The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,105

to be above reproach!” Leo glanced up at the paintings of previous Lord Governors as if at a disapproving jury. “Pure and principled. If we’re willing to do anything, then how are we any better than them?” He had the wounded whine of a boy who finds the grown-ups have stolen his game and are playing it in a way he by no means approves of. “We have to do the right thing!”

She wanted to tell him that they could afford no right thing, only the necessary thing. That there could be no right side, only their side. But why break down a door when you could just slip through a window? “Leo— ah!” And she hunched over, clutching her belly.

Leo sprang to his feet. “By the dead, are you—”

“It’s nothing.” She grabbed his hand, bared her teeth. “Ah! But could you fetch Zuri, get her to bring that tonic—”

“Of course!” And he rushed from the room as fast as his limp would allow.

Isher had half-risen, too. “Lady Savine, can I—”

“Who do you imagine will be king when this is over?” Savine arranged herself again in her chair and coolly met his eye.

He gave a disbelieving little laugh and slowly sat himself. “King Orso, of course. We plan to remove a corrupt Closed Council. To depose the king would be treason.”

“So you plan to stop at half-treason? Come, come. Meat half-cooked agrees with no one. Humiliate the king but leave him on the throne and you will be storing up your own destruction. Not to mention mine.” She had learned a hard lesson in Valbeck. She would never allow herself to be weak, or vulnerable, or terrified again. It gave her a surprisingly sharp pang, but her merciless logic could only lead her to one place. Perhaps she had loved Orso once, but he hated her now. Her father had lied to her all her life. And loyalty? A trick those with power played on those without to make them act against their own interests.

She met Isher’s eye. “King Orso has to go.”

He ran his tongue about the inside of his mouth, moving now from admiration to suspicion. “I see that we are speaking plainly—”

“When speaking of treason, anything else would be ridiculous. What do you really have without us? Lord Barezin, I understand, laughs himself to the point of incontinence staging pornographic plays about Queen Terez in his private theatre. Lord Heugen, I hear, insists on steeping in a copper bath every morning to replenish his magnetic energies. Should we discuss the shortcomings of Lady Wetterlant?”

“You are well informed.”

“Knowledge is the root of power, Juvens said.”

“And what have you found out about me?”

Savine’s turn to pause. “On you, I must confess, my book has a blank page.”

“I am a careful man, Your Grace. And that unfortunate business with Wetterlant has given me great authority in the Open Council. A unity they have never had before. I will keep the lords in line, I promise you that.”

“Even so. In the army of Angland, we supply the best and most experienced soldiers you could hope for. In Stour Nightfall, we bring a decisive ally. Would you agree?”

“You leave me little choice but to agree.”

She laughed as though he had made an excellent joke. “My aim in every conversation. My husband has fewer enemies and far more popular support than any other candidate. And he has some vestige of a legitimate claim through his grandfather. A better claim than the current occupant of the throne, some might say. He will be king, Lord Isher.” And she would be queen, and the ashes of that most treasured ambition blazed up suddenly again. “If you want us to gamble everything, that is my price.”

“And when the mighty Brocks take the crown, what will remain for the rest of us?”

“Everything else. I think you would make an excellent Arch Lector and First Lord of the Open Council, Your Eminence.” Isher was good at hiding his feelings, but she caught his flicker of satisfaction at the title. “Which would leave your magnetic and pornographic colleagues to decide who will be lord chamberlain and lord chancellor. I imagine Leo would like to choose his own lord marshals, but you could fill the other seats with friends.”

“And does all this come from your husband or from you?”

“What comes from me comes from him.”

“And yet you send him upstairs while we discuss it.”

“So that when the crown falls in his lap, he can honestly say he never sought it,