The Wisdom of Crowds

by Joe Abercrombie

  Then he heard footsteps beyond the heavy door. They were coming. To ask their questions? Or just drag him straight to the scaffold? He clenched his fists, but he knew fighting would do no good. It was fighting landed him here in the first place. The key scraped in the lock, his breath coming fast through his clenched teeth as he watched the door creak open.

  A face showed at the gap. Not the black-masked Practical he’d expected. A small woman, cheeks full of broken veins. She looked nervous, like she hadn’t known what to expect, then when she saw him standing there, she broke into a beaming smile. “Brother! You’re free!”

  Broad couldn’t do much but stare. “I’m what?”

  “Free!” She shook a ring of keys at him. “We all are!” And she vanished, leaving the door wide open.

  He heard laughter out there now. Cheering and singing. Was that a high little flute playing somewhere? Like a rowdy market day in the village when he was a boy. He nudged his lenses up his nose, scraped his courage together and went to the door.

  “Brother!” A man wearing bright new armour spotted with blood hauled Broad out into the mould-stained corridor, but the way you’d greet a long-lost comrade rather than the way you’d drag a convict to their death. “You’re free!”

  They were unlocking the cells, and with each door flung open they’d give a cheer, and at each prisoner pulled out they’d give another. Armoured men hugged a woman must’ve spent months in the darkness, pale and shrivelled, squinting at the light like it hurt her. “What’s your name, Sister?”

  She just sat against the wall, floppy as a rag doll. “Is it… Grise?” she whispered. Broad saw one of her hands was all smashed, crooked fingers bloated like sausages.

  Someone clutched at his shirt. “Have you seen my son?” An old man with wild, weepy eyes. “Do you know where my son is?”

  Broad brushed him off. “I don’t know anything.”

  Someone threw their arms around him from behind and he had to smother an instinct to lash out with an elbow. “Ain’t it wonderful?” A girl no older than sixteen with a patchy shawl about her shoulders, crying and smiling at once. “Ain’t it wonderful?” And she grabbed someone else, and they danced a floppy jig together and barged over an old woman who’d been brandishing a mop with a knife tied to the end. She nearly stabbed Broad with it as she fell.

  Maybe he should’ve felt a caper coming on himself at his unexpected taste of freedom, but Broad had seen this mix of mad joy and mad anger before, during the uprising in Valbeck. Knowing how that turned out didn’t make him want to dance. Made him want to slip back to his cell and lock himself in.

  There were Breakers among the crowd. Veterans with shiny new gear Broad well recognised. The arms and armour he’d brought from Ostenhorm on Savine’s orders and handed over to Judge in return for the Breakers’ support. Looked like they’d risen up after all. Just on their own timetable.

  Broad had to push against a joyful current of people to get up the steps, into a wider, brighter hallway. A man in a leather apron ran past laughing, a wedge of documents clutched to his chest, papers slipping out and flapping to the floor. Another man bashed at a lock with a heavy ale flagon. This was where the music was coming from, a woman sitting cross-legged with some clerk’s tall hat jammed down to her eyebrows, eyes closed as she tooted jauntily on her flute.

  And shuffling through the madness, freed as unexpectedly as Broad himself, came his old employers, the Lord and Lady Governor of Angland. Even with his lenses on, it took him a moment to recognise them. The Young Lion had his right arm around his wife’s shoulders, his gaunt face scattered with scabs and twisted with pain, moving in lurching hops with his left arm uselessly dangling and one trouser leg rolled up to the stump. Savine had one arm around her husband, the other under her swollen belly, struggling along with back bent and teeth bared, tufts of dark hair sticking from the bandages around her head.

  They’d owned the world, these two. Now look.

  “Broad!” Savine clung to his arm painfully tight, a sheen of sweat on her blotchy face. “Thank the Fates you’re here!” The warble in her voice made him think of that terrified waif who’d begged for his help on the barricades of Valbeck.

  Brock was clinging to the wall with his fingernails to stay upright. “What the hell’s happening?”

  “Not sure. But their gear…” Broad nodded at one of the armed men, lowering his voice. “It’s from your armoury in Ostenhorm.”

  Savine worked out in a blink what Broad had been slowly putting together. “The Breakers have stormed the Agriont?” she whispered.

  “They’ve what?” squeaked her husband.

  “We’d best get out while we can,” said Broad. “Find a safe place.”

  Savine’s eyes were huge and scared and bloodshot in the shadows. “Is there a safe place?”

  Broad had no answer. He held out his other hand to Brock. The one with the tattoo on the back. You could see how much it hurt him, to need the help. But this was no time for pride. Wasn’t easy, steering a pregnant woman and a one-legged man through that jostling crowd of rescuers and looters. Beyond a set of broken double doors men smashed and laughed, turned over furniture, flinging armfuls of fluttering papers in the air.

  “That was my father’s office,” whispered Savine as they hobbled past. Inside that room, the all-powerful Arch Lector Glokta had ordered life and death with a flick of his pen. Times had changed, all right.

  “Lord Marshal Brint!” called Brock. “You’re alive.”

  “Just barely.” A grey-haired man was pressed against one wall. He’d a trace of military bearing, if you squinted, underneath a filthy officer’s jacket with all markings of rank ripped off. Brock reached out to shake his hand. Not the easiest thing to do, since Brint had only one and Brock only one that worked. “They took me prisoner before you landed. Lord bloody Heugen spilled his guts the moment we were caught.”

  Brock shook his head. “What a crowd of useless bastards the Open Council turned out to be.”

  “Who…” Savine forced through clenched teeth, “could have guessed?”

  They struggled out blinking into bright daylight, down the steps at the front of the House of Questions, the wind chill on Broad’s face. Should’ve been a relief, but the crowds outside were madder than ever, cheering and chanting, brandishing lit torches and swords and broken furniture.

  Papers scattered everywhere. Drifts like snow, ankle deep. Folk were flinging heaps of ’em from the windows, blowing about on the wind, yesterday’s secrets suddenly worthless. Place stank of smoke. A laughing man had blood all over his hands. Broad felt cold as he realised a smug-looking bastard not far away had a head spiked on his spear. Its back was to Broad so he couldn’t see the face. Put him in mind of Musselia. A bag of foul memories he tried never to open.

  “It’s the Young Lion!” someone called, and suddenly folk were crowding around them, reaching out for Leo. “Look, it’s Leo dan Brock!”

  “Can’t be him!”

  “I saw him at his triumph!”

  “Where’s his leg?”

  “Lost it in the cause o’ freedom.”

  “The Young Lion!”

  “Please.” Leo struggled to hold them back with his one good arm. “Let me—”

  “He’s a bloody hero!” A big man dropped down behind Brock, and before anyone could do a thing about it he’d stood, hoisting the Young Lion high into the air on his shoulders.

  Someone struck up a martial tune on an old violin. One that Broad had marched to out in Styria. Folk danced, and saluted, and patted the stump of the Young Lion’s leg like he was some bloody mascot. Whether it made any real sense or not, seemed they’d got their own successful rebellion and Brock’s failed one mixed up into one thing.

  “Still bowing to the nobles?” A fellow with heavy brows that met in the middle had come up with quite the scowl. “Where’s your fucking dignity?” he snarled at the man who had Brock on his shoulders. “Carried these bastards on our backs all our lives
, haven’t we? Ain’t we all equal now?”

  Broad could feel the mood shifting. There were doubting looks pointed his way, and Savine’s way, too. If they realised she was the daughter of the man who’d tortured thousands in the building right behind…

  “Hold these.” Broad handed his lenses to Brint. Then he realised the ex-lord marshal couldn’t hold Savine and the lenses at once, so he tucked ’em in Brint’s jacket pocket and turned back to the crowd, which had become a mass of smeared colour.

  “I was at Stoffenbeck!” the fellow with the brows was snarling. “And he didn’t fight for the fucking people, all he did—”

  Broad’s fist smashed into his blurred face. Before he fell Broad caught his collar and punched him again.

  “I was there, too, and I say you’re a liar.” And Broad punched him one more time. “The Young Lion’s a fucking hero!” It’d been a while since he believed in heroes, but plainly some folk still liked the notion. “Gave his leg and his arm for the people!” Broad flung the man against the wall of the House of Questions so he bounced off and rolled on the cobbles, hands clasped to his broken face.

  “A cheer for the Young Lion!” bellowed Brint, stepping forwards with his one fist raised.

  Like that, the mood was changed back and they were cheering again, Leo dan Brock jolting about on that dancing man’s shoulders with his stump in the air and his limp arm flopping.

  “Wish I could get him down,” said Broad.

  Savine shook her head. “I’ve a feeling it will be safer for us all if he stays up there.”

  “That was… quick and decisive action,” murmured Brint, pressing the lenses back into Broad’s aching hand. “You were a Ladderman?”

  Broad frowned down at his tattoo. He realised there was a little piece of tooth stuck between two of his scarred knuckles.

  “I was,” he said, wincing as he picked it out and flicked it away.

  Brint watched the crowd cheer as they bounced Brock on their shoulders. “The Union will need men like you in the days to come. Someone will have to restore order.”

  “My family needs me. That’s what matters.”

  “Of course,” said Brint. “But… you may serve them best by serving here.”

  Broad slowly hooked his lenses over his ears, carefully settled them into that familiar groove on the bridge of his nose and gave a heavy sigh. He’d sworn to keep away from trouble, but here was the problem.

  Trouble wouldn’t keep away from him.

  Bring Out the King

  Orso stared down from the palace gatehouse, hardly able to believe the evidence of his own senses.

  What could only be described as a horde of people had boiled from the Kingsway and into the park, past the commanding statues of his father, of the First of the Magi, and of a still-unfinished Arch Lector Glokta, surging towards the palace gates in an apparently endless flood.

  “Where did they come from?” he muttered. A fool’s question to which he already knew the answer. They came from Valbeck, from Keln, from Adua, from every corner of Midderland. They were the Union’s citizens. They were his subjects. Or they had been, at any rate. It appeared his grand tour of the country was no longer necessary.

  It had come to him.

  He watched in stunned horror as Union flags were torn down, vandals dancing in triumph on the roofs. A few buildings remained in loyal hands, but they were islands in a stormy sea, hopelessly besieged. Here and there, bloody little dramas unfolded. Tiny figures chased down a street. Tiny figures tumbling from a window. Tiny figures hanged from trees.

  The palace was its own well-guarded fortress within the fortress of the Agriont, but the Breakers were crowding in against its gates, swarming more thickly with Orso’s every faintly wheezing breath.

  “Master Sulfur, would it be possible…?” He was sure the magus had been right beside him, but when Orso turned, Sulfur was nowhere to be seen. It appeared there would be no spectacular magical rescue today. Saving the king from a dozen Breakers was one thing. From countless thousands was clearly quite another. There comes a time, Orso supposed, when even such mighty creditors as the Banking House of Valint and Balk must cut their losses.

  “Bring out the king!” someone screeched, their voice somehow rising above the sullen murmur. There was a surge through the crowd, a shriek as someone fell in the midst, crushed underfoot. Did he hear the heavy gates creak under the pressure? Something shattered against the parapet, not far away, and Orso ducked back on an instinct.

  “Your Majesty?” asked one of the officers. His face looked very pale above his crimson collar. “Should we shoot?”

  “No!” Orso struggled to put some authority into his voice. “No one shoots! I won’t kill my own people. No more… of my own people,” he added lamely, memories of the mass graves at Stoffenbeck floating up unbidden.

  Lord Chancellor Gorodets drew himself up to his full height. Not a very impressive height, but Orso appreciated the effort. “Every man here would die for you, Your Majesty.”

  Certainly there were plenty of square jaws firmly set on the palace battlements. Knights of the Body and Knights Herald, the elite of the elite. But one could discern a stiffening undercurrent of doubt behind the heroic façade. Laying down one’s life for one’s king sounds very fine in principle, but when it comes to actually doing it, and one realises one has just the single life to give, enthusiasm understandably wanes.

  “I’d rather they didn’t have to,” said Orso. “Besides, there are plenty of ladies about the palace, too.” He glanced at Hildi, doing her very best to look fearless, and forced out a grin. “It would be most ungallant to ask them to sacrifice themselves. Further violence will achieve nothing anyway.” He thought again of the charming stretch of countryside he had transformed into a mass grave and shook himself. “I’m not sure it ever does.”

  “You must not despair, Your Majesty!” Lord Hoff wrung his hands. “Thirty years ago, when your father was newly crowned, the city fell to the Gurkish.”

  “A far more fearsome enemy than this rabble!” croaked Lord Marshal Rucksted, whose appearance had degraded far past artfully rugged and into the realm of total disarray.

  “Eaters, Your Majesty! Inside the Agriont. Inside the very palace.”

  “I remember my father telling me the story,” said Orso. He remembered his mother looking enormously bored during it, too.

  “He never gave up!” Rucksted slapped fist into palm. “The Gurkish were driven out! The Eaters vanquished! We can still—”

  “The Gurkish were driven out by my grandfather, Grand Duke Orso, and by Lord Marshal West and his loyal troops, freshly embarked from Angland.” Orso raised one brow. “My grandfather was killed long ago by the Serpent of Talins, the Anglanders have rebelled against us already, and Lord Marshal Forest is retreating eastwards, hard-pressed, with the few loyal troops that remain. We beat the Gurkish, but…” Orso waved a helpless hand towards the crowds beyond the wall. “How can the Union beat itself?”

  Hoff stared about, mouth open, as if searching for a counterargument. Orso patted his fur-trimmed arm. He had never really liked the man, but he felt sorry for him now. He, after all, loved the monarchy more than anything. Orso had never much cared for it.

  “As for the Eaters,” he went on, “it was the First of the Magi who dealt with them, and he destroyed half the Agriont doing it. Bayaz is noticeable by his absence today. Even Master Sulfur appears to have pressing business elsewhere.” Orso looked towards the House of the Maker, rising stark and black and decidedly unhelpful beyond the Agriont’s walls. “I fear the age of wizards is truly over. And one does wonder, after all, whether their price was ever really worth paying.”

  “Then…” Lord Chancellor Gorodets hesitantly licked his lips. “What?”

  Then what had been the question ever since Orso re-entered his capital and learned that the Breakers were converging upon it in countless multitudes.

  Then what indeed.

  He wormed a finger into his c
ollar. Tried to loosen it without actually undoing the hook at his neck. It didn’t work, of course. That’s what the bloody hook’s there for.

  He would have liked to ask Tunny for his opinion. No one had better instincts for self-preservation, after all. But Tunny had, of course, followed those very instincts and slipped away as the riots worsened. No tearful goodbyes, he had simply not been there one morning. King who? Never heard of him. Orso had to smother an inappropriate snort of laughter at the thought. The corporal had never pretended that his first loyalty was to anyone other than himself.

  And the truth was, Orso knew very well what he had to do. It would just have been nice to hear someone try to talk him out of it.

  “Bring out the king!” floating belligerently from below was the wisest counsel on offer.

  Orso sighed. “Lord Hoff, I fear I must surrender myself to the Breakers.”

  “Your Majesty…” The lord chamberlain looked as pale as his own particularly horrified ghost. “You cannot be serious—”

  “I can, and for once I am.” He glanced at the mayhem beyond the walls. “The time has come for someone to nobly sacrifice themselves. In the absence of anyone better qualified… it will have to be me.”

  The remaining worthies of the Closed Council shuffled down the steps after him. Seven old men bent under the weight of their over-heavy robes, chains, responsibilities. They suddenly looked like a set of senile retirees being taken for a brief walk by their nurse.

  “Bring out the king!” A shrill shriek, then a bass growl. “Bring out the king!”

  “I’m bloody coming,” muttered Orso.

  The palace gardens were crowded with memories. He had played hide and seek among those statues with his sisters. Playful little Carlot and serious little Cathil. Over there his father had taught him how to grip a steel. Over there his mother had taught him how to express intense displeasure while still smiling. They had never been the happiest of families but, by the Fates, he missed them now he was the only one left.