Joe Abercrombie - Last Argument of Kings

“We are done. Looks as if I’ll never be a better man, but I can try not to be a worse. I can try that much, at least.”

Bayaz narrowed his eyes. “Well, Master Ninefingers, you surprise me to the last. I thought you a courageous yet restrained man, a calculating yet compassionate one. I thought you, above all, a realistic man. But the Northmen have ever been prone to petulance. I observe in you now an obstinate streak and a destructive temper. I see the Bloody-Nine at last.”

“I’m happy to disappoint you. Seems we misjudged each other entirely. I took you for a great man. Now I realise my mistake.” Logen slowly shook his head. “What have you done here?”

“What have I done?” Bayaz snorted with disbelieving laughter. “I combined three pure disciplines of magic, and I forged a new one! It seems you do not understand the achievement, Master Ninefingers, but I forgive you. I realise that book-learning has never been your strongest suit. Such a thing has not been contemplated since before the Old Time, when Euz split his gifts among his sons.” Bayaz sighed. “None will appreciate my greatest achievement, it seems. None except Khalul, perhaps, and it is unlikely he will ever proffer his congratulations. Why, such power has not been released within the Circle of the World since… since…”

“Glustrod destroyed himself and Aulcus with him?”

The Magus raised his eyebrows. “Since you mention it.”

“And the results are pretty much the same, it seems to me, except you wrought a touch less careless slaughter, and ruined a smaller part of a smaller city, in a smaller, meaner time. Otherwise what’s the difference, between you and him?”

“I would have thought that was entirely obvious.” Bayaz lifted his teacup, gazing mildly over the rim. “Glustrod lost.”

Logen stood there for a long while, thinking on that. Then he turned and stalked from the room, the servant cringing out of his way. Into the corridor, footsteps clapping from the gilded ceiling, Bethod’s heavy chain jingling round his shoulders like laughter in his ear.

He probably should’ve kept the ruthless old bastard on his side. Chances were that Logen would need his help, the way things were like to be in the North, once he got back. He probably should’ve sucked up that stinking piss he called tea and smiled as if it was honey. He probably should’ve laughed, and called Bayaz old friend, so he could come crawling to the Great Northern Library when things turned sour. That would have been the clever thing to do. That would have been the realistic thing. But it was just the way that Logen’s father had always said…

He’d never been that realistic.

A soon as he heard the door open, Jezal knew who his visitor must be. He did not even have to look up. Who else would have the temerity to barge into a king’s own chambers without so much as knocking? He cursed, silently, but with great bitterness.

It could only be Bayaz. His jailer. His chief tormentor. His ever-present shadow. The man who had destroyed half the Agriont, and made a ruin of beautiful Adua, and now smiled and revelled in the applause as though he were the saviour of the nation. It was enough to make a man sick to the pit of his guts. Jezal ground his teeth, staring out of the window towards the ruins, refusing to turn round.

More demands. More compromises. More talk of what had to be done. Being the head of state, at least with the First of the Magi at his shoulder, was an endlessly frustrating and disempowering experience. Getting his own way on even the tiniest of issues, an almost impossible struggle. Wherever he looked he found himself staring directly into the Magus’ disapproving frown. He felt like nothing more than a figurehead. A fine-looking, a gilded, a magnificent yet utterly useless chunk of wood. Except a figurehead at least gets to go at the front of the ship.

“Your Majesty,” came the old man’s voice, the usual thin veneer of respect scarcely concealing the hard body of disdain beneath.

“What now?” Jezal finally turned to face him. He was surprised to see that the Magus had shed his robes of state in favour of his old travel-stained coat, the heavy boots he had worn on their ill-fated journey into the ruined west. “Going somewhere?” asked Jezal, hardly daring even to hope.

“I am leaving Adua. Today.”

“Today?” It was the most Jezal could do to stop himself leaping in the air and screaming for joy. He felt like a prisoner stepping from his stinking dungeon and into the bright sunlight of freedom. Now he could rebuild the Agriont as he saw fit. He could reorganise the Closed Council, pick his own advisers. Perhaps even rid himself of that witch of a wife Bayaz had saddled him with. He would be free to do the right thing, whatever that was. He would be free to try and find out what the right thing might be, at least. Was he not the High King of the Union, after all? Who would refuse him? “We will be sorry to lose you, of course.”

“I can imagine. There are some arrangements that we must make first, however.”

“By all means.” Anything if it meant he was rid of the old bastard.

“I have spoken with your new Arch Lector, Glokta.”

The name alone produced a shiver of revulsion. “Have you indeed?”

“A sharp man. He has greatly impressed me. I have asked him to speak in my stead while I am absent from the Closed Council.”

“Truly?” asked Jezal, wondering whether to toss the cripple from his post directly after the Magus left the gates or to leave it a day.

“I would recommend,” said in very much the tone of an order, “that you listen closely to his opinions.”

“Oh I will, of course. The best of luck on your journey back to…”

“I would like you, in fact, to do as he says.”

A cold knot of anger pressed at Jezal’s throat. “You would have me, in effect… obey him?”

Bayaz’ eyes did not deviate from his own. “In effect… yes.”

Jezal was left momentarily speechless. For the Magus to suppose that he could come and go as he pleased, leaving his maimed lackey in charge? Above a king, in his own kingdom? The overwhelming arrogance of the man! “You have taken a high hand of late in my affairs!” he snapped. “I am in no mind to trade one overbearing adviser for another.”

“That man will be very useful to you. To us. Decisions will have to be made that you would find difficult. Actions will have to be taken which you would rather not take yourself. People who would live in sparkling palaces need others willing to carry away their ordure, lest it pile up in the polished corridors and one day bury them. All this is simple, and obvious. You have not attended to me.”

“No! You are the one who has failed to attend! Sand dan Glokta? That crippled bastard…” he realised his unfortunate choice of words, but had to forge on regardless, growing angrier than ever, “sitting beside me at the Closed Council? Leering over my shoulder every day of my life? And now you would have him dictate to me? Unacceptable. Insufferable. Impossible! We are no longer in the time of Harod the Great! I have no notion of what causes you to suppose that you could speak to me in such a manner. I am king here, and I refuse to be steered!”

Bayaz closed his eyes, and drew a slow breath threw his nose. Quite as though he were trying to find the patience for the education of a moron. “You cannot understand what it is to live as long as I have. To know all that I know. You people are dead in the blink of an eye, and have to be taught the same old lessons all over again. The same lessons that Juvens taught Stolicus a thousand years ago. It becomes extremely tiresome.”

Jezal’s fury was steadily building. “I apologise if I bore you!”