"Last Argument of Kings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Abercrombie Joe)

Bad Debts

Being kind, the place stank. It would seem that a few hundred live pigs do not smell so sweet as one would expect. The floor of the shadowy warehouse was slick with their stinking slurry, the thick air full of their desperate noise. They honked and squealed, grunted and jostled each other in their writhing pens, sensing, perhaps, that the slaughterman’s knife was not so very far away. But, as Morrow had observed, Glokta was not one to be put off by the noise, or the knives, or, for that matter, an unpleasant odour. I spend my days wading through the metaphorical filth, after all. Why not the real thing? The slippery footing was more of a problem. He hobbled with tiny steps, his leg burning. Imagine arriving at my meeting caked in pig dung. That would hardly project the right image of fearsome ruthlessness, would it?

He saw Morrow now, leaning on one of the pens. Just like a farmer admiring his prize-winning herd. Glokta limped up beside him, boots squelching, wincing and breathing hard, sweat trickling down his back. “Well, Morrow, you know just how to make a girl feel special, I’ll give you that.”

Marovia’s secretary grinned up at him, a small man with a round face and eyeglasses. “Superior Glokta, may I first say that I have nothing but the highest respect for your achievements in Gurkhul, your methods in negotiation, and—”

“I did not come here to exchange pleasantries, Morrow. If that’s all your business I can think of sweeter-smelling venues.”

“And sweeter companions too, I do not doubt. To business, then. These are trying times.”

“I’m with you there.”

“Change. Uncertainty. Unease amongst the peasantry—”

“A little more than unease, I would say, wouldn’t you?”

“Rebellion, then. Let us hope that the Closed Council’s trust in Colonel Luthar will be justified, and he will stop the rebels outside the city.”

“I wouldn’t trust his corpse to stop an arrow, but I suppose the Closed Council have their reasons.”

“They always do. Though, of course, they do not always agree with each other.” They never agree about anything. It’s practically a rule of the damn institution. “But it is those that serve them,” and Morrow peered significantly over the rims of his eye-glasses, “that carry the burden for their lack of accord. I feel that we, in particular, have been stepping on each other’s toes rather too much for either of our comfort.”

“Huh,” sneered Glokta, working his numb toes inside his boot. “I do hope your feet aren’t too bruised. I could never live with myself if I caused you to limp. Might you have a solution in mind?”

“You could say that.” He smiled down at the pigs, watching them squirm and grunt and clamber over one another. “We had hogs on the farm, where I grew up.” Mercy. Anything but the life story. “It was my responsibility to feed them. Rising in the morning, so early it was still dark, breath smoking in the cold.” Oh, he paints a vivid picture! Young Master Morrow, up to his knees in filth, watching his pigs gorge themselves, and dreaming of escape. A brave new life in the glittering city! Morrow grinned up at him, dim light twinkling on the lenses of his spectacles. “You know, these things will eat anything. Even cripples.”

Ah. So that’s it.

It was then that Glokta became aware of a man moving furtively towards them from the far end of the shed. A burly-looking man in a ragged coat, keeping to the shadows. He had his arm pressed tightly by his side, hand tucked up in his sleeve. Just as if he were hiding a knife up there, and not doing it very well. Better just to walk up with a smile on your face and the knife in plain view. There are a hundred reasons to carry a blade in a slaughterhouse. But there can only ever be one reason to try and hide one.

He glanced over his shoulder, wincing as his neck clicked. Another man, much like the first, was creeping up from that direction. Glokta raised his eyebrows. “Thugs? How very unoriginal.”

“Unoriginal, perhaps, but I think you will find them quite effective.”

“So I’m to be slaughtered in the slaughterhouse, eh, Morrow? Butchered at the butchers! Sand dan Glokta, breaker of hearts, winner of the Contest, hero of the Gurkish war, shat out the arses of a dozen different pigs!” He snorted with laughter and had to wipe some snot off his top lip.

“I’m so glad you enjoy the irony,” muttered Morrow, looking slightly put out.

“Oh, I do. Fed to the swine. So obvious I can honestly say it’s not what I expected.” He gave a long sigh. “But not expected and not planned for are two quite different things.”

The bowstring made no sound over the clamour of the hogs. The thug seemed at first to slip, to drop his shining knife and fall on his side for no reason. Then Glokta saw the bolt poking from his side. Not too great a surprise, of course, and yet it always seems like magic.

The hired man at the other end of the warehouse took a shocked step back, never seeing Practical Vitari slip silently over the rail of the empty pen behind him. There was a flash of metal in the darkness as she slashed the tendons at the back of his knee and brought him down, his cry quickly shut off as she pulled her chain tight round his neck.

Severard dropped down easily from the rafters off to Glokta’s left and squelched into the muck. He sauntered over, flatbow across his shoulder, kicked the fallen knife off into the darkness and looked down at the man he had shot. “I owe you five marks,” he called to Frost. “Missed his heart, damn it. Liver, maybe?”

“Lither,” grunted the albino, emerging from the shadows at the far end of the warehouse. The man struggled up to his knees, clutching at the shaft through his side, twisted face half crusted with filth. Frost lifted his stick as he passed and dealt him a crunching blow on the back of the head, putting a sharp end to his cries and knocking him face down in the muck. Vitari, meanwhile, had wrestled her man onto the floor and was kneeling on his back, dragging at the chain round his neck. His struggling grew weaker, and weaker, and stopped. A little more dead meat on the floor of the slaughterhouse.

Glokta looked back to Morrow. “How quickly things can change, eh, Harlen? One minute everyone wants to know you. The next?” He tapped sadly at his useless foot with the filthy toe of his cane. “You’re fucked. It’s a tough lesson.” I should know.

Marovia’s secretary backed away, tongue darting over his lips, one hand held out in front of him. “Now hold on—”

“Why?” Glokta pushed out his bottom lip. “Do you really think we can grow to love each other again after all this?”

“Perhaps we can come to some—”

“I’m not upset that you tried to kill me. But to make such a pathetic effort at it? We’re professionals, Morrow. It’s an insult, that you thought this might work.”

“I’m hurt,” muttered Severard.

“Wounded,” sang Vitari, chain jingling in the darkness.

“Deethly othended,” grunted Frost, herding Morrow back towards the pen.

“You should have stuck to licking Hoff’s big drunk arse. Or maybe you should have stayed on the farm, with your pigs. Tough work, perhaps, in the early morning, and so on. But it’s a living.”

“Just wait! Just wuurgh—”

Severard grabbed Morrow’s shoulder from behind, stabbed him through the side of his neck and chopped his throat out as calmly as if he was gutting a fish.

Blood showered over Glokta’s boots and he stumbled back, wincing as pain shot up his ruined leg. “Shit!” he hissed through his gums, nearly stumbling and falling on his arse in the filth, only managing to stay upright by clinging desperately to the fence beside him. “Couldn’t you just have strangled him?”

Severard shrugged. “Same result, isn’t it?” Morrow slid to his knees, eye-glasses skewed across his face, one hand clutching at his cut neck while blood bubbled out into his shirt collar.

Glokta watched the clerk tip onto his back, one leg kicking at the floor, his scraping heel leaving long streaks in the stinking muck. Alas for the pigs on the farm. They will never now see young master Morrow coming back over the hill, returned from his brave life in the glittering city, his breath smoking in the cold, cold morning…

The secretary’s convulsions grew gentler, and gentler, and he lay still. Glokta clung to the rail for a moment, watching the corpse. When was it exactly that I became… this? By small degrees, I suppose. One act presses hard upon another, on a path we have no choice but to follow, and each time there are reasons. We do what we must, we do what we are told, we do what is easiest. What else can we do but solve one sordid problem at a time? Then one day we look up and find that we are… this.

He looked at the blood gleaming on his boot, wrinkled his nose and wiped it off on Morrow’s trouser leg. Ah, well. I would love to spend more time on philosophy, but I have officials to bribe, and noblemen to blackmail, and votes to rig, and secretaries to murder, and lovers to threaten. So many knives to juggle. And as one clatters to the filthy floor, another must go up, blade spinning razor sharp above our heads. It never gets any easier.

“Our magical friends are back in town.”

Severard lifted his mask and scratched behind it. “The Magi?”

“The First of the bastards, no less, and his bold company of heroes. Him, and his slinking apprentice, and that woman. The Navigator too. Keep an eye on them, and see if there’s a piglet we can separate from the herd. It’s high time we knew what they were about. Do you still have your charming house, by the water?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Perhaps for once we can get ahead of the game, and when his Eminence demands answers we can have them to hand.” And I can finally earn a pat on the head from my master.

“What shall we do with these?” asked Vitari, jerking her spiky head towards the corpses.

Glokta sighed. “The hogs will eat anything, apparently.”

The city was growing dark as Glokta dragged his ruined leg through the emptying streets and up towards the Agriont. The shopkeepers were closing their doors, the householders were lighting their lamps, candlelight spilling out into the dusky alleyways through chinks around the shutters. Happy families settling down to happy dinners, no doubt. Loving fathers with their lovely wives, their adorable children, their full and meaningful lives. My heartfelt congratulations.

He pressed his remaining teeth into his sore gums with the effort of maintaining his pace, sweat starting to dampen his shirt, his leg burning more and more with every lurching step. But I’m not stopping for this useless lump of dead meat. The pain crept up from ankle to knee, from knee to hip, from hip all the way up his twisted spine and into his skull. All this effort just to kill a mid-level administrator, who worked no more than a few buildings away from the House of Questions in any case. It’s a damn waste of my time, is what it is, it’s a damn—

“Superior Glokta?”

A man had stepped up, respectfully, his face in shadow. Glokta squinted at him. “Do I—”

It was well done, there was no denying it. He was not even aware of the other man until the bag was over his head and one of his arms was twisted behind his back, pushing him helplessly forward. He stumbled, fumbled his cane and heard it clatter to the cobbles.

“Aargh!” A searing spasm shot through his back as he tried unsuccessfully to drag his arm free, and he was forced to hang limp, gasping with pain inside the bag. In a moment they had his wrists tied and he felt a powerful hand shoved under each of his armpits. He was marched away with great speed, one man on each side, his feet barely scraping on the cobbles as they went. The fastest I’ve walked in a good long while, anyway. Their grip was not rough, but it was irresistible. Professionals. An altogether better class of thug than Morrow stretched to. Whoever ordered this is no fool. So who did order it?

Sult himself, or one of Sult’s enemies? One of his rivals in the race for the throne? High Justice Marovia? Lord Brock? Anyone on the entire Open Council? Or could it be the Gurkish? They have never been my closest friends. The banking house of Valint and Balk, perhaps, chosen finally to call in their debt? Might I have seriously misjudged young Captain Luthar, even? Or could it simply be Superior Goyle, no longer keen to share his job with the cripple? It was quite the list, now that he was forced to consider it.

He heard the footfalls slapping around him. Narrow alleys. He had no idea how far they had come. His breath echoed in the bag, rasping, throaty. The heart thumps, the skin prickles with cold sweat. Excited. Scared, even. What might they want with me? People are not snatched from the street in order to be given promotions, or confections, or tender kisses, more’s the pity. I know why people are snatched from the street. Few better.

Down a set of steps, the toes of his boots scuffing helplessly against the treads. The sound of a heavy door being heaved shut. Footsteps echoing in a tiled corridor. Another door closing. He felt himself dumped unceremoniously in a chair. And now, no doubt, for better or worse, we shall find out…

The bag was snatched suddenly from his head and Glokta blinked as harsh light stabbed at his eyes. A white room, too bright for comfort. A type of room with which I am sadly familiar. And yet it looks so much uglier from this side of the table. Someone was sitting opposite. Or the blurry outline of a someone. He closed one eye and peered through the other as his vision adjusted.

“Well,” he murmured. “What a surprise.”

“A pleasant one, I hope.”

“I suppose we’ll see.” Carlot dan Eider had changed. And it would seem that exile has not entirely disagreed with her. Her hair had grown back, not all the way, perhaps, but more than far enough to manage a fetching style. The bruises round her throat had faded, there were only the very faintest of marks where her cheek had been covered in scabs. She had swapped traitor’s sack-cloth for the travelling clothes of a lady of means, and looked extremely well in them. Jewels twinkled on her fingers, and around her neck. She seemed every bit as rich and sleek as when they first met. That, and she was smiling. The smile of the player who holds all the cards. Why is it that I cannot learn? Never do a good turn. Especially not for a woman.

A small pair of scissors lay on the table before her, within easy reach. Of the type that rich women use to trim their nails. But just as good for trimming the skin from the soles of a man’s feet, for trimming his nostrils wider, for trimming his ears off, strip by slow strip…

Glokta found it decidedly difficult to move his eyes away from those polished little blades, shining in the bright lamplight. “I thought I told you never to come back,” he said, but his voice lacked its customary authority.

“You did. But then I thought… why ever not? I have assets in the city that I was not willing to relinquish, and some business opportunities that I am keen to take advantage of.” She took up the scissors, trimmed the thinnest scrap from the corner of one already perfectly-shaped thumbnail, and frowned at the results. “And it’s hardly as though you’ll be telling anyone I’m here, now, is it?”

“My concerns for your safety are all laid to rest,” grunted Glokta. My concerns for my own, alas, grow with every moment. A man is never so crippled, after all, that he could not be more so. “Did you really need to go to all this trouble just to share your travel arrangements?”

Her smile grew somewhat broader, if anything. “I hope my men didn’t hurt you. I did ask them to be gentle. At least for the time being.”

“A gentle kidnapping is still a kidnapping, though, don’t you find?”

“Kidnapping is such an ugly word. Why don’t we think of it as an invitation difficult to resist? At least I let you keep your clothes, no?”

“That particular favour is a mercy to us both, believe me. An invitation to what, might I ask, beyond a painful manhandling and a brief conversation?”

“I’m hurt that you need more. But there was something else, since you mention it.” She pared away another sliver of nail with her scissors, and her eyes rolled up to his. “A little debt left over, from Dagoska. I fear that I will not sleep easily until it is repaid.”

A few weeks in a black cell and a choking to the point of death? What form of repayment might that earn me? “Please, then,” hissed Glokta through his gums, his eyelid flickering as he watched those blades snip, snip, snip. “I can scarcely stand the suspense.”

“The Gurkish are coming.”

He paused for a moment, wrong-footed. “Coming here?”

“Yes. To Midderland. To Adua. To you. They have built a fleet, in secret. They began building it after the last war, and now it is complete. Ships to rival anything the Union has.” She tossed her scissors down on the table and gave a long sigh. “Or so I hear.”

The Gurkish fleet, just as my midnight visitor Yulwei told me. Rumours and ghosts, perhaps. But rumours are not always lies. “When will they arrive?”

“I really couldn’t say. The mounting of such an expedition is a colossal work of organisation. But then the Gurkish have always been so very much better organised than us. That’s what makes doing business with them such a pleasure.”

My own dealings with them have been less than delightful, but still. “In what numbers will they come?”

“A very great number, I imagine.”

Glokta snorted. “Forgive me if I regard the words of a proven traitor with a certain scepticism, especially as you are rather thin on the details.”

“Have it your way. You’re here to be warned, not convinced. I owe you that much, I think, for giving me my life.”

How wonderfully old-fashioned of you. “And that is all?”

She spread her hands. “Can a lady not trim her nails without giving offence?”

“Could you not simply have written?” snapped Glokta, “and spared me the chafing on my underarms?”

“Oh, come now. You never struck me as a man to bridle at a little chafing. Besides, it has given us the chance to renew a thoroughly enjoyable friendship. And you have to allow me my little moment of triumph, after what you put me through.”

I suppose that I can. I’ve had less charming threats, and at least she has better taste than to meet in a pig sty. “I can simply walk away, then?”

“Did anyone pick up a cane?” No one spoke. Eider gave a happy smile, showing Glokta her perfect white teeth. “You can crawl away, then. How does that sound?”

Better than floating to the top of the canal after a few days on the bottom, bloated up like a great pale slug and smelling like all the graves in the city. “As good as I’ll get, I suppose. I do wonder, though. What is to stop me having my Practicals follow the scent of expensive perfume after we are done here and finish what they started?”

“It is so very like you to say such a thing.” She sighed. “I should inform you that an old and trustworthy business acquaintance of mine has a sealed letter in his possession. In the event of my death, it will be sent to the Arch Lector, laying out to him the exact nature of my sentence in Dagoska.”

Glokta sucked sourly at his gums. Just what I need, another knife to juggle. “And what will occur if, entirely independently from my actions, you succumb to the rot? Or a house falls on you? Or you choke on a slice of bread?”

She opened her eyes very wide, as though the thought had only just occurred. “In any of those cases… I suppose… the letter would be sent anyway, despite your innocence.” She gave a helpless laugh. “The world is nothing like as fair a place as it should be, in my opinion, and I daresay that the natives of Dagoska, the enslaved mercenaries, and the butchered Union soldiers who you made fight for your lost cause would concur.” She smiled as sweetly as if they were discussing gardening. “Things would probably have been far simpler for you if you’d had me strangled, after all.”

“You read my mind.” But it is far too late now. I did a good thing, and so, of course, there is a price to be paid.

“So tell me, before we part ways again, for what, we can both only hope, will be the last time—are you involved with this business of the vote?”

Glokta felt his eye twitch. “My duties would seem to touch upon it.” Indeed it occupies my every waking hour.

Carlot dan Eider leaned forward to a conspiratorial distance, her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands. “Who will be the next king of the Union, do you suppose? Will it be Brock? Isher? Will it be someone else?”

“A little early to say. I’m working on it.”

“Off you hobble, then.” She pushed out her bottom lip. “And it’s probably better if you don’t mention our meeting to his Eminence.” She nodded, and Glokta felt the bag forced back over his face.