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Dagoska did and Adua surely will
before the Emperor’s fury! Burn, as I would love to burn King
Jezal the Bastard, and the First of the Magi, and Arch Lector Sult,
and Valint and Balk, and the whole damned—
    â€œGah!â€

Charity
    Adua burned.
    The two
westernmost districts—the Three Farms, at the south-western
corner of the city, and the Arches, further north—were hacked
with black wounds. Smoke was still pouring up from some of them,
great columns lit in faint orange near the base. They spread out in
oily smears, dragged away to the west by a stiff wind, drawing a
muddy curtain across the setting sun.
    Jezal watched in
solemn silence, his hands bunched into numb fists on the parapet of
the Tower of Chains. There was no sound up here but for the wind
fumbling at his ears and, just occasionally, the slightest hint of
distant battle. A war cry, or the screams of the wounded. Or perhaps
only a sea-bird calling, high on the breeze. Jezal wished for a
maudlin moment that he were a bird, and could simply fly from the
tower and off over the Gurkish pickets, away from this nightmare. But
escape would not be so easy.
    â€œCasamir’s
Wall was first breached three days ago,â€

Better Left Buried
    When the
fighting is over you dig, if you’re still alive. You dig graves
for your dead comrades. A last mark of respect, however little you
might have had for them. You dig as deep as you can be bothered, you
dump them in, you cover them up, they rot away and are forgotten.
That’s the way it’s always been.
    There would be a
lot of digging when this fight was done. A lot of digging for both
sides.
    Twelve days,
now, since the fire started falling. Since the wrath of God began to
rain on these arrogant pinks, and lay blackened waste to their proud
city. Twelve days since the killing started—at the walls, and
in the streets, and through the houses. For twelve days in the cold
sunlight, in the spitting rain, in the choking smoke, and for twelve
nights by the light of flickering fires, Ferro had been in the thick
of it.
    Her boots
slapped against the polished tiles, leaving black marks down the
immaculate hallway behind her. Ash. The two districts where the
fighting was raging were covered in it, now. It had mingled with the
thin rain to make a sticky paste, like black glue. The buildings that
still stood, the charred skeletons of the ones that did not, the
people who killed and the people who died, all coated in it. The
scowling guards and the cringing servants frowned at her and the
marks she left, but she had never cared a shit for their opinions,
and was not about to start. They would have more ash than they knew
what to do with soon. The whole place would be ash, if the Gurkish
got their way.
    And it looked
very much as if they might. Each day and each night, for all the
efforts of the rag-tag defenders, for all the dead they left among
the ruins, the Emperor’s troops worked their way further into
the city.
    Towards the
Agriont.
    Yulwei was
sitting in the wide chamber when she got there, shrunken into a chair
in one corner, the bangles hanging from his limp arms. The calmness
which had always seemed to swaddle him like an old blanket was
stripped away. He looked worried, worn, eyes sunken in dark sockets.
A man looking defeat in the face. A look that Ferro was getting used
to seeing over the past few days.
    â€œFerro
Maljinn, back from the front. I always said that you would kill the
whole world if you could, and now you have your chance. How do you
like war, Ferro?â€

Tomorrow’s Hero
    The hooves of
Jezal’s grey charger clopped obediently in the black mud. It
was a magnificent beast, the very kind he had always dreamed of
riding. Several thousand marks-worth of horse flesh, he did not
doubt. A steed that could give any man who sat on it, however
worthless, the air of royalty. His shining armour was of the best
Styrian steel, chased with gold. His