The Collected Joe Abercrombie (151 page)

Jezal stood, rigid with embarrassment, entirely at a loss as to how to respond to this liberty. At close quarters her black hair was grey at the roots, no doubt heavily dyed. Her smooth skin seemed wrinkled and a touch yellow, no doubt heavily powdered. Her white gown was dirty round the hem, had a noticeable stain on one sleeve. She seemed as old as Bayaz looked, or perhaps older yet.

She peered into the corner where Quai was standing, and frowned. ‘What manner of guest this is, I am not sure . . . but you are welcome all at the Great Western Library. Welcome all . . .’

Jezal blinked at the looking-glass, his razor hanging from one nerveless hand.

Only a few moments before he had been reflecting on the journey, now that it was finally approaching its end, and congratulating himself on how much he had learned. Tolerance and understanding, courage and self-sacrifice. How he had grown as a man. How much he had changed. Congratulations no longer seemed appropriate. The looking-glass might have been an antique, his reflection in it dark and distorted, but there could be no doubt that his face was a ruin.

The pleasing symmetry was gone forever. His perfect jaw was skewed round sharply to the left, heavier on one side than the other, his noble chin was twisted at a slovenly angle. The scar began on his top lip as no more than a faint line, but it split in two and gouged brutally into the bottom one, dragging it down and giving him the appearance of having a permanent and unsightly leer.

No effort on his part helped. Smiling made it far worse yet, exposing the ugly gaps in his teeth, more suited to a prize-fighter or a bandit than to an officer of the King’s Own. The one mercy was that he would very likely die on the return journey, and no one of his old acquaintance would ever see him so horribly disfigured. A meagre consolation indeed.

A single tear plopped down into the basin under his face.

Then he swallowed, and he took a shuddering breath, and he wiped his wet cheek with the back of his forearm. He set his jaw, in its strange new configuration, and he gripped the razor tightly. The damage was done now, and there could be no going back. Perhaps he was an uglier man, but he was a better man too, and at least, as Logen would have said, he was still alive. He gave the razor a flourish and scraped the patchy, straggling hair from his cheeks, from before his ears, from his throat. On his lip, his chin, and around his mouth he left it be. The beard looked well on him, he rather thought, as he rubbed the razor dry. Or it went a meagre way towards hiding his disfigurement, at least.

He pulled on the clothes that had been left for him. A fusty-smelling shirt and breeches of an ancient and absurdly unfashionable design. He almost laughed at his ill-formed reflection when he was finally prepared for dinner. The carefree denizens of the Agriont would hardly have recognised him. He hardly recognised himself.

The evening repast was not all that Jezal might have hoped for at the table of an important historical figure. The silverware was tarnished in the extreme, the plate worn and cracked, the table itself slanted to the point that Jezal was constantly expecting the entire meal to slide off onto the dirty floor. Food was served by the shambling doorman, at no faster pace than he had answered the gate, each dish arriving colder and more congealed than the last. First came a sticky soup of surpassing tastelessness. Next was a piece of fish so overcooked it was little more than ashes, then most recently a slab of meat so undercooked as to be virtually still alive.

Bayaz and Cawneil ate in stony silence, staring at each other down the length of the table in a way which seemed calculated to make everyone uncomfortable. Quai did nothing more than pick at his food, his dark eyes flicking intently between the two elderly Magi. Longfoot stuck into every course with relish, smiling round at the company as though they were all enjoying themselves equally. Logen was holding his fork in his fist, frowning and stabbing clumsily at his plate as if it were a troublesome Shanka, the ballooning sleeves of his ill-fitting doublet trailing occasionally in his food. Jezal had little doubt that Ferro could have used the cutlery with great dexterity had she wished, but she chose instead to eat with her hands, staring aggressively at anyone who met her gaze as if daring them to tell her not to. She had on the same travel-stained clothes she had worn for the past week, and Jezal wondered for a moment if she had been provided with a dress to wear. He nearly choked on his dinner at the notion.

Neither the meal, nor the company, nor the surroundings were quite what Jezal would have chosen, but the fact was that they had largely run out of food a few days before. Rations in that space of time had included a handful of chalky roots dug from the mountainside by Logen, six tiny eggs stolen by Ferro from a high nest, and some berries of indescribable bitterness which Longfoot had plucked from a tree, apparently at random. Jezal would happily have eaten his plate. He frowned as he hacked at the gristly meat on it, wondering if the plate might indeed be a tastier option.

‘Is the ship still seaworthy?’ growled Bayaz. Everyone looked up. The first words to have been said in quite some time.

Cawneil’s dark eye regarded him coldly. ‘Do you mean that ship on which Juvens and his brothers sailed to Shabulyan?’

‘What other?’

‘Then no. It is not seaworthy. It is rotted to green mulch in its old dock. But do not fear. Another was built, and when that rotted also, another after it. The latest rocks on the tides, tethered to the shore, well-coated with weed and barnacle but kept always crewed and victualled. I have not forgotten my promise to our master. I marked well my obligations.’

Bayaz’ brows drew angrily down. ‘Meaning, I suppose, that I did not?’

‘I did not say so. If you hear a reproach it is your own guilt that goads you, not my accusation. I take no sides, you know that. I never have.’

‘You speak as though sloth were the greatest of virtues,’ muttered the First of the Magi.

‘Sometimes it is, if acting means taking part in your squabbles. You forget, Bayaz, that I have seen all this before, more than once, and a wearisome pattern it seems to me. History repeats itself. Brother fights brother. As Juvens fought Glustrod, as Kanedias fought Juvens, so Bayaz struggles with Khalul. Smaller men in a bigger world, but with no less hatred, and no more mercy. Will this sordid rivalry end even as well as the others? Or will it be worse?’

Bayaz snorted. ‘Let us not pretend you care, or would drag yourself ten strides from your couch if you did.’

‘I do not care. I freely admit it. I was never like you or Khalul, or even like Zacharus or Yulwei. I have no endless ambition, no bottomless arrogance.’

‘No, indeed, not you.’ Bayaz sucked disgustedly at his gums and tossed his fork clattering down onto his plate. ‘Only endless vanity and bottomless idleness.’

‘Mine are small vices and small virtues. To see the world recast according to my own great designs has never interested me. I have always been content with the world as it is, and so I am a dwarf among giants.’ Her heavy-lidded eyes swept slowly over her guests, one by one. ‘And yet dwarves crush no one underfoot. ’ Jezal coughed as her searching stare fell on him and gave careful attention to his rubbery meat. ‘Long is the list of those you have trodden over in pursuit of your ambitions, is it not, my love?’

Bayaz’ displeasure began to weigh on Jezal as heavily as a great stone. ‘You need not speak in riddles, sister,’ growled the old man. ‘I would have your meaning.’

‘Ah, I forgot. You are a straight talker, and cannot abide deception of any kind. You told me so just after you told me you would never leave me, and just before you left me to find another.’

‘That was not my choice. You wrong me, Cawneil.’

‘
I
wrong
you
?’ she hissed, and now her anger pressed hard at Jezal from the other side. ‘How, brother? Did you not leave? Did you not find another? Did you not steal from the Maker, first his secrets, then his daughter?’ Jezal squirmed and hunched his shoulders, feeling as squeezed as a nut in a vice. ‘Tolomei, do you remember her?’

Bayaz’ frown grew frostier yet. ‘I have made my mistakes, and still pay for them. Not a day passes that I do not think of her.’

‘How outrageously noble of you!’ sneered Cawneil. ‘No doubt she would swoon with gratitude, if she could hear you now! I think on that day too, now and then. The day the Old Time ended. How we gathered outside the House of the Maker, thirsty for vengeance. How we put forth all of our Art and all of our anger, and could not make a scratch upon the gates. How you whispered to Tolomei in the night, begging her to let you in.’ She pressed her withered hands to her chest. ‘Such tender words you used. Words I never dreamed were in you. Even an old cynic like me was moved. How could an innocent like Tolomei deny you, whether it was her father’s gates or her own legs she was opening? And what was her reward, eh, brother, for her sacrifices? For helping you, for trusting you, for loving you? It must have been quite the dramatic scene! The three of you, up on the roof. A foolish young woman, her jealous father, and her secret lover.’ She snorted bitter laughter. ‘Never a happy formula, but it can rarely have ended quite so badly. Father and daughter both. The long drop to the bridge!’

‘Kanedias had no mercy in him,’ growled Bayaz, ‘even for his own child. Before my eyes he threw his daughter from the roof. We fought, and I cast him down in flames. So was our master avenged.’

‘Oh, well done!’ Cawneil clapped her hands in mock delight. ‘Everyone loves a happy ending! Tell me only one thing more. What was it that made you weep so long for Tolomei, when I could never make you shed a tear? Did you decide you like your women pure, eh, brother?’ And she fluttered her eyelashes in an ironical show, one strangely unsettling on that ancient face. ‘Innocence? That most fleeting and worthless of virtues. One to which I have never laid claim.’

‘Perhaps then, sister, the one thing you have never laid?’

‘Oh, very good, my old love, very fine. It was always your ready wit that I enjoyed, above all else. Khalul was the more skilful lover, of course, but he never had your passion, nor your daring.’ She speared a chunk of meat viciously with her fork. ‘Travelling to the edge of the World, at your age? To steal that thing our master forbade? Courage indeed.’

Bayaz sneered his contempt down the table. ‘What would you know of courage? You, who have loved no one in all these long years but yourself? Who have risked nothing, and given nothing, and made nothing? You, who have let all the gifts our master gave you rot! Keep your stories in the dust, sister. No one cares, and me least of all.’

The two Magi glared at each other in icy silence, the atmosphere heavy with their seething fury. The feet of Ninefingers’ chair squealed gently as he edged it cautiously away from the table. Ferro sat opposite, her face locked in a frown of the deepest suspicion. Malacus Quai had his teeth bared, his fierce eyes fixed on his master. Jezal could only sit and hold his breath, hoping that the incomprehensible argument did not end with anyone on fire. Especially not him.

‘Well,’ ventured Brother Longfoot, ‘I for one would like to thank our host for this excellent meal . . .’ The two old Magi locked him simultaneously with their pitiless gazes. ‘Now that we are close . . . to our final . . . destination . . . er . . .’ And the Navigator swallowed and stared down at his plate. ‘Never mind.’

Ferro sat naked, one leg drawn up against her chest, picking at a scab on her knee, and frowning.

She frowned at the heavy walls of the room, imagining the great weight of old stone all round her. She remembered frowning at the walls of her cell in Uthman’s palace, pulling herself up to look through the tiny window, feeling the sun on her face and dreaming of being free. She remembered the chafing iron on her ankle, and the long thin chain, so much stronger than it had looked. She remembered struggling with it, and chewing on it, and dragging at her foot until the blood ran from her torn skin. She hated walls. For her, they had always been the jaws of a trap.

Ferro frowned at the bed. She hated beds, and couches, and cushions. Soft things make you soft, and she did not need them. She remembered lying in the darkness on a soft bed when she was first made a slave. When she was still a child, and small, and weak. Lying in the darkness and weeping to be alone. Ferro dug savagely at the scab and felt blood seep from underneath. She hated that weak, foolish, child who had allowed herself to be trapped. She despised the memory of her.

Ferro frowned most of all at Ninefingers, lying on his back with the blankets rucked and rumpled round him, his head tipped back and his mouth hanging open, eyes closed, breath hissing soft in his nose, one pale arm flung out wide at an uncomfortable-looking angle. Sleeping like a child. Why had she fucked him? And why did she keep doing it? She should never have touched him. She should never have spoken to him. She did not need him, the ugly, big pink fool.