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

Valbeck’s Courthouse had been a grand building, stately steps of coloured marble with stately columns at the top. Someone had been on the roof and torn some copper from the dome, a spider’s web of rafters showing on one side. The big new bank next door must’ve been even grander than the Courthouse not long ago. Now it was just a burned-out shell. Ashes chased each other around Broad’s boots in little swirls as they crossed the empty square in front.

‘Someone tried to hold ’em off here,’ he said as they eased up the steps. The doors were battered, one half-torn from its hinges and hanging loose.

‘Let’s hope we do better,’ said Sarlby, fingering his bow.

A pair of statues flanked the entrance. Impossibly stately ladies in noble poses no person ever struck, one holding a book and a sword and the other a broken chain. Justice and freedom, Broad reckoned. The Burners had smashed Freedom’s head off and put a dead cow’s where it used to be, flies crawling at the glassy eyes, dried blood in streaks down the hacked marble. Justice had a great red smile daubed over her frown, and We’ll give you fucking justice painted in drippy letters across her chest.

Vick strode between them. ‘Some sense of humour, these Burners.’

‘Oh, aye,’ said Broad. ‘They’re a hoot.’

The door of the great courtroom wasn’t guarded, but the public benches were scattered with Burners. Or perhaps they were just thieves, pimps, gamblers and drunks. Hard to tell the difference. Some hooted and jeered, shook their fists. Others were passed-out, surrounded by empty bottles. A couple had made a nest from some old curtains and the slurping sound of their hungry kissing echoed about the chamber. A dark-skinned Kantic was huffing so hard on a husk-pipe, Broad wondered if he was trying to replace the Valbeck vapours single-handed. Flies buzzed in the soupy heat and the place stank of unwashed bodies. Someone had daubed a childish cock across the mosaic floor in red paint, but rain had come through the hole in the dome and washed half of it into a rusty puddle.

Judge sat up on high in the judge’s box, the lunatic ringleader of this carnival of fools, a judge’s four-cornered black hat perched on her riot of red hair. She’d wreathed herself in stolen jewels: fingers crusted with rings and one arm dripping with bracelets, guildsmen’s chains and strings of pearls and ladies’ necklaces in a tawdry tangle across her battered breastplate. She had one long, thin leg slung lazily over the arm of the gilded chair, tattooed writing scrawled blue around and around her bare white thigh. The sight of that leg gave Broad a guilty tickle, deep inside. The same one he got when he felt violence coming.

The dock held a bony old prisoner, hands tied behind his back, wispy hair stiffened with blood, chin covered with white stubble. The two guards by him wore clown’s motley but the swords they carried were no joke.

‘Ricter dan Vallimir!’ sneered Judge. ‘Quite apart from anything else, you stand accused of having a fucking “dan” in your name—’

‘Guilty!’ There were ten whores in the jury box, eight women and two boys, plus a thickset man in an apron who looked decidedly puzzled to be there. One of the whores had leaped up, night bell tinkling around her neck, painted face twisted in a mad snarl. ‘Shitting guilty!’

‘Ladies of the jury!’ Judge whacked at her desk for order with a hatchet, sending splinters flying. ‘How many times? Fucking silence till I’m done with the charges!’

‘I reject this court,’ growled Vallimir, puffing up his chest. ‘I denounce it!’ Someone on the public benches flung rotten fruit at him. It missed, burst against the far wall, spraying slime across the fine old panelling. ‘You scum have no authority over me!’

‘Wrong!’ shrieked Judge. ‘Show him our credentials!’

One of the men in motley clubbed Vallimir across the head and knocked him gasping against the rail. The other dragged him up again, blood from a fresh cut streaking his face.

Judge shook her ring-covered fist at him. ‘We have the authority of the fist ! We have the authority of sharpened metal ! We have the authority of force , you blubbing cunt, which is the only real authority there is.’ Some light cheering from the few members of the audience still conscious. ‘You should know that. You were a soldier. Counsel for the defence? Where’s that fucker Randock?’

A man rose trembling from behind a table covered with ash, empty bottles and a flyblown chicken carcass. He was stripped naked apart from a pair of broken lenses clinging to his broken nose, hands clasped defensively around his fruits, his back a mass of purple bruises. ‘No defence, your honour,’ he gabbled out, ‘what defence could there be?’ And he gave a hysterical little titter and shrank back into his broken chair which rocked on three legs and nearly dumped him on the floor, much to the amusement of the jury.

Judge wasn’t laughing. She’d caught sight of Vick and her Breakers as they filtered through the door and spread out around the public benches. Her black eyes seemed to linger on Broad and made that guilty tickle spread all over him. He told himself she was lethal as a scorpion, but that didn’t help. Just the opposite.

‘I don’t remember calling witnesses,’ she said, lip curling. ‘I might have to find you lot in contempt.’

‘That’s one word for it,’ said Vick, glancing around. ‘Risinau sent us. He wants your prisoners.’

Judge reached for a bottle and took a long pull. Seeing folk drink always made Broad thirsty, but there was something about the way she wrapped her tongue around the glass neck made him especially want to be in her place. Or maybe it was the bottle’s place he wanted.

Judge narrowed her eyes at Vick. ‘If Risinau wants a favour, he should’ve come himself.’

‘He sent me.’

‘Should I be scared?’ The Burners were waking up to the new arrivals now, staring blearily over, hands creeping towards weapons.

Vick didn’t step forward, didn’t step back. ‘Not if you give me the prisoners.’

‘My prisoners have charges to answer, sister, but don’t worry!’ Judge waved towards the jury. ‘They deliberate like lightning, these bitches. Sometimes I have to stop ’em giving the verdict before I’ve even named the accused! If they were in charge in Adua, we’d soon have the case backlog cleared and every lawyer out of work.’

‘They’d be selling their arses in the gutter!’ squealed one of the whores, to gales of laughter from her fellow jury members, and the naked lawyer flinched, and looked down at his feet.

Judge leaned forward, smile turning to a snarl. ‘We didn’t throw down our masters just to raise up another! Far as I can see, Risinau’s setting himself up like an owner above his workers, like a king above his subjects, like—’

‘A judge above her jury?’ offered Vick.

‘Ouch!’ Judge pushed out her lips in a pantomime of upset. ‘Cut with my own razor, you cunning fucker.’ She leaned from her box to shriek at the tiny clerk’s desk below, where a bent old beggar-woman was sitting. ‘Strike that from the record!’

‘Can’t write anyway,’ muttered the beggar, and went back to drawing scribbles in the ledgers.

‘I get it.’ Vick stepped forward. ‘You want to see someone pay. No doubt there’s plenty to pay for.’ Broad didn’t know how she could stay so cool with all this sweltering madness around her. ‘No one wants to see them pay more than me. But we’ve a city full of people to think about. We need something to bargain with.’

It was a good effort. Very calm. Very reasonable. But Broad didn’t reckon this was the place for calm or reason. Strip it all back, it’s the authority of the fist that counts. Judge was right about that, and Broad knew it better than anyone. Beside him, Sarlby eased the dowel from the trigger of his flatbow.