The Collected Joe Abercrombie (110 page)

The Gurkish ambassador was, without doubt, a majestic presence.

His nose was prominent and hooked, his eyes burned bright with intelligence, his long, thin beard was neatly brushed. Gold thread in his sweeping white robe and his tall head-dress glittered in the bright sun. He held his body awesomely erect, long neck stretched out, chin held high, so that he looked always down at everything he deigned to look upon. Hugely tall and thin, he made the lofty, magnificent room seem low and shabby.
He could pass for an Emperor himself.

Glokta was keenly aware of how bent and awkward he must look as he shuffled, grimacing and sweating, into the audience chamber.
The miserable crow faces the magnificent peacock. Still, battles are not always won by the most beautiful. Fortunately for me.

The long table was surprisingly empty. Only Vissbruck, Eider, and Korsten dan Vurms were in their seats, and none of them looked pleased to see him arrive.
Nor should they, the bastards.

‘No Lord Governor today?’ he barked.

‘My father is not well,’ muttered Vurms.

‘Shame you couldn’t stay and comfort him in his illness. What about Kahdia?’ No one spoke. ‘Didn’t think he’d take to a meeting with them, eh?’ he nodded rudely at the emissary. ‘How lucky for everyone that you three have stronger stomachs. I am Superior Glokta and, whatever you might have heard, I am in charge here. I must apologise for my late arrival, but no one told me you were coming.’ He looked daggers at Vissbruck, but the general was not interested in meeting his eye.
That’s right, you blustering fool. I won’t forget this.

‘My name is Shabbed al Islik Burai.’ The ambassador spoke the common tongue perfectly, in a voice every bit as powerful, as authoritative, as arrogant as his bearing. ‘I come as emissary from the rightful ruler of all the South, mighty Emperor of mighty Gurkhul and all the Kantic lands, Uthman-ul-Dosht, loved, feared, and favoured above all other men within the Circle of the World, anointed by God’s right hand, the Prophet Khalul himself.’

‘Good for you. I would bow, but I strained my back getting out of bed.’

Islik gave a delicate sneer. ‘Truly a warrior’s injury. I have come to accept your surrender.’

‘Is that so?’ Glokta dragged out the nearest chair and sank into it. I
’m damned if I’m going to stand a moment longer, just for the benefit of this towering oaf.
‘I thought it was traditional to make such offers once the fighting is over.’

‘If there is to be fighting, it will not last long.’ The ambassador swept across the tiles to the window. ‘I see five legions, arrayed in battle order upon the peninsula. Twenty thousand spears, and they are but a fraction of what comes. The troops of the Emperor are more numerous than the grains of sand in the desert. To resist us would be as futile as to resist the tide. You all know this.’ His eyes swept proudly across the guilty faces of the ruling council and came to rest on Glokta’s with a piercing contempt.
The look of a man who believes he has already won. No one could blame him much for thinking so. Perhaps he has.

‘Only fools or madmen would choose to stand against such odds. You pinks have never belonged here. The Emperor offers you the chance to leave the South with your lives. Open the gates to us and you will be spared. You can leave on your little boats and float back to your little island. Let it never be said that Uthman-ul-Dosht is not generous. God fights beside us. Your cause is lost.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, we held our own in the last war. I’m sure we all remember the fall of Ulrioch. I know I do. The city burned brightly. The temples especially.’ Glokta shrugged. ‘God must have been elsewhere that day.’

‘That day, yes. But there were other battles. I am sure you also remember a certain engagement, at a certain bridge, where a certain young officer fell into our hands.’ The emissary smiled. ‘God is everywhere.’

Glokta felt his eyelid flickering.
He knows I am not likely to forget.
He remembered his surprise as a Gurkish spear cut into his body. Surprise, and disappointment, and the most intense pain.
Not invulnerable, after all.
He remembered his horse rearing, dumping him from the saddle. The pain growing worse, the surprise turning into fear. Crawling among the boots and the bodies, gasping for air, mouth sour with dust, salty with blood. He remembered the agony as the blades cut into his leg. The fear turning to terror. He remembered how they dragged him, screaming and crying, from that bridge.
That night they began to ask their questions.

‘We won,’ said Glokta, but his mouth was dry, his voice was cracked. ‘We proved the stronger.’

‘That was then. The world changes. Your nation’s entanglements in the icy North put you at a most considerable disadvantage. You have managed to break the first rule of warfare. Never fight two enemies at once.’

His reasoning is hard to fault.
‘The walls of Dagoska have frustrated you before,’ Glokta said, but it did not sound convincing, even to his own ear.
Hardly the words of a winner.
He felt the eyes of Vurms, and Vissbruck, and Eider on him, making his back itch.
Trying to decide who holds the upper hand, and I know who I’d pick in their shoes.

‘Perhaps some of you have more confidence in your walls than others. I will return at sunset for your answer. The Emperor’s offer lasts for this one day only, and will never be repeated. He is merciful, but his mercy has limits. You have until sunset.’ And he swept from the room.

Glokta waited until the door had clicked shut before he slowly turned his chair around to face the others. ‘What in hell was that?’ he snarled at Vissbruck.

‘Er . . .’ The General tugged at his sweaty collar. ‘It was incumbent upon me, as a soldier, to admit an unarmed representative of the enemy, in order to hear his terms—’

‘Without telling me?’

‘We knew you would not want to listen!’ snapped Vurms. ‘But he speaks the truth! Despite all our hard work, we are greatly outnumbered, and can expect no relief as long as the war drags on in Angland. We are nothing more than a pinprick in the foot of a huge and hostile nation. It might serve us well to negotiate while we still hold a position of some strength. You may depend upon it that we will receive no terms beyond a massacre once the city has fallen!’

True enough, but the Arch Lector is unlikely to agree. Negotiating
a surrender was hardly the task for which I was appointed.
‘You are unusually quiet, Magister Eider.’

‘I am scarcely qualified to speak on the military aspects of such a decision. But as it turns out, his terms are generous. One thing is certain. If we refuse this offer, and the Gurkish do take the city by force, the slaughter will be terrible.’ She looked up at Glokta. ‘There will be no mercy then.’

All too true. On Gurkish mercy I am the expert.
‘So all three of you are for capitulation?’ They looked at each other, and said nothing. ‘It has not occurred to you that once we surrender, they might not honour your little agreement?’

‘It had occurred,’ said Vissbruck, ‘but they have honoured their agreements before, and surely some hope . . .’ and he looked down at the table top, ‘is better than none.’
You have more confidence in our enemy than in me, it would seem. Hardly that surprising. My own confidence could be higher.

Glokta wiped some wet from under his eye. ‘I see. Then I suppose I must consider his offer. We will reconvene when our Gurkish friend returns. At sunset.’ He rocked his body back and winced as he pushed himself up.

‘You’ll consider it?’ hissed Vitari in his ear as he limped down the hall away from the audience chamber. ‘You’ll fucking consider it?’

‘That’s right,’ snapped Glokta. ‘I make the decisions here.’

‘Or you let those worms make them for you!’

‘We’ve each got our jobs. I don’t tell you how to write your little reports to the Arch Lector. How I manage those worms is none of your concern.’

‘None of my concern?’ Vitari snatched hold of Glokta’s arm and he tottered on his weak leg. She was stronger than she looked, a lot stronger. ‘I told Sult you could handle things!’ she snarled in his face. ‘If we lose the city, without so much as a fight even, it’s both our heads! And my head is my concern, cripple!’

‘This is no time to panic,’ growled Glokta. ‘I don’t want to end up floating in the docks any more than you do, but this is a delicate balance. Let them think they might get their way, then no one will make any rash moves. Not until I’m good and ready. Understand me when I say, Practical, that this will be the first and the last time that I explain myself to you. Now take your fucking hand off me.’

Her hand did not let go, rather the fingers tightened, cutting into Glokta’s arm as hard as a vice. Her eyes narrowed, furious lines cut into her freckled face at their corners.
Might I have misjudged her? Might she be about to cut my throat?
He almost grinned at the thought. But Severard chose that moment to step out of the shadows further down the dim hall.

‘Look at the two of you,’ he murmured as he padded towards them. ‘It always amazes me, how love blooms in the least likely places, and between the least likely people. A rose, forcing its way through the stony ground.’ He pressed his hands to his chest. ‘It warms my heart.’

‘Have we got him?’

‘Of course. Soon as he stepped out of the audience chamber.’

Vitari’s hand had gone limp, and Glokta brushed it off and began to shuffle towards the cells. ‘Why don’t you come with us?’ he called over his shoulder, having to stop himself rubbing the bruised flesh on his arm. ‘You can put this in your next report to Sult.’

Shabbed al Islik Burai looked considerably less majestic sitting down. Particularly in a scarred, stained chair in one of the close and sweaty cells beneath the Citadel.

‘Now isn’t this better, to speak on level terms? Quite disconcerting, having you looming over me like that.’ Islik sneered and looked away, as though talking to Glokta were a task far beneath him.
A rich man, harassed by beggars in the street, but we’ll soon cure him of that illusion.

‘We know we have a traitor within our walls. Within the ruling council itself. Most likely one of those three worthies to whom you were just now giving your little ultimatum. You will tell me who.’ No response. ‘I am merciful,’ exclaimed Glokta, waving his hand airily, as the ambassador himself had done but a few short minutes before, ‘but my mercy has limits. Speak.’

‘I am here under a flag of parley, on a mission from the Emperor himself! To harm an unarmed emissary would be expressly against the rules of war!’

‘Parley? Rules of war?’ Glokta chuckled. Severard chuckled. Vitari chuckled. Frost was silent. ‘Do they even have those any more? Save that rubbish for children like Vissbruck, that’s not the way grown-ups play the game. Who is the traitor?’

‘I pity you, cripple! When the city falls—’

Save your pity. You’ll need it for yourself.
Frost’s fist scarcely made any sound as it sank into the ambassador’s stomach. His eyes bulged out, his mouth hung open, he coughed a dry cough, somewhere close to vomiting, tried to breathe and coughed again.

‘Strange, isn’t it,’ mused Glokta as he watched him struggle for air. ‘Big men, small men, thin men, fat men, clever men, stupid men, they all respond the same to a fist in the guts. One minute you think you’re the most powerful man in the world. The next you can’t even breathe by yourself. Some kinds of power are nothing but tricks of the mind. Your people taught me that, below your Emperor’s palace. There were no rules of war there, I can tell you. You know all about certain engagements, and certain bridges, and certain young officers, so you know that I’ve been just where you are now. There is one difference, however. I was helpless, but you can stop this unpleasantness at any time. You need only tell me who the traitor is, and you will be spared.’

Islik had got his breath back now.
Though a good deal of his arrogance is gone, one suspects for good.
‘I know nothing of any traitor!’

‘Really? Your master the Emperor sends you here to negotiate without all the facts? Unlikely. But if it’s true, you really aren’t any use to me at all, are you?’

Islik swallowed. ‘I know nothing of any traitor.’

‘We’ll see.’

Frost’s big white fist clubbed him in the face. It would have thrown him sideways if the albino’s other fist hadn’t caught his head before it fell, smashed his nose and knocked him clean over the back of the chair. Frost and Severard dragged him up between them, righted the chair and dumped him gasping into it. Vitari looked on, arms folded.

‘All very painful,’ said Glokta, ‘but pain can be put to one side, if one knows that it will not last long. If it cannot last, say, past sunset. To truly break a man quickly, you have to threaten to deprive him of something. To hurt him in a way that will never heal. I should know.’

‘Gah!’ squawked the ambassador, thrashing in his chair. Severard wiped his knife on the shoulder of the man’s white robe, then tossed his ear onto the table. It lay there, on the wood: a forlorn and bloody half-circle of flesh. Glokta stared at it.
In a baking cell just like this, over the course of long months, the Emperor’s servants turned me into this revolting, twisted mockery of a man. One might have hoped that the chance at doing the same to one of them, the chance at cutting out vengeance, pound for pound, would provide some dull flicker of pleasure.
And yet he felt nothing. Nothing but my own pain. He winced as he stretched his leg out and felt the knee click, hissed air through his empty gums.
So why do I do this?