The Trouble with Peace Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Joe Abercrombie

  Cover design by Lauren Panepinto

  Cover art by Sam Weber

  Cover copyright © 2020 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  First Edition: September 2020

  Simultaneously published in Great Britain by Gollancz

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2020933536

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-18718-3 (hardcover), 978-0-316-59173-7 (signed edition), 978-0-316-59172-0 (BarnesAndNoble.com signed edition), 978-0-316-59171-3 (Barnes & Noble Black Friday signed edition), 978-0-316-34189-9 (ebook)

  E3-20200809-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PART IV The World’s Wrongs

  A Long Way from Adua

  A Sea of Trouble

  A Routine

  The Art of Compromise

  Some Things Never Heal

  With the Wind

  Visions

  Man of the People

  Safe Hands

  An Ambush

  Gentle Temperaments

  Minister of Whispers

  Late

  An Infinite Supply

  The Demon That Breaks All Chains

  The King’s Justice

  The Choice

  Let Ring the Bells

  Future Treasons, Past Affairs

  The King’s Pimp

  The Darling of the Slums

  Dead Wood, New Shoots

  PART V The Favourite Son

  Patriotic Contributions

  A Little Public Hanging

  Old Ways, Proper Ways

  Fire with Fire

  Half-Treason

  A Private Language

  Old Friends

  New Friends

  The Little People

  A Fitting Welcome

  Diplomacy

  The Wolf’s Jaws

  Questions

  Tomorrow Came

  Grown Up

  Grown Up

  All Tastes, No Judgements

  No Philosopher

  Changes at the Top

  Into the Light

  Some Men Can’t Help Themselves

  A Meeting with Destiny

  PART VI Storms

  Liar, Liar

  You Asked for Killers

  Good Ground

  Bad Ground

  High Ground

  Common Ground

  Doubts and Desires

  Fools’ Errands

  The Little People

  Cold Blood

  Heroics

  Just Talk

  The New Harvest

  The Truth

  Those Names

  A Footnote to History

  Loyalties and Sympathies

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More

  The Big People

  Also by Joe Abercrombie

  For Lou,

  With grim, dark

  hugs

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  PART IV

  “In times of peace, the warlike man attacks himself.”

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  The World’s Wrongs

  “I hope no one minds if we dispense with this for now?” Orso tossed his circlet down, gold twinkling in a dusty shaft of spring sunlight as it spun around and around. “Damn thing chafes rather.” He rubbed at the sore spots it had left above his temples. There was a metaphor there somewhere. The burden of power, the weight of a crown. But his Closed Council had no doubt heard all that before.

  The moment he sat they began to drag out their own chairs, wincing as old backs bent, grunting as old arses settled on hard wood, grumbling as old knees were eased under the tottering heaps of paper on the table.

  “Where’s the surveyor general?” someone asked, nodding at an empty chair.

  “Out with his bladder.” There was a chorus of groans.

  “One can win a thousand battles.” Lord Marshal Brint worried at that lady’s ring on his little finger, gazing into the middle distance as though at an opposing army. “But in the end, no man can defeat his own bladder.”

  As the youngest in the room by some thirty years, Orso ranked his bladder among his least interesting organs. “One issue before we begin,” he said.

  All eyes turned towards him. Apart from those of Bayaz, down at the foot of the table. The legendary wizard continued to gaze out of the window, towards the palace gardens which were just beginning to bud.

  “I am set on making a grand tour of the Union.” Orso did his best to sound authoritative. Regal, even. “To visit every province. Every major city. When was the last time a monarch visited Starikland? Did my father ever go?”

  Arch Lector Glokta grimaced. Even more than usual. “Starikland was not considered safe, Your Majesty.”

  “Starikland has always been afflicted with a restless temper.” Lord Chancellor Gorodets was absently smoothing his long beard into a point, fluffing it up, then smoothing it again. “Now more than ever.”

  “But I have to connect with the people.” Orso thumped the table to give it emphasis. They needed some feeling in here. Everything in the White Chamber was cold, dry, bloodless calculation. “Show them we’re all part of the same great endeavour. The same family. It’s supposed to be a Union, isn’t it? We need to bloody unite.”

  Orso had never wanted to be king. He enjoyed it even less than being crown prince, if that was possible. But now that he was king, he was determined to do some good with it.

  Lord Chamberlain Hoff tapped at the table in limp applause. “A wonderful idea, Your Majesty.”

  “Wonderful,” echoed High Justice Bruckel, who had the conversational style of a woodpecker and a beak not dissimilar. “Idea.”

  “Noble sentiments, well expressed,” agreed Gorodets, though his appreciation did not quite reach his eyes.

  One old man fussed with some papers. Another frowned into his wine as though something had died in it. Gorodets was still stroking his beard, but now looked as if he could taste piss.

  “But?” Orso was learning that in the Closed Council there was always at least one but.

  “But…” Hoff glanced to Bayaz, who gave permission with the slightest nod. “It might be best to wait for a more auspicious moment. A more settled time. There are so many challenges here which require Your Maj
esty’s attention.”

  The high justice puffed out a heavy breath. “Many. Challenges.”

  Orso delivered something between a growl and a sigh. His father had always despised the White Chamber and its hard, stark chairs. Despised the hard, stark men who sat on them. He had warned Orso that no good was ever done in the Closed Council. But if not here, where? This cramped, stuffy, featureless little room was where the power lay. “Are you suggesting the machinery of government would grind to a halt without me?” he asked. “I think you over-sugar the pudding.”

  “There are issues the monarch must be seen to attend to,” said Glokta. “The Breakers were dealt a crippling blow in Valbeck.”

  “A hard task well done, Your Majesty,” Hoff drooled out, with cloying sycophancy.

  “But they are far from eradicated. And those that escaped have become… even more extreme in their opinions.”

  “Disruption among the workers.” High Justice Bruckel rapidly shook his bony head. “Strikes. Organising. Attacks on staff and property.”

  “And the damn pamphlets,” said Brint, to a collective groan.

  “Damn. Pamphlets.”

  “Used to think education was merely wasted on the commoners. Now I say it’s a positive danger.”

  “This bloody Weaver can turn a phrase.”

  “Not to mention an obscene etching.”

  “They incite the populace to disobedience!”

  “To disaffection!”

  “They talk of a Great Change coming.”

  A flurry of twitches ran up the left side of Glokta’s wasted face. “They blame the Open Council.” And published caricatures of them as pigs fighting over the trough. “They blame the Closed Council.” And published caricatures of them fucking each other. “They blame His Majesty.” And published caricatures of him fucking anything. “They blame the banks.”

  “They promote the ridiculous rumour that the debt… to the Banking House of Valint and Balk… has crippled the state…” Gorodets trailed off, leaving the room in nervous silence.

  Bayaz finally tore his hard, green eyes from the window to glare down the table. “This flood of disinformation must be stemmed.”

  “We have destroyed a dozen presses,” grated Glokta, “but they build new ones, and smaller all the time. Now any fool can write, and print, and air their opinions.”

  “Progress,” lamented Bruckel, rolling his eyes to the ceiling.

  “The Breakers are like bloody moles in a garden,” growled Lord Marshal Rucksted, who had turned his chair slightly sideways-on to give an impression of fearless dash. “You kill five, pour a celebratory glass, then in the morning your lawn’s covered in new bloody molehills.”

  “More irritating than my bladder,” said Brint, to widespread chuckling.

  Glokta sucked at his empty gums with a faint squelch. “And then there are the Burners.”

  “Lunatics!” snapped Hoff. “This woman Judge.”

  Shudders of distaste about the table. At the notion of such a thing as a woman, or at the notion of this particular one, it was hard to say.

  “I hear a mill owner was found murdered on the road to Keln.” Gorodets gave his beard a particularly violent tug. “A pamphlet nailed to his face.”

  Rucksted clasped his big fists on the table. “And there was that fellow choked to death with a thousand copies of the rule-sheet he distributed to his employees…”

  “One might almost say our approach has made matters worse,” observed Orso. A memory of Malmer drifted up, legs dangling from his cage as it swung with the breeze. “Perhaps we could make some gesture. A minimum wage? Improved working conditions? I heard a recent fire in a mill led to the deaths of fifteen child workers—”

  “It would be folly,” said Bayaz, his attention already back on the gardens, “to obstruct the free operation of the market.”

  “The market serves the interests of all,” offered the lord chancellor.

  “Unprecedented,” agreed the high justice. “Prosperity.”

  “No doubt the child workers would applaud it,” said Orso.

  “No doubt,” agreed Lord Hoff.

  “Had they not been burned to death.”

  “A ladder is of no use if all the rungs are at the top,” said Bayaz.

  Orso opened his mouth to retort but High Consul Matstringer got in first. “And we face a veritable cornucopia of adversaries overseas.” The coordinator of the Union’s foreign policy had never yet failed to confuse complexity with insight. “The Gurkish may still be embroiled in all-encompassing predicaments of their own—”

  Bayaz gave a rare grunt of satisfaction at that.

  “But the Imperials endlessly rattle their swords on our western border, exhorting the populace of Starikland to continued disloyalty, and the Styrians are emboldened in the east.”

  “They are building up their navy.” Lord Admiral Krepskin roused himself for a heavy-lidded interjection. “New ships. Armed with cannon. While ours rot in their docks for lack of investment.”

  Bayaz gave a familiar grunt of dissatisfaction at that.

  “And they are busy in the shadows,” went on Matstringer, “sowing discord in Westport, enticing the Aldermen to sedition. Why, they have succeeded in scheduling a vote within the month which could see the city secede from the Union!”

  The old men competed to display the most patriotic outrage. It was enough to make Orso want to secede from the Union himself.

  “Disloyalty,” grumbled the high justice. “Discord.”

  “Bloody Styrians!” snarled Rucksted. “Love to work in the shadows.”

  “We can work there, too,” said Glokta softly, in a manner that made the hairs prickle beneath Orso’s braid-heavy uniform. “Some of my very best people are even now ensuring Westport’s loyalty.”

  “At least our northern border is secure,” said Orso, desperate to inject some optimism.

  “Well…” The high consul crushed his hopes with a prim pursing of the mouth. “The politics of the North are always something of a cauldron. The Dogman is advanced in years. Infirm. No man can divine the fate of his Protectorate in the event of his death. Lord Governor Brock would appear to have forged a strong bond with the new King of the Northmen, Stour Nightfall—”

  “That has to be a good thing,” said Orso.

  Doubtful glances were traded across the table.

  “Unless their bond becomes… too strong,” murmured Glokta.

  “The young Lord Governor is popular,” agreed Gorodets.

  “Damned,” pecked the high justice. “Popular.”

  “Handsome lad,” said Brint. “And he’s earned a warrior’s reputation.”

  “Angland behind him. Stour as an ally. Could be a threat.”

  Rucksted raised his bushy brows very high. “His grandfather, lest we forget, was an infamous bloody traitor!”

  “I will not see a man condemned for the actions of his grandfather!” snapped Orso, whose own grandfathers had enjoyed mixed reputations, to say the least. “Leo dan Brock risked his life fighting a duel on my behalf!”

  “The job of your Closed Council,” said Glokta, “is to anticipate threats to Your Majesty before they become threats.”

  “After may be too late,” threw in Bayaz.

  “People are… discomfited by the death of your father,” said Gorodets. “So young. So unexpected.”

  “Young. Unexpected.”

  “And you, Your Majesty, are—”

  “Despised?” offered Orso.

  Gorodets gave an indulgent smile. “Untried. At times like this, people yearn for stability.”

  “Indeed. It would without doubt be a very fine thing if Your Majesty were…” Lord Hoff cleared his throat. “To marry?”

  Orso closed his eyes and pressed finger and thumb against them. “Must we?” Marriage was the last thing he wanted to discuss. He still had Savine’s note in a drawer beside his bed. Still looked at that brutal little line every evening, as one might pick at a scab. My answer
must be no. I would ask you not to contact me again. Ever.

  Hoff cleared his throat once more. “A new king always finds himself in an uncertain position.”

  “A king with no heir, doubly so,” said Glokta.

  “The absence of clear succession gives a troubling impression of impermanence,” observed Matstringer.

  “Perhaps with the help of Her Majesty your mother, I might draw up a list of eligible ladies, both at home and abroad?” Hoff cleared his throat yet a third time. “A new list… that is.”

  “By all means,” growled Orso, pronouncing each word with cutting precision.

  “Then there is Fedor dan Wetterlant,” murmured the high justice.

  Glokta’s permanent grimace became even further contorted. “I hoped we might settle that matter without bothering His Majesty.”

  “I’m bothered now,” snapped Orso. “Fedor dan Wetterlant… didn’t I play cards with him once?”

  “He lived in Adua before inheriting the family estate. His reputation here was…”

  “Almost as bad as mine?” Orso remembered the man. Soft face but hard eyes. Smiled too much. Just like Lord Hoff, who was even now breaking out a particularly unctuous example.

  “I was going to say abominable, Your Majesty. He stands accused of serious crimes.”

  “He raped a laundry woman,” said Glokta, “with the assistance of his groundskeeper. When her husband demanded justice, Wetterlant murdered the man, again with the groundskeeper’s assistance. In a tavern. In full view of seventeen witnesses.” The emotionless quality of the Arch Lector’s grating voice only served to sicken Orso even more. “Then he had a drink. The groundskeeper poured, I believe.”

  “Bloody hell,” whispered Orso.

  “Those are the accusations,” said Matstringer.

  “Even Wetterlant scarcely disputes them,” said Glokta.

  “His mother does,” observed Gorodets.

  There was a chorus of groans. “Lady Wetterlant, by the Fates, what a battleaxe.”

  “Absolute. Harridan.”

  “Well, I’m no admirer of hangings,” said Orso, “but I’ve seen men hanged for far less.”

  “The groundskeeper already has been,” said Glokta.