The Collected Joe Abercrombie (128 page)

‘But . . . if we abandon the Lower City we abandon the docks! There can be no supplies brought in! No reinforcements, even if they do arrive! What of your fine speech to me, Superior? The walls of the Upper City are too long and too weak? If the land walls fall the city is doomed? We must defeat them there or not at all, you told me! If the docks are lost . . . there can be no escape!’
My dear, plump, pudding of a General, do you not see it? Escape has never been an option.

Glokta grinned, showing Vissbruck the empty holes in his teeth. ‘If one plan fails, we must try another. The situation, as you have so cleverly pointed out, is desperate. Believe me, I would prefer it if the Emperor simply gave up and went home, but I hardly think we can count on that, do you? Send word to Cosca and Kahdia, all civilians should be moved out of the Lower City tonight. We may need to pull back at a moment’s notice.’
At least I won’t have to limp so far to reach the front lines.

‘The Upper City will scarcely hold so many! They will be lining the streets!’
Better than lining a grave pit.
‘They will be sleeping in the squares and the hallways!’
Preferable to sleeping in the ground.
‘There are thousands of them down there!’

‘Then the sooner you start the better.’

Glokta half ducked back as he stepped through the doorway. The heat beyond was almost unbearable, the reek of sweat and burnt flesh tickled unpleasantly at his throat.

He wiped his eyes, already running with tears, on the back of his trembling hand and squinted into the darkness. The three Practicals took shape in the gloom. They were gathered round, masked faces lit from underneath by the angry orange of the brazier, all hard bright bone and hard dark shadow.
Devils, in hell.

Vitari’s shirt was soaked right through and stuck to her shoulders, furious creases cut into her face. Severard was stripped to the waist, gasping breath muffled through his mask, lank hair flapping with sweat. Frost was as wet as if he had stood out in the rain, fat drops running down his pale skin, jaw muscles locked and bulging. The only one in the room who showed no sign of discomfort was Shickel. The girl had an ecstatic smile across her face as Vitari ground the sizzling iron into her chest.
Just as if it were the happiest moment of her life.

Glokta swallowed as he watched, remembering being shown the brand himself. Remembering pleading, begging, blubbering for mercy. Remembering the feeling of the metal pressed into his skin.
So searing hot it feels almost cold.
The mindless din of his own screams. The stink of his own flesh burning. He could smell it now.
First you suffer it yourself, then you inflict it on others, then you order it done. Such is the pattern of life.
He shrugged his aching shoulders and hobbled forwards into the room. ‘Progress?’ he croaked.

Severard straightened up, grunting and arching his back, wiped his forehead and flicked sweat onto the slimy floor. ‘I don’t know about her, but I’m more than halfway to breaking.’

‘We’re getting nowhere!’ snapped Vitari, tossing the black iron back in the brazier and sending up a shower of sparks. ‘We tried blades, we tried hammers, we tried water, we tried fire. She won’t say a word. Fucking bitch is made of stone.’

‘Softer than stone,’ hissed Severard, ‘but she’s nothing like us.’ He took a knife from the table, the blade briefly flashing orange in the darkness, leaned forward and carved a long gash into Shickel’s thin forearm. Her face barely even twitched while he did it. The wound hung open, glistening angry red. Severard dug his finger into it and twisted it round. Shickel showed not the slightest sign of being in pain. He pulled his finger out and held it up, rubbed the tip against his thumb. ‘Not even wet. It’s like cutting into a week-old corpse.’

Glokta felt his leg trembling, and he winced and slid into the spare seat. ‘Plainly, this is not normal.’

‘Unnerthatement,’ grunted Frost.

‘But she’s not healing the way she was.’ None of the cuts in her skin were closing.
All hanging open, dead and dry as meat in a butcher’s shop.
Nor were the burns fading.
Charred black stripes across her skin, like meat fresh from the grill.

‘Just sits there, watching,’ said Severard, ‘and not a word.’

Glokta frowned.
Can this really be what I had in mind when I joined the Inquisition? The torture of young girls?
He wiped the wet from under his stinging eyes.
But then, this is both much more and much less than a girl.
He remembered the hands clutching at him, the three Practicals straining to pull her back.
Much more and much less than human. We must not make the same mistakes we made with the First of the Magi.

‘We must keep an open mind,’ he murmured.

‘Do you know what my father would say to that?’ The voice croaked out, deep and grinding raw, like an old man’s, oddly wrong from that young, smooth face.

Glokta felt his left eye twitching, the sweat trickling under his coat. ‘Your father?’

Shickel smiled at him, eyes glinting in the darkness. It almost seemed as if the cuts in her flesh smiled with her. ‘My father. The Prophet. Great Khalul. He would say that an open mind is like to an open wound. Vulnerable to poison. Liable to fester. Apt to give its owner only pain.’

‘Now you want to talk?’

‘Now I choose to.’

‘Why?’

‘Why not? Now that you know it is my choice, and not yours. Ask your questions, cripple. You should take your chances to learn when you can. God knows you could do with them. A man lost in the desert—’

‘I know the rest.’ Glokta paused.
So many questions, but what to ask one such as this?
‘You are an Eater?’

‘We have other names for ourselves, but yes.’ She inclined her head gently, her eyes never leaving his. ‘The priests made me eat my mother first. When they found me. It was that or die, and the need to live was so very great, before. I wept afterwards, but that was long ago and there are no tears left in me. I disgust myself, of course. Sometimes I need to kill, sometimes I wish to die. I deserve to. Of that I have no doubts. My only certainty.’

I should have known better than to expect straight answers. One almost feels nostalgic for the Mercers. Their crimes, at least, I could understand. Still, any answers are better than none
. ‘Why do you eat?’

‘Because the bird eats the worm. Because the spider eats the fly. Because Khalul desires it and we are the Prophet’s children. Juvens was betrayed, and Khalul swore vengeance, but he stood alone against many. So he made his great sacrifice, and broke the Second Law, and the righteous joined with him, more and more with the passing years. Some joined him willingly. Some not. But none have denied him. My siblings are many, now, and each of us must make our sacrifice.’

Glokta gestured at the brazier. ‘You feel no pain?’

‘I do not, but plentiful remorse.’

‘Strange. It’s the other way around for me.’

‘You, I think, are the lucky one.’

He snorted. ‘Easy to say until you find you can’t piss without wanting to scream.’

‘I hardly remember what pain feels like, now. All that was long ago. The gifts are different for each of us. Strength, and speed, and endurance beyond the limits of the human. Some of us can take forms, or trick the eye, or even use the Art, the way that Juvens taught his apprentices. The gifts are different for each of us, but the curse is the same.’ She stared at Glokta, head cocked over to one side.

Let me guess.
‘You can’t stop eating.’

‘Not ever. And that is why the Gurkish appetite for slaves is never-ending. There is no resisting the Prophet. I know. Great Father Khalul.’ And her eyes rolled up reverently towards the ceiling. ‘Arch Priest of the Temple of Sarkant. Holiest of all whose feet touch the earth. Humbler of the proud, righter of wrongs, teller of truths. Light shines from him as it shines from the stars. When he speaks it is with the voice of God. When he—’

‘No doubt he shits golden turds as well. You believe all that rubbish?’

‘What does it matter what I believe? I don’t make the choices. When your master gives you a task, you do your best at it. Even if the task is a dark one.’

That much I can understand.
‘Some of us are only suited to dark tasks. Once you’ve chosen your master—’

Shickel croaked dry laughter across the table. ‘Few indeed are those who get a choice. We do as we are told. We stand or fall beside those who were born near to us, who look as we do, who speak the same words, and all the while we know as little of the reasons why as does the dust we return to.’ Her head sagged sideways and a gash in her shoulder opened up as wide as a mouth. ‘Do you think I like what I have become? Do you think I do not dream of being as others are? But once the change has come, you can never go back. Do you understand?’

Oh, yes. Few better.
‘Why were you sent here?’

‘The work of the righteous is never-ending. I came to see Dagoska returned to the fold. To see its people worship God according to the Prophet’s teachings. To see my brothers and sisters fed.’

‘It seems you failed.’

‘Others will follow. There is no resisting the Prophet. You are doomed.’

That much I know. Let us try another tack
. ‘What do you know . . . about Bayaz.’

‘Ah, Bayaz. He was the Prophet’s brother. He is the start of this, and will be the end.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Liar and traitor. He killed his master. He murdered Juvens.’

Glokta frowned. ‘That is not the way I heard the story.’

‘Everyone has their own way of telling every story, broken man. Have you not learned that yet?’ Her lip curled. ‘You have no understanding of the war you fight in, of the weapons and the casualties, of the victories and the defeats, every day. You do not guess at the sides, or the causes, or the reasons. The battlefields are everywhere. I pity you. You are a dog, trying to understand the argument of scholars, and hearing nothing but barking. The righteous are coming. Khalul will sweep the earth clean of lies and build a new order. Juvens will be avenged. It is foretold. It is ordained. It is promised.’

‘I doubt you’ll see it.’

She grinned at him. ‘I doubt you will either. My father would rather have taken this city without a fight, but if he must fight for it then he will, and with no mercy, and with the fury of God behind him. That is the first step on the path he has chosen. On the path he has chosen for all of us.’

‘What step comes next?’

‘Do you think my masters tell me their plans? Do yours? I am a worm. I am nothing. And yet I am more than you are.’

‘What comes next?’ hissed Glokta. Nothing but silence.

‘Answer him!’ hissed Vitari. Frost hauled an iron from the brazier, the tip glowing orange, and ground it into Shickel’s bare shoulder. Foul-smelling steam hissed up, fat spat and sizzled, but the girl said nothing. Her lazy eyes watched her own flesh burn, without emotion.
There will be no answers here. Only more questions. Always more questions.

‘I’ve had enough,’ snarled Glokta as he seized hold of his cane and struggled up, squirming in a painful and futile effort to make his shirt come unstuck from his back.

Vitari gestured at Shickel, her gleaming eyes still fixed on Glokta under their drooping lids, a faint smile still clinging to her lips. ‘What should we do with this?’

An expendable agent of an uncaring master, sent unwilling to a faraway place, to fight, and kill, for reasons she hardly understands. Sound familiar?
Glokta grimaced as he turned his aching back on the stinking chamber.

‘Burn it,’ he said.

Glokta stood on his balcony in the sharp evening, frowning down towards the Lower City.

It was windy up here on the rock, a cold wind off the dark sea, whipping at Glokta’s face, at his fingers on the dry parapet, slapping the tails of his coat against his legs.
The closest thing we’ll get to winter in this cursed crucible.
The flames of the torches by the door flapped and flickered in their iron cages, two lights in the gathering darkness. There were more lights out there, many more. Lamps burned on the rigging of the Union ships in the harbour, their reflections flashing and breaking in the water below. Lights glowed in the windows of the dark palaces under the citadel, in the tops of the lofty spires of the Great Temple. Down in the slums, thousands of torches burned. Rivers of tiny points of light, flowing out of the buildings, onto the roads, towards the gates of the Upper City.
Refugees leaving their homes, such as they are. Heading for safety, such as it is. How long can we
keep them safe, I wonder, once the land walls fall?
He knew the answer already.
Not long.

‘Superior!’

‘Why, Master Cosca. I’m so glad you could join me.’