‘Superior.’
Opening his eyes and lifting his head was a great and painful effort. Everything hurt from his exertions of the past few days. His neck clicked like a snapping twig with every movement, his back was stiff and brittle as a mirror, his leg veered between nagging agony and trembling numbness.
Shickel was standing in the doorway, head bowed. The cuts and bruises on her dark face were healed. There was no outward sign of the ordeal she had suffered in the cells below. She never looked him in the eye, though, always at the floor. Some wounds take time to heal, and others never do. I should know.
‘What is it, Shickel?’
‘Magister Eider sends you an invitation to dinner.’
‘Does she indeed?’
The girl nodded.
‘Send word that I will be honoured to attend.’
Glokta watched her pad out of the room, head bowed, then he sagged back onto his cushions. If I disappear tomorrow, at least I will have saved one person. Perhaps that means my life has not been a total waste of time. Sand dan Glokta, shield to the helpless. Is it ever too late to be . . . a good man?
‘Please!’ squealed Harker. ‘Please! I know nothing!’ He was bound tightly to his chair, unable to move his body far. But he makes up for it with his eyes. They darted back and forth over Glokta’s instruments, glittering in the harsh lamplight on the scarred table top. Oh yes, you understand better than most how this will work. Knowledge is so often the antidote to fear. But not here. Not now. ‘I know nothing!’
‘I will be the judge of what you know.’ Glokta wiped some sweat from his face. The room was hot as a busy forge and the glowing coals in the brazier were far from helping. ‘If a thing smells like a liar, and is the colour of a liar, the chances are it is a liar, would you not agree?’
‘Please! We are all on the same side!’ Are we? Are we really? ‘I have told you only the truth!’
‘Perhaps, but not as much of it as I need.’
‘Please! We are all friends here!’
‘Friends? In my experience, a friend is merely an acquaintance who has yet to betray you. Is that what you are, Harker?’
‘No!’
Glokta frowned. ‘Then you are our enemy?’
‘What? No! I just . . . I just . . . I wanted to know what happened! That’s all! I didn’t mean to . . . please!’ Please, please, please, I tire of hearing it. ‘You have to believe me!’
‘The only thing I have to do is get answers.’
‘Only ask your questions, Superior, I beg of you! Only give me the opportunity to cooperate!’ Oh indeed, the firm hand does not seem such a fine idea any longer, does it? ‘Ask your questions, I will do my best to answer!’
‘Good.’ Glokta perched himself on the edge of the table just beside his tightly bound prisoner and looked down at him. ‘Excellent.’ Harker’s hands were tanned deep brown, his face was tanned deep brown, the rest of his body was pale as a white slug with thick patches of dark hair. Hardly a fetching look. But it could be worse. ‘Answer me this, then. Why is it that men have nipples?’
Harker blinked. He swallowed. He looked up at Frost, but there was no help there. The albino stared back, unblinking, white skin round his mask beaded with sweat, eyes hard as two pink jewels. ‘I . . . I am not sure I understand, Superior.’
‘Is it not a simple question? Nipples, Harker, on men. What purpose do they serve? Have you not often wondered?’
‘I . . . I . . .’
Glokta sighed. ‘They chafe and become painful in the wet. They dry out and become painful in the heat. Some women, for reasons I could never fathom, insist on fiddling with them in bed, as though we derive anything but annoyance from having them interfered with.’ Glokta reached towards the table, while Harker’s wide eyes followed his every movement, and slid his hand slowly around the grips of the pincers. He lifted them up and examined them, the well-sharpened jaws glinting in the bright lamplight. ‘A man’s nipples,’ he murmured, ‘are a positive hindrance to him. Do you know? Aside from the unsightly scarring, I don’t miss mine in the least.’
He grabbed the tip of Harker’s nipple and dragged it roughly towards him. ‘Ah!’ squawked the one-time Inquisitor, the chair creaking as he tried desperately to twist away. ‘No!’
‘You think that hurts? Then I doubt you’ll enjoy what’s coming.’ And Glokta slid the open jaws of the pincers around the stretched out flesh and squeezed them tight.
‘Ah! Ah! Please! Superior, I beg you!’
‘Your begging is worthless to me. What I need from you is answers. What became of Davoust?’
‘I swear on my life that I don’t know!’
‘Not good enough.’ Glokta began to squeeze harder, the metal edges starting to bite into the skin.
Harker gave a despairing shriek. ‘Wait! I took money! I admit it! I took money!’
‘Money?’ Glokta let the pressure release a fraction and a drop of blood dripped from the pincers and spattered on Harker’s hairy white leg. ‘What money?’
‘Money Davoust took from the natives! After the rebellion! He had me round up any that I thought might be rich, and he had them hanged along with the rest, and we requisitioned everything they had and split it between us! He kept his share in a chest in his quarters, and when he disappeared . . . I took it!’
‘Where is this money now?’
‘Gone! I spent it! On women . . . and on wine, and, and, on anything!’
Glokta clicked his tongue. ‘Tut, tut.’ Greed and conspiracy, injustice and betrayal, robbery and murder. All the ingredients of a tale to titillate the masses. Saucy, but hardly relevant. He worked his hand around the pincers. ‘It is the Superior himself, not his money, that interests me. Believe me when I say that I grow tired of asking the question. What became of Davoust?’
‘I . . . I . . . I don’t know!’
True, perhaps. But hardly the answer I need. ‘Not good enough.’ Glokta squeezed his hand and the metal jaws bit cleanly through flesh and met in the middle with a gentle click. Harker bellowed, and thrashed, and roared in agony, blood bubbling from the red square of flesh where his nipple used to be and running down his pale belly in dark streaks. Glokta winced at a twinge in his neck and stretched his head out until he heard it click. Strange how, with time, even the most terrible suffering of others can become . . . tedious.
‘Practical Frost, the Inquisitor is bleeding! If you please!’
‘I’th thorry.’ The iron scraped as Frost dragged it from the brazier, glowing orange. Glokta could feel the heat of it even from where he was sitting. Ah, hot iron. It keeps no secrets, it tells no lies.
‘No! No! I—’ Harker’s words dissolved into a bubbling scream as Frost ground the brand into the wound and the room filled slowly with the salty aroma of cooking meat. A smell which, to Glokta’s disgust, caused his empty stomach to rumble. How long is it since I had a good slice of meat? He wiped a fresh sheen of sweat from his face with his free hand and worked his aching shoulders under his coat.
An ugly business, that we find ourselves in. So why do I do this? The only answer was the soft crunch as Frost slid the iron carefully back into the coals, sending up a dusting of orange sparks. Harker twisted, and whimpered, and shook, his weeping eyes bulging, a strand of smoke still curling up from the blackened flesh on his chest. An ugly business, of course. No doubt he deserves it, but that changes nothing. Probably he has no clue what became of Davoust, but that changes nothing either. The questions must be asked, and exactly as if he did know the answers.
‘Why do you insist on defying me, Harker? Could it be . . . that you suppose . . . that once I’m done with your nipples I’ll have run out of ideas? Is that what you’re thinking? That your nipples are where I’ll stop?’
Harker stared at him, bubbles of spit forming and breaking on his lips. Glokta leaned closer. ‘Oh, no, no, no. This is only the beginning. This is before the beginning. Time opens up ahead of us in pitiless abundance. Days, and weeks, and months of it, if need
be. Do you seriously believe that you can keep your secrets for that long? You belong to me, now. To me, and to this room. This cannot stop until I know what I need to know.’ He reached forward and gripped Harker’s other nipple between thumb and forefinger. He took up the pincers and opened their bloody jaws. ‘How difficult can that be to understand?’
Magister Eider’s dining chamber was fabulous to behold. Cloths of silver and crimson, gold and purple, green and blue and vivid yellow, rippled in the gentle breeze from the narrow windows. Screens of filigree marble adorned the walls, great pots as high as a man stood in the corners. Heaps of pristine cushions were tossed about the floor, as though inviting passers-by to sprawl in comfortable decadence. Coloured candles burned in tall glass jars, casting warm light into every corner, filling the air with sweet scent. At one end of the marble hall clear water trickled gently in a star-shaped pool. There was more than a touch of the theatrical about the place. Like a Queen’s boudoir from some Kantic legend.
Magister Eider, head of the Guild of Spicers, was herself the centrepiece. The very Queen of merchants. She sat at the top of the table in a pristine white gown, shimmering silk with just the slightest, fascinating hint of transparency. A small fortune in jewels flashed on every inch of tanned skin, her hair was piled up and held in place with ivory combs, excepting a few strands, curling artfully around her face. It looked very much as if she had been preparing herself all day. And not a moment was wasted.
Glokta, hunched in his chair at the opposite end with a bowl of steaming soup before him, felt as if he had shuffled into the pages of a storybook. A lurid romance, set in the exotic south, with Magister Eider as the heroine, and myself the disgusting, the crippled, the black-hearted villain. How will this fable end, I wonder? ‘So, tell me, Magister, to what do I owe this honour?’
‘I understand that you have spoken to the other members of the council. I was surprised, and just a little hurt, that you had not sought an audience with me already.’
‘I apologise if you felt left out. It seemed only fitting that I saved the most powerful until last.’
She looked up with an air of injured innocence. And a most consummately acted one. ‘Powerful? Me? Vurms controls the budget, issues the decrees, Vissbruck commands the troops, holds the defences. Kahdia speaks for the great majority of the populace. I scarcely figure.’
‘Come now.’ Glokta grinned his toothless grin. ‘You are radiant, of course, but I am not quite blinded. Vurms’ budget is a pittance compared to what the Spicers make. Kahdia’s people have been rendered almost helpless. Through your pickled friend Cosca you command more than twice the troops that Vissbruck does. The only reason the Union is even interested in this thirsty rock is for the trade that your guild controls.’
‘Well, I don’t like to boast.’ The Magister gave an artless shrug. ‘But I suppose that I do have some passing influence in the city. You have been asking questions, I see.’
‘That’s what I do.’ Glokta raised his spoon to his mouth, trying his best not to slurp between his remaining teeth. ‘This soup is delicious, by the way.’ And, one hopes, not fatal.
‘I thought you might appreciate it. You see, I have been asking questions also.’
The water plopped and tinkled in the pool, the fabric rustled on the walls, the silverware clicked gently against the fine pottery of their bowls. I would call that first round a draw. Carlot dan Eider was the first to break the silence.
‘I realise, of course, that you have a mission from the Arch Lector himself. A mission of the greatest importance. I see that you are not a man to mince your words, but you might want to tread a little more carefully.’
‘I admit my gait is awkward. A war wound, compounded by two years of torture. It’s a wonder I got to keep the leg at all.’
She smiled wide, displaying two rows of perfect teeth. ‘I am thoroughly tickled, but my colleagues have found you somewhat less entertaining. Vurms and Vissbruck have both taken a decided dislike to you. High-handed was the phrase they used, I believe, among others I had better not repeat.’
Glokta shrugged. ‘I am not here to make friends.’ And he drained his glass of a predictably excellent wine.
‘But friends can be useful. If nothing else, a friend is one less enemy. Davoust insisted on upsetting everyone, and the results have not been happy.’
‘Davoust did not enjoy the support of the Closed Council.’
‘True. But no document will stop a knife thrust.’
‘Is that a threat?’
Carlot dan Eider laughed. It was an easy, open, friendly laugh. It was hard to believe that anyone who made such a sound could be a traitor, or a threat, or anything other than a perfectly charming host. And yet I am not entirely convinced. ‘That is advice. Advice born of bitter experience. I would prefer it if you did not disappear quite yet.’
‘Really? I had no idea I was such a winning dinner guest.’
‘You are terse, confrontational, slightly frightening, and impose severe restrictions on the menu, but the fact is you are more use to me here than . . .’ and she waved her hand, ‘wherever Davoust went to. Would you care for more wine?’
‘Of course.’
She got up from her chair and swept towards him, feet padding on the cool marble like a dancer’s. Bare feet, in the Kantic fashion. The breeze stirred the flowing garments around her body as she leaned forwards to fill Glokta’s glass, wafted her rich scent in his face. Just the sort of woman my mother would have wanted me to marry – beautiful, clever, and oh so very rich. Just the sort of woman I would have wanted to marry, for that matter, when I was younger. When I was a different man.
The flickering candlelight shone on her hair, flashed on the jewels around her long neck, glowed through the wine as it sloshed from the neck of the bottle. Does she try and charm me merely because I hold the writ of the Closed Council? Nothing more than good business, to be on good terms with the powerful? Or does she hope to fool me, and distract me, and lure me away from the unpleasant truth? Her eyes met his briefly, and she gave a tiny, knowing smile and looked back to his glass. Am I to be her little urchin boy, dirty face pressed up against the baker’s window, mouth watering for the sweetmeats I know I can never afford? I think not.
‘Where did Davoust go to?’
Magister Eider paused for a moment, then carefully set down the bottle. She slid into the nearest chair, put her elbows on the table, her chin on her hands, and held Glokta’s eye. ‘I suspect that he was killed by a traitor in the city. Probably an agent of the Gurkish. At the risk of telling you what you already know, Davoust suspected there was a conspiracy afoot within the city’s ruling council. He confided as much to me shortly before his disappearance.’
Did he indeed? ‘A conspiracy within the ruling council?’ Glokta shook his head in mock horror. ‘Is such a thing possible?’
‘Let us be honest with each other, Superior. I want what you want. We in the Guild of Spicers have invested far too much time and money in this city to see it fall to the Gurkish, and you seem to offer a better chance of holding on to it than those idiots Vurms and Vissbruck. If there is a traitor within our walls I want him found.’
‘Him . . . or her.’
Magister Eider raised one delicate eyebrow. ‘It cannot have escaped your notice that I am the only woman on the council.’
‘It has not.’ Glokta slurped noisily from his spoon. ‘But forgive me if I don’t discount you quite yet. It will require more than good soup and pleasant conversation to convince me of anyone’s innocence.’ Although it’s a damn sight more than anyone else has offered me.
Magister Eider smiled as she raised her glass. ‘Then how can I convince you?’
‘Honestly? I need money.’
‘Ah, money. It always comes back to that. Getting money out of my Guild is like trying to dig up water in the desert – tiring, dirty, and almost always a waste of time.’ Somewhat like asking questions of Inquisitor Harker. ‘How much were you thinking of?’
>
‘We could begin with, say, a hundred thousand marks.’
Eider did not actually choke on her wine. More of a gentle gurgle. She set her glass down carefully, quietly cleared her throat, dabbed at her mouth with the corner of a cloth, then looked up at him, eyebrows raised. ‘You very well know that no such amount will be forthcoming.’
‘I’ll settle for whatever you can give me, for now.’
‘We’ll see. Are your ambitions limited to a mere hundred thousand marks, or is there anything else I can do for you?’
‘Actually there is. I need the merchants out of the Temple.’
Eider rubbed gently at her own temples, as though Glokta’s demands were giving her a headache. ‘He wants the merchants out,’ she murmured.
‘It was necessary to secure Kahdia’s support. With him against us we cannot hope to hold the city for long.’
‘I’ve been telling those arrogant fools the same thing for years, but stamping on the natives has become quite the popular pastime nonetheless. Very well, when do you want them out?’
‘Tomorrow. At the latest.’
‘And they call you high-handed?’ She shook her head. ‘Very well. By tomorrow evening I could well be the most unpopular Magister in living memory, if I still have my post at all, but I’ll try and sell it to the Guild.’
Glokta grinned. ‘I feel confident that you could sell anything.’
‘You’re a tough negotiator, Superior. If you ever get tired of asking questions, I have no doubt you’ve a bright future as a merchant.’
‘A merchant? Oh, I’m not that ruthless.’ Glokta placed his spoon in the empty bowl and licked at his gums. ‘I mean no disrespect, but how does a woman come to head the most powerful Guild in the Union?’
Eider paused, as though wondering whether to answer or not. Or judging how much truth to tell when she does. She looked down at her glass, turned the stem slowly round and round. ‘My husband was Magister before me. When we married I was twenty-two years old, he was near sixty. My father owed him a great deal of money, and offered my hand as payment for the debt.’ Ah, so we all have our sufferings. Her lip twisted in a faint scowl. ‘My husband always had a good nose for a bargain. His health began to decline soon after we married, and I took a more and more active role in the management of his affairs, and those of the Guild. By the time he died I was Magister in all but name, and my colleagues were sensible enough to formalise the arrangement. The Spicers have always been more concerned for profit than propriety.’ Her eyes flicked up to look at Glokta. ‘I mean no disrespect, but how does a war hero come to be a torturer?’
The First Law Trilogy Boxed Set: The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, Last Argument of Kings Page 69