A Little Hatred

by Joe Abercrombie

  Vick only broke a silence when she knew she could improve on it. Risinau was the sort of man who’d soon answer his own questions.

  “Thousands! Buried in the loam of Midderland in unmarked pits beside the roadways. And yet Casamir is remembered as a hero. A great king. And all those marvellous roads. What a gift to posterity.” Risinau gave a snort of contempt. “How often have I walked through this square and gazed up at this paean to a tyrant, this symbol of oppression?”

  “No doubt it’s a stain on the Union’s past.” Risinau turned somewhat reluctantly to Malmer, who stood behind them with Gunnar Broad looming at his shoulder. “But it’s the present that’s worrying me.”

  Most of the Breakers still had the fervour of true believers, or at least pretended to, but Broad pushed his lenses up and frowned at the ruined monument as if he was harbouring some doubts. What happened when the rest began to doubt was anyone’s guess. Risinau didn’t seem worried, though. He was fixed on higher things.

  “And only look at what we have achieved today, brothers!” He clapped Malmer and Broad on their shoulders as if he’d fold them in a great hug. “We have cast Casamir down! In his place we shall raise a new monument to the workers who died for his vainglory!”

  Vick wondered how many workers would be dying for Risinau’s vainglory. No small number was her guess. Casting down a king two centuries dead was one thing. The one currently on the throne might raise stiffer objections. She was starting to think the ex-Superior was at least half-mad. But then sanity was a rare commodity in Valbeck lately, and didn’t look to be coming back into fashion any time soon.

  Practicals were always loitering around Risinau like the dogs around the city’s baking rubbish. They’d put aside the black and taken off the masks, but a sharp eye could still pick out the telltale tan marks around the mouth. They were swarming in the streets near the House of Questions, optimistically renamed the House of Liberty, hunting for anyone disloyal. Or perhaps for anyone loyal. Loyalty had become quite the fluid concept.

  The uprising had changed some things, but others seemed wearily familiar. The workers were still working, the Practicals were still watching, the big hats might have moved around, but the men wearing them were still lecturing everyone else on the way things should be while doing none of the work themselves.

  Some Great Change.

  “Ever since its founding by that charlatan Bayaz, the Union was always built on the backs of the common folk,” Risinau was spouting. “The coming of the machines, the ever-swelling avarice of investors, the raising up of money as our god and the banks its temples, these are only the latest, bleakest appendices to our sorry history. We must dig new theoretical foundations for the nation, my friends!”

  Malmer made another effort at hauling him down to earth. “Honestly, I’m more worried over feeding folk. One of the big granaries got burned that first day. Another’s empty. And this heat’s not helping. Few o’ the pumps in the old town are already running dry. The water from some of the others I wouldn’t give to a dog—”

  “The mind needs nourishment, too, brother.” Risinau waved away a fly, the only things prospering in the stifling city, then grinned at Vick. “No doubt Sibalt told you that.”

  If Sibalt had told her that, she’d likely have broken his nose. It was the sort of shit only someone who’s never starved could serve up.

  “He was a fine man.” Risinau struck his fist against his heart. “I miss him as one might miss a part of oneself. I think… that must be why I so enjoy conversing with you, sister. It is as close as I can come, now, to talking to him.”

  Vick rarely allowed herself the luxury of not liking people. No more often than the luxury of liking them. Either one could get you killed. But she was starting to truly despise Risinau. He was vain as a peacock, selfish as a toddler, and for all his high-flown language, she was starting to suspect he was a fool. Truly clever things are said with short words. Long ones are used to hide stupidity. She could see no way this fat dreamer could have organised this uprising alone. Someone a great deal more formidable had done the heavy lifting. And Vick wanted very much to know who. So she nodded along to his nonsense as though she’d never heard such profound revelations.

  “I arrested him for organising here,” said Risinau, gazing into the distance. “Twenty years ago, just after I joined the Inquisition, and the foundations of the first mills were being laid in Valbeck. We both were young men, then. Idealistic men. I arrested him, but in the end, I could only agree with him. That the workers would be ground down.” Risinau gave a heavy sigh, the plump hand on his plump gut rising and falling with his breath. “I released him. To be my informant, I thought. I told myself that I had turned him, but the truth was… he turned me. We turned each other, maybe. Just the two of us, talking late into the night about the blows we would strike for the common man! Just the two of us… and the Weaver.”

  Vick frowned. “Aren’t you the Weaver?”

  “A title I borrowed from a better man,” mused Risinau, before his fickle attention was snatched away. “We should draw up a manifesto, don’t you think? Demand a workers’ representative on the Closed Council!” He had that gleam in his eye again, as though he was gazing off towards a better tomorrow. “Sibalt would have loved that idea…”

  “Look, brother.” Malmer made one more desperate effort at waking the dreamer, stepping in close, making Risinau’s Practicals bristle. “I knew Sibalt, too, and he was a good man, but he’s dead. There’s lots of good living folk in need. People are hungry, people are sick, people are scared.” He dropped his voice. “I’ll be honest, I’m bloody scared.”

  “You don’t have to be! No one does. We’ve stopped the riots, haven’t we?”

  “In daylight. But there have been beatings. Hangings, even. And not just owners. Foreigners. Servants. Folk are taking the chance to settle scores. To just grab whatever they want. We need order.”

  “And we will have it, brother! Some of the workers have been so long oppressed they were sure to be carried away with their new freedom. But our prisoners are safe in the House of Questions—of Liberty, I should say, the House of Liberty. The mayor, the commander of the city watch, various leading citizens, by which I mean the most greedy and debased—”

  “What about Savine dan Glokta?” asked Malmer. “I heard she was in the city.”

  “She was.” Risinau gave a shudder of distaste. “A most acid, arrogant and impolite young woman. The exploitative avarice of the modern age, personified. Scarcely to be preferred to her father as a dining companion.”

  “It’s not her manners that interest me, it’s what she could buy us.”

  “It would appear she slipped through our fingers. The day of the uprising was rather chaotic, as I say, even more so than expected…”

  Broad gave Malmer a worried glance over his lenses. “Let’s hope Judge doesn’t have her.”

  Vick felt a surge of worry even above the usual. “Why would Judge have her?”

  “The Burners took charge of a big chunk of the old town,” said Broad. “We had to put barricades up. They aren’t too picky over who they hurt.”

  “We’ve no notion what’s going on over there,” said Malmer, “but they’ve taken hostages. I hear Judge set herself up in the Courthouse—”

  “Where else would Judge take up residence?” Risinau gave a little titter, but no one joined him.

  “She says she’s going to start trying her prisoners for crimes against the people.”

  Vick felt the horror creeping up her throat. “How many does she have?”

  “Two hundred?” Malmer gave a hopeless shrug. “Three? Some owners, some rich folk, but plenty of poor folk, too. Collaborators, she’s calling ’em. Anyone ain’t zealous enough for her taste. And her taste is for the very zealous.”

  “We have to get those prisoners,” said Vick. “If we’re ever going to negotiate—”

  “Judge has never been the most reasonable.” Risinau shrugged as though all this w
as a natural disaster in which he was entirely helpless. “Since the uprising, she has turned positively caustic.”

  “Don’t the Burners answer to you?”

  “Well… they’re unpredictable people. Fiery. That’s why they call them Burners, I suppose!” He snorted up another a little titter, then, when he saw Vick had never looked less like laughing, cleared his throat and went on. “I suppose I could ask for her prisoners…”

  “Or you could send me to ask,” she said, catching his eye and holding it. “That’s what Sibalt would’ve done. We need you to work on what really matters. Our manifesto. Our principles. Let me talk to Judge.”

  Risinau liked that. His little eyes twinkled at the thought of paragraphs of neat script. Of high-minded declarations. Of rights and freedoms. “Sister, I begin to see why Sibalt thought so highly of you. Take some men along.”

  “Definitely.” From what she’d seen of Judge, Vick thought she’d better take a lot of men and those ready for violence. As luck had it, her first pick was close by.

  “Brother Gunnar?” She glanced down at the tattoo on Broad’s fist. “I’ve a feeling you could find a few men who know how to fight.”

  He frowned at her over his lenses. “Made a promise to my wife I wouldn’t take any risks.”

  “The bigger risk is if we don’t do it. If the Arch Lector’s only daughter gets hurt, His Eminence won’t rest until every one of us is dangling.” She looked over at Risinau, explaining to his unmasked Practicals how he wanted his new monument to look, living in a dream that was apt to become everyone’s nightmare. “At this rate, his new monument will be our tomb.”

  All Equal

  The Burners ruled here, and it showed.

  There were houses plundered, their broken doors dangling from twisted hinges. There were houses burned out, their windows yawning empty, the fire-blackened brickwork of a fallen chimney stack left in pieces across the sun-baked mud of the roadway. Rubble and glass were scattered, torn clothes and broken furniture flung around as if a great wind had ripped through the neighbourhood. The place stank, worse the further they went. Stank of rot and piss and charred wood and stale smoke, all cooking in the sticky heat.

  Sarlby held his flatbow tight, hard eyes flicking between the doorways. “Weren’t many rich folk around here before the uprising.”

  “Weren’t any,” said Broad.

  “Got robbed and burned out anyway.”

  “Poor folk never feel comfortable around the rich. Given the choice, they’d much rather rob other poor folk.”

  Vick turned to hiss over her shoulder. “Keep up. Keep together.”

  “Can’t say I care much for taking orders from a woman,” grumbled Sarlby, though he took ’em anyway.

  “This one seems to know what she’s doing,” said Broad. “More’n I can say for most of the officers in Styria.”

  “You’ve a point there.”

  “Looking back at the last five years, truth is I make shit decisions. These days I tend to do what the women tell me and assume it’s for the best. Liddy says build a barricade, I build one. May says take in the girl came over it, I take her in.”

  “The one with the clipped head? She’s living with you?”

  “Ardee’s her name, and she can’t do a damn thing. Liddy asked her to help cook and she looked at the pot like she never saw one before.” Broad puffed out his cheeks. “But May’s taken a liking to her, so she stays.”

  “Hard times, I guess,” said Sarlby. “Everyone’s got to do what they can.”

  “Hard times,” echoed Broad. “When do they get softer? That’s the question.”

  All felt far too quiet. He saw a figure lurking in an alleyway, a face at a window quickly vanished, a couple fighting over a bone who scurried away as they came close. Someone had been busy with a paintbrush, there were slogans smeared and spattered everywhere. Painted across whole terraces in letters three strides high. Scrawled across front doors in letters tiny as in a book.

  “What do they say?” asked Sarlby.

  Broad pushed his lenses up his sweaty nose and squinted so he could spell them out. “Fuck the king. Fuck the queen. Fuck them all. Rise up. Take what’s yours. That type o’ thing.”

  “Might steal your clothes,” muttered Sarlby, shaking his head, “but they’ll leave you with a fine slogan. Fucking Burners. Just another kind of arsehole.”

  “That’s politics for you,” grunted Broad. “Arseholes digging up excuses to be arseholes.”

  “High ideals and reality are like oil and water,” muttered Vick. “They don’t mix well.” She squatted at a corner, beckoning them over. “Quiet now. We’re here.”

  Valbeck’s Courthouse had been a grand building, stately steps of coloured marble with stately columns at the top. Someone had been on the roof and torn some copper from the dome, a spider’s web of rafters showing on one side. The big new bank next door must’ve been even grander than the Courthouse not long ago. Now it was just a burned-out shell. Ashes chased each other around Broad’s boots in little swirls as they crossed the empty square in front.

  “Someone tried to hold ’em off here,” he said as they eased up the steps. The doors were battered, one half-torn from its hinges and hanging loose.

  “Let’s hope we do better,” said Sarlby, fingering his bow.

  A pair of statues flanked the entrance. Impossibly stately ladies in noble poses no person ever struck, one holding a book and a sword and the other a broken chain. Justice and freedom, Broad reckoned. The Burners had smashed Freedom’s head off and put a dead cow’s where it used to be, flies crawling at the glassy eyes, dried blood in streaks down the hacked marble. Justice had a great red smile daubed over her frown, and We’ll give you fucking justice painted in drippy letters across her chest.

  Vick strode between them. “Some sense of humour, these Burners.”

  “Oh, aye,” said Broad. “They’re a hoot.”

  The door of the great courtroom wasn’t guarded, but the public benches were scattered with Burners. Or perhaps they were just thieves, pimps, gamblers and drunks. Hard to tell the difference. Some hooted and jeered, shook their fists. Others were passed-out, surrounded by empty bottles. A couple had made a nest from some old curtains and the slurping sound of their hungry kissing echoed about the chamber. A dark-skinned Kantic was huffing so hard on a husk-pipe, Broad wondered if he was trying to replace the Valbeck vapours single-handed. Flies buzzed in the soupy heat and the place stank of unwashed bodies. Someone had daubed a childish cock across the mosaic floor in red paint, but rain had come through the hole in the dome and washed half of it into a rusty puddle.

  Judge sat up on high in the judge’s box, the lunatic ringleader of this carnival of fools, a judge’s four-cornered black hat perched on her riot of red hair. She’d wreathed herself in stolen jewels: fingers crusted with rings and one arm dripping with bracelets, guildsmen’s chains and strings of pearls and ladies’ necklaces in a tawdry tangle across her battered breastplate. She had one long, thin leg slung lazily over the arm of the gilded chair, tattooed writing scrawled blue around and around her bare white thigh. The sight of that leg gave Broad a guilty tickle, deep inside. The same one he got when he felt violence coming.

  The dock held a bony old prisoner, hands tied behind his back, wispy hair stiffened with blood, chin covered with white stubble. The two guards by him wore clown’s motley but the swords they carried were no joke.

  “Ricter dan Vallimir!” sneered Judge. “Quite apart from anything else, you stand accused of having a fucking ‘dan’ in your name—”

  “Guilty!” There were ten whores in the jury box, eight women and two boys, plus a thickset man in an apron who looked decidedly puzzled to be there. One of the whores had leaped up, night bell tinkling around her neck, painted face twisted in a mad snarl. “Shitting guilty!”

  “Ladies of the jury!” Judge whacked at her desk for order with a hatchet, sending splinters flying. “How many times? Fucking silence till I’m done with
the charges!”

  “I reject this court,” growled Vallimir, puffing up his chest. “I denounce it!” Someone on the public benches flung rotten fruit at him. It missed, burst against the far wall, spraying slime across the fine old panelling. “You scum have no authority over me!”

  “Wrong!” shrieked Judge. “Show him our credentials!”

  One of the men in motley clubbed Vallimir across the head and knocked him gasping against the rail. The other dragged him up again, blood from a fresh cut streaking his face.

  Judge shook her ring-covered fist at him. “We have the authority of the fist! We have the authority of sharpened metal! We have the authority of force, you blubbing cunt, which is the only real authority there is.” Some light cheering from the few members of the audience still conscious. “You should know that. You were a soldier. Counsel for the defence? Where’s that fucker Randock?”

  A man rose trembling from behind a table covered with ash, empty bottles and a flyblown chicken carcass. He was stripped naked apart from a pair of broken lenses clinging to his broken nose, hands clasped defensively around his fruits, his back a mass of purple bruises. “No defence, your honour,” he gabbled out, “what defence could there be?” And he gave a hysterical little titter and shrank back into his broken chair which rocked on three legs and nearly dumped him on the floor, much to the amusement of the jury.

  Judge wasn’t laughing. She’d caught sight of Vick and her Breakers as they filtered through the door and spread out around the public benches. Her black eyes seemed to linger on Broad and made that guilty tickle spread all over him. He told himself she was lethal as a scorpion, but that didn’t help. Just the opposite.

  “I don’t remember calling witnesses,” she said, lip curling. “I might have to find you lot in contempt.”