The Blade Itself

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘Move!’ barked one of the riders, spurring his horse forward. ‘On your feet!’ The old man struggled in the dust. ‘Move!’ The soldier’s whip cracked, leaving a long red mark across the man’s scrawny back. Ferro twitched and winced at the sound, and her back began to tingle.

  Where the scars were.

  Almost as if she’d been whipped herself.

  No one whips Ferro Maljinn and lives. Not any more. She shrugged the bow off her shoulder.

  ‘Peace, Ferro!’ hissed Yulwei, grabbing her by the arm. ‘There’s nothing you can do for them!’

  The girl bent down, helping the old slave to his feet. The whip cracked again, catching them both, and there was a yelp of pain. Was it the girl or the man who had cried out?

  Or had it been Ferro herself?

  She shook Yulwei’s hand off, reaching for an arrow. ‘I can kill this bastard!’ she snarled. The soldier’s head snapped round to look at them, curious. Yulwei seized hold of her hand.

  ‘What then?’ he hissed. ‘If you killed all six of them, what then? Have you food and water for a hundred slaves? Eh? You have it well concealed! And when the column is missed? Eh? And their guards found slaughtered? What then, killer? Will you hide a hundred slaves out here? Because I cannot!’

  Ferro stared into Yulwei’s black eyes, her teeth grinding together, her breath snorting fast through her nose. She wondered whether or not to try and kill him again.

  No.

  He was right, damn him. Slowly, she pushed the anger back, as far down as it would go. She shoved the arrow away, and turned back towards the column. She watched the old slave stumble on, and the girl after him, fury gnawing at her guts like hunger.

  ‘You!’ called the soldier, nudging his horse over towards them.

  ‘You’ve done it now!’ hissed Yulwei, then he bowed to the guard, smiling, scraping. ‘My apologies master, my son is . . .’

  ‘Shut your mouth, old man!’ The soldier looked down at Ferro from his saddle. ‘Well, boy, do you like her?’

  ‘What?’ she hissed, through gritted teeth.

  ‘No need to be shy,’ chuckled the soldier, ‘I’ve seen you looking.’ He turned towards the column. ‘Hold them up there!’ he shouted, and the slaves stumbled to a halt. He leaned from his saddle and grabbed the scrawny girl under the armpit, dragging her roughly out of the column.

  ‘She’s a good one,’ he said, pulling her towards Ferro. ‘Bit young, but she’s ready. Clean up nice, she will. Bit of a limp but that’ll heal, we’ve been driving ’em hard. Good teeth . . . show him your teeth, bitch!’ The girl’s cracked lips curled back slowly. ‘Good teeth. What do you say boy? Ten in gold for her! It’s a good price!’

  Ferro stood there, staring. The girl looked dumbly back with big, dead eyes.

  ‘Look,’ said the soldier, leaning down from his saddle. ‘She’s worth twice that, and there’s no danger in it! When we get to Shaffa, I’ll tell them she died out here in the dust. No one will wonder at that, it happens all the time! I get ten, and you save ten! Everyone wins!’

  Everyone wins. Ferro stared up at the guard. He pulled his helmet off, wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘Peace, Ferro,’ whispered Yulwei.

  ‘Alright, eight!’ Shouted the soldier. ‘She’s got a nice smile! Show him a smile, bitch!’ The corner of the girl’s mouth twitched slightly. ‘There, see! Eight, and you’re stealing from me!’

  Ferro’s fists were clenched, nails digging into her palms. ‘Peace, Ferro,’ whispered Yulwei, with a warning note in his voice.

  ‘God’s teeth but you drive a bargain boy! Seven, and that’s my last offer. Seven, damn it!’ The soldier waved his helmet around in frustration. ‘Use her gently, in five years she’ll be worth more! It’s an investment!’

  The soldier’s face was just a few feet away. She could see each tiny bead of sweat forming on his forehead, each stubbly hair on his cheeks, each blemish, nick, and pore on his skin. She could smell him, almost.

  The truly thirsty will drink piss, or salt water, or oil, however bad for them, so great is their need to drink. Ferro had seen it often in the badlands. That was the extent of her need to kill this man now. She wanted to tear him with her bare hands, to choke the life from him, to rip his face with her teeth. The desire was almost too strong to resist. ‘Peace!’ hissed Yulwei.

  ‘I can’t afford her,’ Ferro heard herself saying.

  ‘You might have said so before, boy, and saved me the trouble!’ The soldier stuck his helmet back on. ‘Still, I can’t blame you for looking. She’s a good one.’ He reached down and grabbed the girl under the arm, dragging her back towards the others. ‘They’ll get twenty for her in Shaffa!’ he shouted over his shoulder. The column moved on. Ferro watched the girl until the slaves disappeared over a rise, stumbling, limping, shambling towards slavery.

  She felt cold now, cold and empty. She wished she had killed the guard, whatever the cost. Killing him could have filled that empty space, if only for a while. That was how it worked. ‘I walked in a column like that,’ she said slowly.

  Yulwei gave a long sigh. ‘I know, Ferro, I know, but fate has chosen you for saving. Be grateful for it, if you know how.’

  ‘You should have let me kill him.’

  ‘Eugh,’ clucked the old man in disgust, ‘I do declare, you’d kill the whole world if you could. Is there anything but killing in you Ferro?’

  ‘There used to be,’ she muttered, ‘but they whip it out of you. They whip you until they’re sure there’s nothing left.’ Yulwei stood there, with that pitying look on his face. Strange, how it didn’t make her angry any more.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ferro. Sorry for you and for them.’ He stepped back into the road, shaking his head. ‘But it’s better than death.’

  She stayed for a moment, watching the dust rising from the distant column.

  ‘The same,’ she whispered to herself.

  Sore Thumb

  Logen leaned against the parapet, squinted into the morning sun, and took in the view. He’d done the same, it felt long ago now, from the balcony of his room at the library. The two views could hardly have been more different. Sunrise over the jagged carpet of buildings on the one hand, hot and glaring bright and full of distant noise. The cold and misty valley on the other, soft and empty and still as death. He remembered that morning, remembered how he’d felt like a different man. He certainly felt a different man now. A stupid man. Small, scared, ugly, and confused.

  ‘Logen.’ Malacus stepped out onto the balcony to stand beside him, smiled up at the sun and out over the city to the sparkling bay, already busy with ships. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’

  ‘If you say so, but I’m not sure I see it. All those people.’ Logen gave a sweaty shiver. ‘It’s not right. It frightens me.’

  ‘Frightened? You?’

  ‘Always.’ Logen had barely slept since they arrived. It was never properly dark here, never properly quiet. It was too hot, too close, too stinking. Enemies might be terrifying, but enemies could be fought, and put an end to. Logen could understand their hatred. There was no fighting the faceless, careless, rumbling city. It hated everything. ‘This is no place for me. I’ll be glad to leave.’

  ‘We might not be leaving for a while.’

  ‘I know.’ Logen took a deep breath. ‘That’s why I’m going to go down and look at this Agriont, and find out what I can about it. Some things have to be done. It’s better to do them than to live with the fear of them. That’s what my father used to tell me.’

  ‘Good advice. I’ll come with you.’

  ‘You will not.’ Bayaz was in the doorway, glaring out at his apprentice. ‘Your progress over the last few weeks has been a disgrace, even for you.’ He stepped through into the open air. ‘I suggest that while we are idle, waiting on His Majesty’s pleasure, you should take the opportunity to study. Another such chance may be a long time coming.’

  Malacus hurried back inside with no backward glances. He knew better than to d
awdle with his master in this mood. Bayaz had lost all his good humour as soon as they arrived at the Agriont, and it didn’t look like coming back. Logen could hardly blame him, they’d been treated more like prisoners than guests. He didn’t know much about manners, but he could guess the meaning of hard stares from everyone and guards outside the door.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe how it’s grown,’ growled Bayaz, frowning out at the great sweep of city. ‘I remember when Adua was barely more than a huddle of shacks, squeezed in round the House of the Maker like flies round a fresh turd. Before there was an Agriont. Before there was a Union, even. They weren’t half so proud in those days, I can tell you. They worshipped the Maker like a god.’

  He noisily hawked up a lump of phlegm and spat it out into the air. Logen watched it clear the moat and vanish somewhere in amongst the white buildings below. ‘I gave them this,’ hissed Bayaz. Logen felt the unpleasant creeping sensation that always seemed to accompany the old wizard’s displeasure. ‘I gave them freedom, and this is the thanks I get? The scorn of clerks? Of swollen-headed old errand-boys?’ A trip down into the suspicion and madness below began to seem like a merciful release. Logen edged towards the door and ducked back into the room beyond.

  If they were prisoners here then Logen had been in some harder cells, he had to admit. Their round living room was fit for a King, to his mind at least: heavy chairs of dark wood with delicate carvings, thick hangings on the walls showing woods and hunting scenes. Bethod would most likely have felt at home in such a room. Logen felt like an oaf there, always on his toes in case he broke something. A tall jar stood on a table in the chamber’s centre, its sides painted with bright flowers. Logen eyed it suspiciously as he made for the long stair down into the Agriont.

  ‘Logen!’ Bayaz was framed in the doorway, frowning after him. ‘Take care. The place may seem strange, but the people are stranger still.’

  The water frothed and gurgled, spurting up in a narrow jet from a metal tube carved like a fish’s mouth, then splashing back down into a wide stone basin. A fountain, the proud young man had called it. Pipes, beneath the earth, he’d said. Logen pictured underground streams, coursing just beneath his feet, washing at the foundations of the place. The thought made him feel slightly dizzy.

  The square was vast—a great plain of flat stones, hemmed in by sheer cliffs of white buildings. Hollow cliffs, covered with pillars and carvings, glittering with tall windows, crawling with people. Something strange seemed to be happening today. All around the distant edges of the square an enormous, sloping structure of wooden beams was being built. An army of workmen swarmed over it, hacking and bludgeoning, swinging at pegs and joints, hurling bad-tempered shouts at each other. All around them were mountains of planks and logs, barrels of nails, stacks of tools, enough to build ten mighty halls, and more besides. In places the structure was already far above the ground, its uprights soaring into the air like the masts of great ships, as high as the monstrous buildings behind.

  Logen stood, hands on hips, gawping at the enormous wooden skeleton, but its purpose was a mystery. He stepped up to a short muscular man in a leather apron, sawing furiously at a plank. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Eh?’ The man didn’t even look up from his task.

  ‘This. What’s it for?’

  The saw bit through the wood, the off-cut clattered to the ground. The carpenter hefted the rest of the plank onto a pile nearby. He turned round, eyeing Logen suspiciously, wiping sweat from his glistening forehead.

  ‘Stands. Seating.’ Logen stared vacantly back at him. How could something stand and sit at once? ‘For the Contest!’ the carpenter shouted in his face. Logen backed slowly away. Gibberish. Nonsense words. He turned and hurried off, keeping well clear of the huge wooden structures and the men clambering over them.

  He blundered out onto a broad lane, a deep gorge between looming white buildings. Statues faced each other down either side, much larger than life, frowning over the heads of the many people hurrying between. The nearest of the carvings seemed strangely familiar. Logen walked over to it, looked it up and down, then grinned to himself. The First of the Magi had gained some weight since it was sculpted. Too much good eating at the library, maybe. Logen turned towards a small man with a black hat, walking by with a big book under his arm.

  ‘Bayaz,’ he said, pointing up at the statue. ‘Friend of mine.’ The man stared at him, at the statue, back at him, and hurried away.

  The carvings marched on down either side of the avenue. Kings of the Union, Logen guessed, stood in line on the left. Some carried swords, some scrolls or tiny ships. One had a dog at his feet, another a sheaf of wheat under his arm, but otherwise there wasn’t much to tell them apart. They all had the same tall crowns and the same stern frowns. You wouldn’t have thought to look at them that they’d ever said a stupid word, or done a stupid thing, or had to take a shit in all their lives.

  Logen heard rapid footsteps thumping up behind him, and he turned just in time to see the proud young man from the gate, pounding down the avenue, shirt soaked through with sweat. Logen wondered where he might be going in such a hurry, but he was damned if he was going to run to catch up with him, not in this heat. Anyway, there were plenty more mysteries that needed solving.

  The lane opened out into a great, green space, scooped out from the country by giant hands and dropped in amongst the tall buildings, but like no countryside that Logen had ever seen. The grass was a smooth, even blanket of vivid green, shaved almost to the ground. There were flowers, but growing in rows and circles and straight lines of bright colour. There were lush bushes and trees, all squeezed and fenced and clipped into unnatural shapes. There was water, too—streams bubbling over stone steps, a great flat pond with sad-looking trees trailing round its edge.

  Logen wandered through this square-edged greenery, boots crunching on a path made of tiny grey stones. There were lots of people gathered here, squeezed in together to enjoy the sun. They sat in boats on the miniature lake, rowing gently round and round, going nowhere. They lazed on the lawns, ate, drank and babbled to one another. Some of them would point at Logen and shout, or whisper, or slope away.

  They were a strange-seeming crowd, especially the women. Pale and ghostly, swaddled in elaborate dresses, hair scraped up and piled and stuck through with pins and combs and great weird feathers or useless tiny hats. They seemed like the big jar in the round chamber—too thin and delicate to be any use, and further spoiled by too much decoration. But it had been a long time, and he smiled at them cheerfully, on the off chance. Some looked shocked, others gasped in horror. Logen sighed. The old magic was still there.

  Further on, in another wide square, Logen stopped to watch a group of soldiers practice. These weren’t beggars, or girlish youths, these were solid-looking men wearing heavy armour, breastplates and greaves polished mirror bright, long spears shouldered. They stood together, each man the same as the one beside, in four squares of maybe fifty men each, still as the statues in the avenue.

  At a bellow from a short man in a red jacket—their chief, Logen reckoned—the whole crowd turned, levelled their spears and began to advance across the square, heavy boots tramping together. Each man the same, armed the same, moving the same. It was quite a sight, all that shining metal moving steadily in bristling squares, spear points glittering, like some great square hedgehog with two hundred legs. Deadly enough, no doubt, on a big flat space, against an imaginary enemy right in front. How it would work on broken rocks, in the tipping rain, in a tangled wood, Logen was less sure. Those men would tire quickly, in all that weight of armour, and if the squares could be broken, what would they do? Men who were used to always having others at their shoulder? Could they fight alone?

  He plodded on, through wide courtyards and neat gardens, past gurgling fountains and proud statues, down clean lanes and broad avenues. He wandered up and down narrow stairways, across bridges over streams, over roads, over other bridges. He saw guards in a dozen different splen
did liveries, guarding a hundred different gates and walls and doors, every one eyeing him with the same deep suspicion. The sun climbed in the sky, the tall white buildings slid by until Logen was footsore and half lost, his neck aching from looking always upwards.

  The only constant was the monstrous tower which loomed high, high over everything else, making the greatest of the great buildings seem mean. It was always there, glimpsed out of the corner of your eye, peering over the tops of the roofs in the distance. Logen’s footsteps dragged him slowly closer and closer to it, until he came to a neglected corner of the citadel in its very shadow.

  He found an old bench beside a ragged lawn near a great crumbling building, coated with moss and ivy, its steep roofs sagging in the middles and missing tiles. He slumped down, puffing out his cheeks, and frowned up at that enormous shape beyond the walls, cut out dark against the blue, a man made mountain of dry, stark, dead stones. No plants clung to that looming mass, not even a clump of moss in the cracks between the great blocks. The House of the Maker, Bayaz had called it. It looked like no house that Logen had ever seen. There were no roofs above, no doors or windows in those naked walls. A cluster of mighty, sharp-edged tiers of rock. What need could there ever be to build a thing so big? Who was this Maker anyway? Was this all he made? A great big, useless house?

  ‘You mind if I sit?’ There was a woman looking down at Logen, more what he would have called a woman than those strange, ghostly things in the park. A pretty woman in a white dress, face framed by dark hair.

  ‘Do I mind? No. It’s a funny thing, but no one else wants to sit with me.’