The Wisdom of Crowds

by Joe Abercrombie

  “A gulf has opened between Midderland and the provinces. I blame myself, in part. But it goes back a long way. I don’t want to see it widen. I hate to think the province of my birth might… break away from the Union.”

  “Unthinkable,” said Risinau, the slightest dangerous gleam in his eye.

  “You’re so right. When I was Governor there…” Leo didn’t think the word “Lord” would help his case. “I tried to move Angland forward.” Or Savine had persuaded him to look like he was trying. “New labour laws, fairer taxes.”

  “I am aware and admire your efforts.”

  “Small steps beside all you’ve achieved. But I want to help bring them the rest of the way. To bury the past.” He gestured towards Bayaz’s fallen head, just the way Risinau had. “To lead them into the future you’re building.”

  The Chairman put the tip of one finger to his thoughtfully pursed lips. “You think you can coax your erstwhile countrymen back into the fold?”

  “I have to try. Let me write to my mother. Assure her of your good intentions. Assure her that I, and my wife, and her grandchildren, are here as willing believers in your cause.” Leo winced as he leaned hard on his cane and stood, so he could speak as one friend to another. “Let me bring like-minded men to represent the province in the Assembly. Trustworthy men. Blunt men. Men who can see first-hand the merit of the changes you’re making. The changes we’re making. Men who can support us, and argue our case back home.”

  Quiet, while Risinau considered Leo with those small, black eyes. The chill wind fumbled between the broken statues. Chisels tapped in the background. Leo used to be always restless. Following an argument had been painful. Sitting still had been torture. Now he knew what torture really was, and he was happy to wait. When every movement hurts, you come to appreciate a little stillness.

  Then Risinau smiled. “Young Lion, I feared you would be an obstacle to our Great Change. I knew we needed you, because of your popularity with the people and the nobles, because of your value to your mother, but I was sure I would have to drag you bodily with us into the future!” He seized Leo by the shoulders, sending a stab of pain through his leg. “Now I see I have in you a kindred spirit!” And he dragged Leo close, into his smell of sweat and rose water, and kissed him on both cheeks.

  It was the most Leo could do not to butt the bastard in his fat face. Instead he followed Savine’s example and smiled his widest smile. “We’re both fathers. I’ve brought two new children into the world, but you’ve brought a whole new nation.”

  “An apt metaphor, Young Lion! No birth happens without pain. Without blood. Without risk. They are joyous occasions even so!”

  “But newborns are so fragile,” said Leo. “They must be protected.”

  “Such insight.” Risinau looked at him with something close to admiration. “Such insight! Write your letters, Citizen Brock! I will see them delivered. We will stride into the new future together!” He slapped Leo on the shoulder as he turned away and strode off with his guards following.

  “We’ll hop into it, at least,” muttered Leo. Looking down, he saw his useless arm had dropped loose without him even noticing, the pale hand dangling. He had to lurch to Bayaz’s head and lean awkwardly against the magus’s nose, breathing hard, before he could stuff his hand back between the buttons of his coat.

  Anger

  “If it isn’t Inspector Teufel.” Gunnar Broad hadn’t got any smaller. And he still had the lenses and the Ladderman’s tattoo. But he looked harder, somehow. Or maybe hard times had ground the softness off and revealed the man beneath.

  “If it isn’t Captain Broad.”

  He peered unhappily at the badges of rank on his sleeve. “No notion how that particular folly came about.”

  “You could say the same for most things these days.” She planted her hands on her hips, pressed her thumb-tip into the stiff one and frowned out across the bridge. She couldn’t see them yet, but she could hear them. That familiar sound of anger on its way. “Seems we keep meeting. And in shitty circumstances.”

  “They’re the only kind I get.” Broad wiped his lenses, then hooked them carefully back over his ears. “But no worse’n I deserve, I guess.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re not holding a grudge.” Vick thought of the last time she saw him, with the Brocks, before the Battle of Stoffenbeck. Noblemen fighting against a king. Seemed a different world. “Last time we met, you called me a traitor.”

  “Aye, well, I’ve said a lot of shit in my time that didn’t add up to much.”

  She could see the people now, tramping out of the murk on the other side of the bridge. Protest, strike or riot, it was hard to say. Harder than ever. They were armed, in a way. Tools and planks and bars. One had a pick with a string of sausages hanging from it. Not weapons of war, exactly, but tell that to someone who gets clubbed over the head with a shaping hammer. Looked like a lot of them were drunk, but then a lot of folk were these days. Drink was the one thing still cheap.

  “Let’s remember they’re just people, eh?” Vick called over her shoulder. “Try not to kill anyone.”

  “You reckon they’ve had the same orders?” muttered Broad, sliding his shield onto his arm and gripping the handle. Vick doubted it. Lot of them wore red. Red hats, red sleeves, coats spattered with red paint. Burners, then. Or at any rate expressing preferences in the Burning direction. You saw more and more of it. People’s patience was wearing thin. Who could blame them?

  “There’s a lot o’ the bastards,” muttered Tallow, peering around Vick’s shoulder. He’d got a Constable’s uniform and a Constable’s stick, but it was hard to imagine him doing much good with either one as he gazed across the bridge with those big, sad eyes.

  “Stay behind Captain Broad,” she snapped at him. Honestly, behind Captain Broad was looking a pretty appealing place to her right then.

  “They look bloody angry,” squeaked Tallow.

  Hard to say exactly what they were angry about. No doubt they all had their own recipe. Price of bread. Price of housing. Price of fuel as the weather got colder. Wages too low, hours too high, too many laws or too few. Pike had taught them a lesson—if enough people got angry enough, they could change things. Now anger was the answer to everything.

  The Great Change had been a basket of dreams. A bouquet of promises. All things to all men. Which was grand until, against all expectations, the Breakers won. Then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t enough just to have a change, it had to be a change into something. Trouble was, soon as you tried to actually deliver the bastard, to mould it into policies, with costs as well as benefits, and losers as well as winners, well, nine-tenths of folk found the Great Change wasn’t the change they’d wanted after all and wouldn’t fucking have it.

  “I could tire of the wisdom of crowds,” Vick whispered to herself. Tallow was right, there were a lot of them and they all looked angry. She felt an urge to glance over her shoulder and count Broad’s men, but she fixed her eyes ahead, feet planted wide. She told herself this was her bridge.

  “Hit ’em now?” she heard Broad grunt.

  There was a big part of Vick that wanted to say yes, but she forced it down. Someone had to. “Let’s try talking first.”

  “I’ve a feeling words won’t solve this.”

  “They’ll leave no one crippled, either,” she murmured, then roared as loud as she could, spraying spit. “That’s far enough!”

  They gathered uncertainly at the far end of the bridge, frowning across the damp stones at her as the first drops of a chilly rain sprinkled the cobbles. There were all sorts mixed in there. A crook-back old man with no shoes. A scrawny boy with his hollow cheeks blotched from the cold. A pregnant girl wearing a damp newsbill as a bonnet.

  “I’m Chief Inspector Teufel!” called Vick. “Commissioner Pike sent me. The Weaver himself, you hear?” Some muttering at that, but none of the scowls went away. Vick clenched her teeth and took a hard breath. “Look, I get it! You’re disappointed! You’re frustr
ated! Let’s face it, you’re fucking furious! Believe me, so am I.”

  A woman shouldered through the press ahead. Big pink fists clutching a wooden paddle. A laundress. Hard women, those. Vick reckoned if she spent all day with her hands in hot water she’d be angry, too. “We don’t need talk!” she howled. “We need bread!”

  There was an answering growl of approval from the crowd, and an old man shook a placard, and a little girl up on someone’s shoulders screeched, “Fuck the Closed Council!” which somewhat missed the boat since all the ones they could catch had been hanged a few weeks before.

  Vick showed one palm and let the noise die down, then she fixed that laundry-woman with her eye and searched hard for the right words. The ones Malmer might’ve picked. The ones Sibalt might’ve found.

  “I understand,” she said, and she did, for what that was worth. “You were promised a better world, and all you’ve got so far is the same old shit. You can’t fill your belly with promises. You can’t warm your house with hopes. You’re tired of being told lies! Believe me, so am I.” Or she was tired of telling lies, at least. So bloody tired of it. “But we’ve got a chance here!” Ridiculous, that it fell to her, who never let herself hope for anything, to try to kindle some hope in these bastards, but she gave it all she had, her voice cracking. “A chance to build something better. We just have to be patient. Have to—”

  Something came spinning from the crowd, missed her by a stride and clonked from the shield of one of Broad’s men. They almost charged then. She could feel their fury, harder to hold in than to release, like dogs straining at the leash, but Vick held up a trembling hand, giving it one last go, preaching patience while she fast ran out of it.

  “Go home!” Her voice came out a warning growl, and she took one step forwards, soles of her boots grinding against the stones, while behind her back she slipped her fingers into her brass knuckles. “Because I tell you what—anyone tries to cross this bridge will regret it.”

  “Maybe you’ll be the one with the regrets!” called a sly-looking bastard, wearing a tall hat with half the felt worn off and gripping an old piece of iron railing. “Thought o’ that?”

  “I’ll file ’em with the others,” snarled Vick.

  Something else came flying at her. A bottle, maybe. She whipped out of the way, and it spun past and smashed somewhere behind, and that was the end of the attempts at reason. As if it had been a signal, the two sides charged screaming at each other, meeting in the middle of the bridge with a clattering and shattering, a thudding of sticks and chair-legs and workmen’s tools.

  That laundress came right at Vick, lifting her paddle high. “Fuck you!”

  “Fuck you.” Vick slipped around the paddle and punched the woman in the throat with her brass knuckles, left her clutching at her neck, eyes bulging. The safe thing would’ve been to go for her knee and bring her down, but when it came to anger, Vick was not immune.

  When the mob broke into the Agriont, they’d ransacked her mean little set of rooms. They’d taken what there was to take, which wasn’t much, smashed what there was to smash, which wasn’t much more, and left that ridiculous book Sibalt used to love torn on the floor. It had made her oddly furious.

  So Vick punched this bitch in the face, snapped her head back, punched her again, and she tripped over someone’s outstretched leg and went down hard. She tried to get up, blood streaming from her nose, and Vick planted a boot on her chest and shoved her back down. “Stick to laundry,” she said.

  There might’ve been a lot of them, and they might’ve been angry, but on the bridge there was no way the rioters could make their numbers tell. Broad’s men were all veterans and they formed an armoured line, shoving with shields, beating with sticks, trampling the fallen, making no distinction between perpetrators and bystanders, between rioters and demonstrators, trampling the lot just the same.

  Vick heard cries further back, the Constables she’d sent around spilling from a side street and straight into the rioters’ flank. They came apart like a flock of starlings, taunts turned to whimpers, tossing down weapons and pamphlets and stolen food, crushing each other in their panic, one man knocked over the parapet, shrieking as he splashed into the canal. Here was the wisdom of crowds, and the courage of crowds, too.

  “All right!” bellowed Vick, hopping up on the parapet and waving her arms. “That’s enough.” One of the Constables had a look of glee plastered across his face as he kicked the snot out of a scrawny boy. “I said enough!” She dragged him clear, near got an elbow in the face for her pains.

  The anger could whip up in no time. But it could leak away just as fast. Those who weren’t running were a sorry sight now. All hanging heads and wobbly lips, like children caught talking after bedtime.

  Vick grabbed Tallow by the shoulder. “Pick out some ringleaders. And someone fish that idiot out of the canal!”

  He blinked at her. “How do I tell who the ringleaders are?”

  “They’ll be the ones you’re pointing at.”

  Broad dragged the sly one up by his jacket, hat knocked off and blood running from a cut on his scalp. “You fucking bitch—” he snarled at Vick.

  Broad dug a fist into his stomach and doubled him up. “Have some respect.” And he shook him like a rag doll, toes of his boots scraping the cobbles.

  “Thought we were meant to be free!” he whined, a string of drool dangling from his lip.

  “Turns out liberty needs boundaries.” Vick jerked her head towards the Agriont. If they were still calling it that. “Get this arsehole to the House of Truth.”

  Broad plucked a pamphlet from the man’s pocket, then shoved him towards the Constables so they could clap the irons on him. “One o’ Sworbreck’s, I reckon.”

  “Don’t tell me,” said Vick as he peered at the ill-printed pages through his lenses. “The Great Change didn’t solve every problem, so the answer must be more of it.”

  “That’s about the gist,” said Broad, crumpling the pamphlet in his big fist and tossing it away. “That was a nice speech you gave, by the way.”

  Vick worked the brass knuckles from her aching fingers and frowned around at the mess. “Didn’t do much good.”

  “Did a little for me. You can’t fill your belly with promises.” Broad nudged his lenses up his nose, slowly nodding. “Reminded me o’ Malmer.”

  Vick took a long breath. “Look where he ended up.”

  “It’s chaos out there,” snapped Vick. She still felt angry. Like she’d been tricked. Tricked into believing things could be different. When the truth was she’d only tricked herself.

  Commissioner Pike looked calmly back at her from across his desk. The same bare, stark room from which Arch Lector Glokta had ruled the Union, some of its furniture still bearing the scars of the day the Agriont fell. Behind the mirrored halls, and the velvet curtains, and the gilt façades, the real decisions always seemed to be made in bare, stark rooms.

  “I understand there have been some disturbances,” he droned, with his usual flare for understatement.

  “A mob hanged two coal merchants the other day. They were already selling as cheap as they could. Prices are higher than before the Great Change. Higher than they’ve ever been. Folk broke into a shop, paid what they thought was fair. Then someone said they were profiteers. So they hanged ’em. Then they marched up the street to the flour merchant.”

  “And committed outrages against his person?”

  “Luckily for him, I got in the way.”

  “You, as far as I can tell, remain unhanged.”

  “Luckily for me, there were some Breakers there who knew how to break heads as well as chains.”

  “Then make sure you take some with you next time.”

  “That’s your solution? Armed men on the streets? Wasn’t that the problem with the old regime?”

  “We cannot blame everything on the old regime. Some problems, and some solutions, are simply… the way people are. We can have no illusions, after what we have seen
, you and I, about the way people are.”

  “Isn’t the point of all this to make them better?”

  “In time, Inspector. By degrees. We must not be distracted. There is still so much work to do. In the bureaucracy. In the banks.”

  “Really?”

  “Corruption has eaten into every part of Union society. No one can be truly free until it is burned away. Replaced with… pure institutions.”

  “Is there any such thing?”

  Pike gave that twitch of his mouth that passed for a smile. “So cynical, Inspector. It is what makes you such a fine investigator. But we are changing the world. There were bound to be… teething pains.”

  “We’re talking about dead shopkeepers. Not teeth. There are parts of the city we don’t go into at night. There are parts of the city we have to ask the Burners’ permission to go into at all.”

  Pike let a breath sigh away, as though dead shopkeepers were an inconvenient by-product, like the slag from a foundry. “You never struck me as a worrier, Inspector Teufel.”

  “Then when I worry you should take me seriously.”

  “I would take your solutions more seriously still.”

  That gave Vick pause. In all those years she’d worked for Glokta, she’d never once been asked for a solution.

  Pike stared back at her, eyes flinty hard. “You should feel free to speak your mind.”

  “Without consequences?”

  “Without consequences, a solution is merely an opinion.” He curled his lip in the direction of the Commons’ Round. “Of those, we have a surfeit.”

  “Risinau has to go!” Vick blurted out, smashing Pike’s desk with her sore hand. Breaking all her rules, maybe, but there was no going back now. “He’s got no grip. He blathers on about making people free like that’s the answer to every problem. But all he’s done is give them the chance to kill whoever they blame.”

  “Someone must lead, Inspector. Who would you put in the chair instead?”

  She knew she couldn’t say what she was starting to think—that the Great Change was in danger of becoming a change for the greatly worse and that King Orso was beginning to look a paragon of leadership. She settled for second best. Or for second least worst, maybe. “You’re the Weaver. You started this.”