The Great Change (and Other Lies)

Copyright © 2023 by Joe Abercrombie.

All rights reserved.
Dust jacket and interior illustrations
Copyright © 2023 by John Anthony Di Giovanni.
All rights reserved.
Interior design
Copyright © 2023 by Desert Isle Design, LLC.
All rights reserved.
Ebook Edition
ISBN
978-1-64524-065-5
Subterranean Press
PO Box 190106
Burton, MI 48519
subterraneanpress.com
 For Lou,
With grim, dark
hugs
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
The Thread
The Stone
The Point
The Great Change
 “There is a certain relief in change,
even though it be from bad to worse.”
Washington Irving
 INTRODUCTION
These stories were written as companion pieces to The Age of
Madness, so it’s sensible, and in a couple of cases even
essential, to read those books first. It’s probably best not to
read “The Thread,” and definitely not “The Stone,” until
you’ve finished A Little Hatred. It’s sensible not to read “The
Point”until you’ve completed The Wisdom of Crowds. But if
you heed one warning, heed this one: you ABSOLUTELY
SHOULD NOT read “The Great Change”until you’ve
completed The Age of Madness altogether.
since The Heroes, there have been special editions of my
E ver
First Law books that have come with an extra short story. Just
a little episode that gives an insight into the past of a key character, or
fleshes out an important event, or gives a different and complimentary
point of view to something seen in the books. In thinking about what
short stories I might write to accompany The Age of Madness, I was
forced to ask myself—what are these books about? Always a horrible
question for an author to answer, since books are invariably about all
kinds of things, and become about all kinds of other things in the
process of writing. But one theme that stuck out was Change.
Something that frustrated me about much of the epic fantasy I read
as a kid was that it seemed to take place in an unchangeable world—a
medieval sandbox which had stayed much the same for apparently
thousands of years. I wanted my world to feel like it was in a constant
state of painful flux and development—like our own—a place where
conflict doesn’t just arise from a battle between abstract good and evil,
but where it grew out of competing interests born of the great tectonic
shifts of economics, technology, and society. So The First Law took
place in a time when commerce was in the ascendancy, a new merchant
class was clawing power from the traditional aristocracy, and money
(and with it, the banks) was becoming all-powerful. For The Age of
Madness, the model for the next great social and technological
upheaval, even more powerful and painful than the last, was the
Industrial Revolution.
It seemed natural, then, in writing three stories to accompany three
books, to look at three different industries—how technology was
transforming them, how that was transforming the lives of the myriad
different people involved and the relationships between them, and how
the web of commerce and industry was knitting the whole world ever
more tightly together. This allowed each story to take a big slice right
through the social strata and introduce us to all kinds of different points
of view—which I think is one of my strengths as a writer, if I have any.
It also had the added advantage of letting me show off some of my
research, which is hugely important. I read about this stuff so I can
inflict it on my readers, not so I can keep it to myself, thank you very
much.
“The Thread” literally follows the thread, from the ex-slaves
working in the fields of Gurkhul, through the mills of Adua and the
overworked seamstresses, to a dress that’s just not quite good enough
for that infamously fastidious leader of fashion Lady Savine dan
Glokta. “The Stone” follows one exceptional rock from the rivers of the
parched south through the smugglers, spivs, merchants, and jewellers of
the burgeoning diamond trade each taking their cut, and ends with the
stone that so many have sweated, schemed and haggled over being not
quite good enough for the King of the Union’s new crown. “The Point,”
meanwhile, digs iron from the penal mines of Angland, forges that iron
into a dagger, and the dagger, by a circuitous route, finds its way into
the hands of a certain member of the Burners and…well, you’ll get the
point.
“The Great Change” is something slightly different—again it is a
chain of varied points of view, but it follows not an industry, but an
idea—the idea of that grand revolution, that blow for the common
man, that effort to sweep the past away wholesale—the Great Change
itself. It begins just after the events of Red Country, and ends as A Little
Hatred is getting underway, with several of its key characters passing
through. It intersects much more closely with the events of The Age of
Madness and puts them in a very different light. In a couple of cases it
even features the same scenes but from very different points of view. It
is strongly recommended that no one reads this particular story until
they have finished The Wisdom of Crowds…it does rather give the
game away…
 THE THREAD
picked the last few bolls from the latest plant, pods
S abra
bursting open with white fluff, tossed them into her bag and
blew a long sigh as she straightened. She squinted up at the sun, wiped
the sweat from her forehead, slapped the fluff from her sore fingertips,
shifted the strap of the bag on her sore shoulder, rubbed at her sore
back and blew out another sigh. The usual routine.
“Hard work, eh?” said Kurin, nudging his hat back so he could
wipe his own sweat-beaded forehead.
He always seemed to be close by. Tending to the next row of plants
when they were picking. Stuffing the bale beside hers when they were
packing. Setting his plate on the table next to hers when they were
eating. She thought she caught him looking at her, sometimes. Or
maybe she just wanted to think so. He was a fine-looking man, after all,
with those broad shoulders and those good teeth and that easy smile.
She took a nervous glance about, worried the overseer might notice
them talking, then remembered that the overseer was gone. Dragged
through the dust behind a donkey then beaten to death with shovels,
and not at all missed. They were not slaves any more. They were free,
and could talk as much as they pleased. As long as they filled their
quota.
“Hot work,” she said, pressing her own hat down a little, half to
hide from the sun, half to hide from Kurin. She thought she might be
blushing, a little.
“Here.” He offered her his flask. Then he wiped the neck with his
sleeve, and offered it again. His sleeve was dirty. All their sleeves were.
But it was a nice gesture. No doubt she would have found it a less nice
gesture had he been less nice looking. But that is the ugly truth about
pretty people.
She wanted to slosh it all over her face, but took what she
imagined was a ladylike sip instead, and handed it back. “Very kind,”
she said, hiding behind the brim of her hat again.
“Have some more, if you want,” he said, still smiling. “We’re free
now.”
She thought about that. “Yes. We’re free.” And she took another
sip, as if to prove the point to herself.
They were free, and that was a great thing. A wonderful thing. A
thing they had all begged God for, for so many years. Only sometimes
Sabra wondered if things had changed all that much after all.
As a slave she had slept in a stinking crumbling shack and ate lentil
paste. Now she was free she lived in the same stinking crumbling shack
and ate the same lentil paste but had to pay the man who lived in her
old master’s house for the privilege. Her master had been hacked to
pieces and she had shed no tears for him at all, but the man who lived
in the house now looked at her just the same way he had.
If a slave had filled their bag too slowly they might have been
beaten. Might have been lashed. Made an example of, to encourage the
others. Now, if a worker could not meet their quota, they would not be
paid. Then they would have no roof. Then they would have no food.
Then one day they would be gone, and a new worker found. There
were always new workers. She had heard that was how they did things
in the Union. They boasted they had no slaves there. But she was not
sure it was better, any more. In her dark moments, she wondered if it
might be worse.
But she did not want to let Kurin see her dark moments, so she
smiled as she handed the flask back to him. Things had not changed as
much as she might have wanted. But at least she could smile now.
“Thank you,” she said, as she bent down to the next plant and started
plucking the bolls, pods bursting open with white fluff.
“You are lucky,” said Kurin, still watching her, still smiling.
She looked up at that. “I have never once in my life thought so.”
“You are short.”
She drew herself up to her full height which was, admittedly, not
high. “We are all the height God made us.”
“And, thanks to God, you do not have to stoop so low as I do to
pick.”
Sabra could not help laughing. No doubt it would have been less
funny if he had been less pretty. But there was the ugly truth again.
“True. But my back still aches by evening. And when my bag gets full it
drags along the ground, while yours wafts at your knees and keeps
them cool, like a fine lady’s dress.”
Kurin laughed. “True. I never thought of that. Perhaps we are both
luckier than we thought.”
“Perhaps,” said Sabra, but she was not convinced.
 Down near the fence, the wagons were trundling out. Trundling off
through the dust to Dagoska, laden down with bales almost as tall as
she was. Sabra wondered how much of her work, her sweat, her pain
went into one of those big grey blocks. But wondering did not help. She
gave a sigh, and wiped the sweat from her forehead, and started
plucking the fluff from the plants, stuffing it into the bag.
The quota wouldn’t fill itself.

“And how can we enrich each other today?” asked Baseem, smiling
wide at this sunburned pink fool. He could afford to smile, after all.
Business was good.
The square before the Great Temple of Dagoska seethed with
buyers and sellers, screaming over each other in thirty languages. The
honk and bray of livestock, the clatter of scales and measures, the
righteous jingle of coins from every land in the Circle of the World.
This pink buyer was frowning at one of Baseem’s bales. One of the
ones that just came in. The only bales Baseem had were ones that had
just come in. As soon as they came in, he sold them on. “I can pay forty
a bale,” he grumbled, in broken Kantic.
Baseem smiled. He could afford to smile all day.
Business was better than it had ever been. Better than when Baseem
was a boy, and he had first worked in this square for his father, and the
pinks had swarmed across the Circle Sea to buy silks and linens. Before
the pinks made the city a part of the Union, took the trade for
themselves and ruined it. Before the Gurkish conquered the city and
stopped the trade altogether. Now the Prophet had gone wherever
Prophets go, presumably heaven but probably the other direction, the
Gurkish were gone and Dagoska belonged to the Dagoskans once
again, and business was better than ever.
“These are sixty a bale,” said Baseem, calmly.
“Sixty?” asked the man, voice squeaky with outrage. “You’d be
robbing me at fifty!”
“And yet sixty is my price.”
“I can stretch to fifty-five and not a coin further.”
Baseem smiled. Fifty-five would have been a ridiculous price last
season, but prices kept going up. He was fixed on sixty, which was
twice what he had paid. “Sixty,” he said, “is my price.”
One might have thought, because the pinks had killed Baseem’s
father in one of their many purges and trashed the business and turned
Dagoska to a bloody ruin with their corruption and mismanagement,
that he would take particular delight in fleecing this sunburned Union
bastard, but Baseem played no favourites. He would fleece people of
Suljuk, Styria, the Old Empire, the North, Gurkhul, Kadir, Yashtavit or
other Dagoskans, for that matter, if the opportunity presented itself,
and all with equal enthusiasm. Prejudice is a luxury no good merchant
can afford, his father had always said. Before they hung him.
“It’s the best quality, my friend,” said Baseem, slapping one of the
bales and sending up a little cloud of dust. “Kadiri, from the rich slopes
of the Rhozin valley. The very best!” It was no better than average and
probably worse, poorly packed from some dry plantation far from the
water, but honesty was a thing for the church not for the market. This
damn pink fool would not know the difference, and if he did would not
have cared. Any old rubbish sold now.
The pink narrowed his eyes in a show of suspicion. “Not trying to
fleece me?”
Baseem dismissed it with a snort. “Firstly, I live on my reputation.”
Baseem’s reputation was no better than average and probably worse,
but no one cared because his goods were in such high demand.
“Secondly, I would not dare.” Though in fact he would have dared
anything if the price was right and often had before business got so
good he did not have to. “Thirdly, how would I fool a man of your
discernment?” This pink was an oaf and a braggart and fooled himself
every morning that he was any kind of merchant. “But by all means, my
friend, if you can find better a better price then go with God, I will not
have to look long for another buyer.”
Across the sea, after all, the machines needed to be fed. More of
them and hungrier every day. And Baseem turned towards the boiling
mass of buyers clogging the market.
“All right!” said the pink, as Baseem had known he would. “All
right. Sixty a bale.” And he pulled open his purse and started sourly
counting out coins.
“You will not regret it, my friend,” said Baseem, who did not care
a log of camel shit whether this pink idiot regretted it or not. “One
hundred bales down to the docks!” he bellowed at his son, whose
shoulders slumped as he started to gather the porters.
The boy was not eager. He was easily distracted. He was nothing
like Baseem had been, when he worked for his father. So keen to learn!
But also to talk to girls. He frowned after his son. Perhaps he was being
unfair on the boy, the way his wife was always telling him. But fair was
for church, not for market. And it had been a while since Baseem had
much time for church.
Business was good, after all. Business had never been so good.
He turned to the next pink, sweat-beaded, ignorant merchant,
rubbing his hands. “And how can we enrich each other today?” he
asked.

“Don’t like this,” muttered Jens, watching his people tending to the
spinning machines. Too many open parts. Wheels and belts and drive-
shafts flying.
He wondered when the next accident would be. Could you call it
an accident, really, if you knew it was coming? Knew it was a question
of when, not if? He winced, and rubbed at the bridge of his nose.
Wasn’t sleeping well. Hadn’t been sleeping well since the last accident.
He could still hear that girl’s screams.
“Careful, everyone,” he called as he strode down the shed, slapping
backs, giving the thumbs up, dishing out the encouragements. “Nice
and careful, eh?”
Jens had told Zeitser he was worried about safety, but Zeitser
hadn’t wanted to hear it. He’d said, “You’re a foreman not a
nursemaid.” He’d said, “Safety’s not your business, just getting the
thread onto the bobbins.” As many strides of thread as man and
machine could deliver.
 There was a big new order. Big new client. Vallimir, or someone, up
in Valbeck, weaving new fabrics from it on those bloody great water-
driven looms they had up there. Always new clients. Always bigger
looms. Always more strides of thread screaming off the rollers. Made
him think of that girl’s screams. Couldn’t be good for the machinery,
pushed this fast, this long.
Jens had told Zeitser there’d be fewer strides all round if the
machines broke down from being worked too hard, or the workers
broke down from being worked too hard, but Zeitser hadn’t wanted to
hear that either. He’d said, “Ladies need dresses, and have no patience
with excuses.”
Jens wondered how much patience they’d have when their bloody
dresses fell apart while they were wearing ’em. He stepped up to squint
at the yarn. Twisted it between finger and thumb. “Don’t like this,” he
muttered. It was coming off the rollers fluffy. Loose. “These new bales
are no bloody good!” he roared at Hanner.
“They’re bloody shit!” Hanner roared back over the noise. Then he
shrugged. “But we can only spin with the bales we’ve got.”
Jens had told Zeitser he was worried about the quality, and Zeitser
had looked at him as if quality, like safety, was a word in a foreign
tongue, and said, “You’re a foreman not a needleworker,” then, “No
one cares a shit about the quality, just the number of strides on the
bobbins.”
Jens was no fool. He’d seen the visitor, late at night, coming to the
corner office with his papers. A neat little colourless man, with Valint
and Balk on his neat little case. Zeitser had a debt, and interest to pay,
and masters of his own too, masters even harder to satisfy than Zeitser
was himself. So he couldn’t care about safety, or quality, or working too
hard. All he cared about was the strides.
“Careful, everyone!” Jens called. “Nice and careful and productive,
eh?” They could stop at sundown and still get a few hundred strides
out. Not enough for Master Zeitser, of course. You could’ve wrapped
the bloody world in thread and it wouldn’t have been enough for
Zeitser.
Jens shook his head, and watched the yarn screaming off the
rollers, and wondered when the next accident would be.

“Damn this thread!” snarled Grette. It had bloody snapped again. She
raised the needle as if she’d dash it on the ground, but she knew if she
did that she’d spend hours on her knees searching for it, and she didn’t
have hours to spare.
“This thread,” she hissed, “what’s wrong with this bloody thread?”
The thread was bad. She knew the thread was bad. But the truth
was she had bigger problems than the thread. When things first got
blurry after a long session with the needle, she hadn’t wanted to admit
it. She hadn’t dared to admit it. Told herself it was nothing. First she’d
just had trouble in the candlelight. Just with the embroidery. She’d had
so many orders, and no one she could trust with the fine work. But
soon enough it was all the time. Now there was no denying it.
She couldn’t see.
 She pressed the heels of her trembling hands over her eyes, felt
tears prickling the inside of her lids.
“This one has to be good,” she whimpered. “This one has to be my
best.”
The last dress hadn’t been good enough. Selest dan Heugen had
been scathing. Refused to pay. What that had cost her. In money. In
time. In reputation. She couldn’t afford another failure. But, by the
Fates, everything was blurred now, by candlelight, by daylight, by every
light. She could hardly tell whether the work was good or bad, and now
even the bloody thread was letting her down.
She rocked back from the table, turned her face away. Didn’t want
to risk her tears staining the cloth. The cost of this cloth. By the Fates.
But it was late, and there was so much to do, and she never did her best
work when she was rushed. “This one has to be good.”
She felt Maree’s hand on her trembling shoulder. “You have to take
a rest, Mama. Maybe I could do some of it—”
“Don’t be fucking ridiculous!” Grette screeched, and an instant
later brought her voice down again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Just…you
know you can’t do the fine work. You know it has to be me. But I’m
already late, and the piece is for a function tomorrow night and if it
isn’t ready…Fates, if it isn’t ready…” She felt the prickle of tears in her
useless eyes again. If it wasn’t ready she’d be done. If it wasn’t ready her
reputation would be sunk, and the great ladies who trusted her
wouldn’t trust her any more. If it wasn’t ready she’d be ruined. Every
dress had to be better than the one before. Costlier cloth, neater work,
finer embroidery, extra detail, and those ladies were vengeful as
Glustrod if they didn’t get exactly what they wanted. The finer the lady,
the more savage the treatment.
“There’s just…” Her voice quivered. “There’s just so much to do.”
She undid her top button. Fates, it felt as if she was suffocating. All
that mass of cloth and lace and flounce in her lap, smothering her,
choking her. She was trying to find the eye of the needle with the thread
but, Fates help her, the whole needle was a blur, her whole hand a
smudge, how could she ever hope to find the eye with this horrible,
loose, fluffy thread?
“At least let me thread it for you, Mama,” came Maree’s voice,
sounding close to tears herself. “At least let me thread it.”
“Yes.” Grette let the thread drop, let the needle fall from her aching
fingers. “Yes, you do it.” Closed her eyes and just breathed a moment.
Tried to settle down. Her nerves had never been the strongest.
“There, Mama. There you go. You breathe, now. Shall I bring up
another candle?”
“Yes. Thank you, dear. I’d be lost without you.” She was lost
anyway. Grette took a shuddering breath. Had to be calm. Had to keep
the hands steady. She bent to the work again. “Bring up another
couple.”
And she gritted her teeth, squinting desperately, trying to force her
aching eyes to focus on the cloth. In, and out, so gentle, so neat, and in,
and out, and just a little tug, and—
“Fuck this fucking thread!” she screeched.
Freid eased back the packaging to take a peek. Always an exciting
moment when a new dress arrived. That beautiful cloth Lady Savine
had picked out, and the lace was fine as ever, but… Freid frowned,
easing the paper back further, tracing a seam with her fingertips. The
stitching did not look good at all.
“Dear, dear,” she murmured, and took the dress upstairs as gently
as if it was worth more than her. Which it definitely was.
“From Grette Brine?” Zuri walked over to her in the outer dressing
room. Such a fine walk, she had, so graceful. “Better late than never, I
suppose.”
“Maybe,” said Freid, doubtfully.
Zuri looked up at her, black brows high. “That bad?”
Freid held the straps against her own shoulders and shook the dress
out down her front so Zuri could get a good look. “To my eye, not near
good enough.”
“You have a very good eye, Freid.” Zuri came close, letting that
beautiful cloth slide through her long fingers, judging the way it fell. “If
you say it is not good enough…”
“Grette’s delivered?” Through the half-open door Freid could see
Lady Savine, still as a statue in her half-constructed underwear, a dozen
different splintered images of herself reflected in the differently angled
mirrors. She couldn’t turn her head ’cause Metello was up on the step-
ladder seeing to her wig, but she glanced sidelong towards the dress.
“How is it?”
 “To my eye,” murmured Zuri, sinking down and taking up the
hem, holding the stitching to the light, “not nearly good enough.”
“Well you have the best eye I know,” said Lady Savine. “If you say
it is not good enough then I have no doubt it is not.” Freid saw Lisbit
pout a little at that as she mixed her powders. But there was no point
arguing with the facts. Zuri had the best eye anyone knew, which was
how she got to be Lady Savine’s companion in the first place. And the
stitching wasn’t good enough, even Freid had seen that right away.
“Grette made such beautiful dresses,” said Lady Savine, wistfully.
Freid nodded. “Some of the best stitching I ever saw.”
“Dress-makers are like dresses, perhaps,” murmured Zuri. “They
only last so long.” She frowned at the hem, plucked something from it
and held it to the light. “God’s breath, there is a dangling thread here.”
Metello gave a gasp of outrage around the comb in her teeth. Lisbit
looked disgusted. “Trying to put our mistress in rags,” she muttered
angrily.
“Shall I withhold payment?” asked Zuri, as she stood.
Lady Savine gave a frustrated sigh, muscles in her shoulders
working as they rose, then dropped. “Pay her half. For old time’s sake.
But we shall be giving her no further commissions.”
“Very good, my lady,” said Zuri, making a note in her book.
“What shall I do with it?” asked Freid. Looking at it as wardrobe
maid to Savine dan Glokta, the stitching was a fucking disgrace.
Looking at it as a girl who grew up on the wrong side of the Arches, by
the Fates, it was still a beautiful dress. She thought of how her mother
would’ve felt, just to touch the cloth.
“Lady Savine cannot wear that,” said Zuri. “And no one can see
what she might have worn. Burn it.” She swept away towards the door.
“And bring the blue one.”
 THE STONE
I t couldn’t be.
No one ever found anything here, upstream, at the top of
the diggings. Nothing but sores and sunburn anyway.
It couldn’t be. As big as this?
But the more Faris looked at it, the more sure he became. Some
grey-green rock clung to one side of it but, God, as he nudged it gently
over with his rake he saw it was all crystal, bright sun flashing on its
wet edges.
It couldn’t be. But what else could it be?
He hunched over it jealously, so the other boys working in his pit
couldn’t see. He had never seen a stone a fraction of the size. As he
lifted it from the water’s edge, with all the reverence he might give a
holy relic, he could barely close his trembling fist around it.
He glanced up, heart thudding in his ears, but the closest guard
was sitting in the shade of a boulder, head back and helmet tipped over
his face, lazily waving away flies. The guards at this end of the diggings
were never watching. No one ever found anything here, after all.
How often, after another back-breaking, skin-cracking, sun-
blistered day, had he dreamed of shouting those wonderful words? I
found one! Words that might win him a few good meals and the rest of
the day off. But, in that moment, he started to think it was a poor
reward for such a stone as this. Hafedieh would give him a far better
one. All the boys said so. And for a stone like this it was worth the risk.
Faris shut his suddenly dry mouth, and slipped the stone into his
cloth where it sat, cold and wet and heavy against his balls. Then he
plucked up some other stone, some lump of gravel just like the
thousands that filled his pit, the millions that made up the diggings, and
he took a deep breath, and readied himself, and tossed down his rake
and screeched, “I found one!”
Hundreds of eyes turned jealously upon him as he scampered down
the path with that worthless rock held high. Following the slow flow of
the river, dammed and channelled and chopped into a winking mass of
ever-wider, ever-shallower ponds, filled with children up to their ankles,
their knees, their waists in the chill mountain water, shovelling, raking,
sifting, chafed and wrinkled from the damp, crooked from long days
bent over. The Overseer strode to meet him, sweat-beaded forehead
furrowed with interest, grabbed the piece of gravel and held it eagerly
to the light while Faris looked around proudly at the other boys.
“This is nothing.” The overseer tossed the stone away and it
bounced from the hundreds, thousands, millions of others. Then he
slapped Faris across the face with an open hand and knocked him on
his back.
Faris sat there, face burning, taste of blood on his lips. “I’m sorry,
sir. I’m sorry.” But the Overseer had already turned away. He had
dozens of other rocks to check, and dozens of other boys to hit.
One of the older ones in the ponds at the bottom of the slope
snorted contempt at him. “Fucking fool.” And went back to his raking.
 Faris walked off hangdog, wiping his bloody mouth and rubbing
the wet sand from his hair and shaking his head as if he could scarcely
bear the shame while his skin sang with excitement. He made himself
not run, only trudge over to Hafedieh, on her haunches beside her
water bucket, and he gave her a look from under his brows. That
meaningful look, and she gave him one back as she handed him the
ladle.
He drank, and made sure that no one was watching, then he
slipped the stone from his cloth and into the ladle as he took it from his
lips. When she saw the size of what was in there her eyes went wide,
just for a moment, before she dumped the ladle back into the bucket,
and gave him the slightest wink. Then she stood, and slapped her palms
clean, hoisted her bucket over one shoulder, and without a word spoken
headed for the gate in the fence.
Every sunset after work the guards stripped every child and picked
through their hair and peered in their mouths and made them squat and
cough but they never once looked in that bucket. Perhaps they were
fools. Or perhaps Hafedieh paid them not to.
Either way, Faris would be paid tonight. He trudged back uphill,
past the ponds, past the children, rubbing sadly at his sore cheek. But he
was smiling on the inside as he picked up his rake again.

The woman started as Zaida slipped from the trees into the darkened
clearing.
“Who are you?” she asked.
 Zaida smiled, stepping slowly towards her, palm raised, as if she
was trying to calm an animal. She could feel the woman’s nervousness.
Not surprising given what she was carrying. “You can call me Zaida.
And you are Hafedieh. You give water to the children at the mine.”
The woman swallowed, throat shifting, nervousness turning to fear.
“Where is Kletu?”
“Kletu could not come. It turns out Kletu is little better than a
pirate. He was buying stolen stones from the workers at the diggings,
and selling them to smugglers. I had to kill him.”
The woman turned to run, but in a breath Zaida was across the
clearing and blocking her path, the wind of her passing ripping leaves
from the bushes and knocking the woman over onto her back, stones
scattering from her bag and glittering in the dirt.
“Please stay,” said Zaida.
The woman stared up at her. Shocked. Terrified. Zaida could feel
the blood pulsing fast through her throat, through her meat.
“Are you an Eater?” she breathed.
“I do not like the word.” Zaida frowned down at her robe, and
gave an exasperated sigh. She had moved so fast she had torn the cloth
wide open. “But I cannot deny it.”
The woman wriggled backwards through the dust. She knew she
could not get away, and yet she tried, and Zaida followed her. “I did a
foolish thing,” she whispered. “Taking the stones. I’ve never done it
before—”
“You have been doing it for years.”
 “I just want to feed my children. I just want to give them…the
things I never had—”
“Oh, your lovely little babies, the fruit of your womb, the light of
your life! How many do you have?”
“Two.” The woman swallowed. “A boy and a girl.”
“I would say I am disappointed,” said Zaida, “but it is never a
great surprise when a thief turns out to be a liar also. I know who you
are, Hafedieh, and the only children you have are the hundreds at the
diggings. The ones you give water to. The ones you take diamonds
from.”
Hafedieh wriggled back into a tree, and there she stopped. She had
run out. Of ground and of lies. Her face crushed up, and her eyes filled
with tears, and they began to spill down her face.
Zaida looked down thoughtfully at her. “You have beautiful eyes.”
Her memories were faint, from the time before her change, back when
she cried, and laughed, and felt things so strongly. But sometimes a
smell, a snatch of music, a face in a crowd would suck some glimpse of
the past into her mind, as strong as if it were yesterday. This woman’s
eyes looked like her sister’s. Her sister, smiling, singing in the sun,
dancing in the garden. How long had she been dead?
“Are you going to kill me?” whispered Hafedieh.
“Who would bring me more stones then?” And Zaida squatted
before the woman, and pulled out the purse she had taken from Kletu,
with his blood still damp upon it, and pressed it into Hafedieh’s hands.
“I will pay you what Kletu would have paid you for these.” And she
took the bag, and looked inside, and saw more stones there, gleaming.
One looked very large. That would fetch a fine price. “If you find any
more, bring them to me, and I will pay for those too, and you need
never deal with…” Zaida wrinkled her nose. “His sort of man again.”
“How would I find you?”
“Oh, I have sharp hearing. Whisper my name to the wind, I will
find you.”
The woman blinked more tears down the glistening tracks on her
face. “I thought you would say that the stones belong to the Prophet…”
“The Prophet would no doubt have said so. The Prophet would
have wagged his lecturing finger and wrinkled his stern brow. The
Prophet would have seen you hung in a cage for stealing them and blah,
blah, blah.” A breeze came up, and Zaida watched it stir the palm
leaves, and listened to the crickets chirp, far off. She tipped her head
back, and looked at the stars, scattered like diamonds across heaven’s
cloth indeed, and sighed. “The Prophet is gone. We that remain must
make our own choices, and if we choose a better world, it must be paid
for.” And she grinned. “You might say I have become more interested in
profit…than Prophet.” For some reason that joke never stopped
amusing her. Perhaps now she was free to be amused, she had a great
deal to catch up on.
The woman swallowed, still pressed against the tree trunk, if
anything more scared than ever. “What kind of an Eater are you?” she
whispered.
Zaida chucked the woman under the chin, and stood. “The new
kind.”
Manok glided into Westport at sunset. Not by day—that would have
been making an exhibition of himself. Not by darkness—that would
have looked like he had something to hide. He had no trouble finding a
berth, because his was neither a large boat nor a small one, neither
especially well maintained and handled nor conspicuously badly. It was
important to find moderation in all things. Especially for a smuggler.
He ambled down the quay at a comfortable pace with a nod and a
smile for everyone. Manok was well liked in Westport. He was well
liked everywhere he went. Partly because of the nods and the smiles but
mostly, he had to admit, because of the bribes.
“Sergeant Jovidi!” And as Manok shook the guard’s big paw he
slipped a purse into it, with the offhand dexterity of a man who did a
lot of bribing.
“Manok!” said Jovidi, squeezing his hand back and pocketing the
coins with the offhand dexterity of a man often bribed. “How was the
voyage?”
“Little rough, but I keep going. I put something extra in there.”
Generosity was not merely good for the soul, it was good for business.
A little goodwill among those in authority, on both sides of the water,
was a sensible precaution against the buffets of fortune. “New shoes for
your wife, perhaps?”
Jovidi grinned. “I wear shoes too.”
“Then you deserve to wear the best.” Manok clapped him on the
arm, and ambled off up the wharf, out of the sun and into the cool
shadows between the buildings. He smiled as he patted the leather
pouch under his shirt. As simply as that it was done, and the stones
were worth twice what he had paid for them in Ulrioch. There they had
been Gurkish diamonds, unlicensed by the church, but Westport was in
the Union, and so the stones were law-abiding Union citizens now, and
could swan across the Circle Sea to Adua without raising any brows.
His August Majesty the High King no doubt lived very well, after all.
What difference would it really make if Manok politely demurred from
making a contribution to his coffers?
There had been times he’d swum into Westport at night, times he’d
slithered through the sewers, times he’d rolled the stones in honey and
swallowed them, then spent the next day wishing they were smaller as
he shat the bastards out. Manok almost missed those high, wild,
dangerous years. But the truth was it was far safer, much drier, a great
deal less wear on the anus, and just far better business all around to
appeal to people’s greed.
Greed was the one thing in the diamond trade, after all, that could
always be relied upon.

“I confess…” murmured Gabresi, once he’d recovered the power of

speech, “I don’t ordinarily deal in stones of this size.” And he gave his
best doubtful sigh. It wasn’t a lie as such. No one ordinarily dealt in
stones of this size, as stones of this size were exceedingly rare. In truth
Gabresi dealt most eagerly in whatever stones he could turn a profit
from, and the bigger the stone the bigger the profit. But it would serve
him well to seem reluctant, even if that became harder and harder the
more closely he examined this stone under his jeweller’s lantern. The
quality was as exceptional as the size.
 “I’m not much moved by the quality—”
Manok laughed. “Shall we take it next door for a second opinion
—?”
“No! No.” It was hard for Gabresi to keep his carefully cultivated
careless manner with such a fortune sitting in the palm of his hand.
There was new money in Midderland, with all the new mills and the
new ideas and the new ways of doing things. There’d never been so
much money, or so many people wanting to show their money off, and
so the price of gems of every type, and diamonds in particular, was
forever going up. Mad money. Ridiculous money. Mad, ridiculous,
lovely money.
Gabresi let vent his best pained sigh. “There’s trouble in
Midderland. Breakers, Burners, this business in Valbeck, these wars in
Styria. Sentiment’s poor. So few buyers. The price of gems of every type,
and diamonds in particular, has taken quite the plunge lately.”
Manok plucked the stone from his hand and turned towards the
door. “I will definitely take a second opinion on that—”
“Wait!” There were times when being a slender man was a decided
advantage—he often liked to think of all the money he had saved on
cloth down the years when buying new clothes, for example—and now
Gabresi slipped around the smuggler and insinuated himself between
him and the exit. “Wait there just a moment.”
“Oh?” Manok opened his hand, and let that monstrous stone sit
there in a shaft of dusty sunlight, glinting. “For what?”
Gabresi licked his lips. He knew that vulture Gort dan Breyer was
in town, paying top money for top stones, and this was the stone of a
career. He was already running the numbers on what he might make
from it without so much as stepping into the street, and the figures were
making his mouth water.
He issued his trademark extravagant sigh, as if minded against his
better judgement to do a costly favour. “I will make you an offer,” he
said.

“What would you do with this?” asked Breyer. “For the sake of
argument?”
Vettel narrowed her eyes. “I have never appreciated jokes,” she
said. Her husband had always called her humourless, but she preferred
to think of herself as practical.
“Oh, I’m in earnest,” said Breyer.
“Wait…it’s real?” She snatched the stone from his hand—by the
Fates, the weight of the thing—and fumbled her lens down over her eye.
It was amazing, how the lenses had come on the last year or two. This
new one was like magic. She could instantly tell the stone was real, after
one breath that it was of fine colour and clarity, and after one more that
it had no significant flaws. “Well I never…” she murmured.
Diamonds are like people—no two are quite alike. The cleaving of
each stone was a puzzle to be solved, and one with no right answer. A
hundred little choices, each a weighing of odds. One large stone might
be worth far more than three smaller ones, but would be so much
harder to sell. And then there was the risk of a mistake. To spoil one of
three would be a disaster. To spoil one great stone could be fatal.
 But cleaving a stone is as much art as science. Her father always
told her that the best cutters trust their instincts. So she let her fingertips
shift over the rough surface, feeling out its shape. Feeling out the shape
that it wanted to be. Judging how it could be split. Diamonds are like
people—they can seem impossibly hard, but they always have their
weaker spots, their softer faces.
She perched the lens back on her forehead, lips pursed. “I would
make a single oval brilliant from it.”
“A single stone?” said Breyer, raising his bushy brows.
“You would have perhaps eight or nine assorted small cuts into the
bargain.” She expected, in fact, there would be at least a dozen, and the
extras she could polish later and sell to a not especially scrupulous
Angland jeweller of her acquaintance, doubling her take from the whole
exercise. She felt no guilt whatsoever at the thought. A reasonable level
of embezzlement was factored into the trade at every stage. How many
miners, merchants, dealers, smugglers, spivs and middle-men would
have wet their beak on a stone like this by the time some rich bastard
actually wore it, after all, just for passing it from one hand to another?
Dozens. Why shouldn’t Vettel wet her beak too, when it was her skill
which would transform it from mud to magic? She was not running a
fucking charity.
“Eight or nine?” asked Breyer, one eyebrow raised, perhaps
calculating the level of embezzlement he considered acceptable.
“And dust, of course, which I will use for the polishing.” Vettel
waved a hand towards the new grinding wheel, the new boy pedalling
away and Foske squinting through his own lens as he buffed some little
flats for a commission of Lady Wetterlant’s. “Diamonds are like people,
after all—they need to be ground down a little before they reveal their
best.”
“Why should I bring it to you?” Breyer narrowed his eyes, giving
her as careful an assessment as she had given his stone. “Rather than to
my good friends in the gem-cutter’s guild, with whom I have worked
profitably for so many years?”
“Because your friends in the gem-cutter’s guild have a vested
interest in keeping our business mired in the past. Outmoded cuts and
outdated techniques, obsolete machinery and stale attitudes.” Vettel
could not keep the contempt from her voice. She did not want to.
“Because they take their fear and laziness and dress it up as proud
tradition. Because I am not cossetted by their privileges, nor bound by
their ridiculous rules. Because I will give you finer stones at a lower
price. Because your friends in the gem-cutter’s guild may be better
friends, but I am a better gem-cutter.”
A smile spread slowly across Breyer’s face, and he wagged a finger
at her. “Savine dan Glokta was right about you.”
“I am delighted to have her as a partner,” said Vettel, who hated
having that bitch as a partner but knew she could not do it without her.
“Very well. One oval brilliant it is. And ten assorted small cuts.”
Breyer turned towards the door. “I look forward to seeing it.”
“As do I,” murmured Vettel, placing the stone on her workbench
and shrugging off her jacket. “Leave that shit for now, Foske! Get me
the cleaving blade and dress the wire for some sawing!”
The bell tinkled and Bronkhorst came bundling down the steps into the
shop so fast he nearly fell at the bottom, sweat on his forehead and his
hair in disarray. “Show me what you have!” he wheezed, once he’d
managed to catch his breath.
Sontice frowned over. “By way of diamonds?”
“Yes by way of fucking diamonds, what do I come here for,
custard?”
“What sort of stones are you after—”
“All sorts! Get it all out, man!”
Sontice wondered what was going on. The Royal Jeweller was not
normally a man to get into a flap. “You speak as if it’s a matter of
urgency—”
“You could bloody well say that! You haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?”
“The king!”
“Ordered some new cufflinks, has he?”
“He fucking died!”
Sontice stared, his mouth slightly open, his palms slightly prickling.
“Well that’s awful news.” He cleared his throat as he glanced towards
the Union flag in the corner, a little dusty, if he was honest. “As a
patriot…terrible news.”
“Terrible,” agreed Bronkhorst. “Terrible.” A nervous smile was
quivering at the corner of his lips as he leaned close to murmur. “But…
I think you and I might perceive an upside.”
 “You mean…” Sontice could hardly bring himself to whisper the
words. “New crown?”
Bronkhorst’s voice was all squeaky breath with excitement. “New
crown, new chain, new regalia, new bloody everything!”
“New everything?”
“Lord Bayaz himself made the commission! Attended the fitting, in
person. He wants it modern. New styles, new stones, new cuts. He told
me money was no object.”
“No object?” squeaked Sontice.
“He said, and I’m quoting the First of the bloody Magi here, you
understand, he said, ‘give it a big arsed diamond.’”
Sontice felt the smile spread across his face. He had been in two
minds about that stone. Something like that, so rare, so hard to move.
He’d cursed his folly after Breyer talked him into it. But now, oh,
serendipity, just two days later he was perceiving the fucking upside. He
locked the door to the shop, he beckoned Bronkhorst into the back
room, he breathlessly knelt beside the safe.
“Do I…” he murmured as he spun the wheel, “have just the thing
for you…”

“Your Majesty looks…truly regal,” observed Bronkhorst, padding

down from the stepladder and gazing obsequiously into the mirror.
Everyone looks at least a bit regal wearing a crown, of course. If
one could manage to ignore the glittering mass of gold and jewels on his
head Prince Orso, who was of course King Orso now, looked, in fact,
tired, worried, and rather dubious as he considered his own reflection.
“You are far too kind…” He squeezed his eyes shut as though making a
huge effort, then his shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry, what was your name
again?”
“Villem dan Bronkhorst, your Majesty,” said Bronkhorst, giving
yet another bow. It would probably have been easier if he remained
continuously bent double while in the palace. “It was, as it happens, my
father who made your father’s crown. It was an immense honour for
him, as this is an immense honour for me.” And he bowed again. “One
might say, for a jeweller, it is a crowning achievement.”
The joke proved to be a significant misjudgement. The new king
was lost in sad contemplation of his own crowned reflection, while
Lord Bayaz narrowed his eyes slightly as if he had suddenly caught the
odour of piss. Bronkhorst bowed once more, cleared his throat, and
drifted backwards across the wide salon, his footsteps echoing in the
gilded space above.
“I have been thinking about my father’s death,” murmured the
king.
“Of course,” said Bayaz, approaching the mirror and placing a
fatherly hand on the king’s shoulder. “The entire nation is in
mourning.”
“But…does it not seem strange to you? The manner of it?”
Bayaz raised one brow. “Arch Lector Glokta conducted a thorough
investigation. There were no indications of foul play.”
“But he was young. He was hearty. Why, just a week or two before
we were fencing together!”
 “Your Majesty, when a great man dies, it is tempting to think it can
only be the result of some great event, some grand conspiracy, some
towering malevolence.” Bayaz adjusted the fall of Orso’s cloak ever so
slightly. “It would be a reassurance, in a way, to feel that death follows
such meaningful patterns. But the hard truth is that great men die of the
same things little ones do. Sometimes they slip and strike their heads,
sometimes they choke on a fish bone, and sometimes they pass
peacefully in the night, for no particular reason. When they do so, it is,
in a way, a mercy. We should all be so lucky as to die in an
unspectacular fashion.”
“I suppose so,” said the prince, snatching the crown from his head
and frowning down at it. “But can we really afford a coronation? I
understand the treasury is…a little light.”
“The Banking House of Valint and Balk have agreed to provide.”
“Borrowing the money to pay for a new crown seems like rather
over-heavy symbolism—”
“But it is the modern age, and the relics of the past will simply not
do.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Orso took a heavy breath and set the
crown on its cushion. Several hundred sleepless hours of work for
Bronkhorst and his assistants. “Thank you for all your efforts…” He
squeezed his eyes shut again, then burst out angrily. “By the fucking
Fates what was your name?”
“Bronkhorst, your Majesty,” said Bronkhorst, bowing even further
than usual.
“Yes, yes. So sorry, I’m all over the bloody place at the moment.”
 “Your Majesty has no need…to apologise…” But his Majesty was
already striding towards the door.
One would have thought one might relax when the High King of
the Union left the room, but the First of the Magi managed to make
Bronkhorst feel more panicked than ever, standing with arms folded
and brow furrowed, considering the crowning achievement of
Bronkhorst’s career as a royal cook might consider spoiled meat.
The silence stretched until Bronkhorst could bear it no longer.
“Magnificent, is it not, my Lord? I was saying to my assistant earlier
that I have never seen such a radiant stone—”
“Honestly, I find the stone somewhat…disappointing.”
Bronkhorst swallowed. They say only diamond can cut diamond,
but he began to think the disapproval of the First of the Magi might
have been capable of the feat as well. “It is a superior cut, Lord Bayaz,”
he stammered out, “a thoroughly modern cut and a flawless polish, the
result of new grinding techniques…” By the Fates, he was trembling. He
could feel the sweat springing from his forehead. “It is of a size with the
principal stones of any previous crown—”
“People expect progress.” Bayaz leaned close and Bronkhorst was
forced to shrink away as he carefully pronounced each word. “Find…a
bigger one.”
 THE POINT
here we are,” said Swift, hopping down from the hoist.
“A nd
He wasn’t at all what one might have expected from an
Inquisitor. A jovial man, prone to backslapping, with ruddy cheeks and
an easy laugh. He had seemed quaint, even a little absurd, back in
Jesper’s office in Ostenhorm. Those cheeks were just as ruddy and that
laugh just as easy down here in the mine, in the darkness. But in these
surroundings they somehow became more troubling than any amount
of glaring menace.
It was a large cave. A natural gallery, perhaps. No doubt the ceiling
was low, further in, as the tunnels wormed like grasping tentacles into
the seam. So low the prisoners would have to work lying on their sides.
But here near the entrance it was so high it became a mere rumour in
the echoing darkness. The hooded lamps were turned down to a flicker
as a precaution against explosive gases, and the place smelled like a
burial. Or no, far worse: an exhumation.
Those few puddles of light crawled with people. If you could call
them that. The ragged ghosts of men, women and children; emaciated,
filthy, crooked, lurching lop-sided. Guards stood over them. Black-
masked Practicals, sticks in their fists. Most of the workers did not look
up, lost in their own misery. Only one woman met Jesper’s gaze. Black
eyes, faintly gleaming, behind tangled hair, in a face so pale and pinched
it hardly seemed alive. What was it in that look, that he could hardly
bear to meet it? Jesper had seen poverty, in the slums of Adua and
Valbeck, considered himself quite the connoisseur of depredation, but
this was something more.
It was oddly quiet. No bawdy work songs, like the ones Jesper had
heard at other iron mines in Angland, where the labourers were—at
least in theory—free to leave. The rickety rattle of mine carts. The clink
and clatter of ore loaded and unloaded. Somewhere the spatter of
falling water. Someone’s wheezing, crackling breath. The silence of
exhaustion. Or of terror. Or perhaps, exiled to this freezing hell, they
had lost the power of speech. Become crooked, burrowing animals.
Become machines for mining, that happened to be made from meat.
Inquisitor Swift smiled as he swept an arm at the great
subterranean chamber with the flourish of a theatre impresario. “What
do you think?”
Jesper hardly knew how to reply. His sister Tilde often accused him
of talking too much, but words seemed to have failed him for a
moment. He was not sure what he had expected. Something like this,
perhaps, if he had thought about it. But nothing could have prepared
him for seeing it…seeing them.
“Striking,” he managed to mumble.
“Here’s the product.” Inquisitor Swift plucked a lump of ore from
a heap beside the hoist and tossed it over. Jesper barely had the presence
of mind to catch it. “Reasonable quality. Been getting better lately, in
fact. Think we’re hitting a good seam, further in.” Further in. To this
buried hell. Where the ceilings became lower, then lower yet. The very
idea made Jesper feel queasy. “We produce maybe twenty tons on a
good day, but if you need more we can run night shifts too. There’s no
shortage of labour.”
“How many…” Jesper cleared his throat, fumbling for the right
word. Inmates? Convicts? Slaves? “…workers do you have?”
“Three or four hundred. More than usual, right now. Lot of
Breakers coming in. And accomplices of the Breakers. Family members,
associates, so on. But the numbers always fall in the winter.”
“You release convicts in the winter…?”
Swift gave that easy laugh. The same one he had so readily given to
the feeblest of Jesper’s jokes in Ostenhorm. “Releases are quite rare. It’s
the cold that thins them out.”
Jesper wanted to swallow, but somehow it was difficult to get the
right amount of spit into the right place, and he ended up awkwardly
choking on it.
Tilde had said it was a bad idea to get into business with the
Inquisition. He’d thought she meant on account of the dreary
bureaucracy, and the stolid complacency, and the low-quality men of no
imagination, like Swift. It had never occurred to him that she might
have some moral objection. Morals had never really been among his
conscious considerations when it came to business. Or, honestly, to
much of his life. He liked to congratulate himself on being rather
ruthless and cutthroat. A privateer on the high seas of commerce!
Partnered with Savine dan Glokta, hadn’t he, when he saw money to be
made, and she regularly indulged in practices that would scandalise a
priest, outrage a judge and make a pirate blush. But now he started to
suspect, with an odd and slightly sweaty creeping feeling across the
back, that most people had a moral line, after all. One they could not
even see until they blundered past it. And he might have unwittingly
strayed onto the wrong side of his.
“Touch of nausea?” asked Swift. “Entirely normal, don’t worry.
The air down here takes some getting used to.” And he clapped Jesper
warmly on the back. “But you do get used to it. Quicker than you’d
think.”
“Absolutely. The air.” Jesper tossed the lump of ore back onto the
heap and slapped the dust from his hands, then whipped out his
kerchief and rubbed away the remainder.
He rather feared the memories of the place might not be so easily
wiped away. But he had satisfied himself that it all made excellent sense
from a business standpoint. The foundries always needed more ore and
the papers were already signed. If there was one thing worse than
making a contract with the Inquisition, it was breaking one.
“I believe I’ve seen enough.” He tore his eyes from those
unfortunate ghosts in the half-light, and forced a smile. “Let’s go.”

“Woah there!” roared Smolof, over the clanging of the forge hammers
turning out the half blooms, eyes narrowed against the glare as the
crucible swung gently into place. “And pour it!”
Canter hauled on the chain, hand over hand, its rattle hardly heard
over the grinding of the great rollers at the other end of the foundry
floor, and Smolof felt himself smile as the crucible slowly tipped.
 In his father’s day they’d had to cook the iron and charcoal for a
week, then bundle it and heat it and hammer-forge it into shear steel, all
by hand. But with this new clay and these new water-powered bellows
they could get the furnaces far hotter. Crucible steel, they were calling
it, took a tenth of the time and came out twice the quality, with every
man in his crew earning twice what they used to, with a bonus on top if
they got past a dozen ingots an hour.
“There it is,” said Smolof, smiling wider as he watched that white
hot stream, flame puffing as it hit the sand in the mould. All the men’s
smiling faces lit by the heat of it, the power of it. “That’s progress, right
there, you bastards! Can you feel it?” They’d had a Gurkish fellow
working with ’em, for a month or two, and he’d said it was like looking
in the face of God. “We’re making the future, every time we fill a
mold!”
He waved towards the gleam of daylight, the doors where they
were loading bar iron onto a wagon for the trip to Ostenhorm. “That’ll
be pillars in a new warehouse, boilers in a new factory, axles on a new
wagon, but this grey gold here, that’ll be springs in the town clock,
needles for the dressmakers, the guts o’ those new weaving machines in
Valbeck!”
“Some fucker’s cutlery!” said Canter, wiping his sweaty forehead
on the back of his long glove.
“Wire in some rich lady’s corset!” called Ridge, sticking his chin in
the air and his chest at the ceiling, and the lads whooped and clapped.
“Swords!” said Salmon, grin white in his soot-smeared face. “And
swords, eh?
 And that was all it took to snatch Smolof back to Styria. The feel
of the hilt in his hand, sticky with sweat. The blood he could never
quite scrub out of the basketwork. The jostling pressure all around him,
the clamour of screams, and his own breath echoing in his helmet. His
own breath and his own endless, mindless swearing. The taste of metal
in his mouth. Had to work his tongue around. Felt like he could taste it
now, somehow. “Aye,” he muttered, “and swords.”
The shriek of the bearings as they wheeled that mould away,
already cooling to an angry orange, shook him free of it, like he had to
be shaken free ten times a day. He slapped Salmon on the back and got
to shouting again. “Right, then, girls, are we on a fucking break? Bring
up the next mould, eh? We’ve a new world to build!”

“We use only the very best materials, of course,” said Zuri, as she led
them on into the guts of the building. Fettel had to confess there was
something exciting about the ever-strengthening throb of machinery
that seemed to rise from the very stones and set her scalp tingling
beneath her wig. “The King’s Own and the Army of Angland are our
most significant clients, but we also have buyers in Styria, have recently
secured a sizeable order from associates in the Old Empire, and are in
negotiations with agents in Dagoska too.”
One of the gentlemen snorted. “So you sell weapons to every side
of every war?”
Zuri might have been a glorified lady’s maid, but the servants of
powerful people can become powerful in themselves. A Lady
Governor’s lady’s maid was no one to be sniffed at. Especially not this
one, Fettel suspected. Her composure was as steely as the weapons they
turned out in this armoury. “Her Grace Lady Savine would no doubt
observe—and she apologises profusely that she cannot be here—that a
willingness to sell to every available client is the essence of the arms
trade. If that is a problem, I fear you may be touring the wrong
manufactory.” A ripple of polite laughter, and the gentleman retreated
flushing into his high collar.
Fettel wished she was looking to invest. But what she was really
after was a good match for her sister. Money is drawn to money, which
made any concern in which Savine dan Brock had a share a powerful
magnet for wealthy men. She took another careful glance over her fan
at the prospects she had identified. The bony fellow with the carefully
arranged hair was Lord Sempter. An awful bore, by all accounts, but
exceedingly rich. His title had been paid for with new money, but that
settles the same debts as the old kind. Fettel had heard he lost his wife
last year and might be in the market for a thoroughbred—someone who
could mix her pedigree with his money to make a highly respectable
alloy. Fettel’s family had breeding. They had too much bloody breeding,
if anything. They had breeding coming out of their arses.
It was cash they needed.
Zuri swung a pair of double doors open, the whining of machinery
instantly redoubling. “This is the grinding room, where blades are
finished.”
There were a few impressed-sounding grunts even from this hard-
nosed audience. There must have been thousands of weapons in that
huge, iron-skeletoned space, all ranged upon identical racks with the
strict discipline of elite soldiers on a parade ground. A good two dozen
workmen were gathered about a spinning drive-shaft that cut through
the midst, working at the water-powered grinding wheels, every man
sending his own shower of sparks as he milled a murderous edge onto
each blade.
Zuri even made pointing out racks of weapons seem superbly
elegant as she led the investors across the armoury floor. “Horseman’s
axes on your left, infantry swords over there, and this is a new pattern
knife for cannon crew, forged in modern crucible steel from a foundry
here in Angland.”
One might have called them daggers, Fettel supposed, but they
were almost short-swords, with a slender blade as long as her forearm.
There was no adornment whatsoever. A truly industrial weapon, turned
out by machine, each identical to the last, and yet there was something
beautiful in their stripped-down functionality.
“Might I…hold one?” she found she had asked.
Zuri nodded as though the request was entirely routine. But then
her composure was such that, had a meteor crashed through the ceiling
behind her, she would probably not even have flinched. “Of course.”
“By the Fates…” murmured Fettel, lifting one gently from the rack.
For some reason she felt the need to treat it with the reverence of some
holy relic. She raised a brow at Lord Sempter, and gave a little laugh.
“It’s so light.”
She had expected something so deadly to be hard to lift, but it was
shockingly easy. She was acutely aware with how little effort she could
have turned to the plump old gentleman beside her and sliced open his
guts. She felt powerful, somehow, holding it. Frighteningly powerful.
It seemed as if there might be the slightest arch in one of Zuri’s
black brows. As if she knew exactly what Fettel was thinking. “Keep
that one, by all means.”
“Really?”
Zuri gestured towards the dozens upon dozens of identical blades.
“We have more.”
“What kind of investment is the Lady Governor expecting?”
grunted a gentleman whose monocle kept falling out.
“Ten thousand marks at a minimum, but she expects returns to be
swift.”
Fettel carefully scanned the company, judging how they reacted to
the figure. Judging what each man might be worth.
“She guarantees it?” someone asked.
“Her grace is not in the guarantees business, but she would observe
that there are few safer bets than weapons.”
“Even in peacetime?” asked Fettel, weighing that knife
thoughtfully in her hand.
Zuri gave the slightest smile. “What better time to rearm? Now.
Let me show you the cannon.”

“We’re here for…” Sarlby frowned at the woman, standing slightly bent
over with one hand clutching at the corner of the desk, something like
an animal at bay. “What was the name again?”
 It was left to Bremer to cast an eye over the warrant, since he was
the only one of ’em who could read. “Fettel dan Sarova, denounced by
her brother-in-law Lord Sempter, accused of profiteering, speculation
and conspiracy to—”
“The usual,” grunted Sparks, stepping towards her.
Sarlby had yet to find a formula for how a given person would
react when they were taken. Most went meek, but a few reasoned, and
a very few raged. This one turned out a rager.
“Get out, damn you!” she screeched, going for Sparks and
scratching at him with her nails. He flung her off and she hit the wall
hard. Her head smashed the window, glass tinkling, and she crumpled
on the threadbare Gurkish carpet.
“Do you have to?” said Sarlby, propping his hands on his hips.
Judge didn’t like it when a prisoner turned up bloody. Punishment is for
the court, she’d always say, with that frown that makes your small hairs
prickle.
Sparks was rubbing at the faint mark on his cheek. “Bitch
scratched me.”
“Punishment is for the court.” And Sarlby wagged a finger just the
way Judge did. Found himself doing just what Judge did a lot, these
days.
He used to think everyone had some bad and some good in ’em,
and the struggle was to bring folk over to your side. Then he saw the
corpses of his friends swinging in their cages above the road to Valbeck.
Yesterday, Judge had said, offhand, “The niceties of nuance and
compromise are for those with no world to change,” and he saw that
she was right. Folk were either on the right side or the wrong, and the
wrong had to be got rid of. Every one you weeded out made the world
a better place. That was the sad truth.
“You bastards,” the woman was gasping, half-way between a snarl
and a sob, breathing hard on her hands and knees with blood creeping
down her face from the hairline. “You bastards.”
Sarlby sighed. “You do good for the good, not for the thanks. Let’s
go.”
Luvonte puffed his cheeks out and started shackling her hands.
Behind her, since she was one of the ragers. Then Sparks grabbed her
under the armpit, made her squeal as he dragged her up, then gasp as he
shoved her into the corridor, catching her shoulder on the doorframe so
she blundered face first into the wall beyond.
“Punishment is for the Court!” Sarlby called after him as he
bundled her down the corridor, slowly shaking his head. That was when
his eye caught on the knife. Strange thing to have in a lady’s study. Not
far shy of a short-sword, fine steel gleaming. A weapon of war, new-
forged and never used, by the look of it, except as a paperweight, lying
on top of a stack of deeds and documents.
Seemed strange, now, how respectful they’d been, to begin with.
Knocked on doors, rather than just kicking them in. Wiped their feet
’fore they crossed the threshold. Ever so sorry, my lord, but you’ve been
asked for at the Court of the People, by all means finish your toast first.
Put things back, if they got knocked over. Made sure to lock up after
themselves. ’Cause they were doing the work o’ the righteous and
needed to disport themselves accordingly and, you know, the place
should be right in case the accused came back to it, found innocent. But
that hardly ever happened these days, and the lists to be picked up got
longer and longer. Now they just tramped through like farmers
snatching pigs from a pen. Dragged folk out by the hair leaving muddy
bootprints everywhere and stuffed them shoulder to shoulder in the
wagon. Something caught your eye on the way these days you just took
it. Why not? Wasn’t like the accused would need it again.
So Sarlby tucked that fine knife in his belt and turned for the door,
since they had a lot of names to get through. A chilly gust through the
broken window took the papers it had sat on and started to scatter
them about the room, settling like leaves in autumn.

“And here we are,” said the one called Sparks, swinging open the door
with the flourish of a lion-tamer revealing the beast. “Out you come.”
It wasn’t that Jesper refused to go through, it was just that his legs
seemed extremely reluctant to step onto the roof.
“I…” he muttered, “I…” His sister Tilde always accused him of
saying too much but at that moment, perhaps unsurprisingly, words
failed him.
“Out you go,” said the one called Sarlby. Jesper felt a sudden
jabbing pain between his shoulder blades. The man had produced a
huge knife and poked him with its point. But there was little time for
outrage as he stumbled from the staircase onto the roof of the Tower of
Chains, the high breeze chilling his sweaty face, plucking at his hair.
The city was spread out before them, hazy through the swirling
specks of snow. The roofs all white from it. The streets black between
them. Columns of grubby smoke rose from the chimneys. From a fire
still burning over in the Arches. It had been burning for days. It was
getting to the point that people hardly bothered to put them out. It
might have been a beautiful sight at another time. Before the Great
Change. But like Inquisitor Swift’s ready chuckle, how it came across
was all about the circumstances. Now, it needed hardly to be said, it
was horrifying.
“I’m innocent!” mumbled Jesper. He was not dressed for the bitter
cold and his teeth were starting to chatter. “I’m an innocent man!”
“Are you though?” asked Sarlby, with a quizzical brow raised, that
knife still in his hand. “Way I heard it, you were in business with the
Inquisition.”
“Buying ore from a penal colony,” said Sparks.
“Folk imprisoned over nothing, and starved, and frozen, and
worked to death for your profits.”
The irony was that Jesper had seen Swift himself, only a few days
before, alive and apparently healthy in the uniform of the People’s
Inspectorate, herding prisoners into the cells with that very same good
humour with which he had brutalised convicts or discussed business in
Jesper’s office in Ostenhorm. Jesper had called out desperately to him,
an arm straining through the bars of his cage. Swift had not slapped his
back then, it needed hardly to be said. He had looked straight past as if
he did not recognise him. Perhaps he hadn’t.
“I had no idea,” Jesper was blathering, his wobbling knees refusing
once again to move. “I mean, the contracts were already signed by the
time I knew! Please believe me! I never meant to hurt any—”
 “Look, friend, we do dozens o’ these a day.” Jesper gasped as
Sarlby pricked him with the point of that dagger, made him stumble
across the roof like a horse given the spur. “It’s hard to say and it’s
harder to hear,” another prick in the small of the back, “but the truth is
we don’t give a shit what you did and still less what you meant by it.”
That great big man glared at Jesper with those furious eyes,
seeming tiny behind his lenses. “Judge says guilty,” he grunted. “That’s
that.” And he took a little sip from his flask.
Jesper’s legs really did not want to step onto the box beside the
parapet, but another prick of that knife in his left buttock and he was
up there in a trice. Astonishing, how a piece of sharp metal can cut so
quickly through such deep objections.
“It was a mistake,” he said. More of a whimper, really, as the toes
of his shoes shuffled over the brink and the city below blurred through
his tears. “It was—”
“Let’s go,” said Sarlby. Jesper felt the point of that knife jab him in
the back, one more time, and he really couldn’t help stepping forward.
 THE GREAT CHANGE
The House of Questions, Spring 591

“T his is the new dress, is it?” asked Glokta.

“It is.” Savine frowned down at herself, and sighed. “I
suppose it will do.” She struck an apparently careless pose which she
had no doubt practised for hours in the mirror. She does nothing by
accident, after all. “What do you think?”
Ardee had told him, with evident pride, that Savine had selected
the fabric herself, and specified the cut herself, and terrorised an entire
team of seamstresses for three days in person. And woe betide the one
who put a stitch out of place.
“As a noted connoisseur of lady’s tailoring…” Glokta twisted his
face discerningly. “I would not wear it to court.”
Her face fell a little. “No?”
“It would never do to so thoroughly outshine Queen Terez herself.”
Savine pushed her tongue into her cheek. “Hmmm.” She tried not
to show how delighted she was with his approval, and he tried not to
show how delighted he was with her delight. At times he would catch
glimpses of the child she had been. And almost want to weep that she is
a child no more. And immediately aferward would see the woman she
was fast becoming. And be choked with pride at all she might achieve.
Ah, the curse and the blessing of parenthood, that can coax a
sentimental tear from the pitiless eye of even a monster like me. It felt
strange, in a way, to have her in his stark office. Filling this place of
death and pain and bloodless paperwork with hope, and beauty, and
potential. It was frightening, even, to have her so near to the cells
below. And to think, I was once a man with nothing to lose.
He had to clear a lump in his throat. “I’ve no doubt you will make
a passable dressmaker, in due course.”
“I’ve no doubt I will make several marvellous ones.” She ran a
careless finger across the map of the Union on the table top. To which I
once nailed an inconvenient rival. “But for my own career I am aiming
somewhat higher.”
“Mind you don’t aim so high you topple backwards. In that dress
you could probably never get up.”
“It is for that sort of thing that one must employ dependable
servants.” She ran a fastidious finger across the top of one of the many
tottering heaps of documents. “A lady of taste should appear to make
no effort. The right things simply…” and she blew a tuft of dust from
the tip, “happen around her.”
“I believe the last time we spoke you were deciding between being
a fencing champion, an architect or a queen.”
“Why not all three?” she asked, regarding him down her nose. “I
am firmly of the opinion that there are no limits for a woman in the
modern world, if she has enough friends and enough money.”
“By the Fates,” murmured Glokta. “Fourteen years old, and you
have the secret of life already.”
 “It is the responsibility of an only child to pour all their energies
into surpassing their parents.”
“You are well on your way to equalling your mother in wits.” He
licked a finger and smoothed one of his eyebrows. “At this rate you
might even manage to surpass your father in looks.”
“You know I love you, Father, but you are infamously hideous.”
He grinned, showing his empty gums, a sight she always found
thoroughly amusing. “It may surprise you to learn that I was once a
celebrated beauty.” And it will certainly surprise you to learn that I am
also not your father. It hovered, on the tip of his tongue, as it did so
often. My old enemy, the truth. More hated even than steps. She will
have to know. He knew that she would have to know. But will she smile
at me the same way, afterward? Will she laugh at my jokes, and talk of
her hopes, and be the spur that pushes me onwards? Will I still have a
daughter? He had his doubts.
I am protecting her. I am preparing her. I am making the world she
deserves. Why, watching her swan about the room, so utterly dauntless,
so beautifully composed, the excuses almost made themselves. Just as
they always do. Don’t I deserve something for myself, after all? I have
been keeping the truth waiting all my life. It will wait a little longer.
Besides, his daughter’s ever-busy mind was already on her next triumph.
“Well,” she said, pulling on gloves which, of course, perfectly
matched her shoes. “Tomorrow’s celebrated beauties have better things
to do than loiter in gloomy offices.”
“Of course,” murmured Glokta. “All that money and all those
friends will not make themselves.”
 She blew him a kiss over her shoulder. “Don’t work too hard.”
As she opened the door, Superior Pike was in the anteroom, just
raising a fist to knock. He delivered a terribly grave formal bow. “Lady
Savine, an absolute honour.”
“Superior Pike, an unqualified privilege.” And she gave a curtsy
that was somehow both perfectly ladylike and crushingly sarcastic at
once, before sweeping away in a whirl of expensive skirts.
“By the Fates,” murmured Pike, frowning after her. “If something
is not done she will rule the world.”
“By next year, if it keeps to her timetable.” Glokta grimaced as he
caught the edge of the desk and hauled himself to his feet so he could
reach the decanter. I swear it gets harder every time. “Shut the door,
would you?” And he began to pour two glasses. The way Arch Lector
Sult once poured a glass for me…
“Excellent work in Starikland, my friend.” He nudged a drink
towards Pike. “As always. The rebels are seen off and the Near Country
is bound tighter to the Union. You pull our undeserving arses from the
fire again.”
“Well.” Pike swirled the spirit around for a moment, frowning into
his glass. “I know how it feels in the fire.”
“Which is why I remain so particularly grateful that you continue
to brave it on my behalf.” He gritted his teeth as he inched his way back
into his chair, legs burning. If you can call them legs. He had to drop
the last few inches to the leather with an undignified gasp.
 “I serve and obey, your Eminence, always.” Pike watched him,
without apparent emotion. “But I think the time has come for us both
to retire, and commit ourselves full-time to our memoirs.” There was a
brief pause. Then they burst out laughing together. Pike’s laugh was an
unlovely thing. A kind of papery gurgle. But I have spent many years
deriving pride and pleasure from unlovely things.
“Glad to see you still have your sense of humour.” Glokta bared his
ruined teeth at the twinge in his back as he leaned forwards. “You may
need it where you’re going.”
Pike raised one largely hairless brow in a silent question.
“Valbeck,” said Glokta. “I want you to take charge of the
Inquisition there.”
Pike raised that brow a little higher. Never use a word, when quiet
will do the job.
“The city is growing at a furious pace. New mills, new ways of
working, new workers too, flooding in from the countryside. There are
signs they are becoming…organised.”
“One cannot stop progress.” Pike gave a sigh. “It’s happening
everywhere. You want me to break them up?”
Glokta paused, his mouth slightly open. Here is the moment, then.
Once the words are said, there can be no going back. But it is hardly
the first time I have gambled everything. He glanced towards the door. I
must make the world she deserves. “No,” he said. “I want you to
encourage them.”
 Pike’s only expression of surprise was another slow movement of
that brow. Glokta greatly enjoyed his cold-bloodedness. Great Euz
could crash through the doors behind and he would probably not even
bother to turn.
“I want you to give them shape,” said Glokta, “and structure, and
purpose. I want you to make them effective. I want you to give them a
name, even. One cannot have a good movement without a good name. I
had been thinking…of the Breakers.”
“It has a certain ring. And tell me—is this a way to keep our little
enemies close? Or a way…” And he dropped his voice ever so slightly.
“To move against our greater enemy?”
“At first the former.” Glokta could not help a little shiver down his
spine. Could not help lowering his own voice almost to a whisper. Even
I. “Perhaps…in time…with the right precautions well in place…the
latter.”
“I have often thought it would be a fine thing…” Pike drained his
glass, and placed it carefully back on the desk with a click. “To leave
the world better than we found it.”
“If we truly are to change things at all…it must be a Great Change.
If we are to make a better future, we must rip the past up by the roots.
We must rip him out by the roots. The banks, the bureaucracy, the
crown. We must remake it all.”
Pike slowly nodded. “One cannot build a shining tower on rotten
foundations. Will you involve the king?”
Glokta gave a sad little smile. “His Majesty’s heart is in the right
place but I fear his guts will never be up to the task. Not to defy his
master. Not to make the sacrifices that will be necessary.” And the
sacrifices…will be many. “We must be as patient, and as determined,
and as ruthless as our enemy.”
Pike looked back evenly at him. “Not qualities that you have ever
lacked, your Eminence.”
“Nor you, my friend.” Glokta emptied his own glass, and frowned
towards the window. Into the little garden outside, just beginning to
bud. “Sometimes, to change the world…we must first burn it down.”

Valbeck, Autumn 593

They had given her quite the beating.
Her face was mottled with bruises, one eye was swollen nearly
shut, her tangle of orange hair was black in patches from clotted blood
and there were two neat red streaks down her top lip from her broken
nose. But Pike had seen far worse. It was widely suspected she had
killed that Practical found in the sewers so, if anything, he considered
them to have been unusually forbearing.
“So,” he said, sitting in the chair opposite her. “Your name is…?”
She leaned forward as far as her chains would allow, curled her
tongue, and blew bloody spit across the table in front of him.
Pike raised his brows. “What a lovely name.”
His face being what it was—or what it wasn’t—he was not quite
included in humanity these days. He stood always a little apart. An
object of fear, scorn or pity. That distance gave him clarity. That
distance, and all the things he had seen. In the wars, and in the camps,
and in the rebellion in Starikland. Humanity at its worst. Humanity
with so little human about it.
People thought themselves each special, each so wonderfully
different. But they were, in the main, so horribly predictable once real
pressure was applied. Their little needs, their little wants, their little
greeds, their little loves. Few people truly worried him, these days.
Truly…interested him.
After a beating such as she had received prisoners were generally
rendered pliable, but it was not unusual to see them go the other way,
and rant and spit and fume. So the fury in her bruised and swollen face
was unremarkable, the spit and defiance entirely familiar, often seen
when the questioning began. But as Pike looked into her eyes he saw
something there. Or…he saw something was missing, perhaps.
Conscience? Fear? Pity? He thought he recognised its absence.
From those rare moments when he dared to look in the mirror.
He placed his elbows on the table top, and clasped his hands. “I
am Superior Pike.”
“You look like a fucking overdone ham,” she snarled at him.
Pike gave a little snort. He turned slowly to look at Inquisitor
Risinau, loitering nervously in the corner of the room. “Well, I can
hardly deny it,” he murmured, before turning back to the prisoner.
“And you can hardly deny…” He glanced over the blood-dotted
paperwork before him. “The murder of a manufactory owner—”
“Cut his throat from behind,” she said.
“And his son—”
 “Stove his skull in with a shaping hammer,” she said.
“Not to mention the setting of a fire which gutted not only that
building but two others.”
“You should’ve seen the bastard burn,” she said.
“Then you are suspected of killing one Practical Stone while he
attempted to arrest you—”
“I hid a needle in my sleeve. When he tried to put the irons on me I
stuck it in his eye. When he went down I put a pick-axe through him.”
Pike thought he heard Risinau give a little squeak of disgust. “And
there’s more. There’s lots more.”
“A great deal of bloody work, for a woman of your size.”
“Oh, I’ve never been scared o’ work,” she said, showing her pink-
stained teeth. “And I don’t regret a bit of it. They deserved it, every
one.”
“What honest man could disagree?” said Pike, sitting back. “Users.
Profiteers. Maggots grown fat on the still-living corpses of the working
folk. What have you really done but to seek justice? When the corrupt
state, and the corrupt courts, and the corrupt system denied it to you,
you have taken it with your own hands. I understand it. I even, believe
it or not…applaud it.”
The fury had gone out of her face. Now she frowned at him,
suspicious, her split lips wrinkled with scorn. A canny customer, being
offered a deal they refused to believe. “What do you know about
justice?”
 “Look at me!” He threw up his hands. “I look like an overdone
ham.” Oh, the indescribable pain, then the horror, then the bitterness
when he had received these burns. But he had come to think of them as
a gift. The pain had been the pain of rebirth. To change a thing you
must first burn it down, and the snivelling wretch he once was had been
burned down so he could rebuild himself as the man he was now. Down
the years he had made of his ruined face a shield no terror and no pity
could pierce. A weapon that could cow the strong and crush the weak
with a glance. Pike turned towards Risinau, looking more worried than
ever, and waved a hand towards his own face. “Do you know where I
received…this?”
Risinau swallowed, thoroughly unnerved. He was an odd choice, in
many ways, for an Inquisitor. Too little spine and too much
imagination. But one must work with the tools one has, as the Arch
Lector was so fond of saying. “In the camps, sir…as I understand it…”
“Yes. In the camps. I have come to believe that the heart of a
society is revealed in its prisons.” Pike gestured at the room. “In its
justice or its…injustice.” He leaned forward, fixing the prisoner’s
strangely empty eye with his own. “You may not have spent time in the
camps, but you see it nonetheless. The heart of the Union is rotten. That
rot must be cut away. It must be burned out. And you can help me.”
She glared over at Risinau, who quickly looked away, then she
glared back at Pike, who did not. “I don’t believe you.”
“If you could be so easily made to believe, what use would you be?
All I ask is that you allow me to prove it. Gather like-minded people. I
think you have a spark in you that others will follow. Collect the hurt,
and the disposessed, and help settle their scores. Strike blows for the
common man. Spill blood. Set fires.”
“Burn?” she murmured.
“Yes. Give it a little theatre. We will talk more, about the right
methods. About the right targets. I will help you, where I can, but…try
to be cleverer. Not only wrathful, but also discerning. You are no fool.
It does not help our cause if you behave like one. You cannot help usher
in the Great Change if you are caught.”
“The Great Change…” She swallowed, muscles shifting in her
rash-speckled throat. “Where would I start?”
“Didn’t I say I wanted us to be free?” Pike stood, looking down at
her. “I have no interest in bringing down the old masters, only to set
myself up in their place.” He slid the key into the lock on her manacles.
“Where should you start?” He held her eye as he turned it. “You be the
judge.”
“You’re letting her go?” squeaked Risinau, as they stepped out into
the hallway.
“I am doing much more than that,” said Pike. “I am making her
useful. I sense she could be very useful, in due course.”
“So…it is a scheme? She will be the bait in a trap? You will use her
to expose more traitors?”
Pike opened the next door. “We work in the shadows.” Another
interrogation room, just the same as the last. They were always the
same. The bare white walls, not quite clean, the scarred table with the
two chairs. “In our business, we get used to the idea that nothing is as it
seems and everything pretends to be something else.” He sat in the
questioner’s chair. “Paranoia and suspicion are tools of our trade, but,
sometimes…a rock is just a rock. Please sit.”
Risinau swallowed as he glanced at the other chair. The one meant
for the prisoner. The significance was not lost on him. It was not lost on
anyone, ever. But what choice did he have?
“I have been watching you, Inquisitor Risinau,” said Pike. “For
some months now. Ever since I took charge in Valbeck, indeed.”
Risinau’s tongue darted over his lips.
“In spite of your efforts at secrecy—which could, frankly, use some
work—I know what you have been doing. Overlooking minor
infringements. Releasing several men thought guilty of fomenting
strikes. And, of course, more recently, collaborating with a one-time
informant of yours by the name of Collem Sibalt to organise workers,
print seditious pamphlets, and mount secret meetings at which the very
principles of the Union are attacked. Have I left anything out?”
Risinau was a far more predictable interrogee than the woman had
been. His soft face had drained of all colour. “I… I can explain.”
“Really, there’s no need. For many years I have been searching—
patiently, carefully—for like-minded people. People who might help me
bring about a Great Change. No less a thing than a change in the
government of the Union. A change in the order of things. A change in
the nature of the world.”
Risinau’s scared eyes seem to gleam a little at the words, but there
was still so much fear there, so much suspicion.
 “I know you will find it hard to believe,” said Pike, “but I told that
woman nothing but the truth. Ask yourself this. If I truly was the
ruthless oppressor I appear to be—would you and she not be dangling
together at the end of two ropes?” Pike came the closest he could to a
smile. “All I ask is that you allow me to prove it.”
Risinau blinked at him. “I never dared hope…that you might be an
ally—”
“Then you must learn to hope more. I could point you towards
some interesting theory, on how society could be restructured, to suit
the needs of all. Have you read the treatises of Livonte, who established
the Affoian communes?”
Risinau stared at him wide-eyed. “I did not know any copies
survived!”
“You must open your eyes to what is possible.” And Pike slid those
battered little books from his coat and pushed them across the table
top. “Your ambitions must become limitless.” Risinau dug the first
volume open, leafing through the pages with eager fingers. “You must
read the works of Farans and Verturio, certain passages from Bialoveld,
even.”
“That proponent of exploitation?” asked Risinau, glancing up.
“One must know one’s enemy.” Pike stood, his chair screeching on
the tiles, and came slowly around the table. “It is not enough to hate
the old system, or even to bring it down. One must have plans for what
will follow. How we might set the people free, my friend, make them all
equal. If we are to make a better world…” Pike nodded towards the cell
where he had just spoken with the red-haired murderer. “We must give
them something to fear.” He placed a gentle hand on Risinau’s shoulder.
“And we must give them something to believe in.”

Valbeck, Summer 599

Sibalt had been sitting on a crate as Risinau walked in, thumbing
through one of those ridiculous fantasies he liked to read. Now he slid
down and walked over, grinning. “Well, well. Superior Risinau.”
Risinau gently stroked the badges of rank newly sewn onto his
collar. “You cannot know how it pains me to wear the uniform of
oppression,” he said. “But if it can be made to serve the cause, I will
suffer it.”
“We all make sacrifices, eh?” For a moment, Risinau wondered if
his old friend might be mocking him a little, and was not at all pleased
at the prospect. “Should I salute?”
“Never, my brother.” And he seized Sibalt’s hand, and shook it
warmly, and clapped him on the arm besides. “In the world to come we
shall all be equal!”
Though there would be different roles to play, of course. Tasks to
suit the talents of each man. Only one with vision clear enough to see
the stars could act as navigator, and plot the course they would all
follow into the new future.
“I’m told two corpses washed up on the river bank.” Sibalt looked
concerned. “Stained blue, they were. Drowned in the dye-works, most
likely.” He dropped his voice. “Was that Judge’s doing?”
“I would not be at all surprised.”
 “She’s got some bad folk following her, now. They’re calling
’emselves Burners.”
“I am aware.” Her violent excesses did not bother Risinau half so
much as they once had. She was a vulgar lunatic, it needed hardly to be
said, one step above a beast, in truth, but beasts have their uses.
“We should talk to the Weaver—”
“Believe me, brother, he understands better than anyone what must
be done if we are to bring about our Great Change.” Except Risinau
himself, of course, who could see the steps to freedom unfolding before
him as though it was a thing already done. “People must have
something to believe in.” And he touched a modest hand to his own
chest. “But they must also have something to fear. Besides, I am sad to
say the Weaver has left us. He will aid us from afar, where he can, but
he has asked that from now on…” And Risinau gave a little laugh. As
though it was nothing. As though it had not been his fondest wish for
years. “I use the name.”
“You?”
“Who else?” He frowned at Sibalt. “Do I not inspire the people,
with my speeches? Do our numbers not swell?”
“Aye, but—”
“Forget about Judge,” said Risinau, trying to contain his
impatience. “Forget about Valbeck. I have a greater purpose in mind for
you. The time has come to spread the message of the Breakers wider. To
Keln. To Holsthorm. Even to Adua. That is where the people most need
you, my friend.” He squeezed Sibalt’s shoulder. “Our movement’s
strongest arm. Our most trusted pillar! You will do the good work
within the shadow of our enemy’s fortress.”
Sibalt looked worried. “Adua? Isn’t that a risk—”
“We will not bring the Great Change without risks, my friend.”
And he guided Sibalt towards the door. “I have been selfish. I have kept
you here too long.” And he was getting too popular. That blunt good
humour of his that had first drawn Risinau to him drew other people as
well. Lately, Risinau had fancied the man was getting louder applause
than he was at the meetings.
“Take Brother Moor and Sister Grise along. They both know the
city. I have no doubt, with patience and care, you will bring other like-
minded people into the fold…”

Somewhere in the Three Farms, Autumn 604

Sibalt sat, boots up on the table, reading his book. Or pretending to
read it, anyway. Mostly he was peering over it, at Vick, standing by the
window with her arms tight folded, frowning down into the street.
He couldn’t stop looking at her, for some reason. He’d seen her
first in the back of a workers’ meeting, early summer, hot and smelly as
a barn dance, but she’d ducked out before he could talk to her. Two
weeks till he’d seen her again, and five till he’d found out her name.
First bit of it, anyway. He still didn’t know the rest.
He couldn’t have said what it was about her. She was a hard case,
that was sure, about as forthcoming as an oyster. Moor said she’d been
with the rebels in Starikland. Cudber heard from someone she’d spent
some time in the camps. Didn’t give much back. Unless you pushed her,
he reckoned, then she’d give you more’n you bargained for. But he had
this feeling there was something under there. Some oysters got a pearl in
’em, don’t they?
Her eyes flicked over to him and he glanced back to his book and
almost certainly that instant too late. Wasn’t like she’d given him the
slightest encouragement. Quite the reverse. But he just got this feeling,
whenever their eyes met. This heat, made his mouth dry and his hands
sweaty.
“Where is she?” she asked him.
“Grise?”
“No, the Queen o’ the Union. Yes, Grise.”
Sibalt puffed out his cheeks. “She’ll be along, don’t worry.”
“It’s when folk tell me not to worry that I really get to worrying.”
“Probably very sensible,” he murmured, trying out the hint of a
grin. It only got Vick frowning harder. He wasn’t sure he’d seen her
smile once. Made him want to see if he could coax one out. Made him
yammer on, and crack bad jokes like some boy without a beard yet, and
that just made her frown the harder.
She stepped away from the window, cross-shaped shadows of the
glazing bars shifting across her face. “What’re you reading?” she asked,
nodding at his book.
Sibalt wondered for a moment whether to lie. Wasn’t like this
would make her take him more seriously. But he’d a sense she’d see
straight through him. “It’s the life of Dab Sweet,” he turned it around to
peer at the spine, “by…who’s this idiot? Marin Glanhorm.”
“What’s it about?”
“A famous scout. In the Far Country.” And he set the book down
beside the candle, and flicked the pages till he came upon that picture
he’d liked so much. “Big skies, and big grass, and… I don’t know.
Living free, I guess.” Sounded more stupid than ever when he put it in
words, but she wasn’t sneering.
She stepped up close to him to frown down at it, in fact. About as
close as he’d ever got to her. About as close as he was ever likely to.
“You were in Starikland, weren’t you?” he asked. “That what it’s
like out there?”
“I was in Starikland. Long way from the Far Country still.”
He looked at her beside him, the line of her jaw so fixed, and
sharp, and strong, and perfect somehow, a little scar just beside it, and
before he knew what he was doing he’d reached up and touched her
there, just gently, just in the shadow under her ear, just with his
fingertips.
Her face made this odd twitch, and her eyes flicked towards his.
She swallowed. But she didn’t pull away. Or punch him in the balls,
which was what he might’ve put his money on, if he’d had any.
“Best you don’t do that,” she said. But there was a kind of throaty
softness to her voice he hadn’t heard before.
“Why?”
“We’ve got the cause to think on.”
 “The cause won’t fail on account of a touch.”
“It might. Never turns out too well, for the men I put my hands
on.”
“I’ll take the risk.”
She just kept frowning at him, not moving away, not moving
towards.
He shrugged. “Can’t spend my whole life waiting for the Great
Change, Vick. Might never come. Don’t we deserve…something…for
ourselves, in the meantime?” He tried a hint of a smile. No more’n a
twitch at the corner of his mouth, really, but she kept frowning, as hard
as ever. He looked down. He took his hand away. “I’m sorry. You’re
right. I won’t ask ag—”
And suddenly she’d taken his face with both hands, gripping it
hard, twisting it up towards her, kissing him like the both of them had
only a minute left to live. He thought he might’ve made a surprised little
squeak, and she’d half climbed on top of him with one knee up on the
chair and her groin pressing into his thigh and he had one hand in her
hair and one arm around her back and could feel her ribs shifting under
her shirt as she breathed.
They broke apart, staring at each other, gripping each other,
breathing quick in each other’s faces, in the light of that one candle.
Sibalt’s heart was thudding. First time he’d ever seen Vick look
surprised. Like she couldn’t believe what she’d just done.
“Woah,” he whispered. So there was something under there, all
right.
 And at that very worst moment, the knob rattled round and the
door shuddered open.
“Pamphlets,” grunted Grise, stomping in with a box in her arms,
“fresh off the…” And she saw Sibalt staring over from his chair and
Vick clambering off him just as fast as she could. “Press,” she finished,
heavy brows drawing in hard.
“You took your time,” croaked Sibalt, trying to look like naught
special had been happening and making quite the botch of it.
“Moor was late.” Grise dropped her box with a thud and propped
her hands on her hips. “He’s downstairs with the rest of ’em.”
“I’ll help unload,” muttered Vick. Sibalt thought she might have
had the hint of a blush on her sharp cheeks as she turned away. Made
him like her more. A lot more. Grise, it seemed, felt otherwise, making
a scowling obstacle of herself that Vick had to duck around, then
kicking the door shut afterwards.
“Tell me you ain’t fucking her,” said Grise.
Was only then Sibalt realised he was staring after Vick like a love-
lorn puppy. He frowned, and flipped that book shut. “I’m not.”
“But you’d like to be.”
“Finding folk guilty o’ what they’d like to be, now, are you? You
should join the Inquisition, Grise, you’d make a fine Practical.”
“Just tell me you’ve told her naught about Valbeck. About the
Weaver.”
“I’m the one brought you in, remember? No one gets told anything
till they have to know it. Safest for everybody.”
 “I don’t trust that bitch.”
Sibalt snorted. “You don’t trust anyone.”
“Not true. In fact I brought over someone you might like to meet.
Won’t change the world wi’ just five of us, will we?”
“Six with Vick.”
Grise sucked sourly at her teeth. “Seven with this lad. Hey, Tallow!
In you come.”

The Hill Street Foundry, Spring 605

“It’s ready,” said Vick. “Let’s go.”
Grise caught her arm in the darkness. “What about them?” And
she jerked her head towards the two nightwatchmen minding the
foundry’s gate.
“They’re paid.”
“You paid the fuckers?”
“It’s easier to shift a man with gold than steel, and it almost always
ends up cheaper.” And Vick twisted free and strutted off across the
street, collar up. Bloody hell, Grise hated that bitch, with her fancy
name and her sob stories about the camps. Hated how she’d just
waltzed in from nowhere and wrapped Sibalt around her finger and got
everyone doing things her way.
She blew an angry breath into the drizzle, and on the other side of
the street Grise heard the bar clatter and the hinges creak as the gates
swung open.
 Years, she’d been with the Breakers, and no one hardly ever asked
her opinion.
“Let’s go!” called Vick, waving ’em on, and Moor gave the reins a
flick and brought the wagon across the muddy street.
Grise walked alongside, frowning at the nightwatchmen, frowning
at the darkened yard on the other side, frowning at the heaps of coal
and stacks of wood, the towering wall of the foundry shed, light
gleaming orange from beyond its windows. She didn’t like the looks of
the place. Had a bad feeling in her gut and a sour taste in her mouth.
She clenched her fists as Moor hauled on the brake and brought the
wagon to a halt.
When she got scared, when she got doubts, she’d think o’ the
guards at the mill where she used to work. The way they’d looked at
her. That scorn. That contempt. She’d see their faces, and the anger
would come up hot, and she’d remember something had to be done.
You want a Great Change, ain’t enough to sit there jawing about it.
“Working so far,” muttered Sibalt, and he gave Grise a clap on the
shoulder as he jumped down from the back of the wagon. One of the
lads, that’s all she was to him. All she’d ever be, now. Now that bitch
Vick dan fucking Teufel had swanned in and stuck her gash in his face.
She bared her teeth, snarling to herself as she started unlashing the tarp,
ripping at the wet cords with her wet fingers.
Gears ground as Sibalt heaved the shed’s sliding door open, orange
forgelight spilling from inside. Grise clambered onto the wagon’s back
to drag away the tarp. “Time to strike a blow for the common man,
eh?” she muttered at Tallow.
 He stared down at her from the wagon’s seat with those big, sad
eyes. “Aye, I guess, he said, watching Moor drag one of the barrels clear
of the others.
“All right,” hissed Vick, “let’s get that first one—”
Grise gasped as light flared right in her eyes, daylight from
nowhere, blinding her. “Hold!” bellowed a voice. “In the name of his
Majesty!”
The wagon lurched forward, Grise stumbled, tangled with one of
the tarp cords, made a despairing grab at the back of the seat then
tumbled off the side, hit her head on a barrel rim on the way down then
got a faceful of the wet cobbles.
She groaned, rolled, blood thudding in her skull. Could hear
someone shouting. Slapping footfalls. She wobbled up to her knees,
lights flickering, black figures against the bright. Something whipped
past her and thudded into the side of the wagon. A flatbow bolt.
More’n one.
“No,” she whispered. Moor was lying on his side by the wagon’s
wheel, one bolt in his chest, one in his thigh, hatchet lying near his
twitching fingers. “No!” Grise snatched it up and spun, crouching,
baring her teeth. She could see the Practicals closing in. Black sticks,
masked faces. Too many.
“Come on, you fuckers!” she screamed, standing over Moor’s
corpse. “Come on!”
“Give it up,” said one, muffled through his mask. Sounded almost
bored. Grise went at him, swinging, but he just took a watchful step
back, and one of the others ducked in and cracked her across the back
of the thigh with his stick while she was off-balance.
As she whipped towards him she was already falling to one knee.
One of the others clubbed her on the shoulder, pain flashing up her
neck. She lifted the hatchet but someone caught her arm, twisted it, a
boot thudded into her side and drove her breath out in a wheeze.
Tallow just watched the whole thing from the wagon’s seat, calm as
anything.
“Run!” she groaned at him as they forced her down. “Run, you
bastard!”
But he didn’t even try to run, let alone to fight. Just hopped down
calmly from the wagon, and lowered himself calmly to his knees, and
put his hands calmly behind his neck, just waiting to be shackled.
Grise screeched and kicked and spat and squirmed, managed to
catch one Practical in the face with a boot but two of them had her,
pinned her, and she was on her face on the cobbles with a knee in her
back and the manacles scraping shut around her wrists. Another one
stood over her, pulling out a canvas bag.
There was a chink of light across Tallow’s face, from one of the
lanterns, and he didn’t look like he always did before. Those big, sad
eyes had narrowed, hard, and there was this curl to his lip as he
watched her struggle. Not pity and not fear. Scorn.
The way the guards at the mill used to look at her.

The House of Questions, Spring 605

Tallow had been wondering how to play it, when Vick came in. Just
going over what he was supposed to know and what he wasn’t. Had to
be on his toes all the time. Tip top form. Slip once and she’d more’n
likely catch him out. She was sharp, he never doubted that for a minute.
He’d learned a lot just from watching her, with the others. The way she
hooked ’em, the way she reeled ’em in, never giving too much. He’d
never have known she was a traitor. She’d have been the very last one
he’d have picked. If Old Sticks hadn’t laid out the whole picture for
him. She was sharp as all fuck. But he had one advantage, and it was a
whopper.
She wanted to believe him.
So Tallow just made his eyes big. Poor me, poor me. Hunched his
shoulders. So feeble, so scared. Little fucking sadsack. She wanted
someone weak to protect. She wanted someone stupid to be clever for.
So he made himself weak. He made himself stupid.
“Did you escape from them?” he whispered.
Vick gave a sad smile as she sat down opposite him, in the chair for
the one who asks the questions. “No one escapes from them.”
“Then—”
“I am them.”
He looked at her for a long moment, wondering how to play it.
Whether to scream insults at her. Whether to kick and scratch and play
at going wild. But there was a chance she’d see through it. Better to
keep it quiet, and let her fill in the blanks. So he just looked down at the
stained table top and said, “Oh.”
 “Do you know who I was just talking to, next door?” Tallow
slowly shook his head, though he knew exactly who. “His Eminence the
Arch Lector.”
He made his eyes even bigger, though his Eminence had been in his
cell just before hers, giving him a few pointers on how to play this very
interview. “Here?”
“In his crippled person. You’re a lucky boy. You’ve never seen him
work. I have.” And she gave a long, soft whistle. “Old Sticks, well, he’ll
be winning no footraces. But when it comes to making folk talk, believe
me, there’s no one faster. My guess is your friend Grise will already be
telling him everything she knows about everything.”
“She’s strong,” he said, though he’d naught but scorn for that
dumb cow.
“No, she’s not. But it doesn’t matter. Once you’re stripped and
alone and he starts cutting, there’s no strong that’s strong enough.”
Tallow could not have given less of a shit, but he’d been able to cry
on cue for years, and he reckoned it a moment to let a tear or two run
down his cheek. “But she’s—”
“Put her out of your mind. She’s already hanged. Moor’s dead, and
Sibalt…” There was the slightest crack in Vick’s voice. Most wouldn’t
have noticed, but Tallow did. He’d seen a few like her in the camps.
Frozen hard on the outside, maybe, but still soft underneath.
“Sibalt?”
“He’s dead, too.”
“You say it like you’re proud.”
 “I’m not. But I’m not ashamed, either. They made their choice, you
heard me ask them. Just like I asked you.”
Tallow paused a moment, licking his lips. Had to play it careful,
make sure she took the bait. “Grise is hanged, but…not me?”
“You catch on fast. For you there’s a door still open. For you…and
your sister.” Tallow blinked at her. Old Sticks had known, like magic.
Known just how it’d play out, almost word for word. Known she’d try
and turn him, and just how she’d do it. He wondered how long Old
Sticks had been planning this. How many moves ahead he was. All
Tallow had to do was play along. Stupid little sadsack who’d do
anything for his sister. Stupid little sadsack got himself in a pickle, and
only Vick could help him out of it. “I told his Eminence maybe you
could be saved,” she said. “Maybe you could be of service to the king.”
“What kind of service?” Though he knew, of course. He’d been
doing it for months.
“Whatever kind I pick.”
He looked down at the table, thinking fast. What would the
sadsack worry about? The good little soldier? Wouldn’t want to let the
side down. He licked his lips. “Betraying my brothers,” he muttered,
like each word hurt him.
“I expect so.”
“What choices do I have?”
“Just this one, and you’re damn lucky to be getting it.”
Now he looked up. Show her a trace of anger, trace of hurt, don’t
let her have it all her own way. Make her work for it, like he’d seen her
make Sibalt work. “Then why even ask?” he snapped.
“So you understand what you owe me.” Which was neat. Or
would’ve been, if he’d been who she thought he was. She got up,
slipping the key out, and unlocked his chains. Then she tossed him
some clothes. “Get dressed. Then get some sleep. We’ll be leaving for
Valbeck in the morning. Need to know where those dullards got three
barrels of Gurkish Fire.”
Tallow left his wrists in the manacles. Reckoned he’d hook her
guilt out, while he could. Her guilt was his grip on her. “Was any of it
true?”
“Any of what?”
“What you told us?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “A good liar lies as little as
possible.”
He’d have said the very same thing. “So…you really did grow up in
the camps?”
“Twelve years. Girl and woman. My parents and my sisters died
there.” She swallowed, and he could see it hurt her. “My brother, too.”
She couldn’t save her brother, so he’d give her a new one to save.
“You’ve lost as much as anyone,” he said, looking like he didn’t get it,
when the truth was he got it just as well as she did.
“More than most.”
“Then how can you—”
“Because if I learned one thing in the camps…” She leaned down
over him, baring her teeth, and he cringed like he was terrified. “It’s
that you stand with the winners.”
A good lesson. He’d learned it too. Vick strode to the door, and
pulled it shut with a bang.
Tallow sat there for a moment longer. Then he allowed himself the
tiniest little smile, and started getting dressed. He wondered what his
sister would look like.
If he ever had to meet her.