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That got him thinking about his life. It seemed a bitter, pointless sort of a life now. No one was any better off because of it. Full of violence and pain, with not much but disappointment and hardship in between.
Once you’ve got a task to do, it’s better to do it than to live with the fear of it.
‘I am still alive,’ he croaked to himself. Still alive, in spite of the best efforts of nature, Shanka, men and beasts. Soaking wet and flat on his back, he started to chuckle. Reedy, gurgling laughter.
Truly a thrill. Did I enjoy it? For most people stairs are a mundane affair. For me, an adventure!
Blows make most men soften up, but some men harden. I never would have taken this one for a tough man, but life is full of surprises.
He looks like a man who has never once in his life been surprised by anything.
A look that implied he already understood Glokta completely, and was unimpressed.
I suppose some men just love the sound of their own voices.
There was an appeal in it, he had to admit. To have no one depending on him but himself, for his decisions to hold no importance, for no one’s life or death to be in his hands.
He felt the great motion of the forest and heard all its thousand sounds. The countless crawling of the insects, the blind scuttling of the moles, the timid rustling of the deer, the slow pulsing of the sap in the old tree trunks. Each thing alive in the forest was in search of its own kind of food, and he was the same.
Jezal had often observed that the ever so slightly stupid will act more stupidly in clever company. Having lost the high ground already they scramble eagerly for the position of likeable idiot, stay out of arguments they will only lose, and can hence be everyone’s friend. Kaspa’s look of baffled concentration seemed to say, ‘I am not clever, but honest and likeable, which is much more important. Cleverness is overrated. Oh, and I’m very, very rich, so everyone likes me regardless.’
‘I am big and manly, and have a quick temper, so I should be treated with respect by everyone.’ Respect was precisely what Jezal never gave him at the card table.
but his voice had a charming note of hysteria.
Jezal upped his pace immediately, and replaced his tortured expression with a nonchalant smile.
Jezal had not the slightest idea what they were talking about. He wanted only to be sick, then go to bed.
You will confess to me within ten minutes.’
He knew he would have to speak now or spend the entire day in embarrassed silence, so he opened his mouth and trusted to luck.
The women of his acquaintance rarely said anything clever, especially the fine-looking ones. He supposed they were trained to smile and nod and listen while the men did the talking.
As for coarse, well, handsome people are never coarse, are they? Just . . . unconventional.
She led him out into the corridor and down the stairs, chatting freely. It was a flurry of conversational blows and, as Marshal Varuz had pointed out earlier, his defence was weak. He parried desperately
She had this way of biting on her lower lip that made his thoughts stray.
Ardee’s spell was suddenly broken, and Jezal felt his skin go cold.
The wine was unfamiliar but delicious. Probably from somewhere very beautiful and far away.
Glokta felt a strange sensation creeping up his back. Is that fear, or ambition, or both?
Danger and opportunity often walk hand in hand . . . ‘Then I accept.’
Logen still remembered the first time he had to leave someone behind, remembered it like it was yesterday. Strange how the boy’s name had gone but the face was with him still.
And on a set of wide steps before the tallest of the three towers sat a magnificent old man.
Both together were an experience to be avoided.
West couldn’t simply leave the man like this, he didn’t have it in him.
It felt almost like being alive.
The conversation hovered over the abyss.
The Lord Chamberlain’s eyes flicked angrily towards him, but the Announcer was not to be robbed of his moment of glory. He made everyone wait an instant longer before finishing, ‘. . . to order!’
The hooded man stepped forward. ‘Angland,’ he hissed. There was a moment of stillness, then the hall exploded with noise.
‘Well I would, but I’m terribly busy this afternoon. Perhaps tomorrow?’ The voice hardly sounded like his own. He certainly hadn’t meant to say any such thing. But who else’s could it be? The words floated confidently, breezily up towards the gilded dome above. There was scattered laughter, a shout of ‘Bravo!’
‘Tomorrow then,’ he whispered. Jezal’s guts gave a sudden painful shift. The seriousness of the situation pressed itself upon him like a ton of rocks. Him? Fight that?
It’s better to do them, than to live with the fear of them.
‘Has it ever occurred to you, Master Ninefingers, that a sword is different from other weapons? Axes and maces and so forth are lethal enough, but they hang on the belt like dumb brutes.’ He ran an eye over the hilt, plain cold metal scored with faint grooves for a good grip, glinting in the torchlight. ‘But a sword . . . a sword has a voice.’
Better to have it, and not want it, than to want it, and not have it.
Logen stood frozen, his mouth half open. His hatred seeped away. They were all friends here. More than friends.
Every man has his excuses, and the more vile the man becomes, the more touching the story has to be.
It was a damn fool of a question, that. He’d never been scared in his life, Black Dow. Didn’t know what it was to be scared.
Different men have different ways, Logen had told him once, and you have to have fear to have courage.
Dogman reckoned that would have to do for a signal.
‘Give it up if you like, by all means. Sit around for the rest of your days and drink and talk shit with the rest of the junior officers. There are a lot of people who’d be more than happy to live that life. A lot of people who haven’t had the chances you’ve had. Give it up. Lord Marshal Varuz will be disappointed, and Major West, and your father,
And she was damn good-looking too, there was no denying it, and seemed prettier every time he saw her.
but there was no harm in looking,
Magic, violence and romance, in equal measure. Utter shit.’
A sense of purpose.
There might have been something fine in that. I just had enough.
‘Something fine,’ said Blacktoe, staring far up into the grey skies, ‘I just had enough.
