The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,60

the Lords’ Round, of all places. Confessions got by torture? Is this Union justice or Gurkish tyranny? Styrian trickery? Northern savagery?”

“Yes!” she heard Lady Wetterlant hiss with fierce delight. There were loud shouts of agreement from the lords. One might almost have called them cheers. Isher shrank silently into his seat, lips pressed carefully together, making sure there was as much empty bench between him and Leo as possible.

“I would caution the Lord Governor to choose his next words carefully,” growled Savine’s father, and she found herself in total agreement. A representative from the Angland delegation was plucking at the hem of Leo’s jacket in an effort to pull him down, but Leo angrily slapped his hand away.

“Sit down, you bloody fool,” Savine forced through gritted teeth, gripping the rail of the gallery. But the Young Lion would not sit down.

“Call yourself a high justice?” he roared at Bruckel, leaning on the back of his bench with one hand and gripping hard at his thigh with the other. “This isn’t justice!”

“Your Grace,” growled Orso, “I would ask you to return to your seat—”

“I refuse!” snarled Leo, spit flying. “It’s plain to everyone that you can’t judge this man fairly! You’re a puppet of the Closed Council!”

You could almost see the jaws drop. A lady clapped a hand over her mouth. Another gasped. Another gave a kind of disbelieving giggle.

“Oh no,” whispered Savine.

Orso had always thought himself the most easy-going man in the Union. He had floated over the scornful glances, the frequent insults, the scurrilous rumours. Most of them had, after all, been more or less fair. He’d never imagined he even really had a temper.

But perhaps he’d never before had anything to be angry about.

Whether it was the ongoing frustration of the throne, the entrenched hostility of everyone in the chamber, Wetterlant’s barefaced gall, Isher’s two-faced chicanery, Brock’s naïve impudence or Savine’s forthcoming nuptials that infuriated him most, the combination produced a feeling of utter rage such as he had never felt in his life.

“Colonel Gorst,” he managed to choke out, his throat so tight he could hardly form the words. “Remove Lord Brock from the chamber.”

Gorst had no expression on his slab of a face as he pounded across the tiled floor towards Leo.

The Open Council didn’t rise united, as they had to support Arnault in the legend. Maybe he’d spoken better than Leo. Or Morlic had been madder than Orso. Or men’s principles had become so greasy, they tended to slip from their grasp at the worst moments. Or maybe the legend was balls. Everyone stared, but not one arse left its seat.

Leo took a shuffling step back and nearly fell onto his bench, grimacing at the stab of pain in his leg. “Now, hold on a—”

Gorst caught two fistfuls of Leo’s jacket.

Once, as a boy, he’d gone swimming in the sea near Uffrith and been taken by a sudden swell and dragged off his feet. He’d thrashed with all his strength, but the current had sucked him helpless over rocks, swept away by a force of nature far greater than he would ever be.

Being dragged bodily from his bench by Bremer dan Gorst felt similar. The man’s strength defied belief. It felt as if he could’ve flung Leo from the chamber with one throw. He marched him up the aisle of the Lords’ Round, through the coloured splashes of light, past gaping lords, Leo’s feet kicking uselessly at the steps, tangled with his badly balanced commemorative sword.

“I’m going!” squawked Leo. “I’m going!”

But he might as well have complained to the tide. Gorst showed no emotion as he bundled Leo from the hall, across the antechamber, then out of the Lords’ Round into the daylight. He finally set Leo down with exaggerated care beside a statue of Casamir the Steadfast, feeling much the same sense of awe and relief as he had when the sea finally washed him up on that beach near Uffrith as a boy, but with an added helping of crippling embarrassment.

Gorst wasn’t even out of breath. “I hope you realise…” he squeaked, “that this was not personal, Your Grace.” He gave an awkward smile. “Please… pass my respects to your mother.”

“What?” muttered Leo, but Gorst was already striding back up the steps.

The doors were were shut on the Young Lion with a crash, and silence pressed in.

“Enough of this pantomime!” snarled Orso. The legs of his gilded chair gave a tortured shriek as he stood, obliging everyone in the chamber to wobble uncertainly