The power of over five million gallons coming down was a force like nothing I’d ever felt, even the Disc-blaze; I’d not survive it—I knew that the second it hit and, roaring, raging, wrenched my body from the controls. The deluge slammed me to the core, flat to the metal, and beat my back with so much force that all the air was pummelled out of my chest, which had at most another second then my ribcage would collapse. Not that it mattered. White water drove so hard and dense, there wasn’t any air to breathe. Fierce and freezing, it killed my senses and, as I died, numb, deaf and blind, all I could think was that the sphere was going to break before the Guilds could see it too!
And then it stopped. Suddenly the water-storm was gone, all gone below in monstrous echoes.
Drenched and battered, I opened my eyes. Rising again. The sphere had taken the barrage. Its rings of tubes—still glowing—were hammered out of shape and one was ruptured, spurting. Some arrestor-blades had broken off at elbows; now I saw why I’d survived, passing the docking cross again and the lax cables that hung there—snapped in half by my forced descent. So the polymer wasn’t unbreakable.
I palmed a gauge-wheel and gazed up at the new sight, just as my sphere crossed the threshold where the Gate had been.
The four Arterials rose with me.
Into the Hub.
There was the breach, the second hole the Rath had made in Arterial-III. Then the big wooden girder that marked the first one. Above that, all four arterials flowered out at angled girders to reach the farther greenstone walls. And higher yet, on the cantilever of Zone Three, the awestruck faces of a hundred soldiers watched me rise. They held their stations as my sphere climbed between the pipes, and overhead along the central line, towards the cables and the one stone arm. All that was left of that docking cross.
Ten feet above the cables, I spun all three gauges closed. Tubes dimmed as upward movement slowed; I flipped the five remaining anchor-claws to docking position; and, before it sank, I stamped a foot down on the jettison pedal, voiding the tank in a fine mist that speckled the tubes gold again. The Deeping Sphere drifted down into the web and came to rest.
The soldiers’ disbelief and wonder echoed up while I stared at Hetch’s hand-hook. It still held, without a Hetch, fixed by that one unopened blade.
Then I looked down into what I’d come from, a depth unimaginable. Guessed I’d never get Eflan’s knife back. Then hoped that Mondric was alright. Hoped that Javairea and my people were as safe as they could be.
Just as four big stone brackets on the lowest zone cracked from the walls and tumbled down into the dark, putting a shudder through the chamber’s column.
No. ‘Please, no . . .’
From the ceiling a team of five engineers dropped into view on vertical zip-lines and stopped a short way from the sphere. As they dangled, one raised a visor: Pintle. Like the others of her team, she didn’t know what to look at: me, the sphere or what had just opened below.
‘It can’t collapse, not now . . .’ I muttered, almost praying, as I waited for more tremors to come, then calving walls, as the Hub finally got swallowed.
But no more came.
Pintle shook her head, staring down after the brackets. ‘Those were mine . . .’ she murmured, dazed. ‘. . . only support-struts.’
----------------------------------------
There wasn’t time to explain it all to Pintle, only the things she had to do. We parted ways on second level. While I ran for the surface, she and her team went to equip themselves with heavy-duty tools to break back into Rusper’s sealed-up workshop.
Had the clerics’ rite started? I only hoped that, if it had, Azal would trust me to keep my word. I sprinted up the rubble-shaft and back into the citadel, which was lit up in splendour. In the corridors I spotted lanterns filtered red, orange and yellow, before I ducked through the first side-door into safer service passages. Couldn’t risk being seen.
Not least because I was covered with blood: both the dwarf’s blood and mine. One side of Zeek’s yellow jacket was red, and as servants passed me, double-taking at the sight, my shoulder flared with so much pain I couldn’t imagine how I’d even worked the sphere after those stabs. Bracing it with a hand, I moved through the commotion, up the stairs and along the passage that crossed the ground-floor foyers.
The rite had begun; these greenstring men, women and children were carrying salvers and platters from the kitchens to the hall. I shoved past more of them upstairs, making my way for the mezzanines; but I’d never been up here, it was like a maze. I stopped and leaned against a wall, gritting my teeth against the pain. Vision blurred but I didn’t have time to collapse. What was my plan? Did I have one?
Pushing past the pain and faintness, I kept moving. More servants were hurrying on through the next chamber, going somewhere . . . ‘You, boy, can’t pass this way,’ a voice was suddenly saying. Vision cleared. I found the face of a glaring service steward. He stood in front of a door that had just closed after the greenstrings. His eyes widened. ‘What the dredth happened to you? You’re soaking wet! And is that blood?’
‘I have to get into the hall,’ words said themselves.
A moment’s pause. ‘Who did this to you?’
‘I must get through,’ I repeated.
He didn’t budge. ‘You’re not on my staff. Return to your own duties or, at the least, get yourself—’
‘No,’ I said.
Another service line was forming up behind me. I plunged my hand into Zeek’s pocket for the ring and held it out. He might have gasped. ‘That’s . . .’ he stammered. ‘That is the Guild-Ring-Most-Royal.’
‘I know what it is,’ I said, firm, focus flooding back until I almost felt an echo of the Sight behind my eyes.
‘How came you by—’
‘I’m the hand of the Viceroy. You will let me through.’
A small bell sounded in an adjoining room, the steward’s attention now split between the guild-ring’s crest and that signal for the next dispatch of trays due through this way.
He grimaced. ‘I don’t know what your purpose is, but should you cause undue disruption I’ll be having the Shield on you.’ Then he pushed me. ‘Get you behind the line and follow. Quietly.’
Pocketing the ring so I could better grip my sticky shoulder, I stepped aside. Six more straight-backed greenstrings flowed past through the door. Then I followed them.
On the other side, the dimly-lit mezzanine sloped by deep tiers to a balustrade styled like battlements. I made out crenels between the lined-up silhouettes of sipping, murmuring watchers; some grandly dressed, others in swathes. The air was charged with a thick incense and a reverential hush, though there were voices floating up, one at a time, from below. The spectrum of red, yellow and orange glowed, but softly, from down there.
Meanwhile the service line divided – three left, three right – along the back wall to deliver their salvers across the counters I barely glimpsed. As I glanced back, the steward made some frantic ushering gesture through a crack in the door. ‘Back and away!’ he mouthed, then shut it.
So the Viceroy’s imprisonment—and “crime”—had been made known to the whole city; his reputation destroyed. I’d seen the look in that steward’s eyes. He would alert the Iron Shield first chance he got, I knew he would. But I had time, maybe some minutes. Half of those Shieldmen were underground, or dead, or manning their posts in other parts of the citadel. The rest were here, on show for Ered. Thankful of shadows on the tiers, I hurried down and wove between the standing watchers, to the edge. Then looked out over the Mooncircle Hall.
I’d never known as many people to stand so quietly together: surely no less than a thousand toe-to-toe in the main hall and overlooking from mezzanines. Judging from the swathes I could make out in the spectral light, most were ergish, but there were also Antissans who crowded nearer the great doors. Manned at intervals by Shieldmen in full colours, an aisle of clear floor split the sea of watching heads from the doors to the dais of the throne, where it widened into a circle. Either side of the dais thronged the two hundred clerics.
The dais itself, seen from here, finally made sense. Or maybe that was because, not an hour ago, I’d recognised the same shape in the Builders’ Stones. Those triangular extensions between the steps to the first tier; that strangely concave inward curve of the highest tier; the random promontory in the middle—all of it, of course, was the Mooncircle.
Now, in a show of presence that looked more like a challenge, a Shieldman stood on each triangle; that was, except for the frontmost. The man who stood there was the red herald, I thought, though it was hard to tell at this distance and through the flame-tinted light. Those behind him were clerics. Important clerics, I guessed, conducting the Rite. It was one of them whose voice resounded through the hall as he recited some dull ikon from memory, though the words he spoke made no sense.
There was the gryphon. Out of its cage and free of straw, the fledgeling creature sat on the middle promontory, body tethered by a cord. Smaller than I’d thought; about the size of a housecat.
As for the throne above it all, I only now realised that I’d never even looked at it before. Its golden planes and angles caught the light through haze, the whole chair made of solid gold; a golden puzzle-block of elongated octagons; its back yards tall. It mustn’t have been needed by the Satrap yet, since all it had on it just now was a heap of garments in beige silk. Some of the clerics’ regalia, I figured. But something made me look again.
Regalia, yes, but not discarded. It had a sick taste, that slow and creeping understanding that a body was there, wrapped in those silks, breathing and looking out of eyes; a taste that filtered through my stomach to settle cold in the pit of it. Those rounded bumps were bony shoulders; that hollow dip of folds, a chest; that pale and sagging mound of rumples was a face. The thinnest trace of a person—just bones and air wrapped in bloodless skin—sat in the clothes slung on that throne; more of a half-finished, smudged scribble of himself than a man of flesh. But that’s what it was, if only just.
It was him.
He wasn’t moving. Purple physicians clustered close on either side of the throne as if on leashes to it. More Shieldmen too.
The ikon-priest stopped crooning. In the open circle below the dais, another priest – one of three who stood at the big central brazier – raised a tray lined with sparkling things and faced a man in Eredian clothes.
Up on the tier, the herald leaned in to hear something a high cleric said. Then stepped forward on his triangle and announced: ‘The conclave of Uribb, Eshipas and Calvallagh so deems the bid of fourteen Sunheart Diamonds, here presented by one Ephody of Creach, as . . . unbefitting of the desert’s sacred daemon.’
Across the mezzanines only a few murmurs broke the silence. The Eredian woman standing beside me, I guessed, thought well of Ephody of Creach because she scoffed and muttered to the man beside her: ‘Unbefitting! Can’t be a half-score more of those in the Empire, don’t they know that!’
‘Reclaim thy gift and withdraw,’ the herald said.
The cleric passed the tray of diamonds to the bidder, Ephody, who turned and left the open circle with two valets. More brightly-costumed folk from Ered stood that side; the Vedish caliphs too. One, two, three . . . only five; the southern three with moulded beards and cone-shaped mitres on their heads. No Bardon. Still down in that dungeon, then, or dead.
I moved along the mezzanine, trying to get a better view. The Sanhedrin was assembled on this side; there in front were the blue gowns and blue talliths of the First Circle. I spotted Dranz but no Amyra.
Nor Azal.
From the murmurs I overheard, that bid of diamonds had been better than the last bid at least: also dismissed, the sum of five hundred golden ducats! How many bids had been made?
‘The conclave calls forth Spode of Crippin.’ Eredian applause pitter-pattered while the vast host of Vedans gazed on in silence. The Satrap didn’t move at all.
I had to get down there.
‘To the clerics of the desert and to His Majesty the Satrap, I say that I am Electra Spode of the Lostrian province Crippin, here to submit before the conclave of this Rite, my hopeful gift . . .’
At the far left of the mezzanine was another service-door; if I’d not been looking I’d have missed it. Down the tight tube of its stair I leaned my weight against the wall, scoring my shoulder over stone as I went down. Then sucked short breaths against the pain and pushed my way through the ground-floor door.
Vedans were around me now, pressed close, and laughing. But not at me. The hall’s doors had opened. To my left I saw the tops of them over the swathe-hoods and shawls. There was a kind of clopping noise as well, moving left to right.
Covering my stab-wound with a hand, I pushed my way between the folk as best I could. It wasn’t easy. These were the people who wanted most to see what happened tonight, and those with good views had fought for them. For every couple of yards I made towards the throne-end, a battery of back-shoves forced me round another way. But soon that cleric took up his nonsense incantation again. It seemed to seize the ergish peoples’ attention more fiercely, which made it easier to slip and shimmy my way between their bodies without a fuss.
‘. . . so deems six Dreszian Piebalds, here presented by one Spode of Crippin . . .’
I squeezed out of the thick at the lower edge of the open circle, right behind a Shieldman.
‘. . . unbefitting,’ announced the herald, answered by more laughter from Vedans and shocked looks from the Eredians overhead: ‘. . . of the desert’s sacred daemon.’
There at the front of the big brazier, I could see neither the clerics nor Spode of Crippin. A row of half a dozen black-and-white ponies was in the way. I only heard Spode’s shrill voice, outraged: ‘They’re thoroughbreds!’
‘Reclaim thy gift and withdraw.’
Grooms guided the ponies roundabout in a brilliant display of equine training and, forming a line, led them back towards the doors. I only saw the back of Spode as she blustered off.
I tried to lean and crane my neck without attracting the attention of the Shieldman, just to see past the stupid talliths of the First Circle. Who else was there, at the foot of the dais? But no, the mathematician so tall, I’d have seen him. He wasn’t here. He hadn’t come.
‘. . . calls forth Wendryl of Nem . . .’
This man was less colourful than the other Eredians: he wore a sleek tunic and leggings both of silver-buckled black. At the brazier he passed the cleric a chunk of rock and strip of wood. ‘. . . one hundred and fifty thousand imperial standards of Nembic oak. One hundred thousand imperial tonnes of granite and marble.’
That was enough to rebuild Radhi, I thought, with enough left over, probably, for a full fleet of new ships. Practically enough to build another Antissa!
The droning ikon came again.
And then the herald: ‘The conclave of Uribb, Eshipas and Calvallagh so deems the bid of a hundred and fifty thousand standards of timber, a hundred thousand tonnes of stone, here presented by one Wendryl of Nem . . . as worthy of the desert’s sacred daemon!’
Ripples ran throughout the hall, gasps of surprise and satisfaction from ergish Vedans and Antissans and Eredians alike. Wendryl left his tokens at the brazier and withdrew.
A cleric lit more incense. Two others stoked up the brazier-coals into a blood-red caldera. Up on the tier, the fledgling croaked and twitched a wing.
‘Now the conclave summons forth Lady Pleunse-Claussen,’ the herald called, ‘Spiral Duchess of the Dunfinds.’
A loud applause sounded above, joined by Antissans at the back. Dragging my eyes down from the mezzanines again—just for a moment, wondering why there were so many swathed folk up there—I watched the Duchess take the floor.
I knew what power looked like now, and the way she carried herself left me in no doubt that she had it. Even here, guest in a foreign capital, she owned the eyes that were on her. And all eyes were. I sensed the awe and wonder, even from the ergish people, the helpless fascination. I shared it.
She was tall. Or was she, really? Crowning her head was a great triple-horned hennin of crimson velvet, finely laced with golden thread. From the hennin, a vast brocaded wimple of silk gauze hung to her waist. Her face was small and very white, her neck sealed right up to the chin inside a velvet collar. A gown of red and robe of black fell from gigantically frilled shoulders to the floor, festooned with pearls and golden spangles. Hands were gloved in soft ermine, and in one she held a sword. I didn’t think even Amyra had ever looked as striking.
And there was Amyra, just behind Vizier Vesh.
‘To the clerics of the desert,’ declared the Duchess, a strong falsetto, ‘and to His Majesty the Satrap, I say that I am Pleunse-Claussen, Duchess of the Dunfinds of Lostor and noble peerage of the Spiral Ministry of Ered . . .’
I watched Amyra. Since that dungeon she’d had a change of dress as well – now wrapped in layers of spiralling blue and white that tightly hugged her curves. On her right shoulder the fabric peaked to a form a single horn-like flare, while on her left it draped her arm and touched the floor. Her gloves were silk, her jewels were splaying silver spears. Tonight her braids were wound up high into a scarab-speckled spike.
‘. . . here to submit before the conclave of this Rite my hopeful gift,’ the Duchess said. There was a long, uncertain pause. I saw Caliphs Arif and Omran shuffle and swap glances.
‘Welcome Lady Duchess,’ the herald said, and gestured. ‘Present thy gift.’
‘Not mine alone,’ replied Pleunse-Claussen.
A quick frown flashed on the herald’s brow.
‘My bid is joined to another’s. To this end, sir, I would address the Satrap.’
As murmurs moved through the audience, the herald said, ‘None may do this, Duchess.’ Then that polished smile again. ‘You will address only the conclave.’
The Satrap still hadn’t moved. Through the haze, his eyes did seem to be open – two yellow blotches in grey beds.
The Duchess straightened. ‘So be it,’ she said and extended a velvet arm. Fear pulled a knot tight in my belly as Amyra stepped into the circle. The hall rose up in clapping, cheers and shouts of welcome. Antissan welcome, but also ergish, and that stung. Both loved her then.
‘I am Amyra Zimran, the Flag-Senera of Vorth!’ Her high voice carried like a bell. ‘And I hereby bind my hopeful gift to that of the Lady Duchess.’
‘This is irregular . . .’ said the herald and took a moment to confer with the high cleric. ‘But the conclave will permit.’
Shuffles, murmurs. Silence.
The Duchess turned to the cleric at the brazier, raised the sword on both gloved hands and presented it. Around me, as the cleric took it, Vedans scoffed with wry faces and I couldn’t blame them. It was just an ordinary longsword; no inset jewels or precious metals.
‘I here present to the conclave and to His Majesty the Satrap,’ Pleunse-Claussen said, ‘the full five thousand men-at-arms of the Dunfinds’ provincial army.’
My jaw went slack. The audience erupted. Hallowed silence shattered, everyone from the viziers of the Sanhedrin to the Antissans by the doors were stirring, shouting in excitement. The clerics were a hessian sea of chants and wild waving. Even the herald had round eyes.
He raised a hand for silence, which took some time, and cleared his throat. ‘Senera Amyra. Your gift?’
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
A smile teased her painted mouth, and I hated it, as she faced another cleric. My hammer-heartbeat was pumping so much blood at my stabbed shoulder that it throbbed with jolting aches. Which jolted harder as Amyra turned to face the hall and look a signal to the doors. Everyone looked that way in answer, and I did too, hardly believing what I saw.
Another six Shieldmen entered. In front of them, bizarre to see, was Loquar, pulling a squeaking trolley down the aisle. On it was the chest that I had seen in his house last night. Azal’s chest. And on bare feet, between the two short files of Shieldmen, walked Rusper Symphin; wrists manacled, raw eyes bare, and still wearing that ragged thobe. A child, chained too, walked with him. They reached the front of the brazier. Loquar’s trolley chirped to a standstill. I looked on, frozen, through a rising mist of tears as they pushed Rusper to his knees; he listed forward on the floor, unable to brace himself with hands.
When the doors groaned closed, no Azal had entered.
The herald stammered, ‘Sinar—’
‘First!’ she cried. ‘A third gift, here joined to mine own . . .’
‘Another?’
‘A bid of three?’ exclaimed Wendryl of Nem. ‘How is this just?’
‘Peace ekharan,’ said the herald. ‘The conclave permits it thus.’
Wendryl cursed. ‘And who might this third bidder be?’
Amyra answered: ‘Albastra Azal, a famed savant of this city.’
There was some laughter in the hall’s churning of voices. ‘You make some high claims, Flag-Senera,’ remarked the herald.
Again Wendryl interrupted: ‘And how shall three bidders claim the gryphon? Is the beast to be divided in three parts?’
The host of clerics swelled at this, but Wendryl held up a hand for patience.
‘Please, I mean no irreverence,’ he begged. ‘I simply fail to understand how all of three claimants might—’
‘We have resolved our terms,’ the Duchess silenced him.
‘Then, where is he, this Azal?’ asked the herald.
Amyra bowed. ‘I beg the grace of His Majesty and the conclave. Alas, the great man has been unable to attend these proceedings.’
I should have known she was going to win. Maybe it was all more lies; maybe she’d caught wind of the plan and simply killed him, claimed his bid. Or maybe Rusper had been right and there’d never been a legendary mathematician on our side, only a trick. It didn’t matter. And now, as Amyra waved a sinuous hand towards Loquar – another traitor all along – I felt queasy.
Loquar stooped down to Azal’s chest, detached its snibs with two snaps and raised its lid. Shuffled aside.
‘Seven thousand Quicklight Gems,’ Amyra announced.
The herald replied, ‘Very well.’
‘As for my own,’ resumed Amyra, and reached a hand out to the cleric. The cleric took what was in it and I saw. So did the herald, whose face fell.
‘That is the medallion of the Viceroyalty.’
‘It is,’ she said. ‘A token.’
‘And the meaning of this token?’
She turned away from the dais to look across the peopled hall. ‘Fidelity.’
The high clerics were frowning down on her, disgruntled, and by the sounds in the audience, no one understood her any better. I couldn’t see Pleunse-Claussen’s face.
‘Let this attest it!’ Amyra said. She wasn’t speaking to the herald or the conclave anymore, but to her people. ‘Here is the traitor, Rusper Symphin . . .’
At just that moment Rusper managed to stand up but a Shieldman pushed him down again. Heckles were rising from the back of the hall: ‘How say you traitor?’
She raised her voice: ‘Here is the man, Chief Engineer, appointed Viceroy of the Throne, charged by the Satrap, and so faithfully invested with defence of this Antissa, rightful upholding of your law in time of war, and the construction of a shelter to safeguard the Vedish people against invasion.’
Suddenly all I wanted to do was break cover, dash out and hurt them. All of them.
No tears, not now.
But I could still hear the heckles: ‘. . . against the Rath! . . . killed it himself! . . . fortress champion!’
Amyra stood calmly and waited them out. So sure, so patient. While across from her Pleunse-Claussen faced the dais, herald and deathly-still Satrap.
‘You are betrayed,’ Amyra pushed through more answering jeers. ‘The engineer has failed outright to forge your wartime shelter, as earnestly promised to your sovereign. This engineer has, by clear design, caused the death of the High Commander Ezra Plamen and most wantonly deceived your Sanhedrin to achieve martial control. Thuswise has he countermanded royal decree and turned Vorth back upon the offensive through full military force.’
The jeers went muddy, uncertain, and I didn’t like the way the Vedans near me shuffled. Why did they love her so much? Because of what she’d been to them in Shad? They didn’t know what she’d been doing since she’d come to Antissa!
‘And more’—I’d known she wasn’t finished—‘This is the engineer, the Elmine engineer graciously gathered to the breast of the Satrap despite his birth outwith Vorth’s sands, who saw it fit to welcome the Satrap’s enemy to the fortress capital!’
Shouts broke through, Antissan accents: ‘. . . know this act! . . . not treason!’
Had I heard right?
Amyra’s bell-voice rang: ‘Look well! A Naemian child, one of a hundred given refuge by the engineer. Forbidden refuge!’
Through the clamour it was impossible to tell how many thought this was true, but I wasn’t listening. I was trying to get a look at the child, the boy two Shieldman pulled into the view of the throne.
The Satrap moved. Only enough to draw my eye and, as it seemed, everyone else’s, he seemed to slide his elbows back along the throne’s arms for better purchase and lean forward. I couldn’t read any expression, but in the silence it commanded I heard him wheeze the word: ‘Continue.’
The herald bowed deep, ‘Your Majesty.’ Then turned his eyes to Amyra. ‘Sinarre, is this the fullness of your gift?’
‘It is not,’ she declared, drawing another scoff from Wendryl of Nem.
‘Pray, what more do you submit?’
She gripped her left wrist and slipped the silk glove from that hand. Then she gave it to the cleric and faced the throne. ‘To seal this attestation of most high fidelity,’ she said, ‘I offer His Majesty my hand in marriage.’
A wave of awe swept through the hall like a buffeting gust. Then, from the front, the ergish Vedans led a rising applause, growing fuller and wider as more joined their whoops and shouts from the back. They loved it. They loved her. The Satrap gazed on, awake after all, but motionless.
The ikon was repeated, and the three-part bid of Flag-Senera, Duchess and Azal deemed worthy. It would triumph, of course. It would win the gryphon. Anyone could see that, though none of it made sense.
Three worthy bids were summoned up to the first tier of the dais where they stood around the gryphon, before the throne. The third, which I’d missed, was that of Gran-artésan Develay-Allade; his gift an artefact called the “Staff of Sembian.”
‘A stick,’ the wheeze said to the Gran-artésan; ushered aside. ‘Rock and lumber,’ it said to Wendryl of Nem. He too withdrew.
Rusper was so still, there on the floor.
The doors crashed open. The gryphon flapped and shrieked. All through the hall Shieldmen drew swords but those who entered were armed too; a score of fortress guards. Leading them was Mondric, drenched and bloody. ‘Farce!’ he boomed, one red hand pressed against his neck as it had been when I’d left him. ‘This Rite you witness is corrupt!’
As Shieldmen peeled away from posts all down the aisle to face the guards, the two hundred clerics broke into a tempest of shouting. But they didn’t shout for long, since, walking with the Captain was their Archimandrite. Bardon. His shoulder-length hair waved about his cassocked shoulders as he walked, white streak spread through its wild strands, and those hazel eyes were bright. Pintle was there too!
I glanced throne-wards again. Rusper had swivelled on his haunches. The high clerics on the tier stood as if rooted to the stone, while Amyra and the Duchess showed blank faces. Satrap still.
‘You have no business here, Captain,’ Amyra threw towards the doors, somehow making it sound like a pleasant request to take his leave.
‘The Captain comes with me, on mine,’ stated Bardon, and his voice was so hard with purpose I felt like everything he’d said before this moment hadn’t really been him. Outnumbered Shieldmen lowered their swords and made way for Mondric’s party. Amyra surfaced a prim smile and briefly nodded to the Duchess, whose air of regal calm was broken; she looked annoyed, unsettled, as Mondric stopped at the brazier.
‘As rightful voice of the city’s law, I declare Amyra Zimran of Shad’—he thrust a pointed finger—‘charlatan and conspirator against the Mooncircle Throne.’
Her smile went placid as she floated to the edge of the tier. ‘A stirring entrance you make, but you intrude on sacred ordinance.’
‘Majesty, your ear!’ Mondric cried.
The herald, urgent, waved a hand: ‘None may—’
‘This Rite is halted, stand down,’ roared Mondric.
Sure enough the herald yielded, glancing doubts to the high clerics and the Duchess, whose face had pickled into grimace. Leaving Bardon at the brazier, Mondric mounted the first-tier steps and the clerics made way. He moved straight past the gryphon’s perch to the first step below the throne. And knelt.
‘Most high ekharan,’ he said, strong as before but husking. I saw only half the Satrap’s face; one bobbing eyeball on Mondric. ‘This Rite disguises the machinations of your servant, the Flag-Senera. It is not solely the gryphon that is here bid for. It is your throne.’
Shock made its paths through different sections of the crowd, but Vedans near me had still faces. The Satrap’s showed no change at all.
‘Enthused words,’ cooed Amyra, ‘but words you may come to regret.’
Mondric stood up and turned around but didn’t look at her. He called out: ‘Caliph Bardon. If you will.’
The Caliph-Archimandrite raised his chin and then his voice rang even louder: ‘Vorth, hear me! I, Methar, hold the last words of Zimran, first-trusted and first-loved of your sovereign.’ He threw his fist high above his head so all could see what he held: a small brass tube. ‘Here is his sigil.’
Rusper’s face swung towards Bardon.
Amyra widened her smile. ‘Indeed, my own.’
‘Here in this missive, writ in the endweek of the wyle of Pelat and reaching Methar a full three months before your Zimran was proclaimed dead to the city, the good Vizier states he will not live out the week—that his affliction is no Lackish Fever, but the effects of a slow toxin administered by his own physicians!’
Amyra hardened her voice. ‘Unbecoming accusations from one so widely adored, ekharan. I bid you rescind them, forthwith, in sight of Satrap and people.’
An outraged high cleric gasped, ‘Archimandrite! This is profane!’
Amyra extended a long arm towards the cleric. ‘Hear you your own disciples? You taint the long-awaited coming of the gryphon with base slander!’
‘Verily,’ declared Pleunse-Claussen, ‘my journey out of Ered was undertaken to stake a claim for the gryphon, not to bear witness to a Vedish trial!’
Bardon continued as if she hadn’t spoken: ‘Herein too, the Vizier confesses sore regret for his disservice to throne and people in restoring the defunct sodality of the Iron Shield.’
Amyra: ‘Treason.’
‘Wait!’ someone cried. ‘That child’s my—’
It was Vizier Dranz. And he was right, now I could see that it was Zeek who stood there blinking in the grips of those Shieldmen. And yet no sooner had the outburst left the lips of the vizier than he faltered back with a look of panicked devastation. Say it.
Amyra glared at him.
Say it! But he didn’t.
So I did. ‘Amyra’s lying!’ I stepped out from the Vedans, past the Shieldman; yelled it loudly as I could. So I would ruin us, but it was done now; couldn’t take it back. ‘She’s lying about Caliph Symphin. And that’s not a Naemian!’
Horror sheeted Mondric’s face and Rusper’s too. ‘Don’t boy,’ he begged as I passed him.
The Duchess threw up her arms. ‘What is the meaning of this?’
Then Vizier Vesh: ‘He says the truth, though, that’s the mute. Dranz, she is yours, no?’
Others joined: ‘. . . citadel servant since she could walk . . .’
‘. . . Vedish as they come . . .’
The Duchess looked to Amyra. ‘Would you deceive both me and the Rite’s conclave with this ruse?’
‘Good Lady Duchess, if you please . . .’ Amyra said, ‘all remains precisely as agreed.’
‘Amyra!’ Bardon bellowed.
And when she looked to him in answer, it was Pintle who stepped forward and threw a piece of metal across the floor. Hetch’s hand-hook. I could only wonder if anyone else noticed the smile die on the Senera’s lips.
‘What occurs here?’ said the Duchess, narrowing eyes.
‘Merely a delay.’ Amyra looked at me now, her dead smile becoming a new one of oily contentment.
‘Who is that child?’
‘That,’ said Amyra, face seeming to glow as if she couldn’t have hoped for better, ‘is not merely a Naemian, the Satrap’s outlawed enemy, but the very Naemian boy whom the Viceroy engineer employed as hand.’
‘I am!’ I shouted for the hall. Mondric’s eyes closed in defeat. I faced the throne. ‘That’s how I know the Deep is finished. Right now, right under us, there’s a shelter big enough for all Vorth’s people and more!’
I felt wild, giddy, terrified and all-powerful at once. Heart in my hand, I climbed the dais to the first tier, not even bothering to hold my shoulder. Let them see.
The Duchess looked at me briefly, then strode towards Amyra, hennin horns towering majestically over her. ‘Withdraw thy bid, Flag-Senera.’
‘It is too late for that,’ she answered, sweetness gone from her voice.
I walked between them, past the herald and high clerics and the bidders. The gryphon cocked its head on its scrawny neck and cast a black eye over me. I passed it, taking to the steps of the second tier. ‘What does he think he’s doing?’ The herald’s voice was shrill. ‘Boy, you’ve no right—’
Up there, four Shieldmen took steps forward. But the Satrap moved his hand, raising it halfway, which halted them. So I climbed on past where Mondric stood and stopped one step shy of the throne.
He’d been a very big man once. Maybe even as monstrous a figure as that stone bust of him had first put in my mind: huge round shoulders, bovine head, ledges of cheekbones, tumbling brow and wide-set eyes. He was a shadow of that. I thought, if humans shed their skins like snakes, then I’d be looking at that skin: the dried up, cast off sheath of him, perhaps propped up for this display with bits of salvaged skeleton. His body looked to have no shape inside the gown but pointy elbows, bulbous knees, dome-knuckled hands splayed on the throne-wings as if pinning him in place, high knotted shoulders like a cradle for his head. All else caved in. There was no grand beard of ringlet-cones, only a scrub of lifeless grey, and all the fearsome, regal aspects of the war-king he had been had gone to seed. From hairless, liver-spotted head, his slanted temples curled in now, his tusk-like nostrils were the nose-holes 0f a pig, and sunken eyes, jaundiced ochre and ichor-clotted, seemed to sit so far apart in the wax-white that they were strangers to each other. It wasn’t clear which one, if either, looked at me.
The eyes of Vorth were on my back but I didn’t kneel.
The wheeze said, ‘Naemian.’ What had they done to this man? Barely older than Rusper, he was so full of drugs he couldn’t raise his head by more than half an inch.
‘I’m not your enemy,’ I said, ‘Rusper Symphin isn’t either.’
‘Enough!’ Pleunse-Claussen cried, incensed. ‘For shame Amyra, withdraw thy bid!’
‘Our bid is sealed,’ Amyra said.
‘Then I withdraw my own! The Dunfinds take no further part in this veiled play!’
Just as she said that and the tier and hall clamoured with shouts of every kind, I felt it there in my pocket. Though I knew it couldn’t be there. It was impossible. Completely. But with my gaze glued to the Satrap, I took it out, and looked, and gave. Did he have the strength to take it?
‘Florian . . .’ Mondric’s tone was grave behind me, but I ignored him. One knotted royal shoulder rose to move an elbow slightly back. A hand deformed by ganglions trembled open.
I put it there.
Every movement a strain, the Satrap brought it to his chest: the little purse Azal had given me last night, the one I knew I’d given back. This was Zeek’s jacket, after all. It made no sense. I watched him bring his other hand toward his chest – seeing the gold ring set with what looked like malachite – and tip out the purse’s contents.
‘What are you doing?’ Amyra snarled, climbing the steps.
I spun. ‘Nothing you’ve not!’ I shouted for everyone to hear. ‘These are the gems you’ve won with!’
Startled, she halted four steps down.
‘Again I say it!’ declared the Duchess. ‘My offer’s severed from this bid. Withdrawn.’
But when I looked back to the Satrap, he’d done it: taken a single amber lozenge and pushed it into his mouth. Everyone went silent as I looked to Amyra with a challenge: stop me. She barely tilted her head as, for some moments, the only sound in the great space was the wet noise the Satrap made as he bore down on the little sweet. And took another, before the first was finished. Then a third.
‘These . . . gems, Amyra . . .’ he squelched through an orange trickle that quickly sank into his beard. ‘. . . please me much.’
As she came to stand next to me, I was probably the only one to hear her clear her throat. ‘I am most glad of it, Majesty.’
Hadn’t she known? She hadn’t known!
A fourth went in; the bony fingers nimbler already. Vorth watched his mouth. When I slid my eyes sidelong I met Amyra’s doing the same.
‘And to this bounty . . . mhm . . . you add your hand . . . as wife and royal consort?’
‘I would, most high ekharan. With it, the traitor and his treachery as sure proof of my good faith.’
‘Hmph.’ Another lozenge. ‘Yet . . .’ He crunched on one and chewed.
‘Majesty?’
‘I think it . . . hmph, mayhaps, I have been overhasty in my choice . . . Mind you well, it is a gryphon . . . a sacred gryphon . . . that I yield upon this day.’ His broad, flat head turned to the right, an almost fluid motion now. ‘I’d look upon the stick once more.’
‘The . . .?’ I’d never heard Amyra stammer.
Along with the Duchess, the high clerics were all glaring at her now, as the herald cried: ‘The Satrap once more summons Develay-Allade, the Gran-artésan. Bring forth thy gift, the Staff of Sembian!’
I still didn’t know what was so special about the item but now I saw it as the grinning, bright-eyed Eredian came to the steps holding a winding, tangle-headed shillelagh. Already straighter on the throne, the Satrap popped the final lozenge between his lips as the man climbed and took a knee between Amyra and me, head down. Raising the staff across his palms.
The Satrap sucked and slopped and salivated through his sticky mouthful, then swallowed. His clearer eye roved up and down the wooden staff.
And then he surged. Out of the throne, he grabbed the staff in both his hands and struck Amyra with the tangle of its head. It dashed her cheek—I heard its crack—and she stumbled. As Develay-Allade gave a sharp cry, the Satrap raised the staff again, high above his head, and brought a second blow down on her shoulder. That blow dropped her.
‘Sire!’ yelled Mondric.
Physicians swarmed in from the sides as others rushed up from below and Mondric grabbed the Satrap’s arm and fought to rein in the weapon. Almost too easily, the Satrap batted him aside, raised the staff and struck another vicious blow to the woman lying on the steps. I flinched.
‘A mock you make of me, beloved! A foul mock!’ railed the Satrap, high and hoarse, and struck again. ‘One traitor—dressed as gracious homage—from another!’
Face creased with pain from his wounded neck, Mondric rallied; hooked the Satrap’s upper shoulder from behind to force him back and snatch the staff. He threw it clear; its owner scrambled to reclaim it.
Over the crowd’s rage and alarm, I thought I heard Bardon shout. I heard the gryphon’s frantic flaps. Amyra staggered to her feet, a mess of ripped, untangled braids, black marks and bloodied blue-and-white, while Mondric gripped the Satrap’s arm. ‘Be still, sire, please, I beg of you . . .’
But the old man tore free of him, lunged for Amyra, seized the long spike of her braids and hurled her back against the throne. Before she had a chance to stand, he was above her like a cloud, her neck enclosed in both big hands. ‘A gift you dare to name it!’
The nearest Shieldmen closed around and tried to get hold of his arms, while Mondric set about his back and waist but couldn’t pull him away, somehow couldn’t match his strength—this feeble smear of a man who, minutes ago, could barely move. ‘Bardon!’
I dared a glance back. There, in front of the forward-surging tide of Vedans, now being warded back by guards, Bardon simply stood and watched the struggle. Why wouldn’t he help? Mondric had freed him!
The Satrap staggered back at last. Away from the throne, I only needed one quick glimpse of Amyra to know that she was dead; her eyes were open but bulged blue, her chin offset at an angle to her neck that was wrong.
Mondric was crouching, panting, bleeding heavily again, as the Satrap lumbered down the steps towards the “gems.” Losing his balance then, he toppled on those steps and lay there wheezing on his back. The entire Mooncircle Hall drew the same breath and held it. Until Bardon’s voice went up like a clear trumpet—‘Eferikh!’
Savhar stepped from the crowd and shouted: ‘All positions!’
Along the mezzanines, between the clutches of Eredians, swathed figures turned into soldiers and with them were the pinpoints of primed chrozite fusils. There with the soldiers on the left was Telmadh Shafra, and to the right Artabh Keda.
The Eighth Battalion.
Mondric stood, hand on his neck and a look on his face I wasn’t sure I understood. A look that moved away from Bardon and settled coldly on Rusper, as Ferikh Savhar cut the shackles at his wrists. I sank into a crouch as the gryphon reared on its hind legs, beat wings and screamed.
‘Szaferis Aysattah, so named the Second Syphus!’ called Bardon clearly. ‘I am Alaric Bardon of Methar, a Vedan-born. The fortress-capital of Antissa stands surrounded by all but two of Vorth’s regiments. The caliphs of the south have bound their loyalty to me. Your reign and dynasty are ended as, in the sight of the Vedish, I take by force the desert throne.’
The hall became a storm but Methan soldiers somehow held back Vedans trying to charge forward. Among the cries of shock and anger, more and more cheers were rising, as if infected by the rapture being shouted by the clerics. In broken shackles Rusper held Zeek close to him, while Mondric drew his sword and threw it clattering to the floor.
With Savhar right behind him, Bardon climbed, but stopped to cast disdainful eyes over the wretch lying on the steps. Only then did I see how close I’d moved beside him. But the wheeze was wordless now.
‘Please don’t,’ I said.
Stone-faced and silent, the Archimandrite met my eyes. Then he moved on, up, for the throne to an explosion of raucous cheers. Bardon the First.
I didn’t watch; instead, I held an old man’s hand.