‘Wait, so this isn’t a set-up?’

Jerome lurked behind me.

‘Meant to be,’ said Mondric. I’d never seen him in swathes before. ‘Senera’s always been aware of you. So yes, if Loquar here still served at her behest, that’d be you neatly done away with.’

Through the gloom I found and glared at Loquar’s withered face. ‘You were working for Amyra?’

Mondric answered, ‘Payment received for services rendered,’ and looking to the engineer, sighed, ‘Isn’t that right, old man?’

I growled, ‘What services?’ and mounted the floorboards.

Mondric tongued his cheek. ‘Go on,’ he prompted Loquar.

‘Hundred tallans,’ the old man said, holding the lantern away from his face.

‘For what?’ I demanded.

A simpering defensive plea surfaced from his oily wrinkles. ‘Felt cheated, didn’t I!’ he snapped.

‘Tell the boy, he’s a right to know,’ Mondric droned.

One of those white cataracts flashed green for a moment. ‘It was me,’ the old man said. ‘Me what done it. Snuck in the Chief’s workshop and jammed it, that fusil.’

While anger burned inside my chest, the old woman kept on pottering behind him as if we were only talking about the weather.

‘He trusted you! You could’ve killed him!’

‘And he’s been reminded of that fact,’ Mondric cut in with a dark glare at the little rat. ‘Again, Amyra’s shrewd. Also on close terms with Vizier Basra, keeper of coin. A fact that you yourself brought to light.’

Basra. I remembered her secret conversation with that blue-gowned vizier in the citadel gardens.

‘When you took Loquar’s place as Symphin’s hand, she called in favours with Basra and had him freeze ekh Loquar’s pension from the Guild.’

‘Thought the Chief meant to leave me with nothing,’ Loquar grumbled. ‘After all my years of honest service. Maybe I’m not much good an’ that, but . . .’

‘But he didn’t,’ I said. ‘You were tricked.’

He looked away.

‘Tools, the matter has been dealt with,’ said Mondric, sternly diplomatic. But it wasn’t good enough.

‘Did he admit it?’ I challenged.

‘Would’a done!’ cried Loquar.

‘What does that mean?’

‘Symphin worked it out first,’ Mondric explained. ‘Knew that the weapon couldn’t backfire in that way unless its mechanism had been corrupted. Manually. He guessed quickly enough that between the two members of his Guild with the wherewithal to interfere, Loquar was most likely. It added up when you tipped us off about Basra. So . . .’ He narrowed eyes at the old man. ‘Sent me round for a cuppa and a little chat, didn’t he?’

Loquar cowered as the crone cackled, ‘Weren’t that a visit!’

I looked from face to face. ‘Why didn’t Rusper tell me?’

‘Because he’s shrewd too, as I said. Shrewder than he seems. Saw his chance. Loquar took the payment from the Senera, of course, and the freeze on his Guild allowance stayed in place. This had to be if he was to act as Symphin’s agent in her employ.’ Now he nodded to Jerome who’d crept around me, Eflan’s knife still in hand. ‘Afraid to say, he knew from then your friend was here. We agreed that to inform you was a risk. You’re not always the most tactful.’

Still taking it in, I glared at Loquar’s milky eyes and wondered if I saw any remorse there. Was there any use punishing him now, if the Captain had already brought him round? He’d been a fool.

He’d also looked after Jerome . . .

Mondric inhaled. ‘Last night, Lieutenant Jharis of the Shield assigned Loquar the task of luring you out of the citadel and dispensing with you here.’

‘Alerted the Cap,’ Loquar threw in fast.

‘Had to speak with you myself,’ Mondric went on, ‘so we simply went ahead with the Senera’s plan. Naturally, now, as far as she and the Iron Shield are concerned—’

‘I’m dead.’

His nod was official. ‘Keeping up as usual.’

Jerome came to stand at the right-hand wall, staring at me. As I looked back, feeling like I didn’t even know who he was now, the crone carried something through the reed curtain.

‘So I can’t leave here?’ I said.

‘We’ll get to that,’ Mondric replied and made an ushering gesture to the curtain. ‘Are you coming in? There’s another gentleman here would also like a word with you.’

I frowned. ‘Who?’

‘My lodger,’ said Loquar.

‘Give the knife back, kid,’ said Mondric to Jerome who avoided my eyes now as he passed it back, blade-first. ‘And someone get the back door for the girl, she’ll be cold.’

Through the reed curtain was a room a little smaller than the first, lit by firelight. A single candle, almost consumed in its own dripped wax, stood in the middle of a round table where Loquar’s wife had just set down a steaming pot of something. As she withdrew, a pair of sky-blue eyes met mine. ‘Ah,’ smiled the man who sat there in a chair.

The Captain clicked and rustled in behind me. ‘As I understand it, you’ve already made the acquaintance of ekh Azal.’

I said, ‘Kind of.’

‘Good evening,’ Azal greeted me.

There were three more chairs there.

‘Hello,’ I said awkwardly.

Gone were the festive Eredian colours in which he’d arrived. Now he wore a long, pale beige gown that looked luxuriously cool. His white hair and beard were bound up in many complicated knots which, given how much he had of both, looked to have been a very long job. ‘Do please join me,’ he said with a fluid gesture to the pot. Under the lid was the tea-strainer I recognised from his belt.

‘Two cups?’ scowled Loquar, scuttling in third. ‘Won’t do, will it, woman—we’ve extra guests!’

Jerome shot out from my right and to the far side of the room beneath another loft. Through its ladder I watched his skinny arms raise a latch.

‘And more light!’ Loquar nagged the crone.

‘Cease your rattle an’ get it yourself!’ the crone nipped back. ‘Only left the lantern back in the front room, ye gormless eejit!’

‘Gotta have the ‘glycerate in the front room—don’t we, woman—or we’ll be trippin’ over our feet!’

‘Not if ye’d rid the damned place of all them confounded dust-collectors, desert take the lot!’

As Loquar violently wiped his nose on a scrap of rag, I realised that the worst of my anger had burned out. A horrid creature and a coward he might be, but those were his crimes. True, Rusper might never again be able to see in daylight without pain, but even then I knew as no one else could that his affliction had to do with more than just the Senera’s scheme. Badly as I wanted to, I couldn’t blame Loquar for Rusper’s ruined eyes any more than I could blame myself for Plamen’s death.

Azal was smiling at me oddly.

The back door swung open then, letting in a cold draught of night air, and slammed to. When the candle’s flame recovered she was among us, unpinning the cloth from her mouth. ‘Wind’s picking up, there’ll be a storm out in the desert,’ she said.

Javairea. Definitely her; the woman from my Sight-dream. Not all that many years younger than the Senera herself, I guessed, then wondered how I’d ever thought Amyra beautiful. The harem-senah had applied her own modest spots of paint over her eyelids, a faintly luminous henna on her cheeks and around the edges of her lips; something else maybe to summon brighter glows from her black skin. But all the beauty was her own: her cheekbones high and taut and noble; forehead sweeping like a curve of Spectre jet; her lips so full, a little stubborn in their shape and yet still drawn in gentle lines. Her cornrow braids, though thick, ran closely over her smooth head before they dropped below her neck into long tails tipped with broad beads; some black, some green, with thinner white strands woven in. Catching me staring, she smiled back, almost coy. Then winked.

I blushed immediately. Even though I’d never meant to, I’d seen her with no clothes on. In the Sight.

‘Turned them vanes about?’ called the crone.

‘Aye!’ Loquar shouted back. ‘Kid went up this morning!’ Jerome scampered up the ladder into the loft and his huge, untrusting bug-eyes glowered down on me from the bed of straw I guessed he slept in. I could still feel the brush of his hand from when he’d given back the knife. Now he was staring at my hair, of course. Who was I to him now? One of them, I supposed, and yet obviously he’d also found his strange way into the world of engineers.

‘Boy wasn’t too much trouble?’ said the Captain as he wedged his wide hips into the chair next to Azal.

‘Only a little,’ said the senah with another smile in my direction. Her desert accent, I realised now, was just like Kobi’s.

‘Sit, Tools, I can’t stay for long,’ said Mondric, ‘and there are things you have to hear.’

The way Javairea seemed quite comfortable to stay standing made me think she’d been here often. Beside her, Loquar struck a match and his lips began to pop away at the mouthpiece of his pipe. I sat in the chair opposite the Captain. The crone returned, stabbed another candle in the globular wax-mound and dropped more clay cups helter-skelter from her hands. They wobbled and stilled as ginger daskh-smoke wafted through the candlelight.

‘The Flag-Senera,’ said Mondric, ‘will move against the Viceroy now, by means of your people.’

I tensed. ‘Now?’

‘Tomorrow night.’

‘That’s when that Rite’s supposed to happen.’

‘Correct,’ he said. ‘The raid will fall upon the refugee shelter some hours before the Rite.’ As Loquar lit the second candle on his match, Mondric raised a finger to the look that must have crossed my face. ‘I don’t believe she means them harm. Not at least until Symphin has been stripped of his medallion and a new viceroy instated. For the present, however, her business is with Symphin himself and the deadlock that exists between them. It’s her intention to take a number of your folk into custody and present them before the Satrap as proof of Symphin’s wartime treason.’

I couldn’t handle this fast enough.

‘But you’ve been banished from the Inner City, how do you know?’

He cocked an eyebrow. ‘I’ve eyes of my own inside the citadel. Not Captain of the Guard for my trusting nature.’

‘Spies?’

‘If you like,’ he said. ‘More like . . . well, Loquar here.’

‘Traitors,’ I scoffed. Thought I’d dropped it.

He seemed to understand it was taking me a while. ‘Loquar’s not a traitor, just soft.’

I looked at him as he smoked and said, ‘I know.’

Suddenly Azal leaned forward in his chair to raise the pot and swirl its contents. ‘Will you partake, ekh Loquar?’

‘If ye please sir.’

While the man’s long graceful fingers selected one of the cups, Mondric spoke on: ‘Many of those in the Mooncircle service are personal favourites of viziers of the Sanhedrin, and the favourite of Vizier Dranz has been of use to me some while. There are . . . disadvantages to the arrangement, I’ll be the first to admit. But my man’s quick off the mark and a valuable source.’

Disadvantages? In a horrid flash of memory, I saw Hetch’s thumbs in their vices and his bloody arm-stump belching. Surely not. No, not him. That wouldn’t make any sense.

Ruby liquid trickled out of the pot’s spout into Loquar’s cup; tranquil as the eyes of the man who poured it.

‘As a schemer, Dranz is hardly worth a district merchant’s salt and, like most of the caliphs, will have nowhere to run but simply back into line should Amyra fail to deliver on her so-called Eredian promise.’

‘But what about her treason?’ I urged. ‘She killed the Satrap’s most trusted. Vizier Zimran. You were the one who suspected it first, weren’t you?’

He nodded, then shook his head. ‘Even if there were a way I could gain entry to the citadel, we cannot touch her now. Plamen was the last man alive with the power to expose her. And as we know, thanks to you, while he may have betrayed her in the end, he would have first betrayed Symphin.’

‘What about your guards? Won’t they have to be there, at the clerics’ Rite?’

‘No, this Rite is the preserve of the clerics’ conclave and the Satrap. The guard represents the law, not sovereign rights. The Iron Shield will take precedence over the entire affair.’

‘What about Rusper?’

‘I don’t know. It is the business of the clerics, after all. And even were he to attend in hopes of defending his name, it’s his word against Amyra’s. She already has the whole Sanhedrin by the short-and-curlies and the Satrap himself all but eating out of her hand. Hence her elevation. If she wins this . . . gryphon, she will gain clerical support on top of that, and think what she might achieve then. They guide the heart of the desert.’

Javairea recited, ‘Who’so tames the Daemon first . . .’

Loquar’s lips went on popping.

I knew the lines from somewhere but they didn’t matter. Or did they? I deflated. ‘There must be something you can do.’

The silver-haired Captain scraped his teeth over his lip, eyes going thoughtful. ‘It had been my intention to make contact with Caliph Bardon, through you. We tried but couldn’t locate you. Then he was . . . detained. But he was always in danger here, it’s why the Viceroy wished him always at a distance.’

‘Is there something he could do?’

Mondric’s nails were digging ruts into the wood of the table, not that the owner of the table seemed to care. Then he batted the arm of his chair, ‘No, I shouldn’t raise such hopes now. He’d have defended the Viceroy, there is no doubt of that at all, even spoken for the disgruntled marszals of the Fortress Regiment who would lay the blame for the deaths of Quade and Iskandar on Amyra’s non-cooperation with the defence-line.’

That was right. It had been her fault. We could have turned back an invasion and she’d stopped that.

‘Does Rusper trust him?’

‘Yes he does. The Vedish trust him. An ergish Vedan himself, he has few territorial interests and always has been immune to the intrigues of the Sanhedrin. The Senera can’t control him, but he could so easily sway the minds and hearts of the desert peoples against her. Not only his Methar but Laudassa too and everywhere south.’

‘Time and again the desert’s seen it,’ said Javairea. ‘A dynasty rises to rule the sands from this Antissa, those sands soon seeping from its heart . . . until the sands rise against it once again and reclaim.’ Her eyes were thin.

Mondric looked grave. ‘Bardon’s the voice of those sands. As a caliph the man eats, sleeps and pisses as his clerics do – indeed, as any ergish Vedan of modest means. Much may be trusted in that.’

‘And by a dynasty,’ Javairea added, ‘much feared.’

‘Easy, girl.’

No one had ever spoken about this before, not to me anyway. But maybe they’d never had to. I’d seen how different a Vedan was outside Antissa’s walls.

‘But no,’ said Mondric. ‘Methar’s been taken. Whatever aid he may have offered gone with him.’ He paused with weight, then suddenly leaned forward and narrowed eyes at my face. ‘Have you seen for yourself this gryphon he brought here from the desert? With your own eyes?’

‘Yes,’ I said, noticing that Javairea was looking at me with much the same interest. ‘It’s quite . . . small.’

‘It is a fledgling,’ said Azal, as if he told a delicious secret.

Eyes leaving my face, Mondric sat back and looked at Loquar’s lodger. ‘You too, I understand it, have come from the Eredian provinces to bid for the creature.’ That was one reason, I thought. ‘May I ask, sir, what exactly . . . what one does with a gryphon?’

‘What are you going to do with it?’ I shot in. Mondric turned a look on me that was somewhere between rebuke and gratitude.

Azal looked unfazed. ‘Assuming my bid is successful . . .’

I stared back, silent.

‘I intend to send it south,’ he said.

South. All faces were on his with a reverence I wasn’t sure I shared. Yes, the man fascinated me. And yet I found I couldn’t altogether rid myself of Rusper’s fears. As for the Captain, the respect obviously came from the belief that he was sitting beside a living piece of Antissan history. The Mathematician.

‘What’s south?’ I said.

‘South,’ the man smiled pleasantly, ‘is where, it so happens now, the gryphon must be.’

Ugh!

Pair by pair, the reverent eyes dropped away from Azal’s face. Mondric nodded sagely. ‘You will be entering the Rite, then?’

‘It is most certainly my hope.’ The weird man’s face betrayed nothing, blue gaze unguarded, and I suddenly realised that the Captain didn’t know. He’d been told we’d met, he and I, but not that Rusper had been there. Or that Rusper hadn’t trusted him. That fact hung invisibly now in the smoky light over the table as if the tall man were inviting me to speak it myself. But I didn’t. The so-called mathematician had the trust of Captain Mondric right now, all because of a name, and if I spoke of the chance that Rusper’s instincts were right, then that same trust could disappear. I didn’t want that. What I wanted was for this man to be exactly who he claimed.

Right at that moment Mondric was politely refusing the man’s offer of tea. I looked into my lap, rubbed at my head and chased the gryphon from my mind. What was important was what was going to happen to my people.

‘Where are your guards?’ I said. ‘I thought I’d seen them everywhere this side.’

‘They are everywhere,’ Mondric replied. ‘But unless you’ve a sharp eye, you won’t see them. Of course, Jharis knows well enough how I operate, which is why you won’t see the Shieldmen he’s seen fit to spare on the districts any better.’

‘Are they near my people?’

‘Not with my men crammed into every crack of sandstone on these streets,’ he assured me, making me feel a little bit better. ‘But, they won’t be far.’

I thought about the shadows in the alleys on our way from the Ilovish Harem and wondered which they’d been. Friend or enemy. It had become a game of shadows. A clay cup had been set down in front of me and I was staring at my own quivering reflection in the tea.

‘Tools.’

I looked up.

‘When the Shield comes for the Naemians, my men will be ready. This I can tell you. As we sit here now, they man a slew of stations, primed to anything that moves in blue and white.’

‘Can’t you surround it? The warehouse.’

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

The way everyone shifted made me feel childish. Mondric blinked slow and shook his head. ‘Too easily levied as proof of the thing we would protect, should they fail to seize their captives. And I’ll not provoke an open skirmish on the streets of Antissa. We all play roles, as I’ve told you often, and you’ll find I know mine well. I have order to protect.’

I said, ‘I understand,’ on cue. But it didn’t sit well and when Javairea looked away I knew that I looked just as scared as I felt. Despair was dragging at my insides. ‘Why’s all this happening?’

With a scratch under his chin Mondric folded arms. ‘If anyone is truly certain of the answer, it’ll be Symphin,’ he said. ‘So much of what stirs in the heart of Vorth harks back to the exile of our shame, the Bronze Coast shame. Then there’s the rumours. Any Antissan of my years will know those rumours well enough and near forgotten.’

Knowingly, slickly, Javairea’s eyes flitted off his face. But I glared stonily at him.

‘There were suggestions,’ he said, almost with an effort, as if pulling at the lid of a long-closed box, ‘some years after Satrap Hyphet ended his coastal . . . liaison. Suggestions regarding the child said to have been living in the royal household of Aysattah then. Supposedly the child shared the guardianship of Hyphet’s own consort, Vecta. The same woman who raised Szaferis.’

‘That’s Syphus,’ I said.

Mondric, Javairea and Loquar all nodded. ‘Szaferis’ father, Szendric, was in the consort’s care at the time also; an invalid who some believe suffered the same malady of the mind that has now come to plague his son. Then of course it was Szendric who was presumptive to the Mooncircle Throne.’

‘What did they say about the child?’ I asked.

‘That he was Szaferis’ playmate.’

‘He.’

A grim smile. ‘For want of knowing, we say he. We cannot know. But by the look of you, Tools, you’re still keeping up well.’

‘She.’

His face was bitter. ‘A conniving thing as young as four, she’s said to have tormented the servants of the royal household whenever Vecta’s back was turned from the care of her charges. If such hearsay can be believed, it was a back turned too often. The child would haunt the rooms of the ailing Szendric. It’s believed she drove him far beyond madness. He took his life.’

Around the table nods were grave.

‘Accounts disagree, as I say, over the age of the child then. As they disagree over where exactly she was sent after Szendric’s death. Some say she was removed to Ered, that seems a stretch. Some say Ospégath, others—’

‘Shad,’ I said.

Mondric was deadpan; he crossed his fingers on his chest. ‘Satrap Hyphet died the following year and Szaferis assumed the throne at thirteen. Not long into his reign he pardoned the caliphy of the Bronze Coast and welcomed all exiled Vedans back to his bosom. He’s now approaching seventy, and all throughout his rule no truth has ever come to light of such a . . . child.’

‘But if it is her . . .’ I murmured, trying to work it out. ‘That means she’s over fifty years old.’

Both the Captain and harem-senah fixed puzzled frowns on me. Javairea said, ‘How old did you think she was?’

A sudden banging from the front door of the house made me jump. Coughing smoke, Loquar lurched to a window and parted shutters to look out. ‘That’s your boys, Cap. Summat’s afoot.’

A splint of terror jagged in me as Mondric pushed up from the table. ‘I must leave you,’ he said. Azal acknowledged his parting glance with a smiling tilt and silent mouthing of his title. Then Mondric drew up his swathe-hood and looked at me again. ‘To remain here would be wisest. The Shield will have no qualm killing you in the open should you leave. Still, I know you better. There’s no warning I can think of that will be of use to the Viceroy now, but if you must return, keep out of sight. I will do all that I can do defend your people tomorrow night, but if you allow yourself to fall into her hands, there will be nothing I can do for Symphin or the Naemians.’ He pointed a stern finger. ‘Don’t let that happen.’

More banging hammered the front door.

‘I’ll take the back,’ the Captain said to Sen Loquar, who went ahead.

But as he shadowed her under the loft I stood up. ‘Why are you doing this?’

He stopped, turned round and pushed a sigh. ‘That Chief Engineer of yours has been right about some things,’ he said, then went. Chill air blasted the flame of the candles. Once shut out, he was gone.

He’d called us Naemians.

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

Fresh tea splashed into cups.

‘Rhaszel!’ Javairea purred. ‘I did not smell it at first through all that smoke.’ Loquar had left us for the moment. Jerome was still up in his straw bed, watching.

‘Truly senah,’ grinned Azal. ‘And there I’d started to despair Vorth was a land lost to the coffee.’

I’d thought so too; so many blueprints of the Guilds, Royal and City, were marked with thick black rings and spills. The harem-senah took a chair and the offered cup, then leaned her head back with a hum. ‘I grew up in Ospégath, on the the very edge of the Long Erg, but always among our herbs there was hibiscus and rhaszat. I thought it no longer grown here.’

Azal chuckled. ‘Ah, there are few things one cannot find in Antissa’s North District when one knows where to look.’ So he’d been shopping.

‘Sugar?’

She waved a hand.

‘Though I admit, I’m a connoisseur. Never turn down a local brew. Ekhin Flint?’ He offered the jar.

‘No thank you.’

‘Very good.’ He dropped three cubes into his own cup, stirring briskly with a long finger since Loquar hadn’t left a spoon, then smelled the tea. I sipped my own. Tart-tasting, like berries, and the warmth was welcome. I looked at Azal over the rim and resolved to be grown-up.

‘I’m sorry the Viceroy was rude to you,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ he dismissed it, ‘but the Viceroy has more to deal with than gryphons and schyluscience. Little wonder he isn’t overly concerned with niceties. Time remains.’ He sipped his tea.

‘Not really. Not if you still want to—’ I stopped. ‘Wait, what?’

‘Hm?’

‘What did you just say?’

‘I said I shouldn’t worry about apologies.’

‘No not that. That word you said. Sky . . .?’

‘Schyluscience.’

‘Yes that.’

The smile. ‘Mm.’

‘Yes, what is that?’

‘Something with which I think you are acquainted.’ He sipped again. So did Javairea, as if retreating from this bit. I wasn’t sure how much she knew, of anything. But it was annoying how this man kept dodging questions!

‘You’re talking about the Discs.’

‘If you like.’

‘That’s what they’re called?’

‘It’s what they came from,’ he replied. ‘And, I presume, what they’ll return to. One day.’

WHAT. Which question first? ‘So are there others?’

A slow blink. ‘There are two.’

‘Only two?’

‘Yes to my knowledge. Rather astonishing, don’t you think, that until recently both should have been here in Antissa.’

Was that astonishing? I supposed it was if there were only two of them, even if he had deliberately brought and left one here himself eleven years ago. Studying his face, I slid my hands under the edge of the table and into my swathes. There was something in my pocket; I rolled it in between my fingers and felt its chrozite coating. ‘So you know about mine?’

‘Ah, I’ve heard more than a trifle about you,’ he replied.

I frowned, suspicious. ‘From who?’

Javairea set down her cup and skewed her eyes at me, which almost made me blush a second time. ‘Rusper speaks of you often. I ought be jealous.’

She said it sternly but there was tenderness there too. Thinking about that dragonfly earring of emerald, I wondered if she loved him and couldn’t decide whether to feel flattered or jealous myself. In spite of the soothing rhaszel tea, my mind was whirring and little splinters of suspicion were getting into everything. I shook them out and turned to Azal with another question. ‘What did you mean about taking my people to Ered?’

Teacup down, he sighed, ‘A fantasy, I fear.’

Javairea nodded as if this made sense.

‘So . . . you can’t do it, then? Take my people away with you to Incraft?’ This was feeling more and more like a stupid game. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t answer the questions; more that by his strange and civil words – shining gem-like in this place of crude walls and coarser manners – he invited me to see just how pointless all of them were. His charm lit the dead-ends.

‘Oh, but I can!’ he assured me. ‘Most able in that regard. And your master would follow, naturally, or it is likely that he would face death in this city.’

I shook my head. ‘Not if Captain Mondric stops the Iron Shield tomorrow.’

‘Florian,’ said Javairea. Again her gentleness silenced me. ‘You should listen, I think.’

Azal swigged a last mouthful, then replenished his cup. Ours too. ‘The offer remains.’

But now in spite of what she’d said, Javairea interrupted. ‘The boy knows full well he won’t take it.’ So she knew about this. ‘He may indeed care for the Naemian exiles, but he cares for this land also. His land.’ Her eyes widened on the candles.

Gesturing graciously towards her, ‘It is as the senah says,’ Azal said. ‘You must understand that I but wished to be certain.’

‘But you said you could help him,’ I pressed. ‘Was that a lie?’

‘No lie sir! I most certainly can. If he will but permit me to enter the Rite of Uribb.’

‘Why don’t you do it anyway?’

‘It’s not mine to decide. I’m not here to make decisions.’

‘You don’t need his permission!’

‘In this I may.’

Listing forward, I flopped my forehead on the table with a thud that shook the teapot. ‘All in order?’ scraped Loquar’s voice as he poked his head in from the front room.

‘Quite so, ekh Loquar, thank you,’ said Azal. ‘Although I wonder if you would be so kind as to bring me my case.’

‘Aye sir, at once.’

‘Have a little more tea, ekhin Flint, it does wonders.’

Tea trickled. Meanwhile Loquar brought the case and set it on the floor beside his lodger. It looked more like a treasure chest than any kind of travel bag, with its lid of veined blue metal all gilded in brass. As Loquar left the room again, the strange man opened it to three crisp snaps and took out a string-purse. The purse he passed across to me over the candles.

‘What’s this?’

Dead-end. The mathematician merely glanced down at the chest and, with a riddling expression, nodded me to look for myself. Feeling tired, I kneaded its contents with my fingers. About five small smooth objects. I untied the silk string and dug my fingers inside. Then took one out. Firelight shone through an amber bead with a radiant glow. Pretty, but . .. ‘A gryphon,’ I said, ‘for this?’

‘That and more,’ he replied. ‘A life’s supply, one might say.’

‘Is it glass?’

‘By name,’ he said. ‘An Eredian speciality of sorts, albeit one as rare now in Ered as, ahem, rhaszel tea in Vorth, I should imagine.’ He winked at Javairea, who only half-smiled back at him, also perplexed by what I held. ‘Glasses are what they call all their confectioneries in Ered. As perhaps one would expect. These, however, are different. Do please sample.’

No sooner had he said this than he reached out with a long arm and fished a bead from the purse. Pausing briefly to admire its colour, he pushed it primly between his lips. He made a little show of delight as he sucked. I looked at the senah but she was sitting very still, looking at him. Did we have another madman here?

‘Dream Lozenges they’re called,’ he said, pursing another smile. ‘Or at least, they were before the Hall of Spires had them discreetly outlawed from the Empire. Mmph ! . . . verily I can’t stress enough the value of knowing where to look.’ He cocked an eye at Javairea, who didn’t smile this time.

I examined the tiny lozenge of translucent orange on my palm, suddenly remembering the Satrap’s horrible obsession with those purple barblars. Did the senah know about that detail? I glanced up, catching her curled lip as she ogled the sweet, and guessed she did.

‘A treat of exceptional quality of course,’ Azal was saying, ‘but in the past also used widely by physicians of the Eredian Academy, not to mention the more affluent burners of the midnight oil. And that is because they contain, among other things, a counter-sedative.’

‘They keep you awake,’ I said flatly.

‘Two or three, and yes.’

‘Stupid name then.’ But my mind was still up in that tower, remembering Amyra’s hold over the Satrap through physicians. Eredian drugs, tonics, sedations . . .

‘Of course there’s more to them than that,’ Azal continued, ‘in the wrong hands.’ That turned our heads to him again as he raised a finger. ‘The euphoric known as somnodulcin.’

‘And this?’ Javairea’s tone had hardened.

Azal’s lozenge clacked his teeth; he seemed to thoroughly enjoy it. ‘Relieved you ask, since I’m aware that the Viceroy would never dream of permitting me to bid with these lovelies unless His Majesty the Satrap were forewarned of the careful, measured way in which he must enjoy them.’ I looked away. Understanding was sliding into place with every click that sticky thing made in his mouth; something just as brittle and just as potent taking shape above the candles and teapot. Something one wrong word could break.

He spoke on: ‘This chemical summons waking trances. Five or six, as contained here, will do the trick without impairing the senses. More than this in quick succession, however, and the trance augments to quite transporting bliss—so heavenly, it’s been said, that some have grown hateful of life upon return.’

‘What happens then?’ I dared.

A shrug and flutter of eyelids. ‘Reach for a dream too sublime and the heart will follow. And when the dream ends, as all dreams must, the heart in turn will slow once more. Until one slides into that last of all the sleeps, that without dreams.’ He held my gaze, then Javairea’s. ‘Of course, the somnodulcin goes by other names in Ered now. Quicklight Gems, for one. I fear to mention some of the others would be somewhat in poorer taste.’

One of the candlewicks snapped, the sudden sound focusing me, and I put the sticky orange bead back in the purse. Didn’t want to eat one. I took a deep quaff of my tea as I pressed through difficult thoughts. Mondric’s advice was that I stayed here in Loquar’s shabby little house where I’d almost started to feel something like safety again. Almost started to imagine there was no threat outside this room. No plotting Flag-Senera or mad Satrap. No Iron Shield. No Rath beyond and all around. But all of that was an illusion and now I knew I couldn’t stay. Not if what was being suggested here was to go further.

‘The thing you ask,’ said Javairea seriously, ‘I understand. But of whom are you asking it?’

There was no hint of retreat in Azal’s eyes. He looked at me. ‘I’d be indebted to you, sir.’

‘Indebted?’ I said.

‘Indeed.’ He smiled. ‘Persuade your master, the Viceroy, to grant me entrance to the Rite of Uribb, and I will show to you the way into the roads beneath this city. The Roads you have dreamed and seen.’

The cup almost fell out of my hand. For several stretching seconds, I pinned my eyes to his in search of what I should have seen and yet had missed. How much time had Javairea spent in this man’s company for that to come up in conversation? Had he asked her? That made no sense! Rusper would have shared what I had seen with Javairea, that much made sense. But how would this man have known? A traveller, an eccentric old traveller, I thought, sparring with doubt. How was there any possible way he could know, even if he was . . .

But I swallowed, steadied my nerve. Don’t be a child: ‘How will that help us?’ I said.

‘I’ve no idea,’ Azal replied. ‘I am not here to decide, as I’ve told you. Merely to suggest. You are the one who, by means of what you call the Disc, has borne witness to the realm below the engineers’ Deep. I would but seek to inform you that there exists a way into that realm. It is possible, likely even, you have seen it.’

‘The Disc’s gone though,’ I confessed, although he’d know that too, no doubt. ‘Mine is anyway.’

‘So it seems,’ he said, thoughtful. ‘And if such a thing as fate holds sway, I daresay you weren’t fated to possess it. Nevertheless, your people and the people of this desert may be glad you did. As it is, I find myself pleased and intrigued by events.’

‘I don’t understand why you care,’ I said, frustrated. This was all too ridiculous. And was that pity in Javairea’s face? ‘Why do you?’ I turned on her. ‘What difference does it make to you what happens to my people?’

‘Such a question,’ she said, folding arms. ‘Vorth may be hard, I know this hardness has punished you, Florian, but there’s compassion in this people. You’ll have to trust that in me. If not that, then let it be because one I love cares what happens. Enough to put his life in danger. This alone would be enough for me to do what was needed.’

‘What was needed?’

Tilting her head, the tiny crystal droplet rolled across her forehead. ‘Florian, who do you think has been administering to your people’s provisions since your mission?’

I cleared my frown; looked at the weave of her dark cloak with new eyes. It had been her in the infirmary.

‘It’s as I’ve said,’ Azal broke in, drawing my eyes. ‘I’ve had many dealings of my own with the peoples of Naemia before the Celestri of Fallstone closed their tall doors. Indeed, I took many such refreshment as this with Rhynen Cadeyrn, your last prince.’

I wasn’t sure I believed that. Or did I. Holding my thoughts in as tight a ball as I could squeeze so they wouldn’t leak, I tried to take in every detail of his appearance from scratch. I studied those clear eyes, youthful, blue. I had missed something. And now, unwelcome, homeland stories rushed over and through me as if sung by the mountains of my childhood horizon. In the song whirled the screams of the borderlands again. Erik and Sarah lay in their blood, as I’d never seen with my own eyes. Con going down like a sack in the courtyard. My throat was closing, eyes blurring. I checked the tears.

They were both looking at me. ‘It seems you have a decision, Florian,’ said Javairea. ‘What would you have?’

‘I want my people safe again,’ I said. ‘Vorth’s people too. I just want . . . why can’t we both be safe?’

‘All still can,’ offered Azal. ‘As for myself, I want the gryphon.’

‘What do you think Rusper wants?’ Javairea put to me.

‘Freedom,’ I shrugged. ‘To do what’s right. But he’s trapped. Trapped by us.’

‘His fears have trapped him, not you, ekhit. Don’t you know who his father was?’

A strange question out of nowhere. ‘Um . . . only that he lived in Balkh Radhi before the exile,’ I said. ‘He was a servant of the caliph there, wasn’t he?’

She nodded, slow. ‘Bartekh Semafin.’

‘Symphin,’ I corrected, but had heard the other name and read it somewhere too.

‘Not a very Vedish name is it,’ she said. I blinked back – it wasn’t. ‘It is Eredian, that name. Semafin, Rusper’s father, wasn’t merely a servant. He was First Illuminator to Caliph Rafa of the Bronze Coast in the year of their exile. That made him most highly trusted of that caliph, principal scribe and adviser.’

I listened, now imagining. I’d walked that stone, that barren stone at the great harbour of Radhi, and now I tried to picture someone who looked a little like Rusper standing high up on the terrace of that caliph’s cliffside house.

‘Rafa’s execution made Rusper’s father, by tradition, head apparent of the caliphy, immediate protector of its people,’ the senah said. ‘Bartekh’s first and highest duty as a Vedan desert-born was to his countrymen in exile. A duty to see them to safety and thenceforth to ensure it. But even in the knowledge that Elman simmered under threat of Lackish tribes, he did not rise to this duty.’

I saw my imagining of Bartekh watching the waves of the Rivan Gulf; and then in Elman, gazing over bleak mudflats. ‘Rusper was born to a man broken, a man embittered by his exile. Not only hateful of the throne that had betrayed him, but in that hate, forgetful of his oaths to the desert, his own Bronze Coast, his brothers and sisters. He abandoned his charge as protector of those people. Not long after the barbarians reached the mudflats of Elman, the princedom of Naemia sent a detachment of its own army to quell the threat that had arisen there. But not before much slaughter. Elmine and Vedan alike.’

‘How many?’ I asked her carefully, wary of the pain Rusper must have shared with her. The woman he must truly love.

‘A hundred in Claywall,’ she said to a candle. ‘No great number, perhaps, to a satrap. But that is not what mattered then, nor matters now even, to Rusper. What is important is that his father could have done something to shield them from that fate before it fell. But he did not. And all this Rusper witnessed young.’

‘How young?’

Her smile was sad, head tilting. Was it that she didn’t know or wouldn’t say? ‘Young,’ she said and simply gazed at me a while. ‘Do you really think it strange he changed his name in Antissa?’

Exile. Persecution. Death. All this time.

‘He’s the reason we survived,’ I said to no one. Then looked at Azal: ‘You told him about Incraft to give him an escape.’

‘An alternative,’ he said.

Javairea drew a breath and crossed her fingers in her lap. ‘He won’t abandon the people, neither Vedan nor Naemian. He can’t.’

‘Like I did,’ I said.

‘But I disagree, ekhin Flint.’ One of Azal’s long fingers touched my teacup. ‘What you did was chance, as thus you turned into a seed blown by the wind. Or didn’t you realise? A seed neither betrays nor flees its kind. A seed transforms to make things possible again, new things, if not to ensure its kind’s very survival. This is a transformation for which, it seems to me, you’ve laid a somewhat uneven share of the credit at Rusper Symphin’s feet.’

On some instinct I reached into my pocket for the schot-stone, but it wasn’t there. It was between those long, thin fingers. Mathematician or magician, I thought, weirdly unimpressed. Or maybe simply unsurprised.

He set it down and rolled it out via the side of the teapot. Ping. ‘The Naemians,’ he went on as it stopped at my hand, ‘will break off and scatter out much the same way within this city, if you can but give them that chance. They are no stranger, after all, to the Antissans than those now here from the erg. Just as you and ekhin Imry have done’—here he smiled up at Jerome in the loft, whose head was propped, though eyelids failing—‘they’ll find their place and have their home.’

‘You had to come first,’ said Javairea. ‘You had to be brave.’

Tremors were on the surface of my tea. ‘I didn’t feel brave. I was just scared.’

Azal waggled a finger. ‘Oughtn’t confuse bravery with what one feels. It’s what one does irrespective. And feeling thus towards the past, you ran instead into the future. A fine choice. It’s where the hope tends to be.’

‘Hope,’ I echoed. But something inside me had turned to metal already. I slurped the last of my tea, took the schot-stone off the table and put it back in my swathe-pocket. My voice was steady: ‘I’ll do it then, talk to the Viceroy. You’ll get your Disc back and enter the Rite.’

Jerome was asleep by the time Sen Loquar cleared the tea. Seed on the wind; that’s what Azal had called me. And whether or not I believed it any more than silly words, I knew a seed had been planted. Not just for me and for my people and for Rusper, but for Vorth. It depended on me and the sweet tooth of a madman.

Somehow still twelve years old, I left the Loquars’ house through the back door. Javairea led me swiftly through the streets of the North District’s upper quarter to the Inner Gate. Twice as many Shieldmen manned it now.

‘Deeping Door,’ she whispered. ‘Merchant’s gate.’

‘That gate’ll be locked up for the night,’ I whispered back.

‘Trust me.’

I did. But when we got there, as expected, the little gate to the gravel yard was secured in chains. Beyond it, to my surprise, the Deeping Door was still half-open. As I tried to make out what was going on in there, the senah plucked a hairpin. No, not a hairpin: the prong was tipped with a thick knot of metal teeth, which she slotted into the gate’s lock with practiced movements. There was a crisp metallic snap. Obviously, I thought.

Prong between her teeth, winking at me, she swept the chains from the gate’s bars, then opened it just enough to let me through. ‘Listen,’ she said when the bars were between us again. ‘Should you succeed, find the dragonfly I gave to Rusper and, by whatever means you can, return it to Loquar’s house. This will be your signal to Azal that he may enter the Rite of Uribb.’

‘Right,’ I answered. Foreboding rising. Could this work?

The hairpin-key was returned into the nest of her braids before she detached another earring. ‘This one’s for you. Do not confuse them,’ she said and placed a twin dragonfly in my hand.

‘Will I see Azal again?’ I asked her.

‘I do not know.’

‘But if I don’t, how . . . he promised to show me—’

‘This is in your hands now, ekhit.’ She pinned the cloth over her mouth and shoved me away. ‘Go now, be safe.’

My ears alert to every footfall, real or imagined, I ran kicking my swathe-ends. Across the Deeping Door threshold, I darted straight into the shadows round the mouth of the Deep and hurried down the rubble-shaft. Something was wrong. There was too much movement on first level for this time of night. Sappers were coming up; they shoved me for claim on ladders. Torchlight blazed on walls ahead as I moved through second level. Skittish shadows danced against them; up ahead a crowd was coming.

‘Keep away, boy,’ Pintle warned, waving me aside. Her voice was urgent. Gudgeon was walking beside her, face even graver than I’d seen it on campaign.

‘Clear this passage!’ came a command from the tunnel behind them. Deepworkers swept past me on both sides, batting my shoulders in their hurry.

‘What’s going on down there?’ I said. But Pintle grabbed me by the arm. To the sound of marching boots, the tunnel suddenly turned as orange as that little sticky bead. Past the fast flow of hands, workers and smiths, Shieldmen appeared; two parallel files of six men. Between them walked Rusper Symphin, wrists shackled.

‘In the Satrap’s name, make way!’

Rusper raised his eyes. Though they were blood-red, they saw me before Pintle pulled me sideways, clapping a hand over my mouth to stop me shouting his name. She threw me into a lay-by where I landed on my backside, then both overseers stood there blocking my way out.

As the line of torchlight moved past, I spun and slapped my hand so hard on those bricks it went numb.

Azal was wrong—I was too late.