Abercrombie, Joe - The Heroes

Bayaz smiled over. ‘Why, Prince Calder!’ As if they’d run into each other by accident in the market. ‘Pray join me!’

Calder wiped snot from his top lip, still expecting a knife to dart from the darkness. Then ever so slowly, his knees wobbling so much he could hear them flapping against the inside of his wet trousers, he picked his way back through the gap in the fence and over to the porch.

The servant righted the fallen chair, dusted it off and held his open palm towards it. Calder sagged into it, numb, eyes still gently leaking by themselves, and watched Bayaz fork a piece of fish into his mouth and slowly, deliberately, thoroughly chew, and swallow.

‘So. The Whiteflow shall remain the northern boundary of Angland.’

Calder sat for a moment, aware of a faint snorting at the back of his nose with every quick breath but unable to stop it. Then he blinked, and finally nodded.

‘The land between the Whiteflow and the Cusk, including the city of Uffrith, shall come under the governorship of the Dogman. It shall become a protectorate of the Union, with six representatives on the Open Council.’

Calder nodded again.

‘The rest of the North as far as the Crinna is yours.’ Bayaz popped the last piece of fish into his mouth and waved his fork around. ‘Beyond the Crinna it belongs to Stranger-Come-Knocking.’

Yesterday’s Calder might’ve snapped out some defiant jibe, but all he could think of now was how very lucky he felt not to be gushing blood into the mud, and how very much he wanted to carry on not gushing blood. ‘Yes,’ he croaked.

‘You don’t need time to … chew it over?’

Eternity in a pit full of corpses, perhaps? ‘No,’ whispered Calder.

‘Pardon me?’

Calder took a shuddering breath. ‘No.’

‘Well.’ Bayaz dabbed his mouth with a cloth, and looked up. ‘This is much better.’

‘A very great improvement.’ The curly-headed servant had a pouty smile as he whisked Bayaz’ plate away and replaced it with a clean one. Probably much the same as Calder’s habitual smirk, but he enjoyed seeing it on another man about as much as he might have enjoyed seeing another man fuck his wife. The servant whipped the cover from a dish with a flourish.

‘Ah, the meat, the meat!’ Bayaz watched the knife flash and flicker as wafer slices were carved with blinding skill. ‘Fish is all very well, but dinner hasn’t really started until you’re served something that bleeds.’ The servant added vegetables with the dexterity of a conjuror, then turned his smirk on Calder.

There was something oddly, irritatingly familiar about him. Like a name at the tip of Calder’s tongue. Had he seen him visit his father once, in a fine cloak? Or at Ironhead’s fire with a Carl’s helmet on? Or at the shoulder of Stranger-Come-Knocking, with paint on his face and splinters of bone through his ear? ‘Meat, sir?’

‘No,’ whispered Calder. All he could think of was all the meat in the pits just a few strides away.

‘You really should try it!’ said Bayaz. ‘Go on, give him some! And help the prince, Yoru, he has an injured right hand.’

The servant doled meat onto Calder’s plate, bloody gravy gleaming in the gloom, then began to cut it up at frightening speed, making Calder flinch with each sweep of the knife.

Across the table, the Magus was already happily chewing. ‘I must admit, I did not entirely enjoy the tenor of our last conversation. It reminded me somewhat of your father.’ Bayaz paused as if expecting a response, but Calder had none to give. ‘That is meant as a very small compliment and a very large warning. For many years your father and I had … an understanding.’

‘Some good it did him.’

The wizard’s brows went up. ‘How short your family’s memory! Indeed it did! Gifts he had of me, and all manner of help and wise counsel and oh, how he thrived! From piss-pot chieftain to King of the Northmen! Forged a nation where there were only squabbling peasants and pigshit before!’ The edge of Bayaz’ knife screeched against the plate and his voice sharpened with it. ‘But he became arrogant in his glory, and forgot the debts he owed, and sent his puffed-up sons to make demands of me. Demands,’ hissed the Magus, eyes glittering in the shadows of their sockets. ‘Of me.’

Calder’s throat felt uncomfortably tight as Bayaz sat back. ‘Bethod turned his back on our friendship, and his allies fell away, and all his great achievements withered, and he died in blood and was buried in an unmarked grave. There is a lesson there. Had your father paid his debts, perhaps he would be King of the Northmen still. I have high hopes you will learn from his mistake, and remember what you owe.’

‘I’ve taken nothing from you.’

‘Have … you … not?’ Bayaz bit off each word with a curl of his lip. ‘You will never know, nor could you even understand, the many ways in which I have interceded on your behalf.’

The servant arched one brow. ‘The account is lengthy.’

‘Do you suppose things run your way because you think yourself charming? Or cunning? Or uncommonly lucky?’

Calder had, in fact, thought exactly that.

‘Was it charm that saved you from Reachey’s assassins at his weapon-take, or the two colourful Northmen I sent to watch over you?’

Calder had no answer.

‘Was it cunning that saved you in the battle, or my instructions to Brodd Tenways that he should keep you from harm?’

Even less to that. ‘Tenways?’ he whispered.

‘Friends and enemies can sometimes be difficult to tell apart. I asked him to act like Black Dow’s man. Perhaps he was too good an actor. I heard he died.’

‘It happens,’ croaked Calder.

‘Not to you.’ The ‘yet’ was unsaid, but still deafening. ‘Even though you faced Black Dow in a duel to the death! And was it luck that tipped the balance towards you when the Protector of the North lay dead at your feet, or was it my old friend Stranger-Come-Knocking?’

Calder felt as if he was up to his chest in quicksand, and had only just realised. ‘He’s your man?’

Bayaz did not gloat or cackle. He looked almost bored. ‘I knew him when he was still called Pip. But big men need big names, eh, Black Calder?’

‘Pip,’ he muttered, trying to square the giant with the name.

‘I wouldn’t use it to his face.’

‘I don’t reach his face.’

‘Few do. He wants to bring civilisation to the fens.’

‘I wish him luck.’

‘Keep it for yourself. I gave it to you.’

Calder was too busy trying to think his way through it. ‘But … Stranger-Come-Knocking fought for Dow. Why not have him fight for the Union? You could have won on the second morning and saved us all a—’

‘He was not content with my first offer.’ Bayaz sourly speared some greens with his fork. ‘He demonstrated his value, and so I made a better one.’

‘This was all a disagreement over prices?’

The Magus let his head tip to one side. ‘Just what do you think a war is?’ That sank slowly into the silence between them like a ship with all hands. ‘There are many others who have debts.’

‘Caul Shivers.’

‘No,’ said the servant. ‘His intervention was a happy accident.’

Calder blinked. ‘Without him … Dow would’ve torn me apart.’

‘Good planning does not prevent accidents,’ said Bayaz, ‘it allows for them. It makes sure every accident is a happy one. I am not so careless a gambler as to make only one bet. But the North has ever been short of good material, and I admit you are my preference. You are no hero, Calder. I like that. You see what men are. You have your father’s cunning, and ambition, and ruthlessness, but not his pride.’

‘Pride always struck me as a waste of effort,’ murmured Calder. ‘Everyone serves.’