The Trouble with Peace

by Joe Abercrombie

  Lady Finree dan Brock and Lady Ardee dan Glokta, mothers to one of the happy couples, glided about the gathering arm in arm, an all-conquering double act, the one imposing military precision on the serving staff, the other administering risqué anecdotes to every guest. So many different styles of laughter. Hearty guffaws and bubbling chuckles from the gentlemen. Silvery giggles and tinkling titters from the ladies.

  A truly wonderful time was being had by all. With one notable exception, of course.

  Orso would rather have been anywhere else. The dungeons of the Emperor of Gurkhul held more appeal at that moment. It was hard to imagine greater torture, after all, than the glorious wedding of the woman he loved to a man he decidedly didn’t, where the guests consisted of a range of sneering enemies, bowing and scraping to his face then spitting scorn as soon as he was out of earshot.

  With every day that passed, he was coming to understand, even to admire, his father more. The man had played the eternally losing hand of being king about as well as was possible.

  He lifted his glass, and glumly watched the way the sunlight sparkled through it. The oblivion of the bottle, then. Wine had never let him down. More importantly, he had never let it down.

  “Your Majesty?”

  It was one of the grooms. Not the one he hated. The one he utterly despised. Lord fucking Isher, even more immaculately polished than usual.

  “I wished to give you my unreserved apology for the events in the Open Council. I am devastated. Who could have known that Lady Wetterlant would renege on her commitments and turn on us both?”

  Orso had spent a great deal of time pointlessly rehearsing the events of that day and, though he could prove nothing, he strongly suspected Isher had orchestrated the whole thing. To Lady Wetterlant, he blamed Orso; to Orso, he blamed Lady Wetterlant; then he teased out Leo dan Brock’s little performance and imagined he would come through greatly empowered and still everybody’s friend.

  The desire to punch him in the face was almost irresistible. But breaking his treacherous nose in front of several hundred guests, though satisfying for a moment, would only have played into Isher’s hands, and Orso had done that quite enough already. Plainly, Isher thought him an utter fool. Better he keep doing so.

  “You have nothing to apologise for!” Orso tossed his empty glass into the bushes and folded Isher in a tight embrace. “I know you did everything you could. Those bloody Wetterlants stabbed us both in the back.” He held Isher at arms’ length and smiled, smiled, smiled. “Some dogs are a danger to everyone. Have to be put down for the general good. And you can hardly be blamed for Lord Brock’s outburst.” Although he most certainly could be and most certainly was.

  “The man has a soldier’s temperament,” said Isher. “I know how desperately he wants to apologise for his behaviour.”

  “Not everyone is a politician, eh? Heart of a lion, and so forth. It’s a shame how things went, but— Ah!”

  And Orso snatched two glasses from a passing waiter’s tray and pressed one into Isher’s hand. “There’s as much need for cooperation between the Crown and Open Council as ever. More! I hope we can work together again to bring it about. This time… with a happier outcome?” Such as Isher’s neck in the noose rather than Wetterlant’s, for example. “To your happiness, my friend, and that of your charming bride, of course!”

  Isher gave a slightly surprised smile. “Of course.”

  Their glasses chinked pleasantly together, and Orso thought about how much he would have loved to smash his in Isher’s face and grind the jagged remnant into his groin.

  But all in good time.

  “Cheers!”

  Cages sprang open and songbirds swarmed into the air above the gardens, a flurry of shimmering blue and purple feathers. Imported from Gurkhul, Broad had been told, at a cost he hardly dared imagine.

  Half had died on the way over. He’d watched them clean the cages out, heaping up the shiny little corpses.

  May gave a delighted giggle as the survivors twittered sparkling into the sky. “Beautiful!”

  The guests clapped politely, and straight away turned to other entertainments. No doubt the birds themselves were meant to loiter in the trees and serenade the newly-weds, but they soon scattered to the wind. Broad doubted they’d last long in this climate. Only one was left on the lawn, weakly cheeping, looking almost as baffled as Broad felt.

  “How much did it all cost, do you reckon?”

  May winked at him. She’d held the books, had one eye on the sums, but she treated the number like a beautiful secret rather than a guilty one. “Better not to ask.”

  A lot better, probably. But he couldn’t help himself. For what Savine had spent on that one dress, which Liddy would help cut her out of in a few hours and she’d never wear again, she could’ve paid her workers on the canal more’n they’d asked for, and got the thing dug without one bone broken.

  For what her father the Arch Lector had spent on the wine today, maybe he could’ve built some better houses in Valbeck, and folk wouldn’t have been stuck in rotten cellars, and the Breakers wouldn’t have risen up, and two hundred good people wouldn’t have been hanged.

  For what Lord fucking Isher had spent on this dinner for seven hundred, the valley Broad grew up in could’ve been left as it was. He could’ve been herding now, the way his father had, along with all those others thrown off their land.

  Was he the only one saw it? Was he the only one worried about it? Or was everyone like him? They saw, and they worried, but they somehow didn’t fucking do anything.

  “Doesn’t she look beautiful?” murmured Liddy, watching Savine dan Brock sweep past with her husband, envious lords and ladies swarming after them like the tail to a comet.

  “Aye,” said Broad, pushing his lenses up his nose. She did look beautiful. Everything looked beautiful. Even them. He’d never seen his wife and his daughter look so fine, so well fed, so happy. It’s easy to scream about the fence when you’re on the wrong side of it. Some mad twist of fortune lands you on the right side, though, the fence starts to look like it might not be such a bad idea. Might even be worth all the sacrifices. Other people’s sacrifices aren’t that hard to make.

  “All worth it, eh?” said Liddy. She was talking about the nights she’d spent stitching by candlelight, he reckoned, not the nights he’d spent beating men by lamplight.

  Had that been worth it?

  “Aye,” he croaked out.

  He forced the smile onto his face. He was doing that a lot lately.

  Leo sat, watching his wife dance, whirl, twist, smile, flitting effortlessly from one partner to another. His wife. Just thinking the words gave him a guilty thrill. She was an enchanting dancer, it hardly needed to be said.

  Leo would’ve liked to join her and soak up his share of the admiration. But he’d never been much of a dancer, even without the leg wound. Few soldiers are. Antaup, maybe. He wondered what his friends would say when he presented his bride. Speechless, most likely. How could they be anything but impressed? How could anyone?

  “Not dancing, Your Grace?” It was that woman with the red hair and all the bosom he’d met last time he was in Adua.

  “The leg, you know. Still a bit sore.”

  “A shame. I can’t remember such a spectacular wedding.”

  “Thank you…” A moment of horror at not knowing her name, then a wash of relief as it came to him. “Selest! So glad you could come.”

  “Oh, Bayaz could have locked me in the House of the Maker and I’d still have found a way to attend!” She tapped him on the chest with her fan. “That’s two wonderful shows you’ve put on in the Lords’ Round.”

  Leo winced. “You know about the other one?”

  “My dear, everyone knows about the other one.”

  “Well, I’m meeting the king later this evening. I’ll say sorry, and that’ll be that.”

  “Of course. I suppose there was always going to be some… friction between you and His Majesty, given his histor
y with your wife.”

  Leo felt a coldness creeping up his spine. “What?”

  “Rumour has it they were lovers,” she purred. “But I’m sure Savine told you. It’s hardly the kind of secret one would want hanging over a marriage, after all.”

  The music struck a false note, suddenly. Was that why Savine had been so worried about the king’s feelings? So keen for Leo to apologise? He felt a surge of fury, and the pain in his leg as he leaned towards Selest dan Heugen only made it worse. He forced the words hissing through his fixed smile. “If I hear you’ve spread that rumour, I’ll break your fucking nose.”

  She looked rather pleased with that. One of those people who count anything but being ignored as a victory. “There’s really no point getting angry with me, Your Grace. I didn’t fuck the king.”

  She left him sitting, watching his wife dance, whirl, twist, smile, flitting effortlessly from one partner to another. The sight no longer filled him with quite the same delight.

  It was done. It was done, and could not be undone.

  Orso drained yet another glass, wondering if there was some kind of drinking record he could aim for. Something to give his life purpose. Something more than staring at Savine and thinking about all he’d lost.

  He glanced over to Brock, who for some reason appeared to be frowning angrily back, and raised his empty glass in a pointless toast. That bastard was everything Orso wasn’t. Honest, decisive, likeable. Crushingly popular with both nobles and commoners. A storybook hero with no crowd of mistakes at his back. Unless you counted the one he’d made in the Lords’ Round, the one he was apparently so very keen to apologise for, and that only appeared to have gilded his reputation. Hot-blooded and passionate, don’t you know! Anyone would have thought the most admirable thing a man could do in Open Council these days was berate the monarch.

  “Blame sticks to some men,” he murmured, under his breath. “Others it slides right off.”

  “Dinner will be served shortly, Your Majesty.” A powdered footman gestured towards his chair—the largest chair, of course—in the very centre of the great polished horseshoe of table. He wondered how many trees had died to make it possible. “If it please Your Majesty, you are to be seated between the two brides, the grooms just without, to either side.” And he managed to back away and bow simultaneously.

  Between the two brides. As though to emphasise how alone he was. He would rather have been seated between the Great Wolf and the Snake of Talins. Far rather. He did not have nearly so ugly a history with them as he had with Savine dan Glokta.

  He realised he had to correct himself.

  Savine dan Brock.

  “Fuck,” he snarled. He could stand it no longer. He could stand himself no longer. “Gorst?”

  “Your Majesty?”

  “Where might we find Corporal Tunny these days?” The Lord Governor of bloody Angland could apologise later, if he cared to. “I think I’ve had quite enough of other people’s happiness.”

  Savine shut the doors and leaned back against them, taking a moment to breathe. Her cheeks burned from the dancing, and the compliments, and the endless smiling, and the ever-greater quantities of pearl dust. She could hardly feel her face any more. She simply had to get some air.

  “So. A married woman.” The sight of her father soon cleared her spinning head. He sat in his wheeled chair on the terrace, deep-lined face tipped back, gazing at the stars. “They say it’s the proudest day of a father’s life.”

  “They say all sorts of nonsense.” His opinion had meant everything to her once, but she found right now she hardly cared. She was eager to shrug off the wreckage of her past life like a snake sheds its skin and sweep away smiling towards her bright new future.

  “There is no guide to being a parent, Savine.” He turned his head slowly to look at her, eyes bright in the darkness. “Especially if your parents did as poor a job as mine and your mother’s did. You reel from one mess to another and chart the only course you can see at the time. We meant to tell you the truth, but… when is the right moment to share a thing like that? We preferred the pretence. We did not… want to hurt you.”

  She gave a bitter snort. “Then congratulations on your spectacular failure.”

  “Hardly my first. One day, I hope you will see that we always tried to act in your best interests.”

  “You could have warned me.”

  “Not to bed the crown prince? Hardly advice someone of your talents should need.” Perhaps he had a point there. “Besides, we agreed long ago that I would give you some privacy. How was I to know you would become involved with the one man who was off limits?”

  “From what my mother tells me, it does rather run in the family.”

  A silence, and she saw the side of his face twitch in the warm light from the party, and he reached up and wiped a streak of wet from his leaking left eye. “Well. A life without regrets is not a life at all. It is in the past now. I know I cast a long shadow, Savine. I am glad you are ready to step out from under it. Just… be careful.”

  “Aren’t I always?”

  “You will move in different circles now. As the Lady Governor of Angland, no less.”

  “I’m used to hard decisions.” It felt as if her life had been one after another.

  “You are used to business. This is politics. The way things are going… well, take care. And promise me one thing.” He beckoned her close to whisper. “Have nothing to do with Bayaz. Not with him, not with any magus. Take no favours from him, owe no debts to him, make no deals with him. Do not please him. Do not displease him. Do everything possible to escape his notice altogether. Promise me.”

  “All right,” she said, frowning. “I promise.” If she was to have a statue on the Kingsway, she supposed she would have to win it for herself.

  “Good. Good.” Her father winced as he settled into his chair, drunken applause in the background as a dance came to its end. “The time may soon come when I cannot protect you any more.”

  “Is that what you’ve been doing?”

  “Believe it or not, I’ve been trying.” He frowned over the rooftops towards the dome of the Lords’ Round, the great black shape soaring high into the night sky, a grand replacement for the one destroyed the year Savine was born. “Sometimes,” he murmured, “the only way to improve something is to destroy it, so it can be rebuilt better. Sometimes, to change the world, we must first burn it down.”

  Savine raised one brow. “Valbeck may be better in the years to come. But being there while it burned was far from pleasant.”

  “The emperor’s prisons were far from pleasant.” He licked at his empty gums with a faint sucking. “But I emerged a better man. Being your father… is the thing I am proudest of. It’s the only thing I’m proud of.”

  “And you’re not even my father.”

  She wanted to strike some spark of anger from him. But all he did was slowly nod, a trace of a smile as he looked up at the stars, bright in the clear sky. “That should tell you what I think of everything else I’ve done.” Beyond the windows, the band struck up a jaunty reel, one of her mother’s favourites, people clapping and stamping and laughing in time. “Could you wheel me back in?”

  She thought about wheeling him off into the flower beds. But in the end, she took the handles of his chair and turned it about, that one wheel slightly squeaking. “I can do that.”

  Future Treasons, Past Affairs

  Leo raised his fist to knock, and paused, clenching it so hard his knuckles clicked.

  It was a bloody humiliation. He’d never had much respect for Orso as a man, and he’d been losing respect for the Crown as an institution for months. Now he had to spend part of his wedding night begging for forgiveness from his wife’s former lover. It was an utter bloody humiliation.

  But it had to be done. He was a leader, and a husband, soon to be a father. He had responsibilities. He was starting to see that humiliations came with the territory.

  He forced on a smile, seasoned i
t with just a sprinkle of shame, turned the doorknob and stepped through. “Your Majesty, I…”

  You could’ve said there were a lot of kings in that vast salon. Twenty, at the least, of the Union’s best, in uniforms, hunting garb, full armour, perched on gilded chairs or astride mighty steeds, sneering, smirking, pouting down at Leo from towering canvasses. But of the current throne-stuffer there was no sign.

  In fact, the only living occupants of the room were Lords Isher, Barezin and Heugen, gathered around a table in one corner in a secretive huddle.

  “Leo!” called Isher, raising his glass. “It seems the king couldn’t stay.”

  “More important matters,” said Heugen, leaning to light his pipe at a candle.

  “At the whorehouse, I understand,” added Barezin, sloshing amber spirit from the decanter and nudging the drink towards an empty chair.

  Leo felt angry colour rising to his cheeks as he limped over. “The whorehouse?” All the effort he’d put into his apology and the arrogant bastard couldn’t even be bothered to hear it?

  “If you ask me…” Heugen puffed out sweet-smelling chagga smoke. “You’ve not a thing to apologise for.”

  “You told the truth,” said Barezin. “Everyone knows it. He’s the one should apologise.”

  “Kings don’t,” grumbled Leo, dropping into the empty seat and snatching up the drink.

  “Not this one, anyway.”

  “Well, shit on him!” Leo drained his glass in one swallow and slammed it down in a rush of fury. “I’ve had enough! We can’t let things carry on like this!” He glared at a painting of Orso’s father King Jezal, handsome enough but with a helpless set to his shoulders even as a young man. An ineffectual ditherer who lost every war he’d fought and achieved nothing but unmatched debts, and his reign was starting to look like a golden age. “We can’t let the Union just… slide into the fucking sewer!”

  Isher gave Barezin and Heugen a significant glance. “There comes a point,” he said with great care, “when talking about a better world is simply not enough. There comes a time… when men of conscience, principle and courage must dare the unthinkable… and fight for a better world.”