Joe Abercrombie - Last Argument of Kings

From very bad to an awful lot worse. “A miscalculation on my part, your Eminence. I thought that I would spare you the trouble of—”

“Disposing of traitors is no trouble for me. You know that.” Angry creases spread out around Sult’s hard blue eyes. “Could it be, after all we have been through together, you might take me for a fool?”

Glokta’s voice rasped uncomfortably in his dry throat. “Absolutely not, Arch Lector.” Merely a lethal megalomaniac. He knows. He knows that I am not entirely the dutiful slave. But how much does he know? And from whom did he learn it?

“I gave you an impossible task, and so I have allowed you the benefit of the doubt. But your benefit will only last as long as your successes. I grow tired of putting the spur to you. If you do not solve my problems with our new King in the next two weeks, I will have Superior Goyle dig out the answers to my questions about Dagoska. I will have him dig them from your twisted flesh, if I must. Do I make myself clear?”

As Visserine glass. Two weeks to find the answers, or… fragments of a butchered corpse found floating by the docks. But if I even ask the questions, Valint and Balk will inform his Eminence of our arrangement and… bloated by seawater, horribly mutilated, far beyond recognition. Alas for poor Superior Glokta. A comely and a well-loved man, but such bad luck. Wherever will he turn?

“I understand, Arch Lector.”

“Then why ever are you still sitting here?”

It was Ardee West herself who opened the door, a half-full wine glass in one hand. “Ah! Superior Glokta, what a delightful surprise. Do come in!”

“You sound almost pleased to see me.” A rare response indeed to my arrival.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” She stepped graciously aside to allow him past. “How many girls are lucky enough to have a torturer for a chaperone? There’s nothing like it for encouraging the suitors.”

He hobbled over the threshold. “Where is your maid?”

“She got herself all worked up about some Gurkish army or other, so I let her go. Went to her mother in Martenhorm.”

“And you are yourself ready to leave, I hope?” He followed her into the warm living room, shutters and curtains closed, illuminated by the shifting glow from the coals on the fire.

“In fact, I have decided to stay in the city.”

“Really? The tragic princess, pining in her empty castle? Abandoned by her faithless servants, wringing her helpless hands while her enemies surround the moat?” Glokta snorted. “Are you sure you fit the role?”

“Better than you fit that of the knight on the white charger, come to rescue the damsel with blade a-flashing.” She looked him scornfully up and down. “I’d hoped for a hero with at least half his teeth.”

“I thought you’d be used to getting less than you hoped for by now.” I know that I am.

“What can I say? I’m a romantic. Have you come here only to puncture my dreams?”

“No. I do that without trying. I had in mind a drink and a conversation which did not include the subtext of my mutilated corpse.”

“It is hard to say at this stage what direction our conversation might take, but the drink I can promise you.” She poured him a glass and he tossed it back in four long swallows. He held it out again, sucking his sweet gums.

“In all seriousness, the Gurkish are no more than a week from taking Adua under siege. You should leave as soon as possible.”

She filled his glass again, and then her own. “Haven’t you noticed that half the city has had the same idea? Such flea-bitten nags not requisitioned by the army are changing hands at five hundred marks a piece. Nervous citizens are pouring out to every corner of Midderland. Columns of defenceless refugees, wandering through a mass of mud at a mile a day as the weather turns cold, laden down with everything of value they possess, easy prey for every brigand within a hundred miles.”

“True,” Glokta had to admit as he wriggled his painful way into a chair near the fire.

“And where would I go to anyway? I swear I have not a single friend or relative anywhere in Midderland. Would you have me hide in the woods, lighting fires by rubbing sticks together and hunting down squirrels with my bare hands? How the hell would I stay drunk in those circumstances? No, thank you, I will be safer here, and considerably more comfortable. I have coal for the fire and the cellar is full to capacity. I can hold out for months.” She waved a floppy hand towards the wall. “The Gurkish are coming from the west, and we are on the eastern side of town. I could not be safer in the palace itself, I daresay.”

Perhaps she is right. Here, at least, I can keep some kind of watch over her. “Very well, I bow to your reasoning. Or I would, if my back allowed it.”

She settled herself opposite. “And how is life in the corridors of power?”

“Chilly. As corridors often are.” Glokta stroked his lips with a finger. “I find myself in a difficult situation.”

“I have some experience with those.”

“This one is… complicated.”

“Well then, in terms a dull wench like me might understand.”

Where’s the harm? I stare death in the face already. “In the terms of a dull wench, then, imagine this… desperately needing certain favours, you have promised your hand in marriage to two very rich and powerful men.”

“Huh. One would be a fine thing.”

“None would be a fine thing, in this particular case. They are both old and of surpassing ugliness.”

She shrugged. “Ugliness is easily forgiven in the rich and powerful.”

“But both these suitors are prone to violent displays of jealousy. Dangerous displays, if your wanton faithlessness were to become common knowledge. You had hoped to extricate yourself from one promise or the other at some stage, but now the date of the weddings draws near, and you find that you are… still considerably entangled with both. More so than ever, in fact. Your response?”

She pursed her lips and took a long breath, considering it, then tossed a strand of hair theatrically over her shoulder. “I would drive them both near madness with my matchless wit and smouldering beauty, then engineer a duel between the two. Whichever won would be rewarded with the ultimate prize of my hand in marriage, never suspecting I was once promised also to his rival. Since he is old, I would earnestly hope for his imminent death, leaving me a wealthy and respected widow.” She grinned at him down her nose. “What say you to that, sir?”

Glokta blinked. “I fear the metaphor has lost its relevance.”

“Or…” Ardee squinted at the ceiling, then snapped her fingers. “I might use my subtle feminine wiles…” thrusting back her shoulders and hitching up her bust, “to entrap a third man, still more powerful and wealthy. Young, and handsome, and smooth of limb as well, I suppose, since this is a metaphor. I would marry him and with his help destroy those other two, and abandon them penniless and disappointed. Ha! What think you?”

Glokta felt his eyelid twitching, and he pressed one hand against it. Interesting. “A third suitor,” he murmured. “The idea had never even occurred.”

Far below, the water frothed and surged. It had rained hard in the night, and now the river ran high with it, an angry flood chewing mindlessly at the base of the cliff. Cold black water and cold white spray against the cold black rock. Tiny shapes—golden yellow, burning orange, vivid purple, all the colours of fire, whisked and wandered with the mad currents, whatever way the rain washed them.

Leaves on the water, just like him.