The Great Leveller: Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country by Joe Abercrombie Read Free Book Online

her right arm, her left foot.
    She’d started to tremble. This butchered carcass couldn’t be her body. Her breath hissed through her rattling teeth, and the blotched and shrivelled ribcage heaved in time. ‘Uh . . .’ she grunted. ‘Uh . . .’
    ‘I know! Impressive, eh?’ He leaned forwards over her, following the ladder of red marks on her chest with sharp movements of his hand. ‘The ribs here and the breastbone were quite shattered. It was necessary to make incisions to repair them, you understand, and to work on the lung. I kept the cutting to the minimum, but you can see that the damage—’
    ‘Uh . . .’
    ‘The left hip I am especially pleased with.’ Pointing out a crimson zigzag from the corner of her hollow stomach down to the inside of her withered leg, surrounded on both sides by trails of red dots. ‘The thighbone, here, unfortunately broke into itself.’ He clicked his tongue and poked a finger into his clenched fist. ‘Shortening the leg by a fraction, but, as luck would have it, your other shin was shattered, and I was able to remove the tiniest section of bone to make up the difference.’ He frowned as he pushed her knees together, then watched them roll apart, feet flopping hopelessly outwards. ‘One knee slightly higher than the other, and you won’t stand quite so tall but, considering—’
    ‘Uh . . .’
    ‘Set, now.’ He grinned as he squeezed gently at her shrivelled legs from the tops of her thighs down to her knobbly ankles. She watched him touching her, like a cook kneading at a plucked chicken, and hardly felt it. ‘All quite set, and the screws removed. A wonder, believe me. If the doubters at the academy could see this now they wouldn’t be laughing. If my old master could see this, even he—’
    ‘Uh . . .’ She slowly raised her right hand. Or the trembling mockery of a hand that dangled from the end of her arm. The palm was bent, shrunken, a great ugly scar where Gobba’s wire had cut into the side. The fingers were crooked as tree roots, squashed together, the little one sticking out at a strange angle. Her breath hissed through gritted teeth as she tried to make a fist. The fingers scarcely moved, but the pain still shot up her arm and made bile burn the back of her throat.
    ‘The best I could do. Small bones, you see, badly damaged, and the tendons of the little finger were quite severed.’ Her host seemed disappointed. ‘A shock, of course. The marks will fade . . . somewhat. But really, considering the fall . . . well, here.’ The mouthpiece of the husk-pipe came towards her and she sucked on it greedily. Clung to it with her teeth as if it was her only hope. It was.
     
    He tore a tiny piece from the corner of the loaf, the kind you might feed birds with. Monza watched him do it, mouth filling with sour spit. Hunger or sickness, there wasn’t much difference. She took it dumbly, lifted it to her lips, so weak that her left hand trembled with the effort, forced it between her teeth and down her throat.
    Like swallowing broken glass.
    ‘Slowly,’ he murmured, ‘very slowly, you have eaten nothing but milk and sugar-water since you fell.’
    The bread caught in her craw and she retched, gut clamping up tight around the knife-wound Faithful had given her.
    ‘Here.’ He slid his hand round her skull, gentle but firm, lifted her head and tipped a bottle of water to her lips. She swallowed, and again, then her eyes flicked towards his fingers. She could feel unfamiliar lumps there, down the side of her head. ‘I was forced to remove several pieces of your skull. I replaced them with coins.’
    ‘Coins?’
    ‘Would you rather I had left your brains exposed? Gold does not rust. Gold does not rot. An expensive treatment, of course, but if you had died, I could always have recouped my investment, and since you have not, well . . . I consider it money well spent. Your scalp will feel somewhat lumpy, but your hair will grow back. Such beautiful hair you have.