Joe Abercrombie - Last Argument of Kings

Cosca glanced round approvingly at the crumbling hall. “A nice place for a warm welcome. I’ll let you know when our guests have been. I doubt they’ll stay long.”

Ardee had found a place near the wall, her hood up, her eyes on the floor. Trying to fade into the plaster, and who could blame her? Hardly the most pleasant company for a young woman, or the most reassuring setting. But better than a slit throat, I suppose. Glokta held his hand out to her. “It would be best if you were to come with me.”

She hesitated. As though not entirely sure that it would, in fact, be best to come with me. But a brief glance at some of the ugliest men in one of the world’s ugliest professions evidently persuaded her. Cosca handed her his lamp, making sure his fingers lingered on hers for an uncomfortably long moment.

“Thank you,” she said, jerking her hand away.

“My particular pleasure.”

Sheets of hanging paper, broken laths, lumps of fallen plaster cast strange shadows as they left Cosca and his thugs behind and picked their way into the guts of the dead building. Doorways passed by, squares of blackness, yawning like graves.

“Your friends seem a charming crowd,” murmured Ardee.

“Oh indeed, the brightest stars in the social firmament. Some tasks demand desperate men, apparently.”

“You must have some truly desperate work in mind, then.”

“When don’t I?”

Their lamp barely lit the rotting drawing room, panelling sagging from the cheap brickwork, the best part of the floor a single festering puddle. The hidden door stood open in the far wall and Glokta shuffled round the edge of the room towards it, his hips burning with the effort.

“What did your man do?”

“Severard? He let me down.” And we will soon find out how badly.

“I hope I never let you down, then.”

“You, I am sure, have better sense. I should go first, then if I fall at least I fall alone.” He winced his way down the steps while she followed with the light.

“Ugh. What’s that smell?”

“The sewers. There’s an entrance to them down here, somewhere.” Glokta stepped past the heavy door and into the converted wine cellar, the bright steel grilles on the cells to either side glimmering as they passed, the whole place reeking of damp and fear.

“Superior!” came a voice from the darkness. Brother Longfoot’s desperate face appeared, pressed up against one set of bars.

“Brother Longfoot, my apologies! I have been so very busy. The Gurkish have laid siege to the city.”

“Gurkish?” squeaked the man, his eyes bulging. “Please, if you release me—”

“Silence!” hissed Glokta in a voice that brooked no dallying. “You should stay here.”

Ardee glanced nervously towards the Navigator’s cell. “Here?”

“He isn’t dangerous. I think you’ll be more comfortable than you would be…” and he nodded his head towards the open doorway at the end of the vaulted hall, “in there.”

She swallowed. “Alright.”

“Superior, please!” One despairing arm stuck from Longfoot’s cell, “please, when will you release me? Superior, please!” Glokta shut the door on his begging with a gentle click. We have other business today, and it will not wait.

Frost already had Severard manacled to the chair beside the table, still unconscious, and was lighting the lamps one by one with a flaming taper. The domed chamber gradually grew bright, the colour leaking into the mural across the round walls. Kanedias frowned down, arms outstretched, the fire burning behind him. Ah, our old friend the Master Maker, always disapproving. Opposite him his brother Juvens still bled his lurid last across the wall. And not the only blood that will be spilled in here tonight, I suspect.

“Urr,” groaned Severard, his lank hair swaying. Glokta lowered himself slowly into his chair, the leather creaking under him. Severard grunted again, his head dropped back, eyelids flickering. Frost lumbered over, reached out and undid the buckles on Severard’s mask, pulled it off and tossed it away into the corner of the room. From a fearsome Practical of the Inquisition to… nothing much. He stirred, wrinkled his nose, twitching like a boy asleep.

Young. Weak. Helpless. One could almost feel sorry for him, if one had a heart. But now is not the time for sentiment and soft feelings, for friendship and forgiveness. The ghost of happy and promising Colonel Sand dan Glokta has been clinging to me for far too long. Farewell, my old friend. You cannot help us today. Now is the time for the ruthless Superior Glokta to do what he does best. To do the only thing that he does well. Now is the time for hard heads, hard hearts and even harder edges.

Time to cut the truth out.

Frost jabbed Severard in the stomach with two fingers and his eyes snapped open. He jerked in his chair, the manacles rattling. He saw Glokta. He saw Frost. His eyes went wide as they darted round the room. They went wider still when he realised where he was. He snorted in air, the quick, hard breath of abject terror, the greasy strands of hair across his face blowing this way and that with the force of it. And how will we begin?

“I know…” he croaked. “I know I told that woman who you were… I know… but I had no choice.” Ah, the wheedling. Every man, more or less, behaves the same way when he’s chained to a chair. “What could I do? She would’ve fucking killed me! I had no choice! Please—”

“I know what you told her, and I know you had no choice.”

“Then… then why—”

“Don’t give me that, Severard. You know why you’re here.” Frost stepped forward, as impassive as ever, and lifted the lid on Glokta’s wonderful case. The trays inside opened up like an exotic flower, proffering out the polished handles, the gleaming needles, the shining blades of his instruments.

Glokta puffed out his cheeks. “I had a good day, today. I woke up clean, and made it to the bath on my own. Not too much pain.” He wrapped his fingers around the grip of the cleaver. “Something to celebrate, a good day. I get so very few of them.” He slid it from its sheath, the heavy blade flashing in the harsh lamplight. Severard’s eyes followed it all the way, bulging with fear and fascination, beads of sweat glittering on his pale forehead.

“No,” he whispered. Yes. Frost unlocked the cuff around Severard’s left wrist, lifted his arm in both meaty hands. He took the fingers and spread them out one by one until they were flattened on the wood in front of him, wrapping his other arm around Severard’s shoulders in a tight embrace.

“I think we can dispense with the preamble.” Glokta rocked forward, got up and limped slowly around the table, his cane clicking on the tiles, his left leg dragging behind it, the corner of the cleaver’s blade scraping gently across the wood of the table-top. “I need not explain how this will work to you. You, who have assisted me so very ably, on so very many occasions. Who could know better how we will proceed?”

“No,” whimpered Severard, trying half a desperate smile, but with a tear leaking from the corner of his eye nonetheless. “No, you wouldn’t! Not to me! You wouldn’t!”

“Not to you?” Glokta gave a sad smile of his own. “Oh, Practical Severard, please…” He let the grin slowly fade as he lifted the cleaver. “You know me so much better than that.”

Bang! The heavy blade flashed down and hacked into the table-top, paring the slightest sliver of skin from the end of Severard’s middle finger.

“No!” he squawked. “No!” You don’t admire my precision any longer, then?

“Oh, yes, yes.” Glokta tugged at the smooth handle and dragged the blade free. “How did you think this would end? You’ve been talking. You’ve been saying things you shouldn’t, to people you had no business saying anything to. You will tell me what. You will tell me who.” The cleaver glimmered as he raised it again. “And you had better tell me soon.”