Free Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie Page B

Glokta’s hat and onto his stooped head. It pressed
through Glokta’s black coat and onto his twisted shoulders. It
threatened to squeeze the water right out of him, squash the life
right out of him, crush him to his knees. A cool autumn morning in
charming Dagoska.
    While the sun
attacked him from above, the salt wind came at him head on. It swept
in off the empty sea and over the bare peninsula, hot and full of
choking dust, blasting the land walls of the city and scouring
everything with salty grit. It stung at Glokta’s sweaty skin,
whipped the moisture from his mouth, tickled at his eyes and made
them weep stinging tears. Even the weather wants to be rid of me,
it would seem.
    Practical Vitari
teetered along the parapet beside him, arms outstretched like a
circus performer on the high rope. Glokta frowned up at her, a gangly
black shape against the brilliant sky. She could just as easily
walk down here, and stop making a spectacle of herself. But at least
this way there is always the chance of her falling off. The land
walls were twenty strides high at the least. Glokta allowed himself
the very slightest smile at the thought of the Arch Lector’s
favourite Practical slipping, sliding, tumbling from the wall, hands
clutching at nothing. Perhaps a despairing scream as she fell to
her death?
    But she didn’t
fall. Bitch. Considering her next report to the Arch Lector, no
doubt. “The cripple continues to flounder like a landed fish.
He has yet to uncover the slightest trace of Davoust, or any traitor,
despite questioning half the city. The one man he has arrested is a
member of his own Inquisition…â€

The Thing About Trust
    The wheel on the
cart turned slowly round, and squeaked. It turned round again, and
squeaked. Ferro scowled at it. Damn wheel. Damn cart. She shifted her
scorn from the cart to its driver.
    Damn apprentice.
She didn’t trust him a finger’s breadth. His eyes
flickered over to her, lingered an insulting moment, then darted off.
As if he knew something about Ferro that she did not know herself.
That made her angry. She looked away from him to the first of the
horses, and its rider.
    Damn Union boy
with his stiff back, sitting in his saddle like a King sits on his
throne, as though being born with a good-shaped face was an
achievement to be endlessly proud of. He was pretty, and neat, and
dainty as a princess. Ferro smiled grimly to herself. The princess of
the Union, that’s what he was. She hated fine-looking people
even more than ugly ones. Beauty was never to be trusted.
    You would have
had to look far and wide to find anyone less beautiful than the big
nine-fingered bastard. He sat in his saddle slumped over like some
great sack of rice. Slow-moving, scratching, sniffing, chewing like a
big cow. Trying to look like he had no killing in him, no mad fury,
no devil. She knew better. He nodded to her and she scowled back. He
was a devil wearing a cow’s skin, and she was not fooled.
    Better than that
damn Navigator, though. Always talking, always smiling, always
laughing. Ferro hated talk, and smiles, and laughter, each one more
than the last. Stupid little man with his stupid tales. Underneath
all his lies he was plotting, watching, she could feel it.
    That left the
First of the Magi, and she trusted him least of all.
    She saw his eyes
sliding to the cart. Looking at the sack he’d put the box in.
Square, grey, dull, heavy box. He thought no one had seen, but she
had. Full of secrets is what he was. Bald bastard, with his thick
neck and his wooden pole, acting as if he had done nothing but good
in his life, as if he would not know where to begin at making a man
explode.
    â€œDamn
fucking pinks,â€

Allies
    To
Arch Lector Sult,
    Head
of his Majesty’s Inquisition.
    Your
Eminence,
    Work
is underway on the defences of the city. The famous land walls,
though powerful, are in a shameful condition, and I have taken
vigorous