Last Argument of Kings (51 page)

Bayaz stepped forward, his staff clenched tightly in his fist. The air around his shoulders was still shimmering ever so slightly. Ferro had killed many men, of course, and shed no tears. But the speed of this shocked even her.

“What did you do?” she hissed, the echoes of Quai’s fatal impact with the far wall still thudding about them.

“What I had to. Get to the palace. Now.” Bayaz stabbed at one of the archways with a heavy finger, and Ferro saw the faintest glimmer of light inside it. “Put that thing into the box! You cannot imagine how dangerous it is!”

Few people liked taking orders less, but Ferro had no wish to stay in this place. She stuffed the lump of rock down inside her shirt. It felt right there, pressed against her stomach. Cool and comforting, for all Bayaz called it dangerous. She took one step, and as her boot slapped down a grating chuckle floated up from the far side of the hall.

From where Quai’s ruined corpse had fallen.

Bayaz did not seem surprised. “So!” he shouted. “You show yourself at last! I have suspected for some time that you were not who you appeared to be! Where is my apprentice, and when did you replace him?”

“Months ago.” Quai was still chuckling as he pushed himself slowly up from the polished floor. “Before you left on your fool’s errand to the Old Empire.” There was no blood on his smiling face. Not so much as a graze. “I sat beside you, at the fire. I watched you while you lay helpless in that cart. I was with you all the way, to the edge of the World and back. Your apprentice stayed here. I left his half-eaten corpse in the bushes for the flies, not twenty strides from where you and the Northman soundly slept.”

“Huh.” Bayaz tossed his staff from one hand to the other. “I thought I noted a sharp improvement in your skills. You should have killed me then, when you had the chance.”

“Oh, there is time now.” Ferro shivered as she watched Quai stand. The hall seemed to have grown suddenly very cold.

“A hundred words? Perhaps. One word?” Bayaz’ lip curled. “I think not. Which of Khalul’s creatures are you? The East Wind? One of those damned twins?”

“I am not one of Khalul’s creatures.”

The faintest flicker of doubt passed over Bayaz’ face. “Who, then?”

“We knew each other well, in times long past.”

The First of the Magi frowned. “Who are you? Speak!”

“Taking forms.” A woman’s voice, soft and low. Something was happening to Quai’s face as he paced slowly forward. His pale skin drooped, twisted. “A dread and insidious trick.” His nose, his eyes, his lips began to melt, running off his skull like wax down a candle. “Do you not remember me, Bayaz?” Another face showed itself beneath, a hard face, white as pale marble. “You said that you would love me forever.” The air was icy chill. Ferro’s breath was smoking before her mouth. “You promised me that we would never be parted. When I opened my father’s gate to you…”

“No!” Bayaz took a faltering step back.

“You look surprised. Not as surprised as I was, when instead of taking me in your arms you threw me down from the roof, eh, my love? And why? So that you could keep your secrets? So that you could seem noble?” Quai’s long hair had turned white as chalk. It floated now about a woman’s face, terribly pale, eyes two bright, black points. Tolomei. The Maker’s daughter. A ghost, stepped out of the faded past. A ghost that had walked beside them for months, wearing a stolen shape. Ferro could almost feel her icy breath, cold as death on the air. Her eyes flickered from that pale face to the archway, far away across the floor, caught between wanting to run, and needing to know more.

“I saw you in your grave!” whispered Bayaz. “I piled the earth over you myself.”

“So you did, and wept when you did, as though you had not been the one to throw me down.” Her black eyes swivelled to Ferro, to where the Seed lay tingling against her belly. “But I had touched the Other Side. In these two hands I had held it, while my father worked, and it had left me altered. There I lay, in the earth’s cold embrace. Between life and death. Until I heard the voices. The voices that Glustrod heard, long ago. They offered me a bargain. My freedom for theirs.”

“You broke the First Law!”

“Laws mean nothing to the buried! When I finally clawed my way from the grasping earth the human part of me was gone. But the other part, the part that belongs to the world below—that cannot die. It stands before you. Now I will complete the work that Glustrod began. I will throw open the doors that my grandfather sealed. This world and the Other Side shall be one. As they were before the Old Time. As they were always meant to be.” She held out her open hand, and a bitter chill flowed from it and sent shivers across Ferro’s back to the tips of her fingers. “Give me the Seed, child. I made a promise to the Tellers of Secrets, and I keep the promises I make.”

“We shall see!” snarled the First of the Magi. Ferro felt the tugging in her stomach, saw the air around Bayaz begin to blur. Tolomei stood ten strides away from him. The next instant she struck him with a sound like a thunderclap. His staff burst apart, splintered wood flying. He gave a shocked splutter as he flew through the darkness, rolled over and over across the cold stone to lie face down in a crumpled heap. Ferro stared as a wave of freezing air washed over her. She felt a sick and terrible fear, all the worse for being unfamiliar. She stood frozen.

“The years have made you weak.” The Maker’s daughter moved slowly now, silently towards Bayaz’ senseless body, her white hair flowing out behind her like the ripples on a frosty pool. “Your Art cannot harm me.” She stood over him, her dry white lips spreading into an icy smile. “For all you took from me. For my father.” She raised her foot above Bayaz’ bald head. “For myself—”

She burst into brilliant flames. Harsh light flickered to the furthest corners of the cavernous chamber, brightness stabbed into the very cracks between the stones. Ferro stumbled back, holding one hand over her eyes. Between her fingers she saw Tolomei reel madly across the floor, thrashing and dancing, white flames wreathing her body, her hair a coiling tongue of fire.

She flopped to the ground, the darkness closing back in, smoke pouring up in a reeking cloud. Yulwei padded out from one of the archways, his dark skin shining with sweat. He held a bundle of swords under one scrawny arm. Swords of dull metal, like the one that Ninefingers had carried, each marked with a single silver letter. “Are you alright, Ferro?”

“I…” The fire had brought no warmth with it. Ferro’s teeth were rattling, the hall had grown so cold. “I…”

“Go.” Yulwei frowned at Tolomei’s body as the last flames died. Ferro finally found the strength to move, began to back away. She felt a bitter sinking in her gut as she watched the Maker’s daughter climb up, the ash of Quai’s clothes sliding from her body. She stood, tall and deathly lean, naked and as bald as Bayaz, her hair all seared away to grey dust. There was not so much as a mark on her corpse-pale skin, gleaming flawless white.

“Always there is something more.” She glared at Yulwei with her flat black eyes. “No fire can burn me, conjuror. You cannot stop me.”

“But I must try.” The Magus flung his swords into the air. They turned, spun, edges glittering, spreading apart in the darkness, drifting impossibly sideways. They began to fly around Yulwei and Ferro in a whirling circle. Faster and faster until they were a blur of deadly metal. Close enough that if Ferro had reached out, her hand would have been snatched off at the wrist.

“Stand still,” said Yulwei.

That hardly needed saying. Ferro felt a surge of anger, hot and familiar. “First I should run, then stand still? First the Seed is at the Edge of the World, and now it is here at the centre? First she is dead and now she has stolen another’s face? You old bastards need to get your stories straight.”

“They are liars!” snarled Tolomei, and Ferro felt the cold of her freezing breath wash over her cheek and chill her to the bone. “Users! You cannot trust them!”

“But I can trust you?” Ferro snorted her contempt. “Fuck yourself!”

Tolomei nodded slowly. “Then die, along with the rest.” She padded sideways, balanced on her toes, rings of white frost spreading out wherever her bare feet touched the ground. “You cannot keep juggling your knives forever, old man.”

Over her white shoulder, Ferro saw Bayaz get slowly to his feet, holding one arm with the other, rigid face scratched and bloody. Something dangled from his limp fist—a long mass of metal tubes with a hook on the end, dull metal gleaming in the darkness. His eyes rolled to the far-off ceiling, veins bulging from his neck with effort as the air began to twist around him. Ferro felt that sucking in her gut and her eyes were drawn upwards. Up to the great machine that hung above their heads. It began to tremble.

“Shit,” she muttered, starting to back away.

If Tolomei noticed, she showed no sign. She bent her knees and sprang high into the air, a white streak over the spinning swords. She hung above for an instant, then plummeted down towards Yulwei. She crashed into the floor, knees first, the impact making the ground shake. A splinter of stone grazed Ferro’s cheek and she felt a blast of icy wind against her face, lurched a step back.

The Maker’s daughter frowned up. “You do not die easily, old man,” she snarled as the echoes faded.

Ferro could not tell how Yulwei had avoided her, but now he danced away, his hands moving in slow circles, bangles jingling, swords still tumbling through the air behind him. “I have been working at it all my life. You do not die easily either.”

The Maker’s daughter stood and faced him. “I do not die.”

High above the huge device lurched, cables pinging as they snapped, whipping in the darkness. With an almost dreamlike slowness, it began to fall. Glittering metal twisted, flexed, shrieked as it tumbled down. Ferro turned and ran. Five breathless strides and she flung herself down, sliding flat on her face across the polished rock. She felt the Seed digging into her stomach, the wind of the spinning swords ripping close to her back as she passed just beneath them.

The great machine hit the floor behind her with a noise like the music of hell. Each ring made a vast cymbal, a giant’s gong. Each struck its own mad note, a screaming, clanging, booming of tortured metal, loud enough to make every one of Ferro’s bones buzz. She looked up to see one great disc reel past her, clattering on its edge, striking bright sparks from the floor. Another flew into the air, spinning crazily like a flipped coin. She gasped as she rolled out of its way, scrambled back as it crashed into the ground beside her.

Where Yulwei and Tolomei had faced each other there was a hill of twisted metal, of broken rings and leaning discs, bent rods and tangled cables. Ferro struggled dizzily to her feet, a fury of discordant echoes ripping about the hall. Splinters dropped around her, pinging from the polished floor. Fragments were scattered the width of the hall, glinting in the shadows like stars in the night sky.

She had no idea who was dead and who alive.

“Out!” Bayaz growled at her through gritted teeth, face a twisted mask of pain. “Out! Go!”

“Yulwei,” she muttered, “is he—”

“I will come back for him!” Bayaz flailed at her with his good arm. “Go!”

There are times to fight, and there are times to run, and Ferro knew well the difference. The Gurkish had taught it to her, deep in the Badlands. The archway jerked and wobbled as she sprinted towards it. Her own breath roared in her ears. She leaped over a gleaming wheel of metal, boots slapping at the smooth stone. She was almost at the archway. She felt a bitter chill at her side, a rush of sick terror. She flung herself forwards.

Tolomei’s white hand missed Ferro by a whisker, tore a great chunk of stone from the wall and filled the air with dust.

“You go nowhere!”

Time to run, perhaps, but Ferro’s patience was all worn down. As she sprang up her fist already swinging, all the fury of her wasted months, her wasted years, her wasted life behind it. Her knuckles hit Tolomei’s jaw with a sharp crunch. It was like punching a block of ice. There was no pain as her hand broke, but she felt her wrist buckle, her arm go numb. Too late to worry on it. Her other fist was on its way.

Tolomei snatched her arm from the air before it touched her, dragged Ferro close, twisting her helpless onto her knees with awful, irresistible strength. “The Seed!” The hissing words froze across Ferro’s face, snatching her breath out in a sick groan, her skin burning where Tolomei held her. She felt her bones twist, then snap, her forearm clicking sideways like a broken stick. A white hand crept through the shadows towards the lump in Ferro’s shirt.

There was a sudden light, a brilliant curve of it that lit the whole chamber for a blinding instant. Ferro heard a piercing shriek and she was free, sprawling on her back. Tolomei’s hand was sliced off cleanly just above the wrist, leaving a bloodless stump. A great wound was scored down the smooth wall and deep into the floor, molten stone running from it, bubbling and sizzling. Smoke curled from the strange weapon in Bayaz’ hand as he lurched from the shadows, the hook at its end still glowing orange. Tolomei gave an icy scream, one hand clawing at him.

Bayaz roared mindlessly back at her, his eyes narrowed, his bloody mouth wide open. Ferro felt a twisting at her stomach, so savage she was bent over, almost dragged to her knees. The Maker’s daughter was snatched up and blasted away, one white heel tearing a long scar through the map on the floor, gouging through rock and ripping up metal.