The Great Leveller by Joe Abercrombie
They chanted her name, and her brother’s name, and the names of her victories. Afieri. Caprile. Musselia. Sweet Pines. The High Bank. The fords of the Sulva too. She wondered if they knew what they were cheering for. Places she’d left trails of corpses behind her. Cantain’s head rotting on the gates of Borletta. Her knife in Hermon’s eye. Gobba, hacked to pieces, pulled apart by rats in the sewers beneath their feet. Mauthis and his clerks with their poisoned ledgers, poisoned fingers, poisoned tongues. Ario and all his butchered revellers at Cardotti’s, Ganmark and his slaughtered guards, Faithful dangling from the wheel, Foscar’s head broken open on the dusty floor. Corpses by the cartload. Some of it she didn’t regret, some of it she did. But none of it seemed like anything to cheer about. She winced up towards the happy faces at the windows. Maybe that was where she and these folk differed.
Maybe they just liked corpses, so long as they weren’t theirs.
She glanced over her shoulder at her so-called allies, but they hardly gave her comfort. Grand Duke Rogont, the king-in-waiting, smiling to the crowds from a knot of watchful guards, a man whose love would last exactly as long as she was useful. Shivers, steel eye glinting, a man who’d turned under her tender touch from likeable optimist to maimed murderer. Cosca winked back at her – the world’s least reliable ally and most unpredictable enemy, and he could still prove to be either one. Friendly . . . who knew what went on behind those dead eyes?
Further back rode the other surviving leaders of the League of Eight. Or Nine. Lirozio of Puranti, fine moustaches bristling, who’d slipped nimbly back into Rogont’s camp after the very briefest of alliances with Orso. Countess Cotarda, her watchful uncle never far behind. Patine, First Citizen of Nicante, with his emperor’s bearing and his ragged peasant’s clothes, who had declined to share in the battle at the fords but seemed more than happy to share in the victory. There were even representatives of cities she’d sacked on Orso’s behalf – citizens of Musselia and Etrea, a sly-eyed young niece of Duke Cantain’s who’d suddenly found herself Duchess of Borletta, and appeared to be greatly enjoying the experience.
People she’d thought of as her enemies for so long she was having trouble making the adjustment, and by the looks on their faces when her eyes met theirs, so were they. She was the spider they had to suffer in their larder to rid them of their flies. And once the flies are dealt with, who wants a spider in their salad?
She turned back, sweaty shoulders prickling, tried to fix her eyes ahead. They passed along the endless curve of the seafront, gulls sweeping, circling, calling above. All the way her nose was full of that rotten salt tang of Talins. Past the boatyards, the half-finished hulls of two great warships sitting on the rollers like the skeletons of two beached and rotted whales. Past the rope-makers and the sail-weavers, the lumber-yards and the wood-turners, the brass-workers and the chain-makers. Past the vast and reeking fish-market, its flaking stalls empty, its galleries quiet for the first time maybe since the victory at Sweet Pines last emptied the buildings and filled the streets with savagely happy crowds.
Behind the multicoloured splatters of humanity the buildings were smothered with bills, as they had been in Talins more or less since the invention of the press. Old victories, warnings, incitements, patriotic bluster, endlessly pasted over by the new. The latest set carried a woman’s face – stern, guiltless, coldly beautiful. Monza realised with a sick turning of her guts that it was meant to be hers, and beneath it, boldly printed: Strength, Courage, Glory. Orso had once told her that the way to turn a lie into the truth was to shout it often enough, and here was her self-righteous face, repeated over and over, plastered torn and dog-eared across the salt-stained walls. On the side of the next crumbling façade another set of posters, badly drawn and smudgily printed, had her awkwardly holding high a sword, beneath the legend: Never Surrender, Never Relent, Never Forgive. Daubed across the bricks above them in letters of streaky red paint tall as a man was one simple word:
Vengeance.
Monza swallowed, less comfortable than ever. Past the endless docks where fishing vessels, pleasure vessels, merchant vessels of every shape and size, from every nation beneath the sun, stirred on the waves of the great bay, cobwebs of rigging spotted with sailors up to watch the Snake of Talins take the city for her own.
Just as Orso had feared she would.
Cosca was entirely comfortable.
It was hot, but there was a soothing breeze wafting off the glittering sea, and one of his ever-expanding legion of new hats was keeping his eyes well shaded. It was dangerous, the crowd very likely containing more than one eager assassin, but for once there were several more hated targets than himself within easy reach. A drink, a drink, a drink, of course, that drunkard’s voice in his head would never be entirely silent. But it was less a desperate scream now than a grumpy murmur, and the cheering was very definitely helping to drown it out.
Aside from the vague smell of seaweed it was just as it had been in Ospria, after his famous victory at the Battle of the Isles. When he had stood tall in his stirrups at the head of the column, acknowledging the applause, holding his hands up and shouting, ‘Please, no!’ when he meant, ‘More, more!’ It was Grand Duchess Sefeline, Rogont’s aunt, who had basked in his reflected glory then, mere days before she tried to have him poisoned. Mere months before the tide of battle turned against her and she was poisoned herself. That was Styrian politics for you. It made him wonder, just briefly, why he was getting into it.
‘The settings change, the people age, the faces swap one with another, but the applause is just the same – vigorous, infectious and so very short-lived. ’
‘Uh,’ grunted Shivers. It seemed to be most of the Northman’s conversation, now, but that suited Cosca well enough. In spite of occasional efforts to change, he had always vastly preferred talking to listening.
‘I always hated Orso, of course, but I find little pleasure in his fall.’ A towering statue of the fearsome Duke of Talins could be seen down a side street as they passed. Orso had ever been a keen patron to sculptors, provided they used him as their subject. Scaffolding had been built up its front, and now men clustered around the face, battering its stern features away gleefully with hammers. ‘So soon, yesterday’s heroes are shuffled off. Just as I was shuffled off myself.’
‘Seems you’ve shuffled back.’
‘My point precisely! We all are washed with the tide. Listen to them cheer for Rogont and his allies, so recently the most despicable slime on the face of the world.’ He pointed out the fluttering papers pasted to the nearest wall, on which Duke Orso was displayed having his face pushed into a latrine. ‘Only peel back this latest layer of bills and I’ll wager you’ll find others denouncing half this procession in the filthiest ways imaginable. I recall one of Rogont shitting onto a plate and Duke Salier tucking into the results with a fork. Another of Duke Lirozio trying to mount his horse. And when I say “mount” . . .’
‘Heh,’ said Shivers.
‘The horse was not impressed. Dig through a few layers more and – I blush to admit – you’ll find some condemning me as the blackest-hearted rogue in the Circle of the World, but now . . .’ Cosca blew an extravagant kiss towards some ladies on a balcony, and they smiled, pointed, showed every sign of regarding him as their delivering hero. The Northman shrugged. ‘People got no weight to ’em down here. Wind blows ’em whatever way it pleases.’
‘I have travelled widely,’ if fleeing one war-torn mess after another qualified, ‘and in my experience people are no heavier elsewhere.’ He unscrewed the cap from his flask. ‘Men can have all manner of deeply held beliefs about the world in general that they find most inconvenient when called upon to apply to their own lives. Few people let morality get in the way of expediency. Or even convenience. A man who truly believes in a thing beyond the point where it costs him is a rare and dangerous thing.’
‘It’s a special kind o’ fool takes the hard path just ’cause it’s the right one.’
Co
So quietly that no one could possibly have heard, so softly that the notes were almost entirely in his mind, Shenkt hummed.
‘Here she is!’
The pregnant silence gave birth to a storm of applause. People danced, threw up their arms, cheered with hysterical enthusiasm. People laughed and wept, celebrated as if their own lives might be changed to any significant degree by Monzcarro Murcatto being given a stolen throne.
It was a tide Shenkt had often observed in politics. There is a brief spell after a new leader comes to power, however it is achieved, during which they can do no wrong. A golden period in which people are blinded by their own hopes for something better. Nothing lasts for ever, of course. In time, and usually with alarming speed, the leader’s flawless image grows tarnished with their subjects’ own petty disappointments, failures, frustrations. Soon they can do no right. The people clamour for a new leader, that they might consider themselves reborn. Again.
But for now they cheered Murcatto to the heavens, so loud that, even though he had seen it all a dozen times before, Shenkt almost allowed himself to hope. Perhaps this would be a great day, the first of a great era, and he would be proud in after years to have had his part in it. Even if his part had been a dark one. Some men, after all, can only play dark parts.
‘The Fates.’ Beside him, Shylo’s lip curled up with scorn. ‘What does she look like? A fucking gold candlestick. A gaudy figurehead, gilded up to hide the rot.’
‘I think she looks well.’ Shenkt was glad to see her still alive, riding a black horse at the head of the sparkling column. Duke Orso might have been all but finished, his people hailing a new leader, his palace at Fontezarmo surrounded and under siege. None of that made the slightest difference. Shenkt had his work, and he would see it through to the end, however bitter. Just as he always did. Some stories, after all, are only suited to bitter endings.
Murcatto rode closer, eyes fixed ahead in an expression of the most bloody-minded resolve. Shenkt would have liked very much to step forwards, to brush the crowds aside, to smile, to hold out his hand to her. But there were altogether too many onlookers, altogether too many guards. The moment was coming when he would greet her, face to face.
For now he stood, as her horse passed by, and hummed.
So many people. Too many to count. If Friendly tried, it made him feel strange. Vitari’s face jumped suddenly from the crowd, beside her a gaunt man with short, pale hair and a washed-out smile. Friendly stood in the stirrups but a waving banner swept across his sight and they were gone. A thousand other faces in a blinding tangle. He watched the procession instead.
If this had been Safety, and Murcatto and Shivers had been convicts, Friendly would have known without doubt from the look on the Northman’s face that he wanted to kill her. But this was not Safety, more was the pity, and there were no rules here that Friendly understood. Especially once women entered the case, for they were a foreign people to him. Perhaps Shivers loved her, and that look of hungry rage was what love looked like. Friendly knew they had been fucking in Visserine, he had heard them at it enough, but then he thought she might have been fucking the Grand Duke of Ospria lately, and had no idea what difference that might make. Here was the problem.
Friendly had never really understood fucking, let alone love. When he came back to Talins, Sajaam had sometimes taken him to whores, and told him it was a reward. It seemed rude to turn down a reward, however little he wanted it. To begin with he had trouble keeping his prick hard. Even later, the most enjoyment he ever got from the messy business was counting the number of thrusts before it was all over.
He tried to settle his jangling nerves by counting the hoofbeats of his horse. It seemed best that he avoid embarrassing confusions, keep his worries to himself and let things take the course they would. If Shivers did kill her, after all, it meant little enough to Friendly. Probably lots of people wanted to kill her. That was what happened when you made yourself conspicuous.
Shivers was no monster. He’d just had enough.
Enough of being treated like a fool. Enough of his good intentions fucking him in the arse. Enough of minding his conscience. Enough worrying on other people’s worries. And most of all enough of his face itching. He grimaced as he dug at his scars with his fingernails.
Monza was right. Mercy and cowardice were the same. There were no rewards for good behaviour. Not in the North, not here, not anywhere. Life was an evil bastard, and gave to those who took what they wanted. Right was on the side of the most ruthless, the most treacherous, the most bloody, and the way all these fools cheered for her now was the proof of it. He watched her riding slowly up at the front, on her black horse, black hair stirring in the breeze. She’d been right about everything, more or less.
And he was going to murder her, pretty much just for fucking someone else.
He thought of stabbing her, cutting her, carving her ten different ways. He thought of the marks on her ribs, of sliding a blade gently between them. He thought of the scars on her neck, and how his hands would fit just right against them to throttle her. He guessed it would be good to be close to her one last time. Strange, that he should’ve saved her life so often, risked his own to do it, and now be thinking out the best way to put an end on it. It was like the Bloody-Nine told him once – love and hate have just a knife’s edge between ’em.
Shivers knew a hundred ways to kill a woman that’d all leave her just as dead. It was where and when that were the problems. She was watchful all the time, now, expecting knives. Not from him, maybe, but from somewhere. There were plenty of ’em aimed at her besides his, no doubt. Rogont knew it, and was careful with her as a miser with his hoard. He needed her to bring all these people over to his side, always had men watching. So Shivers would have to wait, and pick his time. But he could show some patience. It was like Carlot said. Nothing done well is ever . . . rushed.
‘Keep closer to her.’
‘Eh?’ None other than the great Duke Rogont, ridden up on his blind side. It took an effort for Shivers not to smash his fist right into the man’s sneering, handsome face.
‘Orso still has friends out there.’ Rogont’s eyes jumped nervously over the crowds. ‘Agents. Assassins. There are dangers everywhere.’
‘Dangers? Everyone seems so happy, though.’
‘Are you trying to be funny?’
‘Wouldn’t know how to begin.’ Shivers kept his face so slack Rogont couldn’t tell whether he was being mocked or not.
‘Keep closer to her! You are supposed to be her bodyguard!’
‘I know what I am.’ And Shivers gave Rogont his widest grin. ‘Don’t worry yourself on that score.’ He dug his horse’s flanks and urged on ahead. Closer to Monza, just like he’d been told. Close enough that he could see her jaw muscles clenched tight on the side of her face. Close enough, almost, that he could have pulled out his axe and split her skull.
‘I know what I am,’ he whispered. He was no monster. He’d just had enough.
The procession finally came to an end in the heart of the city, the square before the ancient Senate House. The mighty building’s roof had collapsed centuries ago, its marble steps cracked and rooted with weeds. The carvings of forgotten gods on the colossal pediment had faded to a tangle of blobs, perches for a legion of chattering gulls. The ten vast pillars that supported it looked alarmingly out of true, streaked with droppings, stuck with flapping fragments of old bills. But the mighty relic still dwarfed the meaner buildings that had flourished around it, proclaiming the lost majesty of the New Empire.
A platform of pitted blocks thrust o
She slid from her saddle, strode down the narrow valley through the crowds. People strained against the guardsmen, calling to her, begging for blessings. As though touching her might do them any good. It hadn’t done much to anyone else. She kept her eyes ahead, always ahead, jaw aching from being clenched tight, waiting for the blade, the arrow, the dart that would be the end of her. She’d happily have killed for the sweet oblivion of a smoke, but she was trying to cut back, on the killing and the smoking both.
Scarpius towered over her as she started up the steps, peering down out of the corners of his lichen-crusted eyes as if to say, Is this bitch the best they could do? The monstrous pediment loomed behind him, and she wondered if the hundred tons of rock balanced on those pillars might finally choose that moment to crash down and obliterate the entire leadership of Styria, herself along with them. No small part of her hoped that it would, and bring this sticky ordeal to a swift end.