The bald man leaned forward. “Tell me, Ferro, which is the blue stone?”

She stared at him, hard, then down at the stones. There was no difference between them. They were all watching her, closer than ever now, and she ground her teeth.

“That one.” She pointed to the one on the left.

Bayaz smiled. “Exactly the answer I was hoping for.” Ferro shrugged her shoulders. Lucky, she thought, to guess the right one. Then she noticed the look on the big pink’s face. He was frowning at the two stones, as though he didn’t understand.

“They both are red,” said Bayaz. “You see no colours at all, eh, Ferro?”

So the bald pink had played a trick on her. She wasn’t sure how he could have known, but she was sure she didn’t like it. No one plays tricks on Ferro Maljinn. She started to laugh. A rough, ugly, unpractised gurgling.

Then she sprang across the table.

The look of surprise was just forming on the old pink’s face as her fist crunched into his nose. He gave a grunt, chair tipping backwards, sprawling out onto the floor. She scrambled across the table to get at him, but Yulwei grabbed hold of her leg and dragged her back. Her clawing hands missed the bald bastard’s neck and hauled the table over on its side instead, the two stones skittering away across the boards.

She shook her leg free and went for the old pink as he staggered up from the floor, but Yulwei caught her arm and pulled her back again, all the while yelling, “Peace!” He got her elbow in his face for his trouble, and sagged back against the wall with her on top of him. She was first up, ready to go at the bald bastard again.

By now the big one was on his feet though, and moving forward, still watching her. Ferro smiled at him, fists clenched at her sides. Now she would see how dangerous he really was.

He took another step.

Then Bayaz put an arm out to stop him. He had his other hand clasped to his nose, trying to staunch the flow of blood. He started to chuckle.

“Very good!” He coughed. “Very fierce, and damn quick too. Without a doubt, you’re what we’re after! I hope you will accept my apologies, Ferro.”

“What?”

“For my awful manners.” He wiped blood from his upper lip. “I deserved no less, but I had to be sure. I am sorry. Am I forgiven?” He looked somehow different now, though nothing had changed. Friendly, considerate, honest. Sorry. But it took more than that to win her trust. A lot more.

“We’ll see,” she hissed.

“That’s all I ask. That, and that you give Yulwei and I a moment to discuss some… matters. Matters best discussed in private.”

“It’s alright, Ferro,” said Yulwei, “they are friends.” She was damn sure they weren’t her friends, but she allowed him to shepherd her out of the door behind the two pinks. “Just try not to kill any of them.”

This room was much like the other. They had to be rich, these pinks, for all they didn’t look it. Great big fireplace, made of dark veined stone. Cushions, and soft cloth round the window, covered in flowers and birds in tiny stitches. There was a painting of a stern man with a crown on his head, frowning down at Ferro from the wall. She frowned back at him. Luxury.

Ferro hated luxury even more than she hated gardens.

Luxury meant captivity more surely than the bars of a cage. Soft furniture spelled danger more surely than weapons. Hard ground and cold water was all she needed. Soft things make you soft, and she wanted no part of that.

There was another man waiting in there, walking round and round with his hands behind his back, as though he didn’t like to stand still too long. Not quite a pink, his leathery skin was somewhere between hers and theirs in tone. Head shaved, like a priest. Ferro didn’t like that.

She hated priests most of all.

His eyes lit up when he saw her though, for all her sneering at him, and he hurried over. A strange little man in travel-worn clothes, the top of his head came up no higher than Ferro’s mouth. “I am Brother Longfoot,” flapping his hands around all over the place, “of the great order of Navigators.”

“Lucky for you.” Ferro turned her shoulder towards him, straining her ears to hear what the two old men were saying beyond the door, but Longfoot was not deterred.

“It is lucky! Yes, yes, it most certainly is! God has truly blessed me! I declare that never, in all of history, has a man been so well suited to his profession, or a profession to a man, as I, Brother Longfoot, am suited to the noble science of Navigation! From the snow-covered mountains of the far North, to the sun-drenched sands of the utmost South, the whole world is my home, truly!”

He smiled at her with a look of sickening self-satisfaction. Ferro ignored him. The two pinks, the big one and the scrawny one, were talking to each other on the far side of the room. They spoke in some language she didn’t understand. Sounded like pigs grunting. Talking about her maybe, but she didn’t care. They went out another door, leaving her alone with the priest, still flapping his lips.

“There are few nations within the Circle of the World to which I, Brother Longfoot, am a stranger, and yet I am at a loss as to your origins.” He waited expectantly, but Ferro said nothing. “You would like me to guess, then? Indeed, it is a riddle. Let me see… your eyes have the shape of the people of distant Suljuk, where the black mountains rise sheer from the sparkling sea, indeed they do, and yet your skin is—”

“Stop your mouth, cunt.”

The man paused in mid-sentence, coughed and moved away, leaving Ferro to attend to the voices on the other side of the door. She smiled to herself. The wood was thick and the sounds were muffled, but the two old men had not reckoned on the sharpness of her ears. They were still speaking in Kantic. Now that idiot of a Navigator was quiet she could make out every word that Yulwei was saying.

“…Khalul breaks the Second Law, so you must break the First? I like it not, Bayaz! Juvens would never have allowed this!” Ferro frowned. Yulwei had a strange note in his voice. Fear. The Second Law. He had spoken of it to the Eaters, Ferro remembered. It is forbidden to eat the flesh of men.

She heard the bald pink next. “The First Law is a paradox. All magic comes from the Other Side, even ours. Whenever you change a thing you touch the world below, whenever you make a thing you borrow from the Other Side, and there is always a cost.”

“But the cost of this might be too high! It is a cursed thing, this Seed, a damned thing. Nothing but chaos grows from it! The sons of Euz, so great in wisdom and power, this Seed was the end of them, of all of them, in different ways. Are you wiser than Juvens, Bayaz? Are you more cunning than Kanedias? Are you stronger than Glustrod?”

“None of those, brother, but tell me… how many Eaters has Khalul made?”

A long pause. “I cannot be sure.”

“How many?”

Another pause. “Perhaps two hundred. Perhaps more. The priesthood scour the South for those with any promise. Faster and faster now he makes them, but most are young, and weak.”

“Two hundred or more, and growing all the time. Many are weak, but among them are some that might be a match for you or I. Those that were Khalul’s apprentices in the Old Time—the one they called the East Wind, and those cursed bloody twins.”

“Damn those bitches!” Yulwei groaned.

“Not to mention Mamun, whose lies began this chaos.”

“The trouble was well rooted before he was even born, you know it, Bayaz. Still Mamun was in the Badlands. I felt him near. He is grown terrible strong.”

“You know that I am right. Meanwhile, our numbers hardly grow.”

“I thought this one, Quai, showed promise?”

“We need only a hundred more like him and twenty years in which to train them. Then we might stand on equal terms. No, brother, no. We must use fire against fire.”

“Even if the fire burns you and all creation to ashes? Let me go to Sarkant. Khalul might yet hear reason—”