Last Argument of Kings

by Joe Abercrombie

  She sat, and watched the boats.

  She sat until the sun was low, casting a bright glare across the bottoms of the clouds, making the shifting waves sparkle. Until the crowds thinned out, and the carts stopped moving, and the shouting and bustle of the docks faded to a dusty quiet. Until the breeze grew cool against her skin.

  Yulwei was not coming today.

  She climbed down from the roof of the warehouse and worked her way through the back streets towards the Middleway. It was as she was walking down that wide road, scowling at the people who passed her, that she realised. She was being followed.

  He did it well, and carefully. Sometimes closer, sometimes further back. Staying out of plain sight, but never hiding. She took a few turns to make sure, and he always followed. He was dressed all in black, with long, lank hair and a mask covering part of his face. All in black, like a shadow. Like the men that had chased her and Ninefingers, before they left for the Old Empire. She watched him out of the corners of her eyes, never looking straight at him, never letting him know that she knew.

  He would find out soon enough.

  She took a turn down a dingy alley, stopped and waited behind the corner. Pressed up against the grimy stonework, holding her breath. Her bow and her sword might be far away, but shock was the only weapon she needed. That and her hands, and her feet, and her teeth.

  She heard the footsteps coming. Careful footsteps, padding down the alley, so soft she could barely hear them. She found that she was smiling. It felt good to have an enemy, to have a purpose. Very good, after so long without one. It filled the empty space inside her, even if it was only for a moment. She gritted her teeth, feeling the fury swelling up in her chest. Hot and exciting. Safe and familiar. Like the kiss of an old lover, much missed.

  When he rounded the corner her fist was already swinging. It crunched into his mask and sent him reeling. She pressed in close, cracking him in the face with each hand and knocking his head right and left. He fumbled for a knife, but he was slow and dizzy and the blade was barely out of its sheath before she had his wrist tight. Her elbow snapped his head back, jabbed into his throat and left him gurgling. She tore the knife out of his limp hand, spun around and kicked him in the gut so he bent over. Her knee thudded into his mask and sent him onto his back in the dirt. She followed him down, her legs wrapping tight around his waist, her arm across his chest, his own knife pressed up against his throat.

  'Look at this,' she whispered in his face. 'I have picked up a shadow.'

  'Glugh,' came from behind his mask, his eyes still rolling.

  'Hard to talk with that on, eh?' And she slashed the straps of his mask with a jerk of the knife, the blade leaving a long scratch down his cheek. He did not look so dangerous without it. Much younger than she had thought, with a rash of spots around his chin and a growth of downy hair on his top lip. He jerked his head and his eyes came back into focus. He snarled, tried to twist free, but she had him fast, and a touch of the knife against his neck soon calmed him.

  'Why are you following me?'

  'I'm not fucking—'

  Ferro had never been a patient woman. Straddling her shadow as she was it was an easy thing to rear up and smash her elbow into his face. He did his best to ward her off, but all her weight was on his hips and he was helpless. Her arm crashed through his hands and into his mouth, his nose, his cheek, cracking his head back against the greasy cobbles. Four of those and the fight was out of him. His head lolled back, and she crouched down over him again and tucked the knife up under his neck. Blood bubbled out of his nose and his mouth and ran down the side of his face in dark streaks.

  'Following me now?'

  'I just watch.' His voice clicked in his bloody mouth. 'I just watch. I don't give the orders.'

  The Gurkish soldiers did not give the orders to kill Ferro's people and make her a slave. That did not make them innocent. That did not make them safe from her. 'Who does?'

  He coughed, and his face twitched, bubbles of blood blew out of his swollen nostrils. Nothing else. Ferro frowned.

  'What?' She moved the knife down and pricked at his thigh with the point, 'you think I never cut a cock off before?'

  'Glokta,' he mumbled, closing his eyes. 'I work… for Glokta.'

  'Glokta.' The name meant nothing to her, but it was something to follow.

  She slid the knife back up, up to his neck. The lump on his throat rose and fell, brushing against the edge of the blade. She clenched her jaw, and worked her fingers round the grip, frowning down. Tears had started to glitter in the corners of his eyes. Best to get it done, and away. Safest. But her hand was hard to move.

  'Give me a reason not to do it.'

  The tears welled up and ran down the sides of his bloody face. 'My birds,' he whispered.

  'Birds?'

  'There'll be no one to feed them. I deserve it, sure enough, but my birds… they've done nothing.' She narrowed her eyes at him.

  Birds. Strange, the things that people have to live for.

  Her father had kept a bird. She remembered it, in a cage, hanging from a pole. A useless thing, that could not even fly, only cling to a twig. He had taught it words. She remembered watching him feeding it, when she was a child. Long ago, before the Gurkish came.

  'Ssssss,' she hissed in his face, pressing the knife up against his neck and making him cower. Then she pulled the blade away, got up and stood over him. 'The moment when I see you again will be your last. Back to your birds, shadow.'

  He nodded, his wet eyes wide, and she turned and stalked off down the dark alleyway, into the dusk. When she crossed a bridge she tossed the knife away. It vanished with a splash, and ripples spread out in growing circles across the slimy water. A mistake, most likely, to have left that man alive. Mercy was always a mistake, in her experience.

  But it seemed she was in a merciful mood today.

  * * *

  Questions

  « ^ »

  Colonel Glokta was a magnificent dancer, of course, but with his leg feeling as stiff as it did it was difficult for him to truly shine. The constant buzzing of flies was a further distraction, and his partner was not helping. Ardee West looked well enough, but her constant giggling was becoming quite the irritation.

  'Stop that!' snapped the Colonel, whirling her around the laboratory of the Adeptus Physical, the specimens in the jars pulsing and wobbling in time to the music.

  'Partially eaten,' grinned Kandelau, one eye enormously magnified through his eyeglass. He pointed downwards with his tongs. 'This is a foot.'

  Glokta pushed the bushes aside, one hand pressed over his face. The butchered corpse lay there, glistening red, scarcely recognisable as human. Ardee laughed and laughed at the sight of it. 'Partially eaten!' she tittered at him. Colonel Glokta did not find the business in any way amusing. The sound of flies was growing louder and louder, threatening to drown out the music entirely. Worse yet, it was getting terribly cold in the park.

  'Careless of me,' said a voice from behind.

  'How do you mean?'

  'Just to leave it there. But sometimes it is better to move quickly, than to move carefully, eh, cripple?'

  'I remember this,' murmured Glokta. It had grown colder yet, and he was shivering like a leaf. 'I remember this!'

  'Of course,' whispered the voice. A woman's voice, but not Ardee. A low and hissing voice, that made his eye twitch.

  'What can I do?' The Colonel could feel his gorge rising. The wounds in the red meat yawned. The flies were so loud he could hardly hear the reply.

  'Perhaps you should go to the University, and ask for advice.' Icy breath brushed his neck and made his back shiver. 'Perhaps while you are there… you could ask them about the Seed.'

  Glokta lurched to the bottom of the steps and staggered sideways, falling back against the wall, the breath hissing over his wet tongue. His left leg trembled, his left eye twitched, as though the two were connected by a cord of pain that cut into his arse, guts, back, shoulder, neck, face
, and tightened with every movement, however small.

  He forced himself to be still. To breathe long and slow. He made his mind move off the pain and on to other things. Like Bayaz, and his failed quest for this Seed. After all, his Eminence is waiting, and is not known for his patience. He stretched his neck out to either side and felt the bones clicking between his twisted shoulder-blades. He pressed his tongue into his gums and shuffled away from the steps, into the cool darkness of the stacks.

  They had not changed much in the past year. Or probably in a few centuries before that. The vaulted spaces smelled of fust and age, lit only by a couple of nickering, grimy lamps, sagging shelves stretching away into the shifting shadows. Time to go digging once again through the dusty refuse of history. The Adeptus Historical did not appear to have changed much either. He sat at his stained desk, poring over a mouldy-looking pile of papers in the light from a single squirming candle flame. He squinted up as Glokta hobbled closer.

  'Who's there?'

  'Glokta.' He peered up suspiciously towards the shadowy ceiling. 'What happened to your crow?'

  'Dead,' grunted the ancient librarian sadly.

  'History, you might say!' The old man did not laugh. 'Ah, well. It happens to us all.' And some sooner than others. 'I have questions for you.'

  The Adeptus Historical craned forward over his desk, peering dewily up at Glokta as though he had never seen another human before. 'I remember you.' Miracles do happen, then? 'You asked me about Bayaz. First apprentice of great Juvens, first letter in the alphabet of the—'

  'Yes, yes, we've been over this.'

  The old man gave a sulky frown. 'Did you bring that scroll back?'

  'The Maker fell burning, and so on? I'm afraid not. The Arch Lector has it.'

  'Gah. I hear far too much about that man these days. Them upstairs are always carping on him. His Eminence this, and his Eminence that. I'm sick of hearing it!' I know very much how you feel. 'Everyone's in a spin, these days. A spin and a ruckus.'

  'Lots of changes upstairs. We have a new king.'

  'I know that! Guslav, is it?'

  Glokta gave a long sigh as he settled himself in the chair on the other side of the desk. 'Yes, yes, he's the one.' Only thirty years out of date, or so. I'm surprised he didn't think Harod the Great was still on the throne.

  'What do you want this time?'

  Oh, to fumble in the darkness for answers that are always just out of reach. 'I want to know about the Seed.'

  The lined face did not move. 'The what?'

  'It was mentioned in your precious scroll. That thing that Bayaz and his magical friends searched for in the House of the Maker, after the death of Kanedias. After the death of Juvens.'

  'Bah!' The Adeptus waved his hand, the saggy flesh under his wrist wobbling. 'Secrets, power. It's all a metaphor.'

  'Bayaz does not seem to think so.' Glokta shuffled his chair closer, and spoke lower. Though there cannot be anyone to hear, or to care if they did. 'I heard it was a piece of the Other Side, left over from the Old Time, when devils walked our earth. The stuff of magic, made solid.'

  The old man wheezed with papery laughter, displaying a rotten cavern of a mouth with fewer teeth even than Glokta's own. 'I did not take you for a superstitious man, Superior.' Nor was I one, when I last came here with questions. Before my visit to the House of the Maker, before my meeting with Yulwei, before I saw Shickel smile while they burned her. What happy times they were, before I had heard of Bayaz, when things still made sense. The Adeptus wiped his runny eyes with his palsied mockery of a hand. 'Where did you hear that?'

  Oh, from a Navigator with his foot on an anvil. 'Never you mind from where.'

  'Well, you know more about it than me. I read once that rocks sometimes fall out of the sky. Some say they are fragments of the stars. Some say they are splinters, flung out from the chaos of hell. Dangerous to touch. Terribly cold.'

  Cold? Glokta could almost feel that icy breath upon his neck, and he wriggled his shoulders at it, forcing himself not to glance behind him. 'Tell me about hell.' Though I think I already know more than most on the subject.

  'Eh?'

  'Hell, old man. The Other Side.'

  'They say it is where magic comes from, if you believe in such things.'

  'I have learned to keep an open mind on the subject.'

  'An open mind is like to an open wound, apt to—'

  'So I have heard, but we are speaking of hell.'

  The librarian licked at his sagging lips. 'Legend has it that there was a time when our world and the world below were one, and devils roamed the earth. Great Euz cast them out, and spoke the First Law—forbidding all to touch the Other Side, or to speak to devils, or to tamper with the gates between.'

  'The First Law, eh?'

  'His son Glustrod, hungry for power, ignored his father's warnings, and he sought out secrets, and summoned devils, and sent them against his enemies. It is said his folly led to the destruction of Aulcus and the fall of the Old Empire, and that when he destroyed himself, he left the gates ajar… but I am not the expert on all that.'

  'Who is?'

  The old man grimaced. 'There were books here. Very old. Beautiful books, from the time of the Master Maker. Books on the subject of the Other Side. The divide between. The gates and the locks. Books on the subject of the Tellers of Secrets, and of their summoning and sending. A load of invention if you ask me. Myth and fantasy.'

  'There were books?'

  'They have been missing from my shelves for some years now.'

  'Missing? Where are they?'

  The old man frowned. 'Strange, that you of all people should ask that—'

  'Enough!' Glokta turned as quickly as he could to look behind him. Silber, the University Administrator, stood at the foot of the steps, with a look of the strangest horror and surprise on his rigid face. Quite as if he had seen a ghost. Or even a demon. 'That will be quite enough, Superior! We thank you for your visit.'

  'Enough?' Glokta gave a frown of his own. 'His Eminence will not be—'

  'I know what his Eminence will or will not be…' An unpleasantly familiar voice. Superior Goyle worked his way slowly down the steps. He strolled around Silber, across the shadowy floor between the shelves. 'And I say enough. We most heartily thank you for your visit.' He leaned forwards, eyes popping furiously from his head. 'Make it your last!'

  There had been some startling changes in the dining hall since Glokta went downstairs. The evening had grown dark outside the dirty windows, the candles had been lit in their tarnished sconces. And, of course, there is the matter of two dozen widely assorted Practical of the Inquisition.

  Two narrow-eyed natives of Suljuk sat staring at Glokta over their masks, as like as if they had been twins, their black boots up on the ancient dining table, four curved swords lying sheathed on the wood before them. Three dark-skinned men stood near one dark window, heads shaved, each with an axe at his belt and a shield on his back. A great tall Practical loomed up by the fireplace, long and thin as a birch tree with blond hair hanging over his masked face. Beside was a short one, almost dwarfish, his belt bristling with knives.

  Glokta recognised the huge Northman called the Stone-Splitter from his previous visit to the University. But it looks as if he has been attempting to split stones with his face since we last met, and with great persistence. His cheeks were uneven, his brows were wonky, the bridge of his nose pointed sharply to the left. His ruin of a face was almost as disturbing as the enormous mallet he had clenched in his massive fists. But not quite.

  So it went on, as strange and worrying a collection of murderers as could ever have been collected together in one place, and all heavily armed. And it seems that Superior Goyle has restocked his freak show. In the midst of them, and seeming quite at home, stood Practical Vitari, pointing this way and that, giving orders. You would never have thought she was the mothering type, seeing her now, but I suppose we all have our hidden talents.

  Glokta threw his ri
ght arm up in the air. 'Who are we killing?'

  All eyes turned towards him. Vitari stalked over, a frown across the freckled bridge of her nose. 'What the hell are you doing here?'

  'I could ask you the same question.'

  'If you know what's good for you, you'll ask no questions at all.'

  Glokta leered his empty smile at her. 'If I knew what was good for me I'd never have lost my teeth, and questions are all I have left. What's in this old pile of dust that's of interest to you?'

  'That's none of my business, and even less of yours. If you're looking for traitors, maybe you should look in your own house first, eh?'

  'And what is that supposed to mean?'

  Vitari leaned close to him and whispered through her mask. 'You saved my life, so let me return the favour. Get away from here. Get away, and keep away.'

  Glokta shuffled down the passageway and up to his heavy door. As far as Bayaz goes, we are no further on. Nothing that will bring a rare smile to the face of his Eminence. Summonings and sendings. Gods and devils. Always more questions. He turned his key impatiently in the lock, desperate to sit down and take the weight from his trembling leg. What was Goyle doing at the university? Goyle, and Vitari, and two dozen Practicals, all armed as if they were going to war? He took a wincing step over the threshold. There must be some—

  'Gah!' He felt his cane snatched away and he lurched sideways, clutching at the air. Something crunched into his face and filled his head with blinding pain. The next moment the floor thumped him in the back and drove his wind out in a long sigh. He blinked and slobbered, mouth salty with blood, the dark room swaying madly around him. Oh dear, oh dear. A fist in the face, unless I am much mistaken. It never loses its impact.

  A hand grabbed the collar of his coat and dragged him up, the cloth cutting into his throat and making him squawk like a strangled chicken.