Before They Are Hanged

by Joe Abercrombie

  Harker stared at him, bubbles of spit forming and breaking on his lips. Glokta leaned closer. 'Oh, no, no, no. This is only the beginning. This is before the beginning. Time opens up ahead of us in pitiless abundance. Days, and weeks, and months of it, if need be. Do you seriously believe that you can keep your secrets for that long? You belong to me, now. To me, and to this room. This cannot stop until I know what I need to know.' He reached forward and gripped Harker's other nipple between thumb and forefinger. He took up the pincers and opened their bloody jaws. 'How difficult can that be to understand?'

  Magister Eider's dining chamber was fabulous to behold. Cloths of silver and crimson, gold and purple, green and blue and vivid yellow, rippled in the gentle breeze from the narrow windows. Screens of filigree marble adorned the walls, great pots as high as a man stood in the corners. Heaps of pristine cushions were tossed about the floor, as though inviting passers-by to sprawl in comfortable decadence. Coloured candles burned in tall glass jars, casting warm light into every corner, filling the air with sweet scent. At one end of the marble hall clear water trickled gently in a star-shaped pool. There was more than a touch of the theatrical about the place. Like a Queen's boudoir from some Kantic legend.

  Magister Eider, head of the Guild of Spicers, was herself the centrepiece. The very Queen of merchants. She sat at the top of the table in a pristine white gown, shimmering silk with just the slightest, fascinating hint of transparency. A small fortune in jewels flashed on every inch of tanned skin, her hair was piled up and held in place with ivory combs, excepting a few strands, curling artfully around her face. It looked very much as if she had been preparing herself all day. And not a moment was wasted.

  Glokta, hunched in his chair at the opposite end with a bowl of steaming soup before him, felt as if he had shuffled into the pages of a storybook. A lurid romance, set in the exotic south, with Magister Eider as the heroine, and myself the disgusting, the crippled, the black-hearted villain. How will this fable end, I wonder? 'So, tell me, Magister, to what do I owe this honour?'

  'I understand that you have spoken to the other members of the council. I was surprised, and just a little hurt, that you had not sought an audience with me already.'

  'I apologise if you felt left out. It seemed only fitting that I saved the most powerful until last.'

  She looked up with an air of injured innocence. And a most consummately acted one. 'Powerful? Me? Vurms controls the budget, issues the decrees, Vissbruck commands the troops, holds the defences. Kahdia speaks for the great majority of the populace. I scarcely figure.'

  'Come now.' Glokta grinned his toothless grin. 'You are radiant, of course, but I am not quite blinded. Vurms' budget is a pittance compared to what the Spicers make. Kahdia's people have been rendered almost helpless. Through your pickled friend Cosca you command more than twice the troops that Vissbruck does. The only reason the Union is even interested in this thirsty rock is for the trade that your guild controls.'

  'Well, I don't like to boast.' The Magister gave an artless shrug. 'But I suppose that I do have some passing influence in the city. You have been asking questions, I see.'

  'That's what I do.' Glokta raised his spoon to his mouth, trying his best not to slurp between his remaining teeth. 'This soup is delicious, by the way.' And, one hopes, not fatal.

  'I thought you might appreciate it. You see, I have been asking questions also.'

  The water plopped and tinkled in the pool, the fabric rustled on the walls, the silverware clicked gently against the fine pottery of their bowls. I would call that first round a draw. Carlot dan Eider was the first to break the silence.

  'I realise, of course, that you have a mission from the Arch Lector himself. A mission of the greatest importance. I see that you are not a man to mince your words, but you might want to tread a little more carefully.'

  'I admit my gait is awkward. A war wound, compounded by two years of torture. It's a wonder I got to keep the leg at all.'

  She smiled wide, displaying two rows of perfect teeth. 'I am thoroughly tickled, but my colleagues have found you somewhat less entertaining. Vurms and Vissbruck have both taken a decided dislike to you. High-handed was the phrase they used, I believe, among others I had better not repeat.'

  Glokta shrugged. 'I am not here to make friends.' And he drained his glass of a predictably excellent wine.

  'But friends can be useful. If nothing else, a friend is one less enemy. Davoust insisted on upsetting everyone, and the results have not been happy.'

  'Davoust did not enjoy the support of the Closed Council.'

  'True. But no document will stop a knife thrust.'

  'Is that a threat?'

  Carlot dan Eider laughed. It was an easy, open, friendly laugh. It was hard to believe that anyone who made such a sound could be a traitor, or a threat, or anything other than a perfectly charming host. And yet I am not entirely convinced. 'That is advice. Advice born of bitter experience. I would prefer it if you did not disappear quite yet.'

  'Really? I had no idea I was such a winning dinner guest.'

  'You are terse, confrontational, slightly frightening, and impose severe restrictions on the menu, but the fact is you are more use to me here than…' and she waved her hand, 'wherever Davoust went to. Would you care for more wine?'

  'Of course.'

  She got up from her chair and swept towards him, feet padding on the cool marble like a dancer's. Bare feet, in the Kantic fashion. The breeze stirred the flowing garments around her body as she leaned forwards to fill Glokta's glass, wafted her rich scent in his face. Just the sort of woman my mother would have wanted me to marry—beautiful, clever, and oh so very rich. Just the sort of woman I would have wanted to marry, for that matter, when I was younger. When I was a different man.

  The flickering candlelight shone on her hair, flashed on the jewels around her long neck, glowed through the wine as it sloshed from the neck of the bottle. Does she try and charm me merely because I hold the writ of the Closed Council? Nothing more than good business, to be on good terms with the powerful? Or does she hope to fool me, and distract me, and lure me away from the unpleasant truth? Her eyes met his briefly, and she gave a tiny, knowing smile and looked back to his glass. Am I to be her little urchin boy, dirty face pressed up against the bakers window, mouth watering for the sweetmeats I know I can never afford? I think not.

  'Where did Davoust go to?'

  Magister Eider paused for a moment, then carefully set down the bottle. She slid into the nearest chair, put her elbows on the table, her chin on her hands, and held Glokta's eye. 'I suspect that he was killed by a traitor in the city. Probably an agent of the Gurkish. At the risk of telling you what you already know, Davoust suspected there was a conspiracy afoot within the city's ruling council. He confided as much to me shortly before his disappearance.'

  Did he indeed? 'A conspiracy within the ruling council?' Glokta shook his head in mock horror. 'Is such a thing possible?'

  'Let us be honest with each other, Superior. I want what you want. We in the Guild of Spicers have invested far too much time and money in this city to see it fall to the Gurkish, and you seem to offer a better chance of holding on to it than those idiots Vurms and Vissbruck. If there is a traitor within our walls I want him found.'

  'Him… or her.'

  Magister Eider raised one delicate eyebrow. 'It cannot have escaped your notice that I am the only woman on the council.'

  'It has not.' Glokta slurped noisily from his spoon. 'But forgive me if I don't discount you quite yet. It will require more than good soup and pleasant conversation to convince me of anyone's innocence.' Although it's a damn sight more than anyone else has offered me.

  Magister Eider smiled as she raised her glass. 'Then how can I convince you?'

  'Honestly? I need money.'

  'Ah, money. It always comes back to that. Getting money out of my Guild is like trying to dig up water in the desert—tiring, dirty, and almost always a waste of time.' Somewha
t like asking questions of Inquisitor Harker. 'How much were you thinking of?'

  'We could begin with, say, a hundred thousand marks.'

  Eider did not actually choke on her wine. More of a gentle gurgle. She set her glass down carefully, quietly cleared her throat, dabbed at her mouth with the corner of a cloth, then looked up at him, eyebrows raised. 'You very well know that no such amount will be forthcoming.'

  'I'll settle for whatever you can give me, for now.'

  'We'll see. Are your ambitions limited to a mere hundred thousand marks, or is there anything else I can do for you?'

  'Actually there is. I need the merchants out of the Temple.'

  Eider rubbed gently at her own temples, as though Glokta's demands were giving her a headache. 'He wants the merchants out,' she murmured.

  'It was necessary to secure Kahdia's support. With him against us we cannot hope to hold the city for long.'

  'I've been telling those arrogant fools the same thing for years, but stamping on the natives has become quite the popular pastime nonetheless. Very well, when do you want them out?'

  'Tomorrow. At the latest.'

  'And they call you high-handed?' She shook her head. 'Very well. By tomorrow evening I could well be the most unpopular Magister in living memory, if I still have my post at all, but I'll try and sell it to the Guild.'

  Glokta grinned. 'I feel confident that you could sell anything.'

  'You're a tough negotiator, Superior. If you ever get tired of asking questions, I have no doubt you've a bright future as a merchant.'

  'A merchant? Oh, I'm not that ruthless.' Glokta placed his spoon in the empty bowl and licked at his gums. 'I mean no disrespect, but how does a woman come to head the most powerful Guild in the Union?'

  Eider paused, as though wondering whether to answer or not. Or judging how much truth to tell when she does. She looked down at her glass, turned the stem slowly round and round. 'My husband was Magister before me. When we married I was twenty-two years old, he was near sixty. My father owed him a great deal of money, and offered my hand as payment for the debt.' Ah, so we all have our sufferings. Her lip twisted in a faint scowl. 'My husband always had a good nose for a bargain. His health began to decline soon after we married, and I took a more and more active role in the management of his affairs, and those of the Guild. By the time he died I was Magister in all but name, and my colleagues were sensible enough to formalise the arrangement. The Spicers have always been more concerned for profit than propriety.' Her eyes flicked up to look at Glokta. 'I mean no disrespect, but how does a war hero come to be a torturer?'

  It was his turn to pause. A good question. How did that happen? 'There are precious few opportunities for cripples.'

  Eider nodded slowly, her eyes never leaving Glokta's face. 'That must have been hard. To come back, after all that time in the darkness, and to find that your friends had no use for you. To see in their faces only guilt, and pity, and disgust. To find yourself alone.'

  Glokta's eyelid was twitching, and he rubbed at it gently. He had never discussed such things with anyone before. And now here I am, discussing them with a stranger. 'There can be no doubt that I'm a tragic figure. I used to be a shit of a man, now I'm a husk of one. Take your pick.'

  'I imagine it makes you sick, to be treated that way. Very sick, and very angry.' If only you knew. 'It still seems a strange decision, though, for the tortured to turn torturer.'

  'On the contrary, nothing could be more natural. In my experience, people do as they are done to. You were sold by your father and bought by your husband, and yet you choose to buy and sell.'

  Eider frowned. Something for her to think about, perhaps? 'I would have thought your pain would give you empathy.'

  'Empathy? What's that?' Glokta winced as he rubbed at his aching leg. 'It's a sad fact, but pain only makes you sorry for yourself.'

  * * *

  Campfire Politics

  « ^ »

  Logen shifted uncomfortably in his saddle, and squinted up at the few birds circling around over the great flat plain. Damn but his arse hurt. His thighs were sore, his nose was all full of the smell of horse. Couldn't find a comfortable position to put his fruits in. Always squashed, however often he jammed his hand down inside his belt to move 'em. A damn uncomfortable journey this was turning out to be, in all sorts of ways.

  He used to talk on the road, back in the North. When he was a boy he'd talked to his father. When he was a young man he'd talked to his friends. When he'd followed Bethod he'd talked to him, all the day long, for they'd been close back then, like brothers almost. Talk took your mind off the blisters on your feet, or the hunger in your belly, or the endless bloody cold, or who'd got killed yesterday.

  Logen used to laugh at the Dogman's stories while they slogged through the snow. He used to puzzle over tactics with Threetrees while they rode through the mud. He used to argue with Black Dow while they waded through bogs, and no subject was ever too small. He'd even traded a joke or two with Harding Grim in his time, and there weren't too many who could say that.

  He sighed to himself. A long, painful sigh that caught at the back of his throat. Good times, no doubt, but far behind him now, in the sunny valleys of the past. Those boys were all gone back to the mud. All silent, forever. Worse yet, they'd left Logen out in the middle of nowhere with this lot.

  The great Jezal dan Luthar wasn't interested in anyone's stories except his own. He sat stiff upright and aloof the whole time, chin held high, displaying his arrogance, and his superiority, and his contempt for everything like a young man might show off his first sword, long before he learned that it was nothing to be proud of.

  Bayaz had no interest in tactics. When he spoke at all he barked in single words, in yeses and in nos, frowning out across the endless grass like a man who's made a bad mistake and can't see his way clear of it. His apprentice too seemed changed since they left Adua. Quiet, hard, watchful. Brother Longfoot was away across the plain, scouting out the route. Probably best that way. No one else had any talk at all. The Navigator, Logen had to admit, had far too much.

  Ferro rode some distance away from the rest of this friendly gathering, her shoulders hunched, her brows drawn down in a constant scowl, the long scar on her cheek puckered up an angry grey, doing her best to make the others look like a sack of laughs. She leaned forwards, into the wind, pushing at it, as if she hoped to hurt it with her face. More fun to trade jokes with the plague than with her, Logen reckoned.

  And that was the merry band. His shoulders slumped. 'How long until we get to the Edge of the World?' he asked Bayaz, without much hope.

  'Some way yet,' growled the Magus through barely open teeth.

  So Logen rode on, tired, and sore, and bored, and watched those few birds gliding slowly over the endless plain. Nice, big, fat birds. He licked his lips. 'We could do with some meat,' he muttered. Hadn't had fresh meat in a good long time now. Not since they left Calcis. Logen rubbed his stomach. The fatty softness from his time in the city was already tightening. 'Nice bit of meat.'

  Ferro frowned over at him, then up at the few birds circling above. She shrugged her bow off her shoulder.

  'Hah!' chuckled Logen. 'Good luck.' He watched her slide an arrow smoothly out from her quiver. Futile gesture. Even Harding Grim could never have made that shot, and he was the best man Logen had ever seen with a bow. He watched Ferro nock her shaft to the curved wood, back arched, yellow eyes fixed on the gliding shapes overhead.

  'You'll never bag one of those, not in a thousand years of trying.' She pulled back the string. 'Waste of a shaft!' he shouted.

  'You've got to be realistic about these things!' Probably the arrow would drop back down and stab him in the face. Or stick his horse through the neck, so it died and fell over and crushed him under it. A fitting end to this nightmare of a journey. A moment later one of the birds tumbled down into the grass, Ferro's arrow stuck right through it.

  'No,' he whispered, gawping open-mouthed at her as she
bent the bow again. Another arrow sailed up into the grey sky. Another bird flopped to the earth, just beside the first. Logen stared at it, disbelieving. 'No!'

  'Don't tell me you haven't seen stranger things,' said Bayaz. 'A man who talks to spirits, who travels with Magi, the most feared man in all the North?'

  Logen pulled his horse up and slithered down from the saddle. He walked through the long grass, bent down on wobbly, aching legs and picked up one of the birds. The shaft had stuck it right through the centre of the breast. If Logen had stabbed it with the arrow at a distance of a foot, he could hardly have done it more neatly. 'That's wrong.'

  Bayaz grinned down, hands crossed on the saddle before him. 'In ancient days, before history, so the legends say, our world and the Other Side were joined. One world. Demons walked the land, free to do as they pleased. Chaos, beyond dreaming. They bred with humans, and their offspring were half breeds. Part man, part demon. Devil-bloods. Monsters. One among them took the name Euz. He delivered humanity from the tyranny of devils, and the fury of his battle with them shaped the land. He split the world above from the world below, and he sealed the gates between. To prevent such terror ever coming again, he pronounced the First Law. It is forbidden to touch the Other Side direct, or to speak with devils.'

  Logen watched the others watch Ferro. Luthar and Quai, both frowning at this uncanny display of archery. She leaned right back in her saddle, bow string drawn as tight as it would go, glittering point of the next shaft held perfectly steady, still managing to nudge her mount this way and that with her heels. Logen could scarcely make a horse do what he wanted with the reins in his hands, but he failed to see what Bayaz' crazy story had to do with it. 'Devils and so on, the First Law.' Logen waved his hand. 'So what?'

  'From the start the First Law was filled with contradictions. All magic comes from the Other Side, falling upon the land as the light falls from the sun. Euz himself was part devil, and so were his sons—Juvens, Kanedias, Glustrod—and others beside. Their blood brought them gifts, and curses. Power, and long life, and strength or sight beyond the limits of simple men. Their blood passed on into their children, growing ever thinner, into their children's children, and so on through the long centuries. The gifts skipped one generation, then another, then came but rarely. The devil-blood grew thin, and died out. It is rare indeed now, when our world and the world below have drifted so far apart, to see those gifts made flesh. We truly are privileged to witness it.'