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 s
mile.
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 kno
w 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.
The First Law Trilogy Boxed Set: The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, Last Argument of Kings Page 164