The Trouble with Peace

by Joe Abercrombie

  “I swear, you were the one person in Valbeck who kept their wits entirely about them.” The king wagged a finger at her as she sat beside him. “I thought then—next time I’m on a sinking ship, that’s the woman I want rowing the lifeboat.” And he reached out as if to clap her on the shoulder, must have sensed her deep discomfort, and ended up giving the back of her chair an awkward pat instead.

  She had to admit she enjoyed the gratitude. It wasn’t something she tasted often and, like drink, if you only take it rarely a small measure can make you giddy. Any gratitude. Let alone a king’s. But as the silence stretched, she began to consider that bit about the lifeboat and cleared her throat again. “Is… the ship sinking, then?”

  “There might be some bailing to be done,” came a voice from behind. Vick turned, surprised. A man was leaning against the wall beside the door. A man she somehow had no inkling was there until he spoke. An unexceptional man with curly hair. Average height, average build, average everything. The very look Vick aimed for herself, when she wanted to blend into anonymity. The exceptional ordinariness of the expert spy. Or the master assassin. It put her instantly on guard.

  “Do you know Yoru Sulfur?” asked Glokta.

  “We have never met,” said Sulfur, “though I, too, am a great admirer of your work in Valbeck.” He gave her a neat little bow. “I was once apprentice to the First of the Magi.”

  Vick kept her face carefully neutral, but it was a struggle. Shenkt had said the Union was Bayaz’s tool, and now she found his agent at his grinning ease with the nation’s two most powerful men. “And now?” she asked.

  “His watchful eye, his sympathetic ear—”

  “His punishing fist?” asked Orso.

  “Let us say his guiding palm,” said Sulfur. “By all means, pretend I am not here.”

  “Not easily done,” murmured the king, holding out a folded paper to Vick between two fingers. “I received another eye-opening note this morning. One that may give us more bailing to do than in Valbeck and Westport combined.”

  Vick took it, unfolded it and began to read.

  Your Majesty,

  There is a plot against you.

  Your Open Council plans to steal your throne.

  They have powerful allies in the North. They look for more in Styria.

  They will land their troops on the northern coast of Midderland on the last day of summer, declare themselves patriots and march on Adua.

  You should prepare. But you should have care how you prepare. There is a traitor in your Closed Council, too.

  With Best Wishes,

  A Friend

  Vick swallowed, her skin unpleasantly prickling. A plot. The Open Council. Allies in the North and Styria. A traitor in the Closed Council. This could be a threat to make the uprising in Valbeck look like a village dance.

  “A Friend?” The writing was odd. Carefully formed. Almost a little childlike. Vick turned the letter over, studied the ink, felt the paper, smelled it, even. But there were no clues to who wrote it. “Any idea who this friend might be?”

  “None,” said Glokta. “But people keen to declare themselves a friend are usually anything but.”

  “Even enemies can tell you the truth,” said Orso. “Relations between the Crown and the Open Council haven’t been this bad since… well, the last civil war, I suppose. Probably best not to dwell on how that ended…”

  Widespread murder and destruction culminating in the violent overthrow and execution of a king. She placed the letter carefully on the Arch Lector’s desk. “Who on the Open Council might have the audacity, the grievance and the resources for treason?”

  “Just about any of them.” Glokta licked at his empty gums. “Just about all of them.”

  “But if I had to pick a man to declare himself a patriot while doing it, Isher would be the one.” Orso disgustedly adjusted his cuffs. “He tricked me into that mistake with Wetterlant, and I’ve no doubt he manoeuvred Leo dan Brock into his little display of petulance at the trial.”

  The Arch Lector was looking even more pale than usual. “Isher and Brock were married together…” One of them to his own daughter, as they were no doubt all well aware.

  “Enemies on the Open Council are one thing,” said Vick. “Their military resources are limited. The Lord Governor of Angland is another. He commands an army of thousands. Well equipped, experienced, loyal.” That prickling sensation was spreading. “Could Brock be a part of this?”

  The king took a long breath through his nose and let it sigh away. “Powerful allies in the North…”

  “Your Majesty.” Glokta winced as he tried to straighten in his wheeled chair. “If suspicion falls on my son-in-law, it must also fall on my own daughter. As your Arch Lector, I must be above reproach. I should tender my resignation, or at least recuse myself from this—”

  Orso waved it away. “I won’t hear of it, Your Eminence. You’re the one man on the Closed Council I entirely trust. You’re simply far too widely hated to make a good conspirator.”

  Glokta gave a weary snort. “Immensely kind of you to say so, Your Majesty.”

  “Besides, we have no evidence. The one thing I’m sure Leo dan Brock is guilty of is finding me contemptible. If that’s a crime, I’ll have to hang three-quarters of the country. Have you seen the latest pamphlets? About me? About my mother? About the debt?”

  “Outrageous lies, of course,” threw in Sulfur.

  “Yet people can’t get enough of them.”

  “We could arrest Isher,” offered Vick. “I daresay we could pry the truth out of him.”

  “Tempting.” Glokta shook his head. “But after that business with Wetterlant, no one on the Open Council trusts us. We cannot afford to hand them more martyrs. We must tread carefully and bring plenty of proof wherever we go.”

  “In the meantime, we take the advice of our anonymous friend and prepare,” said Orso. “We raise our own forces, we gather every ally we can find.”

  “We are spread thin, Your Majesty.” Glokta spread his thin hands. “The King’s Own are scattered across the Union keeping down the Breakers.”

  “Colonel Forest helped me raise several thousand soldiers to fight in the North. The Crown Prince’s Division.” Orso smiled, as if at a happy memory. “It might be re-formed.”

  “At a cost.”

  “In such dark times as these,” said Sulfur, “I have no doubt that the Banking House of Valint and Balk would prove generous.”

  Again, Vick kept her face expressionless, but she nearly shivered at the memory of Shenkt’s chill breath on her cheek. He had spoken of Valint and Balk, too.

  “By generous,” said Glokta, wiping a long tear from his cheek as his eyelid flickered, “I assume you mean further loans at even more crippling rates of interest?”

  Sulfur gave a good-natured shrug. “They are a bank, not a charity.”

  “Better to put my crown in hock than have it stolen, I suppose,” murmured Orso, though Vick wondered if there was much difference.

  “I will go to the North on the next tide,” said Sulfur. “My master has powerful friends there. If this rebellion is real, it may be that I can nip it in the bud.”

  “As you nipped the Burners at the demonstration of Curnsbick’s engine?” asked Orso.

  Was Sulfur the Eater, then? Another like Shenkt? From the white-toothed smile he gave the king, it was not that hard to imagine. “I would hope more subtly,” he said, “but no less decisively in defence of Your Majesty’s interests.”

  “As long as my interests coincide with your master’s, I presume.”

  “I dare not imagine where they could diverge.” And Sulfur slipped out, pulling the door shut with that final click.

  Glokta sat forward, hands clasped. “Inquisitor Teufel, I would like you to observe the other members of the Closed Council. Subtly, of course. If one of them is disloyal, we have to know. Employ only people you trust. Outsiders, if possible.”

  “I serve and obey, Your Eminence. Your Ma
jesty.” She stood, then paused with a hand on the back of her chair, thinking.

  “Something else?” asked the Arch Lector.

  “The note said they are looking for allies in Styria.”

  Orso raised one brow. “And?”

  “I may know some people who could help us there.”

  The address Shylo Vitari had given her belonged to a basement near the docks, odd lights glowing beyond the coloured glass in the windows, like the lights they say lure sailors into the deep. A man with a battered sea captain’s hat and an even more battered moustache slumped against the crooked railings outside with hands wedged in pockets, a sign creaking above him, a woman with a spear and a bottle, a fish’s tail instead of legs and a smile that said she’d seen things you couldn’t dream of.

  The place looked like a child’s picture of a nest of Styrian spies. Vick could only assume it was a double bluff. That or their contempt for the Union was so great they weren’t even bothering to hide.

  The steps led to a warren of gloomy cellars and low vaults that reminded her far too much of the mines in the camps of Angland. The coloured candles were the flickering lamps as they shuffled into the dark, bent double. The clinking of glasses were the clinking of picks as they lay on their sides to nibble at the seam. The shadows writhing on the stained stone walls were her own shadow as she shoved the coal tub on with her scabbed forehead, squirming down shafts too tight to sit up in, icy water lapping at her raw knees, knowing that if the ceiling fell, if a flame caught gas, if water broke through—

  She shook herself, trying to shake free of the fear. That was all long ago. That girl was gone, not trapped inside her, screaming to get out.

  A man lay rocking in a hammock, tattooed arms folded behind his head, sleepy eyes following her down the tunnel. A couple swayed together to the music of a plaintive violin. It wasn’t clear whether they were dancing or fucking or both, but Vick ruled nothing out. A woman shuffling cards on a ruined chaise winked, then pointed on towards a bright space where the ceiling was a little higher and Vick could stand straight.

  She’d seen plenty of drinking holes, but never one so well stocked. Shelves were crowded with bottles of gleaming crystal and bland pottery, utterly plain and absurdly ornate. One filled with floating worms. One with a dagger for a stopper. One shaped like a grinning face with stones for eyes.

  “At last!” The barman’s accent was a strange cocktail—a slosh of Styrian and a dash of the Union with a few more ingredients which were harder to place. Tall and pale, with spiky red hair and a spiky red beard. He had a white cloth over one shoulder and a little monkey squatting on the other and he smiled a wide smile full of good teeth. “Victarine dan Teufel graces my humble establishment.”

  “Have we met?”

  “We’re meeting now. My mother calls me Cas.” He spread his arms to take in the vast array of bottles. “But to everyone else I’m just the barman. You don’t look like my mother.”

  “I think I’d remember. Who’s this?”

  “My monkey. What can I get you?”

  “What’ve you got?”

  “What haven’t I got?”

  “Has it ever occurred to you that the more choice there is, the harder it becomes to choose?”

  “It has been mentioned. But fear is a poor reason to limit your options.” He looked her discerningly up and down, like a tailor guessing a client’s measurements. “Tough day?”

  “Is there another kind?”

  “Have you ever tried Sworfene?” And he plucked an unassuming bottle of bubbled glass from the top shelf behind him. “It’s only made in one village near Jacra. Hard to find here.” He whipped out two glasses, wiped them with his cloth and poured two little slugs of thick, clear spirit with a practised twist of the wrist.

  “What kind of barman pours himself a drink every time?”

  “This kind. Don’t let the revolting smell put you off.”

  “I don’t generally.” Vick took a sip and swilled it thoughtfully around her mouth. Up in the camps, they’d distilled every rotten vegetable they could get their hands on, but she’d still never tasted anything worse. Swallowing was against her every instinct. Afterwards, she could hardly breathe. “What the hell’s it made from?” she croaked.

  “A secret more closely guarded than the colour of Queen Terez’s underclothes. It’s an acquired taste.”

  “Why would anyone want to acquire that taste?” Vick found she was taking another sip, shuddering as she swilled it around her mouth.

  “Strange, isn’t it? You keep having to check how disgusting it is. Then, one day, you check and you find you actually like it. Soon after, no other drink will quite scratch that itch. I’ve often felt that people are the same.” He dipped the tip of his tongue into his glass and thoughtfully smacked his lips. “The ones you like straight away rarely turn out to be your favourites. I’ve a feeling you might be an acquired taste, Victarine dan Teufel.”

  “Are you flattering me?”

  He held up his finger and thumb and peered at her through the tiny space between. “A little. But with a subtlety and class you don’t often get in Adua. Shylo Vitari doesn’t like being embarrassed, but she likes people who can manage to do it. She works on the principle that it’s your worst enemies that make the best friends. Have you come to take up her offer of employment?”

  “No,” said Vick. “I’m happy where I am.”

  “Even though all the days are tough days?”

  “Adequately unhappy.”

  “So what brings you to my little patch of Styria-in-Midderland?” And the barman raised his red brows as he took a sip of that disgusting spirit. “Or did you really just stop in for a drink?”

  “My employer… wants to meet with yours.”

  He raised his brows even higher. “Old Sticks? Wants to meet with Vitari?”

  “Let’s cut out the middlemen.” She tossed back the last of the spirit. “King Orso wants to meet with King Jappo.” Even the monkey looked shocked as she slid her empty glass back across the bar. “Pour us another, eh?”

  Tomorrow Came

  The thing Broad couldn’t believe about Valbeck was how much it hadn’t changed.

  Not a year ago, smoke poured from the mills as they burned to black shells. Now most of those shells were already demolished and the chimneys thrown up taller than before, smoke pouring from them as they worked. That same perpetual gloom, and scratching smoke, and stink of the great unwashed and unwashable. Those same showers of sparks and blooms of steam and snatches of old worksong from the foundry doorways. The river in its rotten banks was stained again from the dye-works upstream, choked with boats and churned to particoloured froth by bigger waterwheels than ever.

  The destruction of the uprising hadn’t put off the investors one bit, only opened up new opportunities. Scaffolds teetered everywhere, as if giant spiders were spinning webs over the city. There were barricades about, still, but made from sharpened stakes rather than broken furniture, manned not by shabby Breakers but by King’s Own in bright uniforms, ready to crush any sign of disobedience with the full force of His Majesty’s heavily armed displeasure. The queues of the broken and needy clogged the streets around the manufactories, rain spitting down on ’em black from soot. Only difference from the sorry processions Broad begged for work in a year before was that they were even longer.

  “Any o’ you know a man called Sarlby?” he asked, holding up his fist. Wasn’t bothering to hide it any more. “He’d have a tattoo like this one.”

  Some flinched away. Some shook their heads. Some barely even seemed to hear him, lost in their own misery.

  They’d nearly finished rebuilding the bank, and swabbed away the Burners’ slogans, and cleaned up the square before the courthouse. From the three gibbets in front, though, they were doing nearly as brisk a business in hangings as when Judge was in charge. Round the corner, the whores were doing brisk business, too, a clutch of ’em in bedraggled finery, hair gathered up to show bruised neck
s and skirts gathered up to show pale legs and paint smudged by the summer shower.

  “Any o’ you girls know a fellow called Sarlby?” Broad asked, holding up a silver mark.

  “You talk to those girls, it’ll cost you,” said a rat-faced pimp, skulking over from an alleyway.

  Broad gave him a look. “You sure?”

  The man frowned, and twitched, and skulked back into the shadows.

  Broad turned his hand around to show the back. “He’d have a tattoo like this one.”

  The nearest girl shook her head. He gave her the coin anyway.

  “What do you want for it?” she asked, and Broad wondered how young she was under that smeared paint. Young as May. Younger, probably.

  “Just take it.”

  He trudged down a slum street not far from where he’d once lived, the way just rutted dirt and ashes and rubbish flung out from the houses, dark from the buildings leaning together and the washing flapping in the gritty breeze. There were no drains, only pools of flyblown filth, fenced off in places to make pens for the squealing hogs, their run-off leaking through the slit windows into the cellars where the poorest eked out some kind of a living.

  Four men came past with a coffin up on their shoulders and a sad crowd at their backs. Two women walked ahead, in good black dresses. Best clothes round here were the funeral clothes. They were worn often enough, after all. Undertakers were great ones for persuading grieving folk to spend money they didn’t have. That way, debt could follow you even into the Land of the Dead.

  Broad stood aside to watch the mourners pass. Wanted to give ’em something. The way they’d all chipped in when he lived on a street like this, even when they had next to nothing to give. He wanted to give ’em something but he set his jaw against it. You can’t make every problem your problem, Liddy was always telling him. And she was right.

  He caught an old man limping along at the back in ragged black. “You know a fellow called Sarlby?”

  “I don’t know no one no more.” And he limped on.