The Collected Joe Abercrombie (16 page)

‘Why is this damned room always the wrong temperature?’ Hoff was demanding to know, as if the heat was an insult directed solely at him. ‘It’s too hot half the year, too cold the other half! There’s no air in here, no air at all! Why don’t these windows open? Why can’t we have a bigger room?’

‘Er . . .’ mumbled the harassed Under-Secretary, pushing his spectacles up his sweaty nose, ‘requests for audiences have always been held here, my Lord Chamberlain.’ He paused under the fearsome gaze of his superior. ‘Er . . . it is . . . traditional?’

‘I know that, you dolt!’ thundered Hoff, face crimson with heat and fury. ‘Who asked for your damn fool of an opinion anyway?’

‘Yes, that is to say, no,’ stuttered Morrow, ‘that is to say, quite so, my Lord.’

Hoff shook his head with a mighty frown, staring around the room in search of something else to displease him. ‘How many more must we endure today?’

‘Er . . . four more, your Grace.’

‘Damn it!’ thundered the Chamberlain, shifting in his huge chair and flapping his fur-trimmed collar to let some air in. ‘This is intolerable!’ West found himself in silent agreement. Hoff snatched up a silver goblet from the table and took a great slurp of wine. He was a great one for drinking, indeed he had been drinking all afternoon. It had not improved his temper. ‘Who’s the next fool?’ he demanded.

‘Er . . .’ Morrow squinted at a large document through his spectacles, tracing across the crabby writing with an inky finger. ‘Goodman Heath is next, a farmer from—’

‘A farmer? A farmer did you say? So we must sit in this ridiculous heat, listening to some damn commoner moan on about how the weather has affected his sheep?’

‘Well, my Lord,’ muttered Morrow, ‘it does seem as though, er, Goodman Heath has, er, a legitimate grievance against his, er, landlord, and—’

‘Damn it all! I am sick to my stomach of other people’s grievances! ’ The Lord Chamberlain took another swallow of wine. ‘Show the idiot in!’

The doors were opened and Goodman Heath was allowed into their presence. To underline the balance of power within the room, the Lord Chamberlain’s table was raised up on a high dais, so that even standing the poor man had to look up at them. An honest face, but very gaunt. He held a battered hat before him in trembling hands. West shrugged his shoulders in discomfort as a drop of sweat ran down his back.

‘You are Goodman Heath, correct?’

‘Yes, my Lord,’ mumbled the peasant in a broad accent, ‘from—’

Hoff cut him off with consummate rudeness. ‘And you come before us seeking an audience with his August Majesty, the High King of the Union?’

Goodman Heath licked his lips. West wondered how far he had come to be made a fool of. A very long way, most likely. ‘My family have been put off our land. The landlord said we had not been paying the rent but—’

The Lord Chamberlain waved a hand. ‘Plainly this is a matter for the Commission for Land and Agriculture. His August Majesty the King is concerned with the welfare of all his subjects, no matter how mean,’ West almost winced at this slight, ‘but he cannot be expected to give personal attention to every trifling thing. His time is valuable, and so is mine. Good day.’ And that was it. Two of the soldiers pulled the double doors open for Goodman Heath to leave.

The peasant’s face had gone very pale, his knuckles wringing at the brim of his hat. ‘Good my Lord,’ he stammered, ‘I’ve already been to the Commission . . .’

Hoff looked up sharply, making the farmer stammer to a halt. ‘Good day, I said!’

The peasant’s shoulders slumped. He took a last look around the room. Morrow was examining something on the far wall with great interest and refused to meet his eye. The Lord Chamberlain stared back at him angrily, infuriated by this unforgivable waste of his time. West felt sick to be a part of it. Heath turned and shuffled away, head bowed. The doors swung shut.

Hoff bashed his fist on the table. ‘Did you see that?’ He stared round fiercely at the sweating assembly. ‘The sheer gall of the man! Did you see that, Major West?’

‘Yes, my Lord Chamberlain, I saw it all,’ said West stiffly. ‘It was a disgrace.’

Fortunately, Hoff did not take his whole meaning. ‘A disgrace, Major West, you are quite right! Why the hell is it that all the promising young men go into the army? I want to know who is responsible for letting these beggars in here!’ He glared at the Under-Secretary, who swallowed and stared at his documents. ‘What’s next?’

‘Er,’ mumbled Morrow, ‘Coster dan Kault, Magister of the Guild of Mercers.’

‘I know who he is, damn it!’ snapped Hoff, wiping a fresh sheen of sweat from his face. ‘If it isn’t the damn peasants it’s the damn merchants!’ he roared at the soldiers by the door, his voice easily loud enough to be heard in the corridor outside. ‘Show the grubbing old swindler in, then!’

Magister Kault could hardly have presented a more different appearance from the previous supplicant. He was a big, plump man, with a face as soft as his eyes were hard. His purple vesture of office was embroidered with yards of golden thread, so ostentatious that the Emperor of Gurkhul himself might have been embarrassed to wear it. He was accompanied by a pair of senior Mercers, their own attire scarcely less magnificent. West wondered if Goodman Heath could earn enough in ten years to pay for one of those gowns. He decided not, even if he hadn’t been thrown off his land.

‘My Lord Chamberlain,’ intoned Kault with an elaborate bow. Hoff acknowledged the head of the Guild of Mercers as faintly as humanly possible, with a raised eyebrow and an almost imperceptible twist of the lip. Kault waited for a greeting which he felt more befitting of his station, but none was forthcoming. He noisily cleared his throat. ‘I have come to seek an audience with his August Majesty—’

The Lord Chamberlain snorted. ‘The purpose of this session is to decide who is worthy of his Majesty’s attention. If you aren’t seeking an audience with him you have blundered into the wrong room.’ It was already clear that this interview would be every bit as unsuccessful as the last. There was a kind of horrible justice to it, West supposed. The great and the small were treated exactly alike.

Magister Kault’s eyes narrowed slightly, but he continued. ‘The honourable Guild of Mercers, of whom I am the humble representative . . .’ Hoff slurped wine noisily and Kault was obliged to pause for a moment. ‘ . . . have been the victims of a most malicious and mischievous attack—’

‘Fill this up, would you?’ yelled the Lord Chamberlain, waving his empty goblet at Morrow. The Under-Secretary slipped eagerly from his chair and seized the decanter. Kault was forced to wait, teeth gritted, while the wine gurgled out.

‘Continue!’ blustered Hoff, waving his hand, ‘we don’t have all day!’

‘A most malicious and under-handed attack—’

The Lord Chamberlain squinted down. ‘An attack you say? A common assault is a matter for the City Watch!’

Magister Kault grimaced. He and his two companions were already starting to sweat. ‘Not an attack of that variety, my Lord Chamberlain, but an insidious and underhanded assault, designed to discredit the shining reputation of our Guild, and to damage our business interests in the Free Cities of Styria, and across the Union. An attack perpetrated by certain deceitful elements of his Majesty’s Inquisition, and—’

‘I have heard enough!’ The Lord Chamberlain jerked up his big hand for silence. ‘If this is a matter of trade, then it should be handled by His Majesty’s Commission for Trade and Commerce.’ Hoff spoke slowly and precisely, in the manner of a school-master addressing his most disappointing pupil. ‘If this is a matter of law, then it should be handled by the department of High Justice Marovia. If it is a matter of the internal workings of his Majesty’s Inquisition, then you must arrange an appointment with Arch Lector Sult. In any case, it is hardly a matter for the attention of his August Majesty.’

The head of the Mercer’s Guild opened his mouth but the Lord Chamberlain spoke over him, voice louder than ever. ‘Your King employs a Commission, selects a High Justice, and appoints an Arch Lector, so that he need not deal with every trifling issue himself! Incidentally, that is also why he grants licences to certain merchant guilds, and not to line the pockets . . .’ and his lip twisted into an unpleasant sneer ‘ . . . of the trading class! Good day.’ And the doors were opened.

Kault’s face had turned pale with anger at that last comment. ‘You may depend upon it, Lord Chamberlain,’ he said coldly, ‘that we will seek redress elsewhere, and with the very greatest of persistence.’

Hoff glared back at him for a very long while. ‘Seek it wherever you like,’ he growled, ‘and with as much persistence as you please. But not here. Good . . . day!’ If you could have stabbed someone in the face with the phrase ‘good day’, the head of the Guild of Mercers would have lain dead on the floor.

Kault blinked a couple of times, then turned angrily and strode out with as much dignity as he could muster. His two lackeys followed close on his heels, their fabulous gowns flapping behind them. The doors were pushed shut.

Hoff smashed the table once again with his fist. ‘An outrage!’ he spluttered. ‘Those arrogant swine! Do they seriously think they can flout the King’s law and still seek the King’s help when things turn sour?’

‘Well, no,’ said Morrow, ‘of course . . .’

The Lord Chamberlain ignored his Under-Secretary and turned to West with a sneering smile. ‘Still, I fancy I could see the vultures circling around them, despite the low ceiling, eh, Major West?’

‘Indeed, my Lord Chamberlain,’ mumbled West, thoroughly uncomfortable and wishing this torture would end. Then he could get back to his sister. His heart sank. She was even more of a handful than he remembered. She was clever alright, but he worried that she might be too clever for her own good. If only she would just marry some honest man and be happy. His position here was precarious enough, without her making a spectacle of herself.

‘Vultures, vultures,’ Hoff was murmuring to himself. ‘Nasty-looking birds, but they have their uses. What’s next?’

The sweating Under-Secretary looked even more uncomfortable than before as he fumbled for the right words. ‘We have a party of . . . diplomats?’

The Lord Chamberlain paused, goblet halfway to his mouth. ‘Diplomats? From whom?’

‘Er . . . from this so-called King of the Northmen, Bethod.’

Hoff burst out laughing. ‘Diplomats?’ he cackled, mopping his face on his sleeve. ‘Savages, you mean!’

The Under-Secretary chuckled unconvincingly. ‘Ah yes, my Lord, ha, ha! Savages, of course!’

‘But dangerous, eh, Morrow?’ snapped the Lord Chamberlain, his good humour evaporating instantly. The Under-Secretary’s cackling gurgled to a halt. ‘Very dangerous. We must be careful. Show them in!’

There were four of them. The two smallest were great big, fierce-looking men, scarred and bearded, clad in heavy battered armour. They had been disarmed at the gate of the Agriont, of course, but there was still a sense of danger about them, and West had the feeling they would have given up a lot of big, well-worn weapons. These were the sort of men who were crowded on the borders of Angland, hungry for war, not far from West’s home.

With them came an older man, also in pitted armour, and with long hair and a great white beard. There was a livid scar across his face and through his eye, which was blind white. He had a broad smile on his lips though, and his pleasant demeanour was greatly at odds with that of his two dour companions, and with the fourth man, who came behind.

He had to stoop to get under the lintel, which was a good seven feet above the floor. He was swathed and hooded in a rough brown cloak, features invisible. As he straightened up, towering over everyone else, the room began to seem absurdly cramped. His sheer bulk was intimidating, but there was something more, something that seemed to come off him in sickly waves. The soldiers around the walls felt it, and they shifted uncomfortably. The Under-Secretary for Audiences felt it, sweating and twitching and fussing with his documents. Major West certainly felt it. His skin had gone cold despite the heat, and he could feel every hair on his body standing up under his damp uniform.

Only Hoff seemed unaffected. He looked the four Northmen up and down with a deep frown on his face, no more impressed with the hooded giant than he had been with Goodman Heath. ‘So you are messengers from Bethod.’ He rolled the words around in his mouth, then spat them out, ‘The King of the Northmen.’

‘We are,’ said the smiling old man, bowing with great reverence. ‘I am White-Eye Hansul.’ His voice was rich, round and pleasant, without any accent, not at all what West had been expecting.

‘And you are Bethod’s emissary?’ asked Hoff casually, taking another swallow of wine from his goblet. For the first time ever West was pleased the Lord Chamberlain was in the room with him, but then he glanced up at the hooded man and the feeling of unease returned.

‘Oh no,’ said White-Eye, ‘I am here merely as translator. This is the emissary of the King of the Northmen,’ and his good eye flicked nervously up to the dark figure in the cloak, as though even he was afraid. ‘Fenris.’ He stretched out the ‘s’ on the end of the name so that it hissed in the air. ‘Fenris the Feared.’

An apt name indeed. Major West thought back to songs he had heard in his childhood, stories of bloodthirsty giants in the mountains of the distant north. The room was silent for a moment.