The Blade Itself

by Joe Abercrombie

‘His work?’

  ‘Indeed. He took clay, and metal, and left-over flesh and he made them.’

  Logen stared. ‘He made them?’

  ‘To fight in his war. Against us. Against the Magi. Against his brother Juvens. He bred the first Shanka here and let them loose upon the world—to grow, and breed, and destroy. That was their purpose. For many years after Kanedias’ death we hunted them, but we could not catch them all. We drove them into the darkest corners of the world, and there they have grown and bred again, and now come forth to grow, and breed, and destroy, as they were always meant to do.’ Logen gawped at him.

  ‘Shanka.’ Luthar chuckled and shook his head.

  Flatheads were no laughing matter. Logen turned suddenly, blocking the narrow balcony with his body, looming over Luthar in the half light. ‘Something funny?’

  ‘Well, I mean, everyone knows there’s no such thing.’

  ‘I’ve fought them with my own hands,’ growled Logen, ‘all my life. They killed my wife, my children, my friends. The North is swarming with fucking Flatheads.’ He leaned down. ‘So don’t tell me there’s no such thing.’

  Luthar had turned pale. He looked to Glokta for support, but the Inquisitor had sagged against the wall, rubbing at his leg, thin lips tight shut, hollow face beaded with sweat. ‘I don’t care a shit either way!’ he snapped.

  ‘There’s plenty of Shanka in the world,’ hissed Logen, sticking his face right up close to Luthar’s. ‘Maybe one day you’ll meet some.’ He turned and stalked off after Bayaz, already disappearing through an archway at the far end of the balcony. He had no wish to be left behind in this place.

  Yet another hall. An enormous one, lined with a silent forest of columns on either side, peopled with a multitude of shadows. Light cut down in shafts from far above, etching strange patterns into the stone floor, shapes of light and dark, lines of black and white. Almost like writing. Is there a message here? For me? Glokta was trembling. If I looked, just for a moment longer, perhaps I could understand . . .

  Luthar wandered past, his shadow fell across the floor, the lines were broken, the feeling was gone. Glokta shook himself. I am losing my reason in this cursed place. I must think clearly. Just the facts, Glokta, only the facts.

  ‘Where does the light come from?’ he asked.

  Bayaz waved his hand. ‘Above.’

  ‘There are windows?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Glokta’s cane tapped into the light, tapped into the dark, his left boot dragged along behind. ‘Is there nothing but hallway? What’s the point of it all?’

  ‘Who can know the Maker’s mind?’ intoned Bayaz pompously, ‘or fathom his great design?’ He seemed almost to take pride in never giving straight answers.

  The whole place was a colossal waste of effort as far as Glokta could see. ‘How many lived here?’

  ‘Long years ago, in happier times, many hundreds. All manner of people who served Kanedias, and helped him in his works. But the Maker was ever distrustful, and jealous of his secrets. Bit by bit he turned his followers out, into the Agriont, the University. Towards the end, only three lived here. Kanedias himself, his assistant Jaremias,’ Bayaz paused for a moment, ‘and his daughter Tolomei.’

  ‘The Maker’s daughter?’

  ‘What of it?’ snapped the old man.

  ‘Nothing, nothing at all.’ And yet the veneer slipped then, if only for an instant. It is strange that he knows the ways of this place so well. ‘When did you live here?’

  Bayaz frowned deep. ‘There is such a thing as too many questions.’

  Glokta watched him walk away. Sult was wrong. The Arch Lector, fallible after all. He underestimated this Bayaz, and it cost him. Who is this bald, irritable fool, who can make a sprawling idiot of the most powerful man in the Union? Standing here, deep within the bowels of this unearthly place, the answer did not seem so strange.

  The First of the Magi.

  ‘This is it.’

  ‘What?’ asked Logen. The hallway stretched out in either direction, curving gently, disappearing into the darkness, walls of huge stone blocks, unbroken on either side.

  Bayaz did not answer. He was running his hands gently over the stones, looking for something. ‘Yes. This is it.’ Bayaz pulled the key out from his shirt. ‘You might want to prepare yourselves.’

  ‘For what?’

  The Magus slid the key into an unseen hole. One of the blocks that made up the walls suddenly vanished, flying up into the ceiling with a thunderous crash. Logen reeled, shaking his head. He saw Luthar bent forward, hands clamped over his ears. The whole corridor seemed to hum with crashing echoes, on and on.

  ‘Wait,’ said Bayaz, though Logen could barely hear him over the ringing in his head. ‘Touch nothing. Go nowhere.’ He stepped through the opening, leaving the key lodged in the wall.

  Logen peered after him. A glimmer of light shone down a narrow passageway, a rushing sound washed through like the trickling of a stream. Logen felt a strange curiosity picking at him. He glanced back at the other two. Perhaps Bayaz had meant only for them to stay? He ducked through the doorway.

  And squinted up at a bright, round chamber. Light flooded in from high above, piercing light, almost painful to look at after the gloom of all the rest. The curving walls were perfect, clean white stone, running with trickling water, flowing down all around and collecting in a round pool below. The air was cool, damp on Logen’s skin. A narrow bridge sprang out from the passage, steps leading upwards, ending at a tall white pillar, rising from the water. Bayaz was standing there, on top of it, staring down at something.

  Logen crept up behind the Magus, breathing shallow. A block of white stone stood there. Water dripped onto its smooth, hard centre from above. A regular tap, tap, tap, always in the same spot. Two things lay in the thin layer of wet. The first was a square box, simply made from dark metal, big enough to hold a man’s head, maybe. The other was altogether stranger.

  A weapon perhaps, like an axe. A long shaft, made from tiny metal tubes, all twisted about each other like the stems of old vines. At one end there was a scored grip, at the other there was a flat piece of metal, pierced with small holes, a long, thin hook curving out from it. The light played over its many dark surfaces, glittering with beads of moisture. Strange, beautiful, fascinating. On the grip one letter glinted, silver in the dark metal. Logen recognised it from his sword. The mark of Kanedias. The work of the Master Maker.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked, reaching out for it.

  ‘Don’t touch it!’ screamed Bayaz, slapping Logen’s hand away. ‘Did I not tell you to wait?’

  Logen took an uncertain step back. He had never seen the Magus look so worried, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the strange thing on the slab. ‘Is it a weapon?’

  Bayaz breathed a long, slow breath. ‘A most terrible one, my friend. A weapon against which no steel, no stone, no magic can protect you. Do not even tread near it, I warn you. There are dangers. The Divider, Kanedias called it, and with it he killed his brother Juvens, my master. He once told me it has two edges. One here, one on the Other Side.’

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’ muttered Logen. He couldn’t even see one edge you could cut with.

  Bayaz shrugged. ‘If I knew that I suppose that I’d be the Master Maker, instead of merely the First of the Magi.’ He reached forward and lifted the box, wincing as though it was a great weight. ‘Could you help me with this?’

  Logen hooked his hands under it, and gasped. It could hardly have weighed more if it was a block of solid iron. ‘Heavy,’ he grunted.

  ‘Kanedias forged it to be strong. As strong as all his great skill could make it. Not to keep its contents safe from the World.’ He leaned close and spoke softly. ‘To keep the World safe from its contents.’

  Logen frowned down. ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ muttered Bayaz. ‘Yet.’

  Jezal was trying to think of three men in the world he hated more. Brint? He was simply a
swollen-headed idiot. Gorst? He had merely done his meagre best to beat Jezal in a fencing match. Varuz? He was just a pompous old ass.

  No. These three were at the top of his list. The arrogant old man with his idiotic prattle and his self-important air of mystery. The hulking savage with his ugly scars and his menacing frown. The patronising cripple with his smug little comments and his pretensions of knowing all about life. The three of them, combined with the stagnant air and perpetual gloom of this horrible place, were almost enough to make Jezal puke again. The only thing he could imagine worse than his present company was no company at all. He looked into the shadows all around, and shuddered at the thought.

  Still, his spirits rose as they turned a corner. There was a small square of daylight up ahead. He hurried towards it, overtaking Glokta as he shambled along on his cane, mouth watering with anticipation at the thought of being back out under the sky.

  Jezal closed his eyes with pleasure as he stepped into the open air. The cold wind stroked his face and he gasped in great lungfulls of it. The relief was terrific, as though he had been trapped down there in the darkness for weeks, as though fingers clamped around his throat had just now been released. He walked forward across a wide, open space, paved with stark, flat stones. Ninefingers and Bayaz stood side by side up ahead, behind a parapet, waist high, and beyond them . . .

  The Agriont came into view below. A patchwork of white walls, grey roofs, glinting windows, green gardens. They were nowhere near the summit of the Maker’s House, only on one of the lowest roofs, above the gate, but still terrifyingly high. Jezal recognised the crumbling University, the shining dome of the Lords Round, the squat mass of the House of Questions. He could see the Square of Marshals, a bowl of wooden seating in amongst the buildings, perhaps even the tiny yellow flash of the fencing circle in its centre. Beyond the citadel, surrounded by its white wall and twinkling moat, the city was a sprawling grey mass under the dirty grey sky, stretching all the way to the sea.

  Jezal laughed with disbelief and delight. The Tower of Chains was a step ladder compared to this. He was so high above the world that all seemed somehow still, frozen in time. He felt like a king. No man had seen this, not for hundreds of years. He was huge, grand, far more important than the tiny people that must live and work in the little buildings down there. He turned to look at Glokta, but the cripple was not smiling. He was even paler than ever, frowning at the toy city, his left eye twitching with worry.

  ‘Scared of heights?’ laughed Jezal.

  Glokta turned his ashen face toward him. ‘There were no steps. We climbed no steps to get here!’ Jezal’s grin began to fade. ‘No steps, do you understand? How could it be? How? Tell me that!’

  Jezal swallowed as he thought over the way they had come. The cripple was right. No steps, no ramps, they had gone neither up nor down. Yet here they were, far above the tallest tower of the Agriont. He felt sick, again. The view now seemed dizzying, disgusting, obscene. He backed unsteadily away from the parapet. He wanted to go home.

  ‘I followed him through the darkness, alone, and here I faced him. Kanedias. The Master Maker. Here we fought. Fire, and steel, and flesh. Here we stood. He threw Tolomei from the roof before my eyes. I saw it happen, but I could not stop him. His own daughter. Can you imagine? No one could have deserved that less than she. There never was a more innocent spirit.’ Logen frowned. He hardly knew what to say to this.

  ‘Here we struggled,’ muttered Bayaz, his meaty fists clenched tight on the bare parapet. ‘I tore at him, with fire and steel, and flesh, and he at me. I cast him down. He fell burning, and broke upon the bridge below. And so the last of the sons of Euz passed from the world, so many of their secrets lost forever. They destroyed each other, all four of them. What a waste.’

  Bayaz turned to look at Logen. ‘But that was a long time ago, eh, my friend? Long ago.’ He puffed out his cheeks and hunched his shoulders. ‘Let us leave this place. It feels like a tomb. It is a tomb. Let us seal it up once more, and the memories with it. That is all in the past.’

  ‘Huh,’ said Logen. ‘My father used to say the seeds of the past bear fruit in the present.’

  ‘So they do.’ Bayaz reached out slowly, and his fingers brushed against the cold, dark metal of the box in Logen’s hands. ‘So they do. Your father was a wise man.’

  Glokta’s leg was burning, his twisted spine was a river of fire from his arse to his skull. His mouth was dry as sawdust, his face sweaty and twitching, the breath hissing in his nose, but he pressed on through the darkness, away from the vast hall with its black orb and its strange contraption, on towards the open door. And into the light.

  He stood there with his head tipped back, on the narrow bridge before the narrow gateway, his hand trembling on the handle of his cane, blinking and rubbing his eyes, gasping in the free air and feeling the cool breeze on his face. Who would have thought that wind could feel so fine? Maybe it’s just as well there weren’t any steps. I might never have made it out.

  Luthar was already halfway back across the bridge, hurrying as though he had a devil a stride behind. Ninefingers was not far away, breathing hard and muttering something in Northern over and over. ‘Still alive,’ Glokta thought it might be. His big hands were clenched tight around that square metal box, tendons standing out as though it weighed as much as an anvil. There was more to this trip than just proving a point. What is it that they brought out from there? What weighs so heavily? He glanced back into the darkness, and shivered. He was not sure he even wanted to know.

  Bayaz strolled out of the tunnel and into the open air, looking smug as ever. ‘So, Inquisitor,’ he said breezily. ‘How did you find your trip into the House of the Maker?’

  A twisted, strange and horrible nightmare. I might even have preferred to return to the Emperor’s prisons for a few hours. ‘Something to do of a morning,’ he snapped.

  ‘I’m so glad you found it diverting,’ chuckled Bayaz, as he pulled the rod of dark metal out from his shirt. ‘And tell me, do you still believe that I’m a liar? Or have your suspicions finally been laid to rest?’

  Glokta frowned at the key. He frowned at the old man. He frowned into the crushing darkness of the Maker’s House. My suspicions grow with every passing moment. They are never laid to rest. They only change shape. ‘Honestly? I don’t know what to believe.’

  ‘Good. Knowing your own ignorance is the first step to enlightenment. Between you and me, though, I’d think of something else to tell the Arch Lector.’ Glokta felt his eyelid flickering. ‘You’d better start across, eh, Inquisitor? While I lock up?’

  The plunge to the cold water below no longer seemed to hold much fear. If I were to fall, at least I would die in the light. Glokta looked back only once, as he heard the doors of the Maker’s House shut with a soft click, the circles slide back into place. All as it was before we arrived. He turned his prickling back, sucked his gums against the familiar waves of nausea, and cursed and struggled his limping way across the bridge.

  Luthar was hammering desperately on the old gates at the far end. ‘Let us in!’ he was nearly sobbing as Glokta hobbled up, an edge of cracked panic to his voice. ‘Let us in!’ The door finally wobbled open to reveal a shocked-looking Warden. Such a shame. I was sure that Captain Luthar was about to burst into tears. The proud winner of the Contest, the Union’s bravest young son, the very flower of manhood, blubbing on his knees. That sight could almost have made the trip worthwhile. Luthar darted through the open gate and Ninefingers followed grimly after, cradling the metal box in his arms. The Warden squinted at Glokta as he limped up to the gate. ‘Back so soon?’

  You old dolt. ‘What the hell are you talking about, so soon?’

  ‘I’m only halfway through my eggs. You’ve been gone less than half an hour.’

  Glokta barked a joyless laugh. ‘Half a day, perhaps.’ But he frowned as he peered past into the courtyard. The shadows were almost exactly where they had been when they left. Early morning still, but how?
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  ‘The Maker once told me that time is all in the mind.’ Glokta winced as he turned his head. Bayaz had come up behind him, and was tapping the side of his bald skull with a thick finger. ‘It could be worse, believe me. It’s when you come out before you went in that you really start to worry.’ He smiled, eyes glinting in the light through the doorway. Playing the fool? Or trying to make a fool of me? Either way, these games grow tiresome.

  ‘Enough riddles,’ sneered Glokta. ‘Why not just tell me what you’re after?’

  The First of the Magi, if such he was, grinned still wider. ‘I like you, Inquisitor, I really do. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were the only honest man left in this whole damn country. We should have a talk at some point, you and I. A talk about what I want, and about what you want.’ His smile vanished. ‘But not today.’

  And he stepped through the open door, leaving Glokta behind in the shadows.

  Nobody’s Dog

  ‘Why me?’ West murmured to himself through gritted teeth, staring across the bridge towards the South Gate. That nonsense at the docks had taken him longer than expected, much longer, but then didn’t everything these days? It sometimes felt as if he was the only man in the Union seriously preparing for a war, and had to organise the entire business on his own, right down to counting the nails that would hold the horses’ shoes on. He was already late for his daily meeting with Marshal Burr, and knew there would be a hundred impossible things for him to get done today. There always were. To become involved in some pointless hold-up here at the very gate of the Agriont was all he needed.

  ‘Why the hell must it be me?’ His head was starting to hurt again. That all too familiar pulsing behind the eyes. Each day it seemed to come on earlier, and end up worse.

  Because of the heat over the last few days, the guards had been permitted to come to duty without full armour. West reckoned that at least two of them were now regretting it. One was folded up on the ground near the gate, hands clasped between his legs, whimpering noisily. His sergeant stood stooped over next to him, blood running from his nose and pattering dark red drops on the stones of the bridge. The two other soldiers in the detail had their spears lowered, blades pointing towards a scrawny dark-skinned youth. Another southerner stood nearby, an old man with long grey hair, leaning against the handrail and watching the scene with an expression of profound resignation.