make war, and you have no true interest in toeholds on the Kantic continent. So we offer peace.”
“And is that all your offer?”
“All?”
“What will our people make of it, if we surrender Dagoska up to you, so dearly bought in the last war?”
“Let us be realistic. Your entanglements in the North put you at a considerable disadvantage. Dagoska is lost, I would put it from your mind.” Tulkis seemed to think about it for a moment. “However, I could arrange for a dozen chests to be delivered, as reparations from my Emperor to your King. Chests of fragrant ebony wood, worked with golden leaf, carried by bowing slaves, preceded by humble officials of the Emperor’s government.”
“And what would these chests contain?”
“Nothing.” They stared at each other across the room. “Except pride. You could say they contained whatever you wished. A fortune in Gurkish gold, in Kantic jewels, in incense from beyond the desert. More than the value of Dagoska itself. Perhaps that would mollify your people.”
Glokta breathed in sharply, and let it out. “Peace. And empty boxes.” His left leg had gone numb under the table and he grimaced as he moved it, hissed through his gums as he forced himself out of his chair. “I will convey your offer to my superiors.”
He was just turning away when Tulkis held out his hand.
Glokta looked at it for a moment.
“I hope you will be able to persuade them,” said the Gurkish envoy.
To the Edge of the World
On the morning of their ninth day in the mountains, Logen saw the sea. He dragged himself to the top of yet another painful scramble, and there it was. The track dropped steeply away into a stretch of low, flat country, and beyond was the shining line on the horizon. He could almost smell it, a salty tang on the air with each breath. He would have grinned if it hadn’t reminded him of home so much.
“The sea,” he whispered.
“The ocean,” said Bayaz.
“We have crossed the western continent from shore to shore,” said Longfoot, grinning all the way across his face. “We are close now.”
By afternoon they were closer still. The trail had widened to a muddy lane between fields, split up with ragged hedges. Mostly brown squares of turned earth, but some green with fresh grass, or with the sprouts of vegetables, some waving tall with a grey, tasteless-looking winter crop. Logen had never known much about farming, but it was plain enough that someone had been working this ground, and recently.
“What kind of people live all the way out here?” murmured Luthar, looking suspiciously out across the ill- tended fields.
“Descendants of the pioneers of long ago. When the Empire collapsed, they were left out here alone. Alone they have flourished, after a fashion.”
“You hear that?” hissed Ferro, her eyes narrowed, already fishing an arrow from her quiver. Logen put his head up, listening. A thumping sound, echoing from some distance, then a voice, thin on the wind. He put his hand on the grip of his sword and crouched down. He crept to an unruly stretch of hedge and peered over, Ferro beside him.
Two men were struggling with a tree stump in the midst of a turned field, one chopping at it with an axe, the other watching, hands on hips. Logen swallowed, uneasy. These two hardly looked much of a threat, but looks could lie. It had been a long time since they met a living thing that hadn’t tried to kill them.
“Calm now,” muttered Bayaz. “There is no danger here.”
Ferro frowned across at him. “You’ve told us that before.”
“Kill no one until I tell you!” hissed the Magus, then called out in a language Logen didn’t know, waving one arm over his head in a gesture of greeting. The two men jerked round, staring open-mouthed. Bayaz shouted again. The farmers looked at each other, then set down their tools and walked slowly over.
They stopped a few strides away. An ugly-looking pair, even to Logen’s eye—short, stocky, rough-featured, dressed in colourless work clothes, patched and stained. They stared nervously at the six strangers, and at their weapons in particular, as though they’d never seen such people or such things before.
Bayaz spoke to them warmly, smiling and waving his arms, pointing out towards the ocean. One nodded, answered, shrugged and pointed down the track. He stepped through a gap in the hedge, off the field and into the road. Or from soft mud to hard mud, at least. He beckoned at them to follow while his companion watched suspiciously from the other side of the bushes.
“He will take us to Cawneil,” said Bayaz.
“To who?” muttered Logen, but the Magus did not answer. He was already striding westward after the farmer.
Heavy dusk under a grim sky, and they trudged through an empty town after their sullen guide. A singularly ill-favoured fellow, Jezal rather thought, but then peasants were rarely beauties in his experience, and he supposed that they were much the same the world over. The streets were dusty and deserted, weedy and scattered with refuse. Many houses were derelict, furry with moss and tangled with creeper. Those few that did show signs of occupation were, in the main, in a slovenly condition.
“It would seem the glory of the past is faded here also,” said Longfoot with some disappointment, “if indeed there ever was any.”
Bayaz nodded. “Glory is in short supply these days.”
A wide square opened out from the neglected houses. Ornamental gardens had been planted round the edge by some forgotten gardener, but the lawns were threadbare, the flowerbeds turned to briar-patches, the trees no more than withered claws. Out of this slow decay rose a huge and striking building, or more accurately a jumble of buildings of various confused shapes and styles. Three tall, round, tapering towers sprouted from their midst, joined at their bases but separating higher up. One was broken off before the summit, its roof long fallen in, leaving naked rafters exposed.
“A library…” whispered Logen under his breath.
It scarcely looked like one to Jezal. “It is?”
“The Great Western Library,” said Bayaz, as they crossed the dilapidated square in the looming shadow of those three crumbling towers. “Here I took my first hesitant steps along the path of Art. Here my master taught me the First Law. Taught it to me again and again until I could recite it flawlessly in every language known. This was a place of learning, and wonder, and great beauty.”
Longfoot sucked his teeth. “Time has not been kind to the place.”
“Time is never kind.”
Their guide said a few short words and indicated a tall door covered in flaking green paint. Then he shuffled away, eyeing them all with the deepest suspicion.
“You simply cannot get the help,” observed the First of the Magi as he watched the farmer hurry off, then he raised his staff and struck the door three good knocks. There was a long silence.
“Library?” Jezal heard Ferro asking, evidently unfamiliar with the word.
“For books,” came Logen’s voice.
“Books,” she snorted. “Waste of fucking time.”
Vague sounds echoed from beyond the gate: someone approaching inside, accompanied by an irritated muttering. Now locks clicked and grated and the weathered door squealed open.
A man of an advanced age and a pronounced stoop gazed at them in wonder, an unintelligible curse frozen on his lips, a lighted taper casting a faint glow over one side of his wrinkled face.
“I am Bayaz, the First of the Magi, and I have business with Cawneil.” The servant continued to gawp. Jezal half expected a string of drool to escape from his toothless mouth it was hanging open so wide. Plainly, they did not
