Zeek had left the note on my workbench that morning. It was in Plamen’s handwriting, so the High Commander must have taken dictation from Rusper. Even so, the engineer had covered the list with his own smudged scribbles and circles. The last line read simply, “It should not have backfired.” He’d also, clearly, meant to underline the word backfired, but had scored it out instead.
Now I stood on the scaffolds of the empty digging level. Only my lantern broke the darkness, but it didn’t matter. There was nothing out there to aim at but rock and earth anyway. I’d fired two dozen stones of schot ‒ four rounds from each fusil, as instructed ‒ and now the weapons were hot. Not once had there been anything like the malfunction on the wall. A few splutters, when I’d not dusted off the barrel properly; two outright misfires from overloading the capsules on the breech; but no backfires. Rusper’s weapons all functioned well, and there were holes of my own now pocking the digging level walls. What had seemed at first like magic was now a tool in my hands.
My hands were slick inside their gloves, the mouthguard stifling my breathing and the goggle-strap beginning to pinch my scalp. But I was supposed to be thorough: another word Rusper had tried to underline.
So I made the checks he’d showed me: resecured the pyrites, decompressed the ignition mainspring and spun the spindle wheel three times in case the transmission chain was stuck. Then cleaned out the chrozite residue from the chamber and put the weapon in its case. One more to go.
Segment by segment, I assembled the largest of the weapons in his arsenal: the long and heavy “cannon-fusil” he’d hoped to test on the northwest wall. I hefted it into its frame. Barrel locked fast into the gunrest; breech screwed tight between the splines; chamber loaded, chrozite charged, mainspring engaged.
Pulling on the grips, I swung the arm of the jezail frame and presented the cannon to the darkness.
Aim—trigger.
The blast was smart, like a whip’s crack, but so much louder. As the hammer struck the pyrites and sparked, lead ripped through gloom and smote the granite. Ratheine faces I’d imagined morphed back behind the showers of dust that drifted back.
Perfect.
----------------------------------------
Only three days after the attack, Antissa was still shaken to its core. Everywhere I went were furtive looks and nervous murmurs about siege; even in the citadel where people seemed so rattled off their bearings as to forget their normal business. The High Commander had made sure of a military presence on the walls, but rumours had travelled to the people of the city by now that the walls may not be where the Rath would be coming from at all.
Soldiers were also stationed in the Hub: at every hour, vortans on guard along the broken cantilevers. This was a better comfort to me, although the wreckage in that chamber was still a painful thing to look at. Half of the Hub was underwater. Arterial-III leaned across its breadth like a branchless, felled and bleeding tree, while scores of severed minor pipes dangled above the flood like splayed guts. Gashes in the green wall showed where the weight of Arte-III had ripped or snapped them away.
Only Arterial-II was untouched by the destruction, and since its few remaining feeders had been sealed off because of leaks, that channel had now become the city’s only means of supply. The engineers had closed its routes of distribution in order to siphon output to reservoirs of the districts. Amazingly, it held the pressure ‒ well enough, at any rate, to risk expanding its gauge. Rusper said that this was vital, since outgoing flow had to exceed the source supply to the mains. If it didn’t, the flood would rise, spread to the Deep and have everything below its third level awash within a day.
The guilds’ expansions to the city’s aqueduct network were speedy. In less than two days, delivery lines had reached collection points of the North, Citizen and Mercantile Districts, with further conduits soon added to reach the upper Southeast too. This kept supply going, just about, but it was a shaky supply, and I could only imagine the chaos at the fringes of the North District, where wardens regulated fair ration to the people. Would there be enough?
And what about my people? If I could be sure of anything, their shelter’s wardens would take the back of any queue for the essentials. And yet this wasn’t fish or coal or oats or blankets. It was water.
So I kept a close eye on the refugee shelter’s manifests, which I still couriered every day, just to be sure that their quota wasn’t changed.
The metalsmiths were the spearhead of the emergency plan. I helped with the dispatch and transport of the aqueduct segments from their construction to assembly. At first, I was scared to show my face at their foundry at all, worried they would blame me for the death of their leader. Or that they should. But they didn’t. I found no anger or hatred among them; just the same burly comfort in the glow of their work. They’d known him, I realised, and his military scorn for death. If anything burned behind their heat-blistered faces, it was pride.
Meanwhile, the workshop was tense. Manic in his efforts to restore functional capacity to the pipes, Rusper took fewer and fewer hours of sleep, and became scarce above-ground. The Sanhedrin hadn’t convened since the attack, and even then he’d not attended. Nor would he see any of the anxious caliphs or viziers who vied to arrange audiences with him. Plamen took the brunt of their constant questions, but even his patience was wearing. I could hear it in his voice when he reminded the Viceroy of the drugs which kept the royal wrath from spilling; a fragile arrangement with Lieutenant Jharis that I didn’t understand. Plamen himself had been received by the Satrap’s tower once, in Rusper’s place. His second visit was refused.
The fact was clear. While the Viceroy sat below the city, waiting for his sight to come back, a less than pleased or patient Satrap was up there, waiting for him.
Then, early on the fourth morning after the attack, Rusper persuaded the physician that his sight wasn’t lost; not totally. Khalyl had come down to the Deep for me at first, having eventually, on someone’s orders, tended the gash on my leg; stitched it together, salved and dressed it to prevent infection. There’d been no poison in the wound. Besides, he said, it wasn’t the kind of wound a spear would inflict. A claw had done it, he said. He checked the stitches, changed the dressing and, once he’d finished, stood and watched as Rusper clearly demonstrated why he wasn’t truly blind. With enough light and enough focus, it seemed, he could identify an array of objects set in front of him. He couldn’t read or write, or draw, or find his way without a guide. Even when it came to the Transcripts and diagrams he knew like no other of the Guild, he couldn’t tell any one page from another. Because of that, he couldn’t hope to bring a true and detailed report before the Satrap. Not without revealing his blindness.
So, even more reluctantly than when he’d let me take the dangerous crawl into the Hub, he turned to me: ‘I need your help, Flint.’
----------------------------------------
‘Remember what we practiced?’
‘Think so.’
‘No, you don’t think, Flint, not here, not now. Upon our entry?’
‘I bow and put my back against the wall,’ I replied. ‘Saying nothing.’
‘Why nothing?’
‘Because I don’t have a tongue.’
‘Where are your eyes?’
‘On my feet.’
‘And your chin?’
‘In my chest.’
‘So it hurts,’ he added sharply.
We were on the stairs of the fat tower, and I was leading the way. In his robes, Rusper was slow. I wore a pea-green tunic, long brown leggings, and shoes buffed to a shine. Real shoes this time, not sandals. More valiantly than ever, I’d tried to press down my hair but doubted it lay flat anymore. Under my arm were the parchments, and on my belt a flask of water. I didn’t know what that was for. As for the Disc, it was far below us in the workshop, and I felt naked without it clasped onto my wrist. Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine . . . When had I started counting the steps?
Rusper continued: ‘When you’re required . . .?’
‘You’ll tap your chair. I bring the scrolls up to the table.’
‘No!’ he cracked, his voice like a lash at my ankles. ‘What did I say about the table?’
‘Too close, sorry,’ I said. ‘I should . . . present them at your shoulder, and never . . . never . . . stand forward of your chair.’
‘That’s better.’
Seventy-five, seventy-six . . . Leaning from ledges, sculpted beasts passed in and out of the view of arched windows: horses and lions and leopards and long-necked lizards with wings. When I stuck my head out and looked up the wall of the tower, I saw the line of great eagles that supported the top parapet on their wings. These were the true heights of Antissa, visible for leagues across the plains.
Rusper was panting behind me and yet somehow his stamina had never looked so formidable. One had only to follow him around the Deep for a day to know he was strong enough for this. Ninety-one, ninety-two . . .
‘Take care to watch my hands and movements closely,’ he was saying. ‘Bring only the parchments I request. Listen always, but by no means appear to understand what is discussed. React to nothing but my signal. Do not speak to the physicians or to the royal valet. Avoid their eyes. Draw no attention to yourself. Do not cough, do not shuffle, do not scratch if you should itch. Touch nothing but those parchments.’
Just as I was wondering who was more nervous, him or me, he tripped on his robes and stumbled badly. I hopped back down and he didn’t fight me when I helped him up. ‘I think I’ve got it.’
Blank eyes pinned my shins. ‘Let’s hope we both have.’
Windows behind, the spiral dimmed. Its air grew close. At the very top was a room full of darting eyes and movements. In purple gowns and skullcaps, half a dozen royal physicians milled in and out of a narrow passage, exchanging decanters, cloths and trays. Another passage veered off left, almost secretly, while ahead was a very solid-looking door that bore the Mooncircle sigil, like a plug. As I straightened my back, Rusper made the hundred-and-forty-fourth step.
One of the purple gowns turned to show a face like dry persimmon. As he recognised the Viceroy, he went to the passage on the right and pulled a cord. Some moments later, the plug-door opened by a frugal crack and a younger face looked out. He looked at the physician, then at Rusper, then huffed and closed the door again. More moments passed. I watched the purple gowns moving about without a word, until the plug-door reopened. Now the young man stepped out, regarded me curtly, and nodded. The royal valet.
I nodded back. He glared in answer but then pushed the plug slightly wider open. That was my cue: I stepped away from the wall—Rusper following so close behind me that his babooshes clipped my heels—and curled into the room.
A round room. Of course. And large too, though dark and muddled with fancy furnishings. Rugs, throws, tapestries, latticed screens and patterned panels, an enormous bed. Blinded windows. The air was stuffy in here; it smelled of stale perfumes and camphor.
The valet cleared his throat, meaningfully, and I drove my eyes to the floor. Stepping forward, I bowed fast – although I’d seen no one to bow to – and quickly backed into the wall.
As Rusper stood right next to me, his breaths still laboured from the climb, the valet crossed the floor ahead. ‘Your Majesty, if it please you, I present Symphin, Chief Engineer, Honorary Caliph of Antissa and your Viceroy,’ he said in a thin monotone, before scuffling away out of the corner of my eye.
Taking a ragged breath, Rusper walked forward and out of sight, his footsteps immediately lost among the other sounds about the room. Chimes and trickling water. Pottering silver. A kind of warble. A muffled clatter, like beads falling on a breadboard. And the faint whistle of a kettle. No, a squeeze-box?
I dared to raise my head, just slightly, and there was Rusper on his knees.
‘Worshipful greetings, most high ekharan,’ he said in a voice I’d never heard him use with anyone before. ‘Here before you, true and contrite, your humble servant would beg forgiveness for these four days of absence.’
Not a kettle. Not a squeeze-box. It was breath. From here, a latticed screen blocked my view to the breather. Even so, my fingers tightened around the parchments and I felt my thumb burst through a page. It was him: I was actually standing in his presence. The breath wheezed in and out behind the lattice divider. Again, beads clattered. I forced calm.
‘Rise. Dust those knees,’ the breather said to Rusper Symphin. Robes rustled.
And out of nowhere, suddenly, there was a peacock striding past me. Even in the gloom, its lustrous tail-feathers glistened emerald-green.
Again, the wheeze became a voice: ‘So. My Shield was mistaken. You can’t imagine my relief.’
‘Mistaken, sire?’ said Rusper.
‘Their daft report seemed to suggest that you were hiding.’
‘Ah.’ A pause. ‘No, indeed.’ Rusper coughed. ‘Allow me to assure you, Majesty, that it was solely due to the demands of civic administration with which I am charged that I could not earlier attend this audience. A great many matters required most urgent attention. I can only trust that the report with which I dispatched ekhar Plamen served to allay some of my Satrap’s most pressing concerns.’
‘Alas not.’ A stiff silence. Or it would have been without the warbling of the peacock and other sounds. ‘I’ve little love for the Commander. On his last visit, do you know, he refused every treat I proffered. Rudely.’
‘He can be brusque,’ Rusper said.
‘Brusque!’ piped the wheeze. ‘The man’s a schrod of dry fish. Would it break his face to smile upon occasion?’
‘I should beg your grace on his behalf. He means only to honour your Majesty, I am well assured of it, ekharan.’
‘So I should hope.’ The wheezing voice wasn’t king-like. Rather it was the voice of someone old and frail living in an edge-of-town cottage, sorely disappointed at how seldom his grandchildren came to visit him. Beads clattered again and the peacock gave a louder warble. And then the wheeze gasped, ‘Your cheek!’
‘Merely an accident, ekharan, nothing more.’
‘Accident—you’re scarred!’
‘As your Chief Engineer, sire, my industry will always have its dangers, I’m afraid.’
‘Take greater care then, will you.’ The beads clattered more fussily. ‘If some catastrophe should befall my foremost royal engineer, what should become of our plans? And of the city, indeed?’
‘You have me there, sire. And how is your Majesty’s health, might I ask? Ekharan is markedly pale, it must be said. The headaches . . . ?’
Wheezing filled a pause. Beyond my view, someone shuffled. I looked up, slightly, to see if the valet had moved at all, but didn’t think he had. There was someone else here, in the room. Behind the screens, near those blinded windows . . .
‘They’ve gone,’ replied the wheeze.
‘What of the cramps?’
‘Yes, gone also. But now my piss is going purple and I’ve another bad tooth.’
Rusper seemed to consider. ‘If I may be so bold, sire, the colour of one’s chamber water may be due in part to the sugared barblars one so regularly enjoys. Which are, in fact, as it would seem . . . purple in colour. Most likely they are the cause of one’s toothache as well. Fewer sweets perhaps, sire? And perhaps, sire,’ he continued, ‘one might avail oneself of a little more light in these quarters? So many windows here in the tower, such a shame to keep them darkened.’
‘My physicians advise otherwise.’
There, that shuffle again! I was sure now—someone else was nearby, watching and listening through dividers.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
‘Well of course,’ Rusper said pleasantly, ‘I must defer to their judgement.’
‘Sit then, and have yourself a barblar.’
‘No, thank you, sire.’ So that’s what the beads were, I realised.
‘Take one, man.’ They rattled again and I heard Rusper’s finger find them in space. ‘Gorgeous, aren’t they?’
‘Mhm, most flavoursome, sire.’ I cringed for Rusper: he hated sugar.
Then, ‘Esha’s arse—the Viceroy’s chair!’ cried the wheezy voice in what was almost a cockerel’s pitch.
And Rusper clicked his fingers.
In as seemly a way as I could manage at a pace, I crossed the rugs, just missing the high-backed chair that floated from the right. At the row of blinded windows, I spun on my heel and saw the valet set the chair behind Rusper. No sooner had Rusper eased between its arms than the valet shoved two plump bolster cushions at his back.
‘That just won’t do,’ said the wheeze. At which the valet hurried off to some greater, out-of-sight stockpile and came back with arms loaded with cushions.
Rusper raised a hand. ‘I’m quite well cushioned.’
‘Shan’t hear it, you poor man, that is a miserable chair,’ snapped the voice. I caught the valet’s look of trapped desperation. Rusper couldn’t have seen it, but relented all the same, and by the time the batch of cushions were packed and squeezed down every side, he was all but wedged into place. ‘There, isn’t that comfortable?’
‘Intensely.’
‘Have another barblar.’
‘Yes ekharan.’
‘And to the business in hand.’ A cough. ʻLook me in the eye, Semafin.’
My heartbeat picked up pace. That the voice had called him the wrong name wasn’t important, somehow. It was the tone of that voice, dropping so abruptly that I’d thought another man had spoken.
‘You’ve kept something a secret from me, Semafin, and even now as you sit here in my presence, you say nothing.’
From this side of the room, I couldn’t see the man himself any better—another lattice screen blocked my line of sight. But along that screen, just to my right, I saw a purple-gown approach and peer through the tiny lattice-holes.
‘Forgive me,’ Rusper was saying. ‘I’m not altogether certain . . .’
‘Above all things, you know how highly I prize truth from my subjects. Certainly from my foremost minister.’
‘Of course.’
‘Of course. Curious then, that such a thing should have escaped your report. Nevertheless, it is known. And I believe you know only too well of what I speak.’
‘Deepest regrets, sire, I do not.’
‘Little matter.’
Rusper’s shoulders were very high: was he as tense as I felt, or was it simply all those cushions hemming him in? The watching physician was very still. What was this? Was it the blindness, or something else? Something much worse—the thing we feared more than anything?
But as my mind raced through the thoughts of what would happen should he know, the Satrap’s cry filled up the tower. ‘Don’t say I’ve missed it! Your name-day! It is today, not so?’
The drop from panic was dizzying, and yes, I saw Rusper’s shoulders sag back into the cushions of the chair.
‘Why yes, I think it is, ekharan. You honour me.’
‘And to imagine you’d conceal such news from me, your sovereign! Name-day of Semafin, no less! I expect your wife will perform most decadent acts upon your nether—’
‘Ah. No wife, sire,’ sighed Rusper.
‘Then take a whore. One of mine.’
‘Ekharan is kind.’
‘Not me!’ declared the Satrap with a chesty chuckle. ‘How should I have known if it weren’t for that darling Amyra? Sent word to the tower on your behalf, you sly weasel. Been keeping a close eye on you, she says.’
‘Her own words?’
‘Or something. Isn’t she a fox?’
‘Isn’t she just.’
‘Here, another barblar!’ he commanded. Whatever dish they were in must have been flung towards Rusper because several of the sweets flew off and over the floor. They were like beads: tiny, purple beads. ‘Take more than one, it’s your name-day after all!’ The Satrap’s laugh was full and merry.
‘Most gracious.’
‘Never mind that now. The board!’
The watching physician to my right chose this moment to drift away from the lattice, while the valet hurried forward with a small circular table. He set this down in front of Rusper, then lifted three half-moon panels. A playing board was revealed: a triangular plane of even smaller triangles, painted blue and white.
Again, the valet cleared his throat: ‘Ekharan.’
Rusper started slightly at that, not having seen the valet there, and snatched something out of his hand. ‘Will, ah . . . will his Majesty play blue today?’
‘Of course.’
Dread rising, I couldn’t help but dare to watch the pieces laid. Blue in the middle, white in the corners of the triangle. Surely Rusper had somehow been prepared for this to happen. His voice was tight. ‘The knuckles . . . ?’
‘Right there,’ the Satrap said. ‘Look, you’ve put them on the board with your pieces, you goose.’
With a flustered laugh that worried me, Rusper picked up the “knuckles” off the board: four pyramidal dice; two white, two blue. ‘Pray, forgive me, ekharan. My thoughts were elsewhere but for a moment.’
‘Rein them in, man, before me. Forthwith.’
‘Yes sire. Would ekharan . . . prefer to call knuckles? Only it seems less than fair that I should always call lots. Perhaps one might even the odds on this occasion?’
‘Occasion? It’s your name-day, Viceroy.’
‘Nevertheless?’
Teeth crunched a barblar and thoroughly chewed it for a while. ‘Hm, yes. Yes I shall!’
I thought I saw a pale, liver-spotted hand reach for the dice, and disappear. Then heard their rattle and clatter as they were cast into the barblar-dish.
‘Seven blue and two white. I forfeit.’
As I tried to watch and listen, the warbling peacock emerged again out of the corner of my eye. It flounced towards me, getting bigger, but I couldn’t move out of its way—wasn’t allowed! And so I stood completely still until it walked right up to me. The shimmering neck bent for my feet and then the bird pecked at my shoe. The hip-flask on my belt sloshed as I bounced back.
Rusper coughed loudly. ‘What was that, please?’
‘Forfeit, I said! Seven blue and two white. What’s the matter with you?’
Rusper made his move on the board, while the peacock kept on pecking. It didn’t hurt and so I waited until it seemed to lose interest and strut off, sweeping the floor with its brilliant train.
The knuckles fell. ‘Two blue, four white. Forfeit again.’
Rusper’s hand hovered carefully, I saw; nudged a piece, then took another and set it down in a corner of the triangle. It wasn’t the first I’d seen of the game. All through the streets of the districts I’d watched it played by city folk of every class. But folk in the North District had played on flimsy cloths with paint-daubed smidgens of repurposed metal. This was a lavish playing table crafted of marble and rich wood, with pieces sculpted into figures that had faces, spears and turrets. Along the outer edge that faced me, I could make out the ancient symbols that made up its name, dating back to the Builders’ time, or so I’d heard:
× · – <| ¤ |> – · ×
“Xiqopix” - that’s what Antissans called it now; a word somehow drawn out of those symbols. Zick-o-picks. Symbols of the same kind, I knew, were to be found on Meck’s Transcripts. And on his cryptic diagrams . . .
The playing pieces were called “orfin.” The player with blue orfin had to defend the “caliph” in the middle of the triangle. The player with the white, outnumbering the blue, had to attack from the corners, break the blue ranks and reach the caliph. And there was another white piece known as a “tower” that could capture more than one orfin at a time. Also other complicated rules about the moving of pieces; terms like “blue fluke” and “white charge” that I hadn’t worked out yet. When knuckles were cast, their figures were read as either moving pieces already on the board or deploying new ones from a purse.
As they played their Xiqopix, Rusper broached the important matter of the state of the pipeworks, tapping the arm of his chair to summon for the parchments I carried. When I came forward it was always with my chin in my chest, which kept the Satrap as nothing more than a figment of multi-coloured cushions. I never dared to steal a glance, trying not to think about his fearful likeness in the Dynasty Hall – that beard of coils, dark brooding brow, those tusk-like nostrils, hateful eyes . . .
The game went on. Sheet after sheet, Transcript by Transcript, I brought the diagrams to Rusper in the order we’d prepared, and he explained them to the Satrap. On every sheet, Pintle had added layman’s illustrations of the damage in both the Hub and greater circuit. The Satrap listened as he played and sometimes grunted to things.
Then at last he coughed over Rusper’s talking. ‘A pelkhish ploy this is,’ he said crossly, ‘luring my mind from the board with all these scrawlings, damn you.’
My eyes bobbed up to the Xiqopix board, where two white orfin now flanked the blue caliph. After nearly an hour, and through near-blinded eyes, Rusper had won.
‘Well, I am sure there’s some mistake,’ he said. ‘Though perhaps I might beg a moment’s more attention—’
I edged forward.
‘No more!’
And back again.
The Satrap, it seemed, was a sore loser. ‘You’ve quite overstretched my indulgence, Semafin. And cheated. Tell me now, in plain words, will the Deep safeguard my people?’
‘As numbers stand, yes it will,’ replied Rusper smoothly. ‘But not with any additional evacuees from the south. Progress has slowed. Damage to the central pipeworks has destabilised fifth level, as you saw, causing critical delays. I have been forced to cease construction. Temporarily, of course.’
‘Delays, cessations,’ wheezed the Satrap. ‘Liberties I call them, when the enemy may be upon us in weeks.’
‘I can achieve only—’
‘You will achieve the completion of the fifth level before the wyle is out, Semafin. Antissa’s defences will not be breached, and my people will have their shelter from the Naemian scourge.’
‘A month?’ Rusper stammered. ‘I beg you to look kindly on me, sire. To open, brace and seal the fifth level in so short a space of time is a feat quite beyond the guilds. We must consider other ways.’
‘Other ways, you say to me?’ said the Satrap, his wheeze catching in his throat. ‘Have you forgotten the fate of the lands across the gulf?’
Now Rusper sat forward from the cushions, or tried to. ‘Majesty. I do not believe that if the Naemian prince had delved into the earth of his realm, it would have saved him or his people. Antissa has been breached. If it is siege that you fear, let us then heed this new warning. The Rath have beset us, not from the desert but from below, through the pipes themselves. Even now we face further assault from our foundations and should the next force be greater, resistance may come at fearful cost. We stand, sire, to see the Deep of your decree become the enemy’s doorway.’
‘Then fortify it. Barricade the perimeter.’
‘That would deplete our resources.’ Though soft, Rusper’s voice was a plea. I didn’t like it.
The Satrap scoffed, ‘Look at him. Chief Engineer of a nation under siege, he wields the craft of my city and the powers of my throne and yet still he would resist in the defence of his charge.’ He was talking to the peacock. Then, ‘You shame me, Semafin.’
Semafin. Why did the Satrap keep calling him that?
‘I would honour my charge,’ said Rusper, words loud and quick suddenly. ‘For that reason alone, I beseech your leave to counter the Ratheine offensive. With newly developed armaments, we may have renewed strength to engage—’
But I didn’t hear the rest as the lattice was bombarded with a blue-and-white hail. Game pieces rained across the floor, the little caliph himself rolling under the divider to greet me with a carven blue face.
‘Dare you make such blatant utterance before me!’ the Satrap bellowed. ‘I have warned you overmuch. Had not I recalled our forces, no Vedish man-at-arms would live. It was to the salvation of this realm that I sounded full retreat out of the north, yet you would undo it with your bloodthirst. Oh!—the same stink was on Plamen when he knelt here at my feet, I should have smelled it on you when you came crawling up behind him!’
‘I swear to you, sire . . .’
Another smack of the big hand sent the whole table and board against the wall.
The peacock flapped.
‘What would you swear?’ the sovereign seethed, a rumbling cough rising in his chest. ‘What is there left for you to swear unto me when gravest oaths bind you already to the will of my throne?’ He started coughing but squeezed tight words out through the coughs. ‘You wear that medallion . . . yet you torment me with such base, foolhardy threats of reckless warcraft . . . such callous mockery! . . as though I were not . . . not heir of the dynasty that forestalled Vorth’s annihilation . . . !’
The coughs and splutters became violent, turning into an ugly, wet confusion of retching, gagging and gasps. ‘It is because . . .’ he choked, ‘because of my dynasty . . . that the desert has held its head—held it high!—from those feeble states of Exelcia Minor, crawling in blind servitude to their foolish faiths and false prophets—their soothsaying Celestri!’
Cloudy spittle spattered the legs of the overturned Xiqopix table. ʻBecause of my lauded fathers of Aysattah has this great fortress-city weathered the onslaughts of the Lack in ages past. And so too will I—Szaferis Aysattah, Second Son Of This Name—weather the hordes out of Naemia!’
‘Behind its walls we may all—’
‘Hold your tongue, faithless! How addled by vapours do you think me? Do you suppose that my wits have unravelled so far in my ill health as to forget your brazen boldness? How upon my confinement you did twice refuse to take the burden—nay, the high honour!—of that medallion when so commanded? I have forgotten nothing of that insult and by dredth I shall put you in the erg if you should fail me—why are you standing?’
Halfway out of his chair, Rusper sat; the sweet dish striking his forehead with a crack that made me flinch. Purple barblars joined the scattered blue orfin all over the floor. This was the tantrum of a child!
Rusper sat very still, not even raising a hand to touch his smitten forehead, and the room went quiet. I couldn’t even hear the secret shuffles anymore, just the peacock’s worried warble and overlaboured royal wheeze.
‘Semafin, I love you. Indeed as blood,’ said the wheeze, whistling now with only just enough breath recovered. ‘As my own, I tell you. Your birth outwith the sands of Vorth is of no account to me, your sovereign. But hear me now. You thwart my edicts on certain pain of your end. You may have none of those barblars that have fallen on the floor.’
As if accepting his due punishment with grace, Rusper bowed his head. ‘I most sorely regret that I should have invited your distrust, Majesty. Ever do I seek to satisfy your noble wishes, the demands of your Sanhedrin and the needs of your people. I would make only one request, if ekharan might still hear me.’
A barblar clacked, squelching a bit. ‘Say it then.’
‘Time.’ He was brave. ‘I have here revealed to you the extent of the damage to the greater system, and I fear it is not unreasonable to suppose that the pipes will never again function as they did before the Deep.’
‘What drivel you will speak, man. The Builders’ greatness flows through the veins of my people! Why now should it fail?’
‘It is falling away, sire. Even the finest engineering of the guilds may no longer match the ancient craft of the Builders. The Deepworks will, as you command, recommence and I shall triple the workforce to attain the progress you desire. But I must stabilise the pipes. If I fail in this, and they are ruptured yet again, we face the flooding of the Deep. I hardly need remind your Majesty, versed as you are in such matters, that as the Deep is interwoven with the citadel’s foundations, such another haemorrhage could—’
‘Pipes, pipes, pipes, pipes! Desert take it, your ceaseless piping could stretch a Lostrian arsehole!’
‘Sire.’
‘Ten days!’
‘I beg your Majesty’s pardon?’
‘You have ten days,’ said the Satrap. ‘In that time, do what you must to your pelkhish pipes, but know well that you test me.’
A helpless laugh escaped the engineer. ‘Ekharan, please, I must implore you for more—at least a fortnight!’
‘In ten days, Semafin,’ said the Satrap archly, ‘I will have a full return to the Deepworks under your ordinance. Should my Shield report otherwise, it will be to my final displeasure with your tenure as Viceroy, a loud betrayal of my will. Rightly, your neck will be shackled and all Antissa will bear witness as you fall from the spire. Because I love you, I will break you before the city you’ve forsaken.’
Rusper’s voice made me think of beaten iron as he asked, ‘Who then will finish your Deep?’
Teeth crushed the barblar. ‘A truer Vedan.’
----------------------------------------
Back on the stairs, away from the foyer and physicians, Rusper batted for my leg. ‘Give me that flask!’
I uncorked it for him and he snatched it; in three swigs it was empty. He swilled the last mouthful, then seized a window ledge and spat out of the tower. Turning to wipe his mouth on his sleeve, I saw the red mark on his forehead.
‘Went rather better than expected,’ he said, smirking at my silence. ‘Oh, rest assured, I’ve seen far worse than an overturned games board. Still.’ He sniffed. ‘Should’ve let him win.’
‘You beat him blind!’ I exclaimed.
‘Half-blind,’ he corrected. ‘No great feat against the Satrap. Besides, it’s said the mathematician Azal once drew a game in his sleep.’
‘What about the ten days?’ I asked him seriously. ‘Is it enough to fix the pipeworks?’
‘Course it isn’t.’
‘Maybe he’ll . . . forget?’
‘Doesn’t matter. There were enough ears in that tower, as usual. Ten days is what we have to work with, so we prepare for the worst. What you have heard must stay a secret all the same, understood?’
I scratched my wrist. ‘I’m good at secrets.’ But as I went ahead and led him down the stairs, I turned back. ‘Will you teach me how to play the Xiqopix?’
He scowled, ‘Ten days, Flint! Zeek’s a dab hand at it, have her show you.’
‘Oh, happy name—’
‘Don’t even try.’