a baker and crime lord.” “And those are just my hobbies,” said Frigo, mildly. “I will need equipment.” “Marangon can get you anything.” “Highly specialised equipment.” “Marangon can get you anything.” “We bring you this box.” Jakob took one deliberate step forwards, towards the altar stone. One step and he stopped. “You organise us passage to Troy.”

“All things are connected, child. Troy and Venice, and all the states and cities of the Mediterranean, for that matter, are branches grown from one root, which is…?” “The Empire of Carthage,” she grunted. “Why else would the varied peoples of southern Europe and northern Afrique speak one tongue, derived from ancient Punic?” “Because the Carthaginians burned everyone who wouldn’t,” murmured Baron Rikard, lazily watching three little boys pole a raft past.

Witch Engineers of Carthage, daring any risk in their attempts to turn the tide, opened a gate to hell and destroyed their own city.” “I’ve yet to see a gate to hell turn out well.” Vigga sadly shook her head. “Makes you wonder why they keep opening the bastards.”

Balthazar was still droning out his shopping list. “… apothecary’s scales, proper ones, a full set of alchemist’s spoons, a good alembic and an oil burner, some nightshade, of course, and it must be fresh, none of that dried rubbish, and do you know of any twins who died recently?” There was a silence while everyone glanced over. “Well, if you are in there, and I am out here, we will require some method of communication. Or were you planning to just … shout across the street?”

Are you not the granddaughter of one of history’s greatest Empresses? Show some pride, girl!” Alex frowned back at him. “What have I got to be proud of?” “Find something, or invent it.” Baron Rikard tossed his book aside and sat up. “For someone who made their living lying you are remarkably bad at it.” “Well, it wasn’t a very good living.”

“A mere fraction of the pain it has caused me to see you skulk into a room. The shoulders then come back—sweet Saint Stephen, no! You are not cracking a nut between your shoulder blades, they scoop under, there is a structure. You are not hiding, imagine you are there to display your clothes—to sell them to a discerning customer! Yes, better, strong but soft.” “Strong and soft?” “Exactly! Now, the pelvis tilts—good grief, not back—arse in, such as it is, groin up, such as it is, stomach tight. At least pretend you have a spine.

Baptiste was less phlegmatic. She looked thoroughly disgusted by the whole business, which represented a considerable reward in itself.

“Well, I’m not touching the bloody thing,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “If there was one woman comfortable around bits of corpses,” said Baptiste, “it should be you.” “It’s not so much dead bits that bother me as them coming back to life,” said Vigga. “No doubt you’ve got experience with this sort o’ stuff?”

“It’s not so much the corpses or the necromancy that bother me,” he said, “as the bending down.”