The Good Work

The setting sun was a great fiery smear around the Tower of Chains, through the wintry haze and the furnace smoke, over the broken teeth of the Agriont’s part-ruined walls. They’d given up on taking ’em down, more or less. Another job left quarter-done, like most things since the Great Change. Most things but murder, anyway.

The Square of Marshals had become the Square of Martyrs—the sea of flagstones chiselled with the names of Breakers and Burners killed in twenty years of Old Sticks’ purges. Hammers tap, tap, tapped away all day as they added more. Hundreds of them. Thousands.

There were fewer folk come out to watch the executions than when Judge first took charge. Maybe they were tiring of the blood. No doubt they were tiring of the cold. Bitter chill out here. Clouds of smoky breath as the angriest ones screeched insults at the accused.

Broad could hardly see the point of screaming at folk already good as dead. But he was what you’d have to call blind drunk. Spent most of his waking hours blind drunk, now. Like he had in Styria. The only way he could see to get through it.

It was society in miniature, in the Square of Martyrs. Every type of person and every type who preyed on ’em. You’d have thought the aristocrats and the bureaucrats would’ve stayed well away, but they were here, too, with red ribbons in the ex-ladies’ hair and red stains on the ex-lords’ clothes, howling their hate at the convicted louder’n anyone, as if that might save them from being next.

They’d brought carts into the Agriont and opened ’em up to make improvised souvenir shops, jerry tents, food stalls. Some enterprising bastard had turned a guardhouse into a pawn shop, so you could sell your watch for a quarter of what it was worth and go straight upstairs to where they’d turned some administrator’s office into a brothel, the bookcases pushed over to make bawdy stages, the desks made into beds, the easy chairs into husk-dens. Enterprise always finds a way.

Broad gave the closest prisoner a little nudge in the back, just to keep him moving. Didn’t say anything. Saying something encouraged them to say something, and the last thing you want is a conversation. Reminds you that it’s not just stuff you’re pushing off a tower, but people. He took another nip from his flask. Had to keep drinking. Nice and regular. Always put a bottle by his bed when he went to sleep now, so he could start drinking soon as he fought free of his nightmares. Helps to have a routine.

Kept wondering how many he’d herded across the Square of Marshals. Kept counting ’em up. It’d been one at a time when the trials began. Now it was pairs, threes, fours. Here’s a triple! Sarlby would say. He was leading the way, flatbow under his arm. Jaunty, almost, how he strutted across the square, across those dead men’s names. Used to be a good man, Sarlby. There was a piece of him missing, these days. He had no doubts.