The Blade Itself

“Ardee, yes. I’m leaving for Angland soon and… I was hoping that, perhaps, you could keep an eye on her for me, while I’m away.” West’s eyes flickered up nervously. “You always had a way with women… Sand.” Glokta grimaced at the sound of his first name. No one called him that anymore. No one besides my mother. “You always knew just what to say. Do you remember those three sisters? What were their names? You had them all eating out of your hand.” West smiled, but Glokta couldn’t.

He remembered, but the memories were weak now, colourless, faded. The memories of another man. A dead man. My life began in Gurkhul, in the Emperor’s prisons. The memories since then are much more real. Stretched out in bed like a corpse after I came back, in the darkness, waiting for friends who never came. He looked at West, and he knew that his glance was terribly cold. Do you think to win me with your honest face and your talk of old times? Like a long-lost dog, at last come faithfully home? I know better. You stink, West. You smell like betrayal. That memory at least is mine.

Glokta leaned back slowly in his chair. “Sand dan Glokta,” he murmured, as though recalling a name he once knew. “Whatever became of him, eh, West? You know, that friend of yours, that dashing young man, handsome, proud, fearless? Magic touch with the women? Loved and respected by all, destined for great things? Wherever did he go?”

West looked back, puzzled and unsure of himself, and said nothing.

Glokta lurched towards him, hands spread out on the table, lips curling back to show his ruined mouth. “Dead! He died on the bridge! And what remains? A fucking ruin with his name! A limping, skulking shadow! A crippled ghost, clinging to life the way the smell of piss clings to a beggar. He has no friends, this loathsome fucking remnant, and he wants none! Get you gone, West! Go back to Varuz, and to Luthar, and the rest of those empty bastards! There’s no one here you know!” Glokta’s lips trembled and spat with revulsion. He wasn’t sure who disgusted him more—West, or himself.

The Major blinked, his jaw muscles working silently. He got shakily to his feet. “I’m sorry,” he said, over his shoulder.

“Tell me!” shouted Glokta, bringing him up short of the door. “The rest of them, they stuck to me so long as I was useful, so long as I was going up. I always knew it. I wasn’t so very surprised they wanted nothing to do with me when I came back. But you, West, I always thought you were a better friend than that, a better man. I always thought that you at least—you alone—would come to visit me.” He shrugged. “I suppose I was wrong.” Glokta turned away, frowning towards the fire, waiting for the sound of the front door closing.

“She didn’t tell you?”

Glokta looked back. “Who?”

“Your mother.”

He snorted. “My mother? Tell me what?”

“I did come. Twice. As soon as I learned that you were back, I came. Your mother turned me away at the gates of your estate. She said that you were too ill to take visitors, and that in any case you wanted nothing more to do with the army, and nothing more to do with me in particular. I came back again, a few months later. I thought I owed you that much. That time a servant came to see me off. Later I heard that you had joined the Inquisition, and left for Angland. I put you out of my mind… until we met… that night in the city…” West trailed off.

It took a while for his words to sink in, and by the time they had, Glokta realised that his mouth was hanging open. So simple. No conspiracy. No web of betrayal. He almost wanted to laugh at the stupidity of it. My mother turned him away at the gate, and I never thought to doubt that no one came. She always hated West. A most unsuitable friend, far beneath her precious son. No doubt she blamed him for what happened to me. I should have guessed, but I was too busy wallowing in pain and bitterness. Too busy being tragic. He swallowed. “You came?”

West shrugged. “For what it’s worth.”