Last Argument of Kings

The Number of the Dead

It was quiet in the village. The few houses, built from old stone with roofs of mossy slate, seemed deserted. The only life in the fields beyond, mostly fresh-harvested and ploughed over, were a handful of miserable crows. Next to Ferro the bell in the tower creaked softly. Some loose shutters on a window swung and tapped. A few curled-up leaves fell on a gust of wind and fluttered gently to the empty square. On the horizon three columns of dark smoke rose up just as gently into the heavy sky.

The Gurkish were coming, and they always had loved to burn.

“Maljinn!” Major Vallimir was below, framed by the trapdoor, and Ferro scowled down. He reminded her of Jezal dan Luthar when she had first met him. A plump, pale face stuffed with that infuriating mixture of panic and arrogance. It was plain enough that he had never set an ambush for a goat before, let alone for Gurkish scouts. But still he pretended he knew best. “Do you see anything?” he hissed at her, for the fifth time in an hour.

“I see them coming,” Ferro growled back.

“How many?”

“Still a dozen.”

“How far off?”

“Perhaps quarter of an hour’s ride, now, and your asking will not make them come quicker.”

“When they are in the square, I will give the signal with two claps.”

“Make sure you do not miss one hand with the other, pink.”

“I told you not to call me that!” A brief pause. “We must take one of them alive, to question.”

Ferro wrinkled her nose. Her taste did not lean towards taking Gurkish alive. “We will see.”

She turned back to the horizon, and soon enough she heard the sound of Vallimir whispering orders to some of his men. The rest were scattered around the other buildings, hiding. An odd crowd of left-over soldiers. A few were veterans, but most of them were even younger and more twitchy than Vallimir himself. Ferro wished, and not for the first time, that they had Ninefingers with them. Like him or not, no one could have denied that the man knew his business. With him, Ferro had known what she would get. Solid experience or, on occasion, murderous fury. Either one would have been useful.

But Ninefingers was not there.

So Ferro stood in the wide window of the bell tower, alone, frowning out across the rolling fields of Midderland, and watched the riders come closer. A dozen Gurkish scouts, trotting in a loose group down a track. Wriggling specks on a pale streak between patchworks of dark earth.

They slowed as they passed the first wood-built barn, spreading out. A great Gurkish host would number soldiers from all across the Empire, fighters from a score of different conquered provinces. These twelve scouts were Kadiris, by their long faces and narrow eyes, their saddlebags of patterned cloth, lightly armed with bows and spears. Killing them would not be much vengeance, but it would be some. It would fill the space for now. A space that had been empty far too long.

One of them startled as a crow flapped up from a scraggy tree. Ferro held her breath, sure that Vallimir or one of his blundering pinks would choose that moment to trip over one another. But there was only silence as the horsemen eased carefully into the village square, their leader with one hand raised for caution. He looked right up at her, but saw nothing. Arrogant fools. They saw only what they wanted to see. A village from which everyone had fled, crushed with fear of the Emperor’s matchless army. Her fist clenched tight around her bow. They would learn.

She would teach them.

The leader had a square of floppy paper out in his hands, peering at it as though it was a message in a language he did not understand. A map, maybe. One of his men reined his horse in and slid from the saddle, took its bridle and led it towards a mossy trough. Two more sat loose on their mounts, talking and grinning, moving their hands, telling jokes. A fourth cleaned his fingernails with a knife. Another rode slowly round the edge of the square, leaning from his saddle and peering in through the windows of the houses. Looking for something to steal. One of the joke-tellers burst into a deep peal of laughter.

Then two sharp claps echoed from the buildings.

The scout by the trough was just filling his flask when Ferro’s shaft sank into his chest. The canteen tumbled from his hand, shining drops spilling from the neck. Flatbows rattled in the windows. Scouts yelled and stared. One horse stumbled sideways and fell, puffs of dust rising from its flailing hooves, crushing its rider screaming underneath it.

Union soldiers charged from the buildings, shouting, spears ready. One of the riders had his sword half-drawn when he was nailed with a flatbow bolt, fell lolling from the saddle. Ferro’s second arrow took another in the back. The one who had been picking his fingernails was dumped from his horse, stumbled up in time to see a Union soldier coming at him with a spear. He threw down his knife and held his arms up too late, was run through anyway, the spear point sticking bloody out of his back as he fell.

Two of them made a dash the way they had come. Ferro took aim at one, but as they reached the narrow lane a rope was pulled tight across the gap. The pair of them were snatched from their saddles, dragging a Union soldier yelping from a building, bouncing along a few strides on his face, rope stuck tight round his arm. One of Ferro’s arrows caught a scout between his shoulder-blades as he tried to push himself up from the dust. The other dragged himself a groggy few strides before a Union soldier hit him in the head with a sword and left the back of his skull hanging off.

Of the dozen, only the leader got away from the village. He spurred his horse for a narrow fence between two buildings, jumping it with hooves clattering against the top rail. He galloped off across the coarse stubble of a harvested field, pressed low into his saddle, jerking his heels into his horse’s flanks.

Ferro took a long, slow aim, feeling the smile tugging at the corners of her face. All in a moment she judged the way he was sitting the saddle, the speed of the horse, the height of the tower, felt the wind on her face, the weight of the shaft, the tension in the wood, the string biting into her lip. She watched the arrow fly, a spinning black splinter against the grey sky, and the horse rushed forwards to meet it.

Sometimes, God is generous.

The leader arched his back and tumbled from the saddle, rolling over and over on the dusty earth, specks of mud and cut stalks flying up around him. His cry of agony came to Ferro’s ear a moment later. Her lips curled back further from her teeth.

“Hah!” She threw the bow over her shoulder, slid down the ladder, vaulted through the back window and dashed out across the field. Her boots thudded in the soft soil between the clumps of stubble, her hand tightened around the grip of her sword.

The man mewled in the dirt as he tried to drag himself towards his horse. He got one desperate finger hooked over the stirrup as he heard Ferro’s quick footsteps behind, but fell back with a squeal when he tried to lift himself. He lay on his side as she ran up, the blade hissing angry from its wooden sheath. His eyes rolled towards her, wild with pain and fear.

A dark face, like her own.

An unexceptional face of forty years old, with a patchy beard and a pale birthmark on one cheek, dust caked to the other, beads of shining sweat across his forehead. She stood over him, and sunlight glinted on the edge of the curved sword.

“Give me a reason not to do it,” she found she had said. Strange, that she had said it, and to a soldier in the Emperor’s army, of all people. In the heat and dust of the Badlands of Kanta she had not been in the habit of offering chances. Perhaps something had changed in her, out there in the wet and ruined west of the world.

He stared up for a moment, his lip trembling. “I…” he croaked, “my daughters! I have two daughters. I pray to see them married…”

Ferro frowned. She should not have let him start talking. A father, with daughters. Just as she had once had a father, been a daughter. This man had done her no harm. He was no more Gurkish than she was. He had not chosen to fight, most likely, or had any choice but to do as the mighty Uthman-ul-Dosht commanded.

“I will go… I swear to God… I will go back to my wife and my daughters…”

The arrow had taken him just under the shoulder and gone clean through, snapped off when he hit the ground. She could see the splintered shaft under his arm. It had missed his lung, by the way he was talking. It would not kill him. Not right away, at least. Ferro could help him onto his horse and he would be gone, with a chance to live.

The scout held up a trembling hand, a spatter of blood on his long thumb. “Please… this is not my war I—”

The sword carved a deep wound out of his face, through his mouth, splitting his lower jaw apart. He made a hissing moan. The next blow cut his head half off. He rolled over, dark blood pouring out into the dark earth, clutching at the stubble of the shorn crop. The sword broke the back of his skull open and he was still.

It seemed that Ferro was not in a merciful mood that day.

The butchered scout’s horse stared dumbly at her. “What?” she snapped. Perhaps she had changed, out there in the west, but no one changes that much. One less soldier in Uthman’s army was a good thing, wherever he came from. She had no need to make excuses for herself. Especially not to a horse. She grabbed at its bridle and gave it a yank.

Vallimir might have been a pink fool, but Ferro had to admit that he had managed the ambush well. Ten scouts lay dead in the village square, their torn clothes flapping in the breeze, their blood smeared across the dusty ground. The only Union casualty was the idiot who had been jerked over by his own rope, covered in dust and scratches.

A good day’s work, so far.

A soldier poked at one of the corpses with his boot. “So this is what the Gurkish look like, eh? Not so fearsome now.”

“These are not Gurkish,” said Ferro. “Kadiri scouts, pressed into service. They did not want to be here any more than you wanted them here.” The man stared back at her, puzzled and annoyed. “Kanta is full of people. Not everyone with a brown face is Gurkish, or prays to their God, or bows to their Emperor.”

“Most do.”

“Most have no choice.”

“They’re still the enemy,” he sneered.

“I did not say we should spare them.” She shouldered past, back through the door into the building with the bell tower. It seemed Vallimir had managed to take a prisoner after all. He and some others were clustered nervously around one of the scouts, on his knees with his arms bound tightly behind him. He had a bloody graze down one side of his face, staring up with that look that prisoners tend to have.

Scared.

“Where… is… your… main… body?” Vallimir was demanding.

“He does not speak your tongue, pink,” snapped Ferro, “and shouting it will not help.”

Vallimir looked angrily round at her. “Perhaps we should have brought someone with us who speaks Kantic,” he said with heavy irony.

“Perhaps.”

There was a long pause, while Vallimir waited for her to say more, but she said nothing. Eventually, he gave a long sigh. “Do you speak Kantic?”

“Of course.”

“Then would you be so kind as to ask him some questions for us?”

Ferro sucked her teeth. A waste of her time, but if it had to be done, it was best done quickly. “What shall I ask him?”

“Well… how far away the Gurkish army is, how many are in it, what route they are taking, you know—”

“Huh.” Ferro squatted down in front of the prisoner and looked him squarely in the eyes. He stared back, helpless and frightened, no doubt wondering what she was doing with these pinks. She wondered herself.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

She drew her knife and held it up. “You will answer my questions, or I will kill you with this knife. That is who I am. Where is the Gurkish army?”

He licked his lips. “Perhaps… two days march away, to the south.”

“How many?”

“More than I could count. Many thousands. People of the deserts, and the plains, and the—”

“What route are they taking?”

“I do not know. We were only told to ride to this village, and see whether it was empty.” He swallowed, the lump on the front of his sweaty throat bobbing up and down. “Perhaps my Captain knows more—”

“Ssss,” hissed Ferro. His Captain would be telling nobody anything now she had carved up his head. “A lot of them,” she snapped at Vallimir, in common, “and many more to come, two days’ march behind. He does not know their route. What now?”

Vallimir rubbed at the light stubble on his jaw. “I suppose… we should take him back to the Agriont. Deliver him to the Inquisition.”

“He knows nothing. He will only slow us down. We should kill him.”

“He surrendered! To kill him would be no better than murder, war or no war.” Vallimir beckoned to one of the soldiers. “I won’t have that on my conscience.”

“I will.” Ferro’s knife slid smoothly into the scout’s heart, and out. His mouth and his eyes opened up very wide. Blood bubbled through the split cloth on his chest, spread out quickly in a dark ring. He gawped at it, making a long sucking sound.

“Glugh…” His head dropped back, his body sagged. She turned to see the soldiers staring at her, pale faces puffed up with shock. A busy day for them, maybe. A lot to learn, but they would soon get used to it.

That, or the Gurkish would kill them.

“They want to burn your farms, and your towns, and your cities. They want to make slaves of your children. They want everyone in the world to pray to God in the same way they do, with the same words they use, and for your land to be a province of their Empire. I know this.” Ferro wiped the blade of her knife on the sleeve of the dead man’s tunic. “The only difference between war and murder is the number of the dead.”

Vallimir stared down at the corpse of his prisoner for a moment, his lips thoughtfully pursed. Ferro wondered if he had more backbone than she had given him credit for. Finally, he turned towards her. “What do you suggest?”

“We could wait for more here. Perhaps even get some real Gurkish this time. But that might mean too many for we few.”

“So?”

“East, or north, and set another trap like this one.”

“And defeat the Emperor’s army a dozen men at a time? Small steps.”

Ferro shrugged. “Small steps in the right direction. Unless you’ve seen enough, and want to go back to your walls.”

Vallimir gave her a long frown, then he turned to one of his men, a heavy-built veteran with a scar on his cheek. “There is a village just east of here, is there not, Sergeant Forest?”

“Yes, sir. Marlhof is no more than ten miles distant.”

“Will that suit you?” asked Vallimir, raising one eyebrow at Ferro.

“Dead Gurkish suit me. That is all.”

Leaves on the Water

“Carleon,” said Logen. “Aye,” said Dogman. It squatted there, in the fork of the river, under the brooding clouds. Hard shapes of tall walls and towers on the sheer bluff above the fast-flowing water, up where Skarling’s hall used to stand. Slate roofs and stone buildings squashed in tight on the long downward slope, clustered in round the foot of the hill and with another wall outside, everything leant a cold, sharp shine from the rain just finished falling. Dogman couldn’t say he was glad to see the place again. Every visit yet had turned out badly.

“It’s changed some, since the battle, all them years ago.” Logen was looking down at his spread-out hand, waggling the stump of his missing finger.

“There weren’t no walls like that round it then.”

“No. But there weren’t no Union army round it neither.”

Dogman couldn’t deny it was a comforting fact. The Union pickets worked their way through the empty fields about the city, a wobbly line of earthworks, and stakes, and fences, with men moving behind ’em, dull sunlight catching metal now and then. Thousands of men, well-armed and vengeful, keeping Bethod penned up.

“You sure he’s in there?”

“Don’t see where else he’s got to go. He lost most of his best boys up in the mountains. No friends left, I reckon.”

“We’ve all got less than we used to,” Dogman muttered. “I guess we just sit here. We got time, after all. Lots of it. We sit here and watch the grass grow, and we wait for Bethod to give up.”

“Aye.” But Logen didn’t look like he believed it.

“Aye,” said Dogman. But just giving up didn’t sound much like the Bethod he knew.

He turned his head at the sound of hooves fast on the road, saw one of those messengers with a helmet like an angry chicken race from the trees and towards West’s tent, horse well-lathered from hard riding. He reined up in a fumbling hurry, near fell out of his saddle in his rush to get down, wobbled past a few staring officers and in through the flap. Dogman felt that familiar weight of worry in his gut. “That’s got the taste o’ bad news.”

“What other kind is there?”

There was some flutter down there now, soldiers shouting, throwing their arms around. “Best go and see what’s happened,” muttered Dogman, though he’d much rather have walked the other way. Crummock was stood near the tent, frowning at the commotion.

“Something’s up,” said the hillman. “But I don’t understand a thing these Southerners say or do. I swear, they’re all mad.”

Mad chatter came surging out of that tent alright, when Dogman pushed back the flap. There were Union officers all around the place and in a bastard of a muddle. West was in the midst of it, face pale as fresh milk, his fists clenched tight around nothing.

“Furious!” Dogman grabbed him by the arm. “What the hell’s happening?”

“The Gurkish have invaded Midderland.” West pulled his arm free and took to shouting.

“The who have done what now?” muttered Crummock.

“The Gurkish.” Logen was frowning deep. “Brown folk, from way down south. Hard folk, by all accounts.”

Pike had come up now, his burned face grim. “They landed an army by sea. They might have reached Adua already.”

“Hold on, now.” Dogman didn’t know a thing about Gurkish, or Adua, or Midderland, but his bad feeling was getting worse every moment. “What’re you telling us, exactly?”

“We’ve been ordered home. Now.”

Dogman stared. He should’ve known all along it couldn’t be this simple. He grabbed West by the arm again, stabbing down towards Carleon with his dirty finger. “We’ve nothing like the men we need to carry on a siege o’ this place without you!”

“I know,” said West, “and I’m sorry. But there’s nothing I can do. Get over to General Poulder!” he snapped at a young lad with a squint. “Tell him to get his division ready to march for the coast at once!”

Dogman blinked, feeling sick to his stomach. “So we fought seven days in the High Places for nothing? Tul died, and the dead know how many more, for nothing?” It always took him by surprise, how fast something could fall apart once you were leaning on it. “That’s it, then. Back to woods, and cold, and running, and killing. No end to it.”

“Might be another way,” said Crummock.

“What way?”

The chief of the hillmen had a sly grin. “You know, don’t you Bloody-Nine?”

“Aye. I know.” Logen had a look like a man who knows he’s about to hang, and he’s staring at the tree they’re going to do it from. “When have you got to leave, Furious?”

West frowned. “We have a lot of men and not a lot of road. Poulder’s division tomorrow, I imagine, and Kroy’s the day after.”

Crummock’s grin got a shade wider. “So all day tomorrow, there’ll be piles o’ men sat here, dug in round Bethod, looking like they’re never going nowhere, eh?”

“I suppose there could be.”

“Give me tomorrow,” said Logen. “Give me just that and maybe I can settle things. Then I’ll come south with you if I’m still alive, and bring who I can. That’s my word. We’ll help you with the Gurkish.”

“What difference can one day make?” asked West.

“Aye,” muttered Dogman, “what’s one day?” Trouble was, he could already guess the answer.

Water trickled under the old bridge, past the trees and off down the green hillside. Down towards Carleon. Logen watched a few yellow leaves carried on it, turning round and round, dragged past the mossy stones. He wished that he could just float away, but it didn’t seem likely.

“We fought here,” said the Dogman. “Threetrees and Tul, Dow and Grim, and me. Forley’s buried in them woods somewhere.”

“You want to go up there?” asked Logen. “Give him a visit, see if—”

“What for? I doubt a visit’ll do me any good, and I’m damn sure it won’t do him any. Nothing will. That’s what it is to be dead. You sure about this, Logen?”

“You see another way? The Union won’t stick. Might be our last chance to finish with Bethod. Not that much to lose, is there?”

“There’s your life.”

Logen took a long breath. “Can’t think of too many people who place much value on that. You coming down?”

Dogman shook his head. “Reckon I’ll stay up here. I had a belly full o’ Bethod.”

“Alright then. Alright.” It was as if all the moments of Logen’s life, things said and things done, choices he hardly remembered making, had led him to this. Now there was no choice at all. Maybe there never had been. He was like the leaves on the water—carried along, down towards Carleon, and nothing he could do about it. He gave his heels to his horse and off down the slope alone, down the dirt track, beside the gurgling stream.

Everything seemed picked out clearer than usual, as the day wore down. He rode past trees, damp leaves getting ready to fall— golden yellow, burning orange, vivid purple, all the colours of fire. Down towards the valley bottom through the heavy air, just a trace of autumn mist to it, sharp in his throat. The sounds of saddle creaking, harness rattling, hoofbeats in the soft ground all came muffled. He trotted through the empty fields, turned mud pocked with weeds, past the Union pickets, a ditch and a line of sharpened stakes, three times bowshot from the walls. Soldiers there, in studded jackets and steel caps, watched him pass with frowns on their faces.

He pulled on the reins and slowed his horse to a walk. He clattered over a wooden bridge, one of Bethod’s new ones, the river underneath surging with the autumn rain. Up the gentle rise, the wall looming over him. High, sheer, dark and solid looking. A threatening piece of wall if ever there’d been one. He couldn’t see men at the slots in the battlements, but he guessed they had to be there. He swallowed, spit moving awkward in his throat, then made himself sit up tall, pretending he wasn’t cut and aching all over from seven days of battle in the mountains. He wondered if he was about to hear a flatbow click, feel the stab of pain then drop into the mud, dead. Some kind of an embarrassing song that would make.

“Well, well, well!” came a deep voice, and Logen knew it right away. Who else would it be but Bethod?

The strange thing was that he was glad to hear it, for the quickest moment. Until he remembered all the blood between them. Until he remembered they hated each other. You can have enemies you never really meet, Logen had plenty. You can kill men you don’t know, he’d done it often. But you can’t truly hate a man without loving him first, and there’s always a trace of that love left over.

“I’m taking a look down from my gates and who should ride up out of the past?” Bethod called to him. “The Bloody-Nine! Would you believe it? I’d organise a feast, but we’ve no food to spare in here!” He stood there, at the parapet, high up above the doors, fists on the stone. He didn’t sneer. He didn’t smile. He didn’t do much of anything.

“If it ain’t the King o’ the Northmen!” Logen shouted up. “Still got your golden hat, then?”

Bethod touched the ring round his head, the big jewel on his brow glittering with the setting sun. “Why wouldn’t I have?”

“Let me see…” Logen looked left and right, up and down the bare walls. “Just that you’ve got shit all left to be King of, far as I can tell.”

“Huh. I reckon we’re both feeling lonely. Where are your friends, Bloody-Nine? Those killers you liked around you. Where’s the Thunderhead, and Grim, and the Dogman, and that bastard Black Dow?”

“All done with, Bethod. Dead, up in the mountains. Dead as Skarling. Them and Littlebone, and Goring, and Whitesides, and plenty more besides.”

Bethod looked grim at that. “Not much to cheer about, if you’re asking me. That’s some useful men gone back to the mud, one way or another. Some friends of mine, and some of yours. There never is a happy outcome with we two, is there? Bad as friends, and worse as enemies. What did you come here for, Ninefingers?”

Logen sat there, for a moment, thinking of all the other times he’d done what he had to do now. The challenges he’d made, and their outcomes, and there were no happy memories among that lot. Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he’s reluctant. But there was no other way. “I’m here to make a challenge!” he bellowed, and the sound of it echoed back from the damp, dark walls and died a slow death in the misty air.

Bethod tipped back his head and laughed. A laugh without much joy in it, Logen reckoned. “By the dead, Ninefingers, but you never change. You’re like some old dog no one can stop from barking. Challenge? What have we got left to fight over?”

“I win, you open the gates and belong to me. My prisoner. I lose, the Union pack up and sail for home, and you’re free.”

Bethod’s smile slowly faded and his eyes narrowed, suspicious. Logen knew that look from way back. Turning over the chances, sorting through the reasons why. “That sounds like a golden offer, considering the fix I’m in. Hard to believe it. What’s in it for your Southern friends up there?”

Logen snorted. “They’ll wait, if they have to, but they don’t much care about you, Bethod. You’re nothing to them, for all your bluster. They kicked your arse across the North already and they reckon you’ll not be bothering them again either way. If I win, they get your head. If I lose, they can go home early.”

“I’m nothing to them, eh?” Bethod split a sad smile. “Is that what it’s come to, after all my work, and sweat, and pain? Are you happy, Ninefingers? To see all I’ve fought for put in the dust?”

“Why shouldn’t I be? You’ve no one but yourself to blame for it. It was you brought us to this. Take my challenge, Bethod, then maybe one of us can have peace!”

The King of the Northmen gaped down, eyes wide. “No one else to blame? Me? How soon we all forget!” He grabbed the chain round his shoulders and rattled it. “You think I wanted this? You think I asked for any of it? All I wanted was a strip more land to feed my people, to stop the big clans squeezing me. All I wanted was to win a few victories to be proud of, to pass on something better to my sons than I got from my father.” He leaned forward, his hands clutching at the battlements. “Who was it always had to push a step further? Who was it would never let me stop? Who was it had to taste blood, and once he’d tasted it got drunk on it, went mad with it, could never get enough?” His finger stabbed down. “Who else but the Bloody-Nine?”

“That’s not how it was,” growled Logen.

Bethod’s laughter echoed harsh on the wind. “Is it not? I wanted to talk with Shama Heartless, but you had to kill him! I tried to strike a deal at Heonan, but you had to climb up and settle your score, and start a dozen more! Peace, you say? I begged you to let me make peace at Uffrith, but you had to fight Threetrees! On my knees I begged you, but you had to have the biggest name in all the North! Then once you’d beaten him, you broke your word to me and let him live, as though there was nothing bigger to think about than your damn pride!”

“That’s not how it was,” said Logen.

“There’s not a man in the North that doesn’t know the truth of it! Peace? Hah! What about Rattleneck, eh? I would have ransomed his son back to him, and we could all have gone home happy, but no! What did you say to me? Easier to stop the Whiteflow than to stop the Bloody-Nine! Then you had to nail his head to my standard for the whole world to see, so the vengeance would never find an end! Every time I tried to stop, you dragged me on, deeper and deeper into the mire! Until there could be no stopping any longer! Until it was kill or be killed! Until I had to put down the whole North! You made me King, Ninefingers. What other choices did you leave me?”

“That’s not how it was,” whispered Logen. But he knew it had been.

“Tell yourself that I’m the cause of all your woes if it makes you happy! Tell yourself I’m the merciless one, the murderous one, the bloodthirsty one, but ask yourself who I learned it from. I had the best master! Play at being the good man if you please, the man with no choices, but we both know what you really are. Peace? You’ll never have peace, Bloody-Nine. You’re made of death!”

Logen would’ve liked to deny it, but it would just have been more lies. Bethod truly knew him. Bethod truly understood him. Better than anyone. His worst enemy, and still his best friend. “Then why not kill me, when you had the chance?”

The King of the Northmen frowned, as though he couldn’t understand something. Then he started to laugh again. He shrieked with it. “You don’t know why? You stood right beside him and you don’t know? You learned nothing from me, Ninefingers! After all these years, you still let the rain wash you any way it pleases!”

“What’re you saying?” snarled Logen.

“Bayaz!”

“Bayaz? What of him?”

“I was ready to put the bloody cross in you, sink your carcass in a bog with all the rest of your misfit idiots and was happy to do it, until that old liar came calling!”

“And?”

“I owed him, and he wanted you let go. It was that meddling old fuck that saved your worthless hide, and nothing else!”

“Why?” growled Logen, not knowing what to make of it, but not liking that he was learning about it so long after everyone else.

But Bethod only chuckled. “Maybe I didn’t grovel low enough for his taste. You’re the one he saved, you ask him the whys, if you live long enough. But I don’t think you will. I take your challenge! Here. Tomorrow. At sunrise.” He rubbed his palms together. “Man against man, with the future of the North hanging bloody on the outcome! Just as it used to be, eh, Logen? In the old days? In the sunny valleys of the past? Roll the dice together one more time, shall we?” The King of the Northmen stepped slowly back, away from the battlements. “Some things have changed, though. I’ve a new champion now! If I was you, I’d say your goodbyes tonight, and get ready for the mud! After all… what was it you used to tell me…?” His laughter faded slowly into the dusk. “You have to be realistic!”

“Good piece o’ meat,” said Grim.

A warm fire and a good piece of meat were two things to be thankful for, and there’d been times enough when Dogman had a lot less, but watching the blood drip from that chunk of mutton was making him feel sick. Reminded him of the blood that came out of Shama Heartless when Logen split him open. Years ago, maybe, but the Dogman could see it fresh as yesterday. He could hear the roars from the men, the shields crashing together. He could smell the sour sweat and the fresh blood on the snow.

“By the dead,” grunted Dogman, mouth watering like he was about to puke. “How can you think about eating now?”

Dow gave a toothy grin. “Us going hungry ain’t going to help Ninefingers any. Nothing is. That’s the point of a duel, ain’t it? All about one man.” He poked at the meat with his knife and made the blood run sizzling into the fire. Then he sat back, thoughtful. “You reckon he can do it? Really? You remember that thing?” Dogman felt a ghost of the sick fear he’d had in the mist, and he shuddered to his boots. He weren’t likely ever to forget the sight of that giant coming through the murk, the sight of his painted fist rising, the sound of it crunching into Threetrees’ ribs and crushing the life out of him.

“If anyone can do it,” he growled through his gritted teeth, “I reckon Logen can.”

“Uh,” grunted Grim.

“Aye, but do you think he will? That’s my question. That, and what happens if he don’t?” It was a question that Dogman could hardly bear to think up an answer to. Logen would be dead, for a first thing. Then there’d be no siege of Carleon anymore. Dogman had too few men left after the mountains to keep a piss-pot surrounded, let alone the best walled city in the North. Bethod could do as he pleased—seek out help, and find new friends, and set to fighting again. There was no one tougher in a tight corner.

“Logen can do it,” he whispered, bunching his fists and feeling the long cut down his arm burning. “He has to.”

He nearly fell in the fire when a great fat hand thumped him on the back. “By the dead but I never seen such a fire-full o’ long faces!” Dogman winced. The crazy hillman was hardly what he needed to lift his mood, grinning out of the night with his children behind him, great big weapons over their shoulders.

Crummock was down to just the two now, since one of his sons got killed up in the mountains, but he didn’t seem so upset about it. He’d lost his spear too, snapped off in some Easterner, as he was fond of saying, so he still didn’t have to carry aught himself. Neither one of the children had said much since the battle, or not in the Dogman’s hearing, anyway. No more talk about how many men folk might’ve killed. The seeing of it close up could be a woeful drain on your enthusiasm for the business of war. Dogman knew well enough how that went.

But Crummock himself had no trouble keeping cheerful. “Where’s Ninefingers got himself off to?”

“Gone off on his own. Always liked to do that, before a duel.”

“Mmm.” Crummock stroked at the fingerbones round his neck. “Speaking to the moon, I’ll be bound.”

“Shitting himself is closer to it, I reckon.”

“Well, as long as you get the shitting done before the fight, I don’t reckon anyone could grumble.” He grinned all across his face. “No one’s loved of the moon like the Bloody-Nine, I tell you! No one in all the wide Circle of the World. He’s got some kind of chance at winning a fair fight, and that’s the best a man could hope for against that devil-thing. There’s only one problem.”

“Just one?”

“There’ll be no fair fight as long as that damn witch is alive.”

The Dogman felt his shoulders slump even further. “How d’you mean?”

Crummock spun one of the wooden signs on his necklace round and around. “I can’t see her letting Bethod lose, and herself along with him, can you? A witch as clever as that one? There’s all kinds of magic she could mix. All kinds of blessings and curses. All kinds of ways that bitch could tilt the outcome, as though the chances weren’t tilted enough already.”

“Eh?”

“My point is this. Someone needs to stop her.”

Dogman hadn’t thought he could feel any lower. Now he knew better. “Good luck with that,” he muttered.

“Ha ha, my lad, ha ha. I’d love to do it, too, but they’ve got an awful stretch of walls down there, and I’m not much for climbing over ’em.” Crummock slapped one fat hand against his fat belly. “Twice too much meat for that. No, what we need for this task is a small man, but with great big fruits on him. No doubt we do, and the moon knows it. A man with a talent for creeping about, sharp-eyed and sure-footed. We need someone with a quick hand and a quick mind.” He looked at the Dogman, and he grinned. “Now where is it that we’d find a man like that, do you reckon?”

“You know what?” Dogman put his face in his hands. “I’ve no fucking idea.”

Logen lifted the battered flask to his lips and took a mouthful. He felt the sharp liquor tingling on his tongue, tickling at his throat, that old need to swallow. He leaned forward, pursed his lips, and blew it out in a fine spray. A gout of fire went up into the cold night. He peered into the darkness, saw nothing but the black outlines of tree-trunks, the shifting black shadows that his fire cast between them.

He shook the flask back and forth, heard the last measure sloshing inside. He shrugged his shoulders, put it to his mouth and tipped it all the way, felt it burn down to his stomach. The spirits could share with him tonight. Chances were good that, after tomorrow, he wouldn’t be calling on them again.

“Ninefingers.” The voice rustled at him like the leaves falling.

One spirit slid out from the shadows, came up into the light from the fire. There was no trace of recognition about it, and Logen found he was relieved. There was no accusation either, no fear and no distrust. It didn’t care what he was, or what he’d done.

Logen tossed the empty flask down beside him. “On your own?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’re never alone if you bring laughter with you.” The spirit said nothing. “Reckon laughter’s a thing for men, not for spirits.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t speak much, do you?”

“I did not call on you.”

“True.” Logen stared into the fire. “I have to fight a man tomorrow. A man called Fenris the Feared.”

“He is not a man.”

“You know of him, then?”

“He is old.”

“By your reckoning?”

“Nothing is old by my reckoning, but he goes back to the Old Time and beyond. He had another master, then.”

“What master?”

“Glustrod.”

The name was like a knife in the ear. No name could’ve been less expected, or less welcome. The wind blew cold through the trees, and memories of the towering ruins of Aulcus crowded in on Logen, and made his back shiver. “No chance it’s some different Glustrod than the one came close to destroying half the world?”

“There is no other. He it was that wrote the signs upon the Feared’s skin. Signs in the Old Tongue, the language of devils, across his left side. That flesh is of the world below. Where the word of Glustrod is written, the Feared cannot be harmed.”

“Cannot be harmed? Not at all?” Logen thought about it a moment. “Why not write on both sides?”

“Ask Glustrod.”

“I don’t think that’s likely.”

“No.” A long pause. “What will you do, Ninefingers?”

Logen peered off sideways into the trees. The notion of setting off running, and never looking back, seemed a pretty one, right then. Sometimes it can be better to live with the fear of it, than to die doing it, whatever Logen’s father had told him.

“I ran before,” he muttered, “and I only ran a circle. For me, Bethod’s at the end of every path.”

“Then that is all our talk.” The spirit stood up from the fire.

“Perhaps I’ll see you again.”

“I do not think so. The magic leaks from the world, and my kind sleep. I do not think so. Even if you beat the Feared, and I do not think you will.”

“Message o’ hope then, eh?” Logen snorted. “Luck go with you.”

The spirit faded back into the darkness, and was gone. It did not wish Logen luck. It did not care.

Authority

It was a dour and depressing meeting, even for the Closed Council. The weather beyond the narrow windows was sullen and overcast, promising storms but never delivering, casting the White Chamber into a chill gloom. From time to time heavy gusts of wind would rattle the old window panes, making Jezal start and shiver in his fur-trimmed robe.

The grim expressions of the dozen old faces did little to warm his bones. Lord Marshal Varuz was all clenched jaw and harsh determination. Lord Chamberlain Hoff clutched his goblet like a drowning man clinging to the last fragment of his boat. High Justice Marovia frowned as though he were about to pronounce the death sentence on the entire gathering, himself among them. Arch Lector Sult’s thin lip was permanently curled as his cold eyes slid from Bayaz, to Jezal, to Marovia, and back.

The First of the Magi himself glared down the table. “The situation, please, Lord Marshal Varuz.”

“The situation, honestly, is grim. Adua is in uproar. Perhaps one third of the population has already fled. The Gurkish blockade means that few supplies are making it to the markets. Curfews are in place but some citizens are still seizing the opportunity to rob, steal and riot while the authorities are occupied elsewhere.”

Marovia shook his head, grey beard swaying gently. “And we can only expect the situation to deteriorate as the Gurkish come closer to the city.”

“Which they are,” said Varuz, “at the rate of several miles a day. We are doing all we can to frustrate them, but with our resources so limited… they may well be outside the gates within the week.”

There were a few shocked gasps, breathed oaths, nervous sideways glances. “So soon?” Jezal’s voice cracked slightly as he said it.

“I am afraid so, your Majesty.”

“What is the Gurkish strength?” asked Marovia.

“Estimates vary wildly. At present however…” and Varuz sucked worriedly at his teeth, “it appears they field at least fifty thousand.”

There were further sharp intakes of breath, not least from Jezal’s own throat. “So many?” muttered Halleck.

“And thousands more landing every day near Keln,” put in Admiral Reutzer, doing nothing to lift the mood. “With the best part of our navy on its way to retrieve the army after its northern adventure, we are powerless to stop them.”

Jezal licked his lips. The walls of the wide room seemed to close in further with every moment. “What of our troops?”

Varuz and Reutzer exchanged a brief glance. “We have two regiments of the King’s Own, one of foot and one of horse, some six thousand men in all. The Grey Watch, tasked with the defence of the Agriont itself, numbers four thousand. The Knights Herald and of the Body form an elite of some five hundred. In addition, there are non-combat soldiers—cooks, grooms, smiths, and so forth—who could be armed in an emergency—”

“I believe this qualifies,” observed Bayaz.

“—perhaps some few thousand more. The city watch might be of some use, but they are hardly professional soldiers.”

“What of the nobles?” asked Marovia. “Where is their aid?”

“Some few have sent men,” said Varuz grimly, “others only their regrets. Most… not even that.”

“Hedging their bets.” Hoff shook his head. “Brock has let it be known there will be Gurkish gold for those who help him, and Gurkish mercy for those who stand with us.”

“It has ever been so,” lamented Torlichorm. “The nobles are interested only in their own welfare!”

“Then we must open the armouries,” said Bayaz, “and we must not be shy with their contents. We must arm every citizen who can hold a weapon. We must arm the labourers’ guilds, and the craftsmens’ guilds, and the veterans’ associations. Even the beggars in the gutters must be ready to fight.”

All well and good, Jezal supposed, but he hardly cared to trust his life to a legion of beggars. “When will Lord Marshal West return with the army?”

“If he received his orders yesterday, it will be a month at the very least before he is disembarked and ready to come to our aid.”

“Which means we must withstand several weeks of siege,” muttered Hoff, shaking his head. He leaned close to Jezal’s ear and spoke softly, quite as if they were schoolgirls trading secrets. “Your Majesty, it might be prudent for you and your Closed Council to leave the city. To relocate your government further north, outside the path of the Gurkish advance, where the campaign can be conducted in greater safety. To Holsthorm, perhaps, or—”

“Absolutely not,” said Bayaz sternly.

Jezal could scarcely deny that the notion held its attractions. The island of Shabulyan at that moment seemed an ideal place to relocate his government to—but Bayaz was right. Harod the Great would hardly have entertained the idea of retreat, and neither, unfortunately, could Jezal.

“We will fight the Gurkish here,” he said.

“Merely a suggestion,” muttered Hoff, “merely prudence.”

Bayaz spoke over him. “How do the defences of the city stand?”

“We have, in essence, three concentric lines of defence. The Agriont itself is, of course, our last bastion.”

“It will not come to that, though, eh?” chuckled Hoff, with far from total conviction.

Varuz decided not to answer. “Arnault’s Wall is beyond it, enclosing the oldest and most crucial parts of the city—the Agriont, the Middleway, the main docks and the Four Corners among them. Casamir’s Wall is our outermost line of defence—weaker, lower, and a great deal longer than Arnault’s. Smaller walls run between these two, like the spokes of a wheel, dividing the outer ring of the city into five boroughs, each of which can be sealed off, should it be captured by the enemy. There are some built-up areas beyond Casamir’s Wall, but those must be immediately abandoned.”

Bayaz planted his elbows on the edge of the table, his meaty fists clasped together. “Given the number and quality of our troops, we would be best served by evacuating the outer quarters of the city and concentrating our efforts around the much shorter and stronger length of Arnault’s wall. We can continue to fight a rear-guard action in the outer boroughs, where our superior knowledge of the streets and buildings stands in our favour—”

“No,” said Jezal.

Bayaz fixed him with a brooding stare. “Your Majesty?”

But Jezal refused to be overawed. It had been becoming clear for some time that if he allowed the Magus to rule him on every issue then he would never escape from under his boot. He might have seen Bayaz make a man explode with a thought, but he was hardly likely to do it to the King of the Union before his own Closed Council. Not with the Gurkish breathing down all their necks.

“I do not intend to give up the greater part of my capital to the Union’s oldest enemy without giving battle. We will defend Casamir’s Wall, and fight for every stride of ground.”

Varuz glanced across at Hoff, and the Chamberlain raised his eyebrows by the tiniest fraction. “Er… of course, your Majesty. Every stride.” There was an uncomfortable silence, the displeasure of the First of the Magi hanging over the group as heavily as the storm clouds hung over the city.

“Does my Inquisition have anything to contribute?” croaked Jezal, doing his best to mount a diversion.

Sult’s eyes darted coldly up to his. “Of course, your Majesty. The Gurkish love of intrigue is well known. We have no doubt that there are already spies within the walls of Adua. Perhaps within the Agriont itself. All citizens of Kantic origin are now being interned. My Inquisitors are working day and night in the House of Questions. Several spies have already confessed.”

Marovia snorted. “So we are expected to suppose that the Gurkish love of intrigue does not extend to the hiring of white-skinned agents?”

“We are at war!” hissed Sult, giving the High Justice a deadly glare. “The very sovereignty of our nation is at risk! This is no time for your blather about freedom, Marovia!”

“On the contrary, this is precisely the time!”

The two old men bickered on, straining everyone’s frayed nerves to breaking point. Bayaz, meanwhile, had sunk back into his chair and folded his arms, watching Jezal with an expression of calm consideration which was, if anything, even more fearsome than his frown. Jezal felt the worry weighing ever heavier upon him. However you looked at things, he was teetering on the verge of having the briefest and most disastrous reign in Union history.

“I am sorry that I had to send for your Majesty,” piped Gorst, in his girlish little voice.

“Of course, of course.” The clicking of Jezal’s polished boot-heels echoed angrily around them.

“There is only so much that I can do.”

“Of course.”

Jezal shoved open the double doors with both hands. Terez sat bolt upright in the midst of the gilded chamber beyond, glaring at him down her nose in that manner with which he had become so infuriatingly familiar. As though he were an insect in her salad. Several Styrian ladies looked up, and then back to their tasks. Chests and boxes cluttered the room, clothes were being neatly packed within. Every impression was given that the Queen of the Union was planning to leave the capital, and without so much as informing her husband.

Jezal ground his already aching teeth. He was tormented by a disloyal Closed Council, a disloyal Open Council, and a disloyal populace. The poisonous disloyalty of his wife was almost too much to bear. “What the hell is this?”

“I and my ladies can hardly assist you in your war with the Emperor.” Terez turned her flawless head smoothly away from him. “We are returning to Talins.”

“Impossible!” hissed Jezal. “A Gurkish army of many thousands is bearing down upon the city! My people are fleeing Adua in droves and those that remain are a whisker from sliding into outright panic! Your leaving now would send entirely the wrong message! I cannot allow it!”

“Her Majesty is in no way involved!” snapped the Countess Shalere, gliding across the polished floor towards him.

As though Jezal had not enough to worry about with the Queen herself, he was now obliged to bandy words with her companions. “You forget yourself,” he snarled at her.

“It is you who forgets!” She took a step towards him, her face twisted. “You forget that you are a bastard son, and a scarred one at—”

The back of Jezal’s hand cracked sharply into her sneering mouth and sent her reeling back with an ungainly gurgle. She tripped over her dress and collapsed on the floor, one shoe flying from her flailing foot and off into the corner of the room.

“I am a King, and in my own palace. I refuse to be spoken to in this manner by a glorified lady’s maid.” The voice came out, flat, cold, and frighteningly commanding. It scarcely sounded like his own, but who else’s could it be? He was the only man in the room. “I see that I have been far too generous with you, and that you have mistaken my generosity for weakness.” The eleven ladies stared at him, and at their fallen comrade, crumpled on the ground with one hand to her bloody mouth. “If any of your witches should desire to depart these troubled shores, I will arrange passage for them, and even pull an oar myself with a light heart. But you, your Majesty, will be going nowhere.”

Terez had leaped up from her seat and was glowering at him, body rigid. “You heartless brute—” she began to hiss.

“We may both wholeheartedly wish it were otherwise!” he roared over her, “but we are married! The time to raise objections to my parentage, or my person, or to any other facet of our situation, was before you became Queen of the Union! Despise me all you wish, Terez, but you… go… nowhere.” And Jezal swept the dumbstruck ladies with a baleful glare, turned on his polished heel and stalked from the airy salon.

Damn it but his hand hurt.

The Circle

Dawn was coming, a grey rumour, the faintest touch of brightness around the solemn outline of the walls of Carleon. The stars had all faded into a stony sky, but the moon still hung there, just above the tree-tops, seeming almost close enough to try an arrow at.

West had not closed his eyes all night, and had passed into that strange realm of twitchy, dreamlike wakefulness that comes beyond exhaustion. Some time in the silent darkness, after all the orders had been given, he had sat by the light of a single lamp to write a letter to his sister. To vomit up excuses. To demand forgiveness. He had sat, he could not have said for how long, with the pen over the paper, but the words had simply not come. He had wanted to say all that he felt, but when it came to it, he felt nothing. The warm taverns of Adua, cards in the sunny courtyard. Ardee’s one-sided smile. It all seemed a thousand years ago.

The Northmen were already busy, clipping at the grass in the shadow of the walls, the clicking of their shears a strange echo of the gardeners in the Agriont, shaving a circle a dozen strides across down to the roots. The ground, he supposed, on which the duel would take place. The ground where, in no more than an hour or two, the fate of the North would be decided. Very much like a fencing circle, except that it might soon be sprayed with blood.

“A barbaric custom,” muttered Jalenhorm, his thoughts evidently taking a similar course.

“Really?” growled Pike. “I was just now thinking what a civilised one it is.”

“Civilised? Two men butchering each other before a crowd?”

“Better than a whole crowd butchering each other. A problem solved with only one man killed? That’s a war ended well, to my mind.”

Jalenhorm shivered and blew into his cupped hands. “Still. A lot to hang on two men fighting one another. What if Ninefingers loses?”

“Then I suppose that Bethod will go free,” said West, unhappily.

“But he invaded the Union! He caused the deaths of thousands! He deserves to be punished!”

“People rarely get what they deserve.” West thought of Prince Ladisla’s bones rotting out in the wasteland. Some terrible crimes go unpunished, and a few, for no reason beyond the fickle movements of chance, are richly rewarded. He stopped in his tracks.

A man was sitting on his own on the long slope, his back to the city. A man hunched over in a battered coat, so still and quiet in the half-light that West had almost missed him. “I’ll catch you up,” he said as he left the path. The grass, coated with a pale fur of frost, crunched gently under his boots with each step.

“Pull up a chair.” Breath smoked gently round Ninefingers’ darkened face.

West squatted down on the cold earth beside him. “Are you ready?”

“Ten times before I’ve done this. Can’t say I’ve ever yet been ready. Don’t know that there is a way to get ready for a thing like this. The best I’ve worked out is just to sit, and let the time crawl past, and try not to piss yourself.”

“I imagine a wet crotch could be an embarrassment in the circle.”

“Aye. Better than a split head, though, I reckon.”

Undeniably true. West had heard tales of these Northern duels before, of course. Growing up in Angland, children whispered lurid stories of them to each other. But he had little idea how they were really conducted. “How does this business work?”

“They mark out a circle. Round the edge men stand with shields, half from one side, half from the other, and they make sure no one leaves before it’s settled. Two men go into the circle. The one that dies there is the loser. Unless someone has it in mind to be merciful. Can’t see that happening today, though, somehow.”

Also undeniable. “What do you fight with?”

“Each one of us brings something. Could be anything. Then there’s a spin of a shield, and the winner picks the weapon he wants.”

“So you might end up fighting with what your enemy brought?”

“It can happen. I killed Shama Heartless with his own sword, and got stuck through with the spear I brought to fight Harding Grim.” He rubbed at his stomach, as though the memory ached there. “Still, don’t hurt any worse, getting stuck with your own spear instead of someone else’s.”

West laid a hand thoughtfully on his own gut. “No.” They sat in silence for a while longer.

“There’s a favour I’d like to ask you.”

“Name it.”

“Would you and your friends hold shields for me?”

“Us?” West blinked towards the Carls in the shadow of the wall. Their great round shields looked hard enough to lift, let alone to use well. “Are you sure? I’ve never held one in my life.”

“Maybe, but you know whose side you’re on. There ain’t many folk among these that I can trust. Most of ’em are still trying to work out who they hate more, me or Bethod. It only takes one to give me a shove when I need a push, or let me fall when I need catching. Then we’re all done. Me especially.”

West puffed out his cheeks. “We’ll do what we can.”

“Good. Good.”

The cold silence dragged out. Over the black hills, the black trees, the moon sank and grew dimmer.

“Tell me, Furious. Do you reckon a man has to pay for the things he’s done?”

West looked up sharply, the irrational and sickly thought flashing through his mind that Ninefingers was talking of Ardee, or of Ladisla, or both. Certainly, the Northman’s eyes seemed to glint with accusation in the half-light—then West felt the surge of fear subside. Ninefingers was talking of himself, of course, as everyone always does, given the chance. It was guilt in his eyes, not accusation. Each man has his own mistakes to follow him.

“Maybe.” West cleared his dry throat. “Sometimes. I don’t know. I suppose we’ve all done things we regret.”

“Aye,” said Ninefingers. “I reckon.”

They sat together in silence, and watched the light leak across the sky.

“Let’s go, chief!” hissed Dow. “Let’s fucking go!”

“I’ll say when!” Dogman spat back, holding the dewy branches out of the way and peering towards the walls, a hundred strides off, maybe, across a damp meadow. “Too much light, now. We’ll wait for that bloody moon to drop a touch further, then we’ll make a run at it.”

“It ain’t going to get any darker! Bethod can’t have too many men left after all the ones we killed up in the mountains, and that’s a lot o’ walls. They’ll be spread thin as cobwebs up there.”

“It only takes one to—”

And Dow was off across that field and running, as plain on the flat grass as a turd on a snow-field.

“Shit!” hissed Dogman, helpless.

“Uh,” said Grim.

There was nothing to do but stare, and wait for Dow to get stuck full of arrows. Wait for the shouts, and torches lit, and the alarm to go up, and the whole thing dumped right in the shit-hole. Then Dow dashed up the last bit of slope and was gone into the shadows by the wall.

“He made it,” said Dogman.

“Uh,” said Grim.

That ought to have been a good thing, but Dogman didn’t feel too much like laughing. He had to make the run himself now, and he didn’t have Dow’s luck. He looked at Grim, and Grim shrugged. They burst out from the trees together, feet pounding across the soft meadow. Grim had the longer legs, started pulling away. The ground was a good deal softer than Dogman had—

“Gah!” His foot squelched to the ankle and he went flying over, splashed down in the mire and slid along on his face. He floundered up, cold and gasping, ran the rest of the way with his wet shirt plastered against his skin. He stumbled up the slope to the foot of the walls and bent over, hands to his knees, blowing hard and spitting out grass.

“Looks like you took a tumble there, chief.” Dow’s grin was a white curve in the shadows.

“You mad bastard!” hissed Dogman, his temper flaring up hot in his cold chest. “You could’ve been the deaths of all of us!”

“Oh, there’s still time.”

“Shhhh.” Grim flailed one hand at them to say keep quiet. Dogman pressed himself tight to the wall, worry snuffing his anger out quick-time. He heard men moving up above, saw the glimmer of a lamp pass slow down the walls. He waited, still, no sound but Dow’s quiet breath beside him and his own heart pounding, ’til the men above moved on and all was quiet again.

“Tell me that ain’t got your blood flowing quick, chief,” whispered Dow.

“We’re lucky it ain’t flowing right out of us.”

“What now?”

Dogman gritted his teeth as he tried to scrape the mud out of his face. “Now we wait.”

Logen stood up, brushed the dew from his trousers, took a long breath of the chill air. There could be no denying any longer that the sun was well and truly up. It might’ve been hidden in the east behind Skarling’s Hill, but the tall black towers up there had bright golden edges, the thin, high clouds were pinking underneath, the cold sky between turning pale blue.

“Better to do it,” Logen whispered under his breath, “than live with the fear of it.” He remembered his father telling him that. Saying it in the smoky hall, light from the fire shifting on his lined face, long finger wagging. Logen remembered telling it to his own son, smiling by the river, teaching him to tickle fish. Father and son, both dead now, earth and ashes. No one would learn it after Logen, once he was gone. No one would miss him much at all, he reckoned. But then who cared? There’s nothing worth less than what men think of you after you’re back in the mud.

He wrapped his fingers round the grip of the Maker’s sword, felt the scored lines tickling at his palm. He slid it from the sheath and let it hang, worked his shoulders round in circles, jerked his head from side to side. One more cold breath in, and out, then he started walking, up through the crowd that had gathered in a wide arc around the gate. A mix of the Dogman’s Carls and Crummock’s hillmen, and a few Union soldiers given leave to watch the crazy Northerners kill each other. Some called to him as he came through, all knowing there were a lot more lives hanging on this than Logen’s own.

“It’s Ninefingers!”

“The Bloody-Nine.”

“Put an end to this!”

“Kill that bastard!”

They had their shields, all the men that Logen had picked to hold them, standing in a solemn knot near the walls. West was one, and Pike, and Red Hat, and Shivers too. Logen wondered if he’d made a mistake with the last of them, but he’d saved the man’s life in the mountains and that ought to count for something. Ought to was a thin thread to hang your life on, but there it was. His life had been dangling from a thin thread ever since he could remember.

Crummock-i-Phail fell into step beside him, big shield looking small on one big arm, the other hand resting light on his fat belly. “You looking forward to this then, Bloody-Nine? I am, I can tell you that!”

Hands slapped at his shoulders, voices called encouragement, but Logen said nothing. He didn’t look left or right as he pushed past into the shaven circle. He felt men close in behind him, heard them set their shields in a half-ring round the edge of the short grass, facing the gates of Carleon. Further back the crowd pressed in tight. Whispering to each other. Straining to see. No way back now, that was a fact. But then there never had been. He’d been heading here all his days. Logen stopped, in the centre of the circle, and he turned his face up towards the battlements.

“It’s sunrise!” he roared. “Let’s get to it!”

There was silence, while the echoes died, and the wind pushed some loose leaves around the grass. A silence long enough for Logen to start hoping no one would answer. To start hoping they’d all somehow slipped away in the night, and there’d be no duel after all.

Then faces appeared on the walls. One here, one there, then a whole crowd, lining the parapet far as Logen could see in both directions. Hundreds of folk—fighting men, women, children even, up on shoulders. Everyone in the city, it looked like. Metal squealed, and wood creaked, and the tall gates ever so slowly swung apart, the glare of the rising sun spilling out the crack between, then pouring bright through the open archway. Two lines of men came tramping out.

Carls, all hard faces and tangled hair, heavy mail jingling, painted shields on their arms.

Logen knew a few of them. Some of Bethod’s closest, who’d been with him since the beginning. Hard men all, who’d held the shields for Logen more than once, back in the old days. They formed up in their own half-ring, closing the circle tight. A wall of shields—animal faces, trees and towers, flowing water, crossed axes, all of them scarred and scuffed from a hundred old fights. All of them turned in towards Logen. A cage of men and wood, and the only way out was to kill. Or to die, of course.

A black shape formed in the bright archway. Like a man, but taller, seeming to fill it all the way to the high keystone. Logen heard footsteps. Thumping footsteps, heavy as falling anvils. A strange kind of fear tugged at him. A mindless panic, as if he’d woken trapped under the snow again. He forced himself not to look over his shoulder at Crummock, forced himself to look ahead as Bethod’s champion stepped out into the dawn.

“By the fucking dead,” breathed Logen.

He thought at first it must be some trick of the light that made him look the size he did. Tul Duru Thunderhead had been a big bastard, no doubt, big enough that some had called him a giant. But he’d still looked like a man. Fenris the Feared was built on such a scale that he seemed something else. A race apart. A giant indeed, stepped out from old stories and made flesh. A lot of flesh.

His face squirmed as he walked, great bald head jerking from side to side. His mouth sneered and grinned, his eyes winked and bulged by turns. One half of him was blue. No other way to put it. A neat line down his face divided blue skin from pale. His huge right arm was white. His left was blue all the long way from shoulder to the tips of his great fingers. In that hand he carried a sack, swinging back and forward with each step, bulging as if it was stuffed with hammers.

A couple of Bethod’s shield-carriers cringed out of his way, looking like children beside him, grimacing as if death itself was breathing on their necks. The Feared stepped through into the circle, and Logen saw the blue marks were writing, just as the spirit had told him. Twisted symbols, scrawled over every part of his left side—hand, arm, face, lips even. The words of Glustrod, written in the Old Time.

The Feared stopped a few strides distant, and a sickly horror seemed to wash out from him and over the silent crowd, as if a great weight was pressing on Logen’s chest, squeezing out his courage. But the task was simple enough, in its way. If the Feared’s painted side couldn’t be harmed, Logen would just have to carve the rest of him, and carve it deep. He’d beaten some hard men in the circle. Ten of the hardest bastards in all the North. This was just one more. Or so he tried to tell himself.

“Where’s Bethod?” He’d meant to bellow it, all defiance, but it came out a tame, dry squawk.

“I can watch you die just as well from up here!” The King of the Northmen stood on the battlements above the open gate, well-groomed and happy, Pale-as-Snow and a few guards stood about him. If he’d had any trouble sleeping, Logen would never have known it. The morning breeze stirred his hair and the thick fur round his shoulders, the morning sun shone on the golden chain, struck sparks from the diamond on his brow. “Glad you came! I was worried you’d make a run for it!” He gave a carefree sigh and it smoked on the sharp air. “It’s morning, like you said. Let’s get started.”

Logen looked into the Feared’s bulging, twitching, crazy eyes, and swallowed.

“We’re gathered here to witness a challenge!” roared Crummock. “A challenge to put an end to this war, and settle the blood between Bethod, who’s taken to calling himself King of the Northmen, and Furious, who speaks for the Union. Bethod wins, the siege is lifted, and the Union leaves the North. Furious wins, then the gates of Carleon are opened, and Bethod stands at his mercy. Do I speak true?”

“You do,” said West, his voice sounding small in all that space.

“Aye.” Up on his walls, Bethod waved a lazy hand. “Get to it, fat man.”

“Then name yourselves, champions!” shouted Crummock, “and list your pedigree!”

Logen took a step forward. It was a hard step to take, as if he was pushing against a great wind, but he took it anyway, tilted his head back and looked the Feared full in his writhing face. “I’m the Bloody-Nine, and there’s no number on the men I’ve killed.” The words came out soft and dead. No pride in his empty voice, but no fear either. A cold fact. Cold as the winter. “Ten challenges I’ve given, and I won ’em all. In this circle I beat Shama Heartless, Rudd Threetrees, Harding Grim, Tul Duru Thunderhead, Black Dow, and more besides. If I listed the Named Men I’ve put back in the mud we’d be here at sunrise tomorrow. There’s not a man in the North don’t know my work.”

Nothing changed in the giant’s face. Nothing more than usual, at least. “My name is Fenris the Feared. My achievements are all in the past.” He held up his painted hand, and squeezed the great fingers, and the sinews in his huge blue arm bulged like knotted tree roots. “With these signs great Glustrod marked me out his chosen. With this hand I tore down the statues of Aulcus. Now I kill little men, in little wars.” Logen could just make out a tiny shrug of his massive shoulders. “Such is the way of things.”

Crummock looked at Logen, and he raised his brows. “Alright then. What weapons have you carried to the fight?”

Logen lifted the heavy sword, forged by Kanedias for his war against the Magi, and held it up to the light. A stride of dull metal, the edge glittered faintly in the pale sunrise. “This blade.” He stabbed it down into the earth between them and left it standing there.

The Feared threw his sack rattling down and it sagged open. Inside were great black plates, spiked and studded, scarred and battered. “This armour.” Logen looked at that vast weight of dark iron, and licked his teeth. If the Feared won the spin he could take the sword and leave Logen with a pile of useless armour way too big for him. What would he do then? Hide under it? He only had to hope his luck stuck out a few minutes longer.

“Alright, my beauties.” Crummock set his shield down on its rim and took hold of the edge. “Painted or plain, Ninefingers?”

“Painted.” Crummock ripped the shield round and set it spinning. Round and round, it went—painted, plain, painted, plain. Hope and despair swapped with every turn. The wood started to slow, to wobble on its rim. It dropped down flat, plain side up, the straps flopping.

So much for luck.

Crummock winced. He looked up at the giant. “You’ve got the choice, big lad.”

The Feared took hold of the Maker’s blade and slid it from the earth. It looked like a toy in his monstrous hand. His bulging eyes rolled up to Logen’s, and his great mouth twisted into a smile. He tossed the sword down at Logen’s feet and it dropped in the dirt.

“Take your knife, little man.”

The sound of raised voices floated thin on the breeze. “Alright,” hissed Dow, much too loud for the Dogman’s nerves, “they’re getting started!”

“I can hear that!” Dogman snapped, coiling the rope round and round into easy circles, ready to throw.

“You know what you’re doing with that? I could do without it dropping on me.”

“That so?” Dogman swung the grapple back and forward a touch, feeling the weight. “I was just thinking that, after it sticking in that wall, it sticking in your fat head was the second best outcome.” He spun it round in a circle, then a wider one, letting some rope slip through his hand, then he hefted it all the way and let it fly. It sailed up, real neat, the rope uncoiling after it, and over the battlements. Dogman winced as he heard it clatter on the walkway, but no one came. He pulled on the rope. A stride or two slid down, and then it caught. Felt firm as a rock.

“First time,” said Grim.

Dogman nodded, hardly able to believe it himself. “What are the odds? Who’s first?”

Dow grinned at him. “Whoever’s got hold o’ the rope now, I reckon.”

As the Dogman started climbing, he found he was going over all the ways a man could get killed going up this wall. Grapple slipped, and he fell. Rope frayed, and snapped, and he fell. Someone had seen the grapple, was waiting for him to get to the top before they cut the rope. Or they were waiting for him to get to the top before they cut his throat. Or they were just now calling for a dozen big men to take prisoner whatever idiot it was trying to climb into a city on his own.

His boots scuffled at the rough stone, the hemp bit at his hands, his arms burned at the work, and all the while he did his best to keep his rasping breath quiet. The battlements edged closer, then closer, then he was there. He hooked his fingers onto the stone and peered over. The walkway was empty, both ways. He slipped over the parapet, sliding a knife out, just in case. You can never have too many knives, and all that. He checked the grapple was caught firm, then he leaned over, saw Dow at the bottom looking up, Grim with the rope in his hands, one foot on the wall, ready to climb. Dogman beckoned to him to say come, watched him start up, hand over hand, Dow holding to the bottom of the rope to stop it flapping. Soon enough he was halfway—

“What the fuck—”

Dogman jerked his head left. There were a pair of Thralls not far off, just stepped out from a door to the nearest tower and onto the wall. They stared at him, and he stared back, seemed like the longest time.

“There’s a rope here!” he shouted, brandishing his knife around and making like he was trying to cut it away from the grapple. “Some bastard’s trying to climb in!”

“By the dead!” One came running, gawped down at Grim swinging around. “He’s coming up now!”

The other one pulled his sword out. “Don’t worry ’bout that.” He lifted it, grinning, ready to chop through the rope. Then he stopped. “Here—why you all muddy?”

Dogman stabbed him in the chest, hard as he could, and again. “Eeeeee!” wailed the Thrall, face screwed up, lurching back against the battlements and dropping his sword over the side. His mate came charging up, swinging a big mace. Dogman ducked under it, but the Thrall barrelled into him and brought him down on his back, head cracking on stone.

The mace clattered away and they wrestled around, the Thrall kicking and punching while Dogman tried to get his hands round his throat, stop him from calling out. They rolled over one way, then back the other, struggled up to standing and tottered about down the walkway. The Thrall got his shoulder in Dogman’s armpit and shoved him back up against the battlements, trying to bundle him over.

“Shit,” gasped the Dogman as his feet left the ground. He could feel his arse scraping the stone, but still he clung on, hands tight round the Thrall’s neck, stopping him getting a good breath. He went up another inch, felt his head forced back, almost more weight on the wrong side of the parapet than the right.

“Over you go, you fucker!” croaked the Thrall, working his chin away from Dogman’s hands and pushing him a touch further, “over you—” His eyes went wide. He stumbled back, a shaft sticking out of his side. “Oh, I don’t—” Another thumped into his neck and he lurched a step, would’ve fallen off the back of the wall if the Dogman hadn’t grabbed his arm and dragged him down onto the walkway, held him there while he slobbered his last breaths.

When he was finished, Dogman rolled up and stood bent over the corpse, breathing. Grim hurried over, taking a good look around to make sure no one else was likely to happen by. “Alright?”

“Just once. Just once I’d like to get the help before I’m at the point o’ getting killed.”

“Better’n after.” The Dogman had to admit there was some truth to that. He watched Dow pull himself over the battlements and roll down onto the walkway. The Thrall Dogman had stabbed was still breathing, just about, sat near the grapple. Dow chopped a piece out of his skull with his axe as he walked past, careless as if he was chopping logs.

He shook his head. “I leave the two o’ you alone for ten breaths together and look what happens. Two dead men, eh?” Dow leaned down, stuck two fingers in one of the holes Dogman’s knife had made, pulled them out and smeared blood across one side of his face. He grinned up. “What do you reckon we can do with two dead men?”

The Feared seemed to fill the circle, one half bare and blue, the other cased in black iron, a monster torn free from legends. There was nowhere to hide from his great fists, nowhere to hide from the fear of him. Shields rattled and clashed, men roared and bellowed, a sea of blurred faces twisted with mad fury.

Logen crept around the edge of the short grass, trying to keep light on his feet. He might’ve been smaller, but he was quicker, cleverer. At least he hoped he was. He had to be, or he was mud. Keep moving, rolling, ducking, stay out of the way and pick his moment. Above all, don’t get hit. Not getting hit was the first thing.

The giant came at him out of nowhere, his great tattooed fist a blue blur. Logen threw himself out of the way but it still grazed his cheek and caught his shoulder, sent him stumbling. So much for not getting hit. A shield, and not a friendly one, shoved him in the back and he lurched the other way, head whipping forward. He pitched on his face, nearly cut himself on his own sword, rolled desperately to the side and saw the Feared’s huge boot thud into the ground, soil flying where his skull had been a moment before.

Logen scrabbled up in time to see the blue hand coming at him again. He ducked underneath it, hacked at the Feared’s tattooed flesh as he reeled past. The Maker’s sword thudded deep into the giant’s thigh like a spade into turf. The huge leg buckled and he dropped forward onto his armoured knee. It should have been a killing blow, right through the big veins, but there was hardly more blood than from a shaving-scratch.

Still, if one thing fails you try another. Logen roared as he chopped at the Feared’s bald head. The blade clanged against the armour on the giant’s right arm, raised just in time. It scraped down that black steel and slid off, harmless, chopping into the earth and leaving Logen’s hands buzzing.

“Ooof!” The Feared’s knee sank into his gut, folded him up and sent him staggering, needing to cough but not having the air to do it. The giant had already found his feet again, armoured hand swinging back, a lump of black iron the size of a man’s head. Logen dived sideways, rolling across the short grass, felt the wind of the great arm ripping past him. It crashed into the shield where he’d been standing, broke it into splintered pieces, flung the man holding it wailing into the earth.

It seemed the spirit had been right. The painted side couldn’t be hurt. Logen crouched, waiting for the clawing pain in his stomach to fade enough for him to breathe, trying to think of some trick to use and coming up with nothing. The Feared turned his writhing face towards Logen. Behind him on the ground the felled man whimpered under the wreckage of his shield. The Carls either side of him shuffled in to close the gap with some reluctance.

The giant took a slow step forwards, and Logen took a painful step back.

“Still alive,” he whispered to himself. But how long for, it was hard to say.

West had never in his life felt so scared, so exhilarated, so very much alive. Not even when he won the Contest with all the wide Square of Marshals cheering for him. Not even when he stormed the walls of Ulrioch, and burst out from the dust and chaos into the warm sunlight. His skin tingled with hope and horror. His hands jerked helplessly with Ninefingers’ movements. His lips murmured pointless advice, silent encouragement. Beside him Pike and Jalenhorm jostled, shoved, shouted themselves hoarse. Behind them the wide crowd roared, straining to see. On the walls they leaned out, screaming and shaking their fists in the air. The circle of men flexed with the movements of the fighters, never still, bowing out and sucking in as the champions came forward or fell back.

And almost always, so far, the one falling back was Ninefingers. A great brute of a man by most standards, he seemed tiny, weak and brittle in that terrifying company. To make matters a great deal worse, there was something very strange at work here. Something West could only have called magic. Great wounds, deadly wounds, closed in the Feared’s blue skin before his very eyes. This thing was not a man. It could only be a devil, and whenever it towered over him West felt a fear as though he was standing at the very verge of hell.

West grimaced as Ninefingers lurched helplessly against the shields on the far side of the circle. The Feared raised his armoured fist to deliver a blow that could surely crush a skull to jelly. But it hit nothing but air. Ninefingers jerked away at the last moment and let the iron miss his jaw by a hair. His heavy sword slashed down, bounced off the Feared’s armoured shoulder with a resounding clang. The giant stumbled back and Ninefingers came after him, pale scars stretched on his rigid face.

“Yes!” hissed West, the men around him bellowing their approval.

The next blow shrieked down the giant’s armoured side, leaving a long, bright scratch and digging up a great sod of earth. The last chopped deep into his painted ribs and spat out a misty spray of blood, knocked him flailing off balance. West’s mouth opened wide as the great shadow fell across him. The Feared toppled against his shield like a falling tree and drove him trembling to his knees, wilting under the great weight, his stomach rolling with horror and disgust.

Then he saw it. One of the buckles on the spiked and studded armour, just below the giant’s knee, was inches from the fingers of West’s free hand. All he could think of, in that moment, was that Bethod might escape, after all the dead men he had left, scattered up and down the length of Angland. He gritted his teeth and snatched hold of the end of the leather strap, thick as a man’s belt. He dragged at it as the Feared shoved his huge bulk up. The buckle came jingling open, the armour on the mighty calf flapped loose as his foot thumped down again, as his arm lashed out and knocked Ninefingers stumbling away.

West struggled from the dirt, already greatly regretting his impulsiveness. He glanced around the circle, searching for any sign that someone had seen him, but all eyes were fixed on the fighters. It seemed now a tiny, petulant sort of sabotage that could never make the slightest difference. Beyond getting him killed, of course. It was a fact he had known from childhood. Catch you cheating in a Northern duel, and they’ll cut the bloody cross in you and pull your guts out.

“Gah!” Logen jerked away from the armoured fist, tottered to his right as the blue one rushed past his face, dived to his left as the iron hand lashed at him again, slid and nearly fell. Any one of those blows had been hard enough to take his head off. He saw the painted arm go back, gritted his teeth as he dodged around another of the Feared’s mighty punches, already swinging the sword up and over.

The blade sheared neatly through the blue arm, just below the elbow, sent it tumbling away across the circle along with a gout of blood. Logen heaved air into his burning lungs and raised the Maker’s sword high, setting himself for one last effort. The Feared’s eyes rolled up towards the dull grey blade. He jerked his head to one side and it chopped deep into his painted skull, showering out specks of dark blood and splitting his head down to the eyebrow.

The giant’s armoured elbow crunched into Logen’s ribs, half-lifted him off his feet and flung him kicking across the circle. He bounced from a shield and sprawled on his face, lay there spitting out dirt while the blurry world spun around him.

He winced as he pushed himself up, blinked the tears out of his eyes, and froze. The Feared stepped forward, sword still buried deep in his skull, and picked up his severed arm. He pressed it against the bloodless stump, twisted it to the right, then back to the left, and let it go. The great forearm was whole again, the letters ran from shoulder to wrist unbroken.

The men around the circle fell silent. The giant worked his blue fingers for a moment, then he reached up and closed his hand around the hilt of the Maker’s sword. He turned it one way, then the other, his skull crunching as bone shifted. He dragged the blade free, shook his head as if to clear a touch of dizziness. Then he tossed the sword across the circle and it clattered down in front of Logen for the second time that day.

Logen stared at it, his chest heaving. It was getting heavier with each exchange. The wounds he’d taken in the mountains ached, the blows he’d taken in the circle throbbed. The air was still cold but his shirt was sticky with sweat.

The Feared showed no sign of tiring, even with half a ton of iron strapped to his body. There wasn’t so much as a bead of sweat on his twisting face. Not so much as a scratch on his tattooed scalp.

Logen felt the fear pressing hard on him again. He knew now how the mouse felt, when the cat had him between his paws. He should’ve run. He should’ve run and never looked back, but instead he’d chosen this. Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say that bastard never learns. The giant’s mouth crawled up into a wriggling smile.

“More,” he said.

Dogman needed to piss as he walked up to the gate of Carleon’s inner wall. Always needed to piss at times like this.

He had one of the dead Thrall’s clothes on, big enough that he’d had to pull the belt too tight, cloak hanging over the bloody knife hole in the shirt. Grim was wearing the other’s gear, bow over one shoulder, the big mace hanging from his free hand. Dow slumped between them, wrists tied at his back, feet scraping stupidly at the cobbles, bloody head hanging like they’d given him quite the beating.

Seemed a pitiful kind of a ruse, if the Dogman was being honest. There were fifty things he’d counted since they climbed off the walls that could’ve given them away. But there was no time for anything cleverer. Talk well, and smile, and no one would notice the clues. That’s what he hoped anyway.

A guard stood each side of the wide archway, a pair of Carls in long mail coats and helmets, both with spears in their hands.

“What’s this?” one asked, frowning as they walked up close.

“Found this bastard trying to creep in.” Dogman gave Dow a punch in the side of the head, just to make things look good. “We’re taking him down below, lock him up ’til after they’re done.” He made to walk on past.

One of the guards stopped him cold with a hand on his chest, and the Dogman swallowed. The Carl nodded towards the city’s gates. “How’s it going, down there?”

“Alright, I guess.” Dogman shrugged. “It’s going, anyway. Bethod’ll come out on top, eh? He always does, don’t he?”

“I don’t know.” The Carl shook his head. “That Feared puts the fucking wind up me. Him and that bloody witch. Can’t say I’ll cry too hard if the Bloody-Nine kills the pair of ’em.”

The other one chuckled, pushed his helmet onto the back of his scalp, bringing up a cloth to wipe the sweat underneath. “You got a—”

Dow sprang forward, loose bits of rope flapping round his wrists, and buried a knife all the way up to the hilt in the Carl’s forehead. Dropped him like a chair with the legs kicked away. Same moment almost, Grim’s borrowed mace clonked into the top of the other’s helmet and left a great dent in it, jammed the rim right down almost to the tip of his nose. He dribbled some, stumbling back like he was drunk. Then blood came bubbling out of his ears and he fell down on his back.

Dogman turned round, trying to hold his stolen cloak out so no one would see Dow and Grim dragging the two corpses away, but the town seemed empty. Everyone watching the fight, no doubt. He wondered for a moment what was happening, out there in the circle. Long enough to get a nasty feeling in his gut.

“Come on.” He turned to see Dow grinning all across his bloody face. The two bodies he’d just wedged behind the gates, one of ’em staring cross-eyed at the knife hole in his head.

“That good enough?” asked Dogman.

“What, you want to say a few words for the dead, do you?”

“You know what I mean, if someone—”

“No time for clever, now.” Dow grabbed him by the arm and pulled him through the gate. “Let’s kill us a witch.”

The sole of the Feared’s metal boot thudded into Logen’s chest, ripped his breath out and rammed him into the earth, the sword tumbling from his clawing hand, puke burning at the back of his throat. Before he knew where he was a great shadow fell across him. Metal snapped shut round his wrist, tight as a vice. His legs were kicked away and he was on his face, arm twisted behind him and a mouthful of dirt to think about. Something pressed against his cheek. Cold at first, then painful. The Feared’s great foot. His wrist was wrenched round, dragged up. His head was crushed further into the damp ground, short grass prickling up his nose.

The tearing pain in his shoulder was awful. Soon it was a lot worse. He was caught fast and helpless, stretched out like a rabbit for skinning. The crowd had fallen breathlessly silent, the only sound the battered flesh round Logen’s mouth squelching, the air squeaking in one squashed nostril. He would’ve screamed if his face hadn’t been so squeezed that he could scarcely wheeze in half a breath. Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say that he’s finished. Back to the mud, and no one could’ve said he hadn’t earned it. A fitting end for the Bloody-Nine, torn apart in the circle.

But the great arms didn’t pull any further. Out the corner of one flickering eye, Logen could just see Bethod leaning against the battlements. The King of the Northmen waved his hand, round and round, in a slow wheel. Logen remembered what it meant.

Take your time. Make it last. Show them all a lesson they’ll never forget.

The Feared’s great boot slid off his jaw and Logen felt himself dragged into the air, limbs flopping like a puppet with the strings cut. The tattooed hand went up, black against the sun, and slapped Logen across the face. Open-handed, as a father might cuff a troublesome child. It was like being hit with a pan. Light burst open in Logen’s skull, his mouth filled with blood. Things drew into focus just in time for him to see the painted hand swing back the other way. It came down with a terrible inevitability and cracked him a backhand blow, as a jealous husband might crack his helpless wife.

“Gurgh—” he heard himself say, and he was flying. Blue sky, blinding sun, yellow grass, staring faces, all meaningless smears. He crashed into the shields at the edge of the circle, flopped half-senseless to the earth. Far away men were shouting, screaming, hissing, but he couldn’t hear the words, and hardly cared. All he could think about was the cold feeling in his stomach. As if his guts were stuffed with swelling ice.

He saw a pale hand, smeared with pink blood, white tendons starting from the scratched skin. His hand, of course. There was the stump. But when he tried to make the fingers open they only clutched tighter at the brown earth.

“Yes,” he whispered, and blood drooled out of his numb mouth and trickled into the grass. The ice spread out from his stomach, out to the very tips of his fingers and turned every part of him numb. It was well that it did. It was high time.

“Yes,” he said. Up, up onto one knee, his bloody lips curling back from his teeth, his bloody right hand snaking through the grass, seeking out the hilt of the Maker’s sword, closing tight around it.

“Yes!” he hissed, and Logen laughed, and the Bloody-Nine laughed, together.

West had not expected Ninefingers to get up, not ever again, but he did, and when he did, he was laughing. It sounded almost like weeping at first, a slobbering giggle, shrill and strange, but it grew louder, sharper, colder as he rose. As if at a cruel joke that no one else could see. A fatal joke. His head fell sideways like a hanged man’s, livid face all slack around a hacked-out grin.

Blood stained his teeth pink, trickled from the cuts on his face, seeped from his torn lips. The laughter gurgled up louder, and louder, ripping at West’s ears, jagged as a saw-blade. More agonised than any scream, more furious than any war-cry. Awfully, sickeningly wrong. Chuckling at a massacre. Slaughterhouse giggling.

Ninefingers lurched forwards like a drunken man, swaying, wild, sword dangling from his bloody fist. His dead eyes glittered, wet and staring, pupils swollen to two black pits. His mad laughter cut, and grated, and hacked around the circle. West felt himself edging back, mouth dry. All the crowd edged back. They no longer knew who scared them more: Fenris the Feared, or the Bloody-Nine.

The world burned.

His skin was on fire. His breath was scalding steam. The sword was a brand of molten metal in his fist.

The sun stamped white-hot patterns into his prickling eyes, and the cold grey shapes of men, and shields, and walls, and of a giant made from blue words and black iron. Fear washed out from him in sickly waves, but the Bloody-Nine only smiled the wider. Fear and pain were fuel on the fire, and the flames surged high, and higher yet.

The world burned, and at its centre the Bloody-Nine burned hottest of all. He held out his hand, and he curled the three fingers, and he beckoned.

“I am waiting,” he said.

The great fists lashed at the Bloody-Nine’s face, the great hands snatched at his body. But all the giant caught was laughter. Easier to strike the flickering fire. Easier to catch the rolling smoke.

The circle was an oven. The blades of yellow grass were tongues of yellow flame beneath it. The sweat, spit, blood dripped onto it like gravy from cooking meat.

The Bloody-Nine made a hiss, water on coals. The hiss became a growl, iron spattering from the forge. The growl became a great roar, the dry forest in flames, and he let the sword go free.

The grey metal made searing circles, hacked bloodless holes in blue flesh, rang on black iron. The giant faded away and the blade bit into the face of one of the men holding the shields. His head burst apart and sprayed blood across another, a hole torn from the wall around the circle. The others shuffled back, shields wavering, the circle swelling with their fear. They feared him more even than the giant, and they were wise to. Everything that lived was his enemy, and when the Bloody-Nine had made pieces of this devil-thing, he would set to work on them.

The circle was a cauldron. On the walls above the crowd surged like angry steam. The ground shifted and swelled under the Bloody-Nine’s feet like boiling oil.

His roar became a scalding scream, the sword flashed down and clashed from spiked armour like a hammer on the anvil. The giant pressed his blue hand to the pale side of his head, face squirming like a nest of maggots. The blade had missed his skull, but stolen away the top half of his ear. Blood bubbled out from the wound, ran down the side of his great neck in two thin lines, and did not stop.

The great eyes went wide and the giant sprang forward with a thundering bellow. The Bloody-Nine rolled under his flailing fist and slid round behind him, saw the black iron on his leg flap away, the bright buckle dangling. The sword snaked out and slid into the gap, ate deep into the great pale calf inside it. The giant roared in pain, spun, lurched on his wounded leg and fell to his knees.

The circle was a crucible. The screaming faces of the men around its edge danced like smoke, swam like molten metal, their shields melting together.

Now was the time. The morning sun blazed down, glinted bright on the heavy chest-plate, marking the spot. Now was the beautiful moment.

The world burned, and like a leaping flame the Bloody-Nine reared up, arching back, raising high the sword. The work of Kanedias, the Master Maker, no blade forged sharper. Its bitter edge scored a long gash in the black armour, through the iron and into the soft flesh beneath, striking sparks and spattering blood, the shriek of tortured metal mingling with the wail of pain torn from the Feared’s twisted mouth. The wound it left in him was deep.

But not deep enough.

The giant’s great arms slid round the Bloody-Nine’s back, folding him in a smothering embrace. The edges of the black metal pierced his flesh in a dozen places. Closer the giant drew him, and closer, and a ragged spike slid into the Bloody-Nine’s face, cut through his cheek and scraped against his teeth, bit into the side of his tongue and filled his mouth with salt blood.

The Feared’s grip was the weight of mountains. No matter how hot the Bloody-Nine’s rage, no matter how he squirmed, and thrashed, and screamed in fury, he was held as tightly as the cold earth holds the buried dead. The blood trickling from his face, and from his back, and from the great gash in the Feared’s armour soaked into his clothes and spread out blazing hot over his skin.

The World burned. Above the oven, the cauldron, the crucible, Bethod nodded, and the giant’s cold arms squeezed tighter.

Dogman followed his nose. It rarely led him wrong, his nose, and he hoped to hell that it didn’t fail him now. It was a sickly kind of a smell—like sweet cakes left too long in the oven. He led the others along an empty hallway, down a shadowy stair, creeping through the damp darkness in the knotty bowels of Skarling’s Hill. He could hear something now, as well as smell it, and it sounded as bad as it smelled. A woman’s voice, singing soft and low. A strange kind of singing, in no tongue the Dogman could understand.

“That must be her,” muttered Dow.

“Don’t like the sound o’ that one bit,” Dogman whispered back. “Sounds like magic.”

“What d’you expect? She’s a fucking witch ain’t she? I’ll go round behind.”

“No, wait on—” But Dow was already creeping off the other way, boots padding soft and silent.

“Shit.” Dogman followed the smell, creeping down the passageway with Grim at his back, the chanting coming louder and louder. A streak of light slunk out from an archway and he eased towards it, pressed his side to the wall and took a peer round the corner.

The room on the other side had about as witchy a look as a room could ever have. Dark and windowless, three other black doorways round the walls. It was lit just by one smoky brazier up at the far end, sizzling coals shedding a dirty red light on it all, giving off a sick sweet stink. There were jars and pots scattered all round, bundles of twigs, and grass, and dried-out flowers hanging from the greasy rafters, casting strange shadows into the corners, like the shapes of hanged men swinging.

There was a woman standing over the brazier with her back to the Dogman. Her long, white arms were spread out wide, shining with sweat. Gold glinted round her thin wrists, black hair straggled down her back. The Dogman might not have known the words she was singing but he could guess it was some dark work she was up to.

Grim held up his bow, one eyebrow raised. Dogman shook his head, silently drew his knife. Tricky to kill her right off with a shaft, and who knew what she might do once she was shot? Cold steel in the neck left nothing to chance.

Together they crept into the room. The air was hot in there, thick as swamp water. Dogman sneaked forward, trying not to breathe, sure the reek would throttle him if he did. He sweated, or the room did, leastways his skin was beaded up with dew in no time. He picked his steps, finding a path between all the rubbish strewn across the floor—boxes, bundles, bottles. He worked his damp palm round the grip of his knife, fixed his eyes on the point between her shoulders, the point he’d stab it into—

His foot caught a jar and sent it clattering. The woman’s head jerked round, the chant stopped dead on her lips. A gaunt, white face, pale as a drowned man’s, black paint round her narrow eyes—blue eyes, cold as the ocean.

The circle was silent. The men around its edge were still, their faces and their shields hanging limp. The crowd at their backs, the people pressed to the parapet above, all held motionless, all quiet as the dead.

For all of Ninefingers’ mad rage, for all his twisting and his struggling, the giant had him fast. Thick muscles squirmed under blue skin as the Feared’s great arms tightened and slowly crushed the life from him. West’s mouth was bitter with helpless disappointment. All that he had done, all that he had suffered, all those lives lost, for nothing. Bethod would go free.

Then Ninefingers gave an animal growl. The Feared held him still, but his blue arm was trembling with the effort. As if he was suddenly weakened, and could squeeze no further. Every sinew of West’s own body was rigid as he watched. The thick strap of the shield bit into his palm. His jaw was clenched so tight that his teeth ached. The two fighters were locked together, straining against each other with every fibre and yet entirely still, frozen in the centre of the circle.

The Dogman sprang forward, knife raised and ready.

“Stop.”

He froze solid in a moment. He’d never heard a voice like it. One word and there was no thought in his head. He stared at the pale woman, his mouth open, his breath hardly moving, wishing that she’d say another.

“You too,” she said, glancing over at Grim, and his face went slack, and he grinned, halfway through drawing his bow.

She looked Dogman up and down, then pouted as if she was all disappointment. “Is that any way for guests to behave?”

Dogman blinked. What the hell had he been thinking barging in here with a drawn blade? He couldn’t believe he’d done such a thing. He blushed to the roots of his hair. “Oh… I’m sorry… by the dead…”

“Gugh!” said Grim, throwing his bow into the corner of the room as if he’d suddenly realised he had a turd in his hand, then staring down at the arrow, baffled.

“That’s better.” She smiled, and the Dogman found he was grinning like an idiot. Some spit might’ve come out of his mouth maybe, just a bit, but he weren’t that bothered. As long as she kept talking nothing else seemed o’ too much importance. She beckoned to them, long white fingers stroking at the thick air. “No need to stand so far away from me. Come closer.”

Him and Grim stumbled towards her like eager children, Dogman near tripping over his feet in his hurry to please, Grim barging into a table on the way and coming close to falling on his face.

“My name is Caurib.”

“Oh,” said Dogman. Most beautiful name ever, no doubt about it. Amazing, that a single word could be so beautiful.

“Harding Grim’s my name!”

“Dogman, they call me, ’count of a sharp sense o’ smell, and… er…” By the dead, but it was hard to think straight. There’d been something important he was meant to be doing, but for the life of him he couldn’t think what.

“Dogman… perfect.” Her voice was soothing as a warm bath, as a soft kiss, as milk and honey… “Don’t sleep yet!” Dogman’s head rolled, Caurib’s painted face a black and white blur, swimming in front of him.

“Sorry!” he gurgled, blushing again and trying to hide the knife behind his back. “Right sorry about the blade… no idea what—”

“Don’t worry. I am glad that you brought it. I think it would be best if you used it to stab your friend.”

“Him?” Dogman squinted at Grim.

Grim grinned and nodded back at him. “Aye, definitely!”

“Right, right, good idea.” Dogman lifted up the knife, seeming to weigh a ton. “Er… anywhere you’d like him stabbed, in particular?”

“In the heart will do nicely.”

“Right you are. Right. The heart it is.” Grim turned front on to give him a better go at it. Dogman blinked, wiped some sweat from his forehead. “Here we go, then.” Damn it but he was dizzy. He squinted at Grim’s chest, wanting to make sure he got it right first time, and didn’t embarrass himself again. “Here we go…”

“Now!” she hissed at him. “Just get it—”

The axe blade made a clicking sound as it split her head neatly down the middle, all the way to her chin. Blood sprayed out and spattered in Dogman’s gawping face, and the witch’s thin body slumped down on the stones like it was made of nothing but rags.

Dow frowned as he twisted the haft of his axe this way and that, until the blade came free of Caurib’s ruined skull with a faint sucking sound. “That bitch talks too much,” he grunted.

The Bloody-Nine felt the change. Like the first green shoot of spring. Like the first warmth on the wind as the summer comes. There was a message in the way the Feared held him. His bones were no longer groaning, threatening to burst apart. The giant’s strength was less, and his was more.

The Bloody-Nine sucked in the air and his rage burned hot as ever. Slowly, slowly, he dragged his face away from the giant’s shoulder, felt the metal slide out from his mouth. He twisted, twisted until his neck was free. Until he was staring into the giant’s writhing face. The Bloody-Nine smiled, then he darted forward, fast as a shower of sparks, and sank his teeth deep into that big lower lip.

The giant grunted, shifted his arms, tried to drag the Bloody-Nine’s head away, tear the biting teeth out of his mouth. But he could more easily have shaken off the plague. His arms loosened and the Bloody-Nine twisted the hand that held the Maker’s sword. He twisted it, as the snake twists in its nest, and slowly he began to work it free.

The giant’s blue left arm uncoiled from the Bloody-Nine’s body, his blue hand seized hold of the Bloody-Nine’s wrist, but there could be no stopping it. When the sapling seed finds a crack in the mountain, over long years its deep roots will burst the very rock apart. So the Bloody-Nine strained with every muscle and let the slow time pass, hissing out his hatred into the Feared’s twitching mouth. The blade crept onwards, slowly, slowly, and its very point bit into painted flesh, just below the giant’s bottom rib.

The Bloody-Nine felt the hot blood trickling down the grip and over his bunched fist, trickling out of the Feared’s mouth and into his, running down his neck, leaking from the wounds across his back, dripping to the ground, just as it should be. Softly, gently, the blade slid into the Feared’s tattooed body, sideways, upwards, onwards.

The great hands clawed at the Bloody-Nine’s arm, at his back, seeking desperately for some hold that might stop the terrible easing forward of that blade. But with every moment the giant’s strength melted away, like ice before a furnace. Easier to stop the Whiteflow than to stop the Bloody-Nine. The movement of his hands was the growing of a mighty tree, one hair’s breadth at a time, but no flesh, no stone, no metal could stop it.

The giant’s painted side could not be harmed. Great Glustrod had made it so, long years ago, in the Old Time, when the words were written upon the Feared’s skin. But Glustrod wrote on one half only. Slowly, now, softly, gently, the point of the Maker’s sword crossed the divide and into the unmarked half of him, dug into his innards, spitted him like meat made ready for the fire.

The giant made a great, high shriek, and the last strength melted from his hands. The Bloody-Nine opened his jaws and let him free, one arm holding tight to his back while the other drove the sword on into him. The Bloody-Nine hissed laughter through his clenched teeth, dribbled laughter through the ragged hole in his face. He rammed the blade as far as it would go, and its point slid out between the plates of armour just beneath the giant’s armpit and glinted red in the sun.

Fenris the Feared tottered backwards, still making his long squeal, his mouth hanging open and a string of red spit dangling from his lip, the painted half already healed over, the pale half tattered as mince-meat. The circle of men watched him, frozen, gaping over the tops of their shields. His feet shuffled in the dirt, one hand fumbling for the red hilt of the Maker’s sword, buried to the cross-piece in his side, blood dripping from the pommel and leaving red spots scattered across the ground. His squeal became a rattling groan, one foot tripped the other and he toppled like a felled tree and crashed over on his back, in the centre of the circle, great arms and legs spread wide. The twitching of his face was finally still, and there was a long silence.

“By the dead.” It was spoken softly, thoughtfully. Logen squinted into the morning sun, saw the black shape of a man looking down at him from the high gatehouse. “By the dead, I never thought you’d do it.” The world tipped from side to side as Logen began to walk, the breath hissing cold through the wound in his face, scraping in his raw throat.

The men who’d made the circle moved out of his way, now, their voices fallen silent, their shields hanging from their hands.

“Never thought you could do it, but when it comes to killing, there’s no man better! No man worse! I’ve always said so!”

Logen tottered through the open gates, found an archway and began to climb the lurching steps, round and round, his boots hissing against the stone and leaving dark smears behind. The blood dripped, tap, tap, tap from the dangling fingers of his left hand. Every muscle ached. Bethod’s voice dug at him.

“But I get the last laugh, eh, Bloody-Nine? You’re nothing but leaves on the water! Any way the rain washes you!”

Logen stumbled on, ribs burning, jaws locked tight together, shoulder scraping against the curved wall. Up, and up, and round, and round, his crackling breath echoing after.

“You’ll never have anything! You’ll never be anything! You’ll never make anything but corpses!”

Out onto the roof, blinking in the morning brightness, spitting a mouthful of blood over his shoulder. Bethod stood at the battlements. The Named Men stumbled out of Logen’s way as he strode towards him.

“You’re made of death, Bloody-Nine! You’re made of—”

Logen’s fist crunched into his jaw and he took a flopping step back. Logen’s other hand smashed into his cheek and he reeled against the parapet, a long string of bloody drool running from his split mouth. Logen caught the back of his head and jerked his knee up into Bethod’s face, felt his nose crunch flat against it. Logen tangled his fingers in Bethod’s hair, gripped it tight, pulled his head up high, and rammed it down into the stones.

“Die!” he hissed.

Bethod jerked, gurgled, Logen lifted his head and drove it down again, and again. The golden ring flew off his broken skull, bounced across the rooftop with a merry jingling.

“Die!”

Bone crunched, and blood shot out over the stone in fat drops and thin spatters. Pale-as-Snow and his Named Men stared, white-faced, helpless and fearful, horrified and delighted.

“Die, you fucker!”

And Logen hauled Bethod’s ruined corpse into the air with one last effort and flung it tumbling over the battlements. He watched it fall. He watched it crunch to the ground and lie, on its side, arms and legs stuck out awkwardly, fingers curled as if they were grasping at something, the head no more than a dark smear on the hard earth. All the faces of the crowds of men standing below were turned towards that corpse, then slowly, eyes and mouths wide open, they lifted up to stare at Logen.

Crummock-i-Phail, standing in their midst, in the centre of the shaved circle beside the great body of the Feared, slowly raised his long arm, the fat forefinger on the end of it pointing upwards. “The Bloody-Nine!” he screamed. “King o’ the Northmen!”

Logen gaped down at him, panting for breath, legs wobbling, trying to understand. The fury was gone and left nothing but terrible tiredness behind it. Tiredness and pain.

“King o’ the Northmen!” someone shrieked, way back in the crowd.

“No,” croaked Logen, but no one heard him. They were all too drunk with blood and fury, or busy thinking what was easiest, or too scared to say any different. The chants broke out all over, first a trickle of them, then a flow, and then a flood, and all Logen could do was watch, clinging to the bloody stone and trying not to fall.

“The Bloody-Nine! King o’ the Northmen!”

Pale-as-Snow was down on one knee beside him, spots of Bethod’s blood sprayed across the white fur on his coat. He always had been one to lick whatever arse was nearest, but he wasn’t alone. They were all kneeling, up on the walls and down on the grass. The Dogman’s Carls and Bethod’s. The men who’d held the shields for Logen and the ones who’d held the shields for the Feared. Maybe Bethod had taught them a lesson. Maybe they’d forgotten how to be their own men, and now they needed someone else to tell them what to do.

“No,” whispered Logen, but all that came out was a dull slurp. He had no more power to stop it than he had to make the sky fall in. Seemed to him then that men do pay for the things they’ve done, alright. But sometimes the payment isn’t what they expected.

“The Bloody-Nine!” roared Crummock again, as he sank down on his knees and lifted up his arms towards the sky, “King o’ the Northmen!”

Greater Good

The room was another over-bright box. It had the same off-white walls, spotted with brown stains. Mould, or blood, or both. The same battered table and chairs. Virtually instruments of torture in themselves. The same burning pains in Glokta’s foot, and leg, and back. Some things never change. The same prisoner, as far as anyone could have told, with the same canvas bag over their head. Just like the dozens who have been through this room over the past few days, and just like the dozens more crammed into the cells beyond the door, waiting on our pleasure.

“Very well.” Glokta waved a tired hand, “let us begin.”

Frost dragged the bag from the prisoner’s head. A long, lean Kantic face with deep creases around the mouth and a neatly trimmed black beard, streaked with grey. A wise, dignified face, deep-set eyes even now adjusting to the glare.

Glokta burst out laughing. Each chuckle stabbed at the base of his stiff spine and rattled his stiff neck, but he could not help himself. Even after all these years, fate can still play jokes on me.

“Wath futhy?” grunted Frost.

Glokta wiped his runny eye. “Practical Frost, we are truly honoured. Our latest prisoner is none other than Master Farrad, formerly of Yashtavit in Kanta, and more recently of a magnificent address at the top of the Kingsway. We are in the presence of the finest dentist in the Circle of the World.” And one must appreciate the irony.

Farrad blinked into the glaring lamplight. “I know you.”

“Yes.”

“You are the one who was a prisoner of the Gurkish.”

“Yes.”

“The one they tortured. I remember… you were brought to me.”

“Yes.”

Farrad swallowed. As though the memory alone is enough to make him vomit. He glanced up at Frost and the pink eyes glowered back, unblinking. He glanced round the grubby, bloodstained room, at the cracked tiles, at the scarred table-top. His eyes lingered on the paper of confession lying upon it. “After what they did to you—how can you do this, now?”

Glokta showed Farrad his toothless grin. “After what they did to me, how could I do anything else?”

“Why am I here?”

“For the same reason as everyone else who comes here.” Glokta watched Frost plant the heavy tips of his fingers on the paper of confession and slide it deliberately across the table towards the prisoner. “To confess.”

“Confess to what?”

“Why, to spying for the Gurkish.”

Farrad’s face creased up with disbelief. “I am no spy! The Gurkish took everything from me! I fled my home when they came! I am innocent, you must know this!”

Of course. As have been all the spies who confessed in this room over the last few days. But they all confessed, without exception. “Will you sign the paper?”

“I have nothing to confess to!”

“Why is it that no one can answer the questions I ask?” Glokta stretched out his aching back, worked his creaking neck from side to side, rubbed at the bridge of his nose with finger and thumb. Nothing helped. But then nothing ever does. Why must they always make it so very difficult, for me and for themselves? “Practical Frost, would you show the good master our work so far?”

The albino slid a dented tin bucket out from under the table and dumped the contents without ceremony in front of the prisoner. Teeth clattered, and slid, and spun across the wood. Hundreds of them. Teeth of all shapes and sizes, from white, through all the shades of yellow, to brown. Teeth with bloody roots and with shreds of flesh attached. A couple tumbled from the far end of the table and bounced from the grimy tiles, clicked away into the corners of the narrow room.

Farrad gaped down in horror at the bloody mess of dentistry before him. And even the very Prince of Teeth can never have seen such a thing. Glokta leaned forwards. “I daresay you’ve pulled a tooth or two before yourself.” The prisoner nodded dumbly. “Then you can probably imagine how tired I am after this lot. That’s why I’d really like to be done with you as quickly as possible. I don’t want you here, and you certainly don’t want to be here. We can help each other.”

“What must I do?” muttered Farrad, his tongue moving nervously around his own mouth.

“It is not complicated. First you sign your confession.”

“Thorry,” mumbled Frost, leaning forward and brushing a couple of teeth off the document, one of them leaving a long, pink streak across the paper.

“Then you name two others.”

“Two other what?”

“Why, two other spies for the Gurkish, of course, from among your people.”

“But… I know no spies!”

“Then some other names will have to serve. You have been named already, several times.”

The dentist swallowed, then shook his head, and pushed the paper away. A brave man, and a righteous one. But bravery and righteousness are bad virtues to have in this room. “I will sign. But I will not name innocent men. God have mercy on me, I will not.”

“God might have mercy on you. But he doesn’t hold the pliers down here. Clamp him.”

Frost gripped Farrad’s head from behind with one great white hand, tendons standing from the pale skin as he forced his mouth open. Then he shoved the clamp between Farrad’s jaws and spun the nut round nimbly between finger and thumb until they were held wide open.

“Ah!” gurgled the dentist. “Ayrh!”

“I know. And we’re just getting started.” Glokta pushed back the lid of his case, watched the polished wood, the sharpened steel, the shining glass spread outwards. What the… There was a disconcerting gap in the tools. “For pity’s sake! Have you had the pliers out of here, Frost?”

“Nuh,” grunted the albino, shaking his head angrily.

“Damn it! Can none of these bastards keep their own instruments? Go next door and see if we can borrow some, at least.”

The Practical lumbered from the room, the heavy door hanging ajar behind him. Glokta winced as he rubbed at his leg. Farrad stared at him, spit running from one corner of his forced-open mouth. His bulging eyes rolled sideways as a howl of pain came muffled from the corridor outside.

“I do apologise for this,” said Glokta. “We’re usually a great deal more organised, but it’s been busy as hell here the last few days. Such a lot to get through, you see.”

Frost pulled the door shut and handed Glokta a pair of rusty pliers, handles first. There was some dry blood and a couple of curly hairs caked to the jaws.

“Is this the best they could do? These are dirty!”

Frost shrugged. “Whath a ifferenth?”

A fair point, I suppose. Glokta gave a long sigh, struggled up from his chair and leaned forwards to peer into Farrad’s mouth. And a sweet set he has, too. A pearly white complement. I suppose you’d expect prize-winning teeth from a prize-winning dentist. Anything else would be a poor advertisement for his trade.

“I applaud your cleanliness. It’s a rare privilege to question a man who appreciates the importance of washing the mouth out. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a better set of teeth.” Glokta tapped at them happily with the pliers. “It seems a shame to tear them all out, just so that you can confess in ten minutes time instead of now, but there we are.” He closed the jaws around the nearest tooth, worked his hand around the handles.

“Gurlgh,” gurgled Farrad. “Glaigh!”

Glokta pursed his lips, as though considering, then released the pliers. “Let us give the good master one further chance to talk.” Frost unscrewed the clamp and pulled it from Farrad’s mouth along with a string of drool. “Is there something you wish to say?”

“I will sign!” gasped Farrad, a long tear running down one cheek. “God help me, I will sign!”

“And you will name two accomplices?”

“Whatever you wish… please… whatever you wish.”

“Excellent,” said Glokta, as he watched the pen scratching against the paper of confession. “Who’s next?”

Glokta heard the lock behind him rattle. He scowled as he turned his head, preparing to scream at his presumptuous visitor.

“Your Eminence,” he whispered, with barely concealed dismay, grimacing as he struggled to get up from his chair.

“No need to rise, I do not have all day.” Glokta found himself frozen in the most painful possible position, bent somewhere between sitting and standing, and had to sag back into his chair with little grace as Sult swept into the room, three of his huge Practicals looming silently in the doorway behind him. “You may ask your freak of nature to leave us.”

Frost’s eyes narrowed, flickered over the other Practicals, then back to Sult. “Very good, Practical Frost,” said Glokta hastily. “You may remove our prisoner.”

The albino unlocked Farrad’s manacles and dragged the dentist from his chair with one white fist, hauled him gasping by his collar to the door at the back of the room and ripped back the bolt with his free hand. He gave one pink glare over his shoulder and Sult glared back. Then he slammed the door behind him.

His Eminence slid into the chair opposite Glokta. No doubt still warm from the sweating arse of the brave and righteous Master Farrad. He brushed some of the teeth from the table-top before him with the side of one gloved hand and sent them clicking onto the floor. And he could not have seemed to care less had they been breadcrumbs. “There is a deadly conspiracy afoot within the Agriont. Have we made progress in unmasking it?”

“I have interviewed most of the Kantic prisoners, extracted a suitable number of confessions, there should not be—”

Sult gave an angry wave of his hand. “Not that, halfwit. I refer to that bastard Marovia and his pawns, the so-called First of the Magi and our so-called King.”

Even now, with the Gurkish knocking at the gates? “Your Eminence, I had assumed the war would take precedence—”

“You have not the wit to assume,” sneered Sult. “What evidence have you collected against Bayaz?”

I stumbled upon something I shouldn’t have at the University, then was almost drowned in my bath. “So far… nothing.”

“What of the parentage of King Jezal the First?”

“That avenue too appears… a dead end.” Or an avenue with my own death at the end, if my owners at Valint and Balk were to hear of it. And they hear of everything.

The Arch Lector’s lips twisted. “Then what the hell have you been doing lately?”

For the last three days I have been busy tearing meaningless confessions from the mouths of innocent men, so that we could appear effective. When was I supposed to find time to bring down the state, precisely? “I have been occupied with seeking Gurkish spies—”

“Why do I never get anything from you but excuses? I have begun to wonder, since your effectiveness has so sharply declined, how you were able to keep Dagoska out of Gurkish hands so long. You must have needed a tremendous sum of money to strengthen the city’s defences.”

It took all of Glokta’s self-control to prevent his eye from twitching straight out of his head. Still, now, you twitching jelly, or we are done. “The Guild of Spicers were persuaded to contribute when their own livelihoods were on the line.”

“How uncharacteristically generous of them. Now that I think of it, I find the whole business of Dagoska has a strange flavour. It has always struck me as odd that you chose to dispose of Magister Eider so privately, rather than sending her back to me.”

From very bad to an awful lot worse. “A miscalculation on my part, your Eminence. I thought that I would spare you the trouble of—”

“Disposing of traitors is no trouble for me. You know that.” Angry creases spread out around Sult’s hard blue eyes. “Could it be, after all we have been through together, you might take me for a fool?”

Glokta’s voice rasped uncomfortably in his dry throat. “Absolutely not, Arch Lector.” Merely a lethal megalomaniac. He knows. He knows that I am not entirely the dutiful slave. But how much does he know? And from whom did he learn it?

“I gave you an impossible task, and so I have allowed you the benefit of the doubt. But your benefit will only last as long as your successes. I grow tired of putting the spur to you. If you do not solve my problems with our new King in the next two weeks, I will have Superior Goyle dig out the answers to my questions about Dagoska. I will have him dig them from your twisted flesh, if I must. Do I make myself clear?”

As Visserine glass. Two weeks to find the answers, or… fragments of a butchered corpse found floating by the docks. But if I even ask the questions, Valint and Balk will inform his Eminence of our arrangement and… bloated by seawater, horribly mutilated, far beyond recognition. Alas for poor Superior Glokta. A comely and a well-loved man, but such bad luck. Wherever will he turn?

“I understand, Arch Lector.”

“Then why ever are you still sitting here?”

It was Ardee West herself who opened the door, a half-full wine glass in one hand. “Ah! Superior Glokta, what a delightful surprise. Do come in!”

“You sound almost pleased to see me.” A rare response indeed to my arrival.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” She stepped graciously aside to allow him past. “How many girls are lucky enough to have a torturer for a chaperone? There’s nothing like it for encouraging the suitors.”

He hobbled over the threshold. “Where is your maid?”

“She got herself all worked up about some Gurkish army or other, so I let her go. Went to her mother in Martenhorm.”

“And you are yourself ready to leave, I hope?” He followed her into the warm living room, shutters and curtains closed, illuminated by the shifting glow from the coals on the fire.

“In fact, I have decided to stay in the city.”

“Really? The tragic princess, pining in her empty castle? Abandoned by her faithless servants, wringing her helpless hands while her enemies surround the moat?” Glokta snorted. “Are you sure you fit the role?”

“Better than you fit that of the knight on the white charger, come to rescue the damsel with blade a-flashing.” She looked him scornfully up and down. “I’d hoped for a hero with at least half his teeth.”

“I thought you’d be used to getting less than you hoped for by now.” I know that I am.

“What can I say? I’m a romantic. Have you come here only to puncture my dreams?”

“No. I do that without trying. I had in mind a drink and a conversation which did not include the subtext of my mutilated corpse.”

“It is hard to say at this stage what direction our conversation might take, but the drink I can promise you.” She poured him a glass and he tossed it back in four long swallows. He held it out again, sucking his sweet gums.

“In all seriousness, the Gurkish are no more than a week from taking Adua under siege. You should leave as soon as possible.”

She filled his glass again, and then her own. “Haven’t you noticed that half the city has had the same idea? Such flea-bitten nags not requisitioned by the army are changing hands at five hundred marks a piece. Nervous citizens are pouring out to every corner of Midderland. Columns of defenceless refugees, wandering through a mass of mud at a mile a day as the weather turns cold, laden down with everything of value they possess, easy prey for every brigand within a hundred miles.”

“True,” Glokta had to admit as he wriggled his painful way into a chair near the fire.

“And where would I go to anyway? I swear I have not a single friend or relative anywhere in Midderland. Would you have me hide in the woods, lighting fires by rubbing sticks together and hunting down squirrels with my bare hands? How the hell would I stay drunk in those circumstances? No, thank you, I will be safer here, and considerably more comfortable. I have coal for the fire and the cellar is full to capacity. I can hold out for months.” She waved a floppy hand towards the wall. “The Gurkish are coming from the west, and we are on the eastern side of town. I could not be safer in the palace itself, I daresay.”

Perhaps she is right. Here, at least, I can keep some kind of watch over her. “Very well, I bow to your reasoning. Or I would, if my back allowed it.”

She settled herself opposite. “And how is life in the corridors of power?”

“Chilly. As corridors often are.” Glokta stroked his lips with a finger. “I find myself in a difficult situation.”

“I have some experience with those.”

“This one is… complicated.”

“Well then, in terms a dull wench like me might understand.”

Where’s the harm? I stare death in the face already. “In the terms of a dull wench, then, imagine this… desperately needing certain favours, you have promised your hand in marriage to two very rich and powerful men.”

“Huh. One would be a fine thing.”

“None would be a fine thing, in this particular case. They are both old and of surpassing ugliness.”

She shrugged. “Ugliness is easily forgiven in the rich and powerful.”

“But both these suitors are prone to violent displays of jealousy. Dangerous displays, if your wanton faithlessness were to become common knowledge. You had hoped to extricate yourself from one promise or the other at some stage, but now the date of the weddings draws near, and you find that you are… still considerably entangled with both. More so than ever, in fact. Your response?”

She pursed her lips and took a long breath, considering it, then tossed a strand of hair theatrically over her shoulder. “I would drive them both near madness with my matchless wit and smouldering beauty, then engineer a duel between the two. Whichever won would be rewarded with the ultimate prize of my hand in marriage, never suspecting I was once promised also to his rival. Since he is old, I would earnestly hope for his imminent death, leaving me a wealthy and respected widow.” She grinned at him down her nose. “What say you to that, sir?”

Glokta blinked. “I fear the metaphor has lost its relevance.”

“Or…” Ardee squinted at the ceiling, then snapped her fingers. “I might use my subtle feminine wiles…” thrusting back her shoulders and hitching up her bust, “to entrap a third man, still more powerful and wealthy. Young, and handsome, and smooth of limb as well, I suppose, since this is a metaphor. I would marry him and with his help destroy those other two, and abandon them penniless and disappointed. Ha! What think you?”

Glokta felt his eyelid twitching, and he pressed one hand against it. Interesting. “A third suitor,” he murmured. “The idea had never even occurred.”

Skarlings Chair

Far below, the water frothed and surged. It had rained hard in the night, and now the river ran high with it, an angry flood chewing mindlessly at the base of the cliff. Cold black water and cold white spray against the cold black rock. Tiny shapes—golden yellow, burning orange, vivid purple, all the colours of fire, whisked and wandered with the mad currents, whatever way the rain washed them.

Leaves on the water, just like him.

And now it looked as if the rain would wash him south. To fight some more. To kill men who’d never heard of him. The idea of it made him want to be sick. But he’d given his word, and a man who doesn’t keep his word isn’t much of a man at all. That’s what Logen’s father used to tell him.

He’d spent a lot of long years not keeping to much of anything. His word, and the words of his father, and other men’s lives, all meaning less than nothing. All the promises he’d made to his wife and to his children he’d let rot. He’d broken his word to his people, and his friends, and himself, more times than he could count. The Bloody-Nine. The most feared man in the North. A man who’d walked all his days in a circle of blood. A man who’d done nothing in all his life but evil. And all the while he’d looked at the sky and shrugged his shoulders. Blamed whoever was nearest, and told himself he’d had no choices.

Bethod was gone. Logen had vengeance, at last, but the world wasn’t suddenly a better place. The world was the same, and so was he. He spread out the fingers of his left hand on the damp stone, bent and wonky from a dozen old breaks, knuckles scratched and scabbing, nails cracked and wedged under with dirt. He stared down at the familiar stump for a moment.

“Still alive,” he whispered, hardly able to believe it.

He winced at the pain in his battered ribs, groaned as he turned away from the window and back into the great hall. Bethod’s throne room, and now his. The thought tugged a meagre belch of laughter out of his gut, but even that stabbed at the mass of stitches through his cheek and up the side of his face. He limped out across the wide floor, every step an ordeal. The sound of his scraping boots echoed in the high rafters, over the whispering of the river down below. Shafts of blurred light, heavy with floating dust, shone down and made criss-cross patterns across the boards. Near to Logen, on a raised-up dais, stood Skarling’s Chair.

The hall, and the city, and the land around it had all changed far beyond recognition, but Logen reckoned the chair itself was much the same as it had been when Skarling lived. Skarling Hoodless, greatest hero of the North. The man who’d united the clans to fight against the Union, long ago. The man who’d drawn the North together with words and gestures, for a few brief years, at least.

A simple seat for a simple man—big, honest chunks of old wood, faded paint around the edges, polished smooth by Skarling’s sons, and grandsons, and the men who’d led his clan since. Until the Bloody-Nine came knocking at the gates of Carleon. Until Bethod took the chair for his own, and pretended that he was all that Skarling had been, while he forced the North together with fire, and fear, and steel.

“Well then?” Logen jerked his head round, saw Black Dow leaning in the doorway, arms folded across his chest. “Ain’t you going to sit in it?”

Logen shook his head, even though his legs were aching so bad he could hardly bear to stand a moment longer. “Mud always did for me to sit on. I’m no hero, and Skarling was no king.”

“Turned down a crown, as I heard it told.”

“Crowns.” Logen spat onto the straw, spit still pink from the cuts in his mouth. “Kings. The whole notion’s shit, and me the worst choice there could be.”

“You ain’t saying no, though, eh?”

Logen frowned up at him. “So some other bastard even worse’n Bethod can sit in that chair, make the North bleed some more? Maybe I can do some good with it.”

“Maybe.” Dow looked straight back. “But some men aren’t made for doing good.”

“You talking ’bout me again?” chuckled Crummock, striding in through the doorway, Dogman and Grim at his shoulder.

“Not all talk’s about you, Crummock,” said Dogman. “You sleep alright, Logen?”

“Aye,” he lied. “Like the dead.”

“What now?”

Logen stared at that chair. “South, I reckon.”

“South,” grunted Grim, giving no clue whether he thought it was a good idea or a bad.

Logen licked at the ragged flesh at the side of his mouth, checking again, for no reason that made any sense, just how much it hurt. “Calder and Scale are still out there, somewhere. No doubt Bethod sent ’em to find some help. From out past the Crinna, or up in the high valleys, or wherever.”

Crummock chuckled softly. “Ah, the good work’s never done.”

“They’ll be causing mischief sooner or later,” said Dogman, “small doubt o’ that.”

“Someone needs to stay back here and keep a watch on things. Hunt those two bastards out if they can.”

“I’ll do it,” said Black Dow.

“You sure?”

Dow shrugged. “I don’t like boats and I don’t like the Union. Don’t need to take no voyage to work that out. And I’ve got scores enough to settle with Calder and Scale. I’ll pick me some Carls out o’ what’s left, and I’ll pay ’em a visit.” He flashed his nasty grin, and clapped Dogman on the arm. “Good luck to the rest o’ you down there with the Southerners, eh? Try not to get yourselves killed.” He narrowed his eyes at Logen. “You especially, eh, Bloody-Nine? Wouldn’t want to lose us another King o’ the Northmen, now, would we?” And he sauntered out, arms folded.

“How many men we got left over?”

“Might be three hundred, now, if Dow takes a few.”

Logen gave a long sigh. “Best get ’em ready to leave then. Wouldn’t want Furious to go without us.”

“Who’ll want to go?” asked Dogman. “After what they been through these past months? Who’ll want more killing now?”

“Men who don’t know how to do much else, I guess.” Logen shrugged. “Bethod had gold down there, didn’t he?”

“Aye, some.”

“Then share it out. Plenty for each man comes with us. Some now, some when we get back. Reckon a good few’ll take the offer.”

“Maybe. Men’ll talk hard for gold. Not sure they’ll fight hard for it, when the time comes.”

“I reckon we’ll see.”

Dogman stared at him for a long moment. Stared him right in the eye. “Why?”

“Because I gave my word.”

“And? Never bothered you before, did it?”

“Can’t say it did, and there’s the problem.” Logen swallowed, and his mouth tasted bad. “What else can you do, but try and do better?”

Dogman nodded, slow, his eyes not leaving Logen’s face. “Right you are then, chief. South it is.”

“Uh,” said Grim, and the two of them walked out the doorway, leaving just Crummock behind.

“Off to the Union for you is it, your Majesty? South and kill you some brown men in the sun?”

“South.” Logen worked one sore shoulder beside his sore neck, and then the other. “You coming?”

Crummock pushed himself away from the wall and walked forward, finger bones clicking round his thick neck. “No, no, no, not me. I’ve relished our time together, so I have, but everything’s got an end, don’t it. I’ve been away from my mountains for far too long, and my wives’ll be missing me.” The chief of the hillmen held his arms out wide, took a step forward, and hugged Logen tight. A little too tight for comfort, if he was being honest.

“They can have a king if they want one,” whispered Crummock in his ear, “but I can’t say I do. Especially not the man who killed my son, eh?” Logen felt himself go cold, from the roots of his hair to the tips of his fingers. “What did you think? That I wouldn’t know?” The hillman leaned back to look Logen in the eye. “You slaughtered him before the whole world, now, didn’t you? You butchered little Rond like a sheep for the pot, and him just as helpless as one.”

They were alone in that wide hall, just the two of them, and the shadows, and Skarling’s chair. Logen winced as Crummock’s arms squeezed tighter, round the bruises and the wounds the Feared’s arms had left him. Logen hadn’t the strength left now to fight a cat, and they both knew it. The hillman could’ve crushed him flat, and finished the job the Feared had started. But he only smiled.

“Don’t you worry, now, Bloody-Nine. I’ve got what I wanted, haven’t I? Bethod’s dead and gone, and his Feared, and his witch, and his whole bastard notion of clans united, all back to the mud where they belong. With you in charge, I daresay it’ll be a hundred years before folk in the North stop killing each other. Meantime maybe we up in the hills can have some peace, eh?”

“Course you can,” croaked Logen, through his gritted teeth, grimacing as Crummock pressed him even tighter.

“You killed my son, that’s true, but I’ve got plenty more. You have to weed the weak ones out, don’t you know? The weak and the unlucky. You don’t put a wolf amongst your sheep then cry when you find one eaten, do you?”

Logen could only stare. “You really are mad.”

“Maybe I am, but there’s worse than me out there.” He leaned close again, soft breath in Logen’s ear. “I’m not the one killed the boy, am I?” He let Logen free, and he slapped him on the shoulder. The way a friend might, but there was no friendship in it. “Don’t ever come up in the High Places again, Ninefingers, that’s my advice. I might not be able to give you another friendly reception.” He turned and walked away, slowly, waving one fat finger over his shoulder. “Don’t come up in the High Places again, Bloody-Nine! You’re beloved o’ the moon just a little too much for my taste!”

Leadership

Jezal clattered through the cobbled streets astride a magnificent grey, Bayaz and Marshal Varuz just behind him, a score of Knights of the Body, led by Bremer dan Gorst, following in full war gear. It was strangely unsettling to see the city, usually so brimful with humanity, close to deserted. Only a scattering of threadbare urchins, of nervous city watchmen, of suspicious commoners remained to hurry out of the way of the royal party as they passed. Most of those citizens who had stayed in Adua were well barricaded in their bedrooms, Jezal imagined. He would have been tempted to do the same, had Queen Terez not beaten him to it.

“When did they arrive?” Bayaz was demanding over the clatter of hooves.

“The vanguard appeared before dawn,” Jezal heard Varuz shout back. “And more Gurkish troops have been pouring in down the Keln road all morning. There were a few skirmishes in the districts beyond Casamir’s Wall, but nothing to slow them significantly. They are already halfway to encircling the city.”

Jezal jerked his head round. “Already?”

“The Gurkish always liked to come prepared, your Majesty.” The old soldier urged his horse up beside him. “They have started to construct a palisade around Adua, and have brought three great catapults with them. The same ones that proved so effective in their siege of Dagoska. By noon we will be entirely surrounded.” Jezal swallowed. There was something about the word “surrounded” that caused an uncomfortable tightening in his throat.

The column slowed to a stately walk as they approached the city’s westernmost gate. It was, in an irony that gave Jezal little pleasure, the very same gate through which he had entered the city in triumph before he was crowned High King of the Union. A crowd had gathered in the shadow of Casamir’s Wall, larger even than the one that had greeted him after his strange victory over the peasants. Today, however, there was hardly a mood of celebration. Smiling girls had been replaced by frowning men, fresh flowers with old weapons. Polearms stuck up above the press at all angles in an unruly forest, points and edges glinting. Pikes and pitch forks, bill hooks and boat hooks, brooms with the twigs removed and knives nailed in their places.

There was a smattering of King’s Own padded out by some squinting members of the city watch, a few puffed-up tradesmen with leather jerkins and polished swords, some slouching labourers with antique flatbows and tough expressions. These were the very best of what was on offer. They were accompanied by a random assortment of citizens of both sexes and all ages, equipped with a bewildering range of mismatched armour and weapons. Or nothing at all. It was difficult to tell who was supposed to be a soldier and who a citizen, if, indeed, there was still a difference. Every one of them was looking at Jezal as he smartly dismounted, his golden spurs jingling. Looking to him, he realised, as he began to walk out among them, his well-armoured bodyguard clanking behind.

“These are the defenders of this borough?” murmured Jezal to Lord Marshal Varuz, following at his shoulder.

“Some of them, your Majesty. Accompanied by some enthusiastic townsfolk. A touching spectacle.”

Jezal would happily have traded a touching crowd for an effective one, but he supposed a leader had always to appear indomitable before his followers. Bayaz had told him so often. How doubly, how triply true of a king before his subjects? Especially a king whose grip on his recently won crown might be thought of as slippery at best.

So he stood tall, pointed his scarred chin as high as he dared, flicked out his gilt-edged cloak with one gauntleted hand. He strode through the crowd with the confident swagger he had always used to have, one hand resting on the jewelled pommel of his sword, hoping with every step that no one caught an inkling of the cauldron of fear and doubt behind his eyes. The crowd muttered as he swept past, Varuz and Bayaz hurrying behind. Some made attempts at bows, others did not bother.

“The king!”

“I thought he’d be taller…”

“Jezal the Bastard.” Jezal snapped his head round, but there was no way of telling who spoke.

“That’s Luthar!”

“A cheer for ’is Majesty!” Followed by a half-hearted murmur.

“This way,” said a pale-looking officer before the gate, indicating a staircase with one apologetic hand. Jezal climbed manfully, two stone steps at a time, spurs jingling. He came out onto the roof of the gatehouse and froze, his lip curling with distaste. Who should be standing there but his old friend Superior Glokta, bent over on his cane, his repulsive toothless smile on his face?

“Your Majesty,” he leered, voice heavy with irony. “What an almost overwhelming honour.” He lifted his cane to point towards the far parapet. “The Gurkish are that way.”

Jezal was attempting to frame a suitably acidic reply as his eyes followed Glokta’s stick. He blinked, the muscles of his face going slack. He stepped past the cripple without saying a word. His scarred jaw crept gradually open, and stayed there.

“The enemy,” growled Varuz. Jezal tried to imagine what Logen Ninefingers would have said faced with the sight below him now.

“Shit.”

In the patchwork of damp fields, over the roads and through the hedgerows, between the farms and villages and the few coppices of old trees beyond the city walls, Gurkish troops swarmed in their thousands. The wide paved road towards Keln, curving away southwards through the flat farmland, was a single crawling, glittering, heaving river of marching men. Gurkish soldiers, in column, flooding up and flowing smoothly out to encircle the city in a giant ring of men, wood, and steel. Tall standards stood out above the boiling throng, golden symbols flashing in the watery autumn sunlight. The standards of the Emperor’s legions. Jezal counted ten at his first glance.

“A considerable body of men,” said Bayaz, with awesome understatement.

Glokta grinned. “The Gurkish hate to travel alone.”

The fence that Marshal Varuz had referred to earlier was already rising, a dark line winding through the muddy fields a few hundred strides from the walls, a shallow ditch in front of it. More than adequate to prevent supplies or reinforcements reaching the city from outside. Further away several camps were taking shape: vast bodies of white tents erected in neatly ordered squares, several with tall columns of dark smoke already floating up into the white sky from cook-fires and forges. There was a deeply worrying feeling of permanence about the whole arrangement. Adua might still have been in Union hands, but even the most patriotic liar could not have denied that the city’s hinterland already belonged firmly to the Emperor of Gurkhul.

“You have to admire their organisation,” said Varuz grimly.

“Yes… their organisation…” Jezal’s voice was suddenly creaky as old floorboards. Putting a brave face on this seemed more like insanity than courage.

A dozen horsemen had detached themselves from the Gurkish lines and now rode forward at a steady trot. Two long flags streamed above their heads, red and yellow silk, worked with Kantic characters in golden thread. There was a white flag too, so small as to be barely noticeable.

“Parleys,” growled the First of the Magi, slowly shaking his head.

“What are they but an excuse for old fools who love to hear their own voices to prattle about fair treatment before they start on the butchery?”

“I suppose on the subject of old fools who love to hear their own voices, you are the absolute expert.” That was what Jezal thought but he kept it to himself, watching the Gurkish party approach in brooding silence. A tall man came at their head, gold shining on his sharply pointed helmet and his polished armour, riding with that upright arrogance that shouts, even from a distance, of high command.

Marshal Varuz frowned. “General Malzagurt.”

“You know him?”

“He commanded the Emperor’s forces, during the last war. We grappled with each other for months. We parleyed more than once. A most cunning opponent.”

“You got the better of him though, eh?”

“In the end, your Majesty.” Varuz looked far from happy. “But I had an army then.”

The Gurkish commander clattered up the road, through the jumble of deserted buildings scattered beyond Casamir’s wall. He reined in his horse before the gate, staring proudly upwards, one hand resting casually on his hip.

“I am General Malzagurt,” he called in a sharp Kantic accent, “the chosen representative of his magnificence, Uthman-ul-Dosht, Emperor of Gurkhul.”

“I am King Jezal the First.”

“Of course. The bastard.”

It was pointless to deny it. “That’s right. The bastard. Why don’t you come in, General? Then we can speak face to face, like civilised men.”

Malzagurt’s eyes flickered across to Glokta. “Forgive me, but the response of your government to unarmed emissaries of the Emperor has not always been… civilised. I think I will remain outside the walls. For now.”

“As you wish. I believe you are already acquainted with Lord Marshal Varuz?”

“Of course. It seems an age since we tussled in the dry wastelands. I would say that I have missed you… but I have not. How are you, my old friend, my old enemy?”

“Well enough,” grunted Varuz.

Malzagurt gestured towards the vast array of manpower deploying behind him. “Under the circumstances, eh? I do not know your other—”

“He is Bayaz. First of the Magi.” A smooth, even voice. It came from one of Malzagurt’s companions. A man dressed all in simple white, somewhat in the manner of a priest. He seemed hardly older than Jezal, and very handsome, with a dark face, perfectly smooth. He wore no armour, carried no weapon. There was no adornment on his clothes or his simple saddle. And yet the others in the party, even Malzagurt himself, seemed to look at him with great respect. With fear, almost.

“Ah.” The General peered up, stroking thoughtfully at his short grey beard. “So this is Bayaz.”

The young man nodded. “This is he. It has been a long time.”

“Not long enough, Mamun, you damned snake!” Bayaz clung to the parapet, teeth bared. The old Magus was so good at playing the kindly uncle that Jezal had forgotten how terrifying his sudden fury could be. He took a shocked step away, half raising a hand to shield his face. The Gurkish aides and flag-carriers cringed, one going so far as to be noisily sick. Even Malzagurt lost a sizeable chunk of his heroic bearing.

But Mamun gazed up just as levelly as before. “Some among my brothers thought that you would run, but I knew better. Khalul always said your pride would be the end of you, and here is the proof. It seems strange to me, now, that I once thought you a great man. You look old, Bayaz. You have dwindled.”

“Things seem smaller when they are far above you!” growled the First of the Magi. He ground the toe of his staff into the stones under his feet, his voice carrying now a terrible menace. “Come closer, Eater, and you can judge my weakness while you burn!”

“The time was you could have crushed me with a word, I do not doubt it. But now your words are only empty air. Your power has leaked away with the slow years, while mine has never been greater. I have a hundred brothers and sisters behind me. What allies have you, Bayaz?” He swept the battlements with a mocking smile. “Only such as you deserve.”

“I may yet find allies to surprise you.”

“I doubt it. Long ago, Khalul told me what your final, desperate hope would be. Time proved him right, as it always has. So you went to the very edge of the World, chasing shadows. Dark shadows indeed, for one who calls himself righteous. I know that you failed.” The priest showed two rows of perfect white teeth. “The Seed passed out of history, long ago. Interred, dark leagues beneath the earth. Sunk, far below the bottomless ocean. Your hopes are sunk with it. You have only one choice left to you. Will you come with us willingly, and be judged by Khalul for your betrayal? Or must we come in and take you?”

“You dare to speak to me of betrayal? You who betrayed the highest principals of our order, and broke the sacred law of Euz? How many have you murdered, so that you could be powerful?”

Mamun only shrugged. “Very many. I am not proud. You left us a choice of dark paths, Bayaz, and we made the sacrifices we had to. There is no purpose in our arguing over the past. After these long centuries, standing on opposite sides of a great divide, I think neither one of us will convince the other. The victors can decide who was right, just as they always have, since long before the Old Time. I know your answer already, but the Prophet would have me ask the question. Will you come to Sarkant, and answer for your great crimes? Will you be judged by Khalul?”

“Judged?” snarled Bayaz. “He will judge me, the swollen-headed old murderer?” He barked harsh laughter down from the walls. “Come and take me if you dare, Mamun, I will be waiting!”

“Then we will come,” murmured Khalul’s first apprentice, frowning up from under his fine black brows. “We have been preparing long years to do it.”

The two men fell to sullen glaring, and Jezal frowned with them. He resented the sudden feeling that the whole business was somehow an argument between Bayaz and this priest and that he, although a king, was like a child eavesdropping on his parents’ conversation, and with just as little say in the outcome.

“Speak your terms, General!” he bellowed down.

Malzagurt cleared his throat. “Firstly, if you surrender the city of Adua to the Emperor, he is prepared to allow you to retain your throne, as his subject, of course, paying regular tribute.”

“How generous of him. What of the traitor, Lord Brock? We understood that you have promised him the crown of the Union.”

“We are not altogether committed to Lord Brock. He does not hold the city, after all. You do.”

“And we have scant respect for those who turn on their own masters,” added Mamun, with a dark look up at Bayaz.

“Secondly, the citizens of the Union will be permitted to continue to live according to their own laws and customs. They will continue to live in freedom. Or as close to it as they have ever really been, at least.”

“Your generosity is astonishing.” Jezal had meant to sneer it, but in the end it escaped without much irony.

“Thirdly,” shouted the General, with a nervous glance sideways towards Mamun, “the man known as Bayaz, the First of the Magi, be delivered over to us, bound and in chains, that he may be conveyed to the Temple of Sarkant, for judgement by the Prophet Khalul. Those are our terms. Refuse them, and the Emperor has decreed that Midderland shall be treated as any other conquered province. Many will be killed, and many more made slaves, Gurkish governors will be installed, your Agriont will be made a temple, and your current rulers… conveyed to cells beneath the Emperor’s palace.”

Jezal half opened his mouth to refuse on an instinct. Then he paused. Harod the Great, no doubt, would have spat his defiance at any odds, and probably pissed on the emissary to boot. The slightest notion of negotiating with the Gurkish was against every long-held belief he possessed.

But, thinking about it, the terms were far more generous than he had ever expected. Jezal would probably have enjoyed more authority as a subject of Uthman-ul-Dosht than he did with Bayaz staring over his shoulder every moment of every day. He could save lives by saying a word. Real lives, of real people. He reached up and rubbed gently at his scarred lips with a fingertip. He had experienced enough suffering on the endless plains of the Old Empire to think long and hard about risking so much pain to so many, and himself in particular. The notion of cells beneath the Emperor’s palace caused him some pause.

It was bizarre that such a vital decision should fall to him. A man who, no more than a year ago, had proudly confessed to knowing nothing about anything, and caring still less. But then Jezal was beginning to doubt that anyone in a position of high authority ever really knew what they were doing. The best one could hope for was to maintain some shred of an illusion that one might. And occasionally, perhaps, try to give the mindless flood of events the slightest push in one direction or another, hoping desperately that it would turn out to be the right one.

But what was the right one?

“Give me your answer!” shouted Malzagurt. “I have preparations to make!”

Jezal frowned. He was sick of being dictated to by Bayaz, but at least the old bastard had played some role in his ascension to the throne. He was sick of being slighted by Terez, but at least she was his wife. Quite aside from any other consideration, his patience was stretched very thin. He simply refused to be ordered around at sword-point by some posturing Gurkish General and his damn fool priest.

“I reject your terms!” he called airily down from the walls. “I reject them utterly and completely. I am not in the habit of surrendering my advisers, or my cities, or my sovereignty simply when asked. Particularly not to a pack of Gurkish curs with small manners and even smaller wits. You are not in Gurkhul now, General, and here your arrogance becomes you even less than that absurd helmet. I suspect that you will learn a harsh lesson before you leave these shores. Might I add, before you scuttle off, that I encourage you and your priest to fuck each other? Who knows? Perhaps you could persuade the great Uthman-ul-Dosht—and the all-knowing Prophet Khalul too for that matter—to join you!”

General Malzagurt frowned. He conferred quickly with an aide, evidently having not entirely understood the finer points of that last utterance. Once he had finally taken them in he gave an angry slash of his dark hand and barked an order in Kantic. Jezal saw men moving among the buildings scattered outside the walls, torches in their hands. The Gurkish General took one last look up at the gatehouse. “Damn pinks!” he snarled. “Animals!” And he tore at the reins of his horse and sprang away, his officers clattering after him.

The priest Mamun sat there a moment longer, a sadness on his perfect face. “So be it. We will put on our armour. May God forgive you, Bayaz.”

“You need forgiveness more than I, Mamun! Pray for yourself!”

“So I do. Every day. But I have seen no sign in all my long life that God is the forgiving kind.” Mamun turned his horse away from the gates and rode slowly back towards the Gurkish lines, through the abandoned buildings, flames already licking hungrily at their walls.

Jezal took a long, ragged breath as his eyes flicked up to the mass of men moving through the fields. Damn his mouth, it got him in all kinds of trouble. But it was a little late now for second thoughts. He felt Bayaz’ fatherly touch on his shoulder, that steering touch that had become so very annoying to him over the past few weeks. He had to grit his teeth to keep from shaking free.

“You should address your people,” said the Magus.

“What?”

“The right words could make all the difference. Harod the Great could speak at a moment’s notice. Did I tell you of the time he—”

“Very well!” snapped Jezal, “I am going.”

He walked towards the opposite parapet with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man to his scaffold. The crowd was spread out below in all its disturbing variety. Jezal had to stop himself fussing with his belt-buckle. He kept worrying for some reason that his trousers would fall down in front of all those people. A ridiculous notion. He cleared his throat. Someone saw him, pointed.

“The king!”

“King Jezal!”

“The king speaks!”

The crowd shifted and stretched, drawn towards the gatehouse, a sea of hopeful, fearful, needy faces. The noise in the square slowly died and a breathless silence fell.

“My friends… my countrymen… my subjects!” His voice rang out with pleasing authority. A good beginning, very… rhetorical. “Our enemies may be many… very many…” Jezal cursed to himself. That was hardly an admission to give courage to the masses. “But I urge you to take heart! Our defences are strong!” He slapped at the firm stones under his hand. “Our courage is indomitable!” He thumped at his polished breastplate. “We will hold firm!” This was better! He had discovered a natural talent for speaking. The crowd was warming to him now, he could feel it. “We need not hold out forever! Lord Marshal West is even now bringing his army to our assistance—”

“When?” someone screamed out. There was a wave of angry muttering.

“Er…” Jezal, wrong-footed, glanced nervously across at Bayaz, “er…”

“When will they come? When?” The First of the Magi hissed at Glokta, and the cripple made a sharp gesture to someone below.

“Soon! You may depend upon it!” Curse Bayaz, this had been an awful notion. Jezal did not have the ghost of an idea of how to put heart into a rabble.

“What about our children? What about our homes? Will your house burn? Will it?” A swell of unhappy calls went up.

“Do not fear! I beg of you… please…” Damn it! He had no business pleading, he was a king. “The army is on its way!” Jezal noticed black figures forcing through the press. Practicals of the Inquisition. They converged, somewhat to his relief, on the point where the heckles were coming from. “They are even now leaving the North! Any day they will come to our aid, and teach these Gurkish dogs a—”

“When? When will—” Black sticks rose and fell in the midst of the crowd and the question was cut off in a high-pitched shriek.

Jezal did his best to shout over it. “In the meantime, will we let these Gurkish scum ride free over our fields? Over the fields of our fathers?”

“No!” someone roared, to Jezal’s great relief.

“No! We will show these Kantic slaves how a free Union citizen can fight!” A volley of lukewarm agreements. “We will fight as bravely as lions! As fiercely as tigers!” He was warming to his work, now, the words were spilling out as if he really meant them. Perhaps he did. “We will fight as we did in the days of Harod! Of Arnault! Of Casamir!” A rousing cheer went up. “We will not rest until these Gurkish devils are driven back across the Circle Sea! There will be no negotiation!”

“No negotiation!” someone called.

“Damn the Gurkish!”

“We will never surrender!” Jezal bellowed, striking the parapet with his fist. “We will fight for every street! For every house! For every room!”

“For every house!” someone squealed with rabid excitement, and the citizens of Adua bellowed their approval.

Feeling the moment upon him, Jezal slid his sword from its sheath with a suitably warlike ringing and held it high above his head. “And I will be proud to draw my sword beside you! We will fight for each other! We will fight for the Union! Every man… every woman… a hero!”

There was a deafening cheer. Jezal waved his sword and a glittering wave surged out among the spears as they were shaken in the air, thumped against armoured chests, hammered down against the stone. Jezal smiled wide. The people loved him, and were more than willing to fight for him. Together they would be victorious, he felt it. He had made the right decision.

“Nicely done,” murmured Bayaz in his ear. “Nicely—”

Jezal’s patience was worn out. He rounded on the Magus with his teeth bared. “I know how it was done! I have no need of your constant—”

“Your Majesty.” It was Gorst’s piping voice.

“How dare you interrupt me? What the hell is—”

Jezal’s tirade was cut off by a ruddy glare at the corner of his eye, followed a moment later by a roaring detonation. He jerked his head round to see flames springing up above the jumble of roofs some distance away on his right. Below in the square there was a collective gasp, a wave of nervous movement through the crowd.

“The Gurkish bombardment has begun,” said Varuz.

A streak of fire shot up into the white sky above the Gurkish lines. Jezal watched it open-mouthed as it plummeted down towards the city. It crashed into the buildings, this time on Jezal’s left, bright fire shooting high into the air. The terrifying boom assaulted his ears an instant afterward.

Shouts came from below. Orders, perhaps, or screams of panic. The crowd began to move in every direction at once. People rushed for the walls, or for their homes, or nowhere in particular, a chaotic tangle of pressing bodies and waving polearms.

“Water!” someone shouted.

“Fire!”

“Your Majesty.” Gorst was already leading Jezal back towards the stairway. “You should return to the Agriont at once.”

Jezal started at another thunderous explosion, this one even closer. Smoke was already rising in oily smudges over the city. “Yes,” he muttered, allowing himself to be led to safety. He realised that he still had his sword drawn, and sheathed it somewhat guiltily. “Yes of course.”

Fearlessness, as Logen Ninefingers had once observed, is a fool’s boast.

A Rock and a Hard Place

Glokta shook with laughter, wheezing gurgles slobbering through his empty gums, the hard chair creaking under his bony arse. His coughs and his whimpers echoed dully from the bare walls of his dim living room. In a way, it sounded very much like weeping. And perhaps it is, just a little.

Every shake of his twisted shoulders drove nails into his neck. Every jerk of his rib-cage sent flashes of pain down to the very tips of such toes as he had left. He laughed, and the laughter hurt, and the pain made him laugh all the more. Oh, the irony! I titter with hopelessness. I chuckle with despair.

Bubbles of spit blew from his lips as he gave one last long whine. Like a sheep’s death rattle, but less dignified. Then he swallowed, and wiped his running eyes. I have not laughed so hard in years. Since before the Emperor’s torturers did their work, I shouldn’t wonder. And yet it is not so very difficult to stop. After all, nothing is really very funny here, is it? He lifted the letter, and read it again.

Glokta stared at the paper for a long while by the light of the single candle, his ruined mouth hanging open. For this, I lived through months of agony in the darkness of the Emperor’s prisons? Tortured my savage way through the Guild of Mercers? Slaughtered my bloody path through the city of Dagoska? To end my days in ignominy, trapped between a bitter old bureaucrat and a tank full of treacherous swindlers? All my twisting, my lying my bargains, and my pain. All those corpses left beside the road… for this?

A new wave of laughter rocked his body, twisted him up and made his aching back rattle. His Eminence and these bankers deserve each other! Even with the city burning down around them, their games cannot stop for an instant. Games which may very well prove fatal to poor Superior Glokta, who only tried to do his crippled best. He had to wipe a little snot from under his nose he laughed so hard at that last thought.

It almost seems a shame to burn such a horribly hilarious document. Perhaps I should take it to the Arch Lector instead? Would he see the funny side, I wonder? Would we chuckle over it together? He reached out and held the corner of the letter to the twisting candle flame, watched fire flicker up the side, creep out through the writing, white paper curling up into black ashes.

Burn, as my hopes, and my dreams, and my glorious future burned beneath the Emperor’s palace! Burn, as Dagoska did and Adua surely will before the Emperor’s fury! Burn, as I would love to burn King Jezal the Bastard, and the First of the Magi, and Arch Lector Sult, and Valint and Balk, and the whole damned—

“Gah!” Glokta flailed his singed fingertips in the air then stuck them in his toothless mouth, his laughter quickly cut off. Strange. However much pain we experience, we never become used to it. We always scramble to escape it. We never become resigned to more. The corner of the letter was still smouldering on the floor. He frowned, and ground it out with a savage poke of his cane.

The air was heavy with the sharp tang of wood smoke. Like a hundred thousand burnt dinners. Even here in the Agriont, there was the slightest grey haze of it, a messy blending together of the buildings at the end of each street. Fires had been raging in the outer districts for several days now, and the Gurkish bombardment had not let up a hair, night or day. Even as Glokta walked, the breath wheezing through the gaps in his teeth with the effort of putting one foot in front of the other, there came the muffled boom of an incendiary landing somewhere in the city, the tiniest murmur of vibration through the soles of his boots.

The people in the lane froze, staring up in alarm. Those few unlucky folk who found themselves without excuses to flee the city when the Gurkish came. Those unlucky folk who were too important, or not important enough. An optimistic handful who thought the Gurkish siege would be another passing fad—like a rain storm or short trousers. Too late they discover their grave error.

Glokta kept hobbling, head lowered. He had not lost a wink of sleep for the explosions rocking the city in the darkness the past week. I was too busy losing sleep for my mind spinning round and round like a cat in a sack, trying to find some way clear of this trap. I became well-used to explosions during my holiday in charming Dagoska. For him, the pain lancing through his arse and up his spine was considerably more worrisome.

Oh, arrogance! Who would ever have dared suggest that Gurkish boots would one day trample across the fertile fields of Midderland? That the pretty farms and sleepy villages of the Union would dance with Gurkish fire? Who could ever have expected that beautiful, thriving Adua would turn from a little piece of heaven into a little piece of hell? Glokta felt himself smiling. Welcome, everyone! Welcome! I’ve been here all along. How nice of you to join me.

He heard armoured boots tramping down the road behind him, shuffled too late out of the way of a hurrying column of soldiers and was barged roughly onto the grassy verge, left foot sliding in the mud and sending a stab of agony up his leg. The column clattered past, heedless, and Glokta grimaced after them. People no longer have the proper level of fear for the Inquisition. They are all a great deal too afraid of the Gurkish for that. He stepped away from the wall with a wince and a curse, stretched his neck out and carried on limping.

High Justice Marovia was framed in the largest window of his echoing office, hands clasped behind his back. His windows faced west. The direction of the main Gurkish assault. Above the rooftops in the distance, columns of dark smoke rose into the pale sky, blending together into a gritty pall that rendered the autumn half-light still more funereal. Marovia turned when he heard Glokta’s toeless foot creaking on the dark boards, his lined old face alive with a welcoming smile.

“Ah, Superior Glokta! You cannot imagine my delight to hear you announced! I have missed you since your last visit. I do so enjoy your… forthright style. I do so admire your… commitment to your work.” He flapped one lazy hand towards the window. “The law, I must admit, tends to be sleepy in times of war. But even with the Gurkish at the gates the noble business of his Majesty’s Inquisition continues, eh? I assume you have come once again on behalf of his Eminence?”

Glokta paused. But only out of habit. I must turn my twisted back on the Inquisition. What would Sult call me? A traitor? No doubt, and worse besides. But every man’s first loyalty must be to himself. I have made my sacrifices. “No, your Worship. I have come on behalf of Sand dan Glokta.” He limped up to a chair, slid it out and dumped himself into it without being asked. I am far past the niceties, now. “Frankly, I need your help.” Frankly, you are my last hope.

“My help? Surely you are not without powerful friends of your own?”

“It is my regrettable experience that powerful men can afford no friends.”

“All too unfortunately true. You do not reach my position, or even yours, without understanding that each man stands alone, in the end.” Marovia gazed down beneficently as he settled into his own tall chair. Though I am far from put at ease. His smiles are every bit as deadly as Sult’s frowns, I think. “Our friends must be those that can make themselves useful to us. With that in mind, what help can I offer you? And more importantly, what can you offer me in return?”

“That may take some explaining.” Glokta winced at a cramp in his leg and forced it out straight under the table. “May I speak entirely honestly with you, your Worship?”

Marovia stroked thoughtfully at his beard. “The truth is a very rare and valuable commodity. I am astonished that a man of your experience would simply give it away. Especially to someone on the other side of the fence, so to speak.”

“I was once told that a man lost in the desert must take such water as he is offered, regardless of the source.”

“Lost, are you? Speak honestly, then, Superior, and we will see if I can spare something from my canteen.”

Hardly a promise of succour, but the best I might have hoped for from a man so recently a bitter enemy. And so… my confession. Glokta turned over the memories of the last couple of years in his mind. And a filthy, a shameful, an ugly set they are. Where to begin? “It is some time ago, now, that I began to examine irregularities in the business of the Honourable Guild of Mercers.”

“I well remember the unfortunate affair.”

“During my investigations I discovered that the Mercers were financed by a bank. A very wealthy and powerful bank. Valint and Balk.”

Glokta watched carefully for a reaction, but Marovia’s eyes did not so much as flicker. “I am aware of the existence of such an institution.”

“I suspected that they were implicated in the Mercers’ crimes. Magister Kault told me as much before his unfortunate demise. But his Eminence did not wish me to investigate further. Too many complications at a complicated time.” Glokta’s left eye twitched and he felt it beginning to run. “My apologies,” he muttered as he wiped it with a finger. “Shortly afterwards I was dispatched to Dagoska, to take charge of the defence of the city.”

“Your particular diligence in that matter was a source of some discomfort to me.” Marovia worked his mouth sourly. “My congratulations. You did an extraordinary job.”

“I cannot entirely take the credit. The task the Arch Lector had given me was impossible. Dagoska was riddled with treason and surrounded by the Gurkish.”

Marovia snorted. “One sympathises.”

“If only anyone had sympathised then, but they were busy here, trying to get the better of each other, as they always are. Dagoska’s defences were in a state entirely inadequate for the task. I could not strengthen them without money—”

“His Eminence was not forthcoming.”

“His Eminence would not part with a single mark. But an unlikely benefactor stepped forward in my time of need.”

“A rich uncle? What a happy chance.”

“Not entirely.” Glokta licked at the salty space where his front teeth had once been. And the secrets begin to spill like turds from a draining latrine-pit. “My rich uncle was none other than the banking house of Valint and Balk.”

Marovia frowned. “They advanced you money?”

“It was thanks to their generosity that I was able to keep the Gurkish out as long as I did.”

“Bearing in mind that powerful people have no friends, what did Valint and Balk get in return?”

“In essence?” Glokta gave the High Justice an even stare. “Whatever they wanted. Shortly after returning from Dagoska I was investigating the death of Crown Prince Raynault.”

“A terrible crime.”

“Of which the Gurkish ambassador who hung for it was innocent.”

Marovia registered the tiniest hint of surprise. “You say so?”

“Undoubtedly. But the death of the heir to the throne created other problems, problems relating to votes in the Open Council, and his Eminence was happy with the easy answer. I tried to pursue the matter, but was prevented. By Valint and Balk.”

“You suspect that these bankers were involved in the death of the Crown Prince, then?”

“I suspect them of all manner of things, but proof is in short supply.” Always too many suspicions, and not enough proof.

“Banks,” grunted Marovia. “They are made of air. They spin money out of guesses, and lies, and promises. Secrets are their currency, even more than gold.”

“So I have discovered. But men lost in the desert—”

“Yes, yes! Please continue.”

Glokta found, to his surprise, that he was greatly enjoying himself. He was almost tripping over his own tongue in his eagerness to blurt it all out. Now I begin throwing away the secrets I have hoarded for so long, I find I cannot stop. I feel like a miser on a spending spree. Horrified, yet liberated. Agonised, yet delighted. Something like cutting your own throat, I imagine—a glorious release, but one you can enjoy only once. And like cutting my own throat, it will very likely end in my ugly death. Ah well. It has been coming some time, has it not? And not even I could claim I don’t deserve it ten times over.

Glokta leaned forwards. Even here, even now, I somehow need to speak it softly. “Arch Lector Sult is not happy with our new king. Most particularly, he is not happy with the influence that Bayaz exerts over him. Sult finds his powers much curtailed. He believes, in fact, that you are somehow behind the whole business.”

Marovia frowned. “Does he now?”

He does, and I am not entirely sure that I discount the possibility. “He has asked me to find some means of removing Bayaz…” His voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Or removing the king. I suspect, should I fail, that he has other plans. Plans which somehow involve the University.”

“You would seem to be accusing his Eminence the Arch Lector of high treason against the state.” Marovia’s eyes were bright and hard as a pair of new nails. Suspicious, and yet terribly eager. “Have you uncovered anything to use against the king?”

“Before I could even consider doing so, Valint and Balk quite forcibly dissuaded me.”

“They knew so quickly?”

“I am forced to concede that someone close to me may not be as reliable as I have always hoped. The bankers not only demanded that I disobey his Eminence, they also insisted that I investigate him. They want to know his plans. I have only a few days to satisfy them, and Sult no longer trusts me enough to share the contents of his latrine with me, let alone the contents of his mind.”

“Oh dear, dear.” Marovia slowly shook his head. “Oh dear, dear.”

“To add to my woes, I believe that the Arch Lector is considerably less ignorant of what occurred in Dagoska than he at first appeared. If somebody is talking, it may well be that they are talking to both sides.” If you can betray a man once, after all, it is not so very difficult to do it twice. Glokta gave a long sigh. And there we are. The secrets are all spilled. The turd-pit is emptied. My throat is slashed from ear to ear. “That is the whole story, your Worship.”

“Well, Superior, you certainly find yourself in quite a pickle.” Quite a fatal one, in fact. Marovia got up and wandered slowly around the room. “Let us suppose, for the moment, that you truly have come for my help, and not to lead me into some manner of embarrassment. Arch Lector Sult has the means to cause a most serious problem. And the towering self-obsession necessary to try it at a time like this.” You’ll get no argument from me there. “If you could obtain compelling evidence, I would, of course, be willing to present it to the king. But I cannot move against a member of the Closed Council, and the Arch Lector in particular, without firm proof. A signed confession would be best.”

“Sult’s signed confession?” murmured Glokta.

“Such a document would seem to solve some problems for both of us. Sult would be gone, and the bankers would have lost their hold over you. The Gurkish would still be camped outside our walls of course, but one can’t have everything.”

“The Arch Lector’s signed confession.” And shall I pluck the moon from the sky while I’m about it?

“Or a big enough stone to start the landslide—perhaps the confession of someone suitably close to him. I understand that you are expert at obtaining them.” The High Justice peered at Glokta from under his heavy brows. “Was I misinformed?”

“I cannot conjure evidence from thin air, your Worship.”

“Those lost in the desert must take the chances they are offered, however slender. Find evidence, and bring it to me. Then I can act, and not one moment before. You understand that I cannot take any risks for you. It is difficult to trust a man who chose his master, and now chooses another.”

“Chose?” Glokta felt his eyelid twitching again. “If you believe that I chose any part of the pitiful shadow of a life you see before you, you are very much mistaken. I chose glory and success. The box did not contain what was written on the lid.”

“The world is full of tragic tales.” Marovia walked to the window, turning his back and staring out at the darkening sky. “Especially now. You can hardly expect them to make any difference to a man of my experience. I wish you good day.”

Further comment seems pointless. Glokta rocked forwards, pushed himself painfully up to standing with the aid of his cane, and limped for the door. But the tiniest glimmer of hope has come creeping into the dank cellar of my despair… I need only obtain a confession to High Treason from the head of his Majesty’s Inquisition—

“And Superior!” Why can no one ever finish talking before I get up? Glokta turned back into the room, his spine burning. “If someone close to you is talking, you need to shut them up. Now. Only a fool would consider uprooting treason from the Closed Council before he had cut the weeds from his own lawn.”

“Oh, you need not worry about my garden, your Worship.” Glokta treated the High Justice to his most repulsive grin. “I am even now sharpening my shears.”

Charity

Adua burned.

The two westernmost districts—the Three Farms, at the south-western corner of the city, and the Arches, further north—were hacked with black wounds. Smoke was still pouring up from some of them, great columns lit in faint orange near the base. They spread out in oily smears, dragged away to the west by a stiff wind, drawing a muddy curtain across the setting sun.

Jezal watched in solemn silence, his hands bunched into numb fists on the parapet of the Tower of Chains. There was no sound up here but for the wind fumbling at his ears and, just occasionally, the slightest hint of distant battle. A war cry, or the screams of the wounded. Or perhaps only a sea-bird calling, high on the breeze. Jezal wished for a maudlin moment that he were a bird, and could simply fly from the tower and off over the Gurkish pickets, away from this nightmare. But escape would not be so easy.

“Casamir’s Wall was first breached three days ago,” Marshal Varuz was explaining in a monotonous drone. “We drove back the first two assaults, and held the Three Farms that night, but the next day there was another breach, and another. This damn fire-powder has changed all the bloody rules. A wall that would have stood a week they can bring down in an hour.”

“Khalul always loved to tinker with his dust and his bottles,” muttered Bayaz, unhelpfully.

“They were in the Three Farms in force that night, and carried the gates into the Arches soon afterwards. Ever since, the whole western part of the city has been one running battle.” The tavern where Jezal had celebrated his victory over Filio in the Contest was in that district. The tavern where he had sat with West and Jalenhorm, Kaspa and Brint, before they went away to the North, and he to the Old Empire. Was that building now burning? Was it already a blackened shell?

“We’re fighting them hand to hand in the streets by daylight. We’re mounting raids in the darkness, every night. Not a stride of ground is given up without it being soaked with Gurkish blood.” Perhaps Varuz hoped to be inspiring, but he was only succeeding in making Jezal feel sick. The streets of his capital soaked in blood, whoever’s blood it might have been, was hardly his first aim as king of the Union. “Arnault’s Wall still stands firm, though there are fires burning in the centre of town. The flames almost reached the Four Corners last night, but the rain doused them down, at least for now. We’re fighting for every street, every house, every room. Just as you said we should, your Majesty.”

“Good,” Jezal managed to croak, but he almost choked on the word.

When he so blithely turned down General Malzagurt’s terms, he was not sure what he had been expecting. He had dimly imagined that someone would soon come to the rescue. That something heroic would occur. Only now the bloody business was well underway, and there was no sign of instant deliverance. Probably there was heroism going on down there in the smoke. Soldiers hauling injured comrades to safety through the sooty darkness. Nurses stitching wounds by screaming candlelight. Townsfolk plunging into burning buildings to drag out coughing children. Heroism of an everyday and unglamorous kind. A kind that made no difference to the overall outcome.

“Are those our ships in the bay?” he asked quietly, already afraid of the answer.

“I wish they were, your Majesty. I never thought I’d say it, but they have the best of us by sea. You never saw so many damn ships. Even if most of our navy weren’t ferrying the army back from Angland, I’m not sure what they could do. As it is, the men will have to be landed outside the city. It’s a damned inconvenience, and it could get to be a great deal more than that. The docks are a weak spot. Sooner or later they may try to land men there.”

Jezal looked nervously towards the water. Armies of Gurkish, pouring from their ships and into the heart of the city. The Middleway cut straight through the centre of Adua from the bay to the Agriont. A road invitingly wide enough to march an entire Gurkish legion straight down in a twinkling. He shut his eyes and tried to breathe evenly.

Before the arrival of the Gurkish he had hardly been able to have a moment’s silence for the opinions of his councillors. Now that he actually needed advice, the torrent had suddenly run dry. Sult rarely appeared in the Closed Council, and then only to glare at Marovia. The High Justice himself had little to offer beyond bemoaning the fix they were all in. Even Bayaz’ stock of historical examples seemed finally to be exhausted. Jezal was left to carry the responsibility alone, and he was finding it quite a weight. He supposed it was a good deal more unpleasant for those that were actually wounded, or homeless, or killed, but that was slender consolation.

“How many are dead already?” he found himself asking, like a child picking at a scab. “How many have we lost?”

“The fighting along Casamir’s Wall was fierce. The fighting throughout the occupied districts has been fiercer yet. Casualties on both sides are heavy. I would guess at a thousand dead at least on our side.”

Jezal swallowed sour spit. He thought about the mismatched defenders he had seen near the western gate, in a square now presumably overrun by Gurkish legions. Ordinary people, who had looked to him with hope and pride. Then he tried to picture what a thousand corpses might look like. He imagined a hundred of them, side by side, in a row. Then ten such rows, one above the other. A thousand. He gnawed at his thumbnail, already down to the painful quick.

“And many more wounded, of course,” added Varuz, in a sudden twist of the knife. “We are very short of space for them, in fact. Two districts are at least partly occupied by the Gurkish and the enemy are landing incendiaries almost in the heart of the city.” Jezal’s tongue sought out the still sore gap in his teeth. He remembered his own pain, out on the endless plain under the merciless sky, the stabs through his face as the cartwheels squeaked and jolted.

“Open the Agriont to the wounded, to the homeless. With the army away there is room to spare. Barracks for thousands, and ample provisions.”

Bayaz was shaking his bald head. “A risk. We have no way of knowing who we would be letting in. Gurkish agents. Spies of Khalul. Not all of them are what they appear.”

Jezal ground his teeth. “I am prepared to take the risk. Am I king here, or not?”

“You are,” growled Bayaz, “and you would be well advised to act like it. This is no time for sentiment. The enemy are closing on Arnault’s Wall. In places they might be within two miles of where we stand.”

“Two miles?” murmured Jezal, his eyes flickering nervously towards the west again. Arnault’s Wall was a fine grey line through the buildings, looking a terribly frail sort of a barrier from up here, and worryingly close. A sudden fear gripped him. Not the guilty concern he felt for the theoretical people down there in the smoke, but a real and very personal fear for his own life. Like the one he had felt among the stones, when the two warriors advanced on him with murder in mind. Perhaps he had made a mistake not leaving the city when he had the chance. Perhaps it was not too late to—

“I will stand or fall alongside the people of the Union!” he shouted, as angry at his own cowardice as he was at the Magus. “If they are willing to die for me, then I am willing to die for them!” He turned his shoulder towards Bayaz and quickly looked away. “Open the Agriont, Marshal Varuz. You can fill the palace with wounded too, if you have to.”

Varuz glanced nervously sideways at Bayaz, then gave a stiff bow. “Hospitals will be set up in the Agriont, then, your Majesty. The barracks will be opened to the people. The palace we had probably better leave sealed, at least until things get worse.”

Jezal could hardly bear to imagine what worse might look like. “Good, good. See it done.” He had to wipe a tear from under his eye as he turned away from the smouldering city and made for the long stair. The smoke, of course. Nothing but the smoke.

Queen Terez sat alone, framed in the window of their vast bedchamber.

The Countess Shalere was still lurking around the palace somewhere, but it seemed she had learned to keep her scorn well out of Jezal’s way. The rest of Terez’ ladies she had sent back to Styria before the Gurkish blockaded the harbour. Jezal rather wished that he could have returned the queen herself along with the rest but that, unfortunately, was not an option.

Terez did not so much as glance in his direction as Jezal shut the door. He had to stifle a heavy sigh as he trudged across the room, his boots muddy from the spitting rain, his skin greasy from the soot in the air outside.

“You are treading dirt with you,” said Terez, without looking round, her voice as icy as ever.

“War is a dirty business, my love.” He saw the side of her face twitch with disgust when he said the last two words, and hardly knew whether he wanted to laugh or cry at it. He dropped down heavily in the chair opposite her without touching his boots, knowing all the while that it would infuriate her. There was nothing he could do that would not.

“Must you come to me in this manner?” she snapped.

“Oh, but I could not stay away! You are my wife, after all.”

“Not by choice.”

“It was not my choice either, but I am willing to make the best of things! Believe it or not I would rather have married someone who did not hate me!” Jezal shoved one hand through his hair and pressed his anger down with some difficulty. “But let us not fight, please. I have enough fighting to do out there. More than I can stand! Can we not, at least… be civil to one another?”

She looked at him for a long moment, a thoughtful frown on her face. “How can you?”

“How can I what?”

“Keep trying.”

Jezal ventured a fragment of a grin. “I had hoped that you might come to admire my persistence, if nothing else.” She did not smile, but he sensed, perhaps, the slightest softening of the hard line of her mouth. He hardly dared suppose that she might have finally begun to thaw, but he was willing to seize on the slightest shred of hope. Hope was in short supply, these days. He leaned towards her, staring earnestly into her eyes. “You have made it clear that you think very little of me, and I suppose that I hardly blame you. I do not think so very much of myself, believe me. But I am trying… I am trying very hard… to be a better man.”

The corner of Terez’ mouth twitched up in a sad kind of smile, but a kind of smile nonetheless. To his great surprise she reached out, and placed one hand tenderly on his face. His breath caught in his throat, skin tingling where her fingertips rested.

“Why can you not understand that I despise you?” she asked. He felt himself go very cold. “I despise the look of you, the feel of you, the sound of your voice. I despise this place and its people. The sooner the Gurkish burn it all to the ground the happier I’ll be.” She took her hand away and turned back to the window, a glimmering of light down her perfect profile.

Jezal slowly stood up. “I think I will find another room to sleep in tonight. This one is altogether too cold.”

“At last.”

It can be a terrible curse for a man to get everything he ever dreamed of. If the shining prizes turn out somehow to be empty baubles, he is left without even his dreams for comfort. All the things that Jezal had thought he wanted—power, fame, the beautiful trappings of greatness—they were nothing but dust. All he wanted now was for things to be as they had been, before he got them. But there was no way back. Not ever.

He really had nothing further to say. He turned stiffly and trudged for the door.

Better Left Buried

When the fighting is over you dig, if you’re still alive. You dig graves for your dead comrades. A last mark of respect, however little you might have had for them. You dig as deep as you can be bothered, you dump them in, you cover them up, they rot away and are forgotten. That’s the way it’s always been.

There would be a lot of digging when this fight was done. A lot of digging for both sides.

Twelve days, now, since the fire started falling. Since the wrath of God began to rain on these arrogant pinks, and lay blackened waste to their proud city. Twelve days since the killing started—at the walls, and in the streets, and through the houses. For twelve days in the cold sunlight, in the spitting rain, in the choking smoke, and for twelve nights by the light of flickering fires, Ferro had been in the thick of it.

Her boots slapped against the polished tiles, leaving black marks down the immaculate hallway behind her. Ash. The two districts where the fighting was raging were covered in it, now. It had mingled with the thin rain to make a sticky paste, like black glue. The buildings that still stood, the charred skeletons of the ones that did not, the people who killed and the people who died, all coated in it. The scowling guards and the cringing servants frowned at her and the marks she left, but she had never cared a shit for their opinions, and was not about to start. They would have more ash than they knew what to do with soon. The whole place would be ash, if the Gurkish got their way.

And it looked very much as if they might. Each day and each night, for all the efforts of the rag-tag defenders, for all the dead they left among the ruins, the Emperor’s troops worked their way further into the city.

Towards the Agriont.

Yulwei was sitting in the wide chamber when she got there, shrunken into a chair in one corner, the bangles hanging from his limp arms. The calmness which had always seemed to swaddle him like an old blanket was stripped away. He looked worried, worn, eyes sunken in dark sockets. A man looking defeat in the face. A look that Ferro was getting used to seeing over the past few days.

“Ferro Maljinn, back from the front. I always said that you would kill the whole world if you could, and now you have your chance. How do you like war, Ferro?”

“Well enough.” She tossed her bow rattling onto a polished table, dragged her sword out of her belt, shrugged off her quiver. She had only a few shafts left. Most of them she had left stuck through Gurkish soldiers, out there in the blackened ruins at the edge of the city.

But Ferro could not bring herself to smile.

Killing Gurkish was like eating honey. A little only left you craving more. Too much could become sickening. Corpses had always been a poor reward for all the effort it took to make them. But there was no stopping now.

“You are hurt?”

Ferro squeezed at the filthy bandage round her arm, and watched the blood seep out into the grey cloth. There was no pain. “No,” she said.

“It is not too late, Ferro. You do not need to die here. I brought you. I can still take you away. I go where I please, and I take who I please with me. If you stop killing now, who knows? Perhaps God will still find a place in heaven for you.”

Ferro was becoming very tired of Yulwei’s preaching. She and Bayaz might not have trusted each other a finger’s breadth, but they understood each other. Yulwei understood nothing.

“ ‘Heaven’?” she sneered as she turned away from him. “Perhaps hell suits me better, did you think of that?”

She hunched up her shoulders as footsteps echoed down the hallway outside. She felt Bayaz’ anger even before the door was flung open and the old bald pink stormed into the room.

“That little bastard! After all that I have given him, how does he repay me?” Quai and Sulfur slunk through the doorway behind him like a pair of dogs creeping after their master. “He defies me before the Closed Council! He tells me to mind my business! Me! How would that cringing dunce know what is my business and what is not?”

“Trouble with King Luthar the Magnificent?” grunted Ferro.

The Magus narrowed his eyes at her. “A year ago there was no emptier head in the whole Circle of the World. Stick a crown on him and have a crowd of old liars tongue his arse for a few weeks and the little shit thinks he’s Stolicus!”

Ferro shrugged. Luthar had never lacked a high opinion of himself, king or not. “You should be more careful who you stick crowns on.”

“That’s the trouble with crowns, they have to go on someone. All you can do is drop them in a crowd and hope for the best.” Bayaz scowled over at Yulwei. “What of you brother? Have you been walking outside the walls?”

“I have.”

“And what have you seen?”

“Death. Much of that. The Emperor’s soldiers flood into the western districts of Adua, his ships choke the bay. Every day more troops come up the road from the south, and tighten the Gurkish grip on the city.”

“That much I can learn from those halfwits on the Closed Council. What of Mamun and his Hundred Words?”

“Mamun, the thrice blessed and thrice cursed? Wondrous first apprentice of great Khalul, God’s right hand? He is waiting. He and his brothers, and his sisters, they have a great tent outside the bounds of the city. They pray for victory, they listen to sweet music, they bathe in scented water, they laze naked and enjoy the pleasures of the flesh. They wait for the Gurkish soldiers to carry the walls of the city, and they eat.” He looked up at Bayaz. “They eat night and day, in open defiance of the Second Law. In brazen mockery of the solemn word of Euz. Making ready for the moment when they will come to seek you out. The moment for which Khalul made them. They think it will not be long, now. They polish their armour.”

“Do they indeed?” hissed Bayaz. “Damn them then.”

“They have damned themselves already. But that is no help to us.”

“Then we must visit the House of the Maker.” Ferro’s head jerked up. There was something about that great, stark tower that had fascinated her ever since she first arrived in Adua. She found her eyes always drawn towards its mountainous bulk, rising untouchable, high above the smoke and the fury.

“Why?” asked Yulwei. “Do you plan to seal yourself inside? Just as Kanedias did, all those years ago, when we came seeking our vengeance? Will you cower in the darkness, Bayaz? And this time, will you be the one thrown down, to break upon the bridge below?”

The First of the Magi snorted. “You know me better than that. When they come for me I will face them in the open. But there are still weapons in the darkness. A surprise or two from the Maker’s forge for our cursed friends beyond the walls.”

Yulwei looked even more worried than before. “The Divider?”

“One edge here,” whispered Quai from the corner. “One on the Other Side.”

Bayaz, as usual, ignored him. “It can cut through anything, even an Eater.”

“Will it cut through a hundred?” asked Yulwei.

“I will settle for Mamun alone.”

Yulwei slowly unfolded himself from the chair, stood with a sigh.

“Very well, lead on. I will enter the Maker’s House with you, one last time.”

Ferro licked her teeth. The idea of going inside was irresistible. “I will come with you.”

Bayaz glared back. “No, you will not. You can stay here and sulk. That has always been your special gift, has it not? I would hate to deny you the opportunity to make use of it. You will come with us,” he snapped at Quai. “You have your business, eh, Yoru?”

“I do, Master Bayaz.”

“Good.” The First of the Magi strode from the room with Yulwei at his shoulder, his apprentice trudging at the rear. Sulfur did not move. Ferro frowned at him, and he grinned back, his head tipped against the panelled wall, his chin pointed towards the moulded ceiling.

“Are these Hundred Words not your enemies too?” Ferro demanded.

“My deepest and most bitter enemies.”

“Why do you not fight, then?”

“Oh, there are other ways to fight than struggling in the dirt out there.” There was something in those eyes, one dark, one bright, that Ferro did not like the look of. There was something hard and hungry behind his smiles. “Though I would love to stay and chat, I must go and give the wheels another push.” He turned a finger round and round in the air. “The wheels must keep turning, eh, Maljinn?”

“Go then,” she snapped. “I will not stop you.”

“You could not if you wanted to. I would bid you a good day. But I’d wager you’ve never had one.” And he sauntered out, the door clicking to behind him.

Ferro was already across the room, shooting back the bolt on the window. She had done as Bayaz told her once before, and it had brought her nothing but a wasted year. She would make her own choices now. She jerked the hangings aside and slipped out onto the balcony. Curled-up leaves blew on the wind, whipping around the lawns below along with the spitting rain. A quick glance up and down the damp paths showed only one guard, and he was looking the wrong way, huddled in his cloak.

Sometimes it is best to seize the moment.

Ferro swung her legs over the rail, gathered herself, then sprang out into the air. She caught a slippery tree branch, swung to the trunk, slid down it to the damp earth and crept behind a neatly clipped hedge, low to the ground.

She heard footsteps, then voices. Bayaz’ voice, and Yulwei’s, speaking soft into the hissing wind. Damn, but these old fools of Magi loved to flap their lips.

“Sulfur?” came Yulwei’s voice. “He is still with you?”

“Why would he not be?”

“His studies ran in… dangerous directions. I told you this, brother.”

“And? Khalul is not so picky with his servants…”

They passed out of earshot and Ferro had to rush along behind the hedge to keep pace, staying bent double.

“…I do not like this habit,” Yulwei was saying, “of taking forms, of changing skin. A cursed discipline. You know what Juvens’ feelings were on it—”

“I have no time to worry on the feelings of a man centuries in his grave. There is no Third Law, Yulwei.”

“Perhaps there should be. Stealing another’s face… the tricks of Glustrod and his devil-bloods. Arts borrowed from the Other Side—”

“We must use such weapons as we can find. I have no love for Mamun, but he is right. They are called the Hundred Words because they are a hundred. We are two, and time has not been kind to us.”

“Then why do they wait?”

“You know Khalul, brother. Ever careful, watchful, deliberate. He will not risk his children until he must…”

Through the chinks in the bare twigs Ferro watched the three men pass between the guards and out of the gate in the high palace wall. She gave them a few moments, then she started up and strode after, shoulders back, as though she was about important business. She felt the hard stares of the armoured men flanking the gate, but they were used to her coming and going now. For once they kept their silence.

Between the great buildings, around the statues, through the dull gardens she followed the two Magi and their apprentice across the Agriont. She kept her distance, loitering in doorways, under trees, walking close behind those few people hurrying down the windy streets. Sometimes, above the buildings in a square, or at the end of a lane, the top of the great mass of the Maker’s House reared up. Hazy grey through the drizzle to begin with, but growing more black, vast and distinct with each stride she took.

The three men led her to a ramshackle building with crumbling turrets sticking from its sagging roof. Ferro knelt and watched from behind a corner while Bayaz beat on the rickety door with the end of his staff.

“I am glad you did not find the Seed, brother,” said Yulwei, while they waited. “That thing is better left buried.”

“I wonder if you will still think so when the Hundred Words swarm through the streets of the Agriont, howling for our blood?”

“God will forgive me, I think. There are worse things than Khalul’s Eaters.”

Ferro’s nails dug into her palms. There was a figure standing at one of the grimy windows, peering out at Yulwei and Bayaz. A long, lean figure with a black mask and short hair. The woman who had chased her and Ninefingers, long before. Ferro’s hand strayed on an instinct towards her sword, then she realised she had left it in the palace, and cursed her foolishness. Ninefingers had been right. You could never have too many knives.

The door wobbled open, some words were muttered, the two old men went through, Quai at their back, head bowed. The masked woman watched for a while longer, then stepped back from the window into the darkness. Ferro sprang over a hedge as the door wobbled closed, wedged her foot in the gap and slid through sideways, stealing into the deep shadows on the other side. The door clattered shut on its creaking hinges.

Down a long hallway, dusty paintings on one wall, dusty windows in the other. All the way the back of Ferro’s neck prickled, waiting for the black masks to come boiling out of the shadows. But nothing came besides the echoing footsteps up ahead, the mindless droning of the old men’s voices.

“This place has changed,” Yulwei was saying. “Since that day we fought Kanedias. The day the Old Time ended. It rained, then.”

“I remember it.”

“I lay wounded on the bridge, in the rain. I saw them fall, the Maker and his daughter. From on high, they tumbled down. Hard to believe, that I smiled to see it, then. Vengeance is a fleeting thrill. The doubts, we carry to our graves.” Ferro sneered at that. If she could have the vengeance she would live with the doubts.

“Time has brought us both regrets,” muttered Bayaz.

“More of them with every passing year. A strange thing, though. I could have sworn, as I lay there, that it was Kanedias who fell first, and Tolomei second.”

“Memory can tell lies, especially to men who have lived as long as we. The Maker threw down his daughter, then I him. And so the Old Time ended.”

“So it did,” murmured Yulwei. “So much lost. And now we are come to this…”

Quai’s head snapped round and Ferro plastered herself against the wall behind a leaning cabinet. He stood there, for a long moment, frowning towards her. Then he followed the others. Ferro waited, holding her breath, until the three of them turned a corner and passed out of sight.

She caught them up in a crumbling courtyard, choked with dead weeds, littered with broken slates fallen from the roofs above. A man in a stained shirt led them up a long stairway, towards a dark arch high in the high wall of the Agriont. He had a bunch of jingling keys in his gnarled hands, was muttering something about eggs. Once they had passed into the tunnel Ferro padded across the open space and up the steps, pausing near the top.

“We will come back shortly,” she heard Bayaz growling. “Leave the door ajar.”

“It’s always kept locked,” a voice answered. “That’s the rule. It’s been kept locked all my life, and I don’t plan to—”

“Then wait here until we come back! But go nowhere! I have many better things to do than sit waiting on the wrong side of your locked doors!” Keys turned. Old hinges squealed. Ferro’s fingers slid round a loose lump of stone and gripped it tightly.

The man in the dirty shirt was pulling the gates shut as she crept to the top of the steps. He muttered angrily as he fumbled with his keys, metal clinking. There was a dull thump as the stone clubbed him across his bald spot. He gasped, lurched forward, Ferro caught his limp body under the arms and lowered him carefully to the ground.

Then she set the rock down and relieved him of his keys with a hooked finger.

As Ferro lifted her hand to push the doors open, a strange sensation washed over her. Like a cool breeze on a hot day, surprising, at first, then delightful. A shiver, not at all unpleasant, worked its way up her spine and made her breath catch. She pressed her hand to the weathered wood, the grain brushing warm and welcoming against her palm. She eased the door open just wide enough to peer through.

A narrow bridge sprang out from the wall of the Agriont, no more than a stride across, without rail or parapet. At the far end it met the side of the Maker’s House—a soaring cliff of bare rock, shining black with the rain. Bayaz, Yulwei and Quai stood before a gate at the end of that strip of stone. A gate of dark metal, marked in the centre with bright circles. Rings of letters that Ferro did not understand. She watched Bayaz pull something out from the collar of his shirt. She watched the circles begin to move, to turn, to spin, her heart pounding in her ears. The doors moved silently apart. Slowly, reluctantly, almost, the three men passed into that square of blackness, and were gone.

The House of the Maker stood open.

Grey water slapped at hard stone below as Ferro followed them across the bridge. The rain kissed and the wind nipped at her skin. In the distance, smudges of smoke rose from the smouldering city and into the muddy sky, but her eyes were fixed on the yawning portal straight ahead. She loitered on the threshold for a moment, her hands clenched into fists.

Then she stepped into the darkness.

It was neither cold nor warm on the other side of the gate. The air was so still, and flat, and silent that it seemed to weigh heavily on Ferro’s shoulders, to press at her ears. A few muffled steps and the light had all faded. Wind, and rain, and the open sky were dimly remembered dreams. She felt she walked a hundred miles beneath the dead earth. Time itself seemed to have stopped. Ferro crept up to a wide archway and peered through.

The hall beyond was like a temple, but it would have swallowed whole even the great temple in Shaffa, where thousands called hourly out to God. It dwarfed the lofty dome where Jezal dan Luthar had been given a crown. It was an expanse that made even the vastness of ruined Aulcus seem petty. A place crowded with solemn shadows, peopled with sullen echoes, bounded by angry, unyielding stone. The tomb of long-dead giants.

The grave of forgotten gods.

Yulwei and Bayaz stood at its centre. Tiny, insect figures in an ocean of gleaming darkness. Ferro pressed herself to the cold rock, striving to pick their words out from the sea of echoes.

“Go to the armoury and find some of the Maker’s blades. I will go up, and bring… that other thing.”

Bayaz turned away, but Yulwei caught him by the arm. “First answer me one question, brother.”

“What question?”

“The same one I always ask.”

“Again? Even now? Very well, if you must. Ask.”

The two old men stood still for the longest time. Until the last echoes had faded and left only a silence as heavy as lead. Ferro held her breath.

“Did you kill Juvens?” Yulwei’s whisper hissed through the darkness. “Did you kill our master?”

Bayaz did not flinch. “I made mistakes, long ago. Many mistakes, I know. Some out in the ruined west. Some here, in this place. The day does not pass when I do not regret them. I fought with Khalul. I ignored my master’s wisdom. I trespassed in the House of the Maker. I fell in love with his daughter. I was proud, and vain, and rash, all this is true. But I did not kill Juvens.”

“What happened that day?”

The First of the Magi spoke the words as though they were lines long rehearsed. “Kanedias came to take me. For seducing his daughter. For stealing his secrets. Juvens would not give me up. They fought, I fled. The fury of their battle lit the skies. When I returned, the Maker was gone, and our master was dead. I did not kill Juvens.”

Again a long silence, and Ferro watched, frozen. “Very well.” Yulwei let fall his hand from Bayaz’ arm. “Mamun lied, then. Khalul lied. We will fight against them together.”

“Good, my old friend, good. I knew that I could trust you, as you can trust me.” Ferro curled her lip. Trust. It was a word that only liars used. A word the truthful had no need of. The First of the Magi’s footsteps rang out as he strode towards one of the many archways and vanished into the gloom.

Yulwei watched him go. Then he gave a sharp sigh, and padded off in the other direction, his bangles jingling on his thin arms. The echoes of his passing slowly faded, and Ferro was left alone with the shadows, wrapped in silence.

Slowly, carefully, she crept forwards into that immense emptiness. The floor glittered—snaking lines of bright metal, set into the black rock. The ceiling, if there was one, was shrouded in darkness. A high balcony ran around the walls a good twenty strides up, another far above that, then another, and another, vague in the half-light. Above all, a beautiful device hung. Rings of dark metal, great and small, gleaming discs and shining circles, marked with strange writings. All moving. All revolving, one ring about the other, and at their centre a black ball, the one point of perfect stillness.

She turned round, and round, or perhaps she stood still and the room turned about her. She felt dizzy, drunken, breathless. The bare rock soared away into the black, rough stones without mortar, no two alike. Ferro tried to imagine how many stones the tower was made of.

Thousands. Millions.

What had Bayaz said, on the island at the edge of the World? Where does the wise man hide a stone? Among a thousand. Among a million. The rings high above shifted gently. They pulled at her, and the black ball in the centre pulled at her most of all. Like a beckoning hand. Like a voice calling out her name.

She dug her fingers into the dry spaces between the stones and began to climb, hand over hand, up and up. It was easily done. As though the wall was meant to be climbed. Soon she swung her legs over the metal rail of the first balcony. On again, without pausing for breath, up and up. She reached the second balcony, sticky with sweat in the dead air. She reached the third, breath rasping. She gripped the rail of the fourth, and pulled herself over. She stood, staring down.

Far below, at the bottom of a black abyss, the whole Circle of the World lay on the round floor of the hall. A map, the coastlines picked out in shining metal. Level with Ferro, filling almost all the space within the gently curving gallery, suspended on wires no thicker than threads, the great mechanism slowly revolved.

She frowned at the black ball in its centre, her palms tingling. It seemed to hover there, without support. She should have wondered how that could be, but all she could think about was how much she wanted to touch it. Needed to. She had no choice. One of the metal circles drifted close to her, gleaming dully.

Sometimes it is best to seize the moment.

She sprang up onto the rail, crouched there for an instant, gathering herself. She did not think. Thinking would have been madness. She leapt into empty space, limbs flailing. The whole machine wobbled and swayed as she caught hold of its outermost ring. She swung underneath, hanging breathless. Slowly, delicately, her tongue pressed into the roof of her mouth, she pulled herself up by her arms, hooked her legs over the metal and dragged herself along it. Soon it brought her close to a wide disc, scored with grooves, and she clambered from one to the other, body trembling with effort. The cool metal quivered under her weight, twisting and flexing, wobbling with her every movement, threatening to shrug her off into the empty void. Ferro might have had no fear in her.

But plunges of a hundred strides onto the hardest of hard rock still demanded her deep respect.

So she slithered out, from one ring to another, hardly daring even to breathe. She told herself there was no drop. She was only climbing trees, sliding between their branches, the way she had when she was a child, before the Gurkish came. Finally she caught hold of the innermost ring. She clung to it, furious tight, waiting until its own movement brought her close to the centre. She hung down, legs crossed around the frail metal, one hand gripping it, the other reaching out towards that gleaming black ball.

She could see her rigid face reflected in its perfect surface, her clawing hand, swollen and distorted. She strained forward with every nerve, teeth gritted. Closer, and closer yet. All that mattered was to touch it. The very tip of her middle finger brushed against it and, like a bubble bursting, it vanished into empty mist.

Something dropped free, falling, slowly, as if it sank through water. Ferro watched it tumble away from her, a darker spot in the inky darkness, down, and down. It struck the floor with a boom that seemed to shake the very foundations of the Maker’s House, filled the hall with crashing echoes. The ring that Ferro clung to trembled and for a giddy instant she nearly lost her grip. When she managed to haul herself back she realised that it had stopped moving.

The whole device was still.

It seemed to take her an age to clamber back across the motionless rings to the topmost gallery, to make the long descent down the towering walls. When she finally dropped to the floor of the cavernous chamber her clothes were torn, her hands, elbows, knees grazed and bloody, but she scarcely noticed. She ran across the wide floor, her footsteps ringing out. Towards the very centre of the hall, where the thing that had fallen from above still lay.

It looked like nothing more than an uneven chunk of dark stone the size of a big fist. But this was no stone, and Ferro knew it. She felt something leaking from it, pouring from it, flooding out in thrilling waves. Something that could not be seen, or touched, and yet filled the whole space to its darkest reaches. Invisible, yet irresistible, it flowed tingling around her and dragged her forwards.

Ferro’s heart thumped at her ribs as her footsteps drew close. Her mouth flooded with hungry spit as she knelt beside it. Her breath clawed in her throat as she reached out, palm itching. Her hand closed around its pocked and pitted surface. Very heavy, and very cold, as if it were a chunk of frozen lead. She lifted it slowly up, turning it in her hand, watching it glitter in the darkness, fascinated.

“The Seed.”

Bayaz stood in one of the archways, face trembling with an ugly mixture of horror and delight. “Leave, Ferro, now! Take it to the palace.” He flinched, raised one arm, as if to shield his eyes from a blinding glare. “The box is in my chambers. Put it inside, and seal it tight, do you hear me? Seal it tight!”

Ferro turned away, scowling, not sure now which of the archways led out of the Maker’s House.

“Wait!” Quai was padding across the floor towards her, his gleaming eyes fixed on her hand. “Stay!” He showed no trace of fear as he came closer. Only an awful kind of hunger, strange enough that Ferro took a step away. “It was here. Here, all along.” His face looked pale, slack, full of shadows. “The Seed.” His white hand crept through the darkness towards her. “At last. Give it to—”

He crumpled up like discarded paper, was ripped from his feet and flung away the whole width of the vast room in the time it took Ferro to drag in one stunned breath. He hit the wall just below the lowest balcony with an echoing crunch. She watched open-mouthed as his shattered body bounced off and tumbled to the ground, broken limbs flopping.

Bayaz stepped forward, his staff clenched tightly in his fist. The air around his shoulders was still shimmering ever so slightly. Ferro had killed many men, of course, and shed no tears. But the speed of this shocked even her.

“What did you do?” she hissed, the echoes of Quai’s fatal impact with the far wall still thudding about them.

“What I had to. Get to the palace. Now.” Bayaz stabbed at one of the archways with a heavy finger, and Ferro saw the faintest glimmer of light inside it. “Put that thing into the box! You cannot imagine how dangerous it is!”

Few people liked taking orders less, but Ferro had no wish to stay in this place. She stuffed the lump of rock down inside her shirt. It felt right there, pressed against her stomach. Cool and comforting, for all Bayaz called it dangerous. She took one step, and as her boot slapped down a grating chuckle floated up from the far side of the hall.

From where Quai’s ruined corpse had fallen.

Bayaz did not seem surprised. “So!” he shouted. “You show yourself at last! I have suspected for some time that you were not who you appeared to be! Where is my apprentice, and when did you replace him?”

“Months ago.” Quai was still chuckling as he pushed himself slowly up from the polished floor. “Before you left on your fool’s errand to the Old Empire.” There was no blood on his smiling face. Not so much as a graze. “I sat beside you, at the fire. I watched you while you lay helpless in that cart. I was with you all the way, to the edge of the World and back. Your apprentice stayed here. I left his half-eaten corpse in the bushes for the flies, not twenty strides from where you and the Northman soundly slept.”

“Huh.” Bayaz tossed his staff from one hand to the other. “I thought I noted a sharp improvement in your skills. You should have killed me then, when you had the chance.”

“Oh, there is time now.” Ferro shivered as she watched Quai stand. The hall seemed to have grown suddenly very cold.

“A hundred words? Perhaps. One word?” Bayaz’ lip curled. “I think not. Which of Khalul’s creatures are you? The East Wind? One of those damned twins?”

“I am not one of Khalul’s creatures.”

The faintest flicker of doubt passed over Bayaz’ face. “Who, then?”

“We knew each other well, in times long past.”

The First of the Magi frowned. “Who are you? Speak!”

“Taking forms.” A woman’s voice, soft and low. Something was happening to Quai’s face as he paced slowly forward. His pale skin drooped, twisted. “A dread and insidious trick.” His nose, his eyes, his lips began to melt, running off his skull like wax down a candle. “Do you not remember me, Bayaz?” Another face showed itself beneath, a hard face, white as pale marble. “You said that you would love me forever.” The air was icy chill. Ferro’s breath was smoking before her mouth. “You promised me that we would never be parted. When I opened my father’s gate to you…”

“No!” Bayaz took a faltering step back.

“You look surprised. Not as surprised as I was, when instead of taking me in your arms you threw me down from the roof, eh, my love? And why? So that you could keep your secrets? So that you could seem noble?” Quai’s long hair had turned white as chalk. It floated now about a woman’s face, terribly pale, eyes two bright, black points. Tolomei. The Maker’s daughter. A ghost, stepped out of the faded past. A ghost that had walked beside them for months, wearing a stolen shape. Ferro could almost feel her icy breath, cold as death on the air. Her eyes flickered from that pale face to the archway, far away across the floor, caught between wanting to run, and needing to know more.

“I saw you in your grave!” whispered Bayaz. “I piled the earth over you myself.”

“So you did, and wept when you did, as though you had not been the one to throw me down.” Her black eyes swivelled to Ferro, to where the Seed lay tingling against her belly. “But I had touched the Other Side. In these two hands I had held it, while my father worked, and it had left me altered. There I lay, in the earth’s cold embrace. Between life and death. Until I heard the voices. The voices that Glustrod heard, long ago. They offered me a bargain. My freedom for theirs.”

“You broke the First Law!”

“Laws mean nothing to the buried! When I finally clawed my way from the grasping earth the human part of me was gone. But the other part, the part that belongs to the world below—that cannot die. It stands before you. Now I will complete the work that Glustrod began. I will throw open the doors that my grandfather sealed. This world and the Other Side shall be one. As they were before the Old Time. As they were always meant to be.” She held out her open hand, and a bitter chill flowed from it and sent shivers across Ferro’s back to the tips of her fingers. “Give me the Seed, child. I made a promise to the Tellers of Secrets, and I keep the promises I make.”

“We shall see!” snarled the First of the Magi. Ferro felt the tugging in her stomach, saw the air around Bayaz begin to blur. Tolomei stood ten strides away from him. The next instant she struck him with a sound like a thunderclap. His staff burst apart, splintered wood flying. He gave a shocked splutter as he flew through the darkness, rolled over and over across the cold stone to lie face down in a crumpled heap. Ferro stared as a wave of freezing air washed over her. She felt a sick and terrible fear, all the worse for being unfamiliar. She stood frozen.

“The years have made you weak.” The Maker’s daughter moved slowly now, silently towards Bayaz’ senseless body, her white hair flowing out behind her like the ripples on a frosty pool. “Your Art cannot harm me.” She stood over him, her dry white lips spreading into an icy smile. “For all you took from me. For my father.” She raised her foot above Bayaz’ bald head. “For myself—”

She burst into brilliant flames. Harsh light flickered to the furthest corners of the cavernous chamber, brightness stabbed into the very cracks between the stones. Ferro stumbled back, holding one hand over her eyes. Between her fingers she saw Tolomei reel madly across the floor, thrashing and dancing, white flames wreathing her body, her hair a coiling tongue of fire.

She flopped to the ground, the darkness closing back in, smoke pouring up in a reeking cloud. Yulwei padded out from one of the archways, his dark skin shining with sweat. He held a bundle of swords under one scrawny arm. Swords of dull metal, like the one that Ninefingers had carried, each marked with a single silver letter. “Are you alright, Ferro?”

“I…” The fire had brought no warmth with it. Ferro’s teeth were rattling, the hall had grown so cold. “I…”

“Go.” Yulwei frowned at Tolomei’s body as the last flames died. Ferro finally found the strength to move, began to back away. She felt a bitter sinking in her gut as she watched the Maker’s daughter climb up, the ash of Quai’s clothes sliding from her body. She stood, tall and deathly lean, naked and as bald as Bayaz, her hair all seared away to grey dust. There was not so much as a mark on her corpse-pale skin, gleaming flawless white.

“Always there is something more.” She glared at Yulwei with her flat black eyes. “No fire can burn me, conjuror. You cannot stop me.”

“But I must try.” The Magus flung his swords into the air. They turned, spun, edges glittering, spreading apart in the darkness, drifting impossibly sideways. They began to fly around Yulwei and Ferro in a whirling circle. Faster and faster until they were a blur of deadly metal. Close enough that if Ferro had reached out, her hand would have been snatched off at the wrist.

“Stand still,” said Yulwei.

That hardly needed saying. Ferro felt a surge of anger, hot and familiar. “First I should run, then stand still? First the Seed is at the Edge of the World, and now it is here at the centre? First she is dead and now she has stolen another’s face? You old bastards need to get your stories straight.”

“They are liars!” snarled Tolomei, and Ferro felt the cold of her freezing breath wash over her cheek and chill her to the bone. “Users! You cannot trust them!”

“But I can trust you?” Ferro snorted her contempt. “Fuck yourself!”

Tolomei nodded slowly. “Then die, along with the rest.” She padded sideways, balanced on her toes, rings of white frost spreading out wherever her bare feet touched the ground. “You cannot keep juggling your knives forever, old man.”

Over her white shoulder, Ferro saw Bayaz get slowly to his feet, holding one arm with the other, rigid face scratched and bloody. Something dangled from his limp fist—a long mass of metal tubes with a hook on the end, dull metal gleaming in the darkness. His eyes rolled to the far-off ceiling, veins bulging from his neck with effort as the air began to twist around him. Ferro felt that sucking in her gut and her eyes were drawn upwards. Up to the great machine that hung above their heads. It began to tremble.

“Shit,” she muttered, starting to back away.

If Tolomei noticed, she showed no sign. She bent her knees and sprang high into the air, a white streak over the spinning swords. She hung above for an instant, then plummeted down towards Yulwei. She crashed into the floor, knees first, the impact making the ground shake. A splinter of stone grazed Ferro’s cheek and she felt a blast of icy wind against her face, lurched a step back.

The Maker’s daughter frowned up. “You do not die easily, old man,” she snarled as the echoes faded.

Ferro could not tell how Yulwei had avoided her, but now he danced away, his hands moving in slow circles, bangles jingling, swords still tumbling through the air behind him. “I have been working at it all my life. You do not die easily either.”

The Maker’s daughter stood and faced him. “I do not die.”

High above the huge device lurched, cables pinging as they snapped, whipping in the darkness. With an almost dreamlike slowness, it began to fall. Glittering metal twisted, flexed, shrieked as it tumbled down. Ferro turned and ran. Five breathless strides and she flung herself down, sliding flat on her face across the polished rock. She felt the Seed digging into her stomach, the wind of the spinning swords ripping close to her back as she passed just beneath them.

The great machine hit the floor behind her with a noise like the music of hell. Each ring made a vast cymbal, a giant’s gong. Each struck its own mad note, a screaming, clanging, booming of tortured metal, loud enough to make every one of Ferro’s bones buzz. She looked up to see one great disc reel past her, clattering on its edge, striking bright sparks from the floor. Another flew into the air, spinning crazily like a flipped coin. She gasped as she rolled out of its way, scrambled back as it crashed into the ground beside her.

Where Yulwei and Tolomei had faced each other there was a hill of twisted metal, of broken rings and leaning discs, bent rods and tangled cables. Ferro struggled dizzily to her feet, a fury of discordant echoes ripping about the hall. Splinters dropped around her, pinging from the polished floor. Fragments were scattered the width of the hall, glinting in the shadows like stars in the night sky.

She had no idea who was dead and who alive.

“Out!” Bayaz growled at her through gritted teeth, face a twisted mask of pain. “Out! Go!”

“Yulwei,” she muttered, “is he—”

“I will come back for him!” Bayaz flailed at her with his good arm. “Go!”

There are times to fight, and there are times to run, and Ferro knew well the difference. The Gurkish had taught it to her, deep in the Badlands. The archway jerked and wobbled as she sprinted towards it. Her own breath roared in her ears. She leaped over a gleaming wheel of metal, boots slapping at the smooth stone. She was almost at the archway. She felt a bitter chill at her side, a rush of sick terror. She flung herself forwards.

Tolomei’s white hand missed Ferro by a whisker, tore a great chunk of stone from the wall and filled the air with dust.

“You go nowhere!”

Time to run, perhaps, but Ferro’s patience was all worn down. As she sprang up her fist already swinging, all the fury of her wasted months, her wasted years, her wasted life behind it. Her knuckles hit Tolomei’s jaw with a sharp crunch. It was like punching a block of ice. There was no pain as her hand broke, but she felt her wrist buckle, her arm go numb. Too late to worry on it. Her other fist was on its way.

Tolomei snatched her arm from the air before it touched her, dragged Ferro close, twisting her helpless onto her knees with awful, irresistible strength. “The Seed!” The hissing words froze across Ferro’s face, snatching her breath out in a sick groan, her skin burning where Tolomei held her. She felt her bones twist, then snap, her forearm clicking sideways like a broken stick. A white hand crept through the shadows towards the lump in Ferro’s shirt.

There was a sudden light, a brilliant curve of it that lit the whole chamber for a blinding instant. Ferro heard a piercing shriek and she was free, sprawling on her back. Tolomei’s hand was sliced off cleanly just above the wrist, leaving a bloodless stump. A great wound was scored down the smooth wall and deep into the floor, molten stone running from it, bubbling and sizzling. Smoke curled from the strange weapon in Bayaz’ hand as he lurched from the shadows, the hook at its end still glowing orange. Tolomei gave an icy scream, one hand clawing at him.

Bayaz roared mindlessly back at her, his eyes narrowed, his bloody mouth wide open. Ferro felt a twisting at her stomach, so savage she was bent over, almost dragged to her knees. The Maker’s daughter was snatched up and blasted away, one white heel tearing a long scar through the map on the floor, gouging through rock and ripping up metal.

The wreck of the grand device was blown apart behind her, its ruined pieces scattered glittering in the darkness like leaves on the wind. Tolomei was a flailing shape in a storm of flying metal. She hit the distant wall with an earth-shaking boom, flinging out chunks of broken stone. A hail of twisted fragments rattled, rang, clanged against the rock around her. Rings, pins, slivers like dagger blades wedged into the wall, making the whole great curve of stone a giant bed of nails.

Bayaz’ eyes bulged, his gaunt face wet with sweat. “Die, devil!” he bellowed.

Dust filtered down, rock began to shift. Cold laughter echoed out across the hall. Ferro scrambled back, heels kicking at the smooth stone, and she ran. Her broken hand shuddered over the wall of the tunnel, her broken arm dangled. A square of light came jolting towards her. The door of the Maker’s House.

She tottered out into the air, stinging bright after the shadows, the thin rain warm after Tolomei’s freezing touch. The Seed still weighed heavy in her shirt, rough and comforting against her skin.

“Run!” came Bayaz’ voice from the darkness. “To the palace!” Ferro tottered across the bridge, clumsy feet slipping on wet stone, cold water lurching far below. “Put it in the box, and seal it tight!” She heard an echoing boom behind her, metal clashing against metal, but she did not look back.

She shouldered her way through the open doors in the wall of the Agriont, nearly tripping over the doorman, sitting against the wall where she had left him with one hand clasped to his head. She sprang over him as he cringed away, flew down the steps three at a time, across the crumbling courtyard, down the dusty corridors, sparing no thought for masked figures or for anyone else. They seemed a pitiful, everyday sort of threat, now. She could still feel the icy breath on her neck.

Nothing mattered but to put it far behind her.

She slid up to the door, fumbled at the bolt with the heel of her broken hand, burst out into the drizzle and pounded down the wet streets the way she had come. The people in the lanes and squares stumbled back out of her way, shocked at the sight of her, desperate and bloody. Angry voices echoed after her but she ignored them, turned a corner onto a wide street between grey buildings and nearly slid right over on the wet stones.

A great crowd of dishevelled people were choking the road. Women, children, old men, dirty and shambling.

“Out of my way!” she screamed, and started to force a path through. “Move!” The story Bayaz had told on the endless plain nagged at the back of her mind. How the soldiers had found the Seed in the ruins of Aulcus. How they had withered and died. She pushed and kicked and shouldered her way through the press. “Move!” She tore free of them and sprinted off down the empty street, her broken arm held against her body, against the thing inside her shirt.

She ran across the park, leaves fluttering down from the trees with each chilly gust. The high wall of the palace rose up where the lawns ended and Ferro made for the gate. The two guards still flanked it just as they always did, and she knew they were watching her. They might have let her out, but they were not so keen on letting her in, especially filthy, bloody, covered in dirt and sweat, and running as if she had a devil at her heels.

“Wait, you!” Ferro made to duck past them but one grabbed hold of her.

“Let me go you fucking pink fools!” she hissed. “You don’t understand!” She tried to twist away, and a gilded halberd fell to the ground as one of the guards wrapped his arms around her.

“Explain it, then!” snapped out from behind the visor of the other. “Why the hurry?” His gauntleted fist reached out towards the bulge in her shirt. “What have you got—”

“No!” Ferro hissed and squirmed, stumbled against the wall bearing one guard clanking back into the archway. The halberd of the other swung down smoothly, its glittering point levelled at Ferro’s chest.

“Hold still!” he growled, “before I—”

“Let her in! Now!” Sulfur stood on the other side of the gates, and for once he was not smiling. The guard’s head turned doubtfully towards him. “Now!” he roared, “in the name of Lord Bayaz!”

They let her free and Ferro tore away, cursing. She ran through the gardens, into the palace, boots echoing in the hallways, servants and guards moving suspiciously out of her way. She found the door of Bayaz’ rooms and fumbled it open, stumbled through. The box sat open on a table near the window, an unremarkable block of dark metal. She strode across to it, unbuttoned her shirt and pulled out the thing inside.

A dark, heavy stone, the size of a fist. Its dull surface was still cold, no warmer than when she had first picked it up. Her hand tingled pleasantly, as if at the touch of an old friend. It made her angry, somehow, to even think of letting go.

So this, at last, was the Seed. The Other Side, made flesh. The very stuff of magic. She remembered the blighted ruins of Aulcus. The dead expanse of the land around it, for a hundred miles in every direction. Power enough to send the Emperor, and the Prophet, and his cursed Eaters, and the whole nation of Gurkhul to hell, and more besides. Power so terrible that it should have belonged to God alone, held now, in her frail fist. She stared down at it for a long time. Then, slowly, Ferro began to smile.

Now she would have vengeance.

The sound of heavy footsteps in the corridor outside brought her suddenly to her senses. She dropped the Seed into its resting place, jerked her hand away with an effort and snapped the lid of the box closed. As if a candle flame had been suddenly blown out in a darkened room, the world seemed dimmer, weaker, robbed of excitement. It was only then that she realised her hand was whole. She frowned down at it, working her fingers. They moved as easily as ever, not the slightest swelling around knuckles she had been sure were shattered. Her other arm too, the forearm straight and smooth, no sign of a mark where Tolomei’s freezing fingers had crushed it. Ferro looked towards the box. She had always healed quickly. But bones set, within an hour?

That was not right.

Bayaz dragged himself grimacing through the doorway. There was dry blood caked to his beard, a sheen of sweat across his bald head. He was breathing hard, skin pale and twitching, one arm pressed to his side. He looked like a man who had spent the afternoon fighting a devil, and had only just survived.

“Where is Yulwei?”

The First of the Magi stared back at her. “You know where he is.”

Ferro remembered the echoing bang as she ran from the tower. Like the sound of a door being shut. A door that no blade, no fire, no magic could open. Bayaz alone had the key. “You did not go back. You sealed the gates with them inside.”

“Sacrifices must be made, Ferro, you know this. I have made a great sacrifice today. My own brother.” The First of the Magi hobbled across the room towards her. “Tolomei broke the First Law. She struck a deal with the Tellers of Secrets. She meant to use the Seed to open the gates to the world below. She could be more dangerous than all of Khalul’s Eaters. The House of the Maker must remain sealed. Until the end of time, if need be. An outcome not without irony. She began her life imprisoned in that tower. Now she has returned. History moves in circles, just as Juvens always said. “

Ferro frowned. “Fuck your circles, pink. You lied to me. About Tolomei. About the Maker. About everything.”

“And?”

She frowned even harder. “Yulwei was a good man. He helped me in the desert. He saved my life.”

“And mine, more than once. But good men will only go so far along dark paths.” Bayaz’ bright eyes slid down to rest on the cube of dark metal under Ferro’s hand. “Others must walk the rest of the way.”

Sulfur stepped through the doorway, and Bayaz pulled the weapon he had brought from the House of the Maker from under his coat, grey metal glinting in the soft light from the windows. A relic of the Old Time. A weapon that Ferro had seen cut stone as if it was butter. Sulfur took it from him with a nervous respect, wrapped it carefully in an old oilskin. Then he nipped open his satchel and slid out the old black book that Ferro had seen once before. “Now?” he muttered.

“Now.” Bayaz took it from him, placed his hand gently on the scarred cover, closed his eyes and took a long breath. When he opened them he was looking straight at Ferro. “The paths we must walk now, you and I, are dark indeed. You have seen it.”

She had no answer. Yulwei had been a good man, but the gate of the Maker’s House was sealed, and he was gone to heaven, or to hell. Ferro had buried many men, in many ways. One more pile of dirt in the desert was nothing to remark upon. She was sick of stealing her revenge one grain at a time. Dark paths did not scare her. She had been walking them all her life. Even through the metal of the box, she thought that she heard the barest hint of a whisper, calling to her. “All I want is vengeance.”

“And you shall have it, just as I promised.”

She stood face to face with Bayaz, and she shrugged. “Then what does it matter now, who killed who a thousand years ago?”

The First of the Magi smiled a sickly smile, his eyes bright in his pale and bloody face. “You speak my very thoughts.”

Tomorrow’s Hero

The hooves of Jezal’s grey charger clopped obediently in the black mud. It was a magnificent beast, the very kind he had always dreamed of riding. Several thousand marks-worth of horse flesh, he did not doubt. A steed that could give any man who sat on it, however worthless, the air of royalty. His shining armour was of the best Styrian steel, chased with gold. His cloak was of the finest Suljuk silk, trimmed with ermine. The hilt of his sword was crusted with diamonds, twinkling as the clouds flowed overhead to let the sun peep through. He had foregone the crown today in favour of a simple golden circlet, its weight considerably less wearisome on the sore spots he had developed round his temples.

All the trappings of majesty. Ever since he was a child, Jezal had dreamed of being exalted, worshipped, obeyed. Now the whole business made him want to be sick. Although that might only have been because he had scarcely slept last night, and scarcely eaten that morning.

Lord Marshal Varuz rode on Jezal’s right, looking as if age had suddenly caught up with him. He seemed shrunken in his uniform, stooped and slump-shouldered. His movements had lost their steely precision, his eyes their icy focus. He had developed, somehow, the very slightest hint of not knowing what to do.

“Fighting still continues in the Arches, your Majesty,” he was explaining, “but we have only toe-holds there. The Gurkish have the Three Farms under firm control. They moved their catapults forward to the canal, and last night they threw incendiaries far into the central district. As far as the Middleway and beyond. Fires were burning until dawn. Still are burning, in some parts. The damage has been… extensive.”

A crashing understatement. Whole sections of the city had been devastated by fire. Whole rows of buildings, that Jezal remembered as grand houses, busy taverns, clattering workshops, reduced to blackened wreckage. Looking at them was as horrifying as seeing an old lover open their mouth to reveal two rows of shattered teeth. The reek of smoke, and burning, and death clawed constantly at Jezal’s throat and had reduced his voice to a gravely croak.

A man streaked with ash and dirt looked up from picking through the wreckage of a still-smoking house. He stared at Jezal and his guards as they trotted past.

“Where is my son?” he shrieked suddenly. “Where is my son?”

Jezal carefully looked away and gave his horse the slightest suggestion of a spur. He did not need to offer his conscience any further weapons with which to stab at him. It was already exceedingly well armed.

“Arnault’s Wall still holds, though, your Majesty.” Varuz spoke considerably louder than was necessary in a futile effort to smother the heartbroken wails still ringing through the ruins behind them. “Not a single Gurkish soldier has yet set foot in the central district of the city. Not one.”

Jezal wondered how much longer they would be able to make that boast. “Have we received any news from Lord Marshal West?” he demanded for the second time that hour, the tenth time that day.

Varuz gave Jezal the same answer he would no doubt receive ten times more before descending into a fitful sleep that night. “I regret that we are almost utterly cut off, your Majesty. News arrives but rarely through the Gurkish cordon. But there have been storms off Angland. We must face the possibility that the army will be delayed.”

“Black luck,” murmured Bremer dan Gorst from the other side, his narrow eyes flickering endlessly over the ruins for the slightest sign of any threat. Jezal chewed worriedly at the salty remnant of his thumbnail. He could scarcely remember the last shred of good news. Storms. Delays. Even the elements were ranged against them, it seemed.

Varuz had nothing to lift the mood. “And now illness has broken out in the Agriont. A swift and merciless plague. A large group of the civilians to whom you opened the gates have succumbed, all at once. It has extended to the palace itself. Two Knights of the Body have already died from it. One day they were standing guard at the gate, as always. The next night they were in their coffins. Their bodies withered, their teeth rotted, their hair fell out. The corpses are burned, but more cases appear. The physicians have never seen the like before, have no notion of a cure. Some are saying it is a Gurkish curse.”

Jezal swallowed. The magnificent city, the work of so many pairs of hands over long centuries, it had taken only a few short weeks of his tender care to transform into charred wreckage. Its proud people were mostly reduced to stinking beggars, to shrieking wounded, to wailing mourners. Those who had not been reduced to corpses. He was the most pathetic excuse for a king the Union could ever have spawned. He could not bring happiness to his own bitter sham of a marriage, let alone a nation. His reputation was all based on lies that he had not the courage to deny. He was a powerless, spineless, helpless cipher.

“Whereabouts are we now?” he mumbled as they rode out into a great, windswept space.

“Why, this is the Four Corners, your Majesty.”

“This? This cannot…” He trailed off, recognition coming as sharply as a slap in the face.

Only two walls of the building that had once been the Mercers’ guildhall still stood, windows and doorways gaping like the stricken features of corpses, frozen at the moment of their deaths. The paving where hundreds of merry stalls had once been set out was cracked and caked with sticky soot. The gardens were leafless patches of mud and burned briar. The air should have been ringing with the calls of traders, the prattle of servants, the laughter of children. Instead it was deadly silent but for a cold wind hissing through the wreckage, sweeping waves of black grit through the heart of the city.

Jezal pulled on his reins, and his escort of some twenty Knights of the Body, five Knights Herald, a dozen of Varuz’ staff and a nervous page or two clattered to a halt around him. Gorst frowned up towards the sky. “Your Majesty, we should move on. It is not safe here. We do not know when the Gurkish will begin their bombardment again.”

Jezal ignored him, swung down from his saddle and walked out into the wreckage. It was difficult to believe that it was the same place where he had once bought wine, shopped for trinkets, been measured for a new uniform. Not one hundred strides away, on the other side of a row of smoking ruins, stood the statue of Harod the Great where he had met Ardee in the darkness, it seemed a hundred years ago.

A sorry group were clustered near there now, round the edge of a trampled garden. Women and children, mostly, and a few old men. Dirty and despairing, several with crutches or bloody bandages, clutching salvaged oddments. Those rendered homeless in last night’s fires, last night’s fighting. Jezal’s breath caught in his throat. Ardee was one of them, sitting on a stone in a thin dress, shivering and staring at the ground, her dark hair fallen across half of her face. He started towards her, the first time he had smiled in what felt like weeks.

“Ardee.” She turned, eyes wide open, and Jezal froze. A different girl, younger and considerably less attractive. She blinked up at him, rocking slowly back and forward. His hands twitched ineffectually, he mumbled something incoherent. They were all watching him. He could hardly just walk off. “Please, take this.” He fumbled with the gilded clasps on his crimson cloak and held it out to her.

She said nothing as she took it from him, only stared. A ridiculous, worthless gesture, almost offensive in its burning hypocrisy. But the rest of the homeless civilians did not seem to think so.

“A cheer for King Jezal!” someone shouted, and a rousing clamour went up.

A young lad on a crutch gazed at him with moon-eyed desperation. A soldier had a bloody bandage over one eye, the other rimmed with proud moisture. A mother clutched a baby wrapped in what looked horribly like a shred of cloth from a fallen Union flag. It was as if the whole scene had been carefully posed for the greatest emotional impact. A set of painter’s models for a lurid and ham-fisted piece on the horrors of war.

“King Jezal!” came the shout again, accompanied by a weak, “Hurrah!”

Their adulation was like poison to him. It only made the great weight of responsibility press down all the heavier. He turned away, unable to maintain his twisted mockery of a smile one instant longer.

“What have I done?” he whispered, his hands tugging ceaselessly at each other. “What have I done?” He clambered back up into the saddle, guilt picking at his guts. “Take me closer to Arnault’s Wall.”

“Your Majesty, I hardly think that—”

“You heard me! Closer to the fighting. I want to see it.”

Varuz frowned. “Very well.” He turned his horse, led Jezal and his bodyguard off in the direction of the Arches, down routes that were so familiar, and yet so horribly changed. After a few nervous minutes the Lord Marshal pulled up his mount, pointing down a deserted lane to the west. He spoke softly, as though worried the enemy might hear them.

“Arnault’s Wall is no more than three hundred strides that way, and the Gurkish are crawling on the other side. We really should turn—”

Jezal felt a faint vibration through his saddle, his horse started, dust filtered from the roofs of the houses on one side of the street.

He was just opening his mouth to ask what had happened when the air was ripped open by a thunderous noise. A crushing, terrifying wall of sound that left Jezal’s ears humming. Men gasped and gaped. The horses milled and kicked, their eyes rolling with fear. Varuz’ mount reared up, dumping the old soldier unceremoniously from his saddle.

Jezal paid him no mind, he was too busy urging his own horse keenly in the direction of the blast, seized by an awful curiosity. Small stones had started raining down, pinging from the roofs and clattering into the road like hailstones. A great cloud of brown dust was rising up into the sky to the west.

“Your Majesty!” came Gorst’s plaintive cry. “We should turn back!” But Jezal took no notice.

He rode out into a wide square, a great quantity of rubble scattered across the broken paving, some of it in chunks big as sheds. As the choking dust slowly settled in an eerie silence, Jezal realised that he knew the place. Knew it well. There was a tavern he had used to visit on the north side, but something was changed—it was more open than it had been… his jaw fell. A long stretch of Arnault’s Wall had formed the western boundary of the square. Now there was nothing but a yawning crater.

The Gurkish must have dug a mine and filled it with their damned blasting powder. The sun chose that moment to break through the clouds above and Jezal could see all the way across the gaping fissure and into the ruined Arches district. There, crowding at the far edge, clambering down the rubble strewn slope with armour glinting and spears waving, was a sizeable body of Gurkish soldiers.

The first of them were already climbing up out of the crater and into the remains of the shattered square. A few semi-conscious defenders were crawling through the dust, choking and spitting. Others were not moving at all. There was no one to turn the Gurkish back, that Jezal could see. No one but him. He wondered what Harod the Great would have done in this spot.

The answer was not so very hard to find.

Courage can come from many places, and be made of many things, and yesterday’s coward can become tomorrow’s hero in an instant if the time is right. The giddy flood of bravery which Jezal experienced at that moment consisted largely of guilt and fear, and shame at his fear, swollen by a peevish frustration at nothing having turned out the way he had hoped, and a sudden vague awareness that being killed might solve a great number of irritating problems to which he saw no solution. Not noble ingredients, to be sure. But no one ever asks what the baker put in his pie as long as it tastes well.

He drew his sword and held it up to the sunlight. “Knights of the Body!” he roared. “With me!”

Gorst made a despairing grab at his reins. “Your Majesty! You cannot put yourself in—”

Jezal gave his mount the spurs. It sprang forward with unexpected vigour, and his head snapped painfully back almost causing him to lose his grip on the reins. He rolled in the saddle, hooves hammering, the dirty paving flying by beneath him. He was dimly aware of his escort following, some distance behind, but his attention was rather drawn to the ever-increasing body of Gurkish soldiers directly ahead.

His horse carried him forwards with gut-churning speed, directly at a man at the very front of the crowd, a standard-bearer with a tall staff, golden symbols shining on it. His bad luck, Jezal supposed, to have been given such a prominent task. The man’s eyes went wide as he saw an enormous weight of horse bearing down on him. He flung away his standard and tried to throw himself aside. The edge of Jezal’s steel bit deep into his shoulder with the full force of the charge, ripped him open and flung him onto his back. More men went down screaming under the hooves of his mount as it crashed into their midst, he could not have said how many.

Then all was chaos. He sat above a mass of snarling dark faces, glinting armour, jabbing spears. Wood cracked, metal clanged, men shouted words he did not understand. He hacked around him, on one side then the other, yelling mindless curses. A spear tip shrieked along his armoured leg. He chopped at a hand as it seized his reins and a couple of fingers flew off it. Something crunched into his side and nearly threw him from the saddle. His sword caved in a helmet with a hollow bonk and knocked the man under it down into the press of bodies.

Jezal’s horse gave a shriek, reared up, twisting. He felt a terrible lurch of fear as he came away from the saddle, the world turning over. He crunched down, dust in his eyes, dust in his mouth, coughing and struggling. He rolled up to his knees. Hooves crashed against the broken ground. Boots slid and stomped. He fumbled in his hair for his circlet, but it must have come off somewhere. How would anyone know he was king? Was he still king? His head was all sticky. A helmet would have been a damn good thing to have brought with him, but it was a little late now. He plucked weakly at the rubble, turned over a flat stone. He had forgotten what he was looking for. He stumbled up, something caught his foot and snatched it painfully away, dumping him on his face again. He waited to have the back of his head broken, but it was only his stirrup, still strapped to his horse’s magnificent corpse. He dragged his boot free, gasping for air, reeled a couple of drunken steps under the weight of his armour, his sword dangling from one limp hand.

Someone lifted a curved blade and Jezal stabbed him through the chest. He vomited blood in Jezal’s face, fell and twisted the steel from his hand. Something thumped into Jezal’s breastplate with a dull clang and knocked him sideways, right into a Gurkish soldier with a spear. He dropped it and they clawed at each other, tottering pointlessly around. Jezal was getting terribly, terribly tired. His head hurt a lot. Just dragging the breath in was a tremendous effort. The whole heroic charge idea seemed as if it had been a bad one. He wanted to lie down.

The Gurkish soldier tore one arm free and raised it up high, a knife clutched in his fist. It flew off at the wrist, a long gout of blood spurting after it. He started to slide to the ground, staring at the stump and wailing. “The king!” piped Gorst’s boyish little voice. “The king!”

His long steel described a wide arc and whipped the screaming soldier’s head away. Another leaped forward, a curved sword raised. Before he got a stride Gorst’s heavy blade split his skull wide open. An axe clanged into his armoured shoulder and he shrugged it away as if it was a fly, chopped the man who had swung it down in a shower of gore. A fourth got the short steel through his neck, staggered forward, eyes bulging, one bloody hand clutched to his throat.

Jezal, swaying numbly back and forward, almost felt sorry for the Gurkish. Their numbers might have been impressive from a distance, but close up these men were evidently auxiliaries, thrown forward into the crater as a forlorn hope. They were scrawny, dirty, helplessly disorganised, lightly armed and barely armoured. Many of them, he realised, looked extremely scared. Gorst hacked his way impassively through them like a bull through a flock of sheep, growling as his scything steels opened gaping wounds with sickening fleshy sounds. Other armoured figures crowded in after him, shoving with shields, chopping with their bright swords, clearing a bloody space in the Gurkish crowd.

Gorst’s hand slid under Jezal’s armpit and dragged him backwards, his heels kicking at the rubble. He was vaguely aware that he had dropped his sword somewhere, but it seemed foolish to go looking for it now. Some beggar would no doubt receive a priceless windfall while he hunted among the bodies, later. Jezal saw a Knight Herald still mounted, an outline with a winged helmet in the choking dust, his long axe chopping around him.

He was half-carried back, out of the press. Some of the city’s regular defenders had regrouped, or were coming in from other parts of the walls. Men with steel caps started to kneel at the lip of the crater, shooting flatbows down into the heaving mass of Gurkish in the bottom, all tangled up with the mud and the rubble. Others dragged up a cart and tipped it onto its side to form a temporary rampart. A Gurkish soldier sobbed as he was cut open, tumbled over the ragged edge of the crater and back down into the mud. More Union flatbows appeared at the edge of the square, more spears. Barrels, masonry, broken spars came with them until an improvised barricade was built up all across the wide gap in Arnault’s wall, bristling with men and weapons.

Peppered with bolts and chunks of fallen masonry, the Gurkish faltered, then fell back, scrambling through the debris to their side of the crater and up towards safety, leaving the bottom strewn with corpses.

“To the Agriont, your Majesty,” said Gorst. “At once.”

Jezal made no effort to resist. He had done more than enough fighting for today.

Something strange was happening in the Square of Marshals. Labourers were working at the paving stones with pick and chisel, digging up shallow trenches, apparently at random. Smiths sweated at temporary forges, pouring iron into moulds, lit by the glow of molten metal. The din of clanging hammers and crashing stone was enough to make Jezal’s teeth hurt, yet somehow the voice of the First of the Magi managed to be louder still.

“No! A circle, dunce, from here to there!”

“I must return to the Halls Martial, your Majesty,” said Varuz. “Arnault’s Wall is breached. It will not be long until the Gurkish try to push through once again. They would already be at the Middleway if it hadn’t been for that charge of yours, though, eh? I see now how you won your reputation in the west! As noble a business as I ever saw!”

“Uh.” Jezal watched the dead being dragged away. Three Knights of the Body, one of Varuz’ staff and a page-boy no older than twelve, the last with his head hanging off by a flap of gristle. Three men and a child he had led to their deaths. And that was without even considering the wounds the rest of his faithful entourage had gathered on his behalf. A noble business indeed.

“Wait here,” he snapped at Gorst, then he threaded his way through the sweating workmen towards the First of the Magi. Ferro sat cross-legged nearby on a row of barrels, her hands dangling loose, the same utter contempt she had always shown him written plainly on her dark face. It was almost comforting to see that some things never changed. Bayaz was glaring grimly down into the pages of a large black book, evidently of great age, its leather covers cracked and torn. He looked gaunt and pale, old and withered. One side of his face was covered in scabbed-over scratches.

“What happened to you?” asked Jezal.

Bayaz frowned, a muscle trembling under one dark-ringed eye. “I could ask you the same question.”

Jezal noted that the Magus had not even bothered with a “your Majesty”. He touched a hand to the bloody bandage round his skull. “I was involved in a charge.”

“In a what?”

“The Gurkish brought down a section of Arnault’s Wall while I was surveying the city. There was no one to turn them back, and so… I did it myself.” He was almost surprised to hear himself saying the words. He was far from proud of the fact, certainly. He had done little more than ride, fall, and hit his head. Bremer dan Gorst and his own dead horse had done the majority of the fighting, and against meagre opposition to boot. But he supposed he had done the right thing, for once, if there was any such a thing.

Bayaz did not agree. “Have what little brains fate saved for you turned to shit?”

“Have they…” Jezal blinked as the meaning of Bayaz’ words soaked slowly into his consciousness. “How dare you, you meddling old turd? You are talking to a king!” That was what he wanted to say, but his head was pounding, and something in the Magus’ twitching, wasted face prevented him. Instead he found himself mumbling in a tone almost apologetic. “But… I don’t understand. I thought… isn’t that what Harod the Great would have done?”

“Harod?” Bayaz sneered in Jezal’s face. “Harod was an utter coward, and an utter fathead to boot! That idiot could scarcely dress himself without my help!”

“But—”

“It is easy to find men to lead charges.” The Magus pronounced each word with exaggerated care, as though addressing a simpleton. “Finding men to lead nations is considerably more difficult. I do not intend that the effort I have put into you should be wasted. Next time you experience a yearning to risk your life, perhaps you might lock yourself in the latrine instead. People respect a man with a fighter’s reputation, and that you have been fortunate enough to have been gifted. People do not respect a corpse. Not there!” roared Bayaz, limping past Jezal and waving one arm angrily at one of the smiths. The poor man started like a frightened rabbit, glowing embers spattering from his crucible. “I told you, fool! You must follow the charts precisely! Exactly as I have drawn it! One mistake could be worse than fatal!”

Jezal stared after him, outrage, guilt, and simple exhaustion fighting for control of his body. Exhaustion won. He trudged over to the barrels and slumped down next to Ferro.

“Your fucking Majesty,” she said.

He rubbed at his eyes with finger and thumb. “You do me too much honour with your kind attentions.”

“Bayaz not happy, eh?”

“It seems not.”

“Well. When is that old bastard happy with anything?”

Jezal gave a grunt of agreement. He realised that he had not spoken to Ferro since he was crowned. It was not as though they had been fast friends before, of course, but he had to admit that he was finding her utter lack of deference to him an unexpected tonic. It was almost like being, for a brief moment, the vain, idle, worthless, happy man he used to be. He frowned over at Bayaz, stabbing his finger at something in his old book. “What ever is he up to, anyway?”

“Saving the world, he tells me.”

“Ah. That. He’s left it a little late, don’t you think?

She shrugged. “I’m not in charge of the timing.”

“How does he plan to do it? With picks and forges?”

Ferro watched him. He still found those devil-yellow eyes as off-putting as ever. “Among other things.”

Jezal planted his elbows on his knees, his chin drooping down onto his palms, and gave vent to a long sigh. He was so very, very tired. “I seem to have done the wrong thing,” he muttered.

“Huh.” Ferro’s eyes slid away. “You’ve got a knack for it.”

Nightfall

General Poulder squirmed in his field chair, moustaches quivering, as though he could only just control his body so overpowering was his fury. His ruddy complexion and snorting breath seemed to imply that he might spring from the tent at any moment and charge the Gurkish positions alone. General Kroy sat rigidly erect on the opposite side of the table, clenched jaw-muscles bulging from the side of his close-cropped skull. His murderous frown clearly demonstrated that his anger at the invader, while no less than anyone else’s, was kept under iron command, and if any charging was to be done it would be managed with fastidious attention to detail.

In their first briefings West had found himself outnumbered twenty to one by the two Generals’ monstrous staffs. He had reduced them, by a relentless process of attrition, to a meagre two officers a piece. The meetings had lost the charged atmosphere of a tavern brawl and instead taken on the character of a small and bad-tempered family event—perhaps the reading of a disputed will. West was the executor, trying to find an acceptable solution for two squabbling beneficiaries to whom nothing was acceptable. Jalenhorm and Brint, sitting to either side of him, were his dumbstruck assistants. What role the Dogman played in the metaphor it was hard to judge, but he was adding to the already feverish pitch of worry in the tent by picking at his fingernails with a dagger.

“This will be a battle like no other!” Poulder was frothing, pointlessly. “Never since Harod forged the Union has an invader set foot upon the soil of Midderland!”

Kroy growled his agreement.

“The Gurkish mean to overturn our laws, smother our culture, make slaves of our people! The very future of our nation hangs in the—”

The tent flap snapped back and Pike ducked through, his melted face expressionless. A tall man shuffled behind, stooped over and wobbly with fatigue, a heavy blanket wrapped round his shoulders, his face smeared with dirt.

“This is Fedor dan Hayden,” said Pike. “A Knight Herald. He was able to swim from the docks in Adua under cover of night, and slip around the Gurkish lines.”

“An action of conspicuous bravery,” said West, to grumbles of grudging agreement from Poulder and Kroy. “You have all of our thanks. How do things stand inside the city?”

“Frankly, my Lord Marshal, they are dire.” Hayden’s voice was scratchy with weariness. “The western districts—the Arches and the Three Farms—belong to the Emperor. The Gurkish breached Arnault’s Wall two days ago, and the defences are stretched to breaking point. At any moment they could burst through, and threaten the Agriont itself. His Majesty asks that you march on Adua with all possible speed. Every hour could be vital.”

“Does he have any particular strategy in mind?” asked West. Jezal dan Luthar never used to have anything in mind beyond getting drunk and bedding his sister, but he hoped that time might have wrought changes.

“The Gurkish have the city surrounded, but they are spread thin. On the eastern side, particularly. Lord Marshal Varuz believes you could break through with a sharp attack.”

“Though the western districts of the city will still be crawling with Gurkish swine,” growled Kroy.

“Bastards,” whispered Poulder, his jowls twitching. “Bastards.”

“We have no choice but to march on Adua immediately,” said West. “We will make use of every road and move with all possible speed to take up a position east of the city, marching by torchlight if necessary. We must assault the Gurkish encirclement at dawn and break their hold on the walls. Admiral Reutzer will meanwhile lead the fleet in an attack against the Gurkish ships in the harbour. General Kroy, order some cavalry forward to scout the way and screen our advance. I want no surprises.”

For once, there was no sign of reluctance. “Of course, my Lord Marshal.”

“Your division will approach Adua from the north-east, break through the Gurkish lines and enter the city in force, pushing westward towards the Agriont. If the enemy have reached the centre of the city, you will engage them. If not, you will bolster the defences at Arnault’s Wall and prepare to flush them from the Arches district.”

Kroy nodded grimly, a single vein bulging on his forehead, his officers like statues of military precision behind him. “By this time tomorrow, not one Kantic soldier will be left alive in Adua.”

“Dogman, I would like you and your Northmen to support General Kroy’s division in their attack. If your…” West wrestled with the word, “…king has no objections.”

The Dogman licked his sharp teeth. “Reckon he’ll go whichever way the wind blows. That’s always been his style.”

“The wind blows towards Adua tonight.”

“Aye.” The Northman nodded. “Towards Adua, then.”

“General Poulder, your division will approach the city from the south-east, participate in the battle for the walls, then enter the city in force and move on the docks. If the enemy has made it that far, you will clear them away, then turn northwards and follow the Middleway to the Agriont.”

Poulder hammered the table with his fist, his officers growling like prize-fighters. “Yes, damn it! We’ll paint the streets with Gurkish blood!”

West gave Poulder, and then Kroy, each a hard frown. “I hardly need to emphasise the importance of victory tomorrow.”

The two Generals rose without a word and moved for the tent flap together. They faced each other before it. For a moment West wondered if, even now, they would fall back into their familiar bickering.

Then Kroy held out his hand. “The best of luck, General Poulder.”

Poulder seized the hand in both of his. “And to you, General Kroy. The very best of luck to all of us.” The two of them stepped smartly out into the dusk, their officers following, Jalenhorm and Brint close behind.

Hayden coughed. “Lord Marshal… four other Knights Herald were sent with me. We split up, in the hopes that one of us at least would make it through the Gurkish lines. Have any of the others arrived?”

“No… not yet. Perhaps later…” West did not think it terribly likely, and neither did Hayden, he could see it in his eyes.

“Of course. Perhaps later.”

“Sergeant Pike will find you some wine and a horse. I imagine you would very much like to see us attack the Gurkish in the morning.”

“I would.”

“Very good.” The two men left the way they had come, and West frowned after them. A shame about the man’s comrades, but there would be many more deaths to mourn before tomorrow was done. If there was anyone left to do the mourning. He pushed aside the tent flap and stepped out into the chill air.

The ships of the fleet were anchored in the narrow harbour down below, rocking slowly on the waves, tall masts waving back and forth against the darkening clouds—hard blue, and cold grey, and angry orange. West fancied he could see a few boats crawling closer to the black beach, still ferrying the last of the army to the shore.

The sun was dropping fast towards the horizon, a final muddy flare above the hills in the west. Somewhere under there, just out of sight, Adua was burning. West worked his shoulders round in circles, trying to force the knotted muscles to relax. He had heard no word since before they left Angland. As far as he was aware Ardee was still inside its walls. But there was nothing he could do. Nothing beyond ordering an immediate attack and hoping, against the general run of luck, for the best. He rubbed unhappily at his stomach. He had been suffering with indigestion ever since the sea journey. The pressures of command, no doubt. A few more weeks of it would probably see him vomiting blood over his maps, just like his predecessor. He took a long, ragged breath and blew it out.

“I know how you feel.” It was the Dogman, sitting on a rickety bench beside the tent flap, elbows on his knees, staring down towards the sea.

West sagged down beside him. Briefings with Poulder and Kroy were always a terrible drain. Play the man of stone for too long and you are left a man of straw. “I’m sorry,” he found himself saying.

Dogman looked up at him. “You are? For what?”

“For all of it. For Threetrees, for Tul… for Cathil.” West had to swallow an unexpected lump in his throat. “For all of it. I’m sorry.”

“Ah, we’re all sorry. I don’t blame you. I don’t blame no one, not even Bethod. What good does blame do? We all do what we have to. I gave up looking for reasons a long time ago.”

West thought about that for a moment. Then he nodded. “Alright.” They sat and watched the torches being lit around the bay below, like glittering dust spreading out across the dark country.

Night time, and a grim one. Grim for the cold, and the drip, drip of thin rain, and all the hard miles that needed slogging over before dawn. Grim most of all for what waited at the end of it, when the sun came up. Marching to a battle only got harder each time. When Logen had been a young man, before he lost a finger and gained a black reputation, there’d at least been some trace of excitement to it, some shadow of a thrill. Now there was only the sick fear. Fear of the fight, and worse still, fear of the results.

Being king was no kind of help. It was no help to anything, far as he could see. It was just like being chief, but worse. Made him think there was something he should be doing that he wasn’t. Made the gap between him and everyone else that bit wider. That bit more unbridgeable.

Boots squelched and sucked, weapons and harness clattered and jingled, men grunted and cursed in the darkness. A few of them had spitting torches now, to light the muddy way, streaks of rain flitting down in the glow around them. The rain fell on Logen too, a feathery kiss at his scalp, and his face, the odd pit and patter on the shoulders of his old coat.

The Union army was spread out down five roads, all heading east, all pointing towards Adua and what sounded like a hard reckoning with the Gurkish. Logen and his crew were on the northernmost one. Off to the south he could see a faint line of flickering lights, floating disembodied in the black country, stretching away out of sight. Another column. Another few thousand men, cursing through the mud towards a bloody dawn.

Logen frowned. He saw the side of Shivers’ lean face, up ahead, by the flickering light of a torch, a scowl full of hard shadows, one eye glinting. They watched each other for a moment, then Shivers turned his back, hunched up his shoulders and carried on walking.

“He still don’t like me much, that one, and never will.”

“Careless slaughter ain’t necessarily the high road to popularity,” said Dogman. “Especially in a king.”

“But that one there might have the bones to do something about it.” Shivers had a grudge. One that wasn’t going away with time, or kindness, or even lives saved. There aren’t many wounds that ever heal all the way, and there are some that hurt more with every day that passes.

The Dogman seemed to guess at Logen’s thoughts. “Don’t worry about Shivers. He’s alright. We’ve got plenty to worry about with these Gurkish, or whatever.”

“Uh,” said Grim.

Logen wasn’t so sure about that. The worst enemies are the ones that live next door, his father always used to tell him. Back in the old days he’d just have murdered the bastard where he stood and problem solved. But he was trying to be a better man now. He was trying hard.

“By the dead, though,” Dogman was saying. “Fighting against brown men, now, for the Union? How the bloody hell did that all happen? We shouldn’t be down here.”

Logen took a long breath, and he let Shivers walk away. “Furious stuck around for us. Wasn’t for him we’d never have been done with Bethod. We owe him. It’s just this one last fight.”

“You ever noticed how one fight has a habit of leading on to another? Seems like there’s always one fight more.”

“Uh,” said Grim.

“Not this time. This is the last, then we’re done.”

“That so? And what happens then?”

“Back to the North, I guess.” Logen shrugged his shoulders. “Peace, isn’t it?”

“Peace?” grunted the Dogman. “Just what is that, anyway? What do you do with it?”

“I reckon… well… we’ll make things grow, or something.”

“Make things grow? By all the fucking dead! What do you, or I, or any one of us know about making things grow? What else have we done, all our lives, but kill?”

Logen wriggled his shoulders, uncomfortable. “Got to keep some hope. A man can learn, can’t he?”

“Can he? The more you kill, the better you get at it. And the better you get at killing, the less use you are for anything else. Seems to me we’ve lived this long ’cause when it comes to killing we’re the very best there is.”

“You’re in a black mood, Dogman.”

“I been in a black mood for years. What worries me is that you ain’t. Hope don’t much suit the likes of us, Logen. Answer me this. You ever touched a thing that wasn’t hurt by it? What have you ever had, that didn’t turn to dirt?”

Logen thought about that. His wife and his children, his father and his people, all back to the mud. Forley, Threetrees and Tul. All good folk, and all dead, some of them by Logen’s own hand, some of them by his neglect, and his pride, and his foolishness. He could see their faces, now, in his thoughts, and they didn’t look happy. The dead don’t often. And that was without looking to the dark and sullen crew lurking behind. A crowd of ghosts. A hacked and bloody army. All the folk he’d chosen to kill. Shama Heartless, his guts hanging out of his split stomach. Blacktoe, with his crushed legs and his burned hands. That Finnius bastard, one foot cut off and his chest slashed open. Bethod, even, right at the front with his skull pounded to mush, his frowning face twisted sideways, Crummock’s dead boy peering from around his elbow. A sea of murder. Logen squeezed his eyes shut then prised them wide open, but the faces still lingered at the edge of his mind. There was nothing he could say.

“Thought so.” Dogman turned away from him, wet hair dripping round his face. “You have to be realistic, ain’t you always told me? You have to be that.” He strode off up the road, under the cold stars. Grim lingered next to Logen for a moment, then he shrugged his damp shoulders and followed the Dogman, taking his torch with him.

“A man can change,” whispered Logen, not sure whether he was talking to the Dogman, or to himself, or to those corpse-pale faces waiting in the darkness. Men clattered down the track all round him, and yet he stood alone. “A man can change.”

Questions

A trace of autumn fog had slunk off the restless sea as the sun went down over crippled Adua, turning the chill night ghostly. A hundred strides distant the houses were indistinct. Two hundred and they were spectral, the few lights in the windows floating wraiths, hazy through the gloom. Good weather for bad work, and we have much of that ahead of us.

No distant explosions had rattled the still darkness so far. The Gurkish catapults had fallen silent. At least for the moment, and why not? The city almost belongs to them, and why burn your own city? Here, on the eastern side of Adua, far from the fighting, all seemed timelessly calm. Almost as if the Gurkish had never come. So when a vague clattering filtered through the gloom, as of the boots of a body of well-armed men, Glokta could not help a pang of nervousness, and pressed himself into the deeper shadows against the hedge by the road. Faint, bobbing lights filtered through the murk. Then the outline of a man, one hand resting casually on the pommel of a sword, walking with a loose, strutting slouch that bespoke extreme over-confidence. Something tall appeared to stick from his head, waving with his movements.

Glokta peered into the murk. “Cosca?”

“The very same!” laughed the Styrian. He was affecting a fine leather cap with a ludicrously tall plume, and he flicked at it with a finger. “I bought a new hat. Or should I say you bought me one, eh, Superior?”

“So I see.” Glokta glared at the long feather, the flamboyant golden basketwork on the hilt of Cosca’s sword. “I thought we said inconspicuous.”

“In… con… spicuous?” The Styrian frowned, then shrugged his shoulders. “Ah, so that was the word. I remember something was said, and I remember I didn’t understand it.” He winced, and scratched at his crotch with one hand. “I think I picked up some passengers from one of those women at the tavern. Little bastards don’t half give a man an itch.” Huh. The women are paid to go there. One might have thought the lice would have better taste.

A shadowy crowd began to form out of the darkness behind Cosca, a few carrying hooded lanterns. A dozen shaggy outlines, then a dozen more, menace floating silently from each one of them like the stink floating from a turd. “Are these your men?”

The nearest sported perhaps the worst facial boils that Glokta had ever seen. The man beside him had only one hand, the other having been replaced with a savage-looking hook. A huge fat fellow came next, his pale neck blue with a confusion of badly drawn tattoos. A man almost dwarfish, with a face like a rat and only one eye accompanied him. He had not bothered with a patch, and the socket yawned open under his greasy hair. The list of villainy went on. Two dozen, perhaps, all told, of the most savage-looking criminals Glokta had ever laid eyes on. And I’ve laid eyes on a few in my time. Strangers to bathwater, certainly. Not a one of them looks like he wouldn’t sell his sister for a mark. “They appear somewhat unreliable,” he murmured.

“Unreliable? Nonsense, Superior! Out of luck is all, and we both know how that goes, no? Why, there’s not a man of them I wouldn’t trust my mother to.”

“Are you sure?”

“She’s been dead these twenty years. What harm could they do her now?” Cosca flung his arm round Glokta’s twisted shoulders and drew him close, causing a painful twinge to jab at his hips. “I’m afraid that pickings are slim.” His warm breath smelled strongly of spirits and corruption. “Every man not desperate fled the city the moment the Gurkish arrived. But who cares, eh? I hired them for their guts and their sinews, not their looks. Desperate men are the kind I like! We can understand them, no, you and I? Some jobs call for desperate men only, eh, Superior?”

Glokta frowned briefly over that collection of gaunt, of bloated, of scarred and ruined faces. How could it possibly be that promising Colonel Glokta, dashing commander of the King’s Own first regiment, came to be in charge of such a rabble? He gave a long sigh. But it is a little late now to be finding fine-looking mercenaries, and I suppose these will fill a pit as well as better. “Very well. Wait here.”

Glokta looked up at the dark house as he swung the gate open with his free hand and hobbled through. A chink of light peeped out from between the heavy hangings in the front window. He rapped at the door with the handle of his cane. A pause, then the sound of reluctant footsteps shuffling up the hall.

“Who is it?”

“Me. Glokta.”

Bolts drew back and light spilled out into the chill. Ardee’s face appeared, lean-looking, grey round the eyes and pink round the nose. Like a dying cat.

“Superior!” She grinned as she took him by the elbow and half-dragged him over the threshold. “What a delight! Some conversation at last! I’m so toweringly bored.” Several empty bottles were gathered in the corner of the living room, made to glint angrily by smoky candles and a smouldering log in the grate. The table was cluttered with dirty plates and glasses. The place smelled of sweat and wine, old food and new desperation. Can there be a more miserable occupation than getting drunk on one’s own? Wine can keep a happy man happy, on occasion. A sad one it always makes worse.

“I’ve been trying to get through this damn book again.” Ardee slapped at a heavy volume lying open, face down, on a chair.

“The Fall of the Master Maker,” muttered Glokta. “That rubbish? All magic and valour, no? I couldn’t get through the first one.”

“I sympathise. I’m onto the third and it doesn’t get any easier. Too many damn wizards. I get them mixed up one with another. It’s all battles and endless bloody journeys, here to there and back again. If I so much as glimpse another map I swear I’ll kill myself.”

“Someone might save you the trouble.”

“Eh?”

“I’m afraid you are no longer safe here. You should come with me.”

“Rescue? Thank the fates!” She waved a dismissive hand. “We’ve been over this. The Gurkish are away on the other side of the city. You’re in more danger in the Agriont I shouldn’t—”

“The Gurkish are not the threat. My suitors are.”

“Your gentleman-friends are a threat to me?”

“You underestimate the extent of their jealousy. I fear they will soon become a threat to everyone I have known, friend or enemy, my whole sorry life.” Glokta jerked a hooded cloak from a peg on the wall and held it out to her.

“Where are we going?”

“A charming little house down near the docks. A little past its best, but plenty of character. Like the two of us, you could say.”

There were heavy footsteps in the hallway and Cosca stuck his head into the room. “Superior, we should leave if we want to reach the docks by—” He stopped, staring at Ardee. There was an uncomfortable silence.

“Who is this?” she murmured.

Cosca pushed flamboyantly into the room, swept off his hat, displaying his scabrous bald patch, and bowed low, low, low. Any lower and his nose would scrape the floorboards. “Forgive me, my lady. Nicomo Cosca, famed soldier of fortune, at your service. Abject, in fact, at your feet.” His throwing knife dropped out of his coat and rattled against the boards.

They all stared at it for a moment, then Cosca grinned up. “You see that fly, against the wall?”

Glokta narrowed his eyes. “Perhaps not the best moment for—”

The blade spun across the room, missed the target by a stride, hit the wall handle-first and gouged out a lump of plaster, bounced back and clattered across the floor.

“Shit,” said Cosca. “I mean… damn.”

Ardee frowned down at the knife. “I’d say shit.”

Cosca passed it off with a rotten smile. “I must be dazzled. When the Superior described to me your beauty I thought he must have… how do you say… exaggerated? Now I see that he came short of the mark.” He retrieved his knife and jammed his hat back on, slightly askew. “Please allow me to declare myself in love.”

“What did you tell him?” asked Ardee.

“Nothing.” Glokta sucked sourly at his gums. “Master Cosca has a habit of overstating the case.”

“Especially when in love,” threw in the mercenary. “Especially then. When I fall in love, I fall hard, and, as a rule, I do it no more than once a day.”

Ardee stared at him. “I don’t know whether to feel flattered or scared.”

“Why not be both?” said Glokta. “But you will have to do it on the way.” We are short of time, and I have a rank garden to weed.

The gate came open with an agonised shrieking of rusted metal. Glokta lurched over the decaying threshold, his leg, his hip, his back all stabbing at him from the long limp to the docks. The ruined mansion loomed out of the gloom at the far end of the shattered courtyard. Like a mighty mausoleum. A suitable tomb for all my dead hopes. Severard and Frost waited in the shadows on the broken steps, dressed all in black and masked, as usual. But not at all alike. A burly man and a slender, one white haired and one dark, one standing, arms folded, the other sitting, cross-legged. One is loyal, the other… we shall find out.

Severard unravelled himself and got up with the usual grin around his eyes. “Alright, chief, so what’s all the—”

Cosca stepped through the gate and wandered lazily across the broken paving, tapping a few lumps of masonry away with the toe of one shabby boot. He stopped beside a ruined fountain and scraped some muck out of it with a finger. “Nice place. Nice and…” He waved the finger around, and the muck with it. “Crumbly.” His mercenaries were already spreading out slowly around the rubble-strewn courtyard. Patched coats and tattered cloaks twitched back to display weapons of every size and shape. Edges, points, spikes and flanges glinted in the shifting light from their lanterns, their steel as smooth and clean as their faces were rough and dirty.

“Who the hell are these?” asked Severard.

“Friends.”

“They don’t look too friendly.”

Glokta showed his Practical the yawning hole in his front teeth. “Well. I suppose that all depends whose side you’re on.”

The last traces of Severard’s smile had vanished. His eyes flickered nervously around the yard. The eyes of the guilty. How well we know them. We see them on our prisoners. We see them in the mirror, when we dare to look. One might have hoped for better from a man of his experience, but holding the blade is a poor preparation for being cut by it. I should know. Severard dashed towards the house, quick as a rabbit, but he only got a step before a heavy white hand chopped into the side of his neck and flung him senseless on the broken paving.

“Take him downstairs, Frost. You know the way.”

“Downthairth. Unh.” The hulking albino dragged Severard’s limp body over his shoulder and set off towards the front door.

“I have to say,” said Cosca, flicking the scum carelessly off his finger, “that I like your way with your men, Superior. Discipline, I’ve always admired it.”

“Fine advice from the least disciplined man in the Circle of the World.”

“I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes.” Cosca stretched his chin up and scratched at his scabby neck. “The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.”

“Huh,” grunted Glokta as he laboured up the steps. A curse we all have to bear. Round and round in circles we go, clutching at successes that we never grasp, endlessly tripping over the same old failures. Truly, life is the misery we endure between disappointments.

They stepped through the empty doorway and into the deeper darkness of the entrance hall. Cosca held his lamp high, staring up towards the ragged roof, his boots squelching heedless in the bird droppings spattering the floor. “A palace!” His voice echoed back from the shattered staircases, the empty doorways, the naked rafters high above.

“Please make yourselves comfortable,” said Glokta. “But out of sight, perhaps. We can expect visitors some time tonight.”

“Excellent. We love company, don’t we lads?”

One of Cosca’s men gave a wet-lunged chuckle, displaying two rows of shit-coloured teeth. A set so incredibly rotten I am almost glad to have my own. “These visitors will come from his Eminence the Arch Lector. Perhaps you could take a firm hand with them, while I’m downstairs?”

Cosca glanced round approvingly at the crumbling hall. “A nice place for a warm welcome. I’ll let you know when our guests have been. I doubt they’ll stay long.”

Ardee had found a place near the wall, her hood up, her eyes on the floor. Trying to fade into the plaster, and who could blame her? Hardly the most pleasant company for a young woman, or the most reassuring setting. But better than a slit throat, I suppose. Glokta held his hand out to her. “It would be best if you were to come with me.”

She hesitated. As though not entirely sure that it would, in fact, be best to come with me. But a brief glance at some of the ugliest men in one of the world’s ugliest professions evidently persuaded her. Cosca handed her his lamp, making sure his fingers lingered on hers for an uncomfortably long moment.

“Thank you,” she said, jerking her hand away.

“My particular pleasure.”

Sheets of hanging paper, broken laths, lumps of fallen plaster cast strange shadows as they left Cosca and his thugs behind and picked their way into the guts of the dead building. Doorways passed by, squares of blackness, yawning like graves.

“Your friends seem a charming crowd,” murmured Ardee.

“Oh indeed, the brightest stars in the social firmament. Some tasks demand desperate men, apparently.”

“You must have some truly desperate work in mind, then.”

“When don’t I?”

Their lamp barely lit the rotting drawing room, panelling sagging from the cheap brickwork, the best part of the floor a single festering puddle. The hidden door stood open in the far wall and Glokta shuffled round the edge of the room towards it, his hips burning with the effort.

“What did your man do?”

“Severard? He let me down.” And we will soon find out how badly.

“I hope I never let you down, then.”

“You, I am sure, have better sense. I should go first, then if I fall at least I fall alone.” He winced his way down the steps while she followed with the light.

“Ugh. What’s that smell?”

“The sewers. There’s an entrance to them down here, somewhere.” Glokta stepped past the heavy door and into the converted wine cellar, the bright steel grilles on the cells to either side glimmering as they passed, the whole place reeking of damp and fear.

“Superior!” came a voice from the darkness. Brother Longfoot’s desperate face appeared, pressed up against one set of bars.

“Brother Longfoot, my apologies! I have been so very busy. The Gurkish have laid siege to the city.”

“Gurkish?” squeaked the man, his eyes bulging. “Please, if you release me—”

“Silence!” hissed Glokta in a voice that brooked no dallying. “You should stay here.”

Ardee glanced nervously towards the Navigator’s cell. “Here?”

“He isn’t dangerous. I think you’ll be more comfortable than you would be…” and he nodded his head towards the open doorway at the end of the vaulted hall, “in there.”

She swallowed. “Alright.”

“Superior, please!” One despairing arm stuck from Longfoot’s cell, “please, when will you release me? Superior, please!” Glokta shut the door on his begging with a gentle click. We have other business today, and it will not wait.

Frost already had Severard manacled to the chair beside the table, still unconscious, and was lighting the lamps one by one with a flaming taper. The domed chamber gradually grew bright, the colour leaking into the mural across the round walls. Kanedias frowned down, arms outstretched, the fire burning behind him. Ah, our old friend the Master Maker, always disapproving. Opposite him his brother Juvens still bled his lurid last across the wall. And not the only blood that will be spilled in here tonight, I suspect.

“Urr,” groaned Severard, his lank hair swaying. Glokta lowered himself slowly into his chair, the leather creaking under him. Severard grunted again, his head dropped back, eyelids flickering. Frost lumbered over, reached out and undid the buckles on Severard’s mask, pulled it off and tossed it away into the corner of the room. From a fearsome Practical of the Inquisition to… nothing much. He stirred, wrinkled his nose, twitching like a boy asleep.

Young. Weak. Helpless. One could almost feel sorry for him, if one had a heart. But now is not the time for sentiment and soft feelings, for friendship and forgiveness. The ghost of happy and promising Colonel Sand dan Glokta has been clinging to me for far too long. Farewell, my old friend. You cannot help us today. Now is the time for the ruthless Superior Glokta to do what he does best. To do the only thing that he does well. Now is the time for hard heads, hard hearts and even harder edges.

Time to cut the truth out.

Frost jabbed Severard in the stomach with two fingers and his eyes snapped open. He jerked in his chair, the manacles rattling. He saw Glokta. He saw Frost. His eyes went wide as they darted round the room. They went wider still when he realised where he was. He snorted in air, the quick, hard breath of abject terror, the greasy strands of hair across his face blowing this way and that with the force of it. And how will we begin?

“I know…” he croaked. “I know I told that woman who you were… I know… but I had no choice.” Ah, the wheedling. Every man, more or less, behaves the same way when he’s chained to a chair. “What could I do? She would’ve fucking killed me! I had no choice! Please—”

“I know what you told her, and I know you had no choice.”

“Then… then why—”

“Don’t give me that, Severard. You know why you’re here.” Frost stepped forward, as impassive as ever, and lifted the lid on Glokta’s wonderful case. The trays inside opened up like an exotic flower, proffering out the polished handles, the gleaming needles, the shining blades of his instruments.

Glokta puffed out his cheeks. “I had a good day, today. I woke up clean, and made it to the bath on my own. Not too much pain.” He wrapped his fingers around the grip of the cleaver. “Something to celebrate, a good day. I get so very few of them.” He slid it from its sheath, the heavy blade flashing in the harsh lamplight. Severard’s eyes followed it all the way, bulging with fear and fascination, beads of sweat glittering on his pale forehead.

“No,” he whispered. Yes. Frost unlocked the cuff around Severard’s left wrist, lifted his arm in both meaty hands. He took the fingers and spread them out one by one until they were flattened on the wood in front of him, wrapping his other arm around Severard’s shoulders in a tight embrace.

“I think we can dispense with the preamble.” Glokta rocked forward, got up and limped slowly around the table, his cane clicking on the tiles, his left leg dragging behind it, the corner of the cleaver’s blade scraping gently across the wood of the table-top. “I need not explain how this will work to you. You, who have assisted me so very ably, on so very many occasions. Who could know better how we will proceed?”

“No,” whimpered Severard, trying half a desperate smile, but with a tear leaking from the corner of his eye nonetheless. “No, you wouldn’t! Not to me! You wouldn’t!”

“Not to you?” Glokta gave a sad smile of his own. “Oh, Practical Severard, please…” He let the grin slowly fade as he lifted the cleaver. “You know me so much better than that.”

Bang! The heavy blade flashed down and hacked into the table-top, paring the slightest sliver of skin from the end of Severard’s middle finger.

“No!” he squawked. “No!” You don’t admire my precision any longer, then?

“Oh, yes, yes.” Glokta tugged at the smooth handle and dragged the blade free. “How did you think this would end? You’ve been talking. You’ve been saying things you shouldn’t, to people you had no business saying anything to. You will tell me what. You will tell me who.” The cleaver glimmered as he raised it again. “And you had better tell me soon.”

“No!” Severard thrashed and wriggled in the chair but Frost had him as tightly as a fly in honey. Yes.

The blade sliced cleanly through the end of Severard’s middle finger and took it off at the first joint. The end of his index finger spun across the wood. The tip of his ring finger stayed where it was, wedged into a joint in the table top. With Frost’s hand still clamped tight as a vice round his wrist the blood only dribbled gently from the three wounds and spread out in slow rivulets down the grain.

There was a breathless pause. One, two, three… Severard screamed. He wailed, and jerked, and trembled, his face quivering. Painful, eh? Welcome to my world.

Glokta worked his aching foot around in his boot. “Who would ever have thought that our charming association, so enjoyable and profitable to us both, could possibly end like this? Not my choice. Not mine. Tell me who you spoke to. Tell me what you said. Then this unpleasantness will all be over. Otherwise…”

Bang! The end of his little finger, now, and three more pieces of the rest. His middle finger was down to the knuckle, almost. Severard stared, his eyes wide with horror, his breath coming in short, fast gasps. Shock, amazement, stunned terror. Glokta leaned down to his ear. “I hope you weren’t planning to take up the violin, Severard. You’ll be lucky if you can play a fucking gong by the time we’re done here.” He winced at a spasm in his neck as he lifted the cleaver again.

“Wait!” sobbed Severard. “Wait! Valint and Balk! The bankers! I told them… I told them…”

I knew it. “What did you tell them?”

“That you were still looking for Raynault’s murderer when we’d already hung the Emperor’s emissary!” Glokta met Frost’s eyes, and the albino stared back, emotionless. And another secret is dragged kicking into the merciless light. How disappointingly right I was. It always amazes me, how swiftly problems can be solved, once you start cutting things off people. “And… and… I told them that you wanted to know about our bastard king, and about Bayaz, and I told them you weren’t checking up on Sult like they asked, and I told them… I told them…”

Severard stuttered to a halt, staring at the remains of his fingers, scattered out across the table in a spreading slick of blood. That mixture of unbearable pain, even more unbearable loss, and total disbelief. Am I dreaming? Or have I really lost half my fingers, forever?

Glokta nudged Severard with the end of the cleaver. “What else?”

“I told them anything I could. I told them… everything I knew…” The words came spitting and drooling from his lips, curled back with agony. “I had no choice. I had debts, and… they offered to pay. I had no choice!”

Valint and Balk. Debts, and blackmail, and betrayal. How horribly banal it all is. That’s the trouble with answers. They’re never as exciting as the questions, somehow. Glokta’s lips twitched into a sad smile. “No choice. I know exactly how you feel.” He lifted the cleaver again.

“But—”

Bang! The heavy blade scraped against the table-top as Glokta swept four more neat slices of flesh carefully out of the way. Severard screamed, and gasped, and screamed some more. Desperate, slobbering screams, his face screwed up tight. Just like the prunes I sometimes have for breakfast. He still had half his little finger, but the other three were nothing more than oozing stumps. But we cannot stop now, not after we have come so far. We cannot stop for anything, can we? We must know it all.

“What about the Arch Lector?” asked Glokta, stretching his neck to the side and working his stiff shoulder. “How did he know what went on in Dagoska? What did you tell him?”

“How did he… what… I told him nothing! I told him—”

Bang! Severard’s thumb flew off, spinning across the table, leaving behind a spiralling trail of bloody spots. Glokta worked his hips back and forth, trying to wriggle out of the aches down his legs, the aches up his back. But there is no escaping them. Every possible position, a little worse than the one before. “What did you tell Sult?”

“I… I…” Severard stared up, his mouth hanging open, a long string of drool dangling from his bottom lip. “I…”

Glokta frowned. That is not an answer. “Tie it off at the wrist and get the other hand ready. We’ve nothing left to work with here.”

“No! No! Please… I didn’t… please…” How I tire of the pleading. The words “no” and “please” lose all meaning after half an hour of this. They begin to sound like a sheep bleating. We are all lambs to the slaughter, in the end. He stared at the pieces of finger scattered across the bloody table. Meat for the butcher. Glokta’s head hurt, the room was too bright. He put the cleaver down and rubbed at his sore eyes. A draining business, mutilating your closest friends. He realised he had smeared blood across his eyelids. Damn it.

Frost had already tightened a tourniquet round Severard’s wrist and manacled the bloody remains of his left hand back to the chair. He unfastened his right arm and guided it carefully to the table. Glokta watched him do it. All neat, and business-like, and ruthlessly efficient. Does his conscience nag at him, I wonder, when the sun goes down? I doubt it. I give the orders after all. And I act on orders from Sult, on advice from Marovia, on the demands of Valint and Balk. What choice do any of us have, in the end? Why, the excuses almost make themselves.

Frost’s white face was dusted with bloody red specks as he spread Severard’s right hand out on the table, just where the left one had been. He did not even struggle this time. You lose the will, after a while. I remember. “Please…” he whispered.

It would be so very nice to stop. Most likely the Gurkish will burn the whole city and kill us all, and then who will care who told who what? If by some miracle they fail, no doubt Sult will finish me, or Valint and Balk will collect their debt in my blood. What will it matter when I am floating face-down in the docks whether certain questions were ever answered? Then why do I do this? Why?

The blood reached the edge of the wood and started dripping to the floor with a steady tap, tap, tap. No other answer. Glokta felt a flurry of twitches run up the side of his face. He took hold of the cleaver again.

“Look at this.” He gestured at the pieces of bloody flesh scattered across the table. “Look what you’ve lost here, already. All because you won’t tell me what I need to know. Do you not value your own fingers? They’re no use to you now, are they? They’re no use to me, I can tell you that. They’re no use to anyone, besides a hungry dog or two, maybe.” Glokta bared the yawning hole in his front teeth, and ground the point of the cleaver into the wood between Severard’s outspread fingers. “One more time.” He pronounced the words with icy precision. “What… did you tell… his Eminence?”

“I… told him… nothing!” The tears ran down Severard’s hollow cheeks, his chest shuddered with sobs. “I told him nothing! Valint and Balk, I had no choice! I’ve never spoken to Sult in my fucking life! Not a word! Never!”

Glokta looked into his Practical’s eyes, his prisoner’s eyes, for a long moment, trying to see the truth. All was silent except for Severard’s gurgling, agonised breath. Then Glokta wrinkled his lip and tossed the cleaver down rattling on the table. Why give up your other hand, when you have confessed already? He gave a long sigh, reached out and gently wiped the tears from Severard’s pale face. “Alright. I believe you.”

But what then? We are left with more questions than before, and nowhere to look for the answers. He arched his back, wincing at the aches in his twisted spine, down his twisted leg, through his toeless foot. Sult must have gained his information elsewhere. Who else survived Dagoska, who else saw enough? Eider? She would never dare reveal herself. Vitari? If she wanted to spill her guts she could have done it at the time. Cosca? His Eminence would never work with a man that unpredictable. I only use him myself because I have no other choice. Then who?

Glokta’s eyes met Frost’s. Pink eyes, unblinking. They stared at him, bright and hard as pink gemstones. And the wheels clicked into place.

I see.

Neither one of them spoke. Frost reached out, without much haste, his eyes never leaving Glokta’s, and wrapped both his thick arms around Severard’s neck. The ex-Practical could only stare, helpless.

“What’re—” Frost frowned slightly. There was a sharp crunching sound as he wrenched Severard’s head sideways. As simple and careless as killing a chicken. Severard’s skull flopped backwards as Frost let him go, and far past backwards, unnatural knobbly shapes sticking from the pale skin of his twisted neck.

The albino stood up, between Glokta and the door, hanging ajar. No way out. Glokta winced as he stumbled backwards, the tip of his cane scraping against the floor. “Why?” Frost came on, slowly and surely, his white fists clenched tight, his white face expressionless behind his mask. Glokta held up one hand. “Just tell me why, damn it!”

The albino shrugged. I suppose some questions have no answers, after all. Glokta’s twisted back hit the curved wall. And my time is up. Ah well. He took a long breath. The odds were always stacked against me. I do not mind dying, so very much.

Frost raised his white fist, then grunted. The cleaver sank deep into his heavy shoulder with a dull smack. Blood began to leak out from it into his shirt. Frost turned. Ardee stood behind him. The three of them stared at each other for a moment. Then Frost punched her in the face. She reeled away and crashed into the side of the table, slid limp to the floor, dragging it over on its side, Glokta’s case clattering down beside her, instruments tumbling, blood and bits of flesh scattering. Frost started to turn back, the cleaver still wedged in his flesh, his left arm hanging limp.

Glokta’s lips curled away from his empty gums. I do not mind dying. But I refuse to be beaten.

He set his feet as best he could, ignoring the pain that stabbed through his toeless foot and up his front leg. He brought up his cane and jammed his thumb into its hidden catch. It had been made to his precise instructions by the same man who had made the case for his instruments. And is an even finer piece of craftsmanship.

There was a gentle click as the wood sprang open on secret hinges and dropped away revealing a two-foot needle of mirror-bright metal. He let go a piercing shriek.

Jab, jab, Glokta. Jab, jab.

The steel was a blur. The first thrust ran Frost neatly through the left side of his chest. The second darted silently through the right side of his neck. The third punctured his mask and scraped against his jaw bone, the glinting point showing itself just under his white ear for an instant before it whipped back out.

Frost stood, motionless, his white eyebrows going up with mild surprise. Then blood welled from the tiny wound on his throat and ran down into his shirt in a black line. He reached out with one big white hand. He wobbled, blood bubbling from under his mask.

“Futh,” he breathed.

He crumpled to the ground as though his legs had been snatched suddenly from under him. He put out an arm to push himself up, but there was no strength in it. His breaths gurgled noisily, then quietly, and he was still. And that is all.

Ardee was sitting up near the table, blood running out of her nose and down her top lip. “He’s dead.”

“I used to fence,” murmured Glokta. “It seems the trick never entirely leaves you.” He stared from one corpse to the other. Frost lay in a slowly widening dark pool, one pink eye staring ahead, still unblinking, even in death. Severard’s head was hanging back over the chair, mouth yawning wide open in a silent scream, his mutilated hand still manacled, the other hanging limp. My boys. My eyes. My hands. All finished. He frowned at the bloody length of metal in his fist. Well. We must fumble onwards as best we can without them.

He winced as he reached down and picked up the fallen piece of his cane between two fingers, snapped it shut around the bloody steel. “If you wouldn’t mind closing that case for me.” Ardee stared wide-eyed at the instruments, at Severard’s yawning corpse, at the blood-stained table on its side and the fragments of flesh scattered across the floor. She coughed, and pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. One forgets that some people are not used to dealing with these matters. But we need such help as we can get, and it is a little late for easing anyone into this gently. If she can chop into a man with a cleaver, she can carry a blade or two for me without swooning. “The case,” he snapped. “I will still need my instruments.”

Ardee blinked, collected the few scattered tools with trembling hands and put them back in their places. She wedged the box under her arm and stood up, somewhat unsteadily, wiping the blood from her nose on her white sleeve. Glokta noticed that she had a piece of one of Severard’s fingers caught in her hair.

“You have something…” he pointed at his head, “just here.”

“What? Gah!” She tore the dead thing out and flung it on the ground, gave a shiver of disgust. “You should find another way to make a living.”

“I have been thinking that for some time. But there are still a few more questions I must have answered.”

The door creaked and Glokta felt a sudden stab of panic. Cosca stepped through into the room. He whistled softly as he surveyed the carnage, pushed his cap back on his head, its feather casting a spray of long shadows across the mural behind him. “You’ve made quite a mess, Superior, quite a mess.”

Glokta fingered his cane. His leg was on fire, his heart was thumping dully at his temples, he was damp with cold sweat under his scratchy clothes. “Unavoidable.”

“I thought you’d want to know that we had our visitors. Six Practicals of the Inquisition. I rather suspect they may have been sent here to kill you.” Undoubtedly. On the Arch Lector’s orders, acting on information from the late Practical Frost.

“And?” asked Glokta. After the events of the past hour he was almost expecting Cosca to come at him, sword swinging.

But if the last hour has taught us anything, it is that the least trusted henchman is not always the least reliable. “And we cut them to pieces, of course.” The Styrian grinned. “I’m insulted you might think otherwise.”

“Good. Good.” At least something has gone to plan. Glokta wanted nothing more than to slide to the floor and lie there, screaming. But there is work to do. He winced as he limped for the door. “We need to head for the Agriont immediately.”

The first traces of dawn were leaking into the cold, clear sky as Glokta hobbled out onto the Middleway, Ardee at his shoulder. There was still mist on the air, but it was fading, now. A fine day in prospect, it would appear. A fine day for bloodshed, treachery, and—

Shapes were moving in the mist, away south down the wide cobbled road, towards the sea. There were noises too. Rattling, jingling. It sounded very much like a body of armoured men on the move. Further off, someone was shouting. A bell began to clang, sullen and muffled. A warning bell.

Cosca frowned into the thinning mist. “What is that?”

The shapes grew more distinct. Armoured men, carrying spears, and in numbers. Their tall helmets were plainly not of Union design.

Ardee touched Glokta on the arm. “Are they—”

“Gurkish.” Their armour glinted in the thin, grey light as the fog drifted aside. A vast body of them, marching north up the Middleway. They must finally have landed men at the docks, broken through into the centre of the city. What astonishingly poor timing. “Back!” Glokta turned towards the alley, slipped and nearly fell, grimacing as Ardee caught him by the elbow and dragged him up straight.

“Back to the mansion!” And hope we weren’t seen already. “And keep those lamps with you, we’ll need them.” He hurried to the stinking alley as best he could, barged and jostled by Cosca’s mercenaries.

“Damn these Gurkish,” hissed the Styrian. “I don’t know for the life of me what I did to upset them so.”

“You have my sympathy.” The gate squealed shut and a couple of the mercenaries started dragging a broken fountain behind it. I’m not sure how long that will keep out one of the Emperor’s legions.

“Might I ask what the plan is now, exactly, Superior? Charming though your palace is, sitting here and waiting for relief would hardly seem to be an option.”

“No.” Glokta struggled up the steps and through the open front door. “We need to get to the Agriont.”

“Something tells me our Gurkish friends will have had the same idea. We will not be getting there overground, that is certain.”

“Then we must go underground.” Glokta limped into the guts of the building as smartly as he could, Ardee and the mercenaries following behind in a worried crowd. “There is an entrance to the sewers here. One can get all the way to the Agriont, if one knows the route.”

“Sewers?” Cosca grinned. “I like nothing more than wading through life’s filth, as you well know, but sewers can be quite… confusing. Do you know the route?”

“Actually, no.” But I know a man who says he can find a way through anything, even a river of shit. “Brother Longfoot!” he called out as he hobbled towards the steps. “I have a proposition for you!”

The Day of Judgement

Lord Marshal West stood in the shadow of an abandoned barn, up on a rise above the fertile plains of Midderland, his eye-glass clutched tightly in one gloved hand. There was still a trace of morning mist clinging to the flat autumn fields—patchworks of brown, green, yellow, stabbed with trees, slashed with bare hedgerows. In the distance West could see the outermost walls of Adua, a stern grey line pimpled with towers. Behind, in a lighter grey, the vague shapes of buildings jutted skywards. Above them loomed the towering ghost of the House of the Maker, stark and unrepentant. All in all, it was a grim homecoming.

There was not so much as a breath of wind. The crisp air was strangely still. Just as if there was no war, no rival armies drawing up, no bloody battles scheduled to begin. West swept his eye-glass back and forth, but he could scarcely see any hint of the Gurkish. Perhaps he imagined a tiny fence, down there before the walls, perhaps the outlines of pinprick spears, but at this distance, in this light, he could be sure of nothing.

“They must be expecting us. They must be.”

“Maybe they’re sleeping late,” said Jalenhorm, ever the optimist.

Pike was more direct. “What difference if they are?”

“Not much,” West admitted. King Jezal’s orders had been specific. The city was infested with Gurkish troops and the defences were close to complete collapse. There was no time for clever stratagems, for careful approaches, for probing the enemy for weak spots. Prince Ladisla, ironically, would probably have been as good a commander for this particular situation as anyone else. For once, circumstances called for a magnificent charge, followed closely by death or glory. The only thing under West’s control was the timing.

Brint pulled up his horse nearby, sending a shower of grit into the cold air. He swung down from the saddle and gave a smart salute. “General Kroy’s cavalry is in position on the right wing, Lord Marshal, and ready to charge at your order.”

“Thank you, Captain. His foot?”

“Perhaps halfway to deploying. Some companies are still spread out down the roads.”

“Still?”

“Muddy-going, sir.”

“Huh.” Armies left mud behind them like a slug left a trail. “What about Poulder?”

“A similar position, as far as I can tell,” said Brint. “No messages?”

Jalenhorm shook his head. “General Poulder has not been forthcoming this morning.”

West stared towards the city, that distant grey line beyond the fields. “Soon.” He chewed at his lip, already raw from his constant worrying. “Very soon. Mustn’t let fly half-drawn. When a little more of the foot comes up…”

Brint was frowning off to the south. “Sir, is that…” West followed his pointing finger. Over on the left wing, where Poulder had been gathering his division, the cavalry were already moving smartly forward.

West stared as the riders gathered pace. “What the…”

Two full regiments of heavy horse broke into a majestic gallop. Thousands of them, streaming forwards across the open farmland, surging round the trees and the scattered farmhouses, throwing up a wake of dusty earth. West could hear the hammering of their hooves now, like distant thunder, could almost feel the vibration of it through his boots. The sun glinted on raised sword and lance, on shield and full armour. Banners streamed and snapped in the wind. It was quite the display of martial grandeur. A scene from a lurid storybook with a muscular hero in which meaningless words like honour and righteousness were often repeated.

“Shit,” growled West through gritted teeth, feeling the familiar pulsing coming up behind his eyes. General Poulder had been itching to mount one of his fabled cavalry charges all across the North and back. There the harsh terrain, or the harsh weather, or the harsh circumstances had all prevented it. Now, with the perfect conditions, it seemed he had been unable to resist the opportunity.

Jalenhorm slowly shook his head. “Bloody Poulder.”

West gave a snarl of frustration, raised up his eye-glass to dash it on the ground. He managed to stop himself at the last moment, forced in a heavy breath, and slapped the thing angrily closed. He could not afford to indulge himself today. “Well, that’s it then, isn’t it? Order the charge, all across the line!”

“Sound the charge!” roared Pike. “The charge!”

The sharp bugle call rang out, blaringly loud on the chill morning air, doing nothing to ease West’s throbbing headache. He stuck one muddy boot in his stirrup and dragged himself reluctantly up into his saddle, already sore from riding all night. “I suppose we must follow General Poulder to glory. At a less honourable distance, though, perhaps. Someone still needs to co-ordinate this shambles.” The sounds of answering bugles further down the line floated up to them, and on the right Kroy’s horsemen began to trot forwards.

“Major Jalenhorm, order the foot forward in support as soon as they come up.” West worked his mouth. “Piecemeal if need be.”

“Of course, Lord Marshal.” The big man was already turning his horse to give the orders.

“War,” muttered West. “A noble business.”

“Sir?” asked Pike.

“Nothing.”

Jezal took the last few steps two at a time, Gorst and a dozen of his Knights clattering after him, sticking to his heels as tightly as his shadow. He swept imperiously past the guard and into the bright morning light at the top of the Tower of Chains, high above the stricken city. Lord Marshal Varuz was already at the parapet, surrounded by a gaggle of his staff, all glaring out across Adua. The old soldier stood stiffly, his hands clasped behind him, just the way he had always done at fencing practice, long ago. Jezal had never noticed his hands shake in the old days, however. They shook now, and badly. High Justice Marovia stood beside him, black robes stirred by the gentle breeze.

“The news?” demanded Jezal.

The Lord Marshal’s tongue darted nervously over his lips. “The Gurkish mounted an assault before dawn. The defenders of Arnault’s wall were overwhelmed. Not long afterwards they managed to land men at the docks. A great number of men. We have been fighting a rearguard action with the greatest courage, but… well…”

There was really no need to say more. As Jezal moved closer to the parapet, and wounded Adua came into view, he could plainly see the Gurkish flooding down the Middleway, the tiny golden standards of the Emperor’s legions bobbing above the mass of humanity like flotsam on a glittering tide. Like seeing one ant on the carpet, then gradually becoming aware of hundreds all across his living room, Jezal began to notice movement elsewhere, then everywhere. The very centre of the city was infested with Gurkish soldiers.

“Fighting a rearguard action with… mixed success,” finished Varuz lamely.

Down below, a few men burst out from the buildings near the western gate of the Agriont, ran across the cobbled square before the moat, heading for the bridge.

“Gurkish?” someone squealed.

“No,” muttered the Lord Marshal. “Those are ours.” Men doing their very best to escape the slaughter that was no doubt taking place down in the ruined city. Jezal had faced death often enough to guess at how they felt.

“Have those men brought to safety,” he said, voice cracking slightly.

“I am afraid… the gates have been sealed, your Majesty.”

“Then unseal them!”

Varuz’ dewy eyes wandered nervously to Marovia. “That would… not be wise.”

A dozen or more had made it to the bridge now, were shouting and waving their arms. Their words were lost over the distance, but the tone of helpless, abject terror was impossible to miss.

“We should do something.” Jezal’s hands gripped tight to the parapet. “We must do something! There will be others out there, many more!”

Varuz cleared his throat. “Your Majesty—”

“No! Have my horse saddled. Gather the Knights of the Body. I refuse to—”

High Justice Marovia had moved to block the door to the stairs, and now looked calmly, sadly into Jezal’s face. “If you were to open the gates now, you would be putting everyone in the Agriont at risk. Many thousands of citizens, all looking to you for protection. Here we can keep them safe, at least for now. We must keep them safe.” His eyes slid sideways to the streets. Different-coloured eyes, Jezal noticed, one blue, one green. “We must weigh the greater good.”

“The greater good.” Jezal looked the other way, into the Agriont. Brave defenders were ranged around the walls, he knew, ready to fight to the death for king and country, however undeserving. He pictured civilians too, scurrying for safety through the narrow lanes. Men, women, children, the old and the young, driven from their ruined homes. People to whom he had promised safety. His eyes flickered across the high white buildings around the green park, the wide Square of Marshals, the long Kingsway with its tall statues. They were filled, he knew, with the helpless and the needy. Those unlucky enough to have no one better to rely on than the gutless fraud, Jezal dan Luthar.

It stuck in his throat, but he knew the old bureaucrat was right. There was nothing he could do. He had been shockingly lucky to survive his last magnificent charge, and it was far too late for another. Outside the Agriont, Gurkish soldiers were beginning to boil into the square before the gate. A few of them knelt, bows in hand, and sent a flight of arrows arcing across onto the bridge. Tiny figures tumbled and fell, splashed into the moat. Tiny screams wafted gently up to the top of the Tower of Chains.

An answering volley rattled from the walls, peppered the Gurkish with flatbow bolts. Men dropped, others faltered and fell back, leaving a few bodies scattered across the cobbles. They scurried for cover in the buildings around the edge of the square, men darting through the shadows from house to house. A Union soldier jumped from the bridge and splashed along in the moat for a few strokes before disappearing. He did not resurface. Behind him a last handful of the stranded defenders were still crawling, desperately holding up their arms. The notion of the greater good was likely to be scant consolation for them as they choked their last breaths. Jezal squeezed his eyes shut and looked away.

“There! To the east!”

Varuz and a few members of his staff had clustered around the far parapet, gazing out past the House of the Maker and towards the distant fields outside the city. Jezal strode over to them, shielded his eyes against the rising sun. Beyond the great wall of the Agriont, beyond the shining river and the wide curve of the city, he thought he caught some trace of movement. A wide crescent of movement, crawling slowly towards Adua.

One of the officers lowered an eye-glass. “Cavalry! Union Cavalry!”

“Are you sure?”

“The Army!”

“Late to the party,” muttered Varuz, “but no less welcome for that.”

“Hurrah for Marshal West!”

“We are delivered!”

Jezal was in no mood to whoop for joy. Hope was a fine thing, of course, and had long been in short supply, but celebrations were decidedly premature. He crossed back to the other side of the tower and frowned down.

More Gurkish were surging into the square outside the citadel, and more still, and they were coming well prepared. They wheeled great sloping wooden screens forward, each one big enough for a score of men or more to hide behind. The foremost of them already bristled with flatbow bolts, but they continued to creep towards the bridge. Arrows flitted up and down. The wounded fell, did their best to crawl for the rear. One of the buildings at the side of the square had already caught fire, flames licking hungrily round the eaves of its roof.

“The army!” someone whooped from the opposite battlement. “Marshal West!”

“Indeed.” Marovia frowned down at the carnage below, the sounds of battle growing steadily more frantic. “Let us hope he has not come too late.”

The noise of fighting crept up through the cool air. Clashing and clicking, echoing calls. Logen glanced left and right at the men around him, jogging forward over the open fields, quick breath hissing, gear rattling, all blunt frowns and sharp weapons.

Hardly a heartening thing, to be part of all this again.

The sad fact was that Logen had felt more warmth and more trust with Ferro and Jezal, Bayaz and Quai than he did with his own kind now. They’d been a difficult set of bastards, each in their own way. It wasn’t that he’d really understood them, or even liked them much. But Logen had liked himself when he was with them. Out there in the deserted west of the World, he’d been a man you could rely on, like his father had been. A man with no bloody history breathing on his shoulder, no name blacker than hell, no need to watch his back every moment. A man with hopes for something better.

The thought of seeing those folk again, the chance at being that man again, put the spur to him, made Logen want to run at the grey wall of Adua all the faster. It seemed, in that moment anyway, as if he might be able to leave the Bloody-Nine outside it.

But the rest of the Northmen didn’t share his eagerness. It was closer to a stroll than a charge. They ambled up to a stand of trees, a couple of birds went flapping into the white sky, and they stopped altogether. No one said anything. One lad even sat down, with his back to a tree, and started supping water from a flask.

Logen stared at him. “By the dead, I don’t reckon I ever saw such a piss-weak charge as this. Did you leave your bones back in the North?”

There was a bit of mumbling, a few shifty looks. Red Hat glanced sideways, his tongue wedged into his bottom lip. “Maybe we did. Don’t get me wrong, chief, or your Royal Highness, or whatever it is now.” He bowed his head to show he meant no disrespect by it. “I’ve fought before and hard enough, had my life balanced on a sword’s edge, and all o’ that. Just, well… why fight now, is what I’m saying. What we’re all thinking, I reckon. Ain’t none of our business, is it? Ain’t our fight, this.”

Dogman shook his head. “The Union are going to take us for a right crowd o’ cowards.”

“Who cares what they think?” someone said.

Red Hat stepped up close. “Look, chief, I don’t care much of a shit whether some fool I don’t know thinks I’m a coward. I’ve spilled enough blood for that. We all have.”

“Huh,” grunted Logen. “So your vote’s to stay here, then, is it?”

Red Hat shrugged. “Well, I guess—” He squawked as Logen’s forehead crunched into his face, smashing his nose like a nut on an anvil. He dropped hard on his back in the mud, spluttering blood down his chin.

Logen turned round, and he let his face hang on one side, the way he used to. The Bloody-Nine’s face—cold and dead, caring for nothing. It was easy to do it. Felt as natural on him as a favourite pair of boots. His hand found the cold grip of the Maker’s sword, and all around him men eased back, shuffled away, muttered and whispered.

“Any other one o’ you cunts want a vote?”

The lad dropped his flask in the grass and jumped up from where he’d been sitting. Logen gave a few of them his eye, one by one, whoever looked hardest, and one by one they looked at the ground, at the trees, at anything but him. Until he looked at Shivers. That longhaired bastard stared straight back at him. Logen narrowed his eyes. “How about you?”

Shivers shook his head, hair swaying across his face. “Oh no. Not now.”

“When you’re ready, then. When any one o’ you are ready. Until then, I’ll have some work out o’ you. Weapons,” he growled.

Swords and axes, spears and shields were all made ready quick-time. Men fussed about, finding their places, competing all of a sudden to be the first to charge. Red Hat was just getting up, wincing with one hand to his bloody face. Logen looked down at him. “If you’re feeling hard done by, think on this. In the old days you’d be trying to hold your guts in about now.”

“Aye,” he grunted, wiping his mouth. “Right y’are.” Logen watched him walk off back to his boys, spitting blood. Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he’s got a talent for turning a friend into an enemy.

“Did you have to?” asked the Dogman.

Logen shrugged. He hadn’t wanted it, but he was leader now. Always a disaster, but there it was, and a man in charge can’t have men putting questions. Just can’t have it. They come with questions first, then they come with knives. “Couldn’t see another way. That’s how it’s always been, ain’t it?”

“I was hoping times changed.”

“Times never change. You have to be realistic, Dogman.”

“Aye. Shame, though.”

A lot of things were a shame. Logen had given up trying to put them right a long time ago. He slid out the Maker’s sword and held it up. “Let’s go, then! And this time like we care a shit!” He started off through the trees, hearing the rest of the lads following. Out into the open air, and the walls of Adua loomed up, a sheer grey cliff at the top of a grassy rise, studded with round towers. There were quite a number of corpses lying around. Enough to give even a battle-hardened Carl some cold feelings. Gurkish corpses mostly, from the colour of their skin, sprawled among all kinds of broken gear, squashed into muddy earth, trampled with hoof-prints.

“Steady!” shouted Logen as he jogged on through them. “Steady!” He caught sight of something up ahead, a fence of sharpened stakes, the body of a horse hanging dead from one of them. Behind the stakes, men moved. Men with bows.

“Cover up!” A few arrows came zipping down. One thudded into Shivers’ shield, a couple more into the ground round Logen’s feet. A Carl not a stride from him got one in the chest and tumbled over.

Logen ran. The fence came wobbling towards him, a good bit slower than he’d have liked. Someone stood between two of the stakes, dark-faced, with a shining breastplate, a red plume on his pointed helmet. He was shouting to a crowd of others gathered behind him, waving a curved sword. A Gurkish officer, maybe. As good a thing to charge at as any. Logen’s boots squelched at the churned-up ground. A couple more arrows spun past him, hastily aimed. The officer’s eyes went wide. He took a nervous step back, raised his sword.

Logen jerked to his left and the curved blade thudded into the turf at his feet. He growled as he swung the Maker’s sword round and the heavy length of metal clanged deep into the officer’s bright breastplate, left a great dent in it. He screeched, then tottered forwards, all doubled up and hardly able to gasp in a breath. His sword spun out of his hand and Logen hit him on the back of his head, crushed his helmet and sent him sprawling in the mud.

He looked to the others, but not one of them had moved. They were a tattered-looking set, like a dark-skinned version of the weakest kind of Thralls. Hardly the ruthless bastards he’d expected from the way that Ferro had always talked about the Gurkish. They huddled together, spears sticking out this way and that. A couple even had bows with arrows nocked, probably could have stuck him like a hedgehog, but they didn’t. Still, charging right at them might well have been the very thing to wake them up. Logen had taken an arrow or two in his time and he didn’t fancy another.

So instead of coming forward, he stood up tall, and he gave a roar. A fighting roar, like the one he’d given when he charged down the hill at Carleon, all those years ago, when he still had all his fingers and all his hopes intact. He felt the Dogman come up beside him, and lift his sword, and give a scream of his own. Then Shivers was up with them, bellowing like a bull and smashing the head of his axe against his shield. Then Red Hat, with his bloody face, and Grim, and all the rest, yelling their war cries.

They stood in a long line, shaking their weapons, beating them crashing together, roaring and screaming and whooping at the tops of their voices, making a sound as if hell itself had opened up and a crowd of devils was singing welcome. The brown men watched them, staring and trembling, their mouths and their eyes wide open. Logen didn’t reckon they’d ever seen anything like this before.

One of them dropped his spear. Didn’t mean to, maybe, just so struck with the noise and the sight of all these crazy hairy bastards his fingers came open. It fell anyway, whether he meant it or not, and that was it, they all started dropping their gear. Fast as they could, it clattered down in the grass. Seemed stupid to keep shouting, and the war cries died out, left the two groups of men staring at each other in silence across that stretch of mud, planted with bent stakes and twisted corpses.

“Strange kind o’ battle, that,” muttered Shivers.

The Dogman leaned towards Logen. “What do we do with ’em now we’ve got ’em?”

“We can’t just sit hear minding ’em.”

“Uh,” said Grim.

Logen chewed at his lip, spun his sword round and round in his hand, trying to think of some clever way to come at this. He couldn’t see one. “Might as well just let ’em go.” He jerked his head away north. None of them moved, so he tried it again, and pointed with his sword. They cringed and muttered to each other when he lifted it, one of them falling over in the mud. “Just piss off that way,” he said, “and we’ve got no argument. Just piss… off… that way!” He stabbed with the sword again.

One of them got the idea now, took a cautious step away from the group. When no one struck him dead, he started running. Soon enough the others followed him. Dogman watched the last of them shamble off. Then he shrugged his shoulders. “Good luck to ’em, then, I guess.”

“Aye,” muttered Logen. “Good luck.” Then, so quiet that no one could hear, “Still alive, still alive, still alive…”

Glokta limped through the reeking gloom, down a fetid walkway half a stride across, his tongue squirming into his empty gums with the effort of staying upright, wincing all the way as the pain in his leg grew worse and worse, doing his best not to breathe through his nose. I thought when I lay crippled in bed after I came back from Gurkhul I could sink no lower. When I presided over the brutality of a stinking prison in Angland I thought the same again. When I had a clerk slaughtered in an abattoir I imagined I had reached the bottom. How wrong I was.

Cosca and his mercenaries formed a single file with Glokta in their midst, their cursing, grumbling, slapping footfalls echoing up and down the vaulted tunnel, the light from their swinging lamps casting swaying shadows over the glistening stone. Rotten black water dripped from above, trickled down the mossy walls, gurgled in slimy gutters, rushed and churned down the reeking channel beside him. Ardee shuffled along behind with his instruments clasped under one arm. She had abandoned any attempt to hold up the hem of her dress and the fabric was well stained with black slurry. She looked up at him, damp hair hanging across her face, and made a weak effort at a smile. “You certainly do take a girl to the very best places.”

“Oh, indeed. My knack for finding romantic settings no doubt explains my continuing popularity with the fairer sex.” Glokta winced at a painful twinge. “Despite being a crippled monstrosity. Which way are we heading, now?”

Longfoot hobbled along in front, tethered by a rope to one of the mercenaries. “North! Due north, give or take. We are just beside the Middleway.”

“Huh.” Above us, not ten strides distant, are some of the most fashionable addresses in the city. The shimmering palaces and a river of shit, so much closer together than most would ever like to believe. Everything beautiful has a dark side, and some of us must dwell there, so that others can laugh in the light. His snort of laughter turned to a squeak of panic as his toeless foot slid on the sticky walkway. He flailed at the wall with his free hand, fumbled his cane and it clattered to the slimy stones. Ardee caught his elbow before he fell and pulled him upright. He could not stop a girlish whimper of pain hissing out from the gaps in his teeth.

“You’re really not enjoying yourself, are you?”

“I’ve had better days.” He smacked the back of his head against the stone as Ardee leaned down to retrieve his cane. “To be betrayed by both,” he found himself muttering. “That hurts. Even me. One I expected. One I could have taken. But both? Why?”

“Because you’re a ruthless, plotting, bitter, twisted, self-pitying villain?” Glokta stared at her, and she shrugged. “You asked.” They set off once again through the nauseating darkness.

“The question was meant to be rhetorical.”

“Rhetoric? In a sewer?”

“Wait up, there!” Cosca held up his hand and the grumbling procession shuffled to a halt again. A sound filtered down from above, softly at first, then louder—the rhythmic boom of tramping feet, seeming to come, disconcertingly, from everywhere at once. Cosca pressed himself to the sticky wall, stripes of daylight falling across his face from a grate above, the long feather on his cap drooping with slime. Voices settled through the murk. Kantic voices. Cosca grinned, and jabbed one finger up towards the roof. “Our old friends the Gurkish. Those bastards don’t give up, eh?”

“They’ve moved quickly,” grunted Glokta as he tried to catch his breath.

“No one much fighting in the streets any more, I imagine. All pulled back to the Agriont, or surrendered.”

Surrendering to the Gurkish. Glokta winced as he stretched out his leg. Rarely a good idea, and not one a man I would ever consider twice. “We must hurry, then. Move along there, Brother Longfoot!”

The Navigator hobbled on. “Not much further, now! I have not led you wrong, oh no, not I! That would not have been my way. We are close now, to the moat, very close. If there is a way inside the walls, I will find it, on that you may depend. I will have you inside the walls in a—”

“Shut your mouth and get on with it,” growled Glokta.

One of the workmen shook the last of the wood shavings from his barrel, another raked the heap of pale powder smooth, and they were done. The whole Square of Marshals, from the towering white walls of the Halls Martial on Ferro’s right to the gilded gates of the Lords’ Round on her left, was entirely covered in sawdust. It was as if snow had come suddenly, only here, and left a thin blanket across the smooth flags. Across the dark stone, and across the bright metal.

“Good.” Bayaz nodded with rare satisfaction. “Very good!”

“Is that all, my Lord?” called their foreman from the midst of their cringing group.

“Unless any of you wish to stay, and witness the destruction of the indestructible Hundred Words?”

The foreman squinted sideways at one of his fellows with some confusion. “No. No, I think we’ll just… you know…” He and the rest of the workmen began to back off, taking their empty barrels with them. Soon they were away between the white palaces. Ferro and Bayaz were left alone in all that flat expanse of dust.

Just the two of them, and the Maker’s box, and the thing that it contained.

“So. The trap is set. We need merely wait for our quarry.” Bayaz tried his knowing grin, but Ferro was not fooled. She saw his gnarled hands fussing with each other, the muscles clenching and unclenching on the side of his bald head. He was not sure if his plans would work. However wise he was, however subtle, however cunning, he could not be sure. The thing in the box, the cold and heavy thing that Ferro longed to touch, was an unknown. The only precedent for its use was far away, in the empty wastes of the Old Empire. The vast ruin of blighted Aulcus.

Ferro frowned, and loosened her sword in its scabbard.

“If they come, that will not save you.”

“You can never have too many knives,” she growled back. “How do you know they will even come this way?”

“What else can they do? They must come to wherever I am. That is their purpose.” Bayaz pulled in a ragged breath through his nose, and blew it out. “And I am here.”

Sacrifices

Dogman squeezed through the gate along with a rush of others, some Northmen and an awful lot of Union boys, all pouring into the city after that excuse for a battle outside. There were a few folk scattered on the walls over the archway, cheering and whooping like they were at a wedding. A fat man in a leather apron was standing on the other side of the tunnel, clapping folk on the back as they came past. “Thank you, friend! Thank you!” He shoved something into Dogman’s hand, grinning like a madman all the way. A loaf of bread.

“Bread.” Dogman sniffed at it, but it smelled alright. “What the hell’s all that about?” The man had a whole heap of loaves on a cart. He was handing them out to any soldier that came past, Union or Northman. “Who’s he, anyway?”

Grim shrugged. “A baker?”

There weren’t much time to think on it. They were all getting shoved together into a big space full of men pushing, and grumbling, and making mess. All kind of soldiers and some old men and women round the edge, starting to get tired of cheering. A well-clipped lad in a black uniform was standing on top of a cart in the midst of this madness and screeching like a lost goat.

“Eighth regiment, towards the Four Corners! Ninth towards the Agriont! If you’re with the tenth you came through the wrong damn gate!”

“Thought we were to the docks, Major!”

“Poulder’s division are dealing with the docks! We’re for the north part of the city! Eighth regiment towards the Four Corners!”

“I’m with the Fourth!”

“Fourth? Where’s your horse?”

“Dead!”

“What about us?” roared Logen. “Northmen!”

The lad stared at them, wide-eyed, then he threw up his hands. “Just get in there! If you see any Gurkish, kill them!” He turned back towards the gate, jerking his thumb over his shoulder into the city. “Ninth regiment towards the Agriont!”

Logen scowled. “We’ll get no sense here.” He pointed down a wide street, full of walking soldiers. Some great tall tower poked up above the buildings. Huge thing, must’ve been built on a hill. “We get split up we’ll just aim at that.” He struck off down that street and Dogman came after, Grim behind with Shivers and his boys, Red Hat and his crew further back. Wasn’t long before the crowds thinned out and they were marching down empty streets, quiet except for some birds calling, happy as ever, not caring a thing for there having been a battle just now, and caring even less that there was another one coming.

Dogman wasn’t giving it a lot of thought either, for all he had his bow loose in one hand. He was too busy staring at the houses down either side of the road. Houses the like of which he’d never seen in his life. Made of little square, red stones, and black wood filled in with white render. Each one of ’em was big enough for a chieftain to be happy with, most with glass windows in as well.

“Bloody palaces, eh?”

Logen snorted. “You think this is something? You should see this Agriont we’re aiming at. The buildings they got there. You never dreamed o’ the like. Carleon’s a pigsty beside this place.”

Dogman had always found Carleon a good bit too built-up. This was downright ridiculous. He dropped back a way, found he was walking next to Shivers. He lore the loaf and held one half out.

“Thanks.” Shivers took a bite out of the end, then another. “Not bad.”

“Ain’t nothing quite like it, is there? That taste o’ new bread? Tastes like… peace, I guess.”

“If you say so.” They chewed together for a while, saying nothing.

Dogman looked sideways. “I think you need to put this feud o’ yours behind you.”

“What feud’s that?”

“How many you got? The one with our new king up there. Ninefingers.”

“Can’t say I haven’t tried.” Shivers frowned up the road at Logen’s back. “But whenever I turn around, there it is beside me.”

“Shivers, you’re a good man. I like you. We all do. You got bones, lad, and brains too, and men’ll follow you. You could go a long way if you don’t get yourself killed, and there’s the problem. I don’t want to see you start up something you can’t put a good end to.”

“You needn’t worry then. Anything I start I’ll make sure I finish.”

Dogman shook his head. “No, no, that ain’t my point, lad, not at all. Maybe you come out on top, maybe you don’t. My point is neither one’s a victory. Blood makes blood, and nothing else. My point is it ain’t too late for you. It ain’t too late for you to be better’n that.”

Shivers frowned at him. Then he tossed the heel of bread away, turned his big shoulder and headed off without another word. Dogman sighed. Some things can’t be put right just with talk. Some things can’t be put right at all.

They came out from the maze of buildings and onto a river. It must’ve been as wide as the Whiteflow, only the banks on each side were made of stone. The biggest bridge the Dogman had ever seen spanned it, railings made of curly iron, wide enough to drive two carts across side by side. Another wall stood at the far end, even bigger than the one they came through first. Dogman took a few gawping steps forward, and he looked up and down the gleaming water, and he saw that there were more bridges. A lot more, and some even bigger, standing out from a great forest of walls, and towers, and soaring high buildings.

A lot of the others were staring too, eyes wide open like they’d stepped out onto the moon. Even Grim had a twist to his face that might’ve been surprise.

“Bloody hell,” said Shivers. “You ever see the like o’ this?”

Dogman’s neck was aching from staring round at it all. “They’ve got so much here. Why do they even want bloody Angland? Place is a shit-hole.”

Logen shrugged. “Couldn’t say. Some men always want more, I guess.”

“Some men always want more, eh, Brother Longfoot?” Glokta gave a disapproving shake of his head. “I spared your other foot. I spared your life. Now you want freedom, too?”

“Superior,” he wheedled. “If I may, you did undertake to release me… I have upheld my side of the bargain. That door should open onto a square not far from the House of Questions—”

“We shall see.”

One last splintering blow of the axe and the door shuddered back on its rusty hinges, daylight spilling into the narrow cellar. The mercenary with the tattooed neck stood aside and Glokta limped up and peered out. Ah, fresh air. A gift we so often take for granted. A short set of steps led up to a cobbled yard, hemmed in by the grubby backs of grey buildings. Glokta knew it. Just round the corner from the House of Questions, as promised.

“Superior?” murmured Longfoot.

Glokta curled his lip. But where’s the harm? The chances are none of us will live out the day in any case, and dead men can afford to be merciful. The only kind of men that can, in fact. “Very well. Let him go.” The one-eyed mercenary slid out a long knife and sawed through the rope round Longfoot’s wrists. “It would be best if I didn’t ever see you again.”

The Navigator had the ghost of a grin on his face. “Don’t worry, Superior. I was only this moment thinking the very same thing.” He hobbled back the way they had come, down the dank stairway towards the sewers, rounded a corner and was gone.

“Tell me you brought the things,” said Glokta.

“I’m untrustworthy, Superior. Not incompetent.” Cosca flicked a hand at the mercenaries. “Time, my friends. Let’s black up.”

As a unit they pulled out black masks and buckled them on, pulled off their ragged coats, their torn clothes. Every man wore clean black underneath, from head to toe, with weapons carefully stowed. In a few moments a crowd of criminal villains was transformed into a well-ordered unit of Practicals of his Majesty’s Inquisition. Not that there’s too much of a leap from one to the other.

Cosca himself whisked his coat off, pulled it quickly inside out and dragged it back on. The lining was black as night. “Always wise to wear a choice of colours,” he explained. “In case one should be called upon to change sides in a pinch.” The very definition of a turncoat. He took off his hat, flicked at the filthy feather. “Can I keep it?”

“No.”

“You’re a hard man, Superior.” He grinned as he tossed the cap away into the shadows. “And I love you for it.” He pulled his own mask on, then frowned at Ardee, standing, confused and exhausted in a corner of the store-room. “What about her?”

“Her? A prisoner, Practical Cosca! A spy in league with the Gurkish. His Eminence expressed his desire to question her personally.” Ardee blinked at him. “It’s easy. Just look scared.”

She swallowed. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

Wandering through the House of Questions with the aim of arresting the Arch Lector? I should say not. Glokta snapped his fingers. “We need to move.”

“We need to move,” said West. “Have we cleared the docks? Where the hell is Poulder?”

“Nobody seems to know, sir.” Brint tried to push his horse further, but they were squashed in by a grumbling throng. Spears waved, their points flailing dangerously close. Soldiers cursed. Sergeants bellowed. Officers clucked like frustrated chickens. It was hard to imagine more difficult terrain than the narrow streets behind the docks through which to manoeuvre an army of thousands. To make matters worse there was now an ominous flow of wounded, limping or being carried, in the opposite direction.

“Make some room for the Lord Marshal!” roared Pike. “The Lord Marshal!” He lifted his sword as though he was more than willing to lay about him with the flat, and men rapidly cleared out of the way, a valley forming through the rattling spears. A rider came clattering up out of their midst. Jalenhorm, a bloody cut across his forehead.

“Are you alright?”

The big man grinned. “It’s nothing, sir. Caught my head on a damn timber.”

“Progress?”

“We’re forcing them back towards the western side of the city. Kroy’s cavalry made it to the Four Corners, as far as I can tell, but the Gurkish still have the Agriont well surrounded, and now they’re regrouping, counterattacking from the west. A lot of Kroy’s foot are still all caught up in the streets on the other side of the river. If we don’t get reinforcement there soon—”

“I need to speak to General Poulder,” snapped West. “Where the hell is bloody Poulder? Brint?”

“Sir?”

“Take a couple of these fellows and bring Poulder here, right away!” He stabbed at the air with a finger. “In person!”

“Yes, sir!” Brint did his best to turn his horse around.

“What about at sea? Is Reutzer up?”

“As far as I’m aware he’s engaged the Gurkish fleet, but I’ve no idea how…” The smell of rotting salt and burning wood intensified as they emerged from the buildings and onto the harbour. “Bloody hell.”

West could only agree.

The graceful curve of Adua’s docks had been transformed into a crescent of carnage. Near to them the quay was blackened, wasted, scattered with broken gear and broken bodies. Further off, crowds of men were struggling in ill-formed groups, polearms sticking up in all directions like hedgehog’s spines, the air heavy with their noise. Union battle-flags and Gurkish standards flailed like scarecrows in the breeze. The epic conflict covered almost the entire long sweep of the shoreline. Several warehouses were in flames, sending up a shimmering heat-haze, lending a ghostly air to the hundreds of men locked in battle beyond them. Long smears of choking smoke, black, grey, white, rolled from the burning buildings and out into the bay. There, in the churning harbour, a host of ships was engaged in their own desperate struggle.

Vessels ploughed this way and that under full sail, turning, tacking, jockeying for position, flinging glittering spray high into the air. Catapults hurled flaming missiles, archers on the decks loosed flaming volleys, sailors crawled high in the cobwebs of rigging. Other ships were locked together in ungainly pairs by rope and grapple, like fighting dogs snapping at one another, glinting sunlight showing men in savage melée on their decks. Stricken vessels limped vainly, torn sailcloth hanging, slashed rigging dangling. Several were burning, sending up brown columns of smoke, turning the low sun into an ugly smudge.

Wreckage floated everywhere on the frothing water—barrels, boxes, shivered timbers and dead sailors.

West knew the familiar shapes of the Union ships, yellow suns stitched into their sails, he could guess which were the Gurkish vessels. But there were others there too—long, lean, black-hulled predators, each one of their white sails marked with a black cross. One in particular towered far over every other vessel in the harbour, and was even now being secured at one of the few wharves still intact.

“Nothing good ever comes from Talins,” muttered Pike.

“What the hell are Styrian ships doing here?”

The ex-convict pointed to one in the very act of ramming a Gurkish ship in the side. “Fighting the Gurkish, by the look of it.”

“Sir,” somebody asked. “What shall we do?”

The eternal question. West opened his mouth, but nothing came out. How could one man hope to exert any measure of control over the colossal chaos spread out before him? He remembered Varuz, in the desert, striding around with his huge staff crowding after him. He remembered Burr, thumping at his maps and wagging his thick ringer. The greatest responsibility of a commander was not to command, but to look like he knew how to. He swung his sore leg over the saddle bow and slid down to the sticky cobbles.

“We will set up our headquarters here, for the time being. Major Jalenhorm?”

“Sir?”

“Find General Kroy and tell him to keep pressing north and west, towards the Agriont.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Somebody get some men together and start clearing this rubbish from the docks. We need to get our people through quicker.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And somebody find me General Poulder, damn it! Each man has to do his part!”

“What’s this now?” grunted Pike.

A strange procession was sweeping down the blasted quay towards them, almost dreamily out of place amongst the wreckage. A dozen watchful guards in black armour flanked a single man. He had black hair streaked with grey, sported a pointed beard, immaculately trimmed. He wore black boots, a fluted breastplate of black steel, a cloak of black velvet flowing majestically from one shoulder. He was dressed, in fact, like the world’s richest undertaker, but walked with the kind of steely self-importance reserved for the highest royalty. He plotted a direct course towards West, looking neither left nor right, the dumbfounded guards and staff forced effortlessly aside by his air of command like iron filings parted by magnetic repulsion.

He held out his black-gauntleted hand. “I am Grand Duke Orso, of Talins.”

The idea, perhaps, was that West should kneel and kiss it. Instead he seized it with his own and gave it a firm shake. “Your Excellency, an honour.” He had no idea if that was even the proper form of address. He had scarcely been expecting to encounter one of the most powerful men in the world in the midst of a bloody battle on the docks of Adua. “I am Lord Marshal West, commander of his Majesty’s Army. Not to appear ungrateful, but you are far from home—”

“My daughter is your Queen. On her behalf, the people of Talins are prepared to make any sacrifice. As soon as I heard of the…” He arched one black eyebrow at the burning harbour. “Troubles, here, I prepared an expedition. The ships of my fleet, as well as ten thousand of my best troops, stand at your disposal.”

West hardly knew how to respond. “They do?”

“I have taken the liberty of disembarking them. They are engaged in clearing the Gurkish from the south-western quarter of the city. The Three Farms, is it called?”

“Er… yes.”

Duke Orso gave the thinnest of smiles. “A picturesque name for an urban area. You need no longer trouble yourself with your western flank. I wish you the best of luck with your endeavours, Lord Marshal. If fate is willing, we will meet each other afterward. Victorious.” He bowed his magnificent head and swept away.

West stared after him. He knew that he really should have been grateful for the sudden appearance of ten thousand helpful Styrian troops, but he could not escape the nagging feeling that he would have been happier if Grand Duke Orso had never arrived. For the time being, however, he had more pressing worries.

“Lord Marshal!” It was Brint, hurrying down the quay at the front of a group of officers. One side of his face was covered in a long smear of ash. “Lord Marshal, General Poulder—”

“At long bloody last!” snapped West. “Now perhaps we’ll have some answers. Where the hell is that bastard?” He shouldered Brint aside, and froze. Poulder lay on a stretcher held by four muddy and miserable-looking members of his staff. He had the expression of a man in peaceful sleep, to the degree that West kept expecting to hear him snore. A huge, ragged wound in his chest rather spoiled the effect, however.

“General Poulder led the charge from the front,” said one of the officers, swallowing his tears. “A noble sacrifice…”

West stared down. How often had he wished that man dead? He jerked one hand over his face at a sudden wave of nausea. “Damn it,” he whispered.

“Damn it!” hissed Glokta as he twisted his trembling ankle on the topmost step and nearly pitched onto his face. A bony Inquisitor coming the other way gave him a long look. “Is there a problem?” he snarled back. The man lowered his head and hurried past without speaking.

Click, tap, pain. The dim hallway slid by with agonising slowness. Every step was an ordeal, now, but he forced himself on, legs burning, foot throbbing, neck aching, sweat running down his twisted back under his clothes, a rictus of toothless nonchalance clamped onto his face. At every gasp and grunt through the building he had expected a challenge. With each twinge and spasm he had been waiting for the Practicals to flood from the doorways and butcher him and his thinly disguised hirelings like hogs.

But those few nervous people they had passed had scarcely looked up. Fear has made them sloppy. The world teeters at a precipice. All scared to take a step in case they put a foot into empty air. The instinct of self-preservation. It can destroy a man’s efficiency.

He lurched through the open doors and into the ante-room outside the Arch Lector’s office. The secretary’s head jerked angrily up. “Superior Glokta! You cannot simply…” He stumbled on the words as the mercenaries began to tramp into the narrow room behind him. “I mean to say… you cannot…”

“Silence! I am acting on the express orders of the king himself.” Well, everyone lies. The difference between a hero and a villain is whether anyone believes him. “Step aside!” he hissed at the two Practicals flanking the door, “or be prepared to answer for it.” They glanced at each other, then, as more of Cosca’s men appeared, raised their hands together and allowed themselves to be disarmed. The instinct of self-preservation. A decided disadvantage.

Glokta paused before the doorway. Where I have cringed so often at the pleasure of his Eminence. His fingers tingled against the wood. Can it possibly be this easy? To simply walk up in broad daylight and arrest the most powerful man in the Union? He had to suppress a smirk. If only I had thought of it sooner. He wrenched the doorknob round and lurched over the threshold.

Sult’s office was much as it had always been. The great windows, with their view of the University, the huge round table with its jewelled map of the Union, the ornate chairs and the brooding portraits. It was not Sult sitting in the tall chair, however. It was none other than his favourite lapdog, Superior Goyle. Trying the big seat out for size, are we? Far too big for you, I’m afraid.

Goyle’s first reaction was outrage. How dare anyone barge in here like this? His second was confusion. Who would dare to barge in here like this? His third was shock. The cripple? But how? His fourth, as he saw Cosca and four of his men follow Glokta through the door, was horror. Now we’re getting so mew here.

“You!” he hissed. “But you’re—”

“Slaughtered? Change of plans, I’m afraid. Where’s Sult?”

Goyle’s eyes flickered around the room, over the dwarfish mercenary, the one with a hook for a hand, the one with the hideous boils, and came to rest on Cosca, swaggering round the edge of the chamber with one fist on his sword-hilt.

“I’ll pay you! Whatever he’s paying you, I’ll double it!”

Cosca held out his open palm. “I prefer cash in hand.”

“Now? I don’t have… I don’t have it with me!”

“A shame, but I work on the same principle as a whore. You’ll buy no fun with promises, my friend. No fun at all.”

“Wait!” Goyle stumbled up and took a step back, his trembling hands held up in front of him. But there’s nowhere to go but out the window. That’s the trouble with ambition. It’s easy to forget, when you’re always looking upwards, that the only way down from the dizzy heights is a long drop.

“Sit down, Goyle,” growled Glokta.

Cosca grabbed his wrist, twisted his right arm savagely behind him and made him squeal, forced him back into the chair, clamped one hand round the back of his head and smashed his face into the beautiful map of the Union. There was a sharp crunch as his nose broke, spattering blood across the western part of Midderland.

Hardly subtle, but then the time for subtlety is behind us. The Arch Lector’s confession, or someone close to him… Sult would have been better, but if we cannot have the brains, I suppose we must make do with the arsehole. “Where is that girl with my instruments?” Ardee crept cautiously into the room, came slowly across to the table and put the case down.

Glokta snapped his fingers, pointed. The fat mercenary ambled up and took a firm grip on Goyle’s free arm, dragged it sharply out across the table. “I expect you think you know an awful lot about torture, eh, Goyle? Believe me, though, you don’t really understand a thing until you’ve spent some time on both sides of the table.”

“You mad bastard!” The Superior squirmed, smearing blood across the Union with his face. “You’ve crossed the line!”

“Line?” Glokta spluttered with laughter. “I spent the night cutting the fingers from one of my friends and killing another, and you dare to talk to me about lines?” He pushed open the lid of the case and his instruments offered themselves up. “The only line that matters is the one that separates the strong from the weak. The man who asks the questions from the man who answers them. There are no other lines.”

He leaned forward and ground the tip of his finger into the side of Goyle’s skull. “That’s all in your head! The manacles, if you please.”

“Eh?” Cosca looked to the fat mercenary, and the man shrugged, the blurred tattoos on his thick neck squirming.

“Pffft,” said the dwarf. Boil-face was silent. The one-handed mercenary had pulled down his mask and was busy picking his nose with his hook.

Glokta arched his back and gave a heavy sigh. There really is no replacement for experienced help. “Then I suppose we must improvise.” He scooped up a dozen long nails and scattered them jingling across the table-top. He slid out the hammer, its polished head shining. “I think you can see where we’re going with this.”

“No. No! We can work something out, we can—” Glokta pressed the point of one nail into Goyle’s wrist. “Ah! Wait! Wait—”

“Would you be good enough to hold this? I have only one hand to spare.”

Cosca took the nail gingerly between finger and thumb. “Mind where you aim with the hammer, though, eh?”

“Don’t worry. I am quite precise.” An awful lot of practice.

“Wait!” screeched Goyle.

The hammer made three metallic clicks, almost disappointingly quiet, as it drove the nail cleanly between the bones of Goyle’s forearm and into the table beneath. He roared with pain, spraying bloody spit over the table.

“Oh, come now, Superior, compared to what you did to your prisoners in Angland this is really quite infantile. Try to pace yourself. If you scream like that now, you’ll have nowhere to go later.” The fat mercenary seized Goyle’s other wrist in his pudgy hands and dragged it out across the map of the Union.

“Nail?” asked Cosca, raising an eyebrow.

“You’re getting the hang of it.”

“Wait! Ah! Wait!”

“Why? This is the closest I’ve come to enjoying myself in six years. Don’t begrudge me my little moment. I get so very few of them.” Glokta raised the hammer.

“Wait!”

Click. Goyle roared with pain again. Click. And again. Click. The nail was through, and the one-time scourge of Angland’s penal colonies was pinned flat by both arms. I suppose that’s where ambition gets you without the talent. Humility is easier to teach than one would think. All it takes to puncture our arrogance is a nail or two in the right place. Goyle’s breath hissed through his bloody teeth, pinioned fingers clawing at the wood. Glokta disapprovingly shook his head. “I would stop struggling if I was you. You’ll only tear the flesh.”

“You’ll pay for this, you crippled bastard! Don’t think you won’t!”

“Oh, I’ve paid already.” Glokta turned his neck around in a slow circle, trying to make the grumbling muscles in his shoulders unclench just a fraction. “I was kept, I am not sure for how long, but I would guess at several months, in a cell no bigger than a chest of drawers. Far too small to stand, or even to sit up straight in. Every possible position twisted, bent, agonising. Hundreds of interminable hours in the pitch darkness, the stifling heat. Kneeling in a stinking slurry of my own shit, wriggling, and squirming, and gasping for air. Begging for water which my jailers let drip down through a grate above. Sometimes they would piss through it, and I would be grateful. I have never stood up straight since. I really have no idea how I remained sane.” Glokta thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. “Perhaps I didn’t. In any case, these are the kind of sacrifices I have made. What sacrifices will you make, just to keep Sult’s secrets?”

No answer but the blood running out from under Goyle’s forearms, pooling around the glittering stone that marked the House of Questions in the city of Keln.

“Huh.” Glokta gripped his cane hard and leaned down to whisper in Goyle’s ear. “There’s a little bit of flesh, between your fruits and your arsehole. You never really see it, unless you’re a contortionist, or unnaturally fond of mirrors. You know the one I’m talking about. Men spend hours thinking about the area in front of it, and almost as long on the area behind, but that little patch of flesh? Unfairly ignored.” He scooped up a few nails and jingled them gently in Goyle’s face. “I mean to set that right, today. I’m going to start there, and work outwards, and believe me, once I’m done, you’ll be thinking about that patch of flesh for the rest of your life. Or you’ll be thinking about where it used to be, at least. Practical Cosca, would you be kind enough to help the Superior out of his trousers?”

“The University!” bellowed Goyle. He had a sheen of sweat all over his balding head. “Sult! He’s in the University!”

So soon? Almost disappointing. But then few bullies take a beating well. “What’s he doing there, at a time like this?”

“I… I don’t—”

“Not good enough. Trousers, please.”

“Silber! He’s with Silber!”

Glokta frowned. “The University Administrator?”

Goyle’s eyes darted from Glokta, to Cosca, and back again. He squeezed them shut. “The Adeptus Demonic!”

There was a long pause. “The what?”

“Silber, he doesn’t just run the University! He conducts… experiments.”

“Experiments of what nature?” Glokta jabbed sharply at Goyle’s bloody face with the head of the hammer. “Before I nail your tongue to the table.”

“Occult experiments! Sult has been giving him money, for a long time! Since the First of the Magi came calling! Before, maybe!”

Occult experiments? Funding from the Arch Lector? It hardly seems Sult’s style, but it explains why those damn Adepti were expecting money from me when I first visited the place. And why Vitari and her circus have set up shop there now. “What experiments?”

“Silber… he can make contact… with the Other Side!”

“What?”

“It’s true! I have seen it! He can learn things, secrets, there is no other way of knowing, and now…”

“Yes?”

“He says he has found a way to bring them through!”

“Them?”

“The Tellers of Secrets, he calls them!”

Glokta licked at his dry lips. “Demons?” I thought his Eminence had no patience with superstition, when all this time… The nerve of the man!

“He can send them against his enemies, he says. Against the Arch Lector’s enemies! They are ready to do it!”

Glokta felt his left eye twitching, and he pressed the back of his hand against it. A year ago I would have laughed to my boots and nailed him to the ceiling. But things are different, now. We passed inside the House of the Maker. We saw Shickel smile as she burned. If there are Eaters? If there are Magi? Why should there not be demons? How could there not be? “What enemies?”

“The High Justice! The First of the Magi!” Goyle squeezed his eyes shut again. “The king,” he whimpered.

Ahhhh. The. King. Those two little words are my kind of magic. Glokta turned to Ardee, and showed her the yawning gap in his front teeth. “Would you be so kind as to prepare a Paper of Confession?”

“Would I…” She stared at him for a moment, eyes wide in her pale face, then hurried to the Arch Lector’s desk, snatched up a sheet of paper and a pen, dipped it rattling in a bottle of ink. She paused, her hand trembling. “What should I write?”

“Oh, something like, ‘I, Superior Goyle, confess to being an accomplice in a treasonous plot of his Eminence Arch Lector Sult, to…’ ’’ How to phrase it? He raised his brows. How else but call it what it is? “ ‘To use diabolical arts against his Majesty the king and members of his Closed Council.’ ”

The nib scratched clumsily over the paper, scattering specks of ink. Ardee held it crackling out to him. “Good enough?”

He remembered the beautiful documents that Practical Frost used to prepare. The elegant, flowing script, the immaculate wording. Each Paper of Confession, a work of art. Glokta stared sadly down at the ink-spotted daub in his hand.

“But a brief step from unreadable, but it will serve.” He slid the paper under Goyle’s trembling hand, then took the pen from Ardee and wedged it between his fingers. “Sign.”

Goyle sobbed, sniffed, scrawled his name at the bottom of the page as best he could with his arm nailed down. I win, and for once the taste is almost sweet.

“Excellent,” said Glokta. “Pull those nails, and find some sort of bandage. It would be a shame if he bled to death before he had the chance to testify. Gag him, though, I’ve heard enough for now. We’ll take him with us to the High Justice.”

“Wait! Wait! Wurghh—!” Goyle’s cries were sharply cut off as the mercenary with the boils wedged a wad of dirty cloth in his mouth. The dwarf slid the pliers from the case. So far, and we are still alive. What ever are the odds of that? Glokta limped to the window and stood, stretching his aching legs. There was a muffled shriek as the first nail was ripped from Goyle’s arm, but Glokta’s thoughts were elsewhere. He stared out towards the University, its spires looming up through the smoky murk like clawing fingers. Occult experiments? Summonings and sendings? He licked sourly at his empty gums. What is going on in there?

“What is going on out there?” Jezal strode up and down the roof of the Tower of Chains in a manner which he hoped was reminiscent of a caged tiger, but probably was closer to a criminal on the morning of his own hanging.

Smoke had drawn a sooty veil across the city and made it impossible to tell what was happening any further than a half mile distant. Members of Varuz’ staff, scattered around the parapets, would occasionally call out useless and wildly contradictory news. There was fighting in the Four Corners, up the Middleway, throughout the central part of the city. There was fighting on land and on sea. By turns all hope was lost and they were on the verge of deliverance. But one thing was in no doubt. Below, beyond the moat of the Agriont, the Gurkish efforts continued ominously unabated.

A rain of flatbow bolts continued to pepper the square outside the gates, but for every corpse the Gurkish left, for every wounded man dragged away, five more would vomit out from the burning buildings like bees from a broken hive. Soldiers swarmed down there in teeming hundreds, enclosing the whole circuit of the Agriont in an ever-strengthening ring of men and steel. They squatted behind their wooden screens, they shot arrows up towards the battlements. The pounding of drums had drawn steadily closer and now echoed out around the city. Peering through his eye-glass, with every muscle tensed to try and hold it steady, Jezal had begun to notice strange figures scattered below.

Tall and graceful figures, conspicuous in pearly white armour edged with glinting gold, they moved among the Gurkish soldiers, pointing, ordering, directing. Often, now, they were pointing towards the bridge that led to the west gate of the Agriont. Dark thoughts niggled at the back of Jezal’s mind. Khalul’s Hundred Words? Risen up from the shadowy corners of history to bring the First of the Magi to justice?

“If I didn’t know better, I would have said that they were preparing for an assault.”

“There is no cause for alarm,” croaked Varuz, “our defences are impregnable.” His voice quavered, then cracked entirely at the final word, doing little to give anyone the slightest reassurance. Only a few short weeks ago, nobody would have dared to suggest that the Agriont could ever fall. But nobody would ever have dreamed that it would be surrounded by legions of Gurkish soldiers, either. Very plainly, the rules had changed. A deep blast of horns rang out.

“Down there,” muttered one of his staff.

Jezal peered through his borrowed eye-glass. Some form of great cart had been drawn up through the streets, like a wooden house on wheels, covered by plates of beaten metal. Even now, Gurkish soldiers were loading barrels into it under the direction of two men in white armour.

“Explosive powder,” someone said, unhelpfully.

Jezal felt Marovia’s hand on his arm. “Your Majesty, it might be best if you were to retire.”

“And if I am not safe here? Where, precisely, will I be out of danger, do you suppose?”

“Marshal West will soon deliver us, I am sure. But in the meantime the palace is much the safest place. I will accompany you.” He gave an apologetic smile. “At my age, I fear I will be little use on the walls.”

Gorst held out one gauntleted hand towards the stairs. “This way.”

“This way,” growled Glokta, limping up the hall as swiftly as his ruined feet would carry him, Cosca ambling after. Click, tap, pain.

Only one secretary remained outside the office of the High Justice, peering disapprovingly over his twinkling eye-glasses. No doubt the rest have donned ill-fitting armour and are manning the walls. Or, more likely, have locked themselves in cellars. If only I were with them.

“I am afraid his Worship is busy.”

“Oh, he will see me, don’t worry about that.” Glokta hobbled past without stopping, placed his hand on the brass doorknob of Marovia’s office, and almost jerked it back in surprise. The metal was icy cold. Cold as hell. He turned it with his fingertips and opened the door a crack. A breath of white vapour curled out into the hall, like the freezing mist that would hang over the snowy valleys in Angland in the midst of winter.

It was deathly cold in the room beyond. The heavy wooden furniture, the old oak panelling, the grubby window panes, all glittered with white hoar-frost. The heaps of legal papers were furry with it. A bottle of wine on a table by the door had shattered, leaving behind a bottle-shaped block of pink ice and a scattering of sparkling splinters.

“What in hell…” Glokta’s breath smoked before his smarting lips. Mysterious articles were scattered widely about the wintry room. A long, snaking length of black tubing was frozen to the panelling, like a string of sausages left in the snow. There were patches of black ice on the books, on the desk, on the crunching carpet. There were pink fragments frozen to the ceiling, long white splinters frozen to the floor…

Human remains?

A large chunk of icy flesh, partly coated in rime, lay in the middle of the desk. Glokta turned his head sideways to better take it in. There was a mouth, still with some teeth attached, an ear, an eye. Some strands of a long beard. Enough, in the end, for Glokta to recognise whose parts were scattered so widely around the freezing room. Who else but my last hope, my third suitor, High Justice Marovia?

Cosca cleared his throat. “It seems there is something to your friend Silber’s claims after all.”

An understatement of devilish proportions. Glokta felt the muscles round his left eye twitching with a painful intensity. The secretary fussed up to the door behind them, peered through, gasped, and reeled away. Glokta heard him being noisily sick outside. “I doubt the High Justice will be lending us much assistance.”

“True. But isn’t it getting a little late in the day for your papers and so forth anyway?” Cosca gestured towards the windows, flecked and spotted with frozen blood. “The Gurkish are coming, remember? If you’ve scores to settle, get them settled now, before our Kantic friends tear up all the bills. When plans fail, swift action must serve, eh, Superior?” He reached behind his head, unbuckled his mask, and let it drop to the floor. “Time to laugh in your enemy’s face! To risk all on one final throw! You can pick up the pieces afterward. If they don’t go back together, well, what’s the difference? Tomorrow we might all be living in a different world.”

Or dying in one. Not the way we wanted it, maybe, but he is right. Perhaps we might borrow one final shred of Colonel Glokta’s dash before the game is over? “I hope I can still count on your help?”

Cosca clapped him on the shoulder and sent a painful shudder through his twisted back. “A noble last effort, against all the odds? Of course! Though I should mention that I usually charge double once the diabolical arts are involved.”

“How does triple sound?” After all, Valint and Balk have deep pockets.

Cosca’s grin grew wider. “It sounds well.”

“And your men? Are they reliable?”

“They are still waiting for four fifths of their pay. Until they receive it I would trust any one of them with my life.”

“Good. Then we are prepared.” Glokta worked his aching foot around in his boot. Just a little further now, my toeless beauty. Just a few shuddering steps more, and one way or another, we both can rest. He opened his fingers and let Goyle’s confession float down to the frosty floor. “To the University, then! His Eminence has never liked to be kept waiting.”

Open the Box

Logen could feel the doubt in the men around him, could see the worry on their faces, in the way they held their weapons, and he didn’t blame them. A man can be fearless on his own doorstep, against enemies he understands, but take him long miles over the salty sea to strange places he never dreamed of, he’ll take fright at every empty doorway. And there were an awful lot of those, now.

The city of white towers, where Logen had hurried after the First of the Magi, amazed at the scale of the buildings, the strangeness of the people, the sheer quantity of both, had become a maze of blackened ruins. They crept down empty streets, lined with the outsize skeletons of burned-out houses, charred rafters stabbing at the sky. They crept across empty squares, scattered with rubble and dusted with ash. Always the sounds of battle echoed, ghostly—near, far, all around them.

It was as if they crept through hell.

“How d’you fight in this?” whispered the Dogman.

Logen wished he had an answer. Fighting in forests, in mountains, in valleys, they’d done it all a hundred times, and knew the rules, but this? His eyes flickered nervously over the gaping windows and doorways, the piles of fallen stones. So many places for an enemy to hide.

All Logen could do was aim at the House of the Maker and hope for the best. What would happen when they got there, he wasn’t sure, but it seemed a safe bet there’d be blood involved. Nothing that would do anyone the slightest good, most likely, but the fact was he’d said go, and the one thing a leader can’t do is change his mind.

The clamour of fighting was getting louder, now, and louder. The stink of smoke and anger was picking at his nose, scratching at his throat. The scored metal of the Maker’s sword was slippery in his sweaty palm. He crept low to the ground, over a heap of rubble and along beside a shattered wall, his hand held flat behind him to say go careful. He eased up to the edge, and peered around it.

The Agriont rose up just ahead, great walls and towers black against the white sky, a second set reflected in the moat below. A lot of men were gathered near the water, crowded up and down the cobbled space as far as Logen could see. It didn’t take a sharp mind to realise they were Gurkish. Arrows flitted up towards the battlements, bolts flitted back down, spinning from the cobbles, sticking wobbling into wooden screens.

Not thirty strides away they’d drawn up a line, facing into the city. A good, clean line, bristling with spears, set out on either side of a tall standard, golden letters twinkling on it. A tough-looking line of hard men, well armed and well armoured, nothing like the rubbish they’d faced outside the walls. Logen didn’t reckon shouting was going to get this lot moving anywhere. Except straight at him, maybe.

“Whoa,” muttered the Dogman as he crept up. A few more Northmen followed him, spreading out in the mouth of the street, staring stupidly around.

Logen waved an arm at them. “Might be best if we stay out of sight for the—”

An officer in the midst of the Gurkish line barked in his harsh tongue, pointed towards them with his curved sword. Armour rattled as the men set their spears.

“Ah, shit,” hissed Logen. They came forward, fast, but organised. A mass of them, and bristling with bright, sharp, deadly metal.

There are only three choices when you get charged. Run away, stand, or charge yourself. Running away isn’t usually a bad option, but given the way the rest of the boys were feeling, if they ran they wouldn’t stop running until they fell in the sea. If they stood, all in a puzzled mess from coming through the city, the chances were good that they’d break, and that would leave some dead and do nothing for the rest. Which left one choice, and that’s no choice at all.

Two charges in one day. Shitty luck, that, but there was no use crying about it. You have to be realistic about these things.

Logen started running. Not the way he wanted to, but forward, out from the buildings and across the cobbles towards the moat. He didn’t give too much thought to whether anyone was following. He was too busy screaming and waving his sword around. The first into the killing, just like in the old days. A fitting end for the Bloody-Nine. Be a good song, maybe, if anyone could be bothered finding a tune for it. He gritted his teeth, waiting for the terrible impact.

Then a crowd of Union soldiers came pouring from the buildings on the left, shouting like madmen themselves. The Gurkish charge faltered, their line began to break up, spears swinging wildly as men turned to face the sudden threat. An unexpected bonus, and no mistake.

The Union crashed into the end of the line. Men screeched and bellowed, metal shrieked on metal, weapons flashed, bodies dropped, and Logen fell into the midst of it. He slid past a wobbling spear, slashed at a Gurkish soldier. He missed and hit another, sent him screaming, blood bubbling down chain-mail. He rammed into a third with his shoulder and flung him on his back, stomped on the side of his jaw and felt it crunch under his boot.

The Gurkish officer who’d led the charge was only a stride away, his sword ready. Logen heard a bow string behind and an arrow took the officer near the collar bone. He dragged in a shuddering breath to scream, half spinning round. Logen chopped a deep gash through his back-plate, spots of blood jumping. Men crunched into the remains of the line around him. A spear shaft bent up and shattered sending splinters flying in Logen’s face. Someone roared right next to him and made his ear buzz. He jerked his head away to see a Carl throw a desperate hand up, a curved sword sliced into it and sent a thumb spinning. Logen hacked the Gurkish soldier who’d swung it in the face, the heavy blade of the Maker’s sword catching him across the cheek and splitting his skull wide.

A spear flashed at him. Logen tried to turn sideways, gasped as the point slid through his shirt and down his right side, leaving a cold line under his ribs. The man who held it stumbled on towards him, moving too quick to stop. Logen stabbed him right through, just under his breastplate, ended up blinking in his face. A Union soldier with a patchy ginger beard on his cheeks.

The man frowned, puzzled at seeing another white face. “Wha…” he croaked, clutching at him. Logen tore away, one hand pressed to his side. It was wet there. He wondered if the spear had nicked him or run him right through. He wondered if it had killed him already, and he had just a last few bloody moments left.

Then something hit him on the back of his head and he was reeling, bellowing, not knowing what was happening. His limbs were made of mud. The world wobbled about, full of flying dirt and flying edges. He hacked at something, kicked at something else. He grappled with someone, snarling, tore his hand free and fumbled out a knife, stabbed at a neck, black blood flowing. The sounds of battle roared and hummed in his ears. A man staggered past with part of his face hanging off. Logen could see right inside his mangled mouth from the side, bits of teeth falling out.

The cut down his side burned, and burned, and sucked his breath out. The knock on his head made the pulse pound in his skull, made the blurry world slide from side to side. His mouth was full of the salt metal taste of blood. He felt a touch on his shoulder and lurched around, teeth bared, fingers tight round the grip of the Maker’s blade.

Dogman let go of him and held up his hands. “It’s me! It’s me!”

Logen saw who it was. But it wasn’t his hand that held the sword, now, and the Bloody-Nine saw only work that needed doing.

What a curious flock this crippled shepherd has acquired. Two dozen fake Practicals followed Glokta through the deserted lanes of the Agriont, Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, swaggering at their head. My hopes all entrusted to the world’s least trustworthy man. One of them dragged the bound and gagged Superior Goyle stumbling along by a rope. Like an unwilling dog being taken for a walk. Ardee West shuffled in their midst, her white dress stained with the filth of the sewers and the blood of several men, her face stained with darkening bruises and a haunted slackness. No doubt the result of the several horrors she has already witnessed today. All capering through the Agriont after the Inquisition’s only crippled Superior. A merry dance to hell, accompanied by the sounds of distant battle.

He lurched to a sudden halt. An archway beside him led through into the Square of Marshals and, for some reason beyond his comprehension, the whole wide space had been covered with sawdust. In the middle of that yellow-white expanse, perfectly recognisable even over this distance, the First of the Magi stood, waiting. Beside him was the dark-skinned woman who had nearly drowned Glokta in his bath. My two favourite people in all the world, I do declare.

“Bayaz,” hissed Glokta.

“No time for that.” Cosca caught him by the elbow and pulled him away, and the First of the Magi and his sullen companion passed out of view. Glokta limped on, down the narrow lane, winced as he turned a corner, and found himself staring directly into the face of his old acquaintance Jezal dan Luthar. Or, should I say, the High King of the Union. I am painfully honoured.

“Your Majesty,” he said, lowering his head and causing a particularly unpleasant stabbing through his neck. Cosca, just appearing beside him, gave an extravagant bow, reaching for his cap to sweep it from his head. It was gone. He shrugged his shoulders apologetically, and tugged at his greasy forelock.

Luthar frowned at him, and at each member of his strange group as they appeared. Someone seemed to be lurking at the back of the royal entourage. A robe of black and gold in amongst all that polished steel. Could that be… our old friend the High Justice? But surely he is in frozen pieces—Then Ardee shuffled around the corner.

Luthar’s eyes went wide. “Ardee…”

“Jezal…” She looked every bit as amazed as he did. “I mean—”

And the air was ripped apart by a colossal explosion.

The Middleway was not what it used to be.

West and his staff rode northwards in stunned silence. Their horses’ hooves tapped at the cracked road. A sorry bird cheeped from the bare rafters of a burned-out house. Someone in a side street squealed for help. From the west the vague sounds of fighting still echoed, like the noise of a distant sporting event, but one with no winners. Fire had swept through the centre of the city, turning whole swathes of buildings to blackened shells, the trees to grey claws, the gardens to patches of withered slime. Corpses were the only addition. Corpses of every size and description.

The Four Corners was a slaughter-yard, scattered with all the ugly garbage of war, bounded by the ruined remains of some of Adua’s finest buildings. Near at hand, the wounded were laid out in long rows on the dusty ground, coughing, groaning, calling for water, bloody surgeons moving helplessly among them.

A few grim soldiers were already piling the Gurkish dead into formless heaps, masses of tangled arms, legs, faces. They were watched over by a tall man with his hands clenched behind his back. General Kroy, always quick to put things in order. His black uniform was smudged with grey ash, one torn sleeve flapping around his wrist. The fighting must have been savage indeed to make a mark on his perfect presentation, but his salute was unaffected. It could not have been more impeccable if they stood on a parade ground.

“Progress, General?”

“Bitter fighting through the central district, Lord Marshal! Our cavalry broke through this morning and we took them by surprise. Then they counterattacked while we were waiting for the foot. I swear, this weary patch of ground has changed hands a dozen times. But we have the Four Corners, now! They’re fighting hard for every stride, but we’re driving them back towards Arnault’s wall. Look at that, now!” He pointed to a pair of Gurkish standards leaning against a length of crumbling masonry, their golden symbols gleaming in the midst of that drab destruction. “They’ll make a fine centrepiece to anyone’s living room, eh, sir?”

West could not stop his eyes wandering down to a group of groaning wounded lolling against the wall below. “I wish you joy of them. The Agriont?”

“The news is less good there, I’m afraid. We’re pushing them hard, but the Gurkish are up in numbers. They still have the citadel entirely surrounded.”

“Push harder, General!”

Kroy snapped out another salute. “Yes, sir, we’ll break them, don’t you worry. Might I ask how General Poulder is doing with the docks?”

“The docks are back in our hands, but General Poulder… is dead.”

There was a pause. “Dead?” Kroy’s face had turned deathly pale. “But how did he—”

There was a rumble, like thunder in the distance, and the horses shied, pawed at the ground. West’s face, and Kroy’s, and the faces of their officers, all turned as one to the north. There, over the tops of the blackened ruins at the edge of the square, a great mass of dust was rising high above the Agriont.

The bright world spun and throbbed, full of the beautiful song of battle, the wonderful taste of blood, the fine and fruitful stink of death. In the midst of it, no further than arms length away, a small man stood, watching him.

To come so close to the Bloody-Nine? To ask for death as surely as to step into the searing fire. To beg for death. To demand it.

Something about his pointed teeth seemed familiar. A faint memory, from long ago. But the Bloody-Nine pushed it away, shook it off, sunk it in the bottomless sea. It meant nothing to him who men were, or what they had done. He was the Great Leveller, and all men were equal before him. His only care was to turn the living into the dead, and it was past time for the good work to begin. He raised the sword.

The earth shook.

He stumbled, and a great noise washed over him, tore between the dead men and the living, split the world in half. He felt it knock something loose inside his skull. He snarled as he righted himself, lifted the blade high…

Except the arm would not move.

“Bastard…” snarled the Bloody-Nine, but the flames were all burned out. It was Logen who turned towards the noise.

A vast cloud of grey smoke was rising up from the wall of the Agriont a few hundred strides away. Spinning specks flew up high, high above it leaving arching trails of brown dust in the sky, like the tentacles of some vast sea-monster. One seemed to reach its peak just above them. Logen watched it fall. It had looked like a pebble at first. As it tumbled slowly down he realised it was a chunk of masonry the size of a cart.

“Shit,” said Grim. There was nothing else to say. It crashed through the side of a building right in the midst of the fight. The whole house burst apart, flinging broken bodies in every direction. A broken timber whirred past the Dogman and splashed into the moat. Specks of grit nipped at the back of Logen’s head as he flung himself to the ground.

Choking dirt billowed out across the road. He retched, one hand over his face. He wobbled up to standing, the dusty world lurching around him, using his sword as a crutch, ears still ringing from the noise, not sure who he was, let alone where.

The bones had gone right out of the battle by the moat. Men coughed, stared, wandered in the gloom. There were a lot of bodies, Northmen, Gurkish, Union, all mixed up together. Logen saw a dark-skinned man staring at him, blood running down his dusty face from a cut above one eye.

Logen lifted his sword, gave a throaty roar, tried to charge and ended up staggering sideways and nearly falling over. The Gurkish soldier dropped his spear and ran off into the murk.

There was a second deafening detonation, this one even closer, off to the west. A sudden blast of wind ripped at Jezal’s hair, nipped at his eyes. Swords rang from sheaths. Men stared up, faces slack with shock.

“We must go,” piped Gorst, taking a firm grip on Jezal’s elbow.

Glokta and his henchmen were already making off down a cobbled lane, as quickly as the Superior could limp. Ardee gave one brief look over her shoulder, eyes wide.

“Wait…” Seeing her like that had given Jezal a sudden and painful rush of longing. The idea of her in the thrall of that disgusting cripple was almost too much to bear. But Gorst was having none of it.

“The palace, your Majesty.” He ushered Jezal away towards the park without a backward glance, the rest of the royal bodyguard clattering after. Fragments of stone began to click off the roofs around them, to bounce from the road, to ping from the armour of the Knights of the Body.

“They are coming,” muttered Marovia, staring grimly off towards the Square of Marshals.

Ferro squatted, hands held over her head, the monstrous echoes still booming from the high white walls. A stone the size of a man’s head fell out of the sky and burst apart on the ground a few strides away, black gravel scattering across the pale sawdust. A boulder ten times as big crashed through the roof of a building, sent glass tinkling from shattered windows. Dust billowed out from the streets and into the square in grey clouds. Gradually the noise faded. The man-made hailstorm rattled to a stop, and there was a pregnant silence.

“What now?” she growled at Bayaz.

“Now they will come.” There was a crash somewhere in the streets, the sound of men shouting, then a long scream suddenly cut off. He turned towards her, his jaw working nervously. “Once we begin, do not move from the spot. Not a hair. The circles have been carefully—”

“Keep your mind on your own part, Magus.”

“Then I will. Open the box, Ferro.”

She stood, frowning, her fingertips rubbing at her thumbs. Once it was opened, there would be no going back, she felt it.

“Now!” snapped Bayaz. “Now, if you want your vengeance!”

“Sssss.” But the time for going back was far behind her. She squatted down, laying her hand on the cool metal of the lid. A dark path was the only choice, and always had been. She found the hidden catch and pressed it in. The box swung silently open, and that strange thrill seeped, then flowed, then poured out over her and made the air catch in her throat.

The Seed lay inside, nestling on its metal coils, a dull, grey, unremarkable lump. She closed her fingers round it. Lead-heavy and ice-cold, she lifted it from the box.

“Good.” But Bayaz was wincing as he watched her, face twisted with fear and disgust. She held it out towards him and he flinched back. There were beads of sweat across his forehead. “Come no closer!”

Ferro slammed the box shut. Two Union guards, clad in full armour, were backing into the square, heavy swords in their fists. There was a fear in the way they moved, as if they were retreating from an army. But only one man rounded the corner. A man in white armour, worked with designs of shining metal. His dark face was young, and smooth, and beautiful, but his eyes seemed old. Ferro had seen such a face before, in the wastelands near Dagoska.

An Eater.

The two guards came at him together, one shouting a shrill battle-cry. The Eater shrugged effortlessly around their swords, came forward in a sudden blur, caught one of the Union men with a careless flick of his open hand. There was a hollow clang as it caved in his shield and breastplate both, lifted him flailing into the air. He crunched down some twenty strides from where he had been standing, rolled over and over leaving dark marks in the pale sawdust. He flopped to rest not far from Ferro, coughed out a long spatter of blood and was still.

The other guard backed away. The Eater looked at him, a sadness on his perfect face. The air around him shimmered, briefly, the man’s sword clattered down, he gave a long squeal and clutched at his head. It burst apart, showering fragments of skull and flesh across the walls of the white building beside him. The headless corpse slumped to the ground. There was a pause.

“Welcome to the Agriont!” shouted Bayaz.

Ferro’s eyes were drawn up by a flash of movement. High above, a figure in white armour dashed across a roof. They made an impossible leap across the wide gap to the next building and vanished from sight. In the street below a woman flowed out of the shadows and into the square, dressed in glittering chain-mail. Her hips swayed as she sauntered forwards, a happy smile on her flawless face, a long spear carried loose in one hand. Ferro swallowed, shifted her fist around the Seed, gripping it tight.

Part of a wall collapsed behind her, blocks of stone tumbling out across the square. A huge man stepped through the ragged gap, a great length of wood in his hands, studded with black iron, his armour and his long beard coated in dust. Two others followed, a man and a woman, all with the same smooth skin, the same young faces and the same old, black eyes. Ferro scowled round at them as she slid her sword out, the cold metal glinting. Useless, maybe, but holding it was some kind of comfort.

“Welcome to you all!” called Bayaz. “I have been waiting for you, Mamun!”

The first of the Eaters frowned as he stepped carefully over the headless corpse. “And we for you.” White shapes flitted from the roofs of the buildings, thumped down into the square in crouches, and stood tall. Four of them, one to each corner. “Where is that creeping shadow, Yulwei?”

“He could not be with us.”

“Zacharus?”

“Mired in the ruined west, trying to heal a corpse with a bandage.”

“Cawneil?”

“Too much in love with what she used to be to spare a thought for what comes.”

“You are left all alone, then, in the end, apart from this.” Mamun turned his empty gaze on Ferro. “She is a strange one.”

“She is, and exceptionally difficult, but not without resources.” Ferro scowled, and said nothing. If anything needed saying, she could talk with her sword. “Ah, well.” Bayaz shrugged. “I have always found myself my own best council.”

“What choice have you? You destroyed your own order with your pride, and your arrogance, and your hunger for power.” More figures stepped from doorways round the square, strolled unhurried from the streets. Some strutted like lords. Some held hands like lovers. “Power is all you ever cared for, and you are left without even that. The First of the Magi, and the last.”

“So it would seem. Does that not please you?”

“I take no pleasure in this, Bayaz. This is what must be done.”

“Ah. A righteous battle? A holy duty? A crusade, perhaps? Will God smile on your methods, do you think?”

Mamun shrugged. “God smiles on results.” More figures in white armour spilled into the square and spread out around its edge. They moved with careless grace, with effortless strength, with bottomless arrogance. Ferro frowned around at them, the Seed clutched tight at one hip, her sword at the other.

“If you have a plan,” she hissed. “Now might be the time.”

But the First of the Magi only watched as they were surrounded, the muscles twitching on the side of his face, his hands clenching and unclenching by his sides. “A shame that Khalul himself could not pay a visit, but you have brought some friends with you, I see.”

“One hundred, as I promised. Some few have other tasks about the city. They send their regrets. But most of us are here for you. More than enough.” The Eaters were still. They stood facing inwards, spread out in a great ring with the First of the Magi at their centre. Ferro Maljinn felt no fear, of course.

But these were poor odds.

“Answer me one thing,” called Mamun, “since we are come to the end. Why did you kill Juvens?”

“Juvens? Ha! He thought to make the world a better place with smiles and good intentions. Good intentions get you nothing, and the world does not improve without a fight. I say I killed no one.” Bayaz looked sideways at Ferro. His eyes were feverish bright, now, his scalp glistened with sweat. “But what does it matter who killed who a thousand years ago? What matters is who dies today.”

“True. Now, at last, you will be judged.” Slowly, very slowly, the circle of Eaters began to contract, stepping gently forward as one, drawing softly inwards.

The First of the Magi gave a grim smile. “Oh, there will be a judgement here, Mamun, on that you can depend. The magic has drained from the world. My Art is a shadow of what it was. But you forgot, while you were gorging yourselves on human meat, that knowledge is the root of power. High Art I learned from Juvens. Making I took from Kanedias.”

“You will need more than that to defeat us.”

“Of course. For that I need some darker medicine.”

The air around Bayaz’ shoulders shimmered. The Eaters paused, some of them raised their arms in front of their faces. Ferro narrowed her eyes, but there was only the gentlest breath of wind. A subtle breeze, that washed out from the First of the Magi in a wave, that lifted the sawdust from the stones and carried it out in a white cloud to the very edge of the Square of Marshals.

Mamun looked down, and frowned. Set into the stone beneath his feet, metal shone dully in the thin sunlight. Circles, and lines, and symbols, and circles within circles, covering the entire wide space in a single vast design.

“Eleven wards, and eleven wards reversed,” said Bayaz. “Iron. Quenched in salt water. An improvement suggested by Kanedias’ researches. Glustrod used raw salt. That was his mistake.”

Mamun looked up, the icy calmness vanished from his face. “You cannot mean…” His black eyes flickered to Ferro, then down to her hand, clenched tight around the Seed. “No! The First Law—”

“The First Law?” The Magus showed his teeth. “Rules are for children. This is war, and in war the only crime is to lose. The word of Euz?” Bayaz’ lip curled. “Hah! Let him come forth and stop me!”

“Enough!” One of the Eaters leaped forward, flashing across the metal circles towards their centre. Ferro gasped as the stone in her hand turned suddenly, terribly cold. The air about Bayaz twisted, danced, as though he was reflected in a rippling pool.

The Eater sprang up, mouth open, the bright blade of his sword shining. Then he was gone. So were two others behind him. A long spray of blood was smeared across the ground where one of them had been standing. Ferro’s eyes followed it, growing wider and wider. Her mouth fell open.

The building that had stood behind them had a giant, gaping hole torn out of it from ground to dizzy roof. A great canyon lined with broken stone and hanging plaster, with splintered spars and dangling glass. Dust showered from the shattered edges and into the yawning hole below. A flock of torn papers fluttered down through the empty air. From out of the carnage a thin and agonised screaming came. A sobbing. A screech of pain. Many voices. The voices of those who had been using that building as a refuge.

Poor luck for them.

Bayaz’ mouth slowly curled up into a smile. “It works,” he breathed.

Dark Paths

Jezal hurried through the tall archway and into the gardens of the palace, his Knights around him. It was remarkable that High Justice Marovia had been able to keep pace with them on their dash through the Agriont, but the old man scarcely seemed out of breath. “Seal the gates!” he bellowed. “The gates!”

The huge doors were heaved shut, two beams the thickness of ships’ masts swung into position behind them. Jezal allowed himself to breathe a little easier. There was a reassuring feeling to the weight of those gates, to the height and thickness of the walls of the palace compound, to the sizeable host of well trained and armoured men defending it.

Marovia laid his hand gently on Jezal’s shoulder, began to steer him down the cobbled path towards the nearest door into the palace. “We should find the safest place possible, your Majesty—”

Jezal shook him off. “Would you lock me in my bedroom? Or should I hide in the cellar? I will remain here, and co-ordinate the defence of—”

A long, blood-chilling scream came from the other side of the wall and echoed around the bare gardens. It was as if that shriek made a hole in him through which all confidence quickly leaked away. The gates rattled slightly against the mighty beams, and the notion of hiding in the cellar gained appeal with astonishing speed.

“A line!” barked Gorst’s shrill voice. “To the King!” A wall of heavily-armoured men clustered instantly around Jezal, swords drawn, shields raised. Others kneeled in front, pulling bolts from quivers, turning the cranks of their heavy flatbows. All eyes were fixed on the mighty double doors. They rattled gently again, wobbled slightly.

“Down there!” someone called from the walls above. “Down—” There was a screech and an armoured man plummeted from the battlements and crunched into the turf. His body trembled, then fell limp.

“How…” someone muttered.

A white figure dived from the walls, gracefully turned over in the air and thudded onto the pathway in front of them. It stood up. A dark-skinned man, arrayed in armour of white and gold, his face smooth as a boy’s. He held a spear of dark wood with a long, curved blade in one hand. Jezal stared at him, and he looked back, expressionless. There was something in those black eyes, or rather there was something missing from them. Jezal knew that this was not a man. It was an Eater. A breaker of the Second Law. One of Khalul’s Hundred Words, come to settle ancient scores with the First of the Magi. It seemed, rather unfairly, that their score had somehow come to include Jezal. The Eater raised one hand, as if in blessing.

“May God admit us all to heaven.”

“Loose!” squealed Gorst. Flatbows rattled and popped. A couple of bolts glanced off the Eater’s armour, a couple more thudded into flesh, one under the breastplate, another in the shoulder. One bolt caught it right through the face, the flights sticking out just below the eye. Any man should have dropped dead before them. The Eater sprang forwards with shocking speed.

One of the Knights raised his flatbow in a feeble attempt to defend himself. The spear split it in two and sliced him cleanly in half at the belly, chopped into another man with an echoing clang and sent him tumbling through the air into a tree ten strides away. Fragments of dented armour and splintered wood flew. The first Knight made a strange whistling sound as his top half tumbled to the path, showering his dumbstruck comrades with gore.

Jezal was jostled back, could see nothing more than flashes of movement between his bodyguards. He heard screams and groans, clashing metal, saw swords glinting, gouts of blood flying. An armoured body flew into the air, flopping like a rag-doll, crunched into a wall on the other side of the gardens.

The bodies swayed apart. The Eater was surrounded, swinging its spear in blinding circles. One ripped into a man’s shoulder and knocked him shrieking to the ground, the shaft splintering with the force of the blow and the blade spinning away edge-first into the turf. A Knight charged in from behind and spitted the Eater through the back, the glittering point of his halberd sliding bloodless through the white armour on its chest. Another Knight struck its arm off with an axe and dust showered from the stump. The Eater screeched, hit him across the chest with a backhanded blow that crushed his breastplate and drove him sighing into the dirt.

A sword-cut squealed through the white armour, sending dust flying up as if from a beaten carpet. Jezal stared dumbly as the Eater reeled towards him. Gorst shoved him out of the way, growling as he brought his long steel round to hack deep into the Eater’s neck with a meaty thud. It flailed, silently, its head hanging off by a flap of gristle, brown dust pouring from its yawning wounds. It clutched at Gorst with its remaining hand and he staggered, face twisted with pain, sank to his knees as it wrenched his arm around.

“Here’s heaven, bastard!” Jezal’s sword chopped through the last bit of neck and the Eaters’ head dropped onto the grass. It let go of Gorst and he clutched at his mangled forearm, the shape of the Eater’s hand dented into his heavy armour. The headless body slowly toppled over. “Cursed thing!” Jezal took one step and kicked its head across the garden, watched it bounce and roll into a flower bed leaving a trail of dust through the grass. Three men stood over the body, their heavy breath echoing from inside their helmets, their swords flashing in the sun as they hacked it into pieces. Its fingers were still twitching.

“They’re made of dust,” someone whispered.

Marovia frowned at the remains. “Some are. Some bleed. Each one is different. We should get inside the palace!” he shouted as he hurried across the gardens. “There will be more of them!”

“More?” Twelve Knights of the Body lay dead. Jezal swallowed as he counted their broken and bloody, dented and battered corpses. The best men the Union had to offer, scattered around the palace gardens like heaps of scrap metal among the brown leaves. “More? But how do we—?” The gates shuddered. Jezal’s head snapped towards them, the blind courage of the fight fading quickly and sick panic rushing in behind it.

“This way!” roared Marovia, holding open a door and beckoning desperately. It was not as though there were other choices. Jezal rushed towards him, caught one gilded boot with the other three steps in, and went sprawling painfully on his face. There was a cracking, a tearing, a squealing of wood and metal behind. He clawed his way onto his back to see the gates torn apart in a cloud of flying timber. Broken planks spun through the air, bent nails pinged from the pathways, splinters settled gently across the lawns.

A woman sauntered through the open gateway, the air still shimmering gently around her tall, thin body. A pale woman with long, golden hair. Another walked beside her, just the same except that her left side was spattered from head to toe with red blood. Two women, happy smiles on their beautiful, perfect, identical faces. One of them slapped a Knight Herald across the head as he charged up, tearing his winged helmet from his shattered skull and sending it spinning high into the air. The other turned her black, empty eyes on Jezal. He struggled up and ran, wheezing with fear, slid through the door beside Marovia and into the shadowy hallway, lined with ancient arms and armour.

Gorst and a few Knights of the Body tumbled through after him. Over their shoulders the one-sided battle in the gardens continued. A man raised a flatbow only to explode in a shower of blood. An armoured corpse crashed into a Knight just as he turned to run, sent him hurtling sideways through a window, sword spinning from his hand. Another ran towards them, arms pumping, tumbled down a few strides away, thrashing on the ground, flames spurting from the joints in his armour.

“Help me!” someone wailed. “Help me! Help—” Gorst slammed the heavy doors shut with his one good arm, one of his fellows dropped the thick bar into the brackets. They tore old polearms from the walls, one with a tattered battle-flag attached, and started wedging them in the doorway.

Jezal was already backing away, cold sweat tickling at his skin under his armour, gripping tight to the hilt of his sword more for reassurance than defence. His drastically denuded entourage stumbled back with him—Gorst, Marovia, and but five others, their gasping, horrified breath echoing in the dim corridor, all staring towards the door.

“The last gate did not hold them,” Jezal whispered. “Why should this one?”

No one answered.

“Keep your wits about you, gentlemen,” said Glokta. “The door, please.” The fat mercenary took his axe to the front gate of the University. Splinters flew. It wobbled at the first blow, shuddered at the second, tore open at the third. The one-eyed dwarf slithered through, a knife in either hand, closely followed by Cosca, sword drawn. “Clear,” came his Styrian drawl from inside, “if fusty.”

“Excellent.” Glokta looked at Ardee. “It might be best if you stayed towards the back.”

She gave an exhausted nod. “I was thinking the same.” He limped painfully over the threshold, black-clad mercenaries pouring through the doorway behind him, the last of them dragging Goyle reluctantly by his bandaged wrists. And along the very paths I took the first time I visited this heap of dust, so many months ago. Before the vote. Before Dagoska, even. How lovely to be back…

Down the dark hallway, past the dirty paintings of forgotten Adepti, tortured floorboards groaning under the boots of the mercenaries. Glokta lurched out into the wide dining hall.

The freak-show of Practicals was scattered about the dim chamber just as it had been when he last visited. The two identical men from Suljuk, with their curved swords. The tall, thin one, the dark men with their axes, the vast Northman with the ruined face. And so on. A good score of them in all. Have they been sitting here all this time, I wonder, just being menacing to each other?

Vitari was already up from her chair. “I thought I told you to keep away from here, cripple.”

“I tried, indeed I did, but I could not banish the memory of your smile.”

“Ho, ho, Shylo!” Cosca strolled out from the hallway, twiddling at the waxed ends of his moustache with one hand, sword drawn in the other.

“Cosca! Don’t you ever die?” Vitari let a cross-shaped knife tumble from her hand to clatter across the boards on the end of a long chain. “Seems a day for men I hoped I’d seen the last of.” Her Practicals spread out around her, swords sliding from sheaths, axes, maces, spears scraping off the table. The mercenaries clomped into the hall, their own weapons at the ready. Glokta cleared his throat. “I think it would be better for all concerned if we could discuss this like civilised—”

“You see anyone civilised?” snarled Vitari.

A fair point. One Practical sprang up on the table making the cutlery jump. The one-handed mercenary waved his hook in the air. The two heavily-armed groups edged towards each other. It looked very much as if Cosca and his hired hands would be earning their pay. A merry bloodbath I daresay it will be, and the outcome of a bloodbath is notoriously hard to predict. All in all, I would rather not take the gamble.

“A shame about your children! A shame for them, that there’s no one civilised around!”

Vitari’s orange eyebrows drew furiously inwards. “They’re far away!”

“Oh, I’m afraid not. Two girls and a boy? Beautiful, flaming red hair, just like their mother’s?” Which gate would they go through? The Gurkish came from the west, so… “They were stopped at the east gate, and taken into custody.” Glokta stuck out his bottom lip. “Protective custody. These are dangerous times for children to be wandering the streets, you know.”

Even with her mask on Glokta could see her horror. “When?” she hissed.

When would a loving mother send her children to safety? “Why, the very day the Gurkish arrived, of course, you know that.” The way her eyes widened told him that he had guessed right. Now to twist the blade. “Don’t worry though, they’re tucked up safe. Practical Severard is acting as nurse. But if I don’t come back…”

“You wouldn’t hurt them.”

“What is it with everyone today? Lines I won’t cross? People I won’t hurt?” Glokta showed his most revolting leer. “Children? Hope, and prospects, and all that happy life ahead of them? I despise the little bastards!” He shrugged his twisted shoulders. “But perhaps you know me better. If you’re keen to play dice with your children’s lives, I suppose we can find out. Or we could reach an understanding, as we did in Dagoska.”

“Shit on this,” growled one of the Practicals, hefting his axe and taking a step forward. And the atmosphere of violence lurches another dizzy step towards the brink…

Vitari shoved out her open hand. “Don’t move.”

“You’ve got children, so what? Means nothing to me. It’ll mean nothing to Sult eeeeeee—” There was a flash of metal, the jingling of a chain, and the Practical staggered forward, blood pouring from his opened throat.

Vitari’s cross-shaped knife slapped back into her palm and her eyes flicked back to Glokta. “An understanding?”

“Exactly. You stay here. We go past. You didn’t see nothing, as they say in the older parts of town. You know well enough that you can’t trust Sult. He left you to the dogs in Dagoska, didn’t he? And he’s all done, anyway. The Gurkish are knocking at the door. Time we tried something new, don’t you think?”

Vitari’s mask shifted as she worked her mouth. Thinking, thinking. The eyes of her killers sparkled, the blades of their weapons glinted. Don’t call the bluff, bitch, don’t you dare…

“Alright!” She gestured with her arm and the Practicals edged unhappily back, still glaring at the mercenaries across the room. Vitari nodded her spiky head towards a doorway at the end of the chamber. “Down that hall, down the stairs at the end, and there’s a door. A door with black iron rivets.”

“Excellent.” A few words can be more effective than a lot of blades, even in such times as these. Glokta began to hobble away, Cosca and his men following.

Vitari frowned after them, her eyes deadly slits. “If you so much as touch my—”

“Yes, yes.” Glokta waved his hand. “My terror is boundless.”

There was a moment of stillness, as the remains of the gutted building settled across one side of the Square of Marshals. The Eaters stood, as shocked as Ferro, a circle of amazement. Bayaz appeared to be the only one not horrified by the scale of the destruction. His harsh chuckling echoed out and bounced back from the walls. “It works!” he shouted.

“No!” screamed Mamun, and the Hundred Words came rushing forward.

Closer they came, the polished blades of their beautiful weapons flashing, their hungry mouths hanging open, their white teeth gleaming. Closer yet, streaming inwards with terrible speed, shrieking out a chorus of hate that made even Ferro’s blood turn cold.

But Bayaz only laughed. “Let the judgement begin!”

Ferro growled through clenched teeth as the Seed burned cold at her palm. A mighty blast of wind swept out across the square from its centre, sent Eaters tumbling like skittles, rolling and flailing. It shattered every window, ripped open every door, stripped the roofs of every building bare.

The great inlaid gates of the Lords’ Round were sucked open, then torn from their hinges, careering across the square. Tons of wood, spinning over and over like sheets of paper in a gale. They carved a crazy swathe through the helpless Eaters. They ripped white-armoured bodies apart, sending parts of limbs flying, blood and dust going up in sprays and spatters.

Ferro’s hand was shimmering, and half her forearm. She gasped quick breaths as the cold spread through her veins, out to every part of her, burning at her insides. The Seed blurred and trembled as if she looked at it through fast flowing water. The wind whipped at her eyes as white figures were flung through the air like toys, writhing in a storm of shattered glass, shredded wood, splintered stone. No more than a dozen of them kept their feet, reeling, clutching at the ground, shining hair streaming from their heads, straining desperately against the blast.

One of them reached for Ferro, snarling into the wind. A woman, her glittering chain-mail thrashing, her hands clawing at the screaming air. She edged closer, and closer. A smooth, proud face, stamped with contempt.

Like the faces of the Eaters who had come for her near Dagoska. Like the faces of the slavers who had stolen her life from her. Like the face of Uthman-ul-Dosht, who had smiled at her anger and her helplessness.

Ferro’s shriek of fury merged with the shrieking of the wind. She had not known that she could swing a sword so hard. The look of shock only just had time to form on the Eater’s perfect face before the curved blade sliced through her outstretched arm and took her head from her shoulders. The corpse was plucked flopping away, dust flying from its gaping wounds.

The air was full of flashing shapes. Ferro stood frozen as debris whirred past her. A beam crashed through a struggling Eater’s chest and carried it screaming away, high into the air, spitted like a locust on a skewer. Another burst suddenly apart in a cloud of blood and flesh, the remains sucked spiralling up into the trembling sky.

The great Eater with the beard struggled forward, lifting his huge club above his head, bellowing words no one could hear. Through the pulsing, twisting air Ferro saw Bayaz raise one eyebrow at him, saw his lips make one word.

“Burn.”

For a single moment he blazed as brightly as a star, the image of him stamped white into Ferro’s eyes. Then his blackened bones were snatched away into the storm.

Only Mamun remained. He strained forwards, dragging his feet across the stone, across the iron, inch by desperate inch towards Bayaz.

One armoured greave tore from his leg and flew back spinning through the maddened air, then a plate from his shoulder followed it. Torn cloth flapped. The skin on his snarling face began to ripple and stretch.

“No!” One clutching, clawing arm stretched desperately out towards the First of the Magi, fingertips straining.

“Yes,” said Bayaz, the air around his smiling face trembling like the air above the desert. The nails tore from Mamun’s fingers, his outstretched arm bent back, snapped, was ripped from his shoulder. Flawless skin peeled from bone, flapping like sailcloth in a squall, brown dust flying out of his torn body like a sandstorm over the dunes.

He was dashed suddenly away, crashed through a wall near the top of one of the tall buildings. Blocks were sucked from the edges of the ragged hole he left and tumbled outwards, upwards. They joined the whipping paper, thrashing rock, spinning planks, flailing corpses that reeled through the air around the edge of the square, faster and faster, a circle of destruction that followed the iron circles on the ground. It reached now as high as the tall buildings, and now higher yet. It flayed and scoured at everything it passed, tearing up more stone, glass, wood, metal, flesh, growing darker, faster, louder and more powerful with every moment.

Over the mindless anger of the wind Ferro could just hear Bayaz’ voice.

“God smiles on results.”

Dogman got up, and shook his sore head, dirt flying from his hair. There was blood running down his arm, red on white. Seemed as if the world hadn’t ended after all.

Looked like it had come close, though.

Bridge and gatehouse both had disappeared. Where they’d stood there was nothing but a great heap of broken stone and a yawning chasm carved out of the walls. That and a whole lot of dust. There were still some folk killing, but there were a lot more rolling about, choking and groaning, staggering through the rubbish, the fight all gone out of ’em. Dogman knew how they felt.

Someone was clambering up onto that mass of junk where the moat used to be, heading towards the breach. Someone with a tangled mess of hair and a long sword in one hand.

Who else but Logen Ninefingers?

“Ah, shit,” cursed Dogman. He’d got some damn fool ideas all of a sudden, had Logen, but that wasn’t halfway the worst of it. There was someone following him across that bridge of rubble. Shivers, axe in hand, shield on arm, and a frown on his dirty face like a man with some dark work in mind.

“Ah, shit!”

Grim shrugged his dusty shoulders. “Best get after ’em.”

“Aye.” Dogman jerked his thumb at Red Hat, just getting up from the ground and shaking a pile of grit off his coat. “Get some lads together, eh?” He pointed off towards the breach with the blade of his sword. “We’re going that way.”

Damn it but he needed to piss, just like always.

Jezal backed away down the shadowy hall, hardly daring even to breathe, feeling the sweat prickle at his palms, at his neck, at the small of his back.

“What are they waiting for?” someone muttered.

There was a gentle creaking sound above. Jezal looked up towards the black rafters. “Did you hear—”

A shape burst through the ceiling and hurtled down into the hallway in a white blur, flattening one of the Knights of the Body, her feet leaving two great dents in his breastplate, blood spraying from his visor.

She smiled up at Jezal. “Greetings from the Prophet Khalul.”

“The Union!” roared another Knight, charging forward. One moment his sword whistled towards her. The next she was on the other side of the corridor. The blade clanged harmlessly into the stone floor and the man tottered forward. She seized him under the armpit, bent her knees slightly, and flung him shrieking through the ceiling. Broken plaster rained down as she grabbed another Knight round the neck and smashed his head into the wall with such force that he was left embedded in the shattered stonework, armoured legs dangling. Antique swords tumbled from their brackets and clattered down into the hallway around his limp corpse.

“This way!” The High Justice dragged Jezal, numb and helpless, towards a pair of gilded double doors. Gorst lifted up one heavy boot, gave them a shivering kick and sent them flying open. They burst through into the Chamber of Mirrors, cleared of the many tables that had stood there on Jezal’s wedding night, an empty acre of polished tiles.

He ran for the far door, his slapping footfalls and his heaving, wheezing, horrified breath echoing out around the huge room. He saw himself running, distorted, in the mirrors far ahead of him, the mirrors to each side. A ludicrous sight. A clown-king, fleeing though his own palace, crown askew, his scarred face beaded with sweat, slack with terror and exhaustion. He skidded to a halt, almost fell over backwards in his haste to stop, Gorst nearly ploughing into his back.

One of the twins was sitting on the floor beside the far doorway, leaning back against the mirrored wall, reflected in it, as though she were leaning against her sister. She lifted up one languorous hand, daubed crimson with blood, and she waved.

Jezal spun towards the windows. Before he could even think of running one of them burst into the room. The other twin came tumbling through in a shower of glittering glass, rolled over and over across the polished floor, unfolded to her feet and slid to a stop.

She ran one long hand through her golden hair, yawned, and smacked her lips. “Have you ever had the feeling that someone else is having all the fun?” she asked.

Reckonings

Red Hat had been right. There was no reason for anyone to die here. No one but the Bloody-Nine, at least. It was high time that bastard took his share of the blame.

“Still alive,” Logen whispered, “still alive.” He crept around the corner of a white building and into the park.

He remembered this place full of people. Laughing, eating, talking. There was no laughter here now. He saw bodies scattered on the lawns. Some armoured, some not. He could hear a distant roar—far-off battle, maybe. Nothing nearer except the hissing of the wind through the bare branches and the crunching of his own footsteps in the gravel. His skin prickled as he crept towards the high wall of the palace.

The heavy doors were gone, only the twisted hinges left hanging in the archway. The gardens on the other side were full of corpses. Armoured men, all dented and bloody. There was a crowd of them on the path before the gate, crushed and broken as though they’d been smashed with a giant hammer. One was sliced clean in half, the two pieces lying in a slick of dark blood.

A man stood in the midst of all this. He had white armour on, speckled and dusted with red. A wind had blown up in the gardens, and his black hair flicked around his face, dark skin smooth and flawless as a baby’s. He was frowning down at a body near his feet, but he looked up at Logen as he came through the gate. Without hatred or fear, without happiness or sadness. Without anything much.

“You are a long way from home,” he said, in Northern.

“You too.” Logen looked into that empty face. “You an Eater?”

“To that crime I must confess.”

“We’re all guilty o’ something.” Logen hefted his sword in one hand. “Shall we get to it, then?”

“I came here to kill Bayaz. No one else.”

Logen glanced round at the ruined corpses scattered across the gardens. “How’s that working out for you?”

“Once you set your mind on killing, it is hard to choose the number of the dead.”

“That is a fact. Blood gets you nothing but more blood, my father used to tell me.”

“A wise man.”

“If only I’d listened.”

“It is hard, sometimes, to know what is… the truth.” The Eater lifted up his bloody right hand and frowned at it. “It is fitting that a righteous man should have… doubts.”

“You tell me. Can’t say I know too many righteous men.”

“I once thought I did. Now I am not sure. We must fight?”

Logen took a long breath. “Looks that way.”

“So be it.”

He came so fast there was hardly time to lift a sword, let alone swing it. Logen threw himself out of the way but still got caught in the ribs with something—elbow, knee, shoulder. It can be hard to tell when you’re flopping over and over on the grass, everything tumbling around you. He tried to get up, found that he couldn’t. Raising his head an inch was almost more than he could manage. Every breath was painful. He dropped back, staring up at the white sky. Maybe he should’ve stayed outside the walls. Maybe he should’ve just let the lads rest in the trees, until after it was all settled.

The tall shape of the Eater swam into his blurry vision, black against the clouds. “I am sorry for this. I will pray for you. I will pray for us both.” He lifted up his armoured foot.

An axe chopped into his face and sent him staggering. Logen shook the light out of his head, dragged some air in. He forced himself up onto one elbow, clutching at his side. He saw a white-armoured fist flash down and crash onto Shivers’ shield. It ripped a chunk out of the edge and knocked Shivers onto his knees. An arrow pinged off the Eater’s shoulder-plate and he turned, one side of his head hanging bloodily open. A second shaft stuck him neatly through the neck. Grim and the Dogman stood in the archway, their bows raised.

The Eater went pounding towards them with huge strides, the wind of his passing tearing at the grass.

“Huh,” said Grim. The Eater rammed into him with an armoured elbow. He crashed into a tree ten strides away and flopped down onto the grass. The Eater raised its other arm to chop at Dogman and a Carl stabbed a spear into him, carried him thrashing backwards. More Northmen charged through the gate, crowding round, screaming and shouting, hacking with axes and swords.

Logen rolled over, crawled across the lawn and seized hold of his sword, tearing a wet handful of grass up with it. A Carl tumbled past him, broken head covered in blood. Logen squeezed his jaws together and charged, lifting his sword in both hands.

It bit into the Eater’s shoulder, sheared through his armour and split him open down as far as his chest, showering blood in the Dogman’s face. Same time, almost, one of the Carls caught him full in the side with a maul, smashed his other arm and left a great dent in his breastplate.

The Eater stumbled and Red Hat hacked a gash in one of his legs. He lurched to his knees, blood spilling from his wounds and running down his dented white armour, pooling on the path underneath him. He was smiling, so far as Logen could tell with half his face hanging off. “Free,” he whispered.

Logen raised the Maker’s blade and hacked his head from his shoulders.

A wind had blown up suddenly, swirling through the stained streets, hissing out of the burned-out buildings, whipping ash and dust in West’s face as he rode towards the Agriont. He had to shout over it. “How do we fare?”

“The fight’s gone out of ’em!” bellowed Brint, his hair dragged sideways by another gust. “They’re in full retreat! Seems as if they were too keen to get the Agriont surrounded and they weren’t ready for us! Now they’re falling over each other to get away to the west. Still some fighting around Arnault’s Wall, but Orso has them on the run in the Three Farms!”

West saw the familiar shape of the Tower of Chains over the top of a ruin, and he urged his horse towards it. “Good! If we can just clear them away from the Agriont we’ll have the best of it! Then we can…” He trailed off as they rounded the corner and could see all the way to the west gate of the citadel. Or, more accurately, where the west gate had once been.

It took him a moment to make sense of it. The Tower of Chains loomed up to one side of a monumental breach in the wall of the Agriont. The entire gatehouse had somehow been brought down, along with large sections of the wall to either side, the remains choking the moat below or distributed widely around the ruined streets in front.

The Gurkish were inside the Agriont. The very heart of the Union lay exposed.

Not far ahead, now, a formless battle was still raging before the citadel. West urged his horse closer, through the stragglers and the wounded, into the very shadow of the walls. He saw a line of kneeling flatbow-men deliver a withering volley into a crowd of Gurkish, bodies toppling. Beside him a man screamed into the wind as another tried to secure a tourniquet on the bloody stump of his leg.

Pike’s face was grimmer even than usual. “We should be further back, sir. This isn’t safe.”

West ignored him. Each man had to do his part, without exception.

“We need a line formed up here! Where is General Kroy?” The Sergeant was no longer listening. His eyes had drifted upwards, his mouth dropping stupidly open. West turned around in his saddle.

A black column was rising above the western end of the citadel. It seemed at first to be made of swirling smoke, but as West gained some sense of scale he realised it was spinning matter. Masses of it. Countless tons of it. His eyes followed it upwards, higher and higher. The clouds themselves were moving, whipped round in a spiral at the centre, shifting in a slow circle above them. The fighting sputtered, as Union and Gurkish alike gaped up at the writhing pillar above the Agriont, the Tower of Chains a black finger in front of it, the House of the Maker an insignificant pinprick behind.

Things began to rain from the sky. Small things, at first—splinters, dust, leaves, fragments of paper. Then a chunk of wood the size of a chair leg plummeted down and bounced spinning from the paving. A soldier squealed as a stone big as a fist smashed into his shoulder. Those who were not fighting were backing away, crouching to the ground, holding shields above their heads. The wind was growing more savage, clothes whipping in the storm, men stumbling against it, leaning into it, teeth gritted and eyes narrowed. The spinning pillar was growing wider, darker, faster, higher, touching the very sky. West could see specks around its edge dancing against the white clouds like swarms of midges on a summer’s day.

Except that these were tumbling blocks of stone, wood, earth, metal, by some freak of nature sucked into the heavens and set flying. He did not know what was happening, or how. All he could do was stare.

“Sir!” bellowed Pike in his ear. “Sir, we must go!” He seized hold of West’s bridle. A great chunk of masonry crashed into the paving not far from them. West’s horse reared up, screaming in panic. The world lurched, spun, was black, he was not sure how long for.

He was on his face, mouth full of grit. He raised his head, wobbled drunkenly up to his hands and knees, wind roaring in his ears, flying grit stinging at his face. It was dark as dusk. The air was full of tumbling rubbish. It ripped at the ground, at the buildings, at the men, huddled now like sheep, all thoughts of battle long forgotten, the living sprawled on their faces with the dead. The Tower of Chains was scoured by debris, the slates flying from its rafters, then the rafters torn away into the storm. A giant beam plummeted down and crashed into the cobbles, spun end over end, flinging corpses out of its path to slice through the wall of a house and send its roof sliding inwards.

West trembled, tears snatched away from his stinging eyes, utterly helpless. Was this how the end would come? Not covered in blood and glory at the head of a fool’s charge like General Poulder. Not passing quietly in the night like Marshal Burr. Not even hooded on the scaffold for the murder of Crown Prince Ladisla.

Crushed at random by a giant piece of rubbish falling from the sky.

“Forgive me,” he whispered into the tempest.

He saw the black outline of the Tower of Chains shifting. He saw it lean outwards. Chunks of stone rained down, splashed into the churning moat. The whole vast edifice lurched, bulged, and toppled outwards, with ludicrous slowness, through the flailing storm and into the city.

It broke into monstrous sections as it fell, crashing down upon the houses, crushing cowering men like ants, throwing deadly missiles in every direction.

And that was all.

There were no buildings, now, around the space that had once been the Square of Marshals. The gushing fountains, the stately statues in the Kingsway, the palaces full of soft pinks.

All snatched away.

The gilded dome had lifted from the Lords’ Round, cracked, split, and been ripped into chaff. The high wall of the Halls Martial was a ravaged ruin. The rest of the proud buildings were nothing more than shattered stumps, torn down to their very foundations. They had all melted away before Ferro’s watering eyes. Dissolved into the formless mass of fury that whirled shrieking around the First of the Magi, endlessly hungry from the ground to the very heavens.

“Yes!” She could hear his delighted laughter, over the noise of the storm. “I am greater than Juvens! I am greater than Euz himself!”

Was this vengeance? Then how much of it would make her whole? Ferro wondered dumbly how many people had been cowering in those vanished buildings. The shimmering around the Seed was swelling, up to her shoulder, then to her neck, and it engulfed her.

The world grew quiet.

Far away the destruction continued, but it was blurred now, the sounds of it came to her muffled, as if through water. Her hand was beyond cold. She was numb to the shoulder. She saw Bayaz, smiling, his arms raised. The wind ripped about them, a wall of endless movement.

But there were shapes within it.

They grew sharper even as the rest of the world grew less distinct. They gathered around the outside of the outermost circle. Shadows. Ghosts. A hungry crowd of them.

“Ferro…” came their whispering voices.

A storm had blown up sudden in the gardens, more sudden even than the storms in the High Places. The light had faded, then stuff had started tumbling down from the dark sky. Dogman didn’t know where it was coming from and he didn’t much care. He had other things more pressing to worry on.

They dragged the wounded in through a high doorway, groaning, cursing, or worst of all, saying nothing. A couple they left outside, back to the mud already. No point wasting breath on them who were far past helping.

Logen had Grim under his armpits, the Dogman had him by the boots. His face was white as chalk but for the red blood on his lips. You could see it plain on his face that it was bad, but he didn’t complain any, not Harding Grim. Dogman wouldn’t have believed it if he had.

They set him down on the floor, in the gloom on the other side of the door. Dogman could hear things rattling against the windows, thumping against the turf outside, clattering on the roofs above. More men were carried in—broken arms and broken legs and worse besides. Shivers came after, bloody axe in one hand and his shield-arm dangling useless.

Dogman had never seen a hallway like it. The floor was made of green stone and white stone, polished up smooth and shining bright as glass. The walls were hung with great paintings. The ceiling was crusted with flowers and leaves, carved so fine they looked almost real, except that they were made from gold, glittering in the dim light leaking through the windows.

Men bent down, tending to fellows injured, giving them water and soft words, a splint or two being fixed. Logen and Shivers just stood there, giving each other a look. Not hatred, exactly, and not respect. It was hard for the Dogman to say what it was, and he didn’t much care about that either.

“What were you thinking?” he snapped. “Pissing off on your own like that? Thought you were supposed to be chief, now! That’s a poor effort, ain’t it?”

Logen only stared back, eyes gleaming in the gloom. “Got to help Ferro,” he muttered, half to himself. “Jezal too.”

Dogman stared at him. “Got to help who? There’s real folk here in need o’ help.”

“I ain’t much with the wounded.”

“Only with the making of ’em! Go on then, Bloody-Nine, if you must. Get to it.”

Dogman saw Logen’s face flinch when he heard that name. He backed away, one hand clamped to his side and his sword gripped bloody in the other. Then he turned and limped off down the glittering hallway.

“Hurts,” said Grim, as Dogman squatted down next to him.

“Where?”

He gave a bloody smile. “Everywhere.”

“Right, well…” Dogman pulled his shirt up. One side of his chest was caved in, a great blue-black bruise spread out all across it like a tar-stain. He could hardly believe a man could still be breathing with a wound like that. “Ah…” he muttered, not having a clue where to start even.

“I think… I’m done.”

“What, this?” Dogman tried to grin but didn’t have it in him. “No more’n a scratch.”

“Scratch, eh?” Grim tried to lift his head, winced and fell back, breathing shallow. He stared up, eyes wide open. “That’s a fucking beautiful ceiling.”

The Dogman swallowed. “Aye. I reckon.”

“Should’ve died fighting Ninefingers, long time ago. The rest was all a gift. Grateful for it, though, Dogman. I’ve always loved… our talks.”

He closed his eyes, and he stopped breathing. He’d never said much, Harding Grim. Famous for it. Now he’d stay silent forever. A pointless sort of a death, a long way from home. Not for anything he’d believed in, or understood, or stood to gain from. Nothing more’n a waste. But then Dogman had seen a lot of men go back to the mud, and there was never anything fine about it. He took a long breath, and stared down at the floor.

A single lamp cast creeping shadows across the mouldering hallway, over rough stone and flaking plaster. It made sinister outlines of the mercenaries, turned Cosca’s face and Ardee’s into unfamiliar masks. The darkness seemed to gather inside the heavy stonework of the archway and around the door within—ancient-looking, knotted and grained, studded with black iron rivets.

“Something amusing, Superior?”

“I stood here,” murmured Glokta. “In this exact spot. With Silber.” He reached out and brushed the iron handle with his fingertips. “My hand was on the latch… and I moved on.” Ah, the irony. The answers we seek so long and far for—so often at our fingertips all along.

Glokta felt a shiver down his twisted spine as he leaned close to the door. He could hear something from beyond, a muffled droning in a language he did not recognise. The Adeptus Demonic calls upon the denizens of the abyss? He licked his lips, the image of High Justice Marovia’s frozen remains fresh in his mind. It would be rash to plunge straight through, however keen we are to put our questions to rest. Very rash…

“Superior Goyle, since you have led us here, perhaps you would care to go first?”

“Geegh?” squeaked Goyle through his gag, his already bulging eyes going even wider. Cosca took the Superior of Adua by his collar, seized the iron handle with his other hand, thrust it swiftly open and applied his boot to the seat of Goyle’s trousers. He stumbled through, bellowing meaningless nonsense into his gag. The metallic sound of a flatbow being discharged issued from the other side of the door, along with the chanting, louder and harsher now by far.

What would Colonel Glokta have said? Onwards to victory, lads! Glokta lurched through the doorway, almost tripping over his own aching foot on the threshold, and gazed about him in surprise. A large, circular hall with a domed ceiling, its shadowy walls painted with a vast, exquisitely detailed mural. And one that seems uncomfortably familiar. Kanedias, the Master Maker, loomed up over the chamber with arms outspread, five times life-size or more, fire blazing from behind him in vivid crimson, orange, white. On the opposite wall lay his brother Juvens, stretched out on the grass beneath flowering trees, blood running from his many wounds. In between the two men, the Magi marched to take their revenge, six on one side, five on the other, bald Bayaz in the lead. Blood, fire, death, vengeance. How wonderfully appropriate, given the circumstances.

An intricate design had been laid out with obsessive care, covering wide floor. Circles within circles, shapes, symbols, figures of frightening complexity, all described in neat lines of white powder. Salt, unless I am much mistaken. Goyle lay on his chest a stride or two from the door, at the edge of the outermost ring, his hands still tied behind him. Dark blood spread out from under him, the point of a flatbow bolt sticking out of his back. Just where his heart should be. I would never have taken that for his weak spot.

Four of the University’s Adepti stood in various stages of amazement. Three of them: Chayle, Denka, and Kandelau, held candles in both hands, their sputtering wicks giving off a choking corpse-stink. Saurizin, the Adeptus Chemical, clutched an empty flatbow. The faces of the old men, lit in bilious yellow from beneath, were pantomime masks of fear.

At the far side of the room Silber stood behind a lectern, a great book open before him, staring down with intense concentration by the light of a single lamp. His finger hissed across the page, his thin lips moving ceaselessly. Even at this distance, and despite the fact the room was icy cold, Glokta could see fat beads of sweat running down his thin face. Beside him, painfully upright in his pure white coat and glaring blue daggers across the width of the chamber, stood Arch Lector Sult.

“Glokta, you crippled bastard!” he snarled, “what the hell are you doing here?”

“I could well ask you the same question, your Eminence.” He waved his cane at the scene. “Except the candles, the ancient books, the chanting and the circles of salt rather give the game away, no?” And a rather infantile game it seems, suddenly. All that time, while I was torturing my way through the Mercers, while I was risking my life in Dagoska, while I was blackmailing votes in your name, you were up to… this?

But Sult seemed to be taking it seriously enough. “Get out, you fool! This is our last chance!”

“This? Seriously?” Cosca was already through the door, masked mercenaries following. Silber’s eyes were still fixed on the book, lips still moving, more sweat on his face than ever. Glokta frowned. “Someone shut him up.”

“No!” shouted Chayle, a look of utter horror on his tiny face. “You mustn’t stop the incantations! It is a profoundly dangerous operation! The consequences could be… could be—”

“Disastrous!” shrieked Kandelau. One of the mercenaries took a step towards the middle of the room nonetheless.

“Don’t tread near the salt!” screeched Denka, wax dripping from his wobbling candle. “Whatever you do!”

“Wait!” snapped Glokta, and the man paused at the edge of the circle, peering at him over his mask. The room was growing colder even as they spoke. Unnaturally cold. Something was happening in the centre of the circles. The air was trembling, like the air above a bonfire, more and more as Silber’s harsh voice droned on. Glokta stood frozen, his eyes flicking between the old Adepti. What to do? Stop him, or don’t stop him? Stop him, or—

“Allow me!” Cosca stepped forwards, delving into his black coat with his spare left hand. But you can’t be— He whipped his arm out with a careless flourish and his throwing knife came with it. The blade flashed in the candlelight, spun directly through the shimmering air in the centre of the room, and imbedded itself to the hilt in Silber’s forehead with a gentle thud.

“Ha!” Cosca seized Glokta by the shoulder. “What did I tell you? Have you ever seen a knife thrown better?”

Blood ran down the side of Silber’s face in a red trickle. His eyes rolled upwards, flickered, then he sagged sideways, dragging over his lectern, and crashed to the floor. His book tumbled down on top of him, aged pages flapping, the lamp spilled over and sprayed streaks of burning oil across the floor.

“No!” shrieked Sult.

Chayle gasped, his mouth falling open. Kandelau threw his candle aside and sank grovelling to the floor. Denka gave a terrified squeak, one hand over his face, staring out pop-eyed from between his fingers. There was a long pause while everyone except Cosca stared, horrified, towards the corpse of the Adeptus Demonic. Glokta waited, his few teeth bared, his eyes almost squeezed shut. Like that horrible, beautiful moment between stubbing your toe and feeling the hurt. Here it comes. Here it comes.

Here comes the pain…

But nothing came. No demonic laughter echoed through the chamber. The floor did not fall in to expose a gate to hell. The shimmering faded, the room began to grow warmer. Glokta raised his brows, almost disappointed. “It would seem the diabolical arts are decidedly overrated.”

“No!” snarled Sult again.

“I am afraid so, your Eminence. And to think I used to respect you.” Glokta grinned at the Adeptus Chemical, still clinging weakly to his empty flatbow. He waved a hand at Goyle’s body. “A good shot. I congratulate you. One less mess for me to tidy up.” He waved a finger at the crowd of mercenaries behind him. “Now seize that man.”

“No!” bellowed Saurizin, throwing his flatbow to the floor. “None of it was my idea! I had no choice! It was him!” He stabbed a thick finger at Silber’s lifeless body. “And… and him!” He pointed to Sult with a trembling arm.

“You’ve got the right idea, but it can wait for the interrogation. Would you be kind enough to take his Eminence into custody?”

“Happily.” Cosca strolled across the floor of the wide room, his boots sending up puffs of white powder, leaving a trail of ruination through the intricate patterns.

“Glokta, you blundering idiot!” shrieked Sult. “You have no idea of the danger Bayaz poses! This First of the Magi and his bastard king! Glokta! You have no right! Gah!” He yelped as Cosca dragged his arms behind his back and forced him to his knees, his white hair in disarray. “You have no idea—”

“If the Gurkish don’t kill the lot of us, you’ll get ample time to explain it to me. Of that I assure you.” Glokta leered his toothless smile as Cosca drew the rope tight around Sult’s wrists. If you only knew how long I have dreamed of saying these words. “Arch Lector Sult. I arrest you for high treason against his Majesty the King.”

Jezal could only stand and stare. One of the twins, the one spattered in blood, lifted her long arms slowly over her head and gave a long, satisfied stretch. The other raised an eyebrow.

“How would you like to die?” she asked.

“Your Majesty, get behind me.” Gorst hefted his long steel in his one good hand.

“No. Not this time.” Jezal pulled the crown from his head, the crown that Bayaz had been so particular in designing, and tossed it clattering away. He was done with being a king. If he was to die, he would die a man, like any other. He had been given so many advantages, he realised now. Far more than most men could ever dream of. So many chances to do good, and he had done nothing besides whine and think of himself. Now it was too late. “I’ve lived my life leaning on others. Hiding behind them. Climbing on their shoulders. Not this time.”

One of the twins raised her hands and started slowly to clap, the regular tap, tap, echoing from the mirrors. The other giggled. Gorst raised his sword. Jezal did the same, one last act of pointless defiance.

Then High Justice Marovia flashed between them. The old man moved with impossible speed, his dark robe snapping around him. He had something in his hand. A long rod of dark metal with a hook on the end.

“What—” muttered Jezal.

The hook blazed suddenly, searingly white, bright as the sun on a summer’s day. A hundred hooks burned like stars, reflected back from the mirrors round the walls, and back, and back, into the far distance. Jezal gasped, squeezed his eyes shut, holding one hand over his face, the long trail left by that brilliant point burned fizzing into his vision.

He blinked, gaped, lowered his arm. The twins stood, the High Justice beside them, just where they had before, still as statues. Tendrils of white steam hissed up from vents in the end of the strange weapon and curled around Marovia’s arm. For a moment, nothing moved.

Then a dozen of the great mirrors at the far end of the hall fell in half across the middle, as though they were sheets of paper slashed suddenly by the world’s sharpest knife. A couple of the bottom halves and one of the top toppled slowly forwards into the room and shattered, scattering bright fragments of glass across the tiled floor.

“Urgggh,” breathed the twin on the left. Jezal realised that blood was spurting out from under her armour. She lifted one hand towards him and it dropped off the end of her arm and thudded to the tiles, blood squirting from the smoothly severed stump. She toppled to the left. Or her body did, at least. Her legs fell the other way. The bigger part of her crashed to the ground, and her head came off and rolled across the tiles in a widening pool. Her hair, trimmed off cleanly at the neck, fluttered down into the bloody mess in a golden cloud.

Armour, flesh, bone, all divided into neat sections as perfectly as cheese by a cheese wire. The twin on the right frowned, took a wobbling step towards Marovia. Her knees gave out and she fell in half at the waist. The legs slumped down and lay still, dust sliding out in a brown heap. The top half dragged itself forward by the nails, lifted its head, hissing.

The air around the High Justice shimmered and the Eater’s severed body burst into flames. It thrashed, for a while, making a long squealing sound. Then it was still, a mass of smoking black ash.

Marovia lifted up the strange weapon, whistling softly as he smiled at the hook on the end, a last few traces of vapour still drifting from it. “Kanedias. He certainly knew how to make a weapon. The Master Maker indeed, eh, your Majesty?”

“What?” muttered Jezal, utterly dumbfounded.

Marovia’s face melted slowly away as he crossed the floor towards them. Another began to show itself beneath. Only his eyes remained the same. Different-coloured eyes, happy lines around the corners, grinning at Jezal like an old friend.

Yoru Sulfur bowed. “Never any peace, eh, your Majesty? Never the slightest peace.”

There was a crash as one of the doors burst open. Jezal raised his sword, heart in his mouth. Sulfur whipped round, the Maker’s weapon held down by his side. A man stumbled into the room. A big man, his grimacing face covered in scars, his chest heaving, a heavy sword hanging from one hand, the other clutched to his ribs.

Jezal blinked, hardly able to believe it. “Logen Ninefingers. How the hell did you get here?”

The Northman stared for a moment. Then he leaned back against a mirror by the door, let his sword drop to the tiles. He slid down, slowly, until he hit the floor, and sat there with his head leaning back against the glass. “Long story,” he said.

“Listen to us…”

The wind was full of shapes, now. Hundreds of them. They crowded in around the outermost circle, the bright iron turned misty, gleaming with cold wet.

“…we have things to tell you, Ferro…”

“Secrets…”

“What can we give you?”

“We know… everything.”

“You need only let us in…”

So many voices. She heard Aruf among them, her old teacher. She heard Susman the slaver. She heard her mother and her father. She heard Yulwei, and Prince Uthman. A hundred voices. A thousand. Voices she knew and had forgotten. Voices of the dead and of the living. Shouts, mutters, screams. Whispers, in her ear. Closer still. Closer than her own thoughts.

“You want vengeance?”

“We can give you vengeance.”

“Like nothing you have dreamed of.”

“All you want. All you need.”

“Only let us in…”

“That empty space in you?”

“We are what is missing!”

The metal rings had turned white with frost. Ferro kneeled at one end of a dizzying tunnel, its walls made from rushing, roaring, furious matter, full of shadows, its end far beyond the dark sky. The laughter of the First of the Magi echoed faintly in her ears. The air hummed with power, twisted, shimmered, blurred.

“You need do nothing.”

“Bayaz.”

“He will do it.”

“Fool!”

“Liar!”

“Let us in…”

“He cannot understand.”

“He uses you!”

“He laughs.”

“But not for long.”

“The gates strain.”

“Let us in…”

If Bayaz heard the voices he gave no sign. Cracks ran through the quivering paving, branching out from his feet, splinters floating up around him in whirling spirals. The iron rings began to shift, to buckle. With a grinding of tortured metal they twisted out from the crumbling stones, bright edges shining.

“The seals break.”

“Eleven wards.”

“And eleven wards reversed.”

“The doors open.”

“Yes,” came the voices, speaking together.

The shadows crowded in closer. Ferro’s breath came short and fast, her teeth rattled, her limbs trembled, the cold was on her very heart. She knelt at a precipice, bottomless, limitless, full of shadows, full of voices.

“Soon we will be with you.”

“Very soon.”

“The time is upon us.”

“Both sides of the divide, joined.”

“As they were meant to be.”

“Before Euz spoke his First Law.”

“Let us in…”

She needed only to cling to the Seed a moment longer. Then the voices would give her vengeance. Bayaz was a liar, she had known it from the start. She owed him nothing. Her eyelids flickered, closed, her mouth hung open. The noise of the wind grew fainter yet, until she could hear only the voices.

Whispering, soothing, righteous.

“We will take the world and make it right.”

“Together.”

“Let us in…”

“You will help us.”

“You will free us.”

“You can trust us.”

“Trust us…”

Trust?

A word that only liars used. Ferro remembered the wreckage of Aulcus. The hollow ruins, the blasted mud. The creatures of the Other Side are made of lies. Better to have an empty space in her, than to fill it with this. She wedged her tongue between her teeth and bit down hard, felt her mouth fill up with salty blood. She sucked in breath, forced her eyes open.

“Trust us…”

“Let us in!”

She saw the Maker’s box, a shifting, swimming outline. She bent down over it, digging at it with her numb fingertips while the air lashed at her. She would be no one’s slave. Not for Bayaz, not for the Tellers of Secrets. She would find her own path. A dark one, perhaps, but her own.

The lid swung open.

“No.” The voices hissed together in her ear.

“No!”

Ferro ground her bloody teeth, growled with fury as she forced her fingers to unclench. The world was a melting, screaming, formless mass of darkness. Gradually, gradually, her dead hand came open. Here was her revenge. Against the liars, the users, the thieves. The earth shook, crumbled, tore, as thin and fragile as a sheet of glass, and with an empty void beneath it. She turned her trembling hand and the Seed dropped from her palm.

All as one, the voices screamed their harsh command. “No!”

She blindly seized hold of the lid. “Fuck yourselves!” she hissed.

And with her last grain of strength she forced the box closed.

After the Rains

Logen leaned on the parapet, high up on a tower at one side of the palace, and frowned into the wind. He’d done the same, it felt an age ago now, from the top of the Tower of Chains. He’d stared out dumbstruck at the endless city, wondering if he could ever have dreamed of a man-made thing so proud, and beautiful, and indestructible as the Agriont.

By the dead, how times change.

The green space of the park was scattered with fallen rubbish, trees broken, grass gouged, half the lake leaked away and sunken to a muddy bog. At its western edge a sweep of fine white buildings still stood, even if the windows gaped empty. Further west, and they had no roofs, bare rafters hanging. Further still their walls were torn and scoured, empty shells, choked with rubble.

Beyond that, there was nothing. The great hall with the golden dome, gone. The square where Logen had watched the sword-game, gone. The Tower of Chains, the mighty wall under it, and all the grand buildings over which Logen had fled with Ferro. All gone.

A colossal circle of destruction was carved from the western end of the Agriont, and only acres of formless wreckage remained. The city beyond was torn with black scars, smoke still rising from a few last fires, from smouldering hulks still drifting in the bay. The House of the Maker loomed over the scene, a sharp black mass under the brooding clouds, uncaring and untouched.

Logen stood there, scratching at the scarred side of his face, over and over. His wounds ached. So many of them. Every part of him was battered and bruised, slashed and torn. From the fight with the Eater, from the battle beyond the moat, from the duel with the Feared, from seven days of slaughter in the High Places. From a hundred fights, and skirmishes, and old campaigns. Too many to remember. So tired, and sore, and sick.

He frowned down at his hands on the parapet in front of him. The bare stone looked back where his middle finger used to be. He was Ninefingers still. The Bloody-Nine. A man made of death, just as Bethod had said. He’d nearly killed the Dogman yesterday, he knew it. His oldest friend. His only friend. He’d raised the sword, and if it wasn’t for a trick of fate, he would have done it.

He remembered standing high up, on the side of the Great Northern library, looking out over the empty valley, the still lake like a great mirror beneath it. He remembered feeling the wind on his fresh-shaved jaw, and wondering whether a man could change.

Now he knew the answer.

“Master Ninefingers!”

Logen turned quickly, hissed through his teeth as the stitches down his side burned. The First of the Magi stepped through the doorway and out into the open air. He was changed, somehow. He looked young. Younger even than when Logen first met him. There was a sharpness to his movements, a gleam in his eye. It even seemed that there were a few dark hairs in the grey beard round his friendly grin. The first smile Logen had seen in a good while.

“You are hurt?” he asked.

Logen sucked sourly at his teeth. “Hardly the first time.”

“And yet it gets no easier.” Bayaz placed his meaty fists on the stone next to Logen’s and stared out happily at the view. Just as if it was a field of flowers instead of a sweep of epic ruin. “I hardly expected to see you again so soon. And to see you so very far advanced. I understand that your feud is over. You defeated Bethod. Threw him from his own walls, the way I heard it. A nice touch. Always thinking of the song they will sing, eh? And then you took his place. The Bloody-Nine, King of the Northmen! Imagine that.”

Logen frowned. “That wasn’t how it happened.”

“Details. The result is the same, is it not? Peace in the North, at last? Either way, I congratulate you.”

“Bethod had a few things to say.”

“Did he?” asked Bayaz, carelessly. “I always found his conversation rather drab. All about himself, his plans, his achievements. It is so very tiresome when men think never of others. Poor manners.”

“He said you’re the reason why he didn’t kill me. That you bargained for my life.”

“True, I must confess. He owed me, and you were the price I demanded. I like to keep one eye on the future. Even then, I knew I might have need of a man who could speak to the spirits. It was an unexpected bonus that you turned out to be such a winning travelling companion.”

Logen found he was talking through gritted teeth. “Would have been nice to know is all.”

“You never asked, Master Ninefingers. You did not want to know my plans, as I recall, and I did not want to make you feel indebted. ‘I saved your life once’ would have been a poor start to our friendship.”

All reasonable enough, like everything Bayaz ever said, but it left a sour taste still, to have been traded like a hog. “Where’s Quai? I’d like to—”

“Dead.” Bayaz pronounced the word smartly, sharp as a knife thrust. “We feel his loss most keenly.”

“Back to the mud, eh?” Logen remembered the effort he’d made to save that man’s life. The miles he’d slogged through the rain, trying to do the right thing. All wasted. Perhaps he should’ve felt more. But it was hard with so much death spread out in front of him. Logen was numb, now. Either that, or he really didn’t care a shit. It was hard to say which.

“Back to the mud,” he muttered again. “You carry on, though, don’t you.”

“Of course.”

“That’s the task that comes with surviving. You remember them, you say some words, then you carry on, and hope for better.”

“Indeed.”

“You have to be realistic about these things.”

“True.”

Logen worked at his sore side with one hand, trying to make himself feel something. But a scrap of extra pain helped no one. “I lost a friend yesterday.”

“It was a bloody day. But a victorious one.”

“Oh aye? For who?” He could see people moving among the ruins, insects picking at the rubble, searching for survivors and finding the dead. He doubted many of them were feeling the flush of victory right now. He knew he wasn’t. “I should be with my own kind,” he muttered, but without moving. “Helping with the burying. Helping with the wounded.”

“And yet you are here, looking down.” Bayaz’ green eyes were hard as stones. That hardness that Logen had noticed from the very start, and had somehow forgotten. Somehow grown to overlook. “I entirely understand your feelings. Healing is for the young. As one gets older, one finds one has less and less patience with the wounded.” He raised his eyebrows as he turned back towards the horrible view. “I am very old.”

He lifted his fist to knock, then paused, fingers rubbing nervously against his palm.

He remembered the sour-sweet smell of her, the strength of her hands, the shape of her frown in the firelight. He remembered the warmth of her, pressed up close to him in the night. He knew there had been something good between them, even if all the words they had said had been hard. Some people don’t have soft words in them, however much they try. He didn’t hold much hope, of course. A man like him was better off without it. But you get nothing out if you put nothing in.

So Logen gritted his teeth and knocked. No reply. He chewed at his lip, and knocked again. Nothing. He frowned, twitchy and suddenly out of patience, wrenched the knob round and shoved the door open.

Ferro spun about. Her clothes were rumpled and dirty, even more than usual. Her eyes were wide, wild even, her fists clenched. But her face quickly fell when she saw it was him, and his heart sank with it.

“It’s me, Logen.”

“Uh,” she grunted. She jerked her head sideways, frowning at the window. She took a couple of steps towards it, eyes narrowed. Then she snapped round suddenly the other way. “There!”

“What?” muttered Logen, baffled.

“Do you not hear them?”

“Hear what?”

“Them, idiot!” She crept over to one wall and pressed herself up against it.

Logen hadn’t been sure how it would go. You could never be sure of anything with her, he knew that. But he hadn’t been expecting this. Just plough ahead, he reckoned. What else could he do?

“I’m a king, now.” He snorted. “King of the Northmen, would you believe it?” He was thinking she’d laugh in his face, but she just stood, listening to the wall. “Me and Luthar, both. A pair of kings. Can you think of two more worthless bastards to put crowns on, eh?” No answer.

Logen licked his lips. No choice but to get straight to it, maybe. “Ferro. The way things turned out. The way we… left it.” He took a step towards her, and another. “I wish I hadn’t… I don’t know…” He put one hand on her shoulder. “Ferro, I’m trying to tell you—”

She turned, quickly, plastered her hand over his mouth. “Shhhhh.” She grabbed his shirt and pulled him down, down onto his knees. She pressed her ear against the tiles, eyes moving back and forward as if she was listening for something. “Do you hear that?” She let go of him and pushed herself into the corner. “There! Do you hear them?”

He reached out, slowly, and touched the back of her neck, ran his rough fingertips over her skin. She shook him off with a jerk of her shoulders, and he felt his face twist. Perhaps that good thing between them had been only in his mind, and never in hers. Perhaps he had wanted it so badly that he had let himself imagine it.

He stood up, cleared his dry throat. “Never mind. I’ll come back later, maybe.” She was still on her knees, her head against the floor. She did not even watch him leave.

Logen Ninefingers was no stranger to death. He’d walked among it all his days. He’d watched the bodies burned by the score after the battle at Carleon, long ago. He’d seen them buried by the hundred up in the nameless valley in the High Places. He’d walked on a hill of men’s bones under ruined Aulcus.

But even the Bloody-Nine, even the most feared man in the North, had never looked on anything like this.

Bodies were stacked beside the wide avenue in heaps, chest-high. Sagging mounds of corpses, on and on. Hundreds upon hundreds. Too many for him to guess at the numbers. Someone had made an effort at covering them, but not that great an effort. The dead give no thanks for it, after all. Ragged sheets flapped in the breeze, weighted down with broken wood, limp hands and feet hanging out from underneath.

At this end of the road a few statues still stood. Once-proud kings and their advisers, stone faces and bodies scarred and pitted, stared sadly down at the bloody waste heaped round their feet. Enough of them for Logen to recognise that this truly was the Kingsway, and that he hadn’t somehow stumbled into the land of the dead.

A hundred strides further and there were only empty plinths, one with broken legs still attached. A strange group were clustered around them. Withered-looking. Somewhere between dead and alive. A man sat on a block of stone, staring numbly as he pulled handfuls of hair out of his head. Another was coughing into a bloody rag. A woman and a man lay side by side, gawping at nothing, faces shrivelled to little more than skulls. Her breath came crackling short and fast. His did not come at all.

Another hundred strides and it was as if Logen walked through some ruined hell. There was no sign that statues, buildings, or anything else had ever stood there. In their place were only tangled hills of strange rubbish. Broken stone, splintered wood, twisted metal, paper, glass, all crushed together and bound up with tons of dust and mud. Things stuck from the wreckage, strangely intact—a door, a chair, a carpet, a painted plate, the smiling face of a statue.

Men and women struggled everywhere among this chaos, streaked with dirt, picking at the rubbish, throwing it down to the road, trying to clear paths through it. Rescuers, workmen, thieves, who knew? Logen passed by a crackling bonfire high as a man, felt the kiss of its heat on his cheek. A big soldier in armour stained with black soot stood beside it. “You find anything in white metal?” he was roaring at the searchers, “anything at all? It goes in the fire! Flesh in white metal? Burn it! Orders of the Closed Council!”

A few strides further on, someone was on top of one of the highest mounds, straining at a great length of wood. He turned round to get a better grip. None other than Jezal dan Luthar. His clothes were torn and grubby, his face was smudged with mud. He barely looked any more like a king than Logen did.

A thickset man stood staring up, one arm in a sling. “Your Majesty, this is not safe!” he piped in an oddly girlish voice. “We really should be—”

“No! This is where I’m needed!” Jezal bent back over the beam, straining at it, veins bulging from his neck. There was no way he was going to get it shifted on his own, but still he tried. Logen stood watching him. “How long’s he been like this?”

“All night, and all day,” said the thickset man, “and no sign of stopping. Those few we’ve found alive, nearly all of them have this sickness.” He waved his good arm towards the pitiful group beside the statues. “Their hair falls out. Their nails. Their teeth. They wither. Some have died already. Others are well on the way.” He slowly shook his head. “What crime did we commit to deserve this punishment?”

“Punishment doesn’t always come to the guilty.”

“Ninefingers!” Jezal was looking down, the watery sun behind him. “There’s a strong back! Grab the end of that beam there!”

It was hard to see what good shifting a beam might do, in all of this. But great journeys start with small steps, Logen’s father had always told him. So he clambered up, wood cracking and stones sliding underneath his boots, hauled himself to the top and stood there, staring.

“By the dead.” From where he was standing, the hills of wreckage seemed to go on forever. People crawled over them, dragging frantically at the rubble, sorting carefully through it, or simply standing like him, stunned by the scale of it. A circle of utter waste, a mile across or more.

“Help me, Logen!”

“Aye. Right.” He bent down and dug his hands under one end of the great length of scarred wood. Two kings, dragging at a beam. The kings of mud.

“Pull, then!” Logen heaved, his stitches burning. Gradually he felt the wood shift. “Yes!” grunted Jezal through gritted teeth. Together they lifted it, hauled it to one side. Jezal reached down and dragged away a dry tree-branch, tore back a ripped sheet. A woman lay beneath, staring sideways. One broken arm was wrapped around a child, curly hair dark with blood.

“Alright.” Jezal wiped slowly at his mouth with the back of one dirty hand. “Alright. Well. We’ll put them with the rest of the dead.” He clambered further over the wreckage. “You! Bring that crowbar up here! Up here, and a pick, we need to clear this stone! Stack it there. We’ll need it, later. To rebuild!”

Logen put a hand on his shoulder. “Jezal, wait. Wait. You know me.”

“Of course. I like to think so.”

“Alright. Tell me something, then. Am I…” He struggled to find the right words. “Am I… an evil man?”

“You?” Jezal stared at him, confused. “You’re the best man I know.”

They were gathered under a broken tree in the park, a shadowy crowd of them. Black outlines of men, standing calm and still, red clouds and golden spread out above, around the setting sun. Logen could hear their slow voices as he walked up. Words for the dead, soft and sad. He could see the graves at their feet. Two dozen piles of fresh turned earth, set out in a circle so each man was equal. The Great Leveller, just as the hillmen say. Men put in the mud, and men saying words. Could’ve been a scene out of the old North, long ago in the time of Skarling Hoodless.

“…Harding Grim. I never saw a better man with a bow. Not ever. Can’t count the number o’ times he saved my life, and never expected thanks for it. Except maybe that I’d do the same for him. Guess I couldn’t, this time. Guess none of us could…”

The Dogman’s voice trailed off. A few heads turned to look at Logen as his footsteps crunched in the gravel. “If it ain’t the King o’ the Northmen,” someone said.

“The Bloody-Nine his self.”

“We should bow, shouldn’t we?”

They were all looking at him now. He could see their eyes gleaming in the dusk. Nothing more than shaggy outlines, hard to tell one man from another. A crowd of shadows. A crowd of ghosts, and just as unfriendly.

“You got something you want to say, Bloody-Nine?” came a voice from near the back.

“I don’t reckon,” he said. “You’re doing alright.”

“Was no reason for us to be here.” A few mumbles of agreement.

“Not our bloody fight.”

“No need for them to have died.” More mutters.

“Should be you we’re burying.”

“Aye, maybe.” Logen would have liked to weep at that. But instead he felt himself smiling. The Bloody-Nine’s smile. That grin that skulls have, with nothing inside but death. “Maybe. But you don’t get to pick who dies. Not unless you’ve got the bones to put your own hand to it. Have you? Have any of you?” Silence. “Well, then. Good for Harding Grim. Good for the rest o’ the dead, they’ll all be missed.” Logen spat onto the grass. “Shit on the rest of you.” And he turned and walked back the way he came.

Into the darkness.

Answers

So much to do.

The House of Questions still stood, and someone had to take the reins. Who else will do it? Superior Goyle? A flatbow bolt through the heart prevents him, alas. Someone had to look to the internment and questioning of the many hundreds of Gurkish prisoners, more captured every day as the army drove the invaders back to Keln. And who else will do it? Practical Vitari? Left the Union forever with her children in tow. Someone had to examine the treason of Lord Brock. To dig him up, and root out his accomplices. To make arrests, and obtain confessions. And who else is there, now? Arch Lector Sult? Oh, dear me, no.

Glokta wheezed up to his door, his few teeth bared at the endless pains in his legs. A fortunate decision, at least, to move to the eastern side of the Agriont. One should be grateful for the small things in life, like a place to rest one’s crippled husk. My old lodgings are no doubt languishing under a thousand tons of rubble, just like the rest of—

His door was not quite shut. He gave it the gentlest of pushes and it creaked open, soft lamplight spilling out into the corridor, a glowing stripe over the dusty floorboards, over the foot of Glokta’s cane and the muddy toe of one boot. I left no door unlocked, and certainly no lamps burning. His tongue slithered nervously over his empty gums. A visitor, then. An uninvited one. Do I go in, and welcome them to my rooms? His eyes slid sideways into the shadows of the corridor. Or do I make a run for it? He was almost smiling as he shuffled over the threshold, cane first, then the right foot, then the left, dragging painfully behind him.

Glokta’s guest sat by the window in the light of a single lamp, brightness splashed across the hard planes of his face, cold darkness gathered in the deep hollows. The squares board was set before him, just as Glokta left it, the pieces casting long shadows across the chequered wood.

“Why, Superior Glokta. I have been waiting for you.”

And I for you. Glokta limped over to the table, his cane scraping against the bare boards. As reluctantly as a man limping to the gallows. Ah, well. No one tricks the hangman forever. Perhaps we’ll have some answers, at least, before the end. I always dreamed of dying well-informed. Slowly, ever so slowly, he lowered himself grunting into the free chair.

“Do I have the pleasure of addressing Master Valint, or Master Balk?”

Bayaz smiled. “Both, of course.”

Glokta wrapped his tongue round one of his few remaining teeth and dragged it away with a faint sucking sound. “And to what do I owe the overpowering honour?”

“I said, did I not, that day we visited the Maker’s House, that we should have a talk at some point? A talk about what I want, and about what you want? That point has come.”

“Oh joyous day.”

The First of the Magi watched him, the same look in his bright eyes that a man might have while watching an interesting beetle. “I must admit that you fascinate me, Superior. Your life would seem to be entirely unbearable. And yet you fight so very, very hard to stay alive. With every weapon and stratagem. You simply refuse to die.”

“I am ready to die.” Glokta returned his gaze, like for like. “But I refuse to lose.”

“Whatever the cost, eh? We are two of a kind, you and I, and we are a rare kind indeed. We understand what must be done, and we do not flinch from doing it, regardless of sentiment. You remember Lord Chancellor Feekt, of course.”

If I cast my mind a long way back… “The Golden Chancellor? They say he ran the Closed Council for forty years. They say he ran the Union.” Sult said so. Sult said his death left a hole, into which he and Marovia were both keen to step. That is where this ugly dance began, for me. With a visit from the Arch Lector, with the confession of my old friend Salem Rews, with the arrest of Sepp dan Teufel, Master of the Mints…

Bayaz let one thick fingertip trail across the pieces on the squares board, as though considering his next move. “We had an agreement, Feekt and I. I made him powerful. He served me, utterly.”

Feekt… the foundation on which the nation rested… served you? I expected delusions of grandeur, but this will take some beating. “You would have me suppose that you controlled the Union all that time?”

Bayaz snorted. “Ever since I forced the damn thing together in the time of Harod the Great, so-called. It has sometimes been necessary for me to take a hand myself, as in this most recent crisis. But mostly I have stood at a distance, behind the curtain, as it were.”

“A little stuffy back there, one imagines.”

“An uncomfortable necessity.” The lamplight gleamed on the Magus’ white grin. “People like to watch the pretty puppets, Superior. Even a glimpse of the puppeteer can be most upsetting for them. Why, they might even suddenly notice the strings around their own wrists. Sult caught a glimpse of something, behind the curtain, and only look at the trouble he caused for everyone.” Bayaz flicked one of the pieces over and it clattered onto its side, rocked gently back and forth.

“Let us suppose you are indeed the great architect, and you have given us…” Glokta waved his hand towards the window. Acres of charming devastation. “All this. Why such generosity?”

“Not entirely selfless, I must confess. Khalul had the Gurkish to fight for him. I needed soldiers of my own. Even the greatest of generals needs little men to hold the line.” He absently nudged one of the smallest pieces forward. “Even the greatest of warriors needs his armour.”

Glokta stuck out his bottom lip. “But then Feekt died, and you were left naked.”

“Naked as a babe, at my age.” Bayaz gave a long sigh. “And in poor weather too, with Khalul making ready for war. I should have arranged a suitable successor more quickly, but my thoughts were elsewhere, deep in my books. The older you get, the more swiftly the years pass. It’s easy to forget how quickly people die.”

And how easily. “The death of the Golden Chancellor left a vacuum,” muttered Glokta, thinking it through. “Sult and Marovia saw a chance to take power for themselves, and advance their own notions of what the nation should be.”

“Exceptionally cock-eyed notions, as it happens. Sult wanted to return to an imaginary past where everyone kept their place and always did as they were told, and Marovia? Hah! Marovia wanted to piss power away to the people. Votes? Elections? The voice of the common man?”

“He aired some such notion.”

“I hope you aired the suitable level of contempt. Power for the people?” sneered Bayaz. “They don’t want it. They don’t understand it. What the hell would they do with it if they had it? The people are like children. They are children. They need someone to tell them what to do.”

“Someone like you, I suppose?”

“Who better suited? Marovia thought to use me in his petty schemes, and all the while I made good use of him. While he tussled with Sult over scraps the game was already won. A move I had prepared some time before.”

Glokta slowly nodded. “Jezal dan Luthar.” Our little bastard.

“Your friend and mine.”

But a bastard is no use unless… “Crown Prince Raynault stood in the way.”

The Magus flicked a piece over and it rolled slowly from the board and rattled to the table. “We talk of great events. There is sure to be some wastage.”

“You made it seem that he was killed by an Eater.”

“Oh, he was.” Bayaz watched smugly from the shadows. “Not all who break the Second Law serve Khalul. My apprentice, Yoru Sulfur, has long been partial to a bite or two.” And he snapped his two rows of smooth and even teeth together.

“I see.”

“This is war, Superior. In war one must make use of every weapon. Restraint is folly. Worse. Restraint is cowardice. But only look who I am lecturing. You need no lessons in ruthlessness.”

“No.” They cut them into me in the Emperors prisons, and I have been practising them ever since.

Bayaz nudged one of the pieces gently forward. “A useful man, Sulfur. A man who long ago accepted the demands of necessity, and mastered the discipline of taking forms.” He was the guard, weeping outside Prince Raynault’s door. The guard who vanished into thin air the next day…

“A shred of cloth taken from the Emissary’s bed-chamber,” murmured Glokta. “Blood daubed on his robe.” And so an innocent man went to the gallows, and the war between Gurkhul and the Union blossomed. Two obstacles swept neatly away with one sharp flick of the broom.

“Peace with the Gurkish did not suit my purposes. It was sloppy of Sulfur to leave such blatant clues. But then he never expected you to care about the truth when there was a convenient explanation to hand.”

Glokta nodded, slowly, as the shape of things unfolded in his mind. “He heard of my investigations from Severard, and I received a charming visit from your walking corpse, Mauthis, telling me to halt or die.”

“Exactly so. On other occasions Yoru took another face, and called himself the Tanner, and incited a few peasants to some rather unbecoming behaviour.” Bayaz examined his fingernails. “All in a good cause, though, Superior.”

“To lend glamour to your latest puppet. To make him a favourite with the people. To make him familiar to the nobles, to the Closed Council. You were the source of the rumours.”

“Heroic acts in the ruined west? Jezal dan Luthar?” Bayaz snorted. “He did little more than whine about the rain.”

“Amazing the rubbish idiots will believe if you shout it loudly enough. And you rigged the Contest too.”

“You noticed that?” Bayaz’ smile grew wider. “I am impressed, Superior, I am most impressed. You have fumbled so very close to the truth this whole time.” And yet so very far away. “I wouldn’t feel badly about it. I have many advantages. Sult groped towards the answers, in the end, but far too late. I suspected from the first what his plans might be.”

“Which is why you asked me to investigate?”

“The fact that you did not oblige me until the very last moment was the source of some annoyance.”

“Asking nicely might have helped.” It would have been refreshing, at least. “I regret that I found myself in a difficult position. A case of too many masters.”

“No longer, though, eh? I was almost disappointed when I found out how limited Sult’s studies were. Salt, and candles, and incantations? How pathetically adolescent. Enough to put a timely end to that would-be democrat Marovia, perhaps, but nothing to pose the slightest threat to me.”

Glokta frowned down at the squares board. Sult and Marovia. For all their cleverness, for all their power, their ugly little struggle was an irrelevance. They were small pieces in this game. So small they never even guessed how vast the board truly was. Which makes me what? A speck of dust between the squares, at best.

“What of the mysterious visitor to your chambers the day I first met you?” A visitor to my chambers too, perhaps? A woman, and cold…

Angry lines cut across Bayaz’ forehead. “A mistake made in my youth. You will speak no more of it.”

“Oh, as you command. And the Great Prophet Khalul?”

“The war will continue. On different battlefields, with different soldiers. But this will be the last battle fought with the weapons of the past. The magic leaks from the world. The lessons of the Old Time fade into the darkness of history. A new age dawns.”

The Magus made a careless movement with one hand and something flickered into the air, clattered to the centre of the board and spun round and round until it lay flat, with the unmistakable sound of falling money. A golden fifty-mark piece, glinting warm and welcoming in the lamplight. Glokta almost laughed. Ah, even now, even here, it always comes down to this. Everything has a price.

“It was money that bought victory in King Guslav’s half-baked Gurkish war,” said Bayaz. “It was money that united the Open Council behind their bastard king. It was money that brought Duke Orso rushing to the defence of his daughter and tipped the balance in our favour. All my money.”

“It was money that enabled me to hold Dagoska as long as I did.”

“And you know whose.” Who would have thought? More first of the moneylenders than First of the Magi. Open Council and Closed, commoners and kings, merchants and torturers, all caught up in a golden web. A web of debts, and lies, and secrets, each strand plucked in its proper place, played like a harp by a master. And what of poor Superior Glokta, fumbling buffoon? Is there a place for his sour note in this sweet music? Or is the loan of my life about to be called in?

“I suppose I should congratulate you on a hand well played,” muttered Glokta bitterly.

“Bah.” Bayaz dismissed it with a wave. “Forcing a clutch of primitives together under that cretin Harod and making them act like civilised men. Keeping the Union in one piece through the civil war and bringing that fool Arnault to the throne. Guiding that coward Casamir to the conquest of Angland. Those were hands well played. This was nothing. I hold all the cards and always will do. I have—”

I tire of this. “And blah, blah, fucking blah. The stench of self-satisfaction is becoming quite suffocating. If you mean to kill me, blast me to a cinder now and let’s be done, but, for pity’s sake, subject me to no more of your boasting.”

They sat still for a long moment, gazing at each other in silence across the darkened table. Long enough for Glokta’s leg to start trembling, for his eye to start blinking, for his toothless mouth to turn dry as the desert. Sweet anticipation. Will it be now? Will it be now? Will it be—“Kill you?” asked Bayaz mildly. “And rob myself of your winning sense of humour?”

Not now. “Then… why reveal your game to me?”

“Because I will soon be leaving Adua.” The Magus leaned forwards, his hard face sliding into the light. “Because it is necessary that you understand where the power lies, and always will lie. It is necessary that you, unlike Sult, unlike Marovia, have a proper perspective. It is necessary… if you are to serve me.”

“To serve you?” I would sooner spend two years in the stinking darkness. I would sooner have my leg chopped to mincemeat. I would sooner have my teeth pulled from my head. But since I have done all those things already…

“You will take the task that Feekt once had. The task that a score of great men bore before him. You will be my representative, here in the Union. You will manage the Closed Council, the Open Council, and our mutual friend the king. You will ensure him heirs. You will maintain stability. In short, you will watch the board, while I am gone.”

“But the rest of the Closed Council will never—”

“Those that survive have been spoken to. They all will bow to your authority. Under mine, of course.”

“How will I—”

“I will be in touch. Frequently. Through my people at the bank. Through my apprentice, Sulfur. Through other means. You will know them.”

“I don’t suppose I have any choice in the matter?”

“Not unless you can repay the million marks I leant you. Plus interest.”

Glokta patted at the front of his shirt. “Damn it. I left my purse at work.”

“Then I fear you have no choice. But why would you refuse me? I offer you the chance to help me forge a new age.” To bury my hands to the elbow in your dirty work. “To be a great man. The very greatest of men.” To bestride the Closed Council like a crippled colossus. “To leave your likeness set in stone on the Kingsway.” Where its hideousness can make the children cry. Once they clear away the rubble and the corpses, of course. “To shape the course of a nation.”

“Under your direction.”

“Naturally. Nothing is free, you know that.” Again the Magus flicked his hand and something clattered spinning across the squares board. It came to rest in front of Glokta, gold glinting. The Arch Lector’s ring. So many times I bent to kiss this very jewel. Who could have dreamed that I might one day wear it? He picked it up, turned it thoughtfully round and round. And so I finally shake off a dark master, only to find my leash in the fist of another, darker and more powerful by far. But what choice do I have? What choices do any of us truly have? He slid the ring onto his finger. The great stone shone in the lamplight, full of purple sparks. From a dead man to the greatest in the realm, and all in one evening.

“It fits,” murmured Glokta.

“Of course, your Eminence. I always knew it would.”

The Wounded

West woke with a start and tried to jerk up to sitting. Pain shot up one leg, across his chest, through his right arm, and stayed there, throbbing. He dropped back with a groan and stared at the ceiling. A vaulted stone ceiling, covered in thick shadows.

Sounds crept at him now from all around. Grunts and whimpers, coughs and sobs, quick gasping, slow growling. The occasional outright shriek of pain. Sounds between men and animals. A voice whispered throatily from somewhere to his left, droning endlessly away like a rat scratching at the walls. “I can’t see. Bloody wind. I can’t see. Where am I? Somebody. I can’t see.”

West swallowed, feeling the pain growing worse. In the hospitals in Gurkhul there had been sounds like that, when he had come to visit wounded soldiers from his company. He remembered the stink and noise of those horrible tents, the misery of the men in them, and above all the overpowering desire to leave and be among the healthy. But it was already awfully clear that leaving would not be so easy this time.

He was one of the wounded. A different, contemptible and disgusting species. Horror crept slowly through his body and mingled with the pain. How badly was he injured? Did he have all his limbs, still? He tried to move his fingers, wriggle his toes, clenched his teeth as the aching in his arm and leg grew worse. He brought his left hand trembling up before his face, turned it over in the dimness. It seemed intact, at least, but it was the only limb that he could move, and even that was a crushing effort. Panic slithered up his throat and clutched at him.

“Where am I? Bloody wind. I can’t see. Help. Help. Where am I?”

“Fucking shut up!” West shouted, but the words died in his dry throat. All that came up was a hollow cough that set his ribs on fire again.

“Shhhh.” A soft touch on his chest. “Just be still.”

A blurry face swam into view. A woman’s face, he thought, with fair hair, but it was hard to focus. He closed his eyes and stopped trying. It hardly seemed to matter that much. He felt something against his lips, the neck of a bottle. He drank too thirstily, spluttered and felt cold water running down his neck.

“What happened?” he croaked.

“You were wounded.”

“I know that. I mean… in the city. The wind.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows.”

“Did we win?”

“I suppose that… the Gurkish were driven out, yes. But there are a lot of wounded. A lot of dead.”

Another swallow of water. This time he managed it without gagging. “Who are you?”

“My name is Ariss. Dan Kaspa.”

“Ariss…” West fumbled with the name. “I knew your cousin. Knew him well… a good man. He always used to talk about… how beautiful you were. And rich,” he muttered, vaguely aware he should not be saying this, but unable to stop his mouth from working. “Very rich. He died. In the mountains.”

“I know.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Trying to help with the wounded. It would be best for you to sleep now, if you—”

“Am I whole?”

A pause. “Yes. Sleep now, if you can.”

Her dark face grew blurry, and West let his eyes close. The noises of agony slowly faded around him. He was whole. All would be well.

Someone was sitting next to his bed. Ardee. His sister. He blinked, worked his sour mouth, unsure where he was for a moment.

“Am I dreaming?” She reached forward and dug her nails into his arm. “Ah!”

“Painful dream, eh?”

“No,” he was forced to admit. “This is real.”

She looked well. Far better than the last time he had seen her, that was sure. No blood on her face for one thing. No look of naked hatred, for another. Only a thoughtful frown. He tried to bring himself up to sitting, failed, and slumped back down. She did not offer to help. He had not really expected her to. “How bad is it?” he asked.

“Nothing too serious, apparently. A broken arm, a few broken ribs, and a leg badly bruised, they tell me. Some cuts on your face that may leave a scar or two, but then I got all the looks in the family anyway.”

He gave a snort of laughter and winced at the pain across his chest. “True enough. The brains too.”

“Don’t feel badly about it. I’ve used them to make the towering success of my life that you see before you. The kind of achievement that you, as a Lord Marshal of the Union, can only dream of.”

“Don’t,” he hissed, clamping his good hand across his ribs. “It hurts.”

“No less than you deserve.”

His laughter quickly stuttered out, and they were silent for a moment, looking at each other. Even that much was difficult. “Ardee…” His voice caught in his sore neck. “Can you… forgive me?”

“I already did. The first time I heard you were dead.” She was trying to smile, he could tell. But she still had that twist of anger to her mouth. Probably she would have liked to dig her nails into his face rather than his arm. He was almost glad then, for a moment, that he was wounded. She had no choice but to be soft with him. “It’s good that you’re not. Dead, that is…” She frowned over her shoulder. There was some manner of commotion at one end of the long cellar. Raised voices, the clatter of armoured footsteps.

“The king!” Whoever it was nearly squealed it in their excitement. “The king is come again!”

In the beds all around men turned their heads, propped themselves up. A nervous excitement spread from cot to cot. “The king?” they whispered, faces anxious and expectant, as though they were privileged to witness a divine visitation.

Several figures moved through the shadows at the far end of the hall. West strained to look, but could see little more than metal gleaming in the darkness. The foremost shape stopped beside a wounded man a few beds down.

“They are treating you well?” A voice strangely familiar, strangely different.

“Yes, sir.”

“Is there anything you need?”

“A kiss from a good woman?”

“I would love to oblige you, but I fear I’m only a king. We’re a great deal more common than good women.” Men laughed, even though it was not funny. West supposed that people laughing at your poor jokes was one advantage of being a monarch. “Anything else?”

“Maybe… maybe another blanket, sir. Getting cold down here, at night.”

“Of course.” The figure jerked his thumb at a man behind. Lord Hoff, West realised now, dragging along at a respectful distance. “Another blanket for every man here.”

The Lord Chamberlain, that fearsome scourge of the audience chamber, humbly nodded his head like a meek child. The king stood, and moved into the light.

Jezal dan Luthar, of course, and yet it was hard to believe that it was the same man, and not only because of the rich fur mantle and the golden circlet on his forehead. He seemed taller. Handsome, still, but no longer boyish. A deep scar on his bearded jaw had given him an air of strength. The sneer of arrogance had become a frown of command. The carefree swagger had become a purposeful stride. He worked his way on slowly down the aisle between the cots, speaking to each man, pressing their hands, giving them thanks, promising them help. No one was overlooked.

“A cheer for the king!” someone gurgled through gritted teeth.

“No! No. The cheering should be for you, my brave friends! You who have made sacrifices in my name. I owe you everything. It was only with your help that the Gurkish were defeated. Only with your help that the Union was saved. I do not forget a debt, that I promise you!”

West stared. Whoever this strange apparition was who looked so like Jezal dan Luthar, he spoke like a monarch. West almost felt a preposterous desire to drag himself from his bed and kneel. One casualty was trying to do just that as the king passed his bed. Jezal restrained him with a gentle hand on his chest, smiled and patted his shoulder as though he had been offering succour to the wounded his entire life, instead of getting drunk in shit-holes with the rest of the officers, and whining about such meagre tasks as he was given.

He drew close and saw West, lying there. His face lit up, though there was a tooth missing from his smile. “Collem West!” he said, hastening over. “I can honestly say that I have never in my life been so pleased to see your face.”

“Er…” West moved his mouth around a bit, but hardly knew what to say.

Jezal turned to his sister. “Ardee… I hope you are well.”

“Yes.” She said nothing else. They stared at each other, for a long and intensely awkward moment, not speaking.

Lord Hoff frowned at the king, then at West, then at Ardee. He insinuated himself somewhat between the two of them. “Your Majesty, we should—”

Jezal silenced him effortlessly with one raised hand. “I trust that you will soon join me in the Closed Council, West. I am in some need of a friendly face there, in truth. Not to mention good advice. You always were a mine of good advice. I never did thank you for it. Well, I can thank you now.”

“Jezal… I mean, your Majesty—”

“No, no. Always Jezal to you, I hope. You will have a room in the palace, of course. You will have the royal surgeon. Everything possible. See to that, please, Hoff.”

The Lord Chamberlain bowed. “Of course. Everything will be arranged.”

“Good. Good. I am glad you are well, West. I cannot afford to lose you.” The king nodded, to him, and to his sister. Then he turned and moved on, pressing hands, speaking soft words. A pool of hope seemed to surround him as he passed. Despair crowded in behind it. Smiles faded as he moved away. Men dropped back onto their beads, faces clouding over with pain.

“Responsibility seems to have improved him,” muttered West. “Almost beyond recognition.”

“How long will it last, do you think?”

“I’d like to think that it could stick, but then I’ve always been an optimist.”

“That’s good.” Ardee watched the magnificent new king of the Union striding away, wounded men straining from their cots for the slightest touch of his cloak. “That one of us can be.”

“Marshal West!”

“Jalenhorm. Good to see you.” West pulled back the blankets with his good hand, eased his legs over the edge of the bed and winced his way up to sitting. The big man reached out and gave his hand a squeeze, clapped him on the shoulder.

“You’re looking well!”

West smiled weakly. “Better ever day, Major. How’s my army?”

“Fumbling on without you. Kroy’s holding things together. Not such a bad sort, the General, once you get used to him.”

“If you say so. How many did we lose?”

“Still hard to say. Things are somewhat chaotic. Whole companies missing. Impromptu units still chasing Gurkish stragglers across half the countryside. I don’t think we’ll have numbers for a while. I don’t know if we’ll ever get them. No one did well, but the ninth regiment were the ones fighting at the western end of the Agriont. They took the worst of…” He fumbled for the words. “It.”

West grimaced. He remembered that black column of whirling matter reaching from the tortured earth to the circling clouds. The debris lashing at his skin, the screaming of the wind all around him. “What was… it?”

“I’m damned if I know.” Jalenhorm shook his head. “Damned if anyone does. But the rumour is that this Bayaz was involved, somehow. Half the Agriont’s in ruins, and they’ve barely started shifting the rubble. You never saw anything like it, that I promise you. A lot of people dead in all that. Bodies stacked up in the open…” Jalenhorm took a long breath. “And there are more dying every day. A lot of people getting ill.” He shuddered. “This… sickness.”

“Disease. Always a part of war.”

“Not like this. Hundreds of cases, now. Some die in a day, almost before your eyes. Some take longer. They wither to skin and bone. They have whole halls full of them. Stinking, hopeless places. But you don’t need to worry about that.” He shook himself. “I have to go.”

“Already?”

“Flying visit, sir. I’m helping to arrange Poulder’s funeral, would you believe? He’s being buried in state, by order of the king… that is to say Jezal. Jezal dan Luthar.” He blew out his cheeks. “Strange business.”

“The strangest.”

“All that time. A king’s son sitting in the midst of us. I knew there had to be a reason why he was so bloody good at cards.” He slapped West on the back again. “Good to see you looking so well, sir. Knew they wouldn’t be able to keep you down for long!”

“Keep out of trouble!” West called after him as he made for the door.

“Always!” The big man grinned as he pulled it shut.

West took his stick from the side of the bed, gritted his teeth as he pushed himself up to standing. He hobbled across the expanse of chequered tiles to the window, one painstaking step at a time, and finally stood blinking into the morning sunlight.

Looking down on the palace gardens it was hard to believe that there had been any war, that there were any acres of ruins, any heaps of dead. The lawns were neatly trimmed, the gravel well-raked. The last few brown leaves had fallen from the trees, leaving the smooth wood black and bare.

It had been autumn when he set out for Angland. Could it really have been only a year ago? He had lived through four great battles, a siege, an ambush, a bloody melée. He had witnessed a duel to the death. He had stood at the centre of great events. He had survived a slog of hundreds of miles through the bleak Angland winter. He had found new comrades in unlikely places, and he had seen friends dead before his eyes. Burr, Kaspa, Cathil, Threetrees, all back to the mud, as the Northmen said. He had faced death, and he had delivered it. He shifted his aching arm uncomfortably in the sling. He had murdered the heir to the throne of the Union with his own hands. He had risen, by a stroke of chance that verged on the impossible, to one of the highest posts in the nation.

Busy year.

And now it was over. Peace, of a kind. The city was in ruins, and every man had to do his part, but he owed himself a rest. Surely no one would begrudge him that. Perhaps he could insist on Ariss dan Kaspa to tend him to health. A rich and beautiful nurse seemed like just the thing he needed…

“You shouldn’t be up.” Ardee stood in the doorway.

He grinned. It was good to see her. For the last few days they had been close. Almost as it had been long ago, when they were children. “Don’t worry. Getting stronger every day.”

She walked across to the window. “Oh yes, in a few weeks time you’ll be strong as a little girl. Back to bed.” She slid one arm under his and took the cane from his hand, started to guide him back across the room. West made no effort to resist. If he was being honest, he was starting to feel tired anyway. “We’re taking no chances,” she was saying. “You’re all I have, I’m sorry to say. Unless you count that other invalid, my good friend Sand dan Glokta.”

West almost snorted with laughter. “That worked out?”

“The man is utterly loathsome, of course, in a way. Terrifying and pitiful at once. And yet… having had no one else to talk to, I find that I’ve strangely warmed to him.”

“Huh. He used to be loathsome in an entirely different way. I’ve never been sure quite why I warmed to him then. And yet I did. I suppose there’s no—”

He felt a sudden wave of sickness cramp up his guts, stumbled and almost fell, sank onto the bed, stiff leg stretched out in front of him. His vision was blurry, his head spun. He pressed his face into his palms, teeth gritted, as spit rushed into his mouth. He felt Ardee’s hand on his shoulder.

“Are you alright?”

“Ah, yes, it’s just… I’ve been having these sick spells.” The feeling was already passing. He rubbed at his sore temples, then the back of his skull. He lifted his head, and smiled up at her again. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

“Collem…”

There was hair wedged between his fingers. A lot of hair. His own, by the colour. He blinked at it, mystified, then coughed with disbelieving laughter. A wet, salty cough from down under his ribs. “I know it’s been thinning for years,” he croaked, “but really, this is too much.”

Ardee did not laugh. She was staring at his hands, eyes wide with horror.

Patriotic Duties

Glokta winced as he carefully lowered himself into his chair. There was no fanfare to mark the moment when his aching arse touched the hard wood. No round of applause. Only a sharp clicking in his burning knee. And yet it is a moment of the greatest significance, and not only for me.

The designers of the White Chamber’s furniture had ventured beyond austerity and into the realm of profound discomfort. One would have thought that they could have stretched to some upholstery for the most powerful men in the realm. Perhaps the intention was to remind the occupants that one should never become too comfortable at the pinnacle of power. He glanced sideways, and saw Bayaz watching him. Well, uncomfortable is about as good as I ever get. Have I not often said so? He winced as he tried to worm his way forwards, the legs of his chair squealing noisily against the floor.

Long ago, when I was handsome, young, and promising, I dreamed of one day sitting at this table as a noble Lord Marshal, or a respected High Justice, or even an honourable Lord Chamberlain. Who could ever have suspected, even in their darkest moments, that beautiful Sand dan Glokta would one day sit on the Closed Council as the feared, the abhorred, the all-powerful Arch Lector of the Inquisition? He could scarcely keep the smile from his toothless mouth as he slumped back against the unyielding wood.

Not everyone appeared amused by his sudden elevation, however. King Jezal in particular glowered at Glokta with the most profound dislike. “Remarkable that you are confirmed already in your position,” he snapped.

Bayaz interposed. “Such things can happen quickly when there is the will, your Majesty.”

“After all,” observed Hoff, stealing a rare moment away from his goblet to sweep the table with a melancholy glance, “our numbers are most sadly reduced.”

All too true. Several chairs loomed significantly empty. Marshal Varuz was missing, presumed dead. Certainly dead, given that he was conducting the defence from the Tower of Chains, a structure now scattered widely over the streets of the city. Farewell, my old fencing master, farewell. High Justice Marovia had also left a vacant seat. No doubt they are still trying to scrape the frozen meat from the walls of his office. Adieu to my third suitor, I fear. Lord Valdis, Commander of the Knights Herald, was not in attendance. Keeping watch on the southern gate, I understand, when the Gurkish detonated their explosive powder. Body never found, nor ever will be, one suspects. Lord Admiral Reutzer too, was absent. Wounded at sea by a cutlass to the guts. Not expected to survive, alas.

Truly, the pinnacle of power is less crowded than it used to be.

“Marshal West could not be with us?” asked Lord Chancellor Halleck.

“He regrets that he cannot.” General Kroy seemed to pinch off each word with his teeth. “He has asked me to take his place, and speak for the army.”

“And how is the Marshal?”

“Wounded.”

“And further afflicted by the wasting illness that has recently swept the Agriont,” added the king, frowning grimly down the table at the First of the Magi.

“Regrettable.” Bayaz’ face showed not the slightest sign of regret or anything else.

“A terrible business,” lamented Hoff. “The physicians are utterly baffled.”

“Few survive.” Luthar’s glare had become positively deadly.

“Let us ardently hope,” gushed Torlichorm, “that Marshal West is one of the lucky ones.” Let us hope so indeed. Although hope changes nothing.

“To business, then?” Wine gurgled from the pitcher as Hoff filled his goblet for the second time since entering the room. “How fares the campaign, General Kroy?”

“The Gurkish army is utterly routed. We have pursued them towards Keln, where some few managed to flee on the remnant of their fleet. Duke Orso’s ships soon put an end to that, however. The Gurkish invasion is over. Victory is ours.” And yet he frowns as though he is admitting defeat.

“Excellent.”

“The nation owes a debt of thanks to its brave soldiers.”

“Our congratulations, General.”

Kroy stared down at the table-top. “The congratulations belong to Marshal West, who gave the orders, and to General Poulder and the others who gave their lives carrying them out. I was no more than an observer.”

“But you played your part, and admirably.” Hoff raised his goblet. “Given the unfortunate absence of Marshal Varuz, I feel confident his Majesty will soon wish to confer a promotion upon you.” He glanced towards the king, and Luthar grunted his unenthusiastic assent.

“I am honoured to serve in whatever capacity his Majesty should decide, of course. The prisoners are a more urgent matter, however. We have many thousands of them, and no food with which to—”

“We have not enough food for our own soldiers, our own citizens, our own wounded,” said Hoff, dabbing at his wet lips.

“Ransom any men of quality back to the Emperor?” suggested Torlichorm.

“There were precious few men of quality among their entire damn army.”

Bayaz frowned down the table. “If they are of no value to the Emperor they are certainly of no value to us. Let them starve.”

A few men shifted uncomfortably. “We are talking of thousands of lives, here—” began Kroy.

The gaze of the First of the Magi fell upon him like a great stone and squashed his objections flat. “I know what we are talking of, General. Enemies. Invaders.”

“Surely we can find a way?” threw in the king. “Could we not ship them back to Kantic shores? It would be a shameful epilogue to our victory if—”

“Each prisoner fed is one citizen that must go hungry. Such is the terrible arithmetic of power. A difficult decision, your Majesty, but those are the only kind we have in this room. What would your opinion be, Arch Lector?”

The eyes of the king, and the old men in the high chairs, all turned towards Glokta. Ah, we know what must be done, and we do not flinch, and so forth. Let the monster pronounce the sentence, so the rest can feel like decent men. “I have never been a great admirer of the Gurkish.” Glokta shrugged his aching shoulders. “Let them starve.”

King Jezal settled further into his throne with an even grimmer frown. Could it be that our monarch is a touch less house-broken than the First of the Magi would like to believe? Lord Chancellor Halleck cleared his throat. “Now that victory is ours, our first concern, without question, is the clearing of the ruins, and the rebuilding of the damage caused by…” his eyes shifted nervously sideways to Bayaz, and back. “Gurkish aggression.”

“Hear, hear.”

“Rebuilding. We are all agreed.”

“The costs,” and Halleck winced as if the word caused him pain, “even of clearing the wreckage in the Agriont alone, may run to many tens of thousands of marks. The price of rebuilding, many millions. When we consider the extensive damage to the city of Adua besides… the costs…” Halleck scowled again and rubbed at his ill-shaved jaw with one hand. “Difficult even to guess at.”

“We can only do our best.” Hoff sadly shook his head. “And find one mark at a time.”

“I, for one, suggest we look to the nobles,” said Glokta. There were several grumbles of agreement.

“His Eminence makes a fine point.”

“A sharp curtailment of the powers of the Open Council,” said Halleck.

“Harsh taxes on those who did not provide material support in the recent war.”

“Excellent! Trim the nobles’ sails. Damn parasites.”

“Sweeping reforms. Lands returned to the crown. Levies on inheritance.”

“On inheritance! An inspired notion!”

“The Lord Governors too must be brought into the fold.”

“Skald and Meed. Yes. They have long enjoyed too much independence.”

“Meed can hardly be blamed, his province is a wreck—”

“This is not a question of blame,” said Bayaz. No indeed, we all know where that lies. “This is a question of control. Victory has given us the opportunity for reform.”

“We need to centralise!”

“Westport as well. Too long they have played us off against the Gurkish.”

“They need us now.”

“Perhaps we should extend the Inquisition to their city?” suggested Glokta.

“A foothold in Styria!”

“We must rebuild!” The First of the Magi thumped at the table with one meaty fist. “Better and more glorious even than before. The statues in the Kingsway may have fallen, but they have left space for new ones.”

“A new era of prosperity,” said Halleck, eyes shining.

“A new era of power,” said Hoff, raising his goblet.

“A golden age?” Bayaz looked up the table at Glokta.

“An age of unity and opportunity for all!” said the king.

His offering fell somewhat flat. Eyes swivelled uncomfortably toward the king’s end of the table. Quite as if he noisily farted, rather than spoke. “Er… yes, your Majesty,” said Hoff. “Opportunities.” For anyone lucky enough to sit on the Closed Council, that is.

“Perhaps heavier taxes on the merchant guilds?” proffered Halleck. “As our last Arch Lector had in mind. The banks also. Such a move could produce vast incomes—”

“No,” said Bayaz, offhand. “Not the guilds, not the banks. The free operation of those noble institutions provides wealth and security to all. The future of the nation lies in commerce.”

Halleck humbly inclined his head. With more than a hint of fear, do I detect? “Of course, Lord Bayaz, you are right. I freely admit my mistake.”

The Magus moved smoothly on. “Perhaps the banks would be willing to extend a loan to the crown, however.”

“An excellent idea,” said Glokta without hesitation. “The banking house of Valint and Balk are a trustworthy and long-founded institution. They were of profound value during my attempts to defend Dagoska. I am sure we could count on their help again.” Bayaz’ smile was almost imperceptible. “In the meantime the lands, assets, and titles of the traitor Lord Brock have been requisitioned by the crown. Their sale will raise a considerable sum.”

“And what of the man himself, Arch Lector?”

“It would appear he fled the nation along with the last of the Gurkish. We assume that he is still their… guest.”

“Their puppet, you mean.” Bayaz sucked at his teeth. “Unfortunate. He may continue to be a focus for discontent.”

“Two of his children are under lock and key in the House of Questions. His daughter and one of the sons. An exchange might be possible—”

“Brock? Ha!” barked Hoff. “He wouldn’t swap his own life for the whole world and everything in it.”

Glokta raised his eyebrows. “Then perhaps a demonstration of intent? A clear message that treason will not and will never be tolerated?”

“Never a bad message to send,” growled Bayaz to affirmative mutterings from the old men.

“A public declaration of Brock’s guilt, then, and his responsibility for the ruin of the city of Adua. Accompanied by a pair of hangings.” A shame for them, to have been born to such an ambitious father, but everyone loves a public killing. “Does anyone have a preference for a certain day or—”

“There will be no hangings.” The king was frowning levelly at Bayaz.

Hoff blinked. “But your Majesty, you cannot allow—”

“There has been enough bloodshed. Far more than enough. Release Lord Brock’s children.” There were several sharp intakes of breath around the table. “Allow them to join their father, or remain in the Union as private citizens, as they desire.” Bayaz glared balefully from the far end of the room, but the king did not appear intimidated. “The war is over. We won.” The war never ends, and victory is temporary. “I would rather try to heal wounds than deepen them.” A wounded enemy is the best kind, they are the easiest to kill. “Sometimes mercy buys you more than ruthlessness.”

Glokta cleared his throat. “Sometimes.” Though I myself have yet to see the circumstance.

“Good,” said the king in a voice that brooked no argument. “Then it is decided. Have we other pressing business? I need to make a tour of the hospitals, and then once more to clearing the wreckage.”

“Of course, your Majesty.” Hoff gave a sycophantic bow. “Your care for your subjects does you much credit.”

Jezal stared at him for a moment, then snorted, and got up. He had already left the room before most of the old men had struggled to their feet. And I take even longer. When Glokta had finally wrestled his chair out of the way and grimaced to standing, he found Hoff was beside him, a frown on his ruddy face. “We have a small problem,” he muttered.

“Indeed? Something we cannot raise with the rest of the Council?”

“I fear so. Something which, in particular, it would be better not to discuss before his Majesty.” Hoff looked quickly over his shoulder, waited for the last of the old men to pull the heavy door shut behind him and leave the two of them unobserved. Secrets, then? How tremendously exciting. “Our absent Lord Marshal’s sister.”

Glokta frowned. Oh dear. “Ardee West? What of her?”

“I have it on good authority, that she finds herself in… a delicate condition.”

The familiar flurry of twitches ran up the left side of Glokta’s face. “Is that so?” What a shame. “You are remarkably well informed about that lady’s personal business.”

“It is my duty to be so.” Hoff leaned close and blasted Glokta with wine-stinking breath as he whispered. “When you consider who the father might very well be.”

“And that is?” Though I think we both already guess the answer.

“Who else but the king?” hissed Hoff under his breath, a note of panic in his voice. “You must be well aware that they were involved in… a liaison, to put it delicately, prior to his coronation. It is scarcely a secret. Now this? A bastard child! When the king’s own claim to the throne is not of the purest? When he has so many enemies still on the Open Council? Such a child could be used against us, if it became known of, and it will, of course!” He leaned closer yet. “Such a thing would constitute a threat to the state.”

“Indeed,” said Glokta icily. All too unfortunately true. What a terrible, terrible shame.

Hoff’s fat fingers fussed nervously with each other. “I realise that you have some association with the lady and her family. I understand entirely if this is one responsibility that you would rather be free of. I can make the arrangements with no—”

Glokta flashed his craziest grin. “Are you implying that I lack sufficient ruthlessness for the murder of a pregnant mother, Lord Chamberlain?” His voice bounced loud from the hard white walls, merciless as a knife-thrust.

Hoff winced, his eyes darting nervously towards the door. “I am sure you would not flinch from any patriotic duty—”

“Good. You may rest easy, then. Our mutual friend did not select me for this role because of my soft heart.” Anything but. “I will deal with the matter.”

The same small, brick-built house in the same unremarkable street that Glokta had visited so often before. The same house where I spent so many enjoyable afternoons. As close as I have come to comfort since I was dragged drooling from the Emperor’s prisons. He slid his right hand into his pocket, felt the cold metal brush against his fingertips. Why do I do this? Why? So that drunken arsehole Hoff can mop his brow at a calamity averted? So that Jezal dan Luthar can sit a hair more secure on his puppet throne? He twisted his hips one way and then the other until he felt his back click. She deserves so much better. But such is the terrible arithmetic of power.

He pushed back the gate, hobbled up to the front door, and gave it a smart knock. It was a moment before the cringing maid answered. Perhaps the one who alerted our court drunkard Lord Hoff to the unfortunate situation? She showed him through into the over-furnished sitting room with little more than a mumble and left him there, staring at a small fire in the small grate. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror above the fireplace, and frowned.

Who is that man? That ruined shell? That shambling corpse? Can you even call it a face? So twisted and so lined, so etched with pain. What is this loathsome, pitiable species? Oh, if there is a God, protect me from this thing!

He tried to smile. Savage grooves cut through his corpse-pale skin, the hideous gap in his teeth yawned. The corner of his mouth trembled, his left eye twitched, narrower than the other, rimmed with angry red. The smile seems to promise horrors more surely even than the frown.

Has any man ever looked more of a villain? Has any man ever been more of a monster? Could any vestige of humanity possibly remain behind such a mask? How did beautiful Sand dan Glokta become… this? Mirrors. Even worse than stairs. His lip curled with disgust as he turned away.

Ardee stood in the doorway, watching him in silence. She looked well, to his mind, once he got over the awkward surprise of being observed. Very well, with perhaps the slightest swelling about her stomach already? Three months along now? Four perhaps? Soon there will be no disguising it.

“Your Eminence.” She gave him an appraising glance as she stepped into the room. “White suits you.”

“Truly? You do not feel it makes the skull-like rings about my feverish eyes look all the darker?”

“Why, not at all. It perfectly matches your ghoulish pallor.”

Glokta leered his toothless grin. “The very effect I was hoping for.”

“Have you come to take me on another tour of sewers, death and torture?”

“A repeat of that performance will probably never be possible, alas. I seem to have used up all my friends and most of my enemies in that one throw.”

“And regrettably the Gurkish army can no longer be with us.”

“Busy elsewhere, I understand.” He watched her cross to the table, look out of the window towards the street, the daylight glowing through her dark air, down the edge of her cheek.

“I trust that you are well?” she asked.

“Busier even than the Gurkish. A great deal to do. How is your brother? I have been meaning to visit him, but…” But I doubt even I could stand the stink of my own hypocrisy if I did. I cause pain. The easing of it is a foreign tongue to me.

Ardee looked at her feet. “He is always sick now. Every time I visit he is thinner. One of his teeth fell out while I was with him.” She shrugged her shoulders. “It just came out while he was trying to eat. He nearly choked on it. But what can I do? What can anyone?”

“I am truly sorry to hear it.” But it changes nothing. “I am sure that you are a great help to him.” I am sure that there can be no help for him. “And how are you?”

“Better than most, I suppose.” She gave a long sigh, shook herself and tried to smile. “Will you take some wine?”

“No, but don’t let me stop you.” I know you never have.

But she only held the bottle for a moment, then set it down again. “I have been trying to drink less, lately.”

“I have always felt that you should.” He took a slow step towards her. “You feel sick, then, in the mornings?”

She looked sharply sideways, then swallowed, the thin muscles standing out from her neck. “You know?”

“I am the Arch Lector,” he said as he came closer. “I am supposed to know everything.”

Her shoulders sagged, her head dropped, she leaned forwards, both hands on the edge of the table. Glokta could see her eyelids fluttering, from the side. Blinking back the tears. For all of her anger, and her cleverness, she just as much in need of saving as anyone could be. But there is no one to come to the rescue. There is only me.

“I suppose I made quite a mess of things, just as my brother said I would. Just as you said I would. You must be disappointed.”

Glokta felt his face twisting. Something like a smile, perhaps. But not much joy in it. “I’ve spent most of my life disappointed. But not in you. It’s a hard world. No one gets what they deserve.” How long must we drag this out before we find the courage? It will not get any easier to do it. It must be now.

“Ardee…” his voice sounded rough in his own ears. He took another limping step, his palm sweaty on the handle of his cane. She looked up at him, wet eyes gleaming, one hand on her stomach. She moved as if to take a step back. A trace of fear, perhaps? And who can blame her? Can it be that she guesses at what is coming?

“You know that I have always had a great liking and respect for your brother.” His mouth was dry, his tongue slurped awkwardly against his empty gums. Now is the time. “Over the past months I have developed a great liking and respect for you.” A flurry of twitches ran up the side of his face and made a tear leak from his flickering eye. Now, now. “Or… as close to such feelings as a man like myself can come, at least.” Glokta slid his hand into his pocket, carefully, so she would not notice. He felt the cold metal, the hard, merciless edges brushing against his skin. It must be now. His heart was pounding, his throat so tight that he could barely speak. “This is difficult. I am… sorry.”

“For what?” she said, frowning at him.

Now.

He lurched towards her, snatching his hand from his pocket. She stumbled back against the table, eyes wide… and they both froze.

The ring glittered between them. A colossal, flashing diamond so large it made the thick golden band look flimsy. So large it looks a joke. A fake. An absurd impossibility. The biggest stone that Valint and Balk had to offer.

“I have to ask you to marry me,” he croaked. The hand that held the ring was trembling like a dry leaf. Put a cleaver in it and it’s steady as a rock, but ask me to hold a ring and I nearly wet myself. Courage, Sand, courage.

She stared down at the glittering stone, her mouth hanging stupidly open. With shock? With horror? Marry this… thing? I would rather die! “Uh…” she muttered. “I…”

“I know! I know, I’m as disgusted as you are, but… let me speak. Please.” He stared down at the floor, his mouth twisting as he said the words. “I am not stupid enough to pretend that you might ever come to love… a man like me, or think of me with anything warmer than pity. This is a question of necessity. You should not flinch from it because… of what I am. They know you are carrying the king’s child.”

“They?” she muttered.

“Yes. They. The child is a threat to them. You are a threat to them. This way I can protect you. I can give your child legitimacy. It must be our child, now and forever.” Still she stared at the ring in silence. Like a prisoner staring horrified upon the instruments, and deciding whether to confess. Two awful choices, but which is the worse?

“There are many things that I can give you. Safety. Security. Respect. You will have the best of everything. A high place in society, for what such things are worth. No one will dream of laying a finger upon you. No one will dare to talk down to you. People will whisper behind your back, of course. But they will whisper of your beauty, your wit, and your surpassing virtue.” Glokta narrowed his eyes. “I will see to it.”

She looked up at him, and swallowed. And now comes the refusal. My thanks, but I would rather die. “I should be honest with you. When I was younger… I did some foolish things.” Her mouth twisted. “This isn’t even the first bastard I’ve carried. My father threw me down the stairs and I lost it. He nearly killed me. I didn’t think that it could happen again.”

“We have all done things we are not proud of.” You should hear my confessions, some time. Or rather no one ever should. “That changes nothing. I promised that I would look to your welfare. I see no other way.”

“Then yes.” She took the ring from him without any ceremony and slid it onto her finger. “There is nothing to think about, is there?” Scarcely the gushing acceptance, the tearful acquiescence, the joyful surrender that one reads of in the story books. A reluctant business arrangement. An occasion for sad reflection on all that might have been, but is not.

“Who would have thought,” she murmured, staring at the jewel on her finger, “when I watched you fence with my brother, all those years ago, that I would one day wear your ring? You always were the man of my dreams.”

And now of your nightmares. “Life takes strange turns. The circumstances are not quite what anyone would have predicted.” And so I save two lives. How much evil can that possibly outweigh? Yet it is something on the right side of the scales, at least. Every man needs something on the right side of the scales.

Her dark eyes rolled up to his. “Could you not have afforded a bigger stone?”

“Only by raiding the treasury,” he croaked. A kiss would be traditional, but under the circumstances—

She stepped towards him, lifting one arm. He lurched back, winced at a twinge in his hip. “Sorry. Somewhat… out of practice.”

“If I am to do this, I mean to do it properly.”

“To make the best of it, do you mean?”

“To make something of it, anyway.” She drew closer still. He had to force himself to stay where he was. She looked into his eyes. She reached up, slowly, and touched his cheek, and set his eyelid flickering.

Foolishness. How many women have touched me before? And yet that was another life. Another—

Her hand slid round his face, her fingertips pressing tight into his jaw. His neck clicked as she pulled him close. He felt her breath warm on his chin. Her lips brushed against his, gently, and back the other way. He heard her make a soft grunt in her throat, and it made his own breath catch. Pretence, of course. How could any woman want to touch this ruined body? Kiss this ruined face? Even I am repulsed at the thought of it. Pretence, and yet I must applaud her for the effort.

His left leg trembled and he had to cling tight to his cane. The breath hissed fast through his nose. Her face was sideways on to his, their mouths locked together, sucking wetly. The tip of her tongue licked at his empty gums. Pretence, of course, what else could it be? And yet she does it so very, very well…

The First Law

Ferro sat, and she stared at her hand. The hand that had held the Seed. It looked the same as ever, yet it felt different. Cold, still. Very cold. She had wrapped it in blankets. She had bathed it in warm water. She had held it near the fire, so near that she had burned herself.

Nothing helped.

“Ferro…” Whispered so quiet it could almost have been the wind around the window-frame.

She jerked to her feet, knife clutched in her fist. She stared into the corners of her room. All empty. She bent down to look under the bed, under the tall cupboard. She tore the hangings out of the way with her free hand. No one. She had known there would be no one.

Yet she still heard them.

A thumping at the door and she whipped round again, breath hissing through her teeth. Another dream? Another ghost? More heavy knocks.

“Come in?” she growled.

The door opened. Bayaz. He raised one eyebrow at her knife. “You are altogether too fond of blades, Ferro. You have no enemies here.”

She glared at the Magus through narrowed eyes. She was not so sure. “What happened, in the wind?”

“What happened?” Bayaz shrugged. “We won.”

“What were those shapes? Those shadows.”

“I saw nothing, aside from Mamun and his Hundred Words receiving the punishment they deserved.”

“Did you not hear voices?”

“Over the thunder of our victory? I heard nothing.”

“I did.” Ferro lowered the knife and slid it into her belt. She worked the fingers of her hand, the same, and yet changed. “I still hear them.”

“And what do they tell you, Ferro?”

“They speak of locks, and gates, and doors, and the opening of them. Always they talk of opening them. They ask about the Seed. Where is it?”

“Safe.” Bayaz gazed blankly at her. “Remember, if you truly hear the creatures of the Other Side, that they are made of lies.”

“They are not alone in that. They ask me to break the First Law. Just as you did.”

“Open to interpretation.” Bayaz had a proud twist to the corner of his mouth. As if he had achieved something wonderful. “I tempered Glustrod’s disciplines with the techniques of the Master Maker, and used the Seed as the engine for my Art. The results were…” He took a long, satisfied breath. “Well, you were there. It was, above all, a triumph of will.”

“You tampered with the seals. You put the world at risk. The Tellers of Secrets…”

“The First Law is a paradox. Whenever you change a thing you borrow from the world below, and there are always risks. If I have crossed a line it is a line of scale only. The world is safe, is it not? I make no apologies for the ambition of my vision.”

“They are burying men, and women, and children, in pits for a hundred. Just as they did in Aulcus. This sickness… it is because of what we did. Is that ambition, then? The size of the graves?”

Bayaz gave a dismissive toss of his head. “An unexpected side-effect. The price of victory, I fear, is the same now as it was in the Old Time, and always will be.” He fixed her with his eye, and there was a threat in it. A challenge. “But if I broke the First Law, what then? In what court will you have me judged? By what jury? Will you release Tolomei from the darkness to give evidence? Will you seek out Zacharus to read the charge? Will you drag Cawneil from the edge of the World to deliver the verdict? Will you bring great Juvens from the land of the dead to pronounce the sentence? I think not. I am First of the Magi. I am the last authority and I say… I am righteous.”

“You? No.”

“Yes, Ferro. Power makes all things right. That is my first law, and my last. That is the only law that I acknowledge.”

“Zacharus warned me,” she murmured, thinking of the endless plain, the wild-eyed old man with his circling birds. “He told me to run, and never stop running. I should have listened to him.”

“To that bloated bladder of self-righteousness?” Bayaz snorted. “Perhaps you should have, but that ship has sailed. You waved it away happily from the shore, and chose instead to feed your fury. Gladly you fed it. Let us not pretend that I deceived you. You knew we were to walk dark paths.”

“I did not expect…” she worked her icy fingers into a trembling fist. “This.”

“What did you expect, then? I must confess I thought you made of harder stuff. Let us leave the philosophising to those with more time and fewer scores to settle. Guilt, and regret, and righteousness? It is like talking with the great King Jezal. And who has the patience for that?” He turned towards the door. “You should stay near me. Perhaps, in time, Khalul will send other agents. Then I will have need of your talents once again.”

She snorted. “And until then? Sit here with the shadows for company?”

“Until then, smile, Ferro, if you can remember how.” Bayaz flashed his white grin at her. “You have your vengeance.”

The wind tore around her, rushed around her, full of shadows. She knelt at one end of a screaming tunnel, touching the very sky. The world was thin and brittle as a sheet of glass, ready to crack. Beyond it a bottomless void, filled with voices.

“Let us in…”

“No!” She thrashed her way free and struggled up, stood panting on the floor beside her bed, every muscle rigid. But there was no one to fight. Another dream, only.

Her own fault, for letting herself sleep.

A long strip of moonlight reached towards her across the tiles. The window at its end stood ajar, a cold night breeze washed through and chilled her sweat-beaded skin. She walked to it, frowning, pushed it shut and slid the bolt. She turned around.

A figure stood in the thick shadows beside the door. A one-armed figure, swathed in rags. The few pieces of armour still strapped to him were scuffed and gouged. His face was a dusty ruin, torn skin hanging in scraps from white bone, but even so, Ferro knew him.

Mamun.

“We meet again, devil-blood.” His dry voice rustled like old paper.

“I am dreaming,” she hissed.

“You will wish that you were.” He was across the room in a breathless instant. His one hand closed round her throat like a lock snapping shut. “Digging my way out of that ruination one handful of dirt at a time has given me a hunger.” His dry breath tickled at her face. “I will make myself a new arm from your flesh, and with it I will strike down Bayaz and take vengeance for great Juvens. The Prophet has seen it, and I will turn his vision into truth.” He lifted her, effortlessly, crushed her back against the wall, her heels kicking against the panelling.

The hand squeezed. Her chest heaved, but no air moved inside her neck. She struggled with the fingers, ripped at them with her nails, but they were made of iron, made of stone, tight as a hanged man’s collar. She fought and twisted but he did not shift a hair’s breadth. She fiddled with Mamun’s ruined face, her fingers worked their way into his ripped cheek, tore at the dusty flesh inside but his eyes did not even blink. It had grown cold in the room.

“Say your prayers, child,” he whispered, broken teeth grinding, “and hope that God is merciful.”

She was growing weaker now. Her lungs were bursting. She tore at him still, but each effort was less. Weaker and weaker. Her arms drooped, her legs dangled, her eyelids were heavy, heavy. All was terrible cold.

“Now,” he whispered, breath smoking. He brought her down, opening his mouth, his torn lips sliding back from his splintered teeth. “Now.”

Her finger stabbed into his neck. Through his skin and into his dry flesh, up to the knuckle. It drove his head away. Her other hand wormed round his, prised it from her throat, bent his fingers backwards. She felt the bones in them snap, crunch, splinter as she dropped to the floor. White frost crept out across the black window-panes beside her, squeaked under her bare feet as she twisted Mamun round and rammed him against the wall, crushed his body into the splintering panels, the cracking plaster. Dust showered down from the force of it.

She drove her finger further into his throat, upwards, inwards. It was easy to do it. There was no end to her strength. It came from the other side of the divide. The Seed had changed her, as it had changed Tolomei, and there could be no going back.

Ferro smiled.

“Take my flesh, would you? You have had your last meal, Mamun.”

The tip of her finger slid out between his teeth, met her thumb and hooked him like a fish. With a jerk of her wrist she ripped the jaw-bone from his head and tossed it clattering away. His tongue lolled inside a ragged mass of dusty flesh.

“Say your prayers, Eater,” she hissed, “and hope that God is merciful.” She clamped her palms around either side of his head. A long squeak came from his nose. His shattered hand pawed at her, uselessly. His skull bent, then flattened, then burst apart, splinters of bone flying. She let the body fall, dust sliding out across the floor, curling round her feet.

“Yes…”

She did not startle. She did not stare. She knew where the voice came from. Everywhere and nowhere.

She stepped to the window and pulled it open. She jumped through, dropped a dozen strides down to the turf, and stood. The night was full of sounds, but she was silent. She padded across the moonlit grass, crunching frozen where her bare feet fell, crept up a long stair and onto the walls. The voices followed her.

“Wait.”

“The Seed!”

“Ferro.”

“Let us in…”

She ignored them. An armoured man stared out into the night, out towards the House of the Maker, a blacker outline against the black sky. A wedge of darkness over the Agriont within which there were no stars, no moonlit clouds, no light at all. Ferro wondered if Tolomei was lurking in the shadows inside, scratching at its gates. Scratching, scratching, forever. She had wasted her chance at vengeance.

Ferro would not do the same.

She slid down the battlements, around the guard, hugging his cloak tight about his shoulders as she passed. Up onto the parapet and she leaped, the wind rushing against her skin. She cleared the moat, creaking ice spreading out across the water beneath her. The cobbled ground beyond rushed up. Her feet thumped into it and she rolled over, over, away into the buildings. Her clothes were torn from the fall but there was no mark on her skin. Not so much as a bead of blood.

“No, Ferro.”

“Back, and find the Seed!”

“It is near him.”

“Bayaz has it.”

Bayaz. Perhaps when she was done in the South, she would return. When she had buried the great Uthman-ul-Dosht in the ruins of his own palace. When she had sent Khalul, and his Eaters, and his priests to hell. Perhaps then she would come back, and teach the First of the Magi the lesson that he deserved. The lesson that Tolomei meant to teach him. But then, liar or not, he had kept his word to her, in the end. He had given her the means of vengeance.

Now she would take it.

Ferro stole through the silent ruins of the city, quiet and quick as a night breeze. South, towards the docks. She would find a way. South, across the sea to Gurkhul, and then…

The voices whispered to her. A thousand voices. They spoke of the gates that Euz closed, and of the seals that Euz put upon them. They begged her to open them. They told her to break them. They told her how, and they commanded her to do it.

But Ferro only smiled. Let them speak.

She had no masters.

Tea and Threats

Logen frowned.

He frowned at the wide hall, and its glittering mirrors, and the many powerful people in it. He scowled at the great Lords of the Union facing him. Two hundred of them or more, sitting in a muttering crowd around the opposite side of the room. Their false talk, and their false smiles, and their false faces cloyed at him like too much honey. But he felt no better about the folk on his side of the hall, sharing the high platform with him and the great King Jezal.

There was the sneering cripple who’d asked all the questions that day in the tower, dressed now all in white. There was a fat man with a face full of broken veins, looked as if he started each day with a bottle. There was a tall, lean bastard in a black breastplate covered in fancy gold, with a soft smile and hard little eyes. As shifty a pack of liars as Logen had ever laid eyes on, but there was one worse than all the rest together.

Bayaz sat with an easy grin on his face, as if everything had turned out just the way he’d planned. Maybe it had. Damn wizard. Logen should have known better than to trust a man with no hair. The spirits had warned him that Magi have their own purposes, but he’d taken no notice, plunged on blindly, hoping for the best, just like always. Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he never listens. One fault among many.

His eyes swivelled the other way, towards Jezal. He looked comfortable enough in his kingly robes, golden crown gleaming on his head, golden chair even bigger than the one that Logen was sitting in. His wife sat beside him. She had a frosty pride about her, maybe, but no worse for that. Beautiful as a winter morning. And she had this look on her face, when she looked at Jezal. A fierce kind of look, as if she could hardly stop herself tearing into him with her teeth. That lucky bastard always seemed to come out alright. She could’ve had a little bite out of Logen if she’d wanted, but what woman in her right mind did?

He frowned most of all at himself in the mirrors opposite, raised up on the high platform beside Jezal and his queen. He looked a sullen and brooding, scarred and fearsome monster beside that beautiful pair. A man made of murder, then swaddled in rich coloured cloth and rare white furs, set with polished rivets and bright buckles, all topped off with a great golden chain around his shoulders. That same chain that Bethod had worn. His hands stuck from the ends of his fur-trimmed sleeves, marked and brutal, one finger missing, grasping at the arms of his gilded chair. King’s clothes, maybe, but killer’s hands. He looked like the villain in some old children’s story. The ruthless warrior, clawed his way to power with fire and steel. Climbed to a throne up a mountain of corpses. Maybe he was that man.

He squirmed around, new cloth scratching at his clammy skin. He’d come a long way, since he dragged himself out of a river without even a pair of boots to his name. Dragged himself across the High Places with nothing but a pot for company. He’d come a long way, but he wasn’t sure he hadn’t liked himself better before. He’d laughed when he’d heard that Bethod was calling himself a king. Now here he was, doing the same, and even worse suited to the job. Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he’s a cunt. Simple as that. And that’s not something any man likes to admit about himself.

The drunkard, Hoff, was doing most of the talking. “The Lords’ Round lies in ruins, alas. For the time being, therefore, until a venue of grandeur suitable for this noble institution has been built—a new Lords’ Round, richer and greater than the last—it has been decided that the Open Council will stand in recess.”

There was a pause. “In recess?” someone muttered.

“How will we be heard?”

“Where will the nobles have their voice?”

“The nobles will speak through the Closed Council.” Hoff had that tone a man uses talking down to a child. “Or may apply to the Undersecretary for Audiences to obtain a hearing with the king.”

“But any peasant may do so!”

Hoff raised his eyebrows. “True.”

A ripple of anger spread out through the Lords in front of them. Logen might not have understood too much about politics, but he could recognise one set of men getting stood on by another. Never a nice thing to be part of, but at least he was on the side doing the standing, for once.

“The king and the nation are one and the same!” Bayaz’ harsh voice cut over the chatter. “You only borrow your lands from him. He regrets that he requires some portion of them back, but such is the spur of necessity.”

“A quarter.” The cripple licked at his empty gums with a faint sucking sound. “From each one of you.”

“This will not stand!” shouted an angry old man in the front row.

“You think not, Lord Isher?” Bayaz only smiled at him. “Those who do not think so may join Lord Brock in dusty exile, and surrender all their lands to the crown instead of just a portion.”

“This is an outrage!” shouted another man. “Always, the king has been first among equals, the greatest of nobles, not above them. Our votes brought him to the throne, and we refuse—”

“You dance close to a line, Lord Heugen.” The cripple’s face twitched with ugly spasms as he frowned across the room. “You might wish to remain on that side of it, where it is safe, and warm, and loyal. The other side will not suit you so well, I think.” A long tear ran from his flickering left eye and down his hollow cheek. “The Surveyor General will be assessing your estates over the coming months. It would be wise for you all to lend him your fullest assistance.”

A lot of men were on their feet now, scowling, shaking fists. “This is outrageous!”

“Unprecedented!”

“Unacceptable!”

“We refuse to be intimidated!”

Jezal sprang from his throne, raising his jewelled sword high, and struck at the platform again and again with the end of the scabbard, filling the room with booming echoes. “I am the king!” he bellowed at the suddenly silent chamber. “I am not offering a choice, I am issuing a royal decree! Adua will be rebuilt, and more glorious than ever! This is the price! You have grown too used to a weak crown, my Lords! Believe me when I say that those days are now behind us!”

Bayaz leaned sideways to mutter in Logen’s ear. “Surprisingly good at this, isn’t he?”

The Lords grumbled, but they sat back down as Jezal spoke on, voice washing around the room with easy confidence, sheathed sword still held firmly in one fist. “Those who lent me their wholehearted support in the recent crisis will be exempt. But that list, to your shame, is all too brief. Why, it was friends from outside the borders of the Union who sustained us in our time of need!”

The man in black swept from his chair. “I, Orso of Talins, stand always at the side of my royal son and daughter!” He seized Jezal’s face and kissed both his cheeks. Then he did the same with the queen. “Their friends are my friends.” He said it with a smile, but the meaning was hard to miss. “Their enemies? Ah! You all are clever men. You can guess the rest.”

“I thank you for your part in our deliverance,” said Jezal. “You have our gratitude. The war between the Union and the North is at an end. The tyrant Bethod is dead, and there is a new order. I am proud to call the man who threw him down my friend. Logen Ninefingers! King of the Northmen!” He beamed, holding out his hand. “It is fitting that we should stride into this bold new future as brothers.”

“Aye,” said Logen, pushing himself painfully up from his chair. “Right.” He folded Jezal in a hug, slapped him on the back with a thump that echoed round the great chamber. “Reckon we’ll be staying our side of the Whiteflow from now on. Unless my brother has trouble down here, of course.” He swept the sullen old men in the front row with a graveyard scowl. “Don’t make me fucking come back here.” He sat down in the big chair and frowned out. The Bloody-Nine might not have known too much about politics, but he knew how to make a threat alright.

“We won the war!” Jezal rattled the golden hilt of his sword, then slid it smoothly back through the clasp on his belt. “Now we must win the peace!”

“Well said, your Majesty, well said!” The red-faced drunkard stood, not giving anyone the chance to get a word in. “Then only one order of business remains before the Open Council stands in recess.” He turned with an oily smile and a hand-rubbing bow. “Let us offer our thanks to Lord Bayaz, the First of the Magi, who, by the wisdom of his council and the power of his Art, drove out the invader and saved the Union!” He began to clap. The cripple Glokta joined him, then Duke Orso.

A burly lord in the front row sprang up. “Lord Bayaz!” he roared, smashing his fat hands together. Soon the whole hall was resounding with reluctant applause. Even Heugen joined in. Even Isher, although he had a look on his face as if he was clapping at his own burial. Logen let his hands stay where they were. If he was honest, he felt a touch sick even being there. Sick and angry. He slumped back in his chair, and kept on frowning.

Jezal watched the great worthies of the Union file unhappily out of the Chamber of Mirrors. Great men. Isher, Barezin, Heugen, and all the rest. Men that he had once gaped at the sight of. All humbled. He could hardly keep the smile from his face as they grumbled their helpless discontent. It felt almost like being a king, until he caught sight of his queen.

Terez and her father, the Grand Duke Orso, were engaged in what appeared to be a heartfelt argument, carried out in expressive Styrian, accentuated on both sides by violent hand movements. Jezal might have been relieved that he was not the only family member she appeared to despise, had he not suspected that he was the subject of their argument. He heard a soft scraping behind him, and was mildly disgusted to see the twisted face of his new Arch Lector.

“Your Majesty.” Glokta spoke softly, as if he planned to discuss secrets, frowning towards Terez and her father. “Might I ask… is all well between you and the queen?” His voice dropped even lower. “I understand that you rarely sleep in the same room.”

Jezal was on the point of giving the cripple a backhanded blow across the face for his impudence. Then he caught Terez looking at him, out of the corner of his eye. That look of utter contempt that was his usual treatment as a husband. He felt his shoulders sag. “She can scarcely stand to be in the same country as me, let alone the same bed. The woman’s an utter bitch!” he snarled, then hung his head and stared down at the floor. “What am I to do?”

Glokta worked his neck to one side, then the other, and Jezal suppressed a shudder as he heard a loud click. “Let me speak to the queen, your Majesty. I can be quite persuasive when I have the mind. I understand your difficulties. I am myself but recently married.”

Jezal dreaded to think what manner of monster might have accepted this monster as a husband. “Truly?” he asked, feigning interest. “Who is the lady?”

“I believe that the two of you are distantly acquainted. Ardee is her name. Ardee dan Glokta.” And the cripple’s lips slid back to display the sickening hole in his front teeth.

“But not—”

“My old friend Collem West’s sister, yes.” Jezal stared, speechless. Glokta gave a stiff bow. “I accept your congratulations.” He turned away, limped to the edge of the platform, and began to lurch down the steps, leaning heavily on his cane.

Jezal could hardly contain his cold shock, his crushing disappointment, his utter horror. He could not conceive of what blackmail that shambling monstrosity might have employed to trap her. Perhaps she had simply been desperate when Jezal abandoned her. Perhaps, with her brother ill, she had been left with nowhere else to turn. Only the other morning, in the hospital, the sight of her had tugged at something in him, just the way it used to. He had been thinking to himself that perhaps, one day, with time…

Now even such pleasurable fancies were brought crashing to the ground. Ardee was married, and to a man that Jezal despised. A man who sat on his own Closed Council. To make matters even worse, a man to whom he had, in a moment of madness, just now confessed the total emptiness of his own marriage. He had made himself appear weak, vulnerable, absurd. He cursed bitterly under his breath.

It seemed now that he had loved Ardee with an unbearable passion. That they had shared something he would never find again. How could he not have realised it at the time? How could he have allowed it all to fall apart, for this? The sad fact was, he supposed, that love on its own was nothing like enough.

Logen felt a lurch of disappointment as he opened the door, and close behind it an ugly wave of anger. The room was empty, neat and clean, as though no one had ever slept there. Ferro was gone.

Nothing had worked out the way he’d hoped. He should’ve expected it by now, maybe. After all, things never had before. And yet he kept on pissing into the wind. He was like a man whose door’s too low, but instead of working out how to duck, keeps on smacking his head into the lintel every day of his miserable life. He wanted to feel sorry for himself, but he knew he deserved no better. A man can’t do the things he’d done, and hope for happy endings.

He strode out into the corridor and down the hallway, his jaw clenched. He shouldered open the next door without knocking. The tall windows stood open, sunlight pouring into the airy room, hangings stirring in the breeze. Bayaz sat in a carved chair in front of one of them, a teacup in his hand. A fawning servant in a velvet jacket was pouring into it from a silver pot, a tray and cups balanced on his outspread fingertips.

“Ah, the King of the Northmen!” called Bayaz. “How are—”

“Where is Ferro?”

“Gone. She left something of a mess behind, in fact, but I have tidied up, as I so often find myself—”

“Where?”

The Magus shrugged. “South, I would imagine. Vengeance, or some such, if I was forced to guess. She always said a very great deal about vengeance. A most ill-tempered woman.”

“She is changed.”

“Great events, my friend. None of us are quite the same. Now, will you take tea?”

The servant pranced forward, silver tray bobbing. Logen seized him by his velvet jacket and flung him across the room. He squealed as he crashed into the wall and sprawled on the carpet, cups clattering around him.

Bayaz raised an eyebrow. “A simple ‘no’ would have sufficed.”

“Shit on that, you old bastard.”

The First of the Magi frowned. “Why, Master Ninefingers, you seem in bullish mood this morning. You are a king now, and it ill becomes you to let your baser passions rule you in this manner. Kings of that sort never last. You have enemies still in the North. Calder and Scale, up in the hills causing trouble, I am sure. Manners should be repaid by like manners, I have always thought. You have been helpful to me, and I can be helpful in return.”

“As you were to Bethod?”

“Just so.”

“Much good it did him.”

“When he had my help, he prospered. Then he became proud, and unruly, and demanded things all his own way. Without my help… well, you know the rest.”

“Stay out of my business, wizard.” Logen let his hand fall onto the hilt of the Maker’s blade. If swords have voices, as the Magus had once told him, he made it give a grim threat now.

But Bayaz’ face showed only the slightest trace of annoyance. “A lesser man might find himself upset. Did I not buy your life from Bethod? Did I not give you purpose when you had nothing? Did I not take you to the very edge of the World, show you wonders few men have seen? These are poor manners. Why, the very sword with which you threaten me was my gift to you. I had hoped we might come to a—”

“No.”

“I see. Not even—”

“We are done. Looks as if I’ll never be a better man, but I can try not to be a worse. I can try that much, at least.”

Bayaz narrowed his eyes. “Well, Master Ninefingers, you surprise me to the last. I thought you a courageous yet restrained man, a calculating yet compassionate one. I thought you, above all, a realistic man. But the Northmen have ever been prone to petulance. I observe in you now an obstinate streak and a destructive temper. I see the Bloody-Nine at last.”

“I’m happy to disappoint you. Seems we misjudged each other entirely. I took you for a great man. Now I realise my mistake.” Logen slowly shook his head. “What have you done here?”

“What have I done?” Bayaz snorted with disbelieving laughter. “I combined three pure disciplines of magic, and I forged a new one! It seems you do not understand the achievement, Master Ninefingers, but I forgive you. I realise that book-learning has never been your strongest suit. Such a thing has not been contemplated since before the Old Time, when Euz split his gifts among his sons.” Bayaz sighed. “None will appreciate my greatest achievement, it seems. None except Khalul, perhaps, and it is unlikely he will ever proffer his congratulations. Why, such power has not been released within the Circle of the World since… since…”

“Glustrod destroyed himself and Aulcus with him?”

The Magus raised his eyebrows. “Since you mention it.”

“And the results are pretty much the same, it seems to me, except you wrought a touch less careless slaughter, and ruined a smaller part of a smaller city, in a smaller, meaner time. Otherwise what’s the difference, between you and him?”

“I would have thought that was entirely obvious.” Bayaz lifted his teacup, gazing mildly over the rim. “Glustrod lost.”

Logen stood there for a long while, thinking on that. Then he turned and stalked from the room, the servant cringing out of his way. Into the corridor, footsteps clapping from the gilded ceiling, Bethod’s heavy chain jingling round his shoulders like laughter in his ear.

He probably should’ve kept the ruthless old bastard on his side. Chances were that Logen would need his help, the way things were like to be in the North, once he got back. He probably should’ve sucked up that stinking piss he called tea and smiled as if it was honey. He probably should’ve laughed, and called Bayaz old friend, so he could come crawling to the Great Northern Library when things turned sour. That would have been the clever thing to do. That would have been the realistic thing. But it was just the way that Logen’s father had always said…

He’d never been that realistic.

Behind the Throne

A soon as he heard the door open, Jezal knew who his visitor must be. He did not even have to look up. Who else would have the temerity to barge into a king’s own chambers without so much as knocking? He cursed, silently, but with great bitterness.

It could only be Bayaz. His jailer. His chief tormentor. His ever-present shadow. The man who had destroyed half the Agriont, and made a ruin of beautiful Adua, and now smiled and revelled in the applause as though he were the saviour of the nation. It was enough to make a man sick to the pit of his guts. Jezal ground his teeth, staring out of the window towards the ruins, refusing to turn round.

More demands. More compromises. More talk of what had to be done. Being the head of state, at least with the First of the Magi at his shoulder, was an endlessly frustrating and disempowering experience. Getting his own way on even the tiniest of issues, an almost impossible struggle. Wherever he looked he found himself staring directly into the Magus’ disapproving frown. He felt like nothing more than a figurehead. A fine-looking, a gilded, a magnificent yet utterly useless chunk of wood. Except a figurehead at least gets to go at the front of the ship.

“Your Majesty,” came the old man’s voice, the usual thin veneer of respect scarcely concealing the hard body of disdain beneath.

“What now?” Jezal finally turned to face him. He was surprised to see that the Magus had shed his robes of state in favour of his old travel-stained coat, the heavy boots he had worn on their ill-fated journey into the ruined west. “Going somewhere?” asked Jezal, hardly daring even to hope.

“I am leaving Adua. Today.”

“Today?” It was the most Jezal could do to stop himself leaping in the air and screaming for joy. He felt like a prisoner stepping from his stinking dungeon and into the bright sunlight of freedom. Now he could rebuild the Agriont as he saw fit. He could reorganise the Closed Council, pick his own advisers. Perhaps even rid himself of that witch of a wife Bayaz had saddled him with. He would be free to do the right thing, whatever that was. He would be free to try and find out what the right thing might be, at least. Was he not the High King of the Union, after all? Who would refuse him? “We will be sorry to lose you, of course.”

“I can imagine. There are some arrangements that we must make first, however.”

“By all means.” Anything if it meant he was rid of the old bastard.

“I have spoken with your new Arch Lector, Glokta.”

The name alone produced a shiver of revulsion. “Have you indeed?”

“A sharp man. He has greatly impressed me. I have asked him to speak in my stead while I am absent from the Closed Council.”

“Truly?” asked Jezal, wondering whether to toss the cripple from his post directly after the Magus left the gates or to leave it a day.

“I would recommend,” said in very much the tone of an order, “that you listen closely to his opinions.”

“Oh I will, of course. The best of luck on your journey back to…”

“I would like you, in fact, to do as he says.”

A cold knot of anger pressed at Jezal’s throat. “You would have me, in effect… obey him?”

Bayaz’ eyes did not deviate from his own. “In effect… yes.”

Jezal was left momentarily speechless. For the Magus to suppose that he could come and go as he pleased, leaving his maimed lackey in charge? Above a king, in his own kingdom? The overwhelming arrogance of the man! “You have taken a high hand of late in my affairs!” he snapped. “I am in no mind to trade one overbearing adviser for another.”

“That man will be very useful to you. To us. Decisions will have to be made that you would find difficult. Actions will have to be taken which you would rather not take yourself. People who would live in sparkling palaces need others willing to carry away their ordure, lest it pile up in the polished corridors and one day bury them. All this is simple, and obvious. You have not attended to me.”

“No! You are the one who has failed to attend! Sand dan Glokta? That crippled bastard…” he realised his unfortunate choice of words, but had to forge on regardless, growing angrier than ever, “sitting beside me at the Closed Council? Leering over my shoulder every day of my life? And now you would have him dictate to me? Unacceptable. Insufferable. Impossible! We are no longer in the time of Harod the Great! I have no notion of what causes you to suppose that you could speak to me in such a manner. I am king here, and I refuse to be steered!”

Bayaz closed his eyes, and drew a slow breath threw his nose. Quite as though he were trying to find the patience for the education of a moron. “You cannot understand what it is to live as long as I have. To know all that I know. You people are dead in the blink of an eye, and have to be taught the same old lessons all over again. The same lessons that Juvens taught Stolicus a thousand years ago. It becomes extremely tiresome.”

Jezal’s fury was steadily building. “I apologise if I bore you!”

“I accept your apology.”

“I was joking!”

“Ah. Your wit is so very sharp I hardly noticed I was cut.”

“You mock me!”

“It is easily done. Every man seems a child to me. When you reach my age you see that history moves in circles. So many times I have guided this nation back from the brink of destruction, and on to ever greater glory. And what do I ask in return? A few little sacrifices? If you only understood the sacrifices that I have made on behalf of you cattle!”

Jezal stabbed one finger furiously towards the window. “And what of all those dead? What of all those who have lost everything? Those cattle, as you put it! Are they happy with their sacrifices, do you suppose? What of all those who have suffered from this illness? That still suffer? My own close friend among them! I cannot but notice it seems similar to that illness you described to us in ruined Aulcus. I cannot help thinking that your magic might be the cause!”

The Magus made no effort to deny it. “I deal in the momentous. I cannot concern myself with the fate of every peasant. Neither can you. I have tried to teach you this, but it seems you have failed to learn the lesson.”

“You are mistaken! I refuse to learn it!” Now was his chance. Now, while he was angry enough, for Jezal to step forever from the shadow of the First of the Magi and stand a free man. Bayaz was poison, and he had to be cut out. “You helped me to my throne, and for that I thank you. But I do not care for your brand of government, it smacks of tyranny!”

Bayaz narrowed his eyes. “Government is tyranny. At its best it is dressed in pretty colours.”

“Your callous disregard for the lives of my subjects! I will not stand for it! I have moved beyond you. You are no longer wanted here. No longer needed. I will find my own way from now on.” He waved Bayaz away with what he hoped was a regal gesture of dismissal. “You may leave.”

“May… I… indeed?” The First of the Magi stood in silence for a long time, his frown growing darker and darker. Long enough for Jezal’s rage to begin to wilt, for his mouth to go dry, for his knees to feel weak. “I perceive that I have been far too soft with you,” said Bayaz, each word sharp as a razor-cut. “I have coddled you, like a favourite grandchild, and you have grown wilful. A mistake that I shall not make again. A responsible guardian should never be shy with the whip.”

“I am a son of kings!” snarled Jezal, “I will not—”

He was doubled over by a spear of pain through his guts, stunningly sudden. He tottered a step or two, scalding vomit spraying from his mouth. He crashed onto his face, scarcely able even to breathe, his crown bouncing off and rolling away into the corner of the room. He had never known agony like it. Not a fraction of it.

“I have no notion… of what causes you to suppose… that you could speak to me in such a manner. To me, the First of the Magi!” Jezal heard Bayaz’ footsteps thumping slowly towards him, voice picking at his ears as he squirmed helplessly in his own sick.

“Son of kings? I am disappointed, after all that we have been through together, that you would so readily believe the lies I have spread on your behalf. That nonsense was meant for the idiots in the streets, but it seems that idiots in palaces are lulled by sweet slop just as easily. I bought you from a whore. You cost me six marks. She wanted twenty, but I drive a hard bargain.”

The words were painful, of course. But far, far worse was the unbearable stabbing that cut up Jezal’s spine, that tore at his eyes, burned his skin, seared the very roots of his hair and made him thrash like a frog in boiling water.

“I had others waiting, of course. I know better than to trust all to one throw of the dice. Other sons of mysterious parentage, ready to step into the role. There was a family called Brint, as I recall, and plenty more besides. But you floated to the top, Jezal, like a turd in the bath. When I crossed that bridge into the Agriont and saw you grown, I knew you were the one. You simply looked right, and you can’t teach that. You have even come to speak like a king, which is a bonus I never expected.”

Jezal moaned and slobbered, unable even to scream. He felt Bayaz’ boot slide under him and kick him over onto his back. The Magus’ scowling face loomed down towards him, blurred by tears.

“But if you insist on being difficult… if you insist on going your own way… well, there are other options. Even kings die unexplained deaths. Thrown by a horse. Choked on an olive-pit. Long falls to the hard, hard cobblestones. Or simply found dead in the morning. Life is always short for you insects. But it can be very short for those who are not useful. I made you out of nothing. Out of air. With a word I can unmake you.” Bayaz snapped his fingers, and the sound was like a sword through Jezal’s stomach. “Like that you can be replaced.”

The First of the Magi leaned down further. “Now, dolt, bastard, son of a whore, consider carefully your answers to these questions. You will do as your Arch Lector advises, yes?”

The cramps relaxed a merciful fraction. Enough for Jezal to whisper, yes.

“You will be guided by him in all things?”

“Yes.”

“You will abide by his orders, in public and in private?”

“Yes,” he gasped, “yes.”

“Good,” said the Magus, straightening up, towering over Jezal as his statue had once towered over the people on the Kingsway. “I knew that you would say so, because although I know that you are arrogant, ignorant, and ungrateful, I know this also… you are a coward. Remember that. I trust that this is one lesson you will not ignore.” The agony ebbed suddenly away. Enough for Jezal to lift his spinning head from the tiles.

“I hate you,” he managed to croak.

Bayaz spluttered with laughter. “Hate me? The arrogance of you! To suppose that I might care. I, Bayaz, first apprentice of great Juvens! I, who threw down the Master Maker, who forged the Union, who destroyed the Hundred Words!” The Magus slowly lifted his foot and planted it on the side of Jezal’s jaw. “I don’t care whether you like me, fool.” He ground Jezal’s face into the vomit-spattered floor with his boot. “I care that you obey. And you will. Yes?”

“Yes,” Jezal slobbered through his squashed mouth.

“Then, your Majesty, I take my leave. Pray that you never give me cause to return.” The crushing pressure on his face released and Jezal heard the Magus’ footsteps tap away to the far side of the room. The door creaked open, and then clicked firmly shut.

He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, his breath heaving quickly in and out. After a while he drew up the courage to roll over, dragged himself dizzily up to his hands and knees. There was an unpleasant stink, and not just from the vomit smeared across his face. He realised with a meagre flicker of shame that he had soiled himself. He crawled across to the window, still limp as a wrung-out rag, drew himself gasping up to his knees, and looked down into the chilly gardens.

It only took a moment for Bayaz to come into view, striding down the gravel path between the neat lawns, the back of his bald pate shining. Yoru Sulfur walked behind him, staff in one hand, a box of dark metal held under the other arm. The same box that had followed Jezal, and Logen, and Ferro in a cart across half the Circle of the World. What happy days those seemed now.

Bayaz stopped, suddenly, turned, raised his head. He looked up, straight towards the window.

Jezal pressed himself into the hangings with a whimper of terror, his whole body trembling, the after-image of that unbearable pain still stamped, cold as ice, into his guts. The First of the Magi stood there for a moment longer, the faintest hint of a smile on his face. Then he turned away smartly, strode between the bowing Knights of the Body flanking the gate, and was gone.

Jezal knelt there, clinging to the curtains like a child to his mother. He thought about how happy he had once been, and how little he had realised it. Playing cards, surrounded by friends, a bright future ahead of him. He dragged in a heavy breath, the tightness of tears creeping up his throat, spreading out around his eyes. Never in his life had he felt so alone. Son of Kings? He had no one and nothing. He spluttered and sniffed. His vision grew blurry. He shook with hopeless sobs, his scarred lip trembling, the tears dripping down and spattering on the tiles.

He wept with pain and fear, with shame and anger, with disappointment and helplessness. But Bayaz had been right. He was a coward. So most of all he wept with relief.

Good Men, Evil Men

Grey morning time, out in the cold, wet gardens, and the Dogman was just stood there, thinking about how things used to be better. Stood there, in the middle of that circle of brown graves, staring at the turned earth over Harding Grim. Strange, how a man who said so little could leave such a hole.

It was a long journey that Dogman had taken, the last few years, and a strange one. From nowhere to nowhere, and he’d lost a lot of friends along the way. He remembered all those men gone back to the mud. Harding Grim. Tul Duru Thunderhead. Rudd Threetrees. Forley the Weakest. And what for? Who was better off because of it? All that waste. It was enough to make a man sick to the soles of his boots. Even one who was famous for having a flat temper. All gone, and left Dogman lonely. The world was a narrower place without ’em.

He heard footsteps through the wet grass. Logen, walking up through the misty rain, breath smoking round his scarred face. Dogman remembered how happy he’d been, that night, when Logen had stepped into the firelight, still alive. It had seemed like a new beginning, then. A good moment, promising better times. Hadn’t quite worked out that way. Strange, how the Dogman didn’t feel so happy at the sight of Logen Ninefingers no more.

“The King o’ the Northmen,” he muttered. “The Bloody-Nine. How’s the day?”

“Wet is how it is. Getting late in the year.”

“Aye. Another winter coming.” Dogman picked at the hard skin on his palm. “They come quicker and quicker.”

“Reckon it’s high time I got back to the North, eh? Calder and Scale still loose, making mischief, and the dead know what type o’ trouble Dow’s cooked up.”

“Aye, I daresay. High time we left.”

“I want you to stay.”

Dogman looked up. “Eh?”

“Someone needs to talk to the Southerners, make a deal. You’ve always been the best man I knew for talking. Other than Bethod, maybe, but… he ain’t an option now, is he?”

“What sort of a deal?”

“Might be we’ll need their help. There’ll be all kind o’ folk in the North not too keen about the way things have gone. Folk don’t want a king, or don’t want this one, leastways. The Union on our side’ll be a help. Wouldn’t hurt if you brought some weapons back with you too, when you come.”

Dogman winced. “Weapons, is it?”

“Better to have ’em and not want ’em, than to need ’em but—”

“I know the rest. What happened to one more fight, then we’re done? What happened to making things grow?”

“They might have to grow without us, for now. Listen, Dogman, I never looked for a fight, you know that, but you have to be—”

“Don’t. Even. Bother.”

“I’m trying to be a better man, here, Dogman.”

“That so? I don’t see you trying that hard. Did you kill Tul?”

Logen’s eyes went narrow. “Dow been talking, has he?”

“Never mind who said what. Did you kill the Thunderhead or did you not? Ain’t a hard one to come at. It’s just a yes or a no.”

Logen made a kind of snort, like he was about to start laughing, or about to start crying, but didn’t do either one. “I don’t know what I did.”

“Don’t know? What use is don’t know? Is that what you’ll say after you’ve stabbed me through the back, while I’m trying to save your worthless life?”

Logen winced down at the wet grass. “Maybe it will be. I don’t know.” His eyes slid back up to the Dogman’s, and stuck there, hard. “But that’s the price, ain’t it? You know what I am. You could have picked a different man to follow.”

Dogman watched him go, not knowing what to say, not knowing what to think even. Just standing there, in the midst of the graves, getting wetter. He felt someone come up beside him. Red Hat, looking off into the rain, watching after Logen’s black shape growing fainter and fainter. He shook his head, mouth pursed up tight.

“I never believed the stories they told about him. About the Bloody-Nine. All bluster, I thought. But I believe ’em now. I heard he killed Crummock’s boy, in that fight in the mountains. Carved him careless as you’d crush a beetle, no reason. That’s a man there cares for nothing. No man worse, I reckon, ever, in all the North. Not even Bethod. That’s an evil bastard, if ever there was one.”

“That so?” Dogman found he was right up in Red Hat’s face, and shouting. “Well piss on you, arsehole! Who made you the fucking judge?”

“Just saying, is all.” Red Hat stared at him. “I mean… I thought we had the same thing in mind.”

“Well, we don’t! You need a mind bigger’n a pea to hold something in it and you’re lacking the equipment, idiot! You wouldn’t know a good man from an evil if he pissed on you!”

Red Hat blinked. “Right y’are. I see I got the wrong notion.” He backed off a stride, then walked away through the drizzle, shaking his head.

Dogman watched him go, teeth gritted, thinking how he wanted to hit someone, but not sure who. There was no one here but him, now, anyway. Him and the dead. But maybe that’s what happens once the fighting stops, to a man who knows nothing but fighting. He fights himself.

He took a long breath of the cold, wet air, and he frowned down at the earth over Grim’s grave. He wondered if he’d know a good man from an evil, any more. He wondered what the difference was.

Grey morning time, out in the cold, wet gardens, and the Dogman was just stood there, thinking about how things used to be better.

Not What You Wanted

Glokta woke to a shaft of soft sunlight spilling through the hangings and across his wrinkled bed-clothes, full of dancing dust-motes. He tried to turn over, winced at a click in his neck. Ah, the first spasm of the day. The second was not long coming. It flashed through his left hip as he wrestled his way onto his back and snatched his breath away. The pain crept down his spine, settled in his leg, and stayed there.

“Ah,” he grunted. He tried, ever so gently, to turn his ankle round, to work his knee. The pain instantly grew far worse. “Barnam!” He dragged the sheet to one side and the familiar stink of ordure rose up to his nostrils. Nothing like the stench of your own dung to usher in a productive morning.

“Ah! Barnam!” He whimpered, and slobbered, and clutched at his withered thigh, but nothing helped. The pain grew worse, and worse. The fibres started from his wasted flesh like metal cables, toeless foot flopping grotesquely on the end, entirely beyond his control.

“Barnam!” he screamed. “Barnam, you fucker! The door!” Spit dribbled from his toothless mouth, tears ran down his twitching face, his hands clawed, clutching up fistfuls of brown-stained sheet.

He heard hurried footsteps in the corridor, the lock scraping. “Locked you fool!” he squealed through his gums, thrashing with pain and anger. The knob turned and the door opened, much to his surprise. What the…

Ardee hurried over to the bed. “Get out!” he hissed, holding one arm pointlessly over his face, clutching at his bedclothes with the other. “Get out!”

“No.” She tore the sheet away and Glokta grimaced, waiting for her face to go pale, waiting for her to stagger back, one hand across her mouth, eyes wide with shock and disgust. I am married… to this shit-daubed monstrosity? She only frowned down, for a moment, then took hold of his ruined thigh and pressed her thumbs into it.

He gasped and flailed and tried to twist away but her grip was merciless, two points of agony stabbing right into the midst of his cramping sinews. “Ah! You fucking… you…” The wasted muscle went suddenly soft, and he went soft with it, dropping back against the mattress. And now being splattered with my own shit begins to seem just the slightest bit embarrassing.

He lay there for a moment, helpless. “I didn’t want you to see me… like this.”

“Too late. You married me, remember. We’re one body, now.”

“I think I got the better part of that deal.”

“I got my life, didn’t I?”

“Hardly the kind of life that most young women hanker for.” He watched her, the strip of sunlight wandering back and forth across her darkened face as she moved. “I know that I’m not what you wanted… in a husband.”

“I always dreamed of a man I could dance with.” She looked up and held his eye. “But I think, perhaps, that you suit me better. Dreams are for children. We both are grownups.”

“Still. You see now that not dancing is the least of it. You should not have to do… this.”

“I want to do it.” She took a firm grip on his face and twisted it, somewhat painfully, so he was looking straight into hers. “I want to do something. I want to be useful. I want someone to need me. Can you understand that?”

Glokta swallowed. “Yes.” Few better. “Where’s Barnam?”

“I told him he could have the mornings off. I told him I’d be doing this from now on. I’ve told him to move my bed in here, as well.”

“But—”

“Are you telling me I can’t sleep in the same room as my husband?” Her hands slid slowly over his withered flesh, gentle, but firm, rubbing at the scarred skin, pressing at the ruined muscles. How long ago? Since a woman looked at me with anything but horror? Since a woman touched me with anything but violence? He lay back, his eyes closed and his mouth open, tears running from his eye and trickling down the sides of his head into the pillow. Almost comfortable. Almost…

“I don’t deserve this,” he breathed.

“No one gets what they deserve.”

Queen Terez looked down her nose at Glokta as he lurched into her sunny salon, without the slightest attempt to hide her utter disgust and contempt. As though she saw a cockroach crawling into her regal presence. But we will see. We know well the path, after all. We have followed it ourselves, and we have dragged so many others after. Pride comes first. Then pain. Humility follows hard upon it. Obedience lies just beyond.

“My name is Glokta. I am the new Arch Lector of his Majesty’s Inquisition.”

“Ah, the cripple,” she sneered. With refreshing directness. And why do you disrupt my afternoon? You will find no criminals here.” Only Styrian witches.

Glokta’s eyes flickered to the other woman, standing bolt upright near one of the windows. “It is a matter we had better discuss alone.”

“The Countess Shalere has been my friend since birth. There is nothing you can say to me that she cannot hear.” The Countess glared at Glokta with a disdain little less piercing than the queen’s.

“Very well.” No delicate way to say it. I doubt that delicacy will serve us here in any case. “It has come to my attention, your Majesty, that you have not been performing your duties as a wife.”

Terez’ long, thin neck seemed to stretch with indignation. “How dare you? That is none of your concern!”

“I am afraid that it is. Heirs for the king, you see. The future of the state, and so forth.”

“This is insufferable!” The queen’s face was white with fury. The Jewel of Talins flashes fire indeed. “I must eat your repulsive food, I must tolerate your dreadful weather, I must smile at the rambling mutterings of your idiot king! Now I must answer to his grotesque underlings? I am kept prisoner here!”

Glokta looked round at the beautiful room. The opulent hangings, the gilt furnishings, the fine paintings. The two beautiful women in their beautiful clothes. He dug one tooth sourly into the underside of his tongue. “Believe me. This is not what a prison looks like.”

“There are many kinds of prison!”

“I have learned to live with worse, and so have others.” You should see what my wife has to put up with.

“To share my bed with some disgusting bastard, some scarred son of who knows what, to have some stinking, hairy man pawing at me in the night!” The queen gave a shiver of revulsion. “It is not to be borne!”

Tears shone in her eyes. Her lady-in-waiting rushed forward, dress rustling, and knelt beside her, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. Terez reached up, pressed her own hand on top of it. The queen’s companion stared at Glokta with naked hatred. “Get out! Out, cripple, and never come back! You have upset her Majesty!”

“I have a gift for it,” muttered Glokta. “One reason why I am so widely hated…” He trailed off, frowning. He stared at their two hands on Terez’ shoulder. There was something in that touch. Comforting, soothing, protective. The touch of the committed friend, the trusted confidante, the sisterly companion. But there is more than that. Too familiar. Too warm. Almost like the touch of… Ah.

“You don’t have much use for men, do you?”

The two women looked up at him together, then Shalere snatched her hand away from the queen’s shoulder. “I will have your meaning!” barked Terez, but her voice was shrill, almost panicked.

“I think you know my meaning well enough.” And my task is made a great deal easier. “Some help here!” Two hulking Practicals barged through the doors. And as quickly as that, everything is changed. Amazing, the spice that two big men can add to a conversation. Some kinds of power are only tricks of the mind. I learned that well, in the Emperor’s prisons, and my new master has only reinforced the lesson.

“You would not dare!” shrieked Terez, staring at the masked arrivals with wide eyes. “You would not dare to touch me!”

“As luck would have it, I doubt it will be necessary, but we will see.” He pointed at the Countess. “Seize that woman.”

The two black-masked men tramped across the thick carpet. One moved a chair out of his way with exaggerated care.

“No!” The queen sprang up, grabbing Shalere’s hand in hers. “No!”

“Yes,” said Glokta.

The two women backed away, clinging to each other, Terez in front, shielding the Countess with her body, teeth bared in a warning snarl as the two great shadows approached. One might almost be touched by their evident care for one another, if one was capable of being touched at all. “Take her. But no marks on the queen, if you please.”

“No!” screamed Terez. “I’ll have your heads for this! My father… my father is—”

“On his way back to Talins, and I doubt he’ll be starting a war over your friend since birth, in any case. You are bought and paid for, and Duke Orso does not strike me as the type to renege on a deal.”

The two men and the two women lurched around the far end of the room in an ungainly dance. One of the Practicals seized the Countess by one wrist, dragged her away from the queen’s clutching hand and forced her down onto her knees, twisting her arms behind her, snapping heavy irons shut on her wrists. Terez shrieked, punched, kicked, clawed at the other, but she might as well have vented her fury on a tree. The huge man barely moved, his eyes every bit as emotionless as the mask below them.

Glokta found that he was almost smiling as he watched the ugly scene. I may be crippled, and hideous, and in constant pain, but the humiliation of beautiful women is one pleasure I can still enjoy. I do it now with threats and violence, instead of with soft words and entreaties, but still. Almost as much fun as it ever was.

One of the Practicals forced a canvas bag over Shalere’s head, turning her cries to muffled sobs, then marched her helplessly across the room. The other stayed where he was for a moment, keeping the queen herded into the corner. Then he backed off towards the door. On his way he picked up the chair he had moved and carefully put it back exactly as he had found it.

“Curse you!” Terez screeched, her clenched fists trembling as the door clicked shut and left the two of them alone. “Curse you, you twisted bastard! If you harm her—”

“It will not come to that. Because you have the means of her deliverance well within your grasp.”

The queen swallowed, chest heaving. “What must I do?”

“Fuck.” The word somehow sounded twice as ugly in the beautiful surroundings. “And bear children. I will give the Countess seven days in the darkness, unmolested. If, at the end of that time, I do not hear that you have set the king’s cock on fire every night, I will introduce her to my Practicals. Poor fellows. They get so little exercise. Ten minutes each should do the trick, but there are plenty of them, in the House of Questions. I daresay we can keep your childhood friend quite busy night and day.”

A spasm of horror passed over Terez’ face. And why not? This is a low chapter even for me. “If I do as you ask?”

“Then the Countess will be kept quite safe and sound. Once you are verifiably with child, I will return her to you. Things can be as they are now, during the period of your confinement. Two boys, as heirs, two girls, to marry off, and we can be done with one another. The king can find his entertainment elsewhere.”

“But, that will take years!”

“You could get it done in three or four, if you really ride him hard. And you might find it makes everyone’s lives easier if you at least pretend to enjoy it.”

“Pretend?” she breathed.

“The more you seem to like it, the quicker it will be over. The cheapest whore on the docks can squeal for her coppers when the sailors stick her. Are you telling me you cannot squeal for the king of the Union? You offend my patriotic sensibilities! Uh!” he gasped, rolling his eyes in a parody of ecstasy. “Ah! Yes! Just there! Don’t stop!” He curled his lip at her. “You see? Even I can do it! A liar of your experience should have no difficulty.”

Her teary eyes darted round the room, as though she were looking for some way out. But there is none. The noble Arch Lector Glokta, protector of the Union, great heart of the Closed Council, paragon of the gentlemanly virtues, displays his flair for politics and diplomacy. He felt some tiny stirring within him as he watched her wretched desperation, some negligible flutter in his guts. Guilt, perhaps? Or indigestion? It hardly matters which, I have learned my lesson. Pity never works for me.

He took one more slow step forward. “Your Majesty, I hope you fully understand the alternative.”

She nodded, and wiped her eyes. Then she proudly raised up her chin. “I will do as you ask. Please, I beg of you, do not hurt her… please…”

Please, please, please. Many congratulations, your Eminence. “You have my word. I will see the Countess has only the best of treatment.” He licked gently at the sour gaps in his teeth. “And you will do the same with your husband.”

Jezal sat in the darkness. He watched the fire dance in the great hearth, and he thought about what might have been. He thought about it with some bitterness. All the paths his life could have taken, and he had ended up here. Alone.

He heard hinges creaking. The small door that connected to the queen’s bedchamber crept slowly open. He had never bothered to lock it, from his side. He had not foreseen any circumstance under which she would ever want to use it. Some error of etiquette that he had made, no doubt, for which she could not wait even until morning to admonish him.

He stood up, quickly, stupidly nervous.

Terez stepped through the shadowy doorway. She looked so different that at first he hardly recognised her. Her hair was loose, she wore only her shift. She looked humbly towards the ground, her face in darkness. Her bare feet padded across the boards, across the thick carpet towards the fire. She seemed very young, suddenly. Young and small, weak and alone. He watched her, mostly confused, somewhat scared, but also, as she came closer and the firelight caught the shape of her body, ever so slightly aroused.

“Terez, my…” he fumbled for the word. Darling scarcely seemed to cover it. Nor did love. Worst enemy might have, but it hardly would have helped matters. “Can I—”

She cut him off, as ever, but not with the tirade he was expecting. “I’m sorry for the way that I have treated you. For the things that I have said… you must think me…”

There were tears in her eyes. Actual tears. He would hardly have believed until that moment that she could cry. He took a hurried step or two towards her, one hand out, no idea of what to do. He had never dared to hope for an apology, and certainly not one so earnestly and honestly delivered.

“I know,” he stuttered, “I know… I’m not what you wanted in a husband. I’m sorry for that. But I’m as much a prisoner in this as you are. I only hope… that perhaps we can make the best of it. Perhaps we might find a way… to care for one another? We have no one else, either of us. Please, tell me what I have to do—”

“Shhhh.” She touched one finger to his lips, looking into his eyes, one half of her face glowing orange from the fire, the other half black with shadow. Her fingers worked through his hair and drew him towards her. She kissed him, gently, awkwardly, almost, their lips brushing, then pressing clumsily together. He slid one hand round behind her neck, under her ear, his thumb stroking at her smooth cheek. Their mouths worked mechanically, accompanied by the soft squeak of breath in his nose, the gentle squelch of spit moving. Hardly the most passionate kiss he had ever enjoyed, but it was a great deal more than he had ever expected to get from her. There was a pleasant tingling building in his crotch as he pushed his tongue into her mouth.

He ran his other palm down her back, feeling the bumps of her spine under his fingers. He grunted softly as he slid his hand over her arse, down the side of her thigh then up between her legs, the hem of her shift gathering round his wrist. He felt her shudder, felt her flinch, and bite her lip in shock, it seemed, or even in disgust. He jerked his hand back, and they broke apart, both looking at the floor. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, inwardly cursing his eagerness. “I—”

“No. It’s my fault. I’m not… experienced… with men…” Jezal blinked for a moment, then almost smiled at a surge of relief. Of course. Now everything was clear. She was so assured, so sharp, it had never even occurred to him that she might be a virgin. It was simple fear that made her tremble so. Fear of disappointing him. He felt a rush of sympathy.

“Don’t worry,” he murmured it softly, stepping forward and taking her in his arms. He felt her stiffen, no doubt with nervousness, and he gently stroked her hair. “I can wait… we don’t have to… not yet.”

“No.” She said it with a touching determination, looking him fearlessly in the eye. “No. We do.”

She dragged her shift up and over her head, let it drop to the floor. She came close to him, took hold of his wrist, guided it back to her thigh, then upwards.

“Ah,” she whispered, urgent and throaty, her lips brushing his cheek, her breath hot in his ear. “Yes… just there… don’t stop.” She led him breathless to the bed.

“If that is all?” Glokta looked around the table, but the old men were silent. All waiting for my word. The king was absent again, so he made them wait an unnecessarily long time. Just to stab home to any doubters who is in charge. Why not, after all? The purpose of power is not to be gracious. “Then this meeting of the Closed Council is over.”

They rose, quickly, quietly, and in good order. Torlichorm, Halleck, Kroy and all the rest filed slowly from the room. Glokta himself struggled up, his leg still aching with the memory of the morning’s cramps, only to find that the Lord Chamberlain had, once again, remained behind. And he looks far from amused.

Hoff waited until the door shut before he spoke. “Imagine my surprise,” he snapped, “to hear of your recent marriage.”

“A swift and understated ceremony.” Glokta showed the Lord Chamberlain the wreckage of his front teeth. “Young love, you understand, brooks no delays. I apologise if the lack of an invitation offended you.”

“An invitation?” growled Hoff, frowning mightily. “Hardly! This is not what we discussed!”

“Discussed? I believe we have a misunderstanding. Our mutual friend,” and Glokta let his eyes move significantly to the empty thirteenth chair at the far end of the table, “left me in charge. Me. No other. He deems it necessary that the Closed Council speak with one voice. From now on, that voice will sound remarkably like mine.”

Hoff’s ruddy face had paled slightly. “Of course, but—”

“You are aware, I suppose, that I lived through two years of torture? Two years in hell, so I can stand before you now. Or lean before you, twisted as an old tree root. A crippled, shambling, wretched mockery of a man, eh, Lord Hoff? Let us be honest with one another. Sometimes I lose control of my own leg. My own eyes. My own face.” He snorted. “If you can call it a face. My bowels too, are rebellious. I often wake up daubed in my own shit. I find myself in constant pain, and the memories of everything that I have lost nag at me, endlessly.” He felt his left eye twitching. Let it twitch. “So you can see how, despite my constant efforts to be a man of sunny temper, I find that I despise the world, and everything in it, and myself most of all. A regrettable state of affairs, for which there is no remedy.”

The Lord Chamberlain licked his lips uncertainly. “You have my sympathy, but I fail to see the relevance.”

Glokta came suddenly very close, ignoring a spasm up his leg, pressing Hoff back against the table. “Your sympathy is less than worthless, and the relevance is this. Knowing what I am, what I have endured, what I still endure… can you suppose there is anything in this world I fear? Any act I will shrink from? The most unbearable pain of others is at the worst… an irritation to me.” Glokta jerked even closer, letting his lips work back from his ruined teeth, letting his face tremble, and his eye weep. “Knowing all that… can you possibly think it wise… for a man to stand where you stand now… and make threats? Threats against my wife? Against my unborn child?”

“No threat was intended, of course, I would never—”

“That simply would not do, Lord Hoff! That simply would not do. At the very slightest breath of violence against them… why, I would not wish you even to imagine the inhuman horror of my response.”

Closer yet, so close that his spit made a soft mist across Hoff’s trembling jowls. “I cannot permit any further discussion of this issue. Ever. I cannot permit even the rumour that there might be an issue. Ever. It simply… would… not… do, Lord Hoff, for an eyeless, tongueless, faceless, fingerless, cockless bag of meat to be occupying your chair on the Closed Council.” He stepped away, grinning his most revolting grin. “Why, my Lord Chamberlain… who would drink all the wine?”

It was a beautiful autumn day in Adua, and the sun shone pleasantly through the branches of the fragrant fruit trees, casting a dappled shade onto the grass beneath. A pleasing breeze fluttered through the orchard, stirring the crimson mantle of the king as he strode regally around his lawn, and the white coat of his Arch Lector as he hobbled doggedly along at a respectful distance, stooped over his cane. Birds twittered from the trees, and his Majesty’s highly polished boots crunched in the gravel and made faint, agreeable echoes against the white buildings of the palace.

From the other side of the high walls came the faint sound of distant work. The clanking of picks and hammers, the scraping of earth and the clattering of stone. The faint calls of the carpenters and the masons. These were the most pleasant sounds of all, to Jezal’s ear. The sounds of rebuilding.

“It will take time, of course,” he was saying.

“Of course.”

“Years, perhaps. But much of the rubble is already cleared. The repair of some of the more lightly damaged buildings has already begun. The Agriont will be more glorious than ever before you know it. I have made it my highest priority.”

Glokta bowed his head even lower. “And therefore mine, and that of your Closed Council. Might I enquire…” he murmured, “after the health of your wife, the queen?”

Jezal worked his mouth. He hardly liked discussing his personal business with this man, of all people, but it could not be denied that whatever the cripple had said, there had been a most dramatic improvement.

“A material change.” Jezal shook his head. “I find now that she is a woman of almost… insatiable appetites.”

“I am delighted that my entreaties have had an effect.”

“Oh, they have, they have, only there is still a certain…” Jezal waved his hand in the air, searching out the right word. “Sadness in her. Sometimes… I hear her crying, in the night. She stands at the open window, and she weeps, for hours at a time.”

“Crying, your Majesty? Perhaps she is merely homesick. I always suspected she was a much gentler spirit than she appears to be.”

“She is! She is. A gentle spirit.” Jezal thought about it for a moment. “Do you know, I think you may be right. Homesick.” A plan began to take shape in his mind. “Perhaps we should have the gardens of the palace redesigned, to give a flavour of Talins? We could have the stream altered, in the likeness of canals, and so forth!”

Glokta leered his toothless grin. “A sublime idea. I shall speak to the Royal Gardener. Perhaps another brief word with her Majesty as well, to see if I can staunch her tears.”

“I would appreciate whatever you can do. How is your own wife?” he tossed over his shoulder, hoping to change the subject, then realising he had strayed onto one even more difficult.

But Glokta only showed his empty smile again. “She is a tremendous comfort to me, your Majesty. I really don’t know how I ever managed without her.”

They moved on in awkward silence for a moment, then Jezal cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking, Glokta, about that scheme of mine. You know, about a tax on the banks? Perhaps to pay for a new hospital near the docks. For those who cannot afford a surgeon. The common folk have been good to us. They have helped us to power, and suffered in our name. A government should offer something to all its people, should it not? The more mean, the more base, the more they need our help. A king is only truly as rich as his poorest subject, do you not think? Would you have the High Justice draw something up? Small to begin with, then we can go further. Free housing, perhaps, for those who find themselves without a home. We should consider—”

“Your Majesty, I have spoken to our mutual friend of this.”

Jezal stopped dead, a cold feeling creeping up his spine. “You have?”

“I fear that I am obliged to.” The cripple’s tone was that of a servant, but his sunken eyes did not stray from Jezal’s for a moment. “Our friend is… not enthusiastic.”

“Does he rule the Union, or do I?” But they both knew the answer to that question well enough.

“You are king, of course.”

“Of course.”

“But our mutual friend… we would not wish to disappoint him.” Glokta came a limping step closer, his left eye giving a repulsive flutter. “Neither one of us, I am sure, would want to encourage a visit to Adua… on his part.”

Jezal’s knees felt suddenly very weak. The faint memory of that awful, unbearable pain nagged at his stomach. “No,” he croaked, “no, of course not.”

The cripple’s voice was only just above a whisper. “Perhaps, in time, funds could be found for some small project. Our friend cannot see everything, after all, and what he does not see will do no harm. I am sure between the two of us, quietly… we could do some little good. But not yet.”

“No. You are right, Glokta. You have a fine sense for these things. Do nothing that would cause the least offence. Please inform our friend that his opinions will always be valued above all others. Please tell our good friend that he can rely on me. Will you tell him that, please?”

“I will, your Majesty. He will be delighted to hear it.”

“Good,” murmured Jezal. “Good.” A chilly breeze had blown up, and he turned back towards the palace, pulling his cloak around him. It was not, in the end, quite so pleasant a day as he had hoped it might be.

Loose Ends

A grubby white box with two doors facing each other. The ceiling was too low for comfort, the room too brightly lit by blazing lamps. Damp was creeping out of one corner and the plaster had erupted with flaking blisters, speckled with black mould. Someone had tried to scrub a long bloodstain from the wall, but hadn’t tried nearly hard enough.

Two huge Practicals stood against the wall, their arms folded. One of the chairs at the bolted-down table was empty. Carlot dan Eider sat in the other. History moves in circles, so they say. How things have changed. And yet, how they have stayed the same. Her face was pale with worry, there were dark rings of sleeplessness around her eyes, but she still seemed beautiful. More than ever, in a way. The beauty of the candle-flame that has almost burned out. Again.

Glokta could hear her scared breathing as he settled himself in the remaining chair, leaned his cane against the scarred table-top, and frowned into her face. “I am still wondering whether, in the next few days, I will receive that letter you spoke of. You know the one. The one you meant for Sult to read. The one that lays out the history of my self-indulgent little mercy to you. The one that you made sure will be sent to the Arch Lector… in the event of your death. “Will it find its way onto my desk, now, do you suppose? A final irony.”

There was a pause. “I realise that I made a grave mistake, when I came back.” And an even worse one when you didn’t leave fast enough. “I hope you will accept my apology. I only wanted to warn you about the Gurkish. If you can find it in your heart to be merciful—”

“Did you expect me to be merciful once?”

“No,” she whispered.

“Then what, do you suppose, are the chances of my making the same mistake twice? Never come back, I said. Not ever.” He waved with his hand and one of the monstrous Practicals stepped forward and lifted the lid of his case.

“No… no.” Her eyes darted over his instruments, and back. “You won. You won, of course. I should have been grateful, the first time. Please.” She leaned forward, looking him in the eyes. Her voice dropped, grew husky, “Please. Surely there must be… something that I can do… to make up for my foolishness…”

A peculiar mixture of feigned desire and genuine disgust. Fake longing and genuine loathing. And rendered still more distasteful by the edge of mounting terror. It makes me wonder why I was merciful in the first place.

Glokta snorted. “Must this be embarrassing as well as painful?”

The effort at seduction leaked quickly away. But I note that the fear is going nowhere. It was joined now by a rising note of desperation. “I know that I made a mistake… I was trying to help… please, I meant you no real harm… I caused you no harm, you know it!” He reached out slowly towards the case, watched her horrified eyes follow his white-gloved hand, her voice rising to a squeal of panic. “Only tell me what I can do! Please! I can help you! I can be useful! Tell me what I can do!”

Glokta’s hand paused on its remorseless journey across the table. He tapped one finger against the wood. The finger on which the Arch Lector’s ring glittered in the lamplight. “Perhaps there is a way.”

“Anything,” she gurgled, teary eyes gleaming. “Anything, only name it!”

“You have contacts in Talins?”

She swallowed. “In Talins? Of… of course.”

“Good. I, and some colleagues of mine on the Closed Council, are concerned about the role that Grand Duke Orso means to play in Union politics. Our feeling—our very strong feeling—is that he should stick to bullying Styrians, and keep his nose out of our business.” He gave a significant pause.

“How do I—”

“You will go to Talins. You will be my eyes in the city. A traitor, fleeing for her life, friendless and alone, seeking only a place for a new beginning. A beautiful yet wretched traitor, in desperate need of a strong arm to protect her. You get the idea.”

“I suppose… I suppose that I could do that.”

Glokta snorted. “You had better.”

“I will need money—”

“Your assets have been seized by the Inquisition.”

“Everything?”

“You may have noticed that there is a great deal of rebuilding to do. The king needs every mark he can lay his hands on, and confessed traitors can hardly expect to keep their chattels in such times as these. I have arranged passage for you. When you arrive, make contact with the banking house of Valint and Balk. They will arrange a loan to get you started.”

“Valint and Balk?” Eider looked even more scared than before, if that was possible. “I would rather be in debt to anyone but them.”

“I know the feeling. But it’s that or nothing.”

“How will I—”

“A woman of your resourcefulness? I am sure that you will find a way.” He winced as he pushed himself up from his chair. “I want to be snowed in by your letters. What happens in the city. What Orso is about. Who he makes war with, who he makes peace with. Who are his allies and his enemies. You leave on the next tide.” He turned back, briefly, at the door. “I’ll be watching.”

She nodded dumbly, wiping away the tears of relief with the back of one trembling hand. First it is done to us, then we do it to others, then we order it done. Such is the way of things.

“Are you always drunk by this time in the morning?”

“Your Eminence, you wound me.” Nicomo Cosca grinned. “Usually I have been drunk for hours by now.”

Huh. We each find our ways of getting through the day. “I should thank you for all your help.”

The Styrian gave a flamboyant wave of one hand. A hand, Glokta noticed, flashing with a fistful of heavy rings. “To hell with your thanks, I have your money.”

“And I think every penny well spent. I hope that you will remain in the city, and enjoy Union hospitality for a while longer.”

“Do you know? I believe I will.” The mercenary scratched thoughtfully at the rash on his neck leaving red fingernail marks through the flaky skin. “At least until the gold runs out.”

“How quickly can you possibly spend what I have paid you?”

“Oh, you would be amazed. I have wasted ten fortunes in my time and more besides. I look forward to wasting another.” Cosca slapped his hands down on his thighs, pushed himself up, strolled, somewhat unsteadily, to the door, and turned with a flourish. “Make sure you call on me when you next have a desperate last stand organised.”

“My first letter will bear your name.”

“Then I bid you… farewell!” Cosca swept off his enormous hat and bowed low. Then, with a knowing grin, he stepped through the doorway, and was gone.

Glokta had moved the Arch Lector’s office to a large hall on the ground floor of the House of Questions. Closer to the real business of the Inquisition—the prisoners. Closer to the questions, and the answers. Closer to the truth. And, of course, the real clincher… no stairs.

There were well-tended gardens outside the large windows. The faint sound of a fountain splashing beyond the glass. But inside the room there was none of the ugly paraphernalia of power. The walls were plastered and painted simple white. The furniture was hard and functional. The whetstone of discomfort has kept me sharp this long. No reason to let the edge grow dull, simply because I have run out of enemies. New enemies will present themselves, before too long.

There were some heavy bookcases of dark wood. Several leather-covered desks, already stacked high with documents requiring his attention. Aside from the great round table with its map of the Union and its pair of bloody nail-marks, there was only one item of Sult’s furniture that Glokta had brought downstairs with him. The dark painting of bald old Zoller glowered down from above the simple fireplace. Bearing an uncanny resemblance to a certain Magus I once knew. It is fitting after all, that we maintain the proper perspective. Every man answers to somebody.

There was a knocking at the door, and the head of Glokta’s secretary appeared at the gap. “The Lord Marshals have arrived, Arch Lector.”

“Show them in.”

Sometimes, when old friends meet, things are instantly as they were, all those years before. The friendship resumes, untouched, as though there had been no interruption. Sometimes, but not now. Collem West was scarcely recognisable. His hair had fallen out in ugly patches. His face was shrunken, had a yellow tinge about it. His uniform hung slack from his bony shoulders, stained around the collar. He shuffled into the room, bent over in an old man’s stoop, leaning heavily on a stick. He looked like nothing so much as a walking corpse.

Glokta had expected something of the kind, of course, from what Ardee had told him. But the sick shock of disappointment and horror he felt at the sight still caught him by surprise. Like returning to the happy haunt of one’s youth, and finding it all in ruins. Deaths. They happen every day. How many lives have I wrecked with my own hands? What makes this one so hard to take? And yet it was. He found himself lurching up from his chair, starting painfully forwards as if to lend some help.

“Your Eminence.” West’s voice was fragile and jagged as broken glass. He made a weak effort at a smile. “Or I suppose… I should call you brother.”

“West… Collem… it is good to see you.” Good, and awful both at once.

A cluster of officers followed West into the room. The wonderfully competent Lieutenant Jalenhorm I remember, of course, but a Major now. And Brint too, made a Captain by his friends swift advancement. Marshal Kroy we know and love from the Closed Council. Congratulations, all, on your advancement. Another man brought up the rear of the party. A lean man with a face horribly burned. But we, of all people, should hardly hold a repulsive disfigurement against him. Each one of them frowned nervously towards West, as though ready to pounce forward if he should slump to the floor. Instead he shuffled to the round table and sagged trembling into the nearest chair.

“I should have come to you,” said Glokta. I should have come to you far sooner.

West made another effort at a smile, even more bilious than the last. Several of his teeth were missing. “Nonsense. I know how busy you are, now. And I am feeling much better today.”

“Good, good. That is… good. Is there anything that I can get you?” What could possibly help? “Anything at all.”

West shook his head. “I do not think so. These gentlemen you know, of course. Apart from Sergeant Pike.” The burned man nodded to him.

“A pleasure.” To meet someone even more maimed than myself, always.

“I hear… happy news, from my sister.”

Glokta winced, almost unable to meet his old friend’s eye. “I should have sought your permission, of course. I surely would have, had there been time.”

“I understand.” West’s bright eyes were fixed on his. “She has explained it all. It is some kind of comfort to know that she’ll be well taken care of.”

“On that you can depend. I will see to it. She will never be hurt again.”

West’s gaunt face twisted. “Good. Good.” He rubbed gently at the side of his face. His fingernails were black, edged with dried blood, as though they were peeling from the flesh beneath. “There’s always a price to be paid, eh, Sand? For the things we do?”

Glokta felt his eye twitching. “It would seem so.”

“I have lost some of my teeth.”

“I see that, and can sympathise. Soup, I find…” I find utterly disgusting.

“I am… scarcely able to walk.”

“I sympathise with that also. Your cane will be your best friend.” As it will soon be mine, I think.

“I am a pitiable shell of what I was.”

“I truly feel your pain.” Truly. Almost more keenly than my own.

West slowly shook his withered head. “How can you stand it?”

“One step at a time, my old friend. Steer clear of stairs where possible, and mirrors, always.”

“Wise advice.” West coughed. An echoing cough, from right down beneath his ribs. He swallowed noisily. “I think my time is running out.”

“Surely not!” Glokta’s hand reached out for a moment, as if to rest on West’s shrunken shoulder, as if to offer comfort. He jerked it back, awkwardly. It is not suited to the task.

West licked at his empty gums. “This is how most of us go, isn’t it? No final charge. No moment of glory. We just… fall slowly apart.”

Glokta would have liked to say something optimistic. But that rubbish comes from other mouths than mine. Younger, prettier mouths, with all their teeth, perhaps. “Those who die on the battlefield are in some ways the lucky few. Forever young. Forever glorious.”

West nodded, slowly. “Here’s to the lucky few, then…” His eyes rolled back, he swayed, then slumped sideways. Jalenhorm was the first forward, catching him before he hit the ground. He flopped in the big man’s arms, a long string of thin vomit splattering against the floor.

“Back to the palace!” snapped Kroy. “At once!”

Brint hurried to swing the doors open while Jalenhorm and Kroy steered West out of the room, draped between them with his arms over their shoulders. His limp shoes scraped against the floor, his piebald head lolling. Glokta watched them go, standing helpless, his toothless mouth half open, as if to speak. As if to wish his friend good luck, or good health, or a merry afternoon. None of them seem quite to fit the circumstance, however.

The doors clattered shut and Glokta was left staring at them. His eyelid flickered, he felt wet on his cheek. Not tears of compassion, of course. Not tears of grief. I feel nothing, fear nothing, care for nothing. They cut away the parts of me that could weep in the Emperor’s prisons. This can only be salt water, and nothing more. Merely a broken reflex in a mutilated face. Farewell, brother. Farewell, my only friend. And farewell to the ghost of beautiful Sand dan Glokta, too. Nothing of him remains. All for the best, of course. A man in my position can afford no indulgences.

He took a sharp breath, and wiped his face with the back of his hand. He limped to his desk, sat, composed himself for a moment, assisted by a sudden twinge in his toeless foot. He turned his attention to his documents. Papers of confession, tasks outstanding, all the tedious business of government—

He looked up. A figure had detached itself from the shadows behind one of the high book-cases and now stepped out into the room, arms folded. The man with the burned face who had come in with the officers. In the excitement of their exit, it seemed that he had remained behind.

“Sergeant Pike, was it?” murmured Glokta, frowning.

“That’s the name I’ve taken.”

“Taken?”

The scarred face twisted into a mockery of a smile. One even more hideous than my own, if that’s possible. “Not surprising, that you shouldn’t recognise me. My first week, there was an accident in a forge. Accidents often happen, in Angland.” Angland? That voice… something about that voice… “Still nothing? Perhaps if I come closer?”

He sprang across the room without warning. Glokta was still struggling up from his seat as the man dived across the desk. They tumbled to the floor together in a cloud of flying paper, Glokta underneath, the back of his skull cracking against the stone, his breath all driven out in a long, agonised wheeze.

He felt the brush of steel against his neck. Pike’s face was no more than a few inches from his, the mottled mass of burns picked out in particularly revolting detail.

“How about now?” he hissed. “Anything seem familiar?”

Glokta felt his left eye flickering as recognition washed over him like a wave of freezing water. Changed, of course. Changed utterly and completely. And yet I know him.

“Rews,” he breathed.

“None other.” Rews bit off the words with grim satisfaction.

“You survived.” Glokta whispered it, first with amazement, then with mounting amusement. “You survived! You’re a far harder man than I gave you credit for! Far, far harder.” He started to chuckle, tears running down the side of his cheek again.

“Something funny?”

“Everything! You have to appreciate the irony. I have overcome so many powerful enemies, and it’s Salem Rews with the knife at my neck! It’s always the blade you don’t see coming that cuts you deepest, eh?”

“You’ll get no deeper cuts than this one.”

“Then cut away, my man, I am ready.” Glokta tipped his head back, stretched his neck out, pressing it up against the cold metal. “I’ve been ready for a long time.”

Rews’ fist worked around the grip of his knife. His burned face trembled, eyes narrowing to bright slits in their pink sockets. Now.

His mottled lips slid back from his teeth. The sinews in his neck stood out as he made ready to wield the blade. Do it.

Glokta’s breath hissed quickly in and out, his throat tingling with anticipation. Now, at last… now…

But Rews’ arm did not move.

“And yet you hesitate,” whispered Glokta through his empty gums. “Not out of mercy, of course, not out of weakness. They froze all that out of you, eh? In Angland? You pause because you realise, in all that time dreaming of killing me, you never thought of what would be next. What will you truly have gained, with all your endurance? With all your cunning and your effort? Will you be hunted? Will you be sent back? I can offer you so much more.”

Rews’ melted frown grew even harder. “What could you give me? After this?”

“Oh, this is nothing. I suffer twice the pain and ten times the humiliation getting up in the morning. A man like you could be very useful to me. A man… as hard as you have proved yourself to be. A man who has lost everything, including all his scruples, all his mercy, all his fear. We both have lost everything. We both have survived. I understand you, Rews, as no one else ever can.”

“Pike is my name, now.”

“Of course it is. Let me up, Pike.”

Slowly the knife slid away from his throat. The man who had been Salem Rews stood over him, frowning down. Who could ever anticipate the turns that fate can take? “Up, then.”

“Easier said than done.” Glokta dragged in a few sharp breaths, then growling with a great and painful effort he rolled over onto all fours. A heroic achievement indeed. He slowly tested his limbs, wincing as his twisted joints clicked. Nothing broken. No more broken than usual, anyway. He reached out and took the handle of his fallen cane between two fingers, dragged it towards him through the scattered papers. He felt the point of the blade pressing into his back.

“Don’t take me for a fool, Glokta. If you try anything—”

He clutched at the edge of the desk and dragged himself up. “You’ll cut my liver out and all the rest. Don’t worry. I am far too crippled to try anything worse than shit myself. I have something to show you, though. Something that I feel sure you will appreciate. If I’m wrong, well… you can slit my throat a little later.”

Glokta lurched out of the heavy door of his office, Pike sticking as close to his shoulder as a shadow, the knife kept carefully out of sight.

“Stay,” he snapped at the two Practicals in the ante-room, hobbling on past the frowning secretary at the huge desk. Out into the wide hallway running through the heart of the House of Questions and Glokta limped faster, cane clicking against the tiles. It hurt him to do it, but he held his head back, gave a cold wrinkle to his lip. Out of the corners of his eyes he saw the Clerks, the Practicals, the Inquisitors, bowing, sliding backwards, clearing away. How they fear me. More than any man in Adua, and with good reason. How things have changed. And yet, how they have stayed the same. His leg, his neck, his gums. These things were as they had always been. And always will be. Unless I am tortured again, of course.

“You look well,” Glokta tossed over his shoulder. “Aside from your hideous facial burns, of course. You lost weight.”

“Starving can do that.”

“Indeed, indeed. I lost a great deal of weight in Gurkhul. And not just from the pieces they cut out of me. This way.”

They turned through a heavy door flanked by frowning Practicals, past an open gate of iron bars. Into a long and windowless corridor, sloping steadily downwards, lit by too few lanterns and filled with slow shadows. The walls were rendered and whitewashed, though none too recently. There was a seedy feel to the place, and a smell of damp. Just as there always is. The clicking of Glokta’s cane, the hissing of his breath, the rustling of his white coat, all fell dead on the chill, wet air.

“Killing me will bring you scant satisfaction, you know.”

“We shall see.”

“I doubt it. I was hardly the one responsible for your little trip northwards. I did the work perhaps, but others gave the orders.”

“They were not my friends.”

Glokta snorted. “Please. Friends are people one pretends to like in order to make life bearable. Men like us have no need of such indulgences. It is our enemies by which we are measured.” And here are mine. Sixteen steps confronted him. That old, familiar flight. Cut from smooth stone, a little worn towards the centre.

“Steps. Bastard things. If I could torture one man, do you know who it would be?” Pike’s face was a single, expressionless scar. “Well, never mind.” Glokta struggled to the bottom without incident, limped on a few more painful strides to a heavy wooden door, bound with iron.

“We are here.” Glokta slid a bunch of keys from the pocket of his white coat, flicked through them until he found the right one, unlocked the door, and went in.

Arch Lector Sult was not the man he used to be. But then none of us are, quite. His magnificent shock of white hair was plastered greasily to his gaunt skull, dry blood matted in a yellow-brown mass on one side. His piercing blue eyes had lost their commanding sparkle, sunken as they were in deep sockets and rimmed with angry pink. He had been relieved of his clothes, and his sinewy old man’s body, somewhat hairy around the shoulders, was smeared with the grime of the cells. He looked, in fact, like nothing so much as a mad old beggar. Can this truly once have been one of the most powerful men in the wide Circle of the World? You would never guess. A salutary lesson to us all. The higher you climb, the further there is to fall.

“Glokta!” he snarled, thrashing helplessly, chained to his chair. “You treacherous, twisted bastard!”

Glokta held up his white-gloved hand, the purple stone on his ring of office glinting in the harsh lamplight. “I believe your Eminence is the proper term of address.”

“You?” Sult barked sharp laughter. “Arch Lector? A withered, pitiable husk of a man? You disgust me!”

“Don’t give me that.” Glokta lowered himself, wincing, into the other chair. “Disgust is for the innocent.”

Sult glared up at Pike, looming menacingly over the table, his shadow falling across the polished case containing Glokta’s instruments. “What is this thing?”

“This is an old friend of ours, Master Sult, but recently returned from the wars in the North, and seeking new opportunities.”

“My congratulations! I never believed that you could find an assistant even more hideous than yourself!”

“You are unkind, but thankfully we are not easily offended. Let us call him equally hideous.” And just as ruthless, too, I hope.

“When will be my trial?”

“Trial? Why ever would I want one of those? You are presumed dead and I have made no effort to deny it.”

“I demand the right to address the Open Council!” Sult struggled pointlessly with his chains. “I demand… curse you! I demand a hearing!”

Glokta snorted. “Demand away, but look around you. No one is interested in listening, not even me. We all are far too busy. The Open Council stands in indefinite recess. The Closed Council is all changed, and you are forgotten. I run things now. More completely than you could ever have dreamed of doing.”

“On the leash of that devil Bayaz!”

“Correct. Maybe in time I’ll work some looseness into his muzzle, just as I did into yours. Enough to get things my own way, who knows?”

“Never! You’ll never be free of him!”

“We’ll see.” Glokta shrugged. “But there are worse fates than being the first among slaves. Far worse. I have seen them.” I have lived them.

“You fool! We could have been free!”

“No. We couldn’t. And freedom is far overrated in any case. We all have our responsibilities. We all owe something to someone. Only the entirely worthless are entirely free. The worthless and the dead.”

“What does it matter now?” Sult grimaced down at the table. “What does any of it matter? Ask your questions.”

“Oh, we’re not here for that. Not this time. Not for questions, not for truth, not for confessions. I have my answers already.” Then why do I do this? Why? Glokta leaned slowly forwards across the table. “We are here for our amusement.”

Sult stared at him for a moment, then he shrieked with wild laughter. “Amusement? You’ll never have your teeth back! You’ll never have your leg back! You’ll never have your life back!”

“Of course not, but I can take yours.” Glokta turned, stiffly, slowly, painfully, and he gave a toothless grin. “Practical Pike, would you be so good as to show our prisoner the instruments?”

Pike frowned down at Glokta. He frowned down at Sult. He stood there for a long moment, motionless.

Then he stepped forward, and lifted the lid of the case.