“I see!” hissed Zacharus, red-streaked eyes bulging wider than ever. “And if you find what you seek, what then? Do you truly suppose that you can control it? Do you dare to imagine that you can do what Glustrod, and Kanedias, and Juvens himself could not?”
“I am the wiser for their mistakes.”
“I hardly think so! You would punish one crime with a worse!”
Bayaz’ thin lips and hollow cheeks turned sharper still. No sadness, no fear, but much anger of his own. “This war was not of my making, brother. Did I break the Second Law? Did I make slaves of half the South for the sake of my vanity?”
“No, but we each had our part in it, and you more than most. Strange, how I remember things that you leave out. How you squabbled with Khalul. How Juvens determined to separate you. How you sought out the Maker, persuaded him to share his secrets.” Zacharus laughed, a harsh cackle, and his birds croaked and squawked along with him. “I daresay he never intended to share his daughter with you, eh, Bayaz? The Maker’s daughter? Tolomei? Is there room in your memory for her?”
Bayaz’ eyes glittered cold. “Perhaps the blame is mine,” he whispered. “The solution shall be mine also—”
“Do you think Euz spoke the First Law on a whim? Do you think Juvens put this thing at the edge of the World because it was safe? It is… it is evil!”
“Evil?” Bayaz snorted his contempt. “A word for children. A word the ignorant use for those who disagree with them. I thought we grew out of such notions long centuries ago.”
“But the risks—”
“I am resolved.” And Bayaz’ voice was iron, and well sharpened. “I have thought for long years upon it. You have said your piece, Zacharus, but you have offered me no other choices. Try and stop me, if you must. Otherwise, stand aside.”
“Then nothing has changed.” The old man turned to look at Ferro, his creased face twitching, and the dark eyes of his birds looked with him. “And what of you, devil-blood? Do you know what he would have you touch? Do you understand what he would have you carry? Do you have an inkling of the dangers?” A small bird hopped from his shoulder and started twittering round and round Ferro’s head in circles. “You would be better to run, and never to stop running! You all would!”
Ferro’s lip curled. She slapped the bird out of the air, and it clattered to the ground, hopping and tweeting away between the corpses. The others squawked and hissed and clucked their anger, but she ignored them. “You do not know me, old fool pink with a dirty beard. Do not pretend to understand me, or to know what I know, or what I have been offered. Why should I prefer the word of one old liar over another? Take your birds and keep your nose to your own business, then we will have no quarrel. The rest is wasted breath.”
Zacharus and his birds blinked. He frowned, opened his mouth, then shut it silently again as Ferro swung herself up into her saddle and jerked her horse round towards the west. She heard the sounds of the others following, hooves thumping, Quai cracking the reins of the cart, then Bayaz’ voice. “Listen to the birds of the air, the fish of the water, the beasts of the earth. Soon you will hear that Khalul has been finished, his Eaters turned to dust, the mistakes of the past buried, as they should have been, long ago.”
“I hope so, but I fear the news will be worse.” Ferro looked over her shoulder, and saw the two old men exchanging one more stare. “The mistakes of the past are not so easily buried. I earnestly hope that you fail.”
“Look around you, old friend.” And the First of the Magi smiled as he clambered up into his saddle. “None of your hopes ever come to anything.”
And so they rode away from the corpses in silence, past the broken hundred-mile column and into the dead land. Towards the ruins of the past. Towards Aulcus.
Under a darkening sky.
A Matter of Time
To Arch Lector Sult,
head of his Majesty’s Inquisition.
Your Eminence,
Six weeks now, we have held the Gurkish back. Each morning they brave our murderous fire to tip earth and stone into our ditch, each night we lower men from the walls to try and dig it out. In spite of all our efforts, they have finally succeeded in filling the channel in two places. Daily, now, scaling parties rush forward from the Gurkish lines and set their ladders, sometimes making it onto the walls themselves, only to be bloodily repulsed.
Meanwhile the bombardment by catapults continues, and several sections of the walls are dangerously weakened. They have been shored up, but it might not be long before the Gurkish have a practicable breach. Barricades have been raised on the inside to contain them should they make it through into the Lower City. Our defences are tested to the limit, but no man entertains a thought of surrender. We will fight on.
As always, your Eminence, I serve and obey.
Sand dan Glokta
Superior of Dagoska.
Glokta held his breath, licking at his gums as he watched the dust clouds settling across the roofs of the slums through his eye-glass. The last crashes and clatters of falling stones faded, and Dagoska, for that one moment, was strangely silent. The world holds its breath.
Then the distant screaming reached him on his balcony, thrust out from the wall of the Citadel, high above the city. A screaming he remembered well from battlefields both old and new. And hardly happy memories. The Gurkish war cry. The enemy are coming. Now, he knew, they were charging across the open ground before the walls, as they had done so many times these past weeks. But this time they have a breach.
He watched the tiny shapes of soldiers moving on the dust-coated walls and towers to either side of the gap. He moved his eye-glass down to take in the wide half-circle of barricades, the triple ranks of men squatting behind them, waiting for the Gurkish to come. Glokta frowned and worked his numb left foot inside his boot. A meagre-seeming defence, indeed. But all we have.
Now Gurkish soldiers began to pour through the yawning breach like black ants swarming from a nest; a crowd of jostling men, twinkling steel, waving banners, emerging from the clouds of brown dust, scrambling down the great heap of fallen masonry and straight into a furious hail of flatbow bolts. First through the breach. An unenviable position. The front ranks were mown down as they came on, tiny shapes falling and tumbling down the hill of rubble behind the walls. Many fell, but there were always more, pressing in over the bodies of their comrades, struggling forward over the mass of broken stones and shattered timbers, and into the city.
Now another cry floated up, and Glokta saw the defenders charge from behind their barricades. Union soldiers, mercenaries, Dagoskans, all hurled themselves towards the breach. At this distance it all seemed to move with absurd slowness. A stream of oil and a stream of water dribbling towards one another. They met, and it became impossible to tell one side from the other. A flowing mass, punctuated by glittering metal, rippling and surging like the sea, a colourful flag or two hanging limp above.