Joe Abercrombie - Last Argument of Kings

Glokta leaned forwards. Even here, even now, I somehow need to speak it softly. “Arch Lector Sult is not happy with our new king. Most particularly, he is not happy with the influence that Bayaz exerts over him. Sult finds his powers much curtailed. He believes, in fact, that you are somehow behind the whole business.”

Marovia frowned. “Does he now?”

He does, and I am not entirely sure that I discount the possibility. “He has asked me to find some means of removing Bayaz…” His voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Or removing the king. I suspect, should I fail, that he has other plans. Plans which somehow involve the University.”

“You would seem to be accusing his Eminence the Arch Lector of high treason against the state.” Marovia’s eyes were bright and hard as a pair of new nails. Suspicious, and yet terribly eager. “Have you uncovered anything to use against the king?”

“Before I could even consider doing so, Valint and Balk quite forcibly dissuaded me.”

“They knew so quickly?”

“I am forced to concede that someone close to me may not be as reliable as I have always hoped. The bankers not only demanded that I disobey his Eminence, they also insisted that I investigate him . They want to know his plans. I have only a few days to satisfy them, and Sult no longer trusts me enough to share the contents of his latrine with me, let alone the contents of his mind.”

“Oh dear, dear.” Marovia slowly shook his head. “Oh dear, dear.”

“To add to my woes, I believe that the Arch Lector is considerably less ignorant of what occurred in Dagoska than he at first appeared. If somebody is talking, it may well be that they are talking to both sides.” If you can betray a man once, after all, it is not so very difficult to do it twice. Glokta gave a long sigh. And there we are. The secrets are all spilled. The turd-pit is emptied. My throat is slashed from ear to ear. “That is the whole story, your Worship.”

“Well, Superior, you certainly find yourself in quite a pickle.” Quite a fatal one, in fact. Marovia got up and wandered slowly around the room. “Let us suppose, for the moment, that you truly have come for my help, and not to lead me into some manner of embarrassment. Arch Lector Sult has the means to cause a most serious problem. And the towering self-obsession necessary to try it at a time like this.” You’ll get no argument from me there. “If you could obtain compelling evidence, I would, of course, be willing to present it to the king. But I cannot move against a member of the Closed Council, and the Arch Lector in particular, without firm proof. A signed confession would be best.”

“Sult’s signed confession?” murmured Glokta.

“Such a document would seem to solve some problems for both of us. Sult would be gone, and the bankers would have lost their hold over you. The Gurkish would still be camped outside our walls of course, but one can’t have everything.”

“The Arch Lector’s signed confession.” And shall I pluck the moon from the sky while I’m about it?

“Or a big enough stone to start the landslide—perhaps the confession of someone suitably close to him. I understand that you are expert at obtaining them.” The High Justice peered at Glokta from under his heavy brows. “Was I misinformed?”

“I cannot conjure evidence from thin air, your Worship.”

“Those lost in the desert must take the chances they are offered, however slender. Find evidence, and bring it to me. Then I can act, and not one moment before. You understand that I cannot take any risks for you. It is difficult to trust a man who chose his master, and now chooses another.”

“Chose?” Glokta felt his eyelid twitching again. “If you believe that I chose any part of the pitiful shadow of a life you see before you, you are very much mistaken. I chose glory and success. The box did not contain what was written on the lid.”

“The world is full of tragic tales.” Marovia walked to the window, turning his back and staring out at the darkening sky. “Especially now. You can hardly expect them to make any difference to a man of my experience. I wish you good day.”

Further comment seems pointless. Glokta rocked forwards, pushed himself painfully up to standing with the aid of his cane, and limped for the door. But the tiniest glimmer of hope has come creeping into the dank cellar of my despair… I need only obtain a confession to High Treason from the head of his Majesty’s Inquisition —

“And Superior!” Why can no one ever finish talking before I get up? Glokta turned back into the room, his spine burning. “If someone close to you is talking, you need to shut them up. Now. Only a fool would consider uprooting treason from the Closed Council before he had cut the weeds from his own lawn.”

“Oh, you need not worry about my garden, your Worship.” Glokta treated the High Justice to his most repulsive grin. “I am even now sharpening my shears.”

Adua burned.

The two westernmost districts—the Three Farms, at the south-western corner of the city, and the Arches, further north—were hacked with black wounds. Smoke was still pouring up from some of them, great columns lit in faint orange near the base. They spread out in oily smears, dragged away to the west by a stiff wind, drawing a muddy curtain across the setting sun.

Jezal watched in solemn silence, his hands bunched into numb fists on the parapet of the Tower of Chains. There was no sound up here but for the wind fumbling at his ears and, just occasionally, the slightest hint of distant battle. A war cry, or the screams of the wounded. Or perhaps only a sea-bird calling, high on the breeze. Jezal wished for a maudlin moment that he were a bird, and could simply fly from the tower and off over the Gurkish pickets, away from this nightmare. But escape would not be so easy.

“Casamir’s Wall was first breached three days ago,” Marshal Varuz was explaining in a monotonous drone. “We drove back the first two assaults, and held the Three Farms that night, but the next day there was another breach, and another. This damn fire-powder has changed all the bloody rules. A wall that would have stood a week they can bring down in an hour.”

“Khalul always loved to tinker with his dust and his bottles,” muttered Bayaz, unhelpfully.

“They were in the Three Farms in force that night, and carried the gates into the Arches soon afterwards. Ever since, the whole western part of the city has been one running battle.” The tavern where Jezal had celebrated his victory over Filio in the Contest was in that district. The tavern where he had sat with West and Jalenhorm, Kaspa and Brint, before they went away to the North, and he to the Old Empire. Was that building now burning? Was it already a blackened shell?

“We’re fighting them hand to hand in the streets by daylight. We’re mounting raids in the darkness, every night. Not a stride of ground is given up without it being soaked with Gurkish blood.” Perhaps Varuz hoped to be inspiring, but he was only succeeding in making Jezal feel sick. The streets of his capital soaked in blood, whoever’s blood it might have been, was hardly his first aim as king of the Union. “Arnault’s Wall still stands firm, though there are fires burning in the centre of town. The flames almost reached the Four Corners last night, but the rain doused them down, at least for now. We’re fighting for every street, every house, every room. Just as you said we should, your Majesty.”

“Good,” Jezal managed to croak, but he almost choked on the word.

When he so blithely turned down General Malzagurt’s terms, he was not sure what he had been expecting. He had dimly imagined that someone would soon come to the rescue. That something heroic would occur. Only now the bloody business was well underway, and there was no sign of instant deliverance. Probably there was heroism going on down there in the smoke. Soldiers hauling injured comrades to safety through the sooty darkness. Nurses stitching wounds by screaming candlelight. Townsfolk plunging into burning buildings to drag out coughing children. Heroism of an everyday and unglamorous kind. A kind that made no difference to the overall outcome.