Джо Аберкромби - A Little Hatred - Book One (The Age of Madness)

‘Fuck the owners!’ screeched Judge, and the crowd cheered and jeered, wailed and grumbled.

‘There’s men here turn out miles of cloth a day but can’t afford a shirt for their backs! Women whose highest ambition is to con the factory inspector that her son’s old enough to work! How many fingers missing here? And hands? And arms?’ And people held up stumps and crutches and mangled hands, veterans not of battles but endless shifts at the machinery. ‘There are folk dying o’ hunger just a mile from the palaces on the hill! Boys who can hardly breathe for the white lung. Girls who catch some owner’s fancy and are forced into night-work. You know the sort o’ work I mean!’

‘Fuck the owners!’ screeched Judge again, and the crowd’s rage came back louder than ever.

‘There’ll be a reckoning!’ Malmer clenched his fists as he glowered at the crowd, his grinding anger every bit as worrying as Judge’s stabbing fury. ‘I promise you that. But we need to think. We need to plan. When we spill our blood – and blood’ll be spilled, depend on that – we need to make sure it buys us something.’

‘And we will! No less than everything!’ A smooth voice rang out, a cultured voice, and the crowd fell quickly silent. A mood of expectation, people hardly daring to breathe.

Judge grinned as she held out her hand to pull someone up onto the wagon. A plump man in a dark, well-tailored suit, soft and pale, oddly out of place in this rough company.

‘Here he is,’ murmured Gunnar, folding his arms.

‘Here who is?’ whispered Vick, though from that silence she already guessed the answer.

‘The Weaver.’

‘Friends!’ called the plump man, stroking gently at the air with his thick fingers. ‘Brothers and Sisters! Breakers and Burners! Honest folk of Valbeck! Some of you know me as Superior Risinau of His Majesty’s Inquisition.’ And he held up his pink palms, and gave a sorry smile. ‘For that I can only apologise.’

Vick could only stare. If she’d been off balance before, she was knocked on her back now.

‘Fucking shit,’ she heard Tallow breathe.

‘The rest of you know me as the Weaver!’ The crowd gave a jagged murmur, part anger, part love, part anticipation, as though they’d come to see a prizefight and the champion had just strutted into the circle.

A fat man prone to folly, Glokta had said. No imagination, but plenty of loyalty. For the first time in Vick’s memory, it appeared His Eminence had made a most serious misjudgement.

‘I wrote to the king a few weeks ago,’ called Risinau, ‘laying out our grievances. Anonymously, of course. I did not deem it appropriate to use my given name.’ Some laughter through the crowd. ‘The ever-dwindling pay. The ever-swelling cost of living. The appalling quality of lodgings. The foul air and water. The sickness, squalor and hunger. The cheating of workers through false measures and hidden deductions. The oppression of the employers.’

‘Fuck the employers!’ shrieked Judge, spraying spit.

Risinau held up a flapping sheet of paper. ‘This morning I received a reply. Not from His foolish Majesty, of course.’

‘The cock in the Agriont!’ sneered Judge, grabbing hold of her groin to much laughter among the crowd while the children jumped on the rafters and made the dummy king dance.

‘Not from his Styrian queen,’ continued Risinau.

‘The cunt in the palace!’ screamed Judge, thrusting her hips at the crowd, and someone worked a thread that pulled the dummy queen’s skirts up, showing a great fleece muff to gales of merriment.

‘Not from his dissolute son, Prince Orso.’ Risinau glanced expectantly over at Judge.

She shrugged her bony shoulders. ‘There’s nothing to say about that waste o’ fucking flesh.’ And a wave of boos and jeering swept the crowd.

‘Not from the figureheads,’ called Risinau, ‘but from the pilot of the ship! From Old Sticks himself, Arch Lector Glokta!’ The fury at the name was the loudest yet by far. Just ahead, Vick saw an old man with a bent back curl his lip and spit at Glokta’s twisted dummy in disgust.

‘He offers no help, you will be surprised to hear.’ Risinau peered down at the letter. ‘He cautions against disloyalty, and warns of stiff penalties.’

‘Fuck his penalties!’ snarled Judge.

‘He tells me the market must be free to operate. The world must be free to advance. Progress cannot be chained, apparently. Who knew the Arch Lector was so firmly set against manacles?’ Some laughter at that. ‘When one man knowingly kills another, they call it murder! When society causes the deaths of thousands, they shrug and call it a fact of life.’ Growls of agreement, and Risinau crushed the letter in his fist and tossed it away. ‘The time for talk is done , my friends! No one is listening. No one who counts. The time has come for us to throw off the yoke and stand as free men and women. If they will not give us what we are owed, we must rise up and take it by force. We must bring the Great Change!’

‘Yes!’ shrieked Judge, and Malmer nodded grimly as men shook their weapons.

Risinau held up his hands for quiet. ‘We will take Valbeck! Not to burn the city,’ and he wagged a disappointed finger at Judge, and she stuck her tongue out and spat into the crowd, ‘but to free the city. To give it back to her people. To stand as an example to the rest of the Union.’ And the audience gave an approving bellow.

‘Wish it was that easy.’ Gunnar slowly shook his head. ‘Doubt it will be.’

‘No,’ muttered Vick. She made Tallow wince, she squeezed his arm so hard as she marched him over towards the wall to hiss in his ear.

‘Get out of town now, you hear? Head for Adua.’

‘But—’

She pressed her purse into his limp hand. ‘Quick as you can. Go to my employer. You know who I mean. Tell him what you saw tonight. Tell him …’ She glanced around, but folk were too busy cheering Risinau’s mad speech to mind her. ‘Tell him who the Weaver is. I’m trusting you to get it done.’

She let him go but he didn’t move, just stared at her with those big eyes that were so like her brother’s. ‘You’re not coming?’

‘Someone has to try to handle this mess. Go.’ She shoved him away, watched him totter towards the door.

Vick wanted to follow. Badly. But she had to get to the hill and find Savine dan Glokta, maybe there was still time to put out a warning—

‘This must be Victarine dan Teufel!’ She froze at that strangely prim voice. ‘I had heard you were in Valbeck.’ Risinau came smiling through the crowd, dabbing his shining face with a handkerchief, Judge at one shoulder, Malmer at the other.

There was a hollow feeling in Vick’s guts as dozens of pairs of hard eyes turned towards her. Like that moment in the mines, in the dark, the day her sister drowned. When she hissed for quiet, and heard the water rushing, far off.

They had her. She was done.

Risinau wagged one plump finger. ‘Collem Sibalt told me all about you.’

Her heart was thudding so hard she could hardly breathe. Hardly see. The children had pulled down the dummy of Bayaz and were beating it with its own staff, straw flying. She couldn’t believe how calm her voice sounded. Like someone else’s. Someone who knew exactly what they were doing. ‘Good things, I hope.’

‘ All good things. He said you were a woman with a hard heart and a level head. A woman as committed to our cause as any. A woman who could keep her wits on a sinking ship.’ And Risinau stepped forward and folded her in a smothering hug while she stood there, damp with cold sweat and her flesh creeping. ‘Collem Sibalt was a dear friend. Any friend of his is a friend of mine.’