Last Argument of Kings tfl-3

by Joe Abercrombie

  “We will set up our headquarters here, for the time being. Major Jalenhorm?”

  “Sir?”

  “Find General Kroy and tell him to keep pressing north and west, towards the Agriont.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Somebody get some men together and start clearing this rubbish from the docks. We need to get our people through quicker.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And somebody find me General Poulder, damn it! Each man has to do his part!”

  “What’s this now?” grunted Pike.

  A strange procession was sweeping down the blasted quay towards them, almost dreamily out of place amongst the wreckage. A dozen watchful guards in black armour flanked a single man. He had black hair streaked with grey, sported a pointed beard, immaculately trimmed. He wore black boots, a fluted breastplate of black steel, a cloak of black velvet flowing majestically from one shoulder. He was dressed, in fact, like the world’s richest undertaker, but walked with the kind of steely self-importance reserved for the highest royalty. He plotted a direct course towards West, looking neither left nor right, the dumbfounded guards and staff forced effortlessly aside by his air of command like iron filings parted by magnetic repulsion.

  He held out his black-gauntleted hand. “I am Grand Duke Orso, of Talins.”

  The idea, perhaps, was that West should kneel and kiss it. Instead he seized it with his own and gave it a firm shake. “Your Excellency, an honour.” He had no idea if that was even the proper form of address. He had scarcely been expecting to encounter one of the most powerful men in the world in the midst of a bloody battle on the docks of Adua. “I am Lord Marshal West, commander of his Majesty’s Army. Not to appear ungrateful, but you are far from home—”

  “My daughter is your Queen. On her behalf, the people of Talins are prepared to make any sacrifice. As soon as I heard of the…” He arched one black eyebrow at the burning harbour. “Troubles, here, I prepared an expedition. The ships of my fleet, as well as ten thousand of my best troops, stand at your disposal.”

  West hardly knew how to respond. “They do?”

  “I have taken the liberty of disembarking them. They are engaged in clearing the Gurkish from the south-western quarter of the city. The Three Farms, is it called?”

  “Er… yes.”

  Duke Orso gave the thinnest of smiles. “A picturesque name for an urban area. You need no longer trouble yourself with your western flank. I wish you the best of luck with your endeavours, Lord Marshal. If fate is willing, we will meet each other afterward. Victorious.” He bowed his magnificent head and swept away.

  West stared after him. He knew that he really should have been grateful for the sudden appearance of ten thousand helpful Styrian troops, but he could not escape the nagging feeling that he would have been happier if Grand Duke Orso had never arrived. For the time being, however, he had more pressing worries.

  “Lord Marshal!” It was Brint, hurrying down the quay at the front of a group of officers. One side of his face was covered in a long smear of ash. “Lord Marshal, General Poulder—”

  “At long bloody last!” snapped West. “Now perhaps we’ll have some answers. Where the hell is that bastard?” He shouldered Brint aside, and froze. Poulder lay on a stretcher held by four muddy and miserable-looking members of his staff. He had the expression of a man in peaceful sleep, to the degree that West kept expecting to hear him snore. A huge, ragged wound in his chest rather spoiled the effect, however.

  “General Poulder led the charge from the front,” said one of the officers, swallowing his tears. “A noble sacrifice…”

  West stared down. How often had he wished that man dead? He jerked one hand over his face at a sudden wave of nausea. “Damn it,” he whispered.

  “Damn it!” hissed Glokta as he twisted his trembling ankle on the topmost step and nearly pitched onto his face. A bony Inquisitor coming the other way gave him a long look. “Is there a problem?” he snarled back. The man lowered his head and hurried past without speaking.

  Click, tap, pain. The dim hallway slid by with agonising slowness. Every step was an ordeal, now, but he forced himself on, legs burning, foot throbbing, neck aching, sweat running down his twisted back under his clothes, a rictus of toothless nonchalance clamped onto his face. At every gasp and grunt through the building he had expected a challenge. With each twinge and spasm he had been waiting for the Practicals to flood from the doorways and butcher him and his thinly disguised hirelings like hogs.

  But those few nervous people they had passed had scarcely looked up. Fear has made them sloppy. The world teeters at a precipice. All scared to take a step in case they put a foot into empty air. The instinct of self-preservation. It can destroy a man’s efficiency.

  He lurched through the open doors and into the ante-room outside the Arch Lector’s office. The secretary’s head jerked angrily up. “Superior Glokta! You cannot simply…” He stumbled on the words as the mercenaries began to tramp into the narrow room behind him. “I mean to say… you cannot…”

  “Silence! I am acting on the express orders of the king himself.” Well, everyone lies. The difference between a hero and a villain is whether anyone believes him. “Step aside!” he hissed at the two Practicals flanking the door, “or be prepared to answer for it.” They glanced at each other, then, as more of Cosca’s men appeared, raised their hands together and allowed themselves to be disarmed. The instinct of self-preservation. A decided disadvantage.

  Glokta paused before the doorway. Where I have cringed so often at the pleasure of his Eminence. His fingers tingled against the wood. Can it possibly be this easy? To simply walk up in broad daylight and arrest the most powerful man in the Union? He had to suppress a smirk. If only I had thought of it sooner. He wrenched the doorknob round and lurched over the threshold.

  Sult’s office was much as it had always been. The great windows, with their view of the University, the huge round table with its jewelled map of the Union, the ornate chairs and the brooding portraits. It was not Sult sitting in the tall chair, however. It was none other than his favourite lapdog, Superior Goyle. Trying the big seat out for size, are we? Far too big for you, I’m afraid.

  Goyle’s first reaction was outrage. How dare anyone barge in here like this? His second was confusion. Who would dare to barge in here like this? His third was shock. The cripple? But how? His fourth, as he saw Cosca and four of his men follow Glokta through the door, was horror. Now we’re getting so mew here.

  “You!” he hissed. “But you’re—”

  “Slaughtered? Change of plans, I’m afraid. Where’s Sult?”

  Goyle’s eyes flickered around the room, over the dwarfish mercenary, the one with a hook for a hand, the one with the hideous boils, and came to rest on Cosca, swaggering round the edge of the chamber with one fist on his sword-hilt.

  “I’ll pay you! Whatever he’s paying you, I’ll double it!”

  Cosca held out his open palm. “I prefer cash in hand.”

  “Now? I don’t have… I don’t have it with me!”

  “A shame, but I work on the same principle as a whore. You’ll buy no fun with promises, my friend. No fun at all.”

  “Wait!” Goyle stumbled up and took a step back, his trembling hands held up in front of him. But there’s nowhere to go but out the window. That’s the trouble with ambition. It’s easy to forget, when you’re always looking upwards, that the only way down from the dizzy heights is a long drop.

  “Sit down, Goyle,” growled Glokta.

  Cosca grabbed his wrist, twisted his right arm savagely behind him and made him squeal, forced him back into the chair, clamped one hand round the back of his head and smashed his face into the beautiful map of the Union. There was a sharp crunch as his nose broke, spattering blood across the western part of Midderland.

  Hardly subtle, but then the time for subtlety is behind us. The Arch Lector’s confession, or someone close to him… Sult would have been better, but if we cannot hav
e the brains, I suppose we must make do with the arsehole. “Where is that girl with my instruments?” Ardee crept cautiously into the room, came slowly across to the table and put the case down.

  Glokta snapped his fingers, pointed. The fat mercenary ambled up and took a firm grip on Goyle’s free arm, dragged it sharply out across the table. “I expect you think you know an awful lot about torture, eh, Goyle? Believe me, though, you don’t really understand a thing until you’ve spent some time on both sides of the table.”

  “You mad bastard!” The Superior squirmed, smearing blood across the Union with his face. “You’ve crossed the line!”

  “Line?” Glokta spluttered with laughter. “I spent the night cutting the fingers from one of my friends and killing another, and you dare to talk to me about lines?” He pushed open the lid of the case and his instruments offered themselves up. “The only line that matters is the one that separates the strong from the weak. The man who asks the questions from the man who answers them. There are no other lines.”

  He leaned forward and ground the tip of his finger into the side of Goyle’s skull. “That’s all in your head! The manacles, if you please.”

  “Eh?” Cosca looked to the fat mercenary, and the man shrugged, the blurred tattoos on his thick neck squirming.

  “Pffft,” said the dwarf. Boil-face was silent. The one-handed mercenary had pulled down his mask and was busy picking his nose with his hook.

  Glokta arched his back and gave a heavy sigh. There really is no replacement for experienced help. “Then I suppose we must improvise.” He scooped up a dozen long nails and scattered them jingling across the table-top. He slid out the hammer, its polished head shining. “I think you can see where we’re going with this.”

  “No. No! We can work something out, we can—” Glokta pressed the point of one nail into Goyle’s wrist. “Ah! Wait! Wait—”

  “Would you be good enough to hold this? I have only one hand to spare.”

  Cosca took the nail gingerly between finger and thumb. “Mind where you aim with the hammer, though, eh?”

  “Don’t worry. I am quite precise.” An awful lot of practice.

  “Wait!” screeched Goyle.

  The hammer made three metallic clicks, almost disappointingly quiet, as it drove the nail cleanly between the bones of Goyle’s forearm and into the table beneath. He roared with pain, spraying bloody spit over the table.

  “Oh, come now, Superior, compared to what you did to your prisoners in Angland this is really quite infantile. Try to pace yourself. If you scream like that now, you’ll have nowhere to go later.” The fat mercenary seized Goyle’s other wrist in his pudgy hands and dragged it out across the map of the Union.

  “Nail?” asked Cosca, raising an eyebrow.

  “You’re getting the hang of it.”

  “Wait! Ah! Wait!”

  “Why? This is the closest I’ve come to enjoying myself in six years. Don’t begrudge me my little moment. I get so very few of them.” Glokta raised the hammer.

  “Wait!”

  Click. Goyle roared with pain again. Click. And again. Click. The nail was through, and the one-time scourge of Angland’s penal colonies was pinned flat by both arms. I suppose that’s where ambition gets you without the talent. Humility is easier to teach than one would think. All it takes to puncture our arrogance is a nail or two in the right place. Goyle’s breath hissed through his bloody teeth, pinioned fingers clawing at the wood. Glokta disapprovingly shook his head. “I would stop struggling if I was you. You’ll only tear the flesh.”

  “You’ll pay for this, you crippled bastard! Don’t think you won’t!”

  “Oh, I’ve paid already.” Glokta turned his neck around in a slow circle, trying to make the grumbling muscles in his shoulders unclench just a fraction. “I was kept, I am not sure for how long, but I would guess at several months, in a cell no bigger than a chest of drawers. Far too small to stand, or even to sit up straight in. Every possible position twisted, bent, agonising. Hundreds of interminable hours in the pitch darkness, the stifling heat. Kneeling in a stinking slurry of my own shit, wriggling, and squirming, and gasping for air. Begging for water which my jailers let drip down through a grate above. Sometimes they would piss through it, and I would be grateful. I have never stood up straight since. I really have no idea how I remained sane.” Glokta thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. “Perhaps I didn’t. In any case, these are the kind of sacrifices I have made. What sacrifices will you make, just to keep Sult’s secrets?”

  No answer but the blood running out from under Goyle’s forearms, pooling around the glittering stone that marked the House of Questions in the city of Keln.

  “Huh.” Glokta gripped his cane hard and leaned down to whisper in Goyle’s ear. “There’s a little bit of flesh, between your fruits and your arsehole. You never really see it, unless you’re a contortionist, or unnaturally fond of mirrors. You know the one I’m talking about. Men spend hours thinking about the area in front of it, and almost as long on the area behind, but that little patch of flesh? Unfairly ignored.” He scooped up a few nails and jingled them gently in Goyle’s face. “I mean to set that right, today. I’m going to start there, and work outwards, and believe me, once I’m done, you’ll be thinking about that patch of flesh for the rest of your life. Or you’ll be thinking about where it used to be, at least. Practical Cosca, would you be kind enough to help the Superior out of his trousers?”

  “The University!” bellowed Goyle. He had a sheen of sweat all over his balding head. “Sult! He’s in the University!”

  So soon? Almost disappointing. But then few bullies take a beating well. “What’s he doing there, at a time like this?”

  “I… I don’t—”

  “Not good enough. Trousers, please.”

  “Silber! He’s with Silber!”

  Glokta frowned. “The University Administrator?”

  Goyle’s eyes darted from Glokta, to Cosca, and back again. He squeezed them shut. “The Adeptus Demonic!”

  There was a long pause. “The what?”

  “Silber, he doesn’t just run the University! He conducts… experiments.”

  “Experiments of what nature?” Glokta jabbed sharply at Goyle’s bloody face with the head of the hammer. “Before I nail your tongue to the table.”

  “Occult experiments! Sult has been giving him money, for a long time! Since the First of the Magi came calling! Before, maybe!”

  Occult experiments? Funding from the Arch Lector? It hardly seems Sult’s style, but it explains why those damn Adepti were expecting money from me when I first visited the place. And why Vitari and her circus have set up shop there now. “What experiments?”

  “Silber… he can make contact… with the Other Side!”

  “What?”

  “It’s true! I have seen it! He can learn things, secrets, there is no other way of knowing, and now…”

  “Yes?”

  “He says he has found a way to bring them through!”

  “Them?”

  “The Tellers of Secrets, he calls them!”

  Glokta licked at his dry lips. “Demons?” I thought his Eminence had no patience with superstition, when all this time… The nerve of the man!

  “He can send them against his enemies, he says. Against the Arch Lector’s enemies! They are ready to do it!”

  Glokta felt his left eye twitching, and he pressed the back of his hand against it. A year ago I would have laughed to my boots and nailed him to the ceiling. But things are different, now. We passed inside the House of the Maker. We saw Shickel smile as she burned. If there are Eaters? If there are Magi? Why should there not be demons? How could there not be? “What enemies?”

  “The High Justice! The First of the Magi!” Goyle squeezed his eyes shut again. “The king,” he whimpered.

  Ahhhh. The. King. Those two little words are my kind of magic. Glokta turned to Ardee, and showed her the yawning gap in his front teeth. “Would you be so kind
as to prepare a Paper of Confession?”

  “Would I…” She stared at him for a moment, eyes wide in her pale face, then hurried to the Arch Lector’s desk, snatched up a sheet of paper and a pen, dipped it rattling in a bottle of ink. She paused, her hand trembling. “What should I write?”

  “Oh, something like, ‘I, Superior Goyle, confess to being an accomplice in a treasonous plot of his Eminence Arch Lector Sult, to…’ ’’ How to phrase it? He raised his brows. How else but call it what it is? “ ‘To use diabolical arts against his Majesty the king and members of his Closed Council.’ ”

  The nib scratched clumsily over the paper, scattering specks of ink. Ardee held it crackling out to him. “Good enough?”

  He remembered the beautiful documents that Practical Frost used to prepare. The elegant, flowing script, the immaculate wording. Each Paper of Confession, a work of art. Glokta stared sadly down at the ink-spotted daub in his hand.

  “But a brief step from unreadable, but it will serve.” He slid the paper under Goyle’s trembling hand, then took the pen from Ardee and wedged it between his fingers. “Sign.”

  Goyle sobbed, sniffed, scrawled his name at the bottom of the page as best he could with his arm nailed down. I win, and for once the taste is almost sweet.

  “Excellent,” said Glokta. “Pull those nails, and find some sort of bandage. It would be a shame if he bled to death before he had the chance to testify. Gag him, though, I’ve heard enough for now. We’ll take him with us to the High Justice.”

  “Wait! Wait! Wurghh—!” Goyle’s cries were sharply cut off as the mercenary with the boils wedged a wad of dirty cloth in his mouth. The dwarf slid the pliers from the case. So far, and we are still alive. What ever are the odds of that? Glokta limped to the window and stood, stretching his aching legs. There was a muffled shriek as the first nail was ripped from Goyle’s arm, but Glokta’s thoughts were elsewhere. He stared out towards the University, its spires looming up through the smoky murk like clawing fingers. Occult experiments? Summonings and sendings? He licked sourly at his empty gums. What is going on in there?