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September 13 - October 1, 2021
The man the pamphlets once dubbed the Prince of Prostitutes had emerged, like a splendid butterfly from a putrid chrysalis, as the new Casamir!
She had thought she could be strong. She was notorious for cool ruthlessness, after all. But as she unwound the bandages in an obscene striptease they had gone from spotted brown, to pink, to black.
It was quite the shocking disappointment. Like popping some delightful sweetmeat into one’s mouth and, upon chewing, discovering it was actually a piece of shit. But that was the experience of being a monarch. One shocking mouthful of shit after another.
‘Valbeck has fallen to an uprising!’ The glug of Orso swallowing echoed audibly from the stark white walls. ‘Fallen?’ ‘Again?’ squealed Hoff. ‘No word from His Eminence,’ said Gorodets. ‘We fear he may be a captive of the Breakers.’ ‘Captive?’ muttered Orso. The room was feeling even more intolerably cramped than usual. ‘News of turmoil pours in from all across Midderland!’ blurted the high consul, warbling on the edge of panic. ‘We have lost contact with the authorities in Keln. Troubling news from Holsthorm. Robbings. Lynchings. Purges.’ ‘Purges?’ breathed Orso. It appeared he was doomed to
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‘By the Fates,’ someone muttered. ‘Steady,’ said Leeb, but it came out a squeak that couldn’t have steadied anyone. It might have unsteadied those already steady, indeed.
‘Raise bows!’ roared Corporal Grey, veins bulging from his thick neck. At the same time, he looked at Leeb with a vaguely desperate expression. The pilot of a foundering vessel, perhaps, looking to his captain, silently asking if they really did intend to go down with the ship. Perhaps that’s why captains do go down with their ships. No better ideas.
‘Bring out the king!’ A shrill shriek, then a bass growl. ‘Bring out the king!’ ‘I’m bloody coming,’ muttered Orso.
A few days before, a dozen Gurkish immigrants had been burned as spies in the Three Farms. Being too dark or too fair or too rich or too poor or too mad or too sane was a bad idea in the new Union.
He tried to explain it again. ‘The Banking House is owed money everywhere. Everywhere. So many, many friends, here in the Union and abroad. It would be very unwise … it would be utter madness—’ ‘Have you been outside lately? Wisdom is not at a premium, madness is the fashion, the balance sheets are all torn up and the friends that were assets have become liabilities.’ Vick kept walking. ‘Threats for tomorrow don’t cut very deep when today is so damn threatening. You might want to keep ’em to yourself.’
They all say, Yours will seem beautiful, of course. In a smugly knowing way, as if shitting out a child comes with secret knowledge, like joining the Order of Magi. They all say it, but you tell yourself the poor things are just trying to wring some shred of advantage from the curse of parenthood and let them have their self-delusion. Now it appeared they had been understating the case all along. Her own baby was astonishingly, breathtakingly beautiful, its every twitch a miracle. What a cliché.
Tell Black Calder you ran into us. Tell him I tried to be reasonable.’ ‘This what you call reasonable?’ squealed the one with the arrow in his shoulder. ‘Reasonably reasonable, anyway.
‘I’m saying no,’ said Clover, firmly as he could without raising his voice. ‘It’s not a negotiation. No exceptions. It’s a no.’ The one in the hood looked to be getting a bit upset about it. ‘That was my father’s sword, you—’ There was a crack and Clover blinked as blood spattered in his face again. Downside had split this bastard’s head, too. ‘What the—’ ‘Sounding a bit feudy to me, Chief,’ said Downside, wiping his axe.
‘Feels like all I’m ever doing is trying to convince new masters I can be trusted.’ ‘Maybe if you didn’t betray the old ones …’
The notoriously faithless Corporal Tunny was the one truly loyal man in Adua.
‘I’ve heard it said a clever woman can turn enemies into allies with her quim,’ mused Isern, eyes thoughtfully narrowed. ‘Yours seems to work the other way around.’
The worst of mankind jammed into the sockets where the best should have been. A crown of turds.
Bravery had descended inexplicably upon him, as it had at Stoffenbeck. Bravery born of fear, boredom, frustration and at least a little drunkenness. Far from heroic ingredients, to be sure, but no one asks what went into the pie so long as the results taste well.
‘Take ’em up the Tower of Chains. And push ’em off.’ One of the arrested gave a little whimper. Another sagged against the High Table. ‘No trial?’ It was the king, and he wasn’t laughing now. His throat shifted as he nervously swallowed. Judge grinned back at him. ‘The trial can be on the way down. The ground can give the verdict. You go with ’em, Broad. Make sure they all take the drop. Sarlby?’ ‘Judge?’ ‘Make sure he makes sure.’
And Calder grinned at him, teeth shining in the light of the fire-pit. ‘I still like you, Clover. I never can bring myself to trust loyal men. Can’t understand the bastards.’ ‘I’m with you there.’ ‘Man who’ll be loyal to someone might one day up and decide he’d rather be loyal to someone else.’ He wagged a finger at Clover. ‘But a man who’s first loyalty is to himself? It always will be. You don’t pretend to be what you’re not. You’re reliable.’ ‘I am?’ ‘Let’s say reliably unreliable.
There was a valley behind the hill, too. That’s how hills and valleys work, after all.
‘They tried to use the bell tower on the old Spicers’ guildhall, but, well, it wasn’t high enough.’ Vick winced. ‘Fuck.’ ‘They didn’t all die right off. Had to have a Burner at the bottom with a pickaxe to finish the poor bastards—’ ‘All right, Tallow, I get the picture.’ It was coming to something when a child of the prison camps was finding life in the capital too dark for comfort.
‘I’d hoped it might get better,’ she muttered. ‘But it’s getting worse.’ Tallow hopped from one foot to the other for warmth. ‘You could’ve said that any time since I met you.’ ‘That’s your comfort? We’re not at the bottom yet?
Orso woke to the clanging of Corporal Halder’s truncheon on the bars of his cellar. He much preferred the word ‘cellar’ to ‘dungeon’. The place was designed for wine, after all, even if the purpose it was being put to now was, one had to admit, more than a bit dungeony.
‘Don’t get carried away, Your Majesty. I’m saying you’re better than carnage, famine and chaos.’ ‘Honestly, that’s the closest thing to praise I’ve heard in months.’
‘Death is but an occasional hazard. Mud is a constant.’ And Clover rubbed that bit of dirt thoughtfully between thumb and forefinger. ‘Strange, isn’t it? Soil and water are both good things. Things you can’t live without. But mix the two and add an army, you’ve got a nightmare.’
‘Just goes to show,’ said Clover, ‘how fate can smash all our plans in an instant.’ ‘You’ve got plans?’ asked Flick, looking genuinely surprised. ‘I’ve got plans like I’ve got boots.’ Clover frowned down at his waterlogged footwear. ‘Honestly, I could always do with better ones.’
Then there was the lynchpin of the whole business, King Orso – born with a silver spoon so far up his arse you could see the end when he yawned.
Orso wondered what would happen when they had killed everyone. Would Judge try herself last of all in the empty Court of the People, sentence herself to death and fling herself from the Tower of Chains?
There’d been a road under that slop once, Clover thought, a thing now dimly remembered, a fantastical story once heard, like dry boots, warmth and unchafed fruits.
She adjusted her dress as she turned back to Judge. Foolishness, of course, but the habit was impossible to break. Her mother had always warned her a man is judged by his best moment, a woman by her worst.
‘What are you doing?’ hissed Hildi as Orso stepped from captivity. ‘Buying time.’ He was no mighty warrior. He was no learned sage. But when it came to talking rubbish he acknowledged no equal.
‘I hear tell my old friends the Young Lion and his wife—’ ‘Fanciest bitch I ever saw,’ threw in Isern. ‘—have seized power in the Union.’ ‘Quite the power seizers, them twain. However you push ’em down they keep floating back to the top, d’you see, like a pair o’ goat turds in the well.’
‘Don’t you trust me?’ ‘It can be hard to trust men who stab their allies in the back.’ ‘I don’t plan to do it once a week!’ he snapped. ‘Or ever again,’ he added, hurriedly. He felt bad for Lord Marshal Forest. A good man, a good soldier. He felt bad, but there’d been no choice. And as a point of fact, he’d stabbed him in the front.
‘Vanity, a loud voice and a loose relationship with the truth,’ whispered Zuri. ‘All the qualities of a successful politician.’
Orso issued a heavy sigh. Sighing was one of his few remaining hobbies and, with all the recent practice, he flattered himself to think he had become quite accomplished.
‘There’s a function planned at the Agriont tomorrow evening—’ ‘Function?’ Isern bit at the unfamiliar word. ‘Isn’t that, like, having a shit?’ Shivers rolled the eye he still had. ‘It’s folk drinking and dancing and lying to each other. They pretend it’s for fun but really it’s for whoever’s got the power to show how much power they’ve got.’ Isern slowly narrowed her eyes. ‘So it is having a shit, just on everyone else.’ ‘Mostly on me,’ said Rikke. ‘And I’ll be thanking them for the turds, frothing with praise over their fine colour and consistency, and asking if I couldn’t get a couple more.’
‘The Weaver would like a word,’ he said. Vick swallowed. ‘Aren’t you the Weaver?’ The corner of Pike’s mouth quivered. ‘A title I borrowed from a better man.’
I was working with Superior Pike to bring this madness to an end.’ A cold sliver of doubt pierced the warm fuzz of their reunion and began to stab deeper. ‘Working with Pike? Wasn’t he behind all this?’ ‘No, Savine. The time has come for me … at long last … to confess.’
‘Doubts and regrets, they’re the cost of casting a shadow. The only folk without ’em are the dead.
‘So you’ve stabbed me in the fucking back.’ His voice had a wounded whine to it. ‘My own wife. I should have left you to the Burners.’ It was his bad luck that this reinvention of the past coincided with a particularly savage cramp, as if there was a fist clenching around her guts. She jerked forwards, showing him her teeth. ‘You fucking did, you treacherous shit! And then you seized the throne against my wishes, and then you killed my brother, and now I’ll make you pay the fucking bill!’
