Joe Abercrombie - Before They Are Hanged

“Fucking Calder,” growled Tul, shaking his head.

“Fucking Scale,” hissed Dow, spitting on the wet ground.

“No bigger pair o’ bastards in all the north,” said Shivers. “And now I hear tell that Bethod’s made a deal.”

“What kind of a deal?” asked Threetrees.

Shivers turned and spat over his shoulder. “A deal with the fucking Shanka, that’s what.”

Dogman stared. They all did. That was some evil kind of a rumour. “With the Flatheads? How?”

“Who knows? Might be that witch found some way to talk to ’em. Times are changing, fast, and it ain’t right, any of it. There’s a lot of boys over there ain’t happy. That’s without getting started on that Feared.”

Dow frowned. “Feared? I never heard of him.”

“Where you lot been? Under the ice?”

They all looked at each other. “Pretty much,” said the Dogman. “Pretty much.”

“You have a visitor, sir,” muttered Barnam. His face, for some reason, was pale as death.

“Clearly,” snapped Glokta. “That was them knocking at the door, I assume.” He dropped his spoon into his barely touched bowl of soup and licked sourly at his gums. A particularly disgusting excuse for a meal, this evening. I miss Shickel’s cooking, if not her attempts to kill me. “Well, who is it, man?”

“It’s… er… it’s…”

Arch Lector Sult ducked through the low doorway so as not to disturb his flawless white hair on the frame. Ah. I see. He swept the cramped dining room with a scowl, lip wrinkled as though he had stumbled into an open sewer. “Don’t get up,” he spat at Glokta. I wasn’t planning to.

Barnam swallowed. “Can I get your Eminence any—”

“Get out!” sneered Sult, and the old servant nearly fell over in his haste to make it to the door. The Arch Lector watched him go with withering scorn. The good humour of our previous meeting seems a vaguely remembered dream.

“Damn peasants,” he hissed as he slid in behind Glokta’s narrow dining table. “There’s been another uprising near Keln, and this bastard the Tanner was in the midst of it again. An unpopular eviction turned into a bloody riot. Lord Finster entirely misjudged the mood, got three of his guards killed and himself besieged in his manor by an angry mob, the halfwit. They couldn’t get in, fortunately, so they satisfied themselves with burning down half the village.” He snorted. “Their own damn village! That’s what an idiot does when he gets angry. He destroys whatever’s nearest, even if it’s his own house! The Open Council are screaming for blood of course. Peasant blood, and lots of it. Now we have to get the Inquisition going down there, root out some ringleaders, or some fools who can be made to look like them. It should be Finster himself we’re hanging, the dolt, but that’s hardly an option.”

Glokta cleared his throat. “I will pack for Keln immediately.” Tickling the peasantry. Hardly my choice of task, but—

“No. I need you for something else. Dagoska has fallen.”

Glokta raised an eyebrow. Not so great a surprise, though. Hardly enough of a shock, one would have thought, to squeeze such a figure as his Eminence into my narrow quarters.

“It seems the Gurkish were let in by a prior arrangement. Treason, of course, but at a time like that… hardly surprising. The Union forces were massacred, such as they were, but many of the mercenaries were merely enslaved, and the natives, by and large, were spared.” Gurkish mercy, who could have thought it? Miracles do happen, then.

Sult flicked angrily at a speck of dust on one immaculate glove. “I hear that, when the Gurkish had broken into the citadel, General Vissbruck killed himself rather than be captured.” Well I never. I didn’t think he had it in him. “He ordered his body burned, so as not to give the enemy any remains to defile, then he cut his own throat. A brave man. A courageous statement. He will be honoured in Open Council tomorrow.”

How wonderful for him. A horrible death with honour is far preferable to a long life in obscurity, of course. “Of course,” said Glokta quietly. “A brave man.”

“That is not all. An envoy has arrived on the very heels of this news. An envoy from the Emperor of Gurkhul.”

“An envoy?”

“Indeed. Apparently seeking… peace.” The Arch Lector said the word with a sneer of contempt.

“Peace?”

“This room seems rather small for an echo.”

“Of course, your Eminence, but—”

“Why not? They have what they want. They have Dagoska, and there is nowhere further for them to go.”

“No, Arch Lector.” Except, perhaps, across the sea…

“Peace. It sticks in the craw to give anything away, but Dagoska was never worth much to us. Cost us more than we made from it, if anything. Nothing more than a trophy for the King. I daresay we’re better off without it, the worthless rock.”

Glokta bowed his head. “Absolutely, your Eminence.” Although it makes one wonder why we bothered fighting for it.

“Unfortunately, the loss of the place leaves you with nothing to be Superior of.” The Arch Lector looked almost pleased. So it’s back to plain old Inquisitor, eh? I suppose I’ll no longer be welcome at the best social gatherings— “But I have decided to let you keep the tide. As Superior of Adua.”

Glokta paused. A considerable promotion, except that… “Surely, your Eminence, that is Superior Goyle’s role.”

“It is. And will continue to be.”

“Then—”

“You will share the responsibilities. Goyle is the more experienced man, so he will be the senior partner, and continue running the department. For you I will find some tasks suited to your particular talents. I’m hoping that a little healthy competition will bring out the best in you both.”

More than likely it will end with one of us dead, and we can all guess who the favourite is. Sult gave a thin smile, as though he knew precisely what Glokta was thinking. “Or perhaps it will simply demonstrate that one of you is superior to the other.” He barked a joyless laugh at his own joke, and Glokta gave a watery, toothless grin of his own.

“In the meantime, I need you to deal with this envoy. You seem to have a way of handling these Kantics, though you might avoid beheading this one, at least for the time being.” The Arch Lector allowed himself another minuscule smile. “If he’s after anything more than peace, I want you to sniff it out. If we can get anything more than peace from him, then of course, sniff that out too. It would do no harm if we could avoid looking like we got our backs whipped.”

He stood awkwardly and manoeuvred himself out from behind the table, all the while frowning as though the tightness of the room was an intentional affront to his dignity. “And please, Glokta, find yourself some better quarters. A Superior of Adua, living like this? It’s an embarrassment!”

Glokta humbly bowed his head, causing an unpleasant stinging right down to his tailbone. “Of course, your Eminence.”

The Emperor’s envoy was a thickset man with a heavy, black beard, a white skull-cap, and a white robe worked with golden thread. He rose and bowed humbly as Glokta hobbled over the threshold. As earthy and humble-seeming as the last emissary I dealt with was airy and arrogant. A different kind of man, I suppose, for a different purpose.

“Ah. Superior Glokta, I should have guessed.” His voice was deep and rich, his mastery of the common tongue predictably excellent. “Many people on our side of the sea were very disappointed when your corpse was not among those found in the citadel of Dagoska.”