Savhar lowered the scope.

‘What is it?’ Rusper prompted.

I glanced to the Marszal as the scope went up a second time. She smiled, ‘It’s Keda. The Laudassan garrison escorts the clerics to Antissa.’ A pause. ‘And there’s . . . another with them, ekharan. Looks like Methar.’

‘Bardon?’

‘Yes sir.’

Rusper’s goggles turned towards the distant line. ‘What in hell-sands . . .?’

‘Why do we stop here?’ said Amyra as she parted from her column, horse approaching at a trot. With a flick of gold-rimmed eyes, Rusper gestured to the line of dusty men, horses and camels in the haze. She veered her horse, her guard all mimicking her like mounted chambermaids. ‘Rath?’ she said.

Rusper answered: ‘Clerics. Accompanied, it would seem, by the Caliph-Archimandrite and Artabh Keda’s Eighth Battalion. Marszalekh, if you please, lend the lady your eye.’

Parallel to the faraway procession, at half the distance, a herd of gazelle that had been grazing in sun-bleached gorse grew wary and sprinted away across the gypsum. Lieutenant Jharis spurred his horse up beside Savhar’s, took the scope and returned to the Senera. As she too peered through the glass, I tried my best to be discreet about spurring Sprocket some way forward so I could get a better view, but Rusper stopped me with a glance.

Then he turned the look on Amyra. ‘I sent summons to neither the clerics nor Artabh Keda,’ he said to her. ‘Sinarre will perhaps enlighten me as to why she’s left the front at Chidh Eshipas.’

Between Viceroy and Flag-Senera, Savhar stiffened.

‘Perchance that front has fallen,’ replied Amyra. Closing the scope, she tossed it back and Savhar caught it. Rusper said nothing but when Amyra looked at him it was with none of those shrewd smiles I was used to. ‘I know nothing of this.’

Rusper scowled something I missed. ‘And why should their cavalcade be here, north of the city?’

‘They come from the west,’ said Savhar, pointing a path with the scope. ‘From Calvallagh, most likely.’

‘Wounded?’

‘None. But look for yourself, sir. There’s a caravan.’ She touched the scope on Rusper’s cuirass while I stood in Sprocket’s stirrups, craned my neck and . . . yes, a dusty square.

Rusper lifted his goggles, let them fall around his neck. Amyra watched him. The skin underneath was so fragile and the raw, naked eyelids spasmed horribly in the glare. In moments, tears were flowing down his cheeks. But he grimaced through the eyepiece all the same, finally detaching himself with a gasp. ‘That’s easily two hundred priests,’ he scraped, thumping the scope on Savhar’s chest and fumbling the goggles back on. ‘Have the party advance at an even pace. I’ll ride ahead and confer with Bardon. Flag-Senera!’

Raising her chin, ‘Viceroy?’

‘Attend if you will. Alone.’

He didn’t wait, but racked his reins and cantered off from our column and I smiled inside at how Amyra hesitated, if only for a moment, under the challenge to abandon the protection of her Iron Shield. But she rose to it, spurred her mount and rode after Rusper.

Our column moved on over gypsum, though I barely shifted my eyes away from the distancing backs of Rusper and Amyra; not even to look at the outlandish vehicle that travelled at the heart of the procession. By the time they reached it, the gap was less than half a mile.

Riding beside Savhar, I watched as they dismounted and addressed the clerics. Their line had stopped now. I saw a soldier who I thought might be Keda dismount and salute the Viceroy. I heard no raised voices on the air. Hands and arms soon went still. It all seemed civil enough. The closest clerics started to condense around the caravan, then crowd so thickly that they almost blocked all view to Rusper and Amyra. As if trying to protect it.

When they came back to our column, I wished more than ever for a glimpse of Rusper’s eyes. But even his words to Savhar were spoken close at her ear. Whatever he said, the Marszal reacted with a guffaw; quickly checked to wide-eyed silence. Amyra didn’t say anything. I tried to read her black-lined eyes when close enough, but couldn’t.

For the rest of the journey the military company held the back of the line, though it wasn’t long before Rusper and Amyra rode up to the head again. Savhar did the same, saying something about needing to speak with her telmadhi. I sensed avoidance of questions and wasn’t really surprised. My own intrigue burned like the mounting sun.

We climbed the hill of the fortress, passed through the North Gate and the crowds parted as we moved into the streets. The clerics, so unexpected and so many all at once, seemed to stun the district folk, but that couldn’t stop the awful cries of wives and mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children rushing forward, clutching, wringing chafed hands from gurneys.

But something had changed here. As soon as Sprocket passed between the turrets of the North Gate, I felt it; thought I saw some difference about the faces in upper windows, watching us through laundry bunting. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but as we entered the High District a sick sensation filled me up. The Iron Shield was everywhere. Not a single fortress guard.

‘Keep close, Flint,’ Rusper said in the courtyard as I came down from my saddle.

That didn’t help the feeling. ‘What’s happening?’

He waved the question away.

As the travellers dismounted, I stood nervously with reins tight in my hand. Camels moaned. Tired horses steamed. Servants offloaded carts and wagons. Lines of gurneys bore the bloodied soldiers off to healers where most would probably die soon. Clerics and soldiers crowded all over the square while, at the centre, that ragged caravan was fully surrounded. Who was in there to deserve such close and constant protection? Was it Bardon—this “Caliph-Archimandrite” of Methar, finally?

On the southeast of the courtyard was Amyra’s contingent. The evening light sparkled on the steel scales of her coif as she watched Rusper discussing something with a cleric. That cleric accompanied him from the crowd and, quick as I could, I found a hand to stable Sprocket. Then caught up Rusper at the top of the citadel steps.

Two Shieldmen gazed ahead from either side of the high doors. Neither acknowledged the Viceroy.

‘Where’s Captain Mondric?’ demanded Rusper.

He was answered with a smirk. ‘The citadel is no longer in his charge.’

‘No longer what?’ Rusper retorted. ‘I speak of the Captain of the Fortress Guard. Did you mishear me?’

‘The fortress, naturally, is under the Captain’s protection,’ replied the Shieldman. ‘This district is not.’

The cleric with Rusper stepped forward. ‘Under whose—?’

‘Never mind whose,’ Rusper cut him off, regarding the Shieldman through black lenses; the cleric drew back. ‘Tell me plainly: are the Captain’s powers suspended?’

The Shieldman straightened and looked at the goggle-circles, an arch look. He said, ‘The Fortress Guard is no longer permitted to enter the Inner City. Honorary Caliph.’

I refused to look back into the courtyard; her eyes like iron thumbs on my neck.

The air was dense inside. But now the caravan had opened and its contents brought out: not a person but a crate – long and broad – covered with what looked like a shroud. It was carried up the same steps by a multitude of clerics, still more following with hands outstretched despite being too far to reach. From the foyers it was carried into the big hall—the Mooncircle Hall—where the Satrap’s throne had wintered in gloom for a whole year.

Rumours ran their course, drawing the attention of the citadel’s inhabitants. But even faster than rumour, the Iron Shield received their orders. As soon as all the clerics had passed into the hall, the Shieldmen formed a blue-and-white blockade in front of those doors; now clearly marshals of the secret. Above their tasselled helmets all I could see was a brown sea of square hats and, through the odd parting off the line, the mountainous heap of two hundred pairs of sandals.

My mind turned back to Calvallagh and the monument I’d only been allowed to mount barefoot. Whatever the reason, the Mooncircle Hall had just become hallowed ground.

But duties called. Back in the Deep, I tracked down Pintle and handed over the armaments report from Ergmouth. Orders from Rusper were to go ahead with work as normal; Amyra’s halt to fourth-level munitions would be overruled. So, as the dunite walls and floors shook more than I’d ever known them to, I put in hours at the chrozite foundry and checked on the fusil arsenal. After our losses, we’d have to swiftly send more fusil-jhendra back up to the front. They were our strength now, not the engines. If we could use that strength to maximum effect, it could be done: we could still break the Ratheine horde.

That night I surfaced again. The Shield’s blockade at the hall had thinned and to my surprise they let me pass. The space had woken up. Far fewer clerics were in here now and I assumed that they’d been given their own quarters somewhere else. Lit candles flickered on tall staves along the walls of the hall, and calloused feet over the stone filled the stale half-light with whispers. Near the doors stood Rusper, deep in a murmured conversation with a cleric. Same cleric again.

‘. . . know well it isn’t to your taste but, understand, this is Antissa and you’re wearing a cassock.’

‘Ill-prepared, I grant you.’

‘I’ll have something put together.’

‘Something with frills?’

A bitter chuckle from Rusper. ‘You’ll stand no chance without them.’ Dim here, his goggles were off and that red skin around his eyes looked less angry. As he saw me he said, ‘Boots off, Flint, and you may come.’

Only then did I notice that they were both barefoot as well. Some of the other clerics, noting my arrival, were making cryptic signals to Rusper’s companion. ‘Headdress also,’ the man said, ‘if you will.’

The clerics had shed their hats.

What had made all this so . . . sacred?

I took my boots and headdress off, ready as always for new eyes to feast away on my white hair, although the cleric Rusper spoke to had strange hair of his own. Bound in a short, tight tail, it was black with a single streak of white shot through. His face was lean, ruddy and hispid with a few days’ salt and pepper growth.

‘My assistant,’ Rusper said as I came closer. ‘One Florian Flint. Presently serves as jhendrit and command attaché on the front.’

‘Does he indeed,’ the cleric purred, sizing me up with a shrewd look, maybe a hint of amusement. Then approval.

So this was him.

I tried to check the pride that bloomed at Rusper’s introduction, gave a short bow and greeted: ‘Caliph Bardon.’

A shallow smile in return. He was a taller and narrower than Rusper, and a bit younger. I looked at his eyes – they were clear hazel that faded out to pale gold – and tried to search them for some sign of hermit madness. But they were still eyes, and keen. Almost like Plamen’s, I thought. Then changed my mind: no, not his. This was a different stillness. Steady, true. I almost looked away from him as I remembered kind Vedans years ago.

‘Begging your pardon, ekharan,’ I said. ‘Only I was wondering what business . . .’ No. ‘What reason . . .’

The Caliph-Archimandrite of Methar raised an eyebrow. ‘Why we are here.’

I nodded. ‘Yes ekharan.’

He made a thoughtful hum and marked, ‘Yet you’re not Vedish,’ with a glance towards the Viceroy.

‘It’s alright, Flint,’ said Rusper. ‘You can speak freely.’

‘I’m Naemian.’

‘Ah.’ The Caliph raised both eyebrows, then smiled. ‘Resourceful as ever, Viceroy Symphin. Well . . . young Florian . . .’ He seemed unsure about something.

‘I see no harm in it,’ said Rusper after a moment’s thought. ‘As I have your trust, so Florian has mine. Besides, in days, the entire city will know. We can’t prevent that.’

‘Nor ought we try,’ Bardon remarked. He then gestured me forward and led me to the throne’s ascending dais where the cassocked men condensed into the thickest reverent huddles. Resin burned here. On the first platform of the dais, mounted on a promontory in the middle, was the container: unshrouded now, a rustic cage made of sisal twine and wattle sticks, half-filled with straw. When Caliph Bardon nudged my ribs, I jumped by enough to feel embarrassed, already trying to make out what else was in there. He lit a candle from another and gave it to me.

In the straw was a small hump. Another cleric took my hand and drew me closer to the cage. The hump in the straw was breathing; it rose and fell on short, quick breaths. They’d caught a wildcat, I guessed, and brought it here for some strange reason. Some tradition?

It made a low rippling sound as I came closer with my candle. A raptor’s tawny face appeared. A brown beak opened, seemed to yawn. The bird then blinked a shiny eye, released a sleepy-sounding chirrup and burrowed its head back through the straw. So . . . an eagle?

Then its tail caught the light—the tail of no bird. Long, thin and sleek and tipped with fur.

‘You did once ask if it existed,’ Rusper mused, now right behind me. ‘Now we know.’

I couldn’t pull my eyes away.

To my silence Bardon said: ‘It was discovered in Methar a week ago, at Uribb Temple. Atop our Stones of the Builders there, it was. Weak and hungry. Somehow soaked to the bone.’

I looked back at the caliph-priest, trying to decide which unfathomable question to begin with, but at my look he merely tilted his head.

‘We do not know much. Not even whether the creature be male or female. All we know now is what the clerics have inferred from the inscriptions.’

‘The Builders’ inscriptions?’ I said.

‘Obscure as those may be,’ added Rusper.

‘It’s so small,’ I thought aloud.

‘We think it young,’ Bardon offered. ‘And even that is but a guess. No living man has ever seen one.’

‘What are they . . . going to do with it?’ I asked next, wary of how Bardon’s eyes cautioned me to lower my voice; be more discreet.

‘It is the clerics who must decide. Archimandrite of their temples though I am, I am not party to their conclave. It will convene this night, I’m told.’

Rusper’s eyes were narrow; at least as narrow as they could be before the swelling closed them up. ‘After all these decades of rejection, we can’t deny them this practice. If they wish, it will needs be as they say and the beast presented as destined claim of the Satrap.’

This offended me hugely, though I fought hard not to show it. ‘Why the Satrap?’

‘The clerics hold,’ Bardon explained, ‘the gryphon as depicted by the Stones heralds divine sovereignty such as the desert, without gods, has never needed for its people to place faith in a ruler. A chiefdom. A throne. Whoever the Builders were, it was not craft alone that elevated them from us. What made them singular, and had fortunes been different, might have made them Vedish gods, was that they dealt in machinations of what some call prophecy.’

‘What prophecy?’ It was coming back to me, though, that I’d read something about this – a few lines of some old poem – but couldn’t remember the exact words.

Bardon dropped his voice lower, seemingly to avoid reckless speech in front of his clerics. ‘Among other things it foretells power. Whoever comes to master the Earthsky Beast, God-Eagle, the Arbiter of Justice will, it says, reign supreme above all the lords and kings of the world.’

A moment longer than was proper, I watched his calm and steady face and tried to work out if he too believed something as un-Vedish as that.

He caught my look. ‘As I have said, that decision rests solely with the conclave.’ Could his voice go any softer before becoming a whisper? ‘As Rusper says and rightly so, the Stones’ inscriptions are obscure, traditions thus inspired vague and untested. Interpretations vary greatly, even from temple to temple. Many among these very clerics would claim that the daemon of the desert, long-awaited, must return there, to guard as sovereign of a kind. We will know soon enough which of the traditions has prevailed.’

‘Why didn’t you ever say anything about this?’ I asked Rusper.

He shrugged. ‘What cause was there?’ When I kept glaring, he shook his head and held up palms. ‘Boy, the gryphon is—was a legend.’ He nodded forward. ‘Until now.’ As Bardon hummed, Rusper sighed. ‘I’d just have hoped for better timing.’

In the cage, muffled by straw, the creature made that little throat-ripple again. All I saw now was the tail and, as it swayed with drowsy motions, I said—‘Gryphon’—to myself. They might as well have introduced me to one of the Celestri.

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

So now we knew why we’d lost contact with Captain Mondric. The Flag-Senera Amyra, as appointed aide to the Viceroy, had officially banished him and the Fortress Guard from the Inner City, with the support of the First Circle. What could she have told them?

No one had to tell me, anyway, that it meant Hetch had been set free; that Amyra knew Plamen was dead. I guessed Venara, Plamen’s sister, had betrayed Rusper too; told the Sanhedrin that there wasn’t and never had been an active war-front in Laudassa. Maybe that was why the First Circle stood by Amyra in the matter of the guard-force, letting her replace it with the Shield. But all the same, it was decided that the defence-line must hold. Just as he’d said he would do, Rusper persuaded the Sanhedrin to see sense and overrule Amyra’s mad halt to munitions.

This barely done, he returned to Ergmouth the next day with Savhar. I stayed behind, my duties now split between those works and hard labour in the bolstering of the Hub walls.

None of the caliphs returned to service, leaving their regiments in the hands of their ferikhs from then on. And so she’d reeled them back again. Soon enough I learned that Bardon had been tasked to hold negotiations with the other five, one by one. While up in his tower, by all accounts, the Satrap slept and knew nothing. Nothing of the stand made by his army, spending lives against his will in this last bid to save the desert, nor the way the southern caliphs had stood down from that defence. Would he look more kindly on them for that?

Rumours of the gryphon flew more quickly than I thought rumours could fly; the clerics clearly not as guarded with their “secret” as they’d seemed.

The night after Rusper left, trumpets of arrival sounded on the walls. A host was coming from the south: not Rath, but ergish Vedans. Laudassans and Methans approached in their hundreds.

Those middle territories, I knew, were bound somehow to old tradition and weren’t like Antissan folk. Though both strains were known as Vedish, they were separate. Maybe that’s why the southern caliphs had chosen to lay down their arms and withdraw from the campaign. Whatever the reason, while there were no engineers among the people of the south, something must still tie them to the clerics’ beliefs. Something had stirred their desert lives and it wasn’t hard to guess what.

They climbed the hill, poured through all three of the city gates and filled the streets. In those districts, the guard-force must have done what it could to stem the tide, though I already knew there wouldn’t be a place for them to go. The fortress was full. Pintle told me the next morning that most of their number had been corralled in and around the vacant Martial District. Some also camped down in the lower part of the Southeast, now almost empty of its broken stone, used up by engines.

That wasn’t all Pintle told me. An Iron Shield contingent had been sighted coming back from the east . . . the Lack?

No. Ered.

As always, the scraps I knew about that far-off place didn’t help me. That it was the greatest, richest, strongest of all the empires in the world – perhaps now the only in the world – was a fact I couldn’t remember learning; much as I knew, somehow, from someone, that it had since stopped getting bigger. Someone from home – Dewar, maybe? – once spoke of disasters their “Spire Ministry” couldn’t control; splinters in provinces, gained lands coming unhinged; muttered words about how even Naemia’s fall could have sped decline. Erik had once said, in a rare argument with Sarah, that were it not for sacred Fallstone at the heart of our realm, Naemia itself might have been claimed as a province of Ered. He’d also said that Eredian dukes had almost ruled us for a time, their golden ducats mixing in with our humble crowns and guilders – a single coin of it enough to buy a whole league of our earth. Sarah’s stories were always simpler and they’d left me with some idea of what Eredians looked like. Long, stern faces. Long noses too. And all with names not unlike the name I next heard reach Antissa.

Develay-Allade, a “Gran-artésan” of the Lostrian city of Sedgian, reached the fortress two days after the Shield contingent Pintle had mentioned.

The dwarf had named him under torture.

That same evening Caliph Bardon stepped aside from his meetings to take a meal down in Rusper’s workshop. It surprised me as much as it would have shocked the other caliphs, though he’d replaced his modest vestment with a robe. It had no frills. ‘The Gran-artésan has been extended the hospitality of the Flag-Senera’s estate,’ he told me as I poured water into his cup. Water only; no wine.

‘All this because of the gryphon?’ I asked.

‘So it would seem.’

I couldn’t see any way of its being part of Amyra’s scheme. Her prized toeholds in Ered, through the dwarf, were one thing – I understood that – but how could anyone have known that this would happen? That a real gryphon would be found!

And what would happen if the Satrap woke up now? Would he care? Yet the clerics seemed to believe the creature was his right. And the clerics, it was clear now, had the heart of the desert. They’d brought the desert to the city.

‘We can but speculate as to how she may turn this to her advantage,’ said Bardon. ‘I can only hope, before she does, to sway the caliphs against her ends.’

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

There was so much he wasn’t saying, this priest-man. And even if I’d dared to ask him more, I didn’t know the questions.

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

It was another two days before the second host of ergish Vedans arrived out on the plains. These were from Shad, Zeidha and Ospégath; at least twice as many as had come from the middle caliphies. More than a thousand!

The fortress walls were commandeered by the Iron Shield, who closed and barred the city gates. On the Flag-Senera’s orders, true-born Vedans were locked out.

But that night news reached the citadel, spreading quickly, that more artésans were coming from Ered: three more, whose names I didn’t catch, but who were coming from the provinces of Creach, Cless and Crippin. Soon enough they too awaited entry just below the hill.

And still the fortress gates held closed. The artésans and their convoys joined the encampments of the ergish and the army on the plains.

What was Amyra so afraid of?

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

I lived the next days between my duties in the Deep and the new rumours as they trickled underground; unable to leave for keeping Pintle’s strict schedules, all the more urgent as bigger quakes set back our progress in the Hub. That was, at least, until we heard that the army was returning.

Troop by troop, soldiers came back from the north and as their numbers grew and grew, adding to the mixed host on the plain, I yearned to know what had happened. Some said the Ergmouth line had fallen. There was no word yet about Rusper, Commander-in-Chief. And still more came, all locked out.

With all the incoming news, it almost went unnoticed when the clerics’ made their decision. The red herald announced to a full courtyard that Antissa would play host to a ceremony they were calling the “Rite of Uribb” after the site in Methar where they’d found the gryphon. The Rite would take place three days and let petitioners place bids for the Satrap’s sacred property.

Was that why Ered was here? Couldn’t be. Or had she already known?

Where was Rusper? I had to talk to Bardon again, at least. Something felt wrong, very wrong.

But the Caliph-Archimandrite was gone: barely a day after we’d spoken, gone without a trace. And as unlikely as I thought it that he’d gone back to Methar, the city was in the hands of those I couldn’t turn to for help.

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

Still more soldiers returned. It was true: Ergmouth had fallen. I overheard the fearful mutters that at least one regiment was still trapped in the erg-passage—surrounded—and no matter how hard strained my eyes from the citadel terraces, I couldn’t make anything out through the miasma to the north. Nightmares of Rath scared me awake, hour to hour, when I tried to sleep. Were they alive? Was Rusper?

A hawk brought news of the next arrival, and again rumours travelled fast. Not surprisingly either. With yet another artésan, awaiting the welcome of the Satrap on the doorstep of Vorth’s capital was now the Spiral Duchess of the Dunfinds herself. Whose name I couldn’t pronounce.

Amyra opened the gates.

The city was swarmed, while the troops stayed camped out on the plains among their battered war engines. Big Spale, I heard, wasn’t there.

Where was Rusper?

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

In all the chaos no one saw the final Eredian arrive. But I’d got good at eavesdropping. Miming duties in the foyers, I listened.

Others mingled; viziers welcoming a handful of artésans. A greenstring servant was dashing deftly among them, serving the golden spirit suntarr. Vizier Vesh was boasting loudly about his horses—‘Finest stock you’ll lay eyes upon in this desert . . .’ No one seemed to be listening, but his voice made it hard to hear the other conversations.

I made my way around the pillars, past Vizier Ramed who was trying to convince another pair of ambassadors of something—‘Perhaps you’ll do me the great honour of sampling . . .’ They were nodding as they sipped suntarr. ‘But of course, only if time and chance permit.’

I only half noticed the details of Eredian clothes – the bright multicoloured coats, curling epaulettes and capes, coiling liripipe headscarves, leather boots up to their knees – and then of course, those faces. Long and pale and strongly boned, as I’d imagined, with little mouths that moved but slightly when they spoke and didn’t smile. The High Commander, I thought, had been more like his foreign mother than he probably would have admitted.

‘. . . knows anything about the man . . .’ I heard one Eredian remark to another, who then replied that he’d ‘. . . heard much the same in Riddering.’

After my months among the Vedish, the way these people formed their words was so smooth, clear, precise.

‘The Lostrian acquisition of Norwynd as province is fresh news, I grant you, yet this new duke of Wyndhall seems as much a mystery to the Spire as to the rest of . . .’

Once past the high-browed talk, I hovered close I dared to another door where four Shieldmen stood talking. From cover, I listened. Unlike the others, this new Eredian had made specific request for the Viceroy’s audience. Unwilling to see the Flag-Senera instead, he now waited in the antechamber. And while the Shield had told him why such a meeting couldn’t be arranged, apparently the man had insisted. Which made the next thing that happened look like a miracle.

‘What’s all this about a sacred rite?’ All through the foyers, viziers and artésans turned to see Rusper Symphin bluster from the barracks corridor. Savhar and Gudgeon were with him. All three were powdered an even brown by a film of gypsum dust, except for those clean rings round Rusper’s eyes. The top of his arm was wrapped in blood-stained dressings.

‘And where’s Bardon?’ he shouted at the Shieldmen. ‘Speak, one of you!’

As the foyers fell silent a Shieldman spoke: ‘Honorary Caliph, we had not been informed of your return from the front.’

‘There is no more front, you fool!’ spat Rusper. ‘Thanks to your Senera’s sealing the city!’

Viziers were passing sheepish smiles to startled Eredians.

‘Without reinforcements we had no choice but to disband just when we could have turned the tide! She abandoned the Vedish at war, Shieldman. Ferikh Quade and Ferikh Iskandar now both lie among the dead. Because of her, our troops have barely escaped the numbers in that passage. Vorth will not field another army in this age—save your mock courtesy!’

I’d never seen a blue-and-white so taken aback. ‘Ekharan, ah . . . a Lostrian representative seeks your audience,’ he said.

‘What province?’

‘Incraft, sir.’

‘Fine, I’ll see him. Flint! Is that you? Stop slinking.’

Four Shieldmen rounded eyes on me as I came out from behind the pillar and reported to Rusper’s side. I was in swathes, white hair uncovered. Gudgeon didn’t miss the look of horror on my face at Rusper’s bandage. Or the poison? I mouthed. He shook his head.

A different Shieldman stepped up, this one undaunted. ‘Honorary Caliph. Beyond this door is an emissary of Ered,’ he said at Rusper’s dirt-marked face, torn cuirass. At the red and venous, blistered eyes, I looked away.

‘There’s a room full of them behind me,’ Rusper snarled back. ‘Do you judge me unfit to meet my guests?’

‘You come fresh from the battlef—’

‘And what of it?’ Savhar interjected, muscling forward.

The Shieldman took a backstep. ‘No disrespect is meant, marszalekh.’

‘Eferikh,’ she corrected him.

Then Rusper cut the air between them with a hand. ‘If I’m fit for the eyes of my soldiers, I don’t give a whore’s copper kopech if the whole Ministry of Lostor stands the other side of that door,’ he growled. ‘I’m Viceroy of Vorth, a nation at war, and they’ll see me as I am.’

The Shieldmen exchanged dark look, then opened the antechamber. As if still on the defence line, Rusper marched straight past him through the door, leaving Ferikh Savhar and Gudgeon behind. I followed at his heels, entering the room to see an extremely tall man rise out of a chair and say, ‘Good evening.’

‘Please accept Antissa’s civic apologies,’ said Rusper tersely. ‘No doubt you were expecting a warmer welcome. Unfortunately you find the city lacking in courtesy at this time. Among other things.’ He wasn’t himself. Haggard with exhaustion, and on edge, he rattled as he spoke, only stopping to look at the waiting figure when his eyes had scooped a helping of fallen masonry from every corner of the room. The quakes had done that. But the visitor’s eyes couldn’t be avoided: a startling blue.

I stared. About seven feet tall, surely, his frame was willowy despite the bulk of cloth that covered it. His blue eyes had a youthful sparkle, but was he young? Hair just as white as my own fell in strands so ridiculously straight they must have been tautened on a loom, tucked through a lily-shaped collar. A beard, white too, dropped to his waist, forked and plaited with such precision that its intertwining halves looked like linen. His travelling coat was patterned with diamonds of vivid yellow, orange, turquoise. As exotic a costume as I’d ever imagined of Ered, it both amazed and amused me. His hands were buried crossways inside his sleeves. ‘I shouldn’t like to detain you long,’ he said.

‘No,’ answered Rusper with an awkward cough, as if only now seeing what a spectacle the man was. ‘You’ve some request, I understand?’

‘Two in fact.’

Something that shimmered at his belt caught my eye: a kind of silver ball that dangled off a chain. A . . . tea-strainer? He caught me squinting at it.

‘Speak quickly then,’ prompted Rusper.

He did. ‘The first will come as small surprise to you, ekharan. Word has only too naturally reached my ears of the gryphon so recently acquired by your Syphus. Thus I come to ask your leave to enter the Rite of Uribb and make my own bid for the beast.’

‘In that case,’ said Rusper, ‘you’ve waited quite unnecessarily. As I’m told, the Rite is open to all the guests of the Satrap able to present something of value to him.’ Saying this, he turned to leave but the mild voice stopped him.

‘If you please, sir. In return for your express permission, it is my wish to make an offer of my own to your good self.’

‘And what might that be?’

The man lowered his brow. ‘That of my help,’ he replied.

In the silence that followed, Rusper squared himself in front of the visitor. Who gazed back with strange intensity.

‘Help?’ Rusper repeated, quite cold now.

‘Indeed sir.’

The Viceroy’s dusty face gave a twitch. ‘The door, Flint.’ I hurried back to close it, suddenly just as wary of the Shieldmen outside, pushed the bolt home and returned. ‘Explain yourself,’ said Rusper.

The man offered the tiniest of smiles: ‘Most recently I hail from the province of Incraft. I am sure you’ve been informed thus, however it would appear that your doormen have somewhat overestimated my office there.’

‘How is that?’

‘I have none. Quite unlike the good artésan of the Dunfinds and provinces thereabouts, I am no ambassador of Incraft. In fact, sir, I am not at all of Eredian extraction.’

‘Not Eredian!’ Rusper spluttered. ‘Look at you, man, those garments would wring tears from a score of Lostrian seamstresses.’

I thought the man might blush but he only grinned with a little bow. ‘A most princely compliment, thank you, but one that scarcely changes the fact that one may don many skins not one’s own. Viceroy Symphin.’

Rusper’s face dropped, the air changing. His voice went hard: ‘I do not care for your intimations, sir. I’ll ask once more. What do you mean by an offer of help?’

‘The dilemma that binds you to the Flag-Senera is known to me,’ the man continued. ‘And I am here to inform you that you are not without practical avenues. The province of Incraft retains but fraying ducal ties to the Eredian Empire and is, for that reason, perhaps as good a realm as any in which to find oneself an exile.’

I swallowed.

Rusper’s shoulders tightened. ‘I beg your pardon.’

‘You were a child in exile yourself, Rusper Symphin,’ the man went on. ‘It is quite natural that you should have taken mercy upon a people bereft of homeland, and equally so that your deeds have earned you disrepute from your Sanhedrin and Caliphate. You have powerful enemies. In such a light, it is perhaps less natural that your mercy has endured this far. Perchance then, the time has come to concede that it may no longer be within the realms of possibility to protect both their lives and your own behind the walls of Antissa.’

Rusper bristled, nostrils flaring. ‘How do you know of this matter? Who in hell-sands are you?’

An apology creased the tall man’s forehead. ‘I beg that you will forgive if I have offended, sir. I have been attentive to the affairs of Vorth some time.’

‘I asked you to identify yourself.’

‘Of course,’ said the man. ‘My name is Albastra Azal.’

I snapped to attention.

‘Indeed!’ laughed Rusper. ‘The mathematician?’

‘I have dabbled, if you like, in mathematics.’

‘Dabbled.’

‘Rather out of the habit.’ He cocked his head and smiled the briefest smile I think I’d ever seen.

Rusper laughed again, then laugh turned scowl. ‘You are Azal the Mathematician?’ he repeated as if to a deaf person.

‘I’m Azal . . . a mathematician, certainly,’ replied the man with modesty.

Plunging a bloodstained hand into his jacket, Rusper pulled out his pen. The one I knew. Tugging it in half, he produced that tightly-wound strip of yellow parchment, coated with ciphers in old ink. ‘This is a piece of Azal’s Theorem,’ he said, ‘inherited from Meck, former Chief Engineer of this city. You composed it?’

The blue gaze settled on the paper. ‘Yes I did, I’m afraid. Not my best work. The rest . . . ?’

‘Lost,’ said Rusper.

‘Just as well.’

A long silence. ‘So tell me, ekh Azal. Is there anything else in which you’ve dabbled?’

Such an aggressive question was the last thing I expected from Rusper after all the stories I’d heard him tell about the famous genius. But the same placid smile came back. ‘This list is varied, I grant you.’

The engineer took one moment to glare up at the man’s face. Then flashing teeth: ‘I don’t believe you. This may have worked on the Sanhedrin but it won’t work on me. Azal disappeared from Vedish records almost fifty years ago. Whoever you are, then, I advise you to return to your Senera and inform her that she will have to try harder to entice my trust. And I advise you do so before I have you mounted on a rack!’

Scared of what I’d see, I looked back up at the visitor’s face. But his look was steady.

‘Your misgivings are most fair,’ he said. ‘In view of the Flag-Senera’s intimate contact with Ered, you would certainly be foolish to dispense your trust so easily, all the more so with your citadel brimming with guests from the Empire. Even without them your distrust of me is far from surprising. You entertain thoughts of placing me under arrest for what I’ve said – torture perhaps – thereby to draw answers about your adversary’s plans. I will be unable to provide them. Like you, I’m afraid, I may only speculate as to the whereabouts of the Caliph-Archimandrite. As for whether or not you believe me to be the scribe of the Theorem you hold, well, that may be a quandary for another day. My business in Antissa on this occasion is . . . mostly . . . non-mathematical. And so I must ask once again that you approve my participation in the Rite of Uribb.’

Rusper narrowed his eyes. ‘Denied.’

I blurted, ‘No! What—why?’

‘Quiet, Flint.’

I was shocked by my own outburst. Did I trust this person already? Was I right to? Was it even possible that this was truly the legendary mathematician and not an imposter sent by Amyra to trick us? He could be that.

Yes he was probably that. And yet . . .

Astonishingly, the visitor showed no sign of insult at Rusper’s blunt refusal. His voice was kind. ‘I did largely expect that such would be your decision. Of course, I am sorry to say that I must therefore withhold all help. For the moment. I will return to Incraft, with or without success in my endeavours, once the Rite is concluded.’ He looked at me as he added, ‘Time remains to decide.’

‘We are resolved,’ answered Rusper, rounding for the door. ‘We will do without your help, Eredian.’

‘Which leaves my second request.’

Rusper wheeled back, eyes on the ceiling.

‘If you please, sir, I would gratefully request the return of my property.’

I felt a tugging in my chest like a little knot coming undone. Rusper met the bright blue eyes, which held intensely. Silence unwrapped until I broke it: ‘Property?’

‘We’ve never met before, ekharan. I’ve nothing of yours,’ said Rusper.

‘Perchance you’ve merely forgotten,’ the man said. ‘Certainly it was some years ago.’

I looked from face to face and saw Rusper’s shoulders go lax. Slowly he let go of his bandage, hand floating up. ‘You,’ he said.

A blue twinkle.

‘You were here. After Naemia fell.’

A bow of the head.

‘You left—’

‘The Disc,’ I said. The only thing it could be. ‘He left the Disc, didn’t he? He’s the one who gave it to you.’

‘Yes,’ said Rusper, staring as if trying to catch the slipping pieces of a dream.

But I was already hopping inside with enough excitement for us both, clumsily grinning at the man. ‘Are you Naemian?’ I begged him; rewarded with a smile.

‘I am not, young sir, no. Neither Eredian nor Naemian, though I’ve had a great many dealings with both fine peoples. Then again, I’ve always been an avid traveller and have had much to do with a great many peoples besides.’

I yearned to trust him. ‘You have to tell him, Caliph Symphin,’ I urged. ‘You have to tell him about—’

‘That’s enough,’ Rusper stopped me.

Azal looked at me again, this time with interest.

‘But you said—’

‘Not another word!’

I gritted my teeth and glowered at Rusper. His suspicions were shaken then, not lifted, and it needled me. Could he really think that this was all Amyra’s doing? Even the Discs! That wasn’t possible!

‘All the same,’ said Azal, ‘I should be grateful if you would return the item to my care.’

‘I should like more than your gratitude,’ said Rusper and bit his lip. ‘Tell me what it is and I’ll return it as agreed.’

‘Ah,’ sighed Azal. ‘In that I cannot oblige. The knowledge is not mine to share.’

‘Settled then,’ replied Rusper. ‘You are refused on both counts.’

‘You can’t do that,’ I broke in. ‘It isn’t fair!’

Azal raised eyebrows, finally betraying a human reaction while Rusper bore down on me with his fiercest attention. ‘Boy, you defy me at your peril.’

‘But you promised him,’ I pressed, heat building under my swathes. ‘You agreed you’d give it back. That Disc is his, just like the other one’s mine!’

The blue irises swung when I said that, almost faster than Rusper’s hand to the back of my skull.

‘Oww!’ I cried.

‘You have my answer,’ Rusper said loudly to the man. ‘If you wish, rooms in the citadel will be provided for the duration of your visit.’

I rubbed the back of my head, nonetheless hoping that the man wouldn’t think Rusper was cruel. There was something ethereal and impossibly noble about this person, whether or not his name was Azal.

‘Most kind,’ he said. ‘But I’ve lodgings arranged already in the districts.’

Rusper’s frown bordered on disgust. ‘Well then. If there isn’t a third request?’

‘I humbly thank you for your time,’ said the man. ‘And, of course, wish you good luck until such time as we speak again.’

‘What makes you think we will do that?’

‘Sir, if not for the reason you have just now given me, then quite simply because the world is getting smaller. As you’ve good cause, yourself, to know.’

‘I’ve heard enough.’ Rusper turned on his heel and marched to the door. ‘Flint, if it pleases you.’ Unbolting it, he threw it wide and swept out at a pace that cut the group of Shieldmen like wind through a blue-and-white wheat. I held back just long enough to look once more at the tall visitor’s face: the man who called himself Azal and could explain one thing at least. But his own gaze was fixed on Rusper’s back, expression still. Like a portrait. ‘Now Flint!’

Only as I left did I feel his gaze play on my neck like sky-blue feathers. So I’d got his attention too, and not because of my hair. He hadn’t looked at it once.

Despite his injury and fatigue, Rusper stormed down through the Deep ahead of me. Foot-traffic on the upper levels got in my way and put a distance between us but I followed him down, all the way down, taking one of the winch-lifts to fifth level and his new half-constructed workshop. The place was in good order, thanks to me, but when I got there he was tossing tools across the worktops as if displeased. That bandage needed changing and he needed to rest, but just right now I didn’t care.

‘Why?’ I said, my sharp tone breaking through his mutters.

‘Why what.’

‘Why did you refuse him?’

‘Don’t be a dolt. One erg-damned gryphon and now any lark in eastern silks is a living Vedish legend if he says so? Take a hold of yourself, boy.’

‘No.’ I was angry. ‘No. You always do this. I’m not a—’

‘Child?’ he snapped. ‘Not a child, is that it? Yes, Flint, in spite of your bounty of abilities and uses, you are a child and if you ever thought this a game, it has long ceased to be one. Use your cogs! If that Eredian ponce is Azal and has never made the acquaintance of Amyra, then he has chosen a poor time to expect my willing confidence, don’t you think?’

Half a spart I’d put back together this morning flew across the room. I forced myself to ignore it, let him throw things around. ‘Why would he ask your permission to enter the Rite if he was working for her? He gave you the Disc, remember! That was ten years ago.’

‘Eleven.’

‘Back then, Amyra wasn’t doing all this yet, was she?’

‘That’s not the point,’ he retorted. ‘Far too much is at stake to gamble with fanciful ideas.’ He pointed a finger at me. ‘And we still don’t know what those things are, after all.’

‘Well I’m so sorry I’ve failed you!’ I shot back at him.

He glared but dropped the finger and turned back to the worktops. ‘There isn’t time for any of this, little enough for a gryphon,’ he rattled. ‘Think you’ve failed, ha. The nation’s future teeters on a spline and now we’ve all but destroyed our only chance against the Rath.’

The way he said that shook me; I tried to level my tone. ‘But the fusils, the engines . . .’

‘Yes, the fusils, the engines. They’ve outlived their uses now, don’t you see that. We’ve lost momentum. We know the Rath are passive opponents at best, they always were. But there’s too many, still too many, and the more we shake the north, the more will come from beneath it. The army was weak when we began, now it hasn’t the numbers to meet the Rath in open melee. And metal’s too low to restore the fusil-line, that was the one way we could break them.’

‘The fortress can still be defended though,’ I said, a swallow threatening to choke off the last word. ‘It can, can’t it?’

‘Just,’ he said. Strange answer. ‘That is, if you’re right about those doorways down there. Right that they’re shut.’

‘They are shut.’

He flapped a hand. ‘We’ll hold. But with forces withdrawn from that passage, the Rath have only done the same. We haven’t the resources to rout them now. Call it what you like, but the north’s lost. Antissa stands in occupied territory.’

He stopped his pointless rearranging of worktops and leaned forward. Seconds passed in a brittle silence as I stared holes in his back. A tremor started at our feet and grew to judder the walls, but petered out. Another from the Hub.

I steeled my nerve. ‘I’m still not scared.’

He didn’t answer or move. It spiked my anger again. Anger that he wouldn’t even turn and look at me. Listen for once. ‘You’re the one who’s scared.’

‘Think so do you.’

‘You don’t trust anyone. You don’t even trust me and all I’ve tried to do is help you since I came here. You asked me to.’

Shoving away from the worktop, he turned around with a bewildered look. There were lines, at times like these, around his eyes that made him older than even Loquar had been. But even through the lines and scars and red, puffy worms of veins, his eyes were bright: two hot green coals. I’d not back down from them though; hadn’t from Plamen and now wouldn’t from Rusper Symphin either.

‘You’re scared to do what you have to.’

The veined eyes narrowed as he took a step towards me. ‘What I have to,’ he repeated. ‘Do for whom exactly. You?’

‘My people.’

‘Your people.’

When his nostrils flared again I clenched my jaw and wished I’d thought to have my arms crossed when I came in. ‘We can trust Azal, I know it,’ I said. ‘He’s trying to help you. All you have to do is give him what he asks and he could help, take us to Ered—you and me and my people. We can be safe from the Satrap and Amyra and all of it if we just leave here.’

‘Leave?’ he seethed. Another step forward.

I took one back, suddenly not as sure that I was saying the right things. Not sure when I’d become this or what this was. But I had thought he cared.

Now the face of the man I thought I knew stormed with something that really scared me. He took a quivering breath. ‘You think I’m afraid? You’re right. I am.’ His voice was low, hoarse, unsteady.

‘Then take his offer,’ I said, ‘while you can.’

‘How dare you.’ That tremor in his voice wasn’t anger or fear. It was worse. ‘You think I care only for your people? What of mine? How many lives would you have me wager?’

‘But they’re not your people. You’re Elmine!’ I rallied a split-second before the slap took me full-force across the face. I only realised it had happened when I fell hard against the clepsydra, looking back to see the livid heat that burned in Rusper’s face, that fleck of spit over his chin.

From the floor I palmed my cheek and blinked back tears.

He wiped his chin. ‘The Guilds release you from all duties with commendation. Get out.’