The Collected Joe Abercrombie (199 page)

Glokta recognised the huge Northman called the Stone-Splitter from his previous visit to the University.
But it looks as if he has been attempting to split stones with his face since we last met, and with great persistence.
His cheeks were uneven, his brows were wonky, the bridge of his nose pointed sharply to the left. His ruin of a face was almost as disturbing as the enormous mallet he had clenched in his massive fists. But not quite.

So it went on, as strange and worrying a collection of murderers as could ever have been collected together in one place, and all heavily armed.
And it seems that Superior Goyle has restocked his freak show.
In the midst of them, and seeming quite at home, stood Practical Vitari, pointing this way and that, giving orders.
You would never have thought she was the mothering type, seeing her now, but I suppose we all have our hidden talents.

Glokta threw his right arm up in the air. ‘Who are we killing?’

All eyes turned towards him. Vitari stalked over, a frown across the freckled bridge of her nose. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘I could ask you the same question.’

‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll ask no questions at all.’

Glokta leered his empty smile at her. ‘If I knew what was good for me I’d never have lost my teeth, and questions are all I have left. What’s in this old pile of dust that’s of interest to you?’

‘That’s none of my business, and even less of yours. If you’re looking for traitors, maybe you should look in your own house first, eh?’

‘And what is that supposed to mean?’

Vitari leaned close to him and whispered through her mask. ‘You saved my life, so let me return the favour. Get away from here. Get away, and keep away.’

Glokta shuffled down the passageway and up to his heavy door.
As far as Bayaz goes, we are no further on. Nothing that will bring a rare smile to the face of his Eminence. Summonings and sendings. Gods and devils. Always more questions.
He turned his key impatiently in the lock, desperate to sit down and take the weight from his trembling leg.
What was Goyle doing at the university? Goyle, and Vitari, and two dozen Practicals, all armed as if they were going to war?
He took a wincing step over the threshold.
There must be some—

‘Gah!’ He felt his cane snatched away and he lurched sideways, clutching at the air. Something crunched into his face and filled his head with blinding pain. The next moment the floor thumped him in the back and drove his wind out in a long sigh. He blinked and slobbered, mouth salty with blood, the dark room swaying madly around him.
Oh dear, oh dear. A fist in the face, unless I am much mistaken. It never loses its impact.

A hand grabbed the collar of his coat and dragged him up, the cloth cutting into his throat and making him squawk like a strangled chicken. Another had him by the belt and he was hauled bodily along, his knees and the toes of his boots scraping limp over the boards. He struggled weakly on a reflex, but only managed to send a stab of pain through his own back.

The bathroom door cracked against his head and banged open on the wall, he was dragged powerless across the darkened room towards the bath, still full of dirty water from that morning. ‘Wait!’ he croaked as he was wrestled over the edge. ‘Who are—blurghhhh!’

The cold water closed around his head, the bubbles rushed around his face. He was held there, struggling, eyes bulging open with shock and panic, until it seemed his lungs would burst. Then he was yanked up by the hair, water pouring from his face and splattering into the bath.
A simple technique, but undeniably effective. I am greatly discomfited.
He took in a gasping breath. ‘What do you—blarghhh!’

Back into the darkness, such air as he had managed to drag in gurgling out into the dirty water.
But whoever it is let me breathe. I am not being murdered. I am being softened up. Softened up for questions. I would laugh at the irony . . . were there any breath . . . left in my body . . .
He shoved at the bath and thrashed at the water. His legs kicked pointlessly, but the hand on the back of his neck was made of steel. His stomach clenched and his ribs heaved, desperate to drag in air.
Do not breathe . . . do not breathe . . . do not breathe!
He was just sucking in a great lungful of dirty water as he was snatched up from the bath and flung onto the boards, coughing, gasping, vomiting all at once.

‘You are Glokta?’ A woman’s voice, short and hard, with a rough Kantic accent.

She squatted down in front of him, balanced on the balls of her feet, her wrists resting on her knees, her long brown hands hanging limp. She wore a man’s shirt, loose around her scrawny shoulders, wet sleeves rolled up around her bony wrists. Her black hair was hacked off short and stuck from her head in greasy clumps. She had a thin, pale scar down her hard face, a scowl on her thin lips, but it was her eyes that were most off-putting, gleaming yellow in the half light from the corridor.
Small wonder that Severard was reluctant to follow her. I should have listened to him.

‘You are Glokta?’

There was no point denying it. He wiped the bitter drool from his chin with a shaking hand. ‘I am Glokta.’

‘Why are you watching me?’

He pushed himself painfully up to sitting. ‘What makes you think I will have anything to say to—’

Her fist struck him on the point of his chin and snapped his head back, tore a gasp out of him. His jaws banged together and one tooth punched a hole in the bottom of his tongue. He sagged back against the wall, the dark room lurching, his eyes filling up with tears. When things came back into focus she was staring at him, yellow eyes narrowed. ‘I will keep hitting you until you give me answers, or you die.’

‘My thanks.’

‘Thanks?’

‘I think you might have loosened my neck up just a fraction.’ Glokta smiled, showing her his few bloody teeth. ‘For two years I was a captive of the Gurkish. Two years in the darkness of the Emperor’s prisons. Two years of cutting, and chiselling, and burning. Do you think the thought of a slap or two scares me?’ He chuckled bloody laughter in her face. ‘It hurts more when I piss! Do you think I’m scared to die?’ He grimaced at the stabbing through his spine as he leaned towards her. ‘Every morning . . . that I wake up alive . . . is a disappointment! If you want answers you’ll have to give me answers. Like for like.’

She stared at him for a long moment, not blinking. ‘You were a prisoner of the Gurkish?’

Glokta swept a hand over his twisted body. ‘They gave me all this.’

‘Huh. We have both lost something to the Gurkish, then.’ She slid down onto crossed legs. ‘Questions. Like for like. But if you try to lie to me—’

‘Questions, then. I would be failing in my duties as a host if I did not allow you to go first.’

She did not smile.
But then she does not seem the joking type
. ‘Why are you watching me?’

I could lie, but for what? I might as well die telling the truth.
‘I am watching Bayaz. The two of you seem friendly, and Bayaz is hard to watch these days. So I am watching you.’

She scowled. ‘He is no friend of mine. He promised me vengeance, that is all. He has yet to deliver.’

‘Life is full of disappointments.’

‘Life is made of disappointments. Ask your question, cripple.’

Once she has her answers, will it be bath-time again, and this time my last?
Her flat yellow eyes gave nothing away. Empty, like the eyes of an animal.
But what are my choices?
He licked the blood from his lips, and leaned back against the wall.
I might as well die a little wiser
. ‘What is the Seed?’

Her frown deepened by the smallest fraction. ‘Bayaz said it is a weapon. A weapon of very great power. Great enough to turn Shaffa to dust. He thought it was hidden, at the edge of the World, but he was wrong. He was not happy to be wrong.’ She frowned at him for a silent moment. ‘Why are you watching Bayaz?’

‘Because he stole the crown and put it on a spineless worm.’

She snorted. ‘There at least we can agree.’

‘There are those in my government who worry about the direction in which he might take us. Who worry profoundly.’ Glokta licked at one bloody tooth. ‘Where is he taking us?’

‘He tells me nothing. I do not trust him, and he does not trust me.’

‘There too we can agree.’

‘He planned to use the Seed as a weapon. He did not find it, so he must find other weapons. My guess is he is taking you to war. A war against Khalul, and his Eaters.’

Glokta felt a flurry of twitches run up the side of his face and set his eyelid fluttering.
Damn treacherous jelly!
Her head jerked to the side. ‘You know of them?’

‘A passing acquaintance.’
Well, where’s the harm?
‘I caught one, in Dagoska. I asked it questions.’

‘What did it tell you?’

‘It talked of righteousness and justice.’
Two things that I have never seen
. ‘It talked of war and sacrifice.’
Two things that I have seen too much of.
‘It said that your friend Bayaz killed his own master.’ The woman did not move so much as an eyelash. ‘It said that its father, the Prophet Khalul, still seeks vengeance.’

‘Vengeance,’ she hissed, her hands bunching into fists. ‘I will show them vengeance!’

‘What did they do to you?’

‘They killed my people.’ She uncrossed her legs. ‘They made me a slave.’ She rose smoothly to her feet, looming over him. ‘They stole my life from me.’

Glokta felt the corner of his mouth twitch up. ‘One more thing we have in common.’
And I sense my borrowed time is up.

She reached down and grabbed two fistfuls of his wet coat. She dragged him from the floor with fearsome strength, his back sliding up the wall. Body found floating in the bath . . . ? He felt his nostrils opening wide, the air hissing fast in his bloody nose, his heart thumping in anticipation.
No doubt my ruined body will struggle, as best it can. An irresistible reaction to the lack of air. The unconquerable instinct to breathe. No doubt I will thrash and wriggle, just as Tulkis, the Gurkish ambassador, thrashed and wriggled when they hanged him, and dragged his guts out for nothing.

He did his twisted best to stay up under his own power, to stand as close to straight as he could manage.
After all, I was a proud man once, even if that is all far behind me. Hardly the end that Colonel Glokta would have hoped for. Drowned in the bath by a woman in a dirty shirt. Will they find me slumped over the rim, my arse in the air? But what does it matter? It is not how you die, but how you lived, that counts.

She let go of his coat, flattened the front with a slap of her hand.
And what has my life been, these past years? What do I have that I might truly miss? Stairs? Soup? Pain? Lying in the darkness with the memories of the things I have done digging at me? Waking in the morning to the stink of my own shit? Will I miss tea with Ardee West? A little perhaps. But will I miss
tea with the Arch Lector? It almost makes you wonder why I didn’t do it myself, years ago
. He stared into his killer’s eyes, as hard and bright as yellow glass, and he smiled. A smile of the purest relief. ‘I am ready.’

‘For what?’ She pressed something into his limp hand. The handle of his cane. ‘If you have more business with Bayaz, leave me out of it. I will not be so gentle next time.’ She backed slowly towards the doorway, a bright rectangle against the shadowy wall. She turned, and the sound of her boots receded down the corridor. Aside from the soft tip-tap of water dripping from his wet coat, all fell silent.

And so, it seems, I survive. Again
. Glokta raised his eyebrows.
Perhaps the trick is not wanting to.

The Fourth Day

H
e was an ugly bastard, this Easterner. A huge big one, dressed all in stinking, half-tanned furs and a bit of rusted chain-mail, more ornament than protection. Greasy black hair, bound up here and there with rough-forged silver rings, dripped with the thin rain. He had a great scar down one cheek and another across his forehead, and the countless nicks and pittings of lesser wounds and boils as a lad, nose flattened and bent sideways like a dented spoon. His eyes were screwed up tight with effort, his yellow teeth were bared, the front two missing, his grey tongue pressed into the gap. A face that had seen war all its days. A face that had lived by sword, and axe, and spear, and counted every day alive a bonus.

For Logen, it was almost like looking in a mirror.

They held each other as tight as a pair of bad lovers, blind to everything around them. They lumbered back and forward, lurching like feuding drunkards. They plucked and tugged, bit and gouged, gripped and tore, strained in frozen fury, blasting sour breath in each other’s faces. An ugly, and a wearying, and a fatal dance, and all the while the rain came down.