The Wisdom of Crowds (The Age of Madness #3)

by Joe Abercrombie

It appeared his grand tour of the country was no longer necessary. It had come to him.

Lol

“I was thinking something along the lines of… we consider these facts to be self-evident—” There was instant opposition from among the great thinkers. “What? Nothing is self-evident!” “Pretentious! Presumptuous!” “Asking for trouble.” “Terrible first line.”

Lmao british jabs

“History is not the story of battles between right and wrong, but between one man’s right and another’s. Evil is not the opposite of good. It is what we call another man’s notion of good when it differs from ours.”

“Bethod had your help, if I heard the story right. How’s he getting along?” “I made him king. But he grew arrogant, and fell.” “The Bloody-Nine, I think, had your help next. How’s he faring?” “I made him king, too. But he grew wrathful, and fell.” “Then it was Black Calder who had your help. He must’ve prospered!” “I made him the man who made kings,” said Bayaz as she passed behind his back, then he turned his head and caught her from the corner of his eye. “But he grew lazy, and let you in the back door. My help is not the word of Euz. It cannot protect a man from his own faults.”

“Him in particular. When Black Calder and the Union and your father struck a deal.” “And my father spat in Calder’s hand and swore to kill him if he ever crossed the Cusk again.” “That’s right. Bayaz was the one pulling all the strings.” “Well, he won’t be plucking ours.” Shivers’ good eye turned towards her. “Better to have ’em plucked than cut, maybe.”

“Ah. So you’re the hero here, are you?” “As a man who’s been cast as both hero and villain, you should know better’n anyone, Jonas Steepfield—the hero’s whoever wins.”

Savine stared. “My father used to say that.” “Which one? Old Sticks?” He leaned from the bed and fished up his iron leg again. “I can’t say we got on.” He jammed his stump into the padded socket and started to fasten the buckles. “But no one ever denied he was a clever bastard. Can’t be lying around, Savine. I’ve got work to do!” And he grasped his cane and stood. She sat in silence as he limped out, teeth gritted. Click, tap, grunt. Click, tap, grunt. That mixture of cunning, ruthlessness, burning ambition and constant pain was far from unfamiliar. She had heard it said that every woman ends up marrying her father. Until that moment, she had always imagined herself the exception.

So good

“What do you want?” And Scunlich heard a thing he had never heard before in the voice of Stand-i’-the-Barrows and had never thought to hear. The quaver of fear. The witch smiled, skin twisting and puckering around the golden stitches. “Your bones,” she said.

*Chef's kiss

know how it’ll turn out now. Years ago, my father swore to kill you if you crossed the Cusk again.” “I remember.” Calder nodded slowly, his eyes fixed far off. “It all has to be paid for, in the end.” “Took a while for me to keep his word,” said Rikke. “But we got there. Shivers?” “Aye,” he said, and drew his sword. Calder looked up as its shadow fell across him. “Been a long time.” “Aye,” said Shivers. “I remember when you saved my life. In the Circle at the Heroes.” “Aye.” “Quite the irony. That it should be you who ends it.” “Aye.” “Well. I can hardly say I don’t deserve it.”

“Seems your father’s dream came true after all,” said Rikke. “The North united.” She put her hands behind her head and stretched up tall. “It just won’t be his blood that leads it. Scale’s back to the mud. Stour’s back to the mud. Bethod’s line ends with you.” “Ah.” For some reason, Calder had the ghost of a smile at the last. He leaned forwards and spoke so softly only she could hear. “So you don’t see everything.”

Too much trust could kill you in a heartbeat. She’d learned that lesson in the camps. Learned it too well, maybe, because now it seemed too little trust could kill you just as dead. Only it happened slowly, during years spent alone and looking over your shoulder.

Still, if you could only bring one man to a fight with the future of the Union hanging on the outcome, she reckoned Bremer dan Gorst a good pick.

He’d been a good man, Sarlby. Better than Broad. Maybe he still was. Broad did his best to smash his face in even so.

Just that narrow path of crooked wood, and the sea on either side. Was there anyone in the Circle of the World you’d want to face less on a wharf than Bremer dan Gorst?

She didn’t back off. Not a step. There was a lot of her father in the stubborn set to her face, glittering specks of rain across the fur on her shoulders. “If you want war, the North’ll fight you. Fight you as one, you can count on that.” Anger was safe. He knew where he stood with it. “Oh, Rikke.” It might’ve been the first time he’d smiled that night. A hard smile, half a snarl, lips curled back from his teeth. “You know how much I love a fight.”

“The truth is… I used to see things. Before my father died. Before I stole the North. Before I killed Stour and Calder. Before I was Black Rikke and I was… a girl you gave an egg to.” She waved a hand at her tattooed face. “But since the runes were written, nothing.” She bit into the egg and sat back, speaking around a mouthful. “Reckon my Long Eye’s closed for good.” “So… you pretend?” “I do what my father tried to. Give his people at least a bit of what they want. Folk like the notion of someone who knows what’s coming. That way they don’t have to worry about it.”

I had a vision. Just a year or two past, though it feels an age ago. It’s all come true, one way or another.” She looked out of the windows, their bright squares reflected in her eye. “I saw a wolf eat the sun.” Orso pondered that. “Well, I’m no magus, learned in the interpretation of visions… but I’d say that was Stour Nightfall making war on the Union.” “I saw a lion eat the wolf.” He sat back, rather enjoying the game. “The Young Lion, beating the Great Wolf in the Circle.” “I saw a lamb eat the lion.” Orso could not help but grin. “That was me, giving Brock a richly deserved kick up the arse at Stoffenbeck.” “I saw an owl eat the lamb.” Orso’s grin faded. “Who’s the owl?” “No idea.” Now she looked at him, and with the strangest, saddest expression. “Till now.” He was starting to feel worried. “What is it?” “I’m the owl,” she said.

The doors of the dining room swung open. Caul Shivers was the first in, metal eye glinting. Next came those two Anglanders Orso had often seen on the front benches of the Court of the People, the big one and the lean one, Glaward and Jurand. The final guest was announced before his appearance by the squeaking of the bearings in his artificial leg, accompanied by that familiar sinking sensation of dashed hopes. “Leo dan Brock.” Orso forked up another piece of sausage but it seemed to have lost all its taste. “Do you never tire of killing my mood?”

“The North has been through the fire, Orso. I put it through the fire. If it was just about me…” She grimaced, then snapped the words angrily. “But I’ve all those people to think about now! They need peace.” “And I’m the price, I suppose.” Orso glanced from Glaward, to Brock, to Jurand, to Isern, to Shivers, and back to Rikke. “You promised to fight with him against me. Then you broke your word. I’m what it costs you to get back in his good graces. If he even has any, these days.”

“Inquisitor Teufel. I have been waiting for you.” Now it all made sense. And like every illusion, once Vick knew how it worked, she couldn’t understand how she hadn’t seen it right away. “You’re the Weaver,” she said. Sand dan Glokta bared his ruined teeth as he sat back in his wheeled chair and considered her calmly. “Yes.” “Not Pike. Not Risinau. You.” “Me.”

Wooow

“Why?” “Ah, why do I do this? Why?” Glokta gazed down at the squares board. “Because sometimes… to change the world… we must burn it down. Bayaz controlled everything. We all were pieces in his game.” He nudged one of the smallest pieces forwards into empty space. “He owned the banks, and the banks owned the merchants, owned the nobles, owned the treasury, even. The king himself danced to Bayaz’s music. The Closed Council, too. Even me, though I’m not much of a dancer these days. The Great Change was the only way I could see to cut all the puppet strings at once. The only way I could see to make us…” Glokta shrugged his bony shoulders, wincing as though even that much movement gave him pain. “Free.”

The truth was Vick had always wanted to be loyal. But not to nations, or ideas, or causes. To people. Orso was gone. Sibalt was dead. Tallow had never even existed. If she’d ever had a debt to Glokta it had only been in her own mind. One she chose to keep because she had nothing else. So she pronounced it long since paid.

She tossed the ring spinning across the squares board, threw the bag over her shoulder and walked out without a backward glance. She flung the door shut and it banged from the frame, wobbled back open a crack. She didn’t even bother to close it. She thought of a wide sky over a far country. She smiled as she strode off into the night.

“I have started to believe that Leo…” She fixed him with her eye and whispered the words. “Is in love with someone else. That he always has been. I have often thought about how he reacted… to what happened in Sipani.” Jurand’s cheek flushed. He tried to pull away but she gripped his arm. “I have come to believe it might not have been disgust at all, but… jealousy.”

“I doubt he would admit it to anyone,” murmured Savine. “I doubt he even admits it to himself, but… if he ever did… I want you to know I would be the last person to stand in the way of his happiness.” Even softer, so softly it was just breath, she added the last two words. “Or yours.”

“I never doubted it.” She caught Savine’s eye, that brow creeping higher. “It only remains to be seen whether he can tickle your husband half so deftly.” “Zuri, you’re a devil.” “I daresay my scripture teacher would be deeply disappointed in me.”

Foreshadowing Zuri being an eater

“I did it all for you. So you could truly rule. All your life, we’ve been preparing you for this.” “My mother knew what you were planning?” “It was her idea in the first place. One of her best.” Savine did not often find herself at a loss for words. She slowly stepped back, pointing at her father with a trembling hand. “Because… I was King Jezal’s bastard. You knew all along… if Orso could be removed, I could be put in his place!” “Your parentage was not a choice we made.” “Only something you turned to your advantage!”

In war one must make use of every weapon. Restraint is folly. Worse. Restraint is cowardice.

Best Served Cold reference

We will finally have a free hand!” “We?” she whispered. “Your son will be king, but he will need your guidance.” He gripped her arm, and there was strength in those thin fingers. A grasping strength. “And you will need mine.” Savine stared at him, cold all over. “You freed us from Bayaz…” “Yes!” “So you could become Bayaz.” He narrowed his eyes. “That is unfair.”

Savine had taken many roles over the momentous past year or two, or had them forced upon her. A helpless fugitive, a desperate killer, a disappointed lover, a wife and a partner, a rebel and a traitor, a forger of alliances, a mother to twins, a benefactor to orphans, the wretched accused, the terrified convicted, the Darling of the Slums and the Mother of the Nation. A journey of giddy rises, horrifying falls and wild reverses that could leave no one the same.

“Did you really think you could stuff King Jezal’s bastard onto the throne without even a by-your-leave?” “I did. I have.” “Doing it is one thing. Getting away with it is quite another. For a man who complains so much about pain you have been happy to inflict it wholesale.”

“All this destruction, just to end up trapped by your own cleverness.” “No doubt this is a trap.” Glokta looked up mildly at Sulfur. “But not for me.”

“What will you do, cripple? Wheel your chair over me?” “You forget, I have some experience with your kind. The best weapon against an Eater… is another.”

BOON! Zuri time

“Someone has been a very bad boy,” she said. Sulfur spun towards the door he had come in through, but Haroon had entered from the hallway and now pushed it firmly shut. Rabik dropped from the shadows among the vaults above, spun in the air as neatly as an acrobat and landed silently on all fours.

He looked towards the hallway but Zuri was there. Her charred clothes dangled from her in tatters, and underneath her long limbs were bound in white bandages. She neatly blew out a flame still burning on her shoulder and clicked her tongue in annoyance.

The Eater Ishri from best served cold and the heros

“Is your name even Zuri?” “I have had others, but I am Zuri now. I will be Zuri for as long as you need me.”

Zuri already had her hand in hers, so gentle but so strong, the black hair softly settling across her bloody face. “But soon I came to respect you, then to admire you, then… to love you.”

“I am very old,” she said. “I did not think I had anything to learn. But we have learned so much from you. Imagine a South and a Union not opposed but bound together by trade, and industry, and common interest. Not looking always into an ignorant and superstitious past but fixed on progress.” Her black eyes shone at the thought. “A South and a Union where the people are governed not by the selfish whims of priests or wizards, but by the righteous engineering of the watch and the book.”

Her father, who had burned half the world so he could control the other half, put a hand on her wrist. “You need our advice.” Her mother, who had helped hatch the colossal scheme, put a hand on her shoulder. “You need our support.” Zuri smiled wider, her teeth still pink with Sulfur’s blood. “You need our protection.”

Spring had been busy. The garden was overgrown again, just like it always used to be, the stuff her father planted all erupted in a messy riot, nothing like his plans. A creeper had slipped free from the crumbling wall and spilled white flowers across his grave. He’d have laughed to see it, most likely, and said time makes fools of us all.

He looked sideways, sunlight glinting off his metal eye. “But far as I can tell it ain’t that simple. Right things, wrong things, well… it’s all a matter of where you stand. Every choice is good for some, bad for others. And once you’re chief, you can’t just do what’s good for you, or those you love. You have to find what’s best for most. Worst for fewest. Like your father tried to, and with no magic eye to see the outcome.”

“Then why does it hurt so much?” “Said you did your best. Didn’t say it wouldn’t hurt. One thing I can tell you…” And he frowned down at that ring on his little finger. “Doing your worst feels no better.”

Man, so full circle

A mass of books were heaped and spread on a table where a girl with a mop of blonde curls flicked at an abacus with quick fingers.

Hildi?

This promising young lady, for example, has but recently joined me.” Gesturing towards the blonde girl as they passed. “She proves to have a humbling work ethic and a marvellous facility with numbers, so I am teaching her the mysteries of finance.” “What’s that? A kind of magic?” “A very powerful kind. The magic of money. Which do you think rings better—Hildi dan Valint or Hildi dan Balk?”

Nailed it

“I know this lad,” he murmured, though you might’ve called him a young man, now. “Black Calder had him around. Who is he?” “It is not so much who he is that interests me,” said Bayaz, “as who he might become.” “Shaping the future, eh?” “Precisely so.”

Calder's other kid. He eluded to before Shivers killed him. "So you don't seee every thing"

“Oh, I think you know far more than you pretend to. I need him to learn not only how to use the sword, but when. I want you to teach him the warrior’s lessons that his half-brother refused to learn. This is Jonas Clover!”

He knew at a glance this was as much of a shock to her as to anyone. He smiled at her, and she smiled back. A small smile, at the corner of her mouth, but he saw it. He knew what it meant. Perhaps every person is alone, in the end. But in that moment, it seemed they understood each other. Forgave each other. Loved each other still, perhaps, even now. He did not think he had ever let her down. Not in any of the ways that really mattered. That was something.

“I must admit it’s a rather disappointing turnout,” called Orso. “Still, I understand. I’ve always hated hangings myself. And here’s one I’m particularly reluctant to attend!”

Tricky, with his hands tied, but he managed to nudge the executioner in the ribs with his elbow. “Lovely day for it, at least.” He squinted up at the blue sky. The few shreds of cloud, slowly shifting. “Looks like it’ll be a fine summer.” It made him terribly sad, suddenly, to think he wouldn’t see it. He covered it up with a chuckle. “For you, at least.”

The Young Lion looked somewhat nettled. “Have you anything to say?” he snapped. “Too much, usually,” called Orso, “but I’ll try to keep it brief, I know you have a country to ruin.”

Even in death, Orso is too good