The Wisdom of Crowds

by Joe Abercrombie

  “So?” asked Metello, holding up one of her nursing dresses, plain white.

  “Perfect.”

  A clonking knock on the door brought another surge of sick terror.

  “It’s Gunnar Broad,” came the rough voice from outside.

  “Should I tell him you’re dressing?” whispered Freid.

  Savine pressed on her stomach again. Smothered the fear, again. One advantage of facing your death was that modesty did not seem so heavy a consideration. She raised her voice so it could be well understood beyond the door. “Gunnar Broad saved my life in Valbeck after I was chased half-naked by a mob, Freid. I doubt the sight of my petticoat will scandalise him. And he’s got the key, after all!”

  The doorknob turned and the door swung open, leaving Broad framed in the doorway, huge, armoured, red-eyed. He took a heavy step into the room. He frowned towards the children. He frowned towards Freid and she shrank behind the dressing table. He frowned towards Savine.

  He looked ill, drunk, furious and sentimental all at once. The definitive Burner, in fact. As if he couldn’t decide whether to beg her forgiveness or smash her face in.

  “You’ve got one hour,” he said, turning back towards the door.

  “I appreciate the reminder. And I have something for you.” Savine held the folded paper out to him. “From Liddy.”

  His slack face twitched at the name. “Liddy can’t write.”

  “I suppose May must have written it. It came with some dispatches from Leo’s mother.”

  Broad’s jaw worked, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the letter, his hand halfway towards it. “What does it say?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Gunnar, I don’t read letters that aren’t addressed to me. Honestly. You’ll be telling me Zuri eats people next.”

  She pressed the letter carelessly into his hand and turned back to her powder, but she studied him in the mirror. He stared down at that paper for a long moment, then walked very slowly to the door, and pulled it very slowly shut. Savine clenched her jaw and made a trembling fist. She might be going off the Tower of Chains—the Fates knew, the odds were against her—but she would not be going without a fight.

  Freid was over one of the cribs, cooing gently to Harod. “Do you want

  me to take the children?” Her eyes were getting moist again. “I mean…

  when they put you in the dock—”

  “I may need you to take them…” Savine lost her voice for a moment, had to clear her throat. “When I am condemned.” It was better to say when than if. She did not dare to say if. “Until that moment, in the court, in the dock… they come with me.”

  This was not a trial. It was a show. And Savine knew how to put on a show. No one better.

  Adua was hidden behind a rise, but you could see the great shadow of its smoke from miles around.

  “The furnaces are still lit,” said Jurand.

  “No matter how you try,” murmured Leo, “you can’t stop progress.”

  Lord Marshal Forest squinted up at the sun, providing some actual warmth for what felt like the first time in months. “Don’t like marching in the open like this.”

  “If you can call it marching.” The drums were beating double time but the demoralised remains of the People’s Army and the exhausted remnants of the Crown Prince’s Division moved at a trudge, their ranks dissolved into a shambling mass, flags limp and polearms drooping, a trail of mud and rubbish in their wake. A giant military slug, squirming spent across the damp country. “They hardly look ready for a fight.”

  “They’re not,” said Glaward. “We’ve lost more deserters without fighting than we’d ever have lost casualties if we had.”

  Leo looked to the few well-drilled blocks of dark-uniformed cavalry towards the front. “At least we can rely on the Anglanders.”

  “They’re with you to the death,” said Jurand.

  Glaward clapped a heavy hand on Leo’s shoulder. “And so are we.” For a fond moment, it felt almost like old times.

  Forest was fretting at his frayed cuffs as he stared towards that smear on the sky. “They must know we’re coming.”

  “They believe we’re killing each other miles away,” said Leo. “And Inspector Teufel is making sure the People’s Inspectorate won’t be putting anyone straight on that score.”

  “You trust her?” asked Forest.

  “No,” said Leo. “But trust is a poor foundation for an alliance. I’ve found to my cost the woman’s damned effective.”

  “Even so. You can’t keep thousands of soldiers secret for long.”

  “Who’s this?” Glaward spurred in front of Leo, hand on his sword. A couple of Forest’s scouts were leading a dishevelled horse by the bridle, a dishevelled prisoner in the saddle with hands tied behind him.

  “Caught this article on the road ahead, Lord Marshal!” one of them called out.

  “Caught me?” squawked the prisoner. “I was bloody trying to find you! I’ve a message from Corporal Tunny!”

  Forest grinned. “That article’s called Yolk, and I’m sorry to say he’s on our side. Let him free.”

  Once he had his hands back the man gave a slovenly salute. “It’s Lord Brock I need to speak to. I mean to say… are you lords again, now? It’s all—”

  “Out with it,” snapped Leo.

  “It’s your wife. She’s… well, there’s no easy way to say it…”

  “Take the hard way, then.”

  “They’ve arrested her. Judge is putting her on trial for profiteering and treason and… er…” Yolk swallowed. “Well, incest got a mention.”

  Silence. Behind them the drums, and the tramping boots, and the clatter of gear went on. Leo wondered how he ought to feel. Would be expected to feel. He bunched his good hand into a fist. “When?”

  “Today. The king’ll be there. Hell, half the city’ll be there, it’s set to be the biggest execution since Risinau went off the Tower… that is to say…”

  “We’ll get there in time,” said Jurand. “Don’t worry. We’ll get there.”

  “I know,” muttered Leo. It was terrible news, of course. His wife was in danger. His children. He made sure everyone could see how deeply he felt it. Terrible news. But he couldn’t help seeing an upside. The Burners would be distracted. It might give them an opening.

  Forest nudged his mount close. “Listen, Young Lion, I sympathise, but you can’t let this get in the way. His Majesty’s safety has to come first.”

  “They’ll both be at the Court of the People,” said Leo. “Save one, we save the other.”

  Jurand frowned back towards the sleepwalking soldiers. “We’ll save no one limping along like this.”

  “Agreed,” said Forest.

  “If I learned one thing at Stoffenbeck,” said Leo, “it’s that you’ll do no good with bad men. Lord Marshal, I suggest you pick out two hundred men you fully trust, the best armed and mounted. Your most loyal. When we make it through Arnault’s Wall—”

  “If we make it.”

  “When we make it, Glaward and your officers can spread the rest out through Adua. Secure the gates, the docks, the bridges, the squares and crossroads, hold down the city for its own safety. We’ll rush my best men and yours straight for the Agriont and take the south gate. Free the king before they know we’re coming.”

  Forest grimly nodded. “And you wife, too.”

  Leo frowned towards the great pall of smoke on the horizon. Could he see the pinpricks of Adua’s tallest towers, peeking over the grassy rise? The House of the Maker? The highest chimneys? Perhaps even the roof of the Tower of Chains… “And my wife, too.”

  Savine would understand. She used to love a gamble, after all.

  “Tight enough,” squeaked Gorst, and Vick pulled the strap through the buckle and gave his backplate a thump with her fist. Felt like the right thing to do when helping a man on with his armour. Not that she’d know. Helping men in and out of their clothes was something she’d done less than she’d have liked, down the years.<
br />
  “Brock and Forest are on their way,” she said.

  “Will they get here in time?”

  Vick could only shrug. No idea how long they’d take to get to the city. No idea what resistance they’d face once they got in. No idea how long the trial might last. Far too many variables, all way outside her control. While Gorst slid his mirror-polished steels into their sheaths, she pushed the squares board aside and spread out the map, staring at it as if some answer might suddenly reveal itself in invisible ink.

  “I bought off the guards at the gates in Casamir’s Wall, and Arnault’s. With any luck our friends can march straight through. The gate of the Agriont is the problem.” And she tapped at the citadel’s south gate. Always the weakest point in a weak plan. “They blew up some bits of the wall but not enough to make a difference, and Judge has her most loyal men guarding it. Too risky to bribe. The paranoid bastards took all the gates off the hinges, but the portcullises are still mounted. They drop those, our friends will be stuck outside. Might take them days to get in. If they get in at all.”

  “So…?”

  “We have to take the chain room.”

  “We?”

  “You and me. I spin the guards a story about worries over their loyalty, try to get at least a couple out, then… we deal with the rest. We bar the door. We hold it till the Young Lion’s cavalry arrives.”

  Gorst nodded slowly. He didn’t say whether he thought it was a good plan or a bad. He didn’t have to. Vick already knew it was a terrible plan. She just hadn’t been able to think of a better one.

  “Timing’ll be tight,” she murmured, taking the neat row of weapons from the table one by one and sliding them into their various sheaths, pockets, hiding places. “Go too late, they’ll be ready, no way we’ll capture the room. Go too early, even if we capture the room, we might’ve lost it by the time Brock gets there.” She thought about that a moment. “And we’ll probably be dead.”

  Gorst had shaved his head again, and he ran a hand over the silvery stubble on his scalp with a faint hissing. “How many men?”

  “The usual detail…” Vick licked her lips. “Is eight.”

  Gorst made no comment. She doubted he’d have flinched if she’d said a thousand.

  “That seem a lot to you?” she asked.

  “It is what it is. Are you willing to kill?”

  Hearing it like that, so blunt and brutal, made her wonder. “I understand the stakes,” she said, slapping her dagger into her boot-sheath. “I’ll do what needs doing. If you can handle the other seven.”

  She’d meant it as a joke, but he didn’t smile. “Fewer would be better.”

  The fact was, with only the two of them, this wouldn’t be easy. She could’ve asked Tallow along, but she told herself he’d only get in the way. She could’ve hired men, but there was no one she trusted.

  “Story of my life,” she muttered, under her breath. Too much trust could kill you in a heartbeat. She’d learned that lesson in the camps. Learned it too well, maybe, because now it seemed too little trust could kill you just as dead. Only it happened slowly, during years spent alone and looking over your shoulder.

  Still, if you could only bring one man to a fight with the future of the Union hanging on the outcome, she reckoned Bremer dan Gorst a good pick. He pulled the Constable’s greatcoat on with some difficulty. The biggest one she’d been able to find, and still he was close to ripping it at the shoulders, breastplate glinting above the top button, lumps of his many weapons clearly showing.

  “I have never been subtle,” he said, sheepishly.

  “With any luck, folk will be looking elsewhere.” Vick shoved the mace through her belt, and she was ready. “I hear Judge means to make a show of this one.”

  We Know Who You Are

  Orso sat on his stool in his cage in the Court of the People and sweated, and waited, and worried. It had been a while since he’d done much else.

  Over the past few weeks, the audiences had thinned out and grown ever more jaded. He had seen trials in which the observers were outnumbered by the accused. He had seen crumbs shower down from people enjoying a quick pastry in the gallery while blood-curdling accusations were made. He had seen elderly Representatives nod off on their benches as young mothers pleaded for their lives.

  But today was different. The galleries were crammed, the benches overflowing. For the first time in a long time the sun shone outside, slashing the Court of the People and its squinting occupants with long strips of brightness. An eager babble filled the chamber to the highest point of its slogan-splattered dome with an air of breathless expectation. This was going to be an event.

  Orso worked his stool over to the corner of his cage. As close as he could get to Hildi, sitting cross-legged on the tiled floor outside with her back against the bars.

  “Where the hell’s the Young Lion?” he whispered through fixed lips. Not so very long ago, before the battle at Stoffenbeck, he had spent several sleepless nights hoping Brock never arrived. Now he was desperate for the least hint of the bastard.

  Hildi glanced towards Corporal Halder, but he and the rest of Orso’s guards had long ago given up any pretence of guarding and had slunk into one of the patches of sunlight to bask like lizards, not paying the slightest attention. “They’re on their way,” she hissed from the corner of her mouth.

  “What if they don’t get here in time?” He was all too keenly aware how quickly the Court of the People could produce a verdict. “What if Savine’s… convicted?”

  “Then I’ve seen it happen to better people.”

  Orso could hardly deny that, despite for some reason desperately wanting to. “My worry is it’ll happen to a worse next,” he whispered. “Namely me.”

  Hildi was showing depressingly little sign of disagreeing when Judge swept into the hall, chains on her breastplate twinkling, hem of her ripped ballgown hissing across the tiles and sending washes of dust motes through the bars of sunlight. Sworbreck, Broad, Sarlby and a few dozen of the most committed Burners stalked up in her wake. The hubbub dropped away into the usual awful quiet as the Union’s vengeful nightmare lowered herself into the chair once reserved for Orso, picked up her smith’s hammer and gave the already ruined High Table a brutal beating.

  “Court is in fucking session!” she snarled.

  Orso tried to flap some air into his collar. For months he had hardly been able to remember what warmth felt like. Now the Court of the People was smotheringly hot. Hot with the spring sun flashing and twinkling through the distorting windows. Hot with the excited breath of the crowd. Hot with rumour, gossip, scandal, fear. The only cool thing in the whole place, as the great doors were swung open, was the defendant.

  Savine wore a plain nursing dress, pure white. No jewels. No wig. Her dark hair was clipped close to her skull so she looked shorn of all pretence, the scar up her forehead showing red. Orso had never seen her look so beautiful. But then he thought that every time he saw her, with tiresome predictability. He gripped the bars of his cage, face all but pressed to the metal as she passed.

  He wanted to call out some encouragement. Be strong! or You’ll beat the bastards! or I love you! but she did not meet his eye. She glided across the tiled floor with her hands clasped and her head high, a member of some more virtuous species than the sweaty mass gathered on the benches and in the galleries. Two maids followed, each carrying what looked like a little bundle of blankets.

  “Are those her children?” muttered Hildi, sitting up. One of the bundles twisted, made a little mew, and Orso caught a glimpse of its tiny baffled face as it was whisked past.

  “Bloody hell,” he breathed as a murmur went through the crowd. Were they… his niece and nephew, then? The thought made him feel vaguely nauseous.

  Sworbreck, in his blood-red prosecutor’s suit, gazed at them with open disdain. “Babies are not permitted in the Court of the People!”

  “My innocence may stand in question,” Savine’s voice rang out with no trace of f
ear, “but what crime have my children committed that they should be separated from their mother?”

  Usually insults would shower on the accused, sometimes bits of food, coins and broken glass, on one memorable occasion a bucket of piss, but the mood was different today. The murmur from above was of approval. Support, even. It seemed there was almost as much admiration for Savine’s quiet dignity in the public galleries as there was in Orso’s cage. He could not suppress the slightest smile, the slightest shake of his fist. In the Court of the People, one had to celebrate small victories.

  But Judge lazily waved it away. “They’re Citizens, too, ain’t they? All are equal and everyone’s welcome.” She slumped back in her chair, lifted her legs and let her bare feet drop on the table with a final-sounding thud. “It’s not as if it’ll change the result.”

  That was painfully clear to someone who had watched the court send hundreds to their deaths, heedless of proof or process. Savine might bring the cunning of Glustrod, the dignity of Juvens, the will of Euz himself and perch on a mountain of babies in an ocean of sympathy. Orso could not see how it might make the slightest difference. Only the timely arrival of several thousand armed men could do that.

  Savine gave her children a final touch then swept into the dock as calmly as she might have her box at the theatre. Orso glanced towards the benches, where Tunny sprawled on the front row, arms spread out and eyes narrowed lazily against the sunlight. His old gambling partner, panderer and occasional standard-bearer did not meet his eye, but he made a subtle turning motion with one finger, around and around.

  Time. Teufel’s plan was in motion. Forest was on his way with the Young Lion. Orso chewed at his lip, glancing about the court with a new urgency. He had to find some way to buy time.

  Judge bashed away for order, then tossed her hammer rattling down. “Bar all the doors!” she shrieked. “I want no fucking distractions!”

  And a breathless silence closed in.

  “Citizeness Brock!” Sworbreck swaggered towards Savine in his absurd scarlet coat, a sheaf of papers flapping in one hand. It appeared the pompous dolt had duped himself with his own play-acting and come to believe he really was the great legal mind of the age.