Read The Collected Joe Abercrombie Online
Authors: Joe Abercrombie
Interesting.
‘I thought that in your nation, church and state spoke with one voice.’
‘It has often been so, but there are those among us who believe that priests should concern themselves with prayer, and leave the governing to the Emperor and his advisors.’
‘I see. And what might the Emperor wish to communicate to us?’
‘The difficulty of capturing Dagoska has shocked the people. The priests had convinced them that the campaign would be easy, for God was with us, our cause was righteous, and so forth. God is great, of course,’ and he looked up to the ceiling, ‘but he is no substitute for good planning. The Emperor desires peace.’
Glokta sat silent for a moment. ‘The great Uthman-ul-Dosht? The mighty? The merciless? Desires peace?’
The envoy took no offence. ‘I am sure you understand that a reputation for ruthlessness can be useful. A great ruler, especially one of as wide and various a country as Gurkhul, must first be feared. He would desire to be loved also, but that is a luxury. Fear is essential. Whatever you may have heard, Uthman is neither a man of peace, nor of war. He is a man of . . . what would be your word? Necessity. He is a man of the right tool at the right time.’
‘Very prudent,’ muttered Glokta.
‘Peace, now. Mercy. Compromise. These are the tools that suit his purposes, even if they do not suit the purposes of . . . others,’ and he touched his fingers to his forehead. ‘And so he sends me, to find out if they suit you also.’
‘Well, well, well. The mighty Uthman-ul-Dosht comes with mercy, and offers peace. These are strange times we live in, eh, Tulkis? Have the Gurkish learned to love their enemies? Or simply fear them?’
‘One need not love one’s enemy, or even fear him, to desire peace. One need only love oneself.’
‘Is that so?’
‘It is. I lost two sons in the wars between our peoples. One at Ulrioch in the last war. He was a priest, and burned in the temple there. The other died not long ago, at the siege of Dagoska. He led the charge when the first breach was made.’
Glokta frowned and stretched out his neck.
A hail of flatbow bolts. Tiny figures, falling in the rubble.
‘That was a brave charge.’
‘War is harshest on the brave.’
‘True. I am sorry for your losses.’
Though I feel no sorrow, in particular.
‘I thank you for your heartfelt condolences. God has seen fit to bless me with three more sons, but the spaces left by those two children lost will never close. It is almost like losing your own flesh. That is why I feel I understand something of what you have lost, in these same wars. I am sorry for those losses also.’
‘Most kind.’
‘We are leaders. War is what happens when we fail. Or are pushed into failure by the rash and the foolish. Victory is better than defeat, but . . . not by much. Therefore, the Emperor offers peace, in the hope that this may be a permanent end to the hostilities between our great nations. We have no true interest in crossing the seas to make war, and you have no true interest in toeholds on the Kantic continent. So we offer peace.’
‘And is that all your offer?’
‘All?’
‘What will our people make of it, if we surrender Dagoska up to you, so dearly bought in the last war?’
‘Let us be realistic. Your entanglements in the North put you at a considerable disadvantage. Dagoska is lost, I would put it from your mind.’ Tulkis seemed to think about it for a moment. ‘However, I could arrange for a dozen chests to be delivered, as reparations from my Emperor to your King. Chests of fragrant ebony wood, worked with golden leaf, carried by bowing slaves, preceded by humble officials of the Emperor’s government. ’
‘And what would these chests contain?’
‘Nothing.’ They stared at each other across the room. ‘Except pride. You could say they contained whatever you wished. A fortune in Gurkish gold, in Kantic jewels, in incense from beyond the desert. More than the value of Dagoska itself. Perhaps that would mollify your people.’
Glokta breathed in sharply, and let it out. ‘Peace. And empty boxes.’ His left leg had gone numb under the table and he grimaced as he moved it, hissed through his gums as he forced himself out of his chair. ‘I will convey your offer to my superiors.’
He was just turning away when Tulkis held out his hand. Glokta looked at it for a moment.
Well, where’s the harm?
He reached out and squeezed it.
‘I hope you will be able to persuade them,’ said the Gurkish envoy.
So do I.
O
n the morning of their ninth day in the mountains, Logen saw the sea. He dragged himself to the top of yet another painful scramble, and there it was. The track dropped steeply away into a stretch of low, flat country, and beyond was the shining line on the horizon. He could almost smell it, a salty tang on the air with each breath. He would have grinned if it hadn’t reminded him of home so much.
‘The sea,’ he whispered.
‘The ocean,’ said Bayaz.
‘We have crossed the western continent from shore to shore,’ said Longfoot, grinning all the way across his face. ‘We are close now.’
By afternoon they were closer still. The trail had widened to a muddy lane between fields, split up with ragged hedges. Mostly brown squares of turned earth, but some green with fresh grass, or with the sprouts of vegetables, some waving tall with a grey, tasteless-looking winter crop. Logen had never known much about farming, but it was plain enough that someone had been working this ground, and recently.
‘What kind of people live all the way out here?’ murmured Luthar, looking suspiciously out across the ill-tended fields.
‘Descendants of the pioneers of long ago. When the Empire collapsed, they were left out here alone. Alone they have flourished, after a fashion.’
‘You hear that?’ hissed Ferro, her eyes narrowed, already fishing an arrow from her quiver. Logen put his head up, listening. A thumping sound, echoing from some distance, then a voice, thin on the wind. He put his hand on the grip of his sword and crouched down. He crept to an unruly stretch of hedge and peered over, Ferro beside him.
Two men were struggling with a tree stump in the midst of a turned field, one chopping at it with an axe, the other watching, hands on hips. Logen swallowed, uneasy. These two hardly looked much of a threat, but looks could lie. It had been a long time since they met a living thing that hadn’t tried to kill them.
‘Calm now,’ muttered Bayaz. ‘There is no danger here.’
Ferro frowned across at him. ‘You’ve told us that before.’
‘Kill no one until I tell you!’ hissed the Magus, then called out in a language Logen didn’t know, waving one arm over his head in a gesture of greeting. The two men jerked round, staring open-mouthed. Bayaz shouted again. The farmers looked at each other, then set down their tools and walked slowly over.
They stopped a few strides away. An ugly-looking pair, even to Logen’s eye – short, stocky, rough-featured, dressed in colourless work clothes, patched and stained. They stared nervously at the six strangers, and at their weapons in particular, as though they’d never seen such people or such things before.
Bayaz spoke to them warmly, smiling and waving his arms, pointing out towards the ocean. One nodded, answered, shrugged and pointed down the track. He stepped through a gap in the hedge, off the field and into the road. Or from soft mud to hard mud, at least. He beckoned at them to follow while his companion watched suspiciously from the other side of the bushes.
‘He will take us to Cawneil,’ said Bayaz.
‘To who?’ muttered Logen, but the Magus did not answer. He was already striding westward after the farmer.
Heavy dusk under a grim sky, and they trudged through an empty town after their sullen guide. A singularly ill-favoured fellow, Jezal rather thought, but then peasants were rarely beauties in his experience, and he supposed that they were much the same the world over. The streets were dusty and deserted, weedy and scattered with refuse. Many houses were derelict, furry with moss and tangled with creeper. Those few that did show signs of occupation were, in the main, in a slovenly condition.
‘It would seem the glory of the past is faded here also,’ said Longfoot with some disappointment, ‘if indeed there ever was any.’
Bayaz nodded. ‘Glory is in short supply these days.’
A wide square opened out from the neglected houses. Ornamental gardens had been planted round the edge by some forgotten gardener, but the lawns were threadbare, the flowerbeds turned to briar-patches, the trees no more than withered claws. Out of this slow decay rose a huge and striking building, or more accurately a jumble of buildings of various confused shapes and styles. Three tall, round, tapering towers sprouted from their midst, joined at their bases but separating higher up. One was broken off before the summit, its roof long fallen in, leaving naked rafters exposed.
‘A library . . .’ whispered Logen under his breath.
It scarcely looked like one to Jezal. ‘It is?’
‘The Great Western Library,’ said Bayaz, as they crossed the dilapidated square in the looming shadow of those three crumbling towers. ‘Here I took my first hesitant steps along the path of Art. Here my master taught me the First Law. Taught it to me again and again until I could recite it flawlessly in every language known. This was a place of learning, and wonder, and great beauty.’
Longfoot sucked his teeth. ‘Time has not been kind to the place.’
‘Time is never kind.’
Their guide said a few short words and indicated a tall door covered in flaking green paint. Then he shuffled away, eyeing them all with the deepest suspicion.
‘You simply cannot get the help,’ observed the First of the Magi as he watched the farmer hurry off, then he raised his staff and struck the door three good knocks. There was a long silence.
‘Library?’ Jezal heard Ferro asking, evidently unfamiliar with the word.
‘For books,’ came Logen’s voice.
‘Books,’ she snorted. ‘Waste of fucking time.’
Vague sounds echoed from beyond the gate: someone approaching inside, accompanied by an irritated muttering. Now locks clicked and grated and the weathered door squealed open. A man of an advanced age and a pronounced stoop gazed at them in wonder, an unintelligible curse frozen on his lips, a lighted taper casting a faint glow over one side of his wrinkled face.
‘I am Bayaz, the First of the Magi, and I have business with Cawneil.’ The servant continued to gawp. Jezal half expected a string of drool to escape from his toothless mouth it was hanging open so wide. Plainly, they did not receive large numbers of visitors.
The one flickering taper was pitifully inadequate to light the lofty hall beyond. Weighty tables sagged under tottering piles of books. Shelves rose up high on every wall, lost in the fusty darkness overhead. Shadows shifted over leather-bound spines of every size and colour, on bundles of loose parchments, on scrolls rolled and carelessly stacked in leaning pyramids. Light sparked and flashed on silver gilt, and gold ornamentation, and dull jewels set into tomes of daunting size. A long staircase, banister highly polished by the passage of countless hands, steps worn down in the centres by the passage of countless feet, curved gracefully down into the midst of this accumulation of ancient knowledge. Dust sat thickly on every surface. One particularly monstrous cobweb became stickily tangled in Jezal’s hair as he passed over the threshold, and he flicked and wrestled at it, face wrinkled in distaste.
‘The lady of the house,’ wheezed the doorman in a strange accent, ‘has already taken to her couch.’
‘Then wake her,’ snapped Bayaz. ‘The hour grows dark and I am in haste. We have no time to—’
‘Well. Well. Well.’ A woman stood upon the steps. ‘The hour grows dark indeed, when old lovers come calling at my door.’ A deep voice, smooth as syrup. She sauntered down the stairs with exaggerated slowness, one set of long nails trailing on the curving banister. She seemed perhaps of middle age: tall, thin, graceful, a curtain of long black hair falling over half her face.
‘Sister. We have urgent matters to discuss.’
‘Ah, do we indeed?’ The one eye that Jezal could see was large, dark and heavy-lidded, rimmed faintly with sore, tearful pink. Languorously, lazily, almost sleepily it flowed over the group. ‘How atrociously tiresome.’
‘I am weary, Cawneil, I need none of your games.’
‘We all are weary, Bayaz. We all are terribly weary.’ She gave a long, theatrical sigh as she finally glided to the foot of the steps and across the uneven floor towards them. ‘There was a time when you were willing to play. You would play my games for days at a time, as I recall.’
‘That was long ago. Things change.’
Her face twisted with a sudden and unsettling anger. ‘Things rot, you mean! But still,’ and her voice softened again to a deep whisper, ‘we last remnants of the great order of Magi should at least try to remain civil. Come now, my brother, my friend, my sweet, there is no need for undue haste. The day grows late, and there is time for you all to wash away the dirt of the road, discard those stinking rags and dress for dinner. Then we can talk over food, as civilised persons are wont to do. I so rarely have guests to entertain.’ She swept past Logen, looking him admiringly up and down. ‘And you have brought me such rugged guests.’ She lingered on Ferro with her eyes. ‘Such exotic guests.’ Now she reached up and let a long finger trail across Jezal’s cheek. ‘Such comely guests!’