A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness #1) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,15

a morning. Or, indeed, an afternoon.

‘Bed is warm, though,’ he murmured.

‘Certainly is, Your Highness,’ cooed the other whore in his ear. Her perfume was so sickeningly strong, it was a wonder pigeons didn’t drop stunned from the sky around her.

The Inquisitor gave a nod.

Rather than needing strong men or horses to haul up the condemned, some enterprising fellow had devised a system whereby prisoners could be dropped through the scaffold floor at a touch upon a lever. There was an invention to make everything more efficient these days, after all. Why would killing people be an exception?

A strange sound rose from the crowd as the rope snapped taut. Part cheer of joy, part hoot of derision, part groan of discomfort, but mostly gasps of relief. Relief that it wasn’t them at the end of the rope.

‘Damn it,’ muttered Orso, working a finger into his collar. There was nothing even faintly satisfying in this. Even if these people really were enemies of the state, they hardly looked like very dangerous ones.

The next in line to receive the king’s justice was a girl who might not yet have been sixteen. Her eyes, wide in bruised sockets, flickered from the open trapdoor to the Inquisitor as he stepped towards her. ‘Have you anything to say?’

She appeared hardly to comprehend. Orso found himself wishing the vapours were thicker, and that he could not see her face at all.

‘Please,’ said the man beside her. There were tears streaking his dirty cheeks. ‘Take me but, please—’

‘Shut him up,’ snapped the Inquisitor, not at all enjoying his part in this grisly pantomime. A few desultory vegetables were being tossed at the scaffold, but whether they were intended for the accused or those carrying out the sentence, it was hard to say. There was a dark stain spreading down the front of the girl’s dress.

‘Yuck,’ said Yolk. ‘She’s pissed herself.’

Orso frowned sideways. ‘That’s what disgusts you?’

‘I’ve seen you piss yourself often enough,’ sneered Tunny at Yolk, and the whores spilled more false laughter. The side whiskers of the man in front twitched as he ground his teeth.

Orso gritted his as he looked to the scaffold. Hildi had been right, he could stop this. If not him, who? If not now, when?

There was some problem with the girl’s noose, the Inquisitor hissing furiously at one of the executioners as he dragged his hood up over his sweaty face to peer at the knots.

Orso was just about to step forward. Was just about to roar, Stop!

But circumstances always conspired to stop him doing the right thing. He heard a soft, high voice in his ear. ‘Your Highness.’

Orso turned to see the broad, flat and decidedly unwelcome face of Bremer dan Gorst at his shoulder.

‘Gorst, you tiresome bastard.’ The insult caused not the slightest reaction. Nothing ever did. ‘How did you track me down?’

‘Just followed the stench of disgrace,’ said Tunny.

‘It is quite powerful hereabouts.’ Orso reached for the pearl dust and realised it was gone, snatched Yolk’s bottle from his hand instead and took a swig.

‘The queen has sent for you,’ piped Gorst.

Orso blew out through his pursed lips to make a long farting sound. ‘Hasn’t she better things to do?’

Yolk chuckled. ‘What could matter more to a mother than the welfare of her eldest son?’

Gorst’s eyes slid across to him, and stuck there. All he did was look, but it was enough to make Yolk’s laughter sputter into nervous silence. He might sound a clown, but His Majesty’s First Guard was not a man you trifled with.

‘Any chance I can bring the whores with me?’ asked Orso. ‘I’ve paid for the whole day.’ It was his turn to face Gorst’s fish-eyed stare. He sighed. ‘Would you conduct the ladies to their residence, Tunny?’

‘Oh, I’ll conduct a symphony with ’em, Your Highness.’ More false giggling.

Orso turned away without much reluctance. He hated bloody hangings, but the girls had wanted to go and he hated disappointing people, too. As a result of which, it seemed, he disappointed everyone. At his back, there was that strange sound between gasp and cheer as the next trapdoor dropped open.

Orso tossed his hat onto the bald head of a bust of Bayaz, congratulating himself that it came to rest on the legendary wizard at a pleasingly rakish angle.

The tapping of his boot heels echoed in the vast spaces of the salon as he crossed a sea of gleaming tiles to the tiny island of furniture in its centre. The High Queen of the Union sat