Last Argument of Kings

by Joe Abercrombie

  'I had others waiting, of course. I know better than to trust all to one throw of the dice. Other sons of mysterious parentage, ready to step into the role. There was a family called Brint, as I recall, and plenty more besides. But you floated to the top, Jezal, like a turd in the bath. When I crossed that bridge into the Agriont and saw you grown, I knew you were the one. You simply looked right, and you can't teach that. You have even come to speak like a king, which is a bonus I never expected.'

  Jezal moaned and slobbered, unable even to scream. He felt Bayaz' boot slide under him and kick him over onto his back. The Magus' scowling face loomed down towards him, blurred by tears.

  'But if you insist on being difficult… if you insist on going your own way… well, there are other options. Even kings die unexplained deaths. Thrown by a horse. Choked on an olive-pit. Long falls to the hard, hard cobble-stones. Or simply found dead in the morning. Life is always short for you insects. But it can be very short for those who are not useful. I made you out of nothing. Out of air. With a word I can unmake you.' Bayaz snapped his fingers, and the sound was like a sword through Jezal's stomach. 'Like that you can be replaced.'

  The First of the Magi leaned down further. 'Now, dolt, bastard, son of a whore, consider carefully your answers to these questions. You will do as your Arch Lector advises, yes?'

  The cramps relaxed a merciful fraction. Enough for Jezal to whisper, yes.

  'You will be guided by him in all things?'

  'Yes.'

  'You will abide by his orders, in public and in private?'

  'Yes,' he gasped, 'yes.'

  'Good,' said the Magus, straightening up, towering over Jezal as his statue had once towered over the people on the Kingsway. 'I knew that you would say so, because although I know that you are arrogant, ignorant, and ungrateful, I know this also… you are a coward. Remember that. I trust that this is one lesson you will not ignore.' The agony ebbed suddenly away. Enough for Jezal to lift his spinning head from the tiles.

  'I hate you,' he managed to croak.

  Bayaz spluttered with laughter. 'Hate me? The arrogance of you! To suppose that I might care. I, Bayaz, first apprentice of great Juvens! I, who threw down the Master Maker, who forged the Union, who destroyed the Hundred Words!' The Magus slowly lifted his foot and planted it on the side of Jezal's jaw. 'I don't care whether you like me, fool.' He ground Jezal's face into the vomit-spattered floor with his boot. 'I care that you obey. And you will. Yes?'

  'Yes,' Jezal slobbered through his squashed mouth.

  'Then, your Majesty, I take my leave. Pray that you never give me cause to return.' The crushing pressure on his face released and Jezal heard the Magus' footsteps tap away to the far side of the room. The door creaked open, and then clicked firmly shut.

  He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, his breath heaving quickly in and out. After a while he drew up the courage to roll over, dragged himself dizzily up to his hands and knees. There was an unpleasant stink, and not just from the vomit smeared across his face. He realised with a meagre flicker of shame that he had soiled himself. He crawled across to the window, still limp as a wrung-out rag, drew himself gasping up to his knees, and looked down into the chilly gardens.

  It only took a moment for Bayaz to come into view, striding down the gravel path between the neat lawns, the back of his bald pate shining. Yoru Sulfur walked behind him, staff in one hand, a box of dark metal held under the other arm. The same box that had followed Jezal, and Logen, and Ferro in a cart across half the Circle of the World. What happy days those seemed now.

  Bayaz stopped, suddenly, turned, raised his head. He looked up, straight towards the window.

  Jezal pressed himself into the hangings with a whimper of terror, his whole body trembling, the after-image of that unbearable pain still stamped, cold as ice, into his guts. The First of the Magi stood there for a moment longer, the faintest hint of a smile on his face. Then he turned away smartly, strode between the bowing Knights of the Body flanking the gate, and was gone.

  Jezal knelt there, clinging to the curtains like a child to his mother. He thought about how happy he had once been, and how little he had realised it. Playing cards, surrounded by friends, a bright future ahead of him. He dragged in a heavy breath, the tightness of tears creeping up his throat, spreading out around his eyes. Never in his life had he felt so alone. Son of Kings? He had no one and nothing. He spluttered and sniffed. His vision grew blurry. He shook with hopeless sobs, his scarred lip trembling, the tears dripping down and spattering on the tiles.

  He wept with pain and fear, with shame and anger, with disappointment and helplessness. But Bayaz had been right. He was a coward. So most of all he wept with relief.

  * * *

  Good Men, Evil Men

  « ^ »

  Grey morning time, out in the cold, wet gardens, and the Dogman was just stood there, thinking about how things used to be better. Stood there, in the middle of that circle of brown graves, staring at the turned earth over Harding Grim. Strange, how a man who said so little could leave such a hole.

  It was a long journey that Dogman had taken, the last few years, and a strange one. From nowhere to nowhere, and he'd lost a lot of friends along the way. He remembered all those men gone back to the mud. Harding Grim. Tul Duru Thunderhead. Rudd Threetrees. Forley the Weakest. And what for? Who was better off because of it? All that waste. It was enough to make a man sick to the soles of his boots. Even one who was famous for having a flat temper. All gone, and left Dogman lonely. The world was a narrower place without 'em.

  He heard footsteps through the wet grass. Logen, walking up through the misty rain, breath smoking round his scarred face. Dogman remembered how happy he'd been, that night, when Logen had stepped into the firelight, still alive. It had seemed like a new beginning, then. A good moment, promising better times. Hadn't quite worked out that way. Strange, how the Dogman didn't feel so happy at the sight of Logen Ninefingers no more.

  'The King o' the Northmen,' he muttered. 'The Bloody-Nine. How's the day?'

  'Wet is how it is. Getting late in the year.'

  'Aye. Another winter coming.' Dogman picked at the hard skin on his palm. 'They come quicker and quicker.'

  'Reckon it's high time I got back to the North, eh? Calder and Scale still loose, making mischief, and the dead know what type o' trouble Dow's cooked up.'

  'Aye, I daresay. High time we left.'

  'I want you to stay.'

  Dogman looked up. 'Eh?'

  'Someone needs to talk to the Southerners, make a deal. You've always been the best man I knew for talking. Other than Bethod, maybe, but… he ain't an option now, is he?'

  'What sort of a deal?'

  'Might be we'll need their help. There'll be all kind o' folk in the North not too keen about the way things have gone. Folk don't want a king, or don't want this one, leastways. The Union on our side'll be a help. Wouldn't hurt if you brought some weapons back with you too, when you come.'

  Dogman winced. 'Weapons, is it?'

  'Better to have 'em and not want 'em, than to need 'em but—'

  'I know the rest. What happened to one more fight, then we're done? What happened to making things grow?'

  'They might have to grow without us, for now. Listen, Dogman, I never looked for a fight, you know that, but you have to be—'

  'Don't. Even. Bother.'

  'I'm trying to be a better man, here, Dogman.'

  'That so? I don't see you trying that hard. Did you kill Tul?'

  Logen's eyes went narrow. 'Dow been talking, has he?'

  'Never mind who said what. Did you kill the Thunderhead or did you not? Ain't a hard one to come at. It's just a yes or a no.'

  Logen made a kind of snort, like he was about to start laughing, or about to start crying, but didn't do either one. 'I don't know what I did.'

  'Don't know? What use is don't know? Is that what you'll say after you've stabbed me through the back, while I'm trying to save your worthless l
ife?'

  Logen winced down at the wet grass. 'Maybe it will be. I don't know.' His eyes slid back up to the Dogman's, and stuck there, hard. 'But that's the price, ain't it? You know what I am. You could have picked a different man to follow.'

  Dogman watched him go, not knowing what to say, not knowing what to think even. Just standing there, in the midst of the graves, getting wetter. He felt someone come up beside him. Red Hat, looking off into the rain, watching after Logen's black shape growing fainter and fainter. He shook his head, mouth pursed up tight.

  'I never believed the stories they told about him. About the Bloody-Nine. All bluster, I thought. But I believe 'em now. I heard he killed Crummock's boy, in that fight in the mountains. Carved him careless as you'd crush a beetle, no reason. That's a man there cares for nothing. No man worse, I reckon, ever, in all the North. Not even Bethod. That's an evil bastard, if ever there was one.'

  'That so?' Dogman found he was right up in Red Hat's face, and shouting. 'Well piss on you, arsehole! Who made you the fucking judge?'

  'Just saying, is all.' Red Hat stared at him. 'I mean… I thought we had the same thing in mind.'

  'Well, we don't! You need a mind bigger'n a pea to hold something in it and you're lacking the equipment, idiot! You wouldn't know a good man from an evil if he pissed on you!'

  Red Hat blinked. 'Right y'are. I see I got the wrong notion.' He backed off a stride, then walked away through the drizzle, shaking his head.

  Dogman watched him go, teeth gritted, thinking how he wanted to hit someone, but not sure who. There was no one here but him, now, anyway. Him and the dead. But maybe that's what happens once the fighting stops, to a man who knows nothing but fighting. He fights himself.

  He took a long breath of the cold, wet air, and he frowned down at the earth over Grim's grave. He wondered if he'd know a good man from an evil, any more. He wondered what the difference was.

  Grey morning time, out in the cold, wet gardens, and the Dogman was just stood there, thinking about how things used to be better.

  * * *

  Not What You Wanted

  « ^ »

  Glokta woke to a shaft of soft sunlight spilling through the hangings and across his wrinkled bed-clothes, full of dancing dust-motes. He tried to turn over, winced at a click in his neck. Ah, the first spasm of the day. The second was not long coming. It flashed through his left hip as he wrestled his way onto his back and snatched his breath away. The pain crept down his spine, settled in his leg, and stayed there.

  'Ah,' he grunted. He tried, ever so gently, to turn his ankle round, to work his knee. The pain instantly grew far worse. 'Barnam!' He dragged the sheet to one side and the familiar stink of ordure rose up to his nostrils. Nothing like the stench of your own dung to usher in a productive morning.

  'Ah! Barnam!' He whimpered, and slobbered, and clutched at his withered thigh, but nothing helped. The pain grew worse, and worse. The fibres started from his wasted flesh like metal cables, toeless foot flopping grotesquely on the end, entirely beyond his control.

  'Barnam!' he screamed. 'Barnam, you fucker! The door!' Spit dribbled from his toothless mouth, tears ran down his twitching face, his hands clawed, clutching up Fistfuls of brown-stained sheet.

  He heard hurried footsteps in the corridor, the lock scraping. 'Locked you fool!' he squealed through his gums, thrashing with pain and anger. The knob turned and the door opened, much to his surprise. What the…

  Ardee hurried over to the bed. 'Get out!' he hissed, holding one arm pointlessly over his face, clutching at his bedclothes with the other. 'Get out!'

  'No.' She tore the sheet away and Glokta grimaced, waiting for her face to go pale, waiting for her to stagger back, one hand across her mouth, eyes wide with shock and disgust. I am married… to this shit-daubed monstrosity? She only frowned down, for a moment, then took hold of his ruined thigh and pressed her thumbs into it.

  He gasped and flailed and tried to twist away but her grip was merciless, two points of agony stabbing right into the midst of his cramping sinews. 'Ah! You fucking… you…' The wasted muscle went suddenly soft, and he went soft with it, dropping back against the mattress. And now being splattered with my own shit begins to seem just the slightest bit embarrassing.

  He lay there for a moment, helpless. 'I didn't want you to see me… like this.'

  'Too late. You married me, remember. We're one body, now.'

  'I think I got the better part of that deal.'

  'I got my life, didn't I?'

  'Hardly the kind of life that most young women hanker for.' He watched her, the strip of sunlight wandering back and forth across her darkened face as she moved. 'I know that I'm not what you wanted… in a husband.'

  'I always dreamed of a man I could dance with.' She looked up and held his eye. 'But I think, perhaps, that you suit me better. Dreams are for children. We both are grownups.'

  'Still. You see now that not dancing is the least of it. You should not have to do… this.'

  'I want to do it.' She took a firm grip on his face and twisted it, somewhat painfully, so he was looking straight into hers. 'I want to do something. I want to be useful. I want someone to need me. Can you understand that?'

  Glokta swallowed. 'Yes.' Few better. 'Where's Barnam?'

  'I told him he could have the mornings off. I told him I'd be doing this from now on. I've told him to move my bed in here, as well.'

  'But—'

  'Are you telling me I can't sleep in the same room as my husband?' Her hands slid slowly over his withered flesh, gentle, but firm, rubbing at the scarred skin, pressing at the ruined muscles. How long ago? Since a woman looked at me with anything but horror? Since a woman touched me with anything but violence? He lay back, his eyes closed and his mouth open, tears running from his eye and trickling down the sides of his head into the pillow. Almost comfortable. Almost…

  'I don't deserve this,' he breathed.

  'No one gets what they deserve.'

  Queen Terez looked down her nose at Glokta as he lurched into her sunny salon, without the slightest attempt to hide her utter disgust and contempt. As though she saw a cockroach crawling into her regal presence. But we will see. We know well the path, after all. We have followed it ourselves, and we have dragged so many others after. Pride comes first. Then pain. Humility follows hard upon it. Obedience lies just beyond.

  'My name is Glokta. I am the new Arch Lector of his Majesty's Inquisition.'

  'Ah, the cripple,' she sneered. With refreshing directness. And why do you disrupt my afternoon? You will find no criminals here.' Only Styrian witches.

  Glokta's eyes flickered to the other woman, standing bolt upright near one of the windows. 'It is a matter we had better discuss alone.'

  'The Countess Shalere has been my friend since birth. There is nothing you can say to me that she cannot hear.' The Countess glared at Glokta with a disdain little less piercing than the queen's.

  'Very well.' No delicate way to say it. I doubt that delicacy will serve us here in any case. 'It has come to my attention, your Majesty, that you have not been performing your duties as a wife.'

  Terez' long, thin neck seemed to stretch with indignation. 'How dare you? That is none of your concern!'

  'I am afraid that it is. Heirs for the king, you see. The future of the state, and so forth.'

  'This is insufferable!' The queen's face was white with fury. The Jewel of Talins flashes fire indeed. 'I must eat your repulsive food, I must tolerate your dreadful weather, I must smile at the rambling mutterings of your idiot king! Now I must answer to his grotesque underlings? I am kept prisoner here!'

  Glokta looked round at the beautiful room. The opulent hangings, the gilt furnishings, the fine paintings. The two beautiful women in their beautiful clothes. He dug one tooth sourly into the underside of his tongue. 'Believe me. This is not what a prison looks like.'

  'There are many kinds of prison!'

  'I have learned to live with worse, and so have others.' Y
ou should see what my wife has to put up with.

  'To share my bed with some disgusting bastard, some scarred son of who knows what, to have some stinking, hairy man pawing at me in the night!' The queen gave a shiver of revulsion. 'It is not to be borne!'

  Tears shone in her eyes. Her lady-in-waiting rushed forward, dress rustling, and knelt beside her, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. Terez reached up, pressed her own hand on top of it. The queen's companion stared at Glokta with naked hatred. 'Get out! Out, cripple, and never come back! You have upset her Majesty!'

  'I have a gift for it,' muttered Glokta. 'One reason why I am so widely hated…' He trailed off, frowning. He stared at their two hands on Terez' shoulder. There was something in that touch. Comforting, soothing, protective. The touch of the committed friend, the trusted confidante, the sisterly companion. But there is more than that. Too familiar. Too warm. Almost like the touch of… Ah.

  'You don't have much use for men, do you?'

  The two women looked up at him together, then Shalere snatched her hand away from the queen's shoulder. 'I will have your meaning!' barked Terez, but her voice was shrill, almost panicked.

  'I think you know my meaning well enough.' And my task is made a great deal easier. 'Some help here!' Two hulking Practicals barged through the doors. And as quickly as that, everything is changed. Amazing, the spice that two big men can add to a conversation. Some kinds of power are only tricks of the mind. I learned that well, in the Emperor's prisons, and my new master has only reinforced the lesson.

  'You would not dare!' shrieked Terez, staring at the masked arrivals with wide eyes. 'You would not dare to touch me!'

  'As luck would have it, I doubt it will be necessary, but we will see.' He pointed at the Countess. 'Seize that woman.'

  The two black-masked men tramped across the thick carpet. One moved a chair out of his way with exaggerated care.