Jappo raised his brows. “You’d like me to take that one off, too, would you?”
“I wouldn’t ask you to strip too far for your comfort, but I think we have the best chance of a mutually beneficial discussion without it.”
A little smile curled the corner of Jappo’s mouth, and he jerked his gown closed, swung his long legs from the chaise and sat forward. “Then let’s talk honestly!”
“Have you seen my friends?” asked Leo. “One had a bird mask, and one a whale…”
The woman gave him a towering sneer, then a disgusted hiss, and turned back to the cracked mirror, touching up the paint on her mouth with furious concentration.
He limped on down the corridor, one hand on the flaking wall. He wasn’t even sure how he’d ended up backstairs. Took a wrong turn somewhere. When he left Angland to ask for Styrian support, in his opinion. There was nothing you could trust in the whole damn country.
Behind the veneer, Cardotti’s House of Leisure was a very different place. A warren of low-ceilinged little cells, mouldy, cheap and seething with frantic action. It reminded Leo of the preparations for a battle. The chaos and barely contained panic, the pulling on of gear and tightening of straps, the expressions of grim determination.
He glimpsed two women through a doorway, one with teeth gritted and chin raised, mask dangling from her hand. “He fucking bit me, the bastard!” she snarled in common. “He fucking bit me! Is it bleeding?”
“A little,” said the other as she dabbed at red marks on her neck with a cloth. “You shouldn’t be back here!” she snarled at Leo, kicking the door closed.
His meeting with Jappo had gone badly, he knew. Worse the more he thought about it. He wondered whether he might’ve made a serious mistake by not offering more. Then he felt disgusted with himself for offering as much as he had, annoyed with Savine for making him try, irritated at the world and everything in it. He’d made a grubby compromise too far by even talking to that greasy bastard and hadn’t gained a thing. What use could a man like that be in a battle anyway? If you could even call him a man. Once Leo had dealt with the Closed Council, he’d have to lead an army to Styria so Union arms could finally wipe the smirk from King Jappo’s face.
The thought gave him some fleeting satisfaction, but it was soon driven off by the pain in his thigh. He leaned against the wall to grip it, knead it, breathing hard through clenched teeth. He wished he’d brought his cane now, but he refused to look like a cripple. A band was tuning up somewhere, a flurry of screeching notes.
He saw a woman up on her elbows on a bench, skirts around her hips while an old man in cracked eye-lenses peered between her legs. “You’ve caught the rot,” he explained to her in Northern. “You’ll need to use a powder twice a day. Don’t eat it!”
“Why the hell would I eat it?” she snapped.
Leo recoiled from a blast of steam. Half a dozen dark-skinned cooks were wedged into a tiny kitchen, running with sweat as they carved meat and turned spits, one of them singing some jagged prayer as he pushed a dozen grease-caked pans around a brazier, another arranging a few morsels onto a perfectly white plate, the one clean thing in the whole place.
Leo turned to find his way blocked by a dark-haired little girl with food stains around her mouth. “Did you hurt your leg?” she asked in very clear common.
“I did. Or, well… the King of the Northmen hurt it. Hasn’t healed. Don’t know if it ever will.”
She looked up at him with that awfully solemn look children sometimes have. “Do you know where my mother is?”
“I’m afraid… I expect she’s probably working.” Leo cleared his throat, not knowing what the hell to do with her and deciding nothing was his best bet. Somewhere a female voice screeched furiously in Styrian, an endless flow of sing-song curses. “Do you know where the gaming hall is?”
The girl raised her skinny arm to point at a narrow door further down the hallway. “Up the stairs.”
When Leo finally found the place, Antaup was lolling against the dice table looking even more drunk than before. “You’re back!” he called, tried to let go of the table and nearly fell.
Leo caught him by the elbow. “Where the hell is everyone?”
“Think Glaward an’ Jurand went back to the rooms… maybe… said we should stay. Enjoy selves. Jin, is he with that woman still? Shall we get a drink?”
“I think you’ve had enough,” said Leo, giving Antaup a shake. “Jin can find his own way back.” He couldn’t stand to spend another moment in this place. He needed to talk to someone clear-headed. Someone clever, who could work out how big a mistake he’d made. He needed Jurand. “Let’s go.”
King Jappo filled Orso’s glass, then tapped a loose drop from the edge of the decanter. “So what has brought you all the way across the Circle Sea?”
“Treason,” said Orso, simply. “I may be facing a rather serious rebellion, and these rebels may be seeking your help. I want to convince you not to give it.”
“You are frank.”
“I expect your position, like mine, gives you limited time to relax. I would not presume to take up more of it than necessary.”
“How thoughtful.”
“Good manners are a gift that costs nothing.”
“If only the Young Lion saw things that way.”
Orso paused. Plainly that had been no slip of the tongue. “You have… met with Lord Brock, then?” It was a heavy blow, but hardly a surprising one. Orso wondered whether Savine knew of it. Whether she had helped plan it. Even now, the thought gave him a stab of pain so sharp he could barely hide it.
“Perhaps I have been approached about joining a… let us call it a confederation. Conspiracy strikes an ugly note, doesn’t it?”
“Awfully tasteless,” said Orso, sucking thoughtfully on the pipe and letting the smoke curl away.
“A confederation based on freedom, patriotism and high principles.”
“Awfully tasteful.”
“Aimed at… let us say… altering the priorities and personnel of the Union government.”
“Just a little tweak to policy?”
“Exactly!”
“Because treason sounds most underhand,” said Orso, handing back the pipe.
Jappo grinned as he took it. “Few things more so.”
“Might I ask whether you are minded to join this… well-intentioned group?”
“I am considering my options.” Jappo stuck out his bottom lip, twiddling absently with the pipe. “I should say that I was offered Sipani.”
That hung between them for a moment. “You know my sister Carlot is married to Chancellor Sotorius.”
“Does that mean,” asked Jappo, “that you couldn’t match the offer?”
Orso gave a long sigh. “If I was willing to stab my own sister in the back, how could you possibly trust me? How could anyone? I could lie and say yes, then later renege, but I think we’ve all had enough of that sort of behaviour. I would rather be honest and say the best you’ll get from me is that things stay comfortably familiar. I will give up my claims on Talins. I’ve only ever seen the place in paintings. Take it with my blessing. Perhaps in time we can even join hands across the Circle Sea and win the peace together.” He looked up at Jappo and let his smile fade. “But if you try to take Sipani, I will fight you. I may well lose. But I will fight you. With everything I have.”
There was a lengthy silence. Then Jappo raised one long forefinger and wagged it at him. “I thought I’d love the Young Lion and find you detestable.”
“You would hardly be alone with that opinion.”
Jappo slapped his thigh. “That’s what I mean! You’re excellent value, and he’s a fucking idiot! Warriors, I swear.”
“I know. They’re so ridiculous, and yet they have no sense of humour.”
“Fuck him.” And Jappo handed back the pipe. “Sipani isn’t worth another meeting with that arrogant arsehole. And from what I’ve heard, Stour Nightfall wouldn’t know the difference between Aropel
la’s Fates and a smacked arse. I very much doubt he and I would get on.”
“He was one of these patriots, then?”
“Along, I believe, with at least a dozen members of your Open Council and at least one of your Closed.”
“I don’t suppose you’d fancy sharing some names?”
“I wouldn’t want to spoil the game. You’ve played so well so far.”
Orso sat back, smiling. It was bad. It was as bad as he had feared. But there was a strange relief in knowing exactly how bad. “You know, King Jappo, I think we should make this a regular thing.”
“I’m amenable, King Orso. Once you’ve beaten your rebels. If you beat them.”
“So I can rely on you to stay out of this?”
“My mother would want me to promise you yes.” Jappo grinned very wide. “Then stab you in the back at the first opportunity.”
“I think we have probably both had enough of what our mothers want.”
“Probably.”
“So I can rely on you to stay out of this?”
“I suppose you’ll find out when you don’t feel the dagger between your shoulder blades.” Jappo grinned even wider. “Or when you do.”
Orso sucked at the pipe one more time and let the smoke float from his pursed lips. “How thoroughly Styrian of you.”
“Jurand?” called Leo as he pushed open the doors.
But the room was empty. Sounds of the city outside. Music and laughter. Gilt mouldings gleamed in the darkness, drapes stirred about the open window. That made him frown. Surely they’d shut it? Could someone have broken in? Be waiting for them? It only came to him then how dangerous this business might be. How many enemies he’d made. They should never have split up! He put a hand on the hilt of his sword.
“Glaward!” he hissed, wincing as he stepped into the room. After the walk back, his leg was burning all the way from his foot to his hip, he could hardly bend the knee.
Antaup started giggling, which didn’t help. He’d been giggling all the way from bloody Cardotti’s. “Pour me a drink, eh—”
“Shush!” Leo caught him by the elbow and half-steered, half-threw him into a chair.
He sat there, shaking with suppressed laughter which, within a few breaths, turned to gentle snoring.
“By the dead,” muttered Leo. Then he saw a chink of light at the keyhole of one of the connecting doors. Jurand’s and Glaward’s masks dangled on the knob beside it. Whale and bird. A flood of relief. He let go of his sword, went to the door and shoved it wide. “There you are—”
He thought at first that they were wrestling, and nearly laughed at the mismatch.
They were kneeling on the Gurkish carpet, Glaward gripping two fistfuls of the covers which he’d half-dragged from the bed, eyes squeezed shut and his mouth open. Jurand was pressed against his back with his teeth bared, one hand down between Glaward’s legs, the other tangled in his hair and twisting his head around so he could bite at his ear.
Then Leo realised Jurand had his trousers down around his ankles and Glaward had his off completely, flung rumpled into a corner, their hairy thighs pressed together, and suddenly it was entirely clear what they were doing, and it wasn’t wrestling.
“But…” he breathed, clapping a hand over his face, but somehow still looking through the gap between his fingers. “Fuck!”
He reeled away, nearly tripped over Antaup’s outstretched boot and stumbled from the room, out into the corridor, leg burning, face burning. He was sickened, shamed, disgusted. Wasn’t he?
“Leo!” Jurand’s voice echoed at him from behind and Leo flinched, kept lurching on, didn’t look back.
By the dead, he wished he’d never come to Styria.
No Philosopher
They pulled the hood off and Broad was left squinting through one eye, trying and failing to bring the lamplit blurs around him into focus.
“Well, well, well. Gunnar Broad, in my back parlour.”
He knew that voice right off, and what he thought was, Fuck. What he said was, “Hello, Judge.”
“Told you he’d be back, eh, Sarlby?” One of those blurs drifted towards him. “Some men just can’t help ’emselves.” Someone perched his lenses on his nose, nudged them into that familiar groove and, like magic, everything became clear. Might’ve been better if it hadn’t.
Judge grinned down at him, Sarlby and a few others of his ilk standing around the stained walls of a cellar with not a friendly eye among ’em. Time hadn’t improved her. She still wore that rusted breastplate over a ragged ballgown looked like it belonged to a baroness chased through a briar patch. Her red hair was an even madder tangle, gathered up like some parrot’s crest on top and clipped to patchy stubble at the sides. She still was decked with jewels, chains of office and strings of pearls ripped from the rich of Valbeck in the uprising. But, as if she needed to look more like bloodshed personified, she’d strapped herself up with belts and bandoliers, too, knives dangling from them, hatchets tucked into them, blades enough to run a chain of butchers.
She’d made him nervous the first time he laid eyes on her, and being chained to a chair in her presence helped not one bit. Made him think of all the dead folk she’d left hanged in the yard behind the ruined courthouse. He could still hear the sound of it, like a ship’s rigging, creaking with the breeze.
He’d been hoping for Risinau. That would’ve been worrying enough. Judge was ten times worse. Worse ’cause she was far more clever and far more dangerous. Worse ’cause if she was in charge, reason was out the window and running for the hills. Worse ’cause the moment he saw her, he felt that guilty tickle, deep inside. The same one he got when he felt violence coming.
She leaned down over him, reached out and smoothed his hair with one ring-encrusted hand like a mother might smooth a wayward son’s. It was the best he could do not to twist away. Twist away, or maybe twist closer.
“You know how sometimes…” she purred, “you see an old lover you haven’t seen in years… and you get that tingle in the crotch.” He knew what a tingle in the crotch felt like, all right, he had one now. “And you think to yourself… why aren’t we still together? How could something so sweet have turned so sour?”
“Might be all the hangin’s,” tossed out Sarlby from the corner of the room.
Judge pushed her lips into a pout. “Folk just don’t understand me. That’s my tragedy.” She snapped her fingers and one of the men slapped a bottle of spirits into her hand. “But you do, don’t you, Bull Broad? I knew it when you flung that man o’ mine across my courtroom and smashed his head through a witness box. You see what needs to be done.”
And she curled her tongue around the neck of the bottle and drank, blotchy throat shifting with each hard swallow. She caught Broad watching and grinned as she smacked her lips. Gave the bottle a shake, that lovely tinkle of spirits sloshing inside.
“Want a drink?”
“No,” he said, wanting one worse than just about anything and not hiding it well.
“You sure? ’Cause I’m getting the feeling there’s something over here you like the look of.”
Broad watched, caught somewhere between terrified and fascinated as she reached down, took the hem of her tattered skirts and pulled it up, up to show the writing tattooed around and around her thigh, long-winded quotes from some political treatise or other, and she slipped that leg over his and straddled him, knives and chains scraping against her breastplate as she perched herself on his lap.
“Sarlby tells me you want to talk to the Breakers,” she said.
Broad tried to tell himself Judge on top of him was the last thing in the world he’d want. That he was in more danger here than he’d been climbing a ladder onto the walls of Musselia, crowded with enemies. That she disgusted him.
He wasn’t sure who he was fooling.
“Shame is, the Breakers melted away like snow in spring,” said Judge. “Those they didn’t hang, like your friend Sarlby here…” and she tossed him the bottle, “have see
n the light of the fire. Seen the folly of half-measures. Risinau’s off down in Keln or some such fancy place, preaching his blather to the wide-eyed and wishful. But those of us still in Valbeck.” She leaned close, breath hot on his face. “We’re all Burners now.”
Broad tried to keep Liddy and May in his mind. It was them he was doing this for. Had to keep a grip on himself. But it wasn’t easy with Judge’s crotch pressing up against his half-hard prick and the reek of spirits so strong on her breath it was making his head spin.
“Breakers or Burners,” croaked Broad, “makes no difference.”
“Suppose it wouldn’t to you.” She gave a long sniff. “I hear you’ve crossed the lines.”
“Gone to serve the owners,” grunted Sarlby.
“And not just any owner, but the queen bee herself! The fruit of Old Sticks’ own withered loins, Savine dan fucking Glokta!”
“Dan Brock,” muttered Broad.
Judge smiled. Or at any rate showed her teeth. “Don’t try and trick a trickster. Or at least try a bit harder. The owners chisel our pay every unjust way they can and call it an honest wage. The Closed Council drafts a set of rules that make the rich richer and drive the poor to starve and call it an equality law. You know what they named the most low-lying, smog-choking, shit-stinking alley of rotten cellars in all of Valbeck?” She leaned a little closer to whisper it. “Primrose Heights. Calling a thing a different thing don’t make it a different thing, now does it?”
“Wouldn’t know,” croaked Broad, who beat men for a living and called it labour relations, “I’m no philosopher.”
“Just a traitor.” She barked the word, and suddenly she was standing over him with her black eyes blazing, a handful of his shirt clutched in one trembling fist and a cleaver drawn in the other. She pressed that cold metal into his neck, twisting him back in the chair, and the men around the cellar shifted and nodded and grunted their anger.
The Trouble with Peace Page 38