‘I know exactly what’s wrong with them. I used to live in them. When I served my predecessor, Arch Lector Sult.’
‘They serve my purposes.’
‘They served mine, but I didn’t mind getting better ones. There are people who take far more for far less.’
‘That’s up to them.’
He smiled as though he knew exactly what she was thinking. Had expected it, even. ‘Perhaps you somehow feel, if you do not take the rewards for your work, it is as if you have not done the work? Because we both know you did the work.’
‘I’ll take new lodgings when the job’s done, Your Eminence.’ She watched a gardener rake leaves into a barrow. A thankless task, every breeze bringing more onto the narrow patch he’d already cleared. ‘Things could’ve gone much better in Valbeck. Risinau escaped. Judge as well. He may be dangerous. She most definitely is. Many more left the city before the crown prince arrived, and I don’t think the outcome will have made them any less eager for their Great Change.’
‘Nor do I. The Breakers have been … broken … only for the time being.’
‘Risinau was a fat dreamer. I don’t believe he planned the uprising on his own.’
‘I am inclined to agree.’ The Arch Lector swept the park with his narrowed eyes, lowered his voice a cautious fraction. ‘But I am beginning to suspect the roots of our problem may lie at the opposite end of the social scale.’ And he shifted his glance significantly sideways. The gilded dome of the new Lords’ Round peeped glinting over the trees.
‘The nobles?’
‘They were taxed heavily to pay for the king’s wars in Styria.’ Glokta scarcely moved his thin lips as he spoke. ‘They demanded reforms to compensate, acquired a great deal of common land. Many lined their pockets handsomely. Nonetheless, most of the Open Council recently signed a letter of complaint to the king.’
‘Complaining of what?’
‘The usual things. Not enough power. Not enough money.’
‘Demanding what?’
‘The usual things. More money. More power.’
‘You’re suspicious of the men who signed this letter?’
‘Absolutely.’ Glokta reached up with his handkerchief to dab at his weepy eye. ‘But far less than I am of the ones who did not.’
‘Names, Your Eminence?’
‘The Brocks I can excuse, they have been rather busy in the North. But the young Lords Heugen, Barezin and above all Isher smile entirely too much. They lost out when the king was elected, or at any rate their fathers did. They have the largest grievances, but make no complaints.’
‘You think one of them could have been behind the uprising?’
‘It is the nature of men, especially ambitious men, to be unhappy. Happy ones make me nervous. And Isher, in particular, is cunning. He was involved in the drafting of these new land rules and they have made him exceptionally rich.’
‘Worries at both ends of the social scale,’ murmured Vick. ‘Troubled times.’
Glokta watched that gardener struggle to clear the unclearable lawn. ‘They always are.’
Civilisation
The deck creaked under her feet, the sailcloth snapped with the wind, seabirds wheeled and squawked in the salt air above.
‘By the dead,’ muttered Rikke.
The city was a vast cream-coloured crescent, stretching around the wind-whipped, grey-green bay. A mass of walls, and bridges, and endless buildings crusted together like barnacles at low tide, rivers and canals glinting dully among them. Towers stuck up above, and great chimneys tall as towers, their brown smoke smeared across the skies.
She’d heard it was big. Everyone had heard that. If anyone went to Adua, they’d come back scratching their heads and saying, ‘It’s big,’ but she’d never expected it to be this big. You might’ve fitted a hundred Uffriths into it and still had room for a hundred Carleons. Her eye couldn’t make sense of the scale. The number of buildings, the number of ships, the number of people, like ants in an anthill. A thousand anthills. The thought of it was making her head spin. Or spin more, maybe. She looked down at the deck, rubbing her temples. She’d been feeling insignificant enough already.
‘By the dead,’ she muttered again, puffing out her cheeks.
‘Adua,’ said the man standing next to her. ‘The centre of the world.’ He was a thickset old fellow with heavy brows, a short grey beard and a bald head looked like it had been beaten out of iron on an anvil, all planes and knobbles. ‘The poets call her the City of White Towers, though they tend towards the grey-brown these days. Beautiful, isn’t she, from a distance?’ He leaned nearer. ‘Believe me, though, she stinks when you get close.’
‘Most things do,’ muttered Rikke, frowning at Leo. The Young Lion, grinning into the wind with his carefree friends, the bloody young lads together, the bloody young heroes, the bloody young pricks. She sucked some chagga juice out of her gums and sent it spinning into the churned-up water.
She kept thinking of things she could’ve said to him. Pearls of wit and wisdom like he’d never get from those idiots. He’d have died in the Circle if it wasn’t for her Long Eye. And he treated her as if she was an embarrassment.
She was working up to being properly angry when he threw back his head and gave that big, open, honest laugh of his, and all she felt was sad they’d fallen out, and jealous he wasn’t laughing with her, and let down by him and by herself and by the world. The truth was, she bloody missed him. But she was damned if she was saying sorry. It should be him saying sorry to her, on bended knees. But how could you hate a man with an arse like—
He glanced towards her and she made sure she looked away. Him catching her looking would be like he’d scored a point somehow. But looking away from Leo meant looking back to this bald bastard, who was still considering her as if he found her of quite some interest.
‘Who the hell are you, anyway?’ she asked. Somewhat rude, but her failed romance and her endlessly hot and smarting eye and a week or two of seasickness had worn down her patience.
His smile only grew wider. A hungry smile, like a fox at the henhouse. ‘My name is Bayaz.’
‘Like the First of the Magi?’
‘Exactly like. I am he.’
Rikke blinked. Perhaps she should’ve punched him for a liar. But there was something in his glittering green eyes that made her believe it. ‘Well, there’s a thing.’
‘And you are Rikke. The Dogman’s daughter.’ She stared at him, and he smiled back. ‘Knowledge is the root of power. In my business, you have to know who’s who.’
‘What is your business?’
He leaned close, almost hissing the word. ‘Everything.’
‘That’s quite some area of responsibility.’
‘Sometimes, I admit, I think I should have aimed lower.’
‘Shouldn’t you have a staff?’
‘I left it at home. However big a chest you bring, it never quite fits in. And magic, you know, it’s all rather …’ And he squinted thoughtfully towards the city. ‘Out of fashion, these days.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ she said, shifting her chagga pellet across her mouth and chomping it on the other side. ‘I’ve been blessed with the Long Eye.’ At that moment, she glimpsed the faintest phantom of a sinking ship, its mast tipping towards them as it foundered on a stormy sea. She cleared her throat, doing her best to ignore the ghostly sailors toppling into the brine. ‘Or possibly cursed with it.’
‘Fascinating. And what have you seen?’
‘Frustrating glimpses, in the main. Ghosts and shadows. An arrow and a sword. A black pit in the sky with the knowing of everything inside. I saw a wolf eat the sun and a lion eat the wolf then a lamb eat the lion then an owl eat the lamb.’
‘And what does that portend?’
‘I’m entirely fucked if I know.’
‘What do you see when you look at me?’