Last Argument of Kings tfl-3

by Joe Abercrombie

  West nodded, slowly. “Here’s to the lucky few, then…” His eyes rolled back, he swayed, then slumped sideways. Jalenhorm was the first forward, catching him before he hit the ground. He flopped in the big man’s arms, a long string of thin vomit splattering against the floor.

  “Back to the palace!” snapped Kroy. “At once!”

  Brint hurried to swing the doors open while Jalenhorm and Kroy steered West out of the room, draped between them with his arms over their shoulders. His limp shoes scraped against the floor, his piebald head lolling. Glokta watched them go, standing helpless, his toothless mouth half open, as if to speak. As if to wish his friend good luck, or good health, or a merry afternoon. None of them seem quite to fit the circumstance, however.

  The doors clattered shut and Glokta was left staring at them. His eyelid flickered, he felt wet on his cheek. Not tears of compassion, of course. Not tears of grief. I feel nothing, fear nothing, care for nothing. They cut away the parts of me that could weep in the Emperor’s prisons. This can only be salt water, and nothing more. Merely a broken reflex in a mutilated face. Farewell, brother. Farewell, my only friend. And farewell to the ghost of beautiful Sand dan Glokta, too. Nothing of him remains. All for the best, of course. A man in my position can afford no indulgences.

  He took a sharp breath, and wiped his face with the back of his hand. He limped to his desk, sat, composed himself for a moment, assisted by a sudden twinge in his toeless foot. He turned his attention to his documents. Papers of confession, tasks outstanding, all the tedious business of government—

  He looked up. A figure had detached itself from the shadows behind one of the high book-cases and now stepped out into the room, arms folded. The man with the burned face who had come in with the officers. In the excitement of their exit, it seemed that he had remained behind.

  “Sergeant Pike, was it?” murmured Glokta, frowning.

  “That’s the name I’ve taken.”

  “Taken?”

  The scarred face twisted into a mockery of a smile. One even more hideous than my own, if that’s possible. “Not surprising, that you shouldn’t recognise me. My first week, there was an accident in a forge. Accidents often happen, in Angland.” Angland? That voice… something about that voice… “Still nothing? Perhaps if I come closer?”

  He sprang across the room without warning. Glokta was still struggling up from his seat as the man dived across the desk. They tumbled to the floor together in a cloud of flying paper, Glokta underneath, the back of his skull cracking against the stone, his breath all driven out in a long, agonised wheeze.

  He felt the brush of steel against his neck. Pike’s face was no more than a few inches from his, the mottled mass of burns picked out in particularly revolting detail.

  “How about now?” he hissed. “Anything seem familiar?”

  Glokta felt his left eye flickering as recognition washed over him like a wave of freezing water. Changed, of course. Changed utterly and completely. And yet I know him.

  “Rews,” he breathed.

  “None other.” Rews bit off the words with grim satisfaction.

  “You survived.” Glokta whispered it, first with amazement, then with mounting amusement. “You survived! You’re a far harder man than I gave you credit for! Far, far harder.” He started to chuckle, tears running down the side of his cheek again.

  “Something funny?”

  “Everything! You have to appreciate the irony. I have overcome so many powerful enemies, and it’s Salem Rews with the knife at my neck! It’s always the blade you don’t see coming that cuts you deepest, eh?”

  “You’ll get no deeper cuts than this one.”

  “Then cut away, my man, I am ready.” Glokta tipped his head back, stretched his neck out, pressing it up against the cold metal. “I’ve been ready for a long time.”

  Rews’ fist worked around the grip of his knife. His burned face trembled, eyes narrowing to bright slits in their pink sockets. Now.

  His mottled lips slid back from his teeth. The sinews in his neck stood out as he made ready to wield the blade. Do it.

  Glokta’s breath hissed quickly in and out, his throat tingling with anticipation. Now, at last… now…

  But Rews’ arm did not move.

  “And yet you hesitate,” whispered Glokta through his empty gums. “Not out of mercy, of course, not out of weakness. They froze all that out of you, eh? In Angland? You pause because you realise, in all that time dreaming of killing me, you never thought of what would be next. What will you truly have gained, with all your endurance? With all your cunning and your effort? Will you be hunted? Will you be sent back? I can offer you so much more.”

  Rews’ melted frown grew even harder. “What could you give me? After this?”

  “Oh, this is nothing. I suffer twice the pain and ten times the humiliation getting up in the morning. A man like you could be very useful to me. A man… as hard as you have proved yourself to be. A man who has lost everything, including all his scruples, all his mercy, all his fear. We both have lost everything. We both have survived. I understand you, Rews, as no one else ever can.”

  “Pike is my name, now.”

  “Of course it is. Let me up, Pike.”

  Slowly the knife slid away from his throat. The man who had been Salem Rews stood over him, frowning down. Who could ever anticipate the turns that fate can take? “Up, then.”

  “Easier said than done.” Glokta dragged in a few sharp breaths, then growling with a great and painful effort he rolled over onto all fours. A heroic achievement indeed. He slowly tested his limbs, wincing as his twisted joints clicked. Nothing broken. No more broken than usual, anyway. He reached out and took the handle of his fallen cane between two fingers, dragged it towards him through the scattered papers. He felt the point of the blade pressing into his back.

  “Don’t take me for a fool, Glokta. If you try anything—”

  He clutched at the edge of the desk and dragged himself up. “You’ll cut my liver out and all the rest. Don’t worry. I am far too crippled to try anything worse than shit myself. I have something to show you, though. Something that I feel sure you will appreciate. If I’m wrong, well… you can slit my throat a little later.”

  Glokta lurched out of the heavy door of his office, Pike sticking as close to his shoulder as a shadow, the knife kept carefully out of sight.

  “Stay,” he snapped at the two Practicals in the ante-room, hobbling on past the frowning secretary at the huge desk. Out into the wide hallway running through the heart of the House of Questions and Glokta limped faster, cane clicking against the tiles. It hurt him to do it, but he held his head back, gave a cold wrinkle to his lip. Out of the corners of his eyes he saw the Clerks, the Practicals, the Inquisitors, bowing, sliding backwards, clearing away. How they fear me. More than any man in Adua, and with good reason. How things have changed. And yet, how they have stayed the same. His leg, his neck, his gums. These things were as they had always been. And always will be. Unless I am tortured again, of course.

  “You look well,” Glokta tossed over his shoulder. “Aside from your hideous facial burns, of course. You lost weight.”

  “Starving can do that.”

  “Indeed, indeed. I lost a great deal of weight in Gurkhul. And not just from the pieces they cut out of me. This way.”

  They turned through a heavy door flanked by frowning Practicals, past an open gate of iron bars. Into a long and windowless corridor, sloping steadily downwards, lit by too few lanterns and filled with slow shadows. The walls were rendered and whitewashed, though none too recently. There was a seedy feel to the place, and a smell of damp. Just as there always is. The clicking of Glokta’s cane, the hissing of his breath, the rustling of his white coat, all fell dead on the chill, wet air.

  “Killing me will bring you scant satisfaction, you know.”

  “We shall see.”

  “I doubt it. I was hardly the one responsible for your little trip northwards. I did the
work perhaps, but others gave the orders.”

  “They were not my friends.”

  Glokta snorted. “Please. Friends are people one pretends to like in order to make life bearable. Men like us have no need of such indulgences. It is our enemies by which we are measured.” And here are mine. Sixteen steps confronted him. That old, familiar flight. Cut from smooth stone, a little worn towards the centre.

  “Steps. Bastard things. If I could torture one man, do you know who it would be?” Pike’s face was a single, expressionless scar. “Well, never mind.” Glokta struggled to the bottom without incident, limped on a few more painful strides to a heavy wooden door, bound with iron.

  “We are here.” Glokta slid a bunch of keys from the pocket of his white coat, flicked through them until he found the right one, unlocked the door, and went in.

  Arch Lector Sult was not the man he used to be. But then none of us are, quite. His magnificent shock of white hair was plastered greasily to his gaunt skull, dry blood matted in a yellow-brown mass on one side. His piercing blue eyes had lost their commanding sparkle, sunken as they were in deep sockets and rimmed with angry pink. He had been relieved of his clothes, and his sinewy old man’s body, somewhat hairy around the shoulders, was smeared with the grime of the cells. He looked, in fact, like nothing so much as a mad old beggar. Can this truly once have been one of the most powerful men in the wide Circle of the World? You would never guess. A salutary lesson to us all. The higher you climb, the further there is to fall.

  “Glokta!” he snarled, thrashing helplessly, chained to his chair. “You treacherous, twisted bastard!”

  Glokta held up his white-gloved hand, the purple stone on his ring of office glinting in the harsh lamplight. “I believe your Eminence is the proper term of address.”

  “You?” Sult barked sharp laughter. “Arch Lector? A withered, pitiable husk of a man? You disgust me!”

  “Don’t give me that.” Glokta lowered himself, wincing, into the other chair. “Disgust is for the innocent.”

  Sult glared up at Pike, looming menacingly over the table, his shadow falling across the polished case containing Glokta’s instruments. “What is this thing?”

  “This is an old friend of ours, Master Sult, but recently returned from the wars in the North, and seeking new opportunities.”

  “My congratulations! I never believed that you could find an assistant even more hideous than yourself!”

  “You are unkind, but thankfully we are not easily offended. Let us call him equally hideous.” And just as ruthless, too, I hope.

  “When will be my trial?”

  “Trial? Why ever would I want one of those? You are presumed dead and I have made no effort to deny it.”

  “I demand the right to address the Open Council!” Sult struggled pointlessly with his chains. “I demand… curse you! I demand a hearing!”

  Glokta snorted. “Demand away, but look around you. No one is interested in listening, not even me. We all are far too busy. The Open Council stands in indefinite recess. The Closed Council is all changed, and you are forgotten. I run things now. More completely than you could ever have dreamed of doing.”

  “On the leash of that devil Bayaz!”

  “Correct. Maybe in time I’ll work some looseness into his muzzle, just as I did into yours. Enough to get things my own way, who knows?”

  “Never! You’ll never be free of him!”

  “We’ll see.” Glokta shrugged. “But there are worse fates than being the first among slaves. Far worse. I have seen them.” I have lived them.

  “You fool! We could have been free!”

  “No. We couldn’t. And freedom is far overrated in any case. We all have our responsibilities. We all owe something to someone. Only the entirely worthless are entirely free. The worthless and the dead.”

  “What does it matter now?” Sult grimaced down at the table. “What does any of it matter? Ask your questions.”

  “Oh, we’re not here for that. Not this time. Not for questions, not for truth, not for confessions. I have my answers already.” Then why do I do this? Why? Glokta leaned slowly forwards across the table. “We are here for our amusement.”

  Sult stared at him for a moment, then he shrieked with wild laughter. “Amusement? You’ll never have your teeth back! You’ll never have your leg back! You’ll never have your life back!”

  “Of course not, but I can take yours.” Glokta turned, stiffly, slowly, painfully, and he gave a toothless grin. “Practical Pike, would you be so good as to show our prisoner the instruments?”

  Pike frowned down at Glokta. He frowned down at Sult. He stood there for a long moment, motionless.

  Then he stepped forward, and lifted the lid of the case.

  “Does the devil know he is a devil?”

  Elizabeth Madox Roberts

  The Beginning

  The sides of the valley were coated in white snow. The black road ran through it like an old scar, down to the bridge, over the river, up to the gates of Carleon. Black sprouts of sedge, tufts of black grass, black stones poked up through the clean white blanket. The black branches of the trees were each picked out on top with their own line of white. The city was a huddle of white roofs and black walls, crowded in around the hill, pressed into the fork in the black river under a stony grey sky.

  Logen wondered if this was how Ferro Maljinn saw the world. Black and white, and nothing else. No colours. He wondered where she was now, what she was doing. If she thought about him.

  Most likely not.

  “Back again.”

  “Aye,” said Shivers. “Back.” He hadn’t had much to say the whole long ride from Uffrith. They might have saved each other’s lives, but conversation was another matter. Logen reckoned he still wasn’t Shivers’ favourite man. Doubted that he ever would be.

  They rode down in silence, a long file of hard riders beside the black stream, no more than an icy trickle. Horses and men snorted out smoke, harness jingled sharp on the cold air. They rode over the bridge, hooves thumping on the hollow wood, on to the gate where Logen had spoken to Bethod. The gate he’d thrown him down from. The grass had grown back, no doubt, in the circle where he’d killed the Feared, then the snow had fallen down and covered it. So it was with all the acts of men, in the end. Covered over and forgotten.

  There was no one out to cheer for him, but that was no surprise. The Bloody-Nine arriving was never any cause for celebration, especially not in Carleon. Hadn’t turned out too well for anyone the first time he visited. Nor any of the times after. Folk were no doubt barred into their houses, scared that they’d be the first to get burned alive.

  He swung down from his horse, left Red Hat and the rest of the boys to see to themselves. He strode up through the cobbled street, up the steep slope towards the gateway of the inner wall, Shivers at his shoulder. A couple of Carls watched him come. A couple of Dow’s boys, rough-looking bastards. One of them gave him a grin with half the teeth missing. “The king!” he shouted, waving his sword in the air.

  “The Bloody-Nine!” shouted the other, rattling his shield. “King o’ the Northmen!”

  He crunched across the quiet courtyard, snow piled up into the corners, over to the high doors of Bethod’s great hall. He raised his hands and pushed them creaking open. It wasn’t much warmer inside than out in the snow. The high windows were open at the far end, the noise of the cold, cold river roaring from far below. Skarling’s Chair stood on its raised-up platform, at the top of the steps, casting a long shadow across the rough floorboards towards him.

  Someone was sitting in it, Logen realised, as his eyes got used to the dark. Black Dow. His axe and his sword leaned up against the side of the chair, the glint of sharpened metal in the darkness. Just like him, that. Always kept his weapons close to hand.

  Logen grinned at him. “Getting comfortable, Dow?”

  “Bit hard on the arse, being honest, but it’s better’n dirt for sitting in.”

  “Did you find Calder a
nd Scale?”

  “Aye. I found ’em.”

  “Dead, then, are they?”

  “Not yet. Thought I’d try something different. We been talking.”

  “Talking is it? To those two bastards?”

  “I can think o’ worse. Where’s the Dogman at?”

  “Still back there, trading words with the Union, sorting out an understanding.”

  “Grim?”

  Logen shook his head. “Back to the mud.”

  “Huh. Well, there it is. Makes this easier, anyway.” Dow’s eyes flickered sideways.

  “Makes what easier?” Logen looked round. Shivers was standing right at his shoulder, scowling as if he had someone’s murder in mind. No need to ask whose. Steel gleamed beside him in the shadows. A blade, out and ready. He could’ve stabbed Logen in the back with time to spare. But he hadn’t done, and he didn’t now. It seemed as if they all stayed still for quite a while, frozen as the cold valley out beyond the windows.

  “Shit on this.” Shivers tossed the knife away clattering across the floor. “I’m better’n you, Bloody-Nine. I’m better than the pair o’ you. You can get your own work done, Black Dow. I’m done with it.” He turned round and strode out, shoving his way past the two Carls from the gate, just now coming the other way. One of them hefted his shield as he frowned at Logen. The other one pulled the doors shut, swung the bar down with a final-sounding clunk.

  Logen slid the Maker’s sword out of its sheath, turned his head and spat on the boards. “Like that, is it?”

  “Course it is,” said Dow, still sat in Skarling’s chair. “If you’d ever looked a stride further than the end o’ your nose you’d know it.”

  “What about the old ways, eh? What about your word?”

  “The old ways are gone. You killed ’em. You and Bethod. Men’s words ain’t worth much these days. Well then?” he called over his shoulder. “Now’s your chance, ain’t it?”