Joe Abercrombie - The Blade Itself

“Ah, so it’s for the benefit of your nation that you put yourself through this. What a fine citizen you must be. What selflessness. What an example to us all.” Glokta snorted. “Please! If you must lie, at least pick a lie that you yourself find convincing. That answer is an insult to us both.”

How dare this toothless has-been take that tone with him? Jezal’s legs gave a twitch: he was right on the point of getting up and walking away, Varuz and his hideous stooge be damned. But he caught the cripple’s eye as he put his hands on the arms of the chair to push himself up. Glokta was smiling at him, a mocking sort of smile. To leave would be to admit defeat somehow. Why did he take up fencing anyway? “My father wanted me to do it.”

“So, so. My heart brims with sympathy. The loyal son, bound by his strong sense of duty, is forced to fulfil his father’s ambitions. A familiar tale, like a comfortable old chair we all love to sit in. Tell ’em what they want to hear, eh? A better answer, but just as far from the truth.”

“Why don’t you tell me then?” snapped Jezal sulkily, “since you seem to know so much about it!”

“Alright, I will. Men don’t fence for their King, or for their families, or for the exercise either, before you try that one on me. They fence for the recognition, for the glory. They fence for their own advancement. They fence for themselves. I should know.”

“You should know?” Jezal snorted. “It hardly seems to have worked in your case.” He regretted it immediately. Damn his mouth, it got him in all kinds of trouble.

But Glokta only flashed his disgusting smile again. “It was working well enough, until I found my way into the Emperor’s prisons. What’s your excuse, liar?”

Jezal didn’t like the way this conversation was going. He was too used to easy victories at the card table, and poor players. His skills had dulled. Better to sit this one out until he got the measure of his new opponent. He clamped his jaw shut and said nothing.

“It takes hard work, of course, winning a Contest. You should have seen our mutual friend Collem West working. He sweated at it for months, running around while the rest of us laughed at him. A jumped-up, idiot commoner competing with his betters, that’s what we all thought. Blundering through his forms, stumbling about on the beam, being made a fool of, again and again, day after day. But look at him now.” Glokta tapped his cane with a finger. “And look at me. Seems he had the last laugh, eh, Captain? Just shows what you can achieve with a little hard work. You’ve twice the talent he had, and the right blood. You don’t have to work one tenth so hard, but you refuse to work at all.”

Jezal wasn’t about to let that one past. “Not work at all? Don’t I put myself through this torture every day—”

“Torture?” asked Glokta sharply.

Jezal realised too late his unfortunate choice of words. “Well,” he mumbled, “I meant.”

“I know more than a little about both fencing and torture. Believe me when I say,” and the Inquisitor’s grotesque grin grew wider still, “that they’re two quite different things.”

“Er…” said Jezal, still off balance.

“You have the ambitions, and the means to realise them. A little effort would do it. A few months’ hard work, then you would probably never need to try at anything again in your life, if that’s what you want. A few short months, and you’re set.” Glokta licked at his empty gums. “Barring accidents of course. It’s a great chance you’ve been offered. I’d take it; if I was you, but I don’t know. Maybe you’re a fool as well as a liar.”

“I’m no fool,” said Jezal coldly. It was the best he could do.

Glokta raised an eyebrow, then winced, leaning heavily on his cane as he slowly pushed himself to his feet. “Give it up if you like, by all means. Sit around for the rest of your days and drink and talk shit with the rest of the junior officers. There are a lot of people who’d be more than happy to live that life. A lot of people who haven’t had the chances you’ve had. Give it up. Lord Marshal Varuz will be disappointed, and Major West, and your father, and so on, but please believe me when I say,” and he leaned down, still smiling his horrible smile, “that I couldn’t care less. Good day, Captain Luthar.” And Glokta limped off toward the archway.

After that less than delightful interview, Jezal found himself with a few hours of unexpected free time on his hands—but he was scarcely in the frame of mind to enjoy it. He wandered the empty streets, squares and gardens of the Agriont, thinking grimly on what the cripple had said to him, cursing the name of Glokta, but unable to quite push the conversation from his mind. He turned it over and over, every phrase, constantly coming up with new things that he should have said. If only he had thought of them at the time.

“Ah, Captain Luthar!” Jezal started and looked up. A man he did not recognise was sitting on the dewy grass beneath a tree, smiling up at him, a half-eaten apple in his hand. “The early morning is the perfect time for a stroll, I find. Calm and grey and clean and empty. It’s nothing like the gaudy pinkness of evening time. All that clutter, all those people coming and going. How can one think in amongst all that nonsense? And now I see you are of the same mind. How delightful.” He took a big, crunching bite out of the apple.

“Do I know you?”

“Oh no, no,” said the stranger, getting to his feet and brushing some dirt from the seat of his trousers, “not yet. My name is Sulfur, Yoru Sulfur.”

“Really? And what brings you to the Agriont?”

“You might say I have come on a diplomatic mission.”

Jezal looked him over, trying to place his origin. “A mission from?”

“From my master, of course,” said Sulfur unhelpfully. His eyes were different colours, Jezal noticed. An ugly and off-putting characteristic, he rather thought.

“And your master is?”

“A very wise and powerful man.” He stripped the core with his teeth and tossed it away into the bushes, wiping his hands on the front of his shirt. “I see you’ve been fencing.”

Jezal glanced down at his steels. “Yes,” he said, realising that he had finally come to a decision, “but for the last time. I’m giving it up.”

“Oh dear me, no!” The strange man seized Jezal by the shoulder. “Oh dear me, no you mustn’t!”

“What?”

“No, no! My master would be horrified if he knew. Horrified! Give up fencing and you give up more than that! This is how one comes to the notice of the public, you see? They decide, in the end. There’s no nobility without the commoners, no nobility at all! They decide!”

“What?” Jezal glanced around the park, hoping to catch sight of a guard so he could notify him that a dangerous madman was loose in the Agriont.

“No, you mustn’t give it up! I won’t hear of it! No indeed! I’m sure that you’ll stick with it after all! You must!”

Jezal shook Sulfur’s hand off his shoulder. “Who are you?”

“Sulfur, Yoru Sulfur, at your service. See you again, Captain, at the Contest, if not before!” And he waved over his shoulder as he strolled off.

Jezal stared after him, mouth slightly open. “Damn it!” he shouted, throwing his steels down on the grass. Everyone seemed to want to take a hand in his business today, even crazy strangers in the park.

As soon as he thought it was late enough, Jezal went to call on Major West. You could always be sure of a sympathetic ear with him, and Jezal was hoping that he might be able to manipulate his friend into breaking the bad news to Lord Marshal Varuz. That was a scene that he wanted no part of, if he could possibly avoid it. He knocked on the door and waited, he knocked again. The door opened.