Last Argument of Kings

by Joe Abercrombie

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  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 F
erro 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 g
ate 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?'