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

‘I think I once heard we’re related?’ he said as they began to mount up. ‘Fifth cousins or some such.’ Leo tossed his stick to Jurand. He was damned if he’d look like a cripple in front of a man he so much admired. He insisted on dragging himself into the saddle in spite of the pain in his leg, stomach, side, shoulder.

‘How is … your mother?’ came Gorst’s odd squeak.

‘She’s well,’ said Leo, surprised. ‘Happy the war’s over. She was leading the fight when the Northmen first attacked.’ He thought about the light that put him in. ‘Giving me some excellent advice, at least.’

‘She was always highly perceptive.’

‘I knew you saved my father’s life at Osrung. He used to love to tell that story. But I’d no idea you knew my mother.’

Gorst looked a little pained. ‘We were good friends … at one time.’

‘Huh.’ Leo had spent more than enough of his life worrying about his mother’s feelings. He abruptly changed the subject. ‘I would’ve loved to train with you while I’m here, but … I fear I’m in no fit state. Maybe I could observe?’

‘Alas, there will be so many demands on Your Grace’s time,’ said the lord chamberlain, oozing uninvited into their conversation. ‘His Majesty is keen to greet you.’

‘Well … I’m at His Majesty’s disposal, of course.’ Leo gave his horse a nudge and set off at a walk after the two standard-bearers.

‘As are we all, Your Grace. But first His Eminence the Arch Lector wishes to discuss your triumph.’

‘Since when do Inquisitors arrange parades?’

The lord chamberlain delicately cleared his throat. ‘Your Grace will discover there is little that happens in Adua without Arch Lector Glokta’s approval.’

One of the banners at the front of the Young Lion’s grand column had got tangled with a washing line, so they all had to sit in their splendid saddles waiting for it to get untangled. Leo himself could hardly be seen for the fawning gaggle of overpriced arse-lickers. Even Jurand and Glaward had been demoted to trailing after, eased further back with every turn. Seemed the fake adoration of strangers mattered more to Leo than his friends, or his family, or his lover. If that’s what she still was to him. If that’s what she’d ever been.

Rikke raised her brows as a whole column of dark-skinned soldiers tramped out of a side street, gilded standards flashing and spears lowered. Wasn’t until a wagon rattled right through ’em she realised they weren’t there.

‘By the dead.’ She held a hand over her left eye, hot and itching and aching right into her teeth.

‘Still seeing things?’ murmured Isern, jaw chomp-chomping happily on chagga. ‘Take it as proof the moon has marked you special, and rejoice.’

It all made Rikke more than a bit nostalgic for a time when folk just thought she was mad. ‘If this is special, I reckon I’d rather be ordinary.’

‘Aye, well, we all want the things we haven’t got.’

‘That’s it? Thought you were here to help me with the Long Eye?’

‘I said I’d work out if you had it, then help you ease it open. Plain to everyone at that battle or that duel you’ve got it and it’s wide open.’ Isern grinned over. ‘Closing the bastard was never numbered among my promises.’

‘Fucking marvellous,’ muttered Rikke, nudging her horse on so she could find some space to get a breath. Wasn’t easy in this damn place, though.

By the dead, the air. Close and sticky and full of odd smells. There was a catch and a scratch in her throat, a sting at her eyes, like far-off burning. And the noise. The babbling in a dozen languages she didn’t know, pleading, shouting, fighting, everyone shoving on to nowhere as if they were all endlessly late for everything. Hammers clanging, wheels turning and fires burning, so many it became a low rumble that made the ground buzz. As though the city itself were alive, and tortured, and angry, and desperate to wriggle free of its infestation of human lice.

‘All this progress.’ Bayaz again, glancing approvingly at vast building sites to either side, with their towering cranes and their cobwebs of rope and scaffold and their swarms of bellowing workmen. ‘You would not believe how much it has changed in so short a time. This district, the Three Farms? I remember when it was three farms, and far outside the city walls! The city burst those walls and they threw up another set and it burst those, too, and the Three Farms is so built over with manufactories, there’s barely a stride of grass left in the borough. All iron and stone, now.’

Rikke watched one of the horses in front lift its tail and drop a few turds. There was still plenty of that in the streets. ‘All iron and stone? That a good thing?’

Bayaz snorted as if the whole idea of good was a waste of his valuable time. ‘It is a thing as irresistible as the tide. A golden tide of industry and commerce. There is no limit on what can be bought and sold. Why, I saw a shop not far behind that was selling nothing but soap. A whole shop. For soap! When you reach my age, you learn to swim with the current.’