“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?”
