The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,12

turned back.

“I’d like to get home.”

He took his lenses off, tucked them into his shirt pocket and the lamplit faces all turned to smudges.

“But we’ve got all night if we need it.”

The lad’s fear, and Gaunt’s horror, and Bannerman’s carelessness, made muddy blurs Broad could hardly tell one from another.

“I need you to imagine… the state you two will be in by then.”

The lad’s chair squealed on the warehouse floor as Broad shifted it to just the spot he wanted it.

“Daresay you’ll both be making that noise soon.”

Tweaked his sleeves one more time. Routine, routine, routine.

“The one hell makes.”

Broad knew how he’d have felt, if he’d been tied helpless in one chair and May in the other. That was why he was pretty sure it’d work.

“There’ll be no strike!” gasped Gaunt. “There’ll be no strike!”

Broad straightened up, blinking. “Oh, that’s good news.” Didn’t feel like good news. Deep down inside it felt like quite the disappointment. It was an effort, to make his fists unclench. An effort, to take the lenses from his shirt pocket, hook them back over his ears. Too delicate for his aching fingers. “Your son’ll stay with us, though, just to make sure you don’t have a change of heart.”

The lad wriggled as Bannerman dragged him back across the warehouse floor into the darkness.

“Respect!” called Broad, carefully rolling his sleeves down.

Important to have a routine.

The Art of Compromise

“Precision, you dolts!” Filio leaped from his bench to yell at the two swordsmen, their steels drooping as they gaped at him. “Speed is nothing but faff and bluster without precision.”

He was in his late fifties, but quick and handsome still. Vick might’ve had more grey in her hair than he did. He dropped back beside her, muttering a few more Styrian curses under his breath before switching to common. “Young men these days, eh? They expect the world served to them with golden cutlery!”

Vick glanced over at Tallow. He looked like he might never have seen cutlery, let alone been served with the golden kind. Even dressed smartly in Practicals’ black, he reminded her of her brother. That apologetic hunching of the shoulders, as if he was always expecting a slap. “Some have to handle hardship,” she said.

“A little hardship would do my nephew no harm.” Filio shook his head as he watched the swordsmen shuffle about the training circle, boards polished smooth by generations of soft fencing shoes. “He has fast hands, good instincts, but so much to learn.” He groaned at a wayward lunge. “I hope he might represent our city in the Contest in Adua one day, but talent is useless without discipline—” He leaped up again. “Come on, you donkey, think about it!”

“You competed in the Contest yourself.”

Filio gave her a sly grin as he sank back down. “Have you been checking up on me?”

“You lost to the future King Jezal in the semi-final. Took him to a last touch, as I recall.”

“You were there? You can’t have been ten years old!”

“Eight.” A good liar sticks to the truth whenever possible. She had been eight when that bout took place, but she’d been huddled in the blackness of a stinking ship’s hold, shackled to a great chain with her family and a few-score other convicts. All on their way to the prison camps of Angland, from which only she would return. She doubted that memory would’ve brought quite the same delight from Filio, though, his eyes shining at the memory of past glories. People are rarely made happy by all the truth.

“The cheering crowd, the scrape of steel, the Circle laid out before the grandest buildings of the Agriont. The proudest day of my life!” He was a man who admired the pomp and structure of the Union. A man who appreciated precision and discipline. That was why Vick had worn the full dress uniform of an Inquisitor Exempt, boots buffed to a mirror gleam, hair parted with a ruler and ruthlessly bound back. Filio waved towards the flashing blades. “So, you are a devotee of the beautiful science?”

“Who isn’t?” Though in fact she wasn’t.

“And I suppose you have come to gather votes?”

“His Majesty is extremely keen that Westport remain where it belongs, in the Union.”

“Or His Eminence is?” murmured Filio, eyes never leaving the swordsmen as they jabbed and parried. “And who else have you spoken to?”

“You are my first call.” He was the fourth, but in Vick’s experience, you had to take care with the pride of moderately powerful men. They bruised