The Blade Itself

“Ah,” said the Navigator, with a knowing grin. “Ah, a forbidden love then, a secret love is it?” Much to his annoyance, Jezal found that he was blushing. “I am right, I see it! There is no fruit so sweet as the one you cannot taste, eh, my young friend? Eh? Eh?” He waggled his eyebrows in what Jezal felt was a most unsavoury fashion.

“I wonder what’s keeping those two?” Jezal didn’t care in the least, but anything to change the subject.

“Maljinn, and Ninefingers? Hah,” laughed Longfoot, leaning towards him. “Perhaps they’ve become involved, eh, in a secret love like yours? Perhaps they’ve crept off somewhere, to do what comes naturally!” He nudged Jezal in the ribs. “Can you imagine, those two? That’d be something wouldn’t it? Hah!”

Jezal grimaced. The hideous Northman he already knew for an animal, and from what little he’d seen of that evil woman she might well be worse. All he could imagine coming naturally to them was violence. The idea was perfectly revolting. He felt soiled just thinking about it.

The roofs seemed to go on forever. Up one, down another. Creeping along the peaks, one slippery foot on either side, edging across ledges, stepping over crumbling bits of wall. Sometimes Logen would look up for a moment, get a dizzying view across the tumbling mass of damp slates, pitted tiles, ancient lead, to the distant wall of the Agriont, sometimes even the city far beyond. It might almost have been peaceful if it wasn’t for Ferro, fast-moving, sure-footed, cursing at him and pulling him on, giving him no time to think about the view, or the nerve-wracking drops they skirted, or the black figures, surely still seeking for them below.

One of her sleeves had been torn half off some time in the fighting, flapping around her wrist, getting in the way as they climbed. She snarled and ripped it away at the shoulder. Logen smiled to himself as he recalled the efforts Bayaz had gone to in getting her to change her old stinking rags for new clothes. Now she was filthier than ever, shirt sweated through, spotted with blood and caked with grime from the roof-tops. She looked over her shoulder and saw him watching her. “Move, pink,” she hissed at him.

“You see no colours, right?” She clambered on, ignoring him, swinging around a smoking chimney and slithering across the dirty slates on her belly, sliding down onto a narrow ledge between two roofs. Logen scrambled down behind her. “No colours at all.”

“So?” she threw over her shoulder.

“So why do you call me pink?”

She looked round. “Are you pink?”

Logen peered at his forearms. Aside from the mottled bruises, red scratches, blue veins, they were sort of pink, it had to be said. He frowned.

“Thought so.” She scurried away between the roofs, right to the end of the building, and peered down. Logen followed her, leaned out gingerly over the edge. A couple of people were moving around in the lane below. Far below, and there was no way down. They’d have to go back the way they came. Ferro had already moved away behind him.

Wind flicked at the side of Logen’s face. Ferro’s foot slapped against the edge of the roof, and then she was in the air. His jaw hung open as he watched her fly away, back arched, arms and legs flailing. She landed on a flat roof, grey lead streaked with green moss, rolled once then came up smoothly to her feet.

Logen licked his lips, pointed at his chest. She nodded. The flat roof was ten feet below, but there might have been twenty feet of empty air between him and it, and it was a long way down. He backed away slowly, giving himself a good run-up. He sucked in a couple of deep breaths, closed his eyes for a moment.

It would be perfect, in a way, if he fell. No songs, no stories. Just a bloody smear on a road somewhere. He started running. His feet thumped on the stone. The air whistled in his mouth, plucked at his torn clothes. The flat roof came flying up towards him. He landed with a shuddering impact, rolled once just as Ferro had done, stood up beside her. He was still alive.

“Hah!” he shouted. “What d’you think of that?”

There was a creaking sound, then a cracking, then the roof gave way under Logen’s feet. He grabbed despairingly at Ferro as he fell and she slid through after him, helpless. He tumbled in the air for a sickening moment, wailing, hands clutching at nothing. He crashed down on his back.

Logen coughed on choking dust, shook his head, shifted painfully. He was in a room, inky dark after the brightness outside. Dust was filtering down through the light from the ragged hole in the roof above. There was something soft under him. A bed. It had half collapsed, leaning at an angle, blankets covered in broken plaster. There was something across his legs. Ferro. He snorted a gurgling laugh to himself. In bed with a woman again, at last. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite what he’d been hoping for.