The Wisdom of Crowds

by Joe Abercrombie

  “Do you believe…” His voice sounded much like anyone else’s, whispering. “In redemption?”

  “I don’t fucking care.”

  “You’re young. Give it time.”

  Leo groped for a cutting reply, but banter had never really been his thing, and certainly it had never been Gorst’s. Besides, the old swordsman wasn’t moving. His eyes were glassy. Words would’ve been wasted breath. They usually were.

  “Fucking pointless,” hissed Leo, kicking Gorst’s short steel skittering into the sea with a swing of his iron leg. There’d been a time when he’d admired that man more than anyone. When he’d wanted to be just like him. “Goes to show,” he grunted, “you have to be your own hero.” He limped on towards the gangplank, past the corpses and the sobbing man still trying to hold his guts in.

  “Well?” he shouted as Glaward stuck his head over the ship’s rail.

  “The captain says he’s got no passengers and his ship hasn’t been chartered. Not by the Lady Regent. Not by anyone. A cargo of cloth and buttons bound for Westport, that’s all.”

  “By the dead. Rip this fucking boat apart! Down to the last timber.”

  Jurand stood with his flatbow resting on his shoulder, hair stirred by the sea breeze about his thoughtful frown. “He was never here.” And he offered Leo his cane.

  “No.” Leo shut his eyes and tried to bring his anger under control. If he’d thought for a moment, he’d have realised it was very unlike Savine to wave so obvious a clue right under his nose. It seemed he could still be reckless, offered the right bait.

  “The charter was a fake. This was a distraction.” It took Leo an embarrassingly long time to sheathe his sword with only one hand, fishing around with the point for the mouth of the scabbard and near stabbing himself in the hip. “Savine bloody tricked us!” He finally slapped it back and snatched his cane from Jurand’s hand, frowning at Gorst’s body. “I want every loyal man out on the streets. I want every ship, cart and person in or out of the city searched and—”

  “I gave the orders as soon as we found Orso wasn’t in his cell,” said Jurand. “There’s a company at every gate, Arnault’s Wall and Casamir’s. Others out combing the streets. A rat won’t leave Adua without us knowing.”

  Leo closed his eyes and gave a sigh of relief. He would’ve hugged Jurand if he’d had the limbs to do it. What madness had made him send away his best friend? “What the bloody hell would I do without you?” he asked.

  The hooves of the blinkered old boathorse clopped sleepily on the towpath. The water slapped gently against the sides of the barge. A breeze sighed peacefully down the canal, wafting away the worst of the vapours. From time to time, the bargemen would make some growling utterance to labourers, or washerwomen, or ragged children on the banks. Orso could not understand a word. His own subjects, in theory, and it seemed they spoke a different tongue.

  Tunny had lit a pipe, shoved it among his unkempt grey whiskers and was calmly puffing away. Hildi had pulled her cap down low and set her mouth hard, glancing inconspicuously about and looking every bit a river rat born at the prow of a barge.

  “Can’t we go any faster?” murmured Orso. When he’d fantasised about escape it had been thundering from the city among fluttering flatbow bolts on the back of a black charger, hair ripped by the wind of his daring. Not hiding in a greasy coal-heap and floating to safety at a snail’s pace. But there was the difference between fantasy and reality, he supposed. A gulf he should have been familiar with by now.

  “Slow and steady, Your Majesty” said Tunny around his pipe, very softly.

  “You rather assume I am still a king.”

  “It’ll take more than a room full of arseholes dropping a crown on a baby to change my mind on that score.”

  “Or mine,” added Hildi, clambering to the edge of the hold and swinging her legs down.

  “What would I do without you?” Orso watched the stained sheds of warehouses and manufactories slide by. “I hope Gorst got away.”

  “He wasn’t planning to,” said Tunny.

  “What?”

  “All he wanted was to hold Brock and his bastards up long enough for you to get away.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That he hoped to trade his life for yours, and considering his skills with a sword, I expect he’ll have succeeded.”

  Orso stared off at nothing. “I never did a thing to deserve loyalty like that.”

  “Sometimes loyalty’s an excuse for something else,” said Tunny, eyes fixed far off. “This is the way he always wanted it, I reckon.”

  “And it might be you’re a better man than you think,” said Hildi, hopping down with an oiled tarp in her hands and dragging it over Orso’s head to make a foul-smelling hood. “Either way you need to stay out of sight. You can honour his sacrifice by making sure it doesn’t go to waste.”

  “When the hell did you get so profound?” asked Orso.

  “I’ve always been a fount of wisdom.” And she hopped back up on the barge’s roof, tucking a stray yellow curl out of sight inside her cap. “But you’ve been too self-absorbed to notice.”

  “Sounds like me,” murmured Orso.

  Tunny slipped out a battered flask and took a nip. “So where now?”

  Orso had never expected to leave the Agriont again. Not alive, anyway. Now he started to see that escape might be far from the end of his problems. Indeed, it might scarcely be the beginning. He had to find somewhere he could hide, he supposed. Somewhere he could rebuild, gather his forces. Somewhere he could set about a plan to reclaim his throne. That was what deposed kings were supposed to do, wasn’t it? Even if they never wanted the damn thing to begin with? Even if it meant they’d bring trouble wherever they went? Trouble for themselves, trouble for their subjects, trouble for anyone who helped them…

  Orso retreated into his tarp, working his back against the coal. He could not help wondering about a world in which he simply… let it go. Folded his hand and let the Young Lion have it all. Found some unregarded corner in which to live in harmless obscurity. No more fighting. No more deaths on his account. No more crushing responsibilities.

  He was starting to smile. “You know, I think—”

  But Tunny was frowning up at Hildi. “What is it?”

  She had stood tall to get a better view. “Boats up ahead,” she muttered, a warning note in her voice.

  “It is a canal.”

  “But they’re not moving.”

  Orso felt that familiar sinking as he peeked over the prow. He could see Casamir’s Wall ahead, through the furnace murk. Boats and barges, backed up in a queue, horses idle on the towpath. Were there men up near the black opening of the tunnel that led out of the city? Dark-uniformed men on both sides of the water and crawling over the frontmost boat?

  The handler was already pulling up his horse, one of the boatmen jumping to the bank with a rope and looping it around a strapping post, leaning back hard to bring them to a creaking stop.

  “What’s to do?” called Tunny at an old coal-smudged fellow in the barge ahead.

  “They’re searching every boat out o’ the city.”

  “For what?”

  “Damned if I know.” The man spat over the side into the water. “Bloody Anglanders, they’re worse’n the bloody Burners were.”

  “And a lot more organised.” Tunny hopped from the barge onto the towpath, holding out his hand to help Orso across. “Time to go.”

  “Really? You don’t think I could pass for common river folk?”

  Tunny and Hildi both stared at him. The boatmen seemed to be looking, too, and men on other barges, and their eyes did not look so friendly as they had. Orso wondered what reward someone might expect, for turning him in.

  “No,” he conceded, clambering from the boat. “I suppose not.”

  For once he was grateful for the vapours as they strode away from the canal, footfalls muffled in the murk.

  Tunny was shaking his head. “Brock’s tighteni
ng his grip on the city.”

  “There were two dozen Anglanders at every gate before you got away,” said Hildi, glancing back over her shoulder and upping the pace. “There’ll be more now.”

  Orso pulled that smelly tarp up to make a deeper hood. “I may have started planning my retirement a touch too soon.”

  It Was Bad

  Sun just up as Broad made his last preparations. Straightened the plates on the rack. Kind of plates Liddy had always admired. Shifted the flowers about in the vase. Only things he knew about flowers were that they show up in spring and May liked ’em. Then he took off his lenses, and wiped them, and put them back on, and stood there, frowning.

  After the best part of a year without his family—and a black year, too, drowning in blood a little more every day—you’d think a man would be desperate to see the people he loved, would wait for that knock on the door with the biggest smile his cheeks could hold.

  But Broad stood silent as the condemned waiting for the trudge to the scaffold, and smiled about as much, too. There’d been a time when he feared nothing. Now he was scared all the time. He hardly knew what of. Himself, maybe.

  Damn, he wanted a drink. Just a nip. Just a mouthful. Something to take the hard edges off the world. To blur the memories of the things done. But he’d promised no trouble. For him, every bottle had trouble at the bottom.

  When he looked to the door, dappled sunlight through the trees outside the window shifting across it with the breeze, he had this strange urge to walk out. This strange thought that he didn’t belong here any more, in the safe and the warm. Not with what he’d seen. Not with what he’d done. What if no one who stepped in there with him could ever be free of it?

  But the path leading out was a coward’s path. He took a sharp breath and clenched his aching fists. If there was one good word said over his grave, it’d be that Gunnar Broad was no coward. It’d be a lie, but still.

  Took all the courage he had to open that door, when he finally heard the knock. More than it had to man the barricades in Valbeck, or charge into the battle at Stoffenbeck, or fight Judge’s Burners on top of the Tower of Chains. But he stepped up to it, straightening his collar, licking his lips, and finally turned the knob.

  The door rattled open, and there she stood. She’d changed. Not near as much as he had, but she’d changed. Sturdier, maybe. Softer, maybe. But when she smiled, it still lit the gloomy world, the way it always had.

  “Gunnar?” she said.

  And he just started crying. A jolting sob first, that came all the way from his stomach. Then there was no stopping it. He fumbled his lenses off and all the tears he hadn’t shed the last six months came burning down his crushed-up face.

  Liddy stepped forwards and he shrank away, hunched and hurting, arms up as if to fend her off. Like she was made of paper and might crumple in his hands. She caught him even so. Thin arms but a hold he couldn’t break, and though she was a head shorter than him, she held his face against her chest, and kissed his head, and whispered, “Shhhh, now. Shhhhh.”

  After a while, when his sobs started to calm, she put her hands on his cheeks and lifted his head so she was looking straight up at him, calm and serious. She wiped the tears from his face and traced the healing scratches with her thumbtip.

  “It was bad, then, was it?” she asked him.

  “Aye,” he croaked out. “It was bad.”

  She smiled. That smile that lit up the world. Close enough that even without his lenses he could actually see it. “But I’m home now.”

  “Aye. You’re home now.” And he set to crying again.

  The thump of May’s ledger opening made Broad flinch. Made him think of Judge’s hammer as she passed the sentence. He told himself she was dead. Told himself she’d be the last one ever thrown from the Tower of Chains. They were filling the moat again, the water risen higher and the stains in the bottom covered deeper every day. The Court of the People was burned down to charred rubble. He’d seen it. Wasn’t sure he really believed it, though. Kept expecting to hear Judge bark at him to drag some fool out, beat some fool down, make some bloody example. Kept expecting to hear her say, You’re mine.

  He tried to hide it under a joke, peered over May’s shoulder at the neat columns of numbers he was nowhere near understanding.

  “I still say adding up debts is no way to make a living.”

  She looked up from her book and smiled, and he smiled that he could make her smile, and wondered that someone who’d done all the bad he’d done could’ve had a hand in making something as good as she was. When he left them in Angland she’d been sharp, gangly, all shoulders and elbows. Her hair had grown now, and her face fleshed out. She looked like a woman, old enough to have children of her own.

  “Money’s where the money is, Da. Well… that and labour relations.” She said the words with this knowing twist to her grin that made Broad go cold.

  His voice came out a croak. “How d’you mean?”

  “Da. I’m not a child any more. Ma might have a blind spot when it comes to you, always wanting to believe the best, but I know where your talents lie.” She put her hand over his, sitting limp now, on her shoulder, and patted the tattoo on the back of it. “I know how much Lady Savine’s paid you. I can make a guess what you do for it.”

  He pulled his hand away, worked it up into his cuff as far as he could. Fine cloth, it was made of, but he could still see the stars on his scarred knuckles.

  May licked her pencil and turned back to her book, all matter-of-fact, as if beatings, threats and blackmail were just a trade like any other. “And why shouldn’t you be paid what you’re worth? Everyone else takes what they can get. Someone has to put this family first.”

  “What are you two talking about?” asked Liddy, coming out of the bedroom.

  “Just my parents’ quaint notions,” murmured May.

  “Well, there’s no shortage of work to be done. We’re servants to the Lady Regent o’ the Union, now.” Liddy brushed down the front of the fine dress she was wearing, though it was spotless anyway. “Black Rikke’s on her way to Adua, and Lady Savine wants us looking after her while she’s here.”

  “Just the circles we move in now,” said May.

  “Remember when we were living in a cellar?” Liddy smiled around their airy rooms. “It came out all right, Gunnar.”

  It came out all right. Broad’s mouth felt dry. Wanted a drink so bad. He’d been fixed on not saying anything, but now he felt he had to be honest, blurt it all out. Burn it down like the Lords’ Round so they could somehow start fresh.

  “You might hear… some things. About… what I did.” He pulled his lenses off and pressed at the sore bridge of his nose. His hand was shaking. “I was in the Court of the People. And I wasn’t on the right side of it.” Their faces were blurs. He could hardly see them. “You might hear some things… about Judge. She—”

  Liddy gripped his hand. “I don’t want to know! Understand? You did what you had to, to get through it. That’s all you did. It’s in the past. Like Valbeck. Like Styria. We’re together now. And all on the right side.” A blind spot, like May said. Wanting to believe the best. He owed her that much.

  Broad wiped his weak eyes on the back of his hand. “You’re right.” Hooked his lenses back on. “You’re always right.” He forced out a teary smile. “It was that letter the two of you wrote made all the difference. That’s what saved me. That letter.”

  Liddy frowned puzzled at May, and May looked back at her, and shrugged. “We didn’t write a letter. Wish we could’ve, but we’d no way to get one to you. And you know Ma, she’s not much of a writer.” She was already busy in her book again, scratching out the numbers.

  A thumping knock at the door made Broad jump. He wanted to tell Liddy not to answer it. To leave them as they were, for a little longer. But she was already on the way.

  “Your Highness,” she said as the door opened and Savine swept in. Zuri

  was with her, watching Broad carefully
with her black eyes, calm as ever, the familiar book under one arm, the familiar watch around her neck, though she had a gold one now, rather than silver. Everyone moving upwards, it seemed. Those who hadn’t taken the long drop, anyway.

  Savine took Liddy by the hands like an old friend. “Whenever I see your face I am reminded afresh how very glad I am that you are here, Liddy. Almost as glad as your husband is. There is no one left in Adua who knows what to do with a hem.”

  No doubt because most of ’em were paste under the slowly filling moat of the Agriont. Liddy blushed, curtsied clumsily. “We can’t wait to serve Your Highness, of course. To be in the palace, it’s, well…”

  “Not what any of us were expecting. What are you about, May?”

  “Some of the accounts for your mines in Angland, Lady Savine.”

  “I swear you’ll own them yourself one day! Might I have a quick word with Gunnar?”

  “’Course.” May took her ledger and went out. Liddy gave Broad an excited glance in the doorway. Wondering what new reward they were about to get, maybe. Then she was gone, too, pulling the door shut.

  “So.” Savine raised one brow at him as she lowered herself, gracefully as ever, into one of his new leather-covered chairs. “It must be lovely to have the family back together—”

  “The letter you gave me,” he said. “Before the trial.”

  “Yes?”

  “The one you said May wrote.”

  She looked almost impatient. “Yes?”

  “She didn’t.”

  Savine frowned over at Zuri, who had her big book open, as though to make notes. Zuri gave the smallest shrug. “Gunnar,” said Savine, “if you think I would balk at copying someone’s handwriting to save my own life, you really don’t know me very well.”

  Broad had hoped she might say sorry. Had expected her to at least look guilty. But she shrugged it off like it was nothing. “Guess I thought you’d changed.”

  “I like to think so. But I am still me. You needed a nudge in the right direction. I gave you one. Now you are a hero.” Her eyes were very hard. “You could just as easily have ended up the villain.”