The Wisdom of Crowds

by Joe Abercrombie

  “Someone like you, I suppose?”

  “Or you.” He waved towards the bench on the other side of the table. “Have a seat, Inquisitor. Towering over me like that, you’re making me nervous.”

  She dropped down opposite him, numb. “If the Breakers were your tool, why send me to watch them?”

  “I needed to know what they were about. You may have noticed that people have a habit of doing stupid, unpredictable things. And I could hardly show up to meetings.” He gently turned the squares board around, considering the position from the other side. “The Breakers would have been most upset, I imagine, to find they were taking orders from the man they considered their worst enemy.”

  “Taking orders? A moment ago you were merely pointing them in the right direction.”

  Lamplight glistened on his empty gums as he grinned. “You always were a sharp interrogator. Sometimes I had to give a little more than guidance, I confess. Otherwise they might all have run off their own way, like woodlice from a lifted log.”

  “Is that what happened in Valbeck?”

  “People are not machines that one can move with a lever. This business is more art than science.” Glokta licked unhappily at one of the teeth he still had. “I had planned a dress rehearsal, you might say, but Risinau shit the bed on the timing, just as he shit the bed on everything. I am an inveterate bed-shitter myself, so I recognise the tendency in others. Sadly, as an old colleague of mine was fond of saying, we must work with the tools we have.”

  “What about Tallow? Is that even his name?”

  “Do you know, I forget his original name. I’d be surprised if even he remembers it.” Glokta let his forefinger rest on top of one of the smallest pieces, as though considering a move. “I needed to know what you were about. You may have noticed that people have a habit of doing stupid, unpredictable things. I placed him with the Breakers so you could take him under your wing and he could make sure you stuck to the script. Which you did, admirably.”

  “He was your plant from the beginning?” she whispered.

  “Don’t be upset at him, Vick, it’s beneath you. I found him in the camps, like you. I offered him the same deal and he made the same choice. The only choice. To stand with the winners.”

  So she’d finally found a better liar than herself. Or perhaps she’d just found one she wanted desperately to believe. Strange, that the deaths of thousands left her cold, while the betrayal of one boy made her furious. “How did you know that I’d… how could you know—”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself. We all have sore spots.” He grimaced as he shifted in his chair. “I myself am one enormous one. And finding other people’s has been my business for a very long time.” He nudged another piece forwards across the board. “I know you like to think there are no chinks in your armour but, really, you’re not too deep a mystery to fathom. To me your guilt has always been plain as a sign around your neck. About the Breakers in Valbeck. About Collem Sibalt and his friends. About the rebels in Starikland. About your mother and father. About your sisters and your brother—”

  “That was all you!” she snarled in his face. “You made me do all that! Sibalt, and the Breakers, and the rebels, and all the rest!” She stabbed at her chest with a finger and her voice warbled, cracked. “Why should I be guilty? What fucking choice did I have?” It had already become a plaintive whine. Fates help her, almost a tearful one. “You’re the one… you’re the one sent my family to the camps… in the first place…”

  “I am aware,” said Glokta calmly. He hadn’t even flinched. “Where they died, and you survived. I told you to forgive yourself, remember? Your family simply weren’t tough enough. You are.”

  Vick blinked down at the squares board, the anger already drained away to leave her hollow and helpless. Risinau, Judge, Orso, Leo dan Brock, they were all small pieces in the game Glokta had been playing. So small they never even guessed how vast the board truly was. Which made her what? A speck of dust between the squares, at best.

  “Where were you rushing off to, anyway?” asked Glokta. “Talins? To work for Shylo Vitari? Please, the woman’s a hack. We both know how badly you want a cause worthy of your loyalty.” He winced as he twisted to reach into a pocket. “Arch Lector. Commissioner. It doesn’t matter what you call it. I believe the time has come for you to go from digging out the answers to posing the questions. To go from being one of the pieces…” And he leaned forwards to place something on the squares board. That ring with the purple stone he used to wear. That Pike had worn after him. “To making the moves. Practical Dole?”

  One of the Practicals lumbered in, winced as he manoeuvred Glokta’s chair from behind the table. It caught one of the legs on the way and sent a few squares pieces clicking over to roll around in helpless circles on their sides.

  “Feel free to refuse. I will understand.” Vick’s old master leaned to murmur as he was wheeled past. “But we both know that ring will fit you perfectly.”

  She heard the door shut and was left alone in a heavy silence. Just her and all the lies. Some she’d told, some she’d been told, some she’d told herself, until she’d no idea what was true any more. Until she’d no idea if there was such a thing.

  Vick picked up the ring, turning it around in her fingers. Who could’ve dreamed she’d one day wear it? The great stone shone in the lamplight, full of purple sparks. From the prison camps of Angland to the pinnacle of power.

  Then she caught sight of something in her bag. The worn gilt on the

  spine of The Life of Dab Sweet. She pulled it out, and it fell open on

  the table at that favourite page. That favourite picture. The great plains, grass going on for ever. A place where you can make yourself anew. Where you can go as far as your dreams can take you.

  Rubbish, most likely. A made-up drawing in a book full of lies. But there comes a time you have to say no to what you’re given and reach for what you want.

  The truth was Vick had always wanted to be loyal. But not to nations, or ideas, or causes. To people. Orso was gone. Sibalt was dead. Tallow had never even existed. If she’d ever had a debt to Glokta it had only been in her own mind. One she chose to keep because she had nothing else. So she pronounced it long since paid.

  She tossed the ring spinning across the squares board, threw the bag over her shoulder and walked out without a backward glance.

  She flung the door shut and it banged from the frame, wobbled back open a crack. She didn’t even bother to close it.

  She thought of a wide sky over a far country.

  She smiled as she strode off into the night.

  The Only Crime

  “So, short steel in my… left hand?” asked Savine.

  “Yes, then your front foot at the mark—”

  “This mark?” She worked her shoe into the chalk line on the palace lawn as though she had never seen one before. “How exciting!”

  “Isn’t it.” Jurand was teetering on the edge of impatience as he stepped to his own mark, weighing his steels. “Then when I say begin—”

  She darted at him with no warning and no mercy, the way her father taught her. Jurand was a skilled swordsman. No doubt he was quicker and far stronger than her, and it was a while since she had held a steel. She could never have beaten him in a fair bout. But who wants to fight those?

  His long steel was not even up when she caught it with hers, blade flickering, metal scraping, jerking it from his unready hand. She stepped sharply around him as he stumbled, planting her heel behind his where it could trip him. He made a soft oof as her shoulder thudded into his breastbone and sent him crashing onto his back, his short steel bouncing away across the well-tended grass.

  His expression of total shock as the blunted point of her long steel tickled him under the chin was positively delightful.

  “Would that be a touch to me?” she asked, all innocence.

  He slowly lifted his head. “I have a strange sense you’ve fenced before.”

  “I ne
ver said otherwise.” She stabbed her long steel into the turf and offered him her hand. “That was your assumption.”

  “You could’ve corrected me,” he said as she helped him up.

  “I just did. I’ve been fencing since I was a girl. My father taught me.”

  He bent to collect his steels. “So… not only have you fenced before, but you were trained by one of the best swordsmen the Union ever produced?”

  She gave an artless shrug. “It’s fine exercise.” The moment he was up she came at him again, but this time he was ready, parried and stepped watchfully back towards the edge of the circle.

  “I expected to be giving a lesson,” he muttered. “I should have realised I’d be taking one.”

  “Not at all. I gave up playing with knives, after Valbeck…” The well-worn memory of her sword sliding through that man’s back. The faint pressure of the grip in her palm. The look of shock on his face. But she found she could dismiss it much more easily now. She had warned him, after all. If he had not wanted to be stabbed he should have fucking left her alone. “Pregnancy and motherhood are hardly compatible with the fencing circle. I am awfully out of practice.”

  “That was my first thought just now as I lay on my back with your sword at my throat. How awfully out of practice you seem.”

  He jabbed warily at her and she flicked it away. Her legs felt heavier than they once had, her breath came harder, but it felt good to be back in the circle. She had spent too long curled up with her babies, growing soft and motherly. It was high time that she exerted some discipline. That she competed. That she won. And not just with a sword.

  “I confess I was not looking only for a fencing partner,” she said.

  “An ulterior motive?” Jurand eyed her steels warily as they circled. “You shock me again.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about the future.”

  “To me?”

  “To you first of all.” She danced in, their blades rang together prettily enough but with no real fire, and they broke again. “The new Closed Council must represent the new Union, and you will be its heart. You should be confirmed as Lord Chamberlain.”

  Jurand looked pleased, flattered and slightly flushed, precisely as she had intended. “I… would be honoured to serve Your Highnesses however you decide.”

  “Please. I need you at that table every bit as much as Leo does. You are a clever man, Jurand. Subtle and loyal. You have a gift for organisation. I wish you had been at Stoffenbeck with us. I begged Leo to bring you, but… well.” She jabbed again, and again, left her wrist limp and let him parry easily. Nowhere near as sharply as she could have done. Nowhere near as sharply as her father once made her, again and again until her whole body was on fire. “Glaward must have a seat, too, of course. As lord marshal, maybe?”

  “I think that is what Leo had in mind.”

  “And perhaps he was thinking of, say, Isher as lord chancellor and Heugen as lord admiral?”

  Jurand’s forehead wrinkled in surprise. “That’s exactly what he was thinking.”

  “Then it seems sensible to fill the Arch Lector’s and High Consul’s chairs with seasoned bureaucrats. People who understand the challenges of reform and can bring a weight of experience with them.”

  “That does seem sensible— Uh!” She made him twist away from a quick cut and trot back into space, shaking his head.

  “I am of the firm opinion, however…” Cut, cut, jab. “That it would be a missed opportunity to return to the way things were in King Jezal’s reign.” Jab, jab, cut. “A regime that ensured its own downfall with its waste, and exploitation, and callous disregard for its subjects.” Steel rang with each word. “We need a new kind of person on the Closed Council. Engineers and architects. Investors and inventors.” Jurand came back at her and she parried once, twice, thrice. “People who understand the tools of the new age.” Jab, jab, jab. “Who can help us build a better Union.”

  “I don’t know, Leo can be quite traditional in his—”

  “We must move on, Jurand, and we must bring the people with us. After all that was lost in the Great Change. All that was destroyed…” She thought of Vick dan Teufel then, of all people. That oddly moving moment of unexpected honesty, beneath the House of Questions. She lowered her steels and looked Jurand in the eye. “It can’t all be for nothing, you understand?”

  He blinked, then swallowed, and his own steels slowly drifted down. “I do.”

  Savine shook herself. “Shall we break?” Jurand was starting to get her measure, and that would never do. “There was a time I could keep fencing for hours, but motherhood changes you in so many ways.”

  “Oh, of course.”

  “You are Leo’s oldest friend,” she said, with a wrong-footing change of subject. “His best friend.” One should never let an opponent get comfortable in a conversation, after all, any more than in fencing, or business, or politics. “And you are a perceptive man. You must know that he and I… are not entirely getting along.” She let him see her pain at that. Her regret. “But we simply must remain friends, for the sake of our children, for the sake of the nation. I have always felt one cannot have too many friends.” She came closer, looking up shyly from under her lashes. “Are…

  we friends, Jurand?”

  He was caught between sympathy and mistrust. “I would like us to be. I mean, I like to think we are.”

  “I cannot tell you what a comfort that is.” She rested a gentle hand on his forearm. A little human contact, carefully administered, can have such a powerful effect. “To know that even if I have made a mess of things with Leo, we will always have a good friend in common.”

  “I don’t want to deceive you, I have to be Leo’s friend first.”

  “Of course! I should have been a better friend to him myself. I know it was a fool’s mistake to let Orso go, but I allowed my heart to overcome my head, for once. He is my brother, after all, I have…” She had to swallow, the emotion not entirely feigned. “Complicated feelings about him.”

  She had thought this might be where Jurand grew suspicious, but for some reason he looked nervous instead. Was there even pity in his eyes? As if he had some secret on the tip of his tongue… but in the end he swallowed it. “Perhaps… you should tell Leo that. I’m sure he’d like to hear it.”

  Savine would sooner have set herself on fire than apologise for saving Orso’s life. She passed it off with an emotional sniff. “I fear Leo will not listen to me any more. For good reasons, I know. But he will listen to you.”

  “I agree with you about the Closed Council. And about changing the Union for the better. I agree with you about a lot of things. But Leo—”

  “Please, Jurand.” She did not let her lower lip actually wobble, or her eyes fill with tears. That would have been sugaring the pudding too much. But she let her voice crack, ever so slightly. Jurand was a caretaker. A fixer of problems, happiest when he was needed. So she let herself be needy. “I need your help. We all do.” She gave his forearm a gentle squeeze. “For my sake and his.” She looked up earnestly into his face. “For the sake of our children.” She left herself defenceless. “For the sake of the nation. Can I be entirely honest with you? Can I lay myself bare?”

  He hardly knew what to say to that. “I, er—”

  “I think we are alike, in many ways. I can be quite perceptive, too.” She eased even closer, squeezed his arm tighter, made her voice softer so he had to lean down towards her. “I have started to believe that Leo…” She fixed him with her eye and whispered the words. “Is in love with someone else. That he always has been. I have often thought about how he reacted… to what happened in Sipani.” Jurand’s cheek flushed. He tried to pull away but she gripped his arm. “I have come to believe it might not have been disgust at all, but… jealousy.”

  There was a long, tense silence while Jurand stared at her, and the birds twittered pleasantly in the budding trees, and the bees buzzed about a patch of fragrant lavender, and somewhere from a high window in t
he wall of the palace a maid sang in a fine, high voice as she beat the curtains.

  “I doubt he would admit it to anyone,” murmured Savine. “I doubt he

  even admits it to himself, but… if he ever did… I want you to know I would be the last person to stand in the way of his happiness.” Even softer, so softly it was just breath, she added the last two words. “Or yours.”

  Jurand’s throat made a distinct squelching sound as he swallowed, the knob on his neck bobbing. “I hardly know… what you can mean.”

  She held his eye a moment longer. Until she was satisfied that neither one of them could have any doubts exactly what she meant. Then, with a final squeeze, she let him go and took up her steels again, all business. “I can only apologise, I have wandered so far from the subject. Women! We simply cannot resist discussing affairs of the heart when they come up. We were talking about the composition of the new Closed Council, I think?”

  Jurand cleared his throat with some difficulty. “Er… I… yes. Were there… any names in particular you—”

  “Curnsbick, Kort, Vallimir and Selest dan Heugen.”

  He blinked. “You have given this some thought.”

  “I hate to have my time wasted with ill-considered proposals, don’t you? I promise there is excellent sense in every one of those names. Forward-looking people, each with fine qualities. Properly led, with Leo’s charisma and your prudent oversight, they will be invaluable servants of the Crown.”

  “Well…” His mind was clearly elsewhere as he took his mark. “I suppose I can talk to Leo.”

  “That’s all I ask. When do we begin?”

  “Whenever you—”

  This time she came at him with even less warning, snapping the jabs out in a lethal flurry that would have made even her father applaud. Jurand managed to stumble back from the first, just about parried the second, but the last three thudded into his padded jacket in about the same spot, rocking him back on his heels then sending him stumbling from the circle.

  “Oh,” said Savine. “I suppose that would be another touch to me?”