The Wisdom of Crowds

by Joe Abercrombie

  There was a clang as the Nail flung the cage door shut on Stour and left him huddled, filthy back pressed against the bars and one hand dangling between them. “Looks like we hold all the cards.”

  “You’ve still got to play ’em right,” said Clover, frowning over at the remnants of the Great Wolf.

  “Carleon’s ours,” said Shivers.

  “And half the North besides,” crowed Hardbread, “and Nightfall’s men are trickling back wounded and ruined and Black Calder hasn’t much left to fight with, I reckon.”

  “We should hit him now,” said the Nail. “Hit him hard.”

  “Calder’s weak!” growled the big man with all the beard.

  “Calder’s canny,” said Isern. “No doubt he’ll have spies here.”

  Stour was one kind of enemy. He’d come right at you. Black Calder was another. “Doubt he’s halfway as weak as he seems,” said Rikke. “He’s still got friends, and he’ll already be gathering ’em.”

  “And the year’s getting late,” said Shivers, nodding towards the white sky outside the windows.

  “We need to bring him to us.” Rikke dropped into Skarling’s Chair and slung her leg over one of the arms, trying to look right at home, though the dead knew there was no getting comfortable in that bloody thing. “Fight him on the ground we choose at the time we choose.”

  “How you figuring to do that?” asked Hardbread.

  “I already know how.” Rikke put a fingertip to her tattooed cheek and gave Shivers a big wink with her Long Eye. “I’ve seen it.”

  No one laughed at that these days. No one mocked and no one disagreed. There was a respectful murmur at it, in fact. Fearful glances and nervous shiftings from one foot to another. These Named Men, killers all, standing in awe of Skinny Rikke and her Long Eye. A year ago she’d hidden from Stour Nightfall in a freezing stream. Now she had him locked in his own cage. She who used to have fits and shit herself in the streets of Uffrith had stolen half the North. Was enough to make her burst out laughing, almost. But that would’ve spoiled the mood.

  “Patience,” she said, softly, tapping at the peeled paint on the arm of Skarling’s Chair with her fingernail. “We need to chew what we’ve bit before we bite off more. While you boys were having fun on the way from Uffrith there’s been work to do up here.”

  “I’m always ready to work,” said Shivers.

  “We’ve been laying in food for the winter, and I’ve a sense folk in the next valley are holding out on us. Might be…” She glanced sideways at Isern. “I’ve been too soft-hearted with ’em. Need you to take some stonier hearts up there.”

  The curved reflection of the tall windows gleamed in Shivers’ metal eye. “A warning or a wounding?”

  She wanted to say warning. But they all were watching. Watching and judging. And before this set of bastards she couldn’t afford to look too forgiving. “You be the judge. And take Hardbread with you, since he’s in such a bloodthirsty mood.”

  “Right y’are.” And Shivers beckoned Hardbread and a few others after him as he headed for the door.

  “Clover?”

  “Rikke?”

  “Take your people up to the Redwater Valley. Calder’s boys’ve been busy over there. Burned a few farms. Make it clear this side of the river’s mine.”

  “Right back into the cold.” Clover aimed a wistful sigh at the fire. “We’d be honoured, wouldn’t we, Sholla?”

  The blank-faced girl looked blank as ever. “Inexpressibly.”

  Rikke beckoned Corleth over as Clover and his people tramped out. “Get some water boiled and clean that bastard in the cage, eh?”

  “Kindness?” she asked.

  “On my nose. He fucking stinks.”

  “I still reckon the moon would smile upon him face down in the mud.” Isern prodded at the bars with one blue finger, making the cage turn gently, the Great Wolf limp as a heap of filthy rags inside. “Remember when he chased us through the woods, all cold and hungry and gnat-nibbled? Remember how bitter your feelings then?”

  “I’m not forgetting,” said Rikke.

  “He said he’d send your guts to your father in a box. Break what they love, he said.”

  “I’m not forgetting. But we might yet find a use for him.”

  “I’ll admit he makes a fine adornment. Caged in the very cage he had forged, d’you see. Brought to naught in the very room where his hero the Bloody-Nine was brought to naught.” She gave a little chuckle. “My da would’ve laughed long at that one.” And she patted Rikke on her fur-clad shoulder as she passed and pushed the near-empty bottle into her hand.

  “You’re always saying your da was an arsehole.”

  “Most yawning arsehole in the whole Circle of the World.” She wagged that blue finger. “But he saw to the chilly heart o’ things, more often than not.” And she swaggered to the doorway, gave a great showy stretch and spat into the hall. “Don’t get cocky, now.” She pulled the doors shut and the latch dropped with an echoing clatter, leaving Rikke alone with the ex-King of the Northmen and the Nail, his pale eyes on her.

  “Still say we should hit Black Calder while the hitting’s good,” he said.

  “You would. You like hitting things.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Not for its own sake. I want to hit once, and that so hard I never have to hit again.”

  “Thought your father swore to see Black Calder back to the mud?”

  “So they say, but my father didn’t think much o’ vengeance, and since he’s dead into the bargain I feel sure he can wait a spell.”

  The Nail gave a little grin, tip of his tongue stuck between his teeth. “You’re a clever one, ain’t you?”

  “I do my humble best.” And Rikke realised she was threading her chain of emeralds through her fingers, feeling the cool stones tickle at the webs between them.

  She gave the Nail a considering look. You could not have called him pretty, slouched long and loose against the wall with his thumbs in his belt and his elbows stuck out and his chin stuck forward. But then Rikke doubted pretty was the first word anyone would’ve picked for her these days. And there was something about him. All calm, and confident, and in no hurry. Like he was happy in his own skin, the very thing she’d never been. We’re always drawn to our opposites. Drawn to them and scared by them at once. And where’s the fun in someone who don’t scare you just a touch?

  She got up and walked over, taking one more swallow from the bottle. Tasted worse than ever, mixed with chagga bitterness, but it wasn’t burning any more. Just glowing nicely, like the embers in the great fireplace.

  “What do your friends call you?” asked Rikke, handing him the bottle.

  He frowned at the little dribble in the bottom, more spit than spirits. “The Nail.”

  “Aye, but folk who are close.”

  He took a swig of his own, watching her all the way. “Don’t have anyone that close. Not now my da’s dead.”

  “What did he call you?”

  A pause. “The Nail.”

  “Can I borrow that cloak o’ yours?”

  He raised those pale blond brows, and undid the buckle, and tossed it over to her. She wandered to the corner of the hall, taking her time. Felt tense in there, like there was something about to happen, and she enjoyed it. She reckoned she’d earned just a streak of cockiness, whatever Isern said. She went up on her tiptoes to hang the cloak over Stour’s cage.

  “Don’t really want him looking.” And she bent down and pulled one of her boots off, left it lying. Kicked the other off into the corner, and it bounced from the wall and fell on its side.

  The Nail frowned over at it. “Why you taking your boots off?”

  She undid her belt buckle. “’Cause I can’t get my trousers off over ’em.”

  That was when she realised, skirts have many downsides but you can step right out of the bastards. Or pull ’em up in a pinch. But there’s no slick way out of trousers. She got ’em down past her knees all right, then nea
rly fell over pulling her right foot free, and had to hop along dragging the other leg off.

  Not quite the sultry swagger she’d planned. Maybe she’d got too cocky after all. But there was nothing for it now but to see it through. She wriggled into Skarling’s Chair, trying to arrange her fine new cloak in a manner that preserved the delicate balance between too much mystery and not enough.

  The Nail considered this performance, then Stour’s covered cage, then scratched the back of his head. “Fair to say the afternoon has took an unexpected turn.”

  A brief silence. Outside, the river thundered. Bad idea, this. One of her worst. She wondered where her trousers ended up, and how far the shameful shuffle would be to squirm back into ’em so she could pretend it never happened. “Not planning on turning me down, are you? ’Cause that’d be quite an embarrassment.”

  “Fuck, no.” And he cracked out a grin. “Just thought I’d fix the scene in my mind, while I’ve got the chance.” He tapped the side of his head with the bottle. “It’s a good one.” Then he sucked the last drops from it and walked over, undoing his sword-belt on the way and kicking it off. Which was a hell of a relief, ’cause apart from anything else the chill breeze through the window was spreading gooseflesh up her thighs.

  “It don’t bother you?” He planted one big boot between her bare feet, then glanced over towards the cage in the corner, creaking slightly, with his cloak over it. “Knowing he’s under there?”

  “It’s half the point. He once said he’d see me fucked by dogs.”

  The Nail planted his other boot beside the first. “That was rude.”

  “Now he’ll learn I decide who gets fucked and how.”

  “So… you’re using me to teach him a lesson?”

  She turned her head and spat out the chagga pellet. “I guess.”

  He gave a little giggle. “Grand.” And he tossed the empty bottle out of the window, leaned down over the chair, a hand on each arm, and kissed her on the mouth. A delicate, polite little kiss, it was, catching her top lip between both of his, and then her bottom lip. So delicate and polite she almost laughed.

  Kissing’s a simple thing in a way, but everyone’s got their own style at it, like talking, like walking, like fighting, like writing. He kept on kissing her, one lip, then the other, and she had to stretch up to kiss him back, to make the kisses a little deeper, to get the point of her tongue involved, and now she didn’t feel like laughing any more, not at all. She slid her hands along the scarred arms of Skarling’s Chair till they slid onto his, till she was gripping his wrists, till his knees were rubbing against the insides of her bare thighs, just gently, like there was nothing much in it, but to her mind there was quite a lot in it, actually.

  He had his eyes open all the time, looking at her, and she had hers open all the time, looking at him—well, the one that worked—and that felt dangerous, somehow, like each little kiss was a risk. She craned up to kiss him harder but he moved his face away so she couldn’t quite get there, and she found she’d made an excited little gasp and he’d made a satisfied little grunt and the breath between them was hot and smelled of spirits. Good idea, this. One of her best.

  She’d got his belt undone with one hand, rather pleased about her nimble fingers, and now she slipped them inside and dug around till she brought his cock out, halfway hard and definitely going in the right direction. She wouldn’t say she was drunk but she was on the road there, rubbing at him with one hand, fingers of the other around the back of his neck, scratching at his red-blond beard with her thumbnail.

  “I’m going to need your help with something,” she whispered.

  “Not sure… how I can show more willing—”

  “Not that. Well, yes, that. But something else, too. Doubt you’ll like it.”

  “You pick a hell—ah—of a time to ask for—ah—a favour,” he whispered, nudging at her lips with his.

  “They say you should always bargain from a position of strength.”

  “That so?”

  Her turn to gasp as he pushed his hands under her arse, knelt down and pulled her towards him so her head slid down the chair back and her back slid down the chair seat and she was left lying half on it and half off it, her bare toes on the cold stone and her knees spread around his head and her hips pushed up towards him, the warmth of the fire on the side of her bare leg and the cold breeze from the window tickling her bare belly. She squirmed this way and that, couldn’t find anything close to comfortable among the unforgiving angles. You have to be hard, after all, to sit in Skarling’s Chair. Goes double for fucking in it.

  He grinned up at her over her bush and she grinned back.

  “Still need to get me a cushion,” she muttered.

  Questions

  “Can you hear me in there?” bellowed Vick, at the top of her lungs. Felt like all she’d done since the People’s Army arrived in Adua was shout. Her throat was raw from it. In the new Union, you got nothing done talking quietly.

  A faint voice echoed from beyond the monstrous, studded doors in the towering, spike-topped wall of that fortress of a bank. “I can hear you.”

  “I’m Inquisitor—” She ground her teeth. “I’m Chief Inspector Teufel! I have a warrant signed by Commissioner Pike to search any and all branches of the Banking House of Valint and Balk.” She held the document high, though how the hell anyone was supposed to tell whether it was genuine or not, she’d no idea. Everything had to be printed now, but they’d smashed all the good presses the day the Agriont fell so the warrant was all smudged, the seal was a blob and the signature a blur. “It’d be a lot easier to have this conversation if you opened the door!” And her voice died away entirely on the last word.

  “I don’t have the authority to open the door, Inspector.”

  A curious crowd was gathering in front of the bank. These days, crowds built up at the slightest provocation. Risinau insisted they be allowed to. They had to promote the national conversation, he said. They had to politicise the masses, he said. Risinau said a lot, but as far as Vick could tell none of it ever meant anything. The masses were far too politicised for her taste already.

  “Who does have the authority?” she barked. A question people were often asking, in the new Union.

  She had to strain to hear the reply. “The manager.”

  “So where’s he?”

  A pause. “Not here.”

  Vick was out of patience. She’d a lot less patience than she used to, one way or another. “Get the cannon,” she snapped.

  There was an excited murmur from the onlookers as the Practicals gathered around the wagon. They were calling them Constables now, but you could still see the tan lines on their faces where their masks used to sit. Vick planted her hands on her hips and tapped one finger impatiently as she watched them strain at the spokes of its wheels, spit flying from their clenched teeth as it ground ever so slowly over the cobbles. When she wasn’t shouting, she was tapping her finger impatiently.

  Tallow watched the whole business while blowing into his cupped hands with his usual air of hangdog resignation. “So… we’re not the Inquisition any more?”

  She was damn glad he was alive but she didn’t let a trace of it show. Only growled back as impatiently as ever. “Commissioner Pike felt the name gave the wrong signals.”

  “Six centuries of torture, exile and hangings, you mean?”

  “I daresay. But someone still needs to keep folk in line.” One of the Constables slipped and fell, the wagon rocking back alarmingly. “Even if the line’s turned blurry as hell.”

  “Who better’n the folk who used to do it, I guess?”

  “You can’t say we don’t have the relevant experience.”

  “So… the same people, doing the same job, but called something else?”

  “You may have hit closer to the essence of the Great Change than Chairman Risinau has in a hundred hours of speeches. Welcome to the new Union and its People’s Inspectorate, headquarters at the House of Truth. It’s
the big building in the Agriont with the little windows, in case you were wondering.”

  “They’re not asking questions there any more?”

  “Oh, they’re asking questions.”

  “Just… nicely?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “But truth is more important than it used to be?”

  “Time will tell.” Though Vick had her doubts about that, too.

  “I hear the People’s Army let out all the prisoners.”

  “Some of whom I worked hard to put in there. Most of whom weren’t even Breakers. Thieves, smugglers, more than one murderer and an idiot who liked to set fires. Not to mention the Young Lion and his co-conspirators. You’re all free, Brothers! Did they let your sister out?”

  “They did.”

  “Good.” She regretted saying it right away. New Union or old, letting a feeling show was like pointing out a chink in your armour. An invitation to stick the knife in. She frowned sideways at Tallow. With his sister released, he’d no real reason to work with her. Still less to be loyal to her. “You’re still here, though, I notice.”

  “I’m standing with the winners.” He gave her a weak grin. “And where else would I go?”

  “Fair point.” What with all the folk who’d flooded into Adua with the People’s Armies, and the mills and manufactories that were shut up or broken down, and the shambles on the roads, canals and docks, work was hard to come by and prices were higher than ever. And who knew where anyone’s loyalties sat these days? Old friends were set at odds and old enemies made allies. In the new Union, everything was ripped up and spun around, and who was to say it wouldn’t be ripped up fresh tomorrow?

  “You got a uniform, at least,” said Tallow.

  Vick frowned down at herself. Bloody thing was too tight under the armpits and the boots pinched. “Seems black never goes out of fashion.”