The Collected Joe Abercrombie (20 page)

‘Yes. How did you guess?’ Jezal hadn’t meant to kill the conversation quite so dead, but he passed it off with a false chuckle, and the smiles of the ladies soon returned.

‘Hah, hah,’ laughed Kaspa, ever willing to be the butt of a joke.

‘Jezal, may I introduce my cousin, the Lady Ariss dan Kaspa? This is my superior officer, Captain Luthar.’ So this was the famous cousin. One of the Union’s richest heiresses and from an excellent family. Kaspa was always babbling about what a beauty she was, but to Jezal she seemed a pale, skinny, sickly-looking thing. She smiled weakly and offered out her limp, white hand.

He brushed it with the most perfunctory of kisses. ‘Charmed,’ he muttered, without relish. ‘I must apologise for my appearance, I’ve just been fencing.’

‘Yes,’ she squeaked, in a high, piping voice, once she was sure he had finished speaking. ‘I have heard you are a great fencer.’ There was a pause while she groped for something to say, then her eyes lit up. ‘Tell me Captain, is fencing really very dangerous?’

What insipid drivel. ‘Oh no, my lady, we only use blunted steels in the circle.’ He could have said more, but he was damned if he was going to make all the effort. He gave a thin smile. So did she. The conversation hovered over the abyss.

Jezal was about to make his excuses, the subject of fencing evidently exhausted, but Ariss cut him off by blundering on to another topic. ‘And tell me, Captain, is there really likely to be a war in the North?’ Her voice had almost entirely faded away by the end of the sentence, but the chaperone stared on approvingly, no doubt delighted by the conversational skills of her charge.

Spare us. ‘Well it seems to me . . .’ Jezal began. The pale, blue eyes of Lady Ariss stared back at him expectantly. Blue eyes are absolute crap, he reflected. He wondered which subject she was more ignorant of: fencing or politics? ‘What do you think?’

The chaperone’s brow furrowed slightly. Lady Ariss looked somewhat taken aback, blushing slightly as she groped for words. ‘Well, er . . . that is to say . . . I’m sure that everything will . . . turn out well?’

Thank the fates! thought Jezal, we are saved! He had to get out of here. ‘Of course, everything will turn out well.’ He forced out one more smile. ‘It has been a real pleasure to make your acquaintance, but I’m afraid I’m on duty shortly, so I must leave you.’ He bowed with frosty formality. ‘Lieutenant Kaspa, Lady Ariss.’

Kaspa clapped him on the arm, as friendly as ever. His ignorant waif of a cousin smiled uncertainly. The governess frowned at him as he passed, but Jezal took no notice.

He arrived at the Lords’ Round just as the council members were returning from their lunchtime recess. He acknowledged the guards in the vestibule with a terse nod, then strode through the enormous doorway and down the central isle. A straggling column of the greatest peers of the realm were hard on his heels, and the echoing space was full of shuffling footsteps, grumblings and whisperings, as Jezal made his way around the curved wall to his place behind the high table.

‘Jezal, how was fencing?’ It was Jalenhorm, here early for once, and seizing on the opportunity to talk before the Lord Chamberlain arrived.

‘I’ve had better mornings. Yourself?’

‘Oh, I’ve been having a fine time. I met that cousin of Kaspa’s, you know,’ he searched for the name.

Jezal sighed. ‘Lady Ariss.’

‘Yes, that’s it! Have you seen her?’

‘I was lucky enough to run into them just now.’

‘Phew!’ exclaimed Jalenhorm, pursing his lips. ‘Isn’t she stunning? ’

‘Hmm.’ Jezal looked away, bored, and watched the robed and fur-trimmed worthies file slowly to their places. At least he watched a sample of their least favourite sons and paid representatives. Very few of the magnates turned up in person for Open Council these days, not unless they had something significant to complain about. A lot of them didn’t even bother to send someone in their place.

‘I swear, one of the finest-looking girls I ever saw. I know Kaspa’s always raving about her, but he didn’t do her justice.’

‘Hmm.’ The councillors began to spread out, each man towards his own seat. The Lords’ Round was designed like a theatre, the Union’s leading noblemen sitting where the audience would be, on a great half-circle of banked benches with an aisle down the centre.

As in the theatre, some seats were better than others. The least important sat high up at the back, and the occupants’ significance increased as you came forward. The front row was reserved for the heads of the very greatest families, or whoever they sent in their stead. Representatives from the south, from Dagoska and Westport, were on the left, nearest to Jezal. On the far right were those from the north and west, from Angland and Starikland. The bulk of the seating, in between, was for the old nobility of Midderland, the heart of the Union. The Union proper, as they would have seen it. As Jezal saw it too, for that matter.

‘What poise, what grace,’ Jalenhorm was rhapsodising, ‘that wonderful fair hair, that milky-white skin, those fantastic blue eyes.’

‘And all of that money.’

‘Well yes, that too,’ smiled the big man. ‘Kaspa says his uncle is even richer than his father. Imagine that! And he has just the one child. She will inherit every mark of it. Every mark!’ Jalenhorm could scarcely contain his excitement. ‘It’s a lucky man that can bag her! What was her name again?’

‘Ariss,’ said Jezal sourly. The Lords, or their proxies, had all shuffled and grumbled their way to their seats. It was a poor attendance: the benches were less than half full. That was about as full as it ever got. If the Lords’ Round really had been a theatre, its owners would have been desperately in search of a new play.

‘Ariss. Ariss.’ Jalenhorm smacked his lips as though the name left a sweet taste. ‘It’s a lucky man that gets her.’

‘Yes indeed. A lucky man.’ Providing he prefers cash to conversation, that is. Jezal thought he might have preferred to marry the governess. At least she had seemed to have a bit of backbone.

The Lord Chamberlain had entered the hall now, and was making his way towards the dais on which the high table stood, just about where the stage would have been, had the Round been a theatre. He was followed by a gaggle of black-gowned secretaries and clerks, each man more or less encumbered with heavy books and sheaves of official-looking papers. With his crimson robes of state flapping behind him, Lord Hoff looked like nothing so much as a rare and stately gliding bird, pursued by a flock of troublesome crows.

‘Here comes old vinegar,’ whispered Jalenhorm, as he sidled off to find his place on the other side of the table. Jezal put his hands behind his back and struck the usual pose, feet a little spread, chin high in the air. He swept an eye over the soldiers, regularly spaced around the curved wall, but each man was motionless and perfectly presented in full armour, as always. He took a deep breath and prepared himself for several hours of the most extreme tedium.

The Lord Chamberlain threw himself into his tall chair and called for wine. The secretaries took their places around him, leaving a space in the centre for the King, who was absent as usual. Documents were rustled, great ledgers were heaved open, pens were sharpened and rattled in ink wells. The Announcer walked to the end of the table and struck his staff of office on the floor for order. The whispering of the noblemen and their proxies, and that of the few attendees in the public gallery over their heads, gradually died down, leaving the vast chamber silent.

The Announcer puffed out his chest. ‘I call this meeting,’ he said, in slow and sonorous tones, as though he were giving the eulogy at a funeral, ‘of the Open Council of the Union . . .’ he gave an unnecessarily long and significant pause. The Lord Chamberlain’s eyes flicked angrily towards him, but the Announcer was not to be robbed of his moment of glory. He made everyone wait an instant longer before finishing, ‘ . . . to order!’

‘Thank you,’ said Hoff sourly. ‘I believe we were about to hear from the Lord Governor of Dagoska before we were interrupted by luncheon.’ The scratching nibs of quills accompanied his voice, as two clerks recorded his every word. The faint echoes of the pens merged with the echoes of his words in the great space above.

An elderly man struggled to his feet in the front row close to Jezal, some papers clasped before him in shaky hands.

‘The Open Council,’ droned the Announcer, as ponderously as he dared, ‘recognises Rush dan Thuel, accepted proxy of Sand dan Vurms, the Lord Governor of Dagoska!’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Thuel’s cracking, wispy voice was absurdly small in the vast space. It barely carried as far as Jezal, and he was no more than ten strides away. ‘My Lords—’ he began.

‘Speak up!’ called someone from the back. There was a ripple of laughter. The old man cleared his throat and tried again.

‘My Lords, I come before you with an urgent message from the Lord Governor of Dagoska.’ His voice had already faded to its original, barely audible level, each word accompanied by the persistent scratching of quills. Whispers began to emanate from the public gallery above, making it still harder to hear him. ‘The threat posed to that great city by the Emperor of Gurkhul increases with every passing day.’

Vague sounds of disapproval began to float up from the far side of the room, where the representatives from Angland were seated, but the bulk of the councillors simply looked bored. ‘Attacks on shipping, harassment of traders, and demonstrations beyond our walls, have compelled the Lord Governor to send me—’

‘Lucky us!’ somebody shouted. There was another wave of laughter, slightly louder this time.

‘The city is built on but a narrow peninsula,’ persisted the old man, straining to make himself heard over the increasing background noise, ‘attached to a land controlled entirely by our bitter enemies the Gurkish, and separated from Midderland by wide leagues of salt water! Our defences are not all they might be! The Lord Governor is sorely in need of more funds ...’

The mention of funds brought instant uproar from the assembly. Thuel’s mouth was still moving, but there was no chance of hearing him now. The Lord Chamberlain frowned and took a swallow from his goblet. The clerk furthest from Jezal had laid down his quill and was rubbing his eyes with his inky thumb and forefinger. The clerk closest had just finished writing a line. Jezal craned forward to see. It said simply:

Some shouting here.

The Announcer thumped his staff on the tiles with a look of great self-satisfaction. The hubbub eventually died down but Thuel had now been taken with a coughing fit. He tried to speak but was unable, and eventually he waved his hand and sat down, very red in the face, while his neighbour thumped him on the back.

‘If I may, Lord Chamberlain?’ shouted a fashionable young man in the front row on the other side of the hall, leaping to his feet. The scratching of the quills began once again. ‘It seems to me—’

‘The Open Council,’ cut in the Announcer, ‘recognises Hersel dan Meed, third son and accepted proxy of Fedor dan Meed, the Lord Governor of Angland!’

‘It seems to me,’ continued the handsome young man, only slightly annoyed by this interruption, ‘that our friends in the south are forever expecting a full-scale attack by the Emperor!’ Dissenting voices were now raised on the other side of the room. ‘An attack which never materialises! Did we not defeat the Gurkish only a few short years ago, or does my memory deceive me?’ The booing increased in volume. ‘This scaremongering represents an unacceptable drain on the Union’s resources!’ He was shouting to be heard. ‘In Angland we have many miles of border and too few soldiers, while the threat from Bethod and his Northmen is very real! If anyone is in need of funds ...’

The shouting was instantly redoubled. Cries of ‘Hear, hear!’, ‘Nonsense!’, ‘True!’ and ‘Lies!’ could be vaguely made out over the hubbub. Several of the representatives were on their feet, shouting. Some vigorously nodded their agreement, some violently shook their heads in dissent. Others yawned and stared around. Jezal could see one fellow, near to the back in the centre, who was almost certainly asleep, and in imminent danger of slumping into his neighbour’s lap.

He allowed his eyes to wander up, over the faces ranged around the rail of the public gallery. He felt a strange tugging in his chest. Ardee West was up there, looking straight down at him. As their eyes met she smiled and waved. He was smiling himself, with his arm halfway up to wave, when he remembered where he was. He pushed his arm behind his back and looked around nervously, but was relieved to find that no one important had noticed his mistake. The smile would not quite leave his face though.