The Blade Itself

Past midnight, and it was dark in the Middleway. Dark and it smelled bad. It always smelled bad down by the docks: old salt water, rotten fish, tar and sweat and horse shit. In a few hours time this street would be thronging with noise and activity. Tradesmen shouting, labourers cursing under their loads, merchants hurrying to and fro, a hundred carts and wagons rumbling over the dirty cobbles. There would be an endless tide of people, thronging off the ships and thronging on, people from every part of the world, words shouted in every language under the sun. But at night it was still. Still and silent. Silent as the grave, and even worse smelling.

“It’s down here,” said Severard, strolling towards the shadowy mouth of a narrow alley, wedged in between two looming warehouses.

“Did he give you much trouble?” asked Glokta as he shuffled painfully after.

“Not too much.” The Practical adjusted his mask, letting some air in behind. Must get very clammy under there, all that breath and sweat. No wonder Practicals tend to have bad tempers. “He gave Rews’ mattress some trouble, stabbed it all to bits. Then Frost knocked him on the head. Funny thing. When that boy knocks a man on the head, the trouble all goes out of him.”

“What about Rews?”

“Still alive.” The light from Severard’s lamp passed over a pile of putrid rubbish. Glokta heard rats squeaking in the darkness as they scurried away.

“You know all the best neighbourhoods, don’t you Severard?”

“That’s what you pay me for, Inquisitor.” His dirty black boot squelched, heedless, into the stinking mush. Glokta limped gingerly around it, holding the hem of his coat up in his free hand. “I grew up round here,” continued the Practical. “Folk don’t ask questions.”

“Except for us.” We always have questions.

“Course.” Severard gave a muffled giggle. “We’re the Inquisition.” His lamp picked out a dented iron gate, the high wall above topped with rusty spikes. “This is it.” Indeed, and what an auspicious-looking address it is. The gate evidently didn’t see much use, its brown hinges squealed in protest as the Practical unlocked it and heaved it open. Glokta stepped awkwardly over a puddle that had built up in a rut in the ground, cursing as his coat trailed in the foul water.

The hinges screamed again as Severard wrestled the heavy gate shut, forehead creasing with the effort, then he lifted the hood on his lantern, lighting up a wide ornamental courtyard, choked with rubble and weeds and broken wood.

“And here we are,” said Severard.

It must once have been a magnificent building, in its way. How much would all those windows have cost? How much all that decorative stonework? Visitors must have been awed by its owners wealth, if not his good taste. But no more. The windows were blinded with rotting boards, the swirls of masonry were choked with moss and caked with bird droppings. The thin layer of green marble on the pillars was cracked and flaking, exposing the rotten plaster underneath. All was crumbled, broken and decayed. Fallen lumps of the façade were strewn everywhere, casting long shadows on the high walls of the yard. Half the head of a broken cherub stared mournfully up at Glokta as he limped past.

He had been expecting some dingy warehouse, some dank cellar near the water. “What is this place?” he asked, staring up at the rotting palace.

“Some merchant built it, years ago.” Severard kicked a lump of broken sculpture out of his way and it clattered off into the darkness. “A rich man, very rich. Wanted to live near his warehouses and his wharves, keep one eye on business.” He strolled up the cracked and mossy steps to the huge, flaking front door. “He thought the idea might catch on, but how could it? Who’d want to live round here if they didn’t have to? Then he lost all his money, as merchants do. His creditors have had trouble finding a buyer.”

Glokta stared at a broken fountain, leaning at an angle and half filled with stagnant water. “Hardly surprising.”