The Trouble with Peace

by Joe Abercrombie

  “I had not intended to stay so long but, with your father’s death, I wanted to see the crown… smoothly transferred.”

  “Chaos in Westport, chaos in Valbeck, chaos among the commoners, chaos among the nobility?” Orso gave a sorry grunt. “Things could be smoother.”

  “Your father and I passed through rougher seas together.” Bayaz took a long breath through his nose, winced and cleared his throat. The air was always bad when the wind blew from the west, sharp with smoke from the chimneys that towered ever higher over the Three Farms and the Arches. “Times change.” And Bayaz began to stroll through the gardens, giving Orso no choice but to scrape after him, the paths a shade too narrow to walk abreast, leaving him feeling more like a butler than a king. “I am pleased to have played my part in ushering in the new age but… I confess I feel like something of a relic in Adua. And there are other issues that demand my attention. I judge the Union to be in safe hands.”

  “What, mine?”

  Bayaz spared him a glance. “Let us say safe enough. What was your opinion of Fedor dan Wetterlant?”

  Orso gave an explosive snort. “Guilty as the plague and an utter shit to boot. I’m not sure I ever in my life met so loathsome a man.”

  “Your Majesty has been fortunate in his acquaintance,” said Bayaz, feet crunching in the perfect gravel. “I have known many of his type.”

  “He’s like the villain in some tawdry play.”

  “I must confess I have always had some sympathy with villains. Heroism makes fine entertainment but sooner or later someone has to get things done.”

  “Well-written villains, maybe. You wouldn’t believe Wetterlant in a book! How the hell does a man end up like that?”

  “Being given everything he wants all his life. Being asked for nothing in return.”

  Orso frowned. He could have said much the same about himself. “It stings me that we must waste so much effort on so worthless a man. The Breakers, in Valbeck—”

  “Traitors, Your Majesty.”

  “But at least they had reasons. At least they thought they were doing right. What the hell can Wetterlant’s excuse be? He doesn’t even bother to make one. He doesn’t even see the need to make one. I bloody hate hangings, but a man like that presents a sore temptation. I just wish we could find our way to some compromise.”

  “You are welcome to try, of course.”

  “Am I?”

  “Each generation must make its own choices.” Bayaz stopped, smiling down at a perfect white flower, the first in the garden to fully show its face to the spring sun. “If all we do is stick to what we know, how can we make progress?”

  “You couldn’t solve it all with…” Orso waved feebly towards the House of the Maker. “A spell, or something?”

  “Magic fades from the world. I destroyed the Prophet’s indestructible Hundred Words. Those few of his Eaters that remain skulk about the South, trying to hold together the shreds of their ruined empire. A man is measured by his enemies. Worthy ones can be more missed than friends.” Bayaz gave a sigh, then a shrug. “Magic fades from the world but, in truth, most problems have always been better solved with a few sharp words. Or a little sharp steel.”

  “So I must be a rock, eh?”

  “As your father always tried to be.”

  Orso felt a pang of sadness at that. “I used to think he could do whatever he pleased, and chose to do nothing out of fear, or weakness, or incompetence. Now I see he was dragged in so many different directions at once that it took all his energies to stand still.”

  “It is not an easy role to fill.” Bayaz reached out to touch that flower with his fingertip, ever so gently brushing a few specks of glittering dew from its petals. “Living kings are always objects of derision. But people cannot wait to worship the dead ones. Someone must lead. Someone must make the hard choices. For everyone’s benefit.”

  “I somehow doubt they’ll thank me for it,” muttered Orso.

  Bayaz showed his teeth for an instant as he nipped that bloom off with his thumbnail and slipped the stalk through his buttonhole. “Thanks would be too much to ask.”

  “Lord Isher, thank you for coming.”

  “Of course, Your Majesty, the moment I received the message.”

  Orso had an urge to ask Isher what army his overblown uniform belonged to, as he’d certainly never served with the Union one. But then Orso was wearing an even more overblown uniform himself, and the only military action he had seen was surrounding one of his own cities and hanging two hundred of his own subjects. When it came to impostors, he was surely the worst in the whole Circle of the World, so he smiled wide and resisted the temptation to make himself a hypocrite into the bargain. He was getting better at resisting temptations, all in all. Or so he told himself.

  “An astonishing room,” murmured Isher, suitably awestruck as he gazed up at the ceiling, carved in the minutest detail as a forest canopy, gold and silver clockwork birds dotted among the branches. They had sung, once, when fully wound, though the mechanism had failed long ago. It was, without a doubt, impressive, which was why Orso had picked it for this interview. He could not escape the thought, however, that whatever monarch constructed the place could simply have frolicked in one of the dozens of real forests he owned and put several hundred thousand marks into paying off his debts.

  “They call it the Chamber of Leaves,” he said. “For obvious reasons.”

  “I had no idea it existed.”

  “There are probably a dozen rooms just as grand in the palace that I have no idea exist, and I’m supposed to own the place.” Orso thought about how that sounded as he gestured Isher to a chair. “Or… at least be its custodian, for a generation. There’s a hall in the east wing so big my mother used to ride in there. She even had it turfed at one point.”

  “Your Majesty, might I extend my condolences on the death of your father. I have not had the chance to do so personally and—though I confess we had our differences—he was a man I always very much admired.”

  “Thank you, Lord Isher. And might I offer my congratulations on your forthcoming wedding. We have had too few happy events to look forward to, of late.”

  “Difficult times, Your Majesty. Nothing for me.” As a well-powdered footman leaned towards him, silver tray expertly balanced on his fingertips.

  “Nor me.” Orso waved the man away and shuffled to the edge of his chair. “In my youth I loved to dance, but since taking the crown I prefer to get straight to the matter. I wish to speak to you, man to man, on the subject of Fedor dan Wetterlant.”

  “A terrible business.” Isher grimly shook his head. “And one that has the prospect of doing serious harm. Discord between the Closed Council and the Open is like discord between a man and his wife—”

  “It has not been the happiest of marriages in recent years, then,” observed Orso, thinking of his father’s grinding teeth during their fencing sessions.

  Isher only smiled. “The Open Council can be a somewhat shrewish bride, I confess.”

  “And the Closed Council a domineering and neglectful husband. No one knows that better than I, believe me.”

  “Older men on both sides have, perhaps, become entrenched in their positions. Sometimes it takes younger men to find new ways forward.”

  Orso nodded along. “Honestly, my advisors feel the nation’s interests would be best served if a trial were never to happen. If Wetterlant were to rot away in the empty ground between innocence and guilt.”

  “It is a solution that makes sense from their perspective, but… if I may?” Orso waved him on. “It would satisfy no one. Wetterlant would continue to bleat for justice from his cell, and his friends in the Open Council would bleat on his behalf, and his mother would be a continual thorn in everyone’s side—”

  “Doubtless.”

  “—while the common folk would see no justice done and harbour further resentment. And then… I hope you will not think me naïve, but there is a moral question. It would be a victory of e
xpediency over principle.”

  “We have had far too many of those.” This was going better than Orso had dared hope. “You speak my very thoughts!”

  “With your permission, Your Majesty, might I suggest a compromise?”

  “You think you can find one?” Orso had expected to coax or threaten or barter his way to it, and here Isher was offering it up as a gift.

  “I took the liberty of speaking to Lords Heugen and Barezin. Influential old allies of mine. And my friend Leonault dan Brock will soon be arriving in the city. He is new to politics but tremendously popular.”

  “Mmm,” murmured Orso. The Young Lion’s tremendous popularity was something he could hear less about, overall.

  “I believe, with their help… I could get broad support in the Open Council for a lengthy prison sentence.”

  “Wetterlant committed rape and murder.”

  “That is the accusation.”

  “He scarcely even bloody denies it himself!”

  “When I say lengthy… I mean without end.”

  Orso raised his brows. “The Open Council would countenance a life sentence for one of their own?”

  “Most of them are every bit as disgusted at his behaviour as we are, Your Majesty. They are keen to see justice done.”

  “His mother most decidedly is not.”

  “I know Lady Wetterlant well, and this bluster is merely the tigress’s desperate defence of her cub. She is fierce, but no fool. I believe when she realises the alternative… she will help me secure an admission of guilt.”

  “A confession?”

  “A full and contrite confession with no need for the Arch Lector’s… intervention. The trial could be a formality. A demonstration of your justice done, firmly but fairly. Of your power exercised, without delay or dispute. Of a new spirit of cooperation between the Open Council and the Closed.”

  “Well, that would be a fine thing.” It might have been the first time Orso had enjoyed discussing official business. “It’s supposed to be a damn Union, isn’t it? We should strive to find our way to common ground. Perhaps some good can come of this after all.” Orso sat back, grinning up at the gilded birds as he considered it. “I certainly do hate hangings.”

  Isher smiled. “What kind of monster enjoys them, Your Majesty?”

  An Ambush

  Squeak, squeak, squeak, went the wheel of her father’s chair. Savine narrowed her eyes at it. Gritted her teeth at it. Struggled with every turn of that wheel not to scream.

  She had been walking her father to work, then wheeling him to work, once a month since she was a girl. The same route down the Kingsway, between the statues of Harod and Bayaz that began the frowning parade of the Union’s heroes. The same conversation, like a fencing match in which you were never sure whether the steels were blunted. The same laughing at the misfortunes of others. She saw no reason to change her habits simply because her life was falling apart around her, so she mimed the old routines. Still walking, like a ghost through the ruins of the house she died in. Still wriggling, like a snake with its head cut off. Not laughing at misfortunes so much, mind you. One’s own bad luck is so much less amusing than other people’s.

  “Something on your mind?” asked her father. Though he wasn’t really her father, of course.

  “Nothing much,” she lied. Just a string of failing investments, a network of souring acquaintances, a calamitous love affair with her own brother, the ruin of all her dearest ambitions, a constant feeling of nagging horror, an aching chest, occasional waves of weariness, a near-constant need to spew, and the minor detail that she was a bastard carrying a bastard who had become a terrified impostor in her own life. Other than that, all good.

  Squeak, squeak, fucking squeak. Why the hell had she ever asked Curnsbick to build this shrieking contraption?

  “How’s business?”

  Ever more disastrous. “Good,” she lied as she pushed the chair through the giant shadow of Arnault the Just. “If they keep digging at this rate, the canal will be completed within the month.”

  “You let Kort off with a warning? I thought you might have had him skinned as an example to your other partners.”

  “Skinned men generate no revenue. And Zuri says forgiveness is neighbour to the divine.”

  “She has you quoting scripture now? Is she your companion, or are you hers?”

  “She’s my friend,” said Savine. The only one she trusted. “Introducing us may be the best thing you have ever done for me.”

  “We all need someone we can rely on.”

  “Even you?”

  “Please. I can’t get out of bed without your mother’s help.”

  Savine ground her teeth. What she really wanted was to wheel her father off a bridge and stop somewhere for another sniff of pearl dust, even though her face was still numb from the last one. But the parapets on the bridges were too high, and there was nowhere private to snort on the Kingsway, so for the time being the torture would have to continue. It was what her father was known for, after all. Truly, as he loved to say, life is the misery we endure between disappointments. She wheeled him on, between the magnificent sculptures of Casamir the Steadfast and his Arch Lector, Zoller.

  “You should try not to blame her.” Her father paused a moment, and Savine watched the breeze stir the white hairs on his liver-spotted pate. “Or at any rate, you should blame me just as much.”

  “I have more than enough blame to go around, believe me.”

  “I thought forgiveness was neighbour to the divine?”

  “Zuri thinks so but I couldn’t say. Neither of them lives anywhere near me.”

  The scaffolding was coming down from the final statue before the shimmering greenery of the park. The king most recently deceased. Jezal the First, that personification of vaguely well-meaning indecision, rendered grimly commanding by the royal sculptors. The sight of his face made Savine more nauseous than ever. Her uncle, Lord Marshal West, stood opposite, with a hint of her mother in a mood about his frown as he glared off towards the sea, as though he saw the Gurkish fleet there and would sink them with pure force of dislike. Beside him Bayaz towered again, a statue very much like the one at the other end of the Kingsway. Seven hundred years of Union history, topped and tailed by the same bald bastard.

  “A charming picture!” A sturdy man in a superbly tailored coat was blocking their path. Bayaz himself, Savine realised, sun gleaming from his hairless pate, looking less like a legendary wizard than a highly prosperous merchant. “My own brothers and sisters are forever feuding. It warms my heart to see a father and daughter enjoying each other’s company.”

  Or, indeed, a torturer and an unrelated woman barely speaking to one another.

  “Lord Bayaz.” Savine’s father sounded distinctly uncomfortable. “I thought you were returning to the North.”

  “Interrupted on my way to the docks by these new statues.” And he waved up towards King Jezal. “I knew all the men in question and wished to make sure their likenesses were faithful to the facts. I am supposed to be retired, but as an owner of businesses, I am sure you know, Lady Savine, it is nigh impossible to find people who can manage things properly in one’s absence.”

  “Good budgeting is key,” said Savine, stiffly. “When Angland needed help the treasury was empty. Yet we can afford statues.”

  “I need not lecture you on the importance of investing wisely. A bright future rests on a proper respect for the past. The seeds of the past bear fruit in the present, eh, Your Eminence?”

  “In my experience, they never stop blooming.” Her father reached around to put his hand on Savine’s. “We should not take up too much of your time—”

  “I always have time to meet the leading lights of the new generation. The future belongs to them, after all.”

  “Even if we must tear it from the grip of the old,” said Savine, twisting her wrist free of her father’s hand.

  “Very little worth anything is ever given away. I am sure you know that, too.
” Bayaz smiled at Savine’s father. The one in the chair, not the one immortalised in stone. “I have no doubt your father will stand here one day. Who has sacrificed more for the Union, after all? Except perhaps your uncle.” Bayaz turned to look up at the statue of Lord Marshal West. “Who gave his life defending it.”

  “I thought we were being faithful to the facts?” Savine was in no mood to flatter this old fool. “I understand he survived the Gurkish attack but died of the sickness you released when you destroyed half the Agriont.”

  “Well.” Bayaz’s good humour did not so much as flicker. “If this row of statues tells us anything, it is that there are many ways to tell the same story.”

  “Clearly,” said Savine, glancing from the real First of the Magi, shorter than she was with her boots on, to his colossal statue.

  “Savine,” murmured her father, a warning note in his voice.

  “Such a spirited young woman.” Bayaz gave her the kind of look she might have given the men of the Solar Society, wondering which was worthy of investment. “The Union will need someone with good sense and a strong stomach to take charge one day. One day soon, perhaps. Someone who does not flinch from what must be said. What must be done. The Breakers and Burners must be dealt with.” The first hint of real anger in his voice, and for some reason it made Savine flinch. “You were in Valbeck. Do you know the first thing they broke and burned there?”

  She swallowed a wave of sickness. Calm, calm, calm. “I—”

  “The Banking House of Valint and Balk! An attack on enterprise. On progress. On the very future! If the current administration cannot get a grip on the situation… we must find someone who can.”

  “I hope to serve the Crown for many years to come,” grated her father. “King Orso will need just as much guidance as his father did.”

  “Guidance does not have to be given in the White Chamber. It can come in theatre foyers, or comfortable living rooms, or even, who knows, in writers’ offices.” That choice of words could hardly be an accident. Savine felt the heat spreading up her collar. Bayaz smiled at her, but it did not get as far as his eyes. “We should have a talk some day, you and I. About what I want. And about what you want. Who knows? You might be the first woman to be immortalised on the Kingsway! As the only person with two statues here, you can take my word for it—when it’s you they’re sculpting, it all starts to seem like an excellent use of funds.”