The Blade Itself (29 page)

“Me?”

“Yes, you! Marshal Varuz, the Union’s most famous soldier no less, has given you a glowing report. He says you are a most committed, tenacious, and hard-working officer. The very qualities I need! As a Lieutenant you fought in Gurkhul under Colonel Glokta, did you not?”

West swallowed. “Well, yes.”

“And it is well known you were first through the breach at Ulrioch.”

“Well, among the first, I was—”

“You have led men in the field, and your personal courage is beyond question! There is no need to be modest, Major, you are the man for me!” Burr sat back, a smile on his face, confident he had made his point. He burped again, holding up his hand. “My apologies… damn indigestion!”

“Sir, may I be blunt?”

“I am no courtier, West. You must always be blunt with me. I demand it!”

“An appointment on a Lord Marshal’s staff, sir, you must understand. I am a gentleman’s son. A commoner. As commander of a battalion, I already have difficulty gaining the respect of the junior officers. The men I would have to give orders to if I were on your staff, sir, senior men with good blood…” He paused, exasperated. The Marshal gazed blankly at him. “They will not permit it!”

Burr’s eyebrows drew together. “Permit it?”

“Their pride will not allow it, sir, their—”

“Damn their pride!” Burr leaned forward, his dark eyes fixed on West’s face. “Now listen to me, and listen carefully. Times are changing. I don’t need men with good blood. I need men who can plan, and organise, give orders, and follow them. There will lie no room in my army for those who cannot do as they are told, I don’t care how noble they are. As a member of my staff you represent me, and I will not be slighted or ignored.” He burped suddenly, and smashed the table with his fist. “I will see to it!” he roared. “Times are changing! They may not smell it yet, but they soon will!”

West stared dumbly back. “In any case,” and Burr waved a dismissive hand, “I am not consulting with you, I am informing you. This is your new assignment. Your King needs you, your country needs you, and that is all. You have five days to hand over command of your battalion.” And the Lord Marshal turned back to his papers.

“Yes, sir,” muttered West.

He fumbled the door shut behind him with numb fingers, walked slowly down the hallway, staring at the floor. War. War in the North. Dunbrec fallen, the Northmen loose in Angland. Officers hurried around him. Someone brushed past, but he hardly noticed. There were people in danger, mortal danger! People he knew maybe, neighbours from home. There was fighting even now, inside the Union’s borders! He rubbed his jaw. This war could be a terrible thing. Worse than Gurkhul had been, even, and he would be at the heart of it. A place on a Lord Marshal’s staff. Him? Collem West? A commoner? He still could hardly believe it.

West felt a sneaking, guilty glow of satisfaction. It was for just such an appointment that he had been working like a dog all these years. If he did well there was no telling where he might go. This war was a bad thing, a terrible thing, no doubt. He felt himself grinning. A terrible thing. But it just might be the making of him.

The Theatrical Outfitter’s

The deck creaked and shifted beneath his feet, the sail-cloth flapped gently, sea birds crowed and called in the salty air above.

“I never thought to see such a thing,” muttered Logen.

The city was a huge white crescent, stretching all round the wide blue bay, sprawling across many bridges, tiny in the distance, and onto rocky islands in the sea. Here and there green parks stood out from the confusion of buildings, the thin grey lines of rivers and canals shone in the sun. There were walls too, studded with towers, skirting the distant edge of the city and striking boldly through the jumble of houses. Logen’s jaw hung stupidly open, his eyes darted here and there, unable to take in the whole.

“Adua,” murmured Bayaz. “The centre of the world. The poets call her the city of white towers. Beautiful, isn’t she, from a distance?” The Magus leaned towards him. “Believe me, though, she stinks when you get close.”

A vast fortress rose up from within the city, its sheer white walls towering above the carpet of buildings outside, bright sunlight glinting on shining domes within. Logen had never dreamed of a man-made thing so great, so proud, so strong. One tower in particular rose high, high over all the others, a tapering cluster of smooth, dark pillars, seeming to support the very sky.

“And Bethod means to make war on this?” he whispered. “He must be mad.”

“Perhaps. Bethod, for all his waste and pride, understands the Union.” Bayaz nodded towards the city. “They are jealous of one another, all those people. It may be a union in name, but they fight each other tooth and nail. The lowly squabble over trifles. The great wage secret wars for power and wealth, and they call it government. Wars of words, and tricks, and guile, but no less bloody for that. The casualties are many.” The Magus sighed. “Behind those walls they shout and argue and endlessly bite one another’s backs. Old squabbles are never settled, but thrive, and put down roots, and the roots grow deeper with the passing years. It has always been so. They are not like you, Logen. A man here can smile, and fawn, and call you friend, give you gifts with one hand and stab you with the other. You will find this a strange place.”

Logen already found it the strangest thing he had ever seen. There was no end to it. As their boat slipped into the bay the city seemed to grow more vast than ever. A forest of white buildings, speckled with dark windows, embracing them on all sides, covering the hills in roofs and towers, crowding together, wall squashed to wall, pressing up against the water on the shoreline.

Ships and boats of all designs vied with each other in the bay, sails billowing, crewmen crying out over the noise of the spray, hurrying about the decks and crawling through the rigging. Some were smaller even than their own little two-sailed boat. Some were far larger. Logen gawped, amazed, as a huge vessel ploughed through the water towards them, shining spray flying from its prow. A mountain of wood, floating by some magic in the sea. The ship passed, leaving them rocking in its wake, but there were more, many more, tethered to the countless wharves along the shore.

Logen, shielding his eyes against the bright sun with one hand, began to make out people on the sprawling docks. He began to hear them too, a faint din of voices crying and carts rattling and cargoes clattering to the ground. There were hundreds of tiny figures, swarming among the ships and buildings like black ants. “How many live here?” he whispered.

“Thousands.” Bayaz shrugged. “Hundreds of thousands. People from every land within the Circle of the World. There are Northmen here, and dark-skinned Kantics from Gurkhul and beyond. People from the Old Empire, far to the west, and merchants of the Free Cities of Styria. Others too, from still further away—the Thousand Islands, distant Suljuk, and Thond, where they worship the sun. More people than can be counted—living, dying, working, breeding, climbing one upon the other. Welcome,” and Bayaz spread his arms wide to encompass the monstrous, the beautiful, the endless city, “to civilisation!”

Hundreds of thousands. Logen struggled to understand it. Hundreds… of thousands. Could there be so many people in the world? He stared at the city, all around him, wondering, rubbing his aching eyes. What might a hundred thousand people look like?

An hour later he knew.

Only in battle had Logen ever been so squashed, hemmed, pressed by other people. It was like a battle, here on the docks—the cries, the anger, the crush, the fear and confusion. A battle in which no mercy was shown, and which had no end and no winners. Logen was used to the open sky, the air around him, his own company. On the road, when Bayaz and Quai had ridden close beside him, he’d felt squeezed. Now there were people on every side, pushing, jostling, shouting. Hundreds of them! Thousands! Hundreds of thousands! Could they really all be people? People like him with thoughts and moods and dreams? Faces loomed up and flashed by—surly, anxious, frowning, gone in a sickening whirl of colour. Logen swallowed, blinked. His throat was painfully dry. His head span. Surely this was hell. He knew he deserved to be here, but he didn’t remember dying.

“Malacus!” he hissed desperately. The apprentice looked round. “Stop a moment!” Logen pulled at his collar, trying to let some air in. “I can’t breathe!”

Quai grinned. “It might just be the smell.”

It might at that. The docks smelled like hell, and no mistake. The reek of stinking fish, sickly spices, rotting fruit, fresh dung, sweating horses and mules and people, mingled and bred under the hot sun and became worse by far than any one alone.

“Move!” A shoulder knocked Logen roughly aside and was gone. He leaned against a grimy wall and wiped sweat from his face.

Bayaz was smiling. “Not like the wide and barren North, eh, Ninefingers?”

“No.” Logen watched the people milling past—the horses, the carts, the endless faces. A man stared suspiciously at him as he passed. A boy pointed at him and shouted something. A woman with a basket gave him a wide berth, staring fearfully up as she hurried by. Now he had a moment to think, they were all looking, and pointing, and staring, and they didn’t look happy.

Logen leaned down to Malacus. “I am feared and hated throughout the North. I don’t like it, but I know why.” A sullen group of sailors stared at him with hard eyes, muttering to each other under their breath. He watched them, puzzled, until they disappeared behind a rumbling wagon. “Why do they hate me here?”

“Bethod has moved quickly,” muttered Bayaz, frowning out at the crowds. “His war with the Union has already begun. We will not find the North too popular in Adua, I fear.”

“How do they know where I’m from?” Malacus raised an eyebrow. “You stick out somewhat.” Logen flinched as a pair of laughing youths flashed by him. “I do? Among all this?”

“Only like a huge, scarred, dirty gatepost.”

“Ah.” He looked down at himself. “I see.”

Away from the docks the crowds grew sparser, the air cleaner, the noise faded. It was still teeming, stinking, and noisy, but at least Logen could take a breath.

They passed across wide paved squares, decorated with plants and statues, where brightly-painted wooden signs hung over doors—blue fish, pink pigs, purple bunches of grapes, brown loaves of bread. There were tables and chairs out in the sun where people sat and ate from flat pots, drank from green glass cups. They threaded through narrow alleys, where rickety-looking wood and plaster buildings leaned out over them, almost meeting above their heads, leaving only a thin strip of blue sky between. They wandered down wide, cobbled roads, busy with people and lined with monstrous white buildings. Logen blinked and gaped at all of it.

On no moor, however foggy, in no forest, however dense, had Logen ever felt so completely lost. He had no idea now in what direction the boat was, though they’d left it no more than half an hour ago. The sun was hidden behind the towering buildings and everything looked the same. He was terrified he’d lose track of Bayaz and Quai in the crowds, and be lost forever. He hurried after the back of the wizard’s bald head, following him into an open space. A great road, bigger than any they’d seen so far, bounded on either side by white palaces behind high walls and fences, lined with ancient trees.

The people here were different. Their clothes were bright and gaudy, cut in strange styles that served no purpose. The women hardly seemed like people at all—pale and bony, swaddled in shining fabric, flapping at themselves in the hot sun with pieces of cloth stretched over sticks.

“Where are we?” he shouted at Bayaz. If the wizard had answered that they were on the moon, Logen would not have been surprised.

“This is the Middleway, one of the city’s main thoroughfares! It cuts through the very centre of the city to the Agriont!”

“Agriont?”

“Fortress, palace, barracks, seat of government. A city within the city. The heart of the Union. That’s where we’re going.”

“We are?” A group of sour young men stared suspiciously at Logen as he passed them. “Will they let us in?”

“Oh yes. But they won’t like it.”

Logen struggled on through the crowds. Everywhere the sun twinkled on the panes of glass windows, hundreds of them. Carleon had a few glass windows in the grandest buildings, at least before they’d sacked the city. Precious few afterwards, it had to be admitted. Precious little of anything. The Dogman had loved the sound the glass made as it broke. He’d prodded at the windows with a spear, a great big smile on his face, delighted by the crash and tinkle.

That had hardly been the worst of it. Bethod had given the city to his Carls for three days. That was his custom, and they loved him for it. Logen had lost his finger in the battle the day before, and they’d closed the wound with hot iron. It throbbed, and throbbed, and the pain had made him savage. As though he’d needed an excuse for violence back then. He remembered the stink of blood, and sweat, and smoke. The sounds of screaming, and crashing, and laughter.

“Please…” Logen tripped, nearly fell. There was something clinging to his leg. A woman, sitting on the ground beside a wall. Her clothes were dirty, ragged, her face was pale, pinched with hunger. She had something in her arms. A bundle of rags. A child. “Please…” Nothing else. The people laughed and chattered and surged around them, just as if they weren’t there. “Please…”

“I don’t have anything,” he muttered. No more than five strides away a man in a tall hat sat at a table and chuckled with a friend as he tucked into a steaming plate of meat and vegetables. Logen looked at the plate of food, at the starving woman.

“Logen! Come on!” Bayaz had taken him by the elbow and was drawing him away.

“But shouldn’t we—”

“Haven’t you noticed? They’re everywhere! The King needs money, so he squeezes the nobles. The nobles squeeze their tenants, the tenants squeeze the peasants. Some of them, the old, the weak, the extra sons and daughters, they get squeezed right out the bottom. Too many mouths to feed. The lucky ones make thieves or whores, the rest end up begging.”

“But—”

“Clear the road!” Logen stumbled to the wall and pressed himself against it, Malacus and Bayaz beside him. The crowds parted and a long column of men tramped by, shepherded by armoured guards. Some were young, mere boys, some were very old. All were dirty and ragged, and few of them looked healthy. A couple were clearly lame, hobbling along as best they could. One near the front had only one arm. A passer-by in a fabulous crimson jacket held a square of cloth over his wrinkled nose as the beggars shuffled past.

“What are these?” Logen whispered to Bayaz. “Law-breakers?”

The Magus chuckled. “Soldiers.”

Logen stared at them—filthy, coughing, limping, some without boots. “Soldiers? These?”

“Oh yes. They go to fight Bethod.”

Logen rubbed at his temples. “A clan once sent their poorest warrior, a man called Forley the Weakest, to fight me in a duel. They meant it by way of surrender. Why does this Union send their weakest?” Logen shook his head grimly. “They won’t beat Bethod with such as these.”

“They will send others.” Bayaz pointed out another, smaller gathering. “Those are soldiers too.”

“Those?” A group of tall youths, dressed in gaudy suits of red or bright green cloth, a couple with outsize hats. They were at least wearing swords, of a kind, but they hardly looked like fighting men. Fighting women, maybe. Logen frowned, staring from one group to the other. The dirty beggars, the gaudy lads. It was hard for him to say which were the stranger.

A tiny bell jingled as the door opened, and Logen followed Bayaz through the low archway, Malacus behind him. The shop was dim after the bright street and it took Logen’s eyes a moment to adjust. Leaning against a wall were sheets of wood, childishly daubed with pictures of buildings, forests, mountains. Strange clothes were draped over stands beside them—flowing robes, lurid gowns, suits of armour, enormous hats and helmets, rings and jewellery, even a heavy crown. Weapons occupied a small rack, swords and spears richly decorated. Logen stepped closer, frowning. They were fakes. Nothing was real. The weapons were painted wood, the crown was made of flaking tin, the jewels were coloured glass.

“What is this place?”

Bayaz was casting an eye over the robes by the wall. “A theatrical outfitters.”

“A what?”

“The people of this city love spectacle. Comedy, drama, theatre of all kinds. This shop provides equipment for the mounting of plays.”