The Blade Itself

swapped for a stony blankness. He gazed from Bayaz’ smiling face to that gently swinging rod of dark metal, then back again. His eyes moved over to one of the doorways, and he give a tiny shake of his head. The dark figures faded back into the shadows. Logen unclenched his aching teeth, then quietly slipped the knife back on to the table.

Bayaz grinned. “Dear me, Master Sult, you really are a hard man to please.”

“I believe your Eminence is the proper term of address,” hissed the Arch Lector.

“So it is, so it is. I do declare, you really won’t be happy until I’ve broken some furniture. I would hate to spill everyone’s soup though, so…” With a sudden bang, the Arch Lector’s chair collapsed. His hand shot out and grabbed at the table cloth as he plunged to the floor in a clattering mess of loose firewood, and sprawled in the wreckage with a groan. The King started awake, his guests blinked, and gasped, and stared. Bayaz ignored them.

“This really is an excellent soup,” he said, slurping noisily from his spoon.

The House of the Maker

It was a stormy day, and the House of the Maker stood stark and grim, a huge dark shape against the ragged clouds. A cold wind whipped between the buildings and through the squares of the Agriont, making the tails of Glokta’s black coat flap around him as he shuffled after Captain Luthar and the would-be Magus, the scarred Northman at his side. He knew they were watched. Watched the whole way. Behind the windows, in the doorways, on the roofs. The Practicals were everywhere, he could feel their eyes.

Glokta had half expected, half hoped, that Bayaz and his companions would have disappeared in the night, but they had not. The bald old man seemed as relaxed as if he had undertaken to open a fruit cellar, and Glokta did not like it. When does the bluff end? When does he throw his hands up and admit it’s all a game? When we reach the University? When we cross the bridge? When we stand before the very gate of the Maker’s House and his key does not fit? But somewhere in the back of his mind the thought lurked: What if it does not end? What if the door opens? What if he truly is as he claims to be?

Bayaz chattered to Luthar as they strolled across the empty courtyard towards the University. Every bit as much at ease as a grandfather with his favourite grandson, and every bit as boring. “…of course, the city is so much larger than when I last visited. That district you call the Three Farms, all teeming bustle and activity. I remember when that whole borough was three farms! Indeed I do! And far beyond the city walls!”

“Erm…” said Luthar.

“And as for the Spicers’ new guildhall, I never saw such ostentation…”

Glokta’s mind raced as he limped after the two of them, trawling for hidden meanings in the sea of blather, grasping for order in the chaos. The questions tumbled over each other. Why pick me as a witness? Why not the Arch Lector himself? Does this Bayaz suppose that I can be easily fooled? And why Luthar? Because he won the Contest? And how did he win? Is he a part of this deception? But if Luthar was party to some sinister plan, he was giving no sign. Glokta had never seen the slightest hint that he was anything other than the self-obsessed young fool he appeared to be.

And then we come to this puzzle. Glokta glanced sidelong at the big Northman. There were no signs of deadly intent on his scarred face, little sign that anything was going on in there at all. Is he very stupid or very clever? Is he to be ignored, or feared? Is he the servant, or the master? There were no answers to any of it. Yet.

“Well, this place is a shadow of its former self,” said Bayaz as they halted outside the door to the University, raising an eyebrow at the grimy, tilting statues. He rapped briskly on the weathered wood and the door swayed on its hinges. To Glokta’s surprise, it opened almost immediately.

“You’re expected,” croaked the ancient porter. They stepped around him into the gloom. “I will show you to—” began the old man as he wrestled the creaking door shut.

“No need,” called Bayaz over his shoulder, already striding briskly off down the dusty corridor, “I know the way!” Glokta struggled to keep up, sweating despite the cold weather, leg burning all the way. The effort of maintaining the pace scarcely gave him time to consider how the bald bastard might be so familiar with the building. But familiar he certainly is. He swept down the corridors as though he had spent every day of his life there, clicking his tongue in disgust at the state of the place and prattling all the while.

“…I’ve never seen such dust, eh, Captain Luthar? I wouldn’t be surprised if the damn place hadn’t been cleaned since I was last here! I’ve no idea how a man can think under such conditions! No idea at all…” Centuries of dead and justly forgotten Adepti stared gloomily down from their canvases, as though upset by all the noise.

The corridors of the University rolled past, an ancient, dusty, forsaken-seeming place, with nothing in it but grimy old paintings and musty old books. Jezal had precious little use for books.

He had read a few about fencing and riding, a couple about famous military campaigns, once opened the covers on a great big history of the Union he found in his father’s study, and got bored after three or four pages.

Bayaz droned on. “Here we fought with the Maker’s servants. I remember it well. They cried out to Kanedias to save them, but he would not come down. These halls ran with blood, rang with screams, rolled with smoke that day.”

Jezal had no idea why the old fool would single him out to tell his tall stories to, and still less how to reply. “That sounds… violent.”

Bayaz nodded. “It was. I am not proud of it. But good men must sometimes do violent things.”

“Uh,” said the Northman suddenly. Jezal had not been aware that he was even listening.

“Besides, that was a different age. A violent age. Only in the Old Empire were people advanced beyond the primitive. Midderland, the heart of the Union, believe it or not, was a sty. A wasteland of warring, barbaric tribes. The luckiest among them were taken into the Maker’s service. The rest were painted-face savages, without writing, without science, with barely anything to separate them from the beasts.”

Jezal glanced furtively up at Ninefingers. It was not at all difficult to picture a barbaric state with that big brute beside him, but it was ridiculous to suppose that his beautiful home had once been a wasteland, that he was descended from primitives. This bald old man was a blathering liar, or a madman, but some important people seemed to take him seriously.

And Jezal thought it best always to do what the important people said.

Logen followed the others into a broken-down courtyard, bounded on three sides by the crumbling buildings of the University, on the fourth by the inner face of the sheer wall of the Agriont. All was covered in old moss, thick ivy, dry brambles. A man sat on a rickety chair among the weeds, watching them come closer.

“I’ve been expecting you,” he said, pushing himself up with some difficulty. “Damn knees, I’m not what I used to be.” An unremarkable man past middle-age, in a threadbare shirt with stains down the front.

Bayaz frowned at him. “You are the Chief Warden?”

“I am.”

“And where are the rest of your company?”

“My wife is getting the breakfast ready, but not counting her, well, I am the whole company. It’s eggs,” he said happily, patting his stomach.

“What?”

“For breakfast. I like eggs.”

“Good for you,” muttered Bayaz, looking slightly put out. “In King Casamir’s reign, the bravest fifty men of the King’s Own were appointed Wardens of the House, to guard this gate. There was considered to be no higher honour.”

“That was a long time ago,” said the one and only Warden, plucking at his dirty shirt. “There were nine of us when I was a lad, but they went on to other things, or died, and were never replaced. Don’t know who’ll take over