His skin prickled as the two wizards crossed the floor and felt the blast of a raw magic flowing outwards from the seated figure.
Several dozen of the most senior wizards were clustered around the stool, staring in awe at the floor.
Spelter craned to see, and saw-
The world.
It floated in a puddle of black night somehow set into the floor itself, and Spelter knew with a terrible certainty that it was the world, not some image or simple projection. There were cloud patterns and everything. There were the frosty wastes of the Hublands, the Counterweight Continent, the Circle Sea, the Rimfall, all tiny and pastel-coloured but nevertheless real …
Someone was speaking to him.
‘Um?’ he said, and the sudden drop in metaphorical temperature jerked him back into reality. He realised with horror that Coin had just directed a remark at him.
‘I’m sorry?’ he corrected himself. ‘It was just that the world … so beautiful …’
‘Our Spelter is an aesthete,’ said Coin, and there was a brief chuckle from one or two wizards who knew what the word meant, ‘but as to the world, it could be improved. I had said, Spelter, that everywhere we look we can see cruelty and inhumanity and greed, which tell us that the world is indeed governed badly, does it not?’
Spelter was aware of two dozen pairs of eyes turning to him.
‘Um,’ he said. ‘Well, you can’t change human nature.’
There was dead silence.
Spelter hesitated. ‘Can you?’ he said.
‘That remains to be seen,’ said Carding. ‘But if we change the world, then human nature also will change. Is that not so, brothers?’
‘We have the city,’ said one of the wizards. ‘I myself have created a castle-’
‘We rule the city, but who rules the world?’ said Carding. ‘There must be a thousand petty kings and emperors and chieftains down there.’
‘Not one of whom can read without moving his lips,’ said a wizard.
‘The Patrician could read,’ said Spelter.
‘Not if you cut off his index finger,’ said Carding. ‘What happened to the lizard, anyway? Never mind. The point is, the world should surely be run by men of wisdom and philosophy. It must be guided. We’ve spent centuries fighting amongst ourselves, but together… who knows what we could do?’
‘Today the city, tomorrow the world,’ said someone at the back of the crowd.
Carding nodded.
‘Tomorrow the world, and-’ he calculated quickly-’on Friday the universe!’
That leaves the weekend free, thought Spelter. He recalled the box in his arms, and held it out towards Coin. But Carding floated in front of him, seized the box in one fluid movement and offered it to the boy with a flourish.
‘The Archchancellor’s hat,’ he said. ‘Rightfully yours, we think.’
Coin took it. For the first time Spelter saw uncertainty cross his face.
‘Isn’t there some sort of formal ceremony?’ he said.
Carding coughed.
‘I-er, no,’ he said. ‘No, I don’t think so.’ He glanced up at the other senior mages, who shook their heads. ‘No. We’ve never had one. Apart from the feast, of course. Er. You see, it’s not like a coronation, the Archchancellor, you see, he leads the fraternity of wizards, he’s,’ Carding’s voice ran down slowly in the light of that golden gaze, ‘he’s you see … he’s the … first …among … equals …’
He stepped back hurriedly as the staff moved eerily until it pointed towards him. Once again Coin seemed to be listening to an inner voice.
‘No,’ he said eventually, and when he spoke next his voice had that wide, echoing quality that, if you are not a wizard, you can only achieve with a lot of very expensive audio equipment. ‘There will be a ceremony. There must be a ceremony, people must understand that wizards are ruling, but it will not be here. I will select a place. And all the wizards who have passed through these gates will attend, is that understood?’