A Little Hatred

by Joe Abercrombie

  “Stour Nightfall,” he mumbled. Even speaking was a mighty effort then, each word a great stone to lift. “I spare… your life.”

  Dizzy as hell, and he dropped on one knee. Down in the Circle of turf damp with dew, damp with his own blood.

  “Bit dizzy,” he said, and flopped over sideways.

  Best lie down.

  The Poor Pay the Price

  “Amnesty,” said Malmer. “We give up our arms. We give up our hostages. We all go free.”

  Silence, while everyone thought over what that meant. It was a lot more than they’d expected that morning, maybe. But so much less than they’d dreamed of a few weeks before.

  It was a sorry little meeting, in a looted warehouse with a chill breeze blowing through the broken doors. Fifteen Breakers, each in charge of a different district of Valbeck. As far as anyone was in charge of the chaotic warren of garbage the city had been reduced to. The gaunt and grim who’d stayed to the bitter end. They would’ve liked to call themselves the most loyal, but maybe they were just the ones with most to lose.

  Broad took a breath. He should never have got involved. He’d known it then and he knew it now. But he’d told himself things might change. Smashed his face against the wall again, sure that this time it wouldn’t hurt. For all his promises to be a new man, somehow he always made the same wrong choices.

  “Full pardons?” asked a woman with a pinched-in grey face.

  Heron nodded, though he didn’t look all that convinced. “So His Highness tells us.”

  “What did that bastard Pike have to say?” asked Sarlby.

  “He didn’t like it,” said Vick. “But he didn’t disagree.”

  “You trust Orso?” asked Broad.

  “Best never to make a decision based on trust,” said Vick, like trust was some fantastic beast only children believed in. “Just on what’s best for most.”

  Malmer gave a sigh that sounded like it rose from the very dregs of a well of weariness. “Coming to something, when revolutionaries pin their hopes on the crown prince. He seems decent enough, though, considering. Far better than expected.”

  “Expectations could hardly have been lower,” said Vick, frowning, as always. She’d some frown on her, that woman.

  Malmer gave a helpless shrug. “Guess I trust him more than most of the royal family. But then, I trusted Risinau. Look where that got us.”

  “Truth is, we’ve no choice,” said Heron. “We’re out of food. We didn’t do this to starve our own people.”

  “Sometimes I wonder why we did do it.”

  Couple of months ago at those big meetings, folk would’ve fallen over themselves to list all the wrongs they’d die to put right. Now no one offered Malmer a reason. The causes had turned hazy, lately. Like far-off chimneys through the vapours, you could hardly tell if they were there or just a trick of your mind.

  “Then that’s it, I reckon,” said Malmer. “Send word to everyone who’s still listening. We pull down the barricades. We open the city. We surrender.”

  One by one, the others nodded their agreement. Mournful, like that nod cost a little piece of themselves. But no one could see another way. The uprising was done.

  “Sticks in my gullet,” said Sarlby, “giving up.”

  Broad clapped him on the shoulder. “Be thankful you’ve got something in your gullet.”

  There was still a tang of old burning on the air outside. Of old burning and new rot. Ashes blew down the street, settling on the rubbish like little drifts of black snow. Not far off stood the shell of a gutted mill, blackened rafters sticking naked into the pale sky, blackened windows gaping empty.

  “And this was supposed to be our Great Change.” Malmer slowly shook his white head. Broad could’ve sworn he’d turned whiter the last few days. “What a fucking disaster.”

  “I’m not crying for those owners lost their mills,” snapped Sarlby. “I can tell you that.”

  “What about the jobs in those mills?” asked Vick. “Daresay the rich folk whose investments went up in smoke will muddle through. What about the poor folk lost their livings?”

  “Thought we were doing good,” said Malmer, worn face crunched up with wrinkled disbelief. “Sure we were doing good.”

  “Good and bad aren’t as easy to tell apart as you’d think,” said Vick. “Mostly it’s a matter of where you look at ’em from.”

  “That’s the sorry truth,” grunted Broad.

  Malmer frowned towards that burned-out shell. “It’s the poor pay the price, again.”

  Broad remembered Musselia after the sack. The slums looted and turned into smouldering ruins, corpses scattered in the streets. But the palace untouched on the high ground above the smoke. He worked his mouth and spat. “Always the poor pay the price.”

  Folk poured out of Valbeck that night. Columns of them snaking past the abandoned barricades and across the fields. A few were Breakers, going to surrender their arms and take their chances at amnesty. Most were folk who’d heard there might be food.

  The first to meet the wary queue of the filthy, hungry and dispossessed were smiling women, handing out loaves. You might’ve thought they had undiluted hope rather than bread in their barrows for the good humour they spread down the column. A few days before, folk couldn’t have found language harsh enough to describe Crown Prince Orso. A bit of bread in their bellies and they were frothing over with praise for him. Broad was no better than the rest as he caught that heavenly smell of baking, mouth watering up a rainstorm. Seeing May and Liddy’s smiles when they ate their share was a better gift even than the bread itself. Ardee didn’t smile. Broad didn’t think he’d ever seen her smile. Just chewed, staring at her shuffling feet, eyes big and damp in her thin, thin face.

  Wasn’t long after the taste of bread faded that Broad was back to the worried old killer he’d been that morning. The sun slunk down towards distant woods and the cold came on and they reached a knot of blank-faced soldiers collecting weapons. There was a mismatched arsenal heaped up on either side of the road—old pikestaffs, rusted swords, butchers’ cleavers and gardener’s hatchets.

  “I’m a shoemaker,” a man was grumbling as an officer looked over a set of gleaming blades. “How can I work without my knives?”

  “You want something, you have to give something up. On you go.”

  Handing in a weapon had felt too close to an admission of guilt to Broad. He’d thrown his down a well before they left and been glad to see them go. Might be it’s people who kill people, but you can’t stab a man with a blade you haven’t got.

  “I’ve got nothing,” he said to the officer in charge, shifting his lenses on his nose as if to imply he was a man of learning. “Wouldn’t know what to do with a blade.”

  The officer looked him up and down as if that was a bit too rich for either one of them to swallow, but he jerked his head onwards.

  Another hour of shuffling and the sky started to darken, the mood darkening with it. Folk muttered that the Inquisition were up ahead, asking questions. Pulling people from the column. Anyone who’d been tight with the Breakers. Soldiers on horseback prowled the fields to either side of the road, torches in gauntleted fists. Some wanted to think the best. Others were sure they’d all be hanged for treason on the spot. No one left, though. Like lambs queueing up for the slaughterman’s knife, they only huddled tighter together and kept plodding towards the bleak unknown.

  “Don’t like this,” whispered Liddy.

  Broad didn’t like it much, either. After what he’d done in Valbeck, and what he’d done on his farm, and what he’d done in Styria, could he really hope to wriggle free now? It’s coming to something when you reassure yourself with the thought that there’s no justice in the world.

  A good score of soldiers were gathered where the road passed through a gate in a tumbledown wall, a good score of masked Practicals with them. All under the supervision of a black-coated Inquisitor, torchlight finding the hollows in his pale face and making him look quite the dem
on. While Broad was watching, two men were led away to the side and a kind of nervous moan spread through the column. He felt a sudden desire to run, glanced about for his best route of escape.

  “Calm yourselves!” called the Inquisitor. “His Highness the crown prince has offered a full amnesty! There are some questions to be asked and some questions to be answered, that is all. No one will be hurt, you have my word, the word of Superior Pike and the word of Crown Prince Orso himself. There is soup for you all a little further on.”

  That was what it came to. You might die, but you might get soup. Shame was, it more or less worked on Broad.

  “Got to trust ’em,” he muttered. “We’ve come too far now.”

  “We could head back,” hissed Liddy, forehead creased with worry.

  “They’d see us, think we’ve something to hide. Might be best if you two move away from me.” Might’ve been best if they’d moved away from him a long time ago. But May wouldn’t hear of it.

  “No! We’re not splitting up. You’ve a better chance sticking—”

  “What the hell?” While they’d been arguing, Ardee had stepped stiffly from the queue and walked straight towards the Inquisitor. “What’s she doing?” If that useless bloody stray drew the wrong sort of attention, they’d be finished. But there was nothing Broad could do. Dive from the column to grab her, he’d only make it worse.

  One of the Practicals blocked her path, stick gripped tight in his fists. “Get back with the others, girl.”

  “I am Savine dan Glokta!” she called in a ringing voice that seemed to carry for miles in the still evening. “Daughter of His Eminence the Arch Lector! I demand to speak to Crown Prince Orso at once!”

  There was a pause while the Inquisitor stared at her. While the Practicals stared at her. While everyone stared at her, Broad included. He couldn’t believe it. After all they’d done for her, she’d land them on the scaffold.

  But there was something different about her voice. So pure, and smooth, and commanding. Something different about the way she held herself, stiffly upright with her shoulders back, her long, thin neck stretched out and her sharp jaw proudly raised. She looked half a head taller of a sudden.

  “At once!” she snarled at the Inquisitor.

  He stared at her for a moment longer, then bowed his head. “Of course.”

  The Practical looked as dumbstruck as a man could with a mask on. “We’re just going to—”

  “If this young lady is who she claims to be then she deserves our immediate assistance. If she is not… we’ll soon find out. And the world feels like a brighter place if you believe in people’s fundamental honesty.” He offered his hand with extravagant politeness.

  “Thank you, Inquisitor,” she said. “These three are with me.”

  The Inquisitor gave Broad a doubtful look up and down. “I cannot exempt everyone—”

  “Of course not,” said Ardee. Or Savine. Or whoever the hell she was. “Just these three. I must insist.”

  “Very well.” The Inquisitor beckoned them to follow. Broad looked at Liddy, but what could she do? What could any of them do?

  “Better hope that girl’s telling the truth,” the Practical growled in Broad’s ear as he followed them up the road through the gathering darkness.

  “I’m surprised as you are,” muttered Broad, then nearly bit his tongue as the man shoved him and his boot caught in a rut. He was sorely tempted to punch him in the head, but it would only have got him killed and perhaps his family, too. Fighting every fight you’re offered doesn’t make you a big man, it makes you a fool.

  “Did you know about this?” he hissed out of the corner of his mouth at May.

  “’Course I did. I arranged it.”

  “You bloody what?”

  Liddy was staring at her from the other side. “What did you do, May?”

  “What I had to.” May stared straight ahead, jaw muscles working on the side of her face. “It’s high time someone put this family first.”

  The New Woman

  Savine chewed at her cracked lips. She fussed at the frayed hems of the horrible, over-starched dress they had given her. She picked at the peeling skin around her broken fingernails.

  She used to take such particular care over her hands. Their elegance had often been commented upon. Now, however she tugged at her sleeves, there was no hiding the scabs, cracks, callouses. All she had been through, cut into her crooked fingers.

  She was no longer Ardee, the little lost waif. But she certainly was not Savine dan Glokta, feared and fearless scorpion-queen of investors. She used to be drawn to her reflection like a bee to a bloom. Now she shunned the mirror, dreading what she might see there. But then, she dreaded everything.

  She knew she should have felt overwhelming relief to no longer be hungry. Joy to finally be clean. Blubbing gratitude for all the unlikely chances that had led to her salvation. She knew few who had been trapped in Valbeck were anywhere near so fortunate.

  But all she felt was a constant, nagging terror. More like a hostage taken than a prisoner freed. As bad as when she fled through the crazed streets of Valbeck on the day of the uprising. Worse, because then fear had made sense. Now, she was supposed to be safe.

  She heard voices outside and spun, heart suddenly pounding. On some sluggish instinct from long ago, she thought of arranging herself to best advantage. A lady of taste should always be discovered in the midst of something more important. She reached up to adjust her wig, realised there was nothing there but her own shapeless, graceless, colourless fuzz. She ended up frozen, less a beauty arranged for a portrait, more a burglar surprised in a darkened hallway, one scabbed hand twisting the other as someone ripped the flap aside and ducked into the tent.

  Orso.

  The red and gold of his uniform looked impossibly vivid. In Valbeck, towards the end, everything had been the colour of dirt. He looked weightier than he used to. Or perhaps she was so used to seeing everyone famished that the merely well fed looked like members of another species. He had the strangest expression when he saw her. Horror? Pity? Disgust? He gave a kind of shudder and put a hand over his eyes, as though the sight of her was painful.

  “It is you,” he whispered. “Thank the Fates.” He took a step towards her but stopped awkwardly mid-stride. “Are you… hurt?”

  “No.” They both knew she was lying, and not even with any conviction. She was mauled inside and out. She was torn apart and badly stitched back together.

  “Good.” He forced a crooked smile. “You look well.”

  She could not smother a bark of bitter laughter. “You always were a champion liar, Orso, but that one’s a little too big even for you to lift.”

  “You look beautiful to me,” he said, holding her eye. “Whatever you might think.”

  She had no idea what to say to that. She was a wretched understudy, kicked from the wings onto the empty stage and gazing horrified towards the crowd, not knowing her lines. Not even knowing the play.

  When she finally spoke, it was a shock how calm she sounded. “There were some people with me. A family. I wouldn’t have—”

  “They are safe and cared for. You don’t have to worry about anything.”

  “Not worry,” she whispered. She was nothing more than a sheaf of worries, held together by a shitty dress. “I’m sorry… you had to come here,” she managed to dredge up. “I know how much… you wanted to go North.”

  “When I heard you were in danger, I didn’t think twice. I didn’t think once. Not that your father or mine were going to give me any choice. Probably best I leave the North to men’s men like Leo dan Brock. I think we can all agree I’m not really cut out to be a soldier.”

  “The uniform suits you.”

  “I may be a sheep on the battlefield, but when it comes to wearing the uniforms, I’m an absolute tiger.”

  There had been a time she could talk for hours and beautifully say nothing. Now it felt obscene. Swapping light-hearted pleasantries while one party is sh
itting themselves all over the floor.

  She felt an entirely unreasonable stab of fury. Why hadn’t he come sooner? Why had he sat out here waiting, the useless fucking coward? She wanted to tear at him with her nails. Instead, she vomited up compliments. “From where I stand, it seems you managed the whole business rather well.”

  “More by luck than skill, I rather think.”

  “Everyone’s alive.” A flash of blood spattering that guard’s face as his arm was dragged into the grinding gears. Savine had to cough, swallow acid. “Most. Most are.”

  “You are. That’s all that matters. I’m so sorry it took me so long. To get here. To find you.” He looked into her eyes with an intensity she could not stand to meet. “To realise… what I feel for you. I don’t see how things can carry on between us… the way they did before.”

  She almost laughed at that. “Of course not.” How could anything be what it was before, ever again?

  “That’s why…” He looked ridiculously nervous. Crown Prince Orso, notorious for caring about nothing. How many women had he disappointed? Hundreds, most likely. He really should have learned to do it better.

  “That’s why…” He took a hard breath. As if readying himself for some great act of courage. Savine lifted her chin. As if to give the headsman an easier task. He looked up at her. Guilty. Haunted. Ashamed.

  Her patience snapped. “Just spit it out!”

  “I want you to marry me!” he blurted. “I mean… shit!” He wobbled awkwardly down to one knee. “This isn’t how I planned it. I haven’t even got a ring!”

  She stared at him in cold astonishment. “What?”

  He took her limp hand in both of his. They felt hot and faintly clammy. “It’s mad, I know it’s mad, but… I love you. It took this to make me realise, but… hear me out.”

  Honestly, she had no words to interrupt him with.

  “I’m shit without you! Utter shit, everyone knows it. But with you… I have the chance of being a worthwhile person. I didn’t come here to save you. The idea’s fucking ridiculous. I came so that you can save me. I’m the last man you’d pick as a king, I know, but you… bloody hell, Savine, you were made to be a queen! There’s no one I admire more. You have all the brains and the guts and the ambition I don’t! Imagine what we could build together. Well, imagine what I could watch you build. Queen Savine.” He gave that boyish, wheedling smirk of his. “It even rhymes.”