Last Argument of Kings (60 page)

“The University!” bellowed Goyle. He had a sheen of sweat all over his balding head. “Sult! He’s in the University!”

So soon? Almost disappointing. But then few bullies take a beating well.
“What’s he doing there, at a time like this?”

“I… I don’t—”

“Not good enough. Trousers, please.”

“Silber! He’s with Silber!”

Glokta frowned. “The University Administrator?”

Goyle’s eyes darted from Glokta, to Cosca, and back again. He squeezed them shut. “The Adeptus Demonic!”

There was a long pause. “The what?”

“Silber, he doesn’t just run the University! He conducts… experiments.”

“Experiments of what nature?” Glokta jabbed sharply at Goyle’s bloody face with the head of the hammer. “Before I nail your tongue to the table.”

“Occult experiments! Sult has been giving him money, for a long time! Since the First of the Magi came calling! Before, maybe!”

Occult experiments? Funding from the Arch Lector? It hardly seems Sult’s style, but it explains why those damn Adepti were expecting money from me when I first visited the place. And why Vitari and her circus have set up shop there now.
“What experiments?”

“Silber… he can make contact… with the Other Side!”

“What?”

“It’s true! I have seen it! He can learn things, secrets, there is no other way of knowing, and now…”

“Yes?”

“He says he has found a way to bring them through!”

“Them?”

“The Tellers of Secrets, he calls them!”

Glokta licked at his dry lips. “Demons?”
I thought his Eminence had no patience with superstition, when all this time… The nerve of the man!

“He can send them against his enemies, he says. Against the Arch Lector’s enemies! They are ready to do it!”

Glokta felt his left eye twitching, and he pressed the back of his hand against it.
A year ago I would have laughed to my boots and nailed him to the ceiling. But things are different, now. We passed inside the House of the Maker. We saw Shickel smile as she burned. If there are Eaters? If there are Magi? Why should there not be demons? How could there not be?
“What enemies?”

“The High Justice! The First of the Magi!” Goyle squeezed his eyes shut again. “The king,” he whimpered.

Ahhhh. The. King. Those two little words are my kind of magic.
Glokta turned to Ardee, and showed her the yawning gap in his front teeth. “Would you be so kind as to prepare a Paper of Confession?”

“Would I…” She stared at him for a moment, eyes wide in her pale face, then hurried to the Arch Lector’s desk, snatched up a sheet of paper and a pen, dipped it rattling in a bottle of ink. She paused, her hand trembling. “What should I write?”

“Oh, something like, ‘I, Superior Goyle, confess to being an accomplice in a treasonous plot of his Eminence Arch Lector Sult, to…’ ’’
How to phrase it?
He raised his brows.
How else but call it what it is?
“ ‘To use diabolical arts against his Majesty the king and members of his Closed Council.’ ”

The nib scratched clumsily over the paper, scattering specks of ink. Ardee held it crackling out to him. “Good enough?”

He remembered the beautiful documents that Practical Frost used to prepare. The elegant, flowing script, the immaculate wording.
Each Paper of Confession, a work of art.
Glokta stared sadly down at the ink-spotted daub in his hand.

“But a brief step from unreadable, but it will serve.” He slid the paper under Goyle’s trembling hand, then took the pen from Ardee and wedged it between his fingers. “Sign.”

Goyle sobbed, sniffed, scrawled his name at the bottom of the page as best he could with his arm nailed down.
I win, and for once the taste is almost sweet.

“Excellent,” said Glokta. “Pull those nails, and find some sort of bandage. It would be a shame if he bled to death before he had the chance to testify. Gag him, though, I’ve heard enough for now. We’ll take him with us to the High Justice.”

“Wait! Wait! Wurghh—!” Goyle’s cries were sharply cut off as the mercenary with the boils wedged a wad of dirty cloth in his mouth. The dwarf slid the pliers from the case.
So far, and we are still alive. What ever are the odds of that?
Glokta limped to the window and stood, stretching his aching legs. There was a muffled shriek as the first nail was ripped from Goyle’s arm, but Glokta’s thoughts were elsewhere. He stared out towards the University, its spires looming up through the smoky murk like clawing fingers.
Occult experiments? Summonings and sendings?
He licked sourly at his empty gums.
What is going on in there?

“What is going on out there?” Jezal strode up and down the roof of the Tower of Chains in a manner which he hoped was reminiscent of a caged tiger, but probably was closer to a criminal on the morning of his own hanging.

Smoke had drawn a sooty veil across the city and made it impossible to tell what was happening any further than a half mile distant. Members of Varuz’ staff, scattered around the parapets, would occasionally call out useless and wildly contradictory news. There was fighting in the Four Corners, up the Middleway, throughout the central part of the city. There was fighting on land and on sea. By turns all hope was lost and they were on the verge of deliverance. But one thing was in no doubt. Below, beyond the moat of the Agriont, the Gurkish efforts continued ominously unabated.

A rain of flatbow bolts continued to pepper the square outside the gates, but for every corpse the Gurkish left, for every wounded man dragged away, five more would vomit out from the burning buildings like bees from a broken hive. Soldiers swarmed down there in teeming hundreds, enclosing the whole circuit of the Agriont in an ever-strengthening ring of men and steel. They squatted behind their wooden screens, they shot arrows up towards the battlements. The pounding of drums had drawn steadily closer and now echoed out around the city. Peering through his eye-glass, with every muscle tensed to try and hold it steady, Jezal had begun to notice strange figures scattered below.

Tall and graceful figures, conspicuous in pearly white armour edged with glinting gold, they moved among the Gurkish soldiers, pointing, ordering, directing. Often, now, they were pointing towards the bridge that led to the west gate of the Agriont. Dark thoughts niggled at the back of Jezal’s mind. Khalul’s Hundred Words? Risen up from the shadowy corners of history to bring the First of the Magi to justice?

“If I didn’t know better, I would have said that they were preparing for an assault.”

“There is no cause for alarm,” croaked Varuz, “our defences are impregnable.” His voice quavered, then cracked entirely at the final word, doing little to give anyone the slightest reassurance. Only a few short weeks ago, nobody would have dared to suggest that the Agriont could ever fall. But nobody would ever have dreamed that it would be surrounded by legions of Gurkish soldiers, either. Very plainly, the rules had changed. A deep blast of horns rang out.

“Down there,” muttered one of his staff.

Jezal peered through his borrowed eye-glass. Some form of great cart had been drawn up through the streets, like a wooden house on wheels, covered by plates of beaten metal. Even now, Gurkish soldiers were loading barrels into it under the direction of two men in white armour.

“Explosive powder,” someone said, unhelpfully.

Jezal felt Marovia’s hand on his arm. “Your Majesty, it might be best if you were to retire.”

“And if I am not safe here? Where, precisely, will I be out of danger, do you suppose?”

“Marshal West will soon deliver us, I am sure. But in the meantime the palace is much the safest place. I will accompany you.” He gave an apologetic smile. “At my age, I fear I will be little use on the walls.”

Gorst held out one gauntleted hand towards the stairs. “This way.”

“This way,” growled Glokta, limping up the hall as swiftly as his ruined feet would carry him, Cosca ambling after.
Click, tap, pain.

Only one secretary remained outside the office of the High Justice, peering disapprovingly over his twinkling eye-glasses.
No doubt the rest have donned ill-fitting armour and are manning the walls. Or, more likely, have locked themselves in cellars. If only I were with them.

“I am afraid his Worship is busy.”

“Oh, he will see me, don’t worry about that.” Glokta hobbled past without stopping, placed his hand on the brass doorknob of Marovia’s office, and almost jerked it back in surprise. The metal was icy cold.
Cold as hell.
He turned it with his fingertips and opened the door a crack. A breath of white vapour curled out into the hall, like the freezing mist that would hang over the snowy valleys in Angland in the midst of winter.

It was deathly cold in the room beyond. The heavy wooden furniture, the old oak panelling, the grubby window panes, all glittered with white hoar-frost. The heaps of legal papers were furry with it. A bottle of wine on a table by the door had shattered, leaving behind a bottle-shaped block of pink ice and a scattering of sparkling splinters.

“What in hell…” Glokta’s breath smoked before his smarting lips. Mysterious articles were scattered widely about the wintry room. A long, snaking length of black tubing was frozen to the panelling, like a string of sausages left in the snow. There were patches of black ice on the books, on the desk, on the crunching carpet. There were pink fragments frozen to the ceiling, long white splinters frozen to the floor…

Human remains?

A large chunk of icy flesh, partly coated in rime, lay in the middle of the desk. Glokta turned his head sideways to better take it in. There was a mouth, still with some teeth attached, an ear, an eye. Some strands of a long beard. Enough, in the end, for Glokta to recognise whose parts were scattered so widely around the freezing room.
Who else but my last hope, my third suitor, High Justice Marovia?

Cosca cleared his throat. “It seems there is something to your friend Silber’s claims after all.”

An understatement of devilish proportions.
Glokta felt the muscles round his left eye twitching with a painful intensity. The secretary fussed up to the door behind them, peered through, gasped, and reeled away. Glokta heard him being noisily sick outside. “I doubt the High Justice will be lending us much assistance.”

“True. But isn’t it getting a little late in the day for your papers and so forth anyway?” Cosca gestured towards the windows, flecked and spotted with frozen blood. “The Gurkish are coming, remember? If you’ve scores to settle, get them settled now, before our Kantic friends tear up all the bills. When plans fail, swift action must serve, eh, Superior?” He reached behind his head, unbuckled his mask, and let it drop to the floor. “Time to laugh in your enemy’s face! To risk all on one final throw! You can pick up the pieces afterward. If they don’t go back together, well, what’s the difference? Tomorrow we might all be living in a different world.”

Or dying in one. Not the way we wanted it, maybe, but he is right. Perhaps we might borrow one final shred of Colonel Glokta’s dash before the game is over?
“I hope I can still count on your help?”

Cosca clapped him on the shoulder and sent a painful shudder through his twisted back. “A noble last effort, against all the odds? Of course! Though I should mention that I usually charge double once the diabolical arts are involved.”

“How does triple sound?”
After all, Valint and Balk have deep pockets.

Cosca’s grin grew wider. “It sounds well.”

“And your men? Are they reliable?”

“They are still waiting for four fifths of their pay. Until they receive it I would trust any one of them with my life.”

“Good. Then we are prepared.” Glokta worked his aching foot around in his boot.
Just a little further now, my toeless beauty. Just a few shuddering steps more, and one way or another, we both can rest.
He opened his fingers and let Goyle’s confession float down to the frosty floor. “To the University, then! His Eminence has never liked to be kept waiting.”

Open the Box

Logen could feel the doubt in the men around him, could see the worry on their faces, in the way they held their weapons, and he didn’t blame them. A man can be fearless on his own doorstep, against enemies he understands, but take him long miles over the salty sea to strange places he never dreamed of, he’ll take fright at every empty doorway. And there were an awful lot of those, now.

The city of white towers, where Logen had hurried after the First of the Magi, amazed at the scale of the buildings, the strangeness of the people, the sheer quantity of both, had become a maze of blackened ruins. They crept down empty streets, lined with the outsize skeletons of burned-out houses, charred rafters stabbing at the sky. They crept across empty squares, scattered with rubble and dusted with ash. Always the sounds of battle echoed, ghostly—near, far, all around them.

It was as if they crept through hell.

“How d’you fight in this?” whispered the Dogman.

Logen wished he had an answer. Fighting in forests, in mountains, in valleys, they’d done it all a hundred times, and knew the rules, but this? His eyes flickered nervously over the gaping windows and doorways, the piles of fallen stones. So many places for an enemy to hide.

All Logen could do was aim at the House of the Maker and hope for the best. What would happen when they got there, he wasn’t sure, but it seemed a safe bet there’d be blood involved. Nothing that would do anyone the slightest good, most likely, but the fact was he’d said go, and the one thing a leader can’t do is change his mind.

The clamour of fighting was getting louder, now, and louder. The stink of smoke and anger was picking at his nose, scratching at his throat. The scored metal of the Maker’s sword was slippery in his sweaty palm. He crept low to the ground, over a heap of rubble and along beside a shattered wall, his hand held flat behind him to say go careful. He eased up to the edge, and peered around it.

The Agriont rose up just ahead, great walls and towers black against the white sky, a second set reflected in the moat below. A lot of men were gathered near the water, crowded up and down the cobbled space as far as Logen could see. It didn’t take a sharp mind to realise they were Gurkish. Arrows flitted up towards the battlements, bolts flitted back down, spinning from the cobbles, sticking wobbling into wooden screens.

Not thirty strides away they’d drawn up a line, facing into the city. A good, clean line, bristling with spears, set out on either side of a tall standard, golden letters twinkling on it. A tough-looking line of hard men, well armed and well armoured, nothing like the rubbish they’d faced outside the walls. Logen didn’t reckon shouting was going to get this lot moving anywhere. Except straight at him, maybe.

“Whoa,” muttered the Dogman as he crept up. A few more Northmen followed him, spreading out in the mouth of the street, staring stupidly around.

Logen waved an arm at them. “Might be best if we stay out of sight for the—”

An officer in the midst of the Gurkish line barked in his harsh tongue, pointed towards them with his curved sword. Armour rattled as the men set their spears.

“Ah, shit,” hissed Logen. They came forward, fast, but organised. A mass of them, and bristling with bright, sharp, deadly metal.

There are only three choices when you get charged. Run away, stand, or charge yourself. Running away isn’t usually a bad option, but given the way the rest of the boys were feeling, if they ran they wouldn’t stop running until they fell in the sea. If they stood, all in a puzzled mess from coming through the city, the chances were good that they’d break, and that would leave some dead and do nothing for the rest. Which left one choice, and that’s no choice at all.

Two charges in one day. Shitty luck, that, but there was no use crying about it. You have to be realistic about these things.

Logen started running. Not the way he wanted to, but forward, out from the buildings and across the cobbles towards the moat. He didn’t give too much thought to whether anyone was following. He was too busy screaming and waving his sword around. The first into the killing, just like in the old days. A fitting end for the Bloody-Nine. Be a good song, maybe, if anyone could be bothered finding a tune for it. He gritted his teeth, waiting for the terrible impact.

Then a crowd of Union soldiers came pouring from the buildings on the left, shouting like madmen themselves. The Gurkish charge faltered, their line began to break up, spears swinging wildly as men turned to face the sudden threat. An unexpected bonus, and no mistake.

The Union crashed into the end of the line. Men screeched and bellowed, metal shrieked on metal, weapons flashed, bodies dropped, and Logen fell into the midst of it. He slid past a wobbling spear, slashed at a Gurkish soldier. He missed and hit another, sent him screaming, blood bubbling down chain-mail. He rammed into a third with his shoulder and flung him on his back, stomped on the side of his jaw and felt it crunch under his boot.

The Gurkish officer who’d led the charge was only a stride away, his sword ready. Logen heard a bow string behind and an arrow took the officer near the collar bone. He dragged in a shuddering breath to scream, half spinning round. Logen chopped a deep gash through his back-plate, spots of blood jumping. Men crunched into the remains of the line around him. A spear shaft bent up and shattered sending splinters flying in Logen’s face. Someone roared right next to him and made his ear buzz. He jerked his head away to see a Carl throw a desperate hand up, a curved sword sliced into it and sent a thumb spinning. Logen hacked the Gurkish soldier who’d swung it in the face, the heavy blade of the Maker’s sword catching him across the cheek and splitting his skull wide.

A spear flashed at him. Logen tried to turn sideways, gasped as the point slid through his shirt and down his right side, leaving a cold line under his ribs. The man who held it stumbled on towards him, moving too quick to stop. Logen stabbed him right through, just under his breastplate, ended up blinking in his face. A Union soldier with a patchy ginger beard on his cheeks.

The man frowned, puzzled at seeing another white face. “Wha…” he croaked, clutching at him. Logen tore away, one hand pressed to his side. It was wet there. He wondered if the spear had nicked him or run him right through. He wondered if it had killed him already, and he had just a last few bloody moments left.

Then something hit him on the back of his head and he was reeling, bellowing, not knowing what was happening. His limbs were made of mud. The world wobbled about, full of flying dirt and flying edges. He hacked at something, kicked at something else. He grappled with someone, snarling, tore his hand free and fumbled out a knife, stabbed at a neck, black blood flowing. The sounds of battle roared and hummed in his ears. A man staggered past with part of his face hanging off. Logen could see right inside his mangled mouth from the side, bits of teeth falling out.

The cut down his side burned, and burned, and sucked his breath out. The knock on his head made the pulse pound in his skull, made the blurry world slide from side to side. His mouth was full of the salt metal taste of blood. He felt a touch on his shoulder and lurched around, teeth bared, fingers tight round the grip of the Maker’s blade.

Dogman let go of him and held up his hands. “It’s me! It’s me!”

Logen saw who it was. But it wasn’t his hand that held the sword, now, and the Bloody-Nine saw only work that needed doing.

What a curious flock this crippled shepherd has acquired.
Two dozen fake Practicals followed Glokta through the deserted lanes of the Agriont, Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, swaggering at their head.
My hopes all entrusted to the world’s least trustworthy man.
One of them dragged the bound and gagged Superior Goyle stumbling along by a rope.
Like an unwilling dog being taken for a walk.
Ardee West shuffled in their midst, her white dress stained with the filth of the sewers and the blood of several men, her face stained with darkening bruises and a haunted slackness.
No doubt the result of the several horrors she has already witnessed today. All capering through the Agriont after the Inquisition’s only crippled Superior. A merry dance to hell, accompanied by the sounds of distant battle.

He lurched to a sudden halt. An archway beside him led through into the Square of Marshals and, for some reason beyond his comprehension, the whole wide space had been covered with sawdust. In the middle of that yellow-white expanse, perfectly recognisable even over this distance, the First of the Magi stood, waiting. Beside him was the dark-skinned woman who had nearly drowned Glokta in his bath.
My two favourite people in all the world, I do declare.

“Bayaz,” hissed Glokta.

“No time for that.” Cosca caught him by the elbow and pulled him away, and the First of the Magi and his sullen companion passed out of view. Glokta limped on, down the narrow lane, winced as he turned a corner, and found himself staring directly into the face of his old acquaintance Jezal dan Luthar.
Or, should I say, the High King of the Union. I am painfully honoured.

“Your Majesty,” he said, lowering his head and causing a particularly unpleasant stabbing through his neck. Cosca, just appearing beside him, gave an extravagant bow, reaching for his cap to sweep it from his head. It was gone. He shrugged his shoulders apologetically, and tugged at his greasy forelock.

Luthar frowned at him, and at each member of his strange group as they appeared. Someone seemed to be lurking at the back of the royal entourage. A robe of black and gold in amongst all that polished steel.
Could that be… our old friend the High Justice? But surely he is in frozen pieces—
Then Ardee shuffled around the corner.

Luthar’s eyes went wide. “Ardee…”

“Jezal…” She looked every bit as amazed as he did. “I mean—”

And the air was ripped apart by a colossal explosion.

The Middleway was not what it used to be.

West and his staff rode northwards in stunned silence. Their horses’ hooves tapped at the cracked road. A sorry bird cheeped from the bare rafters of a burned-out house. Someone in a side street squealed for help. From the west the vague sounds of fighting still echoed, like the noise of a distant sporting event, but one with no winners. Fire had swept through the centre of the city, turning whole swathes of buildings to blackened shells, the trees to grey claws, the gardens to patches of withered slime. Corpses were the only addition. Corpses of every size and description.

The Four Corners was a slaughter-yard, scattered with all the ugly garbage of war, bounded by the ruined remains of some of Adua’s finest buildings. Near at hand, the wounded were laid out in long rows on the dusty ground, coughing, groaning, calling for water, bloody surgeons moving helplessly among them.

A few grim soldiers were already piling the Gurkish dead into formless heaps, masses of tangled arms, legs, faces. They were watched over by a tall man with his hands clenched behind his back. General Kroy, always quick to put things in order. His black uniform was smudged with grey ash, one torn sleeve flapping around his wrist. The fighting must have been savage indeed to make a mark on his perfect presentation, but his salute was unaffected. It could not have been more impeccable if they stood on a parade ground.

“Progress, General?”

“Bitter fighting through the central district, Lord Marshal! Our cavalry broke through this morning and we took them by surprise. Then they counterattacked while we were waiting for the foot. I swear, this weary patch of ground has changed hands a dozen times. But we have the Four Corners, now! They’re fighting hard for every stride, but we’re driving them back towards Arnault’s wall. Look at that, now!” He pointed to a pair of Gurkish standards leaning against a length of crumbling masonry, their golden symbols gleaming in the midst of that drab destruction. “They’ll make a fine centrepiece to anyone’s living room, eh, sir?”

West could not stop his eyes wandering down to a group of groaning wounded lolling against the wall below. “I wish you joy of them. The Agriont?”

“The news is less good there, I’m afraid. We’re pushing them hard, but the Gurkish are up in numbers. They still have the citadel entirely surrounded.”

“Push harder, General!”

Kroy snapped out another salute. “Yes, sir, we’ll break them, don’t you worry. Might I ask how General Poulder is doing with the docks?”

“The docks are back in our hands, but General Poulder… is dead.”

There was a pause. “Dead?” Kroy’s face had turned deathly pale. “But how did he—”

There was a rumble, like thunder in the distance, and the horses shied, pawed at the ground. West’s face, and Kroy’s, and the faces of their officers, all turned as one to the north. There, over the tops of the blackened ruins at the edge of the square, a great mass of dust was rising high above the Agriont.

The bright world spun and throbbed, full of the beautiful song of battle, the wonderful taste of blood, the fine and fruitful stink of death. In the midst of it, no further than arms length away, a small man stood, watching him.

To come so close to the Bloody-Nine? To ask for death as surely as to step into the searing fire. To beg for death. To demand it.

Something about his pointed teeth seemed familiar. A faint memory, from long ago. But the Bloody-Nine pushed it away, shook it off, sunk it in the bottomless sea. It meant nothing to him who men were, or what they had done. He was the Great Leveller, and all men were equal before him. His only care was to turn the living into the dead, and it was past time for the good work to begin. He raised the sword.