A Little Hatred

by Joe Abercrombie

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Savine’s mother squeezed her eyes shut and a tear black with powder streaked her cheek. “He’s your brother.”

  “He’s…” Savine stared, cold and prickling all over. “He’s what?”

  Her mother opened her pink-rimmed eyes. She looked calm, now. She slipped her hands from Savine’s, took Savine’s in hers, pressed them tightly. “Before the king… was the king. Before anyone guessed he’d ever be the king. We… he and I… were involved.”

  “What do you mean, involved?” breathed Savine. The king had always behaved so strangely around her. So curious. So solicitous.

  “We were lovers.” Her mother gave a helpless shrug. “Then everyone found out he was King Guslav’s bastard, and he was elected king himself and had to marry where politics dictated. But I… was already with child.”

  Savine was having trouble getting a proper breath. The way the king had looked at her, at the last meeting of the Solar Society. That haunted look…

  “It was a dangerous time,” said her mother. “The Gurkish had just invaded. Lord Brock had rebelled against the Crown. The monarchy was hanging by a thread. To protect me… to protect you… your father,” and she winced, realising that the word could not quite fit the Arch Lector any more, “offered to marry me.” And she guiltily bit her lip. Like a little girl caught stealing biscuits.

  “I’m the king’s bastard?” Savine jerked her hands from her mother’s grip.

  “Savine—”

  “I’m the king’s fucking bastard, and my father’s not my father?” She wobbled to her feet, stumbling back as though she’d been slapped.

  “Please, listen to me—”

  Savine pressed her fingers to her temples. Her head was throbbing. She ripped her wig off and flung it into the corner. “I’m the king’s bastard, my father’s not my father, and I’ve been sucking my brother’s cock?” she screamed.

  “Keep your voice down,” hissed her mother, starting up from the settle.

  “My fucking voice?” Savine clutched at her neck. “I’m going to be sick.”

  She was sick, just a little. An acrid, wine-tasting tickle that she managed to choke back down, hunched over.

  “I’m so sorry,” murmured her mother, patting her back as though that might do the slightest good. “I’m so sorry.” She took Savine’s face in her hands and twisted it towards her. Twisted it with surprising firmness. “But you cannot tell anyone. Not anyone. Especially not Orso.”

  “I have to tell him something,” whispered Savine.

  “Then tell him no,” said her mother. “Tell him no and leave it at that.”

  Drinks with Mother

  “When we heading North, then?” asked Yolk.

  Tunny looked down his nose at him as if at a woodlouse turned over and unable to right itself. “You didn’t hear?”

  Yolk looked blank. His favourite expression. “Didn’t hear what?”

  Forest let vent two perfect streams of curling smoke from his nostrils. He was as accomplished a smoker as he was a hat-wearer and military organiser. “Our new Lord Governor of Angland, Leo dan Brock, won a duel against Stour Nightfall, son of Black Calder and heir to the throne of the North and by all accounts a most fearsome opponent.”

  “A manly duel, Northern style!” Orso thumped the table. “Man against man, in a Circle of men’s men! Blood on the snow and all that. Men’s blood, one presumes.”

  “Probably a bit far south for snow this time of year,” observed Tunny. “Though not for blood.”

  “Tell me he got his damn fool head split doing it,” said Yolk.

  “He was by all accounts picturesquely wounded,” grunted Orso, “but his skull remains intact.”

  “Truly, there’s no justice,” added Tunny.

  “This comes as a surprise?”

  “For some reason, I never stop hoping.”

  “War in the North is over,” said Forest. “Uffrith is back in the Dogman’s hands and the Protectorate just as it was before.”

  “Little singed, maybe.”

  “So the Young Lion stole all the glory?” moaned Yolk.

  “Glory just sticks to some men.” Orso glanced down at his hands and turned them thoughtfully over. “Others it slides right off.”

  “Like water off a duck,” threw in Hildi, from her place on the settle.

  “I’ve always been repellent to glory,” observed Tunny, “and have no regrets.”

  “No regrets?” said Orso. “What about the two hundred people we left gibbetted on the road to Valbeck?”

  “Not my fault.”

  “Not yours, either, Your Highness,” added Forest.

  “I suspect I will take much of the blame in some quarters.”

  Tunny shrugged. “The rich folk seem to like you more than ever.” It was true that a polite crowd of well-dressed well-wishers had been gathered at the gates of Adua to welcome him. “And they can express their love financially.”

  “True,” said Yolk, “I mean, what’s the love of the poor actually worth?”

  “Oh, indeed,” said Orso. “All the best kings had utter contempt for the majority of their subjects.”

  He had intended his sarcasm to be withering but Yolk managed to miss it even so. “Exactly,” he said. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  The queen waited, perched with rigid discipline on one of her uncomfortable gilded chairs in the centre of her vast salon. Four musicians smiled radiantly as they sawed out soothing music in a distant corner.

  “Orso! The conquering hero!” She rose to greet him, which was an almost unprecedented honour, gave him a chilly kiss on the cheek, then a chilly pat on the same spot for good measure. “I have never been prouder of you.”

  “I fear I have not set a high standard in that regard.”

  “Even so.”

  Orso went straight to the decanter and pulled out the stopper. It was hard to think of a good reason for the stopper ever to be in, really. “I find I can hardly compete with the victories of the Young Lion, however.”

  Queen Terez flared her nostrils magnificently. “You won without drawing your sword. Your grandfather always said that was the best kind of victory. He would have been proud of you, too.”

  Orso’s grandfather and namesake, Grand Duke Orso of Talins, had by most accounts been a tyrant despised the length of Styria. But then he had been defeated, deposed and assassinated, and such men generally receive poor reports from posterity. “I tricked some peasants into surrendering then hanged them,” he said as he poured. “That’s what the history books will say.”

  “The history books will say whatever you order the historians to write. You will be a king, Orso. You cannot think of the few, but must consider the welfare of the many. I trust this little episode has quenched your thirst for glory for the time being, at least.”

  “I suspect it has quenched it for all time. In fact… I’ve been thinking about my dynastic responsibilities. Marriage, you know.”

  The queen’s head snapped towards him like that of a hawk that has spotted a vole in the bracken. “You mean it?”

  “I do.”

  She snapped her fingers. “The eldest daughter of the Duke of Nicante is coming of age and that family is almost indecently fertile. She is rumoured to have a wonderfully gentle temperament—”

  Orso chuckled. “I’m not sure gentle temperaments are my type.”

  “You have a type, now?”

  “Actually, I do.”

  Actually, there was one woman for him and the rest were all dross. The instant he had seen her in his tent, he had known he was hopelessly in love. The dignity. The resilience. The sheer guts of the woman, unbowed by all hardship. She needed no jewels, no powder, no wigs. She was more beautiful without them. He knew he didn’t deserve her, but he wanted to deserve her, and in working to deserve her, he might come actually to deserve her. Or something. The weather was dreary outside, rain pattering on the great windows, gusts scattering brown leav
es across the palace gardens, but as Orso thought about Savine, it was as if the sun came out and poured its warmth upon him.

  His mother caught his blissful grin forming and narrowed her eyes. “Why do I feel you already have a lady in mind?”

  “Because I have nothing on my mind but one particular lady.” The queen would not be happy. But the time comes in every man’s life when he must set his mother’s opinions to one side. He took a deep breath and sat forward. “Mother—”

  He was interrupted by a knock at the door. It creaked open a crack and Hildi’s head slid through. She fumbled off her cap to reveal blonde curls for some reason cropped short. “I’ve got that message you’ve been waiting for, Your Highness.” And she showed the letter. Just a square of white paper with a white seal. Such a small package to hold all his dreams.

  “Yes, yes!” snapped Orso, nearly jumping out of his seat with excitement. “Come, come!”

  It seemed to take her an age to shuffle nervously across the great expanse of gleaming tiles, then to stop and give the queen a wobbling curtsy. “Your Majesty—”

  “Never mind that!” snapped Orso, snatching the letter from her hand. He could not remember ever being so eager for anything in his life. He fumbled with the seal but his hands were clumsy as mittens and he ended up ripping it wide in his haste. His heart was pounding. His sight was swimming with nerves. But it was brief, so it could only be a yes. Surely a yes. What else could it be?

  He closed his eyes, letting the music soothe him, took a long breath, composed himself, and read.

  My answer must be no. I would ask you not to contact me again. Ever.

  Savine.

  That was all.

  His first feeling was stunned disbelief. Could she have turned him down? How could she have turned him down? He had been so sure this was what they both wanted.

  He read it again. And then a third time. My answer must be no.

  And now came a stab of hot fury. Did she have to do it so fucking rudely? So savagely? With a note? With a line? He had offered her everything he had, everything he was, and she had trodden on his cock while she kicked his guts out. He crushed the note up in his trembling fist.

  “Bad news?” asked his mother.

  “Nothing to worry about,” he somehow heard himself saying in the usual bored drawl.

  And now came a flood of cold loss. Like that, all his dreams were ruined. It was a note that left no room for hope. No room for wheedling, even by a veteran wheedler like him. I would ask you not to contact me again. Ever. There would never be another woman who understood him the way she did. There would never be another woman like her at all. She had never felt so dazzlingly desirable as she did now he could never have her.

  “Is there a reply?” asked Hildi, frowning.

  “No,” he managed to say, “no reply.” What reply could there be to that?

  And now came the slow welling up of self-hatred, steadily becoming a flood of utter disgust. Familiar, at least. As the foul waters closed over his head, he did not even struggle. What was the point? He had been so sure this was what he wanted, he had hardly stopped to consider her desires. Everyone said he was epically self-centred, after all. It was no great surprise that everyone turned out to be right. Why would a woman like her want a man like him? Why would any woman? Aside from a crown, some bad jokes and a shitty reputation, what did he really have to offer?

  “We must plan a grand triumph for you!” His mother’s eyes sparkled at the thought of how right she would finally be proved in the eyes of the world. “The nation shall bear witness to the vindication of our family. I shall make sure of it.”

  And now he slid into a bog of depression. Savine had been the approaching dawn, and now the sun was snuffed out and he was plunged into eternal gloom. He watched the rain thicken outside. It wasn’t only her that he had lost, but the better man he could have been with her beside him, the better Union they might have forged together. He felt himself wilting, melting down his chair into a sagging slump. He scarcely had the energy to lift his head. Scarcely had the energy to breathe.

  He had tried, too little and too late, to make something of himself. The result was two hundred corpses gibbetted on the road to Valbeck and a dismissive note.

  “And then we have a wedding to plan. As soon as we can find someone of your type.”

  Why did he bother? Why did he bother with anything?

  He drained his glass. The best Osprian, but it was sawdust on his tongue. He heaved up a sigh that actually hurt.

  He wanted to cry.

  “Pour me another, would you?” he murmured.

  Questions

  “It’s me,” said Tallow, with his flair for stating the obvious. Vick had known it would be him. Wasn’t as if she got a lot of visitors.

  She took his shoulder and slipped him past into the narrow hall. Not much room but she was thinner even than usual after Valbeck and Tallow had always been a scrap of nothing. She glanced around the ill-lit yard outside. A habit from the camps, kept ever since the camps. But there was no one watching. The only sound was the dripping from a broken gutter, high above.

  “You all right?” she asked Tallow as she shouldered the door shut and slid both the heavy bolts.

  “You were the one stuck in the city,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “’Course not,” he said, giving his shoes a sad grin. “You’re carved out o’ wood. Nothing touches you.”

  He was more like her brother every time she saw him. Or maybe it was her memory that was changing. Making her brother more like Tallow. So she could save him this time around, maybe. How pathetic would that be? Memory could betray you, she’d seen it a hundred times. Chop things about until they suited you better. You have to be on guard all the time. Against everyone else. Against yourself.

  She turned away, making sure he didn’t catch any hint of what she was thinking. Show them a weakness, they’ll find a way to use it.

  “You see your sister?” she asked as she led him from the cramped hall into the cramped dining room.

  “I saw her.”

  “She’s well?”

  Tallow nodded in a way that seemed to say no thanks to you. Or maybe she just thought it did. She nudged a chair out with her boot and he slipped into it, around the squares board. Wasn’t easy, even thin as he was.

  “What’s this?”

  She realised, with an odd little stab of annoyance, that he was looking down at Sibalt’s book. The Life of Dab Sweet. Open at that page. The one it fell open at. That etching of a lone rider, looking out across the endless grass and the endless sky.

  Felt decidedly unpleasant, having someone else look at it. Like they were looking inside her head, at her secret dreams. “It’s the Far Country,” she said, softly.

  “Pretty.”

  She should’ve thrown the damn thing away. She reached out and snapped it shut. “It’s a made-up picture in a book full of lies.” And she tossed it on the dusty windowsill.

  Tallow shrank down into his shoulders. “Guess so.”

  She felt a little bad, then, for snapping. “Can I get you something?” she grunted. That was what you were supposed to do, when you had a guest. However unwilling a guest.

  “What have you got?”

  She thought about that for a moment. “Nothing.”

  “I’ll take a double serving o’ that, then.” Tallow glanced about her narrow, bare apartment with those big eyes of his, the walls mottled with damp around the dirty window. “So this is what you do it for?”

  “What?”

  “All this.” He raised his arms and let them hopelessly drop. Had to be admitted, looking with his fresh eyes, it was less than impressive. Vick was only here when she had nowhere else to be.

  “Would you feel happier if I was living like a queen?”

  “I’d understand it, at least.” He leaned towards her across the narrow table. If she’d leaned towards him the same way, they’d have butted heads in the m
iddle. “They hanged two hundred people, you know. ’Cause of what we did.”

  “Two hundred traitors.” She poked at the table under his face with her pointing finger. “Because of what they did. How many died in their idiot uprising? Don’t fool yourself there was some right side to this. Don’t fool yourself there was a noble path we didn’t take. We took the only path there was. Regret it if you please, but I won’t!” She realised he was sat back now, and she was sat forward, almost shouting. She lowered her voice with an effort. Less furious denial, more statement of fact. “I won’t. Here.” She slipped the coin from her pocket and put it down on the table between them with a deliberate snap. The head of Jezal the First frowned up from a freshly minted golden twenty-mark piece.

  “What’s this for?” asked Tallow.

  “You did a good job in Valbeck. You moved quick. You took the initiative.”

  “I just did what you told me.”

  “You did it well.”

  He stared down at that golden coin. “Can’t say I feel too proud of myself.”

  “I only care about what you do. How you feel about it is up to you. But leave the coin, if it bothers you that much.”

  He swallowed, sharp knobble on the front of his throat shifting, then he reached out and swept the coin off the table. Just like she’d known he would. She had to smile at that. Hell, but he was like her brother.

  “We’re not all carved out o’ wood,” he grunted.

  “Give it a while,” she said. “You’ll get there.”

  “Inquisitor Teufel!” Glokta grinned as though her visit was a delightful surprise rather than a meeting he’d demanded and she couldn’t refuse. He patted the bench beside him. “Do sit.”

  Sitting close to other people always made her uncomfortable. But then she’d slept next to strangers in the camps. Packed together in the stinking straw like piglets in a litter. Better that than freeze. Better this than offend His Eminence.

  She sat, looking out across the park, tugging her coat tight about her. It was a clear, crisp day, the odd gust of wind sweeping ripples in the surface of the lake, bringing flurries of leaves down from the trees. Stirring them about the black boots of the watchful Practicals.