Last Argument of Kings tfl-3

by Joe Abercrombie

  “There are many things that I can give you. Safety. Security. Respect. You will have the best of everything. A high place in society, for what such things are worth. No one will dream of laying a finger upon you. No one will dare to talk down to you. People will whisper behind your back, of course. But they will whisper of your beauty, your wit, and your surpassing virtue.” Glokta narrowed his eyes. “I will see to it.”

  She looked up at him, and swallowed. And now comes the refusal. My thanks, but I would rather die. “I should be honest with you. When I was younger… I did some foolish things.” Her mouth twisted. “This isn’t even the first bastard I’ve carried. My father threw me down the stairs and I lost it. He nearly killed me. I didn’t think that it could happen again.”

  “We have all done things we are not proud of.” You should hear my confessions, some time. Or rather no one ever should. “That changes nothing. I promised that I would look to your welfare. I see no other way.”

  “Then yes.” She took the ring from him without any ceremony and slid it onto her finger. “There is nothing to think about, is there?” Scarcely the gushing acceptance, the tearful acquiescence, the joyful surrender that one reads of in the story books. A reluctant business arrangement. An occasion for sad reflection on all that might have been, but is not.

  “Who would have thought,” she murmured, staring at the jewel on her finger, “when I watched you fence with my brother, all those years ago, that I would one day wear your ring? You always were the man of my dreams.”

  And now of your nightmares. “Life takes strange turns. The circumstances are not quite what anyone would have predicted.” And so I save two lives. How much evil can that possibly outweigh? Yet it is something on the right side of the scales, at least. Every man needs something on the right side of the scales.

  Her dark eyes rolled up to his. “Could you not have afforded a bigger stone?”

  “Only by raiding the treasury,” he croaked. A kiss would be traditional, but under the circumstances—

  She stepped towards him, lifting one arm. He lurched back, winced at a twinge in his hip. “Sorry. Somewhat… out of practice.”

  “If I am to do this, I mean to do it properly.”

  “To make the best of it, do you mean?”

  “To make something of it, anyway.” She drew closer still. He had to force himself to stay where he was. She looked into his eyes. She reached up, slowly, and touched his cheek, and set his eyelid flickering.

  Foolishness. How many women have touched me before? And yet that was another life. Another—

  Her hand slid round his face, her fingertips pressing tight into his jaw. His neck clicked as she pulled him close. He felt her breath warm on his chin. Her lips brushed against his, gently, and back the other way. He heard her make a soft grunt in her throat, and it made his own breath catch. Pretence, of course. How could any woman want to touch this ruined body? Kiss this ruined face? Even I am repulsed at the thought of it. Pretence, and yet I must applaud her for the effort.

  His left leg trembled and he had to cling tight to his cane. The breath hissed fast through his nose. Her face was sideways on to his, their mouths locked together, sucking wetly. The tip of her tongue licked at his empty gums. Pretence, of course, what else could it be? And yet she does it so very, very well…

  The First Law

  Ferro sat, and she stared at her hand. The hand that had held the Seed. It looked the same as ever, yet it felt different. Cold, still. Very cold. She had wrapped it in blankets. She had bathed it in warm water. She had held it near the fire, so near that she had burned herself.

  Nothing helped.

  “Ferro…” Whispered so quiet it could almost have been the wind around the window-frame.

  She jerked to her feet, knife clutched in her fist. She stared into the corners of her room. All empty. She bent down to look under the bed, under the tall cupboard. She tore the hangings out of the way with her free hand. No one. She had known there would be no one.

  Yet she still heard them.

  A thumping at the door and she whipped round again, breath hissing through her teeth. Another dream? Another ghost? More heavy knocks.

  “Come in?” she growled.

  The door opened. Bayaz. He raised one eyebrow at her knife. “You are altogether too fond of blades, Ferro. You have no enemies here.”

  She glared at the Magus through narrowed eyes. She was not so sure. “What happened, in the wind?”

  “What happened?” Bayaz shrugged. “We won.”

  “What were those shapes? Those shadows.”

  “I saw nothing, aside from Mamun and his Hundred Words receiving the punishment they deserved.”

  “Did you not hear voices?”

  “Over the thunder of our victory? I heard nothing.”

  “I did.” Ferro lowered the knife and slid it into her belt. She worked the fingers of her hand, the same, and yet changed. “I still hear them.”

  “And what do they tell you, Ferro?”

  “They speak of locks, and gates, and doors, and the opening of them. Always they talk of opening them. They ask about the Seed. Where is it?”

  “Safe.” Bayaz gazed blankly at her. “Remember, if you truly hear the creatures of the Other Side, that they are made of lies.”

  “They are not alone in that. They ask me to break the First Law. Just as you did.”

  “Open to interpretation.” Bayaz had a proud twist to the corner of his mouth. As if he had achieved something wonderful. “I tempered Glustrod’s disciplines with the techniques of the Master Maker, and used the Seed as the engine for my Art. The results were…” He took a long, satisfied breath. “Well, you were there. It was, above all, a triumph of will.”

  “You tampered with the seals. You put the world at risk. The Tellers of Secrets…”

  “The First Law is a paradox. Whenever you change a thing you borrow from the world below, and there are always risks. If I have crossed a line it is a line of scale only. The world is safe, is it not? I make no apologies for the ambition of my vision.”

  “They are burying men, and women, and children, in pits for a hundred. Just as they did in Aulcus. This sickness… it is because of what we did. Is that ambition, then? The size of the graves?”

  Bayaz gave a dismissive toss of his head. “An unexpected side-effect. The price of victory, I fear, is the same now as it was in the Old Time, and always will be.” He fixed her with his eye, and there was a threat in it. A challenge. “But if I broke the First Law, what then? In what court will you have me judged? By what jury? Will you release Tolomei from the darkness to give evidence? Will you seek out Zacharus to read the charge? Will you drag Cawneil from the edge of the World to deliver the verdict? Will you bring great Juvens from the land of the dead to pronounce the sentence? I think not. I am First of the Magi. I am the last authority and I say… I am righteous.”

  “You? No.”

  “Yes, Ferro. Power makes all things right. That is my first law, and my last. That is the only law that I acknowledge.”

  “Zacharus warned me,” she murmured, thinking of the endless plain, the wild-eyed old man with his circling birds. “He told me to run, and never stop running. I should have listened to him.”

  “To that bloated bladder of self-righteousness?” Bayaz snorted. “Perhaps you should have, but that ship has sailed. You waved it away happily from the shore, and chose instead to feed your fury. Gladly you fed it. Let us not pretend that I deceived you. You knew we were to walk dark paths.”

  “I did not expect…” she worked her icy fingers into a trembling fist. “This.”

  “What did you expect, then? I must confess I thought you made of harder stuff. Let us leave the philosophising to those with more time and fewer scores to settle. Guilt, and regret, and righteousness? It is like talking with the great King Jezal. And who has the patience for that?” He turned towards the door. “You should stay near me. Perhaps, in time, Khalul will send other agents. Then I
will have need of your talents once again.”

  She snorted. “And until then? Sit here with the shadows for company?”

  “Until then, smile, Ferro, if you can remember how.” Bayaz flashed his white grin at her. “You have your vengeance.”

  The wind tore around her, rushed around her, full of shadows. She knelt at one end of a screaming tunnel, touching the very sky. The world was thin and brittle as a sheet of glass, ready to crack. Beyond it a bottomless void, filled with voices.

  “Let us in…”

  “No!” She thrashed her way free and struggled up, stood panting on the floor beside her bed, every muscle rigid. But there was no one to fight. Another dream, only.

  Her own fault, for letting herself sleep.

  A long strip of moonlight reached towards her across the tiles. The window at its end stood ajar, a cold night breeze washed through and chilled her sweat-beaded skin. She walked to it, frowning, pushed it shut and slid the bolt. She turned around.

  A figure stood in the thick shadows beside the door. A one-armed figure, swathed in rags. The few pieces of armour still strapped to him were scuffed and gouged. His face was a dusty ruin, torn skin hanging in scraps from white bone, but even so, Ferro knew him.

  Mamun.

  “We meet again, devil-blood.” His dry voice rustled like old paper.

  “I am dreaming,” she hissed.

  “You will wish that you were.” He was across the room in a breathless instant. His one hand closed round her throat like a lock snapping shut. “Digging my way out of that ruination one handful of dirt at a time has given me a hunger.” His dry breath tickled at her face. “I will make myself a new arm from your flesh, and with it I will strike down Bayaz and take vengeance for great Juvens. The Prophet has seen it, and I will turn his vision into truth.” He lifted her, effortlessly, crushed her back against the wall, her heels kicking against the panelling.

  The hand squeezed. Her chest heaved, but no air moved inside her neck. She struggled with the fingers, ripped at them with her nails, but they were made of iron, made of stone, tight as a hanged man’s collar. She fought and twisted but he did not shift a hair’s breadth. She fiddled with Mamun’s ruined face, her fingers worked their way into his ripped cheek, tore at the dusty flesh inside but his eyes did not even blink. It had grown cold in the room.

  “Say your prayers, child,” he whispered, broken teeth grinding, “and hope that God is merciful.”

  She was growing weaker now. Her lungs were bursting. She tore at him still, but each effort was less. Weaker and weaker. Her arms drooped, her legs dangled, her eyelids were heavy, heavy. All was terrible cold.

  “Now,” he whispered, breath smoking. He brought her down, opening his mouth, his torn lips sliding back from his splintered teeth. “Now.”

  Her finger stabbed into his neck. Through his skin and into his dry flesh, up to the knuckle. It drove his head away. Her other hand wormed round his, prised it from her throat, bent his fingers backwards. She felt the bones in them snap, crunch, splinter as she dropped to the floor. White frost crept out across the black window-panes beside her, squeaked under her bare feet as she twisted Mamun round and rammed him against the wall, crushed his body into the splintering panels, the cracking plaster. Dust showered down from the force of it.

  She drove her finger further into his throat, upwards, inwards. It was easy to do it. There was no end to her strength. It came from the other side of the divide. The Seed had changed her, as it had changed Tolomei, and there could be no going back.

  Ferro smiled.

  “Take my flesh, would you? You have had your last meal, Mamun.”

  The tip of her finger slid out between his teeth, met her thumb and hooked him like a fish. With a jerk of her wrist she ripped the jaw-bone from his head and tossed it clattering away. His tongue lolled inside a ragged mass of dusty flesh.

  “Say your prayers, Eater,” she hissed, “and hope that God is merciful.” She clamped her palms around either side of his head. A long squeak came from his nose. His shattered hand pawed at her, uselessly. His skull bent, then flattened, then burst apart, splinters of bone flying. She let the body fall, dust sliding out across the floor, curling round her feet.

  “Yes…”

  She did not startle. She did not stare. She knew where the voice came from. Everywhere and nowhere.

  She stepped to the window and pulled it open. She jumped through, dropped a dozen strides down to the turf, and stood. The night was full of sounds, but she was silent. She padded across the moonlit grass, crunching frozen where her bare feet fell, crept up a long stair and onto the walls. The voices followed her.

  “Wait.”

  “The Seed!”

  “Ferro.”

  “Let us in…”

  She ignored them. An armoured man stared out into the night, out towards the House of the Maker, a blacker outline against the black sky. A wedge of darkness over the Agriont within which there were no stars, no moonlit clouds, no light at all. Ferro wondered if Tolomei was lurking in the shadows inside, scratching at its gates. Scratching, scratching, forever. She had wasted her chance at vengeance.

  Ferro would not do the same.

  She slid down the battlements, around the guard, hugging his cloak tight about his shoulders as she passed. Up onto the parapet and she leaped, the wind rushing against her skin. She cleared the moat, creaking ice spreading out across the water beneath her. The cobbled ground beyond rushed up. Her feet thumped into it and she rolled over, over, away into the buildings. Her clothes were torn from the fall but there was no mark on her skin. Not so much as a bead of blood.

  “No, Ferro.”

  “Back, and find the Seed!”

  “It is near him.”

  “Bayaz has it.”

  Bayaz. Perhaps when she was done in the South, she would return. When she had buried the great Uthman-ul-Dosht in the ruins of his own palace. When she had sent Khalul, and his Eaters, and his priests to hell. Perhaps then she would come back, and teach the First of the Magi the lesson that he deserved. The lesson that Tolomei meant to teach him. But then, liar or not, he had kept his word to her, in the end. He had given her the means of vengeance.

  Now she would take it.

  Ferro stole through the silent ruins of the city, quiet and quick as a night breeze. South, towards the docks. She would find a way. South, across the sea to Gurkhul, and then…

  The voices whispered to her. A thousand voices. They spoke of the gates that Euz closed, and of the seals that Euz put upon them. They begged her to open them. They told her to break them. They told her how, and they commanded her to do it.

  But Ferro only smiled. Let them speak.

  She had no masters.

  Tea and Threats

  Logen frowned.

  He frowned at the wide hall, and its glittering mirrors, and the many powerful people in it. He scowled at the great Lords of the Union facing him. Two hundred of them or more, sitting in a muttering crowd around the opposite side of the room. Their false talk, and their false smiles, and their false faces cloyed at him like too much honey. But he felt no better about the folk on his side of the hall, sharing the high platform with him and the great King Jezal.

  There was the sneering cripple who’d asked all the questions that day in the tower, dressed now all in white. There was a fat man with a face full of broken veins, looked as if he started each day with a bottle. There was a tall, lean bastard in a black breastplate covered in fancy gold, with a soft smile and hard little eyes. As shifty a pack of liars as Logen had ever laid eyes on, but there was one worse than all the rest together.

  Bayaz sat with an easy grin on his face, as if everything had turned out just the way he’d planned. Maybe it had. Damn wizard. Logen should have known better than to trust a man with no hair. The spirits had warned him that Magi have their own purposes, but he’d taken no notice, plunged on blindly, hoping for the best, just like always. Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he never
listens. One fault among many.

  His eyes swivelled the other way, towards Jezal. He looked comfortable enough in his kingly robes, golden crown gleaming on his head, golden chair even bigger than the one that Logen was sitting in. His wife sat beside him. She had a frosty pride about her, maybe, but no worse for that. Beautiful as a winter morning. And she had this look on her face, when she looked at Jezal. A fierce kind of look, as if she could hardly stop herself tearing into him with her teeth. That lucky bastard always seemed to come out alright. She could’ve had a little bite out of Logen if she’d wanted, but what woman in her right mind did?

  He frowned most of all at himself in the mirrors opposite, raised up on the high platform beside Jezal and his queen. He looked a sullen and brooding, scarred and fearsome monster beside that beautiful pair. A man made of murder, then swaddled in rich coloured cloth and rare white furs, set with polished rivets and bright buckles, all topped off with a great golden chain around his shoulders. That same chain that Bethod had worn. His hands stuck from the ends of his fur-trimmed sleeves, marked and brutal, one finger missing, grasping at the arms of his gilded chair. King’s clothes, maybe, but killer’s hands. He looked like the villain in some old children’s story. The ruthless warrior, clawed his way to power with fire and steel. Climbed to a throne up a mountain of corpses. Maybe he was that man.

  He squirmed around, new cloth scratching at his clammy skin. He’d come a long way, since he dragged himself out of a river without even a pair of boots to his name. Dragged himself across the High Places with nothing but a pot for company. He’d come a long way, but he wasn’t sure he hadn’t liked himself better before. He’d laughed when he’d heard that Bethod was calling himself a king. Now here he was, doing the same, and even worse suited to the job. Say one thing for Logen Ninefingers, say he’s a cunt. Simple as that. And that’s not something any man likes to admit about himself.

  The drunkard, Hoff, was doing most of the talking. “The Lords’ Round lies in ruins, alas. For the time being, therefore, until a venue of grandeur suitable for this noble institution has been built—a new Lords’ Round, richer and greater than the last—it has been decided that the Open Council will stand in recess.”