Last Argument of Kings tfl-3

by Joe Abercrombie

  Their words tickled at his ears.

  “It’s him.”

  “Ninefingers.”

  “The Bloody-Nine!”

  A circle of fear, with him at the centre, and they were wise to fear.

  Their deaths were written in the shapes of sweet blood on the bitter ground. Their deaths were whispered in the buzzing of the flies on the corpses beyond the wall. Their deaths were stamped on their faces, carried on the wind, held in the crooked line between the mountains and the sky. Dead men, all.

  “Who’s next to the mud?” he whispered.

  A bold Carl stepped forward, a shield on his arm with a coiled serpent upon it. Before he could even lift his spear the Bloody-Nine’s sword had made a great circle, above the top of his shield and below the bottom of his helmet. The point of the blade stole the jawbone from his head, cleaved into the shoulder of the next man, ate deep into his chest and drove him into the earth, blood flying from his silent mouth. Another man loomed up and the sword fell on him like a falling star, crushed his helmet and the skull beneath it down to his mouth. The body dropped on its back and danced a merry jig in the dirt.

  “Dance!” laughed the Bloody-Nine, and the sword reeled around him. He filled the air with blood, and broken weapons, and the parts of men, and these good things wrote secret letters, and described sacred patterns that only he could see and understand. Blades pricked and nicked and dug at him but they were nothing. He repaid each mark upon his burning skin one-hundred fold, and the Bloody-Nine laughed, and the wind, and the fire, and the faces on the shields laughed with him, and could not stop.

  He was the storm in the High Places, his voice as terrible as the thunder, his arm as quick, as deadly, as pitiless as the lightning. He rammed the sword through a man’s guts, ripped it back and smashed a man’s mouth apart with the pommel, snatched his spear away with his free hand and flung it through the neck of a third, split a Carl’s side yawning open as he passed. He reeled, spun, rolled, drunken dizzy, spitting fire and laughter. He forged a new circle about him. A circle as wide as the giant’s sword. A circle in which the world belonged to him.

  His enemies lurked beyond its limit now, shuffled back from it, full of fear. They knew him, he could see it in their faces. They had heard whispers of his work, and now he had given them a bloody lesson, and they knew the truth of it, and he smiled to see them enlightened. The foremost of them held up his open hand, bent forward and laid his axe down on the ground.

  “You are forgiven,” whispered the Bloody-Nine, and let his own sword clatter to the dirt. Then he darted forward and seized the man by his throat, lifting him up into the air with both his hands. He thrashed and kicked and wrestled, but the Bloody-Nine’s red grip was the swelling ice that bursts the very bones of the earth apart.

  “You are forgiven!” His hands were made of iron, and his thumbs sunk deeper and deeper into the man’s neck until blood welled up from under them, and he lifted the kicking corpse out to arm’s length and held it above him until it was still. He flung it away, and it fell upon the mud and flopped over and over in a manner that greatly pleased him.

  “Forgiven…” He walked to the bright archway through a cringing crowd, shying away like sheep from the wolf, leaving a muddy path through their midst, strewn with their fallen shields and weapons. Beyond, in the sun, bright-armoured horsemen moved across the dusty valley, their swords twinkling as they rose and fell, herding running figures this way and that, riding between the high standards, rippling gently in the wind. He stood in that ragged gateway, with the splintered doors under his boots, and the corpses of his friends and of his enemies scattered about him, and he heard the sounds of men cheering victory.

  And Logen closed his eyes, and breathed.

  Too Many Masters

  In spite of the hot summer day outside, the banking hall was a cool, dim, shadowy place. A place full of whispers, and quiet echoes, built of sharp, dark marble like a new tomb. Such thin shafts of sunlight as broke through the narrow windows were full of wriggling dust motes. There was no smell to speak of. Except the stench of dishonesty, which even I find almost overpowering. The surroundings may be cleaner than the House of Questions, but I suspect there is more truth told among the criminals.

  There were no piles of shining gold ingots on display. There was not so much as a single coin in evidence. Only pens, and ink, and heaps of dull paper. Valint and Balk’s employees were not swaddled in fabulous robes such as Magister Kault of the Mercers had worn. They did not sport flashing jewels as Magister Eider of the Spicers had. They were small, grey-dressed men with serious expressions. The only flashing was from the odd pair of studious eye-glasses.

  So this is what true wealth looks like. This is how true power appears. The austere temple of the golden goddess. He watched the clerks working at their neat stacks of documents, at their neat desks arranged in neat rows. There the acolytes, inducted into the lowest mysteries of the church. His eyes flickered to those waiting. Merchants and moneylenders, shopkeepers and shysters, traders and tricksters in long queues, or waiting nervously on hard chairs around the hard walls. Fine clothes, perhaps, but anxious manners. The fearful congregation, ready to cower should the deity of commerce show her vengeful streak.

  But I am not her creature. Glokta shouldered his way past the longest queue, the tip of his cane squealing loud against the tiles, snarling, “I am crippled!” if one of the merchants dared to look his way.

  The clerk blinked at him when he reached the front of the line. “How may I—”

  “Mauthis,” barked Glokta.

  “And who shall I say is—”

  “The cripple.” Convey me to the high priest, that I might cleanse my crimes in banking notes.

  “I cannot simply—”

  “You are expected!” Another clerk, a few rows back, had stood up from his desk. “Please come with me.”

  Glokta gave the unhappy queue a toothless leer as he limped out between the desks toward a door in the far, panelled wall, but his smile did not last. Beyond it, a set of high steps rose up, light filtering down from a narrow window at the top.

  What is it about power, that it has to be higher up than everyone else? Can a man not be powerful on the ground floor? He cursed and struggled up after his impatient guide, then dragged his useless leg down a long hallway with many high doors on either side. The clerk leaned forward and humbly knocked at one, waited for a muffled “Yes?” and opened it.

  Mauthis sat behind a monumental desk watching Glokta hobble over the threshold. His face could have been carved from wood for all the warmth or welcome it displayed. On the expanse of blood-coloured leather before him pens, and ink, and neat piles of papers were arranged with all the merciless precision of recruits on a parade ground.

  “The visitor you were expecting, sir.” The clerk hastened forward with a sheaf of documents. “And there are also these for your attention.”

  Mauthis turned his emotionless eyes to them. “Yes… yes… yes… yes… all these to Talins…” Glokta did not wait to be asked. And I’ve been in pain for far too long to pretend not to be. He took a lurching step and sagged into the nearest chair, stiff leather creaking uncomfortably under his aching arse. But it will serve.

  The papers crackled as Mauthis leafed through them, his pen scratching his name at the bottom of each one. He paused at the last. “And no. This must be called in at once.” He reached forward and took hold of a stamp, its wooden handle polished by long use, and rocked it carefully in its tray of red ink. It thumped down against the paper with a disturbing finality. And is some merchant’s life squashed out under that stamp, do we suppose? Is that ruin and despair, so carelessly administered? Is that wives and children, out upon the street? There is no blood here, there are no screams, and yet men are destroyed as completely as they are in the House of Questions, and with a fraction of the effort.

  Glokta’s eyes followed the clerk as he hurried out with the documents. Or is it merely a receipt for ten bits, ref
used? Who can say? The door was pulled softly and precisely shut with the gentlest of smooth clicks.

  Mauthis paused only to align his pen precisely with the edge of his desk, then he looked up at Glokta. “I am truly grateful that you have answered promptly.”

  Glokta snorted. “The tone of your note did not seem to allow for delay.” He winced as he lifted his aching leg with both hands and heaved his dirty boot up onto the chair beside him. “I hope you will return the favour and come promptly to the point. I am extremely busy.” I have Magi to destroy, and Kings to bring down, and, if I cannot do one or the other, I have a pressing appointment to have my throat cut and be tossed in the sea.

  Mauthis’ face did not so much as flicker. “Once again, I find that my superiors are not best pleased with the direction of your investigations.”

  Is that so? “Your superiors are people of deep pockets and shallow patience. What now offends their delicate sensibilities?”

  “Your investigation into the lineage of our new King, his August Majesty Jezal the First.” Glokta felt his eye twitch, and he pressed his hand against it with a sour sucking of his gums. “In particular your enquiries into the person of Carmee dan Roth, the circumstances of her untimely demise, and the closeness of her friendship with our previous King, Guslav the Fifth. Do I come close enough to the point for your taste?”

  A little closer than I would like, in fact. “Those enquiries have scarcely even begun. I find it surprising that your superiors are so very well informed. Do they acquire their information from a crystal ball, or a magic mirror?” Or from someone at the House of Questions who likes to talk? Or from someone closer to me even than that, perhaps?

  Mauthis sighed, or at least, he allowed some air to issue from his face. “I told you to assume that they know everything. You will discover it is no exaggeration, particularly if you choose to try and deceive them. I would advise you very strongly against that course of action.”

  “Believe me when I say,” muttered Glokta through tight lips, “that I have no interest whatsoever in the King’s parentage, but his Eminence has demanded it, and keenly awaits a report of my progress. What am I to tell him?”

  Mauthis stared back with a face full of sympathy. As much sympathy as one stone might have for another. “My employers do not care what you tell him, provided that you obey them. I see that you find yourself in a difficult position, but speaking plainly, Superior, I do not see a choice for you. I suppose you could go to the Arch Lector, and lay before him the whole history of our involvement. The gift you took from my employers, the conditions under which it was given, the consideration you have already extended to us. Perhaps his Eminence is more forgiving of divided loyalties than he appears to be.”

  “Huh,” snorted Glokta. If I did not know better, I might have almost taken that for a joke. His Eminence is only slightly less forgiving than a scorpion, and we both know it.

  “Or you could honour your commitment to my employers, and do as they demand.”

  “They asked for favours, when I signed the damn receipt. Now they make demands? Where does it end?”

  “That is not for me to say, Superior. Or for you to ask.” Mauthis’ eyes flickered towards the door. He leaned across his desk and spoke soft and low. “But if my own experience is anything to go by… it will not end. My employers have paid. And they always get what they have paid for. Always.”

  Glokta swallowed. It would seem that, in this case, they have paid for my abject obedience. It would not normally be a difficulty, of course, I am every bit as abject as the next man, if not more so. But the Arch Lector demands the same. Two well-informed and merciless masters in direct opposition begins too late to seem like one too many. Two too many, some might say. But as Mauthis so kindly explains, I have no choice. He slid his boot off the chair, leaving a long streak of dirt across the leather, and shifted his weight painfully as he began the long process of getting up. “Is there anything else, or do your employers merely wish me to defy the most powerful man in the Union?”

  “They wish you also to watch him.”

  Glokta froze. “They wish me to what?”

  “There has been a great deal of change of late, Superior. Change means new opportunities, but too much change is bad for business. My employers feel a period of stability is in everyone’s best interests. They are satisfied with the situation.” Mauthis clenched his pale hands together on the red leather. “They are concerned that some figures within the government may not be satisfied. That they may seek further change. That their rash actions might lead to chaos. His Eminence concerns them especially. They wish to know what he does. What he plans. They wish, in particular, to know what he is doing in the University.”

  Glokta gave a splutter of disbelieving laughter. “Is that all?”

  The irony was wasted on Mauthis. “For now. It might be best if you were to leave by the back entrance. My employers will expect news within the week.”

  Glokta grimaced as he struggled down the narrow staircase at the back of the building, sideways on like a crab, the sweat standing out from his forehead, and not just from the effort. How could they know? First that I was looking into Prince Raynault’s death, against the Arch Lectors orders, and now that I am looking into our Majesty’s mother, on the Arch Lector’s behalf. Assume they know everything, of course, but no one knows anything without being told.

  Who… told?

  Who asked the questions, about the Prince and about the King? Whose first loyalty is to money? Who has already given me up once to save his skin? Glokta paused for a moment, in the middle of the steps, and frowned. Oh, dear, dear. Is it every man for himself, now? Has it always been?

  The pain shooting up his wasted leg was the only reply.

  Sweet Victory

  West sat, arms crossed upon his saddle-bow, staring numbly up the dusty valley. “We won,” said Pike, in a voice without emotion. Just the same voice in which he might have said, “We lost.”

  A couple of tattered standards still stood, hanging lifeless. Bethod’s own great banner had been torn down and trampled beneath horses’ hooves, and now its threadbare frame stuck up at a twisted angle, above the settling fog of dust, like clean-picked bones. A fitting symbol for the sudden fall of the King of the Northmen.

  Poulder reined in his horse beside West, smiling primly at the carnage like a schoolmaster at an orderly classroom.

  “How did we fare, General?”

  “Casualties appear to have been heavy, sir, especially in our front ranks, but the enemy were largely taken by surprise. Most of their best troops were already committed to the attack on the fortress. Once our cavalry got them on the run, we drove them all the way to the walls! Picked their camp clean.” Poulder wrinkled his nose, moustaches trembling with distaste. “Several hundred of those devilish Shanka we put to the sword, and a much greater number we drove off into the hills to the north, from whence, I do not doubt, they will be greatly reluctant to return. We wrought a slaughter among the Northmen to satisfy King Casamir himself, and the rest have laid down their arms. We guess at five thousand prisoners, sir. Bethod’s army has been quite crushed. Crushed!” He gave a girlish chuckle. “No one could deny that you have well and truly avenged the death of Crown Prince Ladisla today, Lord Marshal!”

  West swallowed. “Of course. Well and truly avenged.”

  “A master-stroke, to use our Northmen as a decoy. A bold and a decisive manoeuvre. I am, and will always be, honoured to have played my small part! A famous day for Union arms! Marshal Burr would have been proud to see it!”

  West had never in his life expected to receive praise from General Poulder, but now the great moment had come he found that he could take no pleasure in it. He had performed no acts of bravery. He had taken no risks with his own life. He had done nothing but say charge. He felt saddle-sore and bone-weary, his jaw ached from being constantly clenched with worry. Even speaking seemed an effort. “Is Bethod among the dead, or the captured?”

  “A
s to specific prisoners, sir, I could not say. It may be that our Northern allies have him.” Poulder gave vent to a jagged chuckle. “In which case I doubt he’ll be with us much longer, eh, Marshal? Eh, Sergeant Pike?” He grinned as he drew his finger sharply across his belly and clicked his tongue. “The bloody cross for him, I shouldn’t wonder! Isn’t that what they do, these savages? The bloody cross, isn’t it?”

  West did not see the funny side. “Ensure that our prisoners are given food and water, and such assistance with their wounded as we are able to provide. We should be gracious in victory.” It seemed like the sort of thing that a leader should say, after a battle.

  “Quite so, my Lord Marshal.” And Poulder gave a smart salute, the very model of an obedient underling, then reined his mount sideways and spurred away.

  West slid down from his own horse, gathered himself for a moment, and began to trudge on foot up the valley. Pike came after him, sword drawn.

  “Can’t be too careful, sir,” he said.

  “No,” murmured West. “I suppose not.”

  The long slope was scattered with men, alive and dead. The corpses of Union horsemen lay where they had fallen. Surgeons tended to the wounded with bloody hands and grim faces. Some men sat and wept, perhaps by fallen comrades. Some stared numbly at their own wounds. Others howled and gurgled, screamed for help, or water. Still others rushed to bring it to them. Final kindnesses, for the dying. A long procession of sullen prisoners was winding down the valley alongside the rock wall, watched carefully by mounted Union soldiers. Nearby were tangled heaps of surrendered weapons, piles of mail coats, stacks of painted shields.