Joe Abercrombie - Last Argument of Kings

“Superior!” She grinned as she took him by the elbow and half-dragged him over the threshold. “What a delight! Some conversation at last! I’m so toweringly bored.” Several empty bottles were gathered in the corner of the living room, made to glint angrily by smoky candles and a smouldering log in the grate. The table was cluttered with dirty plates and glasses. The place smelled of sweat and wine, old food and new desperation. Can there be a more miserable occupation than getting drunk on one’s own? Wine can keep a happy man happy, on occasion. A sad one it always makes worse.

“I’ve been trying to get through this damn book again.” Ardee slapped at a heavy volume lying open, face down, on a chair.

“ The Fall of the Master Maker ,” muttered Glokta. “That rubbish? All magic and valour, no? I couldn’t get through the first one.”

“I sympathise. I’m onto the third and it doesn’t get any easier. Too many damn wizards. I get them mixed up one with another. It’s all battles and endless bloody journeys, here to there and back again. If I so much as glimpse another map I swear I’ll kill myself.”

“Someone might save you the trouble.”

“Eh?”

“I’m afraid you are no longer safe here. You should come with me.”

“Rescue? Thank the fates!” She waved a dismissive hand. “We’ve been over this. The Gurkish are away on the other side of the city. You’re in more danger in the Agriont I shouldn’t—”

“The Gurkish are not the threat. My suitors are.”

“Your gentleman-friends are a threat to me?”

“You underestimate the extent of their jealousy. I fear they will soon become a threat to everyone I have known, friend or enemy, my whole sorry life.” Glokta jerked a hooded cloak from a peg on the wall and held it out to her.

“Where are we going?”

“A charming little house down near the docks. A little past its best, but plenty of character. Like the two of us, you could say.”

There were heavy footsteps in the hallway and Cosca stuck his head into the room. “Superior, we should leave if we want to reach the docks by—” He stopped, staring at Ardee. There was an uncomfortable silence.

“Who is this?” she murmured.

Cosca pushed flamboyantly into the room, swept off his hat, displaying his scabrous bald patch, and bowed low, low, low. Any lower and his nose would scrape the floorboards. “Forgive me, my lady. Nicomo Cosca, famed soldier of fortune, at your service. Abject, in fact, at your feet.” His throwing knife dropped out of his coat and rattled against the boards.

They all stared at it for a moment, then Cosca grinned up. “You see that fly, against the wall?”

Glokta narrowed his eyes. “Perhaps not the best moment for—”

The blade spun across the room, missed the target by a stride, hit the wall handle-first and gouged out a lump of plaster, bounced back and clattered across the floor.

“Shit,” said Cosca. “I mean… damn.”

Ardee frowned down at the knife. “I’d say shit.”

Cosca passed it off with a rotten smile. “I must be dazzled. When the Superior described to me your beauty I thought he must have… how do you say… exaggerated? Now I see that he came short of the mark.” He retrieved his knife and jammed his hat back on, slightly askew. “Please allow me to declare myself in love.”

“What did you tell him?” asked Ardee.

“Nothing.” Glokta sucked sourly at his gums. “Master Cosca has a habit of overstating the case.”

“Especially when in love,” threw in the mercenary. “Especially then. When I fall in love, I fall hard, and, as a rule, I do it no more than once a day.”

Ardee stared at him. “I don’t know whether to feel flattered or scared.”

“Why not be both?” said Glokta. “But you will have to do it on the way.” We are short of time, and I have a rank garden to weed.

The gate came open with an agonised shrieking of rusted metal. Glokta lurched over the decaying threshold, his leg, his hip, his back all stabbing at him from the long limp to the docks. The ruined mansion loomed out of the gloom at the far end of the shattered courtyard. Like a mighty mausoleum. A suitable tomb for all my dead hopes. Severard and Frost waited in the shadows on the broken steps, dressed all in black and masked, as usual. But not at all alike. A burly man and a slender, one white haired and one dark, one standing, arms folded, the other sitting, cross-legged. One is loyal, the other… we shall find out.

Severard unravelled himself and got up with the usual grin around his eyes. “Alright, chief, so what’s all the—”

Cosca stepped through the gate and wandered lazily across the broken paving, tapping a few lumps of masonry away with the toe of one shabby boot. He stopped beside a ruined fountain and scraped some muck out of it with a finger. “Nice place. Nice and…” He waved the finger around, and the muck with it. “Crumbly.” His mercenaries were already spreading out slowly around the rubble-strewn courtyard. Patched coats and tattered cloaks twitched back to display weapons of every size and shape. Edges, points, spikes and flanges glinted in the shifting light from their lanterns, their steel as smooth and clean as their faces were rough and dirty.

“Who the hell are these?” asked Severard.

“Friends.”

“They don’t look too friendly.”

Glokta showed his Practical the yawning hole in his front teeth. “Well. I suppose that all depends whose side you’re on.”

The last traces of Severard’s smile had vanished. His eyes flickered nervously around the yard. The eyes of the guilty. How well we know them. We see them on our prisoners. We see them in the mirror, when we dare to look. One might have hoped for better from a man of his experience, but holding the blade is a poor preparation for being cut by it. I should know. Severard dashed towards the house, quick as a rabbit, but he only got a step before a heavy white hand chopped into the side of his neck and flung him senseless on the broken paving.

“Take him downstairs, Frost. You know the way.”

“Downthairth. Unh.” The hulking albino dragged Severard’s limp body over his shoulder and set off towards the front door.

“I have to say,” said Cosca, flicking the scum carelessly off his finger, “that I like your way with your men, Superior. Discipline, I’ve always admired it.”

“Fine advice from the least disciplined man in the Circle of the World.”

“I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes.” Cosca stretched his chin up and scratched at his scabby neck. “The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.”

“Huh,” grunted Glokta as he laboured up the steps. A curse we all have to bear. Round and round in circles we go, clutching at successes that we never grasp, endlessly tripping over the same old failures. Truly, life is the misery we endure between disappointments.

They stepped through the empty doorway and into the deeper darkness of the entrance hall. Cosca held his lamp high, staring up towards the ragged roof, his boots squelching heedless in the bird droppings spattering the floor. “A palace!” His voice echoed back from the shattered staircases, the empty doorways, the naked rafters high above.

“Please make yourselves comfortable,” said Glokta. “But out of sight, perhaps. We can expect visitors some time tonight.”

“Excellent. We love company, don’t we lads?”

One of Cosca’s men gave a wet-lunged chuckle, displaying two rows of shit-coloured teeth. A set so incredibly rotten I am almost glad to have my own. “These visitors will come from his Eminence the Arch Lector. Perhaps you could take a firm hand with them, while I’m downstairs?”