The Collected Joe Abercrombie (10 page)

West darted forward, ducked inside Jezal’s remaining blade and slammed into him with his shoulder. ‘Ooof,’ said Jezal as he staggered back and crashed to the floor, fumbling his short steel. It skittered across the stones and Lord Marshal Varuz caught it smartly under his foot. The blunted point of West’s sword hovered over Jezal’s throat.

‘Damn it!’ he cursed, as the grinning Major offered him his hand.

‘Yes,’ murmured Varuz with a deep sigh, ‘damn it indeed. An even more detestable performance than yesterday’s, if that’s possible! You let Major West make a fool of you again!’ Jezal slapped West’s hand away with a scowl and got to his feet. ‘He never once lost control of that bout! You allowed yourself to be drawn in, and then disarmed! Disarmed! My grandson would not have made that mistake, and he is eight years old!’ Varuz whacked at the floor with his stick. ‘Explain to me please, Captain Luthar, how you will win a fencing match from a prone position, and without your steels?’

Jezal sulked and rubbed the back of his head.

‘No? In future, if you fall off a cliff carrying your steels, I want to see you smashed to bits at the bottom, gripping them tightly in your dead fingers, do you hear me?’

‘Yes, Marshal Varuz,’ mumbled a sullen Jezal, wishing the old bastard would take a tumble off a cliff himself. Or perhaps the Tower of Chains. That would be adequate. Maybe Major West could join him.

‘Over-confidence is a curse to the swordsman! You must treat every opponent as though he will be your last. As for your footwork,’ and Varuz curled his lip with disgust, ‘fine and fancy coming forward, but put you on the back foot and you quite wither away. The Major only had to tap you and you fell down like a fainting schoolgirl.’

West grinned across at him. He was loving this. Absolutely loving it, damn him.

‘They say Bremer dan Gorst has a back leg like a pillar of steel. A pillar of steel they say! It would be easier to knock down the House of the Maker than him.’ The Lord Marshal pointed over at the outline of the huge tower, looming up over the buildings of the courtyard. ‘The House of the Maker!’ he shouted in disgust.

Jezal sniffed and kicked at the floor with his boot. For the hundredth time he entertained the notion of giving it up and never holding a steel again. But what would people say? His father was absurdly proud of him, always boasting about his skill to anyone who would listen. He had his heart set on seeing his son fight in the Square of Marshals before a screaming crowd. If Jezal threw it over now his father would be mortified, and he could say goodbye to his commission, goodbye to his allowance, goodbye to his ambitions. No doubt his brothers would love that.

‘Balance is the key,’ Varuz was spouting. ‘Your strength rises up through the legs! From now on we will add an hour on the beam to your training. Every day.’ Jezal winced. ‘So: a run, exercises with the heavy bar, forms, an hour of sparring, forms again, an hour on the beam.’ The Lord Marshal nodded with satisfaction. ‘That will suffice, for now. I will see you at six o’clock tomorrow morning, ice cold sober.’ Varuz frowned. ‘Ice. Cold. Sober.’

‘I can’t do this forever, you know,’ said Jezal as he hobbled stiffly back towards his quarters. ‘How much of this horrible shit should a man have to take?’

West grinned. ‘This is nothing. I’ve never seen the old bastard so soft on anyone. He must really like you. He wasn’t half so friendly with me.’

Jezal wasn’t sure he believed it. ‘Worse than this?’

‘I didn’t have the grounding that you’ve had. He made me hold the heavy bar over my head all afternoon until it fell on me.’ The Major winced slightly, as though even the memory was painful. ‘He made me run up and down the Tower of Chains in full armour. He had me sparring four hours a day, every day.’

‘How did you put up with it?’

‘I didn’t have a choice. I’m not a nobleman. Fencing was the only way for me to get noticed. But it paid off in the end. How many commoners do you know with a commission in the King’s Own?’

Jezal shrugged. ‘Come to think of it, very few.’ As a nobleman himself, he didn’t think there should be any.

‘But you’re from a good family, and a Captain already. If you can win the Contest there’s no telling how far you could go. Hoff – the Lord Chamberlain, Marovia – the High Justice, Varuz himself for that matter, they were all champions in their day. Champions with the right blood always go on to great things.’

Jezal snorted. ‘Like your friend Sand dan Glokta?’

The name dropped between them like a stone. ‘Well . . . almost always.’

‘Major West!’ came a rough voice from behind. A thickset sergeant with a scar down his cheek was hurrying over to them.

‘Sergeant Forest, how are you?’ asked West, clapping the soldier warmly on the back. He had a touch with peasants, but then Jezal had to keep reminding himself that West was little better than a peasant himself. He might be educated, and an officer, and so forth, but he still had more in common with the sergeant than he did with Jezal, once you thought about it.

The sergeant beamed. ‘Very well, thank you, sir.’ He nodded respectfully to Jezal. ‘Morning, Captain.’

Jezal favoured him with a terse nod and turned away to look up the avenue. He could think of no possible reason why an officer would want to be familiar with the common soldiers. Furthermore, he was scarred and ugly. Jezal had no use whatever for ugly people.

‘What can I do for you?’ West was asking.

‘Marshal Burr wishes to see you, sir, for an urgent briefing. All senior officers are ordered to attend.’

West’s face clouded. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ The sergeant saluted and strode off.

‘What’s all that about?’ asked Jezal carelessly, watching some clerk chase around after a paper he had dropped.

‘Angland. This King of the Northmen, Bethod.’ West said the name with a scowl, as though it left a bitter taste. ‘They say he’s defeated all his enemies in the North, and now he’s spoiling for a fight with The Union.’

‘Well, if it’s a fight he wants,’ said Jezal airily. Wars were a fine thing, in his opinion, an excellent opportunity for glory and advancement. The paper fluttered past his boot on the light breeze, closely followed by the puffing clerk. Jezal grinned at him as he hurried past, bent almost double in his clumsy efforts to try and grab it.

The Major snatched up the grubby document and handed it over. ‘Thank you, sir,’ said the clerk, his sweaty face quite pitiful with gratitude, ‘thank you so much!’

‘Think nothing of it,’ murmured West, and the clerk gave a sycophantic little bow and hurried away. Jezal was disappointed. He had been rather enjoying the chase. ‘There could be war, but that’s the least of my troubles right now.’ West breathed a heavy sigh. ‘My sister is in Adua.’

‘I didn’t know you had a sister.’

‘Well I do, and she’s here.’

‘So?’ Jezal had little enthusiasm for hearing about the Major’s sister. West might have pulled himself up, but the rest of his family were distinctly beneath Jezal’s notice. He was interested in meeting poor, common girls he could take advantage of, and rich, noble ones he might think about marrying. Anything in between was of no importance.

‘Well, my sister can be charming but she is also a little . . . unconventional. She can be something of a handful in the wrong mood. Truth be told, I’d prefer to take care of a pack of Northmen than her.’

‘Come now, West,’ said Jezal absently, hardly taking any notice of what he was saying, ‘I’m sure she can’t be that difficult.’

The Major brightened. ‘Well, I’m relieved to hear you say that. She’s always been keen to see the Agriont for herself, and I’ve been saying for years that I’d give her a tour if she ever came here. We’d arranged it for today in fact.’ Jezal had a sinking feeling. ‘Now, with this meeting—’

‘But I have so little time these days!’ whinged Jezal.

‘I promise I’ll make it up to you. We’ll meet you at my quarters in an hour.’

‘Hold on . . .’ But West was already striding away.

Don’t let her be too ugly, Jezal was thinking as he slowly approached the door to Major West’s quarters and raised his unwilling fist to knock. Just don’t let her be too ugly. And not too stupid either. Anything but an afternoon wasted on a stupid girl. His hand was halfway to the door when he became aware of raised voices on the other side. He stood guiltily in the corridor, his ear drawing closer and closer to the wood, hoping to hear something complimentary about himself.

‘. . . and what about your maid?’ came Major West’s muffled voice, sounding greatly annoyed.

‘I had to leave her at the house, there was a lot to do. Nobody’s been there in months.’ West’s sister. Jezal’s heart sank. A deep voice, she sounded like a fat one. Jezal couldn’t afford to be seen walking about the Agriont with a fat girl on his arm. It could ruin his reputation.

‘But you can’t just wander about the city on your own!’

‘I got here alright, didn’t I? You’re forgetting who we are, Collem. I can make do without a servant. To most of the people here I’m no better than a servant anyway. Besides, I’ll have your friend Captain Luthar to look after me.’

‘That’s even worse, as you damn well know!’

‘Well I wasn’t to know that you’d be busy. I would’ve thought you’d make the time to see your own sister.’ She didn’t sound an idiot, which was something, but fat and now peevish too. ‘Aren’t I safe with your friend?’

‘He’s a good enough sort, but is he safe with you?’ Jezal wasn’t sure what the Major meant by that little comment. ‘And walking about the Agriont alone, and with a man you hardly know? Don’t play the fool, I know you better than that! What will people think?’

‘Shit on what they think.’ Jezal jerked away from the door. He wasn’t used to hearing ladies use that sort of language. Fat, peevish and coarse, damn it. This might be even worse than he’d feared. He looked up the corridor, considering making a run for it, already working out his excuse. Curse his bad luck, though, someone was coming up the stairs now. He couldn’t leave without being seen. He would just have to knock and get it over with. He gritted his teeth and pounded resentfully at the door.

The voices stopped suddenly, and Jezal put on an unconvincing friendly grin. Let the torture begin. The door swung open.

For some reason, he had been expecting a kind of shorter, fatter version of Major West, in a dress. He had been greatly mistaken. She was perhaps slightly fuller of figure than was strictly fashionable, since skinny girls were all the rage, but you couldn’t call her fat, not fat at all. She had dark hair, dark skin, a little darker than would generally be thought ideal. He knew that a lady should remain out of the sun whenever possible, but looking at her, he really couldn’t remember why. Her eyes were very dark, almost black, and blue eyes were turning the heads this season, but hers shone in the dim light of the doorway in a rather bewitching manner.

She smiled at him. A strange sort of smile, higher on one side than the other. It gave him a slightly uneasy feeling, as though she knew something funny that he didn’t. Still, excellent teeth, all white and shiny. Jezal’s anger was swiftly vanishing. The longer he looked at her the more her looks grew on him, and the emptier his head became of cogent thought.

‘Hello,’ she said.

His mouth opened slightly, as if by force of habit, but nothing came out. His mind was a blank page.

‘And you must be Captain Luthar?’

‘Er ...’

‘I’m Collem’s sister, Ardee,’ she slapped her forehead. ‘I’m such an idiot though, Collem will have told you all about me. I know the two of you are great friends.’

Jezal glanced awkwardly at the Major, who was frowning back at him and looking somewhat put out. It would hardly do to say he had been entirely unaware of her existence until that morning. He struggled to frame even a mildly amusing reply, but nothing came to mind.

Ardee took hold of him by the elbow and drew him into the room, talking all the while. ‘I know you’re a great fencer, but I’ve been told your wit is even sharper than your sword. So much so in fact, that you only use your sword upon your friends, as your wit is far too deadly.’ She looked at him expectantly. Silence.

‘Well,’ he mumbled, ‘I do fence a bit.’ Pathetic. Utterly awful.

‘Is this the right man, or do I have the gardener here?’ She looked him over with a strange expression, hard to read. Perhaps it was the same sort of look Jezal would have while examining a horse he was thinking of buying: cautious, searching, intent, and ever so slightly disdainful. ‘Even the gardeners have splendid uniforms, it seems.’

Jezal was almost sure that had been some kind of insult, but he was too busy trying to think of something witty to pay it too much mind. He knew he would have to speak now or spend the entire day in embarrassed silence, so he opened his mouth and trusted to luck. ‘I’m sorry if I seem dumbfounded, but Major West is such an unattractive man. How could I have expected so beautiful a sister?’

West snorted with laughter. His sister raised an eyebrow, and counted the points off on her fingers. ‘Mildly offensive to my brother, which is good. Somewhat amusing, which is also good. Honest, which is refreshing, and wildly complimentary to me, which, of course, is excellent. A little late, but on the whole worth waiting for.’ She looked Jezal in the eye. ‘The afternoon might not be a total loss.’

Jezal wasn’t sure he liked that last comment, and he wasn’t sure he liked the way she looked at him, but he was enjoying looking at her, so he was prepared to forgive a lot. The women of his acquaintance rarely said anything clever, especially the fine-looking ones. He supposed they were trained to smile and nod and listen while the men did the talking. On the whole he agreed with that way of doing things, but the cleverness sat well on West’s sister, and she had more than caught his curiosity. Fat and peevish were off the menu, of that there could be no doubt. As for coarse, well, handsome people are never coarse, are they? Just . . . unconventional. He was beginning to think that the afternoon, as she had said, might not be a total loss.