Yulwei looked even more worried than before. “The Divider?”

“One edge here,” whispered Quai from the corner. “One on the Other Side.”

Bayaz, as usual, ignored him. “It can cut through anything, even an Eater.”

“Will it cut through a hundred?” asked Yulwei.

“I will settle for Mamun alone.”

Yulwei slowly unfolded himself from the chair, stood with a sigh.

“Very well, lead on. I will enter the Maker’s House with you, one last time.”

Ferro licked her teeth. The idea of going inside was irresistible. “I will come with you.”

Bayaz glared back. “No, you will not. You can stay here and sulk. That has always been your special gift, has it not? I would hate to deny you the opportunity to make use of it. You will come with us,” he snapped at Quai. “You have your business, eh, Yoru?”

“I do, Master Bayaz.”

“Good.” The First of the Magi strode from the room with Yulwei at his shoulder, his apprentice trudging at the rear. Sulfur did not move. Ferro frowned at him, and he grinned back, his head tipped against the panelled wall, his chin pointed towards the moulded ceiling.

“Are these Hundred Words not your enemies too?” Ferro demanded.

“My deepest and most bitter enemies.”

“Why do you not fight, then?”

“Oh, there are other ways to fight than struggling in the dirt out there.” There was something in those eyes, one dark, one bright, that Ferro did not like the look of. There was something hard and hungry behind his smiles. “Though I would love to stay and chat, I must go and give the wheels another push.” He turned a finger round and round in the air. “The wheels must keep turning, eh, Maljinn?”

“Go then,” she snapped. “I will not stop you.”

“You could not if you wanted to. I would bid you a good day. But I’d wager you’ve never had one.” And he sauntered out, the door clicking to behind him.

Ferro was already across the room, shooting back the bolt on the window. She had done as Bayaz told her once before, and it had brought her nothing but a wasted year. She would make her own choices now. She jerked the hangings aside and slipped out onto the balcony. Curled-up leaves blew on the wind, whipping around the lawns below along with the spitting rain. A quick glance up and down the damp paths showed only one guard, and he was looking the wrong way, huddled in his cloak.

Sometimes it is best to seize the moment.

Ferro swung her legs over the rail, gathered herself, then sprang out into the air. She caught a slippery tree branch, swung to the trunk, slid down it to the damp earth and crept behind a neatly clipped hedge, low to the ground.

She heard footsteps, then voices. Bayaz’ voice, and Yulwei’s, speaking soft into the hissing wind. Damn, but these old fools of Magi loved to flap their lips.

“Sulfur?” came Yulwei’s voice. “He is still with you?”

“Why would he not be?”

“His studies ran in… dangerous directions. I told you this, brother.”

“And? Khalul is not so picky with his servants…”

They passed out of earshot and Ferro had to rush along behind the hedge to keep pace, staying bent double.

“…I do not like this habit,” Yulwei was saying, “of taking forms, of changing skin. A cursed discipline. You know what Juvens’ feelings were on it—”

“I have no time to worry on the feelings of a man centuries in his grave. There is no Third Law, Yulwei.”

“Perhaps there should be. Stealing another’s face… the tricks of Glustrod and his devil-bloods. Arts borrowed from the Other Side—”

“We must use such weapons as we can find. I have no love for Mamun, but he is right. They are called the Hundred Words because they are a hundred. We are two, and time has not been kind to us.”

“Then why do they wait?”

“You know Khalul, brother. Ever careful, watchful, deliberate. He will not risk his children until he must…”

Through the chinks in the bare twigs Ferro watched the three men pass between the guards and out of the gate in the high palace wall. She gave them a few moments, then she started up and strode after, shoulders back, as though she was about important business. She felt the hard stares of the armoured men flanking the gate, but they were used to her coming and going now. For once they kept their silence.

Between the great buildings, around the statues, through the dull gardens she followed the two Magi and their apprentice across the Agriont. She kept her distance, loitering in doorways, under trees, walking close behind those few people hurrying down the windy streets. Sometimes, above the buildings in a square, or at the end of a lane, the top of the great mass of the Maker’s House reared up. Hazy grey through the drizzle to begin with, but growing more black, vast and distinct with each stride she took.

The three men led her to a ramshackle building with crumbling turrets sticking from its sagging roof. Ferro knelt and watched from behind a corner while Bayaz beat on the rickety door with the end of his staff.

“I am glad you did not find the Seed, brother,” said Yulwei, while they waited. “That thing is better left buried.”

“I wonder if you will still think so when the Hundred Words swarm through the streets of the Agriont, howling for our blood?”

“God will forgive me, I think. There are worse things than Khalul’s Eaters.”

Ferro’s nails dug into her palms. There was a figure standing at one of the grimy windows, peering out at Yulwei and Bayaz. A long, lean figure with a black mask and short hair. The woman who had chased her and Ninefingers, long before. Ferro’s hand strayed on an instinct towards her sword, then she realised she had left it in the palace, and cursed her foolishness. Ninefingers had been right. You could never have too many knives.

The door wobbled open, some words were muttered, the two old men went through, Quai at their back, head bowed. The masked woman watched for a while longer, then stepped back from the window into the darkness. Ferro sprang over a hedge as the door wobbled closed, wedged her foot in the gap and slid through sideways, stealing into the deep shadows on the other side. The door clattered shut on its creaking hinges.

Down a long hallway, dusty paintings on one wall, dusty windows in the other. All the way the back of Ferro’s neck prickled, waiting for the black masks to come boiling out of the shadows. But nothing came besides the echoing footsteps up ahead, the mindless droning of the old men’s voices.

“This place has changed,” Yulwei was saying. “Since that day we fought Kanedias. The day the Old Time ended. It rained, then.”

“I remember it.”

“I lay wounded on the bridge, in the rain. I saw them fall, the Maker and his daughter. From on high, they tumbled down. Hard to believe, that I smiled to see it, then. Vengeance is a fleeting thrill. The doubts, we carry to our graves.” Ferro sneered at that. If she could have the vengeance she would live with the doubts.

“Time has brought us both regrets,” muttered Bayaz.

“More of them with every passing year. A strange thing, though. I could have sworn, as I lay there, that it was Kanedias who fell first, and Tolomei second.”

“Memory can tell lies, especially to men who have lived as long as we. The Maker threw down his daughter, then I him. And so the Old Time ended.”

“So it did,” murmured Yulwei. “So much lost. And now we are come to this…”

Quai’s head snapped round and Ferro plastered herself against the wall behind a leaning cabinet. He stood there, for a long moment, frowning towards her. Then he followed the others. Ferro waited, holding her breath, until the three of them turned a corner and passed out of sight.

She caught them up in a crumbling courtyard, choked with dead weeds, littered with broken slates fallen from the roofs above. A man in a stained shirt led them up a long stairway, towards a dark arch high in the high wall of the Agriont. He had a bunch of jingling keys in his gnarled hands, was muttering something about eggs. Once they had passed into the tunnel Ferro padded across the open space and up the steps, pausing near the top.