Last Argument of Kings

by Joe Abercrombie

  '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—'

&nb
sp; 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 chee
k 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.