“What is the point of gathering knowledge if one does not pass it on? What is the point of growing old if one does not try to shape the future?”

“That what you’re doing here? Shaping the future?”

“Struggling to do so.” The wizard sighed. “I confess it has not been easy lately. People, Master Clover, make wretched building material. People and their restless whims, and their wilful intransigence, and their petty ambitions.” Bayaz bared his teeth, and Clover had to fight a strange desire to back away. “They simply refuse to see what is best for them. Imagine bricks that pounce on every opportunity to defy the architect and run off their own way.”

“Frustrating,” murmured Clover.

“But I never stop trying. Doing better next time, after all, that’s what life is.”

“I reckon.” Honestly, Clover was somewhat troubled by the tone, along with the memory of Black Calder’s nervous hand-wringing around the man. But then he’d been serving dangerous bastards all his life. A master no one fears won’t take you far, and men who make the worst enemies, after all, can make the best friends. “I… er, have something for you.”

“For me?” asked Bayaz.

“Black Rikke didn’t want it, and I wouldn’t know what to do with it, but I thought…” And Clover drew out the chain that Stour Nightfall once wore, that Scale Ironhand once wore, that Bethod once wore, gold gleaming in the afternoon sun. “Maybe you would.”

“Why, Master Clover,” breathed Bayaz as he took it, eyes fixed on the dangling jewel. “A gift fit for a king indeed! I know just the place for it, in good time.”

Clover humbly shrugged. He was out of friends. If this bought him a safe place to sit, he’d consider it well worth the price. “Would’ve been poor manners to turn up empty-handed.”

“Oh, we are of one mind!” said Bayaz, clapping a palm down on his shoulder and leading him across the yard towards the library. “Manners might be out of fashion in the North, but I want you to know that I appreciate them. Aided by people with good manners and good judgement, there is nothing that cannot be achieved. This promising young lady, for example, has but recently joined me.” Gesturing towards the blonde girl as they passed. “She proves to have a humbling work ethic and a marvellous facility with numbers, so I am teaching her the mysteries of finance.”

“What’s that? A kind of magic?”

“A very powerful kind. The magic of money. Which do you think rings better—Hildi dan Valint or Hildi dan Balk?”

“What?”

“Magic and money are two things I know a little about,” Bayaz was saying as he slipped Bethod’s chain into a pocket. “Kings, also, are an area of some expertise. But I must confess that when it comes to sword-work, I have always relied on others.”

“Lucky for me, I guess. Who’s the student?”

Bayaz led him down a set of steps worn almost to a ramp by time, through a low archway and out onto a paved shelf on the mountainside. It had only a crumbling wall for a parapet and a grand valley was spread out beyond it, the lake stretching away like a grey mirror, forest and mountains reflected in its still surface.