‘Why, Colonel Gorst!’ The First of the Magi strolled up with staff in one hand and teacup in the other. He took in the river and its floating cargo, heaved a long breath through his nose and exhaled satisfaction. ‘Well, you couldn’t say they aren’t giving it a good try, anyway. Successes are all very well, but there’s something grand about a glorious failure, isn’t there?’

I can’t see what, and I should know.

‘Lord Bayaz.’ The Magus’ curly-headed servant snapped open a folding chair, brushed an imaginary speck of dust from its canvas seat and bowed low.

Bayaz tossed his staff on the wet grass without ceremony and sat, eyes closed, tipping his smiling face towards the strengthening sun. ‘Wonderful thing, a war. Done in the right way, of course, for the right reasons. Separates the fruit from the chaff. Cleans things up.’ He snapped his fingers with an almost impossibly loud crack. ‘Without them societies are apt to become soft. Flabby. Like a man who eats only cake.’ He reached up and punched Gorst playfully on the arm, then shook out his limp fingers in fake pain. ‘Ouch! I bet you don’t eat only cake, do you?’

‘No.’

Like virtually everyone Gorst ever spoke to, Bayaz was hardly listening. ‘Things don’t change just by the asking. You have to give them a damn good shake. Whoever said war never changes anything, well … they just haven’t fought enough wars, have they? Glad to see this rain’s clearing up, though. It’s been playing hell with my experiment.’

The experiment consisted of three giant tubes of dull, grey-black metal, seated upon huge wooden cradles, each closed at one end with the other pointed across the river in the vague direction of the Heroes. They had been set up with immense care and effort on a hump of ground a hundred strides from Gorst’s tent. The ceaseless din of men, horses and tackle would have kept him awake all night had he not been half-awake anyway, as he always was. Lost in the smoke of Cardotti’s House of Leisure, searching desperately for the king. Seeing a masked face in the gloom, at the stairway. Before the Closed Council as they stripped him of his position, the bottom dropping out of the world all over again. Twisted up with Finree, holding her. Holding smoke. Coughing smoke, as he stumbled through the twisted corridors of Cardotti’s House of—

‘Pitiful, isn’t it?’ asked Bayaz.

For a moment, Gorst wondered if the Magus had read his thoughts. And yes, it certainly fucking is. ‘Pardon?’

Bayaz spread his arms to encompass the scene of crawling activity. ‘All the doings of men, still at the mercy of the fickle skies. And war most of all.’ He sipped from his cup again, grimaced and flung the dregs out across the grass. ‘Once we can kill people at any time of day, in any season, in any weather, why, then we’ll be civilised, eh?’ And he chuckled away to himself.