Last Argument of Kings tfl-3

by Joe Abercrombie

  “Terez…” She continued to wave imperiously to the crowds. “I realise… that we do not know each other in the least, but… I would like to know you.” The slightest twitch of her mouth was the only sign that she had heard him. “I know that this must have come as a terrible shock to you, just as it has to me. I hope, if there is anything I can do… to make it easier, that—”

  “My father feels the interests of my country are best served by this marriage, and it is a daughter’s place to obey. Those of us born to high station are long prepared to make sacrifices.”

  Her perfect head turned smoothly on her perfect neck, and she smiled. A smile slightly forced, perhaps, but no less radiant for that. It was hard to believe that a face so smooth and flawless could be made of meat, like everybody else’s. It seemed like porcelain, or polished stone. It was a constant, magical delight to see it move. He wondered if her lips were cool or warm. He would have liked very much to find out. She leaned close to him, and placed her hand gently on the back of his. Warm, undoubtedly warm, and soft, and very much made of flesh. “You really should wave,” she murmured, her voice full of Styrian song.

  “Er, yes,” he croaked, his mouth very dry, “yes, of course.”

  Glokta stood, Ardee beside him, and frowned at the doors of the Lords’ Round. Beyond those towering gates, in the great circular hall, the ceremony was taking place. Oh, joyous, joyous day! High Justice Marovia’s wise exhortations would be echoing from the gilded dome, the happy couple would be speaking their solemn vows with light hearts. Only the lucky few had been allowed within to bear witness. The rest of us must worship from afar. And quite a crowd had gathered to do just that. The wide Square of Marshals was choked with them. Glokta’s ears were stuffed with their excited babbling. A sycophantic throng, all eager for their divine Majesties to emerge.

  He rocked impatiently back and forth, from side to side, grimacing and hissing, trying to get the blood to flow in his aching legs, the cramps to be still. But standing in one place for this length of time is, to put it simply, torture.

  “How long can a wedding take?”

  Ardee raised one dark eyebrow. “Perhaps they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, and are busy consummating the marriage right there on the floor of the Lords’ Round.”

  “How bloody long can a consummation take?”

  “Lean on me if you need to,” she said, holding out her elbow to him.

  “The cripple using the drunk for support?” Glokta frowned. “We make quite the couple.”

  “Fall over if you prefer, and knock out the rest of your teeth. I’ll lose no sleep over it.”

  Perhaps I should take her up on the offer, if only for a moment. After all, where’s the harm? But then the first shrill cheers began to float up, soon joined by more and more until a jubilant roar was making the air throb. The doors of the Lords’ Round were finally being heaved open, and the High King and Queen of the Union emerged into the bright sunlight, hand in hand.

  Even Glokta was forced to admit that they made a dazzling pair. Like monarchs of myth they stood arrayed in brilliant white, trimmed with twinkling embroidery, matching golden suns across the back of her long gown and his long coat, glittering as they turned to the crowds. Each tall, and slender, and graceful, each crowned with shining gold and a single flashing diamond. Both so very young, and so very beautiful, and with all their happy, rich, and powerful lives ahead of them. Hurrah! Hurrah for them! My shrivelled turd of a heart bursts open with joy!

  Glokta rested his hand on Ardee’s elbow, and he leaned towards her, and he smiled his most twisted, toothless, grotesque grin. “Is it really true that our King is more handsome than I?”

  “Offensive nonsense!” She thrust out her chest and tossed her head, giving Glokta a withering sneer down her nose. “And I sparkle more brightly than the Jewel of Talins!”

  “Oh, you do, my dear, you absolutely do. We make them look like beggars!”

  “Like scum.”

  “Like cripples.”

  They chuckled together as the royal pair swept majestically across the square, accompanied by a score of watchful Knights of the Body. The Closed Council followed behind at a respectful distance, eleven stately old men with Bayaz among them in his arcane vestments, smiling almost as wide as the glorious couple themselves.

  “I didn’t even like him,” muttered Ardee under her breath, “to begin with. Not really.” That certainly makes two of us.

  “No need to weep. You’re far too sharp to have been satisfied with a dullard like him.”

  She breathed in sharply. “I’m sure you’re right. But I was so bored, and lonely, and tired.” And drunk, no doubt. She shrugged her shoulders hopelessly. “He made me feel like I was something more than a burden. He made me feel… wanted.”

  And what makes you suppose that I want to know about it? “Wanted, you say? How wonderful. And now?”

  She looked miserably down at the ground, and Glokta felt just the smallest trace of guilt. But guilt only really hurts when there’s nothing else to worry about.

  “It was hardly as if it was true love.” He saw the thin sinews in her neck moving as she swallowed. “But somehow I always thought it would be me making a fool of him.”

  “Huh.” How rarely any of us get what we expect.

  The royal party processed gradually out of view, the last splendid courtiers and shining bodyguards tramping after them, the sound of rapturous applause creeping off towards the palace. Towards their glorious futures, and we guilty secrets are by no means invited.

  “Here we stand,” murmured Ardee. “The off-cuts.”

  “The wretched leavings.”

  “The rotten stalks.”

  “I wouldn’t worry over much.” Glokta gave a sigh. “You are still young, clever, and passably pretty.”

  “Epic praise indeed.”

  “You have all your teeth and both your legs. A marked advantage over some of us. I do not doubt that you will soon find some other highborn idiot to entrap, and no harm done.”

  She turned away from him, and hunched her shoulders, and he guessed that she was biting her lip. He winced, and lifted his hand to lay it on her shoulder… The same hand that cut Sepp dan Teufel’s fingers into slices, that pinched the nipples from Inquisitor Harker’s chest, that carved one Gurkish emissary into pieces and burned another, that sent innocent men to rot in Angland, and so on, and so on… He jerked it back, and let it fall. Better to cry all the tears in the world than be touched by that hand. Comfort comes from other sources, and flows to other destinations. He frowned out across the square, and left Ardee to her misery.

  The crowd cheered on.

  It was a magnificent event, of course. No effort or expense had been spared. Jezal would not have been at all surprised if he had five hundred guests, and no more than a dozen of them known to himself in any significant degree. The Lords and Ladies of the Union. The great men of Closed and Open Councils. The richest and the most powerful, dressed in their best and on their best behaviour.

  The Chamber of Mirrors was a fitting venue. The most spectacular room in the entire palace, as big as a battlefield and made to seem larger yet by the great mirrors which covered every wall, creating the disconcerting impression of dozens of other magnificent weddings, in dozens of other adjoining ballrooms. A multitude of candles flickered and waved on the tables, and in the sconces, and among the crystal chandeliers high above. Their soft light shone on the silverware, glittered on the jewels of the guests, and was reflected back from the dark walls, gleaming into the far, dim distance: a million points of light, like the stars in a dark night sky. A dozen of the Union’s finest musicians played subtle and entrancing music, and it mingled with the swell of satisfied chatter, the clink and rattle of old money and new cutlery.

  It was a joyous celebration. The evening of a lifetime. For the guests.

  For Jezal it was something else, and he was not sure what. He sat at a gilded table with his queen beside him, the two of t
hem outnumbered ten to one by fawning servants, displayed to the full view of the whole assembly as though they were a pair of prize exhibits in a zoo. Jezal sat in a haze of awkwardness, in a dreamlike silence, startling from time to time like a sick rabbit as a powdered footman blindsided him with vegetables. Terez sat on his right, occasionally spearing the slightest morsel with a discerning fork, lifting it, chewing it, swallowing it with elegant precision. Jezal had never thought that it was possible to eat beautifully. He now realised his mistake.

  He could scarcely remember the ringing words of the High Justice that had, he supposed, bound the two of them irrevocably together. Something about love and the security of the nation, he vaguely recalled. But he could see the ring that he had handed numbly to Terez in the Lords’ Round, its enormous blood-red stone glittering on her long middle finger. He chewed at a slice of the finest meat, and it tasted like mud in his mouth. They were man and wife.

  He saw now that Bayaz had been right, as always. The people longed for something effortlessly higher than themselves. They might not all have had the king they would have asked for, but no one could possibly deny that Terez was all a queen should be and more. The mere idea of Ardee West sitting in that gilded chair was absurd. And yet Jezal felt a pang of guilt when the idea occurred, closely followed by a greater one of sadness. It would have been a comfort to have someone to talk to, then. He gave a painful sigh. If he was to spend his life with this woman, they would have to speak. The sooner they began, he supposed, the better.

  “I hear that Talins… is a most beautiful city.”

  “Indeed,” she said with careful formality, “but Adua has its sights also.” She paused, and looked down unhopefully at her plate.

  Jezal cleared his throat. “This is somewhat… difficult to adjust to.” He ventured a fraction of a smile.

  She blinked, and looked out at the room. “It is.”

  “Do you dance?”

  She turned her head smoothly to look at him without the slightest apparent movement of her shoulders. “A little.”

  He pushed back his chair and stood up. “Then shall we, your Majesty?”

  “As you wish, your Majesty.”

  As they made their way towards the middle of the wide floor, the chatter gradually diminished. The Chamber of Mirrors grew deathly quiet aside from the clicking of his polished boots, and her polished shoes, on the glistening stone. Jezal swallowed as they took their places, surrounded on three sides by the long tables, and the legions of magnificent guests, all watching. He had rather that same feeling of breathless anticipation, of fear and excitement, that he had used to have when he stepped into the fencing circle against an unknown opponent, before the roaring crowd.

  They stood still as statues, looking into each other’s eyes. He held out his hand, palm up. She reached out, but instead of taking it she pressed the back of her hand firmly against the back of his and pushed it up so that their fingers were level. She lifted one eyebrow by the slightest margin. A silent challenge, that no one else in the hall could possibly have seen.

  The first long drawn-out note sobbed from the strings and echoed around the chamber. They set off, circling each other with exaggerated slowness, the golden hem of Terez’ dress swishing across the floor, her feet out of sight so that she appeared to glide rather than take steps, her chin held painfully high. They moved first one way and then the other, and in the mirrors around them a thousand other couples moved in time, stretching away into the shadowy distance, crowned and dressed in flawless white and gold.

  As the second phrase began, and other instruments joined in, Jezal began to realise that he was utterly outclassed, worse than ever he had been by Bremer dan Gorst. Terez moved with such immaculate poise that he was sure she could have balanced a glass of wine on her head without spilling a drop. The music grew louder, faster, bolder, and Terez’ movements came faster and bolder with it. It seemed as if she somehow controlled the musicians with her outstretched hands, the two were linked so perfectly. He tried to steer her and she stepped effortlessly around him. She feinted one way and whirled the other and Jezal almost went over on his arse. She dodged and spun with masterful disguise and left him lunging at nothing.

  The music grew faster yet, the musicians sawed and plucked with furious concentration. Jezal made a vain attempt to catch her but Terez twisted away, dazzling him with a flurry of skirts that he could barely follow. She almost tripped him with a foot which was gone before he knew it, tossed her head and almost stabbed him in the eye with her crown. The great and good of the Union looked on in enchanted silence. Even Jezal found himself a dumbstruck spectator. It was the most he could do to remain in roughly the right positions to be made an utter fool of.

  He was not sure whether he was relieved or disappointed when the music slowed again and she offered out her hand as though it were a rare treasure. He pressed the back of his against it and they circled each other, drawing closer and closer. As the last refrain wept from the instruments she pressed herself against him, her back to his chest.

  Slowly they turned, and slower still, his nose full of the smell of her hair. At the last long note she sank back and he lowered her gently, her neck stretching out, her head dropping, her delicate crown almost brushing the floor. And there was silence.

  The room broke into rapturous applause, but Jezal hardly heard them. He was too busy staring at his wife. There was a faint colour to her cheek now, her lips slightly parted exposing flawless front teeth, and the lines of her jaw, and stretched-out neck, and slender collarbones were etched with shadow and ringed with sparkling diamonds. Lower down her chest rose and fell imperiously in her bodice with her rapid breathing, the slightest, fascinating sheen of sweat nestling in her cleavage. Jezal would have very much liked to nestle there himself. He blinked, his own breath sharp in his throat.

  “If it please your Majesty,” she murmured.

  “Eh? Oh… of course.” He whisked her back to her feet as the applause continued. “You dance… magnificently.”

  “Your Majesty is too kind,” she replied, with the barest fragment of a smile, but a smile nonetheless. He beamed gormlessly back at her. His fear and confusion had, in the space of a single dance, smoothly transformed into a most pleasurable excitement. He had been gifted a glimpse beneath the icy shell, and plainly his new Queen was a woman of rare and fiery passion. A hidden side to her that he was now greatly looking forward to investigating further. Looking forward so sharply, in fact, that he was forced to avert his eyes and stare off into the corner, frowning and trying desperately to think of other things, lest the tightness of his trousers caused him to embarrass himself in front of the assembled guests.

  The sight of Bayaz grinning in the corner was for once just what he needed to see, the old man’s cold smile cooling his ardour as surely as a bucket of iced water.

  Glokta had left Ardee in her over-furnished living room making every effort to get even more drunk, and ever since he had found himself in a black mood. Even for me. There’s nothing like the company of someone even more wretched than yourself to make you feel better. Trouble is, take their misery away and your own presses in twice as cold and dreary behind it.

  He slurped another half mouthful of gritty soup from his spoon, grimaced as he forced the over-salty slop down his throat. I wonder how wonderful a time King Jezal is enjoying now? Lauded and admired by all, gorging himself on the best food and the best company. He dropped the spoon into the bowl, his left eye twitching, and winced at a ripple of pain through his back and down into his leg. Eight years since the Gurkish released me, yet I am still their prisoner, and always will be. Trapped in a cell no bigger than my own crippled body.

  The door creaked open and Barnam shuffled in to collect the bowl. Glokta looked from the half-dead soup to the half-dead old man. The best food, and the best company. He would have laughed if his split lips had allowed it.

  “Finished, sir?” asked the servant.

  “More than likely.” I have been
unable to pull the means of destroying Bayaz out of my arse, and so, of course, his Eminence will not be pleased. How displeased can he get, do we suppose, before he loses patience entirely? But what can be done?

  Barnam carried the bowl from the room, pulled the door shut behind him, and left Glokta alone with his pain. What is it that I did to deserve this? And what is it that Luthar did? Is he not just as I was? Arrogant, vain, and selfish as hell? Is he a better man? Then why has life punished me so harshly, and rewarded him so richly?

  But Glokta already knew the answer. The same reason that innocent Sepp dan Teufel languishes in Angland with his fingers shortened. The same reason that loyal General Vissbruck died in Dagoska, while treacherous Magister Eider was let live. The same reason that Tulkis, the Gurkish Ambassador, was butchered in front of a howling crowd for a crime he did not commit.

  He pressed his sore tongue into one of his few remaining teeth. Life is not fair.

  Jezal pranced down the hallway in a dream, but no longer the panicked nightmare of the morning. His head was spinning from praise, and applause, and approval. His body was glowing with dancing, and wine, and, increasingly, lust. With Terez beside him, for the first time in his brief reign, he truly felt like a king. Gems and metal, silk and embroidery, and pale, smooth skin all shone excitingly in the soft candlelight. The evening had turned out to be a delight, and the night promised only to be better yet. Terez might have seemed as hard as a jewel from a distance, but Jezal had held her in his arms, and he knew better.

  The great panelled doors of the royal bedchamber were held open by a pair of cringing footmen, then shut silently as the King and Queen of the Union swept past. The mighty bed dominated the far side of the room, sprays of tall feathers at the corners of its canopy casting long shadows up onto the gilded ceiling. Its rich green curtains hung invitingly wide, the silken space beyond filled with soft and tantalising shadows.

  Terez took a few slow steps into the chamber ahead of him, her head bowed, while Jezal turned the key in the lock with a long, smooth rattling of wards. His breath came fast as he stepped up behind his wife, lifted his hand and placed it gently on her bare shoulder. He felt the muscles stiffen under her smooth skin, smiled at her nervousness, matching his own so closely. He wondered if he should say something to try and calm her, but what would have been the purpose? They both knew what had to happen now, and Jezal for one was impatient to begin.