The World Remembers - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

“But what made you think you could open it?” Arbiter Greylock asked, again.

“He already told us, Gerd. He took the koroleva through five years ago,” Arbitra Faylan said, just as String was about to open his mouth. She smiled at him, but she still looked troubled. String was sitting bolt upright in a wooden chair facing Arbiter Dante’s enormous desk. The chair was enormous too, and he felt tiny in it.

“But that’s just absurd,” Greylock said. He was one of the oldest of the arbiters, even older than Dante. String couldn’t help staring at his long white beard, which reminded him of soap bubbles crowded together in a basin of hot water. “My auxiliaries inspect the arches regularly. The Tribulan – and I will review the records this very night to check the dates – has not been opened in over a thousand years. That porta is as dead as dead can be – it’s falling apart. In fact, I have a warrant awaiting approval with Gra Faren to have the entire section of wall demolished and rebuilt before it tumbles into the Narrows.” He turned to Dante, squinting under his bushy white brows. “Hobin, do you know anything of this tale the child tells? Is there any truth to the claim that he actually did take the koroleva through this passway?”

Dante had spoken very little throughout the entire proceedings, and just sat at his desk with a grim expression on his face while String related the story – how Brummel ordered him to take the packet and goaded him to open the Tribulan, of the ancient graveyard, the stone lions, and even the femrils – and answered a score of questions from the old arbiter and the arbitra. He didn’t even get to the part about actually arriving at Farendale, or the girl who’d beaten the tar out of Kael, Rabkin, and Kreve at the Mede, when they asked him to go back and tell it again from the beginning. Three times now he’d taken them through it. Even as he did, something niggled at his mind, some important thing he was supposed to be telling them. But every time he went to pry it out, there were more questions and he lost it again.

“As a matter of fact,” Arbiter Dante said now, though he seemed unhappy with the words coming out of his own mouth, “I believe the boy is telling the truth, yes. It fits with something the koro told me, some years back.”

Arbitra Faylan suddenly snapped her fingers and nodded. “It’s a boding, isn’t it, Hobin? It links to something she dreamed?”

Dante’s threw her a pained look. “These are things best not discussed so casually,” he said. “I’ve had reports from some of the boys who saw him slip the porta, including Torquin, who went straight to Farendale afterwards by the more regular routes, orbs bless his good sense. By the time he got there, String had been and gone, but several people saw him at the estate, including the koreva. I have no doubt it happened as he describes it. As to what it means, I think we should speak to Koro Haldane without delay.”

“Agreed,” Arbitra Faylan said, and Arbiter Greylock nodded.

“String,” Dante said.

“I’m sorry, Arbiter, really I am,” String replied immediately, sitting up even straighter in the huge chair. “I didn’t mean to. That is, I didn’t know…”

“Get cleaned and dressed for the reconfiguration,” Dante said, raising his voice to drown out the apology. “Once you’re ready, report to the anteroom at the royal apartments for your assignment. Speak to no-one about what happened from the time you went through the Tribulan to this very moment. Understood?”

String looked at him, wide-eyed. Half of him could hardly believe he was still to be allowed attend at the reconfiguration. The other half checked through the list of things he had to do, and not do, to make sure he did indeed understand. “Yes, Arbiter,” he said finally.

“Good. Then hurry along. The reconfiguration begins once the suns have set, but given the number of petitions, the Convox will start at six bells. That doesn’t give us much time, so straight to the royal apartments as soon as you’re ready, boy. Now go.”

*

“He’s gone,” Ardyn said, craning his neck out the open window to survey the upper part of the tower where Horna had just disappeared. “Blades, Lake, he went up the wall like there was a ladder attached.” Below him, the tower dropped a hundred feet or so to a ledge barely wide enough for a man to stand on, and beyond that was the long fall to the Plateau. To his right, he could just see round the curve to where its big grey blocks met the impassive wall of Anacapartis. The second journey through the mountain had taken at least as long as the first, and by the time they came out of the caverns through the narrow cleft into this small, dusty room, Horna had the aggravated look of a man already late for an appointment. He’d ordered them to wait for his return, pressed a small purse into Laken’s hand – “Payment for your time,” he said – and all but launched himself out the window.

Ardyn chewed his tongue as he studied the route the man had taken, another forty feet up the wall to the top of the tower. Agile as he was, he doubted he could have made that climb himself, and certainly not with the ease he’d seen Horna do it. “What manner of thief do you think this fellow is?”

Laken, sitting on a crate in the shadows at the far side of the circular room, just grunted.

From the window Ardyn had a spectacular view across the rooftops of Upper Heliot. He made out several crowded squares and could even see a little past the edge of the Lip and part of the sprawl of Lower Heliot far beyond. He should have been down there himself, eating some graav’s free food and relieving careless merchants of their valuables, yet he found himself curiously untroubled by the missed opportunity. “I’ve never been to the Castrum before, have you, Lake?” he asked. “Imagine the riches that are up here. Rooms filled with gold and jewels.” He snapped his fingers loudly as a realization occurred to him. “That’s what he’s doing, I’ll bet! This whole place will be cleared out for the reconfiguration. There’ll only be the koroleva and a few patricians, and a handful of guardsmen, and every one of them concentrating on the ceremony. Crowns, Lake, no wonder Strand was so fidgety today. They’re robbing the vaults!”

“I don’t think so,” Laken replied. He was wearing his usual grim look, though he’d somehow managed to make it even grimmer.

“What is it?” Ardyn asked, crossing the dusty timber floor.

“I’m thinking this Horna’s no thief at all. Strand didn’t say anything about leading him back down, did he? Don’t you think that’s strange? No, something else is going on here, and now we’re in the middle of it.”

Ardyn thought about it. It was true, Strand had only told them to find Horna and lead him up. And now he considered it, it might have been fear rather than mere nervousness that made the thief-master even more sweaty and disagreeable than usual when they’d seen him that morning. “So we go before he comes back. We keep his coppers and get ourselves to the Narrows. Let him find his own way down. Who in hadrades does he think he is anyway, ordering us to wait for him, as if we’ve nothing better to be doing?” Impressed by Horna’s climbing skills, and even more so that he might be making a one-man raid on the royal coffers, Ardyn had briefly forgotten how much he hated the man.

Laken held out the purse Horna had given him before disappearing out the window. “I don’t think these are coppers.”

Ardyn took it, pulled open the drawstring, and emptied the contents into his hand – and his legs almost gave way beneath him when he saw what tumbled out.

“Orbs and scrolls, Laken! Gold sovereigns, fifteen, no, twenty of them. Oh! Crowns and … sceptres, Lake. We’re rich!” He slid the coins around on his palm, fascinated by how they caught the light from the open window. His heart was pounding in his ribs just looking at them.

“We’re trapped is what we are,” Laken said evenly. “You really think we can just run back to the Lower Heliot with twenty sovereigns of that man’s money?”

Ardyn bit down on one of the coins. The metal gave ever so slightly between his teeth. He examined the coin and could clearly see the indentations he’d made. There was no flaking or discolouration as there’d be with a counterfeit. “We stay, then,” he said, never taking his eyes off the glittering gold. “We wait for him, and lead him back out, like he wants.”

Laken raised his head, almost as if he were looking at him, though Ardyn had seen the blind white eyes that lay beneath the cloth.

“What?”

“And if he decides to cut both our throats and take back his gold as soon as we’ve cleared the mountain?”

“Blades, Lake, what do you want to do? Leave the gold and go?” A slight twitch in the blind man’s mouth told him that’s exactly what Laken was thinking. “No!” Ardyn crammed the coins back into the purse and deposited it in one of his many inner pockets, then dropped to his knees and grabbed Laken’s hands. They were big – strong swordsman’s hands – but Ardyn squeezed them tightly now. “Listen to me, Laken,” he said, then paused. Whatever words came out of his mouth next might determine whether or not he got to keep this gold. “I see. I understand. I really do. But if we don’t wait, and this Horna comes back, whether we leave his gold or not, what do you think he’ll do then? If we leave him trapped? I’ve seen him climb. He’ll scale his way down if he has to, I know it. Even without taking his coin, don’t you think he’ll find Strand, find us? If we stay, and if you’re right and he does plan some treachery, he’ll make his move only when we’re safely out. I’m handier than most with a dagger, and you’re not exactly the helpless blind man he thinks you are, now, are you? All in all, I’d say our chances are better if we stay.”

There, he’d said it – said it so well, in fact, he’d convinced himself. Now he waited for the response, for if Laken decided to go there was little he could do to stop him. He could knife him, of course, but that would hardly help. He could feel the weight of the purse in his inner pocket, and still see the way the gold caught the light when the coins were in his hand.

“Alright,” Laken said, finally, drawing his hands out of the thief’s grip. “We stay. But if I get the faintest bad feeling about this Horna on the way back through, I’m cutting him loose in the tunnels. Agreed?”

Ardyn thought of the body they’d found on the way out, crushed inside the wall. “Aye,” he said with a wide grin.

*

Koro Taryl Fhanda Graav Haldane paused outside the double doors. He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the polished timbers, acutely conscious of the weight of responsibility across his armoured shoulders. “What does it mean?” he whispered under his breath. “What can it possibly mean?” When no answer came – had he really expected one? – he took a deep breath, opened the doors, and stepped through.

The room beyond was rather small, considering it was the koroleva’s private chancery. One entire wall was filled with an ancient blackwood bookcase, crammed with an assortment of leather-bound volumes, some older than the bookcase itself. A tapestry covered the opposing wall. Time had washed most of the colour out of it, but Haldane could still make out the scene: the battle of Thulsus, with the bold Haronjë riding out for what would prove to be a victory over the Chlannan magi, and which would lead to the destruction of the first Arcanus. A battle two and a half millennia done now.

The large desk was strewn with charts and papers, many heavily annotated in his wife’s own hand. The windows to the balcony were thrown open wide and her worn silver calamus, erect in its stained cup, caught the light of the waning suns. Cinnia was seated just inside the room from the balcony, apparently lost in thought, one foot tapping out a rhythm as if she listened to some unheard music.

“Is it true?” she asked, without turning.

“Yes,” he told her.

Her lips tightened and she nodded slowly. “Then it is begun.”

Haldane strode forward and went down on one knee before her, his chain and plate making the movement awkward. “Tell me,” he pleaded, taking her hand. “Cinnia, by all that’s holy! What does it mean that this boy opened an ancient passway? Has he unleashed something terrible? Is there danger close? Give me some hint of what to expect, so I can better protect you from it.”

Her face softened then, and she raised a hand to his cheek. “Oh, Taryl, by all that’s holy? Very little is any more, you know. The holy things have all been eaten up and destroyed. And yet, in a sense, they remain. If we knew how, we could just reach out and pluck them back again, as our forebears once did. Better we have forgotten, perhaps, for that knowledge destroyed them too. But the world doesn’t forget. No. The world remembers.”

He disliked it when she spoke this way, as she did more and more these past few years. Show him an enemy and he’d launch an assault against him. Show him a threat and he’d tear the ground from under it and stamp it into the dust. But he had no wit for riddles, and was powerless when she presented them to him.

Sensing his discomfort, perhaps, she closed her eyes, took a single deep breath, and when she looked at him again, she was more like herself. “Nothing’s been unleashed, dear husband. String’s opening of the Tribulan is merely a sign. It tells me certain events, long very probable, are now becoming tangible. And as for danger, when has it ever been far from our door and when have you ever failed to be there to meet it?”

“But if you told me what’s coming…”

“Taryl, told or untold, certain things will come to pass, and knowing about them isn’t always a blessing. As for what is coming - the actual who will do what and when that you really seek – even I don’t know that.” She squeezed his hand and forced a smile, and for a moment she was young and radiant again, the decades old burden of the Arcana lifted away from her.

“Your witching is still strong,” he said, kissing her fingers. “I’ll abide in ignorance, then, because you ask it of me, and because … I have to trust that if you need my help you’ll ask for that too. But know this. I’m strengthening the guard in the Castrum until the reconfiguration is done. I’ve already spoken to Veil and, as luck would have it, he has fifty men available. Whatever boding your dreams have shown you, it doesn’t touch us tonight.” He looked her directly in the eyes, and she gave him the slightest of nods.

*

When Arbiter Dante told him he’d be assigned to Koro Haldane, String had been aghast. The koro was just about the most fearsome man he’d ever seen. Although hardly taller than String himself, there was something perpetually menacing about him – the way he seemed to stalk rather than walk, the way his intense blue eyes stripped you to the bone each time he looked at you with that weather-beaten face, even the way his tightly cropped grey hair stood erect on his head.

String heard the stories from runnerboys and seniors who’d attended him and all said the same thing: when you serve the koro, you damn well better not flounder or fumble, unless you enjoy the idea of being skinned alive and carrying your own hide around like a flag. So String, who was prone to dropping things, and spilling things, and who generally excelled at fumbling, could think only of what was bound to go wrong – and the more he thought about it, the more certain he was that disaster awaited him. His Cursed Day wasn’t over yet, it seemed.

But now, over an hour into the Convox, his biggest problem was a deep and crushing boredom. As it turned out, he was one of six boys attending the koro, and he wasn’t required to carry messages, pour wine, or – heaven forefend – take notes. “Your only task, boy,” Haldane told him after Arbiter Dante had left them alone in the anteroom, “is to see the koroleva safely back to the royal apartments by the quickest possible route, should I so order it.” He then proceeded to question String about how this might be achieved. The fastest way, of course, was to take the Benedishan porta from the Hanging Gardens to the Highrun, then the Augustan to the Lyceum. From there it was a short run to the royal wing. String rattled it off without even having to think of it.

“And if, for some reason, you’re unable to reach the Benedishan, what then?” Haldane asked, with such a savage expression that String was momentarily taken aback.

“Then the Azure porta to the scriptorium, the Childwite to the Maidenspool, and the Penny porta to the Lyceum,” his mouth replied, surprising him and earning a satisfied nod from the koro. Over the next few minutes Haldane threw him increasingly complex situations about portas that couldn’t be reached or areas of the Castrum that had been overrun by enemies. In each case, and without so much as a pause, String told him how he’d still be able to get the koroleva to her destination.

Finally the questioning ceased and Koro Haldane actually smiled, which was perhaps the most frightening thing that had happened to String all that day. The koro never smiled, people said, except in battle, and if you saw that smile you were very likely already dead. Now String understood why. Haldane’s face wasn’t meant for smiling. It made him look like he was planning to murder you, and to greatly enjoy doing so. String’s bowels clenched under the old man’s gaze and when the koro turned and strode away, indicating that he should follow, his whole body was trembling slightly.

Now, though, he was having trouble just staying awake. He was positioned six feet behind and one step up from Koro Haldane, so he was in effect looking at the entire Convox over the koro’s head. The hanging garden resembled nothing so much as an enormous bathtup jutting out over the plateau below. It was oval shaped, with a set of curved granite steps leading up to a high wall here at the south end and a similar set to the double gates at the north end. The north side was on higher ground, so the entire garden sloped downwards to where the koroleva and her arbiters sat. In the middle, though, the walls arched down so low they wouldn’t have reached past his knee and at these two points, east and west, the eruption of flowering plants that gave the garden its name was already beginning to bloom, falling in strands and tentacles that, come midsummer, would reach a hundred feet down towards the rooftops of Upper Heliot.

The southern, more low-lying half of the hanging garden was filled with patrician noblemen and the occasional peeress, seated in row after bowed row of ceremonial chairs, each as large as a miniature throne. The magnates – heads of powerful patrician families that governed entire provinces in the koroleva’s name, were at the front, with the lesser houses laid out behind them. Many were dressed in their ancestral colours with their crests and sigils embroidered on their breasts. The magnates, who by tradition came armoured in mail and plate, each had a bannerman at his side who carried his graav’s pennant. For a while, String amused himself by naming each house just by looking at the crests. After a while, even that got dull, and he tried to remember the different routes he’d come up with for Koro Haldane.

From where he stood, the Benedishan porta was to his left, just at the point before the wall began to drop steeply in height. The Azure was at a similar point to his right. Only one porta led to and from the Castrum – and the Promethean would be sealed by now for the ceremony, a great steel gate bolted in place across it – but the royal level itself was riddled with them and String could have gotten from its eastern shoulder to its western and back again in a matter of minutes.

Not that this did much to help him now. The koroleva had greeted him with a warm smile when Koro Haldane led him to his post, and he was heartened to see how well she looked. Now she was leaning forward in her seat, listening intently as someone from House Sibelius finished his petition. He was only the latest in a long line of those who had risen to speak. Thus far, it had mostly been about lands and titles, and borders and disputes, and String understood almost nothing of it. The koroleva consulted briefly with her arbiters, including Dante, and told the speaker his claim was accepted, and that he should see Magistra Faylan afterwards to make the arrangements.

By now the suns were low and hard towards the west and a small crowd of senior boys entered the garden with big lambents on long poles. String spotted Torquin among them, looking smart in his black armour. As the Sibelian returned to his seat, the seniors went around the garden, placed the lambents in sconces along the wall, and began to make the weaves. One by one the lambents came to life, so by the time the next speakers were standing, the garden was awash with pale yellow light.

“Have we not completed the list?” String heard the koroleva ask Arbiter Dante in a low voice.

“Veil added these two at the last minute, Milady” Haldane said, leaning over towards her. “I don’t know what it’s about, but he seemed to think it was important.”

“Daul Jonlin Markis Tigerna and Volich Taverlinn Graav Brycen beg leave to petition,” the seneschal announced loudly. The two men strode forward from the magnate ranks.

At first glance one seemed barely older than some of the senior boys now standing by their lambents, but as he took his place and bowed before the koroleva his lean, competent face and dark eyes gave a lie to this impression. The other was a giant – String guessed he’d be a head taller even than Brummel, if you stood them back to back – with a thick red beard.

“Markis Tigerna, Gra Brycen, speak,” the koroleva said.

“Milady,” the young man began. “Landgraavs, honoured magisters. I bring grave news from Tigerna. Since winter, our villages have been attacked and burned by raiding parties from south of the Quenna. Some thought at first it was the work of nomadic Rhohani tribesmen, but it soon became clear that no slaves were taken. Men, women, and children alike were butchered, with none left alive to bear witness.” His voice carried clearly in the little amphitheatre.

“After the fifth attack, we led a detachment south, into the desert, found their tracks, but lost them in the sand.” He paused for a long moment, then said “A dozen more villages were burned.” There were gasps and murmurs from among the crowd and the koroleva threw her husband a fleeting, worried glance. “Each time, we tracked the attackers south, and each time the same result. It was as if they vanished into the air.

“Six days ago, the town of Myrith was burned.” String had learned about Myrith in study, but had promptly forgotten every fact, save the name. “This time, we were better prepared. With help from Gra Jericho and Gra Naidus, we had scouts stretched out along the length of the Quenna and forces ready to ride at several points. They were spotted as they crossed back, moving quickly. For a day and a night we pursued with four hundred men. We caught them at Sinech.” He paused again now, and his face betrayed a dark look of satisfaction. “They fought hard, but they were afoot, and we had them outnumbered. Not many were taken alive. Of those that were, we broke them then and there, in the sands. Some eventually talked. They were Sheddaq, Milady. Impali Sheddaq, from Dr’shennadish.”

“What?” old Gra Shellan roared, shooting out of his chair with such force that it tumbled over behind him. “Maddrassan’s dogs setting foot in the realm? They dare? They dare?” A quiver seemed to go through the crowd as Shellan’s fellow magnates sought to calm him and return him to his seat.

“This is grave news,” Koro Haldane interjected quickly. “But these are different times, and I would hope different circumstances.” He bowed slightly towards Gra Shellan who, though seated now, was still being settled by those around him. “Gunthur, in your place, perhaps I too would be reaching for my sword. But Maddrassan paid for the death of your sons with his life’s blood – we saw to that ourselves.” Then he looked at Markis Tigerna and nodded for him to go on.

“It gets worse, Koro. Those that talked all told the same story. They were heading south into the desert to meet a small fleet of skyships. That’s why we didn’t them before. They were aided by the Durani.”

A jolt ran through the seated patricians and String heard Koro Haldane suck air in harshly through clenched teeth. Several of the magnates leapt to their feet now and began speaking loudly, though in all the commotion it was impossible to hear what any one person was saying.

“This is not all!” a great booming voice called out, so loud it seemed to stun most of them to silence. The giant Gra Brycen took a step towards the crowd with his hands held high. “Listen now!”

The clamour died quickly and Brycen turned to the koroleva. “Milady,” he said. Even when he was not shouting, his voice was like a drum. It echoed from the wall behind String. “It saddens me to also bring bad news from the north. Once, maybe twice in a decade, a femril witch emerges with the power to breach into Harrowdown. Always, my house – and the others who patrol the border with the Blasted Lands – turn them back. We track them into the wastelands and we put them down.” He licked his lips – String knew the gesture. He did it himself when he was trying to choose his words carefully. “Twelve days ago,” Brycen said, “three separate packs crossed the line.”

The effect was instantaneous – everyone in the garden was suddenly on their feet, even the magisters. String found Triest, a senior, by his elbow, the jug of wine he’d been taking to refill the koro’s cup held loose and forgotten in his hands. “What does it mean?” String asked.

“Don’t you understand?” the senior said. He sounded as breathless as if he’d just finished a running shift. “Sheddaq and Theronan attacking from the south, femrils from the north. It’s the DreadWar all over again!”





“Henna, wouldn’t we be safer on the streets?” Kithara asked, as they descended the stone steps that led from the back of the guildhouse. She was dressed in a simple white toba, tied at the waist with a silk ribbon. On her head was a dark red shawl, and an orange chehra masked the lower part of her face. All of it had been Akhli’s once, and wearing it made her feel like a thief, like she had stolen from the dead. “There are soldiers, city guards…”

“If they find us in the streets, they’ll kill you,” Henna snapped back, taking the steps two at a time. “The oodankh are zealots, with no fear of death. I saw that when I tended to your father in Sehraamahal. If we had fifty guards around us, I’d still fear to meet them.”

The mention of her father brought a dull pain to Kithara’s gut. Even if he was still alive, she doubted she’d ever see him again.

“And then there’s Jala,” Henna said, reaching the bottom of the steps. “Orbs only know what she’s capable of. No. We need to get to the wharf and find a skyship. The safest place to be is gone.” She set off across the garden, its ancient walls crowned all the way around with knots of tangled honeysuckle, towards the iron gate at the very back.

“Come, Tufa,” Kithara said. The servant was staring up at one of the windows, three floors above. That was the room where they’d left poor Akhli. They’d wrapped her in linen sheets and laid her on the bed, but that was all there was time for before Henna rushed them out the back way.

The garden was deserted. There were paths and benches, and even a small fountain, but anyone staying at the guildhouse during the festival likely had business elsewhere in the city. Kithara was glad there was no-one to see them leave. She felt conspicuous in her stolen clothes. Henna, on the other hand, really was conspicuous. She was wearing an assortment of garments taken from Kithara’s meagre wardrobe, chosen more because they were large enough to fit her than for how they looked. There was a skirt of yellow silk, a purple silk sash that wrapped several times around her waist and hung from her side, almost to the knee, a white cotton shirt threaded through with strands of gold, and a short green taffeta jacket, intricately worked with flowers in blue, pink, and orange. She’d carved up a silken velvet robe with her knife and fashioned a long strip of it into a kind of hat, and finished the costume off with some of Kithara’s less ostentatious jewellery. All in all, she should have looked ridiculous, yet being so tall and thin, and with her reddish tinted hair, she somehow made it work. She was a lady, the ostentatious wife of a merchant prince perhaps. No one would give her more than two glances, she told them, once they got to the big market square.

Kithara and Tufa each carried one small bag with a few clothes and some gems and coins. What little else they’d brought in their flight from Dr’shennadish, they left behind with Akhli. Henna reached the gate, produced a large iron key, and began to unlock it.

“Where’d you get that?” Kithara asked, but Henna just smiled mischievously. As she pulled the gate open, there was a crash and a shout from behind them.

Tufa screamed, and Kithara knew even before her head snapped round that they’d been found. On the tiny balcony, a pale, bald man was pointing at them. He was naked to the waist, his skin as white as hard paneer cheese, except for the straps of his swords that crossed over his chest. Even as someone grasped at her and drew her through the gate, another figure appeared, as tall as the man and near as lean as Henna. Jala, who had once been beautiful with her long black hair and skin like polished bronze, smiled at her with colourless lips. Then she put a hand on the balustrade and leapt from the balcony.

“Move!” Henna barked, twisting the key that locked the gate. They were in an alleyway between high walls, so narrow that Kithara could have reached out and touched both at the same time, except Henna was pushing her along almost faster than she was able to run in the long toba and it was all she could do not to tumble in a heap. Somewhere behind, Tufa was screaming and praying and sobbing. Kithara dared not look back. The alley was in shadow, the walls so high that little sunlight penetrated to its floor. She passed other gates, iron and wood, leading to the gardens and yards of other buildings, but Henna didn’t pause, just kept driving her onward. Ahead, the walls looked less well maintained. The tops leaned towards each other to the point where they almost met and formed a tunnel, and beyond that the way was dark. A few fallen stones littered the path and she had to weave to avoid tripping on them.

“Keep going, just a little further,” Henna told her, and Kithara ran into the shadows. In the dim light she could see a wall directly ahead, which meant the alley must turn. She couldn’t tell whether it was to the left or the right. Left might be better – it would take them away from the little square where Jala’s men might be waiting. Suddenly she was at the wall and she realized with horror that there was no turn. It was a dead end.

“No!” she screamed, coming to a stop before it. It had been a gateway once, but had long ago been bricked up. She pounded her fists against the stones but they were as unyielding as the face of a mountain. They’d gone the wrong way. They were trapped. And that meant they were dead.

“Stand here,” Henna ordered, dragging her aside and placing her so her back was against one of the leaning walls. Tufa came behind her, staggering, her breath ragged and her eyes huge. She looked near to collapse. Kithara looked back down the length of the alley, certain that she’d see her sister and the oodankh charging toward them, but there was nothing. Henna had one hand on the wall that blocked their path and was weaving a binding with the other.

“Henna?”

“Shush! This is not an easy, it’ll take everything I have. I need to concentrate. Hold on to the sash around my waist. Have Tufa hold on to you. When I move forward, follow and do not let go. Now let me work.”

A noise behind them, like the shaking of bushes, made Kithara turn even as she did as she was bid – just in time to see Jala drop from the top of the wall and land in a crouch back by the locked gate. She pulled the whimpering Tufa towards her as her sister rose and began to sprint towards them. It was over, she realized. It had all been for nothing. Even if Jala took her back to Sheddaq to become one of her brother’s creatures, her stupid attempt at escape would cost Henna and Tufa their lives, just as it cost Akhli hers.

Time seemed to slow. She heard Henna whispering her weave, felt Tufa’s body shuddering against her own, saw the look of malevolent glee on Jala’s ash white face as she bore down on them. There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

Then things were happening more quickly than she could follow. Without breaking stride, Jala reached behind her back and pulled out a long, curved blade and Henna stopped whispering and let out a little sigh. At the same moment Tufa turned and shouldered her aside, reached around Henna’s waist, and snatched the knife from the sheath in the taller woman’s sash. Before Kithara even knew what she intended to do, the servant leapt from her grasp and threw herself at Jala with a screech. “No!” Kithara screamed, as Henna’s hand closed round her wrist and she was wrenched into darkness.