Joe Abercrombie - Last Argument of Kings

When he rounded the corner her fist was already swinging. It crunched into his mask and sent him reeling. She pressed in close, cracking him in the face with each hand and knocking his head right and left. He fumbled for a knife, but he was slow and dizzy and the blade was barely out of its sheath before she had his wrist tight. Her elbow snapped his head back, jabbed into his throat and left him gurgling. She tore the knife out of his limp hand, spun around and kicked him in the gut so he bent over. Her knee thudded into his mask and sent him onto his back in the dirt. She followed him down, her legs wrapping tight around his waist, her arm across his chest, his own knife pressed up against his throat.

“Look at this,” she whispered in his face. “I have picked up a shadow.”

“Glugh,” came from behind his mask, his eyes still rolling.

“Hard to talk with that on, eh?” And she slashed the straps of his mask with a jerk of the knife, the blade leaving a long scratch down his cheek. He did not look so dangerous without it. Much younger than she had thought, with a rash of spots around his chin and a growth of downy hair on his top lip. He jerked his head and his eyes came back into focus. He snarled, tried to twist free, but she had him fast, and a touch of the knife against his neck soon calmed him.

“Why are you following me?”

“I’m not fucking—”

Ferro had never been a patient woman. Straddling her shadow as she was it was an easy thing to rear up and smash her elbow into his face. He did his best to ward her off, but all her weight was on his hips and he was helpless. Her arm crashed through his hands and into his mouth, his nose, his cheek, cracking his head back against the greasy cobbles. Four of those and the fight was out of him. His head lolled back, and she crouched down over him again and tucked the knife up under his neck. Blood bubbled out of his nose and his mouth and ran down the side of his face in dark streaks.

“Following me now?”

“I just watch.” His voice clicked in his bloody mouth. “I just watch. I don’t give the orders.”

The Gurkish soldiers did not give the orders to kill Ferro’s people and make her a slave. That did not make them innocent. That did not make them safe from her. “Who does?”

He coughed, and his face twitched, bubbles of blood blew out of his swollen nostrils. Nothing else. Ferro frowned.

“What?” She moved the knife down and pricked at his thigh with the point, “you think I never cut a cock off before?”

“Glokta,” he mumbled, closing his eyes. “I work… for Glokta.”

“Glokta.” The name meant nothing to her, but it was something to follow.

She slid the knife back up, up to his neck. The lump on his throat rose and fell, brushing against the edge of the blade. She clenched her jaw, and worked her fingers round the grip, frowning down. Tears had started to glitter in the corners of his eyes. Best to get it done, and away. Safest. But her hand was hard to move.

“Give me a reason not to do it.”

The tears welled up and ran down the sides of his bloody face. “My birds,” he whispered.

“Birds?”

“There’ll be no one to feed them. I deserve it, sure enough, but my birds… they’ve done nothing.” She narrowed her eyes at him.

Birds. Strange, the things that people have to live for.

Her father had kept a bird. She remembered it, in a cage, hanging from a pole. A useless thing, that could not even fly, only cling to a twig. He had taught it words. She remembered watching him feeding it, when she was a child. Long ago, before the Gurkish came.

“Ssssss,” she hissed in his face, pressing the knife up against his neck and making him cower. Then she pulled the blade away, got up and stood over him. “The moment when I see you again will be your last. Back to your birds, shadow.”

He nodded, his wet eyes wide, and she turned and stalked off down the dark alleyway, into the dusk. When she crossed a bridge she tossed the knife away. It vanished with a splash, and ripples spread out in growing circles across the slimy water. A mistake, most likely, to have left that man alive. Mercy was always a mistake, in her experience.

But it seemed she was in a merciful mood today.

Colonel Glokta was a magnificent dancer, of course, but with his leg feeling as stiff as it did it was difficult for him to truly shine. The constant buzzing of flies was a further distraction, and his partner was not helping. Ardee West looked well enough, but her constant giggling was becoming quite the irritation.

“Stop that!” snapped the Colonel, whirling her around the laboratory of the Adeptus Physical, the specimens in the jars pulsing and wobbling in time to the music.

“Partially eaten,” grinned Kandelau, one eye enormously magnified through his eyeglass. He pointed downwards with his tongs. “This is a foot.”

Glokta pushed the bushes aside, one hand pressed over his face. The butchered corpse lay there, glistening red, scarcely recognisable as human. Ardee laughed and laughed at the sight of it. “Partially eaten!” she tittered at him. Colonel Glokta did not find the business in any way amusing. The sound of flies was growing louder and louder, threatening to drown out the music entirely. Worse yet, it was getting terribly cold in the park.

“Careless of me,” said a voice from behind.

“How do you mean?”

“Just to leave it there. But sometimes it is better to move quickly, than to move carefully, eh, cripple?”

“I remember this,” murmured Glokta. It had grown colder yet, and he was shivering like a leaf. “I remember this!”

“Of course,” whispered the voice. A woman’s voice, but not Ardee. A low and hissing voice, that made his eye twitch.

“What can I do?” The Colonel could feel his gorge rising. The wounds in the red meat yawned. The flies were so loud he could hardly hear the reply.

“Perhaps you should go to the University, and ask for advice.” Icy breath brushed his neck and made his back shiver. “Perhaps while you are there… you could ask them about the Seed.”

Glokta lurched to the bottom of the steps and staggered sideways, falling back against the wall, the breath hissing over his wet tongue. His left leg trembled, his left eye twitched, as though the two were connected by a cord of pain that cut into his arse, guts, back, shoulder, neck, face, and tightened with every movement, however small.

He forced himself to be still. To breathe long and slow. He made his mind move off the pain and on to other things. Like Bayaz, and his failed quest for this Seed. After all, his Eminence is waiting, and is not known for his patience. He stretched his neck out to either side and felt the bones clicking between his twisted shoulder-blades. He pressed his tongue into his gums and shuffled away from the steps, into the cool darkness of the stacks.

They had not changed much in the past year. Or probably in a few centuries before that. The vaulted spaces smelled of fust and age, lit only by a couple of nickering, grimy lamps, sagging shelves stretching away into the shifting shadows. Time to go digging once again through the dusty refuse of history. The Adeptus Historical did not appear to have changed much either. He sat at his stained desk, poring over a mouldy-looking pile of papers in the light from a single squirming candle flame. He squinted up as Glokta hobbled closer.

“Who’s there?”

“Glokta.” He peered up suspiciously towards the shadowy ceiling. “What happened to your crow?”

“Dead,” grunted the ancient librarian sadly.

“History, you might say!” The old man did not laugh. “Ah, well. It happens to us all.” And some sooner than others. “I have questions for you.”