The mace made a meaty crunch as Vick smashed him across the back of the head. He crumpled over the windlass, blood squirting from a ragged gash across his scalp, sprinkling across the chains, the gears, the floor.
She heard a muffled cry from the other end of the room. Saw vague shapes shifting in the shadows. Then one dropped and Gorst stood there, short steel gleaming red.
“Oh.” The bearded one was pushing himself up from the windlass, blood running down his face in regular spurts and soaking into his scarf. “My head’s all—”
She smashed him across the side of the skull, even harder. So hard she knocked him back upright, spinning on one heel, tumbling into the portcullis and crashing down on his back, thrashing like a landed fish, foaming at the mouth in some kind of wild fit. His kicking leg lashed out and knocked a rack of spears clattering across the floor.
She tossed her mace as she dropped on top of him, struggling to pin him down. “Help me hold the bastard—”
There was a sharp crack as Gorst nailed him through the top of his broken head with his short steel. The man flopped down, suddenly still.
Vick rocked back on her haunches. “Shit,” she whispered. She should’ve known limiting the violence would be a forlorn hope. But it looked like their luck had held. They had the chain room, and that was the part that had worried her most. The place was designed to be held even if the walls around it were taken. Now they just had to lock themselves in—
There was a boy standing in the doorway, staring wide-eyed at Gorst and Vick, both of them covered in blood and kneeling over a dead Burner.
She struggled up. “Wait there!”
The boy bolted like a ferret. By the time she’d made it to the corridor, the only sign of him was the fading echoes of his slapping feet.
“Shit!” she hissed again, but a good deal louder. She caught the edge of the door, a good thickness of solid oak, and heaved it shut with a reassuring clunk. She reached for the bar to drop it into the thick brackets and froze.
There was no bar.
There was a hinge against the frame with a couple of dangling screws, but the bar itself was gone. She cast wildly about in the shadows, but there was no sign of it. Might be it got smashed when the Breakers took the Agriont. Or the Burners ripped it off along with the gates downstairs. It hardly mattered why it was gone. That boy would be bringing guards. Lots of guards. And soon.
“There’s no bar!” she snarled.
“Huh,” said Gorst, without emotion.
If there really was such a thing as good luck, it seemed there was a limited supply.
The Side of the Saints
“That’s it!” screamed Judge, springing up and smashing at the wounded table so savagely she put a great split in it. “Fucking stop!”
Savine had not paid enough for all the support that was coming from the galleries. Some of it must have actually been heartfelt. People taking no small risk to show their honest feelings. She had worked all her life to be envied. She had never imagined she might truly be liked.
“Broad!” Judge showered spit, tendons starting from her hand as she shook her hammer towards the galleries. “Next bastard makes a sound, get up there and show ’em the quick way down!”
Broad glared up, then towards Judge, then towards Savine. He had a paper crumpled in his fist. The letter she had given him? The hall had fallen quiet as the grave. Being liked was very pleasant. But its limitations as a shield against terror were starkly revealed.
“Any other cunt wants to lend support to our defendant can come down and join her in the dock.” Judge’s black eyes swept the balconies, the benches. “No? No one?” A silence so complete it was a pressure on the ear. “Didn’t fucking think so.”
Sworbreck wrung his hands. “Citizeness Judge—”
“Sit the shit down, you posturing dunce!” she snarled back at him. “’Fore I send you to the Tower ahead!”
Sworbreck sat.
Judge turned her glare on Savine. “Let’s stop tickling the rim and come to the point. You’ve dressed like a nursemaid, and you’ve smiled at some orphans, and you’ve handed out a blanket or two, congratulations. But you are Savine dan Glokta. You are the daughter of not one tyrant, but two, not to mention the sister of a third.”
“Should I be punished for my birth?” she asked, but her voice was giving out. It sounded thin.
“I’ve seen folk convicted for less.” Judge nodded towards Orso’s cage. “But if you want weightier crimes, I understand you and the king knew each other a little better’n a brother and sister should.”
In spite of everything, she could not help looking at him. Could not help meeting his eye. Could not help feeling the same as she always had.
Judge followed the look between them, red brows high. “I mean to say, you’ll find no broader minds than mine, but even I get itchy around incest.”
Savine felt her face burning and knew she must look guilty as the plague. Knew she was guilty as the plague.
“I never knew… he was…” She could not even finish the sentence.
“Spare your blushes.” Judge waved a generous hand. “Put the brother-
fucking to one side. Put all the rest in the best baby-nurturing, orphan-housing, loaf-giving light you’ve got. Truth is you are a profiteer. You did exploit the working man, and woman, and child. You have built your palaces from their bones. You’re the worst o’ the old regime, squeezed into the shape of a woman. You’re fucking guilty, girl, guilty as Glustrod, and I know it, and you know it, and we all damn well know it.”
Savine did know it. The list of people she had used unrolled pitilessly before her. The desperate supplicants at the Solar Society. The partners she had bullied and blackmailed. The workers she had beaten and tortured. The children slaving in her mill in Valbeck. The soldiers buried in shallow graves at Stoffenbeck. Even her own husband, who she had deftly prodded into serving her ambitions, then left him to pay the bill with his arm and his leg.
One cannot climb high without standing on others, and all she had wanted was to reach the top. What a waste it all seemed now. There is nothing at the summit, in the end, but a long drop.
A different kind of murmur was coming from the galleries, and not nearly so friendly.
“But this court is not without mercy!” called Judge, holding up a hand for silence. “We see you’ve tried to make amends. We see you’ve done some good. The same hands that clawed profits from the people have given ’em back to the needy. You’ve put a toe on righteous earth, even if you left the other foot on evil! So we’ll give you a chance. To come down on the side o’ the saints, as your Gurkish friends might say.”
Judge leaned forwards and pointed with her long forefinger. “Accept your guilt and denounce. Denounce both your fathers. Tell us where we can find Old Sticks. Put him in the dock in your place and live. Refuse?” She draped herself back into her chair, black eyes fixed on Savine like a wolf’s on dinner. “The Tower o’ Chains is waiting.”
No one called out in Savine’s defence now, paid or not, and who could blame them? There was only accusation in the rings of tight-packed faces at the balconies above. She leaned over the dock to lay Ardee in the crook of Freid’s arm, next to her brother. The blanket had come loose and she tucked it gently around her again, laid one hand upon her, the other on Harod. He squirmed and snivelled. She wanted to hold him so badly, one last time. But that would only put them in danger. She had to do the brave thing, for once. Put someone else above herself and let them go.
“Try to keep them safe,” she whispered.
Freid nodded dumbly, tears on her cheeks. Tears more of fear than sorrow, Savine rather thought, and who could blame her?
She adjusted her dress as she turned back to Judge. Foolishness, of course, but the habit was impossible to break. Her mother had always warned her a man is judged by his best moment, a woman by her worst. One had to make the effort, even for an informal event. Savine forced back her shoulders, raised her chin into that po
sition of eternal slight discomfort her governess always used to call deportment.
“I have no idea where my father is,” she said.
Judge narrowed her eyes. “Come, come, Citizeness Brock. That won’t save your life.”
Short of Arch Lector Glokta throwing off a cloak and revealing himself in the public gallery, Savine did not see that anything could. But she refused to let them beat her. Dignity is not worth much, in the end, but she was determined to keep it even so.
“You picked apt names for yourselves.” Savine looked around the ruined hall that was once the Lords’ Round. Its scarred marble, smashed furniture, empty slogans, red-daubed thugs. “You are Burners. You build nothing, you make nothing. All you can do is destroy. The old regime was rotten. The people cried for freedom. What have you given them?” She gave a helpless shrug. “Corpses. I do not know where my father is. But even if I did, I would not tell you.”
The echoes faded. No sound but the quick breath through her nostrils, and little Harod’s faint snivelling.
Her efforts had not even dented Judge’s smile. “Then, Citizeness Brock, you give me no choice but to sentence you to death by falling from the Tower of Chains. And may I say that in my long career there’s no ruling I’ve enjoyed pronouncing more.” And she raised her hammer.
“Wait!” screeched Orso, his sweaty face pressed to the bars of his cage.
Judge turned ever so slowly to regard him through narrowed eyes. “For what, Citizen Orso?”
“If she won’t make denouncements, I will!” A swell of whispers went up, in spite of Judge’s threats. “I’ll denounce anyone! I’ll denounce everyone! I’ll give you the best damn denouncing you ever heard!”
Judge stared at him for a long, tense moment, while a bead of sweat tickled ever so slowly down his scalp. Then she gave vent to a delighted chuckle. “Oh, this we have to hear. Corporal Halder, let His Excuse for a Fucking Majesty address the court.”
Halder strode to the cage’s door and unlocked it as the eager babble spread around the hall.
“What are you doing?” hissed Hildi as Orso stepped from captivity.
“Buying time.” He was no mighty warrior. He was no learned sage. But when it came to talking rubbish he acknowledged no equal.
“Representatives!” he thundered, advancing across the tiled floor where he had once sentenced Lord Wetterlant to death. “Ex-lords and ladies, ex-subjects of myself and my father, good Citizens and Citizenesses of the Union! I, Orso the First, King of Angland, Starikland and Midderland, Protector of Westport and High King of the Union, lately resident in a freezing cellar beneath the palace, come before you now in this sweltering ruin to make denouncements!”
“Do it, then,” said Judge.
“I will, Citizeness, I will.” Orso cleared his throat, gave the court an apologetic smile, dragged out the expectant silence. “I fear I cannot divulge to you the hiding place of Old Sticks. Not by any means because I refuse to do so! Because I do not know. Honestly, what kind of fool would trust me with important information? Would you trust me? I’m not sure I would!” He shook his head as a few chuckles echoed from the galleries. “I’m not sure I would.” He was happy to be their clown, if it bought Savine a few moments. “But I’ll happily denounce the bastard! He was Arch Lector of the Inquisition, for the Fates’ sakes—he more or less denounces himself!” Hearty shouts of agreement. “He was the rotten heart of the Closed Council for thirty years! A hoarder of power. A prolific torturer. An implacable enemy to noblemen and common men alike. Worst of all, he has let his daughter…” He looked over at Savine, who was staring at him from the dock, hands gripping its rail. “His adopted daughter, pay for his crimes in his absence. What a withered shit! What a crippled coward! What a two-bit tyrant!”
Cheers and laughter at each insult, and Orso glanced at Tunny, just in passing. The ex-standard-bearer had the ghost of a smile, still turning that one finger around and around. Drag it out. Drag it out. Orso took a huge breath.
“Yes, good Citizens and Citizenesses, His Eminence Arch Lector Glokta was a specimen as morally as he was physically repugnant. But he did not ruin the Union alone! He did not bring us to the dire pass in which we now find ourselves without a willing patsy to warm the throne while he worked. Pray allow me to make an introduction to my noble father, King Jezal the First!”
A few bits of thrown food accompanied the name and some light heckling which Judge was obliged to wave into silence. “Interrupt the defence, people, by all means, but not the fucking denunciations!”
“My thanks, Your Honour.” Orso bowed extravagantly, exactly the way his mother had taught him. “I like to think my father had good instincts, buried deep. He would often discuss them, when we fenced together. Projects for the relief of the poor. For the fair distribution of medicine and education. For peace on our borders. But that he had good instincts only makes his total failure to follow them all the worse. You can pardon a man who knows no better. One who ignores the best parts of himself you can only condemn. What a waste of flesh he turned out to be! What a worthless fart! What an empty vessel!”
“Hear, hear!” Judge hammered lazily at the table. “I find the bastard guilty in his absence!”
Far from the worst injustice witnessed in the Court of the People. In spite of his many faults, Orso’s father had been a generous sort. He would not have minded being lightly slandered in a good cause. Especially when that good cause was the life of his first-born natural child.
“Thank you, friends, for your patience,” bellowed Orso, “but my roll of ignominy is by no means finished. You might suppose the blame would stop at the throne, but you could not be more wrong! There has always been a man behind the throne of the Union…” He let the moment stretch, the anticipation build. “I would like next to denounce none other than Bayaz, the First of the Magi, whose statue until recently stood in the Kingsway! Two statues of the bastard, in fact, such was his monstrous vanity. The top and tail to centuries of exploitation! He was the man who gave my father and Old Sticks their orders. He was the painstaking watchmaker who pieced together the corrupt system that ground every Citizen of the Union down. He was the one who returned when it suited him, to ensure it was still grinding people down as efficiently as ever. He was the one who carelessly laid waste to the Agriont, who killed thousands in the name of his ambitions, then forced the survivors to celebrate him as their saviour! The very personification of ruthlessness, a puppeteer who used kings as his marionettes!”
All eyes were fixed on him as he paraded across the grubby tiles. He caught a glimpse of Savine whispering to her maid and the woman edged away with the children in her arms. Orso redoubled his efforts.
“All this is common—if horrible—knowledge, but do you know how he profited from it all? Profited beyond the dreams of avarice? You want usurers? Hoarders? Speculators? Bayaz is the grandfather of them all. A magus more taken with money than magic!” Secrets did not seem so very important now, nor immortal wizards so very frightening. “He is both Valint and Balk! The loans that broke the state were all taken from him, the interest all paid to him. He was the one who made a Great Change inevitable. Made it necessary, even! He is the one who should be standing in that dock, to receive the People’s Justice!”
“I’ll keep a warrant warm for him,” said Judge, her black eyes gleaming, “but sad to say the First o’ the Magi’s beyond our reach. You done?”
“I beg the court’s patience for just one more! The worst of the pack. The lowest of the low. Lastly, and most fiercely, I denounce… myself.” And he spread his arms wide as though inviting the crowd to shoot him full of arrows. There was laughter. There was applause, of a mocking variety. “I have been lazy. I have been vain. I have been as petty as my mother and as indecisive as my father. I could have done good, but I could not be bothered. I could have made peace, but I was too busy making love. I could have made the Union a better place! If only I hadn’t been so very, very drunk. I have no doubt that history will judge
me to have been not only the last High King of the Union, but the worst, and my brief reign the most disastrous on—”
There was a boom as the doors at the top of the aisle were flung open and a Burner in red-smeared armour staggered breathless to the steps.
Judge leaped up, raising her hammer as if she was about to fling it at him. “I said we weren’t to be disturbed!”
“But there’s royalists approaching the Agriont!” he squealed, cringing.
“There’s what?”
“Inside the city! Lord Marshal Forest is leading ’em!”
There was no stopping the noise now. Gasps of “Royalists?” Screams of “Treachery?” Shrieks of “Forest?”
“Where’s the fucking Young Lion?” demanded Judge.
“He’s with ’em!”
For a moment, even she was lost for words. Everyone was. And as Orso looked across the staring faces on the Representatives’ benches, from Citizens Heugen and Isher to a surprisingly popular beggar elected from the Three Farms, he knew they were all working desperately at this strange new sum, trying to tally up where their best interests lay, and therefore what mixture of emotion to put on display. He suspected loyalties shifted quicker in that moment than at any time since his father was unexpectedly voted to the throne.
Those most loyal to the Great Change shook fists and roared their dismay. Several of the ex-lords did not look surprised, let alone displeased. Most chose, perhaps wisely, to hedge their bets and stay quiet. But up in the public gallery they were more vocal.
The Wisdom of Crowds Page 42
