Before anything else, I tried the same with Rusper’s Disc. But his did nothing, didn’t answer. Even though the two looked and felt alike in every way, it was as if his were still . . . fast asleep.
I pocketed the key to their hiding place and headed out to hot the lights.
The way the key shifted in my pocket as I made my morning circuit through the Deep made it almost impossible to think about anything but the sight. By the time I got back to the workshop, the sun symbol was fully visible on the dial of the clepsydra. So I pulled a comb through my hair—useless as always—then put the Disc into my sling-bag, wrapped up in a flannel probably last used to dust chrozite residue. Buckling the strap, I slipped out.
The Deep was waking up to its early groans and bangs and clicks, familiar now. Sappers going down into the Hub passed me as I jogged up the steps of the rubble shaft. Surfacing, I entered the citadel and threaded my way to the kitchens. In front of their wide doors, cooks were laying out hot rolls of tesak-radhan, a ruddy sourbread from the Bronze Coast. Crisp on the outside and spongy in the middle, it had a bittersweet taste. I took half a roll and ate it standing in a corner of the foyers, watching the cooks bustling about among their agas. Still brushing crumbs from my swathes, I climbed the stairs from the foyers.
Voices reached me.
‘. . . will expect more than a mere handful of newfangled crossbows, Ezra.’
‘You must be patient, sinarre. Those armaments may yet prove to be of some . . .’
I rounded a corner. The corridor had one lantern, and by its light I clearly saw the High Commander’s white mantle. He stood with a woman who wore a caftan of dappled grey and sea-green, its pattern like snakeskin. Her own skin was rich and her braided hair collected into coils. It was her. Her from the council—the one who had laughed that chilling laugh into the silence.
Claws scratched on stone. The blue-grey body of Tazen stood to attention and looked straight at me. He barked—I jumped. Both man and woman turned their heads. Plamen’s eyes found and pinned me, so I put my head down and moved on, wondering if he’d ever warm to me at all.
When I knocked on the door of Rusper’s quarters, it opened partway and Zeek peered through the crack.
She blinked at me.
I blinked back. ‘Um . . .’
‘Flint! Good you’re here,’ exclaimed Rusper who suddenly appeared in the gap, then disappeared just as fast. ‘Step in, step in, we have to speak.’ Zeek made a dash around my body and scurried from the door like a mouse from under a wardrobe; stepping in, I leaned the door closed behind me.
A large breakfast, one of the few luxuries Rusper had not declined as Viceroy, steamed on the desk through the morning sunlight. Zeek must have just delivered it. Rusper was dressed, not in working gear, but a sleek, green-gauze thobe and turquoise headdress. Riding boots too.
‘You’ll need the papers on my desk,’ he said through the mouthful he was managing.
But I had to tell him what I’d found before he had a chance to get started. ‘Caliph Symphin, I need to . . .’
‘The papers, boy!’ he flapped. So I crossed the room to the desk. Some leaves of parchment were there, bound with twine, and a scroll-tube. ‘I’m to see Vizier Dranz in half an hour, and after that the rest of the First Circle. Then I ride for Methar where Caliph-Archimandrite Bardon expects to receive me at Chidh Uribb by nightfall. I need you to take charge of things for a day, two at a push.’
As he ladled another flatspoon of tashi into his mouth, I turned around. He must be joking. ‘Take what of things?’
He raised a hand, disarmingly. ‘Don’t worry, those documents include all my official instructions and they’ll enable you to act on my behalf if you must.’ He swallowed, took a breath before the next spoonful. ‘Now most pressing is the metal . . .’
My news was bursting! ‘Please, Caliph Symphin, I—’
‘You’ll have to check on the Hub first. See Gudgeon, he’s in charge there. I want progress reports on both repairs and cantilever construction. You’ll write them yourself, understand, so ensure no detail is spared. No detail.’
I bobbed my head for his attention, fidgeting with the scroll-tube in my hand and probably looking like I was aching for a piss.
‘Then go to the metalsmiths. They expect me, of course, but there’s no time. I want you to deliver my blueprint for the jezail frames.’ Swishing past me, he tapped the tube in my hand. ‘That includes the dispatch for immediate commission, signed and marked with my seal. You’re to oversee it.’
Oversee. I didn’t like that word, but ignored it for the moment, desperate to change the subject.
‘Foundrymen are feisty,’ he warned me. ‘Make sure that they commence construction on the jezails without delay. No excuses. And alter none of those designs—Ghulzar’s been known to tweak at will, given the chance. Then, when the jezails are ready, I want them transported to the northwest wall of the fortress. Again, you have my seal on—’
‘Caliph Symphin!’
‘Yes what is it boy?’ he seethed.
‘I’ve worked it out.’
‘Worked what out, Azal’s Theorem?’
I stammered. ‘What’s Azal’s—’
‘Never mind.’
For just a moment, I stopped thinking about the Disc and the Sight. A name Rusper had mentioned suddenly snagged in my mind. Dranz. Wasn’t that the black-and-gold weasel vizier who’d been thrown out of the council that day? I studied Rusper as he now dusted his mouth clean and patted his sleeves. He was on edge; always was when obliged to hold these talks with the viziers and high officials of the city, but there was more to it than that. Why was he meeting Vizier Dranz, a man who obviously didn’t want him as Viceroy? And why so suddenly riding off to the caliphy of Methar? That was south, I remembered, so at least he wouldn’t be in danger. Hopefully. But still.
Whatever the reasons, he wasn’t ready for my news. And as he picked up the thread of his instructions again, forgetting I’d interrupted him at all, I realised I didn’t have to tell him. Didn’t need to. Not yet.
Fastening a broad silver torque around one of his wrists, he glanced at me. ‘I’ve a horse in the courtyard. Everything you’ll need is in those papers. Flint, do this for me and at noon in two days’ time I shall meet you at the wall.’
I nodded, his servant.
Then without warning he attacked his wrist, unclasped the torque and flung it down on his desk. ‘Damn thing’s too tight!’
I don’t know why. But on some impulse, once he’d gone, I put the torque into my bag.
----------------------------------------
And so the Disc would wait again.
Luckily for me, Rusper’s instructions were just as thorough as ever; I only hoped that the two days would be enough time to carry them out.
Gudgeon was stationed at the Hub’s south entrance where his workers were bricking the tunnel, and I caught the nod he gave me. Being acknowledged in the Deep wasn’t so strange anymore. While just another servant in the halls of the citadel, down here I was becoming known by some as the “Chief’s boy.”
‘Where’s Symphin?’ he shouted over the shoulder of a mason.
‘Called away,’ I shouted back.
He cupped his ear. ‘He called a what?’
I repeated it over the din of the work and he rolled his eyes dramatically.
‘How’s Arte-III?’ I asked louder.
‘Higher with that cornice!’ Gudgeon ordered the masons before looking back to me, scratching his nose. ‘Can’t say, boy, I’ve been here since sun-up. Pintle’s heading the repairs. You’ll just have to go down.’
I wove between the busy masons, down the length of the new tunnel and came out in the cold, moist air of the massive Hub Chamber. A finished cantilever bridge now spanned its breadth here, joining the north and south entries. I swayed on it a moment, suddenly horribly aware of the high-hanging darkness, yawning depth. Who could ever get used to this? Gripping the railing, I reminded myself that I’d been here before, alone, in darkness. Lights blinked below, through the confusing criss-cross of pipes and rope-nets that muddled up the descending zones. The other bridges were also close to being finished by now, although today all five were dark and I couldn’t see any workmen at them. That was strange.
Far below, a tapping echoed. The flooded sixth zone was fully lit and there were movements down there; I could tell by the way the shadows and reflections played. Leaving my sandals on the bridge with my bag, I scaled down.
Where the chamber walls narrowed there was still enough water to swim in; the damage to Arterial-III standing some five feet above the waterline. Pintle watched me come down and step across the wide lateral. ‘Where’s the Chief?’ she said, on cue.
‘Seeing viziers,’ I replied. Deciding not to say anything about the ride to Methar, I asked after the progress.
‘Work’s almost done here,’ she told me. ‘And I’d wager the Builders themselves would be proud.’
Another trellis of rope hung below the primary lateral we stood on. Pintle’s repair team dangled in it like spiders around the place where the haemorrhage had been. A new girder of fused timber encircled the arterial now, five hands high and three hands deep; boards conjoining at angles to increase its capacity and endure the pressure when reopened. Behind it, I knew, were sheets of hard Vedish alloys. I watched the team driving bolts home through the girder, then looked up again through the bridges and webs.
‘Why aren’t there any workmen on the bridges?’ I asked.
‘Reassigned,’ Pintle frowned. I rubbed my forehead and wondered if I should have known that. ‘Something about a new arms-construction dispatch.’ She gave a shrug, but I knew. The jezail frames.
‘What’s that?’
‘No it’s nothing,’ I said.
But on my way back up the nets, a fresh chill slid down my spine. If work on the bridges in the Hub had been halted for these “frames,” then Rusper’s defensive preparations were more urgent than I’d thought. So I picked up the pace, made my way out of the Deep, left the citadel and reported to the City Guildhouse. The foreman rebuked me for being late, but it couldn’t be helped and today, at least, the bundle of drafts from him was smaller. I returned with it to the Deep, and found the metalsmiths on first level.
Hot air blasted my face there, but I gasped and pushed my way through it. The space was bricked and veined with pipes. Another clever piece of engineering: these pipes delivered water that was heated by the furnaces to the rooms of the citadel levels. That was what powered the triglycerate oven and samovar in Rusper’s own quarters, although I still wasn’t sure whose invention that had been ‒ Rusper’s or Meck’s. I tugged my collar. The ceiling wasn’t high enough to disperse all the heat here and it smelled of sweat and braehg. About twenty metalsmiths stood in a wide ring around a barrel, all bare-chested and shining copper-brown in the firelight. They spoke in hard, mannish voices as they washed down bread with their beer. Waiting for Rusper.
I looked at my papers, found the name of the man in charge, then with my heart in my hand, slipped between the shining bodies and admitted myself to the braehg-barrel meeting.
‘Ekh Ghulzar?’ I said.
Big arms unfolded and the talking petered out around me. A bald man at the barrel turned with a quart in his hand and foam on his dagger goatee. Not tall, his frame was tightly muscled and there were faded tattoos marking the tops of both his shoulders. His neck was thick and bore a collar of studs like a mastiff’s chain.
‘Who the pelkh are you?’ he said, foamy spit flecking the bricks at my feet.
‘My name is Florian.’
He didn’t have any eyebrows, but four ruts formed in his forehead as he looked me up and down. I was out of place here. Someone grunted, ‘Symphin’s boy.’ ‘Elmine apprentice,’ said another.
I tried to harness at least some sense of my duty, some importance: ‘I work for the Chief Engineer.’
‘Join the clan,’ replied Ghulzar, and took a swig of his braehg. His men exchanged their grins.
‘And I’m not his apprentice. I’m his assistant.’
‘’n that case,’ said Ghulzar, ‘shouldn’t you be a mite older? Just a smidgen, mind. Yeller teeths, milk in your eyes, breath like the desert’s arse-crack?’
All twenty men brayed at that and knocked their quarts together while my cheeks filled up with heat.
‘Loquar’s left the Royal Guild,’ I said and coughed to hide my voice’s croak. I knew it hadn’t worked when they laughed again.
The crow’s feet deepened around Ghulzar’s eyes. Ice-blue eyes. ‘Wondered where he’d buggered off to,’ he said. ‘Aye, I’ve seen you potterin’ round, well enough. Anyways. Got told the Chief would be here. Not assistants.’
‘That’s because I’m here in . . .’
But the metalsmiths had started going back to their own talk, drowning my voice out. I was disappearing. So I remembered that I was servant to the Viceroy, straightened my back and took a deep breath.
‘The Honorary Caliph,’ I said more loudly—talk subsiding—‘has other business. That’s why he sent me instead. I’ve got the blueprints for the job he wants done.’
I held the tube out.
Ghulzar sniffed. When he strode forward to take it from me, it took all my nerve not to step back. Then, with a tug, he freed the parchment and went back to the barrel where he spread it with a quart to pin its edge down. I hurried in before the chests could lock me out.
Just tall enough to see, I looked across the sheet and knew I’d never be good enough to use ink and stain so brilliantly. Every line was needle sharp, every detail precisely clear. A series of diagrams showed a triangulated shape with four legs, a “gutter” and a “gunrest.” Smaller diagrams down the margin detailed other components: a ball-bearing and axle, a line of rollers, a “pull-back” stem. And something that looked like a fusil, but bigger. Much longer. I glanced over the measurements, the list of metals to be used. But the foundryman’s eye was so much quicker. ‘He needs nine,’ I said before he could make any comment. ‘He wants them started straightaway.’
‘That’s clear enough,’ Ghulzar replied. ‘Be on your way.’
‘I’m to stay,’ I said flatly. Any warmth that had crept into his crow’s feet now vanished. I was dirt. Then made it worse—‘And oversee.’
‘Oversee.’ I looked away.
‘I know the way he wants them.’
‘And I’m looking at the prints.’
Couldn’t argue with that. Still, I had my own orders and, handing over more papers, showed Ghulzar the page on which the words “Overseeing: F. flint” were penned in Rusper’s windswept flourish.
‘Stay then,’ he snorted, ‘if it’s his will. Only keep out from under the feet of my men. That’s if you don’t your own feet-fingers broken.’ He drained his quart and gathered the blueprint as if it really were none of my business.
But I wasn’t quite done. ‘How many men will you need?’
‘What of it?’
‘For the frames. Gudgeon needs metal men in the Hub. It’s the bridges, they’re still not finished.’
He clapped his mug to the top of the barrel, making me flinch. ‘And this here dispatch says to ferry nine of these frames to the fortress wall in two days!’ But he had seen Rusper’s seal. He knew my words carried the authority of both his own Chief Engineer and the Viceroy of Vorth, and so snarled: ‘I’ll send five.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, nodding as respectfully as I could. The nod was lost on his back.
I stayed for an hour, choosing a post well out of their way: a table near a forge no one was using. From here it was easy enough to watch the work without needing to dodge whenever Ghulzar made to walk. As for making sure he didn’t stray from the plans, my job seemed done. I’d got his back up. Or maybe Rusper had achieved that by sending a child to relay orders to a master craftsman instead of some more senior artisan like Pintle or Gudgeon. Either way it had worked. Ghulzar wasn’t about to be corrected by a savvy hand of twelve years old, and now would probably stick even closer to the plan than if Rusper had been there, looking over his shoulder. I got on with my reports on Arte-III and the bridges.
But there was another job to do. At first it sounded strange: arranging three days’ provisions to be delivered to the Deepworks. As far as I knew, only engineers and artisans were fed at the expense of the throne. Even then, those provisions would come from the citadel supplies, not ordered directly from the city’s farming yield. Besides, the Deepworks were suspended and had been that way for a month.
I read again, slowly:
Of import to: the fortress YIELDMASTER
1 x Halfweek rations {prov. Workers approx.90}
6 vat: 300 lb shaffan-ful
45 lb cornbr. / lavak
dasheen / mooli – if avail.
10 ½ gal (pump) water
3 sack brickcoal
2 x wagon (heavy cover), destin: Deep
Arrival 3rd hr/noon hereafter
~ DISPATCH & BURN
R.s
I read it several time over, in fact. If I understood it right, this dispatch letter was to authorise two wagonloads of rations to the entrance of the Deep. Right enough, it was signed by Rusper. There was his seal. But why would he want ten and a half gallons of pumped water delivered to workers already at the pipeworks? And why brickcoal? Nor did I understand the need for food rations in—Wait.
That word, burn. That stood out.
Burn what—the coal or the message?
But there was more; a second message:
Of import to: the CAPTAIN, Fortress Guard
LOAD IS DISPATCHED
[Crop Yard—Deep]
/ Intercept & redirect as prev.
/ Escort to wardens: N District
~ BURN
R.s
Just as cryptic, it bore the seal.
As for my own instructions, they were simple: deliver the second message to the Captain of the Guard only when the first message had reached the Yieldmaster. The two messages were linked, that much was obvious enough. What took me longer than it should to understand was that whatever was bound for the entrance of the Deep wasn’t meant to get there.
Redirect, I read again. Escort to wardens. N District. Ninety workers.
Ninety.
And it clicked.
I took the ladders and the stairs and left the citadel again, this time making my way down through the byways of the Mercantile District. Following Rusper’s directions, I found her in the Crop Yard among her baskets and trugs and panniers; the wizened old woman they called the Yieldmaster. She had skin like beef jerky. It was this woman, though she looked far from any kind of official, who ran the distribution of the farming quarters’ crops to the citadel and wider network of city markets. She ogled me from out of the yashmak she wore over her swathes and made me stay and watch the message burn to nothing on her cooker. As it blackened and flaked, I wondered who they’d got to bring the last directive. ‘Supplies will come,’ the woman said, picking her teeth, and let me go.
Retracing my steps, I thought again about the urgency for arms. Nine of these “jezail frames” for the wall, each to be issued to a team of two field-engineers trained in the use of the fusils. That’s if I understood the blueprint back in Ghulzar’s metal foundry. But why? There was only one man I could think of who might give me a reason, and that man was unlikely to see me, much less answer any of my questions. Or was there someone else, maybe?
Hood up, I climbed the wide steps of the barracks’ vennel, moved through the corridors of guards and rapped his door.
‘Come.’ As I entered, Captain Mondric barely lifted his chin. ‘Tools,’ he greeted blandly. ‘Do something for you?’
‘Sir, I’ve a request from the Viceroy.’ My voice surprised me. Efficient.
‘And what’ll it be today?’ he smiled wryly, just before thumping some parchment with a heavy sealing press. When he looked up at me, he made a noise at my hood. I pulled it back, my hair snapping with static from the hessian.
‘He needs the most recent of the scouting reports,’ I lied to him.
‘Not my department,’ Mondric sighed. Then drew together his silver-black brows and focused his eyes. ‘Not got it yet?’
I hesitated. ‘The Viceroy has been . . .’
‘Busy. Yes, well. It’s the High Commander Plamen you’ll need to see about those reports.’
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His eyes seemed in a hurry to usher me out, and so I held my papers close, choosing the next best lie to tell him. ‘The High Commander won’t see me.’
Well, he probably wouldn’t.
Mondric laughed out loud. ‘Ach, don’t take it personally, Tools. High Vedish family, the Plamens. All tall horses and such.’
‘Please sir, only I have other duties,’ I said.
‘Oh you have, have you,’ he scoffed. ‘And how d’you suppose I’m mouldering around? Knitting the wife-mother a new scant-thobe for her name day?’
I fished through my papers for any sheet inscribed heavily enough with Rusper’s handwriting and held it out. ‘This is a message from Caliph Symphin.’
‘Bah, keep it!’ he grimaced, waving a hand at the reams just as I’d hoped. ‘I don’t have eyes for that damn scribble, can see the seal clear enough!’
I hung there, waiting, until he puffed out his chest and stood up from the desk with a wince.
‘The best I can give him is a copy of the last one.’ He shuffled through some little scrolls on his shelf. ‘Here.’
I came to the edge of the desk, where he’d examined me that first day, and took the tiny scroll from his hand. Looking at it, I stayed faithful to my story; made a face. ‘Sorry, Captain, but this won’t . . .’
‘I’m sorry too, Tools. I am. But we’ve each got parts to play right now, and the war, or lack of one, isn’t mine.’
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘Is that all?’
We locked eyes. I took out the second dispatch message: the second link in the chain that would feed the refugees. My people. And by the look on his face, it was what he’d been expecting when I came in. He gave the note a cursory glance ‒ not the first one he’d seen, clearly ‒ then struck a match and dropped them both into a bowl. We said nothing as it burned. He then nodded me to the door and so I thanked him and left. Heading straight for the workshop.
Now to find a message that matched it.
Rusper didn’t use the desk in his quarters, besides I was already holding the only papers that had been there. The reports would be here, they’d have to be. But when I opened the high cupboard that he used to store his general paperwork, the scrolls of decades came tumbling down towards my face like an avalanche of old news. I slammed them back behind the doors as just a few leaves fluttered out. No—not in there!
My key in hand, I went to the vertical cabinet. I’d seen some scrolls in there before, but as I looked at the shelves now, found only personal letters. At first, apparently, to the wrong person: “Ekh Semafin . . .” one began.
“Semafin, brother . . .”
“Firmest friend . . .” But all too old, their parchment marked and yellow now.
I fingered through some others: “Of import to: Symphin . . .”
“Rusper, a warm greeting from . . .”
“Belov . . .” No, not official.
I closed that door and turned the key, grinding my teeth. The scroll from Captain Mondric was small and compact with a seal of blue-stained undercopper about a nail’s head in size. Though cracked now, it bore the emblem of three towers in a circle, whatever that meant. Important though. Secret? Maybe. Scouring his workbench turned up nothing but his rough sketches for the frames.
I racked my brain, impatient: Scouting reports—fortress defence—new weapons—fusils!
Stacking two stools, more than a bit dangerously, I climbed to reach the fusil cases stored up along the gantry. There I found one lid ajar. Unlike him to leave things open, I thought, especially the fusils. But when I looked into the case, it was there. The weapon’s barrel shimmered with violent possibility while the mechanism seemed to glint at me with hunger. I looked in on them all, one by one. There were no scrolls.
Another case in the same fashion had been stored under my own workbench. This case was longer, however, and more secure than the others. I crouched to rattle its heavy lock and then stood up with a sigh.
Right there, on my worktop, lay a slender folio of hide.
Can’t be. Can it?
Hoping anyway, I untied its knot of twine, unwound the loops and there they were. Those cracked blue seals. Had Rusper really been in such a hurry this morning as to leave them right here in open sight? Strange too that I hadn’t seen the folio this morning, simply lying on my station. Had he been here after me, while I’d been hotting the lights?
Thirteen reports. Artabh Kathris, I was lucky, had a readable hand, and they were dated. But Rusper had muddled them up, and having been raised on the Exelcian calendar, I struggled a bit with the order of the Vedish wyles. I wasn’t even exactly sure which wyle we were in at the moment. Zeidhat. Ospa’fon. Fon’verun. Mondric’s scroll was dated Fon’verun-3. So all I needed was the next one.
I leafed. There, that one! Fon’verun-8.
Hurrying, I stuffed it into my sling-bag, put the folio up on the gantry and went back to the metalsmiths. There I read them, slowly, in order:
Of import to: the HIGH COMMANDER; Plamen
& VICEROY; Symphin
~ 12th Reconnaissance REPORT of the North
~ DATED to: Fon’verun r.3 / `3230
Observation lines, equidistant from fortress at 30 miles, breached at ALL flag points. Over 20 Ratheine parties in 3 days [size uncertain— night sightings]. As yet no indication of
movement closer to fortress. Caution advised: Pattern forms clear NW ARC around Antissa.
~ ATB. Kathris
Antissan Regiment / 3rd Battalion
The words were chilling.
Now imagining all the things I didn’t want to imagine, I looked up from the report to watch the base-poles of a jezail frame being assembled by the smiths. Nine frames, I thought. Nine teams trained to fire them from the walls . . .
I combed through my other papers and found the wagon dispatches. Yes, it was the northwest wall that Rusper wanted them transported to.
Who knew about this? Obviously the High Commander. But what about Captain Mondric? Other viziers of the Sanhedrin? The Satrap? And yet, Rusper was about to arm the fortress wall with the best he believed his Guild could throw at an advancing enemy: the chrozite. Why only now? This report had come a full five days ago.
There must be more. More, as well, behind the sudden need to travel to Methar. I tried as hard as I could to call to mind what I had heard about that caliphy and its regiment, but just couldn’t remember anything.
Bating my breath, I opened the last one – the most recent report.
A different hand:
Of import to: the HIGH COMMANDER; Plamen
& VICEROY; Symphin
~ 13th Reconnaissance REPORT of the North
~ DATED to: Fon’verun r.8 / `3230
Telmadh assuming charge of Company
following disappearance of ATB. Kathris & 2 accomp. failing rendezvous at NW passage of
N Erg [21 hrs]. Search unsuccessful—KATHRIS BELIEVED DEAD. Requesting 3rd Battalion Mounted Vortans immediate return to fortress. Ratheine movement IMMINENT. Awaiting orders.
~ TMD. Hafsar
[Adjutant to ATB. Kathris]
Antissan Regiment / 3rd Battalion
Three more words were in the corner; I recognised Plamen’s thorny letters: “Party recalled – Respond.”
Gut going tight in my belly, I folded the message. Rath on the move. A northwest arc. Three scouts missing, Kathris among them . . . Then I unfolded it again and tried to flatten out the crease: I was going to have to put it back, shouldn’t have even read it in the first place.
All over again, I felt the fear stirring in my body as if all I’d done was push it down into a pot and put the lid on. The information in these reports now lit a flame under that pot. The safety I’d given myself permission to feel here in Antissa could be taken away.
And yet what could I do about it?
No. Rusper Symphin was the Viceroy. I told myself that several times. It would be fine. Everything would be fully under control. I was sure. This was a fortress, high on a hill! And those sandstone walls were really high.
Quicker than ever, I completed my checks of the drafts and ran them to Gudgeon. Then came back.
Somewhere above us, the sun curved across the desert sky while work went on in the foundry. Blueprint now up against a wall, it was more interest than distrust that lured me in for a closer look. Ghulzar eyed me in turn from his own frame-in-progress, but then shook his shining head and went back to work. Nothing left to do, I simply sat at my post and watched them working away.
Little spark.
I jerked my hand back. It had found its way down through my sling-bag, to the bottom where the Disc was, and brushed its metal with fingertips. The voice had happened inside my mind, just as the Sight’s living tingle had thrummed up my joints. Not here, I thought.
But as I moved my hand away, down at the bottom, my fingers brushed another metal. Rusper’s torque. I took it out and turned it over several times. It was broad, the silver polished, plain but for one thin, looping line. I slipped it over my wrist and found it fitted my forearm. Then I rapped it with my knuckles.
Hmm . . .
Taking every care not to annoy any of the smiths, I went and found myself a cutting block and mallet. Sliding the upper part of the torque’s band into the block, I hammered at the cylinder until the silver gave way and the sharp edge bit down through it. A round fell out.
I had a hole.
Next I’d need a chamber. Some kind of box, but not too big. There was scrap here in great towering heaps and the rummaging took time. But eventually I found something small enough to be a fit, shaped more or less like the oval of the Disc. Made of brown pewter, it might have once been used for snuff or perfumed powder. It was old, yes, but not so tarnished as to black out the engravings of curling leaves along its sides, or on its lid, a lion’s face. The inside was rusted a bit, but that didn’t matter. Through the base, I cut another hole.
Opening the lid, I took the Disc out, in its flannel, and put it in. The fit was snug. And just as planned, the curving surface of the Disc stuck slightly out of the hole I’d made. Not by much, but just enough.
By now, the metalsmiths were downing their own tools for the day, and storing frames.
I took my things and left the foundry.
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Rusper’s second day of absence went much more smoothly than the first. I hotted the lights, ate my tashi, reported for drafts at the Guildhouse, and at my post in the foundry made my checks through the morning. Pintle had her bundle before noon.
But something wriggled in my mind. It was like a dream only half-remembered, almost impossible to place. An itch I couldn’t reach to scratch. Had I forgotten a task? A message? I couldn’t have: all my errands were right here in my sling-bag, penned down by Rusper himself. Everything else was now routine. Whatever it was, though, the nagging worry wouldn’t go away, lingering like a spider that had only crawled down the back of a bed. Out of sight, but still there.
Trying to distract from the feeling the best way I knew how, I inspected the jezail frames. They were taking proper shape now and so I dared to come closer. Two were almost complete and stood as tall as my shoulders. Over there, a gunrest’s bearing was being fused to the hinge of a pull-back stem. That would let the fusil swing in both a vertical path, through the structure of the frame, and around. The gunrest itself was over three feet in length. So that was what had been locked inside the long case under my workbench. A longer fusil.
Catching Ghulzar’s eye, I became aware that I was smiling to myself, and wiped the look off my face. He sat through a little arch; legs wide apart, an empty mug hooked on a finger. And as I shied from his hard face, I saw the hammer by his shoulder. By far the biggest, meanest hammer I’d ever seen.
I went back to the task I’d set myself yesterday. Attaching the box to the torque’s band would be a challenge, I realised, and I returned to the towering scrap heaps for something like a winch or lever mechanism. For hours I sorted through those junk-piles, scraping and cutting my skin on the sharp edges of metal, before turning up a prong of steel plate five inches long. Wide at one end, with a pair of raised cusps on the rims, it had probably been part of a gear of some kind.
I found a vice. Prong-plate held fast, I took a file to its edge. Then I removed it and put the torque in its place. My plan was for the lever to run under the holes, enabling a side-to-side slide that wouldn’t stick against my arm. The Disc itself was smooth, of course, and the edge of the plate could be filed down to stop it snagging. Even so, I’d need a finer blade than this one, a larger tool, and much more strength.
As if summoned, Ghulzar shambled out of the firelight and shadows. I knew he’d been watching me since noon, and now he nudged me aside. A blade flipped into his hand and he set it to the vice, sharp edge primed just above the torque. He glanced a question back at me.
‘Erm . . .’ I stammered. ‘Down a little?’
He moved it.
‘Left a bit.’
Again, and . . .
‘There. Yes, just there.’ As I was thinking it might be good to step away, the hammer swung and struck the blade with so intense an impact that I thought my teeth would crack from it. Ghulzar bounced back on his heel, turned the hammer in the air and slammed its head against the vice as leverage. Freed the blade. In the silver of the band was now a narrow, clean-straight slit, like a staunched gash.
This done, he shambled back to work without a single word to me. Those tattoos on his shoulders, I now realised, weren’t tattoos after all. They were brandmarks: each weal of heat-blackened skin displaying a symbol over a circle with a number-figure in it.
A little stunned by his help, I pressed on. Filed down the inside of the band where the silver had ruptured inwards, then the underside of the prong so that they wouldn’t scratch or pierce my skin. I slid the prong into the slit. Again, tried it on. The lever held, firmly now, at least until I could find some kind of catch to secure it.
Meanwhile, I mounted the box onto the band of the torque. That was easy enough with just a poker from a forge. I positioned the box so that the two holes were aligned; smoking and smouldering, fused them together. A messy join, but still a join. While the silver bubbles were cooling, I found a nugget of brass and made a stop-catch.
It had come together better than I’d hoped. I popped the lid, peeped through the hole, slid back the lever and smiled.
Just one more thing. From the workshop this morning, I’d taken one of Rusper’s gloves. Now, with a pair of heavy-duty shears, I sliced off all of its fingers, then chopped the thing clean in half. All I needed to do was seal each half around a rim of the band, to form a gauntlet. It might as well be comfortable.
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Midmorning of day three.
Nine jezail frames were ready and I set about having them moved to the fortress wall. My dispatch papers authorised three delivery wagons from the depot on the citadel’s west side, with teams to load and offload them; so that all I had to do was climb aboard beside the driver, bringing only my papers. I couldn’t help but feel important.
From the depot, the wagons made their shaky, rattling departure. They trundled through the underpasses, across the gryphon courtyard, through the baking Inner City and out into the districts. Sounds and smells thickened. I pulled my hood up, not just to shield against the blistering heat, but in case someone recognised me. Then I realised that our ox had overshot my people’s shelter. Even so, the beast laboured slowly under the weight of all the metal, three foundrymen and a boy. We rolled between the clustered, coloured awnings and shouting bidders. One led a stubborn camel in our way, forcing the driver to stop while it pissed there like an open pipeline. It went on pissing for a while, but we were well ahead of schedule. While the driver shook his head and cursed at the traffic and the camel, I simply sat and watched and waited. Watching everything that moved.
Something chattered. I looked left to see wild rodents inside wooden cages, gnawing at their bars, desperate for freedom. And suddenly knew what had been stuck in the back of my mind since yesterday!
What was it Hetch had said that day when I had found him in the steams?
A missive . . . I bear a missive to Senera Amyra’s estate.
Amyra. That was her. The silvery woman from the Sanhedrin council. The same woman I’d seen talking in the corridor with Plamen. Surely it was her!
Another memory soon followed; the one I hated the most. Well, almost. Lieutenant Jharis of the Iron Shield glaring down his sword at Con. There are wills in this city that are greater than the Viceroy’s. That’s what he’d said.
Hetch had been watching all of that. He’d seen it all, from Con’s bloody death to my arrest. He’d nearly chopped off my finger, but then had helped me escape. And why’d he done that? Because, as I’d found out soon enough, he served the High Commander.
Just as Jharis served . . .
The Senera, Jharis had said before he’d left me to the knife, requests my presence in council.
Hetch.
The little man tied it together, from my arrest to the ease with which Plamen had released me from the gaol of the Shield.
And as they’d been doing since that day, Plamen’s instructions rang coldly: None is ever to be mentioned again. Not even to the Viceroy.
I’d obeyed him. Said nothing. Not to Rusper, not to anyone. I had complied with his wishes, to protect my own people, as he’d advised. But was there something else behind that warning—something more than that protection?
My brain hurt.
She will see you, High Commander. That’s what Hetch had said to Plamen after council that day. There’d only been one she in council. And now, as the stream of camel-piss came to an end and we rolled forward again, I thought about her talking with him two days ago. Plamen and Amyra . . .
These sticky thoughts were still clagging and clawing in my head when the fortress wall rose up ahead to block the full light of the sun. Our wagons stopped beside a braehg-house. From here, a casement of steps climbed the fifty feet of rugged sandstone to the battlements above. Offloading the frames, the team began to carry them up. I followed them, climbing via the wall’s long, arched extension, then final steps onto a gangway.
Hot wind out of the northern desert grazed the crenels as I presented my official papers to the watch. They said nothing, merely nodded to show my teams had free run of the thirty yards of fortress wall between the left and right turrets. I looked around to see that the left turret adjoined the North Gate. It wasn’t far from here that I’d been sick on the banner.
Some minutes later, wheels and hooves approached below, and I heard orders being shouted as more people climbed the steps. ‘Sir,’ the watchmen greeted, and ‘Viceroy.’ He replied to few of these greetings, putting almost all of his attention into berating the team who bore his cargo up the steps. Just as suspected, one of the cases was the long one I had found locked in the workshop. ‘Carry it straight!’ Inside the casement extension, Rusper appeared and looked up. I nodded a greeting but he’d looked away, snapping at the men for bumping the case. ‘Can’t you—’
I flinched on their behalf. They carried it, more slowly after that, onto the gangway, along the wall and into the turret to the right, along with several other cases I recognised from the workshop gantry. Fusils, each one. The foundrymen were ordered to assemble the frames in position along the battlements and, once this was done, Rusper walked the line of nine evenly spaced metal structures, making his inspection like a general. In each frame he tested the axle, the ball-bearing and stem that raised the gunrest in such a way that they pointed almost directly down from the crenels. He was an engineer again, though only wearing one glove today. I tugged on the left sleeve of my swathes.
‘No difficulties, I hope,’ he said, walking towards me. ‘I’m sorry for having to foist my duties on you, Flint. Urgent matters needed attention.’
‘I know. I mean—I understand,’ I said and quickly asked him how his business had fared. How much would he say?
He stepped into a crenel and took the air into his lungs. ‘Not unfavourably,’ he said, letting out the breath. ‘One might now, perhaps, assume a fragile loyalty from Dranz. A man easily ignited. The First Circle is another box of screws altogether.’
It was all he gave me. I studied his face as it gleamed in the sun and realised that he wasn’t going to tell me anything about his journey to Methar.
So I grabbed my doubts by the neck: ‘Who’s Amyra?’
I saw the whites in his eyes. ‘What?’
‘Amyra, who is she?’
‘Where did you hear that name?’ he snapped. I stammered, without a ready explanation for my question, wondering if it was only anger that I’d just heard there in his voice. Whatever it was, something slid over it. ‘She is a senera of Shad,’ he said stiffly. ‘Shad caliphy. The wife of Vizier Zimran.’
‘Is she against you?’
He folded his lips, then grabbed me by the arm and pulled me four crenels further down the battlements. Away from the watchmen and smiths. When he looked into my face, it was as if he didn’t trust me. ‘What’s this about, Flint?’
Now or never. ‘I’ve seen the High Commander speaking with her. In private.’ He lifted his chin and pursed his lips. Relaxed slightly. Into his silence I asked, ‘Who’s Zimran?’
‘Head of the Iron Shield. One of the Satrap’s most trusted.’
‘More trusted than you?’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘Yes, I should think so.’
‘So why’s he not the Viceroy?’
‘Because of royal decree. Defensive engineering. You know all this. Besides, Zimran no longer leads a public life. The man is . . . housebound, has been for months. Lackish Cochineal Fever . . .’ There he paused as if choosing words with care. ‘. . . The Senera you mention presides over his estate and acts as his advocate both in office and council. You may think of them as one. And as your worst enemy.’
‘Mine?’
‘Your people’s,’ he said. ‘The Iron Shield is subservient to the Satrap. Directly. And the Satrap does not care to make a Naemian refuge of his city.’
‘So Amyra is against you?’
He sighed. ‘Yes. She is against me.’
‘Because of us.’ I said it as a fact; let him deny it.
But he didn’t, only slackened his shoulders tiredly as if this was all silly childishness. ‘Is that all?’
I shook my head. ‘No it’s not. It still doesn’t make any sense. Why doesn’t she tell the Satrap that you’ve let us into the city?’
‘She’s not permitted near the Satrap,’ he replied. ‘Again, I was given to believe you understood this.’
But the answer skipped over my brain. ‘And what about the High Commander? He’s supposed to be your . . . your aide, and I’ve seen him with her! They’ve been talking. Don’t you believe me?’
‘I believe you.’
‘So why—’
‘Because you’ve made a mistake,’ he cut me off. ‘Politics is a dangerous dance, boy, and one learns to meet a threat on its own turf, you understand. But no, you don’t and why should you. You’re a boy.’
I showed all my outrage on my face. But I really didn’t understand and was getting angry now as well.
He spoke calmly. ‘Plamen still serves me, I can assure you of that.’
‘He’s having little secret meetings with her, talking about you and the fusils and the Deepworks and—’
‘I know. I know all that, Flint. I am using him to blackmail the Senera with certain sensitive information. Information which, exposed, will levy greater transgressions than my own upon her head. Like I said, she and Vizier Zimran are one and the same voice of the Iron Shield.’
He paused again and bit his lip. Whatever was on the tip of his tongue, he didn’t want to say it.
I watched his eyelids fall, hold closed, open again. Then he slowly squared himself in front of me and spoke, very softly, over the top of my head. ‘She’s his widow.’
‘He’s dead?’
‘Keep your flaming voice down!’ Rusper snarled and whacked his glove against the crenel.
Practical, I thought. Just like the look in his eyes now. Make sure of the Senera’s silence and, in so doing, keep my people safe from the Satrap.
‘Zimran’s death is not yet known—all of this city thinks he’s sitting up in bed, running the Shield!’ he said, voice low and urgent. ‘As for the reason for that, you’ll have to work it out for yourself. In your head. You’ve fitted several of the pieces already, the last is hardly a leap.’
Perhaps it was just how he’d said it, but as his eyes rolled away to look over the battlements again, the truth slotted into place like a sheathing dagger. My mouth dropped open. ‘She didn’t—’
‘Flint!’ I snapped it shut.
So that was it: she’d killed him. Her own husband, Zimran, a man loved and trusted by the Satrap, murdered by the Senera herself. And now she was pretending to speak on his behalf in the Sanhedrin, using his powers for . . . for what exactly? How long could that last? And how did Rusper know the truth if no one else did?
Reading my face, he gave a smirk I didn’t like. ‘For far too many reasons, there are things I cannot tell you, ekhin Flint. Most would name me a fool for trusting a foreign child as far as I have trusted you already. Now I’ve no doubt of your good faith, but there are limits.’
I bowed my head away and thought through what he’d told me. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Guess I shouldn’t have said those things about the High Commander. I just thought—’
‘You wanted to help,’ he conceded. ‘But right now, the best way for you to help me is by trusting my judgement. There is work ahead of us. Work for which I brought you into my service.’
‘But . . .’ I could see him deflating, but I needed to know. ‘If you’re the Viceroy, why can’t you just tell the Satrap what you know about her, the Senera?’
Rusper pulled at the fingers of his glove. ‘That’s where it’s clear you know nothing of our Satrap, dear boy. Would that it were so simple. An accusation such as that would excite the man to fury, even sway him to remove me from my office for slander. Both my offices, perhaps! Amyra happens to be one of his personal favourites. Not to mention that the Shield has a firm hold on his physicians. An important fact, I’m afraid.’
He shook his head, his face bitter. We were quiet for a while. The team of foundrymen was now making its way back to the steps. I caught one smith’s eye, raising my hand half-way in thanks or goodbye. I got a nod; more than expected. ‘Will I ever see the Satrap?’ I asked, not really sure where the thought had come from.
‘I rather hope not,’ said Rusper, still panning the desert view. ‘To him you’re an invader. An enemy of Vorth.’
‘I’m twelve.’
‘Small matter. You hail from Naemia, as do the Rath. Hand him a butter knife and he’d probably—’
But something must have popped into his head. His body stiffened, his neck erect like a rabbit alert in tall grass. His gaze was fixed.
‘Caliph Symphin?’
‘Follow my eyes please.’
I stepped into his crenel and looked out. My own eyes watered even as I shaded them and creased them up into slits against the glare. Rusper’s chest was close at my back and his arm brushed against my temple.
‘There,’ he said, pointing past me.
I followed the gloved finger across the barren expanse, left of northwest, where whorls of earth reared brown in grey. The plains were darker in that region, spotted with the skeletons of trees. My pulse was rising.
‘Scope!’ Rusper shouted down the wall, making me jump, before he hurried along the crenels to the right. ‘Look at the trees.’ I scanned them slowly. But they were trees. Had something moved? No, just the wind sweeping a haze of dust across a ridge; it was always stronger out there. Then another movement. A hawk this time, riding an updraught.
Rusper almost ran into a watchman. ‘Viceroy,’ said the man, holding out a brass rod.
The Viceroy took it without thanks and pulled it open to three clicks. ‘Do you see it?’
‘I do, sir.’
The rest of the watch, here when we arrived, was now perched along the battlements, pointing out in watching huddles. Rusper pressed the telescope to his eye, jerked it down. Then up again. ‘Lost it!’
‘Sir!’ shouted someone to the right. This wide-eyed watchman might as well have thrown a noose around us for all the persuasion he needed. Rusper jogged towards him, others opening a way and then closing. I was cut off, but it didn’t matter. Everyone could see it and so could I.