Last Argument of Kings (12 page)

Sult himself, or one of Sult’s enemies? One of his rivals in the race for the throne? High Justice Marovia? Lord Brock? Anyone on the entire Open Council? Or could it be the Gurkish? They have never been my closest friends. The banking house of Valint and Balk, perhaps, chosen finally to call in their debt? Might I have seriously misjudged young Captain Luthar, even? Or could it simply be Superior Goyle, no longer keen to share his job with the cripple?
It was quite the list, now that he was forced to consider it.

He heard the footfalls slapping around him. Narrow alleys. He had no idea how far they had come. His breath echoed in the bag, rasping, throaty.
The heart thumps, the skin prickles with cold sweat. Excited. Scared, even. What might they want with me? People are not snatched from the street in order to be given promotions, or confections, or tender kisses, more’s the pity. I know why people are snatched from the street. Few better.

Down a set of steps, the toes of his boots scuffing helplessly against the treads. The sound of a heavy door being heaved shut. Footsteps echoing in a tiled corridor. Another door closing. He felt himself dumped unceremoniously in a chair.
And now, no doubt, for better or worse, we shall find out…

The bag was snatched suddenly from his head and Glokta blinked as harsh light stabbed at his eyes. A white room, too bright for comfort.
A type of room with which I am sadly familiar. And yet it looks so much uglier from this side of the table.
Someone was sitting opposite.
Or the blurry outline of a someone.
He closed one eye and peered through the other as his vision adjusted.

“Well,” he murmured. “What a surprise.”

“A pleasant one, I hope.”

“I suppose we’ll see.” Carlot dan Eider had changed.
And it would seem that exile has not entirely disagreed with her.
Her hair had grown back, not all the way, perhaps, but more than far enough to manage a fetching style. The bruises round her throat had faded, there were only the very faintest of marks where her cheek had been covered in scabs. She had swapped traitor’s sack-cloth for the travelling clothes of a lady of means, and looked extremely well in them. Jewels twinkled on her fingers, and around her neck. She seemed every bit as rich and sleek as when they first met. That, and she was smiling.
The smile of the player who holds all the cards. Why is it that I cannot learn? Never do a good turn. Especially not for a woman.

A small pair of scissors lay on the table before her, within easy reach. Of the type that rich women use to trim their nails.
But just as good for trimming the skin from the soles of a man’s feet, for trimming his nostrils wider, for trimming his ears off, strip by slow strip…

Glokta found it decidedly difficult to move his eyes away from those polished little blades, shining in the bright lamplight. “I thought I told you never to come back,” he said, but his voice lacked its customary authority.

“You did. But then I thought… why ever not? I have assets in the city that I was not willing to relinquish, and some business opportunities that I am keen to take advantage of.” She took up the scissors, trimmed the thinnest scrap from the corner of one already perfectly-shaped thumbnail, and frowned at the results. “And it’s hardly as though you’ll be telling anyone I’m here, now, is it?”

“My concerns for your safety are all laid to rest,” grunted Glokta.
My concerns for my own, alas, grow with every moment. A man is never so crippled, after all, that he could not be more so.
“Did you really need to go to all this trouble just to share your travel arrangements?”

Her smile grew somewhat broader, if anything. “I hope my men didn’t hurt you. I did ask them to be gentle. At least for the time being.”

“A gentle kidnapping is still a kidnapping, though, don’t you find?”

“Kidnapping is such an ugly word. Why don’t we think of it as an invitation difficult to resist? At least I let you keep your clothes, no?”

“That particular favour is a mercy to us both, believe me. An invitation to what, might I ask, beyond a painful manhandling and a brief conversation?”

“I’m hurt that you need more. But there was something else, since you mention it.” She pared away another sliver of nail with her scissors, and her eyes rolled up to his. “A little debt left over, from Dagoska. I fear that I will not sleep easily until it is repaid.”

A few weeks in a black cell and a choking to the point of death? What form of repayment might that earn me?
“Please, then,” hissed Glokta through his gums, his eyelid flickering as he watched those blades snip, snip, snip. “I can scarcely stand the suspense.”

“The Gurkish are coming.”

He paused for a moment, wrong-footed. “Coming here?”

“Yes. To Midderland. To Adua. To you. They have built a fleet, in secret. They began building it after the last war, and now it is complete. Ships to rival anything the Union has.” She tossed her scissors down on the table and gave a long sigh. “Or so I hear.”

The Gurkish fleet, just as my midnight visitor Yulwei told me. Rumours and ghosts, perhaps. But rumours are not always lies.
“When will they arrive?”

“I really couldn’t say. The mounting of such an expedition is a colossal work of organisation. But then the Gurkish have always been so very much better organised than us. That’s what makes doing business with them such a pleasure.”

My own dealings with them have been less than delightful, but still.
“In what numbers will they come?”

“A very great number, I imagine.”

Glokta snorted. “Forgive me if I regard the words of a proven traitor with a certain scepticism, especially as you are rather thin on the details.”

“Have it your way. You’re here to be warned, not convinced. I owe you that much, I think, for giving me my life.”

How wonderfully old-fashioned of you.
“And that is all?”

She spread her hands. “Can a lady not trim her nails without giving offence?”

“Could you not simply have written?” snapped Glokta, “and spared me the chafing on my underarms?”

“Oh, come now. You never struck me as a man to bridle at a little chafing. Besides, it has given us the chance to renew a thoroughly enjoyable friendship. And you have to allow me my little moment of triumph, after what you put me through.”

I suppose that I can. I’ve had less charming threats, and at least she has better taste than to meet in a pig sty.
“I can simply walk away, then?”

“Did anyone pick up a cane?” No one spoke. Eider gave a happy smile, showing Glokta her perfect white teeth. “You can crawl away, then. How does that sound?”

Better than floating to the top of the canal after a few days on the bottom, bloated up like a great pale slug and smelling like all the graves in the city.
“As good as I’ll get, I suppose. I do wonder, though. What is to stop me having my Practicals follow the scent of expensive perfume after we are done here and finish what they started?”

“It is so very like you to say such a thing.” She sighed. “I should inform you that an old and trustworthy business acquaintance of mine has a sealed letter in his possession. In the event of my death, it will be sent to the Arch Lector, laying out to him the exact nature of my sentence in Dagoska.”

Glokta sucked sourly at his gums.
Just what I need, another knife to juggle.
“And what will occur if, entirely independently from my actions, you succumb to the rot? Or a house falls on you? Or you choke on a slice of bread?”

She opened her eyes very wide, as though the thought had only just occurred. “In any of those cases… I suppose… the letter would be sent anyway, despite your innocence.” She gave a helpless laugh. “The world is nothing like as fair a place as it should be, in my opinion, and I daresay that the natives of Dagoska, the enslaved mercenaries, and the butchered Union soldiers who you made fight for your lost cause would concur.” She smiled as sweetly as if they were discussing gardening. “Things would probably have been far simpler for you if you’d had me strangled, after all.”

“You read my mind.”
But it is far too late now. I did a good thing, and so, of course, there is a price to be paid.

“So tell me, before we part ways again, for what, we can both only hope, will be the last time—are you involved with this business of the vote?”

Glokta felt his eye twitch. “My duties would seem to touch upon it.”
Indeed it occupies my every waking hour.

Carlot dan Eider leaned forward to a conspiratorial distance, her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands. “Who will be the next king of the Union, do you suppose? Will it be Brock? Isher? Will it be someone else?”

“A little early to say. I’m working on it.”

“Off you hobble, then.” She pushed out her bottom lip. “And it’s probably better if you don’t mention our meeting to his Eminence.” She nodded, and Glokta felt the bag forced back over his face.

A Ragged Multitude

Jezal’s command post, if you could use the phrase in relation to a man as utterly confused and clueless as he felt, was at the crest of a long rise. It offered a splendid view of the shallow valley below. At least, it would have been a splendid view in happier times. As things stood, it had to be admitted, the spectacle was far from pleasant.

The main body of the rebels entirely covered several large fields further down the valley, and a dark, and grubby, and threatening infestation they seemed, glinting in places with bright steel. Farming implements and tradesman’s tools, perhaps, but sharp ones.

Even at this distance there was disturbing evidence of organisation. Straight, regular gaps through the men for the quick movement of messengers and supplies. It was plain, even to Jezal’s unpractised eye, that this was as much an army as a mob, and that someone down there knew his business. A great deal better than he did, most likely.

Smaller, less organised groups of rebels were scattered far and wide across the landscape, each one a considerable body in its own right. Men sent foraging for food and water, picking the country clean. That crawling black mass on the green fields reminded Jezal of a horde of black ants crawling over a pile of discarded apple peelings. He had not the slightest idea how many of them there were, but it looked at this distance as though forty thousand might have been a considerable underestimate.

Down in the village in the bottom of the valley, behind the main mass of rebels, fires were burning. Bonfires or buildings it was hard to say, but Jezal rather feared the latter. Three tall columns of dark smoke rose up and drifted apart high above, giving to the air a faint and worrying tang of fire.

It was a commander’s place to set a tone of fearlessness which his men would not be able to help but follow. Jezal knew that, of course. And yet, looking down that long, sloping field, he could not help but reflect on the very great number of men at the other end, so ominously purposeful. He could not stop his eyes from darting back towards their own lines, so thin, meagre, and uncertain-seeming. He could not avoid wincing and tugging uncomfortably at his collar. The damn thing still felt far too tight.

“How do you wish the regiments deployed, sir?” asked his adjutant, Major Opker, with a look which somehow managed to be both condescending and sycophantic all at once.

“Deployed? Er… well…” Jezal racked his brains for something vaguely appropriate, let alone correct, to say. He had discovered early in his military career that if one has an effective and experienced officer above, coupled with effective and experienced soldiers below, one need do, and know, nothing. This strategy had stood him in fine stead for several comfortable peacetime years, but its one shortcoming was now starkly laid bare. If by some miracle one rises to complete command, the system collapses entirely.

“Deployed…” he growled, furrowing his brow and trying to give the impression he was surveying the ground, though he had only a hazy idea what that even meant. “Infantry in double line…” he ventured, remembering a fragment of some story Collem West had once told him. “Behind this hedgerow here.” And he slashed his baton portentously across the landscape. The use of a baton, at least, he was expert in, having practiced extensively before the mirror.

“In front of the hedgerow, the Colonel means to say, of course,” threw in Bayaz smoothly. “Infantry deployed in double line to either side of that milestone. The light cavalry in the trees there, heavy cavalry in a wedge on the far flank, where they can use the open field to their advantage.” He displayed an uncanny familiarity with military parlance. “Flatbows in a single line behind the hedgerow where they will at first be hidden from the enemy, and can give them plunging fire from the high ground.” He winked at Jezal. “An excellent strategy, Colonel, if I may say.”

“Of course,” sneered Opker, turning away to give the orders.

Jezal gripped tight to his baton behind his back, rubbing nervously at his jaw with the other hand. Evidently there was a lot more to command than simply being called “sir” by everyone. He would really have to read some books when he got back to Adua. If he got back.

Three small dots had detached themselves from the crawling mass of humanity down in the valley and started moving up the rise toward them. Shading his eyes with his hand, Jezal could just see a shred of white moving in the air above them. A flag of parley. He felt Bayaz’ decidedly uncomforting hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t worry, my boy, we are well prepared for violence. But I feel confident it will not come to that.” He grinned down at the vast mass of men below. “Very confident.”

Jezal ardently wished he could have said the same.

For a famous demagogue, traitor, and inciter of riots, there was nothing in the least remarkable about the man known as the Tanner. He sat calmly in his folding chair at the table in Jezal’s tent, an ordinary face under a mop of curly hair, a man of medium size in a coat of unexceptional style and colour, a grin on his face that implied he knew very well that he held the upper hand.

“They call me the Tanner,” he said, “and I have been nominated to speak for the alliance of the oppressed, and the exploited, and the put-upon down in the valley. These are two of my partners in this righteous and entirely patriotic venture. My two generals, one might say. Goodman Hood,” and he nodded sideways at a burly man with a shovel beard, a ruddy complexion, and a seething frown, “and Cotter Hoist,” and he jerked his head the other way towards a weaselly type with a long scar on his cheek and a lazy eye.

“Honoured,” said Jezal warily, though they looked more like brigands than Generals as far as he was concerned. “I am Colonel Luthar.”

“I know. I saw you win the Contest. Fine swordplay, my friend, very fine.”

“Oh, well, er…” Jezal was caught off guard, “thank you. This is my adjutant, Major Opker, and this is… Bayaz, the First of the Magi.”

Goodman Hood snorted his disbelief, but the Tanner only stroked thoughtfully at his lip. “Good. And you have come to fight, or negotiate?”

“We have come for either one.” Jezal embarked on his statement. “The Closed Council, while condemning the method of your demonstration, concede that you may have legitimate demands—”

Hood made a rumbling snort. “What choice have they got, the bastards?”

Jezal pressed on. “Well, er… they have instructed me to offer you these concessions.” He held up the scroll that Hoff had prepared for him, a huge thing with elaborately carved handles and a seal the size of a saucer. “But I must caution you,” doing his very best to sound confident, “should you refuse, we are quite ready to fight, and that my men are the best trained, best armed, best prepared in the King’s service. Each one of them is worth twenty of your rabble.”

The burly farmer gave a threatening chuckle. “Lord Finster thought the same, and our rabble kicked his arse all the way from one end of his estates to the other. He would have got himself hung for his trouble if he’d had a slower horse. How fast is your horse, Colonel?”

The Tanner touched him gently on the shoulder. “Peace, now, my fiery friend. We came to get terms, if we can get terms we can accept. Why not show us what you have there, Colonel, and we’ll see if there is any need for threats.”

Jezal held out the weighty document and Hood snatched it angrily from his hand, tore it open and began to read, the thick paper crackling as it unrolled. The more he read, the grimmer grew his frown.

“An insult!” he snapped when he was done, giving Jezal a brooding stare. “Lighter taxes and some shit about the use of common land? And that much they’ll most likely never honour!” He tossed the scroll sideways to the Tanner, and Jezal swallowed. He had not the leanest understanding of the concessions or their possible shortcomings, of course, but Hood’s response hardly seemed to promise an early agreement.

The Tanner’s eyes moved lazily over the parchment. Different-coloured eyes, Jezal noticed: one blue, one green. When he got to the bottom he laid the document down and gave a theatrical sigh. “These terms will do.”

“They will?” Jezal’s eyes opened wide with surprise, but nowhere near as far as Goodman Hood’s.

“But these are worse than the last terms we were offered!” shouted the farmer. “Before we sent Finster’s men running! You said then we could accept nothing but land for every man!”

The Tanner screwed his face up. “That was then.”

“That was then?” muttered Hood, gaping with disbelief. “What happened to honest wages for honest work? What happened to shares in the profit? What happened to equal rights no matter the cost? You stood there, and you promised me!” He shoved his hand towards the valley. “You promised all of them! What’s changed, except that Adua’s within our grasp? We can take all we want! We can—”

“I say these terms will do!” snarled the Tanner with a sudden fury. “Unless you care to fight the King’s men on your own! They follow me, Hood, not you, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“But you promised us freedom, for every man! I trusted you!” The farmer’s face hung slack with horror. “We all trusted you.”

Jezal had never seen a man look so utterly indifferent as the Tanner did now. “I suppose I must have that kind of face that people trust,” he droned, and his friend Hoist shrugged and stared at his fingernails.

“Damn you, then! Damn you all!” And Hood turned and shoved angrily out through the tent flap.

Jezal was aware of Bayaz leaning sideways to whisper to Major Opker. “Have that man arrested before he leaves the lines.”

“Arrested, my Lord, but… under a flag of parley?”

“Arrested, placed in irons, and conducted to the House of Questions. A shred of white cloth can be no hiding place from the King’s justice. I believe Superior Goyle is handling the investigations.”

“Er… of course.” Opker rose to follow the Goodman out of the tent, and Jezal smiled nervously. There was no doubt that the Tanner had heard the exchange, but he grinned on as though the future of his erstwhile companion was no longer any of his concern.

“I must apologise for my associate. In a matter like this, you can’t please everyone.” He gave a flamboyant wave of his hand. “But don’t worry. I’ll give the little people a big speech, and tell them we have all we fought for, and they’ll soon be off back to their homes with no real harm done. Some few will be determined to make trouble perhaps, but I’m sure you can round them up without much effort, eh, Colonel Luthar?”

“Er… well,” mumbled Jezal, left without the slightest idea of what was going on. “I suppose that we—”

“Excellent.” The Tanner sprang to his feet. “I fear I must now take my leave. All kinds of errands to be about. Never any peace, eh, Colonel Luthar? Never the slightest peace.” He exchanged a long glance with Bayaz, then ducked out into the daylight and was gone.

“If anyone should ask,” murmured the First of the Magi in Jezal’s ear, “I would tell them that it was a testing negotiation, against sharp and determined opponents, but that you held your nerve, reminded them of their duty to king and country, implored them to return to their fields, and so forth.”

“But…” Jezal felt like he wanted to cry, he was so baffled. Hugely baffled and hugely relieved at once. “But I—”

“If anyone should ask.” There was an edge to Bayaz’ voice that implied the episode was now finished with.