Bayaz’ eyes did not deviate from his own. “In effect… yes.”
Jezal was left momentarily speechless. For the Magus to suppose that he could come and go as he pleased, leaving his maimed lackey in charge? Above a king, in his own kingdom? The overwhelming arrogance of the man! “You have taken a high hand of late in my affairs!” he snapped. “I am in no mind to trade one overbearing adviser for another.”
“That man will be very useful to you. To us. Decisions will have to be made that you would find difficult. Actions will have to be taken which you would rather not take yourself. People who would live in sparkling palaces need others willing to carry away their ordure, lest it pile up in the polished corridors and one day bury them. All this is simple, and obvious. You have not attended to me.”
“No! You are the one who has failed to attend! Sand dan Glokta? That crippled bastard…” he realised his unfortunate choice of words, but had to forge on regardless, growing angrier than ever, “sitting beside me at the Closed Council? Leering over my shoulder every day of my life? And now you would have him dictate to me? Unacceptable. Insufferable. Impossible! We are no longer in the time of Harod the Great! I have no notion of what causes you to suppose that you could speak to me in such a manner. I am king here, and I refuse to be steered!”
Bayaz closed his eyes, and drew a slow breath threw his nose. Quite as though he were trying to find the patience for the education of a moron. “You cannot understand what it is to live as long as I have. To know all that I know. You people are dead in the blink of an eye, and have to be taught the same old lessons all over again. The same lessons that Juvens taught Stolicus a thousand years ago. It becomes extremely tiresome.”
Jezal’s fury was steadily building. “I apologise if I bore you!”
“I accept your apology.”
“I was joking!”
“Ah. Your wit is so very sharp I hardly noticed I was cut.”
“You mock me!”
“It is easily done. Every man seems a child to me. When you reach my age you see that history moves in circles. So many times I have guided this nation back from the brink of destruction, and on to ever greater glory. And what do I ask in return? A few little sacrifices? If you only understood the sacrifices that I have made on behalf of you cattle!”
Jezal stabbed one finger furiously towards the window. “And what of all those dead? What of all those who have lost everything? Those cattle, as you put it! Are they happy with their sacrifices, do you suppose? What of all those who have suffered from this illness? That still suffer? My own close friend among them! I cannot but notice it seems similar to that illness you described to us in ruined Aulcus. I cannot help thinking that your magic might be the cause!”
The Magus made no effort to deny it. “I deal in the momentous. I cannot concern myself with the fate of every peasant. Neither can you. I have tried to teach you this, but it seems you have failed to learn the lesson.”
“You are mistaken! I refuse to learn it!” Now was his chance. Now, while he was angry enough, for Jezal to step forever from the shadow of the First of the Magi and stand a free man. Bayaz was poison, and he had to be cut out. “You helped me to my throne, and for that I thank you. But I do not care for your brand of government, it smacks of tyranny!”
Bayaz narrowed his eyes. “Government is tyranny. At its best it is dressed in pretty colours.”
“Your callous disregard for the lives of my subjects! I will not stand for it! I have moved beyond you. You are no longer wanted here. No longer needed. I will find my own way from now on.” He waved Bayaz away with what he hoped was a regal gesture of dismissal. “You may leave.”
“May… I… indeed?” The First of the Magi stood in silence for a long time, his frown growing darker and darker. Long enough for Jezal’s rage to begin to wilt, for his mouth to go dry, for his knees to feel weak. “I perceive that I have been far too soft with you,” said Bayaz, each word sharp as a razor-cut. “I have coddled you, like a favourite grandchild, and you have grown wilful. A mistake that I shall not make again. A responsible guardian should never be shy with the whip.”
“I am a son of kings!” snarled Jezal, “I will not—”
He was doubled over by a spear of pain through his guts, stunningly sudden. He tottered a step or two, scalding vomit spraying from his mouth. He crashed onto his face, scarcely able even to breathe, his crown bouncing off and rolling away into the corner of the room. He had never known agony like it. Not a fraction of it.
“I have no notion… of what causes you to suppose… that you could speak to me in such a manner. To me, the First of the Magi!” Jezal heard Bayaz’ footsteps thumping slowly towards him, voice picking at his ears as he squirmed helplessly in his own sick.
“Son of kings? I am disappointed, after all that we have been through together, that you would so readily believe the lies I have spread on your behalf. That nonsense was meant for the idiots in the streets, but it seems that idiots in palaces are lulled by sweet slop just as easily. I bought you from a whore. You cost me six marks. She wanted twenty, but I drive a hard bargain.”
The words were painful, of course. But far, far worse was the unbearable stabbing that cut up Jezal’s spine, that tore at his eyes, burned his skin, seared the very roots of his hair and made him thrash like a frog in boiling water.
“I had others waiting, of course. I know better than to trust all to one throw of the dice. Other sons of mysterious parentage, ready to step into the role. There was a family called Brint, as I recall, and plenty more besides. But you floated to the top, Jezal, like a turd in the bath. When I crossed that bridge into the Agriont and saw you grown, I knew you were the one. You simply looked right, and you can’t teach that. You have even come to speak like a king, which is a bonus I never expected.”
Jezal moaned and slobbered, unable even to scream. He felt Bayaz’ boot slide under him and kick him over onto his back. The Magus’ scowling face loomed down towards him, blurred by tears.
“But if you insist on being difficult… if you insist on going your own way… well, there are other options. Even kings die unexplained deaths. Thrown by a horse. Choked on an olive-pit. Long falls to the hard, hard cobblestones. Or simply found dead in the morning. Life is always short for you insects. But it can be very short for those who are not useful. I made you out of nothing. Out of air. With a word I can unmake you.” Bayaz snapped his fingers, and the sound was like a sword through Jezal’s stomach. “Like that you can be replaced.”
The First of the Magi leaned down further. “Now, dolt, bastard, son of a whore, consider carefully your answers to these questions. You will do as your Arch Lector advises, yes?”
The cramps relaxed a merciful fraction. Enough for Jezal to whisper, yes.
“You will be guided by him in all things?”
“Yes.”
“You will abide by his orders, in public and in private?”
“Yes,” he gasped, “yes.”
“Good,” said the Magus, straightening up, towering over Jezal as his statue had once towered over the people on the Kingsway. “I knew that you would say so, because although I know that you are arrogant, ignorant, and ungrateful, I know this also… you are a coward. Remember that. I trust that this is one lesson you will not ignore.” The agony ebbed suddenly away. Enough for Jezal to lift his spinning head from the tiles.
“I hate you,” he managed to croak.
Bayaz spluttered with laughter. “Hate me? The arrogance of you! To suppose that I might care. I, Bayaz, first apprentice of great Juvens! I, who threw down the Master Maker, who forged the Union, who destroyed the Hundred Words!” The Magus slowly lifted his foot and planted it on the side of Jezal’s jaw. “I don’t care whether you like me, fool.” He ground Jezal’s face into the vomit-spattered floor with his boot. “I care that you obey. And you will. Yes?”
“Yes,” Jezal slobbered through his squashed mouth.
“Then, your Majesty, I take my leave. Pray t
hat you never give me cause to return.” The crushing pressure on his face released and Jezal heard the Magus’ footsteps tap away to the far side of the room. The door creaked open, and then clicked firmly shut.
He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, his breath heaving quickly in and out. After a while he drew up the courage to roll over, dragged himself dizzily up to his hands and knees. There was an unpleasant stink, and not just from the vomit smeared across his face. He realised with a meagre flicker of shame that he had soiled himself. He crawled across to the window, still limp as a wrung-out rag, drew himself gasping up to his knees, and looked down into the chilly gardens.
It only took a moment for Bayaz to come into view, striding down the gravel path between the neat lawns, the back of his bald pate shining. Yoru Sulfur walked behind him, staff in one hand, a box of dark metal held under the other arm. The same box that had followed Jezal, and Logen, and Ferro in a cart across half the Circle of the World. What happy days those seemed now.
Bayaz stopped, suddenly, turned, raised his head. He looked up, straight towards the window.
Jezal pressed himself into the hangings with a whimper of terror, his whole body trembling, the after-image of that unbearable pain still stamped, cold as ice, into his guts. The First of the Magi stood there for a moment longer, the faintest hint of a smile on his face. Then he turned away smartly, strode between the bowing Knights of the Body flanking the gate, and was gone.
Jezal knelt there, clinging to the curtains like a child to his mother. He thought about how happy he had once been, and how little he had realised it. Playing cards, surrounded by friends, a bright future ahead of him. He dragged in a heavy breath, the tightness of tears creeping up his throat, spreading out around his eyes. Never in his life had he felt so alone. Son of Kings? He had no one and nothing. He spluttered and sniffed. His vision grew blurry. He shook with hopeless sobs, his scarred lip trembling, the tears dripping down and spattering on the tiles.
He wept with pain and fear, with shame and anger, with disappointment and helplessness. But Bayaz had been right. He was a coward. So most of all he wept with relief.
Good Men, Evil Men
Grey morning time, out in the cold, wet gardens, and the Dogman was just stood there, thinking about how things used to be better. Stood there, in the middle of that circle of brown graves, staring at the turned earth over Harding Grim. Strange, how a man who said so little could leave such a hole.
It was a long journey that Dogman had taken, the last few years, and a strange one. From nowhere to nowhere, and he’d lost a lot of friends along the way. He remembered all those men gone back to the mud. Harding Grim. Tul Duru Thunderhead. Rudd Threetrees. Forley the Weakest. And what for? Who was better off because of it? All that waste. It was enough to make a man sick to the soles of his boots. Even one who was famous for having a flat temper. All gone, and left Dogman lonely. The world was a narrower place without ’em.
He heard footsteps through the wet grass. Logen, walking up through the misty rain, breath smoking round his scarred face. Dogman remembered how happy he’d been, that night, when Logen had stepped into the firelight, still alive. It had seemed like a new beginning, then. A good moment, promising better times. Hadn’t quite worked out that way. Strange, how the Dogman didn’t feel so happy at the sight of Logen Ninefingers no more.
“The King o’ the Northmen,” he muttered. “The Bloody-Nine. How’s the day?”
“Wet is how it is. Getting late in the year.”
“Aye. Another winter coming.” Dogman picked at the hard skin on his palm. “They come quicker and quicker.”
“Reckon it’s high time I got back to the North, eh? Calder and Scale still loose, making mischief, and the dead know what type o’ trouble Dow’s cooked up.”
“Aye, I daresay. High time we left.”
“I want you to stay.”
Dogman looked up. “Eh?”
“Someone needs to talk to the Southerners, make a deal. You’ve always been the best man I knew for talking. Other than Bethod, maybe, but… he ain’t an option now, is he?”
“What sort of a deal?”
“Might be we’ll need their help. There’ll be all kind o’ folk in the North not too keen about the way things have gone. Folk don’t want a king, or don’t want this one, leastways. The Union on our side’ll be a help. Wouldn’t hurt if you brought some weapons back with you too, when you come.”
Dogman winced. “Weapons, is it?”
“Better to have ’em and not want ’em, than to need ’em but—”
“I know the rest. What happened to one more fight, then we’re done? What happened to making things grow?”
“They might have to grow without us, for now. Listen, Dogman, I never looked for a fight, you know that, but you have to be—”
“Don’t. Even. Bother.”
“I’m trying to be a better man, here, Dogman.”
“That so? I don’t see you trying that hard. Did you kill Tul?”
Logen’s eyes went narrow. “Dow been talking, has he?”
“Never mind who said what. Did you kill the Thunderhead or did you not? Ain’t a hard one to come at. It’s just a yes or a no.”
Logen made a kind of snort, like he was about to start laughing, or about to start crying, but didn’t do either one. “I don’t know what I did.”
“Don’t know? What use is don’t know? Is that what you’ll say after you’ve stabbed me through the back, while I’m trying to save your worthless life?”
Logen winced down at the wet grass. “Maybe it will be. I don’t know.” His eyes slid back up to the Dogman’s, and stuck there, hard. “But that’s the price, ain’t it? You know what I am. You could have picked a different man to follow.”
Dogman watched him go, not knowing what to say, not knowing what to think even. Just standing there, in the midst of the graves, getting wetter. He felt someone come up beside him. Red Hat, looking off into the rain, watching after Logen’s black shape growing fainter and fainter. He shook his head, mouth pursed up tight.
“I never believed the stories they told about him. About the Bloody-Nine. All bluster, I thought. But I believe ’em now. I heard he killed Crummock’s boy, in that fight in the mountains. Carved him careless as you’d crush a beetle, no reason. That’s a man there cares for nothing. No man worse, I reckon, ever, in all the North. Not even Bethod. That’s an evil bastard, if ever there was one.”
“That so?” Dogman found he was right up in Red Hat’s face, and shouting. “Well piss on you, arsehole! Who made you the fucking judge?”
“Just saying, is all.” Red Hat stared at him. “I mean… I thought we had the same thing in mind.”
“Well, we don’t! You need a mind bigger’n a pea to hold something in it and you’re lacking the equipment, idiot! You wouldn’t know a good man from an evil if he pissed on you!”
Red Hat blinked. “Right y’are. I see I got the wrong notion.” He backed off a stride, then walked away through the drizzle, shaking his head.
Dogman watched him go, teeth gritted, thinking how he wanted to hit someone, but not sure who. There was no one here but him, now, anyway. Him and the dead. But maybe that’s what happens once the fighting stops, to a man who knows nothing but fighting. He fights himself.
He took a long breath of the cold, wet air, and he frowned down at the earth over Grim’s grave. He wondered if he’d know a good man from an evil, any more. He wondered what the difference was.
Grey morning time, out in the cold, wet gardens, and the Dogman was just stood there, thinking about how things used to be better.
Not What You Wanted
Glokta woke to a shaft of soft sunlight spilling through the hangings and across his wrinkled bed-clothes, full of dancing dust-motes. He tried to turn over, winced at a click in his neck. Ah, the first spasm of the day. The second was not long coming. It flashed through his left hip as he wrestled his way onto his back and snatched his breath away. The pain crept
down his spine, settled in his leg, and stayed there.
“Ah,” he grunted. He tried, ever so gently, to turn his ankle round, to work his knee. The pain instantly grew far worse. “Barnam!” He dragged the sheet to one side and the familiar stink of ordure rose up to his nostrils. Nothing like the stench of your own dung to usher in a productive morning.
“Ah! Barnam!” He whimpered, and slobbered, and clutched at his withered thigh, but nothing helped. The pain grew worse, and worse. The fibres started from his wasted flesh like metal cables, toeless foot flopping grotesquely on the end, entirely beyond his control.
“Barnam!” he screamed. “Barnam, you fucker! The door!” Spit dribbled from his toothless mouth, tears ran down his twitching face, his hands clawed, clutching up fistfuls of brown-stained sheet.
He heard hurried footsteps in the corridor, the lock scraping. “Locked you fool!” he squealed through his gums, thrashing with pain and anger. The knob turned and the door opened, much to his surprise. What the…
Ardee hurried over to the bed. “Get out!” he hissed, holding one arm pointlessly over his face, clutching at his bedclothes with the other. “Get out!”
“No.” She tore the sheet away and Glokta grimaced, waiting for her face to go pale, waiting for her to stagger back, one hand across her mouth, eyes wide with shock and disgust. I am married… to this shit-daubed monstrosity? She only frowned down, for a moment, then took hold of his ruined thigh and pressed her thumbs into it.
He gasped and flailed and tried to twist away but her grip was merciless, two points of agony stabbing right into the midst of his cramping sinews. “Ah! You fucking… you…” The wasted muscle went suddenly soft, and he went soft with it, dropping back against the mattress. And now being splattered with my own shit begins to seem just the slightest bit embarrassing.
He lay there for a moment, helpless. “I didn’t want you to see me… like this.”
“Too late. You married me, remember. We’re one body, now.”
Last Argument of Kings tfl-3 Page 67
