The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,245

so clearly, but I never doubt you have them. So I believe I understand you.”

“Really?” In spite of all her efforts, her voice sounded strangled.

“Oh, yes. I believe I understand you better than you understand yourself.”

It worried her that Pike was suddenly so talkative. It made her think that he was working his way to something, and she would not like it at all when they got there. She had the feeling, yet again, that this was one of those moments when her life hung by a thread. But when she faced Sibalt, Risinau, Vitari, Savine dan Brock, she had gone in with her eyes open, had known the line she must walk. What Pike wanted was a mystery.

“It was Colonel West who pulled me from the camps,” he mused, “without the slightest idea that we had known each other years before. In his company I even held a shield in a duel, if you can believe that. When the Bloody-Nine beat the Feared and made himself King of the Northmen! Life is… such a cobweb of coincidences, isn’t it? West was a man one could admire.” He gave a sorry sigh. “But the truly good men never seem to last. He died, and I began to work with Arch Lector Glokta. Even though I knew he was far from a good man. Even though he was the very man who had sent me to the camps in the first place. Does any of this sound familiar?”

It did. Not the part about holding a shield in a duel, but otherwise quite uncomfortably so.

Pike watched a nervous-looking set of labourers clear out of their way to huddle against the houses as they clattered past. “In the name of justice, I tortured dissenters in Adua. In the name of freedom, I imprisoned rebels in Starikland. In the name of order, I spread chaos across the Far Country. I was as loyal a servant as the Crown ever had.”

Vick couldn’t help but frown at that choice of words. “Was?”

“Then the manufactories started to spring up, and the unrest began among the spinners, and I was sent here, to Valbeck, as Superior of the Inquisition.”

“You were Superior of Valbeck?”

Pike had that little curl at the corner of his mouth which was the closest he came to a smile. “You didn’t know?”

The street opened out and they rode into the square that should’ve been Valbeck’s busy heart. It was deserted now, except for well-armed guards posted at the corners and clustered on the steps of the courthouse where Judge had tossed out death sentences. Men with fine new breastplates, fine new halberds, fine new swords, everything twinkling in the autumn sun.

A double row of them was drawn up in front of the rebuilt Valbeck branch of Valint and Balk, a temple to debt more magnificent than ever, scaffolding clinging to its pillared façade so sculptors could finish a frieze of history’s richest merchants upon its giant pediment.

“Who are these?” muttered Vick. Some private militia, hired to keep the peace with the king’s soldiers gone? But something didn’t fit. Rough-looking men, all standing their own way. Clean armour, maybe, but unshaven faces.

Pike didn’t look concerned. You might almost have called him jaunty as he led them across the empty square at a trot, past the vacant pedestals of statues torn down during the uprising to the bank’s front steps. That double row of armed men parted and two figures came from the midst. Two awfully familiar figures. One was a fat man in a well-cut suit, the other a tall, lean woman in a dress stitched from many-coloured rags, a rust-eaten breastplate over the top, her red hair pinned into a bonfire tangle.

“Fuck,” breathed Vick. Not often she was at a loss for words, but right then she had nothing better.

“Victarine dan Teufel!” called Risinau, the light of pious belief burning as brightly in his eyes as ever.

“Unless I’m much mistook,” sneered Judge, the light of angry madness burning even brighter in hers, “which I’m not often.”

First thing Vick thought was that they’d fallen into a trap. Then Pike spread his arms wide. “My friends!” he called as he swung down from his saddle to meet them. “My children!” And he kissed Risinau on the forehead, and did the same to Judge, all smiling as if this was a family reunion long put off, while the armed men thumped the butts of their halberds against the steps and sent up an approving rattle.

Like every puzzle, once