The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,14

did in her name. But then, feeling comfortable is a luxury spies are better off without.

“How do you like the public gardens?” asked Mozolia.

“Beautiful. If a little thirsty.”

“They were a gift to the city from a childless heiress to a vast merchant fortune.” Mozolia took her time arranging her long body on the bench. “She travelled the Circle of the World hoping to gather one of every kind of tree that God has made.” She waved towards a towering fur, its lower branches entirely bare, its upper ones still clinging to a few dry needles. “Sadly, not everything flourishes in our climate.” And she glanced at Tallow, wilting in servant’s livery, blotchy face beaded with sweat.

It had been a bad idea to bring him. Vick knew she was better off alone. A lesson learned fresh in the camps with every family member gone in the frozen ground. Her father, shivering, lips turned blue, shortened fingers turned black. Her mother, always asking what she’d done to deserve this, as though deserve had anything to do with it. All the sweat and pain it had taken to get that medicine for her sister. Turning up with the bottle gripped tight to find her stiff and cold under the threadbare blankets, her brother still holding her hand. Only the two of them left. Vick and her brother. His big, sad eyes, just like Tallow’s.

You’ll never hold up someone who can’t swim for themselves. In the end, they’ll drag you down with them.

Mozolia sighed, stretching one arm across the back of the bench. “But I daresay you have not crossed the Circle Sea to discuss trees.”

“No. To discuss the forthcoming vote.”

“People here talk of little else. A momentous decision. But not one that you and I can take any part in. Women cannot be Aldermen, after all.”

Vick snorted. “Women might not sit in the Assembly, but they can still control the men who do. You have at least five votes in your pocket.”

Mozolia shrugged her heavy shoulders. “Six. Possibly seven.”

“I wonder if you might be persuaded to cast them for the Union.”

“I might be. But not easily. I had one grandparent from Yashtavit, one from Sikkur, a third from Ospria and a fourth from the Old Empire. I am welcome, or perhaps equally unwelcome, at five different temples in the city. I sometimes forget which version of God I am supposed to be praying to. In other nations I would be called a mongrel. In this mongrel city I am the norm.” She smiled out at the yellow lawns, where people of every shape and colour walked, sat, chatted in the shade of every strange and wonderful tree God had made. “A merchant in fabrics cannot afford to take a narrow view. My business stretches across the Circle of the World. Suljuk silks and Gurkish linens, Imperial cottons and woollens from the North.”

“Not to mention all those fine new textiles spooling from the mills of the Union.”

“Not to mention those.”

“It would be a shame, for a merchant in fabrics to be cut off from the largest market in the world.”

“There would be frustrations, of course, but, like water, commerce always works through the cracks in time. And becoming a part of Styria would offer its own opportunities.”

“I understand the Serpent of Talins can be a domineering mistress.”

Mozolia’s turn to snort. “As several Union generals have discovered to their cost. But when people are willing to compromise, she can be reasonable. Look how the citizens of Talins have prospered under her rule! And I rather like the idea of a woman in charge, don’t you? Even a domineering one. We women really should do everything we can to work together.”

“Or should we do exactly what the men do, and put sentiment to the side, and follow the greatest profit?”

Mozolia smiled, ever so slightly. “Fancy that. You speak Styrian after all. I hope His Eminence sent an unsentimental sum of money along with you.”

“Something better.” Vick flicked open the letter and held it out between two fingers. The signature of Arch Lector Glokta lurked at the bottom, the lethal punchline. “Trade rights once controlled by the Guild of Mercers, managed by His Majesty’s Inquisition for these last thirty years. His Eminence is prepared to cut you in, quite handsomely.”

Mozolia took the letter and weighed every word. Vick didn’t rush her. She closed her eyes and tipped her face towards the sun, breathed in the perfumed air. So rare, she had a moment to just sit.

“A nice,