The Wisdom of Crowds

by Joe Abercrombie

  Savine cleared her throat and wiped her stinging lower eyelids carefully with one gloved fingertip. “I have started thinking it might be a fine thing… if the world was a better place for my existence.” Curnsbick had always told her she had a generous heart, and she had thought him a sentimental fool. Perhaps it had simply been hidden under all the pearl dust and ambition. Hidden even from her. “I find… I feel a little lighter for every mark I give away. That… is the angle.”

  She tore her eyes from the queue and found her one-time business partner staring at her, pamphlet still in his hand, almost as surprised by that unguarded moment as she was.

  “By all means you can give me the lecture now,” she snapped. “You will tell me nothing I have not told myself. That this is a feeble sponge to soak up the rivers of misery I spilled for my own profit. That this is the pinnacle of soppy hypocrisy. A woman who made slaves of children, handing out a few lumps of coal as though it makes her a heroine.”

  Vallimir paused, mouth slightly open, perhaps trapped between denying it out of politeness or agreeing with the obvious truth. Then he turned to the queue, tucking The Darling of the Slums back in his coat pocket, and blew out a smoky sigh. “I suppose… it’s better to give it away than to keep it.”

  And they stood together as the snow came down, and watched the loaves being given away.

  “They tossed General Bell from the Tower of Chains,” called Leo. A moment later, Savine heard the clonk of his leg tossed onto the floor as he dropped back against his pillows.

  She winced. Not just at the thought of the execution, but at the offhand way he spoke of it. “I heard.”

  “Jurand told the court they should give me his position.”

  She stepped into the bedroom, staring over at him, sprawled on the bed in the light of one candle. “You want it?”

  “Not yet. When the time’s right.” He looked surprised that she was surprised, even though they had been throwing generals off the Tower of Chains almost as fast as they had bankers. “Command of the People’s Army, Savine. I could sway them my way. They’re in a wretched state, though, I hear. No food, no equipment, no morale.”

  “We could send them blankets. Winter coats for the officers. Bread, maybe.” She still was not used to the shape his body made, under the covers. The one leg, the strange absence of the other. Like some fairground trick. It was a struggle not to stare. “Make sure they know it all comes from the Young Lion. To one set of heroes from another.”

  The gap in Leo’s teeth showed as he grinned. “You always know the right gloss to put on things.”

  If only. She looked at the floor, wondering how she could possibly put any gloss on what she had to say. “There is something… I need to share with you. Something I found out shortly before we were married.”

  He narrowed his eyes slightly. “Why didn’t you tell me then?” He had changed. Before Stoffenbeck it would never have occurred to him to ask.

  “I should have. But I never thought you would find out. I never thought anyone would.”

  He narrowed his eyes further. The look of a wary customer who suspects he is being palmed off with inferior goods. “But someone has?”

  “It seems so. And they might make it known to others.” She swallowed. Every word felt like a weight to lift. “Secrets, in my experience, rarely stay buried.”

  “So you judged it was better to tell me now than risk me finding out for myself. Excellent strategy. I’d expect nothing less.”

  “Please, Leo.”

  “What kind of secret worries you?”

  The disgusting and potentially lethal kind. She clenched her fists. Forced out the words. “King Orso… and I…”

  Leo waved her away. “Selest dan bloody Heugen told me you were lovers, remember?”

  “Not that.” Well, yes, that, but so much more than that. It still shocked her to say it. Still repelled her to think it. She squeezed her eyes shut, her ears full of the sound of blood surging, and blurted it in a rush. “We have the same father!”

  Silence. When she opened her eyes, Leo was frowning at her. Puzzled. As though he must have misheard. “Wait…”

  “King Jezal and my mother were lovers! Long ago. Before he was king, even. And I was the result.”

  “Orso’s your brother?” whispered Leo.

  She grimaced. “Yes.”

  “That’s why he didn’t hang me.”

  “Maybe. Part of it.”

  Leo sat back, frowning at the ceiling. “So… my wife…”

  She closed her eyes again, face burning. “Yes.”

  “Is King Jezal’s oldest child?”

  “What?” That she had enthusiastically practised incest did not seem to have occurred to him. Or, if it did, there were aspects of the case that interested him far more.

  “Our children… are King Jezal’s grandchildren. By the dead, Savine, our children might be next in line to the throne!”

  It was not fear in his voice, or disgust. It was excitement. Somehow that worried her even more.

  “But, don’t you see…” She sat on the bed, nervously clutching up a handful of the quilt. “The danger this puts us in, puts them in—”

  “Of course.” He clasped her hand, eyes gleaming in the candlelight. “But danger and opportunity often walk hand in hand.”

  Savine stared. “My father used to say that.”

  “Which one? Old Sticks?” He leaned from the bed and fished up his iron leg again. “I can’t say we got on.” He jammed his stump into the padded socket and started to fasten the buckles. “But no one ever denied he was a clever bastard. Can’t be lying around, Savine. I’ve got work to do!” And he grasped his cane and stood.

  She sat in silence as he limped out, teeth gritted. Click, tap, grunt. Click, tap, grunt. That mixture of cunning, ruthlessness, burning ambition and constant pain was far from unfamiliar.

  She had heard it said that every woman ends up marrying her father. Until that moment, she had always imagined herself the exception.

  The Good Work

  The setting sun was a great fiery smear around the Tower of Chains, through the wintry haze and the furnace smoke, over the broken teeth of the Agriont’s part-ruined walls. They’d given up on taking ’em down, more or less. Another job left quarter-done, like most things since the Great Change. Most things but murder, anyway.

  The Square of Marshals had become the Square of Martyrs—the sea of flagstones chiselled with the names of Breakers and Burners killed in twenty years of Old Sticks’ purges. Hammers tap, tap, tapped away all day as they added more. Hundreds of them. Thousands.

  There were fewer folk come out to watch the executions than when Judge first took charge. Maybe they were tiring of the blood. No doubt they were tiring of the cold. Bitter chill out here. Clouds of smoky breath as the angriest ones screeched insults at the accused.

  Broad could hardly see the point of screaming at folk already good as dead. But he was what you’d have to call blind drunk. Spent most of his waking hours blind drunk, now. Like he had in Styria. The only way he could see to get through it.

  It was society in miniature, in the Square of Martyrs. Every type of person and every type who preyed on ’em. You’d have thought the aristocrats and the bureaucrats would’ve stayed well away, but they were here, too, with red ribbons in the ex-ladies’ hair and red stains on the ex-lords’ clothes, howling their hate at the convicted louder’n anyone, as if that might save them from being next.

  They’d brought carts into the Agriont and opened ’em up to make improvised souvenir shops, jerry tents, food stalls. Some enterprising bastard had turned a guardhouse into a pawn shop, so you could sell your watch for a quarter of what it was worth and go straight upstairs to where they’d turned some administrator’s office into a brothel, the bookcases pushed over to make bawdy stages, the desks made into beds, the easy chairs into husk-dens. Enterprise always finds a way.

  Broad gave the closest prisoner a little nudge in the back, just to keep h
im moving. Didn’t say anything. Saying something encouraged them to say something, and the last thing you want is a conversation. Reminds you that it’s not just stuff you’re pushing off a tower, but people. He took another nip from his flask. Had to keep drinking. Nice and regular. Always put a bottle by his bed when he went to sleep now, so he could start drinking soon as he fought free of his nightmares. Helps to have a routine.

  Kept wondering how many he’d herded across the Square of Marshals. Kept counting ’em up. It’d been one at a time when the trials began. Now it was pairs, threes, fours. Here’s a triple! Sarlby would say. He was leading the way, flatbow under his arm. Jaunty, almost, how he strutted across the square, across those dead men’s names. Used to be a good man, Sarlby. There was a piece of him missing, these days. He had no doubts.

  Sometimes felt like all Broad had was doubts. But they changed nothing. He took another nip. The more he drank, the harder it was to keep count. The more he drank, the less he cared about innocence or guilt. The more he drank, the less their crying bothered him. Their arguing. Their endless fucking reasoning. A cuff across the head would shut ’em up, when it got too much. It’d been the same with the prisoners in Styria. No food to spare for the enemy, so… get Gunnar Broad. He’ll do what needs doing.

  And he did. The families gathered here, in the cold shadow of the Tower of Chains, to say their last goodbyes. To hope for some nick-of-time reprieve that would never come. There was a woman bundled up in a blanket, her face all pink and raw from cold, eyes shining with tears. She blundered out and caught the prisoner closest to Broad.

  They clasped each other. Whispered something to each other, foreheads pressed together. Broad wondered what he’d have done, if that was him and Liddy. Him and May. Maybe he’d find out, one day soon. If there was any justice.

  He drank again, spirits burning his sore gullet. It was like taking the lenses off his mind. Made everything a blur. So he didn’t have to see Liddy’s face, or May’s. Didn’t have to think of what they’d say. Didn’t have to put ’em next to what he was now. Didn’t have to fear what he might do to ’em. Made it easier, being drunk. Or did it make it easier to have something to blame? I was drunk, so I wasn’t thinking straight. I was drunk, so I couldn’t help myself. I was drunk, so it wasn’t really me, even though, when he was drunk, it was really him even more than when he was sober. It was never really him until he was drunk.

  Truth be told, he was a man who broke everything. He’d been running from it ever since Styria, and all he’d done was run straight into it again. Told himself it was the safest thing for Liddy and May to stay in Angland, and for him to stay here. Told himself he was doing it for their sakes. Better’n the alternative. That he was doing it for his own.

  They clung to each other with desperate strength, these two, trying somehow to put off that final parting. Broad had the pain of sentimental tears at the back of his nose as he prised them apart, hands numb from the cold, numb from the drink. But he still did it.

  “I love you!” the woman called as one of the other Burners pulled her away and Broad pushed her man on towards the Tower of Chains. I love you. Like her love might be a cushion he could bounce on when he hit the frozen ground.

  Over the anger of the crowd, faint from beyond the Agriont’s broken walls, he could hear the dogs. A different kind of bloodthirsty. There were packs of ’em in the streets now. Turned almost as feral as the people. Wolves and foxes, too, drawn out of the cold countryside and into the city by some glimpse of fire, some whiff of blood. They slipped through the crowds outside the Agriont, darted up to lap at the half-frozen spatter at the base of the tower.

  Broad pulled his lenses off to rub at the bridge of his nose with a shaky hand, but even without them he could smell it. Even in the cold you could smell it from streets away now, the place of execution. The place where the fall passed its final judgement.

  Didn’t even shock him any more. Part of his workday, like scrubbing out the tubs at the brewery in Valbeck. The unspeakable made commonplace.

  They handed the prisoners over to the Burners at the foot of the tower. Herded them onto Curnsbick’s new lift. A wonder of the modern age. The signal was given, the machinery clattered into life and the platform lurched upwards. The climb had almost been kinder.

  The families sobbed and wailed, blew kisses and streamed with tears, a forest of reaching hands. Wives and husbands, parents and children. The condemned tried to stay strong. The same wearying pattern as ever.

  Broad turned his back on it. Trudged across the frosty stones towards the Court of the People. Sarlby was whistling a tune. All the faces they passed were tilted up now, the light of torches flickering on their expectant grins, the sunset glimmering in their eager eyes as they waited for the little specks to start falling and knew, for certain, the joy of being the ones still alive.

  He took another nip. Easier when you were drunk, so he kept drinking. Helps to have a routine. Innocence and guilt had made no difference in Styria and they made none here. No one was guiltier’n him, were they? But he wasn’t the one falling, he was the one doing the pushing.

  All that mattered was what Judge said. That was all the folk on the benches cared about, the folk in the galleries cared about. Guilty, guilty, guilty. How could Broad say different? He wasn’t special. Since the Great Change, being special was not a good idea.

  Told himself he didn’t want to do it, but he was scared. A coward. That was better’n the alternative. That he did want to do it, ’cause there was a pit of rage in him there was never any filling. He’d rather tell himself he hated Judge than admit he was just like her.

  He looked up the trash-scattered steps to the Court of the People. “I’ll give Judge the report,” he said.

  “Oh, aye, you wouldn’t want to miss that.” Sparks was grinning at him. The man liked to taunt him. Maybe ’cause of the beating Broad had given him in Valbeck that time. Some men never learn their lesson.

  “Meaning?” he asked.

  “Meaning she’s got quite an itch for you, and what Judge likes she tends to get.”

  “Leave it be,” grunted Sarlby. “Broad’s a good family man.”

  “Perfect!” Sparks’s grin had become a leer, and he did a few thrusts of his hips in case anyone was still struggling to find the point. “While one family’s up in Angland you can start another here—”

  Broad caught Sparks by the collar and smashed his fist into his face. Then he hauled him over a plinth some statue had been broken off from, so his neck was over the edge of the block, stuck the heel of his hand on the side of his jaw and started to push.

  Sparks plucked helplessly at Broad’s wrists, clawed at his red-smeared breastplate with his fingernails, made this hissing, squealing groan, eyes bulging as his skull was twisted further and further around.

  “I should pop your fucking head off,” said Broad. Not some wild, hissing threat. Just a dull observation. Bored, almost.

  “Come on, Bull,” said Sarlby. “He’s a fucking idiot, aye, but if that’s a crime we’ll all be for the drop, eh?”

  Broad let go, and Sparks tumbled off the plinth and knelt, blowing bloody bubbles from his nose, clutching at his neck.

  “We are all for the drop,” said Broad, and he stomped up the steps of the court. Told himself he’d lost control a moment. Stopped himself before he did something he’d regret. That was better’n the alternative. That he’d loved every moment of it and would’ve regretted nothing if he’d snapped Sparks’s neck apart.

  Court was over, the galleries emptied, the last few Representatives making their way through the foyer, where the marble walls were smeared with streaked slogans, red paint turned black by candlelight. Broad shouldered through ’em, glaring. He was in a fighting mood. He always was.

  Bannerman was standing guard in the anteroom, sneer on his face and red paint all up his sleeves. Wasn’t long ago he’d been beating labourers for Savine dan Brock. Now he’d joined the Burners and was beating aristocrats f
or Judge and taking equal pleasure in his work. Chances are that men who’ll hurt folk for one master won’t flinch at hurting folk for another. It’s a job. A potter doesn’t need a grand cause to shape his clay for, does he? Why hold a thug to a higher standard?

  Broad thought about punching him in the face. But then he thought about that with everyone now, more or less. They didn’t speak to each other. Didn’t acknowledge each other. What was there to say?

  “Bastard,” Broad muttered to himself, then nearly tripped over his own feet. Damn, he was drunk, but damn, he wasn’t drunk enough. It was sixty-five since dawn. In case anyone was asking. They’d done twenty just after sunup who’d been convicted last night, in the dark. He pulled his lenses off, squeezed at the bridge of his nose. Squeezed it so hard it hurt. At least in Styria there’d been an enemy. Now the enemy was all around. The enemy was everyone. The enemy was yourself.

  “Hard day.” Judge sat in her chair, the chair Risinau once sat in, the chair the king once sat in, the chair she gave the judgements from, passed the sentences from, one bare foot up on the hammer-battered table. She’d a husk-pipe in her hand, and she took a long pull from it and blew out a great plume of sweet-smelling smoke that tickled at the back of Broad’s throat, made him want to cough, made him want to puke, made him want to rip at his face with his nails. She let her head drop back, long, thin throat stretched out, and he could swear he saw the thick veins pulsing.