Joe Abercrombie - The Blade Itself

“Where are we going?” asked Glokta, after they had shambled through the murk for several minutes.

“The Adepti are at dinner,” wheezed the porter, glancing up at him with eyes infinitely tired.

The University’s dining hall was an echoing cavern of a room, lifted one degree above total darkness by a few guttering candles. A small fire flickered in an enormous fireplace, casting dancing shadows among the rafters. A long table stretched the length of the floor, polished by long years of use, flanked by rickety chairs. It could easily have accommodated eighty but there were only five there, crowded up at one end, huddled in around the fireplace. They looked over as the taps of Glokta’s cane echoed through the hall, pausing in their meals and peering over with great interest. The man at the head of the table got to his feet and hurried over, holding the hem of his long black gown up with one hand.

“A visitor,” wheezed the porter, waving his candle in Glokta’s direction.

“Ah, from the Arch Lector! I am Silber, the University Administrator!” And he shook Glokta’s hand. His companions had meanwhile lurched and tottered to their feet as though the guest of honour had just arrived.

“Inquisitor Glokta.” He stared round at the eager old men. A good deal more deference than I was expecting, I must say. But then, the Arch Lector’s name opens all kinds of doors.

“Glokta, Glokta,” mumbled one of the old men, “seems that I remember a Glokta from somewhere.”

“You remember everything from somewhere, but you never remember where,” quipped the administrator, to half-hearted laughter. “Please let me make the introductions.”

He went round the four black-gowned scientists, one by one. “Saurizin, our Adeptus Chemical.” A beefy, unkempt old fellow with burns and stains down the front of his robe and more than one bit of food in his beard. “Denka, the Adeptus Metallic.” The youngest of the four by a considerable margin, though by no means a young man, had an arrogant twist to his mouth. “Chayle, our Adeptus Mechanical.” Glokta had never seen a man with so big a head but so small a face. His ears, in particular, were immense, and sprouting grey hairs. “And Kandelau, the Adeptus Physical.” A scrawny old bird with a long neck and spectacles perched on his curving beak of a nose. “Please join us, Inquisitor,” and the administrator indicated an empty chair, wedged in between two of the Adepti.

“A glass of wine then?” wheedled Chayle, a prim smile on his tiny mouth, already leaning forward with a decanter and sloshing some into a glass.

“Very well.”

“We were just discussing the relative merits of our various fields of study,” murmured Kandelau, peering at Glokta through his flashing spectacles.

“As always,” lamented the Administrator.

“The human body is, of course, the only area worthy of true scrutiny,” continued the Adeptus Physical. “One must appreciate the mysteries within, before turning one’s attention to the world without. We all have a body, Inquisitor. Means of healing it, and of harming it, are of paramount interest to us all. It is the human body that is my area of expertise.”

“Bodies! Bodies!” whined Chayle, pursing his little lips and pushing food around his plate. “We are trying to eat!”

“Quite so! You are unsettling the Inquisitor with your ghoulish babble!”

“Oh, I am not easily unsettled.” Glokta leered across the table, giving the Adeptus Metallic a good view of his missing teeth. “My work for the Inquisition demands a more than passing knowledge of anatomy.”

There was an uncomfortable silence, then Saurizin took hold of the meat plate and offered it out. Glokta looked at the red slices, glistening on the plate. He licked at his empty gums. “Thank you, no.”

“Is it true?” asked the Adeptus Chemical, peering over the meat, voice hushed. “Will there be more funds? Now that this business with the Mercers is settled, that is?”

Glokta frowned. Everyone was staring at him, waiting for his reply. One of the old Adepti had his fork frozen halfway to his mouth. So that’s it. Money. But why would they be expecting money from the Arch Lector? The heavy meat plate was beginning to wobble. Well… if it gets them listening. “Money might be made available, depending, of course, on results.”

A hushed murmur crept around the table. The Adeptus Chemical carefully set down the plate with a trembling hand. “I have been having a great deal of success with acids recently.”

“Hah!” mocked the Adeptus Metallic. “Results, the Inquisitor asked for, results! My new alloys will be stronger than steel when they are perfected!”

“Always the alloys!” sighed Chayle, turning his tiny eyes towards the ceiling. “No one appreciates the importance of sound mechanical thinking!”

The other three Adepti rounded fiercely on him, but the Administrator jumped in first. “Gentlemen, please! The Inquisitor is not interested in our little differences! Everyone will have time to discuss their latest work and show its merits. This is not a competition, is it Inquisitor?” Every eye turned toward Glokta. He looked slowly round at those old, expectant faces, and said nothing.

“I have developed a machine for—”

“My acids—”

“My alloys—”

“The mysteries of the human body—”

Glokta cut them off. “Actually, it is in the area of… I suppose you would call them explosive substances, that I am currently taking a particular interest—”

The Adeptus Chemical jumped from his seat. “That would be my province!” he cried, staring in triumph at his colleagues. “I have samples! I have examples! Please follow me, Inquisitor!” And he tossed his cutlery onto his plate and set off towards one of the doors.

Saurizin’s laboratory was precisely as one would have expected, almost down to the last detail. A long room with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, blackened in places with circles and streaks of soot. Shelves covered most of the wall-space, brimming with a confusion of boxes, jars, bottles, each filled with its own powders, fluids, rods of strange metal. There was no apparent order to the positions of the various containers, and most had no labels. Organisation does not appear to be a priority.

The benches in the middle of the room were even more confused, covered in towering constructions of glass and old brown copper: tubes, flasks and dishes, lamps—one with a naked flame burning. All gave the appearance of being ready at any moment to collapse, dousing anyone unfortunate enough to stand nearby with lethal, boiling poisons.

The Adeptus Chemical rummaged in amongst this mess like a mole in its warren. “Now then,” he mumbled to himself, pulling at his dirty beard with one hand, “blasting powders are somewhere here…”

Glokta limped into the room after him, glancing suspiciously around at the mess of tubing that covered every surface. He wrinkled his nose. There was a revolting, acrid smell to the place.

“Here it is!” crowed the Adeptus, brandishing a dusty jar half-full of black granules. He cleared a space on one of the benches, shoving the clinking and clanking glass and metal out of the way with a sweep of his meaty forearm. “This stuff is terribly rare, you know, Inquisitor, terribly rare!” He pulled out the stopper and tipped a line of black powder onto the wooden bench. “Few men have been fortunate enough to see this stuff in action! Very few! And you are about to become one of them!”

Glokta took a cautious step back, the size of the ragged hole in the wall of the Tower of Chains still fresh in his mind. “We are safe, I hope, at this distance?”

“Absolutely,” murmured Saurizin, gingerly holding a burning taper out at arm’s length and touching it to one end of the line of powder. “There is no danger whatso—”