The Collected Joe Abercrombie (95 page)

Magister Eider’s dining chamber was fabulous to behold. Cloths of silver and crimson, gold and purple, green and blue and vivid yellow, rippled in the gentle breeze from the narrow windows. Screens of filigree marble adorned the walls, great pots as high as a man stood in the corners. Heaps of pristine cushions were tossed about the floor, as though inviting passers-by to sprawl in comfortable decadence. Coloured candles burned in tall glass jars, casting warm light into every corner, filling the air with sweet scent. At one end of the marble hall clear water trickled gently in a star-shaped pool. There was more than a touch of the theatrical about the place.
Like a Queen’s boudoir from some Kantic legend.

Magister Eider, head of the Guild of Spicers, was herself the centrepiece.
The very Queen of merchants.
She sat at the top of the table in a pristine white gown, shimmering silk with just the slightest, fascinating hint of transparency. A small fortune in jewels flashed on every inch of tanned skin, her hair was piled up and held in place with ivory combs, excepting a few strands, curling artfully around her face. It looked very much as if she had been preparing herself all day.
And not a moment was wasted.

Glokta, hunched in his chair at the opposite end with a bowl of steaming soup before him, felt as if he had shuffled into the pages of a storybook.
A lurid romance, set in the exotic south, with Magister Eider as the heroine, and myself the disgusting, the crippled, the black-hearted villain. How will this fable end, I wonder?
‘So, tell me, Magister, to what do I owe this honour?’

‘I understand that you have spoken to the other members of the council. I was surprised, and just a little hurt, that you had not sought an audience with me already.’

‘I apologise if you felt left out. It seemed only fitting that I saved the most powerful until last.’

She looked up with an air of injured innocence.
And a most consummately acted one.
‘Powerful? Me? Vurms controls the budget, issues the decrees, Vissbruck commands the troops, holds the defences. Kahdia speaks for the great majority of the populace. I scarcely figure.’

‘Come now.’ Glokta grinned his toothless grin. ‘You are radiant, of course, but I am not quite blinded. Vurms’ budget is a pittance compared to what the Spicers make. Kahdia’s people have been rendered almost helpless. Through your pickled friend Cosca you command more than twice the troops that Vissbruck does. The only reason the Union is even interested in this thirsty rock is for the trade that your guild controls.’

‘Well, I don’t like to boast.’ The Magister gave an artless shrug. ‘But I suppose that I do have some passing influence in the city. You have been asking questions, I see.’

‘That’s what I do.’ Glokta raised his spoon to his mouth, trying his best not to slurp between his remaining teeth. ‘This soup is delicious, by the way.’
And, one hopes, not fatal.

‘I thought you might appreciate it. You see, I have been asking questions also.’

The water plopped and tinkled in the pool, the fabric rustled on the walls, the silverware clicked gently against the fine pottery of their bowls.
I would call that first round a draw.
Carlot dan Eider was the first to break the silence.

‘I realise, of course, that you have a mission from the Arch Lector himself. A mission of the greatest importance. I see that you are not a man to mince your words, but you might want to tread a little more carefully.’

‘I admit my gait is awkward. A war wound, compounded by two years of torture. It’s a wonder I got to keep the leg at all.’

She smiled wide, displaying two rows of perfect teeth. ‘I am thoroughly tickled, but my colleagues have found you somewhat less entertaining. Vurms and Vissbruck have both taken a decided dislike to you. High-handed was the phrase they used, I believe, among others I had better not repeat.’

Glokta shrugged. ‘I am not here to make friends.’ And he drained his glass of a predictably excellent wine.

‘But friends can be useful. If nothing else, a friend is one less enemy. Davoust insisted on upsetting everyone, and the results have not been happy.’

‘Davoust did not enjoy the support of the Closed Council.’

‘True. But no document will stop a knife thrust.’

‘Is that a threat?’

Carlot dan Eider laughed. It was an easy, open, friendly laugh. It was hard to believe that anyone who made such a sound could be a traitor, or a threat, or anything other than a perfectly charming host.
And yet I am not entirely convinced.
‘That is advice. Advice born of bitter experience. I would prefer it if you did not disappear quite yet.’

‘Really? I had no idea I was such a winning dinner guest.’

‘You are terse, confrontational, slightly frightening, and impose severe restrictions on the menu, but the fact is you are more use to me here than . . .’ and she waved her hand, ‘wherever Davoust went to. Would you care for more wine?’

‘Of course.’

She got up from her chair and swept towards him, feet padding on the cool marble like a dancer’s. Bare feet, in the Kantic fashion. The breeze stirred the flowing garments around her body as she leaned forwards to fill Glokta’s glass, wafted her rich scent in his face.
Just the sort of woman my mother would have wanted me to marry – beautiful, clever, and oh so very rich. Just the sort of woman I would have wanted to marry, for that matter, when I was younger. When I was a different man.

The flickering candlelight shone on her hair, flashed on the jewels around her long neck, glowed through the wine as it sloshed from the neck of the bottle.
Does she try and charm me merely because I hold the writ of the Closed Council? Nothing more than good business, to be on good terms with the powerful? Or does she hope to fool me, and distract me, and lure me away from the unpleasant truth?
Her eyes met his briefly, and she gave a tiny, knowing smile and looked back to his glass.
Am I to be her little urchin boy, dirty face pressed up against the baker’s window, mouth watering for the sweetmeats I know I can never afford? I think not.

‘Where did Davoust go to?’

Magister Eider paused for a moment, then carefully set down the bottle. She slid into the nearest chair, put her elbows on the table, her chin on her hands, and held Glokta’s eye. ‘I suspect that he was killed by a traitor in the city. Probably an agent of the Gurkish. At the risk of telling you what you already know, Davoust suspected there was a conspiracy afoot within the city’s ruling council. He confided as much to me shortly before his disappearance.’

Did he indeed?
‘A conspiracy within the ruling council?’ Glokta shook his head in mock horror. ‘Is such a thing possible?’

‘Let us be honest with each other, Superior. I want what you want. We in the Guild of Spicers have invested far too much time and money in this city to see it fall to the Gurkish, and you seem to offer a better chance of holding on to it than those idiots Vurms and Vissbruck. If there is a traitor within our walls I want him found.’

‘Him . . . or her.’

Magister Eider raised one delicate eyebrow. ‘It cannot have escaped your notice that I am the only woman on the council.’

‘It has not.’ Glokta slurped noisily from his spoon. ‘But forgive me if I don’t discount you quite yet. It will require more than good soup and pleasant conversation to convince me of anyone’s innocence.’
Although it’s a damn sight more than anyone else has offered me.

Magister Eider smiled as she raised her glass. ‘Then how can I convince you?’

‘Honestly? I need money.’

‘Ah, money. It always comes back to that. Getting money out of my Guild is like trying to dig up water in the desert – tiring, dirty, and almost always a waste of time.’
Somewhat like asking questions of Inquisitor Harker.
‘How much were you thinking of?’

‘We could begin with, say, a hundred thousand marks.’

Eider did not actually choke on her wine.
More of a gentle gurgle.
She set her glass down carefully, quietly cleared her throat, dabbed at her mouth with the corner of a cloth, then looked up at him, eyebrows raised. ‘You very well know that no such amount will be forthcoming.’

‘I’ll settle for whatever you can give me, for now.’

‘We’ll see. Are your ambitions limited to a mere hundred thousand marks, or is there anything else I can do for you?’

‘Actually there is. I need the merchants out of the Temple.’

Eider rubbed gently at her own temples, as though Glokta’s demands were giving her a headache. ‘He wants the merchants out,’ she murmured.

‘It was necessary to secure Kahdia’s support. With him against us we cannot hope to hold the city for long.’

‘I’ve been telling those arrogant fools the same thing for years, but stamping on the natives has become quite the popular pastime nonetheless. Very well, when do you want them out?’

‘Tomorrow. At the latest.’

‘And they call you high-handed?’ She shook her head. ‘Very well. By tomorrow evening I could well be the most unpopular Magister in living memory, if I still have my post at all, but I’ll try and sell it to the Guild.’

Glokta grinned. ‘I feel confident that you could sell anything.’

‘You’re a tough negotiator, Superior. If you ever get tired of asking questions, I have no doubt you’ve a bright future as a merchant.’

‘A merchant? Oh, I’m not that ruthless.’ Glokta placed his spoon in the empty bowl and licked at his gums. ‘I mean no disrespect, but how does a woman come to head the most powerful Guild in the Union?’

Eider paused, as though wondering whether to answer or not.
Or judging how much truth to tell when she does.
She looked down at her glass, turned the stem slowly round and round. ‘My husband was Magister before me. When we married I was twenty-two years old, he was near sixty. My father owed him a great deal of money, and offered my hand as payment for the debt.’
Ah, so we all have our sufferings.
Her lip twisted in a faint scowl. ‘My husband always had a good nose for a bargain. His health began to decline soon after we married, and I took a more and more active role in the management of his affairs, and those of the Guild. By the time he died I was Magister in all but name, and my colleagues were sensible enough to formalise the arrangement. The Spicers have always been more concerned for profit than propriety.’ Her eyes flicked up to look at Glokta. ‘I mean no disrespect, but how does a war hero come to be a torturer?’

It was his turn to pause.
A good question. How did that happen?
‘There are precious few opportunities for cripples.’

Eider nodded slowly, her eyes never leaving Glokta’s face. ‘That must have been hard. To come back, after all that time in the darkness, and to find that your friends had no use for you. To see in their faces only guilt, and pity, and disgust. To find yourself alone.’

Glokta’s eyelid was twitching, and he rubbed at it gently. He had never discussed such things with anyone before.
And now here I am, discussing them with a stranger.
‘There can be no doubt that I’m a tragic figure. I used to be a shit of a man, now I’m a husk of one. Take your pick.’

‘I imagine it makes you sick, to be treated that way. Very sick, and very angry.’
If only you knew.
‘It still seems a strange decision, though, for the tortured to turn torturer.’

‘On the contrary, nothing could be more natural. In my experience, people do as they are done to. You were sold by your father and bought by your husband, and yet you choose to buy and sell.’

Eider frowned.
Something for her to think about, perhaps?
‘I would have thought your pain would give you empathy.’

‘Empathy? What’s that?’ Glokta winced as he rubbed at his aching leg. ‘It’s a sad fact, but pain only makes you sorry for yourself.’

Campfire Politics

L
ogen shifted uncomfortably in his saddle, and squinted up at the few birds circling around over the great flat plain. Damn but his arse hurt. His thighs were sore, his nose was all full of the smell of horse. Couldn’t find a comfortable position to put his fruits in. Always squashed, however often he jammed his hand down inside his belt to move ’em. A damn uncomfortable journey this was turning out to be, in all sorts of ways.

He used to talk on the road, back in the North. When he was a boy he’d talked to his father. When he was a young man he’d talked to his friends. When he’d followed Bethod he’d talked to him, all the day long, for they’d been close back then, like brothers almost. Talk took your mind off the blisters on your feet, or the hunger in your belly, or the endless bloody cold, or who’d got killed yesterday.

Logen used to laugh at the Dogman’s stories while they slogged through the snow. He used to puzzle over tactics with Threetrees while they rode through the mud. He used to argue with Black Dow while they waded through bogs, and no subject was ever too small. He’d even traded a joke or two with Harding Grim in his time, and there weren’t too many who could say that.