Joe Abercrombie - Before They Are Hanged

The Maker’s bridge still stood.

“In all my wide travels, in every city and nation under the bountiful sun, I have never seen such a wonder.” Longfoot slowly shook his shaven head. “How can a bridge be made from metal?”

But metal it was. Dark, smooth, lustreless, gleaming with drops of water. It soared across the dizzy space in one simple arch, impossibly delicate, a spider’s web of thin rods criss-crossing the hollow air beneath it, a wide road of slotted metal plates stretching out perfectly level across the top, inviting them to cross. Every edge was sharp, every curve precise, every surface clean. It stood pristine in the midst of all that slow decay. “As if it was finished yesterday,” muttered Quai.

“And yet it is perhaps the oldest thing in the city.” Bayaz nodded towards the ruins behind them. “All the achievements of Juvens are laid waste. Fallen, broken, forgotten, almost as though they had never been. But the works of the Master Maker are undiminished. They shine the brighter, if anything, for they shine in a darkened world.” He snorted, and mist blew from his nostrils. “Who knows? Perhaps they will still stand whole and unmarked at the end of time, long after all of us are in our graves.”

Luthar peered nervously down towards the thundering water, no doubt wondering if his grave might be there. “You’re sure it will carry us?”

“In the Old Time it carried thousands of people a day. Tens of thousands. Horses and carts and citizens and slaves in an endless procession, flowing both ways, day and night. It will carry us.” Ferro watched as the hooves of Bayaz’ horse clanged out onto the metal.

“This Maker was plainly a man of… quite remarkable talents,” murmured the Navigator, urging his horse after.

Quai snapped his reins. “He was indeed. All lost to the world.”

Ninefingers went next, then Luthar reluctantly followed. Ferro stayed where she was, sitting in the pattering rain, frowning at the bridge, at the cart, at the four horses and their riders. She did not like this. The river, the bridge, the city, none of it. It had been feeling more and more like a trap with every step, and now she felt sure of it. She should never have listened to Yulwei. She should never have left the South. She had no business here, out in this freezing, wet, deserted wasteland with this gang of godless pinks.

“I am not going over that,” she said.

Bayaz turned to look at her. “Do you plan to fly across, then? Or simply stay on that side?”

She sat back and crossed her hands before her on the saddlebow. “Perhaps I will.”

“It might be better to discuss such matters once we have made it through the city,” murmured Brother Longfoot, looking nervously back into the empty streets.

“He’s right,” said Luthar. “This place has an evil air—”

“Shit on its air,” growled Ferro, “and shit on you. Why should I cross? What is it exactly, that is so useful to me about that side of a river? You have promised me vengeance, old pink, and given me nothing but lies, and rain, and bad food. Why should I take another stride with you? Tell me that!”

Bayaz frowned. “My brother Yulwei helped you in the desert. You would have been killed if not for him. You gave him your word—”

“Word? Hah! A word is an easy chain to break, old man.” And she jerked her wrists apart in front of her. “There. I am free of it. I did not promise to make a slave of myself!”

The Magus gave vent to a long sigh, slumping wearily forward in his saddle. “As if life were not hard enough without your contributions. Why is it, Ferro, that you would rather make things difficult than easy?”

“Perhaps God had some purpose in mind when he made me so, but I do not know it. What is the Seed?”

Straight to the root of the matter. The old pink’s eye seemed to give a sudden twitch as she said the word. “Seed?” muttered Luthar, baffled.

Bayaz frowned at the puzzled faces of the others. “It might be better not to know.”

“Not good enough. If you fall asleep for a week again, I want to know what we are doing, and why.”

“I am well recovered now,” snapped Bayaz, but Ferro knew it for a lie. Every part of him seemed shrunken, older and weaker than it had been. He might have been awake, and talking, but he was far from recovered. It would take more than bland assurances to fool her. “It will not happen again, you can depend on—”

“I will ask you one more time, and hope at last for a simple answer. What is the Seed?”

Bayaz looked at her for a long moment, and she looked back. “Very well. We will sit in the rain and discuss the nature of things.” And he nudged his horse back off the bridge until it was no more than a stride away. “The Seed is one name for that thing that Glustrod dug for in the deep earth. It is that thing he used to do all this.”

“This?” grunted Ninefingers.

“All this.” And the First of the Magi swept his arm towards the wreckage that surrounded them. “The Seed made a ruin of the greatest city in the world, and blighted the land about it from now until eternity.”

“It is a weapon, then?” murmured Ferro.

“It is a stone,” said Quai suddenly, hunched on his cart, looking at no one. “A rock from the world below. Left behind, buried, when Euz cast the devils from our world. It is the Other Side made flesh. The very stuff of magic”

“It is indeed,” whispered Bayaz. “My congratulations, Master Quai. One subject at least of which you are not entirely ignorant. Well? Answers enough for you, Ferro?”

“A rock did all this?” Ninefingers did not look happy. “What in hell do we want with it?”

“I think some among us can guess.” Bayaz was looking at Ferro, right in the eye, and smiling a sickly grin, as if he knew exactly what she thought. Perhaps he did.

It was no secret.

Stories of devils, and digging, and old wet ruins, none of that mattered to Ferro. She was busy imagining the Empire of Gurkhul made a dead land. Its people vanished. Its Emperor forgotten. Its cities brought to dust. Its power a faded memory. Her mind churned with thoughts of death and vengeance. Then she smiled.

“Good,” she said. “But why do you need me?”

“Who says I do need you that badly?”

She snorted at him. “I doubt you would have suffered me this long if you didn’t.”

“True enough.”

“Then why?”

“Because the Seed cannot be touched. It is painful even to look upon. We came into the shattered city with the Emperor’s army, after the fall of Glustrod, searching for survivors. We found none. Only horrors, and ruins, and bodies. Too many of those to count. Thousands upon thousands we buried, in pits for a hundred each, all through the city. It was long work, and while we were about it a company of soldiers found something strange in the ruins. Their Captain wrapped it in his cloak and brought it to Juvens. By dusk he had withered and died, and his company were not spared. Their hair fell out, their bodies shrivelled. Within a week all hundred men were corpses. But Juvens himself was unharmed.” He nodded at the cart. “That is why Kanedias made the box, and that is why we have it with us now. To protect us. None of us are safe. Except for you.”

“Why me?”

“Did you never wonder why you are not as others are? Why you see no colours? Why you feel no pain? You are what Juvens was, and Kanedias. You are what Glustrod was. You are what Euz himself was, if it comes to that.”

“Devil-blood,” murmured Quai. “Blessed and cursed.”

Ferro glowered at him. “What do you mean?”

“You are descended from demons.” And one corner of the apprentice’s mouth curled up in a knowing smile. “Far back into the Old Time and beyond, perhaps, but still, you are not entirely human. You are a relic. A last weak trace of the blood of the Other Side.”