Sharps Read Online Free

teased it open and started to count.
    “It’s all there,” he said.
    “You counted it?”
    “They’re decent people.”
    “No such thing.” The coins clicked together in the hollow of her hand. “Fifty.”
    “See?”
    “Now then.” She sat upright on the floor, forming short columns of coins with the practised touch of a banker. “Ten for the rent. Ten for Taducian – we owe fifteen, but he can go to hell. Three for the poll tax. Twelve to pay back last month’s housekeeping. Fourteen for your cousin Hammo – it’ll be worth it just to keep him off my back, I’m sick of him pouncing on me every time I put my head round the door.” She held up one coin. “And that’s for us to live on, till you can earn some more.”
    He stared at her. “You’re kidding me.”
    “One nomisma,” she confirmed grimly. “And if you so much as look at a bottle, I’ll kill you. Understood?”
    He sighed. “I thought we’d be all right,” he said.
    “Oh, we are,” she replied. “At least, by our standards. We’re bloody rich, with one nomisma. Of course we still owe for the coal, the water and the window tax, but I can stave them off for another week.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said bitterly. She didn’t reply. Instead, she crawled across the floor and retrieved the handkerchief.
    “You can have it if you like,” he said.
    She was examining it. “I can get nine trachy on that,” she said.
    “It’s worth—”
    “Nine trachy,” she said, “to us, at Blemmyo’s.” She turned it over and picked at the hem with her fingernail. “Was the chairman there?”
    He nodded.
    “Did you ask him?”
    “I sort of hinted,” he replied defensively.
    “Did you ask him?”
    “Not in so many words.” Her face hardened. “Look, it was a social occasion, all right? People lolling around drinking and enjoying themselves. It wasn’t exactly the time and the place for touting for work.”
    “You didn’t ask him.”
    “I’ll go round to the office tomorrow,” he said angrily. “All right?”
    “Do what you like.”
    He sighed melodramatically and lay back in the chair, surveying the room. There wasn’t a lot to see. Except for the chair and the mattress (the bailiff’s men had taken the bed frame) there was nothing there apart from the range, which was built into the wall, and an empty fig crate, on which rested the three-foot-tall solid-gold triple-handed cup that you got lent for a year for being the fencing champion of the Republic of Scheria. She used it to store their arsewipe cabbage leaves in.
    “You could go back to work,” he said.
    She gave him a furious look. “Believe me, I’m tempted,” she said. “At least I’d be warm, instead of freezing to death in this icebox. But unfortunately they’re not hiring right now. Maybe in the spring.”
    His eyes widened. “You asked.”
    “Grow up, Suidas.”
    “I didn’t mean that ,” he said awkwardly. “I thought maybe a few days a week in a shop, something like that. Just till we’re all right again.”
    “Suidas.” When she was really angry, she always spoke softly. “I was principal soubrette at the Palace Theatre. I’m damned if I’m going to work myself to death in a shop just because you’re completely useless with money.” She paused, to let him know she meant what was coming next. “If I go back to work, I’ll leave you. Up to you. Your choice.”
    He looked at her. “For crying out loud, Sontha,” he said wearily. “Do you think we live like this because I want to? It’s just …”
    He didn’t bother with the rest of it. No point. He had his ultimatum, and it was perfectly reasonable. He’d never been able to argue with her, because she had the infuriating knack of being in the right all the time; and Suidas had been a fencer so long that he’d become incapable of not acknowledging a clean hit.
    “Well?”
    “Fair enough,” he said (and her face changed to unreadable). “I’ll go and see the chairman tomorrow, I