“For what?” she said, frowning at him.

Now.

He lurched towards her, snatching his hand from his pocket. She stumbled back against the table, eyes wide… and they both froze.

The ring glittered between them. A colossal, flashing diamond so large it made the thick golden band look flimsy. So large it looks a joke. A fake. An absurd impossibility. The biggest stone that Valint and Balk had to offer.

“I have to ask you to marry me,” he croaked. The hand that held the ring was trembling like a dry leaf. Put a cleaver in it and it’s steady as a rock, but ask me to hold a ring and I nearly wet myself. Courage, Sand, courage.

She stared down at the glittering stone, her mouth hanging stupidly open. With shock? With horror? Marry this… thing? I would rather die! “Uh…” she muttered. “I…”

“I know! I know, I’m as disgusted as you are, but… let me speak. Please.” He stared down at the floor, his mouth twisting as he said the words. “I am not stupid enough to pretend that you might ever come to love… a man like me, or think of me with anything warmer than pity. This is a question of necessity. You should not flinch from it because… of what I am. They know you are carrying the king’s child.”

“They?” she muttered.

“Yes. They. The child is a threat to them. You are a threat to them. This way I can protect you. I can give your child legitimacy. It must be our child, now and forever.” Still she stared at the ring in silence. Like a prisoner staring horrified upon the instruments, and deciding whether to confess. Two awful choices, but which is the worse?

“There are many things that I can give you. Safety. Security. Respect. You will have the best of everything. A high place in society, for what such things are worth. No one will dream of laying a finger upon you. No one will dare to talk down to you. People will whisper behind your back, of course. But they will whisper of your beauty, your wit, and your surpassing virtue.” Glokta narrowed his eyes. “I will see to it.”

She looked up at him, and swallowed. And now comes the refusal. My thanks, but I would rather die. “I should be honest with you. When I was younger… I did some foolish things.” Her mouth twisted. “This isn’t even the first bastard I’ve carried. My father threw me down the stairs and I lost it. He nearly killed me. I didn’t think that it could happen again.”

“We have all done things we are not proud of.” You should hear my confessions, some time. Or rather no one ever should. “That changes nothing. I promised that I would look to your welfare. I see no other way.”

“Then yes.” She took the ring from him without any ceremony and slid it onto her finger. “There is nothing to think about, is there?” Scarcely the gushing acceptance, the tearful acquiescence, the joyful surrender that one reads of in the story books. A reluctant business arrangement. An occasion for sad reflection on all that might have been, but is not.

“Who would have thought,” she murmured, staring at the jewel on her finger, “when I watched you fence with my brother, all those years ago, that I would one day wear your ring? You always were the man of my dreams.”

And now of your nightmares. “Life takes strange turns. The circumstances are not quite what anyone would have predicted.” And so I save two lives. How much evil can that possibly outweigh? Yet it is something on the right side of the scales, at least. Every man needs something on the right side of the scales.

Her dark eyes rolled up to his. “Could you not have afforded a bigger stone?”

“Only by raiding the treasury,” he croaked. A kiss would be traditional, but under the circumstances—

She stepped towards him, lifting one arm. He lurched back, winced at a twinge in his hip. “Sorry. Somewhat… out of practice.”

“If I am to do this, I mean to do it properly.”

“To make the best of it, do you mean?”

“To make something of it, anyway.” She drew closer still. He had to force himself to stay where he was. She looked into his eyes. She reached up, slowly, and touched his cheek, and set his eyelid flickering.

Foolishness. How many women have touched me before? And yet that was another life. Another—

Her hand slid round his face, her fingertips pressing tight into his jaw. His neck clicked as she pulled him close. He felt her breath warm on his chin. Her lips brushed against his, gently, and back the other way. He heard her make a soft grunt in her throat, and it made his own breath catch. Pretence, of course. How could any woman want to touch this ruined body? Kiss this ruined face? Even I am repulsed at the thought of it. Pretence, and yet I must applaud her for the effort.

His left leg trembled and he had to cling tight to his cane. The breath hissed fast through his nose. Her face was sideways on to his, their mouths locked together, sucking wetly. The tip of her tongue licked at his empty gums. Pretence, of course, what else could it be? And yet she does it so very, very well…

The First Law

Ferro sat, and she stared at her hand. The hand that had held the Seed. It looked the same as ever, yet it felt different. Cold, still. Very cold. She had wrapped it in blankets. She had bathed it in warm water. She had held it near the fire, so near that she had burned herself.

Nothing helped.

“Ferro…” Whispered so quiet it could almost have been the wind around the window-frame.

She jerked to her feet, knife clutched in her fist. She stared into the corners of her room. All empty. She bent down to look under the bed, under the tall cupboard. She tore the hangings out of the way with her free hand. No one. She had known there would be no one.

Yet she still heard them.

A thumping at the door and she whipped round again, breath hissing through her teeth. Another dream? Another ghost? More heavy knocks.

“Come in?” she growled.

The door opened. Bayaz. He raised one eyebrow at her knife. “You are altogether too fond of blades, Ferro. You have no enemies here.”

She glared at the Magus through narrowed eyes. She was not so sure. “What happened, in the wind?”

“What happened?” Bayaz shrugged. “We won.”

“What were those shapes? Those shadows.”

“I saw nothing, aside from Mamun and his Hundred Words receiving the punishment they deserved.”

“Did you not hear voices?”

“Over the thunder of our victory? I heard nothing.”

“I did.” Ferro lowered the knife and slid it into her belt. She worked the fingers of her hand, the same, and yet changed. “I still hear them.”

“And what do they tell you, Ferro?”

“They speak of locks, and gates, and doors, and the opening of them. Always they talk of opening them. They ask about the Seed. Where is it?”

“Safe.” Bayaz gazed blankly at her. “Remember, if you truly hear the creatures of the Other Side, that they are made of lies.”

“They are not alone in that. They ask me to break the First Law. Just as you did.”

“Open to interpretation.” Bayaz had a proud twist to the corner of his mouth. As if he had achieved something wonderful. “I tempered Glustrod’s disciplines with the techniques of the Master Maker, and used the Seed as the engine for my Art. The results were…” He took a long, satisfied breath. “Well, you were there. It was, above all, a triumph of will.”

“You tampered with the seals. You put the world at risk. The Tellers of Secrets…”

“The First Law is a paradox. Whenever you change a thing you borrow from the world below, and there are always risks. If I have crossed a line it is a line of scale only. The world is safe, is it not? I make no apologies for the ambition of my vision.”

“They are burying men, and women, and children, in pits for a hundred. Just as they did in Aulcus. This sickness… it is because of what we did. Is that ambition, then? The size of the graves?”