Joe Abercrombie - Last Argument of Kings

“No!” Severard thrashed and wriggled in the chair but Frost had him as tightly as a fly in honey. Yes.

The blade sliced cleanly through the end of Severard’s middle finger and took it off at the first joint. The end of his index finger spun across the wood. The tip of his ring finger stayed where it was, wedged into a joint in the table top. With Frost’s hand still clamped tight as a vice round his wrist the blood only dribbled gently from the three wounds and spread out in slow rivulets down the grain.

There was a breathless pause. One, two, three… Severard screamed. He wailed, and jerked, and trembled, his face quivering. Painful, eh? Welcome to my world.

Glokta worked his aching foot around in his boot. “Who would ever have thought that our charming association, so enjoyable and profitable to us both, could possibly end like this? Not my choice. Not mine. Tell me who you spoke to. Tell me what you said. Then this unpleasantness will all be over. Otherwise…”

Bang! The end of his little finger, now, and three more pieces of the rest. His middle finger was down to the knuckle, almost. Severard stared, his eyes wide with horror, his breath coming in short, fast gasps. Shock, amazement, stunned terror. Glokta leaned down to his ear. “I hope you weren’t planning to take up the violin, Severard. You’ll be lucky if you can play a fucking gong by the time we’re done here.” He winced at a spasm in his neck as he lifted the cleaver again.

“Wait!” sobbed Severard. “Wait! Valint and Balk! The bankers! I told them… I told them…”

I knew it. “What did you tell them?”

“That you were still looking for Raynault’s murderer when we’d already hung the Emperor’s emissary!” Glokta met Frost’s eyes, and the albino stared back, emotionless. And another secret is dragged kicking into the merciless light. How disappointingly right I was. It always amazes me, how swiftly problems can be solved, once you start cutting things off people. “And… and… I told them that you wanted to know about our bastard king, and about Bayaz, and I told them you weren’t checking up on Sult like they asked, and I told them… I told them…”

Severard stuttered to a halt, staring at the remains of his fingers, scattered out across the table in a spreading slick of blood. That mixture of unbearable pain, even more unbearable loss, and total disbelief. Am I dreaming? Or have I really lost half my fingers, forever?

Glokta nudged Severard with the end of the cleaver. “What else?”

“I told them anything I could. I told them… everything I knew…” The words came spitting and drooling from his lips, curled back with agony. “I had no choice. I had debts, and… they offered to pay. I had no choice!”

Valint and Balk. Debts, and blackmail, and betrayal. How horribly banal it all is. That’s the trouble with answers. They’re never as exciting as the questions, somehow. Glokta’s lips twitched into a sad smile. “No choice. I know exactly how you feel.” He lifted the cleaver again.

“But—”

Bang! The heavy blade scraped against the table-top as Glokta swept four more neat slices of flesh carefully out of the way. Severard screamed, and gasped, and screamed some more. Desperate, slobbering screams, his face screwed up tight. Just like the prunes I sometimes have for breakfast. He still had half his little finger, but the other three were nothing more than oozing stumps. But we cannot stop now, not after we have come so far. We cannot stop for anything, can we? We must know it all.

“What about the Arch Lector?” asked Glokta, stretching his neck to the side and working his stiff shoulder. “How did he know what went on in Dagoska? What did you tell him?”

“How did he… what… I told him nothing! I told him—”

Bang! Severard’s thumb flew off, spinning across the table, leaving behind a spiralling trail of bloody spots. Glokta worked his hips back and forth, trying to wriggle out of the aches down his legs, the aches up his back. But there is no escaping them. Every possible position, a little worse than the one before. “What did you tell Sult?”

“I… I…” Severard stared up, his mouth hanging open, a long string of drool dangling from his bottom lip. “I…”

Glokta frowned. That is not an answer. “Tie it off at the wrist and get the other hand ready. We’ve nothing left to work with here.”

“No! No! Please… I didn’t… please…” How I tire of the pleading. The words “no” and “please” lose all meaning after half an hour of this. They begin to sound like a sheep bleating. We are all lambs to the slaughter, in the end. He stared at the pieces of finger scattered across the bloody table. Meat for the butcher. Glokta’s head hurt, the room was too bright. He put the cleaver down and rubbed at his sore eyes. A draining business, mutilating your closest friends. He realised he had smeared blood across his eyelids. Damn it.

Frost had already tightened a tourniquet round Severard’s wrist and manacled the bloody remains of his left hand back to the chair. He unfastened his right arm and guided it carefully to the table. Glokta watched him do it. All neat, and business-like, and ruthlessly efficient. Does his conscience nag at him, I wonder, when the sun goes down? I doubt it. I give the orders after all. And I act on orders from Sult, on advice from Marovia, on the demands of Valint and Balk. What choice do any of us have, in the end? Why, the excuses almost make themselves.

Frost’s white face was dusted with bloody red specks as he spread Severard’s right hand out on the table, just where the left one had been. He did not even struggle this time. You lose the will, after a while. I remember. “Please…” he whispered.

It would be so very nice to stop. Most likely the Gurkish will burn the whole city and kill us all, and then who will care who told who what? If by some miracle they fail, no doubt Sult will finish me, or Valint and Balk will collect their debt in my blood. What will it matter when I am floating face-down in the docks whether certain questions were ever answered? Then why do I do this? Why?

The blood reached the edge of the wood and started dripping to the floor with a steady tap, tap, tap. No other answer. Glokta felt a flurry of twitches run up the side of his face. He took hold of the cleaver again.

“Look at this.” He gestured at the pieces of bloody flesh scattered across the table. “Look what you’ve lost here, already. All because you won’t tell me what I need to know. Do you not value your own fingers? They’re no use to you now, are they? They’re no use to me, I can tell you that. They’re no use to anyone, besides a hungry dog or two, maybe.” Glokta bared the yawning hole in his front teeth, and ground the point of the cleaver into the wood between Severard’s outspread fingers. “One more time.” He pronounced the words with icy precision. “What… did you tell… his Eminence?”

“I… told him… nothing!” The tears ran down Severard’s hollow cheeks, his chest shuddered with sobs. “I told him nothing! Valint and Balk, I had no choice! I’ve never spoken to Sult in my fucking life! Not a word! Never!”

Glokta looked into his Practical’s eyes, his prisoner’s eyes, for a long moment, trying to see the truth. All was silent except for Severard’s gurgling, agonised breath. Then Glokta wrinkled his lip and tossed the cleaver down rattling on the table. Why give up your other hand, when you have confessed already? He gave a long sigh, reached out and gently wiped the tears from Severard’s pale face. “Alright. I believe you.”