The Trouble with Peace Page 8

Isern sagged back on her haunches, just like last time, and her jaw squirmed as she worried at the hole in her teeth with her tongue. “What does that mean?”

  “You know what it means,” snapped Rikke, every word another stab through her head. “You already told me.”

  “What did I say?”

  “That she’s a witch who was sent back from the land of the dead. That she’s much loved or hated by the moon. That she lives in the High Places in a forbidden cave beside a forbidden lake. You told me we had to go and see her.”

  Isern looked more and more scared with every word. Rikke never saw her look scared before. Except just before, in the vision. It made Rikke feel even more scared than the last time it happened.

  “Can’t very well disagree with myself, can I?” muttered Isern.

  “Do we really want help from a corpse stitched together with golden wire?” asked Rikke’s father, again.

  Isern shrugged. “Help with strange problems—”

  “—comes from strange people,” Rikke finished for her.

  Man of the People

  “Snake!” screamed a woman, and Vick recoiled, then realised it wasn’t a warning but a sales pitch. “Best snake meat!”

  She waved something like a length of red rope in Tallow’s horrified face and Vick barged past, shoving people out of the way. Politeness got you nowhere in Westport. It didn’t get you far anywhere.

  “Never been nowhere so busy in my life,” gasped Tallow, dodging a stringy Suljuk woman juggling gourds. Westport was always too hot but with the ovens, braziers and cook-fires of a dozen different cultures burning all around them it was stifling.

  A bearded man loomed up with blades in his hands and Vick went for her pocket, but they were only skewers covered in singed lumps of meat.

  “You never tasted lamb so tender!” he roared in Tallow’s face.

  “Thanks, but—”

  “Don’t speak if silence will do,” grunted Vick, dragging him on. “To these folk, ‘no’ is the start of a conversation. There he is.”

  She caught a glimpse of Solumeo Shudra through the shimmering haze above a great pan of rice, three guards sticking close to him. Two were Styrians, big men but none too skilled by Vick’s reckoning. The third was a Southerner with busy eyes and a scarred sword through his belt. The most dangerous of the three. The most likely to move fast. But no one can be ready all the time. Especially in a crowd like this. All it would take was a moment to brush close. A quick movement of the blade. Then away into the chaos before anyone realised that the man who might’ve led Westport out of the Union was dead.

  “You sure about this?” Tallow caught her by the elbow, hissing in her ear over the rattle of pans, spoons, knives, the calls of the hawkers. “Lorsen told us to leave him be.”

  “If I always did what I was told I’d still be down a mine in Angland. Or dead.”

  Tallow raised his brows. “Or both?”

  “Probably.” She jerked her arm free and battled through a crowded archway after Shudra and his guards, into a spice-market as blinding, deafening and choking in its own way as a Valbeck mill. Baskets and barrels stood in teetering towers, shelves stacked with gleaming jars of oil. The colours were vivid in the sunlight, powders bright red, orange, yellow, leaves every shade of green and brown. Weights and coins rattled and clinked, men and women haggling in a dozen languages, screaming out that they had the best goods, the cheapest prices, the fairest measures.

  Shudra was ahead, talking with one of the traders in Styrian, then with another in some Kantic tongue, switching between the two and making them both laugh, shaking their hands, clapping their shoulders. Vick pretended to look at a stall covered in sticks of incense, hardly able to breathe for their reek, keeping one eye on Shudra through the seething crowd. He scooped up a handful of bright red buds from a basket and gave them a deep sniff, beamed at the merchant as though he never smelled anything so fine.

  “Man of the people, eh?” muttered Tallow.

  “Very likeable,” said Vick. That’s what made him such a threat. She felt the metal in her pocket knock against her stiff hip as she turned to follow him. “But knives kill likeable men just as easily as unlikeable ones.”

  “Easier, if anything.” Tallow shrugged as she glanced around at him. “The likeable ones don’t tend to be watching for it.”

  A great sedan chair was heaved in front of them and Vick ducked under it, nearly knocking one of the carriers over and making the whole thing teeter, pushing on into a flood of people while the passenger screamed abuse after her.

  There was a blood-curdling roar and Tallow jerked back from a cage, would’ve fallen if Vick hadn’t caught him. There was a damn tiger inside. She’d never seen one before, could hardly believe the size of it, the power of it, the weight of bright fur and muscle, twisting angrily with its huge teeth bared.

  “Bloody hell,” squeaked Tallow as Vick dragged him up by one wrist. It was an animal market. A screeching, hooting, snarling menagerie. A boy shook a sad little monkey in Vick’s face and she brushed it out of her way.

  “Fuck you, then!” he spat in a thick accent, and was gone among the faces.

  Vick bent down, trying to catch sight of Shudra through the forest of legs, then up on tiptoe. She waved towards a rooftop. One of her hired men was on a scaffold there, pretending to work at a crumbling chimney. He caught her eye, nodded at an alley.

  “This way.” Vick swung towards it, making sure not to run. Between the high buildings it was suddenly dark, slogans daubed on walls topped with rusted spikes. Eyes gleamed in doorways, watching them hurry past. A sunburned Northman slumped in a heap of rubbish shouted something, waving a bottle after them.

  Down steps three at a time, fetid water splashing with each footfall, the alley so narrow Vick had to turn sideways to slip through. Chanting echoed from up ahead, then a babble of raised voices, then they burst out onto an expanse of worn paving.

  The Great Temple of Westport rose up at one side, six tall turrets like the Valbeck chimneys, but capped with golden spikes rather than plumes of smoke.

  Platforms were scattered in front. Stages where men and women stood in robes, in rags, festooned with talismans and beads or brandishing books and staffs. Wailing in broken voices to little crescents of curious onlookers, tearing at the air with their hands, pointing skywards with clawing fingers, eyes popping with passion and certainty, promising salvation and threatening damnation. Each insisting all the rest were frauds, and they alone were the one with all the answers.

  Vick scorned them, pitied them, but underneath, well hidden, she envied them, too. Wondered what it would be like, to believe in something that much. Enough to die for it. Like Sibalt had. Like Malmer had. Like her brother had. How wonderful it must feel, to be certain. To know you stand on the right side, instead of just the winning one. But you can’t just choose to believe, can you?

  “What the hell is this place?” muttered Tallow.

  “Another market,” said Vick, staring around for Shudra and his men.

  “What are they selling?”

  “God.”

  Now she saw him, gently nodding as he listened to one of the calmer prophets, his bodyguards distracted, unwary.

  “This is the place,” said Vick. Just crowded enough. Plenty of escape routes. But so much confusion that a little more would hardly raise a brow. Not until it was far too late.

  She started towards Shudra, not too fast, not too slow, not looking right at him, no one to remark upon, easing one hand into her pocket. She strode past a woman stripped to her waist on a platform, on her knees in front of a crudely lettered sign, eyes brimming with ecstasy as she whipped herself, bare back a mass of new scratches and old scars.

  “Repent!” she was screeching with every crack of the whip. “Repent!” She twisted around, raised a trembling finger. “Repent, sister!”

  “Later,” said Vick as she strode past.

  And now she saw the hooded figure. Just where she’d guessed he’
d be. Walking towards Shudra, not too fast, not too slow, not looking right at him, no one to remark upon.

  “There,” she hissed.

  “He doesn’t look like much,” said Tallow.

  “He’d be a poor assassin if he stood out.” She cut sideways through the crowd then around a platform where a blistered old man was yelling at the heavens.

  She fell in behind the hooded figure, keeping pace as he slipped towards Shudra. Hoods are good for hiding you from others, but they hide them from you, too. She eased her brass knuckles on, feeling the reassuring tickle of cold metal between her fingers.

  She saw the flash of steel as the hooded man pulled something from his pocket, held it down beside his leg, half-hidden in the folds of his clothes.

  She quickened her pace, closing on him as he closed on Shudra, heart thumping hard now and her breath coming fast as she thought out how she’d do it.

  Shudra clapped as the prophet finished his sermon, turned smiling to say something to one of his guards, caught sight of the hooded man coming, frowned slightly.

  The hooded man stepped towards him, lifting the blade.

  Doesn’t matter how skilled, or tough, or big a man is if he doesn’t see you coming.

  Vick caught his wrist as the knife went up and hauled it down, pulling him backwards and punching him as hard as she could in the side of his knee.

  He gave a shocked gasp as his leg went from under him. She twisted his arm, knife clattering down, dragged him around as he fell and shoved him on his face on the stones, her knee in the small of his back.

  She hit him quick and hard, barking with each punch, in the kidney, in the armpit, in the side of his neck, and he quivered, back arched, gave a breathy wheeze then went limp.

  “Casamir dan Shenkt, I presume,” she forced through her gritted teeth. She looked up at Shudra, who was staring down at her with wide eyes, his guards only now fumbling out their weapons. “No need to worry. You’re safe.”

  Her hired men were shoving through the crowd, one of them snapping manacles shut on the assassin’s wrists while the other dragged him groaning up under one arm.

  “But you might want to head home and bar the door,” she said as she stood, frowning into the crowd for any other threats. “Maybe stay off the streets until the vote.”

  “You saved my life,” breathed Shudra. “Did the Styrians send you?”

  Vick snorted. “The Union sent me.” She was pleased to see he looked more shocked than ever as she nodded towards the assassin, swearing noisily as her men dragged him away. “The Styrians sent him.”

  Safe Hands

  “Your Majesty!” Wetterlant started forward, pressing his face to the bars. He was a handsome man with a playful head of dark curls, but something missing about the eyes. “Thank the Fates you’re here. They’ve been treating me like a dog!”

  “We’ve been treating you like a prisoner, Lord Wetterlant,” grated out Glokta as the Practical wheeled him to a halt and retreated into the shadows. Shadows were one thing of which there was no shortage down here. “This is the House of Questions, not an inn. These are some of the best quarters we have.”

  “You have a window.” High Justice Bruckel pointed through the bars at it. A tiny square of light, up near the ceiling. “He has a window!”

  “I barely get a window,” said Glokta.

  “You dare to talk to me about windows, you crippled remnant?” snarled Wetterlant. “Your Majesty, please, I know you are a reasonable man—”

  “I like to think so,” said Orso, stepping into the light. “I understand you have requested the king’s justice. My justice,” he corrected. He would still on occasion forget that he was the king, in spite of the phrase Your Majesty being flung at him five thousand times a day.

  “I have, Your Majesty! I fling myself upon your mercy! I am ill-used! I am falsely accused!”

  “Of the rape or the murder?”

  Wetterlant blinked. “Well… of everything! I’m an innocent man.”

  “The murder, as I understand it, was witnessed by… how many, Glokta?”

  “Seventeen witnesses, Your Majesty. All sworn statements.”

  “Seventeen bloody peasants!” Wetterlant gripped the bars in a sudden fury. “You’d take their word over mine?”

  “Look at the number of them,” said Orso. “Your groundskeeper has already been hanged on the strength of their testimony.”

  “It was all his idea, the bastard! I tried to talk him out of it. He threatened me!”

  Glokta sucked air disgustedly through his empty gums. “We’ve only been here a minute and you’ve gone from innocent to coerced.”

  “Few moments more,” murmured the high justice, “he’ll be the victim.”

  “Can we speak alone?” Wetterlant’s voice was growing increasingly shrill. “Man to man, you know. Orso, please—”

  “We were never on first-name terms,” snapped Orso. “I can’t see us getting there now, can you?”

  Wetterlant looked from Glokta to Bruckel to Orso, and evidently found little cause for encouragement. “Things have got entirely out of hand. It was simple high spirits.”

  “From innocence, to coercion, to high spirits,” said Glokta.

  “You understand, Your Majesty. You’ve embarrassed yourself often enough.”

  Orso stared at him. “Embarrassed myself, without doubt. But I never bloody raped anyone!” He found he had screamed the last words at the very top of his voice. The high justice took a nervous step back. Glokta ever so slightly narrowed his eyes. Wetterlant blinked, and his lower lip began to wobble.

  “What will become of me?” he whispered, eyes suddenly brimming with tears. It was a strange about-face, from frothing outrage to melodramatic self-pity in a breath.

  “The traditional punishment,” pattered the high justice. “For such crimes. Is hanging.”

  “I’m a member of the Open Council!”

  “You’ll find we all hang much the same,” said Glokta, softly.

  “You can’t hang a member of the Open Council!”

  “From innocence, to coercion, to high spirits, to immunity.” Orso leaned towards the bars. “You demanded the king’s justice. I mean to give it to you.” And he turned on his heel and stalked away.

  “Your Majesty!” wailed Wetterlant as the Practical wrestled Glokta’s chair around, one of its wheels shrieking. “Orso, please!”

  The door was shut behind them with a clunk like the fall of a headsman’s axe. Orso gave the faintest shiver as he strode away, deeply grateful to be on the right side of it.

  “Oh, hell,” hissed Bruckel. A formidable-looking woman, black hair streaked with iron grey and her angular dress incorporating more than a hint of armoured steel, ploughed towards them with the determination of a warship under full sail.

  “Who’s this?” muttered Orso.

  “The bastard’s mother,” grunted Glokta, from the corner of his mouth.

  “Oh, hell.”

  “Your Majesty.” Lady Wetterlant’s rigid curtsy bespoke barely contained fury.

  “Lady Wetterlant.” Orso had no idea of the right tone to strike and ended up trapped between a funeral guest and a boy caught stealing apples. “I… er… wish we were meeting under happier circumstances—”

  “You have the power to make them happier, Your Majesty. Do you plan to dismiss this ridiculous case?”

  He was almost tempted, just to avoid this interview. “I… fear I cannot. The evidence is compelling.”

  “The word of jealous commoners? My son is infamously used! Slandered by unscrupulous enemies. You would take their side?”

  “This is not a question of sides, madam, but of justice.”

  “You call this justice? He is imprisoned!”

  “He has,” said Bruckel, “a window.”

  Lady Wetterlant turned a glare on the high justice that might have frozen milk. “Mine is an old family, Your Majesty. We have many friends.”

  Orso winced as if into a gale. “A
great comfort for you, and them, I am sure, but it does not bear upon the guilt or innocence of your son.”

  “It bears upon the consequences of the verdict. It bears upon them quite considerably. You have a child, Your Eminence.”

  Glokta’s left eye gave an ugly twitch. “Is that a threat?”

  “A humble entreaty,” though made in the very tone one might have used for a threat. “I would ask you to look into your heart.”

  “Oh, mine’s a very small one. People who seek for anything of much significance in there are inevitably disappointed.”

  Lady Wetterlant wrinkled her lip. “Be in no doubt, I will do everything in my considerable power to ensure my child goes free.”

  “Everything within the law,” squeaked Bruckel. “I trust.”

  Lady Wetterlant eased towards him. “A mother’s love for her child transcends the law.”

  “Don’t count on it.” Glokta jerked his head at the Practical wheeling his chair, who shoved it forward with sufficient violence to run Lady Wetterlant down, had she not stumbled aside. Orso seized the opportunity to hurry past in his wake.

  “Do the right thing, Your Majesty!” Lady Wetterlant shrieked after him, her voice so sharp it made him hunch his shoulders. “I beg you, for my sake. For your sake. Do the right thing!”

  “I intend to,” muttered Orso. But he doubted he and Lady Wetterlant meant the same by that particular phrase. No one does. That’s the problem with it.

  The First of the Magi was standing in the gardens when Orso returned, among well-manicured beds in which the first blooms were just peeping from their buds, frowning towards the House of the Maker, its stark outline showing over the battlements of the creeper-covered palace wall.

  “Lord Bayaz.” Orso’s greeting came out with more than a dash of resentment. “Still with us?”

  “Your Majesty.” The First of the Magi smiled as he bowed, but his green eyes stayed hard. “I will soon be taking my leave, in fact.”

  “Oh? Oh.” Orso had been desperate to get rid of the old meddler, but now it came to it, he found he was sorry to see him go. Perhaps he wanted someone to blame. Now, as usual, he would have to blame himself.