“Oh, come now, Glokta. Are you telling me you feel no thrill when your prisoners spill their secrets? When they name the names? When they sign the confession?”
“I take no pleasure in it.” I take no pleasure in anything.
“And yet you do it so very well. In any case, Goyle is coming, and whatever you may think of him, he is one of us. A most capable and trustworthy man, dedicated to the service of crown and state. He was once a pupil of mine, you know.”
“Really?”
“Yes. He had your job… so there is some future in it after all!” The Arch Lector giggled at his own joke. Glokta gave a thin smile of his own. “All in all, things have worked out very nicely, and you are to be congratulated on your part in it. A job well done.” Well enough done that I am still alive, at least. Sult raised his glass and they drank a joyless toast together, eyeing each other suspiciously over the rims of their glasses.
Glokta cleared his throat. “Magister Kault mentioned something interesting before his unfortunate demise.”
“Go on.”
“The Mercers had a partner in their schemes. A senior partner, perhaps. A bank.”
“Huh. Turn a merchant over and there’s always a banker underneath. What of it?”
“I believe these bankers knew about it all. The smuggling, the fraud, the murders even. I believe they encouraged it, maybe ordered it, so that they could get a good return on their loans. May I begin an investigation, your Eminence?”
“Which bank?”
“Valint and Balk.”
The Arch Lector seemed to consider a moment, staring at Glokta through his hard, blue eyes. Does he already know about these particular bankers? Does he already know much more than me? What did Kault say? You want traitors, Glokta? Look in the House of Questions—
“No,” snapped Sult. “Those particular bankers are well connected. They are owed too many favours, and without Kault it will be difficult to prove anything. We got what we needed from the Mercers, and I have a more pressing task for you.”
Glokta looked up. Another task? “I was looking forward to interviewing the prisoners we took at the Guildhall, your Eminence, it may be that—”
“No.” The Arch Lector swatted Glokta’s words away with his gloved hand. “That business could drag on for months. I will have Goyle handle it.” He frowned. “Unless you object?”
So I plough the field, sow the seed, water the crop, then Goyle reaps the harvest? Some justice. He humbly bowed his head. “Of course not, your Eminence.”
“Good. You are probably aware of the unusual visitors we received yesterday.”
Visitors? For the past week Glokta had been in agony with his back. Yesterday he had struggled out of bed to watch that cretin Luthar fence, but otherwise he had been confined to his tiny room, virtually unable to move. “I hadn’t noticed,” he said simply.
“Bayaz, the First of the Magi.” Glokta gave his thin smile again, but the Arch Lector was not laughing.
“You’re joking, of course.”
“If only.”
“A charlatan, your Eminence?”
“What else? But a most extraordinary one. Lucid, reasonable, clever. The deception is elaborate in the extreme.”
“You have spoken with him?”
“I have. He is remarkably convincing. He knows things, things he shouldn’t know. He cannot be simply dismissed. Whoever he is, he has funding, and good sources of information.” The Arch Lector frowned deep. “He has some renegade brute of a Northman with him.”
Glokta frowned. “A Northman? It hardly seems their style. They strike me as most direct.”
“My very thoughts.”
“A spy for the Emperor then? The Gurkish?”
“Perhaps. The Kantics love a good intrigue, but they tend to stick to the shadows. These theatricals don’t seem to have their mark. I suspect our answer may lie closer to home.”
“The nobles, your Eminence? Brock? Isher? Heugen?”
“Perhaps,” mused Sult, “perhaps. They’re annoyed enough. Or there’s our old friend, the High Justice. He seemed a little too pleased about it all. He’s plotting something, I can tell.”
The nobles, the High Justice, the Northmen, the Gurkish—it could be any one of them, or none—but why? “I don’t understand, Arch Lector. If they are simply spies, why go to all this trouble? Surely there are easier ways to get into the Agriont?”
“This is the thing.” Sult gave as bitter a grimace as Glokta had ever seen. “There is an empty seat on the Closed Council, there always has been. A pointless tradition, a matter of etiquette, a chair reserved for a mythical figure, in any case dead for hundreds of years. Nobody ever supposed that anyone would come forward to claim it.”
“But he has?”
“He has! He has demanded it!” The Arch Lector got to his feet and strode around the table. “I know! Unthinkable! Some spy, some liar from who knows where, privy to the workings of the very heart of our government! But he has some dusty papers, so it falls to us to discredit him! Can you believe it?”
Glokta could not. But there hardly seems any purpose to saying so.
“I have asked for time to investigate,” continued Sult, “but the Closed Council will not be put off indefinitely. We have only a week or two to expose this so-called Magus for the fraud he is. In the mean time, he and his companions are making themselves at home in an excellent suite of rooms in the Tower of Chains, and there is nothing we can do to prevent them wandering the Agriont, causing whatever mischief they please!” There is something we could do…
“The Tower of Chains is very high. If somebody were to fall—”
“No. Not yet. We have already pushed our luck as far as it will go in certain circles. For the time being at least, we must tread carefully.”
“There is always the possibility of an interrogation. If we were to arrest them, I could soon find out who they are working for—”
“Tread carefully, I said! I want you to look into this Magus, Glokta, and his companions. Find out who they are, where they come from, what they are after. Above all, find out who is behind them, and why. We must discredit this would-be Bayaz before he can do any damage. After that you can use whatever means you please.” Sult turned and moved away to the window.
Glokta got up awkwardly, painfully from his chair. “How shall I begin?”
“Follow them!” shouted the Arch Lector impatiently. “Watch them! See who they speak to, what they are about. You’re the Inquisitor, Glokta!” he snapped, without even looking round. “Ask some questions!”
Better than Death
“We’re looking for a woman,” said the officer, staring at them suspiciously. “An escaped slave, a killer. Very dangerous.”
“A woman, master?” asked Yulwei, his brow wrinkled with confusion. “Dangerous, master?”
“Yes, a woman!” The officer waved his hand impatiently. “Tall, with a scar, hair cropped short. Well-armed, most likely, with a bow.” Ferro stood there, tall and scarred, hair cropped short, bow over her shoulder, and looked down at the dusty ground. “She is wanted, by the highest of authorities! A thief and a murderer, many times over!”
Yulwei gave a humble smile and spread his hands. “We have seen no such person master. I and my son are unarmed, as you can see.” Ferro looked down uncomfortably at the curved blade of the sword stuck through her belt, shining in the bright sun. The officer didn’t seem to notice though. He swatted at a fly as Yulwei blathered on. “Neither one of us would know what to do with such a thing as a bow, I can assure you. We trust in God to protect us, master, and in the Emperor’s matchless soldiers.”
The officer snorted. “Very wise, old man. What’s your business here?”
“I am a merchant, on my way to Dagoska, to purchase spices,” and he gave a grovelling bow, “with your kind permission.”
“Trading with the pinks are you? Damn Union!” The officer spat in the dust. “Still, a man has to make a living, I suppose, if a shameful one.
Trade while you can, the pinks will be gone soon, swept back into the ocean!” He puffed out his chest with pride. “The Emperor, Uthman-ul-Dosht, has sworn it! What do you think of that, old man?”
“Oh, it will be a great day, a great day,” said Yulwei, bowing low again, “may God bring it to us soon, master!”
The officer looked Ferro up and down. “Your son looks a strong lad. Perhaps he’d make a soldier.” He took a step towards her and grabbed hold of her bare arm. “That’s a strong arm. That arm could draw a bow, I’d say, if it were taught. What do you say, boy? A man’s work, fighting for the glory of God, and your Emperor! Better than grubbing for a pittance!” Ferro’s flesh crawled where his fingers touched her skin. Her other hand crept towards her knife.
“Alas,” said Yulwei quickly, “my son was born… simple. He scarcely speaks.”
“Ah. A shame. The time may come when we need every man. Savages they may be, but these pinks can fight.” The officer turned away and Ferro scowled after him. “Very well, you may go!” He waved them on. The eyes of his soldiers, lounging in the shade of the palms around the road, followed them as they walked past, but without much interest.
Ferro held her tongue until the encampment had dwindled into the distance behind them, then she rounded on Yulwei. “Dagoska?”
“To begin with,” said the old man, staring off across the scrubby plain. “And then north.”
“North?”
“Across the Circle Sea to Adua.”
Across the sea? She stopped in the road. “I’m not fucking going there!”
“Must you make everything so difficult, Ferro? Are you that happy here in Gurkhul?”
“These northerners are mad, everyone knows it! Pinks, Union, or whatever. Mad! Godless!”
Yulwei raised an eyebrow at her. “I didn’t know you were so interested in God, Ferro.”
“At least I know there is one!” she shouted, pointing at the sky. “These pinks, they don’t think like us, like real people! We’ve no business with their kind! I’d rather stay among the Gurkish! Besides, I’ve scores to settle here.”
“What scores? Going to kill Uthman?”
She frowned. “Perhaps I will.”
“Huh.” Yulwei turned and headed off up the road. “They’re looking for you, Ferro, in case you hadn’t noticed. You wouldn’t get ten strides without my help. They’ve still got that cage waiting, remember? The one in front of the palace? They are anxious to fill it.” Ferro ground her teeth. “Uthman is the Emperor now. Ul-Dosht, they call him. The mighty! The merciless! Greatest Emperor for a hundred years, they are saying already. Kill the Emperor!” Yulwei chuckled to himself. “You’re quite a character alright. Quite a character.”
Ferro scowled as she followed the old man up the hill. She wasn’t looking to be anyone’s character. Yulwei could make these soldiers see whatever he pleased, and that was a smart trick, but she’d be damned if she was going north. What business did she have with those godless pinks?
Yulwei was still chuckling away as she drew level with him. “Kill the Emperor.” He shook his head. “He’ll just have to wait until you get back. You owe me, remember?”
Ferro grabbed him by the sinewy arm. “I don’t remember you saying anything about crossing the sea!”
“I don’t remember your asking, Maljinn, and you should be glad you didn’t!” He peeled her fingers gently away. “Your corpse might be drying nicely in the desert, instead of grumbling in my ear, all sleek and healthy—think on that a while.”
That shut her up for the time being. She walked along in silence, scowling out across the scrubby landscape, sandals crunching on the dry dirt of the road. She looked sidelong at the old man. He’d saved her life with his tricks, that couldn’t be denied.
But she’d be damned if she was going north.
The fortress was concealed in a rocky cove, but from where they were, high up on the bluff with the fierce sun behind them, Ferro could see the shape of it well enough. A high wall enclosed neat rows of buildings, enough to make a small town. Next to the them, built out into the water, were long wharves. Moored to the wharves were ships.
Huge ships.
Towers of wood, floating fortresses. Ferro had never seen ships half that size. Their masts were a dark forest against the bright water behind. Ten were docked below them, and further out in the bay two more were cutting slowly through the waves, great sails billowing, tiny figures crawling on the decks and in amongst the spider’s web of ropes above.
“I see twelve,” murmured Yulwei, “but your eyes are the sharper.”
Ferro looked out across the water. Further round the curving shore, twenty miles away perhaps, she could see another fortress, another set of wharves. “There are more over there,” she said, “eight or nine, and those ones are bigger.”
“Bigger than these?”
“A lot bigger.”
“God’s breath!” muttered Yulwei to himself. “The Gurkish never built ships so big before, not half so big, nor half so many. There is not the wood in all the South for such a fleet. They must have bought it from the north, from the Styrians, maybe.”
Ferro cared nothing for boats, or wood, or the north. “So?”
“With a fleet this size, the Gurkish will be a power at sea. They could take Dagoska from the bay, invade Westport even.”
The pointless names of far-away places. “So?”
“You don’t understand, Ferro. I must warn the others. We must make haste, now!” He pushed himself up from the ground and hurried back towards the road.
Ferro grunted. She watched the big wooden tubs moving back and forth in the bay for a moment longer, then she got up and followed Yulwei. Great ships or tiny ships, it meant nothing to her. The Gurkish could take all the pinks in the world for slaves as far as she was concerned.
If that meant they left the real people alone.
“Out of the way!” The soldier spurred his horse right at them, raising his whip.
“A thousand pardons, master!” whined Yulwei, grovelling to the ground, scuttling off into the grass beside the road, pulling Ferro reluctantly by the elbow. She stood in the scrub, watching the column shamble slowly by. Thin figures, ragged, dirty, vacant, hands bound tightly, hollow eyes on the ground. Men and women, all ages, children even. A hundred or more. Six guards rode alongside them, easy in their tall saddles, whips rolled up in their hands.
“Slaves.” Ferro licked her dry lips.
“The people of Kadir have risen up,” said Yulwei, frowning at the miserable procession. “They wished no longer to be part of the glorious nation of Gurkhul, and thought the death of the Emperor might be their chance to leave. It seems they were wrong. The new Emperor is harder even than the last, eh, Ferro? Their rebellion has failed already. It seems your friend Uthman has taken slaves as punishment.”
Ferro watched a scrawny girl limping slowly, bare feet trailing in the dust. Thirteen years old? It was hard to tell. Her face was dirty and listless. There was a scabby cut across her forehead, others on the back of her arm. Whip marks. Ferro swallowed, watched the girl toiling along. An old man, just in front of her, tripped and sprawled face first into the road, making the whole column stumble to a halt.
“Move!” barked one of the riders, spurring his horse forward. “On your feet!” The old man struggled in the dust. “Move!” The soldier’s whip cracked, leaving a long red mark across the man’s scrawny back. Ferro twitched and winced at the sound, and her back began to tingle.
Where the scars were.
Almost as if she’d been whipped herself.
No one whips Ferro Maljinn and lives. Not any more. She shrugged the bow off her shoulder.
“Peace, Ferro!” hissed Yulwei, grabbing her by the arm. “There’s nothing you can do for them!”
The girl bent down, helping the old slave to his feet. The whip cracked again, catching them both, and there was a yelp of pain. Was it the girl or the man who had cried out?
Or had it been Ferro
herself?
She shook Yulwei’s hand off, reaching for an arrow. “I can kill this bastard!” she snarled. The soldier’s head snapped round to look at them, curious. Yulwei seized hold of her hand.
“What then?” he hissed. “If you killed all six of them, what then? Have you food and water for a hundred slaves? Eh? You have it well concealed! And when the column is missed? Eh? And their guards found slaughtered? What then, killer? Will you hide a hundred slaves out here? Because I cannot!”
Ferro stared into Yulwei’s black eyes, her teeth grinding together, her breath snorting fast through her nose. She wondered whether or not to try and kill him again.
No.
He was right, damn him. Slowly, she pushed the anger back, as far down as it would go. She shoved the arrow away, and turned back towards the column. She watched the old slave stumble on, and the girl after him, fury gnawing at her guts like hunger.
“You!” called the soldier, nudging his horse over towards them.
“You’ve done it now!” hissed Yulwei, then he bowed to the guard, smiling, scraping. “My apologies master, my son is…”
“Shut your mouth, old man!” The soldier looked down at Ferro from his saddle. “Well, boy, do you like her?”
“What?” she hissed, through gritted teeth.
“No need to be shy,” chuckled the soldier, “I’ve seen you looking.” He turned towards the column. “Hold them up there!” he shouted, and the slaves stumbled to a halt. He leaned from his saddle and grabbed the scrawny girl under the armpit, dragging her roughly out of the column.
“She’s a good one,” he said, pulling her towards Ferro. “Bit young, but she’s ready. Clean up nice, she will. Bit of a limp but that’ll heal, we’ve been driving ’em hard. Good teeth… show him your teeth, bitch!” The girl’s cracked lips curled back slowly. “Good teeth. What do you say boy? Ten in gold for her! It’s a good price!”
Ferro stood there, staring. The girl looked dumbly back with big, dead eyes.
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