Joe Abercrombie - Sharp Ends

It wasn’t every day you witnessed a ceremony like this, after all.

‘Let’s hope it turns out better than the last time we crowned a King of Styria,’ said Shev.

Vitari ducked out onto the balcony with a glass of wine in one hand. ‘Oh, I think that turned out well enough.’

‘The five most powerful nobles in the land lying dead on the stage?’

‘Nothing could be better. If you backed the sixth.’ And Vitari grinned down at her employer, the Grand Duchess Monzcarro Murcatto. The most powerful woman in the world stood rigidly erect in the centre of the great platform below, still as the statues of her that were springing up across Styria, while her two chancellors – Scavier and Grulo – competed with each other to wail out the most overblown praise to her stewardship of the nation.

Her tailors and armourers must have been working towards this joyous moment as hard as her soldiers and spies. She wore something that neatly split the difference between queen’s gown and general’s armour, breastplate twinkling in the sunlight, long train stitched with gilded serpents snaking behind her and a bright sword at her side. She went nowhere without a sword. Shev had heard she slept with one. Used one for a lover, some said. They didn’t say it to her face, though.

Wise people took great care over what they said to the face of the Serpent of Talins.

Shev sighed. ‘It’s a dark tide that lifts no boats at all.’

‘I’ve made my living picking through the flotsam left behind by other people’s dark tides,’ said Vitari. ‘But I’m confident this crowning will go smoothly.’

‘No doubt you’ve made sure of it.’ There were soldiers down there, with burnished armour and ceremonial weapons, but few of them, and purely for show. A naïve viewer might have supposed the Grand Duchess Monzcarro and her son needed no shield beyond the love of her people. Shev was not naïve.

Not in this, anyway.

From up here she could pick out the agents in the crowd around the platform, in the windows with the best views, at choke points and on corners. There a sharp-eyed boy waving a little flag of Talins. There a woman offering pastries with less enthusiasm than you might expect. There a man whose coat did not quite fit. Something in their watchful attitude. In their ready stance.

No doubt there were others that even Shev’s eyes, filed sharp as needles by years of constant danger, could never have picked out.

Yes, Shylo Vitari left as little to chance as anyone Shev had ever met.

‘You should be down there.’ She nodded at the triple row of soldiers and sailors, bankers and bureaucrats, leading citizens and smirking aristocrats at the back of the platform, basking in the warmth of the grand duchess’s power. ‘No one’s done more than you to make this happen.’

‘She who takes the credit also takes the blame.’ Vitari glanced sideways at Shev, and hers was about as sideways a glance as you could find. ‘Those of us who work in the shadows are better off staying there. Windbags like these can strut about in the light.’

Scavier and Grulo were finally reaching the end of their address, both sweating through their cloth of gold from their oratorical efforts. A somewhat tedious double-act, in Shev’s opinion, a reshuffled deck of the usual quarter-truths about loyalty, justice, leadership and standing united. Folk stood united precisely as long as it suited them, in her experience, and not one instant longer.

The restless crowd stilled as they stepped back. The boy rose from his gilded chair, dressed all in pure and simple white, and strolled with utter confidence to the front of the platform. His mother followed him, close as a long shadow, a crown of golden leaves in her gloved right fist.

While her son smiled beneficently upon the crowd she swept them with a chilling glare, as if determined to pick out any one person among those thousands who might dare to meet her eye. Might dare to challenge her. Might dare to raise the slightest objection to what was coming.

Grand Duke Orso would no doubt have raised objections if he’d been in attendance, but Murcatto had killed him, and both his sons, and both his generals, and his bodyguard and his banker for good measure, and taken his city for herself.

The great noblemen of Etrisani and Sipani, Nicante and Affoia, Visserine and Westport had objected, and one by one she had bribed them, cowed them or crushed them beneath her armoured boot.

Several leading citizens of Ospria had aired doubts that Murcatto’s child really was the son of their dear departed King Rogont, and their flyblown heads had ended up spiked above the city gates, where now they aired the much more eloquent stink of rot.

His August Majesty the King of the Union had objected most of all, but Murcatto had outmanoeuvred him politically and militarily, stripped away his allies one by one, then beaten him three times in the field and proved herself the greatest general of the age.

So it was far from surprising that no one chose to object today.

Satisfied by the utter silence that only abject fear can produce, the grand duchess raised the crown high over her son’s head in both hands. ‘You are crowned Jappo mon Rogont Murcatto!’ she called out as she slowly lowered it, her voice ringing from the faces of the buildings around the square, picked up as an echo by announcers scattered through the crowd. ‘Grand Duke of Ospria and Visserine, Protector of Puranti, Nicante, Borletta and Affoia, and King of Styria!’ And she settled the crown among her son’s brown curls.

‘King of Styria!’ chorused the crowd with one thunderous voice, and there was a mighty rustling, a ripple through the press of bodies as every man and woman knelt, Murcatto stepping back and sinking stiffly herself. Evidently those clothes had not been cut for kneeling in.

Shev’s eyes picked out only one figure who did not kneel. An unremarkable man in unremarkable clothes, standing beside a pillar on the steps of the Senate House, arms folded. It looked as if he glanced up towards Vitari and gave a nod, and she gave the slightest nod in return.

King Jappo himself stood and smiled. Seven years old, and already as calm and controlled before that mighty audience as Juvens himself might have been.

‘Oh, do get up!’ he shouted in a piping voice.

Laughter rippled out through the throng, turning quickly to a thunderous cheer. Startled birds showered up from the roofs as every bell in the city began to toll in celebration of the joyous event. Vitari raised her glass in a silent toast and Shev knocked her ring against it with a gentle ping. Down on the platform, the grand duchess embraced her son, and she was smiling. A sight only slightly less rare than the crowning of a King of Styria. Still, one could hardly begrudge her a grin.

‘She has done what couldn’t be done!’ Shev had to lean close and shout over the noise.

‘She has united Styria!’ Vitari drained her glass in one long swallow.

‘Most of it, at least.’

‘For now.’

Shev slowly shook her head as she watched the leading citizens of Styria file past King Jappo to offer their obsequious congratulations under the hawklike glare of his mother. ‘How many people had to die to give that boy a golden hat?’

‘Exactly the necessary number. Console yourself with the thought that the war might have been a great deal bloodier without your work.’

Shev winced. ‘It was more than bloody enough for my taste. I’m glad it’s done.’

‘The swords may be sheathed but the war goes on. We will move to darker battlefields now, and subtler weapons, and the Union’s general will show far less mercy.’

‘The Cripple?’ muttered Shev.

Vitari’s jaw muscles worked as she frowned down towards the new King of Styria. ‘His hidden legions are already on the move.’