Or a big enough stone to start the landslideperhaps the confession of someone suitably close to him. I understand that you are expert at obtaining them. The High Justice peered at Glokta from under his heavy brows. Was I misinformed?
I cannot conjure evidence from thin air, your Worship.
Those lost in the desert must take the chances they are offered, however slender. Find evidence, and bring it to me. Then I can act, and not one moment before. You understand that I cannot take any risks for you. It is difficult to trust a man who chose his master, and now chooses another.
Chose? Glokta felt his eyelid twitching again. If you believe that I chose any part of the pitiful shadow of a life you see before you, you are very much mistaken. I chose glory and success. The box did not contain what was written on the lid.
The world is full of tragic tales. Marovia walked to the window, turning his back and staring out at the darkening sky. Especially now. You can hardly expect them to make any difference to a man of my experience. I wish you good day.
Further comment seems pointless. Glokta rocked forwards, pushed himself painfully up to standing with the aid of his cane, and limped for the door. But the tiniest glimmer of hope has come creeping into the dank cellar of my despair I need only obtain a confession to High Treason from the head of his Majestys Inquisition
And Superior! Why can no one ever finish talking before I get up? Glokta turned back into the room, his spine burning. If someone close to you is talking, you need to shut them up. Now. Only a fool would consider uprooting treason from the Closed Council before he had cut the weeds from his own lawn.
Oh, you need not worry about my garden, your Worship. Glokta treated the High Justice to his most repulsive grin. I am even now sharpening my shears.
Charity
Adua burned.
The two westernmost districtsthe Three Farms, at the south-western corner of the city, and the Arches, further northwere hacked with black wounds. Smoke was still pouring up from some of them, great columns lit in faint orange near the base. They spread out in oily smears, dragged away to the west by a stiff wind, drawing a muddy curtain across the setting sun.
Jezal watched in solemn silence, his hands bunched into numb fists on the parapet of the Tower of Chains. There was no sound up here but for the wind fumbling at his ears and, just occasionally, the slightest hint of distant battle. A war cry, or the screams of the wounded. Or perhaps only a sea-bird calling, high on the breeze. Jezal wished for a maudlin moment that he were a bird, and could simply fly from the tower and off over the Gurkish pickets, away from this nightmare. But escape would not be so easy.
Casamirs Wall was first breached three days ago, Marshal Varuz was explaining in a monotonous drone. We drove back the first two assaults, and held the Three Farms that night, but the next day there was another breach, and another. This damn fire-powder has changed all the bloody rules. A wall that would have stood a week they can bring down in an hour.
Khalul always loved to tinker with his dust and his bottles, muttered Bayaz, unhelpfully.
They were in the Three Farms in force that night, and carried the gates into the Arches soon afterwards. Ever since, the whole western part of the city has been one running battle. The tavern where Jezal had celebrated his victory over Filio in the Contest was in that district. The tavern where he had sat with West and Jalenhorm, Kaspa and Brint, before they went away to the North, and he to the Old Empire. Was that building now burning? Was it already a blackened shell?
Were fighting them hand to hand in the streets by daylight. Were mounting raids in the darkness, every night. Not a stride of ground is given up without it being soaked with Gurkish blood. Perhaps Varuz hoped to be inspiring, but he was only succeeding in making Jezal feel sick. The streets of his capital soaked in blood, whoevers blood it might have been, was hardly his first aim as king of the Union. Arnaults Wall still stands firm, though there are fires burning in the centre of town. The flames almost reached the Four Corners last night, but the rain doused them down, at least for now. Were fighting for every street, every house, every room. Just as you said we should, your Majesty.
Good, Jezal managed to croak, but he almost choked on the word.
When he so blithely turned down General Malzagurts terms, he was not sure what he had been expecting. He had dimly imagined that someone would soon come to the rescue. That something heroic would occur. Only now the bloody business was well underway, and there was no sign of instant deliverance. Probably there was heroism going on down there in the smoke. Soldiers hauling injured comrades to safety through the sooty darkness. Nurses stitching wounds by screaming candlelight. Townsfolk plunging into burning buildings to drag out coughing children. Heroism of an everyday and unglamorous kind. A kind that made no difference to the overall outcome.
Are those our ships in the bay? he asked quietly, already afraid of the answer.
I wish they were, your Majesty. I never thought Id say it, but they have the best of us by sea. You never saw so many damn ships. Even if most of our navy werent ferrying the army back from Angland, Im not sure what they could do. As it is, the men will have to be landed outside the city. Its a damned inconvenience, and it could get to be a great deal more than that. The docks are a weak spot. Sooner or later they may try to land men there.
Jezal looked nervously towards the water. Armies of Gurkish, pouring from their ships and into the heart of the city. The Middleway cut straight through the centre of Adua from the bay to the Agriont. A road invitingly wide enough to march an entire Gurkish legion straight down in a twinkling. He shut his eyes and tried to breathe evenly.
Before the arrival of the Gurkish he had hardly been able to have a moments silence for the opinions of his councillors. Now that he actually needed advice, the torrent had suddenly run dry. Sult rarely appeared in the Closed Council, and then only to glare at Marovia. The High Justice himself had little to offer beyond bemoaning the fix they were all in. Even Bayaz stock of historical examples seemed finally to be exhausted. Jezal was left to carry the responsibility alone, and he was finding it quite a weight. He supposed it was a good deal more unpleasant for those that were actually wounded, or homeless, or killed, but that was slender consolation.
How many are dead already? he found himself asking, like a child picking at a scab. How many have we lost?
The fighting along Casamirs Wall was fierce. The fighting throughout the occupied districts has been fiercer yet. Casualties on both sides are heavy. I would guess at a thousand dead at least on our side.
Jezal swallowed sour spit. He thought about the mismatched defenders he had seen near the western gate, in a square now presumably overrun by Gurkish legions. Ordinary people, who had looked to him with hope and pride. Then he tried to picture what a thousand corpses might look like. He imagined a hundred of them, side by side, in a row. Then ten such rows, one above the other. A thousand. He gnawed at his thumbnail, already down to the painful quick.
And many more wounded, of course, added Varuz, in a sudden twist of the knife. We are very short of space for them, in fact. Two districts are at least partly occupied by the Gurkish and the enemy are landing incendiaries almost in the heart of the city. Jezals tongue sought out the still sore gap in his teeth. He remembered his own pain, out on the endless plain under the merciless sky, the stabs through his face as the cartwheels squeaked and jolted.