Joe Abercrombie - Last Argument of Kings

“Nail?” asked Cosca, raising an eyebrow.

“You’re getting the hang of it.”

“Wait! Ah! Wait!”

“Why? This is the closest I’ve come to enjoying myself in six years. Don’t begrudge me my little moment. I get so very few of them.” Glokta raised the hammer.

“Wait!”

Click. Goyle roared with pain again. Click. And again. Click. The nail was through, and the one-time scourge of Angland’s penal colonies was pinned flat by both arms. I suppose that’s where ambition gets you without the talent. Humility is easier to teach than one would think. All it takes to puncture our arrogance is a nail or two in the right place. Goyle’s breath hissed through his bloody teeth, pinioned fingers clawing at the wood. Glokta disapprovingly shook his head. “I would stop struggling if I was you. You’ll only tear the flesh.”

“You’ll pay for this, you crippled bastard! Don’t think you won’t!”

“Oh, I’ve paid already.” Glokta turned his neck around in a slow circle, trying to make the grumbling muscles in his shoulders unclench just a fraction. “I was kept, I am not sure for how long, but I would guess at several months, in a cell no bigger than a chest of drawers. Far too small to stand, or even to sit up straight in. Every possible position twisted, bent, agonising. Hundreds of interminable hours in the pitch darkness, the stifling heat. Kneeling in a stinking slurry of my own shit, wriggling, and squirming, and gasping for air. Begging for water which my jailers let drip down through a grate above. Sometimes they would piss through it, and I would be grateful. I have never stood up straight since. I really have no idea how I remained sane.” Glokta thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. “Perhaps I didn’t. In any case, these are the kind of sacrifices I have made. What sacrifices will you make, just to keep Sult’s secrets?”

No answer but the blood running out from under Goyle’s forearms, pooling around the glittering stone that marked the House of Questions in the city of Keln.

“Huh.” Glokta gripped his cane hard and leaned down to whisper in Goyle’s ear. “There’s a little bit of flesh, between your fruits and your arsehole. You never really see it, unless you’re a contortionist, or unnaturally fond of mirrors. You know the one I’m talking about. Men spend hours thinking about the area in front of it, and almost as long on the area behind, but that little patch of flesh? Unfairly ignored.” He scooped up a few nails and jingled them gently in Goyle’s face. “I mean to set that right, today. I’m going to start there, and work outwards, and believe me, once I’m done, you’ll be thinking about that patch of flesh for the rest of your life. Or you’ll be thinking about where it used to be, at least. Practical Cosca, would you be kind enough to help the Superior out of his trousers?”

“The University!” bellowed Goyle. He had a sheen of sweat all over his balding head. “Sult! He’s in the University!”

So soon? Almost disappointing. But then few bullies take a beating well. “What’s he doing there, at a time like this?”

“I… I don’t—”

“Not good enough. Trousers, please.”

“Silber! He’s with Silber!”

Glokta frowned. “The University Administrator?”

Goyle’s eyes darted from Glokta, to Cosca, and back again. He squeezed them shut. “The Adeptus Demonic!”

There was a long pause. “The what?”

“Silber, he doesn’t just run the University! He conducts… experiments.”

“Experiments of what nature?” Glokta jabbed sharply at Goyle’s bloody face with the head of the hammer. “Before I nail your tongue to the table.”

“Occult experiments! Sult has been giving him money, for a long time! Since the First of the Magi came calling! Before, maybe!”

Occult experiments? Funding from the Arch Lector? It hardly seems Sult’s style, but it explains why those damn Adepti were expecting money from me when I first visited the place. And why Vitari and her circus have set up shop there now. “What experiments?”

“Silber… he can make contact… with the Other Side!”

“What?”

“It’s true! I have seen it! He can learn things, secrets, there is no other way of knowing, and now…”

“Yes?”

“He says he has found a way to bring them through!”

“Them?”

“The Tellers of Secrets, he calls them!”

Glokta licked at his dry lips. “Demons?” I thought his Eminence had no patience with superstition, when all this time… The nerve of the man!

“He can send them against his enemies, he says. Against the Arch Lector’s enemies! They are ready to do it!”

Glokta felt his left eye twitching, and he pressed the back of his hand against it. A year ago I would have laughed to my boots and nailed him to the ceiling. But things are different, now. We passed inside the House of the Maker. We saw Shickel smile as she burned. If there are Eaters? If there are Magi? Why should there not be demons? How could there not be? “What enemies?”

“The High Justice! The First of the Magi!” Goyle squeezed his eyes shut again. “The king,” he whimpered.

Ahhhh. The. King. Those two little words are my kind of magic. Glokta turned to Ardee, and showed her the yawning gap in his front teeth. “Would you be so kind as to prepare a Paper of Confession?”

“Would I…” She stared at him for a moment, eyes wide in her pale face, then hurried to the Arch Lector’s desk, snatched up a sheet of paper and a pen, dipped it rattling in a bottle of ink. She paused, her hand trembling. “What should I write?”

“Oh, something like, ‘I, Superior Goyle, confess to being an accomplice in a treasonous plot of his Eminence Arch Lector Sult, to…’ ’’ How to phrase it? He raised his brows. How else but call it what it is? “ ‘To use diabolical arts against his Majesty the king and members of his Closed Council.’ ”

The nib scratched clumsily over the paper, scattering specks of ink. Ardee held it crackling out to him. “Good enough?”

He remembered the beautiful documents that Practical Frost used to prepare. The elegant, flowing script, the immaculate wording. Each Paper of Confession, a work of art. Glokta stared sadly down at the ink-spotted daub in his hand.

“But a brief step from unreadable, but it will serve.” He slid the paper under Goyle’s trembling hand, then took the pen from Ardee and wedged it between his fingers. “Sign.”

Goyle sobbed, sniffed, scrawled his name at the bottom of the page as best he could with his arm nailed down. I win, and for once the taste is almost sweet.

“Excellent,” said Glokta. “Pull those nails, and find some sort of bandage. It would be a shame if he bled to death before he had the chance to testify. Gag him, though, I’ve heard enough for now. We’ll take him with us to the High Justice.”

“Wait! Wait! Wurghh—!” Goyle’s cries were sharply cut off as the mercenary with the boils wedged a wad of dirty cloth in his mouth. The dwarf slid the pliers from the case. So far, and we are still alive. What ever are the odds of that? Glokta limped to the window and stood, stretching his aching legs. There was a muffled shriek as the first nail was ripped from Goyle’s arm, but Glokta’s thoughts were elsewhere. He stared out towards the University, its spires looming up through the smoky murk like clawing fingers. Occult experiments? Summonings and sendings? He licked sourly at his empty gums. What is going on in there?

“What is going on out there?” Jezal strode up and down the roof of the Tower of Chains in a manner which he hoped was reminiscent of a caged tiger, but probably was closer to a criminal on the morning of his own hanging.