They’d drawn up an old wagon to serve as a stage, and a woman stood there now giving as wild a performance as any actress, one thin hand clutching at the rail while she tore at the air with the other.
Judge, Vick reckoned, and she had a sense for theatre. She wore an old, scarred breastplate rusty at the rivets over a ragged red dress that might once have been some noblewoman’s wedding gown. She had a mass of flame-red hair all braided and coiled and pinned into a mad tangle. Her eyes bulged, huge in her bony, blotchy face, black, and empty, catching the torch flames so it looked as if she had fire in her skull. Maybe she did at that.
“The time for talk’s long past!” she screamed in a wild, piercing voice that made Vick wince. “Nothing was ever got with talk…” Judge let it hang there a moment, head cocked to one side, a brittle smile quivering on her lips. “That couldn’t be got with fire.”
“Burn ’em!” someone shouted.
“Burn the mills!”
“Burn the owners!”
“Burn it all!” squealed one of the children from the rafters, so excited she nearly fell, and others took up the chant.
“Burn it! Burn it! Burn it!” Fists punched at the air, tattooed writing on bared forearms. Like the rebels in Starikland used to have. Treasonous slogans, proudly on display. Weapons, too, thrust up from the crowd in time with the chanting, and not just workmen’s tools sharpened for a show. Polearms. Swords. At least one flatbow. Soldiers’ weapons, made for killing.
“What did I tell you?” The man called Gunnar was standing next to her, shaking his head as he watched Judge prowl the stage, urging the crowd louder.
“If I’d known it was fancy dress,” murmured Vick, “I’d have made more effort.”
She could dig out a smart comment when she had to, but in truth she was way off balance. She’d been expecting the Breakers in Valbeck to be a dozen blowhard fools like Grise, hiding in a cellar and arguing over what colour to paint a fine new world that’d never come. Instead she found them armed and organised in numbers, preaching open rebellion. She was off balance, and she wasn’t used to it, and her mind raced to catch up.
“Hold up, now!” And an old man hauled himself onto the wagon beside Judge. “Hold up!”
“That’s Malmer,” said Gunnar, leaning down towards Vick’s ear. “He’s a good man.”
He was Judge’s opposite. Big and solid and dressed in plain work clothes, face lined from years of labour and his balding hair iron-grey, all ice-water calm to her burning fury. “You can always find folk keen to start fires,” he said, turning to the sweltering warehouse. “Finding folk to build in the ashes is harder.”
Judge folded her arms across her battered breastplate and sneered at Malmer down her nose, but the rest of the crowd settled to hear him speak.
“Everyone’s here ’cause they don’t care for the way things are,” he said. “Who could?” And Gunnar grunted and nodded along. “I was born in this city. Lived here all my life. You think I like the way it’s changed? Think I like the river running with filth or the streets knee deep in rubbish?” With each phrase his voice grew louder, with each phrase an answering grumble swelled from the crowd. “Think I like to see good folk put out of work at the whim of some bastards born to privilege? Our rights stripped away for the sake o’ their greed? Good folk treated like cattle?”
“Fuck the owners!” screeched Judge, and the crowd cheered and jeered, wailed and grumbled.
“There’s men here turn out miles of cloth a day but can’t afford a shirt for their backs! Women whose highest ambition is to con the factory inspector that her son’s old enough to work! How many fingers missing here? And hands? And arms?” And people held up stumps and crutches and mangled hands, veterans not of battles but endless shifts at the machinery. “There are folk dying o’ hunger just a mile from the palaces on the hill! Boys who can hardly breathe for the white lung. Girls who catch some owner’s fancy and are forced into night-work. You know the sort o’ work I mean!”
“Fuck the owners!” screeched Judge again, and the crowd’s rage came back louder than ever.
“There’ll be a reckoning!” Malmer clenched his fists as he glowered at the crowd, his grinding anger every bit as worrying as Judge’s stabbing fury. “I promise you that. But we need to think. We need to plan. When we spill our blood—and blood’ll be spilled, depend on that—we need to make sure it buys us something.”
“And we will! No less than everything!” A smooth voice rang out, a cultured voice, and the crowd fell quickly silent. A mood of expectation, people hardly daring to breathe.
Judge grinned as she held out her hand to pull someone up onto the wagon. A plump man in a dark, well-tailored suit, soft and pale, oddly out of place in this rough company.
“Here he is,” murmured Gunnar, folding his arms.
“Here who is?” whispered Vick, though from that silence she already guessed the answer.
“The Weaver.”
“Friends!” called the plump man, stroking gently at the air with his thick fingers. “Brothers and Sisters! Breakers and Burners! Honest folk of Valbeck! Some of you know me as Superior Risinau of His Majesty’s Inquisition.” And he held up his pink palms, and gave a sorry smile. “For that I can only apologise.”
Vick could only stare. If she’d been off balance before, she was knocked on her back now.
“Fucking shit,” she heard Tallow breathe.
“The rest of you know me as the Weaver!” The crowd gave a jagged murmur, part anger, part love, part anticipation, as though they’d come to see a prizefight and the champion had just strutted into the circle.
A fat man prone to folly, Glokta had said. No imagination, but plenty of loyalty. For the first time in Vick’s memory, it appeared His Eminence had made a most serious misjudgement.
“I wrote to the king a few weeks ago,” called Risinau, “laying out our grievances. Anonymously, of course. I did not deem it appropriate to use my given name.” Some laughter through the crowd. “The ever-dwindling pay. The ever-swelling cost of living. The appalling quality of lodgings. The foul air and water. The sickness, squalor and hunger. The cheating of workers through false measures and hidden deductions. The oppression of the employers.”
“Fuck the employers!” shrieked Judge, spraying spit.
Risinau held up a flapping sheet of paper. “This morning I received a reply. Not from His foolish Majesty, of course.”
“The cock in the Agriont!” sneered Judge, grabbing hold of her groin to much laughter among the crowd while the children jumped on the rafters and made the dummy king dance.
“Not from his Styrian queen,” continued Risinau.
“The cunt in the palace!” screamed Judge, thrusting her hips at the crowd, and someone worked a thread that pulled the dummy queen’s skirts up, showing a great fleece muff to gales of merriment.
“Not from his dissolute son, Prince Orso.” Risinau glanced expectantly over at Judge.
She shrugged her bony shoulders. “There’s nothing to say about that waste o’ fucking flesh.” And a wave of boos and jeering swept the crowd.
“Not from the figureheads,” called Risinau, “but from the pilot of the ship! From Old Sticks himself, Arch Lector Glokta!” The fury at the name was the loudest yet by far. Just ahead, Vick saw an old man with a bent back curl his lip and spit at Glokta’s twisted dummy in disgust.
“He offers no help, you will be surprised to hear.” Risinau peered down at the letter. “He cautions against disloyalty, and warns of stiff penalties.”
“Fuck his penalties!” snarled Judge.
“He tells me the market must be free to operate. The world must be free to advance. Progress cannot be chained, apparently. Who knew the Arch Lector was so firmly set against manacles?” Some laughter at that. “When one man knowingly kills another, they call it murder! When society causes the deaths of thousands, they shrug and call it a fact of life.” Growls of agreement, and Risinau crushed the letter in his fist and tossed it
away. “The time for talk is done, my friends! No one is listening. No one who counts. The time has come for us to throw off the yoke and stand as free men and women. If they will not give us what we are owed, we must rise up and take it by force. We must bring the Great Change!”
“Yes!” shrieked Judge, and Malmer nodded grimly as men shook their weapons.
Risinau held up his hands for quiet. “We will take Valbeck! Not to burn the city,” and he wagged a disappointed finger at Judge, and she stuck her tongue out and spat into the crowd, “but to free the city. To give it back to her people. To stand as an example to the rest of the Union.” And the audience gave an approving bellow.
“Wish it was that easy.” Gunnar slowly shook his head. “Doubt it will be.”
“No,” muttered Vick. She made Tallow wince, she squeezed his arm so hard as she marched him over towards the wall to hiss in his ear.
“Get out of town now, you hear? Head for Adua.”
“But—”
She pressed her purse into his limp hand. “Quick as you can. Go to my employer. You know who I mean. Tell him what you saw tonight. Tell him…” She glanced around, but folk were too busy cheering Risinau’s mad speech to mind her. “Tell him who the Weaver is. I’m trusting you to get it done.”
She let him go but he didn’t move, just stared at her with those big eyes that were so like her brother’s. “You’re not coming?”
“Someone has to try to handle this mess. Go.” She shoved him away, watched him totter towards the door.
Vick wanted to follow. Badly. But she had to get to the hill and find Savine dan Glokta, maybe there was still time to put out a warning—
“This must be Victarine dan Teufel!” She froze at that strangely prim voice. “I had heard you were in Valbeck.” Risinau came smiling through the crowd, dabbing his shining face with a handkerchief, Judge at one shoulder, Malmer at the other.
There was a hollow feeling in Vick’s guts as dozens of pairs of hard eyes turned towards her. Like that moment in the mines, in the dark, the day her sister drowned. When she hissed for quiet, and heard the water rushing, far off.
They had her. She was done.
Risinau wagged one plump finger. “Collem Sibalt told me all about you.”
Her heart was thudding so hard she could hardly breathe. Hardly see. The children had pulled down the dummy of Bayaz and were beating it with its own staff, straw flying. She couldn’t believe how calm her voice sounded. Like someone else’s. Someone who knew exactly what they were doing. “Good things, I hope.”
“All good things. He said you were a woman with a hard heart and a level head. A woman as committed to our cause as any. A woman who could keep her wits on a sinking ship.” And Risinau stepped forward and folded her in a smothering hug while she stood there, damp with cold sweat and her flesh creeping. “Collem Sibalt was a dear friend. Any friend of his is a friend of mine.”
Judge was staring at her with those black, empty eyes, head dropped to one side. Vick couldn’t tell whether she was putting on a hell of an act or if she really was as mad as she looked.
“I don’t trust this one,” she growled.
“You don’t trust anyone,” grunted Malmer.
“Yet folk still disappoint me.”
Risinau held Vick out at arm’s length, smiling. “You’ve come at just the right moment, sister.”
“Why?” asked Vick. “We on a sinking ship?”
“By no means.” The Superior-turned-revolutionary threw an arm around her shoulders. “We are aboard a ship embarking for shores of prosperity, shores of equality, shores of freedom! A ship headed for a Great Change! But the voyage will not be easy. At midday tomorrow, our fair city will pass through quite the storm. Yes, my friends!” He turned towards the crowded warehouse, throwing up his hands. “Tomorrow is the day!”
And the Breakers and Burners broke into thunderous applause.
Welcome to the Future
The spike-topped wall seemed better suited to a prison than a manufactory, and Savine felt far from comfortable stepping through its iron-faced gate. Her monthly agonies had dwindled to a nagging ache, but the summer heat was more oppressive even than yesterday, and her sense of unease had been steadily growing all the way through Valbeck from the hill as her carriage clattered down murky streets strangely empty, oddly quiet, towards the river.
The three towering sheds were unlovely buildings of soot-streaked brickwork with few windows and no adornments. Even through the thick-soled boots she had chosen, Savine could feel the cobbles of the yard buzz with the movement of the great machines inside. Men slouched sullen about the yard, loading and unloading wagons, grey-clothed and grey-skinned, hard eyes turned rudely towards the new arrivals. Savine met the stare of one and he made a great show of spitting. She was reminded of the charming reception Queen Terez received on her rare appearances before the commoners. At least no one was screaming Styrian cunt! at her. But only, she suspected, because she was not Styrian.
“The workers appear less than delighted by my visit,” murmured Savine.
Vallimir snorted. “If there is a way to delight the workers, I have yet to find it. Managing soldiers was considerably more straightforward.”
“One can have perfectly cordial relationships with one’s competitors, but rarely with one’s employees.” Savine glanced over her shoulder at the ten armoured guards filing through the gate after them, fingers tickling their weapons. It did nothing for her nerves that heavily armed men looked even more nervous than she did. “Do we really need such a conspicuous escort?”
“Merely a precaution,” said Vallimir as he led Savine, Lisbit and the rest of their party across the yard. “Superior Risinau suggested you have a dozen Practicals about you at all times.”
“That seems… excessive.” Even for the daughter of the Union’s most hated man.
“I felt their presence would only inflame tensions. In order to make the mill profitable, certain… efficiencies have been necessary. Longer hours and shorter breaks. Reductions in the budgets for food and living quarters. Punishments for talking or whistling.”
Savine nodded approvingly. “Sensible economies.”
“But several of the older hands banded together to oppose them and had to be laid off. There was some violence. It became necessary to forbid any organising among the workers, though that was made easier by the king’s new laws against congregation.” Savine’s father’s new laws, in fact, which she had taken a personal hand in drafting. “Then the new methods instituted in our third shed have caused…” Vallimir frowned towards the newest of the three buildings, longer, lower and with even narrower windows in its already grubby walls. “Considerable ill will.”
“I often find the more effective the method, the more ill will it causes. Perhaps we should begin our tour there.”
Vallimir winced. “I am not sure you would be… comfortable inside. It is extremely noisy. Very warm. Not at all a suitable place for a lady of your standing.”
“Oh, come now, Colonel,” she said, already striding towards it, “on my mother’s side, I am from tough common stock.”
“I am aware. I knew your uncle.”
“Lord Marshal West?” The man had died before she was born, but her mother sometimes spoke of him. If you counted the sentimental platitudes one used about family long in their grave.
“He once challenged me to a duel, in fact.”
“Really?” Her interest piqued by that flash of an honest recollection. “Over what?”
“Rash words I have often regretted. You remind me of him, in a way. He was a very driven man. Very committed.” Vallimir glanced towards her as he produced a key and unlocked the door. “And he could be quite terrifying.” The hum of machinery became a roar as he pushed it wide.
Inside, the whole place shook with the endless anger of the engines. The slap of belts, the clatter of cogs, the rattle of shuttles, the shrieking of metal under furious pressure. The manufactory floor was dug deep into
the ground so they stood at a kind of balcony. Savine stepped to the rail, frowning down at the workers, and paused, wondering if there was some trick of perspective.
But no.
“They are children.” She let no emotion enter her voice at the word. Hundreds of children, lean and filthy, gathered in long rows about the looms, darting among the machines, rolling spindles of yarn as tall as they were, bent under bolts of finished cloth.
“If Valbeck has one commodity in abundance,” shouted Vallimir in her ear, “it is orphaned and abandoned children. Paupers, serving only as a burden to the state. Here we provide them with useful occupation.” He gave a grim smile. “Welcome… to the future.”
In one corner of the shed there were large shelves, five or six high, equipped with sliding ladders but holding only rags. As Savine watched, a tangle-haired girl crawled from one. Their beds, then. They lived in this place. The smell was nauseating, the heat crushing, the noise thunderous, the combination positively hellish.
She stifled a cough as she tried to speak again. Even up here on the balcony, the air was heavy with dust, the shafts of light from the narrow windows swarming with motes. “Wages are minimal, I imagine?”
Vallimir gave a strange grimace. “That is the beauty of this scheme. Aside from a stipend to the poor house from which they are acquired, and minimal expenditure on food and clothing, they receive no wages. They can, in effect… be purchased.”
“Purchased.” Savine let no emotion enter her voice at that word, either. “Like any other piece of machinery.”
She looked down at her new sword-belt. She had been delighted when it was delivered the other day. Quite the masterpiece. Sipanese leather, with gem-studded silver panels showing scenes from the Fall of Juvens. How many children could she have bought for the same money? How many had she bought?
A Little Hatred Page 23