The Wisdom of Crowds
Page 27
Halder stared at him with those heavy-lidded eyes. “You reckon you’re quite the funny fucker, don’t you?”
“Laughter is a tonic in hard times. I have your welfare in mind.”
“No one laughs where you’re going.”
“What does that mean?” asked Hildi, frowning at him.
“His Majesty has been sent for.” And Halder pulled the barred door open.
“Oh, damn.” Orso draped himself as nonchalantly as he could against the damp pillar in the middle of the cellar. “Must I really leave my suite?”
“’Fraid so.”
“Have the chef prepare my morning repast for my return, Hildi.” And he flounced from the cell. He knew how much his attendants hated it when he did that. He much preferred the word “attendants” to “jailers.”
He hadn’t realised how warm it was beneath the palace until he stepped into the open air.
“It’s like winter’s tits out here!” he gasped. The gardens were all frozen, every branch on every tree picked out with a line of snow, the drainpipes dangling with glinting icicles, the heaps of fallen leaves from the creeper that covered the palace walls glittering with frost. It might’ve been beautiful had he been better dressed, but even wearing every stitch he still possessed the air had a bitter bite. He was not sure whether to blow on his hands or wedge them under his armpits. He settled for blowing on the left one while wedging the right and swapping them every few strides. “Where are we going, anyway?”
“Oh, you’ll love it,” said Halder, with a glance over his shoulder that implied he wouldn’t. Not that Orso had liked anything for some weeks now. Before the Great Change, he’d often joked that being High King of the Union was the worst job in the world. After the Great Change, it wasn’t even a joke. He’d heard they were selling night pots with his face on the inside of the bowl. Once, the ladies of Adua had scrambled into his bed. Now they queued up to shit on him. He could hardly say he didn’t deserve it.
Snow was falling on the park. Just dirty spots and specks against the House of the Maker, silhouetted in the winter haze. The place was almost empty. Lonely figures wobbled on the icy pathways, smoke pluming from their faces. A pair of children, ridiculously underdressed for the season, were chasing each other around leaving spirals of footprints, hands and faces chapped pink, scraping up snow and flinging it. Not so much snowballs as pointless showers of glittering powder. Their giggles rang out as they flopped down together in the white.
“Good to see someone’s having fun,” muttered Orso. He rather wished he could join them. Especially once his destination became clear. They were calling it the House of Purity now, of course, but its aspect was no more comforting. The same lowering, near-windowless façade. The same guards, prisoners, questions. Even the crimes were mostly the same. Only the direction of the treason had changed.
He had visited several times in the past, for unpleasant interviews with Arch Lector Glokta, but he had never before had cause to go below ground level. He worried that the interviews conducted down here were a great deal more unpleasant yet. It was dim and chill as an ice house. No romance to the place. A cheap, workmanlike feel, and it smelled of damp.
Halder knocked on a heavy door, bound with iron. Orso wondered how he would respond to torture. Badly, he suspected. Who responds well? And what possible preparation could a life of cosseted indulgence be, after all, for expertly and ruthlessly applied pain? He closed his eyes, trying to find that breezy courage that had somehow welled up in him at Stoffenbeck.
“Come in.”
The room was a sparse white box, plaster speckled with mould in one corner. There was something that looked like a badly scrubbed bloodstain on one badly whitewashed wall.
There was a battered table with two battered chairs. One was empty. In the other, regarding him coolly with those hard eyes that never gave anything away, was Inquisitor Teufel. Or Chief Inspector Teufel now, he supposed. Everything had a different title than before the Great Change. Well, not quite everything. He had the same title, but it meant the opposite.
Teufel looked up at Halder. “You can go.”
“Reckon I’d better stay.”
Her forehead showed a beautifully regular set of creases as she frowned. “What’s your name?”
Orso only wished he had been able to so easily unsettle the man. “Why d’you want to know that?”
“So I can tell Commissioner Pike who’s putting themselves in his way.”
Halder swallowed noisily, lump on his throat bobbing. “I’ll wait outside.” And he shut the door ever so politely behind him.
“Chief Inspector Teufel!” called Orso. “What a lovely surprise, and what a fetching uniform. This has been a delightful outing so far, I must say. Are we touring all the cellars of the Agriont? There must be miles of—”
“I found a letter, Your Majesty. In your bread.”
There was a brief and highly uncomfortable silence. Orso struggled to stay upbeat, in spite of the yawning pit of panic that had just opened beneath his chair. “You must be in desperate straits if you’re stealing my bread, Inspector, it’s positively horrible.”
“We’re all in desperate straits.” Teufel slid out a stained slip of paper, very like the ones Hildi had been bringing him since Tunny’s visit to his attic. “Royalist traitors are pressing the People’s Army hard, out there in the east of Midderland. And from what I read, it looks like you’re in contact with Lord Marshal Forest.”
So, there it was. He had been very much looking forward to seeing the murderous smile wiped from Judge’s face, preferably by a fall from the Tower of Chains, but he supposed the chances of discovery had always been high. “I’ve told him to desist but you know how hard it is to stop an admirer once they have the bit between their teeth.”
“No doubt. I’m besieged by the bastards.” She slowly unfolded the letter, glanced from the writing to Orso’s face. Bloody hell, those eyes. When it came to hiding secrets, and to digging them out, he could scarcely have been further out of his league, and well knew it. “Seems Forest and his royalists want to put you back on the throne. Seems they’re in touch with your mother and sister, out in Sipani. Seems they’ve been sending you messages via your servant—”
“I take full responsibility!” he said, far too eagerly, and probably very ill-advisedly, but when Hildi’s safety was at stake the time for jokes was over. “My servant knew nothing about… any plot…”
Teufel was holding up a hand to stop him. She glared down, teeth bared, as if working herself up to some distasteful task. Orso did not care to imagine what kind of threats, blackmail or torture might give her pause. She tapped a chewed fingernail on the scarred tabletop, witness to who knew what horrors under the old regime and the new, then finally looked up at him.
When she spoke, her voice had turned oddly soft. “Forest isn’t the only one who’d like to see the monarchy restored.”
Orso had steeled himself for almost anything but that. “He isn’t?”
“No.” She considered him a moment longer. “This madness has gone on long enough. Far too long. Judge has to be stopped.” She gave a shrug of resignation, shoulders slumping. “And since no one else is doing it…”
Orso felt a wave of relief that came close to loosening his bowels. “You mean… to help me?”
“Against my much better judgement. The truth is, far as I can tell…
you’re the Union’s best chance.”
“You… think I…” And Orso felt the smile spread right across his face. A sensation he had not experienced in quite some time.
“Don’t get carried away, Your Majesty. I’m saying you’re better than carnage, famine and chaos.”
“Honestly, that’s the closest thing to praise I’ve heard in months.” And not from a source prone to compliments. Orso shuffled eagerly forwards. “What’s your plan?” She struck him as a woman who did not get out of bed without three or four strong plans in place. “I mean to say… do you have a plan?”
Orso patted his trousers. “I seem to be a little light at the moment. In fact, I’ve a hell of a debt to my valet, you’d never guess what a shirt costs these days—”
“Four chairs on the Closed Council.”
Orso raised his brows. “Do you plan to drape yourself across them?”
“I plan to sell them.”
“Four chairs are a high price.”
“I’d say it’s a pretty low price, given right now you don’t have any chairs at all.”
He pushed out his lips in a pout. “I have an old box to sit on, actually. Hildi and I call it the throne. When I am feeling beneficent, she gets the corner. I was thinking once I am restored I might have it installed in the actual throne room. To keep me humble.”
He wondered if he might have coaxed the hint of a smile from the corner of Teufel’s unbendable mouth. “You could do with some help in that regard.”
“And, let us be honest, in every other.”
“So I have your permission? To make offers?”
“Might I ask to whom?”
“Might be better if you didn’t.”
“You’ll be talking to my enemies?”
“If it works, you’ll have fewer enemies and more friends. Isn’t that what everyone wants?”
Orso sat there for a moment. He was cold. He was drained. And he suspected it would not be much longer until Judge removed him from his cage in the Court of the People and put him in the dock. He needed to trust someone and, honestly, if Victarine dan Teufel wanted to betray him, there had been golden opportunities when she had far more to gain.
“You have my permission, for this and anything else. You can speak with my full authority, such as it is. And can I say, honestly, for once, that there is no one I would rather have on my side. From the first moment I met you, I have always felt safe in your hands, Inquisitor Teufel. Or…
Inspector Teufel? Or—”
“Vick.” She pressed her fist on the tabletop, took a long breath through her nose, and let it sigh away. “If we’re going down in flames together, it might as well be on first-name terms.”
“Well, Vick. I have no doubt there is a healthy dose of self-interest in this, and an even healthier dose of common good, but on a personal note…” He leaned forwards and put his hand on hers. “I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your loyalty.”
Her face gave a strange twitch at that, and she stared down at his hand on hers, jaw muscles clenched almost angrily. For the briefest moment, he had the bizarre feeling that she was about to cry. Or perhaps punch him in the face. Strange reactions, in a way, to the heartfelt thanks of one’s monarch. But in the end, all she did was give him a stiff nod and ease her hand from under his, rubbing the back of it with the other as if his touch had burned her. “We’re done here!” she yelled at the door.
By the time it swung open and Halder stomped back in, Vick did not look like a woman who had ever shed one tear. She curled her lip at Orso with immaculately acted contempt. He hoped it was acted, anyway. “Fucking idiot doesn’t know anything,” she said.
A Matter of Time
“Move over… there.” She straddled his good leg, rubbing herself against it, kissing him softly, catching his hand and sliding it up her side while at the same time she slipped her fingers under his nightshirt, started stroking him into life.
“Is this more of your charity?” he asked.
There had been a time, not so very long ago, when she would have slapped him for that. And he would have gasped at the sting of it, and with his eyes he would have asked to be slapped again. When he had been whole, and strong as a lion, and could have flung her across the room with a flick of his wrist, hurting him had felt daring, thrilling, an exhilarating gamble.
Now, so crippled and so vulnerable, the thought of hitting him made her sick. Now, looking in his eyes, she thought she saw a kind of hate for her. A wounded envy. She guessed that he blamed her for how things had turned out almost as much as she blamed herself. And she imagined he would very much have liked to fling her across the room, just to prove he still could.
There had been a time, not so very long ago, when he had been almost too gentle with her. Now his one hand clutched her, gripped her, yanked and crushed and twisted, as if to make a point of how strong it still was. There had been a time, fucking her husband, she had occasionally teetered on the brink of boredom. Now she occasionally teetered on the brink of fear.
It was not like it had been. But what was? You have to make the best of it.
She kept rubbing at him. “What I had in mind… is a fair trade…
for both parties.”
“Ah, the business arrangement. I can agree to that.” And he caught her under the arm and heaved her onto her back. Probably his hope had been to flip her effortlessly, but with only one leg and one arm he had to rock one way then the other and ended up with his stump tangled in the blankets.
One of her hands was busy between her legs, guiding him, the other around the back of his head, pulling him close while at the same time she could prop his shoulder up with her forearm and stop his useless hand flopping into the way.
His teeth were gritted with pain and effort, growling more with anger than pleasure. She wanted to stroke his face, whisper calming noises. Fates help her, the same shushing she would have given her crying children. Could he not have let her ride him? It would have been far more enjoyable for them both. But one works with what one has. She strained up to kiss him—
There was a sharp cry from next door and they both froze.
She dropped back against the pillows. “Fuck.”
“Let them cry,” he hissed.
“No.” She made him grunt as she wriggled out from under him, slid from the bed and into the cold.
“You don’t have to be at their mercy.”
After all the damage she had done, motherhood was a chance to do one thing right. She pulled her nightgown on. “We’re all at someone’s mercy, Leo.”
Through their dressing room, dimly lit by the glow of the dying fire, and into the nursery. She could tell them apart by their cries. Ardee’s howls were thuggish demands. Harod’s whines were pleas for mercy. Three months old and already they were so different. Ardee fed with a purpose, and once she was asleep nothing would rouse her. Harod pecked and fussed and shook awake at the slightest sound.
She lifted him from his cot, quivering he was crying so hard. She held him close, shushing and cooing desperately. She pulled the door to and went to sit in one of the chairs beside the fire, the one with the shawl over the back that still smelled like her mother—
She froze with a strangled gasp.
Someone was already sitting there. Someone in the black uniform of the People’s Inspectorate, firelight picking out the bones and hollows of a hard frown. Vick dan Teufel.
“Have I been denounced?” asked Savine. Surprising, how cool her voice sounded. Perhaps it was a kind of relief, if it had come, to know she need not worry any more about when it would come.
“Not yet,” said Teufel. “But we both know it’s a matter of time. Judge hates you.”
Now Savine had her hammering heart under control she was damned if she would give any hint of being rattled. She sank into the other chair, pulling her nightgown open as though her breast was a hidden weapon she was showing off.
Harod wriggled about, mouth searching desperately for her nipple everywhere but where it was. She finally managed to get him settled and sat back, frowning. “Judge hates everyone.”
“Oh, but she has some favourites.”
“If all you have is threats you can make them during business hours.”
“I’ve an offer, too. For you and your husband.”
“An offer it’s better you aren’t seen making?”
“I’m not really
the front-door type.”
“No. Thoroughly underhanded in my experience.”
“While the Darling of the Slums never flirted with a falsehood?”
Silence stretched while they carefully considered one another, as they had a long time ago, when they shared a carriage on the way to Valbeck. “I suppose you have me there,” Savine admitted. Her trouble with Teufel was not that she was a liar, after all, but that she had proved herself a better liar than Savine. “Do you know where my father is?” she found she had asked.
“No. I wish I did.”
“He hasn’t even met his grandchildren.” A ridiculous, sentimental thing to say to a professional torturer. She half-expected Teufel to burst out laughing, but all she did was thoughtfully narrow her eyes. Savine looked down at Harod. “I daresay I’m the only one who misses him.”
“Oh, I don’t know. His tenure’s starting to look like a golden age. Where’s your husband? I need both of you.”
“I daresay he’ll be along—”
The door crashed open and Leo took a clanking step through on his iron leg, shoulder of his useless arm against the door frame, drawn sword in his other hand, stark naked and still halfway hard.
Teufel glanced over, unmoved by either weapon. “Careful. You might have someone’s eye out with that.”
He lowered the sword. “If you break into people’s houses you can’t complain about what you see.”
“Oh, I’m delighted someone in the city’s still having fun.” Teufel watched him limp to the settle, toss his sword down and drop onto the cushions. He winced as he twisted his iron leg off then sat back, his stump thrust forwards. When he’d been a perfect specimen of manhood he’d always been oddly modest. Now he loved to put his many scars on display and see how people reacted. To no one’s surprise, the inspector was unmoved.
“I appreciate the visit,” said Leo, “but knowing how much you value honesty—I don’t like you.”
“Good. Mutual suspicion is the best basis for an alliance. Everyone knows where they stand.”