My hand hovered an inch above the handle.

‘. . . by other means!’

‘. . . maintaining order!’

Rusper and Plamen, arguing. I turned the handle anyway and pushed into the workshop.

‘It won’t be enough,’ Plamen was pressing.

‘Enough for what?’ Rusper retorted, braced in his chair as if to pounce. ‘Enough to make of me the sacrificial lamb of the Sanhedrin? How much less closely do you think they watch me now Ramed has stepped onto the First Circle?’

Plamen’s face swung towards me.

Think quick.

‘Uhm, Caliph Symphin, I got your—’

‘Flint, wait outside,’ Rusper bit off, and I shrank behind the door again. Their voices argued on, leaving me at a loss. I’d already been to Captain Mondric’s office; delivered the second part of my people’s supplies-dispatch. I’d delivered parts to Pintle. Though of course one was broken, she hadn’t sent me back to the Guildhouse. All I had now were Rusper’s; those and the wicked conversation I’d overheard in the gardens. I hadn’t been supposed to hear that. But whatever it meant, it surely had to be about more than just my people’s refuge.

A hand out of nowhere clapped my shoulder. Before I could untangle myself from my thoughts and react, the door was shoved open again and my body barrelled back into the workshop. A stern female voice over my head said, ‘Excuse me, ekharaan, but this was right outside the door.’

Hands on hips, thoughts in mid-quarrel, Plamen gave a hot sigh: ‘Thank you, marszalekh, he’s the Viceroy’s, you may unhand him.’

‘Ah. Sir, begging pardon.’

The firm grip left me and I hurried away to the safety of the middle table. The new arrival was a stout, dark-skinned woman who looked closer in age to Rusper than Plamen; short-cropped hair turning grey. Maybe as tall as Captain Mondric, and just about as broadly built too. She wore open swathes, high quality, with a black-leather tabard and greaves underneath. I rubbed my shoulder as her brown eyes moved away from me.

Rusper snapped the word, ‘Marszal?’

Back straightening, arms behind it, the woman cleared her throat: ‘Marszal Savhar, Honorary Caliph.’

Straining, Rusper blinked across the room—he was looking worse by the day—and repeated: ‘Savhar.’

‘Sir,’ she responded.

‘The Marszal fronts the Methan Eighth Battalion,’ Plamen said.

‘I know who she is.’

A heavy pause. True to her martial office, Marszal Savhar stood rooted to the floor without a shuffle. ‘I was most aggrieved to learn of your affliction, ekharan.’

Rusper’s face contorted. ‘My what?’

The Marszal went on: ‘Your recent bravery in defence of the northwest wall has been no small matter among the Methan Regiment officers. With respect, sir, few soldiers expect such courage from a caliph. Even from a field-engineer, if you’ll permit me.’

Silence again, this time stony. Then, ‘What’s your business here, marszalekh?’

‘Savhar is present at my request,’ Plamen answered for her.

‘Yours,’ said Rusper. His hand drifted over the worktop in front of him, fingers tripping over parts and tools scattered there. Were those fingers trembling? The room was tense; so tense I felt like crawling under the table.

Plamen took a squarer stance in front of Rusper’s worktop. ‘Savhar has readied Methan soldiers.’

The engineer’s fingers closed around a copper shank and made a fist. ‘She has.’

‘I’ll go,’ I said.

‘You’ll stay,’ said both Rusper and Plamen together. The Marszal shot a puzzled look my way, just as Plamen walked forward and leaned over the worktop. ‘A single battalion, that is all it will take.’ He looked back over his shoulder and nodded a prompt at the Marszal.

‘Viceroy,’ said the woman. ‘It is mine to advise you that the mounted scimitars of my battalion have been placed at your immediate disposal. Under the direction of High Command, the cavalry may be ready to move at a word.’

Rusper’s head tilted. ‘A word.’

‘Sir.’

A vague nod. Something was wrong. What had just happened at that council?

‘Consider what’s at stake,’ said Plamen; I caught the clench of his jaw.

But Rusper’s voice remained level: ‘I will not discuss this further. Flint, did you get me the lenses I wanted?’

‘Symphin . . .’ Plamen was stern. ‘. . . this may be your last opportunity.’

‘Flint, the sparts please.’

Straightening from the worktop with a strained glance back at the Marszal, the Commander fell silent and I could feel his frustration. Nervous of it, and cowed by guilt for having become the object of attention at this moment, I walked to the front of Rusper’s station. Rusper’s eyes, when I looked at them, were almost too awful to meet: so red-rimmed and raw that I could barely tell that they were green, or any colour.

‘I got everything,’ I said and fished into my sling-bag. Piece by piece, I placed the sparts before his hands. Quadruple lever-wheel, pin gears, tallan lenses. And stepped back. The two martial officers watched from behind me, so full of important things to say that I felt the hackles stand on my neck. Rusper had put me before their business—urgent business, obviously!—and right now I hated him for it. The silence stretched. Face twitching as he tried to focus his damaged eyesight, his hands explored the objects as if he were all by himself in the room.

Plamen sucked a breath. ‘Viceroy—’

‘Under whose authority was a unit prepared for deployment?’ Rusper shouted. He dashed the lever-wheel against the worktop and forced himself up from his chair.

‘Mine,’ said Plamen.

‘These were your orders?’

‘They were. Deliberation was unnecessary. You would have resisted, when it remains a matter for the High Command of the Mooncircle Army.’

Teeth set: ‘I am Viceroy.’

‘And I am your aide, so appointed by Sanhedrin and Satrap,’ countered Plamen. ‘I have made emergency contact with Caliph Bardon in Methar. Your ally. He now knows of the attack on the fortress, as do the caliphs of Shad, Zeidha and Ospégath. They too have acquiesced to the partial dispatch of their regiments, should needs of state require them.’

‘Well that is good news,’ Rusper congratulated him with venom. ‘You have succeeded in appeasing a southern caliph with the semblance of mobilisation, or so you think! And what then? Did you intend to deploy this special unit of yours as soon as I wasn’t looking? Because that should hardly present too great an obstacle just now, Commander! Well? Marszalekh? What were your orders?’

When I looked to Savhar, her eyes couldn’t have been any steadier. ‘To assemble the company only with your express permission, sir.’

‘Preparations have been discreet,’ added Plamen. ‘I’ve made certain.’

‘Discreet!’ Rusper scoffed, spitting a bit. ‘You most of all should know better than that. There’s a pair of watching eyes for every brick and stone in this city.’

‘Yet we have already dispatched scouts. Armed detachments, in the desert.’

‘And even that was at our peril! How do you expect me to face the First Circle when they discover I’m deploying the army in pieces?’

‘A single unit of cavalry is all that I ask,’ Plamen pressed him. ‘At this stage that is all Caliph Bardon will offer, lest the Satrap lift his decree.’

Rusper thumped his fist on the worktop, sparts leaping up about an inch. ‘Again I’ll say it, Commander, just as I have to all those who would have me undermine royal decree in favour of their caliphies—I will not mobilise forces until the Satrap himself stands before the Mooncircle Throne and makes it known to all that he wills it.’

‘That will not happen, Symphin.’

‘Then nor will this. If your plan is uncovered before it meets with success, it will be a transgression too many. I will be at their mercy. Her mercy!’

Her. Senera Amyra. I had to tell them what I’d heard.

But Plamen was speaking again, more exuberantly than I’d ever heard him speak: ‘A violation of the Satrap’s will awaits us at every turn. A year from now, how many more such waiting violations will royal decree have strewn before us to obstruct the desert’s rule? Total submission will destroy us, yet this one breach of decree could swing the Sanhedrin in your favour. Even the First Circle. It’s what they want.’

‘It’s what they want because it’s what’ll put my neck in a noose!’ Rusper fired back at him. ‘Or is that what you want also, Plamen, because I can assure you your neck will be in the noose beside mine. The same goes for you, marszalekh! Tell me, please, how this unit was to leave the fortress without the knowledge of the Iron Shield? At the very least, the Fortress Guard would be alerted and when word reaches Mondric, he too will turn against me. What allies have I then, I wonder? Hm?’

‘I am the High Command,’ Plamen said again. ‘Strings may be pulled to ensure the secrecy of this mission. The Captain need know nothing.’

‘Ah,’ Rusper smiled, bitterly. ‘So you would have me undermine the authority of the very man to whom I should turn when fortune favours us enough to implicate the Senera for her crimes? How dare you make a spare wheel of me!’

‘Mondric’s loyalty to the throne is as steel,’ Plamen argued. ‘His knowledge of soldiers leaving the fortress will put an end to it.’

‘I am putting an end to it.’

‘You will regret this, Symphin.’ Suddenly fierce, Plamen spoke through teeth. ‘When the borderlanders your care so much about are marched from the gates of this city, you will regret.’

‘Don’t threaten me, Commander.’

Marszal Savhar interrupted; her calmer voice a relief. ‘Doors are closing to you, Viceroy. On the field of battle, a moment comes when a Vedan of rank must make a decision of daring. Rash as it may seem, it may spare both his own life and the lives in his service.’

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‘Is that right.’ Rusper tried to look at her, but his gaze fell off-target.

I felt my courage swell. ‘You should listen to them,’ I said, loud as I dared.

He aimed a glare at me too. ‘Well thank you, Flint, for recruiting yourself to my board of advisors, but I’ve heard enough. From both Commander and Marszal.’

‘You have demonstrated such daring once,’ the Marszal persisted, warmth in her voice’s husk, but also strength. Bravery. Something about her already made me sure that, just like Ghulzar, she would die for the desert if she had to.

‘Once will suffice,’ said Rusper.

Still she persisted: ‘Ultimately, sir, you will be drawn back into warfare, whether or not the Satrap wills it. Is it not better that you act of your own accord in martial matters than allow the Sanhedrin to harry you into a corner?’

‘Savhar is right,’ Plamen rallied. ‘When the viziership recognises its power to sway you, the Viceroyalty will no longer protect you from Amyra.’ He paused. ‘Do this now. Locate the site from which the Rath gained their entry to the pipeworks of Antissa. Cut them off. If the mission fails, nothing need ever be known of it again. But if it succeeds—if we break their access to the fortress—you will acquire not only greater hold over the Sanhedrin but leverage to persuade the Satrap into further military action.’

While I marvelled at the words, Rusper laughed. ‘You are suggesting we unearth a hidden river in the desert. In nine days.’

‘Yes.’

‘And how?’

Just as eager to know the answer, I looked to Plamen. Whose grey eyes narrowed at Rusper.

‘That one so resourceful as you, Viceroy, has not yet proposed that solution is of some surprise to me. From the intelligence we obtained from Kathris’ scouting parties in the north, we will easily enough be able to formulate a likely area of the Rath’s entry-point. A place to begin, at the outmost. Thereafter, all we will need is the speed of Methan horses, an armed detachment, and the boy.’

I froze. Only Savhar looked at me.

Rusper ground his teeth, and then said, ‘What?’

‘Your hand, ekhin Flint,’ said Plamen, ‘and the seeing-disc he possesses.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘The boy wishes to be useful to Antissa. So let him.’

Now the engineer simmered through his nostrils: ‘I shall be blowing a first-grade steam-flanged gasket if someone doesn’t tell me what the—’

‘He doesn’t know,’ I broke in. Rusper closed his angry mouth when he heard me. ‘I’m sorry, Caliph Symphin. I know I should’ve told you before, before the attack. I was going to!’

‘Told me what?’

‘About the Disc. What it does.’

‘Yes, and?’

This was all wrong. This wasn’t the industrious intrigue we’d shared over the Discs before. The workshop bristled with tempers and the wrong people were in it. It wasn’t the way I’d imagined this conversation playing out.

‘It sees,’ I said.

He pushed a sigh. I looked away from his exasperation, trying to squash down the hurt that he would choose this of all moments to treat me like just a bothersome child. But when I looked back, he was still waiting. So was Plamen. The floor was mine and it dawned on me that this had probably been in Plamen’s mind ever since he had seen the Disc’s power in the Hub. When I looked at the Commander, he nodded; I drew my sleeve back. ‘Someone speak,’ Rusper said.

Plamen was calm again: ‘The boy will explain.’

‘You seem awfully sure of this, Plamen.’ I heard mockery there.

‘I’ve seen enough for myself.’

‘But it’s just . . . a gauntlet,’ said the Marszal, eyes on my arm. ‘What does he mean, it sees? You said nothing of this before, High Commander.’

I popped the lid of the torque. All eyes—except for Rusper’s—were drawn straight to the Disc where, exquisitely and impossibly, each face found a way into its mirror. My own face dominated the lower-right, but I could trace the reactions of all three others as I started speaking; especially that of the Marszal, whose features gave a drama of grave doubt. Plamen’s face reshaped under the mastery I knew, though his eyes flicked towards Rusper as he listened, chin raised as one who has heard a story once already. Rusper remained leaning on his worktop, face frozen in a scowl.

In as much detail as I could remember, I reported how I’d come to find the Sight. How far I’d reached using it. What I’d seen below the waterline of the Hub on the day of the Ratheine attack. I kept the voice and the ghost to myself, but told the rest. There was no point or use in keeping it a secret anymore. Plamen had seen the blaze himself and how it had moved me through the Hub. Rusper had seen it once as well. But the Sight . . .

‘Both hold this power?’ Rusper said when I was finished.

‘I . . . don’t know,’ I confessed. ‘I’ve tried to see with the other one, but it never works. Only mine.’

His face then pickled into another, possibly angrier, scowl. ‘And so, what else have you seen?’

It fell right out of my mouth: ‘Underground roads. I don’t know what they are, really, but I’ve made drawings. They’re in my scroll case over there.’ Plamen followed my pointing finger and retrieved the tube from its hook. ‘Under the Deep, under the hill, I think, but I couldn’t tell how far exactly. It was part of a . . . a dream.’

‘Sounds it.’

‘No . . .’ I frowned at Rusper’s stubbornness. ‘You don’t understand. I fell asleep touching the Disc. It was a dream, but it was . . . real, too.’

‘A real dream.’

With a schwack, Plamen extracted my parchments and came back. Opening my diagrams, he looked at them for several studious moments. I felt ashamed of their roughness and a little relieved Rusper couldn’t see them too. ‘These mean nothing to me,’ murmured Plamen as Marszal Savhar came to look too.

‘And I’m blind,’ Rusper said. All three of us looked at him then. He wasn’t leaning anymore, but standing rigid behind the worktop. ‘Tell me about these roads, then. How do you propose such things could possibly exist when we’re still digging so far above where you believe them to be?’

There was only one word with which to answer. When I said it he laughed, but it wasn’t mockery. Not quite. Again, I saw him trying to locate me in his darkness.

‘So, the Builders left a city under ancient Antissa and forgot to tell anyone about it before disappearing into the desert? I’m going to need a little more than just your word on this one, Flint.’

‘I fear I must agree with the Viceroy,’ said Marszal Savhar, pushing her chest out as if distancing herself from the subject. ‘Forgive me, High Commander, but without proof of this . . . magic . . . the boy asks much of a soldier.’

I closed the lid, offended now, and Rusper twitched at the snap. ‘This torque you mention.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You have it now?’

‘I do.’

His voice hardened. ‘Turn him, Plamen. Face him to the door.’

‘Ow!’ I cried as Plamen spun me round. But he didn’t have to push. I could hear the clumsy rummaging on the worktop behind me and the door of the vertical cabinet squeaking open. I’d been meaning to oil that.

It slammed. ‘Tell me what’s inside there. Lowest shelf,’ ordered Rusper.

Fine, I thought!

Closing my eyes, I pulled the lever on the torque, and Plamen’s hand left my shoulder. The workshop transformed into space made of nothing but blue light; space broken only by the interruption of non-space. There stood Plamen . . . Savhar . . . across the worktop, Rusper . . . and the cabinet. I passed through it . . . the shelves . . . their contents . . . the other Disc wrapped in its cloth . . . and on the lowest shelf, an object. I allowed my awareness of the space to close around it and—

‘Flint, please, at your earliest convenience.’

‘Flywheel,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘A lightweight flywheel. That’s what you put on the bottom shelf.’

Outside the barrier of the cabinet door, I could still monitor the shapes of Plamen, watching, and Rusper who staggered to open it again. He swapped its contents. Slam. ‘And now?’

‘Ball-valve,’ I said.

Rummage, squeak and slam.

‘A clamp . . . a scriber . . . lockpin and hex-plug.’

‘Is he looking at the door?’ rasped Rusper waspishly, sounding breathless. ‘Marszal?’

‘Facing it,’ she said. ‘Boy’s eyes are closed, sir.’

I was aware of Plamen edging forward. ‘This is futile, Symphin. Surely it is plain.’

‘One more,’ said Rusper.

Slam.

‘A shim . .. no two shims,’ I said. ‘And a spanner.’

‘Hah! Riveter,’ corrected Rusper.

I both heard and saw Plamen round the worktop and open the cabinet himself. He took the object out. ‘I lack your Guild experience in such matters, of course, Viceroy, but this is a spanner, I believe. The boy saw right for every object that you placed.’ He set it down.

Fully aware of how still Rusper was standing, my anger flared. How much more did he want? I turned around and glared at him. ‘You saw the white light! You know the Disc has a magic inside it!’

Glances were exchanged but no one spoke.

So I grabbed the scene I’d dreamed: ‘Two nights ago there was a woman in your quarters. A dark woman from the harem with green gems around her neck. She was naked and she gave you a green dragonfly earring. She was touching you and then she kissed you, and—’

‘That’s enough,’ snapped Plamen.

I crossed my arms tightly and just glared at the floor. When I finally did look up again, the blind face had gone empty, and maybe even a bit pale, which made the redness round his eyes more awful. Rusper didn’t stare or pretend to look at anyone or anything; he simply stood there, allowing silence to stretch between us. The Marszal broke it.

‘Well . . .’ she said, stepping forward. And gave a husky, heartening chortle. ‘No call for embarrassment, I’m sure, Honorary Caliph . . . if . . . what the boy describes is true.’ She wasn’t sure what to make of all this, I could tell. ‘Most men of the viziership keep one girl at the very least, do they not.’

Plamen’s eyes chided her, but Rusper didn’t seem to have heard. Very slowly, he slid his hand into a pocket of his shirt. Withdrawing it, he let a small green jewel fall on his palm. A dragonfly. ‘Bring me the torque,’ he said.

Anger all burned away now, I was ashamed. But at a nudge from Plamen, I wriggled the leather off my wrist and came forward to place it on the worktop near the sparts. In a small, bruised voice, ‘It was in the same dream that showed me the roads,’ I added.

‘Yes,’ said Rusper and sank into his chair. Touching the torque, he passed his fingertips over the lion’s head embossed on the lid; then gripped the box and hooked the lid with fingernails.

Blue light.

‘Get your hand away!’ I shouted.

But too late. The whiteness crackled inside like the roots of an explosion, then leapt. A living arm of lightning fury wrapped Rusper’s head and threw him right out of his chair. He crashed hard into the worktop behind him, dashing more sparts onto the floor. I flung myself at the source to shut it out—but it was over already. The blaze slipped under the lid. The torque went dark.

Limp, Rusper released the edge of the worktop and slid onto the bricks, while Plamen and Savhar ran to his side. Heart pounding, I made sure the torque was shut—definitely shut—before I scrambled under the workbenches to his feet. Plamen knelt and gripped him by the shoulder. ‘Symphin?’ He shook it. ‘Symphin, do you hear me?’ He looked at me and snarled, ‘What happened?’

‘I don’t know what happened!’

‘Symphin!’

Rusper’s eyes were closed but surely, if he was dead, his head should loll if he was shaken like that.

Plamen shook him again and this time Rusper did move. Only a twitch of his left hand that rolled a washer away. Then his eyes snapped open and I gasped. Two tiny storms of bright white lightning blazed, one inside each of his pupils, burned and gone in an instant. ‘Caliph Symphin?’

‘Are you hurt, sir?’ said the Marszal.

‘Yes . . . I am,’ Rusper croaked. Then winced, moving his arm and shoulder stiffly. ‘Knocked my back right on that worktop.’

Slow-feed relief steadied my heartbeat as he gave Plamen his elbow and I took the other arm. We helped him up. But for a while he simply stood there, rubbing the small of his back and looking from face to face, dazed. Then he looked around the workshop as if just woken from a sleep. ‘Are you well, Symphin?’ said Plamen.

‘Yes, I think so,’ Rusper said.

And when he looked to me again, his eyes weren’t blankly staring. He was looking at me. ‘You can see,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he breathed. ‘I can, it seems.’

The Marszal ran a hand over her mouth. Then regarded Plamen and me, each in turn: ‘What is this power of the boy’s, some stray arcanum of Ered?’

‘No,’ I said distractedly.

‘Then what—’

‘Savhar,’ said Rusper. ‘Flint . . .’ He blinked slowly, then let his eyes drop to the bricks; glanced leg to leg of the workbenches as if suddenly these were the most fascinating pieces of engineering in all Antissa. He raised the quadruple lever-wheel that he had broken in anger, put it down, then hovered his hand above the torque. ‘Hm,’ he mused. ‘By all means help yourself.’ So he did recognise the torque from his own wardrobe. The ghost of a smile flickered on his lips, then disappeared. ‘. . . If you would kindly leave us please,’ he said, seeming to find a sharper focus. ‘I would now speak with my aide alone.’