The Wisdom of Crowds

by Joe Abercrombie

  He didn’t know what to say to that. Wasn’t as if he could deny it.

  “How is your shoulder?” she asked.

  He winced as he worked his arm in a circle. “Mending, I reckon.”

  “Good. My husband refuses to move any soldiers out of Adua, whether they throttle the life from the city or not. Especially since the… king’s escape.” She took a long breath through her nose, and let it sigh away. “But we cannot simply ignore the rest of the country. It grieves me to say that there are still Breakers out there. They are determined to get in the way of the reconstruction. Determined… to cause trouble.”

  Broad blinked at her. “I’m done with trouble,” he whispered. “I promised Liddy. I promised May—”

  “Must you? Really? I need you to gather some useful men and go to Valbeck.”

  “To Valbeck?”

  “Yes.”

  “To the Breakers.”

  “Yes.” Savine’s eyes grew harder yet. “Break them.”

  Broad swallowed. “But… Liddy and May, they just got here.” A pathetic whine of an excuse. Like saying he couldn’t murder anyone today ’cause he had to trim his fingernails.

  Zuri checked her watch. “It does not have to be now.” And she gave Savine the hint of a nod.

  Savine stood. “Tomorrow will be fine.”

  “Tomorrow,” croaked Broad.

  “Tomorrow early. I am still me, Gunnar. And you are still you. Go to Valbeck and do what you do. If it helps, you can say I made you go. You can pretend you would be happier here.” She leaned close to murmur. “But we both know you wouldn’t be.”

  Zuri made a note in her book, then raised her brows, slipped her pencil behind her ear and followed the Lady Regent from the room.

  Broad stood a moment longer, skin prickling with horror. Or was it excitement? Judge had the truth of it all along, maybe. Some men can’t help themselves.

  “What did Her Highness want?” asked Liddy, slipping in.

  “To send me to Valbeck,” muttered Broad. “She says there’s trouble there.”

  Liddy didn’t say anything. Neither did he.

  What was there to say?

  So Many Changes

  Rikke had to admit to feeling a bit unsteady as she shuffled from the ship to the quay. The Circle Sea had thrown a tantrum on the way and she’d spent the first day or two heaving over the side. Now solid ground was making her queasy. But she kept the smile on her face. That’s what being chief’s all about, her father would’ve said. Smiling while you want to puke.

  “Jurand!” She ignored his hand and gave him a hug instead. “Still…” She waved a hand at him, trying to find the right words. “Juranding, then?”

  He respectfully bowed his head. “I wouldn’t know how to do anything else.”

  “But with more of…” And she flicked at the swags of gold braid festooning his uniform. “All this.”

  “It has pleased the Lord and Lady Regent to appoint me interim Lord Chamberlain.”

  Isern was giving him an approving look-over. “You can be lord o’ my interim whenever you please,” she said.

  Rikke frowned at her. “I thought I said good behaviour? Should it be Lord Jurand, then?”

  “Not to an old friend. I’m hardly the only one advanced in the world, after all.” Jurand looked towards the strange and varied peoples of the North clambering from the ship to stand gawping at the vast scale, crawling activity and choking smokiness of everything. Quite the entourage. Which was, of course, the idea. Merchants of Uffrith and Carleon, dressed in their best dyed cloth and keen to talk business. Named Men in feast-day cloaks. Chieftains of the High Valleys and the West Valleys and all the valleys in between. Hillmen and hillwomen, too, faces blue with tattoos. “Should it be Queen Rikke?”

  “By the dead, no! Black Rikke will do.” She glanced at the soldiers on the quay, stiff and polished in big, dark uniforms on big, dark horses under big, dark banners. Must’ve been a hundred of ’em at the least. “Quite the welcome you’ve laid on.”

  “The Lord Regent insisted we take no chances with your safety,” said Jurand, leading them across to a set of spare horses.

  “Touched,” said Rikke. “I never feel so safe as when I’m surrounded by heavily armed strangers.” Took her a moment to mount up, as she wasn’t much happier on a horse than a ship. “Must confess I was a smidge worried Leo and Savine might not be all that pleased to see me.” Rikke nudged her mount close to Jurand and murmured out of the corner of her mouth. “I did betray ’em, after all. Just a bit.”

  “Lady Savine has always had a cool head.”

  “She could freeze milk with a whisper, that one.”

  “And you’ll find Leo’s not so easily carried away as he used to be.”

  “So all’s forgiven?”

  Jurand’s smile didn’t totally convince. “They both want to look to the future.”

  It wasn’t lost on Rikke that he’d come nowhere near answering the question.

  The chimneys still puffed away, leaving a great grey stain across the sky. The streets still thronged with folk of every shape and size, cut and colour. That tower they called the House of the Maker still stuck up into the fog like a giant’s finger. The stones still throbbed with that endless unquiet, the snore of some slumbering demon, the rumble of unhappy men and machines.

  But not everything was the same. They’d always liked a flag in the Union but since her last visit they’d gone mad with them. Buildings with great banners down the front. Suns painted twenty strides high on the sides of warehouses. Crossed hammers of Angland, too, with Leo’s golden lion. There were armed men at every gate and corner. King’s Own in red, but always shadowed by dark-clothed Anglanders. Rikke saw barricades down side streets, folk queueing up to be searched, soldiers rooting through wagons, flatbowmen frowning down from roofs.

  “Reckon there’s more soldiers of Angland here than there were in the army of Angland,” murmured Rikke.

  Shivers rubbed thoughtfully at his grey stubble. “Feels more like a city fallen to a siege than one delivered.”

  “Don’t trust a one o’ these bastards,” whispered Isern-i-Phail, in Northern, frowning over her shoulder at their escort.

  “Aye, but you hate everyone,” said Rikke.

  Isern looked shocked to her roots. “Lies! I am all yielding fellowship and good humour! I like Shivers.”

  “Everyone likes me,” droned the most feared man in the North, swaying in his saddle.

  “And I’m fond of old Hardbread. And the Nail is a man I could be persuaded to hammer, d’you take my meaning?”

  “Despite the many layers of cunning I believe I’ve dug it out,” said Rikke.

  “I’m taking to that girl Sholla. She surely can slice cheese fine.”

  “Like cobwebs.”

  “Just melts on your tongue. I’ve been thinking about all the other things she might be able to slice and coming on all aquiver at the prospect.”

  “High praise.”

  “Hmmm.” Isern stuck out her lips, clearly sorting through the rest of her acquaintance and finding no treasure. “Hardly an army of friends, now I reckon ’em up.”

  Rikke cleared her throat, pointing a hopeful thumb towards herself.

  “Meh.” Isern scrunched up her face like she’d taken a sup of old ale and had a fear it was off. “On you I remain to be convinced.”

  “You said that two bloody years ago!”

  “And you’re shifting me in the right direction. Love easily given isn’t worth a thing, d’you see. Another few years and I might like you as much as my brothers.” She twisted in her saddle to look at Scofen and Scenn, gazing about at the great soot-streaked buildings in amazement.

  “So… you’ll ignore me most o’ the time, and the rest treat me with open scorn?”

  “That’s it!” And Isern clapped Rikke on the shoulder hard enough she had to clutch at her saddle to stay in it.

  They passed blackened scars through the city. Whole streets in r
uins. Burned-out shells being torn down but some carcasses still standing, too, doors and windows gaping like corpse mouths, breeze whipping stinging ash from inside. There were more beggars on the streets even than there used to be. More homeless and helpless, slinking away as their great company clattered past.

  “By the dead,” breathed Rikke, staring at a great set of marble steps with nothing on top but the stumps of huge pillars, workmen battering away at those with picks and chisels, a great crane towering high over the monstrous building site. “Is this where that bank was?”

  “Valint and Balk,” said Jurand, with a disapproving frown.

  That mighty temple to profits, where the First of the Magi had met his smirking sidekick. Seemed even that could be laid low.

  “What’re they putting in its place?” asked Rikke.

  “I understand there is an urgent need for loans and investment. For new business and construction. The Lady Regent has plans… to build the world’s largest bank.”

  They finally reined in outside a huge house among other huge houses, in a part of the city where the air was cleaner and the sun shone brighter. Rikke had to admit she was a little relieved. Wouldn’t have surprised her if they’d been led in state all the way to the House of Questions and straight into a cell.

  “Savine’s house,” she said, looking up at all those windows. “Looks like every leaf in the garden got polished by hand.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Jurand. “She used to live here. Then it was an orphanage for a while, but it became too full, and the children have been moved to new lodgings. Now it’s yours.”

  “What?”

  “As long as you’re in the city.” He swung down easily from the saddle. “Black Rikke must have rooms fit for her station.”

  The hall alone was big as a chieftan’s audience chamber and a lot finer furnished. Two well-turned-out women were waiting there, one older, one younger, with a dark-skinned fellow wide as a door. They looked a bit shocked at Rikke’s face, for which she hardly blamed them; she still jumped herself whenever she passed a mirror. They looked more shocked as Shivers loomed up behind her, then very shocked indeed as the fur- and mail-clad Named Men and the tattooed hillfolk and some great tall woman who ran Yaws these days crowded into the hallway tramping muck across the spotless tiles.

  The older woman gave a doubtful curtsy. “Your, er—”

  “Just Black Rikke will do,” said Rikke.

  “I’m Liddy, this is May and this is Haroon.”

  “An honour,” said the dark-skinned man in the deepest voice you ever heard, bowing low.

  “Likewise,” said Rikke, bowing back. Since half of her people couldn’t even speak the language, that set everyone off bowing to everyone else. Quite the sea of bobbing heads.

  “The Lady Regent sent us in case there was anything you wanted,” said Liddy. “There’s a function planned at the Agriont tomorrow evening—”

  “Function?” Isern bit at the unfamiliar word. “Isn’t that, like, having a shit?”

  Shivers rolled the eye he still had. “It’s folk drinking and dancing and lying to each other. They pretend it’s for fun but really it’s for whoever’s got the power to show how much power they’ve got.”

  Isern slowly narrowed her eyes. “So it is having a shit, just on everyone else.”

  “Mostly on me,” said Rikke. “And I’ll be thanking them for the turds, frothing with praise over their fine colour and consistency, and asking if I couldn’t get a couple more.” Rikke raised her brows at Liddy, who was looking more shocked than ever, and switched back to their tongue. “You a seamstress?”

  “I’ve… sewn a few seams…”

  “You help make Lady Savine look all…” And Rikke waved her hands around, searching for the word. “Savine-y?”

  “I help dress her… sometimes.”

  “Lovely! Last time I went to the Agriont I looked a fucking dunce.” Rikke shrugged the red cloak from her shoulders and ran that fine cloth hissing through her fingers. “Reckon we’ve got some work ahead of us.”

  Good Times

  Since the weather was finally warming after the bitter freeze and the bloody thaw, Savine had been keen to throw open the doors of the palace and hold a reception in the budding gardens. Spring, and a new beginning, and a sorely needed opportunity to heal wounds: wounds of the Great Change still far from scarred over, and wounds inflicted since still bleeding.

  But the evening was not so balmy as she had hoped, and the gooseflesh on her bare arms made her think of the brutal winter just past. The braying laughter of someone drunk too soon brought back the rioters’ clamour in the Square of Marshals. The glint of torches on the armour of the many guards reminded her of the flames towering into the sky above the Court of the People. She wanted to run for her chambers, lock every door and hold her children close, but she had hidden too long. So she squared her shoulders, snapped her fingers at Zuri to pass the box and took another pinch of pearl dust instead.

  Savine was far from the only one on edge. Her guests were those lucky, clever or treacherous enough to have lived through the fury of the mobs, the chaos of Risinau, the massacres of Judge. Now, after the briefest period of heady relief, they were starting to wonder if they might end up purged by their new Lord Regent.

  Leo was in no mood to heal wounds. He stood grim and aloof, as usual, surrounded by armed Anglanders, as usual, refusing to sit down, as usual. He had taken Adua in a vice-like grip the day Judge fell, but since Orso’s escape, and with Jurand to help, he had instigated a crackdown far harsher than any the Burners had dreamed of.

  The endless restrictions and searches, curfews and tests of loyalty were bad for morale and terrible for business. The only people prospering were armourers, flag-makers and the painters daubing Union emblems on the homes of Citizens terrified of showing inadequate patriotism. Leo insisted he was infusing Adua with common purpose, oblivious to the fact that nothing proclaims disunity like shrill proclamations of unity on every corner.

  “My lords and ladies!” The panicky chatter subsided, every eye turning towards the gateway in the palace wall, flanked by two giant sun banners. The announcer puffed himself up with a mighty breath. “Might I present…” He glanced nervously towards Leo then, as if embarrassed by the lack of a suitably magnificent string of titles, deflated. “Black Rikke.”

  Savine knew how to make an entrance. She had engineered some classics in her time. Starting new trends at the Solar Society. Radiantly happy at her wedding. Proudly defiant at her trial. But she was not sure that she ever made an entrance like Rikke did that day.

  “Someone has been to the tailor,” murmured Zuri.

  The new mistress of the North was a heady concoction of high fashion, black magic and barbaric splendour with a weird twist all her own. Her dress was of fine red Suljuk silk, long and lean like a streak of blood with a cloud of white fur about the shoulders. Her hair was bound up into a ridiculously tall, impossibly shiny black gentleman’s hat, cocked right over in the manner of a backstreet pimp. She showed every one of those fine teeth in a knowing smile, the emeralds that Savine once gave her shining at her throat but her eyes shining brighter, one all white, the other all gaping pupil in the centre of those tattooed witch’s rings. She raised her sinewy arms and spread them wide, Sipanese lace gloves on her hands but chains, runes and bone bangles dangling from her wrists.

  “Greetings from the North!” she screeched, and a strange entourage spilled through the gate and into the heart of the Union. At Rikke’s right shoulder came Isern-i-Phail, dressed like a duchess but walking like a docker, necklace of fingerbones around her neck and the toes of her heavy boots peeping under the lace hem of her skirt. Caul Shivers was on her left, oddly at ease in a braid-heavy general’s uniform paired with a savage-looking broadsword, metal eye glinting behind his hanging grey hair. There were hillwomen whose faces were stained with swirling tattoos. There were warriors whose faces were criss-crossed with scars. There were craftsmen o
f Carleon and ships’ captains of Uffrith, and all with odd specks and spatters of Union fashion: a crystal-knobbed cane, a machine-patterned shawl, a jewelled pocket watch. One hillman peered suavely through a monocle as though he’d been born wearing one.

  “Savine!” And Rikke slipped between her outstretched hands and folded her in a hug. Savine could hardly remember the last time anyone held her that way, and she found herself squeezing Rikke back, as if they truly were old friends, with no jealousies or rivalries or backstabbings behind them.

  She found herself both reluctant to let go and relieved when Rikke did, holding her out at arm’s length with that unsettling grin. Magic was not a thing one could sensibly invest in, of course. But looking into the black depths of the Long Eye she could not help wondering what Rikke might have seen with it. What she might know that Savine could not guess.

  “Rikke. You are… a vision.”

  “Ha! Vision. Saying you look good would be like calling snow cold, but I swear you look better’n ever. Motherhood must agree with you. Mother of the Nation, no less!”

  “None of us came through the Great Change quite the same.” Savine glanced over at Leo, his hard face a pale spot among all those splendid uniforms.

  “All both more and less than we were.” And Rikke swept a glass of wine from a passing tray, swallowed half at one gulp. “You remember my last visit here?”

  “Chiselled into my memory.” Savine wondered how many people who had laughed, and drunk, and danced in the Hall of Mirrors that night were dead now. Half? More? A chilly gust swept across the gardens and it was the most she could do not to shiver.

  “Not my proudest moment,” Rikke was saying. “Played a pigeon at a peacock contest, got caught by the queen in her son’s bed, then shat myself at a parade. What’s become of Orso?”

  Savine tried not to sound strangled but did not entirely succeed. “No one knows.”

  “Careless, for a country to lose its king. But I hear you found another, so no harm done, eh?”