She looked up, and her eyes were hard. “I don’t. He deserves worse.”
That was unexpected too. “Do you want him to have worse?”
She swallowed, slowly sat back. “No.”
“Up to you.” But it’s nice to have the option. “You may want to change your clothes.”
She looked down. “Oh.” Spots of Fallow’s blood were spattered as far as her knees. “I don’t have anything—”
“There’s a room full of new ones, upstairs. I made sure of it. I’ll arrange for some dependable servants as well.”
“I don’t need them.”
“Yes, you do. I won’t hear of you here alone.”
She shrugged her shoulders hopelessly. “I have nothing to pay them with.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” All compliments of the hugely generous Valint and Balk, after all. “Don’t worry about anything. I made a promise to your brother, and I mean to see it through. I’m very sorry that things came this far. I had a great deal to take care of… in the South. Have you heard from him, by the way?”
Ardee looked up sharply, her mouth slightly open. “You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
She swallowed, and stared down at the floor. “Collem was with Prince Ladisla, at this battle that everyone is talking of. Some prisoners were taken, have been ransomed—he wasn’t among them. They presume…” She paused for a moment, staring at the blood on her dress. “They presume he was killed.”
“Killed?” Glokta’s eyelid fluttered. His knees felt suddenly weak. He took a lurching step back and sank into a chair. His own hands were trembling now, and he clasped them together. Deaths. They happen every day. I caused thousands of them not long ago, with hardly a thought. I looked at heaps of corpses and shrugged. What makes this one so hard to take? And yet it was.
“Killed?” he whispered.
She nodded slowly, and put her face in her hands.
Cold Comfort
West peered out of the bushes, through the drifting flakes of snow, down the slope toward the Union picket. The sentries were sat in a rough circle, hunched round a steaming pan over a miserable tongue of fire on the far side of the stream. They wore thick coats, breath smoking, weapons almost forgotten in the snow around them. West knew how they felt. Bethod might come this week, he might come next week, but the cold they had to fight every minute of every day.
“Right then,” whispered Threetrees. “You’d best go down there on your own. They might not like the looks of me and the rest of the boys, all rushing down on ’em from the trees.”
The Dogman grinned. “Might shoot one of us.”
“And that’d be some kind o’ shame,” hissed Dow, “after we come so far.”
“Give us the shout when they’re good and ready for a crew of Northmen to come wandering out the woods, eh?”
“I will,” said West. He dragged the heavy sword out of his belt and handed it to Threetrees. “You’d better hold on to this for me.”
“Good luck,” said the Dogman.
“Good luck,” said Dow, lips curling back into his savage grin. “Furious.”
West walked out slowly from the trees and down the gentle slope towards the stream, his stolen boots crunching in the snow, his hands held up above his head, to show he was unarmed. Even so, he could hardly have blamed the sentries if they shot him on sight. No one could have looked more like a dangerous savage than he did now, he knew. The last tatters of his uniform were hidden beneath a bundle of furs and torn scraps, tied around his body with twine, a stained coat stolen from a dead Northman over the top. He had a few weeks’ growth of scraggy beard across his scabby face, his eyes were sore and watering, sunken with hunger and exhaustion. He looked like a desperate man, and what was more, he knew, he was one. A killer. The man who murdered Crown Prince Ladisla. The very worst of traitors.
One of the sentries looked up and saw him, started clumsily from his place, knocking the pan hissing into the fire, snatching his spear out of the snow. “Stop!” he shouted, in slurred Northern. The others jumped up after him, grabbing at their weapons, one fumbling at the string on his flatbow with mittened fingers.
West stopped, flecks of snow settling gently on his tangled hair and across his shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he shouted back in common. “I’m on your side.”
They stared at him for a moment. “We’ll see!” shouted one. “Come on across the water, but do it slow!”
He crunched on down the slope and sloshed out into the stream, gritted his teeth as the freezing water soaked him up to his thighs. He struggled up the far bank and the four sentries shuffled into a nervous half circle around him, weapons raised.
“Watch him!”
“It could be a trick!”
“It’s no trick,” said West slowly, keeping his eyes on the various hovering blades and trying to stay calm. It was vitally important to stay calm. “I’m one of you.”
“Where the hell have you come from?”
“I was with Prince Ladisla’s division.”
“With Ladisla? You walked up here?”
West nodded. “I walked.” The bodies of the sentries started to relax, the spear-points started to waver and drift upwards. They were on the point of believing him. After all, he spoke the common tongue like a native, and certainly looked as if he had slogged a hundred leagues across country. “What’s your name, then?” asked the one with the flatbow.
“Colonel West,” he muttered, voice cracking. He felt like a liar even though it was true. He was a different man from the one who set out for Angland.
The sentries exchanged worried glances. “I thought he was dead,” mumbled the one with the spear.
“Not quite, lad,” said West. “Not quite.”
Lord Marshal Burr was poring over a table covered in crumpled maps as West pushed through the flap into his tent. It seemed in the lamplight that the pressures of command had taken their toll on him. He looked older, paler, weaker, his hair and beard wild and straggling. He had lost weight and his creased uniform hung loose, but he started up with all his old vigour.
“Colonel West, as I live and breathe! I never thought to see you again!” He seized West’s hand and squeezed it hard. “I’m glad you made it. Damn glad! I’ve missed your cool head around here, I don’t mind telling you.” He stared searchingly into West’s eyes. “You look tired, though, my friend.”
There was no denying it. West had never been the prettiest fellow in the Agriont, that he knew, but he had always prided himself on having an honest, friendly, pleasant look. He had scarcely recognised the face in the mirror once he had taken his first bath in weeks, dragged on a borrowed uniform, and finally shaved. Everything was changed, sharpened, leached of colour. The prominent cheekbones had grown craggy, the thinning hair and brows were full of iron grey, the jaw was lean and wolf-like. Angry lines were cut deep into the skin down the pale cheeks, across the narrow bridge of the sharp nose, out from the corners of the eyes. The eyes were worst of all. Narrow. Hungry. Icy grey, as though the bitter cold had eaten into his skull and still lurked there, even in the warmth. He had tried to think of old times, to smile and laugh, and use the expressions he had used to use, but it all looked foolish on that stone wall of a face. A hard man had glared back at him from the glass, and would not go away.