The gatehouse was cool. I dissolved into its shade, head and back against the wall, and let the talk surrounding the stallion lap against me. Of course they knew who the horse belonged to; his sword was leaning at the wall next to his saddlebag. Above it, just in front of the steps up to the battlements, a hooded falcon sat a perch. A mug was nudged at my fingers. ‘Come, two hands.’

Eyes still closed, I sat forward on the stool to take the mug and find its rim with crusty lips. I drank, withholding the urge to spit out at the tang.

‘Braehg,’ said Mondric. ‘You’ll need it, I’ll wager.’

I’d have rather had water but, at his prompt, I swallowed. Then sipped again. Then drank deeply. Soon I was gulping.

‘Another?’

‘Mm.’

‘Mm,’ he mimicked gravely and took the mug.

With some effort, I parted my caked eyelids to watch him pass it to the other guard in the room. The man refilled it from a small cask and passed it forward; it didn’t last long either. Now that I remembered the taste of the watery beer, it was good. Very good. I wanted to dunk my head in it but I was drained; too drained to do anything but sit, and drink, and sit. Closing my eyes, I rested my head.

‘Tools.’ Mondric shook my knee. At the undertone, I forced eyes open. He was crouching on the floor in front of me, the other guard having gone outside to join the others. ‘Where’s the Commander?’

Lids fell. I croaked, ‘Gone.’

‘What do you mean by that, gone?’ he pressed me and in a lower murmur, ‘Dead?’

Even as I tried to stop my neck going lax, my head lolled back. Plamen seemed like something from another life, another time, as I fought to hold the Captain’s question in an aching, swimming brain. Was he dead? Or just gone like the Disc? I must have given some kind of answer; Mondric’s grip eased on my knee.

‘What about the rest of the company?’ Again my head knocked the wall but he patted my cheek and pulled me forward. ‘Stay with me, Tools. The cavalry. When the Marszal returned, she reported losses in Verunia. And yesterday we got word from Artabh Keda that her thirty had arrived in Laudassa.’ So it was the same bird. ‘Where are the others?’

‘Laudassa,’ I echoed, only afterwards realising it was the answer to his question. My head was pounding.

‘Ten riders?’

And I felt sick to my stomach. I think I nodded. Then, ‘Caliph Symphin . . .’ I managed to say. Even after those two mugs of braehg, my throat was dry.

‘Same old tune, eh,’ Mondric sighed. His hand firmed to a short squeeze on my knee before he pulled it away. Suddenly his calloused fingers were brushing my forehead, lifting the lip of my hood where the headcloth bound it. His voice changed: ‘What the dredth—? What’s this?’

Whatever he was asking, I didn’t know the answer. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t even find the strength to ask him for some food, as my belly fought the rising nausea. ‘Need to.. . talk to . . .’

Somehow, time left me out of the moment when it happened: next thing I knew, when at least some of me was back and looking out of my eyes, was the other guard down on hands and knees, maybe suppressing a grumble, as he mopped a spatter of sick with an old rag. Not again. And not so far, I vaguely guessed, from the first time. I felt another cloth or something firmly dabbing my mouth, but still pushed murmurs.

‘Need to . . .’

‘I’ll take you to him, but you’ll just have to wait. You’re in no state to be walking about anyway, and the crowds block all ways back to the Inner City right now.’

‘What . . . ?’

‘Easy.’ Shoulders in his hands, I was being eased back to the wall. ‘Say no more for the moment,’ he said. ‘Rest a while, lad.’

I felt more than heard him stand and leave me; aware of the vomit-mopper’s tone of astonishment by the door: ‘What happened to him?’

‘Taken the heat.’

‘No, I meant—’

‘I know what you meant.’ Mondric’s tone was clipped, almost a comforting sound as I slipped in an out of thoughts that made no sense. ‘That horse can’t stay, there’ll be questions. Cover it, have it stabled in the barracks tonight and tend its injuries there. Well out of sight, least till I’ve got some more answers.’

‘What about the crowds, sir?’

A huff. ‘You’re right, dammit. Better chance of parting them myself . . .’ His words trailed off and mingled with the human hum outside.

It didn’t sound like the North District. Even for the Citizen District the street-sounds seemed too soft. Voices out there were too few and I heard no bustle of feet or hooves or wheels. What time of day was it anyway? Was it still the same day? For a while, the word and concept of day morphed and stretched and wiggled; like a ball of dough, I played with it, distracting from the headache and nausea. They were going down a bit.

A happy cheer went up somewhere. Many people but far off. They cheered again and again — ‘Day! Day! Day!’ — obviously day, what else would people be cheering? Cheering for day . . . cheering for days . . . Doughball back in my mind’s fingers, I grew obsessed with the plural. Days and days . . . in a daze . . . The cheering turned into a dreamy rhythm as I lost all sense of time, joining the footfalls of the guards through the gatehouse, jogging of boots on the stairs, splashing of braehg into mugs, the odd remark flung towards me, always answered by the doormen, the falcon shaking its feathers now and then. ‘Day! Day! Day!’

When trumpets blared to join the rhythm, I opened my eyes, rubbed out some sand and raised my head from the wall.

The falcon rocked into a more comfortable position on its perch. The Captain was gone; so were Plamen’s things. But I saw the swathed arms of both guards outside the door, the butt of one spear in the dust. It was hard to tell if I’d properly slept here on the stool but the light looked like the light of late afternoon. Again the far-off cheer went up above the trumpet notes—‘Yea! Yea!’—now an even bigger crowd, I thought.

A man in the cream-and-crimson of the watch came down the steps from the fortress wall, and no sooner had I glanced at him than the words jumped out of my mouth: ‘What’s going on?’

His face wasn’t unkind but he shot me a frown. ‘Gathering at the citadel,’ he replied, reaching the braehg-cask. There he flipped one of the stacked mugs into his grasp, opened the tap and filled up. ‘Satrap addresses the people.’

Panic-coloured stamina surged into my body like the water through the tubes of that sphere under the erg, charging them up with golden light. I tottered off the stool, wobbling forward, but the watchman caught me by the arm—spilling his beer as he closed the tap. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Nothing, far’s I know,’ he said, frowning harder. Then raised his voice over his shoulder, ‘Hey, there’s a boy in here acting strange. No shackles, what’s he in for?’

I ignored the dull reply from the doorway as my thoughts churned muddy fear.

Rusper. How many days had it been—how could I lose count of them? And what could possibly be important enough to bring the Satrap down from his tower? It could be anything, but please—please—not that thing! I remembered what I’d heard the Satrap promise him that day: that, if he failed, he would be hanged from the sentinel spire.

I tugged my hood lower down under my headcloth; as one of the doormen ambled in with a yawn, I bounded away. Keda’s falcon hopped and flapped as I took to the steps.

‘Oi!’ snapped the watchman.

‘Let him go, he’s the Viceroy’s . . .’

Yes I was. And even if there was nothing I could do to stop what was going to happen to the Viceroy, I couldn’t just sit here in the gatehouse while it did.

Up on the wall, through shimmering heat, the houses of the Citizen District gleamed white under orange roofs. There was almost no one in the streets. My eyes stung and streamed in the light, slamming my head with that ache, as another cheer went up from the direction of the citadel. The domes and spire sparkled through the haze; it was coming from the courtyard, joined now by the pound of many drums and whine of duduks.

Though my muscles ached and keened, protesting that they couldn’t run, not yet, I made them run: along the walkway of the wall, through the next turret and then down the nearest steps.

In the street I pushed them on between the houses and domiciles towards the gate of the district. But that would take me through the lower quarter of the North District, I realised—too close to my people’s shelter—so, with a twinge of guilt I’d let myself feel later, I swerved clear of that gate and then up through the climbing streets.

They were eerily empty but for dozing vagrants and a few aged faces staring vainly out of windows toward the noise. I followed the cheering and music, helplessly slowing to a jog while the smaller drums sped to a tattoo. Vibrating through my sandals, the heavier drums maintained a steady two-by-two.

Under the arc of Inner Wall that enclosed the gardens, I stopped to be sick again. I let the dizzy, nauseous wave peak and subside, and caught some breath back. Then kept on going; climbed the steps and wove a way through the levels and corridors of hedge. The greenness was almost surreal to see after so much dust and yellow sand, but here were people; many people, all the stone terraces and ledges clustered full of spectators, eagerly surrendering any view of the courtyard for the chance that they might hear what was going on.

But I wouldn’t do that. Hurrying up across the highest garden tier, I scrambled over its balustrade and dropped to land right in the trellis of leaves on the district wall.

This wall was narrow, thinly separating the citadel gardens from high estates. From it, I hopped onto the roof of a mansion below and moved, carefully, down its tiles. Ahead, crowds thronged under the walls and stately Inner City balconies, all milling for the courtyard, unable to get any closer. I could, though it wasn’t easy. The asphalt coating of the roof was coarse and searing hot to touch, but I knew I’d felt a whole lot worse.

From the mansion roof I hoisted myself onto another a few feet higher. Next to that was the first of the roofs that seemed to stem from the citadel walls. I crossed the roofscape, slope to slope, the third allowing me to slide onto my backside and ease down. My sandals stopped me in the trough of the gutter.

Human voices blasted up, citizens cheering in the courtyard as if for my arrival. The multicoloured turbans and shawls of Antissa engorged the square and shaded terraces of its north and south sides. Merchants, artisans, engineers, men and women, stood shoulder-to-shoulder, vying for the edge, waving and shouting. In the square itself, children darted in and out of the multitude towards the black-cape guards who stood around the gryphon statue.

Behind the guards, dancers and acrobats performed. Bare-chested men and silk-clad women shaped liquid arcs through the air with bright ribbons. A torch-bearer emerged through the spirals of colour and stood before the stone gryphon to unleash a jet of fire over the heads of the crowd. The cheers exploded in another exhilarated roar and I almost joined them.

The fire had come out of his mouth!

‘Eya,’ came a voice along the gutter to my left. I hadn’t been the only one to think of this spot: some way along the roof’s edge were some boys I knew at once. ‘I remember you.’

The tall one parted from his pack, who all grinned like perching gargoyles, and moved towards me. Not this. If he touched me, I thought as I stared back Con’s murderer, I’d push him right off the rooftop. And I wondered for a second just how much of that cheering crowd below would notice.

‘Border boy, right? Nice swathes,’ he snorted but seemed less ballsy this time. The way he looked at me was different. Whatever it was he said next was drowned by more wailing duduks, and as my head throbbed at the sound, I knew I couldn’t risk this happening. I inched along the gutter’s edge until I was above one of the columns of the terrace underneath. Peering down onto the muddle of lined-up hands on its balustrade, I knew I could reach it. The other waifs, behind their leader, laughed as I swivelled in the gutter, but their faces dropped when they saw me hook my legs around the column and start down. As the performance went on in the courtyard behind me, the terrace watchers squawked and cursed and batted my legs, but couldn’t push me back up, nor could the boys follow me down. I held on tight against the smacking, then swung my body in among them.

There was barely any room here, even for me. A woman shoved me—‘Motherless chidhik!’—while other hands picked at my clothes so that I had to force a way between the backs and bellies to escape all the commotion I’d caused. The nausea was mostly gone but the film of dizziness made me feel somehow apart from it all. Still, not liking the looks I was getting from people, I plucked at my hood, crouched low and squeezed between the legs until I was hard up at the columns. Uncomfortable, but now I could see. Soon enough, the surrounding feet gave up their kicking. They could kick all they wanted, I wasn’t going anywhere until I knew what all this was.

Minutes of watching went by. The drums and duduks grew faster and louder. Then the ribbon-dancers pirouetted away from the frontal circle, under the wings of the gryphon and up between the guards on the citadel steps, leaping and twirling. The fire-breather was joined by a second and I gasped as their cones of flame crossed above the gryphon’s back, exciting the people to a burst of applause that surged louder when they back-flipped onto even higher steps. I couldn’t stop myself from grinning in amazement, almost laughing, and for a while I forgot exhaustion and thirst and hunger and pain. Higher and higher went the ribbons and the flames, above the drummers and duduk-players. The music grew rapid and thrilling, my heart beating in time, until two final balls of flame erupted from the top landing. The four heaviest drums pounded twice in unison, silencing the smaller drums and duduks.

The crowd gave back a massive cheer while the performers broke away and retreated from the landing, dousing torches, ribbons snaking out of sight.

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Servants ran out from the wings of the landing and gripped the ropes at the citadel wall. They pulled. Clasps were released and a long banner unfurled down the length of the stone above the doors, bearing an enormous Mooncircle in its regal blue-and-white. The crowd replied with another cheer.

Four more servants leaned into the grand doors and heaved; they groaned inward and, once the servants had put their backs to either side, the viziers of the Sanhedrin flowed out into the early evening, attired in resplendent robes and gowns, headdresses and jewels. Caliph Omran in mauve, jangling as always. Caliph Arif in overlapping flaps of orange and rose, all hemmed with gold brocades. His face was solemn, not unlike some others I could see, and I thought of his house in Shen Drumbar, so recently swarming with the Rath. Half in shade were the deep blue gowns and high talliths of the First Circle, huddled together.

That shock of grey and white hair caught my eye. In the shadow of the wall, Rusper Symphin stood next to a vizier I didn’t know; arms behind his back and face down. He wore his crimson council robes, minus the flared shoulders and cuffs, with the gold medallion of Viceroyalty on his chest. On his eyes, a brand new pair of goggles – their design elaborate, their lenses dark. When I saw Zeek at his elbow, I felt a prick of envy.

But my attention was snatched back by the figure who came last from the doors: a lithe and skinny, dark-skinned man dressed entirely in red. The herald: I remembered him from the council chamber. Almost acrobatically he dashed across the landing—so fast I thought he might leap and dive from the top step. Instead he stopped right before it, raised a trumpet to his lips and blew a long note over the square; the people shouting and waving their hands and flannel scarves in joyful answer.

The note ended. The herald’s slender chest swelled again as if he were a cockerel about to crow: ‘People of Vorth!’ he cried out in a powerful tenor. ‘Proud, happy citizens of Antissa! Hear me!’ A high cheer. ‘You gather this day to bear witness to your Most Supreme Caliph the Satrap. Thus may each knee be bended and each voice raised in his name!’

He was like a trumpet himself and his smiles were wide and white and shiny. Watching and hearing him speak, it was very hard not to swell with Vedish pride.

But my stomach had frozen. Something was inside in the shadows of the citadel threshold; moving into the light. ‘Behold now your sovereign of the Mooncircle Throne!’

The voices rose from the square, and around me, in a jubilant roar, as the red herald twirled his trumpet and dashed from the edge in another almost acrobatic bow. I heard the smart march of boots as, from the grand doors, overtaking the shape that emerged, two lines of blue-and-white Shieldmen filed out into the sunlight. Silvery helmets gleamed and sparkled as they descended the citadel steps in parallel: twenty, thirty and still counting. And when the first of each line had reached the bottom of the steps, they halted directly in front of the guards already there. Then turned sharply, drew curved swords and raised them, hilts up.

Out came the sedan. Sun glanced off poles of brilliant gold as the long platform was borne out through the doors on six burly pairs of shoulders. The purple-gowned physicians followed, edging out of the shadows like pale children raised indoors. One, I was sure, had a patched eye.

The cheering shredded away. Heads bowed. The square of the courtyard seemed to sink by a level as the full crowd stooped to its knees. So did the viziers on the landing. I was crouched already but now was squashed against the balustrade by the bodies kneeling round me. Someone smacked the back of my head and forced it down, from which position I heard the sedan being lowered and set down on the stone.

But as I’d done in the tower, I dared to lift my face and look. Everyone was kneeling except the Shieldmen on the steps. The red herald knelt directly in front of the sedan, which stood in the centre of the landing on its own four golden legs. Its sides were veiled and I could see little more than a shadow through the jewelled muslin, hard enough to separate from all the cushions packed around it. His stone likeness stared back in my mind’s eye: wide, bearded face with storming brow and hate-filled eyes. I watched the red herald stand now, still bent low, and approach. He hovered in front of the veil, then straightened to full height and threw his voice back to the square: ‘The Satrap bids you rise, Antissa.’

To a thousand shuffling sandals, the crowd obeyed and rose from the flagstones, steps and balconies. I stayed where I crouched and held my breath; watched the red herald go back to the veil. The shape moved behind it, as if leaning forward slightly, and in an instant all five physicians surged in. I caught the silhouette of an arm as they were waved away again, and they widened their purple circle.

The city waited.

And then it parted, the veil; just by a sliver, to produce a scroll. Bowing, the herald took it. And bowing still, he backed away from the sedan as the sliver closed again, turning only on the lip of the top step.

He opened the scroll before his face. ‘These here are the true words of your Satrap,’ he declared. And paused, no doubt for effect. His voice went sombre. ‘Hereby do I declare that this day, first of the new reckoning of `3231, is—by proper rights—a day of grief within this capital. For on this day has the bitter news reached my ken, that a beloved subject of the realm has left my service and this life entire.’

A murmur rippled over the heads but the herald hushed it with a red-gloved hand.

A new reckoning? A new year. That didn’t matter. What did he mean “left this life?” And who—a “beloved subject of the realm?” Impossible. No one could know that.

But then—‘Zimran, Vizier and First Lieutenant of my Iron Shield, is this day released from his long and most terrible malady.’ The dread didn’t leave me but changed colour. Murmurs ran fresh through the audience as the herald lifted his eyes. ‘I call now upon the Senera Amyra, noble woman thus bereaved by his passing.’

While the four heavy drums began a soft and steady dirge, a chill frisked up my spine. The herald moved beside the sedan while viziers shuffled on the right. She stepped forward. Clad all in black, wraith-like under a veil of her own, weighted with metal, she came on the arm of Vizier Dranz. The weasel. In respectful silence, the men and women of the city watched her slow accession round the front of the royal sedan. Where she parted from her escort, stooped and knelt. It was strange to see. But even as pity tried to surface, I squashed it down. None of this was what it looked like.

Eyes primed to the slightest movement inside the sedan, I waited. Only when the herald cut the air with his hand, silencing the drums, did the shadow move again. Amyra stayed there on her knee, head bowed low. ‘Let it be known,’ the herald read on, ‘that Lieutenant Vizier Zimran headed, nay served, the Iron Shield nigh twenty years: served it, indeed, with the fiercest of Vedish loyalties to the throne of the desert. Thus should this day rightly be the first of a month spent in deepest mourning, as all Vedans unite in the grief borne by his widow and lord.’

The herald paused here again and I thought something changed in his face as he looked at the scroll.

He cried, ‘It shall not be so!’

The crowds stirred at that, a triumphant exclamation, out of place. I watched them, finding it strange how easy it was to read unease in so many people. The folding arms, the shaking heads, the shared, uncomfortable glances. Even the murmurs told me that, somehow, a sour chord had been struck.

So, Zimran had been favoured, even loved, by the people. Was this an insult to them?

The red hand lifted again. ‘To my people I say this. Full well I know that such a day cannot rightly be one of rejoicing, nor of cheer. But as I grieve for the loss of so true a Vedan, by my powers I would yet thwart the pall of his death. And as I am your lord, so I would shoulder the weight of your hurt. I claim it thus, that no such hurt to my nation be done. The day must rise, arise from tears, and rise it shall. Thus I decree it, that there will be no public mourning for this noblest of Vedans.’

The Sanhedrin stood so still. Restlessness was growing in the square; a dislike of this. I saw the whites of the herald’s eyes as he glanced from scroll to crowd to scroll. I saw him swallow maybe. But then he straightened his willowy back and mastered his face behind a smile.

‘Rising thus,’ he continued, ‘I do in the presence of my people, Sanhedrin and Viceroy, appoint successor to the office here left bare. For that is the office of he who stands nearest mine own side. I do this now, without postponement in the name of solemn grief, that none may challenge me nor sway me.’

A hint of the royal rage I’d heard in the tower that day seemed to infuse these words, even though it was the herald who spoke them, and I wondered if the city heard it too. Their murmurs continued, softer, as they listened. And as he lowered the scroll, the herald regarded the woman kneeling on the stone.

‘Know then that I anguish with you, nay for you, Amyra Zimran of Shad. But know also that I defy anguish this day.’

Rusper raised his chin.

‘And bear witness as I proclaim Amyra—Flag-Senera and First Lieutenant of the Iron Shield!’

Applause answered. So did the cheers, but not from all. The crowd, it seemed, wasn’t one. I gripped the balustrade, feeling as if something in my chest had jolted loose and made a turn. The viziers on the landing gave a fuller applause, Rusper slightly late to join it. How many of those viziers, I wondered, knew the truth? How long Zimran had really been dead and that his sickness hadn’t killed him. I wondered for the first time what kind of man Zimran had been and how he’d fallen into such a woman’s clutches. All this, I knew, was in her plan.

‘Rise now, Amyra!’ The red herald was all smiles and teeth again, brandishing the scroll. The woman stood, face to the sedan, while the softer cheers and clapping went on behind her. ‘Are you prepared to bear the high burden I offer to you in the sight of my people?’ It was impossible, of course, to hear her answer but her black veil seemed to tilt and its metal weights to sway. ‘Accept then the honours of thy office.’

The same two servants who had released the Mooncircle banner scurried forward with regalia. Amyra lifted olive hands to unveil her sculpture of braids and, with the help of Vizier Dranz, allowed the servant to slip a sleeveless coat of blue over her slender shoulders. The helmet of blue tassels that followed would never fit her decorous head and so she held it at her hip like a warrior goddess.

Rusper was looking at his feet.

The herald pealed—‘Behold, the Flag-Senera! First of the Iron Shield!’—and at that shout the cheering surged. The herald collapsed the royal scroll to approach the Senera’s side and ushered her to face the square. When she did I saw her eyes; swollen and dark. She had them all. Many in the crowd were raising hands clasped above their heads to laud her. Some loved her too, then. But then the herald spun around, looked to the doors and beckoned. ‘Viceroy, come ye forth!’

Rusper, raising his goggled face, stepped forward. Applause greeted him too, among it whooping cries and shouts of welcome. But also laughter and heckles and I stiffened when I heard them. Mockery and scorn. I could hear them because I knew what they sounded like too. His mouth was flat as he took his place beside Amyra in the evening light. The red man stepped in between them and forward, reopening the scroll.

‘Look well, Antissa, and be not heavy in your noble hearts,’ he read out. ‘It is said the Naemian palace weathered its siege a mere six days. Mine shall not share such a fate. The shelter I have forged to house the children of my desert will soon be fully in readiness. Nor need any Vedan be afeared that the coming siege may deprive them of the water that is theirs, so granted us by our ancient founders. After these days of thirst and lack, I have reopened our pipes at the fullest of their great power. Water flows within the bedrock of this city again as it has flowed five hundred years. And when the hordes of Naemia come to bear upon our walls, it will flow still!’

This was a different unease. The darkness of the words now defied the herald’s brilliant smiles and held his audience rapt. He cleared his throat: ‘And so I say we are prepared. I am your Satrap. And as I am your sovereign father, so are these your defenders.’

The muted clapping that followed these words was awful and I felt sick again.

But the herald knew his crowd and I had to admire him. Deftly closing the scroll and tucking it through his shiny scarlet sash, he seized an arm from Amyra and an arm from Rusper and swung them both into the air. ‘Viceroy and Flag-Senera! Your defenders!’ he cried.

Up went the cheer. They were fickle, these people, and no matter how unsettling the recited words of their sovereign, they wanted to cheer. They wanted defenders. Of course they did, so did I. And now we had two.

From the red-gloved grip Rusper almost dangled while Amyra’s composure seemed unbroken. Their arms were thrust up a second time, and a third, exciting louder cheers. Then the herald released them and summoned back the performers.

Fire billowed, ribbons streamed, drums rolled and duduks pealed again. Dancers spun onto the steps. The cheering picked up momentum, becoming almost a chant, as the six burly men raised the sedan up on high and turned it round; the whole Sanhedrin bowing at the waist as it floated back inside the citadel. Two short lines of Shieldmen closed off the entrance in its wake. The viziers straightened while Rusper and Amyra stood at the edge of the landing, facing one another but looking into the crowd, lifting an occasional hand to wave. Folk jostled behind me, shouting their support of one or the other defender. Never both. It was happening: Antissa was dividing.

I was forced to stand up to avoid the kicking and shoving, and soon it became hard to keep my place. When the Shieldmen parted from the citadel doors, the viziers turned away from the flames and the dancing and made their own way back inside. Rusper and Amyra withdrew behind the bowing red herald. I had to get to him somehow.

There was no climbing back onto the roof so I squeezed towards the terrace stair. Elbows jabbed me in the mouth and in the stomach, hands cuffed my head and sandals trod on my feet. The people yelled in their mixed excitement and crazed thrill. I reached the stair and managed to get onto the balustrade, slide down, but there was still no way through the courtyard. Some of the clusters were breaking, herding off, but the thick of the crowd still remained, standing and chanting at the spectacle. So I pressed myself close to the terrace wall and waited.

A heavy hand landed on my shoulder. ‘Enjoy the show?’ growled Mondric. Dropping my sling-bag on my arm, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me up against his hip. ‘Nine days in the desert and you’ve already forgotten how to dodge a city crowd. Come on.’

He moved out like a battering ram, parting the throng much the same way. The people in his path stepped out of it without delay, or tried to. The press of the crowd was slow to leave and while I could walk easily enough if I kept close to the Captain’s black cape, it was more than ten minutes before we reached the gryphon’s plinth. Only then did I see that he was carrying a long object wrapped in burlap: the sword.

Over fallen ribbons we climbed the steps. All the performers were gone now. So were the Shieldmen, leaving only a pair of fortress guards on the landing. They nodded to their Captain as we passed the high doors and, at his signal, pulled them closed.

Mondric didn’t slow down, not even to greet mingling viziers. Taking the east corridors, he took me straight to the Deeping hall, down the rubble-shaft spiral and into the Deep.

The feeling of homecoming took me by surprise as we hurried between the powdery walls, among the lintels and the ladders and milky pools of triglycerate light. I didn’t fight the feeling. Judging by the vibrations and the sappers we passed, industry had started again on digging level.

But as we made the last corner within sight of the workshop, my heart lurched. Deepworkers were moving in and out of its door, lumbering down the passage with crates, machines and furniture. Preparing for the worst, I ran ahead and slipped between the workshop’s doorframe and the men who carried out the big metal-turning lathe. What were they doing? I’d used that lathe to make the rat-traps with Loquar!

The place was almost empty, all worktops bare. The middle table was still there and, at it, some of the stools. The tall vertical cabinet in the corner. Two lanterns, both half-shuttered. I dodged more workers as they lifted a trunk, stepping aside to let them pass, and then saw Zeek. She stood with both arms draped over with crimson robes, black boots on top under her chin. On the stool in front of her was Rusper, gritting his teeth as he flexed out cramps from his leg.

‘Caliph Symphin,’ I said more formally than I’d meant to. Zeek looked at me. Then so did Rusper, which made the medallion and goggles swing at his neck. At the sight of him I felt another lurch. The inflammation had spread. From livid lids, the bright red streaks now fanned away from his eyes to the skin of his temples and cheeks, like crow’s feet come alive to wrap claws round his head. Under it, a webwork of veins splayed like trails of ink in fibrous paper. The burn from the fusil’s discharge was starting to heal, but the flesh around the weal was bloated and raw, which made it look worse. He met my eyes; the look was blank, as if my body had blended with the bricks behind me.

Then it lit—‘Florian’—and he stood on bootless feet. Stepping towards me, his grin looked painful. As I heard the Captain come in behind me, I grabbed my headcloth and pulled it away. My hood fell back.

Rusper stopped, grin falling off.

Zeek always stared but now her mouth popped open as if spring-loaded.

At the back of the room, as two men lifted a bigger trunk, the man who faced me said a swear. I rubbed a hand over my face to clear at least some of the dirt. But something was wrong: they were all staring. I looked back at Mondric who made way for the men to waddle out through the door, but didn’t take his eyes off me. He walked in slowly, circling me like some risky artefact. And as the trunk-bearers left, I caught the tone of gibe they made in the passage. ‘What?’ I said.

‘How in . . . tarnation?’ said Rusper.

‘Don’t think he knows,’ said Mondric.

‘Knows what?’

An empty-handed worker came in to another small sound of alarm. Alarm at me. Rusper went to where the middle workbench had been and, from a pile of orphaned sparts, took a piece of plate. Zeek hadn’t blinked. Neither, it seemed, had Mondric. With a sleeve Rusper wiped a film of dust off the plate, then turned it to my face.

I jumped at what I saw.

In its reflection my skin was brown, powdered with dirt and scratched all over. My lips were crusty and split. My left cheek badly swollen. There were bruises on my neck like soot smudges. All these things I half-noticed.

For as long as I could remember my hair had been dark; even darker than my eyes. Dark enough, at least, for Erik and Sarah to have always called it black.

As I saw myself now, not a strand remained.