Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie

shadowy night sky beyond it.
    The Imperial Legate lay sprawled out across a couch on a high dais at the far end of the room, a table before him loaded with delicacies. He was a huge man, round-faced and fleshy. Fingers heavy with golden rings snatched up choice morsels and tossed them into his waiting mouth, eyes never leaving his two guests, or his two prisoners, for a moment.
    'I am Salamo Narba, Imperial Legate and governor of the city of Calcis.' He worked his mouth, then spat out an olive stone which pinged into a dish. 'You are the one they call the First of the Magi?'
    The Magus inclined his bald head. Narba lifted up a goblet, holding the stem between his heavy forefinger and his heavy thumb, took a swig of wine, sloshed it slowly round in his mouth while he watched them, and swallowed. 'Bayaz.'
    'The same.'
    'Hmm. I mean no offence.' Here the Legate snatched up a tiny fork and speared an oyster from its shell, 'but your presence in this city concerns me. The political situation in the Empire is… volatile.' He picked up his goblet. 'Even more so than usual.' Swig, slosh, swallow. 'The last thing that I need is someone… upsetting the balance.'
    'More volatile than usual?' asked Bayaz. 'I understood that Sabarbus had finally calmed things.'
    'Calmed them under his boot, for a while.' The Legate tore a handful of dark grapes from a bunch and leaned back on his cushions, popping them one by one into his gaping mouth. 'But Sabarbus… is dead. Poison, they say. His sons, Scario… and Goltus… squabbled over his legacy… then made war on each other. An exceptionally bloody war, even for this exhausted land.' And he spat the pips out onto the table top.
    'Goltus held the city of Darmium, in the midst of the great plain. Scario employed his father's greatest general, Cabrian, to take it under siege. Not long ago, after five months of encirclement, starved of provisions, hopeless of relief… the city surrendered.' Narba bit into a ripe plum, juice running down his chin.
    'So Scario is close to victory, then.'
    'Huh.' The Legate wiped his face with the tip of his little finger and tossed the unfinished fruit carelessly onto the table. 'No sooner had Cabrian finally taken the city, pillaged its treasures and given it over to a brutal sack by his soldiers, than he installed himself in the ancient palace and proclaimed himself Emperor.'
    'Ah. You seem unmoved.'
    'I weep on the inside, but I have seen all this before. Scario, Goltus, and now Cabrian. Three self-appointed Emperors, locked in a deadly struggle, their soldiers ravaging the land, while the few cities who have maintained their independence look on, horrified, and do their best to escape the nightmare unscathed.'
    Bayaz frowned. 'I mean to travel westward. I must cross the Aos, and Darmium is the closest bridge.'
    The Legate shook his head. 'It is said that Cabrian, always eccentric, has lost his reason entirely. That he has murdered his wife and married his own three daughters. That he has declared himself a living god. The city gates are sealed while he scours the city for witches, devils, and traitors. Every day there are new bodies hanging at the public gibbets he has raised on each corner. No one is permitted either to enter or to leave. Such is the news from Darmium.'
    Jezal was more than a little relieved to hear Bayaz say, 'it must be Aostum, then.'
    'Nobody will be crossing the river at Aostum any longer. Scario, running from his brother's vengeful armies, fled across the bridge and had his engineers bring it down behind him.'
    'He destroyed it?'
    'He did. A wonder of the Old Time which stood for two thousand years. Nothing remains. To add to your woes, there have been heavy rains and the great river runs swift and high. The fords are impassable. You will not cross the Aos this year, I fear.'
    'I must.'
    'But you will not. If you wish for my advice, I would leave the Empire to its misery and return from whence you came. Here in Calcis we have always tried