“Your Eminence, I have some questions about—” She stopped with Bayaz’s name on the tip of her tongue as Glokta’s guest turned in his chair, raising an urbane eyebrow.
“Inquisitor Teufel!” It was only the bloody king. “I never got the chance to thank you for your help in Valbeck. You made me look good, and that takes some damn doing. That note of yours saved my arse, not to mention several thousand others.” His smile faded somewhat. “Shame it couldn’t save everyone’s, really. And now I hear you pulled our feet out of the fire in Westport, too!”
Vick cleared her throat. “I am… delighted I could assist… Your Majesty.” She had slipped into the smooth, aristocratic, slightly constipated tone her mother might have used to greet the king. The full Victarine dan Teufel. Pathetic, really. The king’s so-called justice had sent her family to their deaths and her to rot in Angland, and here she was grovelling before the latest occupant of the throne. That was the Union for you: nobleman, peasant or convict, deference was baked in.
“I swear, you were the one person in Valbeck who kept their wits entirely about them.” The king wagged a finger at her as she sat beside him. “I thought then—next time I’m on a sinking ship, that’s the woman I want rowing the lifeboat.” And he reached out as if to clap her on the shoulder, must have sensed her deep discomfort, and ended up giving the back of her chair an awkward pat instead.
She had to admit she enjoyed the gratitude. It wasn’t something she tasted often and, like drink, if you only take it rarely a small measure can make you giddy. Any gratitude. Let alone a king’s. But as the silence stretched, she began to consider that bit about the lifeboat and cleared her throat again. “Is… the ship sinking, then?”
“There might be some bailing to be done,” came a voice from behind. Vick turned, surprised. A man was leaning against the wall beside the door. A man she somehow had no inkling was there until he spoke. An unexceptional man with curly hair. Average height, average build, average everything. The very look Vick aimed for herself, when she wanted to blend into anonymity. The exceptional ordinariness of the expert spy. Or the master assassin. It put her instantly on guard.
“Do you know Yoru Sulfur?” asked Glokta.
“We have never met,” said Sulfur, “though I, too, am a great admirer of your work in Valbeck.” He gave her a neat little bow. “I was once apprentice to the First of the Magi.”
Vick kept her face carefully neutral, but it was a struggle. Shenkt had said the Union was Bayaz’s tool, and now she found his agent at his grinning ease with the nation’s two most powerful men. “And now?” she asked.
“His watchful eye, his sympathetic ear—”
“His punishing fist?” asked Orso.
“Let us say his guiding palm,” said Sulfur. “By all means, pretend I am not here.”
“Not easily done,” murmured the king, holding out a folded paper to Vick between two fingers. “I received another eye-opening note this morning. One that may give us more bailing to do than in Valbeck and Westport combined.”
Vick took it, unfolded it and began to read.
Your Majesty,
There is a plot against you.
Your Open Council plans to steal your throne.
They have powerful allies in the North. They look for more in Styria.
They will land their troops on the northern coast of Midderland on the last day of summer, declare themselves patriots and march on Adua.
You should prepare. But you should have care how you prepare. There is a traitor in your Closed Council, too.
With Best Wishes,
A Friend
Vick swallowed, her skin unpleasantly prickling. A plot. The Open Council. Allies in the North and Styria. A traitor in the Closed Council. This could be a threat to make the uprising in Valbeck look like a village dance.
“A Friend?” The writing was odd. Carefully formed. Almost a little childlike. Vick turned the letter over, studied the ink, felt the paper, smelled it, even. But there were no clues to who wrote it. “Any idea who this friend might be?”
“None,” said Glokta. “But people keen to declare themselves a friend are usually anything but.”
“Even enemies can tell you the truth,” said Orso. “Relations between the Crown and the Open Council haven’t been this bad since… well, the last civil war, I suppose. Probably best not to dwell on how that ended…”
Widespread murder and destruction culminating in the violent overthrow and execution of a king. She placed the letter carefully on the Arch Lector’s desk. “Who on the Open Council might have the audacity, the grievance and the resources for treason?”
“Just about any of them.” Glokta licked at his empty gums. “Just about all of them.”
“But if I had to pick a man to declare himself a patriot while doing it, Isher would be the one.” Orso disgustedly adjusted his cuffs. “He tricked me into that mistake with Wetterlant, and I’ve no doubt he manoeuvred Leo dan Brock into his little display of petulance at the trial.”
The Arch Lector was looking even more pale than usual. “Isher and Brock were married together…” One of them to his own daughter, as they were no doubt all well aware.
“Enemies on the Open Council are one thing,” said Vick. “Their military resources are limited. The Lord Governor of Angland is another. He commands an army of thousands. Well equipped, experienced, loyal.” That prickling sensation was spreading. “Could Brock be a part of this?”
The king took a long breath through his nose and let it sigh away. “Powerful allies in the North…”
“Your Majesty.” Glokta winced as he tried to straighten in his wheeled chair. “If suspicion falls on my son-in-law, it must also fall on my own daughter. As your Arch Lector, I must be above reproach. I should tender my resignation, or at least recuse myself from this—”
Orso waved it away. “I won’t hear of it, Your Eminence. You’re the one man on the Closed Council I entirely trust. You’re simply far too widely hated to make a good conspirator.”
Glokta gave a weary snort. “Immensely kind of you to say so, Your Majesty.”
“Besides, we have no evidence. The one thing I’m sure Leo dan Brock is guilty of is finding me contemptible. If that’s a crime, I’ll have to hang three-quarters of the country. Have you seen the latest pamphlets? About me? About my mother? About the debt?”
“Outrageous lies, of course,” threw in Sulfur.
“Yet people can’t get enough of them.”
“We could arrest Isher,” offered Vick. “I daresay we could pry the truth out of him.”
“Tempting.” Glokta shook his head. “But after that business with Wetterlant, no one on the Open Council trusts us. We cannot afford to hand them more martyrs. We must tread carefully and bring plenty of proof wherever we go.”
“In the meantime, we take the advice of our anonymous friend and prepare,” said Orso. “We raise our own forces, we gather every ally we can find.”
“We are spread thin, Your Majesty.” Glokta spread his thin hands. “The King’s Own are scattered across the Union keeping down the Breakers.”