A day dawned dull around my body. At least that’s what I guessed was happening as feet shuffled near my head without voices, and I remembered where I was. In the chaos of last night Pintle had spirited me away, out of the Deep and into the servants’ quarters; out of sight. Here I’d slept on the hard stone without a blanket.
The shuffling feet left me alone. There’d be no leaving this room; one of many like it, tucked away behind the citadel walls. My head was a beacon after all, and it was only because of Pintle’s quick thinking that I’d not been caught.
In the windowless gloom I sat up. I’d dreamed but couldn’t remember much. Twilight over the clay huts that still peppered the earth to the north. The smell of coals and cooking. A box of treasures, all as she’d left them.
An empty space there.
Not Naemian either . . . it came with you.
Rhaszel was a stale taste in my mouth, reminding me of my promise. Something somewhere was grinding: my teeth. I’d failed again. What did it matter if I was Naemian or not? Would I ever know? I could never be Vedish. But if it was going to end this way, I should have died in the borderlands.
How long would Amyra hold him? How long could she? She’d routed the Captain from the Inner City, the Shield replacing guards. Rusper could already be dead.
Trapped with my dread, time crawled on. It could have been an hour, or three, or five, before I heard the footsteps. Someone small was in the passage.
My muscles seized, ready to do whatever they had to—run or fight—but it wasn’t him. Not plump enough and those steps too quiet. ‘Jerms?’ I said. But how would Jerome even get here?
Staring eyes met mine. Zeek. She wore her yellow jacket as usual, over a white shirt and breeches. Strapped across her little frame was a scroll-case. She’d brought a flask and bowl of food, which she set down on the floor and pushed to me. If she’d been among the servants who’d slept here last night, I hadn’t seen her.
‘Thanks,’ I murmured. Pintle must have sent her; only Pintle knew where I was. The meal was standard servants’ fare: herbed alfalfa shaffan-ful with a very thin slice of black bread. The flask held water. Grateful, I used to the bread to spoon some food into my mouth. After two mouthfuls, Zeek sat cross-legged on the floor. ‘Y’know what happened?’ I said.
But she only sat there and stared, so I went on eating.
What if I set the plan in motion by myself? Without Rusper. Azal’s terms had been clear. Well no, they hadn’t been clear, but I understood. Rusper must agree. But now that stood in the way. If I just said that he had agreed, it was all possible again. Already, somehow, I’d come to serve the man entrusted with a nation. All I had to do was go a single step further. One last risk and turn the wheel. Decide the future. Free everyone. Azal had given me that power. Or had Javairea? I had a dragonfly earring exactly the same as Rusper’s one – send this one back to Loquar’s house! Decide for him.
Don’t confuse them, she’d said before leaving me last night. Why’d she said that?
It didn’t matter. Only one thing mattered: was I prepared to kill a man? Not an animal and not the Rath, but a man. And a king. His stony hateful eyes gazed back inside my mind. Could I do it? The sky-blue eyes replaced them. Azal would simply know. And if I made the decision he’d never meant for me to make, could I even be sure he would appear at the rite?
I couldn’t eat anymore, so pushed the bowl away and gripped my temples, thinking hard. Trying to work it all out. No. Whatever else he’d come for, Azal did want the prize of the rite just as the Eredians did. He wanted the gryphon. And it was my task to make the Viceroy see why he had to have it. I told the floor, ‘I have to find him.’
When I looked up, Zeek was still cross-legged there, staring back as always. An idea twinkled suddenly. ‘You know the citadel better than anyone,’ I said.
She nodded.
‘Do you . . . know where Rusper is?’
Another nod: yes.
‘You know?’ I sprang onto my feet, only once up feeling how unsteady my legs were. ‘Zeek, there’s something he needs to know before tonight, before the Rite of Uribb happens. After that it’s too late. And I can’t go out there, you understand? If they see me and catch me, then the Viceroy . . . my people too, they’re all dead. And then it won’t be long, I think, ‘til . . .’
Hope had got hold of my tongue. Until what exactly? It was all too big.
Zeek was still on the floor, staring back.
Taking a deep breath, I sat back down on a servant’s pallet. ‘They’re not looking for you, Zeek. You can get my message to him. Get past the Shield . . .’
She was shaking her head now, a thing I’d never seen her do. I glared at her; confused, offended, annoyed. ‘What—why not?’ I snapped. ‘Look, you’ve even got a scroll-case. Do you want Rusper dead or something?’
Off those crossed legs, she bounced up and looked intensely at my face, eyes almost popping. Seriously, could they grow any bigger without bursting right out of her skull?
‘Well?’ I demanded. But when I got nothing again—‘Pelkh’s sake, Zeek!’—I pushed away from the pallet. ‘Can’t you ever just speak?’ As I stood and fumed on the other side of the room, regret washed in. It wasn’t fair to shout at her, she was only a little girl and none of this was her fault. I should say sorry. And yet the question I’d just shouted hung in the air, repeating, and as it did my shoulders sagged. I looked at her. ‘You can’t, can you?’
She blinked. Then shook her head, twice, and opened her mouth. Opened it wide with two fingers hooked over her lower teeth. Even feet away, I could see the stub that had once been her tongue. I was an idiot, I told myself as I crossed back to her again, finding the green ribbon on her jacket. Disadvantages. I reached for the scroll-case on her shoulder. It was empty. But there it was on the sigil: a name embossed between four roses. Dranz.
‘It’s you. You’re Mondric’s spy.’
On cue, she nodded and I let the tube swing back. Then almost laughed. Who knew what that arrogant weasel might be careless enough to say in front of a favourite serving girl, especially if that girl didn’t have a tongue? Maybe he’d even been the one to cut it out. But if Zeek was dumb, then she was anything but simple and a hint of pride now pricked the corner of her mouth.
‘The Captain sent you?’ I said.
Nod, yes.
‘He knows what happened?’
Another nod.
‘Can you help me?’
No nod this time. As if some tiny transmission chain had been released inside her body, she was moving. Claiming the bowl and flask, she scuttled out and left. Having nothing else, I held onto the hope that she’d come back and when she did, a short time later, it was with a canvas-wrap of utensils which she spread out on the floor. A coarse-bristled brush, a square brass mirror, a silver razor and copper shears. Stepping around these tools, she grabbed me by the fringe and pulled a lock of white hair over my eyes. Then passed her other hand over her own close-shaven head.
My turn to nod. ‘Fine, do it.’
Without any words, but just as sternly as that old woman who’d taught me how to don my swathes, Zeek coaxed me out of them. Then my shirt. I knelt on the stone, feeling a shiver. But Zeek had shorn a head before, it seemed; her own, probably. As she took her place behind me, I put my faith in her completely: a mute child younger than me, who might as easily have been Amyra’s assassin as Mondric’s spy and who now brandished blades mere inches from my throat. Don’t think about it.
Her little fingers started working, cleverly navigating clumps that had grown wild, somehow avoiding all the knotty tangles I knew were thickening in there. Though she was firm, I never winced. When she pulled, it was to instantly bring the hair between the blades, making short squeaks. With every snip, I kept on thinking, the Disc’s weird mark was leaving me. The crescent wisps cascaded, snow-like, to the floor and settled all around my legs. The snips grew shorter, sharper, pulling gentler, shears squeaking more softly before going quiet altogether. With the inner blade, she pared away proud bits she’d missed, then used the brush to clear the last, which drifted down from me like dust. Patting and plucking with her free hand, she finished the job and held the mirror to my face.
So that was why her eyes always looked so enormous. Mine did too. My head looked eerie, Ratheine almost, jaw and temple muscles tensing and flexing in relief. The layer of hair with which she’d left me was much paler than hers was, and she was smaller than me of course. But to a Shieldman on duty who already thought I was dead . . .
Not Vedan or Antissan. Maybe not Naemian, I thought.
But still an engineer. Be that.
I rubbed the itch from my scalp and reached for my shirt, but Zeek caught my hand, already halfway out of her own clothes. Off came her jacket and shirt, without shame. Breeches too, giving me a glimpse of the marks of cane-strokes all over her back and upper legs. But I followed her lead; became her as she took my swathes and became me.
With the brush she swept the white ringlets of hair into the canvas, wrapped them up tight with her tools and gestured sternly that I stay.
She left. I stayed and waited for her.
With nothing else to do but think, I slept again eventually. The gloom was changeless, time of day impossible to guess. But when she came back again, it was to beckon me out of hiding with all the urgency of a name-day morning.
Late afternoon was just bending, which meant the clerics’ rite was due to start in only a few hours. Zeek led the way through corridors, dodging the Shieldmen on patrol and using traffic to cloak us. Cool air flowed over my new head as we went down to courtyard level where the sky-links of the barracks overhung the inner thoroughfare. A Shieldman strolled the empty road near to a door that stood ajar.
The girl pressed a hand against my chest, then moved it up onto my shoulder and pointed out at that doorway. I understood. She signed simply, you’re me, and the instructions that followed were all just as simple. I spoke them aloud as she gestured: ‘Stairs down. Walk fast . . . Don’t look at eyes, faces.’
As if I would. But she didn’t even give me time to brace myself before snatching my arm in both her hands and propelling me out of cover. My legs instinctively took up the quick-march of a servant with urgent jobs. The crunch of grit under my—Zeek’s—sandals ricocheted up the citadel wall, alerting the Shieldman. ‘Move, you’re late,’ he snipped. Before he had the the time to look me in the face, I slipped inside. It was a box-room half painted orange by evening light. There were the stairs: flight up, flight down. Another Shieldman sat on a stool, so intent on getting a brighter shine out of his tasselled helmet that he barely gave me a glance. I went straight for the steps and down.
Thirty steps and two turns brought me into a service passage of some kind, which delved ahead between torches. The wider room it opened into was unexpected.
‘Time you call this?’ a voice grated, joined by the clang of a ladle on the side of a pot. A kitchen. Overseeing a large cauldron, like the guardian of some hellish pool, was a figure that looked as if he’d been stitched together from dead skin, and who wore an apron instead of a shirt. At his sour face I broke eye-contact, but he didn’t know me. ‘Well then, step, step! Rounds won’t wait,’ he prompted, ogling me curiously through his ropes of greasy hair as I approached. ‘You’re not the normal one,’ he said then. He knew Zeek. ‘Well, I’ll be buggered if you’re getting the tour.’ He raised a horrid rusted bucket and plunged it into the cauldron. ‘Two slops a hole.’
The bucket dripped something muddy as he dangled it at me. I took it, nodding, ‘Ekharan,’ as some of the gruel splashed on Zeek’s jacket.
‘Ooh ekharan no less!’ he grinned. ‘They have sent me a nice one. Shall needs remember my own manners next time.’ The grin fell. ‘Now leg it, squirt, before I fall in love!’
Hugging the slimy metal to stop its slopping again, I put my back to the ghoulish cook and took the passage that led on and sloped down into the murk. Through the catacombs, I could clearly hear two men speaking somewhere close by.
‘. . . We’ll be spread thin, that’s for sure, but she wants five units in the hall.’
‘What good’s so many? That’s half . . .’
Ready to duck or draw attention to the bucket at a moment’s notice, I made my way along the row of grotesque cells. As my ladle went to work, so did my eyes. Men and women, Vedans, with barely any flesh on their bones came from far corners to paw the slop with bleeding hands, faces all twisted. Some were insane, I could tell, and some were far worse than that. Not all dared come forward though; a few were too frightened to move and waited until I’d moved on and away from their cell before darting to the iron bars to scoop their meal out of its hole. One man did nothing at all; simply knelt in the cracked stone, completely still, eyes closed, breath slow. His cassock was torn in places and though his hair was unbound now, I saw the bruises on his face.
I dared a whisper: ‘Caliph Bardon.’
Nothing; not a twitch. Was he praying or something? They didn’t pray. And there was no way to give him food, since the hole in front of his cell was now a dome of hardened gruel. He’d eaten none since he’d been down here.
Suddenly the talking voices returned from just around a corner: ‘You won’t complain when you get picked. Be a uniform on show, easy night.’
‘S’pose you’re right yeah. Good bit of blue and white should give those Eredians the right idea.’
They were walking, getting closer. Starting to panic, ready to run, I scanned for cover.
‘. . . thought Jharis was taking twenty more downtown?’
‘Mm, doesn’t leave much more to work with on patrol . . .’
There! A low square hole in the wall ahead. Bucket nearly empty now, I hurried in. Without steps, it sloped deeper. Then levelled out at another hole. This one barred.
The hewn-stone space beyond the bars was high and wide and weirdly muddled by the light of a torch that rumbled on the landing above it. It was a pit. My eyes accustomed around the shape of Rusper on the floor; arms on knees and head between them. All he was wearing was a thobe that might have once been yellow – hard to tell in this light. His feet were bare.
‘Caliph Symphin, it’s me.’ But he didn’t move so I dared to knock my ladle lightly on the bars.
‘What are you doing?’ he growled, lifting his head. A few moments passed in cold silence. I raised the bucket. ‘No, thank you.’ Creasing his face at the bucket and then at me, he said, ‘You should’ve known better than to come here.’
‘I had to talk to you.’
‘Hard to believe, in spite of all your talents, you’d be this staggeringly stupid,’ he went on growling as if not hearing me at all. ‘And I’ve seen a gryphon, remember. They’ll kill you and there won’t be a thing I can do.’
‘You’re still the Viceroy.’
He stared, mouth ajar.
‘She hasn’t won yet,’ I said firmly. ‘The Captain’s still on your side, but you have to listen to me now. Just once, please, listen.’
That earned a pitying look; a look that lengthened as he seemed to note my head was shaven. But then it broke as he scowled. Using the pit’s jagged wall to steady himself, he stood on feet cut by sharp stones and stalked away to where the torchlight didn’t reach. Sank down again.
‘Your eyes look better,’ I offered.
‘Not much strong light down a hole, is there,’ he muttered. ‘Just as well. They took the goggles.’
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
If I focused on the wall above his head, I could see him better. ‘Did they hurt you?’
‘No,’ he replied after a while. It sounded more like not yet. I looked into my bucket, considering giving him more than his two-slop quota of gruel, but couldn’t imagine anyone really wanting that. ‘Well you’re here now,’ he grunted from darkness. ‘What would you like to talk about?’
‘Azal.’
‘Ha.’
‘He is who he says he is.’
‘Remind me what that was. See, I don’t recall him being very specific. But then of course, that doesn’t strike you as being the least bit suspicious.’
‘He’s not her servant.’
‘Then why’s he not here?’ he shouted back.
‘He’s not a threat to her, not yet. He isn’t even one of the contestants in the Rite ‘cos you won’t let him enter it.’
Rusper chuckled. ‘Amyra has no cause to fear the so-called Mathematician.’
‘You don’t know that,’ I said.
‘You don’t know otherwise.’
‘Yes I do.’ I only hoped I sounded convincing.
Abruptly he stood up and came back into the middle of the pit. ‘So what is it you’re not saying?’ he demanded. ‘Why exactly is it so important at this time that a cryptic outlander with a fancy for mystic metals claim a gryphon?’
It was hard to look at him. Torn out of his world by force, here was an old and battered man reduced to rags. But I couldn’t look away either. Not now. ‘I don’t know why he wants the gryphon,’ I confessed, ‘and I don’t care. But his bid could save us.’
‘How, boy?’
Although his tone was lead I heard something else behind it. And so I did what I’d come to do; told him, quickly and as clearly as I could, of the hoard Azal had brought out of Ered, and with which he’d attempt to outbid the other entrants for the Satrap’s gryphon. Rusper stood and heard it all; first with a stultified expression, then something like a thin amusement, and then reluctance as he tried to silence the clack of mental cog-teeth even I could hear by then.
His voice was a soft husk: ‘Do you understand what you’re suggesting?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
Somewhere overhead a gate swung open. Rusper jolted at the noise but didn’t look away from me; not until harsh voices and bootfalls smacked the walls above the pit. ‘Away from the bars,’ he warned me, waving me away, and I obeyed.
Firelight grew out of the gap of a narrow atrium up there. ‘This way sinarre,’ came a voice I recognised while Rusper backed into the far side of the pit. I crouched down low, hugging the bucket in the shadows as the light of another torch waxed through the space. Lieutenant Jharis waved it out from the lipless edge. I flexed my fingers, squelching gruel.
Like smoke Amyra came behind him, her body clad in a tight suit of utilitarian black and charcoal. Her painted eyes dropped from the edge into the pit as if she watched a leaf slowly sink into the bottom of a pond. Jharis retreated with his torch until only its flickers on out-of-sight corners and walls outlined the woman’s drake-like flares. I couldn’t help but hope she’d trip as she stepped closer to the edge.
‘Your meal is cooling.’
The stuff was cold to begin with. Gazing up at her, Rusper said nothing for at least half a minute. Then, ‘The clerics’ rite will commence shortly. I’ll need my robes brought from my quarters, and a shaving bowl if it please you.’ And I’d thought his tone leaden with me.
‘Pride won’t serve you,’ she mused. ‘But if I’ve misled you I beg pardon. There is no call for your attendance at the Rite of Uribb.’
‘And when the Satrap demands it?’ said Rusper. ‘You and I are his faithful defenders, Amyra. He will demand it of you.’
Her smile was oily. ‘His Majesty’s attentions will fall where they’re required.’
‘You too would bid for this creature?’
‘This surprises you.’
His shoulders moved with a voiceless chuckle. ‘He who tames the gryphon first? You are aware—’
‘Mistranslated quatrains?’ Amyra cut him off. ‘Naturally, of course. Oh Honorary Caliph, do you really think I must believe a thing for it to serve me?’
‘Serve you,’ he echoed. ‘Endearing you to the temples and ergish peoples in turn. And, I imagine, removing your opponent in the Caliph-Archimandrite.’
‘Archimandrite he may keep,’ she said. ‘He will not retain his seat upon the Vedish Caliphate.’
‘A most tidy arrangement.’
‘I knew I could count on your discernment, ekharan.’
‘And to think the gryphon nearly foiled all of your diligent work,’ Rusper marvelled.
‘The Arbiter of Justice, I suppose?’ she said tunefully. ‘Surely it is you now who waxes disproportionately lyrical. None can deny that the creature’s coming was an unexpected turn, but Ered would never have failed me. And when I hold not only His Majesty’s esteem for true loyalty to the throne, but the prize Ered desires, these luminaries will return to ignite word of the Vedish miracle throughout the provinces of Lostor. Within weeks the eyes of Empire will turn west.’
Rusper sighed as if he’d just finished a big meal. ‘Certainly more glamorous than murder.’
‘Tools all,’ she said, ‘as well you know.’
‘We’ve both played the Vedish game,’ Rusper replied.
The torch-flame sputtered on the wall, dipping the light. No, it hadn’t. Behind Amyra something shuffled from the atrium gate, blocking the torchlight from that way. Amyra didn’t react, saying almost kindly, ‘Historically a game for Vedans desert-born, and thus a game that was never truly yours to play, valiantly as I daresay you tried. Always you must fail to see how weak a hand you hold by your own nature. A true Vedan will take what must be taken, when it must.’
It was a man, a small squat man, who came to stand with her and look into the pit. Shabby swathes discarded, he was dressed in the Eredian style: a deep blue surcoat with white trim that somehow moulded his bulbous body into an almost linear shape. There was a fine belt around his waist, a ruff of overlapping collars about his jowls, a pair of glinting epaulettes and even boots upon his feet with shining silver studs and buckles. That pudding head was bare, a kneaded ball that pressed a wide smile on Rusper. Who said blandly, ‘Trusting your vassal’s in haler health.’
Her eyes floated only briefly over the fat head. ‘Ered prides itself in medicines supreme, Honorary Caliph, many remedies of which combine such craft as your poor Guilds might hope to wield. Perhaps one day.’
The dwarf’s right arm was tucked in his surcoat as if to protect the amputation. But there was something else in there, something that glinted.
‘The gloat does not become you well,’ snorted Rusper, ‘knowing as I do that Plamen would have betrayed both of us.’
‘Always proper timing,’ she pouted. ‘Plamen had considerable uses, but these would have all but dwindled by the time he was prepared to betray me.’ As she spoke she raised her arm and dropped it sharply, catching the medallion’s octagon in her palm. ‘Not so, ekh Etch?’
‘Just as you say, my lady,’ Hetch replied.
Rusper took a step towards the landing overhead. ‘But there you’re wrong. He’d have had that medallion, not you, had he helmed our return to war.’
She raised the medallion. ‘No small coincidence, then, the man was dead by the time that happened.’ She studied the medallion for a moment longer, then looked at Rusper with a curious smile. Almost as if she’d forgotten he was a man she’d put in a hole. ‘How did he die?’ she asked him sweetly.
It was Rusper’s turn to smile and it creased up his whole face. ‘The truth, sinarre?’
‘If you would.’
‘The High Commander was consumed by a magic stone.’
I flinched. So did Hetch or whatever his Eredian name was. Amyra’s tranquil smile froze up. ‘Jests will serve you little better than your pride, ekharan.’
If I knew Rusper, it was now when he would lose his temper—throw his arms wide and shout at her that he had nothing else to lose. But instead he just stared back. Something in the set of Amyra’s lips made it clear that he’d insulted her with something that she didn’t, couldn’t, know. But if she didn’t . . .
Rusper shook his head sadly. ‘Duchess of Vorth, a grand new province of Lostor.’
The woman’s brows met in remorse. ‘Should the malady take our lord, then yes.’
‘How can you think to know Ered when you’ve never set foot there?’ he put to her. ‘Do you truly believe the strings of Empire so easily pulled?’
‘How should you know different?’ she countered. ‘Engineer and accidental steward.’
‘But you forget the worst of it, sinarre!’ He puffed a laugh. ‘As if you could.’
‘Oh?’ But her look was knowing.
‘I’m the accidental Vedan.’ That took me by surprise and now he pityingly palmed his forehead. ‘You, Amyra of Shad, haven’t pursued your claim with any will to right the evils of a dynasty any more than you’ve the eyes to see a shrinking world, or an Ered no longer that paragon of Empire you envisaged as your hatred boiled in exile. You, sinarre, are what I can’t be.’
She raised her chin.
‘Blind. The world is shrinking. And when the Hall of Spires in Ered bats barely an eyelash to your miserable plea from a war-torn desert, you will not understand.’
‘The Spire has weakened, it’s true,’ said Hetch. ‘More so since Naemia’s fall. But that is why, desert or war, it will be only too eager to secure this coastline belt. The wealth of Vorth lies in more than engineer-craft.’
The beast.
‘We are invaded!’ shouted Rusper.
‘By invaders easily crushed if we but doubled our forces,’ said Amyra. ‘To Lostrian eyes ours is still sacred ground—gateway to the Inner World of Celestrian Fallstone—when Ered’s westernmost reaches have for centuries been tethered to such religious superstition. How long have they desired a way into these realms?’
‘You think they care now for Fallstone?’ Rusper exclaimed. ‘That bastion’s doors have stood closed to what’s been left of the Inwold for over a decade! To say nothing of the decades of war fought between Ered and the Rath in the last century. And you’d sell that enemy back to them?’
Hetch said: ‘If Crippin alone brought reinforcements . . .’
Rusper laughed almost maniacally now, tilting back on his heels. ‘I think you and your mercantile cast-off will find the Hall of Spires less than enchanted by your offer!’
I didn’t fully understand. I didn’t even know if Rusper believed what he was saying. He could be bluffing, I thought, not giving in to defeat even though she seemed so sure.
And sure enough: ‘I fear you haven’t understood, Honorary Caliph,’ she said with unbroken calm. She paused to examine her glove as if it had its own nails. ‘But you may remain unimpressed by the future of this nation if you so wish. It is a future you are unlikely to share, after all.’
Hetch turned to regard her. ‘It will soon be time, my lady.’
Rusper said: ‘Who could have doubted.’
Amyra’s brows made two points. ‘Doubted what, ekharan?’
‘The madman’s blood in your veins.’
She did a strange thing with her lips, then turned to leave. As Hetch withdrew from the landing I caught the metal glint again inside his surcoat. What was he hiding there?
‘Oh, it very nearly escaped me to mention,’ Amyra said then, turning back with a gloved finger on her lip. ‘Only that your borderland assistant has been permanently relieved.’
With that they left and the invisible atrium gate swung shut. Jharis’ torchlight faded out, the footfalls too, before I threw the bucket down with a clang and launched myself at the bars. ‘Blood?’
‘Voice down please.’
‘It doesn’t matter! Amyra’s blood of the Satrap?’
‘Cousin, yes. A second cousin.’
‘So that’s her claim?’
‘Most of it.’
‘And the Satrap knows?’
Rusper shrugged. ‘Who can say what our Satrap Syphus knows or thinks or even remembers anymore. This is what we are, Flint. A pelkhing mess of powerless minds around one all but mindless power.’
‘But she’s the one, then—the girl he grew up with. The girl who drove his father crazy!’
‘You know about that,’ he chortled darkly. ‘So some believe.’
‘Some like the Captain,’ I said. ‘That’s why he watched her for so long, even before all this started. He told me. So did Javairea.’
‘Javairea?’ he repeated, back to full focus again.
I nodded. ‘The dragonfly that she gave you is the signal I’ve to send back to Azal.’
As he took in the fullness of the plan I’d got myself tangled up in, for his and all our sakes now, I stood and gripped the bars in silence. By the set of his jaw I could tell his thoughts were rounding back on what I’d brought before him. The decision. His fingers fidgeted; he burned to ask me his own questions but couldn’t, I knew, for fear of agreeing. I saw the fear of what I offered and how angry it made him.
He looked aside suddenly. ‘She knows nothing of the Discs.’
‘I know, I figured. I told you.’
He nodded vaguely, ceding the point.
‘Listen,’ I said. Level, careful, but grabbing my chance. ‘The Shield is going to be sent to my peoples’ shelter. The Captain said he’ll do everything he can to stop them, but.. .’
But Rusper turned away, fists clenched, and walked some paces from the bars. ‘Good man that Mondric,’ he said.
‘So are you,’ I told him firmly. And it was true, I knew it was.
Rusper shook his head. ‘To him I’ll always be un-Vedish. To all of them, in the end.’
‘Then . . .’ I began, but stopped myself and planted my forehead on the bars. I knew what I wanted to say but was afraid of saying it. Not scared of anger or rebukes, but of how much like Amyra it meant I wanted him to be. She’d said the same exact thing; that he wasn’t any true Vedan because he wouldn’t take what was in reach. And yet to take it now could save us. Him. Me. My people and his. ‘Just tell me where you keep the dragonfly. Please, Caliph Symphin.’
‘And put the Satrap to death.’ His voice was so full of defeat; this was the end, one way or another.
‘Please,’ I begged, closing my eyes. I’d stay right here, head pressed to iron, until the Shield pried me away. But then I said it: ‘It’ll make them wrong about you, all of them. Show them you’re Vedish.’
At the scrape of his feet in the gravel, I looked up. Hadn’t heard him coming back to stand in front of the bars. ‘At least there’s that,’ he said simply and the sound of his voice could have broken me in half. I held his haggard gaze until he reached in through the bars with the dragonfly and put it straight into my hand. I looked at it. The same exactly. ‘I am sorry, Florian,’ he said. Then nodded. ‘Go. Grant Azal his requests.’
And there it was.
‘Take this too,’ he added, screwing off his Guild-ring. Jaw slack, I took it. The consent I’d come for was in my hands with the dragonfly, but this? It was too much like giving up. He smiled and walked into the dark. ‘Little use to me in here.’
Hardest of all was leaving him, not knowing when or if I’d see him again. Still, I remembered to keep my head down as I made my hurried exit from the Iron Keep and back up into orange light. Rusper’s Guild-ring shared a pocket with his emerald dragonfly, while the other held the twin. That warning – don’t confuse them – haunted me like a lost spirit.
Zeek beckoned me back into the shelter of the underpass. At a stairwell I gripped her shoulder. ‘Two things,’ I said.
She blinked, ready.
‘First run up to the Mooncircle Hall. By the doors there’s a stand and a parchment with some names. You have to write another name.’
She shook her head and mimed writing in the air.
‘Okay, can’t write, I get it. But this is easy, Zeek, just look.’ I let go of her shoulder, hunkered down on the lowest step and with my finger drew four letters, clear as I could, in the gutter’s dust. AZAL. ‘Can you do that?’
She crouched beside me and frowned down at what I’d done. Patiently, knowing her for smart, I waited for the image to dissolve into her memory. A minute later she was nodding.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘When that’s done, take this to the house of the engineer Loquar. It’s a message.’ Trusting her completely, I put the emerald earring—key to everything—in her hand. ‘I can’t take it. The house is watched. But it’s really important, it has to get there.’
The mute girl winked and was up the steps in an instant.
I sat and dusted off my hands. As a stream of late wagons from the depot passed me by, I forced calm and focus. There was something I’d forgotten; something someone had said. I pried Azal’s face from memory and tried to coax it to speak, but it was no use. He’d said so many things last night, and that incredible promise of a way into the Builders’ Roads blurred all the others.
This is in your hands now. Javairea had said that when I’d asked how I was to find out the secret. How in mine?
Don’t confuse them.
Cog-teeth seized. That Sight-dream billowed fresh from memory. In it, Rusper knelt there on the floor with his lover. She unclasped the emerald jewel, but before she gave him that gift, she turned and opened its capsule to let a single tear slide in. How’d I forgotten that part?
I dug the jewel out of my pocket, squeezed it by head and emerald abdomen, and twisted. The thread gave. I spun it further by the wings, as if opening a tap or valve, then caught the body as it freed. Exposed just above the thorax was a tiny roll of paper. Loquar’s paper, all grubby, though bearing the royal emblem, so obviously more pillaged citadel supplies. But the writing wasn’t his. I’d seen a writing like it, though – the Theorem – each immaculate letter giving the illusion of sprouting its own filigree of flowers:
Step into the gardens
That was all the letters said. Some ink had smudged over the emblem. But the clue was simple—I’d cracked it!—and now I felt myself smile. For the first time in a long time I knew a feeling like real hope. Inside the darkness an idea had sparked; an idea so unlikely to work that I nearly laughed at it myself. It was possible though. Suddenly, I realised, it was everything I had.