All as one, the voices screamed their harsh command. “No!”

She blindly seized hold of the lid. “Fuck yourselves!” she hissed.

And with her last grain of strength she forced the box closed.

After the Rains

Logen leaned on the parapet, high up on a tower at one side of the palace, and frowned into the wind. He’d done the same, it felt an age ago now, from the top of the Tower of Chains. He’d stared out dumbstruck at the endless city, wondering if he could ever have dreamed of a man-made thing so proud, and beautiful, and indestructible as the Agriont.

By the dead, how times change.

The green space of the park was scattered with fallen rubbish, trees broken, grass gouged, half the lake leaked away and sunken to a muddy bog. At its western edge a sweep of fine white buildings still stood, even if the windows gaped empty. Further west, and they had no roofs, bare rafters hanging. Further still their walls were torn and scoured, empty shells, choked with rubble.

Beyond that, there was nothing. The great hall with the golden dome, gone. The square where Logen had watched the sword-game, gone. The Tower of Chains, the mighty wall under it, and all the grand buildings over which Logen had fled with Ferro. All gone.

A colossal circle of destruction was carved from the western end of the Agriont, and only acres of formless wreckage remained. The city beyond was torn with black scars, smoke still rising from a few last fires, from smouldering hulks still drifting in the bay. The House of the Maker loomed over the scene, a sharp black mass under the brooding clouds, uncaring and untouched.

Logen stood there, scratching at the scarred side of his face, over and over. His wounds ached. So many of them. Every part of him was battered and bruised, slashed and torn. From the fight with the Eater, from the battle beyond the moat, from the duel with the Feared, from seven days of slaughter in the High Places. From a hundred fights, and skirmishes, and old campaigns. Too many to remember. So tired, and sore, and sick.

He frowned down at his hands on the parapet in front of him. The bare stone looked back where his middle finger used to be. He was Ninefingers still. The Bloody-Nine. A man made of death, just as Bethod had said. He’d nearly killed the Dogman yesterday, he knew it. His oldest friend. His only friend. He’d raised the sword, and if it wasn’t for a trick of fate, he would have done it.

He remembered standing high up, on the side of the Great Northern library, looking out over the empty valley, the still lake like a great mirror beneath it. He remembered feeling the wind on his fresh-shaved jaw, and wondering whether a man could change.

Now he knew the answer.

“Master Ninefingers!”

Logen turned quickly, hissed through his teeth as the stitches down his side burned. The First of the Magi stepped through the doorway and out into the open air. He was changed, somehow. He looked young. Younger even than when Logen first met him. There was a sharpness to his movements, a gleam in his eye. It even seemed that there were a few dark hairs in the grey beard round his friendly grin. The first smile Logen had seen in a good while.

“You are hurt?” he asked.

Logen sucked sourly at his teeth. “Hardly the first time.”

“And yet it gets no easier.” Bayaz placed his meaty fists on the stone next to Logen’s and stared out happily at the view. Just as if it was a field of flowers instead of a sweep of epic ruin. “I hardly expected to see you again so soon. And to see you so very far advanced. I understand that your feud is over. You defeated Bethod. Threw him from his own walls, the way I heard it. A nice touch. Always thinking of the song they will sing, eh? And then you took his place. The Bloody-Nine, King of the Northmen! Imagine that.”

Logen frowned. “That wasn’t how it happened.”

“Details. The result is the same, is it not? Peace in the North, at last? Either way, I congratulate you.”

“Bethod had a few things to say.”

“Did he?” asked Bayaz, carelessly. “I always found his conversation rather drab. All about himself, his plans, his achievements. It is so very tiresome when men think never of others. Poor manners.”

“He said you’re the reason why he didn’t kill me. That you bargained for my life.”

“True, I must confess. He owed me, and you were the price I demanded. I like to keep one eye on the future. Even then, I knew I might have need of a man who could speak to the spirits. It was an unexpected bonus that you turned out to be such a winning travelling companion.”

Logen found he was talking through gritted teeth. “Would have been nice to know is all.”

“You never asked, Master Ninefingers. You did not want to know my plans, as I recall, and I did not want to make you feel indebted. ‘I saved your life once’ would have been a poor start to our friendship.”

All reasonable enough, like everything Bayaz ever said, but it left a sour taste still, to have been traded like a hog. “Where’s Quai? I’d like to—”

“Dead.” Bayaz pronounced the word smartly, sharp as a knife thrust. “We feel his loss most keenly.”

“Back to the mud, eh?” Logen remembered the effort he’d made to save that man’s life. The miles he’d slogged through the rain, trying to do the right thing. All wasted. Perhaps he should’ve felt more. But it was hard with so much death spread out in front of him. Logen was numb, now. Either that, or he really didn’t care a shit. It was hard to say which.

“Back to the mud,” he muttered again. “You carry on, though, don’t you.”

“Of course.”

“That’s the task that comes with surviving. You remember them, you say some words, then you carry on, and hope for better.”

“Indeed.”

“You have to be realistic about these things.”

“True.”

Logen worked at his sore side with one hand, trying to make himself feel something. But a scrap of extra pain helped no one. “I lost a friend yesterday.”

“It was a bloody day. But a victorious one.”

“Oh aye? For who?” He could see people moving among the ruins, insects picking at the rubble, searching for survivors and finding the dead. He doubted many of them were feeling the flush of victory right now. He knew he wasn’t. “I should be with my own kind,” he muttered, but without moving. “Helping with the burying. Helping with the wounded.”

“And yet you are here, looking down.” Bayaz’ green eyes were hard as stones. That hardness that Logen had noticed from the very start, and had somehow forgotten. Somehow grown to overlook. “I entirely understand your feelings. Healing is for the young. As one gets older, one finds one has less and less patience with the wounded.” He raised his eyebrows as he turned back towards the horrible view. “I am very old.”

He lifted his fist to knock, then paused, fingers rubbing nervously against his palm.

He remembered the sour-sweet smell of her, the strength of her hands, the shape of her frown in the firelight. He remembered the warmth of her, pressed up close to him in the night. He knew there had been something good between them, even if all the words they had said had been hard. Some people don’t have soft words in them, however much they try. He didn’t hold much hope, of course. A man like him was better off without it. But you get nothing out if you put nothing in.

So Logen gritted his teeth and knocked. No reply. He chewed at his lip, and knocked again. Nothing. He frowned, twitchy and suddenly out of patience, wrenched the knob round and shoved the door open.

Ferro spun about. Her clothes were rumpled and dirty, even more than usual. Her eyes were wide, wild even, her fists clenched. But her face quickly fell when she saw it was him, and his heart sank with it.

“It’s me, Logen.”

“Uh,” she grunted. She jerked her head sideways, frowning at the window. She took a couple of steps towards it, eyes narrowed. Then she snapped round suddenly the other way. “There!”