The Blade Itself tfl-1

by Joe Abercrombie

  “Er, well… nothing.” And he smiled apologetically. “But I have made some interesting discoveries as to the cause of death!”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yes, look at this!” I would rather not. Glokta limped cautiously over to the bench, peering down at the spot the old man was indicating.

  “You see here? The shape of this wound?” The Adeptus prodded at a flap of gristle.

  “No, I do not see,” said Glokta. It appears all to be one enormous wound to me.

  The old man leaned towards him, his eyes wide. “Human,” he said.

  “We know that it is human! This is a foot!”

  “No! No! These teeth marks, here… they are human bites!”

  Glokta frowned. “Human… bites?”

  “Absolutely!” Kandelau’s beaming smile was quite at odds with the surroundings. And with the subject matter, I rather think. “This individual was bitten to death by another person, and, heh heh, in all likelihood,” and he gestured triumphantly at the mess on his table, “considering the incomplete nature of the remains… partially eaten!”

  Glokta stared at the old man for a moment. Eaten? Eaten? Why must every question answered raise ten more? “This is what you would have me tell the Arch Lector?”

  The Adeptus laughed nervously. “Well, heh heh, these are the facts, as I see them…”

  “A person, unidentified, perhaps a man, perhaps a woman, either young or old, was attacked in the park by an unknown assailant, bitten to death within two hundred strides of the King’s palace and partially… eaten?”

  “Er…” Kandelau gave a worried glance sideways towards the entrance. Glokta turned to look, and frowned. There was a new arrival there, one that he had not heard enter. A woman, standing in the shadows at the edge of the bright lamp-light with her arms folded. A tall woman with short, spiky red hair and a black mask on her face, staring at Glokta and the Adeptus through narrowed eyes. A Practical. But not one I recognise, and women are quite a rarity in the Inquisition. I would have thought…

  “Good afternoon, good afternoon!” A man stepped briskly through the door: gaunt, balding, with a long black coat and a prim little smile on his face. An unpleasantly familiar man. Goyle, damn him. Our new Superior of Adua, arrived at last. Great news. “Inquisitor Glokta,” he purred, “what an absolute pleasure it is to see you again!”

  “Likewise, Superior Goyle.” You bastard.

  Two other figures followed close behind the grinning Superior, making the glaring little room seem quite crowded. One was a dark-skinned, stocky Kantic with a big golden ring through his ear, the other was a monster of a Northman with a face like a stone slab. He almost had to stoop to cram himself through the doorway. Both were masked and dressed from head to toe in Practicals black.

  “This is Practical Vitari,” chuckled Goyle, indicating the red-haired woman, who had flowed over to the jars and was peering into them, one at a time, tapping on the glass and making the specimens wobble. “And these are Practicals Halim,” the Southerner sidled past Goyle and into the room, busy eyes darting here and there, “and Byre.” The monstrous Northman gazed down at Glokta from up near the ceiling. “In his own country they call him the Stone-Splitter, would you believe, but I don’t think that would work here, do you, Glokta? Practical Stone-Splitter, can you imagine?” He laughed softly to himself and shook his head.

  And this is the Inquisition? I had no idea the circus was in town. I wonder if they stand on each other’s shoulders? Or jump through flaming hoops?

  “A remarkably diverse selection,” said Glokta.

  “Oh yes,” laughed Goyle, “I have picked them up wherever my travels have taken me, eh my friends?”

  The woman shrugged as she prowled around the jars. The dark-skinned Practical inclined his head. The towering Northman simply stood there.

  “Wherever my travels have taken me!” chuckled Goyle, just as though everyone else had laughed with him. “And I have more besides! It’s been quite a time, I do declare!” He wiped a tear of mirth from his eye as he moved towards the table in the centre of the room. It seemed that everything was a source of amusement to him, even the thing on the bench. “But what’s all this? A body, unless I’m quite mistaken!” Goyle looked up sharply, his eyes sparkling. “A body? A death within the city? As Superior of Adua, surely that falls within my province?”

  Glokta bowed. “Naturally. I was not aware that you had arrived, Superior Goyle. Also, I felt that the unusual circumstances of this—”

  “Unusual? I see nothing unusual.” Glokta paused. What game is this chuckling fool playing?

  “Surely you would agree that the violence here is… exceptional.”

  Goyle gave a flamboyant shrug. “Dogs.”

  “Dogs?” asked Glokta, unable to let that one pass. “Domestic pets run mad, do you think, or wild ones which climbed over the walls?”

  The Superior only smiled. “Whichever you like, Inquisitor. Whichever you like.”

  “I’m afraid it could not possibly be dogs,” the Adeptus Physical began pompously to explain. “I was only just making clear to Inquisitor Glokta… these marks here, and on the skin here, do you see? These are human bites, undoubtedly…”

  The woman sauntered away from the jars, closer and closer to Kandelau, leaning in towards him until her mask was only inches away from his beak of a nose. He slowly trailed off. “Dogs,” she whispered, then barked in his face.

  The Adeptus jumped away. “Well, I suppose I could have been mistaken… of course…” He backed into the enormous Northman’s chest, who had moved with surprising speed to position himself directly behind. Kandelau turned slowly around, staring up with wide eyes.

  “Dogs,” intoned the giant.

  “Dogs, dogs, dogs,” hummed the southerner in a thick accent.

  “Of course,” squeaked Kandelau, “dogs, of course, how foolish I’ve been!”

  “Dogs!” shouted Goyle in delight, throwing his hands in the air. “The mystery is solved!” To Glokta’s amazement, two of the three Practicals began politely to applaud. The woman stayed silent. I never believed that I would miss Superior Kalyne, but suddenly I am overcome with nostalgia. Goyle turned slowly round, bowing low. “My first day here, and already I warm to the work! You can bury this,” he said, gesturing to the corpse and smiling broadly at the cringing Adeptus. “Best buried, eh?” He looked over at the Northman. “Back to the mud, as you say in your country!”

  The massive Practical showed not the slightest sign that anyone had spoken. The Kantic was standing there, turning the ring through his ear round and round. The woman was peering down at the carcass on the table, sniffing at it through her mask. The Adeptus Physical was backed up against his jars, sweating profusely.

  Enough of this pantomime. I have work to do. “Well,” said Glokta stiffly, limping for the door, “the mystery is solved. You don’t need me any more.”

  Superior Goyle turned to look at him, his good humour suddenly vanished. “No!” he hissed, furious little eyes nearly popping out of his head. “We don’t… need you… any more!”

  Never Bet Against a Magus

  Logen sat in the hot sun, hunched over on his bench, and sweated. The ridiculous clothes did not help with the sweating, or indeed with anything else. The tunic had not been designed to sit down in, and the stiff leather dug painfully into his fruits whenever he tried to move.

  “Fucking thing,” he growled, tugging at it for the twentieth time. Quai looked hardly more comfortable in his magical garb—the glittering of the gold and silver symbols only served to make his face look the more ill and pallid, his eyes the more twitchy and bulging. He’d hardly spoken a word all morning. Of the three of them, only Bayaz appeared to be enjoying himself, beaming round at the surging crowds on the benches, the sunlight shining off his tanned pate.

  They stood out among the heaving audience like well-rotted fruit, and seemed about as popular. Even though the benches were packed shoulder to shoulder a small, nervous space
had built up around the three of them where no one would sit.

  The noise was even more crushing than the heat and the crowds. Logen’s ears hummed with the din. It was the most he could do to keep from clamping his hands over them and throwing himself under the bench for cover. Bayaz leaned towards him. “Was this what your duels were like?” He had to shout even though his mouth was barely six inches from Logen’s ear.

  “Huh.” Even when Logen had fought Rudd Threetrees, when a good part of Bethod’s army had drawn up in a great half-circle to watch, shouting and screaming and hammering their weapons against their shields, when the walls of Uffrith above them had been crammed with onlookers, his audience had not been half this size, not half this noisy. No more than thirty men had watched him kill Shama Heartless, kill him then butcher him like a pig. Logen winced and flinched and hunched his shoulders higher at the memory of it. Cutting, and cutting, and licking the blood from his fingers, while the Dogman stared in horror and Bethod laughed and cheered him on. He could taste the blood now, and he shuddered and wiped his mouth.

  There had been so many fewer people, and yet the stakes had been so much higher. The lives of the fighters, for one thing, and the ownership of land, of villages, of towns, the futures of whole clans. When he’d fought Tul Duru, no more than a hundred had watched, but perhaps the whole fate of the North had turned on that bloody half hour. If he’d lost then, if the Thunderhead had killed him, would things be the same? If Black Dow, or Harding Grim, or any of those others had put him in the mud, would Bethod have a golden chain now, and call himself a King? Would this Union be at war with the North? The thought made his head hurt. Even more.

  “You alright?” asked Bayaz.

  “Mmm,” Logen mumbled, but he was shivering, even in the heat. What were all these people here for? Only to be amused. Few could’ve found Logen’s battles very amusing, except Bethod, perhaps. Few others. “This isn’t like my fights,” he muttered to himself.

  “What’s that?” asked Bayaz.

  “Nothing.”

  “Uh.” The old man beamed around at the crowd, scratching at his short grey beard. “Who do you think will win?”

  Logen really didn’t much care, but he reckoned that any distraction from his memories was welcome. He peered into the enclosures where the two fighters were getting ready, not far from where he was sitting. The handsome, proud young man they’d met at the gate was one of them. The other was heavy and powerful-looking, with a thick neck and a look almost bored.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know anything about this business.”

  “What, you? The Bloody-Nine? A champion who fought and won ten challenges? The most feared man in the North? No opinion? Surely single combat is the same the world over!”

  Logen winced and licked his lips. The Bloody-Nine. That was far in the past, but not far enough for his liking. His mouth still tasted like metal, like salt, like blood. Touching a man with a sword and cutting him open with one are hardly the same things, but he looked the two opponents over again. The proud young man rolled up his sleeves, touched his toes, swivelled his body this way and that, swung his arms round in quick windmills, watched by a stern old soldier in a spotless red uniform. A tall, worried-looking man handed the fighter two thin swords, one longer than the other, and he whisked them around before him in the air with impressive speed, blades flashing.

  His opponent stood there, leaning against the wooden side of his enclosure, stretching his bull neck from side to side without much hurry, glancing round with lazy eyes.

  “Who’s who?” asked Logen.

  “The pompous ass from the gate is Luthar. The one who’s half asleep is Gorst.”

  It was plain who the crowd preferred. Luthar’s name could be heard often in the din, and whoops and claps greeted every movement of his thin swords. He looked quick, and deft, and clever, but there was something deadly in that big man’s waiting slouch, something dark about his heavy-lidded eyes. Logen would rather have fought Luthar, for all his speed. “I reckon Gorst.”

  “Gorst, really?” Bayaz’ eyes sparkled. “How about a little bet?”

  Logen heard a sharp suck of breath from Quai. “Never bet against a Magus,” whispered the apprentice.

  It didn’t seem to make much difference to Logen. “What the hell have I got to bet with?”

  Bayaz shrugged. “Well, let’s just say for honour then?”

  “If you like.” Logen had never had too much of that, and the little he did have he didn’t care about losing.

  “Bremer dan Gorst!” The scattered clapping was smothered by an avalanche of hisses and boos as the great ox shambled towards his mark, half-closed eyes on the ground, big, heavy steels dangling from his big, heavy hands. Between his short-cropped hair and the collar of his shirt, where his neck should have been, there was nothing but a thick fold of muscle.

  “Ugly bastard,” Jezal murmured to himself, as he watched him go. “Damn idiot ugly bastard.” But his curses lacked conviction, even to his own ear. He had watched that man fight three bouts and demolish three good opponents. One of them had still to leave his sick bed a week later. Jezal had been training for the last few days specifically to counter Gorst’s bludgeoning style: Varuz and West swinging big broom handles at him while he dodged this way and that. More than once one of them had made contact, and Jezal was still smarting from the bruises.

  “Gorst?” offered the referee plaintively, doing his best to wheedle some applause from the audience, but they were having none of it. The boos only became louder, joined by jeers and heckling as Gorst took his mark.

  “You clumsy ox!”

  “Get back to your farm and pull a plough!”

  “Bremer the brute!” and other such.

  The people stretched back, and back, and back into obscurity. Everyone was there. Everyone in the world, it looked like. Every commoner in the city round the distant edges. Every gentleman, artisan and trader thronging the middle benches. Every noble man or woman in the Agriont towards the front, from fifth sons of high-born nobodies to the great magnates of the Open and Closed Councils. The Royal box was full: the Queen, the two Princes, Lord Hoff, the Princess Terez. The King even appeared to be awake for once, truly an honour, his goggling eyes staring around in amazement. Out there somewhere were Jezal’s father and his brothers, his friends and fellow officers, his entire acquaintance, more or less. Ardee too, he hoped, watching…

  All in all, it was quite an audience.

  “Jezal dan Luthar!” bellowed the referee. The meaningless bibble-babble of the crowd surged into a storm of cheering, a thunderous wave of support. The cries and shouts rang and echoed around the arena, making Jezal’s head throb.

  “Come on, Luthar!”

  “Luthar!”

  “Kill the bastard!” and other such.

  “Off you go, Jezal,” whispered Marshal Varuz in his ear, clapping him on the back and pushing him gently out towards the circle, “and good luck!”

  Jezal walked in a daze, the noise of the crowd punching at his ears until it seemed his head would split. The training of the last few months flashed through his mind. The running, the swimming, the work with the heavy bar. The sparring, the beam, the endless forms. The punishment, the study, the sweating and the pain. Just so he could stand here. Seven touches. The first to four. It all came down to this.

  He took his mark opposite Gorst, and stared into those heavy-lidded eyes. They looked back, cool and calm, seeming almost to stare past him as though he wasn’t there. That needled him and he pushed the thoughts out of his head and raised high his noble chin. He would not, could not, let this oaf get the better of him. He would show all these people his blood, and his skill, and his mettle. He was Jezal dan Luthar. He would win. It was an incontestable fact. He knew it.

  “Begin!”

  The first cut sent him reeling, shattering his confidence, his poise, and nearly his wrist. He had been watching Gorst fence, of course, if you could call it that, so he knew
the man would come out swinging, but nothing could have prepared him for that first shattering contact. The crowd gasped with him as he staggered back. All his carefully laid plans, all of Varuz’ carefully worded advice, vanished into air. He winced with pain and shock, his arm still vibrating from the force of that mighty blow, his ears still ringing from the crashing noise of it, his mouth hanging open, his knees wobbling.

  It was hardly the most promising start, but the next chop followed hard after the first, flashing down with even greater power. Jezal leaped aside and slid away, trying to make room and give himself time. Time to work out some tactic, some trick to stem the pitiless tide of swinging metal. But Gorst was not about to give him time. He was already loosing another throaty growl, his long steel already begun on its next irresistible arc.

  Jezal dodged where he could, blocked where he couldn’t, his wrists already aching from the ceaseless punishment. To begin with he hoped that Gorst would tire. No one could throw those great lumps of metal around for long the way that he was doing. Soon the fierce pace would take its toll on the big man and he would slow, and droop, and the heavy steels would lose their venom. Then Jezal would fight back doggedly, run his opponent ragged, and win. The crowd would crack the Agriont with their cheers. A classic tale of victory against the odds.

  Only Gorst did not tire. The man was a machine. After a few minutes there was still not the slightest sign of weariness in those heavy-lidded eyes. There was barely any emotion of any kind that Jezal could see, during the rare moments when he dared to take his eyes away from the flashing swords. The big long steel swung, swung, swung in its brutal circles, and the short steel was always there to turn away such feeble efforts as Jezal could make in between, never faltering or dropping even an inch. The power of the blows did not decrease, the growls tore from Gorst’s throat with as much vigour as ever. The crowd were given nothing to cheer at, and merely muttered angrily. It was Jezal who began to feel his legs slowing, to feel the sweat springing out of his forehead, to feel his grip on his steels slipping.