Chapter Text
"'Some fool wins the contest every year and wars produce many promising soldiers, but your achievement of surviving those two years was unique. So you were sent to the North and put in charge of one of our mines there. What did you make of Angland?'
A filthy sink of violence and corruption. A prison where we have made slaves of the innocent and guilty alike in the name of freedom. A stinking hole where we send those we hate and those we are ashamed of to die of hunger and disease and hard labour.
'It was cold,' said Glokta."
The Blade Itself, Joe Abercrombie
By the time Sand dan Glokta arrived in Holsthorm, he was ready to die.
He had been ready to die for the last three years, of course. Since the Gurkish had dragged him from under the bridge, every day had been a little hell. But some days were even worse than others, and the last eleven days had brought back a level of agony he had almost forgotten to be possible under his mother’s care. Almost.
Eleven days on a bumpy road, in an unsprung carriage. By the third day, every pothole was a hot knife in Glokta’s crippled leg and spine, by the seventh day it took all his resolve not to order the wagoner to turn back, by the tenth he was whimpering almost constantly. His mended bones felt freshly broken, his twisted muscles spasmed, his remaining teeth rattled in his jaw.
Why didn’t I listen to the physicians, to my mother, to Barnam? Why am I putting myself through this? Why? There was no answer other than the rattle and creak of the wheels.
When the carriage finally stopped in front of the inn by the docks of Holsthorm, Glokta was almost delirious. The wagoner opened the door, and a breath of cool night air caressed Glokta’s clammy skin. It was tangy and salty, and carried the sound of gentle waves lapping the wooden structures of the docks.
“Can you walk, sir?” Barnam asked cautiously, but Glokta had no strength left to speak.
Barnam turned to the wagoner. “You'll have to help me get the Inquisitor into the warmth,” he said.
The tall, blond Anglishman spat, scratched at his woolly hat, shrugged and clambered into the carriage. The two men each took one of Glokta’s limp arms around their shoulders and hoisted him up. Glokta cried out in pain as he was half dragged, half carried out into the cold night and across the yard.
As they lowered him onto a bench in the alehouse, Glokta slumped against the wall and gasped like a trout in the mud, too exhausted to even care about the looks of the other patrons or the thinly veiled disgust on the carter’s face. The man tapped his hat - more of a scratch than a salute - and left without another word.
Relieved to see the back of me, and I cannot even blame him.
“Barnam,” Glokta gasped, “my leg. Could you…”
The old servant pulled out a chair and carefully lifted Glokta’s clump foot onto it. The pain in the mangled limp spiked for an instant before Glokta could take a few deep breaths and wriggle his aching hip into a less excruciating position.
Some time later, they both had a goblet and a steaming bowl of fish stew in front of them. Glokta had recovered enough to wipe his teary eye and sit up. He carefully rolled his aching shoulders, bent his neck from side to side, but could not make it click.
He reached for the goblet. The wine was so mouth-raspingly dry, it felt like a piece of wood in his mouth.
“You need to eat some, sir.”
Glokta peered into the bowl and wrinkled his nose. The greens are so thoroughly overcooked that even I can slurp them down — no chewing required.
Listlessly, Glokta picked up the spoon and swallowed a mouthful of the soggy stuff. It tasted no better than it looked. But I have had worse in the Emperor’s prison. Anything is better than mouldy bread and piss.
As they ate in silence, the agony in Glokta’s left leg faded to a dull throb. His body still echoed with the impact of the wooden wheels on the road. Glokta pushed the bowl away and studied the old servant.
“I am grateful, Barnam, that you joined me on this… expedition.”
Barnam returned his gaze calmly.
The only person who looks at me without flinching. Without either pity or disgust. His eyes on me are like a balm.
“Of course, sir.”
“You won’t miss your home?”
Barnam weighed his head, the firelight playing on his pate. “I will miss nothing but my wife, sir — in Miderland as well as in the North.” He paused before adding, “And you will need me.”
“True,” Glokta said.
Forty years. How must that feel to mourn your wife after a lifetime spent together? They seemed happier than my parents ever were. To say nothing of myself. Marriage, happy or otherwise, seems as likely as winning a fencing contest.
“Will you be able to embark tomorrow afternoon, sir?” Barnam asked.
Glokta smiled grimly, revealing his empty gums. “Not much choice, is there?”
“I will have the bath ready by eight, then, and lay out your uniform.”
Glokta shook his head. “No need. I’ll change into it when we get to Ostenhorm.”
Six days of respite before I have to face another carriage. And I should be surprised if the roads in Angland are half as good as those on the mainland. Another week or two of most exquisite pain, I reckon. All that to become a jailer. But what would have been the alternative? Staying with mother? Becoming a clerk for the Open Council, dutifully scribbling down other men's dribble? Work for a bank? I’d rather be a jailer than a bootlicker or a moneylender.
So Angland it is.
Glokta put down the razor. His lip curled up as he studied his face in the mirror: Hollow cheeks, haunted eyes, angry scars and sunken lips where his front teeth had once been.
When will I get used to this? Will I ever?
He tugged at a strand of wavy hair that tickled his chin. A nobleman's cut. The last remnant of the proud, dashing Colonel Sand dan Glokta. He bared his empty gums at his reflection. It looks like a cruel joke.
“Barnam?” he called over his shoulder, careful not to turn his head too far. “Cut my hair before you help me into my new uniform, will you?”
The old manservant put down the linen he had been folding. “Sir?”
“Get a pair of scissors and cut my hair,” Glokta repeated.
“Of course,” Barnam said and left.
It wasn’t long before he returned to the tiny washroom. “How short, sir?”
“Short."
After, Glokta studied himself again, turning his hollow face this way and that. A faint scar on his scalp showed through the stubble: an old wound from fencing practice.
How worried I was that the scar would ruin my appearance. Utterly laughable how vain I used to be. If only I had known then what I would become.
Barnam steadied him by the elbow as Glokta put on his Inquisitor’s uniform. Black trousers, black coat, wide-brimmed black hat. He looked down at himself and chuckled. I look like a villain from a children's tale — all I want is a crow on my shoulder.
“Inquisitor Glokta,” he whispered. Then he turned around, reached for his cane and hobbled carefully — painfully — from the room.
Superior Goyle looked up from his desk. At first, his eyebrows shot up in surprise, then his face fell into an expression with which Glokta was intimately familiar: disgust.
Glokta stood in the doorway, hunched over and leaning heavily on his cane. He bowed his head stiffly and waited as the beefy man studied him.
“You are Glokta?”
“I am Glokta.”
The Superior’s wide mouth pulled down even further.
Don’t tell me you haven’t seen worse, Superior? In your line of work…
“You? The new Inquisitor of Camp 11? Must be a bloody joke.”
Glokta limped into the room. “I don’t hope so,” he said and lowered himself into a chair with as much dignity as he could muster. “The journey was a bit rough on my leg.” He tapped at his left calve with his cane.
The Superior snorted. “If you think the journey was rough, you’re in for a surprise. I bet you won’t last a month up there.”
He wiped a broad palm over his ruddy cheeks, shook his head and started rummaging around the papers on his desk.
“Great,” he muttered under his breath. “And it will be my bloody job to partition the Arch Lector for a replacement. Again.”
I am crippled, not deaf, you arsehole.
Glokta waited in silence while the Superior lifted a couple more papers. Finally, he fished a bunch of items from under the chaos. He tossed them on the edge of the desk.
“The inventory, the logbook, your chain of office and your seal.”
Glokta raised his eyebrows. Is that all the training I am going to get? I don’t know what I expected, but more than this.
Goyle picked his nose and flicked the contents under the desk. “You know what Camp 11 is, Inquisitor?”
“A coal mine, sir.”
“A 'coal mine', correct." Goyle's voice dripped with sarcasm. "And do you know what that means?”
Glokta shrugged, unsure of what Goyle wanted to hear.
“'Coal mine' means the highest casualty rates in all of the colonies. Darkness, coal dust, mine accidents, all that shit. And the practicals don’t trip over their feet to being transferred there, either. It’s that bloody dust. Settles everywhere and you can never stop coughing. Camp 11 is particularly unpopular because it is so remote that there isn’t even anything the practicals can spend their pay on. We call it 'The Tomb' here in Ostenhorm.” Superior Goyle grinned, showing a line of broad yellow teeth.
If it’s coal we are mining, then at least I won’t freeze. A hot bath in the morning is all I want from life at this point.
“It can’t be worse than a Gurkish prison and I survived that for two years,” Glokta said.
Goyle frowned and scratched at a rash on his neck. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “Barely, from the looks of it. Colonel Glokta, the hero of Kadir. Best swordsman the Union has seen in decades. I heard the stories alright. But this is not the military. I hope you are not looking for glory because you won't find anything but coal dust up there.”
Goyle’s face suddenly split into a gormless grin. “Unless you've come for the bitches?”
It took a moment for the words to sink in, so utterly perplexed was Glokta by the suggestion. A penal colony might be the last place on earth I would recommend if in search of a conquest. Unless one has a thing for head lice and strong body odour, I suppose.
“I am not sure I can follow, Superior,” he said.
Goyle laughed heartily. “Those girls in the colonies, they are so desperate they’d even do you for a piece of hard bread. Not as picky as the whores in Adua, I reckon. Don’t worry. As long as the coal keeps coming, I don’t give a fart about what you do with them.”
Glokta stared at him coldly and the grin slid off of the Superior's face like slop spilling from a bucket.
“Well,” he said finally and cleared his throat, his expression even more hostile than before. “You have everything you need. Now get out of my sight.”
Glokta bowed his head respectfully — and somewhat painfully. "I hope you don’t mind me asking, Superior, but what is the procedure, exactly? Just in the unlikely case that I do outlive the month? When am I to report back to you?”
Goyle chewed his tongue for a moment. “You send me a monthly report and I inspect each colony twice a year.”
Glokta waited. “And the supplies?” he prompted.
The Superior had already returned his attention to his desk. “Will get to you every couple of weeks together with new workers if there are casualties. Which there will be.”
“And the coal, sir?”
“You keep a tally of your output in the logbook, don’t worry about the rest.”
Lazy bastard. It's almost as if you want me to fail. In the army, you'd get a flogging for your incompetence.
“Thank you for your time, Superior,” Glokta said with only a tinge of irony and laboured out of his chair.
Goyle glared at him as he hobbled towards the desk, pocketed the books and the seal and, after a moment’s hesitation, stretched out his hand. “You will hear from me.”
Goyle did not have much choice but to shake Glokta’s hand, but he did it reluctantly, and Glokta rewarded him with his most revolting smile.
Glokta reached Camp 11 after almost two more weeks on the road. The ride had been surprisingly tolerable, due to the slow pace at which they were going. When the door of the wagon was opened by a burly man with a mask over the lower half of his face, Glokta managed to get up and reach the door almost by himself. Carefully, Glokta placed the tip of his cane on the topmost step of the ladder. Then his good foot followed. Cautiously, wincing at a twinge in his hip, he put his weight on his right leg and dragged the other out onto the step.
The Practical backed away. A wise decision, making sure I don’t land on top of him if I fall.
After a drawn out and painful process during which Barnam steadied him by the elbow, Glokta reached the cobbled courtyard and could not suppress a sigh of relief. Three steps - an almost insurmountable obstacle.
Barnam and the coachman unloaded the heavy trunk from the carriage while Glokta tried ineffectually to draw his cloak tighter around himself with one hand.
“You the new Inquisitor?” asked the Practical with a voice like the grinding of a millstone.
Glokta rolled his aching shoulders, wiped a tear from his eye and twisted his neck with a satisfying click.
“What do you think?” he asked, looking up into the man’s hard eyes. “The Tooth Fairy?”
Glokta grinned, revealing the wreckage of his teeth, but the taller man merely shrugged. A more subtle sense of humour, then?
Glokta held out his hand to the man. “I am Inquisitor Glokta. And your name would be?”
The man hesitated for a moment before taking Glokta’s hand in his paw, and Glokta felt the hard calluses on his palm. “Ganrit.”
“A pleasure, Practical Ganrit.” Glokta studied the man: dark complexion, short hair, greying at the temples, and two unsightly boils beneath his left eye. But who am I to count the boils on another man’s face?
“You are from Styria?” Glokta asked.
Practical Ganrit grunted in agreement. “Talins,” he said. He hooked a finger behind his black mask, drew it aside, and spat phlegm onto the cobbles.
Glokta looked around. The main building loomed before him, dark and uninviting, a collection of ramshackle barracks, stables, storehouses and an open smithy were scattered about the courtyard, fenced in by a wooden palisade. Two more Practicals guarded the main entrance, another stood by the barracks. There was no sign of inmates other than a few dirty children who sat in the mud next to one of the barracks. The camp was nestled on the side of the mountain. Bare, slate-grey rock rose to the sky behind the barracks.
The rock face was steep but not without structure, interrupted by patches of grass and the occasional stunted tree. A skilled climber might scale the wall to freedom. But first he would have to get over the palisade. And where would he go? There is nothing around this camp for a hundred miles. That man — or woman — would have to be a skilled hunter as well as a climber to survive in the wilderness.
Glokta looked up at the sky and regretted it instantly. This damn neck will be the death of me!
“It’s getting late, Practical Ganrit, and we had a long journey. Why don’t you show us in, and we continue this pleasant chat in the morning?”
The Practical turned towards the main building and Glokta made to follow him. Carefully, he picked his way across the slick cobbles. The cane first, followed by the good leg and the long scrape of his clump foot.
Click. Tap. Pain. That was the new rhythm of his walking.
After a few months of training, Glokta could walk long enough to get around his mother’s estate. ‘A miracle,’ the physicians had said. A bloody joke is what I call it.
"I see you've had rain today," Glokta said.
"We always have rain."
Glokta threw a last glance around the darkening camp before limping inside.
So this dreary place is my new life. But why not? It suits me far better than the airy room in my mother’s estate, with its blowy rose curtains and shiny wooden floors and all that sickening comfort and luxury. It suits me better than Adua, too. Who knows? I might even find a man in this camp more ugly than myself.
“Your quarters are this way, Inquisitor. First door on the right.”
Glokta followed the man’s outstretched arm with his eyes and sighed. Stairs. Why am I not surprised?
Glokta clicked his neck and straightened his shoulders, bracing himself against the pain. “I will have to lean on you, Barnam,” he said.
“Of course, sir.”
Glokta’s footsteps echoed through the dark hallway as he approached his enemy.
Click. Tap. Pain.
“I want all Practicals assembled in the main hall tomorrow morning, Ganrit.”
The Styrian nodded his heavy head and stepped out into the twilight. This may not be the Agriont, but the weather is lovely, and the company is cheerful.
When Glokta finally lay in his bed, the woolen blanket drawn up to his chin and a hot stone from the fire at his feet, his body shook with the strain of the last days. Barnam sat on the left side of the bed. He carefully pulled Glokta’s mangled leg to the edge of the mattress — accompanied by a sharp hiss of pain — and began his evening ritual. He scraped cold cream from a small glass tin and rubbed the mixture of beeswax, oil and rosewater into the scars with methodical strokes.
The physician had said it would stretch the taught new skin and loosen the muscle, slowly allowing him more freedom of movement. And it did seem to work. The scars no longer pulled as much as they had at first.
Glokta sighed with relief as Barnam got to work. The highlight of my day is being touched by an old man. But beggars can't be choosers, I suppose.
“Tomorrow, you will find somewhere else for me to stay. I’ll even take one of those barracks, as long as the room is on the ground floor.”
“Yes, sir.”
Tomorrow. Glokta wriggled into a more comfortable position. Tomorrow we'll see, Superior Goyle.