“Ome ageh.” Frost looked pleased as he stepped off the gangplank with Glokta’s box under his arm.
“You don’t much like hot weather, do you?”
The Practical shook his heavy head, half-grinning into the winter drizzle, white hair spiky with wet. Severard followed behind him, squinting up at the grey clouds. He paused for a moment at the end of the plank, then he stepped off onto the stones of the quay.
“Good to be back,” he said.
I only wish I could share your enthusiasm, but I cannot relax quite yet. “His Eminence has sent for me, and judging by the way we left things in Dagoska, I think it more than likely that the meeting will… not go well.” A spectacular understatement. “You had better stay out of sight for a couple of days.”
“Out of sight? I don’t plan to see outside of a whorehouse for a week.”
“Very wise. And Severard. In case we don’t see each other again. Good luck.”
The Practical’s eyes glinted. “Always.” Glokta watched him stroll off through the rain towards the seedier parts of town. Just another day for Practical Severard. Never thinking more than an hour ahead. What a gift.
“Damn your miserable country and damn its bloody weather,” Vitari grumbled in her sing-song accent. “I have to go and speak to Sult.”
“Why so do I!” cried Glokta with exaggerated glee. “What a charming coincidence!” He offered her his bent elbow. “We can make a couple, and visit his Eminence together!”
She stared back at him. “Alright.”
But the pair of you will have to wait another hour for my head. “There’s just one call I need to make first.”
The tip of his stick cracked against the door. No answer. Damn it. Glokta’s back was hurting like hell and he needed to sit down. He rapped again with his cane, harder this time. The hinges creaked, the door swung open a crack. Unlocked. He frowned, pushed it all the way. The door frame was split inside, the lock shattered. Broken open. He limped across the threshold, into the hall. Empty and frosty cold. Not a stick of furniture anywhere. Almost as if she moved out. But why? Glokta’s eyelid gave a twitch. He had scarcely once thought about Ardee his whole time in the South. Other matters seemed so much more pressing. My one friend gave me this one task. If anything has happened to her…
Glokta pointed to the stairs, and Vitari nodded and crept up them silently, bending and sliding a glinting knife out from her boot. He pointed down the hall and Frost padded off deeper into the house, pressed up into the shadows by the wall. The living room door stood ajar, and Glokta shuffled to it and pushed it open.
Ardee was sitting in the window with her back to him: white dress, dark hair, just as he remembered her. He saw her head move slightly as the door’s hinges creaked. Alive, then. But the room was strangely altered. Aside from the one chair she sat in, it was entirely empty. Bare whitewashed walls, bare wooden boards, windows without curtains.
“There’s nothing fucking left!” she barked, voice cracked and throaty.
Clearly. Glokta frowned, and stepped through the door into the room.
“Nothing left, I said!” She stood up, still with her back to him. “Or did you decide you’d take the chair after all?” She spun round, grabbing hold of the back, lifted it over her head and flung it at him with a shriek. It crashed into the wall beside the door, sending fragments of wood and plaster flying. One leg whizzed past Glokta’s face and clattered into the corner, the rest tumbled to the floor in a mass of dust and splintered sticks.
“Most kind,” murmured Glokta, “but I prefer to stand.”
“You!” He could see her eyes wide with surprise through her tangled hair. There was a gauntness and a paleness to her face that he did not remember. Her dress was rumpled, and far too thin for the chilly room. She tried to smooth it with shivering hands, plucked ineffectually at her greasy hair. She gave a snort of laughter. “I’m afraid I’m not really prepared for visitors.”
Glokta heard Frost thumping down the hall, saw him looming up at the doorway, fists clenched. He held up a finger. “It’s alright. Wait outside.” The albino faded back into the shadows, and Glokta hobbled across the creaking boards into the empty sitting room. “What happened?”
Ardee’s mouth twisted. “It seems my father was not nearly so well off as everyone imagined. He had debts. Soon after my brother left for Angland, they came to collect.”
“Who came?”
“A man called Fallow. He took all the money I had, but it wasn’t enough. They took the plate, my mother’s jewels, such as they were. They gave me six weeks to find the rest. I let my maid go. I sold everything I could, but they wanted more. Then they came again. Three days ago. They took everything. Fallow said I was lucky he was leaving me the dress I was wearing.”
“I see.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Since then, I have been sitting here, and thinking on how a friendless young woman can come by some money.” She fixed him with her eye. “I have thought of only one way. I daresay, if I had the courage, I would have done it already.”
Glokta sucked at his gums. “Lucky for us both that you’re a coward, then.” He shrugged one shoulder out of his coat, then had to wriggle and flail to get his arm out. Once he finally did, he had to fumble his cane across into his other hand so he could finally throw it off. Damn it. I can’t even make a generous gesture gracefully. Finally he held it out to her, tottering slightly on his weak leg.
“You sure you don’t need it more than me?”
“Take it. At least then I won’t have to get the bloody thing back on.”
That brought half a smile from her. “Thank you,” she muttered as she pulled it round her shoulders. “I tried to find you, but I didn’t know… where you were…”
“I am sorry for that, but I am here now. You need not worry about anything. You will have to come and stay with me tonight. My quarters are not spacious, but we’ll find a way.” There will be plenty of room once I am face down in the docks, after all.
“What about after that?”
“After that you will come here. Tomorrow this house will be just as it was.”
She stared at him. “How?”
“Oh, I will see to it. First of all we get you in the warm.” Superior Glokta, friend to the friendless.
She closed her eyes as he spoke, and he heard breath snorting fast through her nose. She swayed slightly, as if she hardly had the strength to stand any longer. Strange how, as long as the hardship lasts, we can stand it. As soon as the crisis is over, the strength all leeches away in an instant. Glokta reached out, almost touched her shoulder to steady her, but at the last moment her eyes flickered open, and she straightened up again, and he pulled his hand away.
Superior Glokta, rescuer of young women in distress. He guided her into the hallway and towards the broken front door. “If you could give me one moment with my Practicals.”
“Of course.” Ardee looked up at him, big, dark eyes rimmed with worried pink. “And thank you. Whatever they say, you’re a good man.”
Glokta had to stifle a sudden urge to giggle. A good man? I doubt that Salem Rews would agree. Or Gofred Hornlach, or Magister Kault, or Korsten dan Vurms, General Vissbruck, Ambassador Islik, Inquisitor Harker, or any of a hundred others scattered through the penal colonies of Angland or squatting in Dagoska, waiting to die. And yet Ardee West thinks me a good man. A strange feeling, and not an unpleasant one. It feels almost like being human again. What a shame that it comes so late in the day.