The Collected Joe Abercrombie (92 page)

‘My father is mindful of his people’s needs in any eventuality!’ snapped Vurms. ‘We have provisions for six months!’

‘Six months? For all the inhabitants?’

‘Of course.’
Better than I expected. One less thing to worry about, at least, from this vast tangle of worries.
‘Unless you count the natives,’ added Vurms, as though it was of no importance.

Glokta paused. ‘And what will they eat, if the Gurkish lay siege to the city?’

Vurms shrugged. ‘I really hadn’t thought about it.’

‘Indeed? What will happen, do you suppose, when they begin to starve?’

‘Well . . .’

‘Chaos is what will happen! We cannot hold the city with four fifths of the population against us!’ Glokta sucked at his empty gums in disgust. ‘You will go to the merchants, you will secure provisions for six months! For everyone! I want six months’ supplies for the rats in the sewers!’

‘What am I?’ sneered Vurms. ‘Your grocery boy?’

‘I suppose you’re whatever I tell you to be.’

All trace of friendliness had vanished from Vurms’ face now. ‘I am the son of a Lord Governor! I refuse to be addressed in this manner!’ The legs of his chair squealed furiously as he sprang up and made for the door.

‘Fine,’ murmured Glokta. ‘There’s a boat that goes to Adua every day. A fast boat, and it takes its cargo straight to the House of Questions. They’ll address you differently there, believe me. I could easily arrange a berth for you.’

Vurms stopped in his tracks. ‘You wouldn’t dare!’

Glokta smiled. His most revolting, leering, gap-toothed smile. ‘You’d have to be a bold man to bet your life on what I’d dare. How bold are you?’ The young man licked his lips, but he did not meet Glokta’s gaze for long.
I thought not. He reminds me of my friend Captain Luthar. All flash and arrogance, but with no kind of character to hang it on. Prick him with a pin, and he sags like a punctured wineskin.

‘Six months’ food. Six months for everyone. And see that it’s done promptly.’
Grocery boy.

‘Of course,’ growled Vurms, still staring grimly at the floor.

‘Then we can get started on the water. The wells, the cisterns, the pumps. People will need something to wash all your hard work down with, eh? You will report to me every morning.’

Vurms’ fists clenched and unclenched by his sides, his jaw muscles worked with fury. ‘Of course,’ he managed to splutter.

‘Of course. You may go.’

Glokta watched him stalk away.
And I have talked to two out of four. Two of four, and I have made two enemies. I will need allies if
I am to succeed here. Without allies, I will not last, regardless of what documents I hold. Without allies I will not keep the Gurkish out, if they decide to try and come in. Worse yet, I still know nothing of Davoust. A Superior of the Inquisition, disappeared into thin air. Let us hope the Arch Lector will be patient.

Hope. Arch Lector. Patience. Glokta frowned. Never have three ideas belonged together less.

The Thing About Trust

T
he wheel on the cart turned slowly round, and squeaked.

It turned round again, and squeaked. Ferro scowled at it. Damn wheel. Damn cart. She shifted her scorn from the cart to its driver.

Damn apprentice. She didn’t trust him a finger’s breadth. His eyes flickered over to her, lingered an insulting moment, then darted off. As if he knew something about Ferro that she did not know herself. That made her angry. She looked away from him to the first of the horses, and its rider.

Damn Union boy with his stiff back, sitting in his saddle like a King sits on his throne, as though being born with a good-shaped face was an achievement to be endlessly proud of. He was pretty, and neat, and dainty as a princess. Ferro smiled grimly to herself. The princess of the Union, that’s what he was. She hated fine-looking people even more than ugly ones. Beauty was never to be trusted.

You would have had to look far and wide to find anyone less beautiful than the big nine-fingered bastard. He sat in his saddle slumped over like some great sack of rice. Slow-moving, scratching, sniffing, chewing like a big cow. Trying to look like he had no killing in him, no mad fury, no devil. She knew better. He nodded to her and she scowled back. He was a devil wearing a cow’s skin, and she was not fooled.

Better than that damn Navigator, though. Always talking, always smiling, always laughing. Ferro hated talk, and smiles, and laughter, each one more than the last. Stupid little man with his stupid tales. Underneath all his lies he was plotting, watching, she could feel it.

That left the First of the Magi, and she trusted him least of all. She saw his eyes sliding to the cart. Looking at the sack he’d put the box in. Square, grey, dull, heavy box. He thought no one had seen, but she had. Full of secrets is what he was. Bald bastard, with his thick neck and his wooden pole, acting as if he had done nothing but good in his life, as if he would not know where to begin at making a man explode.

‘Damn fucking pinks,’ she whispered to herself. She leaned over and spat onto the track, glowered at their five backs as they rode ahead of her. Why had she let Yulwei talk her into this madness? A voyage way off into the cold west where she had no business. She should have been back in the South, fighting the Gurkish.

Making them pay what they owed her.

Cursing the name of Yulwei silently to herself, she followed the others up to the bridge. It looked ancient – pitted stones splattered with stains of lichen, the surface of it rutted deep where a cart’s wheels would roll. Thousands of years of carts, rolling back and forward. The stream gurgled under its single arch, bitter cold water, flowing fast. A low hut stood beside the bridge, settled and slumped into the landscape over long years. Some wisps of smoke were snatched from its chimney and out across the land in the cutting wind.

One soldier stood outside, alone. Drew the short straw, maybe. He’d pressed himself against the wall, swathed in a heavy cloak, horse-hair on his helmet whipping back and forth in the gusts, his spear ignored beside him. Bayaz reined his horse in before the bridge and nodded across.

‘We’re going up onto the plain. Out towards Darmium.’

‘Can’t advise it. Dangerous up there.’

Bayaz smiled. ‘Dangers mean profits.’

‘Profits won’t stop an arrow, friend.’ The soldier looked them up and down, one by one, and sniffed. ‘Varied crowd, aren’t you?’

‘I take good fighters wherever I can find them.’

‘Course.’ He looked over at Ferro and she scowled back. ‘Very tough, I’m sure, but the fact is the plains are deadly, and more than ever now. Some traders are still going up there, but they’re not coming back. That madman Cabrian has raiders out there, I reckon, keen for plunder. Scario and Goltus too, they’re little better. We keep some shred of law on this side of the stream, but once you’re up there, you’re on your own. There’ll be no help for you if you’re caught out on the plain.’ He sniffed again. ‘No help at all.’

Bayaz nodded grimly. ‘We ask for none.’ He spurred his horse and it began to trot over the bridge, onto the track on the other side. The others followed behind, Longfoot first, then Luthar, then Ninefingers. Quai shook the reins and the cart clattered across. Ferro brought up the rear.

‘No help at all!’ the soldier called after her, before he wedged himself back against the rough wall of his hut.

The great plain.

It should have been good land for riding, reassuring land. Ferro could have seen an enemy coming from miles away, but she saw no one. Only the vast carpet of tall grass, waving and thrashing in the wind, stretching away in every direction, to the far, far, horizon. Only the track broke the monotony, a line of shorter, drier grass, pocked with patches of bare black earth, cutting across the plain straight as an arrow flies.

Ferro did not like it, this vast sameness. She frowned as they rode, peering left and right. In the Badlands of Kanta, the barren earth was full of features – broken boulders, withered valleys, dried-up trees casting their clawing shadows, distant creases in the earth full of shade, bright ridges doused in light. In the Badlands of Kanta, the sky above would be empty, still, a bright bowl holding nothing but the blinding sun in the day, the bright stars at night.

Here all was strangely reversed.

The earth was featureless, but the sky was full of movement, full of chaos. Towering clouds loomed over the plain, dark and light swirling together into colossal spirals, sweeping over the grassland with the raking wind, shifting, turning, ripping apart and flooding back together, casting monstrous, flowing shadows onto the cowering earth, threatening to crush the six tiny riders and their tiny cart with a deluge to sink the world. All hanging over Ferro’s hunched up shoulders, the wrath of God made real.

This was a strange land, one in which she had no place. She needed reasons to be here, and good ones. ‘You, Bayaz!’ she shouted, drawing up level with him. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Huh,’ he grunted, frowning out across the waving grass, from nothing, to nothing. ‘We are going westwards, across the plain, over the great river Aos, as far as the Broken Mountains.’

‘Then?’

She saw the faint lines around his eyes, across the bridge of his nose, grow deeper, watched his lips press together. Annoyance. He did not like her questions. ‘Then we go further.’

‘How long will it take?’

‘All of winter and into spring,’ he snapped. ‘And then we must come back.’ He dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and trotted away from her, up the track towards the front of the group.

Ferro was not so easily put off. Not by this shifty old pink. She dug in her own heels and drew up level with him. ‘What is the First Law?’

Bayaz looked sharply over at her. ‘What do you know about it?’

‘Not enough. I heard you and Yulwei talking, through the door.’

‘Eavesdropping, eh?’

‘You have loud voices and I have good ears.’ Ferro shrugged. ‘I am not sticking a bucket on my head just to keep your secrets. What is the First Law?’

The lines round Bayaz’ forehead grew deeper, the corners of his mouth turned down. Anger. ‘A stricture that Euz placed on his sons, the first rule made after the chaos of ancient days. It is forbidden to touch the Other Side direct. Forbidden to communicate with the world below, forbidden to summon demons, forbidden to open gates to hell. Such is the First Law, the guiding principle of all magic.’

‘Uh,’ snorted Ferro. It meant nothing to her. ‘Who is Khalul?’

Bayaz’ thick brows drew in together, his frown deepened, his eyes narrowed. ‘Is there no end to your questions, woman?’ Her questions galled him. That was good. That meant they were the right questions.

‘You’ll know if I stop asking them. Who is Khalul?’

‘Khalul was one of the order of Magi,’ growled Bayaz. ‘One of my order. The second of Juvens’ twelve apprentices. He was always jealous of my place, always thirsty for power. He broke the Second Law to get it. He ate the flesh of men, and persuaded others to do the same. He made of himself a false prophet, tricked the Gurkish into serving him. That is Khalul. Your enemy, and mine.’

‘What is the Seed?’

The Magus’ face gave a sudden twitch. Fury, and perhaps the slightest trace of fear. Then his face softened. ‘What is it?’ He smiled at her, and his smile worried her more than all his anger could have. He leaned towards her, close enough that no one else could hear. ‘It is the instrument of your vengeance. Of our vengeance. But it is dangerous. Even to speak of it is dangerous. There are those who are always listening. It would be wise for you to shut the door on your questions, before the answers to them burn us all.’ He spurred his horse once again, trotting out ahead of the party on his own.

Ferro stayed behind. She had learned enough for now. Learned enough to trust this First of the Magi less than ever.

A hollow in the ground, no more than four strides across. A sink in the soil, ringed by a low wall of damp, dark earth, full of tangled grass roots. That was the best place they had found to camp for the night, and they had been lucky to find it.

It was as big a feature in the landscape as Ferro had seen all day.

The fire that Longfoot had made was burning well now, flames licking bright and hungry at the wood, rustling and flickering out sideways as a gust of wind swept down into the hollow. The five pinks sat clustered around it, hunched and huddled for warmth, light from it bright on their pinched-up faces.

Longfoot was the only one speaking. His talk was all of his own great achievements. How he had been to this place or that. How he knew this thing or that. How he had a remarkable talent for this, or for that. Ferro was sick of it already, and had told him so twice. The first time she thought she had been clear. The second time she had made sure of it. He would not be talking to her of his idiot travels again, but the others still suffered in silence.

There was space for her, down by the fire, but she did not want it. She preferred to sit above them, cross-legged in the grass on the lip of the hollow. It was cold up here in the wind, and she pulled the blanket tighter round her shivering shoulders. A strange and frightening thing, cold. She hated it.