The Collected Joe Abercrombie (190 page)

A heavy double door loomed at the far end of this collection, black and unadorned, as inviting as a scaffold. Knights Herald stood on either side of it, solemn as executioners, winged helmets glittering. Men taxed not only with guarding the centre of government, but with carrying the King’s Orders to whatever corner of the Union was necessary. His orders, Jezal realised with a sudden further lurch of nerves.

‘His Majesty seeks audience with the Closed Council,’ intoned Bayaz. The two men reached out and pulled the heavy doors open. An angry voice surged out into the corridor. ‘There must be further concessions or there will only be further unrest! We cannot simply—’

‘High Justice, I believe we have a visitor.’

The White Chamber was something of a disappointment after the magnificence of the rest of the palace. It was not that large. There was no decoration on the plain white walls. The windows were narrow, almost cell-like, making the place seem gloomy even in the sunshine. There was no draft and the air was uncomfortably close and stale. The only furniture was a long table of dark wood, piled high with papers, and six plain, hard chairs arranged down either side with another at the foot and one more, noticeably higher than the others, at the head. Jezal’s own chair, he supposed.

The Closed Council rose as he ducked reluctantly into the room. As frightening a selection of old men as could ever have been collected in one place, and every man of them staring right at Jezal in expectant silence. He jumped as the door was heaved shut behind him, the latch dropping with an unnerving finality.

‘Your Majesty,’ and Lord Chamberlain Hoff bowed deep, ‘may I and my colleagues first congratulate you on your well-deserved elevation to the throne. We all feel that we have in you a worthy replacement for King Guslav, and look forward to advising you, and carrying out your orders, over the coming months and years.’ He bowed again, and the collection of formidable old men clapped their hands in polite applause.

‘Why, thank you all,’ said Jezal, pleasantly surprised, however little he might feel like a worthy replacement for anything. Perhaps this would not be so painful as he had feared. The old wolves seemed tame enough to him.

‘Please allow me to make the introductions,’ murmured Hoff. ‘Arch Lector Sult, head of your Inquisition.’

‘An honour to serve, your Majesty.’

‘High Justice Marovia, chief Law Lord.’

‘Likewise, your Majesty, an honour.’

‘With Lord Marshal Varuz, I believe you are already well acquainted. ’

The old soldier beamed. ‘It was a privilege to train you in the past, your Majesty, and will be a privilege to advise you now.’

So they went on, Jezal smiling and nodding to each man in turn. Halleck, the Lord Chancellor. Torlichorm, the High Consul. Reutzer, Lord Admiral of the Fleet, and so on, and so on. Finally Hoff ushered him to the high chair at the head of the table and Jezal enthroned himself while the Closed Council smiled on. He grinned gormlessly up at them for a moment, and then realised. ‘Oh, please be seated.’

The old men sat, a couple of them with evident winces of pain as old knees crunched and old backs clicked. Bayaz dropped carelessly into the chair at the foot of the table, opposite Jezal, as though he had been occupying it all his life. Robes rustled as old arses shifted on polished wood, and gradually the room went silent as a tomb. One chair was empty at Varuz’ elbow. The chair where Lord Marshal Burr would have sat, had he not been assigned to duty in the North. Had he not been dead. A dozen daunting old men waited politely for Jezal to speak. A dozen old men who he had thought of until recently as occupying the pinnacle of power, all now answerable to him. A situation he could never have imagined in his most self-indulgent daydreams. He cleared his throat.

‘Pray continue, my Lords. I will try and catch up as we go.’

Hoff flashed a humble smile. ‘Of course, your Majesty. If at any time you require explanation, you have but to ask.’

‘Thank you,’ said Jezal, ‘thank—’

Halleck’s grinding voice cut over him. ‘Back to the issue of discipline among the peasantry, therefore.’

‘We have already prepared concessions!’ snapped Sult. ‘Concessions which the peasants were happy to accept.’

‘A shred of bandage to bind a suppurating wound!’ returned Marovia. ‘It is only a matter of time before rebellion comes again. The only way we can avoid it is by giving the common man what he needs. No more than is fair! We must involve him in the process of government.’

‘Involve him!’ sneered Sult.

‘We must transfer the burden of tax to the landowners!’

Halleck’s eyes rolled to the ceiling. ‘Not this nonsense again.’

‘Our current system has stood for centuries,’ barked Sult.

‘It has failed for centuries!’ threw back Marovia.

Jezal cleared his throat and the heads of the old men snapped round to look at him. ‘Could each man not simply be taxed the same proportion of his income, regardless of whether he is a peasant or a nobleman . . . and then, perhaps . . .’ He trailed off. It had seemed a simple enough idea to him, but now all eleven bureaucrats were staring at him, shocked, quite as if a domestic pet had been ill-advisedly allowed into the room, and it had suddenly decided to speak up on the subject of taxation. At the far end of the table, Bayaz silently examined his fingernails. There was no help there.

‘Ah, your Majesty,’ ventured Torlichorm in soothing tones, ‘such a system would be almost impossible to administer.’ And he blinked in a manner that said, ‘How do you manage to dress yourself, given your incredible ignorance?’

Jezal flushed to the lips of his ears. ‘I see.’

‘The subject of taxation,’ droned Halleck, ‘is a stupendously complex one.’ And he gave Jezal a look that said, ‘It is far too complex a subject to fit inside your tiny fragment of a mind.’

‘It would perhaps be better, your Majesty, if you were to leave the tedious details to your humble servants.’ Marovia had an understanding smile that said, ‘It would perhaps be better if you kept your mouth shut and avoided embarrassing the grown-ups.’

‘Of course.’ Jezal retreated shame-facedly into his chair. ‘Of course.’

And so it went on, as the morning ground by, as the strips of light from the windows slunk slowly over the heaps of papers across the wide table. Gradually, Jezal began to work out the rules of this game. Horribly complex, and yet horribly simple. The aging players were split roughly into two teams. Arch Lector Sult and High Justice Marovia were the captains, fighting viciously over every subject, no matter how small, each with three supporters who agreed with their every utterance. Lord Hoff, meanwhile, ineffectually assisted by Lord Marshal Varuz, played the role of referee, and struggled to build bridges across the unbridgeable divide between these two entrenched camps.

Jezal’s mistake had not been to think that he would not know what to say, though of course, he did not. His mistake had been to think that anyone would want him to say anything. All they cared about was continuing their own profitless struggles. They had become used, perhaps, to conducting the affairs of state with a drooling halfwit at the head of the table. Jezal now realised that they saw in him a like-for-like trade. He began to wonder if they were right.

‘If your Majesty could sign here . . . and here . . . and here . . . and there . . .’

The pen scratched against paper after paper, the old voices droned on, and held forth, and bickered one with the other. The grey men smiled, and sighed, and shook their heads indulgently whenever he spoke, and so he spoke less and less. They bullied him with praise and blinded him with explanation. They bound him up in meaningless hours of law, and form, and tradition. He sagged slowly lower and lower into his uncomfortable chair. A servant brought wine, and he drank, and became drunk, and bored, and even more drunk and bored. Minute by stretched-out minute, Jezal began to realise: there was nothing so indescribably dull, once you got down to the nuts and bolts of it, as ultimate power.

‘Now to a sad matter,’ observed Hoff, once the most recent argument had sputtered to a reluctant compromise. ‘Our colleague, Lord Marshal Burr, is dead. His body is on its way back to us from the North, and will be interred with full honours. In the meantime, however, it is our duty to recommend a replacement. The first chair to be filled in this room since the death of the esteemed Chancellor Feekt. Lord Marshal Varuz?’

The old soldier cleared his throat, wincing as though he realised he was about to open a floodgate that might very well drown them all. ‘There are two clear contenders for the post. Both are men of undoubted bravery and experience, whose merits are well known to this council. I have no doubt that either General Poulder or General Kroy would—’

‘There can be not the slightest doubt that Poulder is the better man!’ snarled Sult, and Halleck immediately voiced his assent.

‘On the contrary!’ hissed Marovia, to angry murmurs from his camp, ‘Kroy is transparently the better choice!’

It was an area in which, as an officer of some experience, Jezal felt he might have been of some minuscule value, but not one of the Closed Council seemed even to consider seeking his opinion. He sagged back sulkily into his chair, and took another slurp of wine from his goblet while the old wolves continued to snap viciously at one another.

‘Perhaps we should discuss this matter at greater length later!’ cut in Lord Hoff over the increasingly acrimonious debate. ‘His Majesty is growing fatigued with the fine points of the issue, and there is no particular urgency to the matter!’ Sult and Marovia glared at each other, but did not speak. Hoff gave a sigh of relief. ‘Very well. Our next point of business relates to the supply of our army in Angland. Colonel West writes in his dispatches—’

‘West?’ Jezal sat up sharply, his voice rough with wine. The name was like smelling salts to a fainting girl, a solid and dependable rock to cling to in the midst of all this chaos. If only West had been there now, to help him through, things would have made so much more sense . . . he blinked at the chair that Burr had left behind him, sitting empty at Varuz’ shoulder. Jezal was drunk, perhaps, but he was king. He cleared his wet throat. ‘Colonel West shall be my new Lord Marshal!’

There was a stunned silence. The twelve old men stared. Then Torlichorm chuckled indulgently, in a manner that said, ‘How will we shut him up?’

‘Your Majesty, Colonel West is known to you personally, and a brave man, of course . . .’

The entire Council, it seemed, had finally found one issue on which they could all agree. ‘First through the breach at Ulrioch and so on,’ muttered Varuz, shaking his head, ‘but really—’

‘. . . he is junior, and inexperienced, and . . .’

‘He is a commoner,’ said Hoff, eyebrows raised.

‘An unseemly break with tradition,’ lamented Halleck.

‘Poulder would be far superior!’ snarled Sult at Marovia.

‘Kroy is the man!’ Marovia barked back.

Torlichorm gave a syrupy smile, of the kind a wet-nurse might use while trying to calm a troublesome infant. ‘So you see, your Majesty, we cannot possibly consider Colonel West as—’

Jezal’s empty goblet bounced off Torlichorm’s bald forehead with a loud crack and clattered away into the corner of the room. The old man gave a wail of shock and pain and slid from his chair, blood running from a long gash across his face.

‘Cannot?’ screamed Jezal, on his feet, eyes starting from his head. ‘You dare to give me fucking “cannot”, you old bastard? You belong to me, all of you!’ His finger stabbed furiously at the air. ‘You exist to advise me, not to dictate to me! I rule here! Me!’ He snatched up the ink bottle and hurled it across the room. It burst apart against the wall, spraying a great black stain across the plaster and spattering the arm of Arch Lector Sult’s perfect white coat with black spots. ‘Me! Me! The tradition we need here is one of fucking obedience!’ He grabbed a sheaf of documents and flung them at Marovia, filling the air with fluttering paper. ‘Never again give me “cannot!” Never!’

Eleven sets of dumbstruck eyes stared at Jezal. One set smiled, down at the very end of the table. That made him angrier than ever. ‘Collem West shall be my new Lord Marshal!’ he screeched, and kicked his chair over in a fury. ‘At our next meeting I will be treated with the proper respect, or I’ll have the pack of you in chains! In fucking chains . . . and . . . and . . .’ His head was hurting, now, rather badly. He had thrown everything within easy reach, and was becoming desperately unsure of how to proceed.

Bayaz rose sternly from his chair. ‘My Lords, that will be all for today.’

The Closed Council needed no further encouragement. Papers flapped, robes rustled, chairs squealed as they scrambled to be first out of the room. Hoff made it into the corridor. Marovia followed close behind and Sult swept after him. Varuz helped Torlichorm up from the floor and guided him by his elbow. ‘I apologise,’ he was wheezing as he was hustled, bloody-faced, through the door, ‘your Majesty, I apologise profusely . . .’

Bayaz stood sternly at the end of the table, watching the councillors hurry from the room. Jezal lurked opposite, frozen somewhere between further anger and mortal embarrassment, but increasingly tending towards the latter. It seemed to take an age for the last member of the Closed Council to finally escape from the room, and for the great black doors to be dragged shut.

The First of the Magi turned towards Jezal, and a broad smile broke suddenly out across his face. ‘Richly done, your Majesty, richly done.’