The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,161

had to suppress a splutter of entirely inappropriate laughter at the thought of the word.

“I hear congratulations are in order once again. Lord Heugen’s faithlessness is far from surprising but it shocks me that Lord Marshal Brint would betray the Crown.” Glokta slowly shook his head. “Ten years we sat together on the Closed Council.”

“You think you know someone…” murmured Vick, rubbing absently at her bruised knuckles as she frowned out at the sunlight glittering on the lake. People were boating, laughing, lounging on the banks. You would never have thought a civil war was coming. But then the worst betrayals often happen in good weather. When there’s a blizzard blowing, people are too busy huddling together.

“I am leaving Adua today,” said Glokta. “My wife thinks the country air may be good for my health. That is… what she tells me she thinks, anyway. I suspect she does not want us to become sad ghosts haunting the halls where we were once powerful. I suspect she is wise in this, as in so much else.” He cleared his throat. “Before I left, I wanted to thank you.”

She looked sharply across at him. She should have been pleased to get the thanks of the man she’d served faithfully for so many years. But pleasure was not her first feeling.

“For all you have done for me,” he went on, not meeting her eye. “Done for the Union. Especially given… what the Union has done for you. Or what it has failed to do. By my judgement, our new king has had few more valuable servants. So. Thank you. For your courage. Your diligence. Your… patriotism.”

“Diligence and patriotism.” She gave a bitter snort, slowly clenching her aching fist. “That or lack of choices. That or being too much of a coward to find another way. That or sticking to the habits of the camps, and grabbing the chance to stand with the winners, and making the only move up the convict can see—from taking the beating to giving it.”

She wasn’t sure why she was suddenly angry. Because of the things he’d made her do? Or because he wouldn’t be there to make her do more?

“Well.” Glokta looked towards the summer revellers. So near to them, yet somehow in a different world. “I have often said that life is the misery we endure between disappointments. Whatever the reasons, you have never once disappointed me. I wish I had been so reliable in return, but I fear I have let you down. I know how much you want to be… need to be… loyal.”

“Loyal.” She thought of all the people she’d lied to, deceived, sold out over the last eight years. It was quite the list. Malmer dangling above the road to Valbeck. Sibalt and his pathetic little dreams of the Far Country. Moor and Grise. Tallow and his sister. She could still smell the rebels’ camp in Starikland, after she told the soldiers where to find them. “I betray people for a living.”

“Yes.” He gave her a knowing glance. “Perhaps that’s why you need to be loyal. I always imagined there would be time to give you your proper reward, but… at the pinnacle of power, as you see… time runs out suddenly. Might I at least give you one piece of advice, before I go?”

She could have said no. She could have punched him in the face. But she did nothing.

He reached up to gently wipe some wet from under his leaking left eye. “Forgive yourself.”

She sat there, on that bench, jaw clenched, breath hissing fast in her nose, while down on the banks of the lake someone gave a braying peel of laughter at some joke.

“There is no way out of the camps without His Majesty’s approval.”

She could have stuck her fingers in her ears. She could have got up and stalked away. Instead she sat there, her skin turned cold and every muscle rigid.

“Your brother’s little prisoners’ revolution was doomed from the start.”

She remembered that last glimpse of his face. The shock and the hurt as they dragged him away. She remembered it as if it was happening now.

“It would have been easy to give in to sentimentality,” said Glokta. “But you did the brave thing. The right thing. Turning him in. Buying your freedom.”

She closed her eyes, but her brother’s accusing face was still there. As if it was etched into her lids.

“He would only have dragged you down with him. Some people… cannot be saved.”

Now she stood, wobbly, ready