Last Argument of Kings (54 page)

“Thought so.” Dogman turned away from him, wet hair dripping round his face. “You have to be realistic, ain’t you always told me? You have to be that.” He strode off up the road, under the cold stars. Grim lingered next to Logen for a moment, then he shrugged his damp shoulders and followed the Dogman, taking his torch with him.

“A man can change,” whispered Logen, not sure whether he was talking to the Dogman, or to himself, or to those corpse-pale faces waiting in the darkness. Men clattered down the track all round him, and yet he stood alone. “A man can change.”

Questions

A trace of autumn fog had slunk off the restless sea as the sun went down over crippled Adua, turning the chill night ghostly. A hundred strides distant the houses were indistinct. Two hundred and they were spectral, the few lights in the windows floating wraiths, hazy through the gloom.
Good weather for bad work, and we have much of that ahead of us.

No distant explosions had rattled the still darkness so far. The Gurkish catapults had fallen silent.
At least for the moment, and why not? The city almost belongs to them, and why burn your own city?
Here, on the eastern side of Adua, far from the fighting, all seemed timelessly calm.
Almost as if the Gurkish had never come.
So when a vague clattering filtered through the gloom, as of the boots of a body of well-armed men, Glokta could not help a pang of nervousness, and pressed himself into the deeper shadows against the hedge by the road. Faint, bobbing lights filtered through the murk. Then the outline of a man, one hand resting casually on the pommel of a sword, walking with a loose, strutting slouch that bespoke extreme over-confidence. Something tall appeared to stick from his head, waving with his movements.

Glokta peered into the murk. “Cosca?”

“The very same!” laughed the Styrian. He was affecting a fine leather cap with a ludicrously tall plume, and he flicked at it with a finger. “I bought a new hat. Or should I say you bought me one, eh, Superior?”

“So I see.” Glokta glared at the long feather, the flamboyant golden basketwork on the hilt of Cosca’s sword. “I thought we said inconspicuous.”

“In… con… spicuous?” The Styrian frowned, then shrugged his shoulders. “Ah, so that was the word. I remember something was said, and I remember I didn’t understand it.” He winced, and scratched at his crotch with one hand. “I think I picked up some passengers from one of those women at the tavern. Little bastards don’t half give a man an itch.”
Huh. The women are paid to go there. One might have thought the lice would have better taste.

A shadowy crowd began to form out of the darkness behind Cosca, a few carrying hooded lanterns. A dozen shaggy outlines, then a dozen more, menace floating silently from each one of them like the stink floating from a turd. “Are these your men?”

The nearest sported perhaps the worst facial boils that Glokta had ever seen. The man beside him had only one hand, the other having been replaced with a savage-looking hook. A huge fat fellow came next, his pale neck blue with a confusion of badly drawn tattoos. A man almost dwarfish, with a face like a rat and only one eye accompanied him. He had not bothered with a patch, and the socket yawned open under his greasy hair. The list of villainy went on. Two dozen, perhaps, all told, of the most savage-looking criminals Glokta had ever laid eyes on.
And I’ve laid eyes on a few in my time. Strangers to bathwater, certainly. Not a one of them looks like he wouldn’t sell his sister for a mark.
“They appear somewhat unreliable,” he murmured.

“Unreliable? Nonsense, Superior! Out of luck is all, and we both know how that goes, no? Why, there’s not a man of them I wouldn’t trust my mother to.”

“Are you sure?”

“She’s been dead these twenty years. What harm could they do her now?” Cosca flung his arm round Glokta’s twisted shoulders and drew him close, causing a painful twinge to jab at his hips. “I’m afraid that pickings are slim.” His warm breath smelled strongly of spirits and corruption. “Every man not desperate fled the city the moment the Gurkish arrived. But who cares, eh? I hired them for their guts and their sinews, not their looks. Desperate men are the kind I like! We can understand them, no, you and I? Some jobs call for desperate men only, eh, Superior?”

Glokta frowned briefly over that collection of gaunt, of bloated, of scarred and ruined faces.
How could it possibly be that promising Colonel Glokta, dashing commander of the King’s Own first regiment, came to be in charge of such a rabble?
He gave a long sigh.
But it is a little late now to be finding fine-looking mercenaries, and I suppose these will fill a pit as well as better.
“Very well. Wait here.”

Glokta looked up at the dark house as he swung the gate open with his free hand and hobbled through. A chink of light peeped out from between the heavy hangings in the front window. He rapped at the door with the handle of his cane. A pause, then the sound of reluctant footsteps shuffling up the hall.

“Who is it?”

“Me. Glokta.”

Bolts drew back and light spilled out into the chill. Ardee’s face appeared, lean-looking, grey round the eyes and pink round the nose.
Like a dying cat.

“Superior!” She grinned as she took him by the elbow and half-dragged him over the threshold. “What a delight! Some conversation at last! I’m so toweringly bored.” Several empty bottles were gathered in the corner of the living room, made to glint angrily by smoky candles and a smouldering log in the grate. The table was cluttered with dirty plates and glasses. The place smelled of sweat and wine, old food and new desperation.
Can there be a more miserable occupation than getting drunk on one’s own? Wine can keep a happy man happy, on occasion. A sad one it always makes worse.

“I’ve been trying to get through this damn book again.” Ardee slapped at a heavy volume lying open, face down, on a chair.

“
The Fall of the Master Maker
,” muttered Glokta. “That rubbish? All magic and valour, no? I couldn’t get through the first one.”

“I sympathise. I’m onto the third and it doesn’t get any easier. Too many damn wizards. I get them mixed up one with another. It’s all battles and endless bloody journeys, here to there and back again. If I so much as glimpse another map I swear I’ll kill myself.”

“Someone might save you the trouble.”

“Eh?”

“I’m afraid you are no longer safe here. You should come with me.”

“Rescue? Thank the fates!” She waved a dismissive hand. “We’ve been over this. The Gurkish are away on the other side of the city. You’re in more danger in the Agriont I shouldn’t—”

“The Gurkish are not the threat. My suitors are.”

“Your gentleman-friends are a threat to me?”

“You underestimate the extent of their jealousy. I fear they will soon become a threat to everyone I have known, friend or enemy, my whole sorry life.” Glokta jerked a hooded cloak from a peg on the wall and held it out to her.

“Where are we going?”

“A charming little house down near the docks. A little past its best, but plenty of character. Like the two of us, you could say.”

There were heavy footsteps in the hallway and Cosca stuck his head into the room. “Superior, we should leave if we want to reach the docks by—” He stopped, staring at Ardee. There was an uncomfortable silence.

“Who is this?” she murmured.

Cosca pushed flamboyantly into the room, swept off his hat, displaying his scabrous bald patch, and bowed low, low, low.
Any lower and his nose would scrape the floorboards.
“Forgive me, my lady. Nicomo Cosca, famed soldier of fortune, at your service. Abject, in fact, at your feet.” His throwing knife dropped out of his coat and rattled against the boards.

They all stared at it for a moment, then Cosca grinned up. “You see that fly, against the wall?”

Glokta narrowed his eyes. “Perhaps not the best moment for—”

The blade spun across the room, missed the target by a stride, hit the wall handle-first and gouged out a lump of plaster, bounced back and clattered across the floor.

“Shit,” said Cosca. “I mean… damn.”

Ardee frowned down at the knife. “I’d say shit.”

Cosca passed it off with a rotten smile. “I must be dazzled. When the Superior described to me your beauty I thought he must have… how do you say… exaggerated? Now I see that he came short of the mark.” He retrieved his knife and jammed his hat back on, slightly askew. “Please allow me to declare myself in love.”

“What did you tell him?” asked Ardee.

“Nothing.” Glokta sucked sourly at his gums. “Master Cosca has a habit of overstating the case.”

“Especially when in love,” threw in the mercenary. “Especially then. When I fall in love, I fall hard, and, as a rule, I do it no more than once a day.”

Ardee stared at him. “I don’t know whether to feel flattered or scared.”

“Why not be both?” said Glokta. “But you will have to do it on the way.”
We are short of time, and I have a rank garden to weed.

The gate came open with an agonised shrieking of rusted metal. Glokta lurched over the decaying threshold, his leg, his hip, his back all stabbing at him from the long limp to the docks. The ruined mansion loomed out of the gloom at the far end of the shattered courtyard.
Like a mighty mausoleum. A suitable tomb for all my dead hopes.
Severard and Frost waited in the shadows on the broken steps, dressed all in black and masked, as usual.
But not at all alike.
A burly man and a slender, one white haired and one dark, one standing, arms folded, the other sitting, cross-legged.
One is loyal, the other… we shall find out.

Severard unravelled himself and got up with the usual grin around his eyes. “Alright, chief, so what’s all the—”

Cosca stepped through the gate and wandered lazily across the broken paving, tapping a few lumps of masonry away with the toe of one shabby boot. He stopped beside a ruined fountain and scraped some muck out of it with a finger. “Nice place. Nice and…” He waved the finger around, and the muck with it. “Crumbly.” His mercenaries were already spreading out slowly around the rubble-strewn courtyard. Patched coats and tattered cloaks twitched back to display weapons of every size and shape. Edges, points, spikes and flanges glinted in the shifting light from their lanterns, their steel as smooth and clean as their faces were rough and dirty.

“Who the hell are these?” asked Severard.

“Friends.”

“They don’t look too friendly.”

Glokta showed his Practical the yawning hole in his front teeth. “Well. I suppose that all depends whose side you’re on.”

The last traces of Severard’s smile had vanished. His eyes flickered nervously around the yard.
The eyes of the guilty. How well we know them. We see them on our prisoners. We see them in the mirror, when we dare to look. One might have hoped for better from a man of his experience, but holding the blade is a poor preparation for being cut by it. I should know.
Severard dashed towards the house, quick as a rabbit, but he only got a step before a heavy white hand chopped into the side of his neck and flung him senseless on the broken paving.

“Take him downstairs, Frost. You know the way.”

“Downthairth. Unh.” The hulking albino dragged Severard’s limp body over his shoulder and set off towards the front door.

“I have to say,” said Cosca, flicking the scum carelessly off his finger, “that I like your way with your men, Superior. Discipline, I’ve always admired it.”

“Fine advice from the least disciplined man in the Circle of the World.”

“I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes.” Cosca stretched his chin up and scratched at his scabby neck. “The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.”

“Huh,” grunted Glokta as he laboured up the steps.
A curse we all have to bear. Round and round in circles we go, clutching at successes that we never grasp, endlessly tripping over the same old failures. Truly, life is the misery we endure between disappointments.

They stepped through the empty doorway and into the deeper darkness of the entrance hall. Cosca held his lamp high, staring up towards the ragged roof, his boots squelching heedless in the bird droppings spattering the floor. “A palace!” His voice echoed back from the shattered staircases, the empty doorways, the naked rafters high above.

“Please make yourselves comfortable,” said Glokta. “But out of sight, perhaps. We can expect visitors some time tonight.”

“Excellent. We love company, don’t we lads?”

One of Cosca’s men gave a wet-lunged chuckle, displaying two rows of shit-coloured teeth.
A set so incredibly rotten I am almost glad to have my own.
“These visitors will come from his Eminence the Arch Lector. Perhaps you could take a firm hand with them, while I’m downstairs?”

Cosca glanced round approvingly at the crumbling hall. “A nice place for a warm welcome. I’ll let you know when our guests have been. I doubt they’ll stay long.”

Ardee had found a place near the wall, her hood up, her eyes on the floor.
Trying to fade into the plaster, and who could blame her? Hardly the most pleasant company for a young woman, or the most reassuring setting. But better than a slit throat, I suppose.
Glokta held his hand out to her. “It would be best if you were to come with me.”

She hesitated.
As though not entirely sure that it would, in fact, be best to come with me.
But a brief glance at some of the ugliest men in one of the world’s ugliest professions evidently persuaded her. Cosca handed her his lamp, making sure his fingers lingered on hers for an uncomfortably long moment.