In one moment, Orso’s carefully laid plans went up in flames and his hopes for a better politics sank into the depths. Now he realised why his father had always despised this place.
“Oh. Dear,” murmured Bruckel. Uselessly.
Leo had never seen so clear an injustice. He sat with his jaw hanging open.
“Are we to hear no evidence?” called out Heugen.
“Will there be no witnesses?” shouted Barezin, thumping a fat fist into a fat palm.
“Witnesses have been presented. Exhaustively interviewed.” High Justice Bruckel struggled to make himself heard over the anger. “The Closed Council is satisfied!”
Unsurprisingly, that satisfied no one, and Wetterlant’s mother was the least satisfied of all. “I demand justice for my son!” she screamed from the balcony. “The king’s justice!”
Glokta held up a sheet of parchment, an illegible scrawl at the bottom. “The accused has confessed! In full!”
“I was forced!” wailed the accused.
“Shut him up!” snapped Bruckel, and Wetterlant cringed as the two Practicals turned on him.
“There is no need to waste more of the Open Council’s time!” shouted Glokta.
“Waste our time?” whispered Leo. Isher had brows raised and palms helplessly spread, as if to say, What did I tell you? Behind him, in one of the great stained-glass panels, the Open Council rose up united against the tyranny of Morlic the Mad, and all because Arnault had the courage to stand first, alone.
“Waste our time?” said Leo. Everyone else on the Open Council might be too craven to say what they could all see, but the Young Lion was no coward.
“Waste our time?” shouted Leo, lurching to his feet. Damn it, his leg hurt. It was as if he were being stabbed again and he almost fell, had to clutch the back of the bench to steady himself as the announcer struck his staff on the floor for order.
“The Open Council recognises—”
“They know who I bloody am! This…” Leo floundered for words. Everyone was staring at him. Everyone in the whole great chamber. But this had to be done. For his father. For his country. “This is a disgrace!”
“What is he doing?” muttered Savine. Ladies were stuck to the rail all around her, staring down, eyes bright, fans fluttering like excited butterflies. Better drama than the theatre and all free of charge.
“I’m no lawyer!” called Leo, his Angland accent sounding particularly pronounced. “But… even I can tell this is a travesty.”
Savine watched with growing horror. A man who knows he is no lawyer should also know to keep his bloody mouth shut during a trial. But the Young Lion was not a man to keep his mouth shut.
“My father,” he bellowed, in an ever angrier and more broken voice, “always told me Union justice was the envy of the world!”
Orso frowned up towards the public gallery, looking angrier than Savine had ever seen him. She shrank back from the rail, wondering whether her own history with the two men might be aggravating things. But the Young Lion was aggravating enough without her help.
“My friends, I’m horrified. In the Lords’ Round, of all places. Confessions got by torture? Is this Union justice or Gurkish tyranny? Styrian trickery? Northern savagery?”
“Yes!” she heard Lady Wetterlant hiss with fierce delight. There were loud shouts of agreement from the lords. One might almost have called them cheers. Isher shrank silently into his seat, lips pressed carefully together, making sure there was as much empty bench between him and Leo as possible.
“I would caution the Lord Governor to choose his next words carefully,” growled Savine’s father, and she found herself in total agreement. A representative from the Angland delegation was plucking at the hem of Leo’s jacket in an effort to pull him down, but Leo angrily slapped his hand away.
“Sit down, you bloody fool,” Savine forced through gritted teeth, gripping the rail of the gallery. But the Young Lion would not sit down.
“Call yourself a high justice?” he roared at Bruckel, leaning on the back of his bench with one hand and gripping hard at his thigh with the other. “This isn’t justice!”
“Your Grace,” growled Orso, “I would ask you to return to your seat—”
“I refuse!” snarled Leo, spit flying. “It’s plain to everyone that you can’t judge this man fairly! You’re a puppet of the Closed Council!”
You could almost see the jaws drop. A lady clapped a hand over her mouth. Another gasped. Another gave a kind of disbelieving giggle.
“Oh no,” whispered Savine.
Orso had always thought himself the most easy-going man in the Union. He had floated over the scornful glances, the frequent insults, the scurrilous rumours. Most of them had, after all, been more or less fair. He’d never imagined he even really had a temper.
But perhaps he’d never before had anything to be angry about.
Whether it was the ongoing frustration of the throne, the entrenched hostility of everyone in the chamber, Wetterlant’s barefaced gall, Isher’s two-faced chicanery, Brock’s naïve impudence or Savine’s forthcoming nuptials that infuriated him most, the combination produced a feeling of utter rage such as he had never felt in his life.
“Colonel Gorst,” he managed to choke out, his throat so tight he could hardly form the words. “Remove Lord Brock from the chamber.”
Gorst had no expression on his slab of a face as he pounded across the tiled floor towards Leo.
The Open Council didn’t rise united, as they had to support Arnault in the legend. Maybe he’d spoken better than Leo. Or Morlic had been madder than Orso. Or men’s principles had become so greasy, they tended to slip from their grasp at the worst moments. Or maybe the legend was balls. Everyone stared, but not one arse left its seat.
Leo took a shuffling step back and nearly fell onto his bench, grimacing at the stab of pain in his leg. “Now, hold on a—”
Gorst caught two fistfuls of Leo’s jacket.
Once, as a boy, he’d gone swimming in the sea near Uffrith and been taken by a sudden swell and dragged off his feet. He’d thrashed with all his strength, but the current had sucked him helpless over rocks, swept away by a force of nature far greater than he would ever be.
Being dragged bodily from his bench by Bremer dan Gorst felt similar. The man’s strength defied belief. It felt as if he could’ve flung Leo from the chamber with one throw. He marched him up the aisle of the Lords’ Round, through the coloured splashes of light, past gaping lords, Leo’s feet kicking uselessly at the steps, tangled with his badly balanced commemorative sword.
“I’m going!” squawked Leo. “I’m going!”
But he might as well have complained to the tide. Gorst showed no emotion as he bundled Leo from the hall, across the antechamber, then out of the Lords’ Round into the daylight. He finally set Leo down with exaggerated care beside a statue of Casamir the Steadfast, feeling much the same sense of awe and relief as he had when the sea finally washed him up on that beach near Uffrith as a boy, but with an added helping of crippling embarrassment.
Gorst wasn’t even out of breath. “I hope you realise…” he squeaked, “that this was not personal, Your Grace.” He gave an awkward smile. “Please… pass my respects to your mother.”
“What?” muttered Leo, but Gorst was already striding back up the steps.
The doors were were shut on the Young Lion with a crash, and silence pressed in.
“Enough of this pantomime!” snarled Orso. The legs of his gilded chair gave a tortured shriek as he stood, obliging everyone in the chamber to wobble uncertainly onto their knees. He turned towards Wetterlant.
“I find you guilty of rape and murder,” he said, in the same icy tone his own mother might have used.
“But…” Wetterlant stared over at Isher, as though this was not at all what he had been expecting, but Isher had folded his arms and was meeting no one’s eye. “I am a member of the Open Council—”
“The members of this exalted body must be exe
mplars,” snapped Orso, glowering at the silent lords, “held to higher standards, not lower, and subject to the same justice as any other man. The king’s justice. My justice.” And he stabbed at his chest with a finger. “There is no question in my mind of your guilt. I have given you every chance to show remorse and you have slapped my hand away. I therefore sentence you to death by hanging. Take him down.”
“No!” shrieked Lady Wetterlant from above.
“You can’t do this!” her son wailed as he was dragged away. “I’m an innocent man! I was compelled!” He screeched over his shoulder, bucking and twisting, “Isher! Mother! You can’t let them do this!”
“Get rid of him,” hissed Glokta, and the Practicals bundled him through the side door and flung it shut with an echoing bang.
“You’ll pay for this!” Lady Wetterlant was screaming. “I’ll see you pay! Every one of you! Take your hands off me!” She was viciously beating at a guardsman with her fan as he struggled to manhandle her from the gallery.
Orso could not bear to stay a moment longer. He snatched up the crown by one pearl-studded prong, turned on his heel and strode disgustedly for the door. Caught by surprise, the Knights of the Body only had it open a crack when he got there, obliging him to wriggle through sideways.
He flung the crown angrily over his shoulder and left one of his footmen juggling the damn thing, stomped out into the daylight and off towards the palace, shocked bystanders scraping out of his way, his entourage clattering after.
Bruckel’s gown flapped at his ankles as he hurried to catch up. “Well, Your Majesty. That was—”
“Don’t!” snapped Orso.
They walked in silence, one of the wheels of Glokta’s chair catching on every turn with a regular squeak, squeak, squeak which might as well have been a saw applied directly to Orso’s nerves.
He wished he had some honest men beside him. He wished he could have given Malmer a seat on the Closed Council. But he had hanged Malmer, and two hundred others, and fully earned the scorn and distrust of every commoner in Midderland. Now, in trying to find a compromise, he had somehow made enemies of the entire nobility, too, with the Union’s most celebrated hero foremost among them.
And that was without even touching on the man’s forthcoming marriage to the woman Orso quite evidently still loved.
“What a fucking disaster!” he snarled.
The high justice tried to smile but it ended up a wince. “I suppose… It could have been… worse?”
“How, exactly?”
The Arch Lector raised one brow. “Well, nothing’s on fire.”
Savine hurried down the steps as fast as her shoes would allow.
“Leo!” she called.
Gorst had left him upright, at least, for all he was leaning against a statue’s pedestal, face twisted with evident pain and his jacket in some disarray.
“What the hell were you thinking, you thick shit?” was what she was burning to ask, but instead she stuffed her voice with concern. “Are you hurt?”
“Hurt? I was bloody humiliated!”
“You humiliated yourself, dunce, and me by association,” was what she wanted to say. The happy news of their engagement was entirely overshadowed now, but she bit her lip and waited for him to blow himself out.
“The whole thing was a mockery! And your father—”
“I know.” She spoke as softly as she could, for all she wanted to slap some sense into him. People were starting to emerge from the Lords’ Round, eager for more scandal. She should have been parading the square like a peacock. Instead she was scurrying to limit the damage.
“We should get out of the way.” She came close to tug his jacket smooth. “Before it gets busy out here.”
He nodded, then winced, all his weight on one leg. His old wound was clearly troubling him far more than he pretended. “I left my cane in the chamber.”
“That is why you have me.” She took his elbow, one hand draped on top while the other held it firmly underneath, so she could hold him up while it looked as if she were leaning upon him, and steer him away from the Square of Marshals towards the quieter ways while it looked as if he were steering her. “This is politics.” She smiled at passers-by as if this was the most wonderful afternoon of her life. “You have to be subtle. There is a way to do things.”
“So I should just sit there?”
“That’s why they have seats in the Open Council.”
“Watch a man convicted just because of who he is—”
“I have it on good authority he couldn’t be guiltier,” said Savine, but Leo was not listening.
“That high-handed bastard! To have the Lord Governor of Angland dragged out like a beggar—”
“What did you expect?” she snapped, digging her fingers into his arm. “You gave him no choice.”
“You’re taking his side? We’re supposed to be—”
“Leo!” She turned his face towards her so he had to look into her eyes. She spoke to him without fear or anger. With simple authority. The way one speaks to a dog that has soiled the carpet. “Sides? Think about what you are saying. He is the High King of the Union! His is the only side that counts! He cannot allow himself to be defied before the foremost noblemen of the land. Men have ended up in the House of Questions for less.”
He stared at her, breathing hard. Then suddenly all the defiance drained out of him. “Shit. You’re right.”
“Of course,” was what she wanted to say, but she kept her silence, and tidied a loose strand of hair behind his ear, and let him get there by himself.
“Shit.” He closed his eyes, utterly dismayed. “I’ve made myself look a fool.”
She turned his face back towards her again. “You have made yourself look passionate, and principled, and brave.” And an utter fool, it hardly needed saying. “All the qualities people admire in you. All the qualities I admire in you.”
“I’ve offended the king. What should I—”
“That is why you have me.” She led him on while appearing to follow, talking softly as though they were trading sweet nothings. “I will speak to my father and arrange for you to apologise to His Majesty. You will smile and be the charming but hotheaded young hero you are. You will show how difficult it is for you to swallow your pride, but you will swallow it, every last bitter drop. You will explain that you are a soldier not a courtier, and say your manly passions got the better of you, but that it will never happen again. And it will never happen again.”
She smiled as they walked. The Union’s most admired couple, so very well matched and so much in love. She had smiled through far worse, after all. She kept her eyes ahead, but she was conscious that he was looking at her all the way.
“I think…” he murmured, leaning towards her, “that I might be the luckiest man in the Union.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She patted his elbow. “You’re the luckiest man in the world.”
The Choice
Clip, clip. Copper-brown hair scattered about her bare feet, across her bare feet. Hard fingers on her scalp, tipping her head this way and that. Clip, clip.
“’Tis only hair, d’you see?” said Isern, pausing with the shears a moment. “Hair grows back.”
Rikke frowned up at her. “Hair does.”
Clip, clip, and more hair fell, like moments passed, moments lost.
Shivers set a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Better to do it than live with the fear of it.”
“That’s what my father says,” said Rikke.
“Your father’s a wise man.”
“Out of all the men you hate, he’s the one you hate least.”
Her father gave a sad nod. “They’ll need your bones and your brains, when I’m gone.” Old, he was, and crooked and grey. “And your heart.”
“And my heart.” Rikke wasn’t sure whether she’d meant to let go the string or not, but her arrow stuck into the lad’s back, just under his shoulder blade.
“Oh,” she said, shocked how easy killing
someone turned out to be. He looked around, a bit offended, a bit scared, but not half as scared as she was now.
She squeezed her eyes shut. By the dead, her head was hurting, jabbing in her face, jab, jab, jab.
“Keep it, and I see for you a great destiny. A great destiny. Or give it away. And be Rikke. Have a life. Push out children and teach them songs.” Caurib shrugged as she sucked fish off the bones, and the wind blew up and made sparks shower from the fire, down the shingle and out over the black water. “Cook porridge and spin and sit in your father’s garden and watch the sun go down. Do whatever it is ordinary folk do these days.”
“They do what they always do,” said Shivers. “They die.”
Isern gripped her shoulder. “You must choose. You must choose now.”
Pain stabbed through her head and Rikke screamed, screamed so hard her voice cracked and became a breathy wheeze. A long-drawn rattle. A laugh. Stour Nightfall’s laugh, wet eyes on her as he grinned at the audience, dancing, mocking, and a golden snake was coiled around him.
“Break what they love!” And his sword left a bright smear. A thousand bright smears. She knew where it would be, always. She knew the sword and the arrow, too. She knew too much. The crack yawned wide in the sky and she squeezed her eyes shut. All she could hear was the clashing of steel. A thunder of voices and hooves and metal and fury.
She opened her eyes and, by the dead, a battle. A battle at night, but lit by fires so bright it looked like day. Or was it smoke? Broken pillars like broken teeth. A lion torn by the wind, ragged and stained. And a sun on a broken tower.
There was a flash like lightning, a noise like thunder, and men were ripped apart, horses flung like toys. She sank down in terror, sank among the corpses and the stomping boots and spraying mud and squeezed her eyes tight shut.
“It’s already over,” said a strange, high voice. “It couldn’t be more over.”
Strong arms forced her down into the dirt and she kicked and struggled and fought with everything she had but it wasn’t enough.
The Trouble with Peace Page 16