The door was shut behind them with a clunk like the fall of a headsman’s axe. Orso gave the faintest shiver as he strode away, deeply grateful to be on the right side of it.
“Oh, hell,” hissed Bruckel. A formidable-looking woman, black hair streaked with iron grey and her angular dress incorporating more than a hint of armoured steel, ploughed towards them with the determination of a warship under full sail.
“Who’s this?” muttered Orso.
“The bastard’s mother,” grunted Glokta, from the corner of his mouth.
“Oh, hell.”
“Your Majesty.” Lady Wetterlant’s rigid curtsy bespoke barely contained fury.
“Lady Wetterlant.” Orso had no idea of the right tone to strike and ended up trapped between a funeral guest and a boy caught stealing apples. “I… er… wish we were meeting under happier circumstances—”
“You have the power to make them happier, Your Majesty. Do you plan to dismiss this ridiculous case?”
He was almost tempted, just to avoid this interview. “I… fear I cannot. The evidence is compelling.”
“The word of jealous commoners? My son is infamously used! Slandered by unscrupulous enemies. You would take their side?”
“This is not a question of sides, madam, but of justice.”
“You call this justice? He is imprisoned!”
“He has,” said Bruckel, “a window.”
Lady Wetterlant turned a glare on the high justice that might have frozen milk. “Mine is an old family, Your Majesty. We have many friends.”
Orso winced as if into a gale. “A great comfort for you, and them, I am sure, but it does not bear upon the guilt or innocence of your son.”
“It bears upon the consequences of the verdict. It bears upon them quite considerably. You have a child, Your Eminence.”
Glokta’s left eye gave an ugly twitch. “Is that a threat?”
“A humble entreaty,” though made in the very tone one might have used for a threat. “I would ask you to look into your heart.”
“Oh, mine’s a very small one. People who seek for anything of much significance in there are inevitably disappointed.”
Lady Wetterlant wrinkled her lip. “Be in no doubt, I will do everything in my considerable power to ensure my child goes free.”
“Everything within the law,” squeaked Bruckel. “I trust.”
Lady Wetterlant eased towards him. “A mother’s love for her child transcends the law.”
“Don’t count on it.” Glokta jerked his head at the Practical wheeling his chair, who shoved it forward with sufficient violence to run Lady Wetterlant down, had she not stumbled aside. Orso seized the opportunity to hurry past in his wake.
“Do the right thing, Your Majesty!” Lady Wetterlant shrieked after him, her voice so sharp it made him hunch his shoulders. “I beg you, for my sake. For your sake. Do the right thing!”
“I intend to,” muttered Orso. But he doubted he and Lady Wetterlant meant the same by that particular phrase. No one does. That’s the problem with it.
The First of the Magi was standing in the gardens when Orso returned, among well-manicured beds in which the first blooms were just peeping from their buds, frowning towards the House of the Maker, its stark outline showing over the battlements of the creeper-covered palace wall.
“Lord Bayaz.” Orso’s greeting came out with more than a dash of resentment. “Still with us?”
“Your Majesty.” The First of the Magi smiled as he bowed, but his green eyes stayed hard. “I will soon be taking my leave, in fact.”
“Oh? Oh.” Orso had been desperate to get rid of the old meddler, but now it came to it, he found he was sorry to see him go. Perhaps he wanted someone to blame. Now, as usual, he would have to blame himself.
“I had not intended to stay so long but, with your father’s death, I wanted to see the crown… smoothly transferred.”
“Chaos in Westport, chaos in Valbeck, chaos among the commoners, chaos among the nobility?” Orso gave a sorry grunt. “Things could be smoother.”
“Your father and I passed through rougher seas together.” Bayaz took a long breath through his nose, winced and cleared his throat. The air was always bad when the wind blew from the west, sharp with smoke from the chimneys that towered ever higher over the Three Farms and the Arches. “Times change.” And Bayaz began to stroll through the gardens, giving Orso no choice but to scrape after him, the paths a shade too narrow to walk abreast, leaving him feeling more like a butler than a king. “I am pleased to have played my part in ushering in the new age but… I confess I feel like something of a relic in Adua. And there are other issues that demand my attention. I judge the Union to be in safe hands.”
“What, mine?”
Bayaz spared him a glance. “Let us say safe enough. What was your opinion of Fedor dan Wetterlant?”
Orso gave an explosive snort. “Guilty as the plague and an utter shit to boot. I’m not sure I ever in my life met so loathsome a man.”
“Your Majesty has been fortunate in his acquaintance,” said Bayaz, feet crunching in the perfect gravel. “I have known many of his type.”
“He’s like the villain in some tawdry play.”
“I must confess I have always had some sympathy with villains. Heroism makes fine entertainment but sooner or later someone has to get things done.”
“Well-written villains, maybe. You wouldn’t believe Wetterlant in a book! How the hell does a man end up like that?”
“Being given everything he wants all his life. Being asked for nothing in return.”
Orso frowned. He could have said much the same about himself. “It stings me that we must waste so much effort on so worthless a man. The Breakers, in Valbeck—”
“Traitors, Your Majesty.”
“But at least they had reasons. At least they thought they were doing right. What the hell can Wetterlant’s excuse be? He doesn’t even bother to make one. He doesn’t even see the need to make one. I bloody hate hangings, but a man like that presents a sore temptation. I just wish we could find our way to some compromise.”
“You are welcome to try, of course.”
“Am I?”
“Each generation must make its own choices.” Bayaz stopped, smiling down at a perfect white flower, the first in the garden to fully show its face to the spring sun. “If all we do is stick to what we know, how can we make progress?”
“You couldn’t solve it all with…” Orso waved feebly towards the House of the Maker. “A spell, or something?”
“Magic fades from the world. I destroyed the Prophet’s indestructible Hundred Words. Those few of his Eaters that remain skulk about the South, trying to hold together the shreds of their ruined empire. A man is measured by his enemies. Worthy ones can be more missed than friends.” Bayaz gave a sigh, then a shrug. “Magic fades from the world but, in truth, most problems have always been better solved with a few sharp words. Or a little sharp steel.”
“So I must be a rock, eh?”
“As your father always tried to be.”
Orso felt a pang of sadness at that. “I used to think he could do whatever he pleased, and chose to do nothing out of fear, or weakness, or incompetence. Now I see he was dragged in so many different directions at once that it took all his energies to stand still.”