The Collected Joe Abercrombie (182 page)

Seemed he’d let himself forget what the North was like. Or he’d let himself pretend it would be different. Now he saw his mistake. He’d made a trap for himself, years ago. He’d made a great heavy chain, link by bloody link, and he’d bound himself up in it. Somehow he’d been offered the chance to get free, a chance he didn’t come near to deserving, but instead he’d blundered back in, and now things were apt to get bloody.

He could feel it coming. A great weight of death, like the shadow of a mountain falling on him. Every time he said a word, or took a step, or had a thought, even, it seemed he’d somehow brought it closer. He drank it down with every swallow, he sucked it in with every breath. He hunched his shoulders up and stared down at his boots, strips of sunlight across the toes. He should never have let go of Ferro. He should have clung to her like a child to its mother. How many things halfway good had he been offered in his life? And now he’d turned one down, and chosen to come back and settle some scores. He licked his teeth, and he spat sour spit out onto the earth. He should’ve known better. Vengeance is never halfway as simple, or halfway as sweet, as you think it’s going to be.

‘I bet you’re wishing you didn’t come back at all, eh?’

Logen jerked his head up, on the point of pulling the knife and setting to work. Then he saw it was only Tul standing over him. He pushed the blade away and let his hands drop. ‘Do you know what? The thought had occurred.’

The Thunderhead squatted down beside him. ‘Sometimes I find my own name’s a heavy weight to carry. Dread to think how a name like yours must drag at a man.’

‘It can seem a burden.’

‘I bet it can.’ Tul watched the men moving past, single file, down on the dusty track. ‘Don’t mind ’em. They’ll get used to you. And if things get low, well, you’ve always got Black Dow’s smile to fall back on, eh?’

Logen grinned. ‘That’s true. It’s quite the smile he has, that man. It seems to light up the whole world, don’t it?’

‘Like sunshine on a cloudy day.’ Tul sat down on the rock next to him, pulled the stopper from his canteen and held it out. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’re sorry? For what?’

‘That we didn’t look for you, after you went over that cliff. Thought you were dead.’

‘Can’t say I hold much of a grudge for that. I was pretty damn sure I was dead myself. I’m the one should have gone looking for you lot, I reckon.’

‘Well. Should’ve looked for each other, maybe. But I guess you learn to stop hoping, after a while. Life teaches you to expect the worst, eh?’

‘You have to be realistic, I reckon.’

‘That you do. Still, it came out alright. Back with us now, aren’t you?’

‘Aye.’ Logen sighed. ‘Back to warring, and bad food, and creeping through woods.’

‘Woods,’ grunted Tul, and he split a big grin. ‘Will I ever get tired of ’em?’

Logen took a drink from the canteen, then handed it back, and Tul took a swig himself. They sat there, silent, for a minute.

‘I didn’t want this, you know, Tul.’

‘Course not. None of us wanted this. Don’t mean we don’t deserve it, though, eh?’ Tul slapped his big hand down on Logen’s shoulder. ‘You need to talk it over, I’m around.’

Logen watched him go. He was a good man, the Thunderhead. A man that could be trusted. There were still a few left. Tul, and Grim, and the Dogman. Black Dow too, in his own way. It almost gave Logen some hope, that did. Almost made him glad that he chose to come back to the North. Then he looked back at the file of men and he saw Shivers in there, watching him. Logen would have liked to look away, but looking away wasn’t something the Bloody-Nine could do. So he sat there on his rock, and they stared at each other, and Logen felt the hatred digging at him until Shivers was lost through the trees. He shook his head again, and sucked his teeth again, and spat.

You can never have too many knives, his father had told him. Unless they’re pointed at you, and by people who don’t like you much.

Best of Enemies

‘T
ap, tap.’ ‘Not now!’ stormed Colonel Glokta. ‘I have all these to get through!’ There must have been ten thousand papers of confession for him to sign. His desk was groaning with great heaps of them, and the nib of his pen was soft as butter. What with the red ink, his marks looked like dark bloodstains sprayed across the pale paper. ‘Damn it!’ he raged as he knocked over the bottle with his elbow, splashing ink out over the desk, soaking into the piles of papers, dripping to the floor with a steady tap, tap, tap.

‘There will be time later for you to confess. Ample time.’

The Colonel frowned. The air had grown decidedly chill. ‘You again! Always at the worst times!’

‘You remember me, then?’

‘I seem to . . .’ In truth, the Colonel was finding it hard to recall from where. It looked like a woman in the corner, but he could not make out her face.

‘The Maker fell burning . . . he broke upon the bridge below . . .’ The words were familiar, but Glokta could not have said why. Old stories and nonsense. He winced. Damn it but his leg hurt.

‘I seem to . . .’ His usual confidence was all ebbing away. The room was icy cold now, he could see his breath smoking before his face. He stumbled up from his chair as his unwelcome visitor came closer, his leg aching with a vengeance. ‘What do you want?’ he managed to croak.

The face came into the light. It was none other than Mauthis, from the banking house of Valint and Balk. ‘The Seed, Colonel.’ And he smiled his joyless smile. ‘I want the Seed.’

‘I . . . I . . .’ Glokta’s back found the wall. He could go no further.

‘The Seed!’ Now it was Goyle’s face, now Sult’s, now Severard’s, but they all made the same demand. ‘The Seed! I lose patience!’

‘Bayaz,’ he whispered, squeezing his eyes closed, tears running out from underneath his lids. ‘Bayaz knows—’

‘Tap, tap, torturer.’ The woman’s hissing voice again. A finger-tip jabbed at the side of his head, painfully hard. ‘If that old liar knew, it would be mine already. No. You will find it.’ He could not speak for fear. ‘You will find it, or I will tear the price from your twisted flesh. So tap, tap, time to wake.’

The finger stabbed at his skull again, digging into the side of his head like a dagger blade. ‘Tap, tap, cripple!’ hissed the hideous voice in his ear, breath so cold it seemed to burn his bare cheek. ‘Tap, tap!’

Tap, tap.

For a moment Glokta hardly knew where he was. He jerked upright, struggling with the sheets, staring about him, hemmed in on every side by threatening shadows, his own whimpering breath hissing in his head. Then everything fell suddenly into place. My new apartments. A pleasant breeze stirred the curtains in the sticky night, washing through the one open window. Glokta saw its shadow shifting on the rendered wall. It swung shut against the frame, open, then shut again.

Tap, tap.

He closed his eyes and breathed a long sigh. Winced as he sagged back in his bed, stretching his legs out, working his toes against the cramps.
Those toes the Gurkish left me, at least. Only another dream. Everything is—

Then he remembered, and his eyes snapped wide open.
The King is dead. Tomorrow we elect a new one.

The three hundred and twenty papers were hanged, lifeless, from their nails. They had grown more and more creased, battered, greasy and grubby over the past few weeks.
As the business itself has slid further into the filth.
Many were ink smudged, covered with angrily scrawled notes, with fillings-in and crossings-out.
As men were bought and sold, bullied and blackmailed, bribed and beguiled.
Many were torn where wax had been removed, added, replaced with other colours.
As the allegiances shifted, as the promises were broken, as the balance swung this way and that.

Arch Lector Sult stood glaring at them, like a shepherd at his troublesome flock, his white coat rumpled, his white hair in disarray. Glokta had never before seen him look anything less than perfectly presented.
He must, at last, taste blood. His own. I would almost want to laugh, if my own mouth were not so terribly salty
.

‘Brock has seventy-five,’ Sult was hissing to himself, white gloved hands fussing with each other behind his back. ‘Brock has seventy-five. Isher has fifty-five. Skald and Barezin, forty a piece. Brock has seventy-five . . .’ He muttered the numbers over and over, as though they were a charm to protect him from evil.
Or from good, perhaps.
‘Isher has fifty-five . . .’

Glokta had to suppress a smile.
Brock, then Isher, then Skald and
Barezin, while the Inquisition and Judiciary struggle over scraps. For all our efforts, the shape of things is much the same as when we began this ugly dance. We might as well have led the country then and saved ourselves the trouble. Perhaps it is still not too late . . .

Glokta noisily cleared his throat and Sult’s head jerked round. ‘You have something to contribute?’

‘In a manner of speaking, your Eminence.’ Glokta kept his tone as servile as he possibly could. ‘I received some rather . . . troubling information recently.’

Sult scowled, and nodded his head at the papers. ‘More troubling than this?’

Equally, at any rate. After all, whoever wins the vote will have but a brief celebration if the Gurkish arrive and slaughter the lot of us a week later.
‘It has been suggested to me . . . that the Gurkish are preparing to invade Midderland.’

There was a brief, uncomfortable pause.
Scarcely a promising reception, but we have set sail now. What else to do but steer straight for the storm?
‘Invade?’ sneered Goyle. ‘With what?’

‘It is not the first time I have been told they have a fleet.’
Trying desperately to patch my foundering vessel.
‘A considerable fleet, built in secret, after the last war. We could easily make some preparations, then if the Gurkish do come—’

‘And what if you are wrong?’ The Arch Lector was frowning mightily. ‘From whom did this information come?’

Oh, dear me no, that would never do. Carlot dan Eider? Alive? But how? Body found floating by the docks . . .
‘An anonymous source, Arch Lector.’

‘Anonymous?’ His Eminence glowered through narrowed eyes. ‘And you would have me go to the Closed Council, at a time like this, and put before them the unproven gossip of your anonymous source?’
The waves swamp the deck . . .

‘I merely wished to alert your Eminence to the possibility—’

‘When are they coming?’
The torn sailcloth flaps in the gale . . .

‘My informant did not—’

‘Where will they land?’
The sailors topple screaming from the rigging . . .

‘Again, your Eminence I cannot—’

‘What will be their numbers?’
The wheel breaks off in my shaking hands . . .

Glokta winced, and decided not to speak at all.

‘Then kindly refrain from distracting us with rumours,’ sneered Sult, his lip twisted with contempt.
The ship vanishes beneath the merciless waves, her cargo of precious warnings consigned to the deep, and her captain will not be missed.
‘We have more pressing concerns than a legion of Gurkish phantoms!’

‘Of course, your Eminence.’
And if the Gurkish come, who will we hang? Oh, Superior Glokta, of course. Why ever did that damn cripple not speak up?

Sult’s mind had already slipped back into its well-worn circles. ‘We have thirty-one votes and Marovia has something over twenty. Thirty-one. Not enough to make the difference.’ He shook his head grimly, blue eyes darting over the papers.
As if there were some new way to look at them that would alter the terrible mathematics.
‘Nowhere near enough.’

‘Unless we were to come to an understanding with High Justice Marovia.’ Again, a pause, even more uncomfortable than last time. Oh dear. I must have said that out loud.

‘An understanding?’ hissed Sult.

‘With Marovia?’ squealed Goyle, his eyes bulging with triumph.
When the safe options are all exhausted, we must take risks. Is that not what I told myself as I rode down to the bridge, while the Gurkish massed upon the other side? Ah well, once more into the tempest . . .

Glokta took a deep breath. ‘Marovia’s seat on the Closed Council is no safer than anyone else’s. We may have been working against each other, but only out of habit. On the subject of this vote our aims are the same. To secure a weak candidate and maintain the balance. Together you have more than fifty votes. That might well be enough to tip the scales.’

Goyle sneered his contempt. ‘Join forces with that peasant-loving hypocrite? Have you lost your reason?’

‘Shut up, Goyle.’ Sult glared at Glokta for a long while, his lips pursed in thought.
Considering my punishment, perhaps? Another tongue-lashing? Or a real lashing? Or my body found floating—
‘You are right. Go and speak to Marovia.’