The Collected Joe Abercrombie (123 page)

‘Where’s Eider?’

‘What?’ snapped Glokta, stalling for time while he thought about how to answer. I
hardly expected her to find out about that so soon.

‘Eider. You remember? Dressed like an expensive whore? Adornment to the city’s ruling council? Tried to betray us to the Gurkish? Her cell’s empty. Why?’

‘Oh, her. She’s at sea.’
True.
‘With fifty strides of good chain round her.’
False.
‘She’s adorning the bottom of the bay now, since you ask.’

Vitari’s orange brows drew in with suspicion. ‘Why wasn’t I told?’

‘I’ve got better things to do than keep you informed. We’ve a war to lose, or hadn’t you noticed?’ Glokta turned away but her hand shot out in front of him and slapped on to the wall, her long arm barring his path.

‘Keeping me informed means keeping Sult informed. If we start telling him different stories—’

‘Where have you been the last few weeks?’ He chuckled as he gestured at the pile of shrouded shapes beside the wall. ‘It’s a funny thing. The closer the Gurkish get to breaking through our walls and murdering every living thing in Dagoska, the less I seem to care about his fucking Eminence! Tell him what you please. You’re boring me.’ He made to push past her arm but found it did not move.

‘What if I were to tell him what you please?’ she whispered.

Glokta frowned.
Now that isn’t boring. Sult’s favourite Practical, sent here to make sure I tread the righteous path, offering deals? A trick? A trap?
Their faces were no more than a foot apart, and he stared hard into her eyes, trying to guess what she was thinking.
Is there just the slightest trace of desperation there? Could the motive be nothing more than simple self- preservation? When you lose the instinct yourself, it’s hard to remember how powerful it is for everyone else.
He felt himself starting to smile. Yes, I see it now. ‘You thought you’d be recalled once the traitors had been found, didn’t you? You thought Sult would arrange a nice little boat home! But now there are no boats for anyone, and you’re worried your kindly uncle’s forgotten all about you! That you’ve been tossed to the Gurkish with the rest of the damn dogmeat!’

Vitari’s eyes narrowed. ‘Let me tell you a secret. I didn’t choose to be here any more than you did, but I learned a long time ago that when Sult tells you to do a thing you’d better look like you did it. All I care about is getting out of here alive.’ She moved even closer. ‘Can we help each other?’

Can we indeed? I wonder.
‘Alright then. I daresay I can squeeze one extra friend into the social whirl that is my life. I’ll see what I can do for you.’

‘You’ll see what you can do?’

‘That’s the best you’ll get. The fact is I’m not much good at helping people. Out of practice, you see.’ He leered his toothless grin in her face, lifted her slack arm out of the way with his cane, then hobbled past the heap of bodies and back towards the temple door.

‘What shall I tell Sult about Eider?’

‘Tell him the truth,’ Glokta called over his shoulder. ‘Tell him she’s dead.’

Tell him we all are.

So This is Pain

‘W
here am I?’ asked Jezal, only his jaw would not move. The cartwheels squealed as they turned, everything blinding bright and blurry, sound and light digging into his aching skull.

He tried to swallow, but could not. He tried to raise his head. Pain stabbed through his neck and his stomach heaved.

‘Help!’ he squealed, but nothing came out beyond a bubbling croak. What had happened? Painful sky above, painful boards underneath. He was lying in a cart, head on a scratchy sack, bouncing and jolting.

There had been a fight, he remembered that. A fight among the stones. Someone had called out. A crunch and blinding light, then nothing but pain. Even trying to think was painful. He lifted his arm to feel his face, but found that he couldn’t. He tried to shift his legs, to push himself up, but he couldn’t do that either. He worked his mouth, grunting, moaning.

His tongue was unfamiliar, three times its usual size, like a bloody lump of ham that had been shoved between his jaws, filling his mouth so he could hardly breathe. The right side of his face was a mask of agony. With every lurch of the cart his jaws rattled together, sending white-hot stabs of pain from his teeth into his eyes, his neck, the very roots of his hair. There were bandages over his mouth, he had to breathe through the left side, but even the air moving in his throat was painful.

Panic started to claw at him. Every part of his body was screaming. One arm was bound tight across his chest but he clutched weakly at the side of the cart with the other, trying to do something, anything, his eyes bulging, heart hammering, breath snorting in his nose.

‘Gugh!’ he growled, ‘gurrr!’ And the more he tried to speak, the more the pain grew, and grew, until it seemed his face would split, until it seemed his skull would fly apart—

‘Easy.’ A scarred face swam into view above. Ninefingers. Jezal grabbed at him, wildly, and the Northman caught his hand in his own big paw and squeezed it tight. ‘Easy, now, and listen to me. It hurts, yes. Seems like more than you can take, but it isn’t. You think you’re going to die, but you won’t. Listen to me, because I’ve been there, and I know. Each minute. Each hour. Each day, it gets better.’

He felt Ninefingers’ other hand on his shoulder, pushing him gently back down into the cart. ‘All you got to do is lie there, and it gets better. You understand? You got the light duty, you lucky bastard.’

Jezal let his limbs go heavy. All he had to do was lie there. He squeezed the big hand and the hand squeezed back. The pain seemed less. Awful still, but within his control. His breath slowed. His eyes closed.

The wind cut over the cold plain, plucking at the short grass, tugging at Jezal’s tattered coat, at his greasy hair, at his dirty bandages, but he ignored it. What could he do about the wind? What could he do about anything?

He sat, his back against the wheel of the cart, and stared down wide-eyed at his leg. A broken length of spear shaft had been strapped to either side, wrapped round and round with strips of torn-up cloth, held firmly and painfully straight. His arm was no better, sandwiched between two slats from a shield and bound tightly across his chest, the white hand dangling, fingers numb and useless as sausages.

Pitiful, improvised efforts at medicine that Jezal could never see working. They might almost have seemed amusing, had he not been the unfortunate patient. He would surely never recover. He was broken, shattered, ruined. Would he be now a cripple of the kind he avoided on the street corners of Adua? War-wounded, ragged and dirty, shoving their stumps in the faces of passers-by, holding their crabbing palms out for coppers, uncomfortable reminders that there was a dark side to soldiering that one would rather not think about?

Would he be now a cripple like . . . and a horrible coldness crept over him . . . like Sand dan Glokta? He tried to shift his leg and groaned at the pain. Would he walk for the rest of his life with a stick? A shambling horror, shunned and avoided? A salutary lesson, pointed at and whispered of? There goes Jezal dan Luthar! He used to be a promising man, a handsome man, he won a Contest and the crowd cheered for him! Who would believe it? What a waste, what a shame, here he comes, let’s move on . . .

And that was before he even thought about what his face might look like. He tried to move his tongue and the stab of agony made him grimace, but he could tell there was a terribly unfamiliar geography to the inside of his mouth. It felt slanted, twisted, nothing fitted together as it used to. There was a gap in his teeth that felt a mile wide. His lips tingled unpleasantly under the bandages. Torn, battered, ripped open. He was a monster.

A shadow fell across Jezal’s face and he squinted up into the sun. Ninefingers stood over him, a water-skin hanging from one big fist. ‘Water,’ he grunted. Jezal shook his head but the Northman squatted down, pulled the stopper from the skin and held it out regardless. ‘Got to drink. Keep it clean.’

Jezal snatched the skin bad-temperedly from him, lifted it gingerly to the better side of his mouth and tried to tilt it. It hung bloated and baggy. He struggled for a moment, before realising there was no way of drinking with only one good hand. He fell back, eyes closed, snorting through his nose. He almost ground his teeth with frustration, but quickly thought better of it.

‘Here.’ He felt a hand slide behind his neck and firmly lift his head.

‘Gugh!’ he grunted furiously, with half a mind to struggle, but in the end he allowed his body to sag, and submitted to the ignominy of being handled like a baby. What was the point, after all, in pretending he was anything other than utterly helpless? Sour, lukewarm water seeped into his mouth, and he tried to force it down. It was like swallowing broken glass. He coughed and spat the rest out. Or he tried to spit and found the pain far too great. He had to lean forward and let it dribble from his face, most of it running down his neck and into the filthy collar of his shirt. He sat back heavily with a moan and pushed the skin away with his good hand.

Ninefingers shrugged. ‘Alright, but you’ll have to try again later. Got to keep drinking. You remember what happened?’ Jezal shook his head.

‘There was a fight. Me and sunshine there,’ and he nodded over at Ferro, who scowled back, ‘handled most of ’em, but it seems three got around us. You dealt with two, and you did well with that, but you missed one, and he hit you in the mouth with a mace.’ He gestured at Jezal’s bandaged face. ‘Hit you hard, and you’re familiar with the outcome. Then you fell, and I’m guessing he hit you when you were down, which is how you got the arm and the leg broke. Could have been a lot worse. If I was you I’d be thanking the dead that Quai was there.’

Jezal blinked over at the apprentice. What did he have to do with anything? But Ninefingers was already answering his question.

‘Came up and knocked him on the head with a pan. Well, I say knocked. Smashed his skull to mush, didn’t you?’ He grinned over at the apprentice, who sat staring out across the plain. ‘He hits hard for a thin man, our boy, eh? Shame about that pan, though.’

Quai shrugged as though he stove a man’s head in most mornings. Jezal supposed he should be thanking the sickly fool for saving his life, but he didn’t feel so very saved. Instead he tried to form the sounds as clearly as he could without hurting himself, making little more than a whisper. ‘Ow bad ith it?’

‘I’ve had worse.’ Small comfort indeed. ‘You’ll get through alright. You’re young. Arm and leg’ll mend quick.’ Meaning, Jezal inferred, that his face would not. ‘Always tough taking a wound, and never tougher than the first. I cried like a baby at every one of these,’ and Ninefingers waved a hand at his battered face. ‘Most everyone cries, and that’s a fact. If it’s any help.’

It was not. ‘Ow bad?’

Ninefingers scratched at the thick stubble on the side of his face. ‘Your jaw’s broke, you lost some teeth, you got your mouth ripped, but we stitched you up pretty good.’ Jezal swallowed, hardly able to think. His worst fears seemed to be confirmed. ‘It’s a hard wound you got there, and a nasty place to get it. In your mouth so you can’t eat, can’t drink, can’t hardly talk without pain. Can’t kiss either of course, though that shouldn’t be a problem out here, eh?’ The Northman grinned but Jezal was in no mood to join him. ‘A bad wound, alright. A naming wound they’d call it, where I come from.’

‘A wha?’ muttered Jezal, immediately regretting it as pain licked at his jaw.

‘A naming wound, you know,’ and Ninefingers waggled the stump of his finger. ‘A wound you could get named after. They’d probably call you Brokejaw, or Bentface or Lackteeth or something. ’ He smiled again, but Jezal had left his sense of humour on the hill among the stones, along with his broken teeth. He could feel tears stinging at his eyes. He wanted to cry, but that made his mouth stretch, the stitches tug at his bloated lips under the bandages.

Ninefingers made a further effort. ‘You got to look at the bright side. It ain’t likely to kill you now. If the rot was going to get into it, I reckon it would’ve already.’ Jezal gawped, horrified, eyes going wider and wider as the implications of that last utterance sank in. His jaw would surely have dropped, had it not been shattered and bound tightly to his face. Wasn’t likely to kill him? The possibility of the wound going bad had never even occurred. Rot? In his
mouth?

‘I’m not helping, am I?’ muttered Logen.

Jezal covered his eyes with his one good hand and tried to weep without hurting himself, silent sobs making his shoulders shake.

They had stopped on the shore of a wide lake. Choppy grey water under a dark sky, heavy with bruises. Brooding water, brooding sky, all seeming full of secrets, full of threats. Sullen waves slapped at the cold shingle. Sullen birds croaked to one another above the water. Sullen pain pulsed through every corner of Jezal’s body, and would not stop.

Ferro squatted down in front of him, frowning, as always, cutting the bandages away while Bayaz stood behind her, looking down. The First of the Magi had woken from his torpor, it seemed. He had given no explanation of what had caused it, or why he had so suddenly recovered, but he still looked ill. Older than ever, and a lot bonier, his eyes sunken, his skin looking somehow thin, pale, almost transparent. But Jezal had no sympathy to spare, especially not for the architect of this disaster.