Joe Abercrombie - The Blade Itself

“Good. Knowing your own ignorance is the first step to enlightenment. Between you and me, though, I’d think of something else to tell the Arch Lector.” Glokta felt his eyelid flickering. “You’d better start across, eh, Inquisitor? While I lock up?”

The plunge to the cold water below no longer seemed to hold much fear. If I were to fall, at least I would die in the light. Glokta looked back only once, as he heard the doors of the Maker’s House shut with a soft click, the circles slide back into place. All as it was before we arrived. He turned his prickling back, sucked his gums against the familiar waves of nausea, and cursed and struggled his limping way across the bridge.

Luthar was hammering desperately on the old gates at the far end. “Let us in!” he was nearly sobbing as Glokta hobbled up, an edge of cracked panic to his voice. “Let us in!” The door finally wobbled open to reveal a shocked-looking Warden. Such a shame. I was sure that Captain Luthar was about to burst into tears. The proud winner of the Contest, the Union’s bravest young son, the very flower of manhood, blubbing on his knees. That sight could almost have made the trip worthwhile. Luthar darted through the open gate and Ninefingers followed grimly after, cradling the metal box in his arms. The Warden squinted at Glokta as he limped up to the gate. “Back so soon?”

You old dolt. “What the hell are you talking about, so soon?”

“I’m only halfway through my eggs. You’ve been gone less than half an hour.”

Glokta barked a joyless laugh. “Half a day, perhaps.” But he frowned as he peered past into the courtyard. The shadows were almost exactly where they had been when they left. Early morning still, but how?

“The Maker once told me that time is all in the mind.” Glokta winced as he turned his head. Bayaz had come up behind him, and was tapping the side of his bald skull with a thick finger. “It could be worse, believe me. It’s when you come out before you went in that you really start to worry.” He smiled, eyes glinting in the light through the doorway. Playing the fool? Or trying to make a fool of me? Either way, these games grow tiresome.

“Enough riddles,” sneered Glokta. “Why not just tell me what you’re after?”

The First of the Magi, if such he was, grinned still wider. “I like you, Inquisitor, I really do. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were the only honest man left in this whole damn country. We should have a talk at some point, you and I. A talk about what I want, and about what you want.” His smile vanished. “But not today.”

And he stepped through the open door, leaving Glokta behind in the shadows.

“Why me?” West murmured to himself through gritted teeth, staring across the bridge towards the South Gate. That nonsense at the docks had taken him longer than expected, much longer, but then didn’t everything these days? It sometimes felt as if he was the only man in the Union seriously preparing for a war, and had to organise the entire business on his own, right down to counting the nails that would hold the horses’ shoes on. He was already late for his daily meeting with Marshal Burr, and knew there would be a hundred impossible things for him to get done today. There always were. To become involved in some pointless hold-up here at the very gate of the Agriont was all he needed.

“Why the hell must it be me?” His head was starting to hurt again. That all too familiar pulsing behind the eyes. Each day it seemed to come on earlier, and end up worse.

Because of the heat over the last few days, the guards had been permitted to come to duty without full armour. West reckoned that at least two of them were now regretting it. One was folded up on the ground near the gate, hands clasped between his legs, whimpering noisily. His sergeant stood stooped over next to him, blood running from his nose and pattering dark red drops on the stones of the bridge. The two other soldiers in the detail had their spears lowered, blades pointing towards a scrawny dark-skinned youth. Another southerner stood nearby, an old man with long grey hair, leaning against the handrail and watching the scene with an expression of profound resignation.

The youth glanced quickly over his shoulder and West felt a sting of surprise. A woman: black hair hacked off short and sticking off her head in a mess of greasy spikes. One sleeve was torn off round her shoulder and a long, sinewy brown arm stuck out, ending in a fist bunched tight around the grip of a curved knife. The blade shone, mirror bright and evilly sharp, the one and only thing about her that looked clean. There was a thin, grey scar all the way down the right side of her face, through her black eyebrow and across her scowling lips. It was her eyes, though, which truly caught West off guard: slightly slanted, narrowed with the deepest hostility and suspicion, and yellow. He had seen all kinds of Kantics in his time, while he was fighting in Gurkhul, in the war, but he never saw eyes like that before. Deep, rich, golden yellow, like…

Piss. That was the smell, as he came closer. Piss, and dirt, and a lot of old, sour sweat. He remembered that from the war alright, the stink of men who had not washed in a very long time. West fought the compulsion to wrinkle up his nose and breathe through his mouth as he approached, and the urge to circle out wide and keep his distance from that glittering blade. You have to show no fear if you’re to calm a dangerous situation, however much you might be feeling. In his experience, if you could seem to be in control, you were more than halfway to being there.

“What the hell is going on here?” he growled at the bloody-faced sergeant. He had no need at all to feign annoyance, he was getting later and angrier by the second.

“These stinking beggars wanted to come into the Agriont, sir! I tried to turn them away, of course, but they have letters!”

“Letters?”

The strange old man tapped West on the shoulder, handed over a folded sheet of paper, slightly grubby round the edges. He read it, his frown growing steadily deeper. “This is a letter of transit signed by Lord Hoff himself. They must be admitted.”

“But not armed, sir! I said they couldn’t go in armed!” The sergeant held up an odd looking bow of dark wood in one hand, and a curved sword of the Gurkish design in the other. “It was enough of a struggle getting her to give these up, but when I tried to search her… this Gurkish bitch…” The woman hissed and took a quick step forward, and the sergeant and his two guards shuffled nervously back in a tight group.

“Peace, Ferro,” sighed the old man in the Kantic tongue. “For God’s sake, peace.” The woman spat on the stones of the bridge and hissed some curse that West could not understand, weaving the blade back and forth in a way that suggested she knew how to use it, and was more than willing.

“Why me?” West mumbled under his breath. It was plain he was going nowhere until this difficulty was resolved. As if he didn’t have enough to worry about. He took a deep breath and did his best to put himself in the position of the stinking woman: a stranger, surrounded by strange-looking people speaking words she didn’t understand, brandishing spears and trying to search her. Probably she was even now thinking about how horrible West smelled. Disorientated and afraid, most likely, rather than dangerous. She did look very dangerous though, and not in the least afraid.

The old man certainly seemed the more reasonable of the two, so West turned to him first. “Are you two from Gurkhul?” he asked him in broken Kantic.

The old man turned his tired eyes on West. “No. There is more to the South than the Gurkish.”