Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie

  'Your Eminence,' he whispered, with barely concealed dismay, grimacing as he struggled to get up from his chair.

  'No need to rise, I do not have all day.' Glokta found himself frozen in the most painful possible position, bent somewhere between sitting and standing, and had to sag back into his chair with little grace as Sult swept into the room, three of his huge Practicals looming silently in the doorway behind him. 'You may ask your freak of nature to leave us.'

  Frost's eyes narrowed, flickered over the other Practicals, then back to Sult. 'Very good, Practical Frost,' said Glokta hastily. 'You may remove our prisoner.'

  The albino unlocked Farrad's manacles and dragged the dentist from his chair with one white fist, hauled him gasping by his collar to the door at the back of the room and ripped back the bolt with his free hand. He gave one pink glare over his shoulder and Sult glared back. Then he slammed the door behind him.

  His Eminence slid into the chair opposite Glokta. No doubt still warm from the sweating arse of the brave and righteous Master Farrad. He brushed some of the teeth from the table-top before him with the side of one gloved hand and sent them clicking onto the floor. And he could not have seemed to care less had they been breadcrumbs. 'There is a deadly conspiracy afoot within the Agriont. Have we made progress in unmasking it?'

  'I have interviewed most of the Kantic prisoners, extracted a suitable number of confessions, there should not be—'

  Sult gave an angry wave of his hand. 'Not that, halfwit. I refer to that bastard Marovia and his pawns, the so-called First of the Magi and our so-called King.'

  Even now, with the Gurkish knocking at the gates? 'Your Eminence, I had assumed the war would take precedence—'

  'You have not the wit to assume,' sneered Sult. 'What evidence have you collected against Bayaz?'

  I stumbled upon something I shouldn't have at the University, then was almost drowned in my bath. 'So far… nothing.'

  'What of the parentage of King Jezal the First?'

  'That avenue too appears… a dead end.' Or an avenue with my own death at the end, if my owners at Valint and Balk were to hear of it. And they hear of everything.

  The Arch Lector's lips twisted. 'Then what the hell have you been doing lately?'

  For the last three days I have been busy tearing meaningless confessions from the mouths of innocent men, so that we could appear effective. When was I supposed to find time to bring down the state, precisely? 'I have been occupied with seeking Gurkish spies—'

  'Why do I never get anything from you but excuses? I have begun to wonder, since your effectiveness has so sharply declined, how you were able to keep Dagoska out of Gurkish hands so long. You must have needed a tremendous sum of money to strengthen the city's defences.'

  It took all of Glokta's self-control to prevent his eye from twitching straight out of his head. Still, now, you twitching jelly, or we are done. 'The Guild of Spicers were persuaded to contribute when their own livelihoods were on the line.'

  'How uncharacteristically generous of them. Now that I think of it, I find the whole business of Dagoska has a strange flavour. It has always struck me as odd that you chose to dispose of Magister Eider so privately, rather than sending her back to me.'

  From very bad to an awful lot worse. 'A miscalculation on my part, your Eminence. I thought that I would spare you the trouble of—'

  'Disposing of traitors is no trouble for me. You know that.' Angry creases spread out around Sult's hard blue eyes. 'Could it be, after all we have been through together, you might take me for a fool?'

  Glokta's voice rasped uncomfortably in his dry throat. 'Absolutely not, Arch Lector.' Merely a lethal megalomaniac. He knows. He knows that I am not entirely the dutiful slave. But how much does he know? And from whom did he learn it?

  'I gave you an impossible task, and so I have allowed you the benefit of the doubt. But your benefit will only last as long as your successes. I grow tired of putting the spur to you. If you do not solve my problems with our new King in the next two weeks, I will have Superior Goyle dig out the answers to my questions about Dagoska. I will have him dig them from your twisted flesh, if I must. Do I make myself clear?'

  As Visserine glass. Two weeks to find the answers, or… fragments of a butchered corpse found floating by the docks. But if I even ask the questions, Valint and Balk will inform his Eminence of our arrangement and… bloated by seawater, horribly mutilated, far beyond recognition. Alas for poor Superior Glokta. A comely and a well-loved man, but such bad luck. Wherever will he turn?

  'I understand, Arch Lector.'

  'Then why ever are you still sitting here?'

  It was Ardee West herself who opened the door, a half-full wine glass in one hand. 'Ah! Superior Glokta, what a delightful surprise. Do come in!'

  'You sound almost pleased to see me.' A rare response indeed to my arrival.

  'Why wouldn't I be?' She stepped graciously aside to allow him past. 'How many girls are lucky enough to have a torturer for a chaperone? There's nothing like it for encouraging the suitors.'

  He hobbled over the threshold. 'Where is your maid?'

  'She got herself all worked up about some Gurkish army or other, so I let her go. Went to her mother in Martenhorm.'

  'And you are yourself ready to leave, I hope?' He followed her into the warm living room, shutters and curtains closed, illuminated by the shifting glow from the coals on the fire.

  'In fact, I have decided to stay in the city.'

  'Really? The tragic princess, pining in her empty castle? Abandoned by her faithless servants, wringing her helpless hands while her enemies surround the moat?' Glokta snorted. 'Are you sure you fit the role?'

  'Better than you fit that of the knight on the white charger, come to rescue the damsel with blade a-flashing.' She looked him scornfully up and down. 'I'd hoped for a hero with at least half his teeth.'

  'I thought you'd be used to getting less than you hoped for by now.' I know that I am.

  'What can I say? I'm a romantic. Have you come here only to puncture my dreams?'

  'No. I do that without trying. I had in mind a drink and a conversation which did not include the subtext of my mutilated corpse.'

  'It is hard to say at this stage what direction our conversation might take, but the drink I can promise you.' She poured him a glass and he tossed it back in four long swallows. He held it out again, sucking his sweet gums.

  'In all seriousness, the Gurkish are no more than a week from taking Adua under siege. You should leave as soon as possible.'

  She filled his glass again, and then her own. 'Haven't you noticed that half the city has had the same idea? Such flea-bitten nags not requisitioned by the army are changing hands at five hundred marks a piece. Nervous citizens are pouring out to every corner of Midderland. Columns of defenceless refugees, wandering through a mass of mud at a mile a day as the weather turns cold, laden down with everything of value they possess, easy prey for every brigand within a hundred miles.'

  'True,' Glokta had to admit as he wriggled his painful way into a chair near the fire.

  'And where would I go to anyway? I swear I have not a single friend or relative anywhere in Midderland. Would you have me hide in the woods, lighting fires by rubbing sticks together and hunting down squirrels with my bare hands? How the hell would I stay drunk in those circumstances? No, thank you, I will be safer here, and considerably more comfortable. I have coal for the fire and the cellar is full to capacity. I can hold out for months.' She waved a floppy hand towards the wall. 'The Gurkish are coming from the west, and we are on the eastern side of town. I could not be safer in the palace itself, I daresay.'

  Perhaps she is right. Here, at least, I can keep some kind of watch over her. 'Very well, I bow to your reasoning. Or I would, if my back allowed it.'

  She settled herself opposite. 'And how is life in the corridors of power?'

  'Chilly. As corridors often are.' Glokta stroked his lips with a finger. 'I find myself in a difficult
situation.'

  'I have some experience with those.'

  'This one is… complicated.'

  'Well then, in terms a dull wench like me might understand.'

  Where's the harm? I stare death in the face already. 'In the terms of a dull wench, then, imagine this… desperately needing certain favours, you have promised your hand in marriage to two very rich and powerful men.'

  'Huh. One would be a fine thing.'

  'None would be a fine thing, in this particular case. They are both old and of surpassing ugliness.'

  She shrugged. 'Ugliness is easily forgiven in the rich and powerful.'

  'But both these suitors are prone to violent displays of jealousy. Dangerous displays, if your wanton faithlessness were to become common knowledge. You had hoped to extricate yourself from one promise or the other at some stage, but now the date of the weddings draws near, and you find that you are… still considerably entangled with both. More so than ever, in fact. Your response?'

  She pursed her lips and took a long breath, considering it, then tossed a strand of hair theatrically over her shoulder. 'I would drive them both near madness with my matchless wit and smouldering beauty, then engineer a duel between the two. Whichever won would be rewarded with the ultimate prize of my hand in marriage, never suspecting I was once promised also to his rival. Since he is old, I would earnestly hope for his imminent death, leaving me a wealthy and respected widow.' She grinned at him down her nose. 'What say you to that, sir?'

  Glokta blinked. 'I fear the metaphor has lost its relevance.'

  'Or…' Ardee squinted at the ceiling, then snapped her fingers. 'I might use my subtle feminine wiles…' thrusting back her shoulders and hitching up her bust, 'to entrap a third man, still more powerful and wealthy. Young, and handsome, and smooth of limb as well, I suppose, since this is a metaphor. I would marry him and with his help destroy those other two, and abandon them penniless and disappointed. Ha! What think you?'

  Glokta felt his eyelid twitching, and he pressed one hand against it. Interesting. 'A third suitor,' he murmured. 'The idea had never even occurred.'

  * * *

  Skarlings Chair

  « ^ »

  Far below, the water frothed and surged. It had rained hard in the night, and now the river ran high with it, an angry flood chewing mindlessly at the base of the cliff. Cold black water and cold white spray against the cold black rock. Tiny shapes—golden yellow, burning orange, vivid purple, all the colours of fire, whisked and wandered with the mad currents, whatever way the rain washed them.

  Leaves on the water, just like him.

  And now it looked as if the rain would wash him south. To fight some more. To kill men who'd never heard of him. The idea of it made him want to be sick. But he'd given his word, and a man who doesn't keep his word isn't much of a man at all. That's what Logen's father used to tell him.

  He'd spent a lot of long years not keeping to much of anything. His word, and the words of his father, and other men's lives, all meaning less than nothing. All the promises he'd made to his wife and to his children he'd let rot. He'd broken his word to his people, and his friends, and himself, more times than he could count. The Bloody-Nine. The most feared man in the North. A man who'd walked all his days in a circle of blood. A man who'd done nothing in all his life but evil. And all the while he'd looked at the sky and shrugged his shoulders. Blamed whoever was nearest, and told himself he'd had no choices.

  Bethod was gone. Logen had vengeance, at last, but the world wasn't suddenly a better place. The world was the same, and so was he. He spread out the fingers of his left hand on the damp stone, bent and wonky from a dozen old breaks, knuckles scratched and scabbing, nails cracked and wedged under with dirt. He stared down at the familiar stump for a moment.

  'Still alive,' he whispered, hardly able to believe it.

  He winced at the pain in his battered ribs, groaned as he turned away from the window and back into the great hall. Bethod's throne room, and now his. The thought tugged a meagre belch of laughter out of his gut, but even that stabbed at the mass of stitches through his cheek and up the side of his face. He limped out across the wide floor, every step an ordeal. The sound of his scraping boots echoed in the high rafters, over the whispering of the river down below. Shafts of blurred light, heavy with floating dust, shone down and made criss-cross patterns across the boards. Near to Logen, on a raised-up dais, stood Skarling's Chair.

  The hall, and the city, and the land around it had all changed far beyond recognition, but Logen reckoned the chair itself was much the same as it had been when Skarling lived. Skarling Hoodless, greatest hero of the North. The man who'd united the clans to fight against the Union, long ago. The man who'd drawn the North together with words and gestures, for a few brief years, at least.

  A simple seat for a simple man—big, honest chunks of old wood, faded paint around the edges, polished smooth by Skarling's sons, and grandsons, and the men who'd led his clan since. Until the Bloody-Nine came knocking at the gates of Carleon. Until Bethod took the chair for his own, and pretended that he was all that Skarling had been, while he forced the North together with fire, and fear, and steel.

  'Well then?' Logen jerked his head round, saw Black Dow leaning in the doorway, arms folded across his chest. 'Ain't you going to sit in it?'

  Logen shook his head, even though his legs were aching so bad he could hardly bear to stand a moment longer. 'Mud always did for me to sit on. I'm no hero, and Skarling was no king.'

  'Turned down a crown, as I heard it told.'

  'Crowns.' Logen spat onto the straw, spit still pink from the cuts in his mouth. 'Kings. The whole notion's shit, and me the worst choice there could be.'

  'You ain't saying no, though, eh?'

  Logen frowned up at him. 'So some other bastard even worse'n Bethod can sit in that chair, make the North bleed some more? Maybe I can do some good with it.'

  'Maybe.' Dow looked straight back. 'But some men aren't made for doing good.'

  'You talking 'bout me again?' chuckled Crummock, striding in through the doorway, Dogman and Grim at his shoulder.

  'Not all talk's about you, Crummock,' said Dogman. 'You sleep alright, Logen?'

  'Aye,' he lied. 'Like the dead.'

  'What now?'

  Logen stared at that chair. 'South, I reckon.'

  'South,' grunted Grim, giving no clue whether he thought it was a good idea or a bad.

  Logen licked at the ragged flesh at the side of his mouth, checking again, for no reason that made any sense, just how much it hurt. 'Calder and Scale are still out there, somewhere. No doubt Bethod sent 'em to find some help. From out past the Crinna, or up in the high valleys, or wherever.'

  Crummock chuckled softly. 'Ah, the good work's never done.'

  'They'll be causing mischief sooner or later,' said Dogman, 'small doubt o' that.'

  'Someone needs to stay back here and keep a watch on things. Hunt those two bastards out if they can.'

  'I'll do it,' said Black Dow.

  'You sure?'

  Dow shrugged. 'I don't like boats and I don't like the Union. Don't need to take no voyage to work that out. And I've got scores enough to settle with Calder and Scale. I'll pick me some Carls out o' what's left, and I'll pay 'em a visit.' He flashed his nasty grin, and clapped Dogman on the arm. 'Good luck to the rest o' you down there with the Southerners, eh? Try not to get yourselves killed.' He narrowed his eyes at Logen. 'You especially, eh, Bloody-Nine? Wouldn't want to lose us another King o' the Northmen, now, would we?' And he sauntered out, arms folded.

  'How many men we got left over?'

  'Might be three hundred, now, if Dow takes a few.'

  Logen gave a long sigh. 'Best get 'em ready to leave then. Wouldn't want Furious to go without us.'

  'Who'll want to go?' asked Dogman. 'After what they been through these past months? Who'll want more killing now?'

  'Men who don't know how to do much else, I guess.' Logen shrugged. 'Bethod had
gold down there, didn't he?'

  'Aye, some.'

  'Then share it out. Plenty for each man comes with us. Some now, some when we get back. Reckon a good few'll take the offer.'

  'Maybe. Men'll talk hard for gold. Not sure they'll fight hard for it, when the time comes.'

  'I reckon we'll see.'

  Dogman stared at him for a long moment. Stared him right in the eye. 'Why?'

  'Because I gave my word.'

  'And? Never bothered you before, did it?'

  'Can't say it did, and there's the problem.' Logen swallowed, and his mouth tasted bad. 'What else can you do, but try and do better?'

  Dogman nodded, slow, his eyes not leaving Logen's face. 'Right you are then, chief. South it is.'

  'Uh,' said Grim, and the two of them walked out the doorway, leaving just Crummock behind.

  'Off to the Union for you is it, your Majesty? South and kill you some brown men in the sun?'

  'South.' Logen worked one sore shoulder beside his sore neck, and then the other. 'You coming?'

  Crummock pushed himself away from the wall and walked forward, finger bones clicking round his thick neck. 'No, no, no, not me. I've relished our time together, so I have, but everything's got an end, don't it. I've been away from my mountains for far too long, and my wives'll be missing me.' The chief of the hillmen held his arms out wide, took a step forward, and hugged Logen tight. A little too tight for comfort, if he was being honest.

  'They can have a king if they want one,' whispered Crummock in his ear, 'but I can't say I do. Especially not the man who killed my son, eh?' Logen felt himself go cold, from the roots of his hair to the tips of his fingers. 'What did you think? That I wouldn't know?' The hillman leaned back to look Logen in the eye. 'You slaughtered him before the whole world, now, didn't you? You butchered little Rond like a sheep for the pot, and him just as helpless as one.'

  They were alone in that wide hall, just the two of them, and the shadows, and Skarling's chair. Logen winced as Crummock's arms squeezed tighter, round the bruises and the wounds the Feared's arms had left him. Logen hadn't the strength left now to fight a cat, and they both knew it. The hillman could've crushed him flat, and finished the job the Feared had started. But he only smiled.