A black-cape guard stood outside the steams while I peeled my dirty, tattered clothes off and eased into the water. It was a gradual process of cringing, toes to chin. Cuts and scratches, burns and grazes, bruises, aches. Exhaustion. The water was too hot. A few other servants stared at me from the farther side of the pool. Not at my injuries either.

Fine, let them stare.

I washed slowly, rubbing gently where skin was split or raw or bruised, but tried to be thorough and even managed to dip my whole head underwater to rinse the grit out of my hair. My neck was the most painful. I’d been too hungry to care down in the workshop earlier, but even swallowing had hurt and now it ached and stung far worse, as if Plamen’s wide hand still gripped it and squeezed. As I cleaned the caked accretion of the desert from my leg-gash, now rough and hard at the edges, I pulled a last bit of stitch-gut that had embedded in the scabs; that bled a little.

After the bath it took me almost as long to dry myself and put fresh clothes on. Clean for the first time in nine days, I didn’t much like the idea of putting my dusty swathes on but wanted even less to walk about the citadel unhooded. Especially now.

The guard took me back to Rusper’s quarters. Triglycerate crystals glowed in their oven as it hissed and the shutters were open, but no one was here. The pallet in the adjoining room looked like it hadn’t been slept in for days. So, when the guard left me alone I went and sat in the sheepskin chair.

White bodies swarmed. A gelding screamed. Kobi lay face-down in the sand. Eflan’s wound oozed with black poison . . .

Con was a heap on the flagstones.

Erik and Sarah cried out on the river-plain, their limbs were gone. . .

Shutters banged.

The gasp I pulled through my throat snagged as I sat up and grabbed my wrist. Yes, still gone. Only dreams.

Rusper came into the middle of the room. I started again as the long grey body by his leg darted at me. It shoved its snout straight at my legs and nudged the gash, which burned on cue. Seething, I pulled my legs up on the chair while Rusper clicked fingers at the animal. Plamen’s dog made a circle in front of the oven and smartly sat. His tail smacked three times on the rug. ‘His name again?’

‘Tazen,’ I said. The dog looked at me before glancing round the room, his pink tongue lapping. Gritting my teeth, I let my fingers coast the raised and pinkish edges of the wound he’d nosed so hard. That skin was swollen, sensitive now.

‘He’ll have to stay here, at least a while,’ Rusper was saying. ‘I have dismissed all Plamen’s staff with the news that he is now indefinitely stationed at the new garrison in Laudassa. Senah Venara cannot take him either, she has three hounds already.’

Drawn by the husk in his voice, I looked at Rusper. He was dressed smartly – a plain fawn thobe with black trim – and had possibly combed his hair. The swelling around his eyes had softened slightly but exhaustion was still etched into their lids. Goggles hung around his neck; the new pair with black lenses. I sent a hand up through my own hair and pulled a lock over my eyes. So that part hadn’t been a dream; still white. Still speaking, Rusper shot me a glare but I was listening, just a bit soupy from my hour of dream-drenched sleep. Which made my voice thick and clumsy when I asked, ‘Did you tell her?’

Glare turned grimace. ‘She may hold her silence, or she may not,’ he said slowly. ‘I’ve no reason to consider her an enemy of mine, but that matters little now. Whatever the Plamen family saw or did not see in me . . .’ He didn’t finish and didn’t have to. If the sister was anything like the Commander, I already knew all the reasons she might think Rusper unworthy. I just wished I could understand why he’d told her at all.

Tazen licked his mouth loudly again and started panting. I wasn’t sure I still liked him. ‘Lie down,’ I tested and immediately he put forward his front paws and lay. ‘What about the horse?’ I asked.

‘Impounded in the barracks,’ said Rusper. ‘Heavily barded to avert suspicion, though it’s likely some have already . . .’

‘He was hurt.’

‘So I believe.’ Rusper was also staring at the dog as he stood there, gnawing at his mouth in a daze and ignoring my concern if he’d even heard it. His right hand moved, turning some small thing between his fingers, but with Tazen blocking the light it was a strain to make out what. Then I saw a small green wing and wondered if the new Flag-Senera was still the woman on his mind. ‘I’m sorry, Flint, I know you’re in dire need of proper rest, but you can’t stay here alone.’

‘Why not?’

‘When the physician has finished you’ll need to come with me,’ he said, which didn’t answer my question. ‘I’ve already sent for Khalyl, that leg’s infected.’

----------------------------------------

Khalyl was cross that I’d lost my bandage and let his stitches get plucked out. ‘A mess you’ve made. Be an ugly scar, no helping that now,’ he griped. And no point stitching it again, he said. Instead, with hardly so much as a word of warning, he doused the wound with some kind of fizzing, bubbling acid, which burned like crazy and made me yelp so loud that Tazen, who’d been sleeping on the rug, leapt up and barked. But I held still. Through the white pain of that burning, at least, I couldn’t feel the added pain of his wire brush as it roughly gouged out amalgams of pus, dirt and gypsum, even some small bits of stone. After all I’d been through over the nine days of the mission, it was strange, almost funny, to realise the worst of all my injuries was the one I’d left with. Clean, he staunched it with a disgusting, muddy poultice. Again the bandage, then a thicker cotton cast to stay on for three days.

Up went my hood. All my joints and muscles far past tired and aching, I followed close at Rusper’s heels down through the halls, only leaving off my backward glances when we got to the barracks. The Captain was waiting for us at the top of a stair I’d often passed on errands; as soon as he saw us, he turned and led us down its steps. Either side of a door at the bottom were two guards who gave low greetings, ‘Viceroy,’ and ‘Sir.’

‘No one passes.’ Mondric pushed the door. We shadowed him into a passage lit by a wall-torch. I heard a scratching from the far end. A box was there on the floor. As we came near it, the fleshy body of Heironymus spun round to wedge his vile toothed snout through its bars. Rusper made a sound of revulsion and the sandrat hissed back in challenge. Its maw and eyeless face were covered in blood; its own, I guessed, from trying to fight free.

Mondric looked through a door-hatch at face-height, then gave a nod to the guard on duty there. The guard turned his key in the heavy lock, lifted the bar and scraped the heavy door inward. The Captain took the single step down at the threshold and we followed him into a round room floored with straw. It was empty except for a freestanding wooden post, a mounted torch, and the pink and pasty mound of flesh at the far wall.

‘Look alive!’

I jumped. Mondric was no longer a man who sipped coffee at a table while a boy told a story.

Across the straw, the bare head lifted and the forehead loaf expanded. The tiny currants of the eyes suddenly grew wider than I’d ever seen them. Choking a whimper, Hetch launched and barrelled towards us. Rusper and I took backsteps but Mondric stopped and stood his ground as two chains surfaced from the straw and went taut with a shivering rattle.

‘Ill-judged!’ Hetch spluttered, straining. ‘You cannot hope to hold me long, Captain, you know it.’ But for an almost invisible undercloth, he was naked, and the way he leaned out, suspended by manacles, made it clear for the first time that he did in fact have a neck. ‘What’s my crime but loyal service to my masters?’

‘The masters in question,’ replied Mondric. ‘Enemies of the Viceroyalty and thus the throne.’

‘But I serve the Shield!’ the dwarf retorted. ‘The throne’s protectors!’

‘So we’ve learned.’ It wasn’t three inches between that jowly mouth and Mondric’s chest. ‘Which puts you at the disposal of its lieutenants. And of course our new Flag-Senera.’

I heard the slow scrape of the door as the guard pulled it closed behind us, trying not to let the thought of being closed in make me nervous. He was restrained, and only now did the dwarf relax into his bonds, letting the chains clink down as he listed back. The forehead closed, eyes reducing to black dots. ‘Many serve the Senera. Doubtless you know,’ said the powdery voice. ‘I’m but one servant.’ He looked at Rusper. ‘Much like you, Honorary Caliph. And your pet Naemian.’

Mondric said, ‘You’ve done exceedingly well, Hetch, to attract so little attention in your time here. Yet you’re no Vedan.’ He said this as fact, but I heard the question.

Any expression in those pudding cheeks now flopped clean off. ‘I see few Vedans in the room.’ Hetch looked from me to Rusper. ‘Look at them, Captain. One fancies himself Vedish, the other Naemian. So confusing, is it not?’

‘I am Naemian,’ I said, tired of his slimy insinuations.

On the beginnings of a smile, ‘Mmm.’

‘Tools, when I want your input I’ll ask for it,’ Mondric said without turning.

A vexed sigh from Rusper: ‘We’ll get nowhere like this.’

‘No-where,’ Hetch echoed like the simpleton he seemed. ‘I know where indeed, Viceroy.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ snapped Rusper.

As the dwarf’s smile widened, the fat folds under his brow closed to almost consume the currant eyes. ‘You are the Viceroy, true enough, but she is still the Iron Shield. She’ll overrule this sadly misjudged indiscretion.’

‘Why should she?’ Rusper put more firmly. ‘What is your value to her, the nature and terms of your employment?’

But the currants only stared.

‘Forgive me, Viceroy,’ said Mondric, ‘but you haven’t the time and I haven’t the patience,’ before calling ‘Garth!’

The door scraped open again and, as the guard moved past us, Hetch’s smile went stale on his face. ‘What are you doing?’

‘You know the game,’ Mondric replied. ‘It’s your business. Indeed my understanding is you’ve had this boy under your knife.’

As the stale grin wobbled, I met the currants and glared back. ‘Boy was spared. I never cut him! Tell them, Naemian.’

I steeled my eyes and held my tongue.

‘We know,’ said Rusper. ‘We know the High Commander was he to order Flint’s release. We know now, also, that you are instrumental to both him and Amyra.’

The dwarf looked at the guard who was now standing next to me, and back to Rusper. He stilled. ‘Then you know already the part I play in your arrangement.’ He pointed a porky finger at me. ‘As long as they are in the city, your impasse with the Senera stands. Plamen binds it. All this you know, so why hold me?’

‘Because the High Commander is not your true master,’ said Mondric. ‘Before your service to him, you served her.’

‘How long?’ said Rusper.

The eye-folds opened, then contracted. It became harder to tell who he was looking at. Another slow smile split his face. As a little laugh came from his belly, my own filled up with ice. ‘Ah,’ he said.

Hands on hips, Mondric took one step forward. ‘The Viceroy’s question amuses?’

The grin opened, revealing the top row of black teeth like lined-up corpses in a pit. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘Or, just perhaps, I begin to see his true dilemma.’

‘And what might that be?’

If I’d been asked a question in the tone Mondric used now, I’d have been too frightened to look him in the eye. Hetch wasn’t frightened. More than a head shorter than the Captain of the Guard, he had to tilt his neck back all the way to meet his eyes. But he did, still grinning. As fleshy folds of neck and back struggled to prevail over each other, he said, ‘Didn’t go as planned, I suppose, your secret mission.’

Shit.

He looked to Rusper. ‘Did the Rath wipe out the horsemen you so unlawfully deployed? There’s a caliph I know won’t be too pleased about that. Or, perhaps . . . perhaps . . . the Naemian’s magic failed in costlier ways?’

It was too close to the truth. Now, like some overbearing nursemaid, he stooped down lower as if to peer into my hood.

‘Something has happened to the boy. Has it not.’ I tried without a show to bow my head away from view. How could one who seemed so simple be so clever? ‘It matters little.’ Face still, his grin turned to Rusper. ‘A dead Commander, however, well that changes much indeed.’

‘Left arm, Garth!’

At Mondric’s shout the guard launched forward to seize an arm. Hetch struggled backward through the straw but Mondric soon had the other forearm in his grip. The little man wilted to his knees. ‘I’m but a servant!’

‘And serve you shall.’

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

They dragged him up to the wooden post, chains and all. Locks, hooks and rings stuck from the timber, stained by deep red that wasn’t rust. Beside me Rusper’s voice was rigid: ‘Flint, I’m sorry, you must stay, so steel yourself.’

As the breath caught in my lungs, I thought how close I’d come to losing my finger on the blood-soaked table of the Iron Keep. Such things Hetch did to prisoners. And now they’d be done to him. Mondric and the guard pushed him hard against the post, then raised his arms above his head. The manacles slid towards his elbows and soon his hands were pinned and bound. Not by the wrists but by the thumbs. A vice of twin apertures secured them both, crested with a rusty wingnut. The bald head bobbed inside the window of his pink forearms as if he didn’t know where to put it. I stamped out pity. If Plamen hadn’t intervened on that day, this man would’ve sliced my finger off without a second thought, or just as happily killed me. He was a servant.

Still, I didn’t want to be here for this. Garth spun the wingnut so the bevelled slats of the clamps pinched both thumbnails. ‘We’re confident,’ said Mondric as he sidled round, ‘given your service to the Shield, that you were privy to the Senera’s intention to see the High Commander made Viceroy. You know more, however. Now, must I squeeze it out of you or are the best bits in the rat?’

As if in answer, a chatter echoed from the passage. ‘You wouldn’t!’ snapped Hetch, his pastry face a pattern of new creases. To which the Captain set his hand atop of the left wingnut’s screw. And turned it.

Hetch gave a yelp. ‘All Antissa,’ said Mondric, loud over the cry, ‘knows you as Hetch, but that’s not your true name, is it.’

‘Tell us who you are,’ said Rusper while Hetch groaned more like one who struggled with his bowels than with his thumbs. ‘And if not Vedish, then what? Norwyndal? Elmine?’

The chatter got louder in the passage, the sandrat scratching and flailing in its box, fully absorbing the dwarf’s attention.

Mondric turned the screw again.

‘Etch!’ he shrieked.

‘What?’ cracked Mondric.

‘Etch, that’s my name,’ he whimpered. ‘‘Tis . . . Heironymus . . . Etch.’

‘Eredian,’ said Rusper with a note of defeat, as if it should have been obvious. It wasn’t obvious. The horrid man was nothing like the classic Eredian picture in my mind: lean, lordly men and women with long, elegant faces. Plamen himself had had that blood and even that should have been obvious by the time he’d told me. But Hetch?

Even in Ered, I guessed, some had to be short, fat and ugly. Mondric thumped the post. ‘The Viceroy put to you a question.’

‘Was that a question?’ said the dwarf, whatever his name was.

Third twist—third shriek. ‘It was a question.’

‘Yes, yes, yes, Eredian!’ he spat. ‘Artésan family of the Dunfinds. Merchants of Lostor. I’m . . . cut off.’

‘Why?’ said Rusper.

Hetch gave a tug at his constraints to leer at him. ‘Look at me, Viceroy. Even in the provinces, I’m hardly prime stock of the Empire. The Etches know value.’ He licked his lips. ‘So they think, at least.’

‘So you are exiled,’ said Rusper and the word hung in the crackling air. ‘Why to Antissa?’

Mondric’s hand hovered at the wingnut but before he turned it again the dwarf shook his head. ‘Not Antissa.’

Mondric growled, ‘We’re listening.’

Again the tongue swept his chops. ‘Shad,’ he said. ‘Trading ties existed, still, with the southern caliphies in those days. The Etches traded with Shad. I was comptroller of the trade-line before it all came apart. Contract severed. Happened to be the easiest way the Gran-artésan could disown a son who shamed him. Cut my charge without replacement.’ There was a flinch in the eye-folds. ‘But there was a creditor in Vorth determined to keep hard-won connections. I could continue to provide . . .’

Rusper said, ‘Amyra.’

The bald head nodded; Mondric leaned back from the post. ‘It’s been more than twenty years since Amyra came to the capital from Shad.’

‘Kept my looks have I?’ said Hetch on a twitch.

‘Why serve her at all?’ Rusper pressed. ‘What do you gain? Revenge for banishment?’

The look Hetch shot him was sharp. ‘The Senera perceives things. As indeed she would. Yes?’ Torchlight flickered on one eye. ‘Wouldn’t she, Honorary Caliph? You perceive things also.’

I didn’t understand what he was getting at. Clearly neither did Mondric who stooped to look his captive closely in the face. ‘Perceives what?’ he said and twisted again. That was four twists now; I was counting. But he must have been unsatisfied by the flinch it got because he added a fifth. Hetch cried and dropped his head onto his chest, exciting the sandrat outside to another frenzy in its box. ‘Perceives what?’

The thumbs were purple, breathing laboured, chest and belly slick with sweat. Face set in a snarling grimace, Hetch croaked, ‘The desert shares the Inwold’s fate. These backwater kingdoms cannot endure all on their own in the shadow of the Empire. Naemia’s fallen, Elman followed. Even the lordship of Norwynd to the south has sputtered out. Already this realm begins to shrink into the dust, burrowing to save what is left on the madman’s whim.’ His head lolled, eyes rolling to show slivers of white. ‘Vorth won’t endure without Ered.’

‘That is treason,’ said Mondric.

‘It is the future,’ replied Hetch, trying to smile. ‘Not plain to you, of course, Captain. Nor to the High Commander. But you, Viceroy,’ he tutted. ‘Of you I know better. And your Naemian. He too will have thought it.’

Whatever he meant, I hadn’t.

Two more brisk twists and now Hetch screamed and kicked his feet under his knees. I no longer had a word for the colour of his thumbs: two dark round bubbles about to pop. But when Rusper took a step forward, I followed. ‘Were you the one to kill Zimran?’ he put to him.

‘Zimran died upon the order of one you cannot hope to touch. What does it matter?’

Rusper clenched his fists and stepped even closer. This time I held back, spotting a verruca on one thumb that was surely about to explode.

‘What does she plan? Say what it is, Hetch, and no more harm will come to you.’

Hetch cackled. ‘So gracious! But how am I, a lowly vassal, to know of plans?’

Rusper scowled. ‘A rogue Eredian artésan, you come to the capital on the heels of a Shadish Senera to whom you’ve been loyal twenty years – I think you more than a lowly vassal. And out of nowhere now she owns the Sanhedrin. Why? What do the viziers gain by allegiance to her?’ He looked a prompt at Mondric, who turned the screw again.

Something crunched—I winced. Hetch blurted out a burst of angry pain: a nail had cracked. I couldn’t see it past the slats but now a rivulet of blood trickled down his right forearm. He started drawing rapid, noisy breaths through nostrils, making moans on each exhale.

Rusper said, ‘What does she pledge?’

Hetch forced the words out through those breaths. ‘Far more than . . . Plamen could.’

‘Speak plainly!’ Mondric leaned into the screw with dread force, but this time Hetch didn’t scream. He dropped his head and seethed and drooled. I shuddered at how flat his thumbs had gone and how the vice creaked with the pressure. At least I hoped it was the vice. He was already bearing pain I couldn’t imagine – surely he couldn’t withstand breaking of bones without begging for mercy. I squashed that pity again, refusing to believe that his ugliness alone was the reason he’d been banished by his family of Eredian merchants. There’d be more than that, must be. But this method wasn’t working. The dwarf was tough and suddenly I knew he’d let them crush both of his thumbs. His toes as well. He could take it.

Rusper glanced to Mondric, who glanced to Garth, who left the cell and closed the door. Chattering erupted, even wilder. Hetch dangled from the thumb-grip, tilting towards the frantic noises. I heard Garth cursing as well. Then the door was booted open. Garth came back, the rodent writhing in blood-streaked hands. Despite a grip that should have crushed it, those fangs had done some work already.

Suddenly the Captain had a hatchet. Only now did I see the bucket. Garth crouched and pressed the sandrat down into the straw; one hand on its throat and the other on its belly. Between his hands the body gyrated in ways I thought should snap it at the spine. The fanged mouth gnashed. Hetch raised his face, tears joining spittle on his jowls. Mondric lowered the hatchet’s blade until it rested in the squirming midsection. The steel was heavy enough and that body so soft that it seemed to carve the flesh by itself. It would take nothing at all to cut the creature in half. Even now I could clearly see the rapid heart pumping away amid the tiny blue organs: it didn’t take much to imagine them spilled. ‘Names,’ said the Captain.

Hetch blubbed, ‘What names?’

Rusper demanded: ‘With whom in the provinces is Amyra engaged?’

I was frozen; the scene in front of me horrific and bizarre. Through his sobs, eye-to-eye with his pet, the dwarf started reciting. ‘Four minor provincial artésans. Ephody of Creach . . . Cato of Cless . . .’

‘Go on,’ said Mondric.

Wheezing, eyes on the rat: ‘Spode of Crippin . . . Wendryl of Nem.’

‘Have these artésans influence in Lostor?’ said Rusper. ‘Power in greater Ered?’

‘They have.’

‘Who else?’

‘One other . . . of the Dunfinds.’

‘Your own family?’

‘Not mine.’

‘Names!’ thundered Mondric.

‘Develay-Allade, a . . . a Gran-artésan of Sedgian. He is . . . in the employ of the . . . Duchess . . . of the Dunfinds.’ Wheeze turned gurgle. ‘It is through Develay-Allade . . . and through the others . . . that the Senera incurs imperial interest in this realm.’

‘Imperial interest?’ Mondric said, voice very low. The rodent was silent now, perhaps stunned under the blade’s weight. Hetch pouted a whimper.

His tears flowed on as Mondric straightened; I slammed my eyes shut just in time.

Heard the wet chop and Hetch’s wail.

Garth was standing up when I looked again, although I tried not to look at the bloody halves of rat he held, opting instead for the dwarf’s grief-stricken face. No, that was worse. Gasping in his heartbreak, he watched the two halves dangle and drop into the bucket, so didn’t see the second swing of the hatchet that came his way and bit into the post.

His arm flopped free as the manacle slid off the severed end. Back behind slammed eyelids I fled the fast-spurting blood, bright over bone, while a howl like nothing I’d ever heard from any human filled the cell. I wanted to block my ears or run, jolting in fright when Rusper touched me on the shoulder. As a second howl tore out of Hetch, I forced my eyes open and looked only at Rusper, who kept his hand there on my shoulder but looked directly at the blood. Steadying me or himself, I wondered? His mouth was flat, face grey. He hated this as well, and now I knew that they were right: he wasn’t Vedish. Nor was I.

But neither was Hetch. I willed myself to look at the dwarf. Wailing like a newborn, he squeezed the stump between his legs in a vain attempt to staunch the gaily leaping spouts. Both legs were spattered red already.

Mondric tugged the hatchet out of the wood, batting back the hand that hung there by its thumb, and sidled round to Hetch’s left. Against that wrist he set the blade. Hetch tossed his head, railing—‘NO!’—as if pleading would help him now.

‘Then speak,’ said Mondric.

‘Speak!’ I yelled. I couldn’t watch this anymore. ‘Think he won’t do it, you idiot? He killed your stupid rat and chopped one hand off! You know he’ll do it, so just tell us! Hetch, what’s she planning to do?’

No one silenced my tirade, though Rusper’s grip firmed on my shoulder and he pulled me back a step. With an almost casual air Mondric made two practice-motions of the hatchet. Hetch groaned, fighting for breath, and turned imploring eyes on him. ‘She’ll have the power she is due. Before he dies . . . you know . . . it’s within her reach. When the Satrap’s dead . . . his throne will cease.’

‘Cease?’ repeated Rusper.

‘Sold to the highest bidder,’ Hetch answered. ‘For martial support from imperial forces . . . this desert will be remade a province of Lostor . . . each caliph loyal to the Flag-Senera created an imperial duke . . .’ As blood belched up between the clamp of his thighs, he gave a ragged cry, then swallowed as if fighting an urge to vomit. ‘Resistors banished.’

Around the hatchet’s haft Mondric’s knuckles were white. Muscles bunched in his jawline; was he trembling? There was rage there. We all saw the white in Hetch’s eyes; if there was more he had to say, he’d have to say it very fast.

‘Who stands with her?’ Rusper pushed. ‘Basra. Dranz. Ramed, I can name them. Who else?’

But the dwarf was fading. ‘Sanhedrin’s hers, Symphin. And the caliphs are against you.’

‘No.’

‘Ha . . . save one.’ Saliva seeped from parted frog-lips. Going limp, he fell forward and hung off his thumb.

Rusper’s shoulders sagged and Mondric tossed the hatchet. ‘Bind the wounds,’ he said to Garth. Vice unscrewed, the hand was tossed into the bucket to join the rat, while another guard came in with dressings.

The prisoner was bundled, moaning, to the wall.

I felt sick as we as we climbed up from the dungeon, the stink of blood clogging my senses until we stepped into the air of the citadel skylink. Rusper laid a hand on a pillar and looked out at the lights.

‘Plamen’s death can be contained only as long as you have him,’ Mondric warned.

‘I thought the Iron Shield could do what they wanted,’ I said. ‘Can’t Amyra set him free?’

‘Not without a fight.’ Mondric’s rage still simmered just under the surface.

‘The throne itself bartered to Ered.’ Rusper’s head drooped between his shoulders. ‘The brass neck of it!’

‘Amyra has none of Plamen’s pride in this nation,’ Mondric said. ‘For all the reasons that we know. And now neither have the caliphs.’

‘Arif, Khalin, they’ve all betrayed me,’ said Rusper, shaking his head. ‘Omran too, even after . . .’

‘Fear will lower loyalty’s price,’ said the Captain.

‘Even the southern caliphs?’ Rusper scowled, incredulous.

Mondric was silent for a beat. ‘I can’t explain that. Still, you heard the dwarf. One of the six remains true. Did you doubt it?’

‘Course not,’ replied Rusper bitterly. ‘But it means nothing after power changes hands.’

‘She cannot take it. Not yet. Not with you in her way.’

‘She could destroy me with a word.’

‘And so destroy herself.’

Rusper hissed: ‘Plamen’s dead, we can’t expose her treason.’

‘She doesn’t know that.’

Rusper stared at his hands. ‘I’ll find a way to sway the caliphs. I must.’ He dropped his voice. ‘But I want eyes on Amyra. She could obtain a royal audience too easily now, on the strength of her new office. If the Satrap were to grant it—’

‘With respect,’ Mondric broke in, ‘I have been watching her far longer than you have. Symphin. See the dwarf is held or kill him, but do not let him back into her hands.’

Rusper’s nod firmed at that, even though none of what they were saying about power made sense. Hetch had said it too, down there. I shook my head: ‘I don’t get it. What power can she take unless the Satrap gives her your medallion? She’s not a commander. Even if Vorth goes back to war, it won’t make her the viceroy. Will it?’

But Rusper only gazed out and sighed; nor would Mondric answer for him. It chilled me. Silence lengthened.

Then four silhouettes with tasselled helmets appeared in the lights of the next skylink; the one that adjoined the Iron Keep. Rusper drew back from the pillars. ‘How many guards have you stationed at that cell?’

‘Ten,’ Mondric said.

‘Make it twenty,’ said Rusper and turned a foggy smile on me. ‘You need rest now.’