Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie Read Free Book Online Page A

with a bewildering throng. There were people of Midderland, and Gurkhul, and Styria, narrow-eyed natives of Suljuk, yellow-haired citizens of the Old Empire, bearded Northmen even, far from home.
    'Merchants,' grunted Harker.
All the merchants in the world, it looks like
. They crowded round stalls laden with produce, great scales for the weighing of materials, blackboards with chalked-in goods and prices. They bellowed, borrowed and bartered in a multitude of different languages, threw up their hands in strange gestures, shoved and tugged and pointed at one another. They sniffed at boxes of spice and sticks of incense, fingered at bolts of cloth and planks of rare wood, squeezed at fruits, bit at coins, peered through eye-glasses at flashing gemstones. Here and there a native porter stumbled through the crowds, stooped double under a massive load.
    'The Spicers take a cut of everything,' muttered Harker, shoving impatiently through the chattering press.
    'That must be a great deal,' said Vitari under her breath.
A very great deal, I should imagine. Enough to defy the Gurkish. Enough to keep a whole city prisoner. People will kill for much, much less
.
    Glokta grimaced and snarled his way across the square, jolted and barged and painfully shoved at every limping step. It was only when they finally emerged from the crowds at the far side that he realised they were standing in the very shadow of a vast and graceful building, rising arch upon arch, dome upon dome, high over the crowds. Delicate spires at each corner soared into the air, slender and frail.
    'Magnificent,' muttered Glokta, stretching out his aching back and squinting up, the pure white stone almost painful to look at in the afternoon glare. 'Seeing this, one could almost believe in God.'
If one didn't know better
.
    'Huh,' sneered Harker. 'The natives used to pray here in their thousands, poisoning the air with their damn chanting and superstition, until the rebellion was put down, of course.'
    'And now?'
    'Superior Davoust declared it off limits to them. Like everything else in the Upper City. Now the Spicers use it as an extension to the marketplace, buying and selling and so on.'
    'Huh.'
How very appropriate. A temple to the making of money. Our own little religion
.
    'I believe some bank uses part of it for their offices, as well.'
    'A bank? Which one?'
    'The Spicers run that side of things,' snapped Harker impatiently. 'Valint and something, is it?'
    'Balk. Valint and Balk.'
So some old acquaintances are here before me, eh? I should have known. Those bastards are everywhere. Everywhere there's money
. He peered round at the swarming marketplace.
And there's a lot of money here
.
    The way grew steeper as they began to climb the great rock, the streets built onto shelves cut out from the dry hillside. Glokta laboured on through the heat, stooped over his cane, biting his lip against the pain in his leg, thirsty as a dog and with sweat leaking out through every pore. Harker made no effort to slow as Glokta toiled along behind him.
And I'll be damned if I'm going to ask him to
.
    'Above us is the Citadel.' The Inquisitor waved his hand at the mass of sheer-walled buildings, domes and towers clinging to the very top of the brown rock, high above the city. 'It was once the seat of the native King, but now it serves as Dagoska's administrative centre, and accommodates some of the most important citizens. The Spicers' guildhall is inside, and the city's House of Questions.'
    'Quite a view,' murmured Vitari.
    Glokta turned and shaded his eyes with his hand. Dagoska was spread out before them, almost an island. The Upper City sloped away, neat grids of neat houses with long, straight roads in between, speckled with yellow palms and wide squares. On the far side of its long, curving wall lay the dusty brown jumble of the slums. Looming over them in the distance, shimmering in the haze, Glokta could see the mighty land walls, blocking the one narrow neck of rock that