The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,128

one thing he’d learned over the last year—before you draw your sword, you need to know how you’ll win.

To win, he needed the King of the Northmen.

Flattery always did the trick for Savine. Leo puffed out his cheeks, looking at the crowd of Named Men down the great horseshoe of tables. “You’ve summoned quite the host,” he said. “The North seems stronger than ever. More united than ever.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Black Calder leaned past his son to point a frown at Leo as hostile as a drawn dagger.

“Now, now, Father.” Stour wagged a greasy finger. “I said be polite.”

When it came to flattery, Leo was more used to taking than giving. He wished he was down there with the warriors, drinking and singing and slapping backs, with no worries but a sore head in the morning. By the dead, diplomacy was hard work.

He felt Savine’s gentle touch on his arm. “You fought the man and won,” she murmured in his ear. “Surely you can talk to him?”

The thing about killing a man—you could do it in a moment. Bringing him around to your way of thinking took so much patience. And how could you even tell when it was done? Kill a man, he stayed dead. Change his mind, he always had the bloody chance to change it back.

“Reckon I’d rather fight him again.” He glanced over, and caught Black Calder glaring back. “Specially with his father judging every word.”

“If I had known we were bringing overbearing parents, we could have packed some of our own.” Savine sat forward. “I must say that you speak the common tongue wonderfully well, Lord Calder!”

She could usually slit a man right open with one compliment, but Black Calder was better armoured than most. “My own father always said it serves a man well to learn the ways of his enemies,” he grunted.

“And even better to learn the ways of his friends. I have been trying to garner some words of Northern, but I fear I am a poor study.”

“Oh, no doubt.” Calder snorted. “The first thing I think when I look at you is—there’s a woman who’s not crafty enough.”

Leo clenched his fist around his eating knife. He was damned if he’d let this old prick insult his wife, but before he could speak, Savine’s hand clamped tight on his sore thigh and cut him off in a pained squeak. “You, I think, are a man with craft to spare.” The ruder Calder got, the wider she smiled. “Perhaps you might tell me something of the history of Skarling’s Hall.”

“What am I, some bloody storyteller—”

“Father!” growled Stour. “There isn’t a man in this hall wouldn’t kill for the chance to teach the Lady Governor a few words of Northern. Stop insulting my guests and make yourself useful.”

With bad grace, which seemed the only grace he had, Black Calder stood, leaned close to his son’s ear and whispered loud enough for everyone to hear. “They want something. Don’t say yes because you feel you should, or because you feel you’re bored, or because of anything you feel, you understand? Make sure they pay.”

“I know what to do,” snapped Stour.

Savine gave Leo a wink as she took Black Calder’s bony hand and let the old man lead her from the dais. “Black Dow fought the Bloody-Nine right there,” he was saying.

“You saw it yourself?” breathed Savine, as if she’d never been so thrilled.

Stour worked his tongue around his sharp teeth as he watched them go. “Whatever my father says, it’s quite the honour to host you, Young Lion. And your wife, who’s clearly as clever as she is beautiful and I daresay knows a lot more Northern than she’s letting on. But I don’t reckon you suffered our roads all the way up to Carleon for my ale and my father’s stories.” He licked his fingers while he looked sidelong at Leo. “What are you after?”

Now was the moment, then. Courage, courage. He was the Young Lion, wasn’t he? He leaned in, speaking in an urgent whisper. “The Closed Council have to be stopped.”

“And you’re the man who’ll do it?”

“We’re the men who’ll do it.”

Stour raised one brow, as if he had his doubts.

“I want you with me on a grand adventure!” Leo tried to elbow through the detail and summon up some passion. “To win glory, and set the world right, and make friends of every decent man in the Union!”

Sad to say, Stour didn’t slit his hand and swear a blood oath