The Blade Itself

“Always.” Logen had barely slept since they arrived. It was never properly dark here, never properly quiet. It was too hot, too close, too stinking. Enemies might be terrifying, but enemies could be fought, and put an end to. Logen could understand their hatred. There was no fighting the faceless, careless, rumbling city. It hated everything. “This is no place for me. I’ll be glad to leave.”

“We might not be leaving for a while.”

“I know.” Logen took a deep breath. “That’s why I’m going to go down and look at this Agriont, and find out what I can about it. Some things have to be done. It’s better to do them than to live with the fear of them. That’s what my father used to tell me.”

“Good advice. I’ll come with you.”

“You will not.” Bayaz was in the doorway, glaring out at his apprentice. “Your progress over the last few weeks has been a disgrace, even for you.” He stepped through into the open air. “I suggest that while we are idle, waiting on His Majesty’s pleasure, you should take the opportunity to study. Another such chance may be a long time coming.”

Malacus hurried back inside with no backward glances. He knew better than to dawdle with his master in this mood. Bayaz had lost all his good humour as soon as they arrived at the Agriont, and it didn’t look like coming back. Logen could hardly blame him, they’d been treated more like prisoners than guests. He didn’t know much about manners, but he could guess the meaning of hard stares from everyone and guards outside the door.

“You wouldn’t believe how it’s grown,” growled Bayaz, frowning out at the great sweep of city. “I remember when Adua was barely more than a huddle of shacks, squeezed in round the House of the Maker like flies round a fresh turd. Before there was an Agriont. Before there was a Union, even. They weren’t half so proud in those days, I can tell you. They worshipped the Maker like a god.”

He noisily hawked up a lump of phlegm and spat it out into the air. Logen watched it clear the moat and vanish somewhere in amongst the white buildings below. “I gave them this,” hissed Bayaz. Logen felt the unpleasant creeping sensation that always seemed to accompany the old wizard’s displeasure. “I gave them freedom, and this is the thanks I get? The scorn of clerks? Of swollen-headed old errand-boys?” A trip down into the suspicion and madness below began to seem like a merciful release. Logen edged towards the door and ducked back into the room beyond.

If they were prisoners here then Logen had been in some harder cells, he had to admit. Their round living room was fit for a King, to his mind at least: heavy chairs of dark wood with delicate carvings, thick hangings on the walls showing woods and hunting scenes. Bethod would most likely have felt at home in such a room. Logen felt like an oaf there, always on his toes in case he broke something. A tall jar stood on a table in the chamber’s centre, its sides painted with bright flowers. Logen eyed it suspiciously as he made for the long stair down into the Agriont.

“Logen!” Bayaz was framed in the doorway, frowning after him. “Take care. The place may seem strange, but the people are stranger still.”

The water frothed and gurgled, spurting up in a narrow jet from a metal tube carved like a fish’s mouth, then splashing back down into a wide stone basin. A fountain, the proud young man had called it. Pipes, beneath the earth, he’d said. Logen pictured underground streams, coursing just beneath his feet, washing at the foundations of the place. The thought made him feel slightly dizzy.

The square was vast—a great plain of flat stones, hemmed in by sheer cliffs of white buildings. Hollow cliffs, covered with pillars and carvings, glittering with tall windows, crawling with people. Something strange seemed to be happening today. All around the distant edges of the square an enormous, sloping structure of wooden beams was being built. An army of workmen swarmed over it, hacking and bludgeoning, swinging at pegs and joints, hurling bad-tempered shouts at each other. All around them were mountains of planks and logs, barrels of nails, stacks of tools, enough to build ten mighty halls, and more besides. In places the structure was already far above the ground, its uprights soaring into the air like the masts of great ships, as high as the monstrous buildings behind.

Logen stood, hands on hips, gawping at the enormous wooden skeleton, but its purpose was a mystery. He stepped up to a short muscular man in a leather apron, sawing furiously at a plank. “What’s this?”

“Eh?” The man didn’t even look up from his task.

“This. What’s it for?”

The saw bit through the wood, the off-cut clattered to the ground. The carpenter hefted the rest of the plank onto a pile nearby. He turned round, eyeing Logen suspiciously, wiping sweat from his glistening forehead.