08 A Little Hatred: Book One (The Age of Madness)

Once his eyes had adjusted to the brightness, everything looked rather ordinary. Officers enjoying their breakfast. Soldiers warming their hands at a fire. Others striking a tent as they prepared for the journey back to Adua. A smith some way off was hammering away at some wrought iron. No massacre, plague or famine that he was responsible for, as far as he could—

He froze. A tall pole, almost a mast, had been erected beside the road into Valbeck, a gib sticking sideways from the top. From the gib hung a cylindrical cage. In the cage was a man. A dead man, clearly, his legs dangling. A few curious crows were already gathering in the branches of a tree nearby.

An officer saluted him with a hearty, ‘Your Highness!’ and Orso could not even bring himself to acknowledge it. He wanted very much not to approach the gibbet but he had no choice, the camp mud cold on his bare feet as he picked his way closer.

Two Practicals held the base of the pole while another thumped down the earth around it with a great mallet. A fourth was conscientiously hammering nails into its supports. A large wagon was drawn up beside them. On the wagon were more poles. Twenty? Thirty? Superior Pike stood beside it, frowning at a large map, pointing something out to the driver.

‘Oh no.’ Orso’s guts weighed heavier with every step, as though they might suddenly tear free and drop out of his arse. ‘Oh no, no, no.’

The cage creaked as it turned slowly towards him, displaying its occupant, his face awfully slack behind tangled grey hair. Malmer. The man who had led the Breakers. The man to whom Orso had promised amnesty.

‘What the fuck have you done?’ he screeched, at no one in particular. A fool’s question. The answer could scarcely have been more obvious. Their whole purpose was to make it as obvious as they possibly could.

‘We are gibbetting two hundred of the ringleaders at quarter-mile intervals along the road from Valbeck,’ droned Pike, as though Orso’s despairing shriek had been a straightforward request for information without the slightest emotional element. As though the issue was the precise positioning of the corpses, not that there were any.

‘Well … stop, damn it!’ frothed Orso, his majesty somewhat dimmed by having to hold his dressing gown up like a lady’s skirts above the road muck. ‘Fucking stop!’

One of the Practicals paused halfway through swinging his hammer, a questioning brow raised at the Superior.

‘Your Highness, I fear I cannot.’ And Pike nodded the man on, the hammer tap, tap, tapping at the nail. The Superior slid out a weighty-looking document, several signatures scrawled at the bottom, a great red and gold seal attached which Orso recognised immediately as his father’s. ‘These are the express and specific orders of His Eminence the Arch Lector, backed by all twelve chairs on the Closed Council. Stopping now would do no good in any case. The two hundred traitors have already confessed and been executed. All that remains is to display them.’

‘Without trial?’ Orso’s voice had gone terribly shrill. Hysterical, almost. He tried to bring it under control and failed entirely. ‘Without process? Without—’

Now Pike turned his lashless, loveless eyes on him. ‘Your father has granted the Inquisition extraordinary powers to examine, try and execute the perpetrators of this rebellion at once. His edict countermands your feelings, Your Highness, or mine, or, indeed, anyone’s.’

‘But I fear there was never really an alternative.’ Yoru Sulfur was lying on the back of the wagon, perfectly at ease among the hanging posts with one hand behind his head. His highly specific diet evidently allowed fruit, as he had a half-eaten apple in the other. He had different-coloured eyes, Orso noticed as he gazed up calmly at the gibbet, one blue, one green. ‘I have seen many cases like this and, take my word for it, justice must fall like lightning. Swift and merciless.’

‘Lightning rarely strikes those who deserve it,’ grated Orso.

‘Who among us is entirely innocent?’ Sulfur bared his teeth to take a bite from his apple and thoughtfully chewed. ‘Could you really have let these Breakers go? To scatter to the winds and spread chaos across the Union? To foment further uprisings? To teach the lesson that murder, riot and treason are small matters, hardly to be remarked upon and certainly not punished?’

‘I promised them amnesty,’ muttered Orso, his voice getting weaker with every syllable.

‘You said what had to be said to bring this unfortunate episode to a close. To ensure stability. A stable Union means a stable world, my master is always saying.’

‘You cannot be held to your word by traitors, Your Highness,’ added Pike.