The Wisdom of Crowds

by Joe Abercrombie

  “After weeks of painstaking investigation,” he shrieked, meaning a night spent hauling the latest crop of unfortunates from their beds at random, “the loyal servants of the Great Change,” meaning the drunken, drugged and murder-addicted Burners, “have ripped a most sinister conspiracy up by the roots and into the light of justice!”

  Always new conspiracies. Always the most sinister. Ever more elaborate, fiendish, impossible to disprove. Intrigues that somehow involved Styrians, Gurkish and Northmen all at once. Schemes that required the enemies of the Great Change to be inscrutable puppet masters and utter idiots simultaneously. Orso wondered what would happen when they had killed everyone. Would Judge try herself last of all in the empty Court of the People, sentence herself to death and fling herself from the Tower of Chains? He gave an entirely inappropriate splutter of laughter at the thought. The shame was he would not live to see it, having been pulped in the dry moat years before. Unless his friend at the House of Purity came through sooner rather than later…

  His eyes flickered to the latest wretched group being herded to the dock by Captain Broad, and he sat bolt upright.

  Most prisoners strove to appear humble. It was hard not to after a few days with meagre food and no bath, in some chilly corner of the Agriont hastily converted into cells. But the woman at the back of this trio had done the exact opposite, costumed as if for the Summer Contest at the height of the old regime, all piled red wig, dramatic black silk and bosomy flounce.

  “Selest dan Heugen,” murmured Orso. He knew the woman was nobody’s fool. So why had she dressed as the villain of this particular pantomime? She stood proudly in the dock, in defiance of the boos, catcalls and obscene suggestions from the public galleries, but there was a waxy pallor of fear under her over-heavy blush. She glanced at Judge, and the ringleader of this demented circus grinned back as she propped her dirty feet on the High Table and nodded at her prosecutor to get the righteous work underway.

  “Henrik Jost!” Sworbreck roared at the first prisoner, a portly man with a double chin and a patched waistcoat. “You stand accused of grand usury and conspiracy! Have you anything to say?”

  The man struggled up, looking punch-drunk, a large bruise above his eye. “I admit to serving for a dozen years as a senior lending clerk at the Banking House of Valint and Balk—” Hisses from above. “But it was considered a respectable trade, entirely respectable! I arranged loans for worthy enterprises. Mills and manufactories the breadth of Midderland. Establishments that gave employment to many—”

  “Including businesses and establishments,” hissed Sworbreck, as though they were the worst excesses of witchcraft, “owned by this woman, Selest Heugen?”

  A chorus of boos. Some rotten piece of vegetable matter tumbled from above and sprayed juice across the tiles. The banker stared at Selest. She stared back, breathing hard through flared nostrils. “Well… yes, but in those days, no one thought of it as a crime—”

  “Time’s no shield from punishment,” growled Judge. “Guilty!”

  Jost was about to protest, but Sarlby leaned over the dock to cuff him across the head and knock him back into his seat. Sworbreck had already swaggered to the next prisoner, a trembly man with a nimbus of wild hair, his eyes bloodshot behind cracked lenses.

  “Piater Norlhorm, you stand accused of disloyal pronouncements, royalist sympathies and conspiracy to incite riot! Have you anything to say?”

  “Absolutely!” He sprang up, waving a fistful of flapping papers, scrawled on both sides. “I have established a watertight defence!” Grumbles from the galleries as he perched his lenses on his wispy pate and began rummaging through his mismatched pages. “I fear there was some damage caused by damp during the last search of my cell…”

  “I thought it was watertight?” some wag called from the upper gallery. Laughter.

  “Ah, yes!” The old man cleared his throat, puffing up his chest to read from notes scrawled on an old shirt, declaiming in an orator’s wail, “Was it not Juvens himself who spoke unto the Samnites, ‘Justice is more than punishment, more than vengeance?’ Er…” He shuffled his papers again, a couple of scraps fluttering to the floor. “And was it Bialoveld, or no, my mistake, one moment, I think it was Verturio who said—”

  “We’re not here for a fucking history lesson!” sneered Judge, hammering at the table. “He’s guilty, too!”

  “But I have scarcely commenced my preamble—” Broad tore the sheaf of scrawlings from Norlhorm’s hands and shoved him back down. He missed his seat and sprawled on the floor, paper bags, candle-wrappers and scribbled-on sheet music drifting about him.

  “Selest dan Heugen!” snapped Sworbreck. She rose, an ill-looking blotchiness across her collarbones, but her fists clenched like those of a prizefighter about to enter the ring. “You stand accused of profiteering, speculation, exploitation and conspiracy.” Charges vague enough to be impossible to prove or disprove, as they always were. “Have you anything to—”

  “I wish to make denunciations!” she blurted, as though desperate to get in before she missed her chance. She did not even bother to protest her innocence. In that, she was probably wise. Innocence was wasted on the court these days.

  Judge hungrily licked her lips. “By all means.”

  Selest spilled names like a broken cask spills wine. Her entire acquaintance came out in a burbling rush. Several Orso knew had already been executed. Tears began to trickle down her face, leaving black powder tracks all the way to her spit-flecked lips. She denounced friends, partners, family members. Boras Heugen, her cousin, shrivelled into his seat with characteristic cowardice. It came as no surprise these days, of course. Orso had seen courage in that dock, and inspiring camaraderie, and towering dignity. He had also seen brothers denounce their sisters, wives denounce their husbands, parents denounce their children.

  Judge started to frown. She shifted impatiently in her chair. She curled her lip and reached for her hammer.

  “I denounce Savine Brock!” screeched Selest.

  Orso felt as if his guts had suddenly fallen out of his arse. And he was not the only one on whom the name fell heavily. There was no cheer. Only a disbelieving mutter. The ex-noblemen looked grim. This was an attack on their leader. An attack on them. And Savine had made herself popular, recently, at the other end of the social scale. She had fed people, clothed people, brought them fuel in the bleak winter when the Burners had brought them nothing but corpses.

  Sworbreck glanced worriedly over at Judge, but Judge waved him eagerly on. “Of what do you accuse her?”

  “Of profiteering, speculation and usury on the grandest of scales! It is a fact that for years she exploited the working men and women of the Union for her own profit! That she conspired with her father, Arch Lector Glokta! That she conspired with bankers, Gurkish agents and Styrian spies!” Selest lifted a trembling finger to point straight at Orso. “It is a fact that she conspired with the king!”

  He stared back in shocked upset. “Everyone knows she bloody conspired against me!”

  “Then why did you spare her and her husband the noose?” shrieked Selest. It was a good question. One to which Orso had himself struggled to find a satisfactory answer. Selest was less circumspect. “Because it is a fact that Savine Brock was for years the king’s lover!”

  Orso sat back frowning on his stool as the whispers fluttered about the public galleries. That one was harder to deny with much conviction. They were memories he still often guiltily caught himself enjoying, after all.

  “Not only that! It is a fact!” Selest spat the word with a kind of savage triumph. “That Savine Brock is the king’s sister!”

  Orso felt the colour drain from his face. Probably he should have lied his head off. That was what everybody else did in here. But he was taken too much by surprise. Everyone was.

  “It is a fact!” Selest was screaming now, spit flying, broken voice echoing. “That Savine Brock is the bastard daughter of King Jezal the First!”

  There w
as a breathless silence in the court as people struggled to make sense of what they were hearing. The Representatives sat gawping on their benches. The public galleries gave a collective gasp. Captain Broad stood, flask frozen just short of his mouth. Judge sat bolt upright in her chair, mouth twisted into a delighted grin.

  In her last message, Teufel had told him that it might be a matter of days.

  It looked as if days might be too long.

  “Now that,” breathed Hildi, “is a spicy denunciation.”

  Purity

  “Purity Officers of the People’s Army!” called Leo.

  A hundred of the bastards, their clothes and armour spattered with red. Two from each company. There to make sure every military decision was politically sound and that every soldier stayed loyal to the Great Change. These were the longest serving and most committed Burners. Fanatics who’d stood with Judge when standing with Judge had looked like madness.

  “You all know who I am!” he roared. He might not have a hero’s legs any more, but he still had a hero’s voice, and he meant to use it. “My name’s Leo Brock. Some call me the Young Lion.” Applause would’ve been too much to hope for, but he paused for appreciation. There was none of that, either. Only folded arms, impatient grunts, hard frowns on scarred faces. These men weren’t easily impressed. They had scant regard for ex-noblemen, ex-Lord Governors or ex-heroes of the Union and had already sent several sets of failed generals back to Adua for the long drop.

  Leo took a hard breath through his nose and glanced at Sparks. The man gave a sneering shrug.

  “Citizeness Judge has made me General of the People’s Army.” Leo thought he heard a few disgusted sniffs near the back. “She wants me to lead you to victory against the royalists…” Someone spat noisily on the floor of the barn. “I fought Stour Nightfall in the Circle and won. I fought the king at Stoffenbeck—”

  “And fucking lost,” someone growled. Murmurs of agreement. Leo felt Glaward shifting unhappily at his shoulder.

  “Aye, I lost!” he called. “I was rash. I was reckless. I was vain. It cost me two of my best friends, not to mention an arm and a leg.” He tapped at the metal one with his cane. “But I learned my lesson. I learn it fresh every time I try to hold one of my babies, climb the stairs or pull my prick out to piss.” Some grudging nods there. Most of them were veterans. They might not respect much, but they respected wounds, and they respected swearing. “I used to be quite the hero! And quite the fucking fool. But I’m not so much of a fool that I’ll make the same mistake twice.”

  He glanced sideways, and Jurand gave the slightest encouraging nod, enough to settle any doubts in a warm rush of confidence. He always knew just what Leo needed. Leaving him in Angland had been the worst mistake of all. One he’d never make again.

  Leo puffed out his chest like he used to, when he gave his speeches

  to the Army of Angland. “With me in charge, there’ll be no more compromises. No more half-measures. No more defeats.” Some of the arms were coming unfolded. Some of the frowns were fading. “I know you’ve been short of food and supplies, gone without pay for weeks. I’ll put that right first.” The grunts had turned appreciative. Even fanatics like being paid. “But I understand why you might not accept me! I was a nobleman. Now I’m a fucking cripple.” He grinned and dug out a couple of grim laughs. “I won’t force myself on you, whether Judge picked me or not. But I won’t fight you over every decision, either. I mean to lead. So I need your consent, now, to be led. I’ll give you some time to discuss it, but when I come back I want a straight answer.”

  A big man with a beard stained red spoke up. “Young Lion, I think I speak for us all when I say—”

  Leo held up his hand. “Discuss it! Take a vote if you need to. I don’t want to hear later you weren’t given the chance.” He tapped Sparks’s shoulder with the handle of his cane. “Citizen Sparks will make sure you’re all heard.” And before anyone could disagree, he turned and limped out of the barn into the morning chill, hearing the doors creak as they were swung shut behind him.

  He waited, gripping his cane tight. Waited, listening to the birds twitter in the dripping trees, the dewy hedgerows. Waited, watching the mist down in the still valley. He took a cold breath through his nose and smiled. It wasn’t hard to do. It felt better than he’d ever expected, to be back in uniform and in charge of soldiers again, even if the uniform scarcely fit him and the soldiers were a pack of scum.

  When he left Angland his mother had warned him he was no general. He saw now how right she’d been. Rash and indecisive at once, and so horribly sentimental. Losing everything, and seeing his friends dead before his eyes, and months of pain ever since had cured him of all that. Perhaps he had half the limbs, but he reckoned he was twice the man he used to be. He’d a harder head, a harder heart and, most important of all, a far stronger stomach.

  “Generals are forged in the fires of defeat,” he murmured to himself. Stolicus, maybe? He wondered what his mother would say now.

  “Not having second thoughts, are you?” asked Jurand, stepping up beside him.

  “You know me.” Leo gave a grunt as he shifted his weight on his iron leg. “I barely even have first thoughts.”

  “Once, maybe. Not any more.” And Jurand grinned at him. By the dead, that smile. Leo could’ve looked at it all day.

  He could hear the raised voices from the barn. The Burners and the Breakers always loved a debate. An argument. A vote. The noisier and more tedious the better. How much of that nonsense had he endured in the ruined Lords’ Round?

  “Which side do you think they’ll come down on?” he asked.

  Jurand looked almost puzzled. “What does it matter?”

  “Just curious, I suppose. I mean, we all want to be liked.” Leo winced as he turned and waved to the dark-uniformed Anglanders gathered about the barn. Quietly, carefully, men slipped forward. They slid a beam into the brackets, barring the doors from outside. Others sloshed oil over the lower timbers of the barn. More came forwards with torches, touched them to the wood and fire bloomed. In a few moments the flames were licking high, all around, right to the eaves of the roof. Leo heard shouting inside, over the crackle and roar. The doors wobbled, clattered.

  Leo’s men had dropped their torches, now they drew swords and readied flatbows. “Surround the barn!” he called. “Kill anyone who makes it out.”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “Glaward, put loyal Anglanders wherever there were Purity Officers before. Jurand, see the People’s Army fed and paid with what Savine gave you. When the time comes, I want them loyal. Loyal enough, anyway.”

  Over the roar of flames, Leo could just hear the wails of horror. Alongside the stink of burning, it reminded him more than a little of Stoffenbeck. He’d been conceived on a battlefield. He’d been reborn on another. He took a wary step back, narrowing his eyes against the heat, and watched the smoke pour up into the dawn sky.

  “I guess it had to be done,” said Glaward, wide eyes flickering with reflected flames.

  “They love the fire,” said Leo, tugging his jacket smooth, then turning away. “They can have the fire.”

  None of the Cards

  “Calder’s coming!” roared the messenger, skittering to a halt in the middle of Skarling’s Hall and nearly going over on his arse.

  “By the dead,” someone breathed.

  Rikke felt a flutter in her stomach. Fear and doubt, of course, those familiar friends of hers, but excitement, too. So strong she couldn’t quite keep the smile off her face. She glanced over at Corleth. “Looks like the weather didn’t put him off after all.”

  The messenger was halfway sick from running and he coughed, spat, then blurted out more in gulping rushes. “He’s no more’n… a day or two distant. Strung out on the bad roads, but… lot o’ men. Mighty host. Thousands! And a swarm o’ bastards from past the Crinna, too. Some fucker rides on a wagon of bones. Stand-i’-the-Barrows, they call him.”

  There was a murmur i
n Skarling’s Hall. Fear and doubt, of course, but… actually just fear and doubt. From a set of bastards who’d been tigers every man not a few months back, when they dragged Stour Nightfall into the hall on his ruined knees. She remembered her father telling her, All warriors are brave when they’re sure of victory. Amazing how few stay brave when the numbers are against ’em and the hopes look thin.

  “They’re burning every farm they find,” blathered the messenger, “and skinning the folk there, and taking their bones!”

  “Their bones?” someone muttered, face all twisted with sick shock.

  “They’re the things that keep you standing,” growled Rikke. “We could do with a few more in here, I reckon. Shivers, send scouts into the hills, keep a watch on Calder and his men. Make sure we get no more surprises. And spread word in the valleys round about. Don’t want this Barrows bastard killing anyone we can save with a warning. Tell any friends Black Calder’s on his way, and they should be ready.”

  “Aye,” said Shivers, simply. No hint of fear on his scarred face as he picked a few men out and sent ’em scampering for the doors. He didn’t know what fear was. Or if he did, he’d buried his so deep no one would ever catch a glimpse of it. Rikke took courage from that, though her heart was thumping so hard she worried Black Calder might hear it, even a day or two away.

  Corleth leaned close to Skarling’s Chair. “They’re still a ways off. Ain’t too late to run—”

  “It’s way too late.” Rikke grinned sideways at her. Had to keep grinning, however her stomach bubbled and her skin prickled and her hands wanted to shake. “I ran from Black Calder once and it was no fun at all. Promised myself I’d never do it again.”

  “We’re staying, then?” grunted one of the warriors, looking like that wouldn’t have been his first choice.

  Shivers raised his one brow at Rikke.