The Trouble with Peace

by Joe Abercrombie

  “Me, too,” said Halder.

  “I’m just… trying to get you to see.” And Broad nudged his lenses back up his nose, back into that little groove. “To see where this is going before we get there and find out… we really didn’t want to get there.” He winced. That’d come out all wrong. Wished he was better with words, but, being honest, words alone rarely got this kind of job done. Malmer had been a good talker. Look where he’d ended up. “What I’m trying to say—”

  “Master Broad?”

  He turned, surprised. There was a single light burning in the office, built up on columns at the back of the warehouse. A figure stood by the steps leading up to it. A woman’s figure, tall and slight and graceful.

  Broad felt an ugly twist of fear in the pit of his stomach. Small women troubled him a lot more than big men these days.

  “Just… hold on,” he said as he stood.

  “He’s not going anywhere.” And Bannerman patted Gaunt on the side of his face and made him flinch.

  “Respect.” Broad strode across the warehouse floor, footsteps echoing. “Not like it costs anything.”

  It was Zuri. She looked worried, and that made him worried. She was about as hard to rattle as anyone Broad had ever met.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She nodded up the steps towards the office. “Lady Savine is here.”

  “She’s here now?”

  “She wants to watch you work.” That sat there for a moment, between them, in the darkness. Doing it was one thing. He could tell himself he had to. Choosing to watch it was another. “Perhaps you could… persuade her not to?”

  Broad winced. “If I could persuade people just by talking I wouldn’t have to persuade ’em the other way.”

  “My scripture teacher used to say that those who strive and fail are as blessed as those who succeed.”

  “That ain’t been my experience.”

  “Trying cannot hurt.”

  “That ain’t been my experience, either,” muttered Broad, following her up the steps.

  From the door, Savine looked her usual, perfectly controlled self. Close up in the lamplight, he could tell something was wrong. There was a sore pinkness around the rims of her nostrils, an eager brightness to her eyes, a strand of hair stray from her wig. Then he spotted the streak of faint stains on her jacket, as shocking as no clothes at all might’ve been on someone else.

  “Lady Savine,” he said. “Sure you want to be here for this?”

  “Your concern is ever so sweet, but I have a strong stomach.”

  “I don’t doubt it. I’m not thinking o’ you.” He dropped his voice. “Truth is, you bring out the worst in me.”

  “Your problem, Master Broad, is you confuse your best with your worst. I need work to continue on the canal first thing tomorrow. First thing. I need it open and making me money.” She snarled the last word, teeth bared, her fury setting his heart thumping. She was a head shorter than him. He’d have been shocked if she was half his weight. But she still scared him. Not because of what she might do. Because of what she might get him to do. “Now make it happen, there’s a darling.”

  Broad glanced over at Zuri, her black eyes gleaming in the darkness. “We all are fingers on God’s hand,” she murmured, with a sorry shrug.

  He looked down at his own hand, knuckles aching as he slowly curled it into a fist. “If you say so.”

  Broad strode back across the warehouse floor, footsteps echoing, towards that pool of light. He told himself he was trying to look eager. To act the part. But he’d never been much of an actor. The truth was he couldn’t wait to get there.

  Gaunt saw something in Broad’s eye, maybe. He twisted in his chair, like he could twist away from what was coming. But neither of them could. “Now wait a—”

  Broad’s tattooed fist thudded into his ribs. The chair rocked back and Bannerman caught it, shoved it forward again. Broad’s other fist sank into Gaunt’s other side and twisted him, eyes bulging. He stayed like that, quivering, face turning purple, for a moment. He got one little wheezing breath in before he puked.

  It spattered in his lap, spattered the warehouse floor, and Bannerman stepped back, frowning down at his shiny new boots. “Oh, we got a gusher.”

  Took an effort, not to keep punching. Took an effort, for Broad to keep some kind of grip on himself and speak. When he did, it was strange how calm his voice sounded. “Time’s up on the civilised approach. Bring him out.”

  Halder came from the darkness, dragging someone with him. A young lad, roped up, gurgling into a gag.

  “No,” croaked Gaunt as Halder shoved the lad down and Bannerman started tying him to a chair. “No, no,” a string of drool still hanging from the corner of his mouth.

  “A man can take a lot, when he thinks he’s fighting the good fight. I know that.” Broad rubbed gently at his knuckles. “But seeing it done to your child? That’s something else.”

  The lad stared around, tears tracking his face. Broad wished he could have a drink. He could almost taste it, on his tongue. A drink made everything easier. Easier at the time, anyway. Harder afterwards. He pushed the thought away.

  “Doubt I’ll be boasting ’bout this, either.” Broad checked his sleeves were rolled up right. That seemed important, for some reason. “But when you toss it into all the other shit I done, it hardly even shifts the level.”

  He glanced up towards the office. Maybe he’d been hoping Savine would be waving at him to stop. But there was no one there. Just the light, to say she was watching. A man has to be able to stop himself. Broad had never been any good at that. He turned back.

  “I’d like to get home.”

  He took his lenses off, tucked them into his shirt pocket and the lamplit faces all turned to smudges.

  “But we’ve got all night if we need it.”

  The lad’s fear, and Gaunt’s horror, and Bannerman’s carelessness, made muddy blurs Broad could hardly tell one from another.

  “I need you to imagine… the state you two will be in by then.”

  The lad’s chair squealed on the warehouse floor as Broad shifted it to just the spot he wanted it.

  “Daresay you’ll both be making that noise soon.”

  Tweaked his sleeves one more time. Routine, routine, routine.

  “The one hell makes.”

  Broad knew how he’d have felt, if he’d been tied helpless in one chair and May in the other. That was why he was pretty sure it’d work.

  “There’ll be no strike!” gasped Gaunt. “There’ll be no strike!”

  Broad straightened up, blinking. “Oh, that’s good news.” Didn’t feel like good news. Deep down inside it felt like quite the disappointment. It was an effort, to make his fists unclench. An effort, to take the lenses from his shirt pocket, hook them back over his ears. Too delicate for his aching fingers. “Your son’ll stay with us, though, just to make sure you don’t have a change of heart.”

  The lad wriggled as Bannerman dragged him back across the warehouse floor into the darkness.

  “Respect!” called Broad, carefully rolling his sleeves down.

  Important to have a routine.

  The Art of Compromise

  “Precision, you dolts!” Filio leaped from his bench to yell at the two swordsmen, their steels drooping as they gaped at him. “Speed is nothing but faff and bluster without precision.”

  He was in his late fifties, but quick and handsome still. Vick might’ve had more grey in her hair than he did. He dropped back beside her, muttering a few more Styrian curses under his breath before switching to common. “Young men these days, eh? They expect the world served to them with golden cutlery!”

  Vick glanced over at Tallow. He looked like he might never have seen cutlery, let alone been served with the golden kind. Even dressed smartly in Practicals’ black, he reminded her of her brother. That apologetic hunching of the shoulders, as if he was always expecting a slap. “Some have to handle hardship,” she said.

&nb
sp; “A little hardship would do my nephew no harm.” Filio shook his head as he watched the swordsmen shuffle about the training circle, boards polished smooth by generations of soft fencing shoes. “He has fast hands, good instincts, but so much to learn.” He groaned at a wayward lunge. “I hope he might represent our city in the Contest in Adua one day, but talent is useless without discipline—” He leaped up again. “Come on, you donkey, think about it!”

  “You competed in the Contest yourself.”

  Filio gave her a sly grin as he sank back down. “Have you been checking up on me?”

  “You lost to the future King Jezal in the semi-final. Took him to a last touch, as I recall.”

  “You were there? You can’t have been ten years old!”

  “Eight.” A good liar sticks to the truth whenever possible. She had been eight when that bout took place, but she’d been huddled in the blackness of a stinking ship’s hold, shackled to a great chain with her family and a few-score other convicts. All on their way to the prison camps of Angland, from which only she would return. She doubted that memory would’ve brought quite the same delight from Filio, though, his eyes shining at the memory of past glories. People are rarely made happy by all the truth.

  “The cheering crowd, the scrape of steel, the Circle laid out before the grandest buildings of the Agriont. The proudest day of my life!” He was a man who admired the pomp and structure of the Union. A man who appreciated precision and discipline. That was why Vick had worn the full dress uniform of an Inquisitor Exempt, boots buffed to a mirror gleam, hair parted with a ruler and ruthlessly bound back. Filio waved towards the flashing blades. “So, you are a devotee of the beautiful science?”

  “Who isn’t?” Though in fact she wasn’t.

  “And I suppose you have come to gather votes?”

  “His Majesty is extremely keen that Westport remain where it belongs, in the Union.”

  “Or His Eminence is?” murmured Filio, eyes never leaving the swordsmen as they jabbed and parried. “And who else have you spoken to?”

  “You are my first call.” He was the fourth, but in Vick’s experience, you had to take care with the pride of moderately powerful men. They bruised much more easily than the truly mighty. “Superior Lorsen spoke of you in glowing terms. A senior Alderman, well respected on all sides. Someone who could be a unifying voice.”

  “I’m flattered, of course, but the Superior is too kind. If unity was simply a matter of the right voice… Westport might not be so terribly disunited.”

  “Perhaps we can help bring your city together. I know you believe in the Union.”

  “I do! I have, all my life. My grandfather was one of those who brought us in to begin with.” Filio’s smile faded. “But there are difficulties. King Jezal was a known quantity but King Orso is young…” Filio winced as his nephew gave a showy flourish of his steels. “And has, by reputation, a surfeit of all the young man’s faults. Your bungling in the wars against Styria was far from helpful. And then we have Solumeo Shudra!” Filio clicked his tongue. “Have you heard him speak?”

  “Briefly.”

  “So persuasive. So compelling. So very… what’s that word… charismatic. Loved as only politicians free from power—and therefore from disappointment—ever can be. He’s brought a lot of people around to his way of seeing things. The Union side have no one in his class. All rather stodgy. But then it’s difficult, isn’t it, to make a passionate argument for what you already have? So boring. Whereas the delightful alternative? A bouquet of promises! A sackful of dreams! A glorious ship of fantasies, undamaged by collision with actually getting anything done.”

  “So His Majesty can count on you to vote the right way?”

  “I wish I could give you an uncompromising Union yes. But I fear, for now…” Filio scrunched up his face with distaste. “I can only go so far as the traditional Styrian perhaps. Here in Westport, at the Crossroads of the World, balanced between the Gurkish and the Styrians and the Union, we have been obliged to make an art of compromise. I have not lasted so long in the politics of the city by sticking too closely to any one set of principles.”

  “Principles are like clothes,” said Vick, straightening her jacket. “You have to change them to suit the audience.”

  “Precisely so. In due course, perhaps we can discuss my price for wearing one set of colours or the other? But it would be folly to pick a side too early. I might put myself on the losing one!”

  Vick supposed she could hardly blame the man. If she’d learned one thing in the camps, after all, it was that you stand with the winners.

  “Then we should talk again. As the future takes shape.” Vick stood, ignoring a sudden twinge through her bad hip, snapped her heels together and gave a stiff bow.

  Filio looked rather pleased with it. But not pleased enough to promise his vote. “I hope so. But let us not waste each other’s time until we are sure of our arithmetic— Ah!” He sprang up as his nephew’s heel scuffed the edge of the Circle. “Watch your back foot, you fool! Precision!”

  A rare breeze washed through Westport’s public gardens, smelling of resin, flowers and spice from the market over the wall. It made a hundred varieties of foliage flap, rustle and whisper. It flung a cloud of spray from the fountain in which the bright spring sun made a short-lived rainbow. Then a shadow fell across Vick.

  “Might I sit?” A broad-shouldered woman stood over her, dressed in loose linens in the southern fashion. Dark-skinned, strong-featured, with a fuzz of clipped grey-black hair.

  “I’m afraid I don’t speak Styrian,” said Vick, in common. Half a lie. She could make herself understood but might not catch every nuance, and in negotiations as delicate as these, she couldn’t risk a mistake. That, and she preferred to be underestimated.

  The woman sighed. “How typical of the Union authorities to send a negotiator who cannot even speak the language.”

  “I thought this was the Crossroads of the World, where all tongues are spoken. You must be Dayep Mozolia.”

  “And you must be Victarine dan Teufel.”

  “I have that misfortune.” Vick had reckoned the aristocratic overtones of her full name, however awkwardly it fit her now, would suit this meeting best. Mozolia was said to be a hard-headed woman of business, so Vick had chosen to present herself as a practical Aduan lady on a trip abroad. Hair neatly braided, coiled and pinned. Top button left undone, for a hint of relaxed approachability. It had been a while since she wore a skirt, and she felt no more comfortable in it than she did in her name. But then, feeling comfortable is a luxury spies are better off without.

  “How do you like the public gardens?” asked Mozolia.

  “Beautiful. If a little thirsty.”

  “They were a gift to the city from a childless heiress to a vast merchant fortune.” Mozolia took her time arranging her long body on the bench. “She travelled the Circle of the World hoping to gather one of every kind of tree that God has made.” She waved towards a towering fur, its lower branches entirely bare, its upper ones still clinging to a few dry needles. “Sadly, not everything flourishes in our climate.” And she glanced at Tallow, wilting in servant’s livery, blotchy face beaded with sweat.

  It had been a bad idea to bring him. Vick knew she was better off alone. A lesson learned fresh in the camps with every family member gone in the frozen ground. Her father, shivering, lips turned blue, shortened fingers turned black. Her mother, always asking what she’d done to deserve this, as though deserve had anything to do with it. All the sweat and pain it had taken to get that medicine for her sister. Turning up with the bottle gripped tight to find her stiff and cold under the threadbare blankets, her brother still holding her hand. Only the two of them left. Vick and her brother. His big, sad eyes, just like Tallow’s.

  You’ll never hold up someone who can’t swim for themselves. In the end, they’ll drag you down with them.

  Mozolia sighed, stretching one arm across the back of the bench. “But I daresay you ha
ve not crossed the Circle Sea to discuss trees.”

  “No. To discuss the forthcoming vote.”

  “People here talk of little else. A momentous decision. But not one that you and I can take any part in. Women cannot be Aldermen, after all.”

  Vick snorted. “Women might not sit in the Assembly, but they can still control the men who do. You have at least five votes in your pocket.”

  Mozolia shrugged her heavy shoulders. “Six. Possibly seven.”

  “I wonder if you might be persuaded to cast them for the Union.”

  “I might be. But not easily. I had one grandparent from Yashtavit, one from Sikkur, a third from Ospria and a fourth from the Old Empire. I am welcome, or perhaps equally unwelcome, at five different temples in the city. I sometimes forget which version of God I am supposed to be praying to. In other nations I would be called a mongrel. In this mongrel city I am the norm.” She smiled out at the yellow lawns, where people of every shape and colour walked, sat, chatted in the shade of every strange and wonderful tree God had made. “A merchant in fabrics cannot afford to take a narrow view. My business stretches across the Circle of the World. Suljuk silks and Gurkish linens, Imperial cottons and woollens from the North.”

  “Not to mention all those fine new textiles spooling from the mills of the Union.”

  “Not to mention those.”

  “It would be a shame, for a merchant in fabrics to be cut off from the largest market in the world.”

  “There would be frustrations, of course, but, like water, commerce always works through the cracks in time. And becoming a part of Styria would offer its own opportunities.”

  “I understand the Serpent of Talins can be a domineering mistress.”

  Mozolia’s turn to snort. “As several Union generals have discovered to their cost. But when people are willing to compromise, she can be reasonable. Look how the citizens of Talins have prospered under her rule! And I rather like the idea of a woman in charge, don’t you? Even a domineering one. We women really should do everything we can to work together.”

  “Or should we do exactly what the men do, and put sentiment to the side, and follow the greatest profit?”