The Wisdom of Crowds

by Joe Abercrombie

  He was a crippled shell. A tortured ghost. He’d never be himself again.

  “You all right?” asked Heugen.

  Leo got as near a smile as he could. A skull’s rictus. “Fine.” He’d never been much of a liar, but this must’ve been one of his very worst.

  “If I was in your position,” drawled Isher, “I’d be straight out of this madhouse and back to Angland as fast as my legs could carry me.” He realised his dire choice of words. “On the next tide, I mean to say.”

  “Savine’s due any day,” grunted Leo. “Be a while till she can make the voyage.” Even speaking was painful. “But Commissioner Pike’s invited us to stay. Meaning we’re still prisoners. I think he’s got people watching us.”

  “He has people watching everyone with a ‘dan’ in their name,” murmured Isher.

  “He has us watching each other.” Heugen glanced suspiciously about the surrounding benches. “Better value for money.”

  “Gentlemen, if I may?” someone shouted.

  “Citizens!” someone roared back.

  “Citizens, of course, my profuse apologies!” The man looked terrified. There was a feeling that little mistakes were being noted down and would soon enough be counted against you. “I wished to speak of the walls! The city walls, the walls of the Agriont. They are, practically speaking, an impediment to the growth of the city. They are, symbolically, a reminder of monarchist oppression.”

  Isher sprang up. The man could move fast, when he wanted to. Scurrying from the Battle of Stoffenbeck, for instance. Or scurrying back, once he saw something to gain.

  “They’re damn useful for the defence of the city, though!” Leo thought he might be roughing up the clipped accent of the Midderland nobleman to sound more like a commoner. “There’ll be foreign enemies, jealous of our freedoms. There’ll be enemies in the provinces, keen to take us back into the past.” Isher pointed across at Orso, watching this performance with weary scorn. “There’ll be enemies among us, wanting to raise a king above our heads again.”

  Those who’ve snatched power always fear it’ll be snatched away. There were murmurs of agreement, nods rippling through the benches. The public gallery was less enthusiastic, though. Not so much the message, Leo reckoned, as the messenger.

  “Aristocrats!” someone bellowed from above. “Clinging to aristocratic symbols!” Insults were thrown down, and scraps of food, and crumpled pamphlets, and the king acknowledged them by raising his goblet and taking a lazy swallow.

  “What does the Young Lion say?”

  “Let’s hear from Brock!”

  Risinau banged on the table for order and Leo flinched. The sound made him think of the cannon blast in Stoffenbeck. The shattered Guildhall. His horse falling across him. Antaup with bloody hands in his lap. Jin riddled with flatbow bolts.

  He tried to wipe his face, greasy with cold sweat.

  “You should say something,” muttered Isher, frowning up towards the jeering gallery.

  The thought of standing terrified him, but there must still have been some stubborn remnant of the Young Lion, hidden deep inside. Better to do it, than live with the fear of it, the Dogman used to say. Leo might have lost a leg and an arm, but he’d show these bastards he still had his heart.

  Heugen hauled him up while Isher wedged his crutch under his arm. Then they sat back, applauding his pluck. Not the man he was—he’ll never be the man he was—but the crippled curiosity can still raise a cheer or two.

  Leg trembling, stump burning, Leo drew himself up, raised his chin, bellowed at the echoing hall they way he’d once bellowed at the cavalry of Angland, working them up to a charge.

  “Citizens! We’ve changed the world! A Great Change!” For the massively worse, in his case. But he heard applause. Or he hoped it was applause, and not just the blood rushing in his splitting head. “But there’s still so much to do!”

  Sweat tickled his scalp, trickled down his forehead. He paused to catch his breath, to think through the pain. All his life he’d been fixed on what he wanted to say. Never given a thought to what they wanted to hear before.

  “Walls… won’t protect us now, only unity!” By the dead, the hall was swimming. “Those who’ve enjoyed great privileges must make great sacrifices.” They needed some noble gesture. He bared his teeth. “So I give up the ‘dan’ in my name! I renounce it! I cut it out! We must all… be equal.”

  No doubt it was clapping now, and lots of it. Folk were standing. Someone was shouting, “The Young Lion!” over and over. It took Leo an age to turn around, good leg quivering, aching hand sticky with sweat on his crutch. Isher, Heugen and the rest of the lords looked more than a bit queasy.

  “I’m sure my comrades… who once sat on the Open Council… will all happily do the same. I for one…” He gathered himself for a final effort, roared it at the dome in a broken voice. “Cannot think of a title that makes me prouder than Citizen!”

  Furious applause, and the thudding of boots from the public gallery seemed to merge with his thudding heartbeat, the pulsing pain in the stump of his leg. He could hardly make out Risinau’s words.

  “The Assembly no doubt wishes to thank the Young Lion for his sacrifices on behalf of the Great Change! It is an inspiration to us all, that he has so soon overcome his wounds and returned to the service of the nation! Let the walls of the Agriont be demolished! There is no need for we in power to separate ourselves from the people.” Risinau thumped the table with his chubby fist. “We are the people!”

  More cheering. One more hopping, lurching step and Leo collapsed onto the front bench. Isher caught him under the arm, clapped him on the back, waving to the public gallery.

  Through his fixed smile he hissed furiously, “We did not agree to this!”

  “You will.” Leo didn’t care a shit about that coward’s discomfort. He’d too much of his own to deal with. “When you’ve lost an arm and a leg,” he snarled, gripping at his throbbing stump, “a piece of your name doesn’t seem such a sacrifice.”

  Broad stood there, where he swore he’d never be again—in uniform.

  They called him Captain Broad now, if you could bloody believe it. He wondered what Liddy would’ve made of that. Asked him what the hell he thought he was doing, most likely. He wished he’d got an answer. He hadn’t asked for it. Hadn’t even agreed to it. But he hadn’t stopped it, either.

  “Symbols have power!” It was that bloody writer, Sworbreck, near foaming at the mouth with passion. “And the statues on the Kingsway are the most powerful symbols of all! Must the Representatives of the people pass every day below the very feet of such oppressors as Harod the Great or the Magus Bayaz? Why, I would sooner lay down my life! Lay it down on the gallows where so many martyrs were slain by the Inquisition, than see it continue for another day!”

  “Citizen Sworbreck wants to set the people free,” murmured Brint, who by some magic had gone, within weeks, from lord marshal in the old regime, to imprisoned traitor, to general in the People’s Army. Those kinds of wild falls and rises were everywhere in Adua these days.

  Broad thought of Valbeck. The streets strewn with rubbish. The mobs and the fires. Wallpaper being boiled for soup. “Folk want bread,” he said. “Then safety. Then shelter. Freedom’s far down the list, and principles far behind that.”

  “Perhaps you should be a Representative.”

  Broad raised his brows at the benches. There were some good folk on them. Honest folk with good ideas and good intentions. Shame they could hardly get a word in. The first day the Assembly sat there’d been this moment, when they all swore an oath to serve the people, then applauded loud enough to shake the dome and threw their hats in the air. Some bastard’s cap was still snagged on a bit of carving, just below the gallery. Broad had been sure then that things would get better. Better for everyone. But before the end of the session things were turning sour. Even when they could agree on what the people wanted, they couldn’t agree on how to get there. Ever since, they’d been mired like
a wagon with a horse at each corner.

  Broad folded his arms over the breastplate they’d given him. “I’ve a shitty enough job as it is, General, thanks all the same.”

  “Good men must stick together,” said Brint. “Try to contain this madness.”

  If that was the aim, it looked to Broad like they’d already failed. “Can’t make you any promises.”

  “Best you don’t. No one’s keeping the damn things anyway.”

  “We should dismantle the House of the Maker!” a man with a huge beard was squawking out, shaking a great sheaf of papers. His plans for the future, maybe. There was no shortage of those. “It’s a regressive symbol!”

  “The House o’ the Maker ain’t our problem,” roared a great big fellow with an anchor tattooed on his cheek, “or the statues, or the bloody walls.” He took a great breath, nostrils flaring. “It’s the fucking foreigners!”

  Broad winced. Everyone was furious all the time. Everyone looking for someone to blame. Everything teetering on the brink of violence. He felt like he had in Styria, in the war. A clenched fist, itching to strike. And the worst thing about it—he wasn’t sure he didn’t like the feeling.

  “Citizens, please, we must stand together!” A bony fellow with a shock of wild white hair had jumped up, something desperate in his voice that made everyone fall silent. “I have been administering charity in the Three Farms for these past twelve years, and I swear to you things have never been worse. Never.”

  Some nods from the more ragged members of the commons. Some rolled eyes among the noblemen.

  “We have wrested the reins of power from the Closed Council. I applaud it! They dragged our nation towards the abyss. But the granaries are emptier than they have ever been. Coal is in scarce supply. The injustices that led to this upheaval—the want, the scarcity, the degradation, the disease—they will not simply vanish because we remodel some statues. All the signs point to a harsh winter on the way. We must prepare, Citizens, we must be ready!”

  Broad found he was nodding along, but the noise in the hall was mounting again. Jeers and cheers together. The old man’s voice was failing, and Sworbreck sprang up to thunder over him.

  “Prepare, of course, but we must not indulge in defeatism. We must not encourage a dangerous nostalgia for happier times that never were! I would rather lay down my life than see this proud assembly cavil, nag and nay-say. We must not talk the nation down!”

  “Before we can feed the people’s bellies,” agreed Risinau, “we must feed the people’s minds. Only with a government founded on sound principles of fairness and justice can they prosper!”

  As the old man dropped spent into his seat, the rest of the Representatives were rising to applaud their Chairman. They did that a lot. Broad clenched his fists tighter and glanced towards Judge, flopped loose in her chair with her head resting on the back, scratching gently at her stretched-out throat. With something stuck between horror and excitement, he realised she was looking right back at him.

  He remembered being chained to a chair with her in his lap, crotch grinding against his, and he felt that guilty tickle, deep inside. He remembered her grinning face spotted with blood when he split that banker’s skull, and he felt that tickle even worse. Even better.

  A little smile quivered at the corner of her mouth. As if she guessed everything he was thinking. Some men can’t help ’emselves…

  “I have a point to raise!” As the Representatives sat back down, one man was left standing in the aisle. Ordinary-looking, in travel-stained clothes, a walking staff in one hand.

  Risinau peered up at him. “I do not recognise you, Citizen. What district do you represent?”

  “Oh, this is Master Sulfur!” The king tried to swig from his goblet, frowned, upended it and shook a couple of drips into his lap. Then he turned his lazy eyes towards the benches. “He represents the First of the Magi.”

  That got a murmur from the Assembly, and from the gallery, too. Broad raised a brow at Brint. The general could only shrug. Not much would’ve surprised any of them now. If a dragon had risen from the benches, it would likely have been calmly dismissed on a point of order.

  “My master, Bayaz, is gravely concerned by recent events!” called Sulfur. “In the Union he founded. In the city he built.” He gestured towards Orso, who was sitting back and holding out his goblet for a refill. “To the king he crowned.”

  “Do thank your master for his concern,” replied Risinau, “but tell him he should keep it for himself!” Laughter at that, and an approving banging of fists on benches. “The free people of the Union have no further need of his meddling!”

  Sulfur’s eyes narrowed. “How soon you all forget. It was within your lifetimes that he saved Adua from the terrors of the Eaters!”

  “By destroying half the city and causing the deaths of thousands!” called Risinau. “Bayaz saved us from the Eaters, perhaps, but one wonders…

  who will save us from Bayaz?” More laughter, and more anger, and Risinau flashed that prim little smile. “General Brint, could you see our visitor out? The age of wizards is over, Master Sulfur. An age of reason has dawned!”

  “Reason?” Sulfur glanced about the benches and gave a hiss of disgust. “I’d like to see it.” And he stalked off up the aisle, staff tapping against the steps.

  Before he’d even reached the doors, someone else was bellowing to be heard. “I demand we reopen the question of whether we should be called the Assembly of Representatives. I would like to propose Colloquium—”

  A chorus of groans. “Again?”

  Miracles

  Savine’s throat was raw from screaming.

  Dark outside. No chink of light between the shutters. It had been hours, then. It felt like for ever. That same question chased itself around and around her mind.

  How many women had she known who died giving birth?

  “My lady—” began the surgeon.

  “Don’t fucking… call me that,” she snarled over her shoulder between whooping breaths, nearly swallowing her own tongue with fury. “No one… calls anyone that… any more.”

  “Of course not, I apologise. The times take some adjusting to.” He spoke in the blandest of drones. As if they were discussing the weather and he by no means had his fingers in her quim. “You can push if you feel the need—”

  “Oh, fucking can I?” she screamed at him. The idea that she might be able to stop herself was absurd. The one thing she wanted in the world was to push.

  The ridiculous shift they’d given her was tangled around her neck, choking her, and she dragged it up, got it stuck, tore at it, spitting, stitches popping, finally ripped it off and it dropped on the bed around her wrists. It was spotted red. Zuri’s hand slipped in and whisked it away, folding it so the blood did not show.

  How many women had she known who died giving birth?

  She grunted, and the pain tightened in her belly, and the grunt became a groan, and the groan a moan, and the moan a wail, and the wail a howl, and the howl a grinding scream. She clutched up fistfuls of the sheets, tried to climb the headboard, but that was worse, and she flopped back, and that was worse, and she twisted desperately this way and that on her hands and knees, but it was all worse.

  “Fuck,” she gasped. “Shit. Cunt.” She wished she knew worse words. Wished Zuri had taught her Kantic. They had some savage-sounding curses in the South. The room was so bloody hot. Sweat tickled her scalp. But her arms were so locked and trembling she couldn’t lift a hand to scratch.

  People came and went. Barged in with water, with cloths, with muttered messages. Naked on her hands and knees with her arse in the air, honking like a sow, she barely even cared. If anything she was grateful for the waft of breeze when the door opened.

  “I do apologise,” murmured the surgeon, “for all the coming and going.”

  “You can let the whole fucking city in,” she snarled, “as long as you get the fucking baby out.” The spasms were coming so quickly now it was one continuou
s agony, and she clenched her teeth again, ground them so hard she thought they might crumble.

  They all say, It’s the most painful thing there is, of course. In a slightly gloating way, with a knowing raised brow as they look down at your massive belly. They all say it, but you persuade yourself they are being overdramatic. Savine’s mother had held the pain of childbirth over her like a debt that could never possibly be paid, but then Savine’s mother was one of the most overdramatic people in the world. Now it seemed she had been understating the case all along. By the Fates, Savine wished her mother was there. No doubt she would have been at least half-drunk, but she always kept her head in a crisis.

  Savine felt Zuri’s hand firm on her shoulder, rubbing at her aching back, and was pathetically grateful for it. She wanted to cry, but she was crying already.

  “It might be easier if you were to lie on your back—” murmured the surgeon.

  “Easier for fucking who?”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  She gave another ripping growl, panted and shuddered and twisted desperately but there was no wriggling free of it. She had wanted so many things. Beating everyone, and winning everything, and having it all, and being seen to have it all. Now all she cared about was getting this over.

  How many women had she known who died giving birth?

  She wondered if dying might be preferable to much more of this.

  “One more push should do the trick—”

  “Fuck yourself!”

  “Good, good.”

  She screamed again. She screamed her face off. She screamed her guts out. She screamed as if she was being murdered. She felt as if she was being murdered. A stinging, burning, ripping to add to all the rest and she ran out of breath, her scream dying off into a wheezing groan as she felt something slither out.

  Zuri cradled her head. “Done,” she whispered. “Done.”

  The best words Savine ever heard. She slumped onto her face, breath coming in shivering gasps.