The Trouble with Peace

by Joe Abercrombie

  Something whizzed past. There was a loud popping sound and a strange silence.

  A hot wind tore at her, twisted her back in her chair.

  She could hardly see anything. Could hear absolutely nothing. Everything moved very slowly. As if she was underwater.

  An armoured man blundered past, screaming silently, a smouldering shard of metal embedded in his breastplate.

  There was something wet on her face. She touched it. Red fingertips. She realised High Justice Bruckel had pressed himself against her shoulder. How dare he? As she turned to remonstrate with him, she saw the side of his head was sheared away, blood spurting from the pulp inside and turning her dress red.

  Probably she should assist. Very severe injury, by all appearances.

  “High Justice?” she asked as he flopped into her lap, but she could not even hear her own voice. She did her best to hold his broken skull together but pieces of it slid between her red fingers.

  She tried to stand, but the over-bright world tipped crazily and slapped her in the side. Dust and splinters. Boots shuffled. She saw someone staring at her. One of Curnsbick’s friends, blowing bloody bubbles out of his nose. It looked as if there might be an iron rivet embedded in the side of his neck. She realised they were both lying on the floor.

  She tried to stand again, thought it prudent to clutch at something for support. The railing of the royal box, its gaudy decorations now red-spotted. Curnsbick stood swaying beside her. His hat had been blown off and his grey hair stuck out at all angles.

  Terez clutched at his bloody jacket. “What happened?” Couldn’t hear herself speak. Couldn’t hear anything. Curnsbick clasped his hands to his face. Stared between his fingers.

  Terez stuck her thumb in her ear and waggled it. It made nothing but a muffled squelching. She squinted into the sunlight. Towards the engine. Or towards where the engine had been.

  There was nothing of it left now but a great claw of burning wreckage, sending up a thick plume of brown smoke. Papers fluttered down. Like the flower petals at her wedding, so long ago. Bodies were fanned out from the engine in rows. Mangled, tangled. Bodies still and bodies vaguely moving, twisting, crawling. A man wandered drunkenly. His shirt appeared to have been torn off.

  There were people coming through the bodies. Not helping. Stepping over the corpses. People in dark clothes, with dark masks over their faces. One held a hatchet. One a long knife. One pointed towards the royal box with a sword. Where was Orso? By the Fates, where was Orso?

  Beside her! He was beside her, staring, blood on his face. He had drawn his sword. A king should never have to touch his sword, let alone draw it. She tried to put herself between him and the assassins, but he brushed her away, pushed her back. He was so much stronger than she had expected. Had some part of her thought he was a snivelling toddler, still helpless in her arms?

  Faint through the burbling in her ears she heard him speak: “Get behind me, Mother.”

  Sofee came blundering through the murk, gripping her sword so tight her hand ached, hardly able to breathe even with the cloth over her face, and stumbled to an uncertain stop.

  Bodies everywhere. Bodies and parts of bodies. More and more revealed as the breeze snatched the smoke away. Things dropped. A walking stick. A hat. A broken picnic hamper, spilling broken crockery. A glove.

  No. It was a hand.

  The pamphlets they’d made fluttered down. The explanations, the excuses, the justifications. One fell near Sofee’s boot, and began to soak up blood at one corner, and turn red. She’d been a governess for a year, before she was married, so she’d been very particular about the wording of that pamphlet. She’d wanted to convince people. To show them the truth.

  Someone shoved her, near knocked her over. One of the other Burners, desperate to begin the killing. Wasn’t that what she came for? All she’d wanted, for so long. To kill them. Tear them with her bare hands. Bite them with her teeth. Now she wondered who “them” was. Whose enemy was the little boy with a fluttering pamphlet stuck across his face and his guts hanging out? She felt sick.

  Brevan had been the kind of man everyone liked the moment they met him. The day they were married had been the happiest of her life. Suddenly special, when she’d been nothing since the day she was born. After they hanged him, left the crows picking at him above the road to Valbeck, it was like the sun went out for her. Such a gloom she couldn’t even lift a finger. Judge had given her purpose. Lit a fire in the ashes. But now that helplessness came flooding back.

  “Come on!” screeched Gus, dragging at her, and he half-pulled her over, left her kneeling in the dirt as he charged on. Charged on with the rest of them, all with a thirst for blood that would never be satisfied.

  Judge had promised her she’d feel better, after this. Cleansed by righteous fire. But she saw now there was no feeling better, and for damn sure no cleansing. All she’d done was what was done to her.

  Sofee had dropped her sword. She left it where it was. All those bodies. All those injured. Even if she’d wanted to help them, where would you start?

  Brevan had been such a good man. Everyone loved him the moment they met him. Would he have wanted this?

  She put a hand over her mouth.

  What had she done?

  Curnsbick’s terror, when he struggled up with his hat blown off, was not for his own safety, but that he might be responsible. Or, at any rate, that he might be blamed.

  “Oh, my,” he whispered. Carnage where the cheering onlookers had stood. Bodies strewn everywhere. It was as bad as that day in Crease. Worse, because then he had not been responsible. Could not possibly have been blamed.

  Among engineers and investors there were many embittered failures, and he knew they must gaze enviously at him and think how wonderful it must be, to be Curnsbick. They had no idea of the pressure. Ever since his patent portable forge, with every success the weight of expectation grew heavier. For every world-changing idea there were a million duds, and until they were thoroughly tested and explored, the two could be surprisingly hard to tell apart. That was why he had founded the Solar Society, really. As a great sounding board for his worse notions. That, and he simply could not say no to Savine dan Glokta.

  Someone clutched hold of him. Queen Terez? He wanted to blubber some ridiculous apology, but his voice utterly failed him. All he could do was put his hands over his face, stare between his fingers like a child at some horror and murmur, “Oh, my.”

  So when he saw the Burners coming, his first feeling was an improbable flood of relief. Someone to blame! The villains of the piece, custom made for the purpose! Then came the sickening concern for his own safety. There were a great number of black-clothed assassins down there. They had dispatched the disorganised guards, were converging on the royal box. They had a Knight of the Body on his knees! Were smashing at him with hammers!

  “Oh, my.” Men can be brave in some ways, not in others. Curnsbick could face the unknown and summon new things into being. Could stand before a crowd of hundreds and make them believe. Could take responsibility for millions of marks and never falter. But when it came to physical danger, he had always been a hopeless coward. He missed Majud terribly, then. Brave, stingy Majud. Missed him as he had every day these past ten years. But Curnsbick had made his choices. All that remained was to live with them. Or perhaps die with them.

  “If I may, Your Majesty?” That man Sulfur. He was brushing the king aside. Went smiling towards a dozen well-armed fanatics as they mounted the steps. What the hell was he about?

  A Knight of the Body came stumbling from the direction of the royal box. He was stunned by the explosion, tangled with his purple cloak, and the Burners had come prepared. Judge had loved the notion of pouring Gurkish sugar through their visors and setting a match to it, but Gus had a more practical solution.

  Briar threw a net and pinned his sword-arm, then Rollow and Laws, two beefy ex-diggers, went at him with hammers, aiming for knees and elbows. Once they brought him down, Gus step
ped up, swung his pick high and neatly punched it right through the top of his helmet. It was some time since he had thought of himself as an engineer, but he could still take pleasure in a well-executed design.

  He had been a wheelman once. A specialist in the design of waterwheels, that was. A surveyor of slopes and flows. A connoisseur of dams and sluices. His scheme for the river-driven mill at Sharnlost had been much admired. But for the important work, one had to go to Adua. So he had set out to study at the University, hoping to wear the robes of an Adeptus Mechanical himself one day, perhaps. What petty ambitions.

  Gus charged through the scattering mass of panicked humanity, people running, begging, blubbing, bleeding, towards the royal box, waving his comrades forward. “For the people!” he roared. “For the Great Change!”

  The lecture theatres of the University’s grand new buildings had contained only dry whispers and dated ideas. The inspiring speeches were given in the teahouses and jerry shops on the borders of the poor districts, where the intellectuals would spring onto the tables to hold forth on the injustice of the current system, lay out bold fantasies for what could replace it, compete with each other to make the most outrageous pronouncements on behalf of the noble and oppressed commoner. The commoners themselves, it hardly needed to be said, could scarcely get a word in. Gus still remembered the excitement of those heady days. It was the first time he had ever believed in something greater than himself. Belonged to something greater than himself.

  His pick thudded into the back of a crawling city watchman, and as he dragged the bloody weapon free, he knew he had never done such important work.

  It was not until he went to Valbeck, and saw the great chimneys, the great smogs, the great slums, and heard the Weaver speak, that he began to glimpse the truth. That the Union was itself a wheel, designed not by a single engineer but by a web of mutual interest, hidden influence and collective greed, to raise up the rich and drag the poor down into the churning waters. Well, now the wheel would turn, as wheels are made to do, and drive down the privileged, and lift up the downtrodden, and there would be justice. There would be justice, and equality, and plenty for all.

  He had cut the “dan” from his name. Guslav dan Turmric had become simple Gus Turmer. Arguments with his family had borne no fruit so he had cut them off, too. He had been a stack of kindling waiting desperately for a spark. Then he met Judge, and his eyes were opened. There was no dry theory with her, no sentimental compromises, no having to be patient, no convincing the doubters. What some called madness he recognised as diamond-edged clarity. The time for arguments in the teahouse, for pretty words and fancy theories, was over. The grasping hands of the owners, the noblemen, the king and his venal henchmen could only be opened by force. Fire and steel would be the last words in their argument.

  Another knight had killed two of his brothers, but they had him cornered now and were battering away at him, leaving great dents in his armour. Gus left the pick stuck in his helmet, kicked the knight over with a clatter of falling steel, pulled out his sword and charged for the royal box, its steps unguarded. He caught a glimpse of the king, mouth and eyes wide open, his Styrian mother, too, her face spattered with blood. If he could get to them… what a blow for the common man! A blow that would resound across the Circle Sea and around the world as if his clenched fist were the clapper of a great bell. The history books would record this as the day of the Great Change, and Gus Turmer as the man who ushered it in!

  Except someone stepped in front of the king as Gus laboured to the top of the steps. No armoured Knight of the Body, just a nondescript, curly haired fellow in plain clothes, with a strange, bland smile which did not quite touch his eyes. If this fool thought he could stop the changing of an epoch, rob the people, steal this moment, he was mistaken! Gus was the instrument of history! He was a torrent that could not be dammed!

  He raised his sword, shouting, “The Great Change!” The man seemed to shimmer, to blur. There was a blast of wind, and—

  “Oh dear,” said Orso. Mouth all numb. Could hardly make the words.

  He’d been thinking when he let the footman buckle his sword on that morning how pointless it was. How he’d never draw the bloody thing. Now he fumbled it from the sheath. He got the blade caught on the back of his chair. Realised there was a piece of metal lodged in the split wood. Must’ve missed his head by no more than a hand’s width.

  “Get behind me, Mother,” he said, pawing at her shoulder, but his voice was an echoing burble. Like water sloshing at the bottom of a very deep drain. His head hurt. His jacket felt all sticky inside. Bloody hell, was he wounded? Or was it someone else’s blood? That’s the thing about blood. King’s or commoner’s, everyone’s looks much the same.

  Where were the Knights of the Body? Weren’t they supposed to handle this type of thing? The absolute point of the bastards, wasn’t it? He saw one dead with a piece of metal through his breastplate. So he could hardly be blamed. Where was Bremer dan Gorst? Had given him the day off. Insisted on it. Terrible decision. Did Orso make any good ones? Couldn’t think of any. Probably the blame was his. It usually was. A king was just a kind of bin for all the blame to go in.

  No one up here would be much use in a fight. Curnsbick had his hands pressed to his horrified face. Kort had scrambled for the rear. Funny, when death’s on the table, how vitally important it seems that one be killed last.

  He felt very tired. As if he’d run a mile. Papers were fluttering down. Scorched pamphlets. Whole thing was like a nightmare. One was still burning as it fell beside him. He scrubbed it out under his boot. Could’ve been dangerous. Almost wanted to laugh at that. But not for long.

  Someone was coming up the steps to the royal box. A big man wearing a dark coat. Thin yellow hair stirred by the smoky wind. A cloth wrapped around his face so Orso could only see his eyes. Hard eyes. Furious about something. There was a sword in his hand. An old, cheap sword, but cheap swords can still kill you.

  All seemed so unlikely. Orso was a pleasant fellow, wasn’t he? Always tried to see other people’s points of view. To be polite. He could hardly believe this man had come here to murder him. There might have been a dozen killers crowding towards the steps, and none looked likely to be moved by politeness.

  “Oh dear,” said Orso again. Probably the best chance was if he met them at the top of the stair. But he was worried if he took a step he might fall over. Then a hand caught his shoulder.

  “If I may, Your Majesty?” It was Sulfur, brushing past and carefully, almost daintily, stepping over High Justice Bruckel’s corpse. Orso had forgotten the magus was even there.

  The big Burner raised his sword, the cloth over his mouth fluttering faintly as he shouted something. “A great shame!” Orso thought it might have been, a sentiment with which he could readily agree. He narrowed his eyes, expecting that blade to swing down and split the humble representative of the Order of Magi in half.

  But Sulfur had already moved. With breathtaking, impossible speed. Orso’s eyes could barely follow him. His fist sank into the Burner’s gut with a wet-sounding thud, so hard it folded him in half, lifted him right off his feet then dropped him on the floor of the royal box like a heap of rags, his cheap sword clattering from his hand and bouncing harmlessly from Curnsbick’s leg.

  The next Burner raised his shield. Sulfur’s fist was a blur that turned it into flying splinters, folded the man’s arm back on itself, ripped his head half-off in a spray of blood and sent him flopping like a rag doll among the benches below. Sulfur had already caught a woman by her hair, ripped her head down and smashed his knee into her face with a bang so loud it set Orso’s ears ringing again.

  He flinched as blood spotted the royal box, stared in horror as a man was smashed into a shape no man should ever be with one chop of an open hand. Sulfur caught another under the jaw, a board cracking beneath his heel as he flung the man high into the sky, his echoing shriek fading as if he had been shot from a cannon. Sulfur backhanded a third man and sent
him tumbling bonelessly end-over-end, tangled up with fluttering festoons of the bunting that had decorated the royal box.

  Orso was not sure whether he was trying to shield his mother or cling to her for support. In the space of a breath, maybe two, Sulfur reduced half a dozen assassins to flying meat. Corpses turned inside out, twisted into corkscrews, popped open or crushed in on themselves. Worse than anything the exploding engine had done to the people down near the tracks.

  A man screamed through the cloth around his face as Sulfur caught the wrist of his sword-arm, the joint popping apart in his grip, and dragged him close. The scream turned to a bubbling groan, and there was a crunching, cracking, slurping, the back of Sulfur’s head jolting like a famished dog’s at its dinner.

  “An Eater,” breathed Queen Terez. Orso made a point of never arguing with his mother. While watching a man rip into another with his teeth was no time to start. Orso’s father had fought Eaters at the Battle of Adua. When Orso asked him what it was like, he had turned pale, and said nothing. Now, as the man Sulfur had thrown into the sky plummeted down and crashed into the ground thirty strides away, he finally understood why.

  The last of the Burners was running. Orso caught a glimpse of her terrified eyes as she dropped her axe and bolted. Sulfur let the limp corpse fall, its throat one single glistening black wound. The air about his shoulders shimmered, like the horizon on a hot day. Orso flinched as the woman burst into flames, fell to the ground on fire, thrashing and squealing.

  Perhaps they were living in the age of reason, but anyone proclaiming the death of magic had done so, it seemed, a little prematurely.

  Sulfur turned towards Orso with the very same smile he had worn before the explosion. But what had been a bland salesman’s grin was become a monster’s leer, dotted with shreds of flesh, his mouth daubed red, different-coloured eyes twinkling with the reflected flames of the woman he had somehow set on fire.

  “So, might I speak to the lord chancellor?” Sulfur asked.