‘Little spark . . .’
The voice was thin, like that of a starved man in the cold outside the window. A foggy face loomed at the pane, one finger tapping at the glass.
Glass?
‘Come, little spark.’ I sensed my body, heard the fire and felt the heat on my skin. Someone was moving near my head. The voice faded, the foggy face drawing away . . . another moving into view. Plamen’s face. He looked down on me for just a moment, then stepped away and out of sight.
Wherever I was, there was an acrid smell here and sound of shuffling coals. Dragging my mind out of the darkness, I blinked to focus, turned my head. I lay on raised brickwork somewhere in the Deep; the furnace rooms, I guessed, from the roar of flames I could hear through a nearby arch. The High Commander stood feet away, next to a body. I looked at the face of the body, the branded shoulder and broken spearhead still lodged under the ribs. Massive hammer on the floor.
‘Wha—’ I started, sitting up, but my throat was totally dry and my ‘what’ turned into ‘water?’ Plamen brought me a skin and I drained it, panting between gulps. ‘What happened?’
‘It’s over.’
‘How?’
He reached to take the empty skin back and slid it into his mantle. ‘Flooded out,’ he answered, ‘by the pipe you destroyed. Its current filled the Hub Chamber to just below the third zone, then stopped. We’re still fishing bodies from the water.’
The memory of the last thing I’d seen surged back at me—the terrific collapse of Arterial-III—and at the thought of the Builders’ ancient pipeworks in ruins, halfway flooded, my body tensed all over. ‘Are they dead now, the Rath?’
But Plamen didn’t answer me. Not until I looked him in the eye. ‘The last of those to have entered were shot down in the access tunnels. I now have both tunnels guarded. Should further numbers arise from the broken arterial, they will be seen and dispatched as they surface.’ Always so calm. Even now.
‘But how . . .’ I started, ‘how’d I get out?’
As I asked it, I felt what was missing from my wrist, and knew the answer. He raised the torque. ‘Perhaps you’d be so good as to tell me.’
It wasn’t his to know about. Just wasn’t. If there was anyone who should know . . . ‘Rusper!’ I blurted. ‘Caliph Symphin I mean—where is he? Is he alive?’
‘He is alive.’
‘Is he alright?’
‘Not altogether.’
‘But,’ I stammered, ‘I don’t get . . . how long have I been here?’
He drew a breath. ‘It’s been three hours. Time enough for the Sanhedrin to convene at emergency notice.’
‘Without the Viceroy?’
His eyes widened, slightly. ‘He was unfit to attend.’
‘I have to talk to him. Right now,’ I pressed, not even sure why I had to. For what I’d done to the central pipeworks, Rusper Symphin would probably dismiss me from his service. Maybe worse. This was Vorth.
‘And so you will,’ Plamen said, ‘when you have spoken to me.’
I could lie, I supposed, but what good would it do? He would know, he’d find out. He was like that, Plamen. Now he was holding the torque in both hands, at chest level.
‘We don’t know,’ I said small.
‘You don’t fool me.’ So much for that. ‘Symphin assigned you the task of discovering what properties it holds, did he not? So then, report. What have you found?’
Eyes on his boots, I ground my teeth. I’d not even had the chance to tell Rusper. No, that wasn’t true: I’d had the chance and not taken it. I’d kept it secret from him. Because of that, the High Commander was going to know of it first. And yet, I supposed, had it not been for Plamen—his decision to trust me after all, and send his troops—I’d be dead. He had done that.
I owed him something.
‘When I . . . touch it,’ I said, deliberately slowly, ‘it shows me . . . things. Lets me see into places.’
‘As does common triglycerate.’
‘Not like that,’ I rebutted. ‘Through things. Through walls and floors and . . . everything. Anything. I think. When I touch it, I can see it inside my head, like in a dream. But not really a dream. Like a . . .’ I huffed. ‘It’s hard to explain. I just have to look, but with my eyes closed. That’s how I found the second hole in Arterial-III, the one the Rath got in through.’
‘Which would have been more useful before they did,’ he remarked. Not much arguing with that, even though I knew I had tried to convince him before I’d found it.
‘Look, I know how it sounds.’
‘What else?’ he said.
I took a breath; this part was harder. ‘It moves me,’ I said. ‘White light, like a flash, comes out sometimes, from the mirror. I think it’s dangerous and can kill things, but then sometimes it makes me disappear and appear again somewhere different. I can’t control it, I don’t know how yet, but it happened in the Hub.’
‘When?’
I thought back, pulling shreds out of the chaos of the attack, and realised that I’d known the answer for a while. ‘When I was in danger,’ I said. More to myself.
Had he heard me? If he hadn’t, he didn’t ask me to repeat it. Instead he opened the lion-faced lid of the torque I’d fashioned and looked in, curling his lip as if unimpressed by what he saw. It made me angry.
‘You saw it!’
My temper didn’t rouse him. Stoic as marble, he put a finger to the metal and stroked the mirror. Testing. Nothing happened. Then he raised it to his face, just as he had in the Captain’s office that day and, for a moment, I thought he was going to keep it again. Would he do that?
His eyes slid back to me in the mirror; those pale grey bubbles. ‘Considering the ease with which the Rath navigated the city’s waterworks, it’s clear their kind are able swimmers. As such, they are not dead because they drowned in pipe-water.’
I held still.
‘As the arterial collapsed, you—or this—released something into the floodwater that killed everything in it. Including many of my men.’
I remembered the falling buttress, how it had smashed into the bridge; how an explosion of water from a flying iron rivet had thrown me off Arterial-I; how I’d opened the torque even as I fell towards the water. And I remembered, through the chaos, that glimpse of Plamen. ‘You left me.’
He raised his chin. ‘You fell at least fifty feet. The decisions of a commander concern the men he has alive, not the dying or the dead.’
‘But I’m not dead.’
‘Nor are you a man. Let it not be forgotten that men, vortans, Vedans, died because of this.’
He walked away from me again; this time to cover the dead body with a length of hessian.
‘Ghulzar’s dead?’ I said, but knew.
‘As you see.’
‘He was a soldier, wasn’t he?’
‘Once, yes. Rank of marzhal, a field-officer of the Laudassan Regiment.’
‘He died protecting me.’
‘Protecting Vorth.’ Plamen walked back. ‘You should also be dead, child. Yet there you were, alive, in the foundry after my troops retreated. How did you get there?’
‘I told you. The Disc, it moves me. That’s all I know, I promise.’
A lie. The voice in my head, and the ghost, were still unmentioned. My secret. And that was how I meant to keep them.
‘The disc,’ sneered Plamen, looking down at it again, almost amused. ‘The dwarf calls it magic.’
So Hetch had made his report. Some kind of report, anyway.
‘Might be,’ I shrugged.
With a snort, Plamen shook his head. ‘And I thought that I’d been clear when I warned you to keep your people away from the centre of attention. Now again you leap into it yourself.’
‘I’m doing nothing!’
Face darting up, he took one step closer to me. ‘Acts of national defence do not amount to nothing,’ he said, intoning the last word like a blade of air.
Tears I didn’t understand tightened up my throat; I swallowed them. ‘I was just trying to—’
‘What you did,’ he spoke over me, ‘was cut off enemy access. Effecting the collapse of that arterial prevented greater numbers from infiltrating the Deep. Without the backwash it caused, Rath could have reached the city surface.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘What I am saying, ekhin Flint, is that High Command can no more deny the merit of your actions in the Hub, than the gratitude owed by Antissa.’ I frowned as I tried to work out if he was chiding or thanking me. Gratitude? Shocked by the praise, if praise was what it really was, I didn’t know what to say. He gave a nod I hadn’t seen from him before, a slow bowing of the neck, and snapped the torque’s lid shut again. He flung it into my lap. ‘Tread lightly, child.’
I swallowed hard. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘For what.’
‘For what I did, if it destroyed Arterial-III.’
‘It didn’t,’ he told me flatly. ‘Not entirely.’
‘But it fell.’
‘Yes, it did fall. But something at the centre of the Hub broke its fall. A vane of cables or some such.’
My jaw went slack. ‘The polymer?’
His shrug was the slightest I’d ever seen, but I didn’t need him to confirm it. The Guild, I knew, had tried to stretch and even cut those strange black cords that we had found right in the centre of Zone Two. Attempts had failed. And yet to think that they had somehow borne the weight of an arterial . . . ‘Can I speak to Caliph Symphin?’
‘He is with the physician.’ Plamen pointed to a bundle near my feet. Of course my sandals were gone. Another pair. But someone, somehow, had saved my swathes. ‘Don them,’ he said.
‘They’re wet.’
‘They’ll dry.’
Trying to forget what I’d just been forced to tell him, I put my swathes on and returned the torque to my left forearm. The swathes were only a little damp, but I came through the arch tugging at the collar where the Rath had ripped it wide open. I limped a bit from the bite on my heel, and there was a long slice on my right leg I didn’t even remember having happened. It was bleeding, but only a little, and strangely didn’t hurt at all, but I still flinched as I remembered that one had had me in its grip. Had me again.
Furnaces raged everywhere, their heat prickling my skin. Near the middle of the rooms, a heap of Ratheine garments and scraps was growing higher. The smiths and sappers dripped as they worked, faces contorted as they stripped the dead white bodies to their flesh. I saw heads lolling and limbs flapping and what looked like the flash of a satisfied smile. The naked Rath were then hauled from the floor to the flames where they crackled and burned. The smell they gave off was horrible; a bit like pork frying in a pan but so much fouler. I gagged, and Plamen shot me a look as if I’d sworn under my breath.
‘High Commander!’ One of the smiths surged through the hell towards us, dashing the sweat from his face. ‘There’s bodies here you should see, sir.’
I held my breath. ‘I don’t want to see them.’
‘You should have thought of that before you stepped up to save the city,’ said Plamen and strode after the smith. I bowed from the heat of the furnaces and followed him to a table draped with canvas. Back stiff, I put the dance of corpses behind me, only to find myself almost cowering when the canvas flew back. Plamen shifted a bit too.
Four bodies lay on the table; arms at their sides and legs apart. To repel the stink, I forced the air out through my nose. Flies droned and settled on the bodies, though I couldn’t think how they had even found their way down here at all.
‘Women,’ said Plamen. His eyes flashed at the smith.
‘That’s right, sir. Just these four for now, sir, but we’re still dredging from the Hub, sir. May be others, sir.’
‘No doubt.’ He circled the table, examining. These Rath were smaller and, without that jutting collarbone, also flat-chested. Their skins, now dulled from chalky white, revealed a layer of translucence with only blotches of brighter pigment. Veins stood out black under the surface of the flesh, like dribbled ink. I watched, disgusted, as Plamen handled one of their feet, parting the toes. There was some webbing between them; the same not true of the fingers. As for those blue and purple markings, the water hadn’t washed them off. Never more detailed than two or three concave score-lines, they weren’t war-paints, as I’d thought, but finely sunken tattoos.
It annoyed me that I found it so hard to look at them like this. They had taken away from me the people I loved; why should I fear seeing them dead, gutted and naked on a table? Why should I care about the dignity they’d had while still alive? The High Commander didn’t care and that was right. The Rath were monsters. Yet he’d said “women,” not females. That was strange.
He gripped a lower jaw, widening a mouth already open. He studied teeth. Sickly, I admired him; touching that face even as its dead eyes bulged back from purple sockets. I dared a small step closer and tried to be as brave as he was; turn my disgust into . . .
No ears, there was that. Where the ear should have been was a weal of chitinous scar tissue. Wondering why, I swallowed my revulsion and laid a hand on its skin. Rubbery, cold. I peeled a sticky clump of hair away from the eyes, then nose, small mouth. Throat slit, gash clean. The body beside it had three crossbow bolts in its stomach. These were the wounds that had killed them.
Or were they? The white blaze from the Disc had killed all that had been in the water, that’s what Plamen had said, and I almost felt sick to think how many Vedish soldiers that had been. I’d opened the torque and released the blaze—that had been me. So, if the Rath had been killed by its power in that moment, then I’d killed the soldiers as well. And Plamen knew that I had.
Just then, he pulled something that snapped: from one of their necks, a strip of tackle or something. He tossed it over to me and I caught it in a clap. ‘For your services.’
It wasn’t tackle. The cord was twisted from thin strands of dried-out seaweed. Crude charms were looped over the strands; the figure of a man whittled crudely out of deadwood, a strip of hide, a small crab’s carapace.
Monsters . . .
I wasn’t sure if, in the gift, Plamen was mocking me somehow, but still I pocketed the necklace. Now he turned towards the foundryman. ‘Burn these bodies with the rest.’
Another voice hailed the Commander. A new group had arrived, bearing a body.
‘Those are martial colours,’ Plamen said as he moved to meet the vortan soldiers.
I ran around him to see what he was talking about, but could smell it. The chrozite. ‘That’s him,’ I said. They tumbled the phantom’s body onto the floor, the ruined head landing close to my bare feet. I didn’t jump, or even move, transfixed by the mess of its face. By now, Plamen would have heard exactly what had taken place out on the wall, but the effect of Rusper’s fusil was a sight in itself: a morass of bone and blood and leather, all collapsed into the crater. Shattered teeth in half a jaw. I wondered how well Plamen had known Artabh Kathris, the man whose garments the creature wore, but his face gave no clue.
‘Sir, the weapon,’ said a vortan, offering the Commander the shortsword, hilt first, and taking a step back. Plamen took it and lifted its edge into the light. Blood marked the blade. Kereth and Gareth, and Arras. Some of that blood would be theirs.
Plamen seemed to consider for a while. Then, ‘Part the remains from the cloak and garments, and any other article taken from the Artabh. Clean this sword. Send it all to his family.’ He returned the shortsword and regarded the smith. ‘Another for the pyre.’
A troubled look crossed the vortan’s face. ‘What do we tell the family, ekharan? There’s no body.’
‘Death in service to the Satrap.’
Even I knew that for a lie. However Kathris had died—if he was dead—it hadn’t been in obedience to royal wishes. If the Satrap had known about the party he’d led, or anything at all about Rusper’s scouts in the desert, sentence may well have been passed that would have brought a far worse death. Now the vortans knelt around the phantom’s body. One pulled a boot off, dropping the foot.
The foot was wrong.
Plamen was leaving, but he turned back at the exit. ‘Boy.’ Ignoring his impatience, I hurried around the ring of focused vortans and peered at the foot between their shoulders. Chalk white, but wrong. ‘Wait,’ I said.
Soldiers glared at me, a child who’d dared to speak to them. ‘Back off,’ one said. I ignored him too.
‘Spread the toes,’ I said. ‘Please. Could you spread the toes.’
The vortan huffed as he indulged me; pinched the big and second toe and parted them.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
No webbing. We’d just assumed.
‘High Commander!’ I called.
The vortans stood and made way as Plamen came back and crouched beside me. He studied the foot for himself, then looked up the body to the face. There was no use in trying to peel bits of that mask from the flesh. Instead, he lifted up a hand and turned it over, felt its palm. I could see its stiffness, hear its texture: withered, rough and sandy. Standing and pulling me away, he told them: ‘Strip it.’
The second boot was pulled. The cloak was unclasped and pried free from the gangly shoulders, the hood removed in tatters. That gone, the mask was found to reach as far back as the temples. Disintegrating as it came, it freed an unexpected mass of ratty, charcoal-coloured hair. Even the skull was somehow wrong, strange yet familiar at once. And with an ear on each side.
While they cut the garments, a hiss came from behind us in the beds of the furnaces. The first female body was rolled onto its pyre, exciting sparks. The flames claimed it almost completely before I could see any Ratheine flesh curl off bones. Inside the pocket of my swathes, I toyed with the necklace of charms.
It lay there naked now, the phantom. Though it was sleek, the skin all over was grey and sallow and dry, and the body’s shape utterly different from both Ratheine sexes. Not only had it a full head of hair; the arms and legs had hair too. No pronounced, jutting collarbone. No blue tattoos. No ink-black veins. Plamen spiralled his finger; the men rolled the body to expose a grey canvas of back, broken only by a scattering of warts, but no scars: battle or lash. I looked at the vortans, who seemed almost to relax at the sight. ‘It’s not Kathris,’ one of them said in a quiet voice, but he sounded sure of it.
‘Nor any other of his party. Too thin. And the hair . . .’
‘Something’s wrong with that skin.’
‘Can’t be a vortan, or any soldier,’ said a third. ‘Where’s his battalion brandmark?’
‘Not a Vedan soldier, at least.’
‘Perhaps not,’ Plamen said, ‘but neither is it Ratheine.’ For the first time since I’d woken, his grey eyes looked uneasy. ‘This is a human body.’
----------------------------------------
The lamp-flame wafted, but drew no reaction from him. Not a blink. I stood next to the High Commander and watched while the man who so often chided me for letting my mouth simply hang open, did the same. The hardened cleverness was missing. He looked both childlike and ancient; each crevice deepened in his face, including those around the burn that ran from his left eye to his jaw. Now it glistened with unguent. He was sweating and his hair looked a lot worse than mine did.
The lamp jerked sideways, dragging the flame, but the head tilt came late. ‘No,’ the physician said as if correcting a pupil. ‘Pretending will not help you, Caliph Symphin.’
Rusper made a fist. ‘I wasn’t pretending. I saw something.’ Between their faces at the desk of the Viceroy’s quarters, the night was purple-blue.
‘What did you see?’
Rusper leaned forward. ‘A light.’
The gowned physician set the lamp in its dish, excusing himself, and approached the High Commander.
‘Improvement?’ said Plamen.
The man’s smile was rueful. ‘I’ve been repeating this for more than two hours, ekharan. It seems unlikely to pass. The Viceroy’s blindness—’
‘Temporary.’ This from Rusper. ‘I can hear you, Khalyl. And I’m not blind. I can see the lamp’s flame, as I said. Vaguely, in blurs.’
Turning back, the young physician called Khalyl spoke with gracious indulgence. ‘Viceroy, the chemical from your weapon has caused much damage.’
‘Chrozite,’ snapped Rusper. ‘It burned my face, don’t you see. Nothing got into my eyes, only light!’
‘That may not be true.’
‘Just . . . !’ He batted for the lamp. Khalyl hurried back to slide it away from his fingers, then scooped it up himself and returned to his seat. At the creak in his chair Rusper seemed to relax a little bit. There was a tray of food there as well, but it hadn’t been touched. ‘Plamen, report.’
Plamen reported. As he spoke, I watched him closely; now seeing more than a leader, but a soldier who could and would fight for his country.
‘The Sanhedrin is uneasy. The viziers, for the most part, wished an explanation of events. That and some assurance that the fortress stands firm. Having led the defence, I was able to put most of their immediate fears to rest. Furthermore, as vortans of the Fortress Regiment alone were called upon, the Caliphs Arif and Omran presented little difficulty.’
The way Rusper stared in another direction unnerved me. Plamen paused, then added a little more discreetly: ‘Your own participation at the wall has won acclaim.’
‘What did you say of my sight?’
‘Only that injuries were sustained in confrontation with the scout. Such was necessary to justify your absence from council. Nevertheless, there is regard for your courage.’
‘Fine.’
I almost smiled at Rusper’s disinterest in that fact, but stopped myself as the physician glanced at me.
‘Vizier Dranz was outspoken,’ Plamen continued. ‘He called the attack a blatant affront to the throne and maligns the Viceroyalty as entirely to blame. Further, he maintains that your duty as Viceroy outweighs your afflictions at this time.’
Rusper made a sound in his nose. ‘He’d be right if I wasn’t—’ But he must have felt Khalyl’s expectant look.
‘Ramed supports him,’ added Plamen.
‘Course he does, the sycophant!’
‘As for what took place on the northwest wall, the assailant appears to have acted as a decoy, disguised in the garb of the missing Artabh Kathris to pass the gates.’
Rusper nodded, ‘The boy was right.’
I tensed at that but said nothing. Did he know I was in the room?
Plamen relayed what we’d discovered of the phantom’s body: that the intruder was not Ratheine, but human. Rusper’s expression was hard to read. ‘So who was it?’
‘Hard to tell. Your weapon did not leave much of his face for inspection.’
‘Nor your own, near enough,’ Khalyl said boldly.
Rusper slapped the desk. ‘Peace!’
‘Your pardon, ekharan.’ Even from the sightless glare, Khalyl bowed his head.
‘There were questions,’ said Plamen, ‘only naturally there were questions, as to how such an intruder might have entered the city at all. I have not divulged that he was human, and maintained that the Rath scout used the same means of entry as the Ratheine force that followed. The breach in the central pipeworks.’
‘Agreed. Can’t have them thinking he walked straight in through the gate. What of the attack?’
‘Regrettably, Viceroy, word of damage to the Hub spread too quickly through the echelons of the viziership for those details to be altered, though I did my utmost to cause no undue alarm in confirming them. A Ratheine force gained entry to the Hub Chamber via a second, heretofore undiscovered haemorrhage, and that force exterminated by troops already present there.’
A lie.
Plamen looked at me, seeming to acknowledge the thought, before saying, ‘The Sanhedrin is fully briefed in our losses.’
‘Which are?’
‘Forty-nine vortans of the First and Second Battalions. Six guardsmen. Four watchmen. One foundryman.’
‘Who?’
‘The metalsmith, Ghulzar.’
Rusper deflated. ‘Civilians?’
‘None.’
ʻWhat of the Ratheine poison?’ As Rusper asked that, my eyes shot to Plamen’s face, then my own gashed leg. I’d forgotten that!
ʻIn that,’ Plamen replied, ʻit seems we have been somewhat fortunate. Thus far, no wounds have showed signs of the poison. So it may be that whatever Ratheine spears were touched with it before, were cleansed by their time in the water.’
ʻThat is most fortunate, yes.’ But Rusper’s tone was hollow. ‘And Arterial-III?’
‘Its collapse was attributed to the attack, as we earlier agreed.’
‘What?’ I blurted. Plamen winced.
Rusper’s head bobbed towards me—‘Thought that was you’—but Plamen drew my eyes to his and raised a finger to his lips; some fragile moments passing before I understood what he was trying to tell me.
They’d spoken already, Viceroy and aide; Plamen having taken full responsibility for what I’d done in that chamber. Another secret to keep, but another secret that made sense. He might persuade the Sanhedrin that the collapse had been down to some structural flaw, but not the Chief Engineer. And so my actions would be his now. Saviour of Antissa or destroyer of her pipeworks, Rusper was not to know how great a part I had played in our defence. And it was all because Plamen was playing by the rules that he had set. Protect my people from attention. And so protect Rusper Symphin.
Rusper’s eyes were somewhere else, but his attention still on me. ‘You were there, I understand.’
‘You ordered me to the pipes,’ I answered him.
He was corpse-like. ‘I did.’
‘But I got out just in time. Thanks to the High Commander.’
‘So I see. Or at least . . .’
A boot kicked the door inward. I backed against the wooden bureau, as much from fright as from the flash of blue-and-white that entered. We’d left the door slightly ajar, and now a Shieldman strode in.
‘Who is that?’ cracked Rusper.
But Plamen spoke over him: ‘Steady, Jharis.’
The Iron Shield Lieutenant didn’t look at the Commander, but locked eyes straight on the Viceroy. Like a prize, he sized him up, then stopped and smirked behind Plamen, not removing his helm. I grappled for my hood but the collar’s rip meant that it wouldn’t hide my face properly. Instead, I lowered my chin and stood still.
Rusper firmed his expression but also turned his face aside. ‘What is your business here, Lieutenant?’
‘The Senera Amyra,’ announced Jharis, ‘to speak with you, Honorary Caliph.’
Dread filled my veins.
Rusper stood abruptly, waving a hand at Khalyl. ‘Assist me.’ But as he said it, he scraped his chair and fell against the physician, bringing their faces close. When I saw his lips move in that moment, I hoped that Jharis hadn’t too. Khalyl walked Rusper over to the chair at the triglycerate oven where the older man eased into the sheepskin.
‘Hood away!’ Jharis snarled at me.
‘Stand down,’ said Plamen. But I’d obeyed, and meeting Jharis’ eyes, knew he remembered me just fine.
Then a sweet voice: ‘Heed him, Jharis.’
Skirt-tails snaked across the threshold, her hips seeming to roll on well-oiled wheels. She wore the skin of the desert, it seemed; a silky sheath of tan fabric that ascended to a bodice of lake-green gems. Every part of her body seemed impossibly perfect: those slender branches of her arms, her olive back, coal-painted eyebrows and lips, the treacle sculpture of her braids that crowned it all; today styled almost flat to her head like a helm of spirals. And yet she’d killed. Murdered her husband, the most trusted of the Satrap. This woman was the Iron Shield.
‘Sinarre,’ said Rusper. ‘A less than precedented call. To what do I owe it?’
‘My sympathies,’ she said. ‘Only too naturally, ekharan. And, of course, my commendations for your brave deeds upon the wall. Such national zeal for a man of your . . . extraction. And indeed, for your years, such fortitude and spirit! Such . . . oh, what is the word? It’s on the tip of my tongue.’ Her voice was light and bright and buoyant, and her Vedish accent highly refined. And though she faced away from me, I could still hear that she was smiling. ‘Mettle,’ she said.
Facing the oven, Rusper’s body didn’t move in his chair. ‘Neither sympathies nor commendations are needed,’ he said. Amyra looked at Plamen for a moment, and he stared back at her, unmoving.
‘Nevertheless, Honorary Caliph, it would appear that your hand grows less than steady over affairs. Not only has the city fallen under direct Ratheine attack, but you failed to appear at the Sanhedrin’s assembly. An unhappy oversight, would you not agree.’
‘The High Commander was briefed,’ said Rusper.
The physician cleared his throat. ‘The Viceroy’s injuries are no small matter, sinarre.’
‘Indeed,’ replied the woman without a glance in his direction. ‘Seated in the presence of our betters, are we, doctor.’
Khalyl stood up.
‘Sit down,’ said Rusper at the fall of his chair. Khalyl was left awkwardly wavering between two wills before he submitted to the highest, and sat down. Amyra rewarded his decision with a smile I saw one side of, then raised her finely pencilled eyebrows.
ʻI wonder,’ she cooed, ʻif the Honorary Caliph, in his eminent capacity as Chief Engineer of this city, might be so good as to indulge a point of lay curiosity.’ She paused, for three seconds exactly. ʻHow is it possible—if you’ll forgive me—for a feral, spear-wielding race a thousand years behind our craft, to penetrate a pipe wrought of solid iron?’ There was another, shorter, pause as she leaned her head towards Plamen. ʻWhat were the precise words used in council . . . ?’
Jharis answered: ʻTorn wide from within.’
The next silence was like the one I’d heard in council that day, when she had laughed. Rusper, in his chair, was motionless. Plamen didn’t move either, nor the physician, or even Jharis. Though it tasted sour to admit, I quickly realised, it was a fair—a good—question. How had they done it? Did we have an answer?
Skirt-tails rustled again as Amyra took a step nearer Rusper’s chair. ‘Will you not look at me, ekharan?’ she purred, almost coy. This one wasn’t a question.
Rusper’s head tilted, face too low to meet her eyes anyway. He growled, ‘You are uninvited. You march your strongarm into my quarters and show rudeness to my servants. Do not dare to make demands of courtesy here.’
My eye slipped to Plamen: I thought he’d moved, but maybe not. I was primed, as the silence stretched coolly, for almost anything to happen.
When Amyra spoke again, her voice was harder. Colder. Her true voice, I suspected. ‘His Majesty the Satrap demands a report.’
‘He will receive one,’ said Rusper.
‘Directly,’ said Jharis.
Amyra looked to her officer and then back to the Viceroy. ‘My Lieutenant was present in the tower when the Rath attacked your Deep, Symphin. It may interest you to know that at the sound of the alarum, the Satrap grew most frightfully distressed. A most harrowing scene, I’m informed, the full count of his physicians required to restrain him in his torment, as well as potent tonics for the fevers. Such a mercy, he has slept.’ She wrung her hands in some gesture. ‘But now he wakens, ekharan, and calls you to attend him.’
‘And as I’ve said, he will receive me,’ repeated Rusper, showing teeth.
My mind was churning like the water that had flooded the Hub just hours ago. Lieutenant Jharis was allowed in the tower of the Satrap, but not her. Not Amyra. The Iron Shield was the Satrap’s personal guard, and it was Vizier Zimran who was the true head of that order. Vizier Zimran who was dead, though no one knew it. How much was really going on here?
Jharis was looking almost as pleased with himself as when he’d sentenced my finger. ‘Thankfully the sedation is one of our strongest Eredian medicinals,’ he said. ‘Nevertheless, it will subside.’
‘And His Majesty’s physicians will no doubt be close at hand when it does,’ Rusper retaliated in a voice full of acid. ‘I trust that’s all.’
‘For a time.’ Amyra’s voice was sweet again; thick with honey.
‘Then good evening, sinarre.’
‘Honorary Caliph. High Commander.’
She gathered her skirt. Her slender face, rounding into view, knocked my eyes straight back to the floor. I wasn’t sure that she’d marked or even seen me standing there, but I’d seen the smile and it stayed inked into my mind as those skirts whispered past me to the door. She knew.
Jharis followed her out; Plamen closed the door, securely. In the chilly, seeping silence, I stepped away from the bureau, while a grey-faced Rusper rose out of the sheepskin. Khalyl took him by the arm and helped him back to the desk. My heart sank at the sound of his voice: ‘Plamen.’
‘Viceroy.’
‘You must go to the Satrap.’ His mouth was making the words, but he wasn’t fully in them. ‘I can’t face him.’
‘And if your sight does not return?’
‘It will return.’
The Commander and physician exchanged the glance of half a second. ‘If you’ll permit me,’ Plamen broached, and Rusper weakly waved a hand, ‘I should strongly advise against attempting to conceal this mischance. Announce to the Sanhedrin that you are blind. Tell them—’
‘Tell them what, that I’m now unable to perform the most basic duties of a Guildsman?’
‘For the most part, the viziers applaud your courage. True perhaps, neither your courage nor their sympathy for such an affliction as blindness will buy you the allegiance of Dranz or Ramed. But you may yet placate such men.’
‘And just how might that be done?’
‘A compromise. Respond with our forces.’
Rusper’s laugh was acerbic. ‘So, not only should I flout royal decree, I should announce it in council.’
‘Approach the First Circle,’ pressed Plamen. ‘Present the matter at hand as one of immediate urgency and threat.’
‘It’s what they want!’ Rusper retorted. ‘There is no proper manner in which to controvert the Satrap, Plamen. Only treason! You know this. Behind every vizier who would back a martial course are ten more waiting to hang me for it.’
‘The people of the city are already on your side. They chant your name. If you persist in denying that we are at war, you will lose them. Especially now.’
‘Royal orders deny that we’re at war!’
‘You must respond,’ said Plamen firmly. ‘The Rath have a route straight to the citadel. More than a hundred of our enemy have been in your Deep.’
‘I know that!’ Rusper swiped at the food tray. Missing, he dashed the lamp and dish onto the floor. His face flushed as red as the burn on his cheek and when Khalyl tried to calm him, his hand was flung away. ‘I can’t, Plamen. Cannot mobilise forces.’
‘It may keep you in power.’
‘It will put the power in her hands.’
My head was darting side-to-side, but the physician interrupted. ‘Caliph Symphin, this exertion is unwise. Rest would be better. Eat something, please.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ said Rusper. ‘Flint. Flint, is he still there? You hungry, boy?’
I was starving. ‘Um . . .’
‘There, take it, eat! It’s getting cold. And hold your nose when you drink—the blood of our own now flows in our water!’
Arguing had put a rare crack in Plamen’s calm, but now he’d sealed it. Seeming to give up his attempt to advise for the night, he took a breath. ‘With your permission, then, I will take my report to the Satrap.’
Rusper flapped a hand at him. Without any further discussion, the High Commander left the room, not gone a second when Rusper rapped his knuckles on the desk. ‘Come, again, with the lamp.’
Khalyl relit the wick and waved the flame. It was as if I wasn’t even there. ‘Caliph Symphin?’ I said.
‘What is it, boy.’
‘Can I sleep . . . here tonight, please?’
I don’t know what I expected. ‘No, that won’t do, Flint. You’re a servant,’ he said shortly.
‘Only tonight. Because of, you know . . . in the Deep.’
‘Use the service quarters then.’
‘The—?’
‘Goodnight.’
----------------------------------------
It felt wrong, taking his whole meal. So I only took half a loaf of sangak and a small handful of drupes. Then left him in peace with his physician and his blindness. From his quarters, I went to the terrace above the citadel gardens. Back to a pillar, face to the city, I ate the food.
Some servants passed. So did distracted viziers, obviously on their way to meet with other viziers and catastrophise about what had happened today. Could the Honorary Caliph still defend the fortress city of Antissa? Could the engineer-lord be trusted? Was this the beginning of the downfall of the nation of Vorth? I saw Caliph Omran, lost in his mutters as he shuffled along, and realised that I’d started to wonder those things too. Or was it just that he’d stung me then by sending me away? He had been hurt worse than me; I should forgive him, I knew.
He’d saved my life.
Antissa fought sleep, though stars were out bright and deep blue night embraced the city. Out there a humdrum filled the streets: men and their horses, wagon wheels, a woman singing, barking dogs. From somewhere in the Citizen District, chanting went up: ‘Viceroy! Viceroy! Viceroy!’
Out on the walls, torches touched braziers and they went up in towering flames. So high and strong those sandstone walls and yet what had they been good for? The Rath had cut straight to the heart, risen right from under us, and all I could think as I fought my own sleep was how long we had before they did it again. The thousands were out there, somewhere.
Though now I knew it wasn’t poisoned, I was doing my best to keep from touching the open gash on my leg, which no one had bothered to ask about and I didn’t care that they hadn’t. The cut was deep, I thought, but had stopped bleeding, at least, under fragile, squamous clotting. But while it hadn’t hurt at first, now it did: it hurt a lot. Trying not to focus on the pain, I let my fingers trace the lion-headed lid of the torque. A lot of people had died. The horrors of all the things I’d seen, the killing, blood and savage violence, skittered over my thoughts. Twice today I’d been just inches from my death.
As I pushed that thought away, I realised that I was staring at the lights of the North District; without even knowing it, trying to decide which of those lights was the warehouse lantern.
Other thoughts came on cue. My people would know, now, that we’d been under attack. But they wouldn’t wonder where I’d gone or what had happened to me. Those who had loved me were all dead, and now I couldn’t even find Sarah or Erik’s faces in my memory.
My eyelids drooped.
Night noises flowed like coloured wind and I tried to let them calm me; soothe some of the pain in my leg and take the place of all that fighting, blood and death. It would be wrong to go to sleep, but I could rest. Just for a while.
The eyelids won. The city sank; its hum of life left me alone. Silence spread with the darkness that lapped where dreams were meant to be.
And in that silence and that dark: little spark . . .