The World Remembers

Prologue

Surgaliff wondered if this was the cave he himself had crawled from. He didn’t remember his birth, coming out into the world, but he’d seen enough others dig their way from clefts and hollows along the dark cliff to know it must have been that way for him too. At first all he’d had was the memory of stone, and so he became a stone, a small boulder, warming and expanding under the suns during the day, compressing back into himself in the chill of the night. Over time other memories grew slowly in the dark crystal of his mind. He remembered being a thing that crawled, and for whom the world was constructed all of smells, then being another creature, diving with his brothers from the limb of a great tree into a warm pool. Eventually, he remembered being a man.

He wished he could remember more. It was hard, carrying the memories of so many things, but not really being any of them. Sometimes the man in him was hardly even there, its thoughts a wiry jumble in his head that made no sense. Other times, like tonight, he was so close that Surgaliff could almost reach out and grasp him, and all the things the man so desperately wanted to tell him were there for the plucking, like fruits hanging heavy on a tree. Always on branches that were just out of reach, though. It was frustrating.

Now he crouched on a rocky slope, pulling the furred leather of his batskin coat more tightly about him as he watched the men – real men – fan out from the sky-thing. One group set off up the fragmented bluff under the cliff face, their lights bobbing as they struggled over the broken rock. The lights vanished one by one as they entered the cave. The rest stayed by the sky-thing, which seemed to want to float away again, but they hammered metal spikes into the rocks and anchored it to them with ropes. They had lights too – balls made of dark glass that glowed like little suns – and they lit more and more of them so the front end of the sky-thing was eventually bathed in a circle of light.

Surgaliff inched closer, driven by the curiosity of the man in him, flowing from stone to stone down the hill, silent as a shadow. He thought stone thoughts, and if any of them looked his way, all they saw was a dark rock. He stopped just beyond the light and hunkered down to watch and listen.

Hours went by.

The stars wheeled overhead. They were the same stars the remembered, but set slightly differently in the sky, as if he’d glanced away briefly from a game of senet and found all the pieces subtly shifted when he turned back to the board. Then he looked again and they were alien stars, distant and cold, with great dark empty spaces between them. There was nothing of the blazing skies under which he’d hunted with his blood pack, no sign of red Cep’har’ach’adhin or shining blue F’eh’moqr and her brood of thousands. Surgaliff shook his dark, wrinkled head slowly. For a while there he’d been thinking in a language whose meaning he couldn’t now grasp. He probed about in his mind, like a tongue exploring the hole left by a missing tooth, but the memory turned to mist before he could lay hands on it. He let it go – it would come back at some point – and concentrated again on the men.

They were different from the ones that usually came. The others had a glow to them, if you looked at them the right way, as if they’d been dipped in silverwater – little sparkles of it clung to them. These had none of that, but none of the fear either. The others always rode in half terrified they’d never ride back out again. These were different. He reached, and reached, and reached, until he was reaching with a finger a thousand times thinner than a hair, and touched the mind of one of them as he checked the lines securing the sky-thing. Yes, these were hard and confident men who looked at the world with flinty eyes and thought little beyond what lay in front of them and what they might squeeze out of the day they were in.

He drew back. Something was happening now. Some of those who’d gone up to the cave were coming back down, hurrying. From across the valley of broken stone he could sniff the satisfaction on them. Within no time the area around the sky-thing was a hive of activity. Others came from inside it, and these ones did have the silverwater glow to them. But they were in chains and the fear was strong on them. The men whipped and prodded them up the slope and drove them, crying, into the cave. Surgaliff counted forty seven, mostly women and children, and some old men. Minutes later, though they were gone from his sight, he felt them dying, like little lights going out one by one, and pretty soon the smell of their blood was spilling from the mouth of the cave, a red haze so dispersed and scattered no human sense could have detected it. A shiver went through him and even he didn’t know if it was the man in him mourning their deaths or some other, older part stirred by the blood, and he watched as the killers exited the cave once more and hurried back down to the circle of light.

They’d no sooner reached it than there was a screeching cry from one among them that drained the potency from the rocky little valley. If any had looked his way in that brief half second they would have seen him in his true form. Even as the power flowed back, a clap of thunder, louder than anything Surgaliff ever heard, erupted from the cave. He watched the entire cliff face burst, then shudder, then fall down upon itself. A great tremor passed through the ground and an immense wall of dust billowed from the ruined cliff and rolled down to engulf the sky-thing and even flowed up nearly to the place where he hid. For a time, though the lights never dimmed, he could see nothing through the dust. Eventually the wind began to snatch it away south and as it cleared even Surgaliff gasped, for the cliff was gone and where it had been there was now a great arched opening leading back into the mountain. It was carved from one enormous piece of sleek black stone and was so wide that a hundred men could have ridden through it side by side; so tall that the sky-thing itself could have flown into it.

He wrapped himself in stone as men approached. They climbed the hill on his side to avoid the dust that still swirled around the sky-thing. There were four of them, though the one who was speaking was but a child and walked hand in hand with the leader.

“My brother is really coming? You swear?”

“You will join him soon,” the man said, stopping just yards from where Surgaliff crouched. “But first I need you to look into Uthragon’s bowl and tell me what you see.”

One of the men, swathed from head to toe in robes as dark as Surgaliff’s own batleather coat, placed a large copper bowl on the ground. The other man urged the child to kneel before it while the third, much larger and heavily armed with knives and swords, produced a flask and poured a little water into it.

“This is a conjuring bowl from Annacorsak,” the man, who still held the little hand in his own, said. “Theirs is a powerful magic. See the runes along the edge? We’ll use it to call your brother to us. Look now, deep into the bottom of it and tell me if you see him there.”

“Truly?” the child asked, leaning forward, his big dark eyes widening as he stared into the bottom of the bowl. “Jaarvin, are you there? Jaarvin? I think I do see him.” He was still like that when the robed one reached forward and, with a single quick jerking movement, opened his throat with an obsidian blade. The big man grasped the child’s legs and raised them high while the robed one held the head back so the wound gaped open and the blood gushed, then pattered, then trickled into the copper bowl.

The little body quivered as it emptied and when the leader released the hand he’d been holding, the arm flopped lifelessly away. “How long now?” he asked.

“When they slaughter the twin, the connection will be made,” the robed one replied. His voice was halfway between a whisper and a hiss. Curious, Surgaliff reached out a single strand-like finger towards him. It had barely touched him when he spun and began warily scanning the slope. Surgaliff snatched it back, wrapping himself even more tightly in stone.

“What?” the leader asked.

“Something,” the other one said, staring directly at Surgaliff for a fraction of a second before turning away. “Maybe nothing.”

Interesting, Surgaliff thought. He’d never known a man to feel the soft touch before.

A crackling sound from the copper bowl drew their attention back. A light blossomed in the blood and grew and brightened until it bathed the three men in a rose-pink glow. The leader knelt and dropped his face so it hovered inches above the edge of the bowl.

“Empress?” he said. Surgaliff couldn’t make out what the man was seeing, but he heard the voice that responded to his call.

“Is it done?” A woman’s voice, though it seemed to echo from the bottom of a mile-deep shaft.

“It’s here, as you told us it would be, Imperiata. We’ve cleared the path, but the mages need time, and blood, to prise it open.”

There was a pause, then the strange tinkle of laughter. “There’ll be no shortage of blood. How go things in the south?”

“Hamunnassan thanks you for your gifts,” the man said. The bloody light made it seem that his face had been skinned. “He will do what is asked. His men are already moving north.”

“Good. You have the winter to set the game in motion. By then, my son will have returned from his conquests. Come the spring, I want the shards, Ripnail. Bring them to me and anything that god or man can give is yours for the asking.”

“It shall be done, Imperiata.” The light began to die in the bloody bowl. Surgaliff heard the tinkling laughter again, but it faded to nothing with the light, and the little group was thrown back into shadow. The kneeling man raised his face to look at his two companions, then nodded and stood. “Come, Chinoweth,” he said, beginning back towards the circle of lights under the sky-thing. “Let’s leave our friend to his sustenance.” The big man turned wordlessly and followed, stepping past the body of the child without so much as a glance.

The robed figure waited till they were well away before settling down before the copper bowl. When he seemed sure he was alone, he drew back his hood and unwound the scarf of dark cloth from round his head. Surgaliff saw a pale white hairless face, small sharp little teeth, a nose so short and shrunken it looked like some animal had bitten it off. He’d known faces like this before, but where? The man part of him tried to remember but even as it turned its attention inwards, something shifted in his brain and all the thoughts he’d been having and the words echoing in his head turned to inscrutable nonsense.

Thinking only as a hunter now, he rolled one eye to regard the pale creature lapping at the blood. He let the mask of stone slip away and rose to his full height, and though he made no sound at all, his prey seemed to sense him, for it stopped its feeding and turned its head slowly towards him. Its eyes widened when it saw him there, and it opened its mouth to scream, but by then Surgaliff was upon it, his fingers digging deep into its brain.

*

Finister woke with the dawn. The rising suns drew him from his sleep these days, regardless of how deep he slumbered or how few hours rest he’d had. It was a carryover from the DreadWar, from taking on the Burden and not sleeping at all for six whole months. Even after all this time, he’d never quite been able to return to being the man he was before.

Over the years he developed some skill for waking without coming quite fully awake, for holding just beneath the surface of sleep long enough to greet the dawn, then drifting back down to darkness once more. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes, like now, the rising suns stripped sleep away so no amount of curling up or squeezing his eyes shut could bring it back.

Ah well, Rissa’ll be up soon to tend the animals anyhow, he thought, snuggling himself more tightly against the warmth of her naked back. The evening before, he’d joined her for supper at her campfire, black olives, chewy flatbread in olive oil, sheep’s cheese chopped with figs and raisins. He’d contributed half a jug of potent honey wine in exchange for the food, and they ate and got slowly drunk while watching a bizarre sunset: long shreds of cloud turning molten gold, infused with pale greens and unnaturally intense violets. In a life lived outdoors, Rissa said she’d rarely seen its equal. Finister found it vaguely troubling, like a boding scratching at the back door of his mind.

I’ve had enough of portents, he thought, pressing his face into the shepherdess’s soft flesh. He was sorry he’d even thought about the sunset, because now he couldn’t get it out of his head. There was something … troubling. Some dream he’d had…

His eyes snapped open. This was the dream – waking up beside Rissa, remembering the sunset – a dream he’d had more than once since that night. A dream he sensed, though he couldn’t remember the details, always ended badly.

He rolled onto his back, cautiously. Everything looked real. The interior of the croft was still in shadow, but he could make out the piled sheaves of hay and the few barrels and crates Rissa stored in one corner, and Wolf lying curled nearby, snout tucked under one paw. Finister sat up slowly, listening. No birdsong, no noises of goats or sheep. If this was a dream, what happens next? Peering behind him he found one of the large double doors of the croft fully closed, the other standing ajar, drawn out a couple of feet and awash with dawn light. But they’d thrown both doors open the night before because of the heat, he was sure of it.

“Wake up now, Brother, you’re nearly there,” a voice said, and an immensely tall stick figure detached itself from the edge of the doorway and stood silhouetted in the light. Finister leapt from the mattress and landed in a hunkered crouch, naked on the straw-covered floor. Rissa slept on – he could see the rhythmic rise and fall of her shoulder – and even Wolf didn’t stir. Someone giggled, a soft, girlish sound. The figure picked something from the floor and tossed it towards him. “You’d better put this on.” His robe, bundled up and tied with his own cord, landed before him. Was this how the dream usually went? He couldn’t be sure.

As he reached for the robe the figure moved forward into the croft. No longer silhouetted in the doorway, she wasn’t so tall and thin at all – it was a trick of the light and his own half-sleeping eyes. If anything, she was a little short, and young too – maybe twenty. Finister unwrapped the old grey summer robe and worked his way into it. By the time he got it over his head, she was squatting right in front of him.

“Are you awake now, Brother?” she asked. There was a remnant of that giggle from earlier still there in her voice and he thought he could even see it in her green eyes and the half hopeful, half mocking look on her freckled face.

“I’d lay good odds I’m not. I’m still sleeping, aren’t I?” He looked around the croft. “But not here. Not in this place.”

The girl grinned. She had perfectly straight teeth. “You’re growing wiser, Brother Finister, though it’s taken nigh half a year to get you this far.” She stood and offered him her hand. When he took it she hauled him easily to his feet. Standing beside her he saw she really was quite short, barely up to his chink, and he’d never been considered tall. She was dressed all in greens and browns like a forester, and her honey-coloured hair was cropped short as a boy’s and stood out from her head at all sorts of angles.

Behind her, the light streaming in through the open door changed, going from dawn white to a dirty orange. Finister noticed it and felt unsettled without knowing why.

“It’s true the summer’s long gone. Time grows short,” the girl said. She looked him up and down and frowned a bit. “You’ll need a new robe, this one’s practically falling apart. I suppose you can pick up the makings of one at the druidcall.”

Finister forgot about the light. “The what?”

“It’s Samhaine, or will be in just a few days. Your brother druids are gathering at Falbarg to confer and discuss the bodings for the year ahead. You still don’t remember, do you? We’ve been through it many, many times now. Your mind still flees at the thought of it.” She looked at him with what might have been stern disappointment.

Finister was breathing harder, his confusion giving way to a low, bubbling anger. “I’m dreaming, aye, and I don’t doubt it’s a dream I’ve had before. And looking at your face I’d say I know you, or knew you once, though I can’t say when or where. But I’ll not be going to any druidcall, girl, I’ll tell you that right now. I’ve done my part, more than my part. No-one has a right to ask more of me than I’ve already given.” He glanced past her shoulder to where the light in the doorway had shifted now to a dull red, more like a sunset than a sunrise. Even as he watched, it changed intensity, became more the colour of fresh blood. Dread clawed at his innards at the sight of it. “Better you just leave me be,” he said, unable to draw his eyes away from it.

“That’s what you’ve said for months,” the girl told him. She took his hand and began leading him towards the door. “That’s why I have to keep showing you.” Finister found his feet moving of their own volition, following her, though he had no desire whatever to see what lay beyond the croft door.

“No,” he said, quietly.

“This is what the world becomes if you turn away.” She reached the door, pushed it further open. The red light throbbed now, more ominous than ever. Finister tried to close his eyes and panicked when he found he couldn’t. The part of him that remembered, that knew what she was about to show him, rebelled and scrambled backwards, shrieking, but in the dream his feet continued to carry him to the door. “No,” he said again. It was the only word he could get out.

“You have to see,” she said, drawing him forward.

I don’t want to.

“You’re needed.”

I gave too much already.

“Look.”

Every fibre of him strove not to. He ground his teeth and strained and turned his head away.

“Look, Finister. Look!” The girl’s voice was urgent.

No.

A big, powerful hand grasped his chin and forced his head around. Instead of the girl, someone else was there now, and he found himself staring into a scarred, tattooed face, with dark eyes from which all hope seemed to have fled. “Look!” she growled, and Finister saw madness in those eyes, and a flash of enlarged canines in the twisted mouth, and abruptly he remembered where he’d met these two before.

He looked.



His own screams woke him and for a whole minute he thrashed and kicked in the darkness, clawing at the hand he could still feel clamped on his jaw. Eventually the screams died and he gained enough control of his limbs so they just shook and shivered like an enfeebled old man’s.

He dragged himself from beneath the sheepskin coverlet and stumbling out of the makeshift tent. It was still dark on the mountainside, and cold, as he fell to his knees in the hard, crusty snow. Off in the east, the first faint hint of dawn was a thin pink line on the horizon. “Holy mother!” he exclaimed, his breath ragged and fogging before him. He was still quite high up on the northeast face of the Myrridon where the air was thin. “Holy mother of the world!”

Another dream, despite the fact he was going exactly where they told him to go. Despite the fact he’d just made a perilous winter crossing of the Myrridon high passes and was within a day’s travel of Falbarg.

“I’m going,” he screeched into the empty air. “I’m nearly fucking there. Can’t you leave me alone now? I’m doing what you said.” But in his heart he knew why the dream had come back now, after two weeks of dreamless travel in the mountains. Last night he drank the very last of the wine he’d been rationing so carefully, and as he lay down to sleep he began to wonder if he shouldn’t just turn back. But there was no going back now, he saw. They were driving him hard, towards Falbarg and the druidcall, and whatever fate awaited him there. It was either that or wake up every night screaming.

“I’m going,” he murmured one more time, his heart finally calming, his breathing evening out. He looked back over his shoulder to where the dark mountains towered silently, watching him. Even the winter crossing had been his own fault. The first dream was on the night of the strange sunset, and the very next morning he’d said a regretful goodbye to the shepherdess and headed off east, determined to get as far away from Falbarg as possible. He’d held out for quite a while, going the wrong way – made it as far as Gloomindale. But the further he went, the worse the dreams became, until he spent his nights watching the slaughter of innocents, or experiencing their deaths as if they were his own or, worse, seeing them hacked apart at his own hands, feeling the dark exultation of the killers running through him. It got so bad that even just closing his eyes was enough to bring visions of burning cities and a dark maw leading in under the skin of the world from which unspeakable things crawled forth. In the end, he’d been forced to turn around and make the long trek back.

“I hate you,” he murmured, still kneeling there on the rocky slope looking out over the dark land below, and even he wasn’t sure who or what he was talking to.

Chapter 1

He was still sleeping when they came for him. They grabbed him by the hair and wrenched him from the bunk. His body jerked and spasmed, as happens sometimes when you find yourself falling in a dream, but when his cheekbone hit the hard oak floor all he was aware of was the pain, and the thousand bright shards of starlight that went with it.

“What do we have here, Jons? A halfwit sleeping through matins call, and on the day of the high spring festival too,” one of them said.

“Shameful!”

“Are you properly ashamed, halfwit?”

Head ringing and one side of his face afire, String opened his eyes - just as a booted foot drew back to deliver a kick to his ribs. He scrabbled aside, jamming himself into the space between the bunk and the locker and, sitting there in nothing but his threadbare drawers, faced his attackers. The wall was cold and rough against the skin of his back.

Brummel grinned down at him, dark pig eyes gleaming. Further back, Jons stood with arms folded, one mocking eyebrow raised.

“What do you want?” String’s heart pounded like a mill hammer. His cheek throbbed and even his hair hurt where the older boy had grasped it.

“Look around you,” Brummel said, gesturing left and right. Pale sunlight streamed through the tall windows and caught countless motes of dust floating in the air but the dorm room stretched out empty on either side of them.

“You’ve surpassed yourself again, you dumb shit. Matins call was half a bell ago. Every runner in the city’s fed and heading to his post. Except you!” Brummel hunkered down. “I suppose there was some good reason for it. You were in the middle of a dream, no doubt. Something just too good to wake up from.” He looked at Jons. “What does an idiot dream of, do you suppose?”

“Of all the things he’ll never have.”

“Hmmm. For this one, that’s just about everything, isn’t it?”

A prickle crawled into String’s bruised face. Without his willing it, his long fingers tightened into fists. This! Always the mocking and the bullying. He was sick of it, sick, sick, sick! But what galled him most was how he always seemed to make a target of himself by doing stupid things, like sleeping through matins. Stupid, stupid!

Jons tittered. “Looks like he’s getting ready to belt you one, Brum.”

Brummel eyed String’s tightening fists with a hard little smile. “Is that what you’re gonna do, halfwit? Start a fight with a senior who’s had three years military training?” String desperately wanted to say something, something smart, something so hard and shocking that they’d back off and never bother him again. But nothing came, and when it was clear nothing would come his fists slowly unclenched.

“Thought not.” Brummel stood. He was nearly a foot taller than String, and broad. The senior could beat him to a pulp without breaking a sweat. String felt needles behind his eyes, tears trying to come. He bit his tongue to hold them back.

Brummel turned as if to go and String slithered up the wall till he was standing in the little space. His legs were shaking so badly they almost didn’t support him but he dared to hope it was over and they’d leave him be. Tentatively, he reached into the locker for his pants and tunic.

But Jons hadn’t moved. “Ask him about the Tribulan, Brum. Ask him if he really slipped it.”

The breath caught in String’s chest, like the air in his lungs turning to ice water.

“Ah, yes. I almost forgot.” Brummel pivoted on his heel and stepped back in close, clapping a meaty hand down on Sting’s bare shoulder hard enough to hurt. “Heard a tale,” he said. “A little bird told us you once slipped the Tribulan arch. We just had to check this since, well, no-one’s ever opened the Tribulan. Isn’t that right Jons?”

“Every runner since Chancery’s tried. Can’t see how an idiot could have done it.”

“Exactly! We feel a need – a duty, I’d almost say – to get to the truth of the matter.”

“Who told you?” He hated the tremor in his voice.

“A little bird,” Jons said. “A little blue-eyed bird with golden feathers.”

Darian. Darian told them.

“You see our problem,” Brummel said. “Either the little bird’s telling lies – slandering your good name, as it were…” Jons barked a harsh little laugh. “…or else you did make this false claim and you’re the liar. And we can’t have that now, can we? A liar among the runnerboys? We’re all sworn to truth and decency, after all.”

“So which is it?”

String looked from Brummel to Jons and back to Brummel. The silence of the empty dorm pressed in around them. His bunkmates – led by Kael, no doubt – must have been particularly quiet when they rose. String might sleep through matins easily enough, but the clatter or twenty boys first thing in the morning was loud. They left him sleeping, then, for these two to find. A knot tightened in his stomach. Not one had woken him or tried to warn him. He didn’t have a single friend among them. Just right then he didn’t care what happened next.

“Springfest, five years ago,” he said. He was relieved to find the tremor had gone from his voice. “In the middle of the night the koroleva came and woke me, took me to Shadover Square. She told me to open the Tribulan, so I did.”

He waited for a reaction but they only looked at him. The hand on his shoulder clamped tighter. “Go on.”

“I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to … that people thought it wouldn’t open.” He really hadn’t known. He’d only just learned to find and open some of the easier passways, and it would be another year before he’d navigate the more difficult ones unaccompanied. “We went through to a … place, some part of the gottenlands I’ve never seen. A kind of graveyard, but really, really old. The koroleva knew the way. There was another catena in one of the tombs and I slipped that too. We came out at Farendale, on the hill above the greathouse. It was Gra Faren’s own carriage took us back to the castrum.”

There, he’d said it, told it just like it happened. Or like he remembered it happening. In the years since he’d sometimes doubted that memory. Yet there’d been mud on his feet when he woke the next morning. The koroleva had hurried him so much he hadn’t even had time to put on his boots.

He waited for a reaction from the seniors.

“So there we have the truth of it,” Brummel said, his hand abruptly tightening on String’s shoulder as he leaned in close. “You, String, are a filthy, dirty liar. What do we do with filthy liars, Jons?”

“We grab them by the ankles and put their heads in a bucket of shit, Brum.”

“We do indeed. And it just so happens the boys were good enough to leave a bucket of shit in the garderobe this morning. Grab his legs, Jons.”

They were on him before he’d even begun the futile attempt to fight them off. Brummel’s arm slipped round his neck and jerked his head back. Jons dived in and pinned his knees together, lifting him bodily from the floor. With his weight no longer supported and Brummel’s forearm like and anvil horn across his throat, his breath was abruptly cut off. He thrashed, squirmed, kicked, but they only gripped harder. He tried to cry out, to roar, and gurgled away the last of his air. A tremendous pressure began to build in his skull and a roiling black fog darkened the edges of his vision.

Fight, a voice screamed in his mind. Fight. Fight!

But he couldn’t.

“Put that boy down!”

For the second time in a quarter bell, String landed hard on the floor. He gasped air in great heaving sobs while the sound of his own heartbeat clamoured in his ears. Someone – Jons, he thought – mumbled something, but was cut off by a thundering bark. “Out! Out, now!” By the time was able to crawl to his knees and wipe his watering eyes, his attackers had fled.

The iron-shod tip of a staff cracked down before him. “Slept through matins call again, young Master String.”

“Magister Dante,” String croaked. It hurt to talk.

“Up off the floor, lad.” Dante grasped him by the elbow and all but hauled him to his feet.

String rubbed the last of the tears from his eyes and steadied himself on the end of a bunk. Every part of him hurt and the room was rocking and spinning. The Runnermaster watched him in silence for the full minute it took him to stop shaking and get control of his breath.

“Better now?” Dante asked evenly. String could only nod. “Good. Get dressed. You’re late for your duty, and that just won’t do, not today of all days.” Without another word, the old man strode down the centre of the dorm room, staff thudding on the boards with every second footstep.

String hobbled back to his bunk and dressed in silence. They’d picked on him before, but this was the worst yet. At almost nineteen he was already the oldest among the runnerboys and the few friends he’d made in the early years had all moved up the ranks. Torquin was a senior and had completed his military training, while Grevain was in the Diplomatic Corps, already travelling with foreign missions. But not him – he was still running packets round one or other of the high cities and hadn’t advanced a jot since making cadet five years before. His father was once among the most powerful men in Harrowdown, but String knew he’d never follow in those footsteps. And every year, as new juniors came in and cadets moved on, he stood out more starkly among his fellow runners, and it got harder and harder to make any real friends.

“Stupid, stupid!” he cursed. His hands were shaking as he struggled to fasten his aiguillette. The arrangement of braided silver cords hung from the left shoulder and attached to a tiny hook in a cleft on the right side of his collar, but even after years of donning the uniform he still had trouble with it. Finally dressed in black boots, grey pants, and red tunic, he started towards the door, his mind replaying bits and pieces of the morning’s attack, over and over. As he reached out for the knob, he stopped.

We grab them by the ankles and put their heads in a bucket of shit.

He looked back down the length of the dorm room to the garderobe door at the other end, then turned and walked slowly back towards it.

Along one wall were the copper basins with spigots that piped water from higher up in the castrum, and the polished steel mirrors where many of the boys took pains to arrange their hair and uniforms. On the other side was the line of privies, lids all firmly latched down. The bucket, one of those used to sluice out the pits, stood in the centre of the room, wooden staves banded in rusty old iron, a frayed rope for a handle. It was half full of stinking brown liquid. Quite a few of his fellow runnerboys had contributed their piss and shit for Brummel’s plan. He stood there, just looking at it, for some time.



The Magister was hovering at the top of the steps leading down to the lyceum. “You’ll have a colourful bruise there in a day or so,” Dante said, indicating String’s already swollen cheek.

“Yes, Magister.” He didn’t want to talk about what happened, or even think about it any more.

“The other boys didn’t wake you?”

“No, Magister.” The prickly heat rose again in his face.

The old man nodded slowly. “Masters Brummel and Jons will be doing double shifts today, you’ll be glad to hear. Some of your bunkmates too, I think.” He gave String a conspiratorial little wink, which looked odd on his brown leathery face.

String tried to smile but for the moment he was all emptied out of things to smile about. Dante leaned heavily on his staff and sighed. “You’re a good runner, String. You’re far better than them that mock you.” Raised as a court brat, String had known the Runnermaster for as long as he could remember. As an advisor to the koroleva, Dante spent a good deal of his time at court. String remembered him as a tall, heavyset man in dark robes who was never without his staff. Now they looked each other straight in the eyes. I’ve grown, he thought, or the Magister’s shrunk over the years. Certainly he was more wrinkled now, and there was more grey in his beard. String couldn’t imagine himself ever being that old.

“I can’t always be a runnerboy, though, can I Magister?” he said. “Already it’s hard. Now even the cadets that get moved up are younger than me. I like running, honest, I do, but … what will happen to me, Magister? When I can’t be a runnerboy any more?”

Dante grasped his staff with both his big hands. “Don’t think like that, lad,” he said, his voice softer now. “The koroleva loves you like one of her own. You’ve no cause to worry about the future. There’ll always be a place for you.”

“But what place, Magister? I can’t do anything else. I can’t even read well enough to be a senior, and Magister Parrish tried and tried to teach me. And the koroleva … she hardly speaks to me these days. I’m not sure she even remembers who I am.”

Dante shook his head. “If I told you how often she asks after you, I’d only embarrass you. But she knows she can’t be seen to favour you. It’s hard enough being … different, without having them hate you for that as well.” He reached out and put a firm hand on String’s shoulder. “What you’ve achieved as a runnerboy, you’ve done on your own, lad. Be proud of it. No-one can take that away from you.”

“She’s all right, though, isn’t she? I mean, she’s well?”

“She’s well as anyone who’s ruled so long with the arcana. It’s a heavy burden, and there are times when it takes its toll.”

“The dreams?”

“Aye. The powers are hard to bind and hard to hold. Not an easy thing to endure for years at a time.”

“I’m glad she’s well, though. Will you tell her that, Magister? That I’m glad?”

“You’ll see her yourself this afternoon at the reconfiguration. But yes, I’ll tell her. Now here, let me help you sort out that uniform. Your aiguillette looks like an old skyship hawser. We’re not just charged with delivering our packets swiftly and efficiently, remember. We have to look good while we do it, too, don’t we?”

String raised his chin as Dante laid aside his staff, unclipped the aiguillette, and began to sort out its various cords with thick fingers. “Damn fiddly things,” he muttered. It was oddly pleasant to have someone help him like this. It reminded him of his very first day as a junior, when the koroleva herself helped him don his uniform, and Seph told him how handsome he looked in the red and grey.

“You know, the festival this year looks set to be a busy one,” Dante said, eyes focused intently on his work. “There’s mischief in the air, too. Well, more mischief than usual. I can smell it. Factions looking to leverage power and influence. Various prods and counterprods, threats and suggestions. Hidden alliances. And lots and lots and lots of packets being moved, the better to conceal who’s talking to whom, eh?”

“Er, yes Magister.” String wasn’t exactly sure what the Runnermaster meant. Probably it was something to do with politics, which String didn’t understand at all. He only knew that the patricians, whenever they gathered in large numbers, liked to send messages – lots of messages – and some of these were important. And since no-one knew which were the important ones and which were not, they were therefore all important. It was his job to deliver them, swiftly and fishingly as the Magister said. He had a sudden, almost overwhelming urge to be running, slipping the passways around Heliot, not thinking about anything beyond the next delivery and how to get there. Things were always simpler when he was running.

“That’s better,” Dante said, finishing his adjustments. “Now off with you, lad. And don’t be late for assembly. Three bells, you hear. Assignments and duties for reconfiguration will be given out.” He waved a finger under String’s nose. “Do not be late.”





With hardly a thought he made the weave – a few deft twirls of his fingers in the empty air – and stepped through the Promethian arch, the only passway to and from the castrum level. He loped across the shadowed courtyard in the world of perpetual twilight beyond., ancient leaves crunching under his feet, though there were no trees in evidence that could have shed them. The courtyard nestled in an irregular space between immensely tall towers that seemed to have been carved of reddish stone, for he’d never been able to see the joins where one block had been placed atop another. The towers were taller by far than any building in Heliot. This was the world between the portals, the gottenlands, and even the Magisters couldn’t agree on how such places existed or where they actually were.

A cracked and leaf-filled fountain, dry as old bones, was the only adornment here, and String hurried past it to the Scythian or the Cyrilian arches on the other side. Each was a vaulted opening leading into darkness. Without a moment’s pause, he plunged through the Scythian.

He emerged moments later into the north end of Shadover Square, already bustling with preparations for the market. The castrum was behind and three hundred feet above him now. High overhead, the Hanging Garden jutted out over the square, like an immense rock-hulled ship that had somehow embedded itself in the mountain. Neither the Academy nor any of the other the buildings on the royal level were visible from here.

His appearance startled a small group of mongers unloading their wares close to the arch. They stared open-mouthed at him as he passed, some making the protective sign of the orb. Though it was well known that the runnerboys used the enchanted passways, it was still a shock for most people to actually see someone step out through a solid wall for the first time.

“Sorry,” String called, slipping round them to cut a path south-west towards the runner station. He zig-zagged between wagons being hurriedly unloaded and dozens of stalls, trestles, and counters still being assembled or carried into place. He dodged carts and oxen, and avoided collisions with bands of waifs ferrying goods by the basketful, burly men rolling enormous kegs, and various heaped barrows being manoeuvred into place by gangs of rough-faced labourers. Things got more organized as he made his way south. The less wealthy traders came up the Climb and didn’t reach the plateau till the merchant gate opened at dawn. Those who could afford it stayed in a guildhouse and had their servants setting up their pavilions even before the suns were up. Still others, the really rich ones, came in by skyship. A dozen of the great craft were moored at the wharf along the length of the Lip, their gondolas pulled up right to the edge. Their bulbous envelopes, emblazoned with the colours of the Theronan families that operated them, towered a hundred feet or more over the south end of the square. Scores of stripped down, sweating navvies unloaded bales and crates of cargo while merchant princes and a scattering of city watchmen looked on. Beyond, hanging in the sky a thousand feet over Lower Heliot, twice as many skyships awaited their turn to dock.

String skirted the edge of the wharf to reach the runner station, tucked into the shell of what had long ago been a small Kastigan temple at the extreme south-west corner of the square. An octagonal building once, it was little more than a set of crumbling, serrated walls now. It was the southernmost wall, which leaned precariously outward over the Lip, that held the Tribulan arch.

The station was little more than a raised timber platform crammed with desks and shelves and cabinets, and shaded by a canvas tarp roped to hasps on the uneven walls. A set of wooden steps, in dire need of paint, led up from the edge of the wharf. On the far side a similar set led down to the Kosovan arch on the temple’s western wall.

“Late!” Torquin chided as String jogged noisily onto the platform. The senior was sorting packets at his desk, noting the names of the sender and recipient for each. Behind him, half a dozen junior boys added sigils with wooden stamps and dark ink, then ordered and bagged them for delivery.

“Sorry, Torq. Slept through matins again,” String said, watching Torquin expertly pen an annotation to one packet with his steel-tipped calamus. Writing looked easy when you watched someone else do it, but whenever he tried it – even when he carefully memorized the word he needed to inscribe – it ended up looking like so many mouse scratchings, and even he couldn’t tell which letter was supposed to be which.

“No change there, then. Still not a morning bird, are you? Blades, man, what’d you do to your face?”

“Nothing,” String replied, too quickly. “Took a tumble in the dorm is all. You know how clumsy I am sometimes.” He’d all but forgotten his bruised face on the run across the square, though now he thought about it, it still stung a bit. Torquin’s noticing it started him thinking about Brummel and Jons again, and speaking about it would only make him remember it more. Best not to.

“That’s nasty.” The senior stepped in close, grabbed String’s chin, and began manhandling his head this way and that as he inspected the bruise. “You haven’t been letting those cadet runts beat you up, have you?”

“No. Stop doing that, Torq, it’s sore.”

“I’ll bet it is. All right, you won’t tell so I won’t pry. I have a bag here for you. Put it together special. Kindis, give me that blue pouch, would you, the leather one?” One of the juniors jumped up, grabbed the bag, and handed it to Torquin, who tossed it to String. “Have a look at those.”

Sting quickly leafed through the folded and wax-sealed parchments, noting the sigils and stamps on the back of each. “Hmm, these are all east quarter.”

Torquin grinned again, and punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Not gonna run you all over the city on a fine, crowded day like this. I saved you all the east quarter stuff. Some kind of obscure ones in there. You able to find them?”

Sting threw him a look.

“Ah, of course you will. You know your ways, I’ll give you that.”

Yes, he did indeed know his ways – where each one was, where it led, and the weaves to open them, not just in Heliot, but in the other high cities as well. They came easy to him, unlike anything else he’d ever tried to learn in his life.

Torquin leaned on the rail and gazed out over the busy square. He was the same age as String, but taller, broad at the shoulders, and with blond hair cropped close. They’d known each other seven years, but Torq made senior dispatcher when he was sixteen and their paths crossed less and less after that. “Something, isn’t it, the spring festival market?”

“A lot of people, yeah,” Sting agreed. “How many do you think will be here today, Torq? A thousand?”

Torquin gave him a quizzical look. “A thousand? Blades, String, there’s three, maybe four thousand people in the square right now, and they’re mostly merchants, traders, and trader’s brats. There’ll be twenty thousand people packed in here by afternoon.”

“Oh. Right.” He could feel his face heat up, his injured cheek tingling and throbbing. At least Torq didn’t make fun of every stupid thing he said.

“I’ve seen five different troubadour companies arrive this morning alone. How rich would they have to be to fly in for springfest? See that ship there, just pulling away?” Torquin indicated a small, sleek craft with sky blue skin and a dark stripe down its length. “The Kingplayers. The entire troupe arrived not half a bell ago. Rumour has it they rent it from the Calakur the year round. They perform Grendaal tonight, after the reconfiguration – the whole thing, all five hours of it.”

String nodded. He’d seen a few plays, growing up at court, but had never been able to understand them, and mostly they made him sleepy.

“And,” Torquin added, “as well as hosting his usual grevinna’s feast, Gra Faren’s turning Castle Street, the entire length of it, into an open banquet for anyone who cares to show up. That should be enough to bring every beggar, thief, and vagabond from the lower city up here. I’d hate to be on city watch today, I tell you.”

“Mmm,” String said. The crowds made it harder to run packets, too. He’d have to rely on the passways even more than usual. “I’m late, Torq, I’d better get going. Look, there’s one of the others back already.” He pointed to a boy in the red and grey approaching down the wharf. The figure wasn’t running, though, he was sauntering along casually with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his tunic.

“That’s the useless dog,” Torquin said. “I gave him two packets to deliver to a captain on the east end of the wharf and he’s taken all day about it. He’s worse than his brother. At least Brummel could run.” It was only then String recognized the figure as Kael.

“Hey, String,” the boy called as he got nearer. He had a wicked little grin, and the same small dark eyes as his brother. “Have a nice sleep, did you? Have a nice wakey wakey? Did you get that little present we left for you?” The knot that was always there, though it mostly went unnoticed, tightened in String’s stomach. For all his lack of wits, he’d guessed it right, then. Without meaning to, he brought his hand up and ran a finger down his swollen cheek. It stung. Torquin was looking at him. “Better go,” String told him, stepping down from the platform. He avoided Kael’s eyes as they passed but could feel the other boy’s mocking grin following him.

“Where in Hadrades have you been, you little pissant?” he heard Torquin growl behind him. “Get your arse up here. You just earned yourself a double shift.”

“You can’t do that, it’s not fair…ow!” String glanced back in time to catch the senior deliver a hefty slap across Kael’s ear. It was enough to bring a faint smile to his lips and he suddenly felt a good deal better as he set off jogging down the wharf.

*

Ardyn came to the sand garden a little after seven bells. Though the Little Sisters of Toil and Hope opened the gates at dawn, the walled enclosure tucked behind the cloisterhouse got few visitors in the early morning. In fact, he was pretty sure few people even knew it was there. In the evenings, though, after the gates were locked, some of the sisters would come out and spend an hour or two raking the sand smooth, tending the plants, or just quietly meditating. He watched them sometimes from the high branches of a tree overlooking the garden. Out among the city’s poor the sisters always wore their veils down, but in the sand garden they pinned them back and you could see their faces. Some of them were pretty.

He wondered, as he slipped off his sandals, if their work in the garden was a kind of cleansing, like the purgations he’d endured as a boy under the Kastigan Fathers – days spent without rest or food transferring water from one large stone bath to another with a leaky leather bucket. The water flowed back through a cunning contrivance of hidden pipes, but the doing of it, the very meaninglessness of it, prepared the acolyte’s mind and soul for the eventual revelations of Saint Kastigere. So the Fathers insisted, anyway. Ardyn never did find out if it was true. He’d stayed long enough to learn to read and write, and to decide that he was supremely unsuitable for a life dedicated to the warrior-saint, then scaled the walls of the sanctuary one night and never looked back. He’d earned a decent living as a thief in Heliot ever since.

It was thieving that kept him up through most of the previous few nights – all those lovely wagons lined up on the Climb waiting for the Merchant Gate to open were too much to resist. He’d hoped to snag maybe some gold and silver bracelets, or a bottle or two of fine wine, or even a bolt of expensive silk – the kind of thing Strand paid handsomely for – but in the end all he managed to steal was a large and rather heavy crate of fish. It wasn’t even the fish that made up most of the weight, it was the ice. Not his most profitable night’s labour, he had to admit. But still, fish was a rare enough delicacy in Heliot. And since he’d never actually seen ice before, even that was interesting, though it was already melting by the time got it back to the Narrows.

Right now he should have been tucked up in his hole grabbing a little shut-eye. He wanted to be fresh and awake when he headed to the plateau for a nice afternoon’s filching. Instead, he found himself running this little errand for Strand. Oh, how he hated the fat thief-master. Even though Strand was his main conduit for disposing of what he stole, Ardyn sometimes dreamed of murdering him.

He slipped barefoot through the gate. If Laken was here, which Ardyn was pretty sure he was, he wanted to get as close as possible without giving away his presence. The swordsman was blind, but he had ears like a cat. He padded into the sand garden, following the smooth stone path through the shrubbery, his breathing slow and even, his arms a little out from his sides. After only a few yards, the bushes gave way to an irregular mosaic of raised beds, each filled with sand. The blind man was in the circle at the very centre, his back to the thief, one leg raised theatrically, the other bent and taking most of his weight. He held both arms extended forward, as if he’d just completed a double thrust through the belly of some invisible opponent. The two thin, slightly curved blades, protruding from long wooden hilts, glinted wickedly in the morning light.

Ardyn paused. For nearly a minute he didn’t move at all, just watched as Laken drew back the weapons so slowly he hardly appeared to be moving. At the same time he straightened his leg and brought the other up, then forward. With the unsharpened back edges of the blades parallel over his right shoulder, he shifted his weight to the forward leg, they began to slice a deliberate diagonal path from right to left. The move, if it had been carried out with speed and power, would have eviscerated anyone standing in their way. Without taking his eyes off the swordsman’s broad back, Ardyn eased down to a hunkered position and selected a single tiny pebble from the edge of the path.

The exercises were the fabled katas of the Nerian bladedancers. Laken explained it to him once, after hours of pestering – they recreated the thrusts, pivots, turns, and parries an ancient hero of Neria had made when he slaughtered a thousand enemies in a single day, but slowed down a hundred times.

“Why slowed down,” Ardyn had asked.

“So they can be studied,” Laken told him. “Every tiny twist and stretch of muscle is examined and learned. A bladedancer practises for hours, every day of his life, so when he needs to use them for real, he doesn’t have to think about it. His body already knows.”

It sounded like nonsense to Ardyn – until the day that drunken fool Kurns waylaid them in an alley with a wicked looking dagger, demanding payment for a gambling debt Ardyn swore he didn’t owe.

“Get behind me,” was all Laken said. Seconds later Kurns lay gasping on the ground, his body laid open from shoulder to groin, little sprays of blood shooting from his dying lips as his innards poured onto the dirt. After that Ardyn often dreamed of dark-swathed warriors practising their endless katas in far off Neria.

He edged forward, drawing back the hand that held the pebble, moving almost as slowly as Laken. Three more yards would take him to the edge of the sand circle, then only two more. I have you now, old friend, he thought.

“You stink of fish, Ardyn,” Laken said, stopping him in mid-step.

“Aw!” He sagged and cast the pebble despondently away. “That’s not fair. I was quiet as a temple mouse.” Then he had another thought. “But even if you smelled the damned fish, how did you know it was me?”

“Fish is not all you stink of.” Laken never even paused or changed the pace of his moves. “I heard you from the moment you came through the gate. I smelled you once you got past the bushes. You need a lot more practice – and a long hot bath – before you’re as good a thief as you think you already are.”

Ardyn harrumphed, but chose to ignore the insult. This was already more conversation than he got from the swordsman in an average week. “Well, the day I can get close enough to touch you, I’ll know I’ve got it nailed. I’ll be the quietest burglar ever crawled the roofs of Heliot. I’ll climb straight to the castrum and take the crown off the koroleva’s head while she sleeps, sell it to Strand, and live like a graav for the rest of my days.” He clicked his tongue and smacked his lips. In his mind’s eye he could see it just as he described it.

“I see three problems,” Laken said, finishing his last kata. He crossed the two blades where the metal met the hilts and draw the back of the right one over the tip of is thumb all the way to the point, then guided the tip into the narrow slit beside the butt of the left blade. “First, I doubt the koroleva wears her crown to bed.” He folded the right blade up against the left, guided the left tip into the right hilt, and pushed the hilts towards each other. “Second, they say Koro Haldane stands by her bed throughout the night with his armour on and a sword in his hand to protect her from assassins. Thieves too, probably.” The hilts came together with a faint click, and Laken was left with what appeared to be nothing more than a slightly curved staff of polished wood, a little less than four feet long. “Third, even if you got the crown, what do you think Strand would pay you for it? A couple of nights drinking and whoring, and you’d be right back where you started.”

Ardyn had heard it all before. It didn’t make thinking about it any less pleasant, though. He grinned. “Where’d you get a weapon like that, Lake?”

“Gift,” the swordsman said. Now that he’d exchanged his swords for a stick, he looked more like what he truly was, a blind man who somehow managed to eke out a living among the slums of Lower Heliot. Some said Laken had fought in the DreadWar and others that he’d been a mercenary in the lands far to the east, maybe even in Neria itself. But that was before someone had taken his eyes. Now his clothes were faded, stained, and patched. The linen cloth that bound his eyes was clean, but countless washings had turned it a greyish brown, and it was as tattered looking as the rest of him. “What brings you out here, Ardyn? It’s too early for ogling nuns.”

“Ah.” Having almost gotten close enough to toss a pebble at the swordsman’s nose, he’d forgotten his original purpose. “Strand’s looking for you at the granary. Wants you to guide someone in, I think. Not in the happiest of moods, to tell the truth. Even sweatier and stinkier than usual. Said to find you and bring you back now. Like, right now. And as for the Little Sisters, I think you’re just jealous you can’t ogle them yourself.”

Laken shrugged. “It’s my day off.” Gingerly, he adjusted the rag over his eyes, then used the staff to tap his way to the edge of the circle and onto the path. “Old Boerth should be doing it.”

Ardyn fell in beside him. “I haven’t seen Boerth in days. I wouldn’t mess with Strand right now, Lake. I mean, something’s got him pissed. And whatever he wants of you, it probably needs doing sooner rather than later, it being festival day and all. Also, er, well, I think he’ll crack my head if I go back without you. You don’t want me left a cross-eyed idiot like the ones the Little Sisters care for, do you?”

Laken snorted. “I’m sure you’d enjoy being fed and bathed by a Little Sister or two. Not like you use your wits for much else.” He sighed. “All right. Let’s see what Strand wants.” He set off, tapping, down the path.

Ardyn watched him go, chewing his lip. “Hey! Hey, I was really quiet. The quietest I’ve ever been. You couldn’t have heard me.” He sniffed at his stained grey tunic, then hurried after the blind man. “You smelled me when I got close, I’ll give you that. But if it hadn’t been for the fish I’d have had you. I would, wouldn’t I? Admit it.”

*

The Shakla, already losing altitude, came in from the north west, made a long curving loop over the sparse forests and rolling fields south of the mountain, and swung directly towards Heliot. Anacapartis was out of place in the otherwise flat landscape, a single enormous rock jutting five thousand feet into the clear blue sky. The city clung to its pocked southern face; the other three sides were sheer cliffs dropping into a sloped scrubland of stunted thorn bushes and shattered scree.

“There. See?” Gravenhur pointed, shielding his eyes with his other hand. The man who claimed to be an engineer called Horna followed the line of his finger to the city a few miles distant and drawing steadily closer. He was smaller than the captain, and lean as a Sheddaqi mummy. His hair, pulled back tight and knotted at the back of his skull, must once have been pure black but was now heavily streaked with grey. “You’ve seen before?” Gravenhur asked, indicating their destination. He’d no sooner said the words than it occurred to him that it might be wiser not to learn too much about the man. It was a long fall to the plowed fields slipping past below.

“No. First time,” the so-called engineer replied, eyes still fixed on Heliot. “Why do you swing so far around? Why not come in over the top, or follow the line around the mountain?”

“Updrafts along the sides make it difficult to manoeuvre, especially as it warms or cools.” He twitched his head towards the east, where Chryse was already a hot yellow ball above the horizon with the bloated red arc of the Mother beneath her.

“And if you come across the top?”

“Same, but worse. Anacapartis is the mountain that sleeps. You fly over him, you disturb his sleep and he watches you. The kizekhi have trouble with the witching when he is looking.”

“So it can’t be done?”

Gravenhur forced a smile. Disturbing questions, these. All the more so as he felt certain his passenger already knew the answers. “Maybe, by a crazy captain. Not by me. Besides, it’s forbidden to approach from the side or over the peak. They’d shoot you down. Ballistae. Steel tipped bolts. Heated.” He made a fzzt sound then threw his hands apart to illustrate what happened when a rizengas bladder was pierced by hot metal. A grim little smile appeared on Horna’s lips and he straightened from where he’d been leaning on the railing. They were at the very fore end of the sprit, jutting out over the topkeel, as high as the highest part of the Shakla’s spine, but further forward and with a better view. The air was cool at this height, but there was little wind. Directly below and in front of them the green-white skin of the skyship’s envelope, criss-crossed by long strands of webbing, stretched and dropped away towards the nose. Behind them, down the entire length of the spine, a score of Gravenhur’s clouders busily trimmed the sails in preparation for their arrival in Heliot.

“You disembark on the plateau, yes?” the captain asked. They were making good speed while maintaining a slow descent. Gravenhur could tell their altitude as much by the taste and temperature of the air as by how close the ground appeared. He could easily make out the Desert Road now, and could even discern individual wagons and riders, all making their way north towards the city. He found himself unsurprised when the smaller man shook his head.

“I need to get off in Lower Heliot, as close to the edge of the city as you can get me.”

Gravenhur nodded. If I were docking at the castrum, you’d come the whole way in with me, I’ll bet. Not for the first time he wondered if it had been a good or an evil moirai that led Felzindur to approach him with the task of delivering this “special” passenger. He’d captained twenty years now, and was a young clouder before that during the DreadWar, both before and after the Theronans changed sides. He had a nose for trouble. More than a nose, a gift. He could feel things going bad the way a skyship felt a storm blowing twenty miles ahead. A little shudder here, a fluttering there. He’d felt it when the durani made the offer, felt it strongly even as Felzindur counted out the gold. But sometimes in the greatest of storms there’s a calm place, a place at the centre where a man might see clearly an opportunity that presented itself to him. If the durani wanted someone delivered in secret to Heliot on the eve of the great festival, that someone likely came with some very special skills. And so he’d divided the gold, and pushed half back across the table to Felzindur, and made a proposition of his own. Two nights into their journey, high over the Pellian Hills, his brother Reigenhur disappeared while on watch. Just gone. It was a great dishonour for a clouder to die by falling from his ship. Gravenhur was sorry his brother would be remembered that way, but he was sole master of the Shakla now, and it only cost him those few pieces of gold that had never been his to begin with. Still, his nose for trouble itched when Horna turned his dark green eyes on him. Dangerous eyes.

“I have a pickup at Sorley, well outside the walls,” Gravenhur told him. “Merchants, too poor to make the whole trip by sky, too proud not to be seen arriving on the plateau by ship.” He pointed to the spot, what appeared to be a village crowded onto a small hilltop just to the south east of where the sprawl of Lower Heliot petered out.

“Aye, that’ll do just fine,” Horna said. They walked together back along the sprit. “One more thing,” he added, positioning himself at the top of the ladder that would carry him down to the webbing. From his tunic he drew out a thin letter sealed in wax. “I need this delivered as soon as you dock on the plateau. Get one of your own men to do it, don’t pass it to the dispatchers. Someone you trust, understand? I believe the … payment already made is sufficient to cover such inconveniences.” He handed the letter over, his eyes never leaving Gravenhur’s. The captain took it, folded it carefully in two without examining it, and put it in his inner pocket. Horna nodded, that grim little smile reappearing momentarily as he descended the ladder and began climbing down the webbing like a veteran clouder.

Gravenhur watched him go. Sometimes a traveller asked to be taken up the climbing shaft to stand on the sprit, and generally Gravenhur would oblige. Not everyone was cut out to stand so high in the open air, with the skyship thrumming and vibrating beneath him. He’d never before seen a paying passenger make the climb – and the return – on the outside of the ship. He glanced back at the city, much closer now. “A bad day for you, Heliot, I think,” he murmured as Horna expertly negotiated his way down the webbing and slipped from view beyond the curve of the envelope.

*

“More chaye, Shehzadi?” Tufa asked from behind her. Kithara hardly heard. She was on the balcony overlooking the little square where they’d taken rooms in a guildhouse. At any given moment there were dozens of people going past, moving singly or in small groups, hurrying to or from one of the markets or bazaars, or whatever other wonderful things were going on around Heliot. More than anything in the world some part of her wanted to be down there with them, exploring the city and enjoying all the sights, and sounds, and smells the festival had to offer. But it was too dangerous, Henna said. When they reached Graavlund, further north, they would be safer. Kithara’s hand touched the ancient grey stone of the balustrade. She fancied she could feel the faintest hum of power in it, more than she’d ever been able to sense back home.

“Shehzadi?”

“You need to stop calling me that,” she said without turning. She could almost feel the older woman’s confusion, though she’d been trying for days to break the habit, both in Tufa and in little Akhli. “I’m not your shehzadi anymore. I’m not anyone’s shehzadi anymore.” Now she did turn, and found Tufa, as expected, with the teapot in her hand and a look of perplexity on her face. “Don’t you understand, Tufa? I’m not a shehzadi, and you’re not a slave. We’re free. Here, give me that. I’ll pour chaye for you, for a change.”

As she reached for the teapot the other woman snatched it back on horror. “Shehzadi, I…” she began, then realized she’d used the forbidden title again and seemed to crumple in despair.

“Kithara,” Kithara said, going to her and taking the teapot gently from her hands, which still seemed to want to resist. “It is my name after all. Please, Tufa. You’ve served me all my life, do this thing for me now. No-one must know who I am, and if you call me Shehzadi and someone overhears…” She let the silence speak for itself.

Tufa nodded. “Yes … Kithara,” she said, though it clearly pained her.

Kithara smiled and began to fill two cups. “Now, this shumaali chaye is truly awful – they call it tea here, by the way. There will be a lot of new words to learn.” She put the teapot down, lifted the two cups, and passed one to the other woman. Tufa sniffed unhappily at it, before taking the smallest of sips, then looked back at Kithara and tried to smile. Though they’d spent their days together for as long as Kithara could remember, the former slave looked different now without the kohl on her eyes and the chuntee on her lips – older, more careworn. Not for the first time, Kithara wondered if it had been a mistake to bring them with her when she fled Dr’shennadish.

She tried the bitter northern tea. “How is Akhli?” she asked. “Has she eaten yet?”

“No, not yet. She can’t stomach the strange food, she says, but…” Tufa let the sentence trail off.

“You think it’s more fear than the food that ails her, don’t you?”

The servant cupped her tea in both hands, as if trying to warm herself with it. She was wearing her heaviest tobe, the one of grey wool, and had two shawls draped around her shoulders. Kithara had forgotten how cold the others seemed to find it here, so she set her own cup aside and moved to close the double doors that gave out onto the balcony. “Before we left, all she could think of was what would become of us once your brother took you,” Tufa said. “When Jalanapani went south, she brought her slaves with her, but when she came back, they were gone. There were … rumours – terrible rumours. In the two years since, no-one has seen them. When Muqa asked after her daughter, she was beaten and told never to ask again.”

Kithara had heard the rumours too, but somehow managed to not believe them. It was only when her sister came back to Dr’shennadish, and she saw what Jala was now with her own eyes, that her fears came bubbling back up.

“She thought she would be sacrificed on the altars of your brother’s churai.” Tufa made a spitting sound, cleansing her mouth after saying the word. She took a gulp of the tea, as if that would help also. “Now we’re here, among the ghayr, she fears the oodankh will come for her, that an even worse death awaits.”

Kithara sighed. Akhli had always been the sensitive one, the fearful one, tiny as a child and with a superstitious story for every occasion. But since they set out across the desert even Kithara had found herself looking back apprehensively, dreading to see Jala and her milk-eyes following them. Reaching Heliot had been such a relief. Henna said it still wasn’t safe, but Kithara could not believe they’d pursue her into Harrowdown. The people here had not forgotten the hard war they’d fought with her uncle. A hunting party from Sheddaq would find an uncomfortable welcome here.

But Henna would find them passage on a skyship going north, and then they would be truly safe. She was about to reassure Tufa with these thoughts when the door to their apartments burst open. The servant’s teacup slipped from her hands and shattered on the floor. Even Kithara felt a moment of terror until she saw it was only Henna returning. “What news?” she asked as the tall woman, who’d been her teacher from the time she was little, hurried past her and briskly closed the heavy drapes over the balcony door. Henna’s face was taut, her mouth a hard, thin line. Something was wrong.

“Henna? Tell us.”

“Your sister is here,” was all she said. She lifted the teapot and began pouring herself a cup, even though the tea was probably near cold by now. Her hands were shaking. Tufa pressed her thumbs to her forehead and began chanting a prayer. Kithara could only collapse back into her chair, speechless.

“How did they get here so fast?” Henna asked, though she seemed to be addressing the question to herself. She pulled the drapes aside just enough to peer down into the square. “We had five days head start on them. At least. They came by skyship. Hurani, I think. Damn it. Damn it!”

“Are you certain?” Kithara asked, finally finding her voice.

“Oh, it was Jalanapani, all right, though you’d hardly recognize her now all the colour’s been washed out of her. She has men with her, oodankh, ten or twelve. They stepped onto the wharf, bold as brass. They look almost like Essels now – no-one’s going to take them for Sheddaq, so long as they keep their mouths shut. But I still don’t understand how they got here so quickly. Where’d they get that ship?”

Kithara’s heart was thumping and she felt like she was going to be sick, not very becoming for a shehzadi and the daughter of an emperor. But you’re not a shehzadi anymore, are you? You said so yourself. Now you’re just a hunted animal, and you’ve turned these other women into hunted animals along with you. The voice in her head sounded like her mother, never the kindest of the shehen’s wives. “What are we going to do?” she asked. She was surprised how calm her own voice sounded.

Henna moved away from the drapes and sat in one of the chairs, the green silk of her robes settling around her. For a moment her pale eyes flitted left and right, searching for something inside her own head. When she looked at Kithara, it was with a mix of fear and bewilderment. “I don’t know,” she said. “I need … time to think.”

“They will find us. They will kill us,” Tufa sobbed softly. “They will sacrifice us and drink our blood.”

“No!” Kithara cried, louder than she’d intended. “Henna, did you find us a ship?”

The tall woman shook her head. “I tried the Sisterhood first. I wanted to get the lay of the land, find some information that might help us. They’re not here anymore. It’s a blading guildhouse now. They say the Sisterhood left Heliot shortly after the war. I was just coming to the wharf when I saw them disembarking. Orbs, I almost walked right into them.”

Kithara had a fleeting, disturbing sense that the world was collapsing around her. No ship, and no chance of sanctuary with the Sisterhood.

“Did they see you?” Tufa asked, horrified. She ran to the drape and began scanning the square. “If they saw you, you’ll have led them right to us.”

Henna threw her a disgusted look. “They didn’t see me,” she said. “On the other hand, they may not need to. The very fact they’re here is more than mere coincidence.” She looked Kithara directly in the eyes. “Remember what I told you, bacha. All Jala needs is something you love, something you’ve cherished and thought about, and put part of yourself into. She’ll use the connection to find you, to sniff you out.”

Kithara shook her head. No, there was nothing. She’d taken some of her jewellery, the things that could most easily be carried and traded, and left the rest behind, but had never cared overmuch for such things anyway. They’d burned much of the rest, her clothes and her books, and anything she’d felt the least attachment to. It was hard, letting some things go, like the illuminated copy of the Jal her father gave her, and the portrait of her grandmother as a young woman that had hung in her bedroom for as long as she could remember. She’d even sold her beloved horse, Chalti, taking far less than he was worth from a Rohani desert prince known for treating his animals well. Lohaar had arranged it, and much of the rest of their preparations. She wished he were here now, her loyal guard. He would have come, but he had a wife and daughters of his own in Dr’shennadish and she couldn’t ask him to leave them.

A quiet sob from behind her told her Akhli was there. She turned to find the diminutive girl staring at them with tears flowing from her huge dark eyes. Her whole body was shaking and Kithara guessed she’d heard everything they’d been talking about. “Akhli,” she whispered.

“We will die,” Akhli said, before dashing back to her rooms. Kithara looked to Tufa who rolled her eyes, then nodded and went after her.

Kithara turned her attention back to Henna. There had to be a way out of this. “The Harrans, then?” she said, an idea forming in her mind. “What would they do if we told them a group of Sheddaqi are in their city?”

The teacher was chewing her lip, lost in her own thoughts, but her eyes snapped up. “Maybe,” she said, leaning forward in her chair. “The koroleva is here, and the arcana, too. If we could make them believe Jala intends to harm her…”

“Yes,” Kithara said. She had no illusions about what would happen to her sister and her ten or twelve men if every sword in Heliot was suddenly turned against them. But then Jala hadn’t really been her sister since she went south to join Asmaansarak. He and his churai had turned her into something else, the very fate Kithara herself was running from now.

“We need to plan this,” Henna said. “If they’re using witchery, I have no idea how long we have. We may not be safe here for very long. We need…”

There was a sound of glass breaking, then a scream from the rooms behind them. Henna was suddenly standing, a small, sharp-looking knife in her hand. “Wait here,” she said, but Kithara couldn’t and followed right behind her into the chamber Tufa and Akhli shared. The first thing she saw was the blood.

Akhli was on the floor, in a pool of it. Tufa was kneeling over her, pressing her hands desperately against a gaping wound in the smaller woman’s neck. As Kithara watched, more blood spurted out between her slick red fingers. “Akhli, no, no,” Tufa cried. “What have you done?”

Then Kithara saw the shard of broken mirror still clutched in the girl’s hand. “Oh, no,” she whispered.

Henna took charge. “Back,” she ordered, swiping Tufa out of her way. She pressed her left hand firmly over the wound and began making a binding with her right. Her fingers moved so quickly, Kithara could barely follow it. Orb over blade, crown over blade. Her eyes were closed, her lips moving. On the floor, Akhli’s eyes were wide open, but blinking rapidly. Her lips were moving too, but only harsh, choking sounds came out. A shudder went through her whole body, and then another, less powerful.

“Akhli,” Kithara sobbed. The name felt lost and hopeless on her lips. By the time Henna opened her eyes, Akhli had grown still and the blood had stopped pumping through her fingers. Now it just ran in a bright trickle, and Akhli’s big dark eyes stared sightlessly up at her.

For a long moment the only sound was Tufa weeping. “She’s gone,” Henna said, finally. “The glass cut the artery. There was no saving her.”

Kithara put her back against the wall and slid down till her knees were in front of her face. Hot tears burned themselves from her eyes and cooled as they rolled down her cheeks. “It’s my fault,” she said. “I should never have left. It’s my fault she’s dead.”

“No!” Henna was suddenly there, right in front of her, one hand still bright with blood. Kithara could see the way it had worked its way into the lines of her palm. “If you hadn’t fled, you’d be setting out on the road to Sehraamahal even now to become a thing like your sister. Akhli was a stupid, frightened girl. Her own fear killed her.” Kithara looked at her, horrified. Henna had always been kind, gentle. It was the first thing you saw in her, even before she opened her mouth to speak. How could she be so cruel now? The teacher put reached out and put her hand – the unbloody one – on Kithara’s shoulder, and in a softer voice, said, “You can’t give courage to another, bacha. Each needs to find their own.” Then she stood and looked around the room.

“We can’t stay here. It’s not safe. Pack light. Take just what we need. Kithara, find something to wear from among Akhli’s clothes. You’re not that much bigger than her, and I need you to look like a servant.” She turned to leave the room.

“What about her body?” Tufa asked in a voice that sounded like a child’s.

Henna looked at the dead girl on the floor and sighed. “Leave her,” she said.