A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness #1) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,125

question.’

All felt far too quiet. He saw a figure lurking in an alleyway, a face at a window quickly vanished, a couple fighting over a bone who scurried away as they came close. Someone had been busy with a paintbrush, there were slogans smeared and spattered everywhere. Painted across whole terraces in letters three strides high. Scrawled across front doors in letters tiny as in a book.

‘What do they say?’ asked Sarlby.

Broad pushed his lenses up his sweaty nose and squinted so he could spell them out. ‘Fuck the king. Fuck the queen. Fuck them all. Rise up. Take what’s yours. That type o’ thing.’

‘Might steal your clothes,’ muttered Sarlby, shaking his head, ‘but they’ll leave you with a fine slogan. Fucking Burners. Just another kind of arsehole.’

‘That’s politics for you,’ grunted Broad. ‘Arseholes digging up excuses to be arseholes.’

‘High ideals and reality are like oil and water,’ muttered Vick. ‘They don’t mix well.’ She squatted at a corner, beckoning them over. ‘Quiet now. We’re here.’

Valbeck’s Courthouse had been a grand building, stately steps of coloured marble with stately columns at the top. Someone had been on the roof and torn some copper from the dome, a spider’s web of rafters showing on one side. The big new bank next door must’ve been even grander than the Courthouse not long ago. Now it was just a burned-out shell. Ashes chased each other around Broad’s boots in little swirls as they crossed the empty square in front.

‘Someone tried to hold ’em off here,’ he said as they eased up the steps. The doors were battered, one half-torn from its hinges and hanging loose.

‘Let’s hope we do better,’ said Sarlby, fingering his bow.

A pair of statues flanked the entrance. Impossibly stately ladies in noble poses no person ever struck, one holding a book and a sword and the other a broken chain. Justice and freedom, Broad reckoned. The Burners had smashed Freedom’s head off and put a dead cow’s where it used to be, flies crawling at the glassy eyes, dried blood in streaks down the hacked marble. Justice had a great red smile daubed over her frown, and We’ll give you fucking justice painted in drippy letters across her chest.

Vick strode between them. ‘Some sense of humour, these Burners.’

‘Oh, aye,’ said Broad. ‘They’re a hoot.’

The door of the great courtroom wasn’t guarded, but the public benches were scattered with Burners. Or perhaps they were just thieves, pimps, gamblers and drunks. Hard to tell the difference. Some hooted and jeered, shook their fists. Others were passed-out, surrounded by empty bottles. A couple had made a nest from some old curtains and the slurping sound of their hungry kissing echoed about the chamber. A dark-skinned Kantic was huffing so hard on a husk-pipe, Broad wondered if he was trying to replace the Valbeck vapours single-handed. Flies buzzed in the soupy heat and the place stank of unwashed bodies. Someone had daubed a childish cock across the mosaic floor in red paint, but rain had come through the hole in the dome and washed half of it into a rusty puddle.

Judge sat up on high in the judge’s box, the lunatic ringleader of this carnival of fools, a judge’s four-cornered black hat perched on her riot of red hair. She’d wreathed herself in stolen jewels: fingers crusted with rings and one arm dripping with bracelets, guildsmen’s chains and strings of pearls and ladies’ necklaces in a tawdry tangle across her battered breastplate. She had one long, thin leg slung lazily over the arm of the gilded chair, tattooed writing scrawled blue around and around her bare white thigh. The sight of that leg gave Broad a guilty tickle, deep inside. The same one he got when he felt violence coming.

The dock held a bony old prisoner, hands tied behind his back, wispy hair stiffened with blood, chin covered with white stubble. The two guards by him wore clown’s motley but the swords they carried were no joke.

‘Ricter dan Vallimir!’ sneered Judge. ‘Quite apart from anything else, you stand accused of having a fucking “dan” in your name—’

‘Guilty!’ There were ten whores in the jury box, eight women and two boys, plus a thickset man in an apron who looked decidedly puzzled to be there. One of the whores had leaped up, night bell tinkling around her neck, painted face twisted in a mad snarl. ‘Shitting guilty!’

‘Ladies of the jury!’ Judge whacked at her desk for order with a hatchet, sending splinters flying. ‘How many