“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.

She needed no one.

Ferro told herself she hated all these things, and that her hatred could never fade. But however she curled her lip, and frowned, and picked her scabs, it was hard to feel the same. She looked at the bed, at the dark wood shining in the glow from the embers in the fireplace, at the shifting blobs of shadow in the wrinkled sheet. What difference would it really make to anyone, if she lay there rather than on the cold, wide mattress in her own room? The bed was not her enemy. So she got up from the chair, and padded over and slid down into it with her back to Ninefingers, taking care not to wake him. Not for his sake, of course.

But she had no wish to explain herself.

She wriggled her shoulders, moving backwards towards him where it was warmer. She heard him grunt in his sleep, felt him roll. She tensed to spring out of the bed, holding her breath. His arm slid over her side and he muttered something in her ear, meaningless sleep sounds, breath hot on her neck.

His big warm body pressed up tight against her back no longer made her feel so trapped. The weight of his pale hand resting gently against her ribs, his heavy arm around her felt almost… good. That made her frown.

Nothing good ever lasts for long.