He had tried, too little and too late, to make something of himself. The result was two hundred corpses gibbetted on the road to Valbeck and a dismissive note.
‘And then we have a wedding to plan. As soon as we can find someone of your type.’
Why did he bother? Why did he bother with anything?
He drained his glass. The best Osprian, but it was sawdust on his tongue. He heaved up a sigh that actually hurt.
He wanted to cry.
‘Pour me another, would you?’ he murmured.
Questions
‘It’s me,’ said Tallow, with his flair for stating the obvious. Vick had known it would be him. Wasn’t as if she got a lot of visitors.
She took his shoulder and slipped him past into the narrow hall. Not much room but she was thinner even than usual after Valbeck and Tallow had always been a scrap of nothing. She glanced around the ill-lit yard outside. A habit from the camps, kept ever since the camps. But there was no one watching. The only sound was the dripping from a broken gutter, high above.
‘You all right?’ she asked Tallow as she shouldered the door shut and slid both the heavy bolts.
‘You were the one stuck in the city,’ he said.
‘Don’t worry about me.’
‘’Course not,’ he said, giving his shoes a sad grin. ‘You’re carved out o’ wood. Nothing touches you.’
He was more like her brother every time she saw him. Or maybe it was her memory that was changing. Making her brother more like Tallow. So she could save him this time around, maybe. How pathetic would that be? Memory could betray you, she’d seen it a hundred times. Chop things about until they suited you better. You have to be on guard all the time. Against everyone else. Against yourself.
She turned away, making sure he didn’t catch any hint of what she was thinking. Show them a weakness, they’ll find a way to use it.
‘You see your sister?’ she asked as she led him from the cramped hall into the cramped dining room.
‘I saw her.’
‘She’s well?’
Tallow nodded in a way that seemed to say no thanks to you. Or maybe she just thought it did. She nudged a chair out with her boot and he slipped into it, around the squares board. Wasn’t easy, even thin as he was.
‘What’s this?’
She realised, with an odd little stab of annoyance, that he was looking down at Sibalt’s book. The Life of Dab Sweet. Open at that page. The one it fell open at. That etching of a lone rider, looking out across the endless grass and the endless sky.
Felt decidedly unpleasant, having someone else look at it. Like they were looking inside her head, at her secret dreams. ‘It’s the Far Country,’ she said, softly.
‘Pretty.’
She should’ve thrown the damn thing away. She reached out and snapped it shut. ‘It’s a made-up picture in a book full of lies.’ And she tossed it on the dusty windowsill.
Tallow shrank down into his shoulders. ‘Guess so.’
She felt a little bad, then, for snapping. ‘Can I get you something?’ she grunted. That was what you were supposed to do, when you had a guest. However unwilling a guest.
‘What have you got?’
She thought about that for a moment. ‘Nothing.’
‘I’ll take a double serving o’ that, then.’ Tallow glanced about her narrow, bare apartment with those big eyes of his, the walls mottled with damp around the dirty window. ‘So this is what you do it for?’
‘What?’
‘All this.’ He raised his arms and let them hopelessly drop. Had to be admitted, looking with his fresh eyes, it was less than impressive. Vick was only here when she had nowhere else to be.
‘Would you feel happier if I was living like a queen?’
‘I’d understand it, at least.’ He leaned towards her across the narrow table. If she’d leaned towards him the same way, they’d have butted heads in the middle. ‘They hanged two hundred people, you know. ’Cause of what we did.’
‘Two hundred traitors.’ She poked at the table under his face with her pointing finger. ‘Because of what they did. How many died in their idiot uprising? Don’t fool yourself there was some right side to this. Don’t fool yourself there was a noble path we didn’t take. We took the only path there was. Regret it if you please, but I won’t!’ She realised he was sat back now, and she was sat forward, almost shouting. She lowered her voice with an effort. Less furious denial, more statement of fact. ‘I won’t. Here.’ She slipped the coin from her pocket and put it down on the table between them with a deliberate snap. The head of Jezal the First frowned up from a freshly minted golden twenty-mark piece.
‘What’s this for?’ asked Tallow.
‘You did a good job in Valbeck. You moved quick. You took the initiative.’
‘I just did what you told me.’
‘You did it well.’
He stared down at that golden coin. ‘Can’t say I feel too proud of myself.’
‘I only care about what you do. How you feel about it is up to you. But leave the coin, if it bothers you that much.’
He swallowed, sharp knobble on the front of his throat shifting, then he reached out and swept the coin off the table. Just like she’d known he would. She had to smile at that. Hell, but he was like her brother.
‘We’re not all carved out o’ wood,’ he grunted.
‘Give it a while,’ she said. ‘You’ll get there.’
‘Inquisitor Teufel!’ Glokta grinned as though her visit was a delightful surprise rather than a meeting he’d demanded and she couldn’t refuse. He patted the bench beside him. ‘Do sit.’
Sitting close to other people always made her uncomfortable. But then she’d slept next to strangers in the camps. Packed together in the stinking straw like piglets in a litter. Better that than freeze. Better this than offend His Eminence.
She sat, looking out across the park, tugging her coat tight about her. It was a clear, crisp day, the odd gust of wind sweeping ripples in the surface of the lake, bringing flurries of leaves down from the trees. Stirring them about the black boots of the watchful Practicals.
‘I used to spend a great deal of time on this very bench.’ Glokta squinted into the autumn brightness. ‘Just watching the water. My physicians say I should get into the sun more.’
‘It’s a very … restful spot,’ said Vick. Small talk had never really been her strength.
‘As if either one of us will find rest this side of the grave.’ Glokta gave her his hollow smile. ‘You did an excellent job in Valbeck. You showed quick thinking, courage and loyalty. Superior Pike was most impressed, and he is a hard man to impress.’
It wasn’t lost on Vick that he was giving her the same compliments she’d just given Tallow. Some people you reel in by making them think they need you. More often, it’s making them think you need them. People want to feel good about themselves. Want to feel needed. Vick wondered if she’d been reeled in already. Long ago.
She left it at a simple, ‘Thank you, Your Eminence.’
‘I am coming to rely on you more and more. You really are the only person I feel I can entirely trust.’
Vick wondered how many other people the Arch Lector had fed that same lie to. The idea that he might entirely trust anyone was sugaring the pudding too much, but she let it go. She let them both believe they both believed it.
‘You’ve earned a reward,’ he went on. ‘Is there anything you need?’
Vick didn’t like rewards. Not even ones she’d earned. They felt too much like debts she might have to repay. She thought about saying, Only to serve, or some patriotic guff, but that would’ve been her sugaring the pudding too much. She settled for, ‘No.’
‘Let me get you some better lodgings, at least.’
‘What’s wrong with the ones I have?’