Last Argument of Kings tfl-3

by Joe Abercrombie

  “A King to make us all happy, eh?”

  “If you were to express a preference for one man or another, I could take that back to his Eminence.” More steps, more coaxing, more disappointments. Oh, to have a great office of my own, and to sit all day in comfort while cringing bastards slog up my stairs to smile at my insults, lap up my lies, beg for my poisonous support.

  “Shall I tell you what would make me happy, Superior Glokta?”

  Now for the musings of another power-mad old fart. “By all means, your Worship.”

  Marovia tossed his cutlery onto his plate, sat back in his chair and gave a long, tired sigh. “I would like no King at all. I would like every man equal under the law, to have a say in the running of his own country and the choosing of his own leaders. I would like no King, and no nobles, and a Closed Council selected by, and answerable to, the citizens themselves. A Closed Council open to all, you might say. What do you think of that?”

  I think some people would say that it sounds very much like treason. The rest would simply call it madness. “I think, your Worship, that your notion is a fantasy.”

  “Why so?”

  “Because the vast majority of men would far rather be told what to do than make their own choices. Obedience is easy.”

  The High Justice laughed. “Perhaps you are right. But things will change. This rebellion has convinced me of it. Things will change, by small steps.”

  “I am sure Lord Brock on the throne is one small step none of us would like to see taken.”

  “Lord Brock does indeed have very strong opinions, mostly relating to himself. You make a convincing case, Superior.” Marovia sat back in his chair, hands resting on his belly, staring at Glokta through narrowed eyes. “Very well. You may tell Arch Lector Sult that this once we have common cause. If a neutral candidate with sufficient support presents themselves, I will have my votes cast along with his. Who could have thought it? The Closed Council united.” He slowly shook his head. “Strange times indeed.”

  “They certainly are, your Worship.” Glokta struggled to his feet, wincing as he put his weight on his burning leg, and shuffled across the gloomy, echoing space towards the door. Strange, though, that our High Justice is so philosophical on the subject of losing his position tomorrow. I have scarcely ever seen a man look calmer. He paused as he touched the handle of the door. One would almost suppose that he knows something we do not. One might almost suppose that he already has a plan in mind.

  He turned back. “Can I trust you, High Justice?”

  Marovia looked sharply up, the carving knife poised in his hand. “What a beautifully quaint question from a man in your line of work. I suppose that you can trust me to act in my own interests. Just as far as I can trust you to do the same. Our deal goes no further than that. Nor should it. You are a clever man, Superior, you make me smile.” And he turned back to his joint of meat, prodding at it with a fork and making the blood run. “You should find another master.”

  Glokta shuffled out. A charming suggestion. But I already have two more than I’d like.

  The prisoner was a scrawny, sinewy specimen, naked and bagged as usual, with hands manacled securely behind his back. Glokta watched as Frost dragged him into the domed room from the cells, his stumbling bare feet flapping against the cold floor.

  “He wasn’t too hard to get a hold of,” Severard was saying. “He left the others a while ago, but he’s been hanging round the city like the smell of piss ever since. We picked him up yesterday night.”

  Frost flung the prisoner down in the chair. Where am I? Who has me? What do they want? A horrifying moment, just before the work begins. The terror and the helplessness, the sick tingling of anticipation. My own memory of it was sharply refreshed, only the other day, at the hands of the charming Magister Eider. I was set free unmolested, however. The prisoner sat there, head tilted to one side, the canvas on the front of the bag moving back and forth with his hurried breath. I very much doubt that he will be so lucky.

  Glokta’s eyes crept reluctantly to the painting above the prisoner’s bagged head. Our old friend Kanedias. The painted face stared grimly down from the domed ceiling, the arms spread wide, the colourful fire behind. The Maker fell burning… He weighed the heavy hammer reluctantly in his hand. “Let’s get on with it, then.” Severard snatched the canvas bag away with a showy flourish.

  The Navigator squinted into the bright lamplight, a weather-beaten face, tanned and deeply lined, head shaved, like a priest. Or a confessed traitor, of course.

  “Your name is Brother Longfoot?”

  “Indeed! Of the noble Order of Navigators! I assure you that I am innocent of any crime!” The words came out in rush. “I have done nothing unlawful, no. That would not be my way at all. I am a law-abiding man, and always have been. I can think of no possible reason why I should be manhandled in this way! None!” His eyes swivelled down and he saw the anvil, gleaming on the floor between him and Glokta, where the table would usually have been. His voice rose an entire octave higher. “The Order of Navigators is well respected, and I am a member in good standing! Exceptional standing! Navigation is the foremost of my many remarkable talents, it is indeed, the foremost of—”

  Glokta cracked his hammer against the top of the anvil with a clang to wake the dead. “Stop! Talking!” The little man blinked, and gaped, but he shut up. Glokta sank back in his chair, kneading at his withered thigh, the pain prickling up his back. “Do you have any notion of how tired I am? Of how much I have to do? The agony of getting out of bed each morning leaves me a broken man before the day even begins, and the present moment is an exceptionally stressful one. It is therefore a matter of the most supreme indifference to me whether you can walk for the rest of your life, whether you can see for the rest of your life, whether you can hold your shit in for the rest of your intensely short, intensely painful life. Do you understand?”

  The Navigator looked wide-eyed up at Frost, looming over him like an outsize shadow. “I understand,” he whispered.

  “Good,” said Severard.

  “Ve’ gooth,” said Frost.

  “Very good indeed,” said Glokta. “Tell me, Brother Longfoot, is one among your remarkable talents a superhuman resistance to pain?”

  The prisoner swallowed. “It is not.”

  “Then the rules of this game are simple. I ask a question and you answer precisely, correctly, and, above all, briefly. Do I make myself clear?”

  “I understand completely. I do not speak other than to—”

  Frost’s fist sunk into his gut and he folded up, eyes bulging. “Do you see,” hissed Glokta, “that your answer there should have been yes?” The albino seized the wheezing Navigator’s leg and dragged his foot up onto the anvil. Oh, cold metal on the sensitive sole. Quite unpleasant, but it could be so much worse. And something tells me it probably will be. Frost snapped a manacle shut around Longfoot’s ankle.

  “I apologise for the lack of imagination.” Glokta sighed. “In our defence, it’s difficult to be always thinking of something new. I mean, smashing a man’s feet with a lump hammer, it’s so…”

  “Pethethrian?” ventured Frost.

  Glokta heard a sharp volley of laughter from behind Severard’s mask, felt his own mouth grinning too. He really should have been a comedian, rather than a torturer. “Pedestrian! Precisely so. But don’t worry. If we haven’t got what we need by the time we’ve crushed everything below your knees to pulp, we’ll see if we can think of something more inventive for the rest of your legs. How does that sound?”

  “But I have done nothing!” squealed Longfoot, just getting his breath back. “I know nothing! I did—”

  “Forget… about all that. It is meaningless now.” Glokta leaned slowly, painfully forwards, let the head of the hammer tap gently against the iron beside the Navigator’s bare foot. “What I want you to concentrate on… are my questions… and your toes… and this hammer. But don’t worry if you find that difficult now. Believe me when I s
ay—once the hammer starts falling, you will find it easy to ignore everything else.”

  Longfoot stared at the anvil, nostrils flaring as his breath snorted quickly in and out. And the seriousness of the situation finally impresses itself upon him.

  “Questions, then,” said Glokta. “You are familiar with the man who styles himself Bayaz, the First of the Magi?”

  “Yes! Please! Yes! Until recently he was my employer.”

  “Good.” Glokta shifted in his chair, trying to find a more comfortable position while bending forwards. “Very good. You accompanied him on a journey?”

  “I was the guide!”

  “What was your destination?”

  “The Island of Shabulyan, at the edge of the World.”

  Glokta let the head of the hammer click against the anvil again. “Oh come, come. The edge of the World? A fantasy, surely?”

  “Truly! Truly! I have seen it! I stood upon that island with my own feet!”

  “Who went with you?”

  “There was… was Logen Ninefingers, from the distant North.” Ah, yes, he of the scars and the tight lips. “Ferro Maljinn, a Kantic woman.” The one that gave our friend Superior Goyle so much trouble. “Jezal dan Luthar, a… a Union officer.” A posturing dolt. “Malacus Quai, Bayaz’ apprentice.” The skinny liar with the troglodyte’s complexion. “And then Bayaz himself!”

  “Six of you?”

  “Only six!”

  “A long and a difficult journey to undertake. What was at the edge of the World that demanded such an effort, besides water?”

  Longfoot’s lip trembled. “Nothing!” Glokta frowned, and nudged at the Navigator’s big toe with the head of the hammer. “It was not there! The thing that Bayaz sought! It was not there! He said he had been tricked!”

  “What was it that he thought would be there?”

  “He said it was a stone!”

  “A stone?”

  “The woman asked him. He said it was a rock… a rock from the Other Side.” The Navigator shook his sweating head. “An unholy notion! I am glad we found no such thing. Bayaz called it the Seed!”

  Glokta felt the grin melting from his face. The Seed. Is it my imagination, or has the room grown colder? “What else did he say about it?”

  “Just myths and nonsense!”

  “Try me.”

  “Stories, about Glustrod, and ruined Aulcus, and taking forms, and stealing faces! About speaking to devils, and the summoning of them. About the Other Side.”

  “What else?” Glokta dealt Longfoot’s toe a firmer tap with the hammer.

  “Ah! Ah! He said the Seed was the stuff of the world below! That it was left over from before the Old Time, when demons walked the earth! He said it was a great and powerful weapon! That he meant to use it, against the Gurkish! Against the Prophet!” A weapon, from before the Old Time. The summoning of devils, the taking of forms. Kanedias seemed to frown down from the wall more grimly than ever, and Glokta flinched. He remembered his nightmare trip into the House of the Maker, the patterns of light on the floor, the shifting rings in the darkness. He remembered stepping out onto the roof, standing high above the city without climbing a single stair.

  “You did not find it?” he whispered, his mouth dry.

  “No! It was not there!”

  “And then?”

  “That was all! We came back across the mountains. We made a raft and rode the great Aos back to the sea. We took a ship from Calcis and I sit before you now!”

  Glokta narrowed his eyes, studying carefully his prisoner’s face. There is more. I see it. “What are you not telling me?”

  “I have told you everything! I have no talent for dissembling!” That, at least, is true. His lies are plain.

  “If your contract is ended, why are you still in the city?”

  “Because… because…” The Navigator’s eyes darted round the room.

  “Oh, dear me, no.” The heavy hammer came down with all of Glokta’s crippled strength and crushed Longfoot’s big toe flat with a dull thud. The Navigator gaped at it, eyes bulging from his head. Ah, that beautiful, horrible moment between stubbing your toe and feeling the hurt. Here it comes. Here it comes. Here it— Longfoot let vent a great shriek, squirmed around in his chair, face contorted with agony.

  “I know the feeling,” said Glokta, wincing as he wriggled his own remaining toes around in his sweaty boot. “I truly, truly do, and I sympathise. That blinding flash of pain, then up washes the sick and dizzy faintness of the shattered bone, then the slow pulsing up the leg that seems to drag the water from your eyes and make your whole body tremble.” Longfoot gasped, and whimpered, tears glistening on his cheeks. “And what comes next? Weeks of limping? Months of hobbling, crippled? And if the next blow is to on your ankle?” Glokta prodded at Longfoot’s shin with the end of the hammer. “Or square on your kneecap, what then? Will you ever walk again? I know the feelings well, believe me.” So how can I inflict them now, on someone else? He shrugged his twisted shoulders. One of life’s mysteries. “Another?” And he raised the hammer again.

  “No! No! Wait!” wailed Longfoot. “The priest! God help me, a priest came to the Order! A Gurkish priest! He said that one day the First of the Magi might ask for a Navigator, and that he wished to be told of it! That he wished to be told what happened afterward! He made threats, terrible threats, we had no choice but to obey! I was waiting in the city for another Navigator, who will convey the news! Only this morning I told him everything I have told you! I was about to leave Adua, I swear!”

  “What was the name of this priest?” Longfoot said nothing, his wet eyes wide, the breath hissing in his nose. Oh, why must they test me? Glokta looked down at the Navigator’s toe. It was already starting to swell and go blotchy, streaks of black blood-blisters down each side, the nail deep, brooding purple, edged with angry red. Glokta ground the end of the hammer’s handle savagely into it. “The name of the priest! His name! His name! His—”

  “Aargh! Mamun! God help me! His name was Mamun!” Mamun. Yulwei spoke of him, in Dagoska. The first apprentice of the Prophet himself. Together they broke the Second Law, together they ate the flesh of men.

  “Mamun. I see. Now.” Glokta craned further forward, ignoring an ugly tingling up his twisted spine. “What is Bayaz doing here?”

  Longfoot gaped, a long string of drool hanging from his bottom lip. “I don’t know!”

  “What does he want with us? What does he want in the Union?”

  “I don’t know! I have told you everything!”

  “Leaning forwards is a considerable ordeal for me. One that I begin to tire of.” Glokta frowned, and lifted the hammer, its polished head glinting.

  “I just find ways from here to there! I only navigate! Please! No!” Longfoot squeezed his eyes shut, tongue wedged between his teeth. Here it comes. Here it comes. Here it comes…

  Glokta tossed the hammer clattering down on the floor and leaned back, rocking his aching hips left and right to try and squeeze away the aches. “Very well,” he sighed. “I am satisfied.”

  The prisoner opened first one grimacing eye, and then the other. He looked up, face full of hope. “I can go?”

  Severard chuckled softly behind his mask. Even Frost made a kind of hissing sound. “Of course you can go.” Glokta smiled his empty smile. “You can go back in your bag.”

  The Navigator’s face went slack with horror. “God take pity on me.”

  If there is a God, he has no pity in him.

  Fortunes of War

  Lord Marshal Burr was in the midst of writing a letter, but he smiled up as West let the tent flap drop.

  “How are you, Colonel?”

  “Well enough, thank you, sir. The preparations are well underway. We should be ready to leave at first light.”

  “As efficient as ever. Where would I be without you?” Burr gestured at the decanter. “Wine?”

  “Thank you, sir.” West poured himself a glass. “Would you care for one?”

&n
bsp; Burr indicated a battered canteen at his elbow. “I believe it would be prudent if I was to stick to water.”

  West winced, guiltily. He hardly felt as if he had the right to ask, but there was no escaping it now. “How are you feeling, sir?”

  “Much better, thank you for asking. Much, much better.” He grimaced, put one fist over his mouth, and burped. “Not entirely recovered, but well on the way.” As though to prove the point he got up easily from his chair and strode to the map, hands clasped behind his back. His face had indeed regained much of its colour. He no longer stood hunched over, wobbling as though he were about to fall.

  “Lord Marshal… I wanted to speak to you… about the battle at Dunbrec.”

  Burr looked round. “About what feature of it?”

  “When you were sick…” West teetered on the brink of speaking, then let the words bubble out. “I didn’t send for a surgeon! I could have, but—”

  “I’m proud that you didn’t.” West blinked. He had hardly dared to hope for that answer. “You did what I would have wanted you to do. It is important that an officer should care, but it is vital that he should not care too much. He must be able to place his men in harm’s way. He must be able to send them to their deaths, if he deems it necessary. He must be able to make sacrifices, and to weigh the greatest good, without emotion counting in his choice. That is why I like you, West. You have compassion in you, but you have iron too. One cannot be a great leader without a certain… ruthlessness.”

  West found himself lost for words. The Lord Marshal chuckled, and slapped the table with his open hand. “But as it happens, no harm done, eh? The line held, the Northmen were turned out of Angland, and I tottered through alive, as you can see!”

  “I am truly glad to see you feeling better, sir.”

  Burr grinned. “Things are looking up. We are free to move again, with our lines of supply secure and the weather finally dry. If your Dogman’s plan works then we have a chance of finishing Bethod within a couple of weeks! They’ve been a damn courageous and useful set of allies!”