The Blade Itself tfl-1

by Joe Abercrombie

  “Yes, we have made a good first step. These are dangerous times alright, and yet danger and opportunity often walk hand in hand.” Glokta felt a strange sensation creeping up his back. Is that fear, or ambition, or both? “I need someone to help me put matters in order. Someone who does not fear the Superiors, or the merchants, or even the Closed Council. Someone who can be relied upon to act with subtlety, and discretion, and ruthlessness. Someone whose loyalty to the Union is beyond question, but who has no friends within the government.” Someone who’s hated by everyone? Someone to take the fall if things turn sour? Someone who will have few mourners at their funeral?

  “I have need of an Inquisitor Exempt, Glokta. Someone to operate beyond the Superiors’ control, but with my full authority. Someone answerable only to me.” The Arch Lector raised an eyebrow, as though the thought had only just come to him. “It strikes me that you are exceptionally well suited to this task. What do you think?”

  I think the holder of such a post would have a great many enemies and only one friend. Glokta peered up at the Arch Lector. And that friend might not be so very reliable. I think the holder of such a post might not last long. “Could I have some time to consider it?”

  “No.”

  Danger and opportunity often walk hand in hand… “Then I accept.”

  “Excellent. I do believe this is the start of a long and productive relationship.” Sult smiled at him over the rim of his glass. “You know, Glokta, of all the merchants grubbing away out there, it is the Mercers I find the most unpalatable. It was largely through their influence that Westport entered the Union, and it was because of Westport’s money that we won the Gurkish war. The King rewarded them, of course, with priceless trading rights, but ever since then their arrogance has been insufferable. Anyone would have thought they fought the battles themselves, for the airs they have put on, and the liberties they have taken. The honourable Guild of Mercers,” he sneered. “It occurs to me, now that your friend Rews has given us the means to hook them in so deeply, it would be a shame to let them wriggle free.”

  Glokta was much surprised, though he thought he hid it well. To go further? Why? The Mercers wriggle free and they keep on paying, and that keeps all kinds of people happy. As things are, they’re scared and soft—wondering who Rews named, who might be next in the chair. If we go further they may be hurt, or finished entirely. Then they’ll stop paying, and a lot of people will be unhappy. Some of them in this very building. “I can easily continue my investigations, your Eminence, if you would like me to.” Glokta took another sip. It really was an excellent wine.

  “We must be cautious. Cautious and very thorough. The Mercers’ money flows like milk. They have many friends, even amongst the highest circles of the nobility. Brock, Heugen, Isher, and plenty more besides. Some of the very greatest men in the land. They’ve all been known to suck at that tit, one time or another, and babies will cry when their milk is snatched away.” A cruel grin flickered across Sult’s face. “But still, if children are to learn discipline, they must sometimes be made to weep… who did that worm Rews name in his confession?”

  Glokta leaned forward painfully and slid Rews’ paper of confession toward him, unfolded it and scanned the list of names from bottom to top.

  “Sepp dan Teufel, we all know.”

  “Oh, we know and love him, Inquisitor,” said Sult, beaming down, “but I feel we may safely cross him off the list. Who else?”

  “Well, let’s see,” Glokta took a leisurely look back at the paper. “There’s Harod Polst, a Mercer.” A nobody.

  Sult waved his hand impatiently. “He’s nobody.”

  “Solimo Scandi, a Mercer from Westport.” Also nobody.

  “No, no, Glokta, we can do better than Solimo what’s-his-name can’t we? These little Mercers are of no real interest. Pull up the root, and the leaves die by themselves.”

  “Quite so, Arch Lector. We have Villem dan Robb, minor nobility, holds a junior customs post.” Sult looked thoughtful, shook his head. “Then there’s—”

  “Wait! Villem dan Robb…” The Arch Lector snapped his fingers, “His brother Kiral is one of the Queen’s gentlemen. He snubbed me at a social gathering.” Sult smiled. “Yes, Villem dan Robb, bring him in.”

  And so we go deeper. “I serve and obey, your Eminence. Is there anyone’s name in particular that need be mentioned?” Glokta set down his empty glass.

  “No.” The Arch Lector turned away and waved his hand again. “Any of ’em, all of ’em. I don’t care.”

  First of the Magi

  The lake stretched away, fringed by steep rocks and dripping greenery, surface pricked by the rain, flat and grey as far as the eye could see. Logen’s eye couldn’t see too far in this weather, it had to be said. The opposite shore could have been a hundred strides away, but the calm waters looked deep. Very deep.

  Logen had long ago given up any attempt at staying dry, and the water ran through his hair and down his face, dripped from his nose, his fingers, his chin. Being wet, tired, and hungry had become a part of life. It often had been, come to think on it. He closed his eyes and felt the rain patter against his skin, heard the water lapping on the shingle. He knelt by the lake, pulled the stopper from his flask and pushed it under the surface, watched the bubbles break as it filled up.

  Malacus Quai stumbled out of the bushes, breathing fast and shallow. He sank down to his knees, crawled against the roots of a tree, coughed out phlegm onto the pebbles. His coughing sounded bad now. It came right up from his guts and made his whole rib cage rattle. He was even paler than he had been when they first met, and a lot thinner. Logen was somewhat thinner too. These were lean times, all in all. He walked over to the haggard apprentice and squatted down.

  “Just give me a moment.” Quai closed his sunken eyes and tipped his head back. “Just a moment.” His mouth hung open, the tendons in his scrawny neck standing out. He looked like a corpse already.

  “Don’t rest too long. You might never get up.”

  Logen held out the flask. Quai didn’t even lift his arm to take it, so Logen put it against his lips and tipped it up a little. He took a wincing swallow, coughed, then his head dropped back against the tree like a stone.

  “Do you know where we are?” asked Logen.

  The apprentice blinked out at the water as though he’d only just noticed it. “This must be the north end of the lake… there should be a track.” His voice had sunk to a whisper. “At the southern end there’s a road with two stones.” He gave a sudden violent cough, swallowed with difficulty. “Follow the road over the bridge and you’re there,” he croaked.

  Logen looked off along the beach at the dripping trees. “How far is it?” No answer. He took hold of the sick man’s bony shoulder and shook it. Quai’s eyelids flickered open, he stared up blearily, trying to focus. “How far?”

  “Forty miles.”

  Logen sucked his teeth. Quai wouldn’t be walking forty miles. He’d be lucky to make forty strides on his own. He knew it well enough, you could see it in his eyes. He’d be dead soon, Logen reckoned, a few days at the most. He’d seen stronger men die of a fever.

  Forty miles. Logen thought about it carefully, rubbing his chin with his thumb. Forty miles.

  “Shit,” he whispered.

  He dragged the pack over and pulled it open. They had some food left, but not much. A few shreds of tough dried meat, a heel of mouldy black bread. He looked out over the lake, so peaceful. They wouldn’t be running out of drinking water any time soon at least. He pulled his heavy cookpot out of his pack and set it down on the shingle. They’d been together a long time, but there was nothing left to cook. You can’t become attached to things, not out here in the wild. He tossed the rope away into the bushes, then threw the lightened pack over his shoulder.

  Quai’s eyes had closed again, and he was scarcely breathing. Logen still remembered the first time he had to leave someone behind, remembered it like it was yesterday. Strange how the boy’s name ha
d gone but the face was with him still.

  The Shanka had taken a piece out of his thigh. A big piece. He’d moaned all the way, he couldn’t walk. The wound was going bad, he was dying anyway. They had to leave him. No one had blamed Logen for it. The boy had been too young, he should never have gone. Bad luck was all, could happen to anyone. He’d cried after them as they made their way down the hillside in a grim, silent group, heads down. Logen seemed to hear the cries even when they’d left him far behind. He could still hear them.

  In the wars it had been different. Men dropped from the columns all the time on the long marches, in the cold months. First they fell to the back, then they fell behind, then they fell over. The cold, the sick, the wounded. Logen shivered and hunched his shoulders. At first he’d tried to help them. Then he became grateful he wasn’t one of them. Then he stepped over the corpses and hardly noticed them. You learn to tell when someone isn’t getting up again. He looked at Malacus Quai. One more death in the wild was nothing to remark upon. You have to be realistic, after all.

  The apprentice started from his fitful sleep and tried to push himself up. His hands were shaking bad. He looked up at Logen, eyes glittering bright. “I can’t get up,” he croaked.

  “I know. I’m surprised you made it this far.” It didn’t matter so much now. Logen knew the way. If he could find that track he might make twenty miles a day.

  “If you leave me some of the food… perhaps… after you get to the library… someone…”

  “No,” said Logen, setting his jaw. “I need the food.”

  Quai made a strange sound, somewhere between a cough and a sob.

  Logen leaned down and set his right shoulder in Quai’s stomach, pushed his arm under his back. “I can’t carry you forty miles without it,” and he straightened up, hauling the apprentice over his shoulder. He set off down the shore, holding Quai in place by his jacket, his boots crunching into the wet shingle. The apprentice didn’t even move, just hung there like a sack of wet rags, his limp arms knocking against the backs of Logen’s legs.

  When he’d made it thirty strides or so Logen turned around and looked back. The pot was sitting forlorn by the lake, already filling up with rainwater. They’d been through a lot together, him and that pot.

  “Fare you well, old friend.”

  The pot did not reply.

  Logen set his shivering burden gently down at the side of the road and stretched his aching back, scratched at the dirty bandage on his arm, took a drink of water from his flask. Water was the only thing to have passed his sore lips that day, and the hunger was gnawing at his guts. At least it had stopped raining. You have to learn to love the small things in life, like dry boots. You have to love the small things, when you’ve nothing else.

  Logen spat in the dirt and rubbed the life back into his fingers. There was no missing the place, that was sure. The two stones towered over the road, ancient and pitted, patched with green moss at the base and grey lichen higher up. They were covered in faded carvings, lines of letters in a script Logen couldn’t understand, didn’t even recognise. There was a forbidding feel about them though, a sense more of warning than welcome.

  “The First Law…”

  “What?” said Logen, surprised. Quai had been in an unpleasant place between sleep and waking ever since they left the pot behind two days before. The pot could have made more meaningful sounds in that time. That morning Logen had woken to find him scarcely breathing. He’d been sure that he was dead, to begin with, but the man was still clinging weakly to life. He didn’t give up easy, you had to give him that.

  Logen knelt down and shoved the wet hair out of Quai’s face. The apprentice suddenly grabbed his wrist and started forward.

  “It’s forbidden,” he whispered, staring at Logen with wide eyes, “to touch the Other Side!”

  “Eh?”

  “To speak with devils,” he croaked, grabbing hold of Logen’s battered coat. “The creatures of the world below are made of lies! You mustn’t do it!”

  “I won’t,” muttered Logen, wondering if he’d ever know what the apprentice was talking about. “I won’t. For what that’s worth.”

  It wasn’t worth much. Quai had already dropped back into his twitching half-sleep. Logen chewed at his lip. He hoped the apprentice would wake again, but he didn’t think it likely. Still, perhaps this Bayaz would be able to do something, he was the First of the Magi after all, great in high wisdom and so on. So Logen hefted Quai up onto his shoulder again and trudged between the ancient stones.

  The road climbed steep into the rocks above the lake, here built up, there cut deep into the stony ground. It was worn and pitted with age, pocked with weeds. It switched back on itself again and again, and soon Logen was panting and sweating, his legs burning with the effort. His pace began to slow.

  The fact was, he was getting tired. Not just tired from the climb, or from the back-breaking slog he’d walked that day with a half-dead apprentice over his shoulder, or from the slog the day before, or even from the fight in the woods. He was tired of everything. Of the Shanka, of the wars, of his whole life.

  “I can’t walk for ever, Malacus, I can’t fight for ever. How much of this horrible shit should a man have to take? I need to sit down a minute. In a proper fucking chair! Is that too much to ask? Is it?” In this frame of mind, cursing and grumbling at every step, and with Quai’s head knocking against his arse, Logen came to the bridge.

  It was as ancient as the road, coated with creepers, simple and slender, arching maybe twenty strides across a dizzying gorge. Far below a river surged over jagged rocks, filling the air with noise and shining spray. On the far side a high wall had been built between towering faces of mossy stone, made with such care it was difficult to say where the natural cliff ended and the man-made one began. A single ancient door was set into it, faced with beaten copper, turned streaky green by the wet and the years.

  As Logen picked his way carefully across the slippery stone he found himself wondering, through force of habit, how you could storm this place. You couldn’t. Not with a thousand picked men. There was only a narrow shelf of rock before the door, no room to set a ladder or swing a ram. The wall was ten strides high at least, and the gate had a dreadful solid look. And if the defenders were to bring down the bridge… Logen peered over the edge, and swallowed. It was a long way down.

  He took a deep breath and thumped on the damp green copper with his fist. Four big, booming knocks. He’d beat on the gates of Carleon like that, after the battle, and its people had rushed to surrender. No one rushed to do anything now.

  He waited. He knocked again. He waited. He became wetter and wetter in the mist from the river. He ground his teeth. He raised his arm to knock again. A narrow hatch snapped open, and a pair of rheumy eyes stared at him coldly from between thick bars.

  “Who’s this now?” snapped a gruff voice.

  “Logen Ninefingers is my name. I’ve—”

  “Never heard of you.”

  Hardly the welcome Logen had been hoping for. “I’ve come to see Bayaz.” No reply. “The First of the—”

  “Yes. He’s here.” But the door didn’t open. “He isn’t taking visitors. I told that to the last messenger.”

  “I’m no messenger, I have Malacus Quai with me.”

  “Malaca what?”

  “Quai, the apprentice.”

  “Apprentice?”

  “He’s very ill,” said Logen slowly. “He may die.”

  “Ill, you say? Die, was it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what was your name again—”

  “Just open the fucking door!” Logen shook his fist pointlessly at the slot. “Please.”

  “We don’t let just anyone in… hold up. Show me your hands.”

  “What?”

  “Your hands.” Logen held his hands up. The watery eyes moved slowly across his fingers. “There are nine. There’s one missing, see?” He shoved the stump at the hatch.

  “Nine
, is it? You should have said.”

  Bolts clanked and the door creaked slowly open. An elderly man, bent under an old-fashioned suit of armour, was staring at him suspiciously from the other side. He was holding a long sword much too heavy for him. Its point wobbled around wildly as he strained to keep it upright.

  Logen held up his hands. “I surrender.”

  The ancient gatekeeper was not amused. He grunted sourly as Logen stepped past him, then he wrestled the door shut and fumbled with the bolts, turned and trudged away without another word. Logen followed him up a narrow valley lined with strange houses, weathered and mossy, half dug into the steep rocks, merging with the mountainside.

  A dour-faced woman was working at a spinning wheel on a doorstep, and she frowned at Logen as he walked past with the unconscious apprentice over his shoulder. Logen smiled back at her. She was no beauty, that was sure, but it had been a very long time. The woman ducked into her house and kicked the door shut, leaving the wheel spinning. Logen sighed. The old magic was still there.

  The next house was a bakery with a squat, smoking chimney. The smell of baking bread made Logen’s empty stomach rumble. Further on, a couple of dark-haired children were laughing and playing, running round a scrubby old tree. They reminded Logen of his own children. They didn’t look anything like them, but he was in a morbid frame of mind.

  He had to admit to being a little disappointed. He’d been expecting something cleverer-looking, and a lot more beards. These folk didn’t seem so very wise. They looked just like any other peasants. Not unlike his own village had looked before the Shanka came. He wondered if he was in the right place. Then they rounded a bend in the road.