The Wisdom of Crowds

by Joe Abercrombie

  Her father slowly, effortfully swivelled his chair towards the door to the hallway. “Get behind me,” he said.

  The knob turned and the door swung open. A face appeared around the edge. An unremarkable face, with different-coloured eyes.

  “Knock, knock.” Yoru Sulfur stepped into the room. He was neatly presented, as he had always been at meetings of the Solar Society. That same polite manner, that same unassuming smile. The only difference that he was spattered from head to toe with blood.

  Savine took a quivering step back. These rooms were the best guarded in the Union. He must have come through several well-armed men. She presumed it was their screams she had heard, their gore with which he was showered.

  He called himself a magus, but she had thought of it as a hollow title, left over from a distant age of ignorance and superstition. She knew that Bayaz had ruined the Agriont, but that had been before she was born. She had heard people whisper about Eaters, but written it off as small-minded fearmongering. Every day she had seen the dark outline of the House of the Maker, looming over even the city’s tallest chimneys, but she had somehow allowed herself to believe that actual magic would never play a role in her thoroughly structured, ruthlessly rational, entirely modern life.

  It was with a feeling of chill horror that she discovered her error.

  Sulfur smiled at her father. The smile of a disappointed tutor, finally tracking down a wayward pupil. “Sand dan Glokta. You have become a difficult man to find.”

  “Did you try making an appointment?”

  “You know I prefer to arrive unannounced.” Sulfur rooted through his curly hair and picked something out between finger and thumb. A piece of bone. Perhaps a tooth. He flicked it away and it bounced clicking across the floor. “I warned my master you could not be trusted.”

  “What useful people can be?”

  Sulfur smiled wider, showing a full set of clean, sharp teeth. “Do you know? Those were his very words.” He glanced towards Savine, who was clinging to one of the handles of her father’s chair, no idea whether to stand her ground, run for the children or scream for help. “Did you really think you could stuff King Jezal’s bastard onto the throne without even a by-your-leave?”

  “I did. I have.”

  “Doing it is one thing. Getting away with it is quite another. For a man who complains so much about pain you have been happy to inflict it wholesale.” Sulfur gently wagged one finger as he padded across the room towards them. “All this destruction, just to end up trapped by your own cleverness.”

  “No doubt this is a trap.” Glokta looked up mildly at Sulfur. “But not for me.”

  “What will you do, cripple? Wheel your chair over me?”

  “You forget, I have some experience with your kind. The best weapon against an Eater… is another.”

  A latch dropped with a soft scrape and Sulfur froze in the middle of the floor.

  Zuri had slipped in through the nursery door. Savine was about to scream at her to get out, to get help, but something stole her voice, so all that came out was a reedy squeak. Zuri’s head hung over on one side, her teeth showing very white as she smiled too wide, her eyes gleaming black in the shadows.

  “Someone has been a very bad boy,” she said.

  Sulfur spun towards the door he had come in through, but Haroon had entered from the hallway and now pushed it firmly shut. Rabik dropped from the shadows among the vaults above, spun in the air as neatly as an acrobat and landed silently on all fours. Savine had no idea how she could have failed to notice him, clinging to the ceiling. But she saw him now.

  “It has been a long time, Sulfur,” he sang, rocking back on his haunches.

  “So much to answer for,” said Haroon.

  The shock on Sulfur’s face only lasted for an instant. Then the air above his shoulders shimmered and Rabik was flung across the room as if by a slap from a giant’s hand. Savine gasped as he crashed into the window in a spray of glass, bounced from the stone frame leaving a great crack. He should have been dead, every bone shattered. Instead he fell in a ready crouch like a cat dropped from a high place, dust showering from a great dry split in his cheek but his mouth still fixed in a smile.

  Sulfur and Haroon were fighting, too fast for Savine’s darting eyes to follow, a tangle of flailing limbs, blows landing with thuds and smacks so loud they were painful on the ear. Savine felt an awful sucking in her stomach and Haroon tumbled past like a cannon-stone, missed her by no more than a stride, smashed into the wall with an impact that showered plaster and made the whole room shake.

  Savine clung to her father’s chair, a great draft nearly dragging her over as Zuri whipped by in a white blur, crossing the room in two impossible strides, springing high into the air. Sulfur was turning, mouth twisted, arm raised, when she dropped on him with a crash like a thunderclap, buckling the polished floor, shattering the polished stones, chips of rock and spots of blood flying, sending out a wash of wind that rocked the painting on its easel.

  There was a brilliant flash. Savine squeezed her eyes shut but still saw the bloom of fire through her lids, felt the heat of it stinging her face. She fell on her side, a roar all about her like a great furnace catching light. She coughed, retched, throat full of the acid tang of burning. Haroon was bent over her father’s chair, shielding them both with his body, hair on fire, beard on fire, shirt turning black as it burned, hanging off his arms in flaming strips.

  Savine tried to shield her face but her sleeve was on fire. She dragged herself up by the arm of her father’s chair, saw the blanket across his knees was burning, too, ripped it from his legs, dragging him around a squealing quarter turn, beating at her sleeve with it, trying to smother the flames.

  Little fires were scattered across the floor, blurred and sparkling through the tears stung from her eyes. Leo’s ruined painting was scorching, canvas curling, the room crazily lit by flickering flames, cast into dancing shadow. Sulfur reeled and thrashed while Rabik clawed at him, bit at him, his hair turned to a burning torch. Sulfur flung him away but Rabik tore a mouthful of meat from his face as he went, ripping one of his ears half off, tumbling across the floor, spinning, sliding, fingernails squealing as they scored long scratches in the stones.

  Sulfur crouched, breath coming in hisses, blood coursing from the bite-marks on his face, blood dripping from his fingertips and pattering on the broken flags.

  He looked towards the window but Rabik was there, his bloody tongue hanging out. He looked towards the nursery but Haroon was there, giving a rumbling growl as he slapped ash from his body. He looked towards the hallway but Zuri was there. Her charred clothes dangled from her in tatters, and underneath her long limbs were bound in white bandages. She neatly blew out a flame still burning on her shoulder and clicked her tongue in annoyance.

  “This was my favourite dress,” she said.

  Sulfur rounded on Savine and her father. She caught a glimpse of his bared teeth shining, his different-coloured eyes turned black in the dying firelight. The air about his shoulders shimmered once more and Savine took a whooping breath to scream.

  Zuri caught him from behind like a trap snapping shut, one arm snaking around his neck, one around his chest, legs locked tight about his hips. He caught her hair but now Haroon was on him, gripping his wrist with one broad hand, his throat with the other. Rabik skittered up, wrapping himself around Sulfur’s legs, all three of them pinning him fast.

  Savine cowered behind her father’s chair, staring between her fingers. Zuri twisted Sulfur’s head back, one hand hooking his top jaw, one hooking the bottom. She snarled as she began to drag them apart, his eyes bulging, his mouth gaping wider and wider until with a snapping crunch she ripped his face wide open, blood showering, tearing his bottom jaw from his head until it hung on strings of gristle.

  He made a gurgling hiss as he fell, and they swarmed on him with a crunching, ripping, cracking, blood spraying the broken floor, spotting the walls.

  The whole impossible fight h
ad only taken a few breaths.

  “Out.” Savine’s father was tugging weakly at her charred sleeve. “Out.”

  Stupidly, she turned his chair, her shoes slithering on the smooth stones, leaving crooked tracks through the scattered ash and chips of masonry. She whimpered as she wheeled it to the door, got it caught on the frame, snarled as she wrestled it through into the great chamber, skinning her knuckles, the sound of ripping and gnawing echoing behind her.

  She dragged the door shut and hung from the knob. Her eyes were swimming. Her legs wobbled. She could scarcely see through the smeared after-images across her vision, scarcely hear for the ringing in her ears. She stumbled, nearly fell, and someone caught her. Her mother. Holding her tight, stroking her head. Savine clung to her, making a little moan with every breath.

  “Don’t worry. The children are safe.”

  “Safe?” whispered Savine. Her hand was burned. The sleeve of her dress was scorched. The skin beneath tingled. Faint through the door, she could still hear them, eating. “Zuri is… Zuri is…”

  “Yes. Did you think we picked her as your companion by accident?”

  “You had to be protected,” said Savine’s father, baring the teeth he still had as he wheeled his chair towards her. “I made an arrangement with the only ones who could do it.”

  Savine stared from one parent to another. “You used me as bait. Me and my children—”

  “We used ourselves as bait,” said her mother.

  “It had to be done, Savine,” said her father.

  “God smiles on results, my scripture teacher would have said.”

  Zuri shut the door behind her. Her dress hung singed and shredded and the bandages beneath were spotted red. Savine had never seen her so much as undo a top button before, had always taken that for fitting modesty, but without even knowing it the Burners had stumbled on the truth.

  It was one of those moments—like the uprising in Valbeck, like the battle at Stoffenbeck—when Savine was forced to realise the world was not quite what she had thought it was. When the solid foundations were revealed to be shifting sands, and all her certainties no more than guesses. She wanted to back away. Wanted to run out into the hall and keep running. But she stood her ground. “Who was your scripture teacher?” she croaked.

  “The Prophet Khalul,” said Zuri, stepping into the room. “As you have no doubt guessed.” Her hair had come unpinned on one side, hanging across her bloody face, her bloody chin, her bloody throat in a black curtain. “I wish I could have told you sooner.”

  “Is your name even Zuri?”

  “I have had others, but I am Zuri now. I will be Zuri for as long as you need me.”

  “You were my friend,” whispered Savine. She thought she might be crying. “My one real friend.”

  The slightest frown wrinkled Zuri’s smooth brow as she came closer.

  “I still am. And you are mine.”

  “You… eat people.”

  “And you grind them to dust in your mills, and render them to meat on your battlefields, and let them rot when the sickness sweeps through your slums.”

  “I trusted you.”

  Zuri looked almost hurt by that. “And I have done my best never to let you down.”

  “Because of some deal with my father—”

  “At first.” Zuri flitted the last few strides towards her in a flash, a sudden chill breeze making Savine flinch. Zuri already had her hand in hers, so gentle but so strong, the black hair softly settling across her bloody face. “But soon I came to respect you, then to admire you, then… to love you.” She reached up and delicately wiped a tear from Savine’s cheek with her cool thumbtip.

  “I am very old,” she said. “I did not think I had anything to learn. But we have learned so much from you. Imagine a South and a Union not opposed but bound together by trade, and industry, and common interest. Not looking always into an ignorant and superstitious past but fixed on progress.” Her black eyes shone at the thought. “A South and a Union where the people are governed not by the selfish whims of priests or wizards, but by the righteous engineering of the watch and the book.”

  “What would your scripture teacher think of that?” whispered Savine.

  “It has been many years since I cared a shit for his opinions.” And Zuri gave a little smile. Like a lover, venturing a joke so they could see if they were forgiven for some petty misdemeanour. By the Fates, could Savine still hear the faint cracking of bone from the room next door?

  Her father, who had burned half the world so he could control the other half, put a hand on her wrist. “You need our advice.”

  Her mother, who had helped hatch the colossal scheme, put a hand on her shoulder. “You need our support.”

  Zuri smiled wider, her teeth still pink with Sulfur’s blood. “You need our protection.”

  They were not wrong. The world might not have been quite what she thought but, above all, Savine had always been a woman of business. And a woman of business must adapt quickly to new circumstances and recognise a bargain when she sees it. She had handled difficult partners before, after all, and come out ahead.

  She slid the box from her sleeve and took a healthy pinch of pearl dust up each nostril. Then another. Just to stop her hands from shaking. She wiped her nose carefully, dabbed her eyes on her unburned sleeve, pushed her chin up and her shoulders back, and managed something like a smile.

  “Well,” she said. “No one ever achieved anything alone.”

  Great Men’s Footsteps

  Wasn’t till Rikke was walking up the steep cobbled way from the harbour that she realised how much she’d missed Uffrith. Missed the sea’s smell and the gulls’ clamour. Missed knowing every street and face. Missed her father. His memory had been getting hazy, in the echoing space of Skarling’s Hall, in the grand salons of Adua. Here it rushed back so sharp she wanted to cry.

  For the first time in a long time, she felt like she was home.

  She wandered beneath the carved rafters where she and Leo had sat together as children. Her fingertip left a snaking trail through the dust on the seat where her father had given his judgements. She stepped from the shadows and into the sunny garden, and dropped down on the time-greyed bench, frowning off towards the sea.

  Spring had been busy. The garden was overgrown again, just like it always used to be, the stuff her father planted all erupted in a messy riot, nothing like his plans. A creeper had slipped free from the crumbling wall and spilled white flowers across his grave. He’d have laughed to see it, most likely, and said time makes fools of us all.

  She thought of the girl she’d been, when Isern took her up into the hills to prove she had the Long Eye. Foolish and twitchy and soft. Ignorant about so many things. No bones and no brains, maybe, but a good heart. She touched her fingertips to the tattoos on her face. So much changed. She wondered if it was really for the better.

  “Your father loved this plot.” Shivers stood in the doorway, arms folded.

  “Naught he liked more than sitting back and watching things grow,” she said.

  “It’s grown, all right.”

  “Aye, well, he never had much time for weeding, what with all the wars he got dragged into.”

  “True enough. But you’ve made the whole North your garden now.” Shivers shook his head like he could hardly believe it. “Reckon he’d be proud.”

  “Would he? After all I’ve done? Black Rikke, they call me.”

  “A proud name.”

  “A name they hung on a killer ’cause he was the worst man in the North.”

  “It’s just a name. It’ll be what you make of it.”

  “Aye, I guess.” And Rikke slumped with her elbows on her knees and her chin propped in her hands. “Did I do the right thing, Shivers?”

  “You’re asking the wrong man, I reckon.”

  “I’m asking the only one I trust.”

  “’Cause I done so much o’ the wrong thing?”

  “Shows you know the difference, d
on’t it?”

  “Not sure there is one.” He sank down on the bench beside her. “It’s a comfort, telling yourself there’s some big right thing out there. That you could seek some wise old bastard in the mountains who’s got the answer. Then there’d be no need for doubts and regrets.” He looked sideways, sunlight glinting off his metal eye. “But far as I can tell it ain’t that simple. Right things, wrong things, well… it’s all a matter of where you stand. Every choice is good for some, bad for others. And once you’re chief, you can’t just do what’s good for you, or those you love. You have to find what’s best for most. Worst for fewest. Like your father tried to, and with no magic eye to see the outcome.” He sat back, one leg stretched out, and looked towards the sea, breeze stirring the grey hair about his craggy face. “Doubts and regrets, they’re the cost of casting a shadow. The only folk without ’em are the dead. For what it’s worth, I’d say you did the best you could.”

  Rikke looked towards her father’s grave and winced. “Then why does it hurt so much?”

  “Said you did your best. Didn’t say it wouldn’t hurt. One thing I can tell you…” And he frowned down at that ring on his little finger. “Doing your worst feels no better.”

  “By all the fucking dead, don’t tell me you’re sitting here pining.” Isern strutted into the garden, chagga squelch, squelching as she worked her jaw.

  Rikke ground her own teeth. She was tiring of the sound of Isern-i-Phail being right. “Doubts and regrets, Isern. They’re the cost of casting a shadow.”

  “Surely, but you’ve no time to indulge yours. You’ve the whole North to lead from the darkness and into the moon’s silvery favour. Tell me this—what else could you have done?”

  “Nothing,” grunted Rikke, slumping further into her hands, flicking the ring through her nose with a fingertip so it knocked against her lip. “Nothing at all.” Hadn’t stopped her turning it over every spare moment since they set off from Adua. Didn’t stop her turning it over now.