Gorst shook his head, eyes eternally roving around the dim room as though a Styrian assassin might spring from the dresser at any moment. If one had, Orso never doubted Gorst would have been ready with the utmost extremes of lethal force.
“You two know each other?” Orso looked from the old bodyguard to the old standard-bearer. They were probably of an age, but otherwise could hardly have been less alike.
“Fought together at the Battle of Osrung,” said Tunny, starting to deal. “Well, I say fought. He fought. I just sat there.”
Yolk raised a finger. “I sat there, too.”
“So you did, boy, and you even managed to do that badly.”
Yolk grinned. “If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s doing things badly.”
“I hear you sentenced Wetterlant to dangle,” said Tunny, still flicking out cards.
“I did,” said Orso. “Terrible decision.”
“Everyone says he’s guilty,” threw in Hildi, who was sitting cross-legged on the dresser between two large candlesticks shaped like naked women.
“Guilty as hell,” said Orso.
“So… you should’ve let him off?”
“That would’ve been a terrible decision, too.”
Yolk’s face crinkled up with incomprehension. Its usual expression. “So…”
“I tried to manage a compromise in which he’d get life in prison, probably to worm his way out when nobody was looking.”
“Compromise is always a good idea,” threw in one of the whores.
Orso raised his brows at her, and she blushed, and looked at the floor. “So I thought, but it turned out to be the worst option of all. I made the fatal mistake of trying to improve things. And of trusting Lord bloody Isher.” He scraped up his hand and started sorting through it. “A king can only select from a range of wrong choices and bad outcomes.” Another awful hand. Even worse than the last. “A lifetime of trying to ferret out the least worst in a mist of lies, stupidity and imperfect information.”
“Sounds like the army life,” muttered Tunny. “Wish you’d come to me first. I could’ve told you Isher’s a snake.”
“I should put you on my Closed Council.” Orso paused a moment, looking at his glass. “Actually, I’ve heard worse ideas.”
“High Justice Tunny!” Hildi gave a giggle, and a couple of the girls laughed, and Orso thought he even heard a snort from one of the Knights of the Body.
“Charmed by the offer, Your Majesty,” said Tunny drily, “but corporal’s as high as I go.”
“Leo dan Brock would make a fine king, don’t you think?” asked Orso. “Don’t you think? With those shoulders?”
“He’s pretty,” said Hildi, twisting her old soldier’s cap off so her blonde curls popped out in a mop, then twisting it back on.
“He’s very pretty,” said one of the girls, and the others nodded agreement.
“Bold,” said Yolk, thoughtfully. “Very… manly.”
“Reckless,” piped Gorst. Orso turned to him, surprised. It might have been the first time he’d ever heard the man volunteer a word of conversation. He shrugged, armour faintly rattling. “Kings needs cool tempers.” And he went back to frowning about the room.
Orso turned to the table to find the madam leaning over him in an explosion of heavily daubed perfume and lightly veined bosom. “Might one interest… Your August Majesty…” She traced a wiggly line on the tabletop in a manner that was perhaps intended to be arousing. “In anything?”
Orso sighed. “Fucking-wise?”
“It is what we do here.”
The girl who had extolled the virtues of compromise gave Orso a slightly desperate smile. His shoulders slumped.
“Do you know, I’m not sure I could even manage it. It’s not you. It’s not any of you. It’s me. Commoners, nobles, Starikland, Angland and Midderland, everyone bloody hates me.”
“Hasn’t Westport decided it likes you after all?” asked Hildi.
Orso ignored her. He was in a mood only for bad news. “It’s a Union indeed. United in their dislike for their king.”
“That’s what a king’s there for,” said Tunny. “High or low, we all need someone to blame.”
“Who do I get to blame?” asked Orso.
“Whoever you like,” murmured Yolk, frowning at his cards. “You’re king.”
“My Closed Council, my Open Council, the boy who empties my bloody chamber pot, too, I shouldn’t wonder, they all think I’m a fucking—”
“Who cares a shit what they think?” shouted Tunny, jerking forward and stabbing at Orso with the stem of his pipe. “Long as they bloody obey! You’re king, boy! Not me, not Yolk and not Leo dan bloody Brock! You! Now, I daresay being king has its downsides but I can tell you there are worse jobs.”
“Huh,” grunted one of the girls, adjusting her bodice.
“All this bloody self-pity. It was fun when you were a crown prince, but fuck, it doesn’t suit a king.” Tunny took a pull on his pipe, but it was dead, and he angrily smacked the ashes out on the tabletop. “Get back to the palace and get on with it. We’ll miss you, but these lovely ladies need to make some money and you’re scaring away the guests.”
There was a long silence. Orso glanced about the room. Everyone—the girls, the knights, the madam, Hildi and Yolk, even Bremer dan Gorst, had the same expression: mouth tight shut and eyes wide open, an expression that seemed to say, I can’t believe he said it, but it definitely needed saying.
“I see.” Orso tossed down his cards and stood, with only a small wobble. “Gorst, we’re going back to the palace. Hildi, could you see everyone paid for their time, please?”
She frowned over at him. “You already owe me sixty—”
“I think we know I’m good for it.”
“We do?”
“I’ll talk to the lord chancellor and have you written into the budget, how’s that?” As the knights tramped down the stairs to leave, Orso leaned close to Tunny. “Thank you for that, Corporal.”
Without looking up from his cards, Tunny gave a grudging nod. “Any time, Your Majesty.”
The Darling of the Slums
“Morning, Your Grace,” said Leo, stepping out onto the balcony.
“Morning, Your Grace,” said Savine as he sat opposite her at the breakfast table and gingerly stretched out his leg.
She shifted subtly, trying not to let her own discomfort show. A comfortable corset really isn’t doing its job, but her belly was most definitely starting to swell. Savine had been softening all over since she gave up fencing. Gripping a sword made her think too much of Valbeck. Scrabbling with the hilt in a sweaty panic as she tried to pull up that loose board, men screaming for her blood outside the door—
“So…” Leo frowned out towards the Middleway, where the morning’s traffic was already busy, then gave a helpless little laugh. “We’re married, then.”
Savine banished the ugly memories and held up the new ring she had commissioned, its satisfyingly colossal stone flashing in the morning sun. “So it would appear.”
“What happens now?”
“I recommend the trout.”
“And then?”
“Give me and Zuri a week here to put my affairs in order, and then to Angland—”
“Where you can put my affairs in order?”
“Where I can help you put them in order.” And people might care less about appearances and Zuri would not have to haul quite so savagely on the laces. “Probably best that we leave before Wetterlant’s hanging.”
“I might hold off on saying sorry to His Majesty as well.”
Savine winced. “I hope my… history with the king will not—”
“If he’s fool enough to let the most beautiful woman in the Union slip through his fingers, then I pity him.” And Leo gave her that big, boyish smile, the one that made a faint groove from the scar on his cheek.
She found she was smiling back, and not even having to pretend. “That’s… a rather lovely thing to say.”<
br />
“Don’t get used to it.” He scooped a piece of trout onto his plate then sucked the fork. “I’m not much of a flatterer.”
“Oh, I think you could prosper at anything you put your mind to.”
He smiled even wider. “That’s a rather lovely thing to say.”
“I’m one of the best flatterers in the Union, ask anyone.”
He laughed, and started eating, and she rather enjoyed watching him. So strong and healthy and handsome. No sign of last night’s anger now. Except perhaps a faint pink graze her open hand had left on his cheek. The Young Lion had his moods but it seemed they passed quickly, like stormclouds sweeping over the rugged Northern valleys and just as quickly letting the sun shine again. She could work with that. Who doesn’t have moods, after all? Savine had been in one ever since she got back from Valbeck.
Haroon had to squeeze his great shoulders together to fit through the door onto the balcony. “Spillion Sworbreck is here, Lady Savine.” A few months in Adua and he had barely any accent at all.
“Thank you, Haroon, you’re a treasure. Send him out.”
Leo frowned after him. “Not sure how your servants will go down in Angland.”
“Angland will just have to get used to them. Haroon and Rabik are Zuri’s brothers, and they’re some of the most diligent, conscientious, trustworthy people I know. Haroon used to be an officer in the emperor’s army, I believe, and Rabik’s an absolute magus with horses. As for Zuri…” She was Savine’s closest friend, and the very thought of her being unwelcome somewhere made her want to grind that place under her heel. “She is indispensable. My business interests would suffer more without her than without me. I would trust her with our lives.”
Leo prodded at his fish. “Just feels like there are too many brown faces around in Adua these days.”
“Too many for what? The people who come here are hard workers. They bring wealth and energy and new ideas. There are great thinkers among them. Great engineers. And how would you stop them, anyway? Make us less prosperous?”
Leo did not look convinced. He was not a man much moved by reason. “We fought a war against the Gurkish,” he grumbled.
“You fought a war against the Northmen. Some of your best friends are still Northmen.”
He actually looked slightly offended. “Not all Northmen are the same, you know.”
There was a snapping of cloth and Sworbreck swept onto the balcony, became briefly entangled in the drapes but manfully fought his way free. He was fresh from another trip to the Far Country and was affecting the facial hair of a fearless adventurer.
“Your Grace,” he intoned, giving Savine a flourishing bow. “You look a veritable goddess, as always.”
“Master Sworbreck, how was your latest escapade in the unsettled West?”
“Wild and packed with danger. I have tales to tell which the pampered citizens of Adua will scarcely credit!” Savine certainly would not credit them, for she had it on good authority that he rarely strayed far from the harbour at Rostod and paid a scout to wear his clothes while riding across the plains so they would have an authentically adventured-in appearance on his return.
“And may I introduce my husband, Leo dan Brock?”
“Your Grace.” Sworbreck gave an even more flourishing bow. “An absolute honour to make the acquaintance of the hero of Red Hill and conqueror of the Great Wolf!”
“I don’t like to talk about that,” said Leo sternly. Sworbreck blinked, mouth slightly open. Leo burst out laughing. “It’s all I’d bloody talk about if I had my way!” And he seized Sworbreck’s hand and nearly dragged the hapless writer off the balcony with the vigour of his shaking. “I think I visited your office once.”
Sworbreck must have guessed what they had used his office for, but to his credit he gave no sign of it. “My humble premises are forever at your disposal, as is my humble pen.”
“I have a use in mind for the latter.” And Savine nudged a chair out with one shoe so Sworbreck could sit. “The name Glokta carries… something of a stigma.”
“A proud name, but I see Your Grace’s point. There is a flavour of…”
“Torture?”
Sworbreck gave an apologetic smile. “The name Brock has entirely different connotations. Heroism, patriotism, derring-do! Have you considered a biography, by the way, Your Grace?”
Leo paused with fork halfway to his mouth. “I’m twenty-two years old. I hope I’ve a few achievements still to come.”
“Your famous victories thus far are, one cannot doubt, but a prelude, but there would be great public interest even in a first volume or two—”
“My name,” Savine reminded him.
“Of course, my apologies, new ideas erupt and must be thrust aside! A curse of the artistic temperament.”
Far from the only one, in her opinion. “Savine dan Glokta was a woman of business,” she explained. “She needed a reputation for cunning, ruthlessness and flinty resolve.”
“She needed the confidence of investors, the respect of partners, the awe of debtors,” mused Sworbreck, “but… Savine dan Brock, Lady Governor of Angland, might be… a woman of the people? A woman who balances wisdom with warmth and generosity? A woman who struggles tirelessly for the common good?”
Curnsbick was always saying that he suspected Savine of hiding a generous heart. Perhaps the time had come to put it on public display. “What do you think about a series of pamphlets discussing my charitable work in the Three Farms? Nothing too obvious, you understand.”
“I am all in the subtext.” Sworbreck sat back, considering the trees in the garden as though their branches were laden with weighty revelations. “It would help if we could find our way to a place of honesty. I hope you will not think me indelicate if I suggest we might… make use of your experiences during the uprising in Valbeck?”
Savine felt a sick surge of fear, then a sting of annoyance at her own weakness. All it took was a mention of the place to set her heart thumping and turn her mouth sour, to send that tickling shiver up her back.
Her voice came strangled. “How do you mean?”
“You lived among the common folk there.” The Broads’ cramped apartment, her bed of rags, the cries echoing through the blistering walls. “Their daily trials were yours.” Up to her knees in the cold river, throat raw from smoke, endlessly filling buckets to put out fires that could not be put out. “The hunger.” Queueing for vegetable peelings, and grateful to get them. “The danger.” The sound of the gangs outside, the screams in the night. “The daily want.” Her wheezing breath as she dragged herself through the machinery, blood spattering the floor—
“Of course!” she barked, knuckles white as she gripped at the edge of the table. “A place of honesty.” If Sworbreck could spin diamonds out of shit, good luck to him. Where the hell had she put her pearl dust?
“A story of personal growth,” the writer was musing. “Of dangers faced and trials braved. A woman born to privilege, coming through the fire of struggle to understand the plight of the common man.” He took a self-satisfied breath. “Powerful. Are you aware of Carmee Groom? She did some sketches for my Life of Dab Sweet. One of the best artists in Adua, but she is not in the greatest demand because she is…”
“A she.”
“Indeed. A few etchings can truly make a pamphlet sing. Words are powerful, but an image can shortcut the reason and speak directly in the language of the heart.”
Savine snapped her fingers. “Done. We can visit the Three Farms this afternoon.” Once she and Zuri had calculated the precise minimum a reputation for charity could be bought for.
“Then I shall make the arrangements at once!” said Sworbreck, springing up. “Your Grace. Your Grace. Do think about that biography.” And he ducked back through the window.
“So… that’s the famous writer?” asked Leo. “He has some of the bravest facial hair I’ve ever seen.”
“Despite being one of the biggest cowards in the Union.”
“I s
uppose if he was brave, he wouldn’t need such brave facial hair.”
“And if everyone was brave, what would make you special?”
“Well…” He gave her that grin again. “I am married to the cleverest woman in the Union.”
“Stop,” she said, smiling as she leaned towards him. “By which I mean, don’t.”
“I won’t. But… pamphlets?”
“Absolutely.”
“Etchings?”
“The language of the heart.”
“Do you really think people are that stupid?”
“Darling.” She leaned closer, and kissed him gently, and touched him lightly on the tip of his nose with her fingertip. “People are far more stupid than that.”
The city closed in around them and, like a rake falling into a life of debauchery, turned mean, twisted, sick and dirty. High above, so high that it seemed no one could ever reach it, a narrow crack of sky showed between the crumbling tenements.
“And so we pass into the Three Farms.” Sworbreck spoke in an urgent whisper, scribbling away in his notebook. “Perhaps the most infamous of Adua’s districts, once largely burned then brutally occupied by the savage Gurkish, now rendered into an endless night… no, a perpetual dusk by the smoke of the manufactories, and a moral murk even more complete in which… what? In which the light of hope is extinguished for its thousands of wretched inhabitants. Can I find a place for the word crepuscular, do you think?”
“I try to find a place for it in every sentence,” said Carmee Groom, her fair brows raised very high.
“Not much of a reader myself,” said Leo, leaning close, “but he sounds a bit overwrought.”
Savine shrugged. “That’s what people consider good writing these days.”
He nodded towards a pair of ragged boys shovelling horse-dung onto a rotting wagon. “What’re they doing?”
“Making a living.”
“Out of shit?”
“All you need is a shovel and a poor sense of smell.” Savine made an utterly futile effort to wriggle some room into her overtight collar. “And good senses of smell don’t last long around here.”
The Trouble with Peace Page 20