The Collected Joe Abercrombie (153 page)

‘You need some help with that?’ asked Shickel, sitting wedged in behind the table, black burns across her shoulders, cuts hanging open, dry as meat in the butcher’s shop.

‘No I do not need bloody help!’ he shrieked, flinging his belt onto the floor. ‘What I need is for someone to explain what the hell is going on here! This is a disgrace! I will not have members of my regiment sitting around naked! Especially with such unsightly wounds! Where is your uniform, girl?’

‘I thought you were more worried about the Prophet.’

‘Never mind about him!’ snapped Glokta, worming his way onto the bench opposite her. ‘What about Bayaz? What about the First of the Magi? Who is he? What’s he really after, the old bastard?’

Shickel smiled a sweet smile. ‘Oh, that. I thought everyone knew that. The answer is . . .’

‘Yes!’ muttered the Colonel, mouth dry, eager as a schoolboy, ‘The answer is?’

She laughed, and slapped at the bench beside her.
Thump, thump, thump.

‘The answer is . . .’

The answer is . . .

Thump, thump, thump. Glokta’s eyes snapped open. It was still half dark outside. Only a faint glow was coming through the curtains.
Who comes belting at the door at this hour? Good news comes in the daylight.

Thump, thump, thump. ‘Yes, yes!’ he screeched. ‘I’m crippled, not deaf! I damn well hear you!’

‘Then open the bloody door!’ The voice came muffled from the corridor, but there was no mistaking the Styrian note.
Vitari, the bitch. Just what one needs in the middle of the night.
Glokta did his best to stifle his groans as he carefully disentangled his numb limbs from his sweaty blanket, rolling his head gently from side to side, trying to stretch some movement into his twisted neck, and failing.

Thump, thump.
I wonder, when was the last time I had a woman beating down my bedroom door?
He snatched his cane from its place, resting against the mattress, then pressed one of his few teeth hard into his lip, grunting softly to himself as he wormed his way down the bed and let one leg flop off onto the boards. He threw himself forward, eyes squeezed shut at a withering pain through his back, and finally reached sitting, gasping as though he had run ten miles.
Fear me, fear me, all must fear me! If I can just get out of bed, that is.

Thump. ‘I’m coming, damn it!’ He footed his cane on the floor and rocked himself up to standing.
Careful, careful.
The muscles in his mutilated left leg were shaking violently, making his toeless foot twitch and flop like a dying fish.
Damn this hideous appendage! It would feel like someone else’s, if it didn’t hurt so much. But calm, calm, we must be gentle.

‘Shhh,’ he hissed, like a parent trying to sooth a wailing child, kneading softly at his ruined flesh and trying to breathe slow. ‘Shhh.’ The convulsions slowly calmed to a more manageable trembling.
About the best that we can hope for, I fear.
He was able to pull his nightshirt down and shuffle to the door, flip the key angrily round in the lock, and pull it open. Vitari stood outside in the corridor, draped against the wall, a darker shape in the shadows.

‘You,’ he grunted, hopping to the chair. ‘You just can’t stay away, can you? What is your fascination with my bedchamber?’

She sauntered through the door, peering around scornfully at the miserable room. ‘Perhaps I just like seeing you in pain.’

Glokta snorted, rubbing gingerly at his burning knee. ‘Then you must be wet between the legs right now.’

‘Surprisingly, no. You look like death.’

‘When don’t I? Did you come to mock my looks, or have we some business?’

Vitari folded her long arms and leaned against the wall. ‘You need to get dressed.’

‘More excuses to see me naked?’

‘Sult wants you.’

‘Now?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh no, we can take our time. You know how he is.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘You’ll see when we get there.’ And she upped her pace, making him gasp and wince, snorting his aching way through the dim archways, down the shadowy lanes and the grey court-yards of the Agriont, colourless in the thin light of early morning.

His clumsy boots crunched and scraped in the gravel of the park. The grass was heavy with cold dew, the air thick with dull mist. Trees loomed up, black and leafless claws in the murk, and then a towering, sheer wall. Vitari led him towards a high gate, flanked by two guards. Their heavy armour was worked with gold, their heavy halberds were studded with gold, the golden sun of the Union was stitched into their surcoats.
Knights of the Body. The King’s personal guard.

‘The palace?’ muttered Glokta.

‘No, the slums, genius.’

‘Halt.’ One of the two knights raised his gauntleted hand, voice echoing slightly from the grill in his tall helmet. ‘State your names and business.’

‘Superior Glokta.’ He hobbled to the wall and leaned against the damp stones, pressing his tongue into his empty gums against the pain in his leg. ‘As for the business, ask her. This wasn’t my idea, I can damn well tell you that.’

‘Practical Vitari. And the Arch Lector is expecting us. You know that already, fool, I told you on the way out.’

If it were possible for a man in full armour to appear hurt, this one did. ‘It is a matter of protocol that I ask everyone—’

‘Just get it open!’ barked Glokta, pressing his fist into his trembling thigh, ‘while I can still lurch through on my own!’

The man thumped angrily on the gate and a small door opened inside it. Vitari ducked through and Glokta limped after her, along a path of carefully-cut stones through a shadowy garden. Drops of cold water clung to the budding branches, dripped from the towering statuary. The cawing of a crow somewhere out of sight seemed ridiculously loud in the morning stillness. The palace loomed up ahead of them, a confusion of roofs, towers, sculptures, ornamental stonework outlined against the first pale glow of morning.

‘What are we doing here?’ hissed Glokta.

‘You’ll find out.’

He limped up a step, between towering columns and two more Knights of the Body, still and silent enough to have been empty suits of armour. His cane clicked on the polished marble floor of an echoing hallway, half lit by flickering candles, the high walls covered entirely with dim friezes. Scenes of forgotten victories and achievements, one king after another pointing, brandishing weapons, reading proclamations, standing with their chests puffed out in pride. He struggled up a flight of steps, ceiling and walls carved entirely in a glorious pattern of golden flowers, flashing and glittering in the candlelight, while Vitari waited impatiently for him at the top.
Their being priceless doesn’t make them any easier to climb, damn it.

‘Down there,’ she muttered at him.

A worried-looking group were gathered round a door twenty strides away. A Knight of the Body sat bent over on a chair, his helmet on the floor beside him, his head in his hands, fingers pushed through curly hair. Three other men stood, huddled together, their urgent whispering rebounding from the walls and echoing down the hallway.

‘Aren’t you coming?’

Vitari shook her head. ‘He didn’t ask for me.’

The three men looked up at Glokta as he limped towards them.
And what a group to find muttering in a palace corridor
before daybreak.
Lord Chamberlain Hoff was wearing a quickly flung on nightgown, his puffy face stricken as though by a nightmare. Lord Marshal Varuz had one collar of his rumpled shirt sticking up, the other down, his iron grey hair shooting off his skull at all angles. High Justice Marovia’s cheeks were gaunt, his eyes were rimmed with red, and there was a slight tremble to his liverish hand as he raised it to point at the door.

‘In there,’ he whispered. ‘A terrible business. Terrible. Whatever shall be done?’

Glokta frowned, stepped past the sobbing guard and limped over the threshold.

It was a bedchamber.
And a magnificent one. This is a palace, after all.
The walls were papered with vivid silk, hung with dark canvases in old gilt frames. An enormous fireplace was carved from brown and red stone to look like a miniature Kantic temple. The bed was a monstrous four-posted creation whose curtains probably enclosed more space than Glokta’s entire bedroom. The covers were flung back and rumpled, but there was no sign of the former occupant. One tall window was standing ajar, and a chill breeze washed in from the grey world outside, making the flames on the candles dance and flutter.

Arch Lector Sult was standing near the centre of the room, frowning thoughtfully down at the floor on the other side of the bed. If Glokta had expected him to be as dishevelled as his three colleagues outside the door, he was disappointed. His white gown was spotless, his white hair neatly brushed, his white gloved hands clasped carefully before him.

‘Your Eminence . . .’ Glokta was saying as he shuffled up. Then he noticed something on the floor. Dark fluid, glistening black in the candlelight.
Blood. How very unsurprising.

He hobbled a little further. The corpse lay on its back on the far side of the bed. Blood was spattered on the white sheets, smeared over the boards and across the wall behind, had soaked up into the hem of the opulent drapes by the window. The ripped nightshirt was soaked through with it. One hand was curled up, the other was torn off, ragged, just beyond the thumb. There was a gaping wound on one arm, a chunk of flesh missing.
As though it were bitten away.
One leg was broken and bent back on itself, a snapped off length of bone poking through split flesh. The throat had been so badly mauled that the head was barely attached, but there was no mistaking the face, seeming to grin up at the fine stucco work on the ceiling, teeth bared, eyes wide, bulging open.

‘Crown Prince Raynault has been murdered,’ muttered Glokta.

The Arch Lector raised his gloved hands and slowly, softly clapped two fingertips against his palm. ‘Oh, very good. It is for just such insights that I sent for you. Yes, Prince Raynault has been murdered. A tragedy. An outrage. A terrible crime that strikes at the very heart of our nation, and at every one of its people. But that is far from the worst of it.’ The Arch Lector took a long breath. ‘The King has no siblings, Glokta, do you understand? Now he has no heirs. When the king dies, where do you suppose our next illustrious ruler will come from?’

Glokta swallowed.
I see. What a towering inconvenience.
‘From the Open Council.’

‘An election,’ sneered Sult. ‘The Open Council, voting for our next king. A few hundred self-serving halfwits who can’t be trusted to vote for their own lunch without guidance.’

Glokta swallowed.
I would almost be enjoying his Eminence’s discomfort, were my neck not on the block beside his.
‘We are not popular with the Open Council.’

‘We are reviled by them. Few more so. Our actions against the Mercers, against the Spicers, against Lord Governor Vurms, and more besides. None of the nobles trust us.’

Then if the king dies
. . . ‘How is the king’s health?’

‘Not. Good.’ Sult frowned down at the bloody remains. ‘All our work could be undone at this one stroke. Unless we can make friends in the Open Council, Glokta, while the king yet lives. Unless we can curry enough favour to choose his successor, or at least to influence the choice.’ He stared at Glokta, blue eyes glittering in the candlelight. ‘Votes must be bought, and blackmailed, coaxed and threatened our way. And you can depend upon it that those three old bastards outside are thinking just the same thing. How will I stay in power? With which candidate should I align myself? Whose votes can I control? When we announce the murder, we must assure the Open Council that the killer is already in our hands. Then swift, and brutal, and highly visible justice must be done. If the vote does not go our way, who knows what we could end up with? Brock on the throne, or Isher, or Heugen?’ Sult gave a horrified shudder. ‘We will be out of our jobs, at best. At worst . . .’
Several bodies found floating by the docks
. . . ‘That is why I need you to find me the Prince’s murderer. Now.’

Glokta looked down at the body.
Or what remains of it
. He poked at the gouge out of Raynault’s arm with the tip of his cane.
We have seen wounds like these before, on that corpse in the park, months ago. An Eater did this, or at least, we are meant to think so.
The window tapped gently against its frame on a sudden cold draft.
An Eater who climbed in through the window? Unlike one of the Prophet’s agents to leave such clues behind. Why not simply vanished, like Davoust? A sudden loss of appetite, are we meant to suppose?

‘Have you spoken to the guard?’

Sult waved his hand dismissively. ‘He says he stood outside the door all night as usual. He heard a noise, entered the room, found the Prince as you see him, still bleeding, the window open. He sent immediately for Hoff. Hoff sent for me, and I for you.’