Last Argument of Kings (16 page)

Best of Enemies

Tap, tap.

“Not now!” stormed Colonel Glokta. “I have all these to get through!” There must have been ten thousand papers of confession for him to sign. His desk was groaning with great heaps of them, and the nib of his pen was soft as butter. What with the red ink, his marks looked like dark bloodstains sprayed across the pale paper. “Damn it!” he raged as he knocked over the bottle with his elbow, splashing ink out over the desk, soaking into the piles of papers, dripping to the floor with a steady tap, tap, tap.

“There will be time later for you to confess. Ample time.”

The Colonel frowned. The air had grown decidedly chill. “You again! Always at the worst times!”

“You remember me, then?”

“I seem to…” In truth, the Colonel was finding it hard to recall from where. It looked like a woman in the corner, but he could not make out her face.

“The Maker fell burning… he broke upon the bridge below…” The words were familiar, but Glokta could not have said why. Old stories and nonsense. He winced. Damn it but his leg hurt.

“I seem to…” His usual confidence was all ebbing away. The room was icy cold now, he could see his breath smoking before his face. He stumbled up from his chair as his unwelcome visitor came closer, his leg aching with a vengeance. “What do you want?” he managed to croak.

The face came into the light. It was none other than Mauthis, from the banking house of Valint and Balk. “The Seed, Colonel.” And he smiled his joyless smile. “I want the Seed.”

“I… I…” Glokta’s back found the wall. He could go no further.

“The Seed!” Now it was Goyle’s face, now Sult’s, now Severard’s, but they all made the same demand. “The Seed! I lose patience!”

“Bayaz,” he whispered, squeezing his eyes closed, tears running out from underneath his lids. “Bayaz knows—”

“Tap, tap, torturer.” The woman’s hissing voice again. A finger-tip jabbed at the side of his head, painfully hard. “If that old liar knew, it would be mine already. No. You will find it.” He could not speak for fear. “You will find it, or I will tear the price from your twisted flesh. So tap, tap, time to wake.”

The finger stabbed at his skull again, digging into the side of his head like a dagger blade. “Tap, tap, cripple!” hissed the hideous voice in his ear, breath so cold it seemed to burn his bare cheek. “Tap, tap!”

Tap, tap.

For a moment Glokta hardly knew where he was. He jerked upright, struggling with the sheets, staring about him, hemmed in on every side by threatening shadows, his own whimpering breath hissing in his head. Then everything fell suddenly into place.
My new apartments.
A pleasant breeze stirred the curtains in the sticky night, washing through the one open window. Glokta saw its shadow shifting on the rendered wall. It swung shut against the frame, open, then shut again.

Tap, tap.

He closed his eyes and breathed a long sigh. Winced as he sagged back in his bed, stretching his legs out, working his toes against the cramps.
Those toes the Gurkish left me, at least. Only another dream. Everything is—

Then he remembered, and his eyes snapped wide open.
The King is dead. Tomorrow we elect a new one.

The three hundred and twenty papers were hanged, lifeless, from their nails. They had grown more and more creased, battered, greasy and grubby over the past few weeks.
As the business itself has slid further into the filth.
Many were ink smudged, covered with angrily scrawled notes, with fillings-in and crossings-out.
As men were bought and sold, bullied and blackmailed, bribed and beguiled.
Many were torn where wax had been removed, added, replaced with other colours.
As the allegiances shifted, as the promises were broken, as the balance swung this way and that.

Arch Lector Sult stood glaring at them, like a shepherd at his troublesome flock, his white coat rumpled, his white hair in disarray. Glokta had never before seen him look anything less than perfectly presented.
He must, at last, taste blood. His own. I would almost want to laugh, if my own mouth were not so terribly salty.

“Brock has seventy-five,” Sult was hissing to himself, white gloved hands fussing with each other behind his back. “Brock has seventy-five. Isher has fifty-five. Skald and Barezin, forty a piece. Brock has seventy-five…” He muttered the numbers over and over, as though they were a charm to protect him from evil.
Or from good, perhaps.
“Isher has fifty-five…”

Glokta had to suppress a smile.
Brock, then Isher, then Skald and Barezin, while the Inquisition and Judiciary struggle over scraps. For all our efforts, the shape of things is much the same as when we began this ugly dance. We might as well have led the country then and saved ourselves the trouble. Perhaps it is still not too late…

Glokta noisily cleared his throat and Sult’s head jerked round. “You have something to contribute?”

“In a manner of speaking, your Eminence.” Glokta kept his tone as servile as he possibly could. “I received some rather… troubling information recently.”

Sult scowled, and nodded his head at the papers. “More troubling than this?”

Equally, at any rate. After all, whoever wins the vote will have but a brief celebration if the Gurkish arrive and slaughter the lot of us a week later.
“It has been suggested to me… that the Gurkish are preparing to invade Midderland.”

There was a brief, uncomfortable pause.
Scarcely a promising reception, but we have set sail now. What else to do but steer straight for the storm?
“Invade?” sneered Goyle. “With what?”

“It is not the first time I have been told they have a fleet.”
Trying desperately to patch my foundering vessel.
“A considerable fleet, built in secret, after the last war. We could easily make some preparations, then if the Gurkish do come—”

“And what if you are wrong?” The Arch Lector was frowning mightily. “From whom did this information come?”

Oh, dear me no, that would never do. Carlot dan Eider? Alive? But how? Body found floating by the docks…
“An anonymous source, Arch Lector.”

“Anonymous?” His Eminence glowered through narrowed eyes. “And you would have me go to the Closed Council, at a time like this, and put before them the unproven gossip of your anonymous source?”
The waves swamp the deck…

“I merely wished to alert your Eminence to the possibility—”

“When are they coming?”
The torn sailcloth flaps in the gale…

“My informant did not—”

“Where will they land?”
The sailors topple screaming from the rigging…

“Again, your Eminence I cannot—”

“What will be their numbers?”
The wheel breaks off in my shaking hands…

Glokta winced, and decided not to speak at all.

“Then kindly refrain from distracting us with rumours,” sneered Sult, his lip twisted with contempt.
The ship vanishes beneath the merciless waves, her cargo of precious warnings consigned to the deep, and her captain will not be missed.
“We have more pressing concerns than a legion of Gurkish phantoms!”

“Of course, your Eminence.”
And if the Gurkish come, who will we hang? Oh, Superior Glokta, of course. Why ever did that damn cripple not speak up?

Sult’s mind had already slipped back into its well-worn circles. “We have thirty-one votes and Marovia has something over twenty. Thirty-one. Not enough to make the difference.” He shook his head grimly, blue eyes darting over the papers.
As if there were some new way to look at them that would alter the terrible mathematics.
“Nowhere near enough.”

“Unless we were to come to an understanding with High Justice Marovia.” Again, a pause, even more uncomfortable than last time.
Oh dear. I must have said that out loud.

“An understanding?” hissed Sult.

“With Marovia?” squealed Goyle, his eyes bulging with triumph.
When the safe options are all exhausted, we must take risks. Is that not what I told myself as I rode down to the bridge, while the Gurkish massed upon the other side? Ah well, once more into the tempest…

Glokta took a deep breath. “Marovia’s seat on the Closed Council is no safer than anyone else’s. We may have been working against each other, but only out of habit. On the subject of this vote our aims are the same. To secure a weak candidate and maintain the balance. Together you have more than fifty votes. That might well be enough to tip the scales.”

Goyle sneered his contempt. “Join forces with that peasant-loving hypocrite? Have you lost your reason?”

“Shut up, Goyle.” Sult glared at Glokta for a long while, his lips pursed in thought.
Considering my punishment, perhaps? Another tongue-lashing? Or a real lashing? Or my body found floating—
“You are right. Go and speak to Marovia.”

Sand dan Glokta, once more the hero!
Goyle’s jaw hung open. “But… your Eminence!”

“The time for pride is far behind us!” snarled Sult. “We must seize any chance of keeping Brock and the rest from the throne. We must find compromises, however painful, and we must take whatever allies we can. Go!” he hissed over his shoulder, folding his arms and turning back to his crackling papers. “Strike a deal with Marovia.”

Glokta got stiffly up from his chair.
A shame to leave such lovely company, but when duty calls…
He treated Goyle to the briefest of toothless smiles, then took up his cane and limped for the door.

“And Glokta!” He winced as he turned back into the room. “Marovia’s aims and ours may meet for now. But we cannot trust him. Tread carefully.”

“Of course, your Eminence.”
I always do. What other choice, when every step is agony?

The private office of the High Justice was as big as a barn, its ceiling covered in festoons of old moulding, riddled with shadows. Although it was only late afternoon, the thick ivy outside the windows, and the thick grime on the panes, had sunk the place into a perpetual twilight. Tottering heaps of papers were stacked on every surface. Wedges of documents tied with black tape. Piles of leather-bound ledgers. Stacks of dusty parchments in ostentatious, swirling script, stamped with huge seals of red wax and glittering gilt. A kingdom’s worth of law, it looked like.
And, indeed, it probably is.

“Superior Glokta, good evening.” Marovia himself was seated at a long table near the empty fireplace, set for dinner, a flickering candelabra making each dish glisten in the gloom. “I hope you do not mind if I eat while we talk? I would rather dine in the comfort of my rooms, but I find myself eating here more and more. So much to do, you see? And one of my secretaries appears to have taken a holiday unannounced.”
A holiday to the slaughterhouse floor, in fact, by way of the intestines of a herd of swine.
“Would you care to join me?” Marovia gestured at a large joint of meat, close to raw in the centre, swimming in bloody gravy.

Glokta licked at his empty gums as he manoeuvred himself into a chair opposite. “I would be delighted, your Worship, but the laws of dentistry prevent me.”

“Ah, of course. Those laws there can be no circumventing, even by a High Justice. You have my sympathy, Superior. One of my greatest pleasures is a good cut of meat, and the bloodier the better. Just show them the flame, I always tell my cook. Just show it to them.”
Funny. I tell my Practicals to start the same way.
“And to what do I owe this unexpected visit? Do you come on your own initiative, or at the urging of your employer, my esteemed colleague from the Closed Council, Arch Lector Sult?”

Your bitter mortal enemy from the Closed Council, do you mean?
“His Eminence is aware that I am here.”

“Is he?” Marovia carved another slice and lifted it dripping onto his plate. “And with what message has he sent you? Something relating to tomorrow’s business in the Open Council, perhaps?”

“You spoil my surprise, your Worship. May I speak plainly?”

“If you know how.”

Glokta showed the High Justice his empty grin. “This affair with the vote is a terrible thing for business. The doubt, the uncertainty, the worry. Bad for everyone’s business.”

“Some more than others.” Marovia’s knife squealed against the plate as he slit a ribbon of fat from the edge of his meat.

“Of course. At particular risk are those that sit on the Closed Council, and those that struggle on their behalf. They are unlikely to be given such a free hand if powerful men such as Brock or Isher are voted to the throne.”
Some of us, indeed, are unlikely to live out the week.

Marovia speared a slice of carrot with his fork and stared sourly at it. “A lamentable state of affairs. It would have been preferable for all concerned if Raynault or Ladisla were still alive.” He thought about it for a moment. “If Raynault were still alive, at least. But the vote will take place tomorrow, however much we might tear our hair. It is hard now to see our way to a remedy.” He looked from the carrot to Glokta. “Or do you suggest one?”