Joe Abercrombie: Last Argument of Kings

“Ah,” she whispered, urgent and throaty, her lips brushing his cheek, her breath hot in his ear. “Yes… just there… don’t stop.” She led him breathless to the bed.

“If that is all?” Glokta looked around the table, but the old men were silent. All waiting for my word. The king was absent again, so he made them wait an unnecessarily long time. Just to stab home to any doubters who is in charge. Why not, after all? The purpose of power is not to be gracious. “Then this meeting of the Closed Council is over.”

They rose, quickly, quietly, and in good order. Torlichorm, Halleck, Kroy and all the rest filed slowly from the room. Glokta himself struggled up, his leg still aching with the memory of the morning’s cramps, only to find that the Lord Chamberlain had, once again, remained behind. And he looks far from amused.

Hoff waited until the door shut before he spoke. “Imagine my surprise,” he snapped, “to hear of your recent marriage.”

“A swift and understated ceremony.” Glokta showed the Lord Chamberlain the wreckage of his front teeth. “Young love, you understand, brooks no delays. I apologise if the lack of an invitation offended you.”

“An invitation?” growled Hoff, frowning mightily. “Hardly! This is not what we discussed!”

“Discussed? I believe we have a misunderstanding. Our mutual friend,” and Glokta let his eyes move significantly to the empty thirteenth chair at the far end of the table, “left me in charge. Me. No other. He deems it necessary that the Closed Council speak with one voice. From now on, that voice will sound remarkably like mine.”

Hoff’s ruddy face had paled slightly. “Of course, but—”

“You are aware, I suppose, that I lived through two years of torture? Two years in hell, so I can stand before you now. Or lean before you, twisted as an old tree root. A crippled, shambling, wretched mockery of a man, eh, Lord Hoff? Let us be honest with one another. Sometimes I lose control of my own leg. My own eyes. My own face.” He snorted. “If you can call it a face. My bowels too, are rebellious. I often wake up daubed in my own shit. I find myself in constant pain, and the memories of everything that I have lost nag at me, endlessly.” He felt his left eye twitching. Let it twitch. “So you can see how, despite my constant efforts to be a man of sunny temper, I find that I despise the world, and everything in it, and myself most of all. A regrettable state of affairs, for which there is no remedy.”

The Lord Chamberlain licked his lips uncertainly. “You have my sympathy, but I fail to see the relevance.”

Glokta came suddenly very close, ignoring a spasm up his leg, pressing Hoff back against the table. “Your sympathy is less than worthless, and the relevance is this. Knowing what I am, what I have endured, what I still endure… can you suppose there is anything in this world I fear? Any act I will shrink from? The most unbearable pain of others is at the worst… an irritation to me.” Glokta jerked even closer, letting his lips work back from his ruined teeth, letting his face tremble, and his eye weep. “Knowing all that… can you possibly think it wise… for a man to stand where you stand now… and make threats? Threats against my wife? Against my unborn child?”

“No threat was intended, of course, I would never—”

“That simply would not do, Lord Hoff! That simply would not do. At the very slightest breath of violence against them… why, I would not wish you even to imagine the inhuman horror of my response.”

Closer yet, so close that his spit made a soft mist across Hoff’s trembling jowls. “I cannot permit any further discussion of this issue. Ever. I cannot permit even the rumour that there might be an issue. Ever. It simply… would… not… do, Lord Hoff, for an eyeless, tongueless, faceless, fingerless, cockless bag of meat to be occupying your chair on the Closed Council.” He stepped away, grinning his most revolting grin. “Why, my Lord Chamberlain… who would drink all the wine?”

It was a beautiful autumn day in Adua, and the sun shone pleasantly through the branches of the fragrant fruit trees, casting a dappled shade onto the grass beneath. A pleasing breeze fluttered through the orchard, stirring the crimson mantle of the king as he strode regally around his lawn, and the white coat of his Arch Lector as he hobbled doggedly along at a respectful distance, stooped over his cane. Birds twittered from the trees, and his Majesty’s highly polished boots crunched in the gravel and made faint, agreeable echoes against the white buildings of the palace.

From the other side of the high walls came the faint sound of distant work. The clanking of picks and hammers, the scraping of earth and the clattering of stone. The faint calls of the carpenters and the masons. These were the most pleasant sounds of all, to Jezal’s ear. The sounds of rebuilding.

“It will take time, of course,” he was saying.

“Of course.”

“Years, perhaps. But much of the rubble is already cleared. The repair of some of the more lightly damaged buildings has already begun. The Agriont will be more glorious than ever before you know it. I have made it my highest priority.”

Glokta bowed his head even lower. “And therefore mine, and that of your Closed Council. Might I enquire…” he murmured, “after the health of your wife, the queen?”

Jezal worked his mouth. He hardly liked discussing his personal business with this man, of all people, but it could not be denied that whatever the cripple had said, there had been a most dramatic improvement.

“A material change.” Jezal shook his head. “I find now that she is a woman of almost… insatiable appetites.”

“I am delighted that my entreaties have had an effect.”

“Oh, they have, they have, only there is still a certain…” Jezal waved his hand in the air, searching out the right word. “Sadness in her. Sometimes… I hear her crying, in the night. She stands at the open window, and she weeps, for hours at a time.”

“Crying, your Majesty? Perhaps she is merely homesick. I always suspected she was a much gentler spirit than she appears to be.”

“She is! She is. A gentle spirit.” Jezal thought about it for a moment. “Do you know, I think you may be right. Homesick.” A plan began to take shape in his mind. “Perhaps we should have the gardens of the palace redesigned, to give a flavour of Talins? We could have the stream altered, in the likeness of canals, and so forth!”

Glokta leered his toothless grin. “A sublime idea. I shall speak to the Royal Gardener. Perhaps another brief word with her Majesty as well, to see if I can staunch her tears.”

“I would appreciate whatever you can do. How is your own wife?” he tossed over his shoulder, hoping to change the subject, then realising he had strayed onto one even more difficult.

But Glokta only showed his empty smile again. “She is a tremendous comfort to me, your Majesty. I really don’t know how I ever managed without her.”

They moved on in awkward silence for a moment, then Jezal cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking, Glokta, about that scheme of mine. You know, about a tax on the banks? Perhaps to pay for a new hospital near the docks. For those who cannot afford a surgeon. The common folk have been good to us. They have helped us to power, and suffered in our name. A government should offer something to all its people, should it not? The more mean, the more base, the more they need our help. A king is only truly as rich as his poorest subject, do you not think? Would you have the High Justice draw something up? Small to begin with, then we can go further. Free housing, perhaps, for those who find themselves without a home. We should consider—”