Last Argument Of Kings: Book Three (The First Law 3)

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.’

‘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.