The Collected Joe Abercrombie (133 page)

‘Come now, General.’ Cosca let his head roll back against the wall, a faint smile on his lips. ‘The Superior didn’t have to come to us with this. He could have stolen away in the night, and no one any the wiser. That’s what I’d have done.’

‘Allow me to have scant regard for what you might have done,’ sneered Vissbruck. ‘Our situation is critical. The land walls are lost, and with them all chance of holding out for long. The slums swarm with Gurkish soldiers. Every night we make sallies from the gates of the Upper City. We burn a ram. We kill some sentries while they sleep. But every day they bring up more equipment. Soon, perhaps, they will have cleared space down among the hovels and assembled their great catapults. Shortly thereafter, one imagines, the Upper City will come under sustained fire from incendiaries!’ He stabbed an arm at the window. ‘They might even reach the Citadel from there! This very room may sport a boulder the size of a woodshed as a centrepiece!’

‘I am well aware of our position,’ snapped Glokta.
The stench of panic the last few days has grown strong enough almost for the dead to smell it.
‘But the Arch Lector’s orders are most specific. To fight to the last man. No surrender.’

Vissbruck’s shoulders slumped. ‘Surrender would do no good in any case.’ He got up, made a half-hearted attempt to straighten his uniform, then slowly pushed his chair under the table. Glokta almost pitied him at that moment.
Probably he is deserving of pity, but I wasted all I had on Carlot dan Eider, who hardly deserved it at all.

‘Allow me to offer you one piece of advice, from a man who’s seen the inside of a Gurkish prison. If the city should fall, I strongly recommend that you take your own life rather than be captured.’

General Vissbruck’s eyes widened for a moment, then he looked down at the beautiful mosaic floor, and swallowed. When he lifted his face Glokta was surprised to see a bitter smile. ‘This is hardly what I had in mind when I joined the army.’

Glokta tapped his ruined leg with his cane, and gave a twisted grin of his own. ‘I could say the same. What did Stolicus write? “The recruiting sergeant sells dreams but delivers nightmares?”

‘That would seem appropriate to the case.’

‘If it’s any comfort, I doubt that my fate will be even as pleasant as yours.’

‘A small one.’ And Vissbruck snapped his well-polished heels together and stood to vibrating attention. He remained like that for a moment, frozen, then turned without a word for the door, soles clicking loud against the floor and dying away in the corridor outside.

Glokta looked over at Kahdia. ‘Regardless of what I said to the General, I would urge you to surrender the city at the earliest opportunity.’

Kahdia’s tired eyes slid up. ‘After all this? Now?’

Especially now.
‘Perhaps the Emperor will choose to be merciful. In any case, I can see little advantage for you in fighting on. As things stand, there is still something to bargain with. You might be able to get some kind of terms.’

‘And that is the comfort you offer? The Emperor’s mercy?’

‘That’s all I have. What did you tell me about a man lost in the desert?’

Kahdia nodded slowly. ‘Whatever the outcome, I would like to thank you.’

Thank me, you fool?
‘For what? Destroying your city and leaving you to the Emperor’s mercy?’

‘For treating us with some measure of respect.’

Glokta snorted. ‘Respect? I thought I simply told you whatever you wanted to hear, in order to get what I needed.’

‘Perhaps so. But thanks cost nothing. God go with you.’

‘God will not follow where I am going,’ Glokta muttered, as Kahdia shuffled slowly from the room.

Cosca grinned down his long nose. ‘Back to Adua, eh, Superior?’

‘Back, as you say, to Adua.’
Back to the House of Questions. Back to Arch Lector Sult.
The thought was hardly a happy one.

‘Perhaps I’ll see you there.’

‘You think so?’
More likely you’ll be butchered along with all the rest when the city falls. Then you’ll miss your opportunity to see me hanged.

‘If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that there’s always a chance.’ Cosca grinned as he pushed himself away from the wall and strutted towards the door, one hand rested jauntily on the pommel of his sword. ‘I hate to lose a good employer.’

‘I’d hate to be lost. But prepare yourself for the possibility of disappointment. Life is full of them.’
And the manner of its ending is often the greatest one of all.

‘Well then. If one of us should be disappointed.’ And Cosca bowed in the doorway with a theatrical flourish, the flaking gilt on his once magnificent breastplate glinting in a shaft of morning sunlight. ‘It has been an honour.’

Glokta sat on the bed, tonguing at his empty gums and rubbing his throbbing leg. He looked around his quarters.
Or Davoust’s quarters. That’s where an old wizard terrified me in the middle of the night. That’s where I watched the city burn. That’s where I was nearly eaten by a fourteen-year-old girl. Ah, the happy memories . . .

He grimaced as he pushed himself up and limped over to the one box he had brought with him.
And this is where I signed a receipt for one million marks, advanced by the banking house of Valint and Balk.
He slid the flat leather case that Mauthis had given him out of his coat pocket.
Half a million marks in polished stones, barely touched.
He felt again the tugging temptation to open it, to dig his hand inside and feel that cool, hard, clicking distillation of wealth between his fingers. He resisted with an effort, bent down with a greater one, pushed some of the folded clothes aside with one hand and dug the case down under them with the other. Black,
black and black. I really should get a more varied wardrobe—

‘Going without saying goodbye?’

Glokta jerked violently up from his stoop and nearly vomited at a searing spasm through his back. He reached out with one arm and slammed the box lid down just in time to flop onto it before his leg buckled. Vitari was standing in the doorway, frowning over at him.

‘Damn it!’ he hissed, blowing spit through the gaps in his teeth with every heaving breath, left leg numb as wood, right leg cramping up with agony.

She padded into the room, narrowed eyes sliding left and right.
Checking that there’s no one else here. A private interview, then.
His heart was starting to beat fast as she slowly shut the door, and not just from the spasms in his leg. The key rattled in the lock.
Just the two of us. How terribly exciting.

She paced silently across the carpet, her long black shadow stretching out towards him. ‘I thought we had a deal,’ hissed out from behind her mask.

‘So did I,’ snapped Glokta, struggling to find a more dignified position. ‘Then I got a little note from Sult. He wants me back, and I think we can all guess why.’

‘Not because of anything I told him.’

‘So you say.’

Her eyes narrowed further, her feet padded closer. ‘We had a deal. I kept my end.’

‘Good for you! You can console yourself with that thought when I’m floating face down in the docks in Adua and you’re stuck here, waiting for the Gurkish to break down the—oof!’

And she was on him, her weight grinding his twisted back into the box, squeezing the air from him in a ragged wheeze. There was a bright flash of metal and the rattle of a chain, her fingers slid round his neck.

‘You crippled worm! I should cut your fucking throat right now!’ Her knee jabbed painfully into his stomach, cold metal tickled gently at the skin on his neck, her blue eyes glared into his, flickering back and forth, glistening hard as the stones in the box under his back.
My death could be moments away. Easily.
He remembered watching her choke the life out of Eider.
With as little care as I might squash an ant, and I, poor cripple, just as helpless as one.
Perhaps he should have been gibbering with fear, but all he could think was:
when was the last time I had a woman on top of me?

He snorted with laughter. ‘Don’t you know me at all?’ he blubbered, half chuckling, half sobbing, eyes watering with a sickening mixture of pain and amusement. ‘Superior Glokta, pleased to meet you! I don’t care a good shit what you do, and you know it. Threats? You’ll have to do a sight better than that, you ginger whore!’

Her eyes bulged with fury. Her shoulder came forwards, her elbow went back, ready to apply the greatest possible pressure.
Enough to cut my neck through to my twisted spine, I don’t doubt.

Glokta felt his lips curl back in a sickly grin, wet with spit.
Now.

He heard Vitari’s breath snorting behind her mask.
Do it.

He felt the blade press against his neck, a chill touch, so sharp that he could hardly feel it.
I’m ready.

Then she let out a long hiss, lifted the blade high and rammed it into the wood beside his head. She stood up and turned away from him. Glokta closed his eyes and breathed for a moment.
Still alive.
There was an odd feeling in his throat.
Relief, or disappointment? Hard to tell the difference.

‘Please.’ It was said so softly that he thought he might have imagined it. Vitari was standing with her back to him, head bent over, fists clenched and trembling.

‘What?’

‘Please.’
She did say it. And it hurts her to do it, you can tell.

‘Please, eh? You think there’s any place here for please? Why the hell should I save you, really? You came here to spy for Sult. You’ve done nothing but get in my way ever since you got here! It’s hard to think of anyone I trust less, and I don’t trust anyone!’

She turned back to face him, reached behind her head, took hold of the straps of her mask, and pulled it off. There was a sharp tan line underneath: brown round her eyes, her forehead, her neck, white round her mouth with a pink mark across the bridge of her nose. Her face was far softer, much younger, more ordinary than he had expected. She no longer looked fearsome. She looked scared and desperate. Glokta felt suddenly, ludicrously awkward, as though he had blundered into a room and caught someone naked. He almost had to look away as she kneeled down level with him.

‘Please.’ Her eyes looked moist, dewy, her lip trembling as if she was on the very point of weeping.
A glimpse at the secret hopes beneath the vicious shell? Or just a good act?
Glokta felt his eyelid fluttering. ‘It’s not for myself,’ she almost whispered. ‘Please. I’m begging you.’

He rubbed his hand thoughtfully across his neck. When he took it away there was blood on his fingertip. The faintest brown smear.
A nick. A graze. Just a hair’s breadth further, and I’d be pumping blood all over the lovely carpet right now. Only a hair’s breadth. Lives turn on such chances. Why should I save her?

But he knew why.
Because I don’t save many.

He turned painfully round on the box so his back was to her and sat there, kneading at the dead flesh of his left leg. He took a deep breath. ‘Alright,’ he snapped.

‘You won’t regret it.’

‘I regret it already. Damn but I’m a fool for crying women! And you can carry your own damn luggage!’ He looked round, raising a finger, but Vitari already had the mask back on. Her eyes were dry, and narrow, and fierce.
They look like eyes that couldn’t shed a tear in a hundred years.

‘Don’t worry.’ She jerked on the chain round her wrist and the cross-shaped blade sprang from the lid of the box and slapped into her waiting palm. ‘I travel light.’

Glokta watched the flames reflected in the calm surface of the bay. Shifting fragments, red, yellow, sparkling white in the black water. Frost pulled at the oars, smoothly, evenly, his pale face half lit by the flickering fires in the city, expressionless. Severard sat behind him, hunched over, glowering out across the water. Vitari was beyond, in the prow, her head no more than a spiky outline. The blades dipped into the sea and feathered the water with barely a sound. It hardly seemed that the boat moved. Rather the dark outline of the peninsula slipped slowly away from them, into the darkness.

What have I done? Consigned a city full of people to death or slavery, for what? For the King’s honour? A drooling halfwit who can scarcely control his bowels, let alone a country. For my pride? Hah. I threw it all away long ago, along with my teeth. For Sult’s approval? My reward is like to be a rope collar and a long drop.

He could just see the darker outline of the rock against the dark night sky, the craggy form of the citadel perched on top of it. Perhaps even the slender shapes of the spires of the Great Temple. All moving off into the past.

What could I have done differently? I could have thrown in my lot with Eider and the rest. Given the city away to the Gurkish without a fight. Would that have changed anything? Glokta licked sourly at his empty gums. The Emperor would have set about his purges just the same. Sult would have sent for me, just as he has done. Little differences, hardly worth commenting on. What did Shickel say? Few indeed are those who get a choice.