Joe Abercrombie - Before They Are Hanged

“It had occurred,” said Vissbruck, “but they have honoured their agreements before, and surely some hope…” and he looked down at the table top, “is better than none.” You have more confidence in our enemy than in me, it would seem. Hardly that surprising. My own confidence could be higher.

Glokta wiped some wet from under his eye. “I see. Then I suppose I must consider his offer. We will reconvene when our Gurkish friend returns. At sunset.” He rocked his body back and winced as he pushed himself up.

“You’ll consider it?” hissed Vitari in his ear as he limped down the hall away from the audience chamber. “You’ll fucking consider it?”

“That’s right,” snapped Glokta. “I make the decisions here.”

“Or you let those worms make them for you!”

“We’ve each got our jobs. I don’t tell you how to write your little reports to the Arch Lector. How I manage those worms is none of your concern.”

“None of my concern?” Vitari snatched hold of Glokta’s arm and he tottered on his weak leg. She was stronger than she looked, a lot stronger. “I told Sult you could handle things!” she snarled in his face. “If we lose the city, without so much as a fight even, it’s both our heads! And my head is my concern, cripple!”

“This is no time to panic,” growled Glokta. “I don’t want to end up floating in the docks any more than you do, but this is a delicate balance. Let them think they might get their way, then no one will make any rash moves. Not until I’m good and ready. Understand me when I say, Practical, that this will be the first and the last time that I explain myself to you. Now take your fucking hand off me.”

Her hand did not let go, rather the fingers tightened, cutting into Glokta’s arm as hard as a vice. Her eyes narrowed, furious lines cut into her freckled face at their corners. Might I have misjudged her? Might she be about to cut my throat? He almost grinned at the thought. But Severard chose that moment to step out of the shadows further down the dim hall.

“Look at the two of you,” he murmured as he padded towards them. “It always amazes me, how love blooms in the least likely places, and between the least likely people. A rose, forcing its way through the stony ground.” He pressed his hands to his chest. “It warms my heart.”

“Have we got him?”

“Of course. Soon as he stepped out of the audience chamber.”

Vitari’s hand had gone limp, and Glokta brushed it off and began to shuffle towards the cells. “Why don’t you come with us?” he called over his shoulder, having to stop himself rubbing the bruised flesh on his arm. “You can put this in your next report to Sult.”

Shabbed al Islik Burai looked considerably less majestic sitting down. Particularly in a scarred, stained chair in one of the close and sweaty cells beneath the Citadel.

“Now isn’t this better, to speak on level terms? Quite disconcerting, having you looming over me like that.” Islik sneered and looked away, as though talking to Glokta were a task far beneath him. A rich man, harassed by beggars in the street, but we’ll soon cure him of that illusion.

“We know we have a traitor within our walls. Within the ruling council itself. Most likely one of those three worthies to whom you were just now giving your little ultimatum. You will tell me who.” No response. “I am merciful,” exclaimed Glokta, waving his hand airily, as the ambassador himself had done but a few short minutes before, “but my mercy has limits. Speak.”

“I am here under a flag of parley, on a mission from the Emperor himself! To harm an unarmed emissary would be expressly against the rules of war!”

“Parley? Rules of war?” Glokta chuckled. Severard chuckled. Vitari chuckled. Frost was silent. “Do they even have those any more? Save that rubbish for children like Vissbruck, that’s not the way grown-ups play the game. Who is the traitor?”

“I pity you, cripple! When the city falls—”

Save your pity. You’ll need it for yourself. Frost’s fist scarcely made any sound as it sank into the ambassador’s stomach. His eyes bulged out, his mouth hung open, he coughed a dry cough, somewhere close to vomiting, tried to breathe and coughed again.

“Strange, isn’t it,” mused Glokta as he watched him struggle for air. “Big men, small men, thin men, fat men, clever men, stupid men, they all respond the same to a fist in the guts. One minute you think you’re the most powerful man in the world. The next you can’t even breathe by yourself. Some kinds of power are nothing but tricks of the mind. Your people taught me that, below your Emperor’s palace. There were no rules of war there, I can tell you. You know all about certain engagements, and certain bridges, and certain young officers, so you know that I’ve been just where you are now. There is one difference, however. I was helpless, but you can stop this unpleasantness at any time. You need only tell me who the traitor is, and you will be spared.”

Islik had got his breath back now. Though a good deal of his arrogance is gone, one suspects for good. “I know nothing of any traitor!”

“Really? Your master the Emperor sends you here to negotiate without all the facts? Unlikely. But if it’s true, you really aren’t any use to me at all, are you?”

Islik swallowed. “I know nothing of any traitor.”

“We’ll see.”

Frost’s big white fist clubbed him in the face. It would have thrown him sideways if the albino’s other fist hadn’t caught his head before it fell, smashed his nose and knocked him clean over the back of the chair. Frost and Severard dragged him up between them, righted the chair and dumped him gasping into it. Vitari looked on, arms folded.

“All very painful,” said Glokta, “but pain can be put to one side, if one knows that it will not last long. If it cannot last, say, past sunset. To truly break a man quickly, you have to threaten to deprive him of something. To hurt him in a way that will never heal. I should know.”

“Gah!” squawked the ambassador, thrashing in his chair. Severard wiped his knife on the shoulder of the man’s white robe, then tossed his ear onto the table. It lay there, on the wood: a forlorn and bloody half-circle of flesh. Glokta stared at it. In a baking cell just like this, over the course of long months, the Emperors servants turned me into this revolting, twisted mockery of a man. One might have hoped that the chance at doing the same to one of them, the chance at cutting out vengeance, pound for pound, would provide some dull flicker of pleasure. And yet he felt nothing. Nothing but my own pain. He winced as he stretched his leg out and felt the knee click, hissed air through his empty gums. So why do I do this?

Glokta sighed. “Next will come a toe. Then a finger, an eye, a hand, your nose, and so on, do you see? It’ll be at least an hour before you’re missed, and we are quick workers.” Glokta nodded at the severed ear. “We could have a pile of your flesh a foot high by that time. I’ll carve you until you’re nothing but a tongue and a bag of guts, if that’s what it takes, but I’ll know who the traitor is, that I promise you. Well? Do you know anything yet?”

The ambassador stared at him, breathing hard, dark blood running from his magnificent nose, down his chin, dripping from the side of his head. Speechless with shock, or thinking on his next move? It hardly matters. “I grow bored. Start on his hands, Frost.” The albino seized hold of his wrist.

“Wait!” wailed the ambassador, “God help me, wait! It was Vurms. Korsten dan Vurms, the governor’s own son!”

Vurms. Almost too obvious. But then again, the most obvious answers are usually the right ones. That little bastard would sell his own father if he only thought that he could find a buyer—