Last Argument of Kings (25 page)

Severard looked up. “What, that brown bitch?”

“She’s still in the city, isn’t she?”

“Last I heard.”

“Follow her, then, and find out what she’s about.”

The Practical paused. “Do I have to?”

“What? You scared?”

Severard lifted up his mask and scratched underneath it. “I can think of people I’d rather follow.”

“Life is a series of things we would rather not do.” Glokta looked up and down the corridor, making sure there was no one there. “We also need to ask some questions about Carmee dan Roth, supposed mother of our present king.”

“What sort of questions?”

He leaned towards Severard and hissed quietly in his ear. “Questions like—did she really bear a child before she died? Was that child really the issue of the overactive loins of King Guslav? Is that child truly the same man that we now have on the throne? You know the kind of questions.”
Questions that could land us in a great deal of trouble. Questions that some people might call treason. After all, the definition is notoriously flexible.

Severard’s mask looked the same as ever, but the rest of his face was decidedly worried. “You sure we want to go digging there?”

“Why don’t you ask the Arch Lector if he’s sure? He sounded sure to me. Get Frost to help you if you’re having trouble.”

“But… what are we looking for? How will we—”

“How?” hissed Glokta. “If I wished to attend to every detail myself I would have no need of your services. Get out there and get it done!”

When Glokta had been young and beautiful, quick and promising, admired and envied, he had spent a great deal of time in the taverns of Adua.
Though I never remember falling this far, even in my darkest moods.

He scarcely felt out of place now, as he hobbled among the customers. To be crippled was the norm here, and he had more teeth than average. Nearly everyone carried unsightly scars or debilitating injuries, sores or warts to make a toad blush. There were men with faces rough as the skin on a bowl of old porridge. Men who shook worse than leaves in a gale and stank of week-old piss. Men who looked as if they’d slit a child’s throat just to keep their knives sharp. A drunken whore slouched against a post in an attitude that could hardly have been arousing to the most desperate sailor.
That same reek of sour beer and hopelessness, sour sweat and early death that I remember from the sites of my worst excesses. Only stronger.

There were some private booths at one end of the stinking common room, vaulted archways full of miserable shadows and even more miserable drunks.
And who might one expect to find in such surroundings?
Glokta shuffled to a stop beside the last of them.

“Well, well, well. I never thought I’d see you alive again.”

Nicomo Cosca looked even worse than when Glokta first met him, if that was possible. He was spread out against the slimy wall, his hands dangling, his head hanging over to one side, his eyes scarcely open as he watched Glokta work his painful way into a chair opposite. His skin was soapy pale in the flickering light from the single mean candle flame, dark pouches under his eyes, dark shadows shifting over his pinched and pointed face. The rash on his neck had grown angrier, and spread up the side of his jaw like ivy up a ruin.
With just a little more effort he might look nearly as ill as me.

“Superior Glokta,” he wheezed, in a voice as rough as tree-bark, “I am delighted that you received my message. What an honour to renew our acquaintance, against all the odds. Your masters did not reward your efforts in the South with a cut throat, eh?”

“I was as surprised as you are, but no.”
Though there is still ample time.
“How was Dagoska after I left?”

The Styrian puffed out his hollow cheeks. “Dagoska was a real mess, since you are asking. A lot of men dead. A lot of men made slaves. That’s what happens when the Gurkish come to dinner, eh? Good men with bad endings, and the bad men did little better. Bad endings for everyone. Your friend General Vissbruck got one of them.”

“I understand he cut his own throat.”
To rapturous approval from the public.
“How did you get away?”

The corner of Cosca’s mouth curled up, as though he would have liked to smile but had not the energy. “I disguised myself as a servant girl, and I fucked my way out.”

“Ingenious.”
But far more likely you were the one who opened the gates to the Gurkish, in return for your freedom. I wonder if I would have done the same, in that position? Probably.
“And lucky for us both.”

“They say that luck is a woman. She’s drawn to those that least deserve her.”

“Perhaps so.”
Though I appear to be both undeserving and unlucky.
“It is certainly fortunate that you should appear in Adua at this moment. Things are… unsettled.”

Glokta heard a squeaking, rustling sound and a large rat dashed out from under his chair and paused for a moment in full view. Cosca delved a clumsy hand into his stained jacket and whipped it out. A throwing knife flew out with it, flashed through the air. It shuddered into the boards a good stride or two wide of the mark. The rat sat there for a moment longer, as though to communicate its contempt, then scurried away between the table and chair legs, the scuffed boots of the patrons.

Cosca sucked at his stained teeth as he slithered from the booth to retrieve his blade. “I used to be dazzling with a throwing knife, you know.”

“Beautiful women used to hang from my every word.” Glokta sucked at his own empty gums. “Times change.”

“So I hear. All kinds of changes. New rulers mean new worries. Worries mean business, for people in my trade.”

“It might be that I will have a use for your particular talents, before too long.”

“I cannot say that I would turn you down.” Cosca tipped his bottle up and stuck his tongue into the neck, licking out the last trickle. “My purse is empty as a dry well. So empty, in fact, that I don’t even have a purse.”

There, at least, I am able to assist.
Glokta checked that they were not observed, then tossed something across the rough table top and watched it bounce with a click and a spin to a halt in front of Cosca. The mercenary picked it up between finger and thumb, held it to the candle flame and stared at it through one bloodshot eye. “This seems to be a diamond.”

“Consider yourself on retainer. I daresay you could find some like-minded men to assist you. Some reliable men, who tell no tales and ask no questions. Some good men, to help out.”

“Some bad men, do you mean?”

Glokta grinned, displaying the gaps in his teeth. “Well. I suppose that all depends on whether you’re the employer, or you’re the job.”

“I suppose it does at that.” Cosca let his empty bottle drop to the ill-formed floorboards. “And what is the job, Superior?”

“For now, just to wait, and stay out of sight.” He leaned from the booth with a wince and snapped his fingers at a surly serving girl. “Another bottle of what my friend is drinking!”

“And later?”

“I’m sure I can find something for you to do.” He shuffled painfully forward in his chair to whisper. “Between you and me, I heard a rumour that the Gurkish are coming.”

Cosca winced. “Them again? Must we? Those bastards don’t play by the rules. God, and righteousness, and belief.” He shuddered. “Makes me nervous.”

“Well, whoever it is banging on the door, I’m sure I can organise a heroic last stand, against the odds, without hope of relief.”
I am not lacking for enemies, after all.

The mercenary’s eyes glinted as the girl thumped a full bottle down on the warped table before him. “Ah, lost causes. My favourite.”

The Habit of Command

West sat in the Lord Marshal’s tent and stared hopelessly into space. For the past year he had scarcely had an idle moment. Now, suddenly, there was nothing for him to do but wait. He kept expecting to see Burr push through the flap and walk to the maps, his fists clenched behind him. He kept expecting to feel his reassuring presence around the camp, to hear his booming voice call the wayward officers to order. But of course he would not. Not now and not ever again.

On the left sat General Kroy’s staff, solemn and sinister in their black uniforms, as rigidly pressed as ever. On the right lounged Poulder’s men, top buttons carelessly undone in an open affront to their opposite numbers, as puffed-up as peacocks displaying their tail feathers. The two great Generals themselves eyed each other with all the suspicion of rival armies across a battlefield, awaiting the edict that would raise one of them to the Closed Council and the heights of power, and dash the other’s hopes for ever. The edict that would name the new King of the Union, and his new Lord Marshal.

It was to be Poulder or Kroy, of course, and both anticipated their final, glorious victory over the other. In the meantime the army, and West in particular, sat paralysed. Powerless. Far to the north the Dogman and his companions, who had saved West’s life in the wilderness more times than he could remember, were no doubt fighting for survival, watching desperately for help that would never come.

For West, the entire business was very much like being at his own funeral, and one attended chiefly by sneering, grinning, posturing enemies. It was to be Poulder or Kroy, and whichever one it was, he was doomed. Poulder hated him with a flaming passion, Kroy with an icy scorn. The only fall swifter and more complete than his own would be that of Poulder, or of Kroy, whichever of them was finally overlooked by the Closed Council.

There was a dim commotion outside, and heads turned keenly to look. There was a scuffle of feet up to the tent, and several officers rose anxiously from their chairs. The flap was torn aside and the Knight Herald finally burst jingling through it. He was immensely tall, the wings on his helmet almost poking a hole in the tent’s ceiling as he straightened up. He had a leather case over one armoured shoulder, stamped with the golden sun of the Union. West stared at it, holding his breath.

“Present your message,” urged Kroy, holding out his hand.

“Present it to me!” snapped Poulder.

The two men jostled each other with scant dignity while the Knight Herald frowned down at them, impassive. “Is Colonel West in attendance?” he demanded, in a booming bass. Every eye, and most especially those of Poulder and Kroy, swivelled round.

West found himself rising hesitantly from his chair. “Er… I am West.”

The Knight Herald stepped carelessly around General Kroy and advanced on West, spurs rattling. He opened his dispatch case, pulled out a roll of parchment and held it up. “On the king’s orders.”

The final irony of West’s unpredictable career, it seemed, was that he would be the one to announce the name of the man who would dismiss him in dishonour moments later. But if he was to fall on his sword, delay would only increase the pain. He took the scroll from the Knight’s gauntleted hand and broke the heavy seal. He unrolled it halfway, a block of flowing script coming into view. The room held its breath as he began to read.

West gave vent to a disbelieving giggle. Even with the tent as tense as a courtroom waiting for judgement, he could not help himself. He had to go over the first section twice more before he came close to taking it in.

“What is amusing?” demanded Kroy.

“The Open Council has elected Jezal dan Luthar as the new King of the Union, henceforth known as Jezal the First.” West had to stifle more laughter even though, if it was a joke, it was not a funny one.

“Luthar?” someone asked. “Who the hell is Luthar?”

“That boy who won the Contest?”

It was all, somehow, awfully appropriate. Jezal had always behaved as though he was better than everyone else. Now, it seemed, he was. But all of that, momentous though it might have been, was a side-issue here.

“Who is the new Lord Marshal?” growled Kroy, and the two staffs shuffled forward, all on their feet now, forming a half-circle of expectation.

West took a deep breath, gathered himself like a child preparing to plunge into an icy pool. He pulled the scroll open and his eyes scanned quickly over the lower block of writing. He frowned. Neither Poulder’s name nor Kroy’s appeared anywhere. He read it again, more carefully. His knees felt suddenly very weak.

“Who does it name?” Poulder nearly shrieked. West opened his mouth, but he could not find the words. He held the letter out, and Poulder snatched it from his hand while Kroy struggled unsuccessfully to look over his shoulder.

“No,” breathed Poulder, evidently having reached the end.

Kroy wrestled the dispatch away and his eyes flickered over it. “This must be a mistake!”

But the Knight Herald did not think so. “The Closed Council are not in the habit of making mistakes. You have the King’s orders!” He turned to West and bowed. “My Lord Marshal, I bid you farewell.”

The army’s best and brightest all gawped at West, jaws dangling. “Er… yes,” he managed to stammer. “Yes, of course.”

An hour later, the tent was empty. West sat alone at Burr’s writing desk, nervously arranging and rearranging the pen, ink, paper, and most of all the large letter he had just sealed with a blob of red wax. He frowned down at it, and up at the maps on the boards, and back down at his hands sitting idle on the scarred leather, and he tried to understand what the hell had happened.

As far as he could tell, he had been suddenly elevated to one of the highest positions in the Union. Lord Marshal West. With the possible exception of Bethod himself, he was the most powerful man on this side of the Circle Sea. Poulder and Kroy would be obliged to call him “sir”. He had a chair on the Closed Council. Him! Collem West! A commoner, who had been scorned, and bullied, and patronised his entire life. How could it possibly have happened? Not through merit, certainly. Not through any action or inaction on his part. Through pure chance. A chance friendship with a man who, in many ways, he did not particularly like, and had certainly never expected to do him any favours. A man who, in a stroke of fortune that could only be described as a miracle, had now ascended to the throne of the Union.

His disbelieving laughter was short-lived. A most unpleasant image was forming in his head. Prince Ladisla, lying somewhere in the wilderness with his head broken open, half-naked and unburied. West swallowed. If it had not been for him, Ladisla would now be king, and he would be swabbing latrines instead of preparing to take command of the army. His head was starting to hurt and he rubbed uncomfortably at his temples. Perhaps he had played a crucial part in his own advancement after all.

The tent flap rustled as Pike came through with his burned-out ruin of a grin. “General Kroy is here.”

“Let him sweat a moment.” But it was West who was sweating. He wiped his moist palms together and tugged the jacket of his uniform smooth, his Colonel’s insignia but recently cut from the shoulders. He had to appear to be in complete and effortless control, just as Marshal Burr had always done. Just as Marshal Varuz had used to, out in the dry wastelands of Gurkhul. He had to squash Poulder and Kroy while he had the chance. If he did not do it now, he would be forever at their mercy. A piece of meat, torn between two furious dogs. He reluctantly picked up the letter and held it out to Pike.

“Could we not just hang the pair of them, sir?” asked the convict as he took it.

“If only. But we cannot do without them, however troublesome they may be. A new King, a new Lord Marshal, both men that, by and large, no one has ever heard of. The soldiers need leaders they know.” He took a long breath through his nose, puffing out his chest. Each man had to do his part, and that was all. He let it hiss out. “Show in General Kroy, please.”

“Yes, sir.” Pike held the tent flap open and roared out, “General Kroy!”

Kroy’s black uniform, chased about the collar with embroidered golden leaves, was so heavily starched that it was a surprise he could move at all. He drew himself up and stood to vibrating attention, eyes fixed on the middle distance. His salute was impeccable, every part of his body in regulation position, and yet he somehow managed to make his contempt and disappointment plain to see.

“May I first offer my congratulations,” he grated, “Lord Marshal.”

“Thank you, General. Graciously said. “

“A considerable promotion, for one so young, so inexperienced—”

“I have been a professional soldier some dozen years, and fought in two wars and several battles. It would seem his Majesty the King deems me sufficiently seasoned.”

Kroy cleared his throat. “Of course, Lord Marshal. But you are new to high command. In my opinion you would be wise to seek the assistance of a more experienced man.”

“I agree with you absolutely.”

Kroy lifted one eyebrow a fraction. “I am glad to hear that.”

“That man should, without the slightest doubt, be General Poulder.” To give him credit, Kroy’s face did not move. A small squeak issued from his nose. The only indication of what, West did not doubt, was his boundless dismay. He had been hurt when he arrived. Now he was reeling. The very best time to plunge the blade in to the hilt. “I have always been a great admirer of General Poulder’s approach to soldiering. His dash. His vigour. He is, to my mind, the very definition of what an officer should be.”

“Quite so,” hissed Kroy through gritted teeth.

“I am taking his advice in a number of areas. There is only one major issue upon which we differed.”

“Indeed?”

“You, General Kroy.” Kroy’s face had assumed the colour of a plucked chicken, the trace of scorn replaced quick-time by a definite tinge of horror. “Poulder was of the opinion that you should be dismissed immediately. I was for giving you one more chance. Sergeant Pike?”

“Sir.” The ex-convict stepped forward smartly and held out the letter. West took it from him and displayed it to the General.

“This is a letter to the king. I begin by reminding him of the happy years we served together in Adua. I go on to lay out in detail the reasons for your immediate dismissal in dishonour. Your unrepentant stubbornness, General Kroy. Your tendency to steal the credit. Your bloodless inflexibility. Your insubordinate reluctance to work with other officers.” If it was possible for Kroy’s face to grow yet more drawn and pale it did so, steadily, as he stared at the folded paper. “I earnestly hope that I will never have to send it. But I will, at the slightest provocation to myself or to General Poulder, am I understood?”

Kroy appeared to grope for words. “Perfectly understood,” he croaked in the end, “my Lord Marshal.”

“Excellent. We are extremely tardy in setting off for our rendezvous with our Northern allies and I hate to arrive late to a meeting. You will transfer your cavalry to my command, for now. I will be taking them north with General Poulder, in pursuit of Bethod.”

“And I, sir?”

“A few Northmen still remain on the hills above us. It will be your task to sweep them away and clear the road to Carleon, giving our enemies the impression that our main body has not moved north. Succeed in that and I may be willing to trust you with more. You will make the arrangements before first light.” Kroy opened his mouth, as though about to complain at the impossibility of the request. “You have something to add?”

The General quickly thought better of it. “No, sir. Before first light, of course.” He even managed to force his face into a shape vaguely resembling a smile.

West did not have to try too hard to smile back. “I am glad you are embracing this chance to redeem yourself, General. You are dismissed.” Kroy snapped to attention once more, spun on his heel, caught his leg up with his sabre and stumbled from the tent in some disarray.

West took a long breath. His head was pounding. He wanted nothing more than to lie down for a few moments, but there was no time. He tugged the jacket of his uniform smooth again. If he had survived that nightmare journey north through the snow, he could survive this. “Send in General Poulder.”

Poulder swaggered into the tent as though he owned the place and stood to slapdash attention, his salute as flamboyant as Kroy’s had been rigid. “Lord Marshal West, I would like to extend to you my earnest congratulations on your unexpected advancement.” He grinned unconvincingly, but West did not join him. He sat there, frowning up at Poulder as if he was a problem that he was considering a harsh solution to. He sat there for some time, saying nothing. The General’s eyes began to dart nervously around the tent. He gave an apologetic cough. “Might I ask, Lord Marshal, what you had to discuss with General Kroy?”

“Why, all manner of things.” West kept his face stony hard. “My respect for General Kroy on all matters military is boundless. We are much alike, he and I. His precision. His attention to detail. He is, to my mind, the very definition of what a soldier should be.”

“He is a most accomplished officer,” Poulder managed to hiss.

“He is. I have been elevated with great rapidity to my position, and I feel I need a senior man, a man with a wealth of experience, to act as a… as a mentor, if you will, now that Marshal Burr is gone. General Kroy has been good enough to agree to serve in that capacity.”