Joe Abercrombie - Last Argument of Kings

You must be fucking joking.

The pale faces of the councillors were frozen, hanging in wide-eyed shock, squashed up in narrow-eyed rage. The pale men behind the table gaped. The pale people at the balcony pressed their hands over their mouths. Jezal dan Luthar, who had wept with self-pity while Ferro had stitched his face. Jezal dan Luthar, that leaky piss-pot of selfishness, and arrogance, and vanity. Jezal dan Luthar, who she had called the princess of the Union, had a chance of ending the day as its King.

Ferro could not help herself.

She let her head drop back and she hacked, and coughed, and gurgled with amusement. Tears sprung up in her eyes, her chest shook and her knees trembled. She clung to the rail of the balcony, she gasped, blubbered, drooled. Ferro did not laugh often. She could scarcely remember the last time. But Jezal dan Luthar, a King?

This was funny.

High above, in the public gallery, someone had started laughing. A jagged cackling completely inappropriate to the solemnity of the moment. But Jezal’s first impulse, when he realised that it was his name that Bayaz had called out, when he realised that it was him the outstretched finger was pointing to, was to join in. His second, as every face in the entire vast space turned instantly towards him, was to vomit. The result was an ungainly cough, a shame-faced grin, an unpleasant burning at the very back of the mouth, and an instant paling of the complexion.

“I…” he found himself croaking, but without the slightest idea of how he would continue his sentence. What words could possibly help at a time like this? All he could do was stand there, sweating profusely, trembling under his stiff uniform, as Bayaz continued in ringing tones, his voice cutting over the laughter bubbling down from above.

“I have the sworn statement of his adoptive father here, attesting that all I say is true, but does it matter? The truth of it is plain for any man to see!” His arm shot out towards Jezal again. “He won a Contest before you all, and accompanied me on a journey full of peril with never a complaint! He charged the bridge at Darmium, without a thought for his own safety! He saved Adua from the revolt without a drop of blood spilled! His valour and his prowess, his wisdom and his selflessness are well known to all! Can it be doubted that the blood of kings flows in his veins?”

Jezal blinked. Odd facts began to bob to the surface of his sluggish mind. He was not much like his brothers. His father had always treated him differently. He had got all the looks in the family. His mouth was hanging open, but he found he could not close it. When his father had seen Bayaz, at the Contest, he had turned white as milk, as though he recognised him.

He had done, and he was not Jezal’s father at all.

When the king had congratulated Jezal on his victory, he had mistaken him for his own son. Not such blinding folly, evidently, as everyone might have thought. The old fool had been closer to the mark than anyone. Suddenly, it all made horrible sense.

He was a bastard. Literally.

He was the natural son of a king. What was much more, he was slowly and with increasing terror beginning to realise, he was now being seriously considered as his replacement.

“My Lords!” shouted Bayaz over the disbelieving chatter gaining steadily in volume with every passing moment. “You sit amazed! It is a difficult fact to accept, I can understand. Especially with the suffocating heat in here!” He signalled to the guards at both ends of the hall. “Open the gates, please, and let us have some air!”

The doors were heaved open and a gentle breeze washed into the Lords’ Round. A cooling breeze, and something else with it. Hard to make out at first, and then coming more clearly. Something like the noise of the crowd at the Contest. Soft, repetitive, and more than a little frightening.

“Luthar! Luthar! Luthar!” The sound of his own name, chanted over and over from a multitude of throats beyond the walls of the Agriont, was unmistakable.

Bayaz grinned. “It would seem that the people of the city have already chosen their favoured candidate.”

“This is not their choice!” roared Brock, still on his feet but only now regaining his composure. “Any more than it is yours!”

“But it would be foolish to ignore their opinion. The support of the commoners cannot be lightly dismissed, especially in these restless times. If they were to be disappointed, in their current mood, who knows what might occur? Riots in the streets, or worse? None of us wants that, surely, Lord Brock?”

Several of the councillors shifted nervously on their benches, glancing towards the open doors, whispering to their neighbours, if the atmosphere in the Round had been confused before, it was flabbergasted now. But the worry and surprise of the Open Council was nothing compared to Jezal’s own.

A fascinating tale, but if he supposes that the Union’s greediest men will simply take his word for it and give the crown away he has made a staggering blunder, whether commoners wet themselves at the name of Luthar or not. Lord Isher rose from the front row for the first time, stately and magnificent, the jewels on his chain of office flashing. And so the furious objections, the outraged denials, the demands for punishment begin.

“I wholeheartedly believe!” called Isher in ringing tones, “that the man known as Colonel Jezal dan Luthar is none other than the natural child of the recently deceased King Guslav the Fifth!” Glokta gawped. So, it seemed, did almost everyone else in the chamber. “And that he is further fitted for rule on account of his exemplary character and extensive achievements, both within the Union and outside it!” Another peal of ugly laughter gurgled down from above, but Isher ignored it. “My vote, and the votes of my supporters, are wholeheartedly for Luthar!”

If Luthar’s eyes had gone any wider they might have dropped from his skull. And who can blame him? Now one of the Westport delegation was on his feet. “The Aldermen of Westport vote as one man for Luthar!” he sang out in his Styrian accent. “Natural son and heir to King Guslav the Fifth!”

A man jumped up a few rows back. He glanced quickly and somewhat nervously at Glokta. None other than Lord Ingelstad. The lying little shit, what’s he about? “I am for Luthar!” he shrieked.

“And I, for Luthar!” Wetterlant, his hooded eyes giving away no more emotion than they had when he fed the ducks. Better offers, eh, gentlemen? Or better threats? Glokta glanced at Bayaz. He had a faint smile on his face as he watched others spring from their benches to declare their support for the so-called natural son of Guslav the Fifth. Meanwhile, the chanting of the crowds out in the city could still be heard.

“Luthar! Luthar! Luthar!”

As the shock drained away, Glokta’s mind began to turn. So that is why our First of the Magi cheated in the Contest on Luthar’s behalf. That is why he has kept him close, all this time. That is why he procured for him so notable a command. If he had presented some nobody as the King’s son, he would have been laughed from the chamber. But Luthar, love him or hate him, is one of us. He is known, he is familiar, he is… acceptable. Glokta looked at Bayaz with something close to admiration. Pieces of a puzzle, patient years in the preparation, calmly slotted into place before our disbelieving eyes. And not a thing that we can do, except, perhaps, to dance along to his tune?

Sult leaned sideways in his chair and hissed urgently in Glokta’s ear. “This boy, Luthar, what manner of a man is he?”

Glokta frowned over at him, standing dumbstruck by the wall. He looked at that moment as if he could scarcely be trusted to control his own bowels, let alone a country. Still, you could have said much the same for our previous King, and he discharged his duties admirably. His duties of sitting and drooling, while we ran the country for him. “Before his trip abroad, your Eminence, he was as empty-headed, spineless and vain a young fool as one might hope to find in the entire nation. The last time I spoke to him, though—”