“They’re the best kind. Risinau thought I was mad. Still a few bits of him spattered about the moat, I expect. So much for madness. So much for sanity.” She offered out the pipe. “Smoke?”
“I should keep a clear head.”
“Good idea.” She spun the pipe across the floor, leaving a trail of smoking ash. “Very… sane.”
The dead help him, Leo thought he could still hear those people fucking. Or killing each other. Maybe it was a different set.
Jurand cleared his throat again. “I understand… there has been another defeat. In the east.”
“Mmm,” grunted Judge. “Forest got the better of the People’s Army yet again. General Cutler and a few of his losing officers are being dragged back to Adua to be tried for treason. Seems giving little men big men’s shoes doesn’t make ’em big. Just makes ’em trip over.” She let her head drop to one side. “Now Forest and his traitors are marching for Adua to put our dunce of a king back on the throne, would you believe. Quite the military muddle. Seems the Great Change is in need of a hero to save it.” Her brows went up as though the idea had only now occurred. “How’re you fixed, Young Lion? Keen to get back in the saddle?”
For some months now, in fact, and especially since Vick dan Teufel’s recent visit, but Leo tried not to let his desires lead him about by the nose any more. “If I’m called on to defend the Great Change,” he said calmly, “I’ll do my duty.”
“Huh.” The corner of Judge’s mouth curled up. “D’you know why they call me Judge? It’s quite the story. Have some fucking tea, really.” And she settled back into her cushions and propped one bare foot up onto the table, staring thoughtfully up at the Master Maker.
And Leo realised with a cold start that her gown had fallen open and given half the room a full view of her ginger quim. He couldn’t tell if she’d done it on purpose, but something about the way she stuck it so carelessly in his face faintly terrified him. There was nothing he wanted to see less, but somehow he had to keep steering his eyes away.
“I don’t know who my parents were,” she mused, wriggling her toes. “Settlers in the Far Country, maybe. But they were killed when I was a child, and I was stolen by the Ghosts. Raised by the Ghosts. In the clan of Great Sangeed, the Emperor of the Plains.”
The woman with the knives looked up from her dice and chuckled. Judge frowned over at her. “Do I fucking amuse you?”
She shook her head and went back to her dice.
“They treated me lower’n dirt, the Ghosts. Lower’n a slave. But on account of my being an outsider, they made me judge o’ the disputes between their clans. Wasn’t about justice, or innocence, or guilt. It was about what had to be done. Keeping the balance between the groups on the plain, so no one got too much power over the others.” She rubbed at the patchy stubble on the side of her head. “’Course, the settlers came more and more, in their fellowships, and they picked the Ghosts off one by one, and drove away the hunting and poisoned the water. One day they came to the village and killed everyone I knew and told me I was rescued. And they asked me what my name was, and do you know what I said?”
“Judge.”
She snapped her fingers. “You’re no fool. Maybe that’s why I play judge now. They gave me a passion for keeping the balance.”
“That sounds more like an excuse than a reason,” murmured Jurand.
Leo frowned sideways at him. “They’re the same thing seen from different sides.”
“Ha!” Judge jabbed at Leo with a finger. “I was going to say the very same thing! He’s not just a pretty face, eh, Broad?”
Broad stared at Leo, jaw muscles squirming, and took a sip from his bottle. Leo wondered whether he was so angry he couldn’t speak, or so drunk he’d forgotten how. Maybe both.
“You know the trouble with a pretty face?” Judge was saying. “People get used to its advantages, and when it’s took away, they lack the wherewithal to make a success of themselves. Nothing sadder’n a person who used to be beautiful. They have this desperate smile. Like me, it says. Like me, even though there’s nothing left to like.”
She sat forwards—putting her groin back in shadow, thank the dead—and slid a hatchet from the table. Glaward stirred nervously as she lifted it, but all she did was hack a leg from the chicken carcass with a couple of echoing bangs that caused a sleepy mew of upset from the room next door. She tossed the axe down, started gnawing hungrily at the bone then paused. “What were we talking about?”
“The leadership of the People’s Army,” said Leo, as though it was a matter of total indifference. He’d hardly spoken, but he felt as if her eyes were sizing him up and slitting him open and probing at his guts like a physician at a cadaver even so.
“Right!” She stabbed at him with the chicken bone and a piece of meat flew off and stuck to the floor behind him. “A lot’s changed this past year or two, but you’re still popular. That military business is in your bones and fighting men respect you. Beat Stour Nightfall in a circle of blood and all. I hear you used to be reckless, but I reckon you’ve been cured o’ that. Can’t say I trust you, but then I never trust anyone I trust, if you see what I mean? You’re a risk, but nothing’s safe these days, and nothing safe’s worthwhile anyway.”
“So…”
“So you’re the perfect choice.” And she sat and gnawed away at that bone.
“But…?”
“But you’re not the only one who wants something.” Judge tossed the stripped bone down, licked her fingers, then dried them off by dragging her hair out of her face. “Do you know the person I’d most like to put on trial?”
Leo didn’t want to draw this out. A conversation with Judge was a game that could turn fatal at any moment. He wondered who he’d most like to see on trial. “King Orso?”
She wrinkled her nose. “That walking cock? No. Have you ever read one o’ Sworbreck’s books?”
Leo would rather have drunk Sworbreck’s piss. “I’m… not much of
a reader.”
“You should. They got me through some hard times. The last chapter is the sentimental fairwell. But the climax of the story is a little bit before. The danger. The excitement. The triumph. You see? Putting King Orso on trial,” she shrugged her bony shoulders high. “That’s the last chapter. It has to be done, but it’ll get no one’s juices flowing, eh, Broad?”
Broad stayed silent.
“No, the person I’d most like to put on trial is Old Sticks himself. Sand dan fucking Glokta. He was the one who set the policies. The one who did the torturing and raised the gibbets and made all the examples. The one who racked up most o’ the names we’ve carved into the Square of Martyrs.” Judge curled back her lips in disgust. “But like the cunning old louse he is, he’s wriggled away into the woodwork. I need someone in the dock who can help me winkle out the cripple.” She raised her red brows expectantly.
“Well, we never wasted much warmth on each other, I promise you. I’ve no idea where—”
“I want to put your wife on trial.”
Judge was smiling, so Leo took it for a joke, and managed a sour grin himself. “You’re joking.”
“I’m fucking not,” she hissed, showing her teeth. “I want your word—if I put your wife on trial, you’ll do nothing to stop me. She denounces her father, tells us where he can be found, I daresay the court could find its way to clemency. Eh? Eh? Eh?”
Leo swallowed. His heart was beating very loud. He glanced up at Broad, but the man’s eye-lenses had caught the light from a window and were bright white, so Leo couldn’t see his eyes. There was something dead about his thickly stubbled face. Scabs on his tattooed knuckles. A welt of bruises on one side of his neck. He lifted his bottle, and took a sip.
“Leo…” he heard Glaward whisper, and Leo held up a hand to silence him.
It was less than a year ago, if you could believe it, that he had introduced Savine to the people of Angland, cheering on the dockside, full of pride and admiration. He remembered using the word
love, even though he wasn’t sure now what he’d meant by it. If someone had threatened a hair on his wife’s head then, they would’ve faced his rash and righteous fury. But there had been a Great Change since. A change in so many things. He couldn’t afford rashness or righteousness, and fury even less.
“If there is evidence against my wife…” Leo spoke the words slowly and precisely. “The nation must judge her. I agree to your terms.”
There was a long, nervous silence. Then Judge started to laugh. “Oh, Young Lion, that’s beautiful.” She slapped her tattooed thigh. “Love can bring folk together in fair weather, but it won’t bind ’em when the chill sets in. Hate’s better, in my experience. A common enemy gets folk moving together. But enemies get beaten, and put behind you, like the Breakers beat the king, like the magi beat Kanedias, and then what happens? Folk get used to enemies. They always need more. They turn on each other.”
Someone had wandered in from the room next door. A short, heavyset man wearing a vest and nothing else. “Wha’ fuck?” he muttered, squinting into the daylight.
“Put some bloody clothes on, you animal.” Judge’s eyes flickered back to Leo. “Love and hate, they’re luxuries. Poets might say they’re from the heart, but I say no. They’re lies we tell ourselves. They’re choices made. But fear,” and she lifted her trembling fist, “that’s an instinct. Fear and lust and hunger, they’re universal. The lowest insects have ’em. Fear is in the gut. It’s in the bones. It’s in the balls and the arse and the cunt. Fear and lust and hunger are what’ll bind us together and keep us on the right path. The people don’t need love or hate, Young Lion, but they always have to fear. Bear that in mind.”
Leo thought it over, and nodded. “Sage advice,” he said, and he didn’t even have to lie. “So…” With an effort he lifted his good foot, used the heel to slide some rubbish out of the way and propped it on the stained table beside Judge’s. “Shall I put my riding boot on?”
“At once if not sooner, General Brock! The Young Lion, back in the saddle!” And she threw her arms up, and one of the two men at the window gave a brief round of applause. “Here’s the irony! On behalf of
the king we’ve got a commoner who was made a lord marshal, and on behalf of the people we’ve got a lord governor who made himself a commoner. Life can be horrible,” she said, jabbing her thumb at dead Juvens. “But life can be delightful, too,” pointing up at Kanedias and his sea of fire. “There’s its real beauty, eh? In its range. Daresay you’ve an old uniform lying about somewhere. Might need to take it in around the knee, I suppose.”
“The Representatives will agree to it?”
“Well, I haven’t noticed anyone disagreeing with me lately. Have you?” Judge jerked her head towards the man with the broken nose. “Sparks? You’ll be going along.”
He looked as unhappy about it as Leo felt, but he hid it a lot less well. “Me?”
“Are you fucking disagreeing?”
Broad shifted, his free fist clenching, and Sparks took a cautious step back. “’Course not, Judge. ’Course not.”
“He’ll be, what d’you call it? A conduit, between you and the Purity Officers. Keep everyone nice and loyal and pointed the same way.”
“No doubt he’ll be a huge help.” Leo gritted his teeth as he rocked his weight back, then shoved himself to his feet, the ache in his stump turning sharp again.
“I’ll send him along after. Once we’ve had a little word. Burners’ business, you know.”
“I’m sure he can catch me up.” Leo tapped his false leg with his cane. “I don’t walk too quickly these days.”
“I wouldn’t want to intrude into the manly business o’ war, but one word of advice, General, before you ride to glory.” Judge let her head drop back, looking at him down her nose. “Don’t lose. Now someone rub my fucking feet! Or start there, at any rate, and work upwards!”
The horrible voices seemed to have stopped, at least, as Leo limped back towards the steps. Except for the crying one. That softly went on.
Glaward hurried up beside him, hissing, “She wants to put Savine on trial—”
Leo tossed down his cane and caught the big man by the jacket, lurching into him and pinning him against the wall. “Do you think I fucking missed that?”
“I can warn her—”
“You will not. You’ll gather every man we can rely on and head out with me to join the People’s Army at once.”
Glaward stared at him. Shocked. As though he’d never quite seen Leo until that moment and didn’t like the look of him now he did. “But…
your children—”
Leo shoved him back again, hissing through gritted teeth. “If Savine runs, Judge will know we broke the deal and it will all be over. She has to trust me. Trust me enough, anyway. That’s the only way this has a chance of working.”
“He’s right,” said Jurand, softly, pushing Leo’s cane against his chest and using it to lever him away from Glaward. “There’s no choice.” He saw it right off, of course. He’d never been sentimental.
“Savine wanted this,” snapped Leo. “She should’ve known where it might lead.” He snatched his cane from Jurand’s hand and lurched off down the stairway again, the scraping of his iron foot on the marble echoing from the gilded ceiling. “Should I have said no?” He jerked his chin towards the slogan at the bottom of the steps. “Should I have told Judge fuck yourself? We’d all have been in the dock together before sundown.”
Behind him, Jurand took a long breath. “We all might end up there yet.”
This Half-Arsed Conspiracy
Vick picked her way down the street, a mass of slushy footprints, black-stained snow gathered in the gutters and against the doorsteps. She went against the crowd, as always, and thought about everything that could go wrong.
She’d flung a wide net when she scraped this half-arsed conspiracy together. She’d had to, to give it any chance of working. It had closed around some of the last people she’d have trusted. Savine Brock—as ruthless a schemer as you could hope never to be in business with. Her husband Leo—whose recklessness had already wrecked one attempt at treachery. Corporal Tunny—a legend in the husk-dens and gambling houses for his big mouth and small courage. His sidekick Yolk—who from her brief acquaintance appeared to be one of the stupidest men in
creation. Then there was the lynchpin of the whole business, King Orso—born with a silver spoon so far up his arse you could see the end when he yawned. Vick’s best hope was that his valet could stop him making a fatal blunder—a fourteen-year-old he’d hired while she was working as a laundry girl in a brothel.
The one person she actually trusted was Tallow, and he was the one person she’d made sure to keep entirely out of it.
All those hard-learned lessons from the camps. All the painstaking risks and calculations. All the lies she’d told to make sure she stayed on the winning side. All pissed away in one moment of folly.
She paused at a corner to tap the dirty snow from her boots, and to take another careful glance back while she was doing it.
That big bastard in the hood was still on the other side of the street, face hidden except for a scraggy grey beard on a heavy jaw. She’d been worried he was following. Now she was sure. There was something in the way he stood that she didn’t like at all. Slightly hunched around his left side. As if he was trying to hide a weapon that was too big to conceal.
Tempers were short in the market. Stocks were low and dwindling, prices high and climbing. A beefy labourer was arguing with the fishmonger, feet planted wide and finger stabbing. Vick slipped up through the crowd and, in passing, slid her hand between the labourer’s legs from behind and gently cupped his balls. He spun around, but by then she was considering the second-hand cutlery on the next stall.
“What the—”
The labourer grabbed the nearest man, started snarling in his face. Vick dropped and slithered under a wagon, darting through the press bent double, gripping her bad hip tight to stop it
aching, folk all straining up on tiptoe to see the blazing row behind. She slipped through the doorway of a pawnshop she knew, which had another door at the far side onto the Middleway. She nodded to the clerk as he frowned at her over his cracked eye-lenses, pulled her collar up against the cold and joined the hunched crowds shuffling south.
It was busy in the tavern. Noisy with idle chatter and hot with wasted breath, the windows misted so the street outside became a sparkling blur. One of those places where rich young men gather to pretend to be poor young men, and vomit up whatever point of view they last heard. One of those places where rich young men once brayed for a Great Change, and now drank hard and hoped desperately it would go away again.
She’d made sure she was early but her contact was there ahead of her. A nondescript fellow with a sprig of holly on his lapel, an empty glass and a plate of unappetising sausages in front of him.
“Inspector Teufel.”
“And you are?”
“An employee of Chancellor Sotorius of Sipani.” Though he spoke with no accent at all.
She slid into the chair opposite. “Were you followed?”
“No. Were you?”
She glanced about the room without seeming to, but there was no sign of the big man who’d been following her. Just a plump woman in an expensive hat splashed red, reading a poem about the horrors of watching one’s children starve. “No.”
“Good. You should try these.” And he slid his plate across towards her, breathing the words. “A gift from Princess Carlot.”
“Looks good,” she lied, and drew the plate close so the packet underneath it dropped into her lap. She took a bite from one of the sausages. “And it tastes as good as it looks.” That, at least, was no lie. But those eating were the lucky ones. Food that tasted good was a true extravagance these days.
“That concludes our business,” said Chancellor Sotorius’s nondescript man. “Good luck with your endeavours.”
Vick caught his wrist as he got up to leave. “She realises I can’t make any promises.”
The Wisdom of Crowds Page 30