The Trouble with Peace

by Joe Abercrombie

“They say Styria’s the home of culture, but when it comes to theatre, all they want is flash and sparkle.” Murdine waved it away with flamboyant disgust. “I want to get at the truth.”

  “The truth is overrated.” Vick let the purse drop into his hand. “An actor should know that.”

  It was early, the sun an angry clipping over the hills in the east, the rigging of the ships casting a cobweb of long shadows on the quay. It was early, but the sooner they were at sea and she was out of this endlessly crowded, superstitious, suffocating city, the happier she’d be.

  Or the less unhappy, at least.

  Two Practicals followed Vick and Tallow along the seafront, lugging her trunk between them. They were big men, but they were sweating. There was almost as great a weight of clothes, powders and props inside as Savine dan Glokta might have taken on a trip abroad. The many different Victarine dan Teufels she might need to slip into. Made her wonder who the real one was. If there was such a thing any more.

  “He was an actor?” muttered Tallow, for about the fifth time, his one little bag slung over his shoulder.

  “An actor and acrobat. He’s very particular on that point.”

  “You didn’t think to tell me?”

  “You can’t let slip what you don’t know.”

  “What if, well…” He mimed a stabbing motion. “I’d killed him. Or something?”

  “Then there are always more actors.” She gave a sigh that tasted of salt and sea rot and the acrid smoke from the tanneries down the coast, just starting up for the day. “Every idiot wants to be one.”

  “Was the real Shenkt even in the city?”

  “Who says there even is a real Shenkt? People like things that are simple. Black and white. Good and evil. They want to make a choice and tell themselves they were right. But as His Eminence is fond of saying, the real world is painted in greys. The truth is complicated, full of mixed emotions and blurred outcomes and each-way bets. The truth… is a hard sell.”

  They’d reached the ship, now. An unappealing tub in need of a good careening, but it was sailing the right way. The two Practicals set down Vick’s trunk with a clatter. One unceremoniously planted his arse on it while he stretched out his back, the other pulled his mask aside to wipe his sweaty face.

  “It helps to give people a straightforward story, with villains to boo and heroes to root for.” Vick narrowed her eyes as she looked out to sea. “In my experience, that means making them up.”

  “But who’s—”

  Doesn’t matter how sharp you are. No one can be ready all the time.

  Something flashed past. One of the two Practicals. He didn’t make a sound. He didn’t have time. Just flew a dozen strides and crashed into the side of a boat, staving in the planking in a cloud of splinters.

  Tallow shrank back, hands over his head. Vick whipped around to see the other Practical tumbling across the quay, limbs bonelessly flopping. She caught a glimpse of a black figure against the rising sun, coming impossibly fast. She was just raising her arm, she hardly even knew what to do, when it was caught with irresistible strength. She was jerked off her feet, the world reeled, and the quayside smashed her in the chest and drove her breath out in a choking wheeze.

  She saw boots through the blur. Well-worn old work boots. Then something was over her face. Darkness and her own booming breath. Hands tied behind her. Scrape of her toes as she was dragged along under the armpits. Hiss over the cobbles. Clack, clack, clack over the boards of a wharf.

  She gathered herself, trying to think through the throbbing in her head, the burning ache in her shoulder. She might only get one chance. She might not even get one chance. She shoved a boot down, tried to twist free, but she was gripped tight as barrel bands. Pain stabbed up her arm, made her gasp through gritted teeth.

  “Better not,” said a man’s voice in her ear. A soft, bland, bored-sounding voice.

  A door clattered open, then shut. Boots clonked and rattled on a loose floor. She felt herself dumped into a chair. A creak of wood and a hiss of rope as her hands were tied fast to the back, her ankles to the legs.

  “All right, take it off.”

  The bag was pulled from her head.

  Some gloomy shed with a tar-and-fish stink. Shafts of light shone through the cracks between the timbers of its walls. Slimy lobster cages were stacked to one side. Vick wondered if this was the place she’d die. She guessed she’d seen worse.

  A tall woman perched on a table with arms folded, looking down at Vick through narrowed eyes. Her grey hair was short and spiky, her sharp face deeply lined. Late fifties, maybe. Calm and professional. Not trying to be menacing. There was no need.

  “Know who I am?” she asked. A Styrian accent, but she spoke common well. Like someone who’d spent a lot of time in the Union.

  Vick’s head was thumping where it had hit the quay. Blood tickling her scalp. Her shoulder was throbbing worse and worse. But she made sure to show as little pain as possible. Show hurt, you’re asking to be hurt. “I’ve a guess,” she said.

  “Well, don’t keep us in suspense.”

  “You’re Shylo Vitari, Minister of Whispers for the Serpent of Talins.” If Old Sticks had an opposite number on this side of the Circle Sea, here she sat.

  “Very good.” Hard wrinkles showed around Vitari’s eyes as she smiled. “I like her already. You like her?”

  The bored man gave a non-committal grunt. As if liking or disliking things wasn’t really his business. He finished tying Tallow to his chair the way he’d tied Vick to hers. Quick and practised, like he’d done it many times before.

  “Know who this is?” Vitari nodded towards him as he tested the knots on Tallow’s bonds.

  Vick hardly wanted to answer. “I’ve a guess.”

  “Let’s see if you can make it two of two.”

  “He’s Casamir dan Shenkt.”

  “The real one,” said Vitari. “Imagine that.”

  Styria’s most infamous killer, if it really was him, gave Vick a watery, slightly apologetic smile. Few men had ever looked so ordinary. Gaunt and colourless, with dark rings around his eyes. But then awesome looks put people on their guard, and that’s the last thing a killer wants. He leaned back against the wall and pulled something from a pocket. A piece of wood, roughly carved. He began to whittle it with a little curved knife, blade flashing, white shavings scattering about his worn boots.

  “Do you go by Victarine?” asked Vitari. “It’s quite the mouthful. Maybe your friends call you Vick?”

  “Maybe they would. If I had any.”

  “You’ve got at least one.” She grinned down at Tallow and he stared back at her with those big, sad eyes, and grunted something into his gag no one could understand.

  Vick didn’t like the thought that he’d ended up in that chair because of her. “No need to hurt him,” she wanted to say, and, “It’s me you want,” and all the bloody clichés, but that would’ve been good as telling them this stringy fool was a chink in her armour. So Vick didn’t even glance in his direction. She treated him like he was nothing. It was all she could do for him.

  “Do you know the irony, Vick?” Vitari slowly sat forward, wrists on her knees and her long hands dangling. “We were there. In the Temple Square, waiting for Shudra, so we could kill him and pretend you’d done it.”

  When you’ve nothing to add, stay silent.

  “Then we saw you coming, and we thought, if you’re fool enough to kill him yourself… why not let you save us the trouble?”

  More silence.

  “But you weren’t there to kill him. You were there to pretend we’d tried, so you could pretend to save him. I watched the whole thing with a growing sense of annoyance, then a growing sense of admiration. It was very neat, wasn’t it?”

  Shenkt’s only contribution was the soft scraping of his knife.

  “Who was he? Your fake assassin? An actor?”

  “And acrobat,” said Vick. “I found him in a circus.”

  Vitari grinned. �
��Nice touch. Well, he can take a punch. You gave him quite the beating.”

  “He was a bit upset about it.”

  “So am I,” said Vitari, her grin vanishing. “The Grand Duchess Monzcarro is going to be quite irked. And believe me, you haven’t really seen irked until you’ve seen the Serpent of Talins irked. Do you think you’re clever?”

  Vick tried to shift her throbbing shoulder into a more comfortable position, but there was none. “I’ve felt cleverer.”

  “I think you’re clever. I don’t often find people who can get the better of me. When I do, I’d rather have them work for me than work against. Or dead, I guess. But dead would be a waste, wouldn’t it?”

  Shenkt gave that grunt again, as though it was the same to him either way.

  “So, how about it?” Vitari looked sideways at her. “After a new job? You could tell me secrets. What the Union’s planning, where they’re weak, where they’re strong, that kind of thing.”

  Thump, thump, thump went the pulse in Vick’s head and the blood tickled at her scalp and it occurred to her this might be one of those turning points. Like in the mine, when she chose to run. Or in the camps, when she chose to tell. Or in Valbeck, when she chose to stay. Her mouth felt very dry all of a sudden.

  “I’ve already got a job,” she said.

  Vitari’s brows drew in. Grey brows, with just a few orange flecks in them. “I used to work for Old Sticks, you know. Back before he was Old Sticks. Young Sticks, would you say?”

  Shenkt shrugged, as though he wouldn’t say much about anything, and pursed his lips, and blew a puff of dust from his carving.

  “We were in Dagoska together, during the siege.” Vitari gave a faraway sigh. “So many happy memories. He’s a clever bastard. Fearless. And ruthless. Understands pain like no one else I ever knew. Lots to admire. But it’s not as though he really pulls the strings himself, is it?”

  She narrowed her eyes slightly, as if she was waiting for Vick to chime in. She’d a feeling there was some piece to this conversation she was missing. But when you’ve nothing to add, stay silent.

  “Bayaz.” Shenkt pronounced both syllables crisply in Vick’s ear, and his breath felt chill, like the draught through a window on a winter evening, and it made the hairs on her neck rise almost painfully.

  “The First of the Magi?” The idea of that self-satisfied old bastard pulling anyone’s strings seemed hard to credit.

  “The Union has been his tool since he first brought it together in the days of Harod the Great.”

  “You want ruthless?” Vitari gave a low whistle. “Should’ve seen Adua after he was done with it. He already has you dancing to his tune, I reckon.”

  “I never even met the man.”

  “And yet you came to Westport with more than a trunk full of clothes.” Vitari leaned closer, voice dropping to a breathy murmur. A voice for secrets. A voice for threats. “You came with Valint and Balk’s debts. With Valint and Balk’s trade rights. With Valint and Balk’s money.”

  “What have Valint and Balk got to do with Bayaz?”

  “They’re three names for the same thing,” murmured Shenkt.

  Vitari slowly shook her head. “Dark company you keep.”

  “Really?” Vick jerked her head towards Stryia’s most infamous assassin. “I heard he eats people.”

  “As rarely as possible,” he said, without a trace of irony. “That bank chomps up dozens a day.”

  “So how about it?” Vitari stuck her lips out in a pout. “Come work for me. Stand with the righteous. Or as close as the likes of us will get.”

  Vick looked down at the ground, the blood thump, thump, thumping in her skull louder than ever. “I owe Glokta.” It surprised her, that she said it. It surprised her, how sure she sounded. “Reckon I’ll stick with him. Till the debt’s paid.”

  Tallow made a high-pitched squeak into his gag. Vitari gave a long sigh. Shenkt issued that indifferent grunt one more time. Vick bared her teeth, back prickling, expecting the blade. Any moment now. The brittle silence stretched, almost unbearable.

  “That’s interesting,” said Vitari.

  “Mmm,” said Shenkt, slipping his carving away but keeping the knife out.

  “You could’ve told me yes, then when you got back home, never followed through. Or tried to work me somehow. Someone clever as you would’ve seen that right off. So why not just tell me yes?”

  Vick looked up at her. “Because I want you to believe me.”

  “Huh.” Vitari smiled wide. Good teeth she had, for a woman her age. “I like that. Do you like that?”

  “I do,” said Shenkt.

  Vitari pulled out a slip of paper, and folded it, and pressed the fold sharp with her thumbnail, then she opened Vick’s shirt pocket, and slipped the paper inside, and gave it a pat. “Once you realise how things really are, go to this address. The barman there will have what you need.”

  “He has what everyone needs,” said Shenkt.

  “Until then, if I was you…” Vitari stood and strolled towards the door, wagging one long finger. “I wouldn’t come back to Styria.”

  “We’re in Westport,” said Vick. “This is the Union.”

  “For now.” Vitari drew the bolt and opened the door. Shenkt slipped away that little curved knife, pulled up his hood and walked out, humming faintly to himself, leaving nothing but a scattering of pale shavings on the boards.

  It looked like Vick would live out the day after all.

  “How do we get free?” she called, still trussed up tight.

  Vitari paused, a long, black shape in the bright doorway. “You’re the clever one. You work it out.”

  Late

  “You are late, Rikke.”

  She opened her eyes. Candle flames in the darkness. Hundreds of flames, like stars prickling a night sky. Or were they the ghosts where candles once burned, long ago?

  “You might be too late.”

  A face swam at her. Lank grey hair, and shadows in the deep lines, and candlelight glimmering on the golden wire.

  “There is no time left.”

  Strong fingers pressed at Rikke’s face, pressed at the sore flesh around her burning left eye, and she grunted, squirmed, but she was too weak to move.

  “There must be a price.”

  A hand lifted her head, the rim of a cup pressed to her mouth. She coughed on something bitter, shuddered as she swallowed.

  “You have to choose, Rikke.”

  She felt afraid. Terrified. She tried to twist away but strong hands held her down, held her tight.

  “Which will it be?”

  The woman reached for her. Something glittered in her hand. A cold needle.

  “No,” whispered Rikke, closing her eyes. “This hasn’t happened yet.”

  Shivers held her hand. Held so tight it hurt.

  “Can’t lose you, Rikke.” The grey stubble on his grey cheek shifted as he clenched his jaw. “Can’t do it.”

  “Not planning to be lost.” Her tongue felt all thick and clumsy, she could hardly make the words. “But if I am you’ll get through it. Lost your eye, didn’t you, and you were a good deal closer to that.”

  “I’ve got another eye. There’s just one o’ you.”

  It was dawn, she thought. Slap and suck of water on shingle. Cold light on rocks streaked with damp. A cobweb fluttered in the breeze, glittering dewdrops dancing.

  “You don’t know what I was.” Shivers fussed at that ring with the red stone he wore on his little finger. “I cared for nothing. Hated everything. Came to serve your father ’cause of all the men I hated, he was the one I hated least. I walked in a nightmare.” He shut his eyes. Or the one that could see. The other showed a slit of gleaming metal still.

  “You were so sick, then. No one thought you’d last another winter. Your mother dead and your father grieving. So sick, but so full of hope. You trusted me. Me, with nothing in him to trust. You sucked goat’s milk from a cloth, in my arms. Your father said I was the least likely nur
semaid he ever saw. Said I brought you back from the brink.” He looked at her then, and a tear streaked from his good eye. “But it was you brought me back.”

  “You soft fool,” she croaked through her cracked lips. “You can’t cry. Not you.”

  “When I was a boy, my brother called me pig fat, I cried so easy. Then I forgot how. All I wanted was to be feared. But you never feared me.”

  “Well, you’re not so scary as they all make out.” Rikke tried to shift, but nothing was comfortable. She felt her eyes drifting closed, and Shivers squeezed her hand so hard it made her gasp.

  “Hold on, Rikke. She’s coming.”

  “No,” she said, tears stinging her lids. “This hasn’t happened yet.”

  Two great stones loomed into the evening, black fingers against the pink sky. Ancient, they were, splattered with moss and lichen, carved with symbols that time had pitted and smudged all meaning from. There was a hint of drizzle in the air and the hair was stuck to Rikke’s face and everything had a watery sheen.

  A pair of guards stood by the stones, holding crude spears, so still Rikke took them for statues. As Shivers carried her closer, she saw there was something wrong about them. Misshapen.

  “By the dead,” croaked Rikke. “They’re flatheads.”

  “That they are,” said Scenn. The hillman stood grinning next to one of the Shanka and it narrowed its already narrow eyes at him while it used a splinter of bone to pick at one huge tooth. “They guard the witch. She can speak to ’em. Sings to ’em, some say. They’re tame. Long as we behave.”

  “I always behave,” said Isern, frowning at those two flatheads with her grip tight on the dark haft of her spear. Far as Shanka have expressions beyond just a lot of teeth, these ones seemed to frown back. “Let’s go, then.”

  Scenn shook his head. “I go no further.”

  “I know you to be many things, Scenn, and most of ’em bad, but I never took you for a coward.”

  “Take me for whatever you like, sister, but I know where I belong, and it’s on this side of the stones. My task was to bring you and my task is done. I don’t pretend to be—”

  “Shit on you, then, you hill of blubber,” and Isern elbowed him out of their way and strode on.