Chapter Five - In the Hall of Kings

The days after their arrival in Rivertown passed in the slow blur of listless waiting. The King’s View, with all its comforts, cultivated with the care befitting the waiting room of the capital, seemed a long way from the filth and dirt of the road. There were baths, and plenty of them, fresh linens, fur-lined blankets and hearth-fires broad as wagon beds. Fresh, pale fish and vegetables roasted in honey and oil over the coals. All of these Sara remembered, like one single, distant memory of sight and smell and touch, but not one detail could she recall in isolation, later. It withdrew through the heady haze that attaches itself to days without movement, the lethargy of inaction and comfort, mingled together like warm mist.

She spent many long hours soaking in the bath in her room, shutters thrown wide, staring up at the white gleam of Uldoroth rising inexplicably from the grass. By day, the walls began a pearly white, hotter than bare steel in summer, and slowly took on the dusky glare of the evening, until they gleamed with amber fire. At night, the moon dripped its pale light over the stones, picking out lines of silver atop the impossible cliffs of the Heartspire, shimmering like gossamer in the dark. Sara liked that time the best. The dead of night, when the inn fell to sleeping, and she alone stood by her windows, looking out over the city beyond. That was her time, when the city was just for her. The cold air would tug and shiver over her skin, but she would not care, seduced by the gleam of moonlight on distant halls.

Eventually she would sleep, as best she could, and dream of the city beyond her window. When morning came, food, another bath, maybe. She said her prayers, as she always did, mumbling words as practised as footsteps, all the Makers in their right place. Of Raka, she asked a plentiful harvest. From Falk, a season of good trade. Temur she pleaded to hold his winter storms, the First among them, Ulwe, to keep her family safe. Arana she thanked for her beauty. Of Kar, who loved war best, Lorar, who watched over the waves, and Horis, the craftsman, she had no requests, but she spoke their names all the same, as her mother had taught her. Only one did she leave off her lips, but no one spoke the name of Death. No one who knew what was good for them, anyway.

Her duties to the Gods finished, her watch would begin once more, passed with the intervening distractions of another endless day. More food. Another bath. Waiting for the silver gleam of night, and then her routine would begin all over again, without a shred of progress to show for it. Four nights, they waited. Four endless, empty days. Then on the morning of the fifth day, there was a commotion in the courtyard below her window. A bird from the Heartspire, bearing the seal of the Keeper of the King’s Hall, no less. For her father; a summons for the Lord of Westmere and his kin to attend on the King in the City of the Moon. They were to arrive not before the second hour of the afternoon, one day hence.

Time took on a new edge, then. Sara’s impatience, held back somewhat in days past by the tantalising view of their goal, surfaced with the fervour of a sudden storm. The details of the inn surged back out of the haze of her waiting, and every hour was a lifetime of crystallised agony, details upon details piling up in time like an endless hourglass of spiraling sand. She found that she could no longer watch the city out of her window. The closeness of it made the walls close in around her, made her heart stir like a drum in her breast. She ate her meals in silence, that day, listening to the excitable boasts of her father with barely veiled indifference. The King was his oldest friend, he told the small company of assembled wealth inside the common room. Fought with him during the rebellion. She had heard the story before. The throne was won by the King, of course, but where would he be, without his allies? King Dekar remembered his friends. Lord Nordin was sure to be received with much excitement atop the Heartspire.

Sara retired early, and slept fitfully in her bed under covers soft as silk, tossing and turning away the small hours. She did not realise she had slept at all, until Ewa roused her with the pale light of the dawn spilling around the edges of the shutters. Her bath was steaming ready, and she took her time with it, smoothing her weary skin with the perfumed water. By the time she rose into the waiting towels she had almost forgotten the emptiness of her sleep. She stood before the glamour as Ewa plaited her hair, watching the tiny shifts of her own emerald eyes against the murmurated surface. The more they worked, the more Sara grew still. There was a poise that came with preparation, a confident grace that was the armour of womanhood. That’s what her mother had told her. So, she said her prayers, naming the Nine each in turn, girding herself with the familiarity of the words. And she thought of the silver streets atop the Heartspire, the Hall of the King himself, the Lords and Ladies of Valia watching her through eyes veiled with gold. They would know her, before the day was done. That she knew with the kind of certainty only a child can possess.

When she was ready, she drifted out of her room and into the flickering hallways of the inn, her servant shadow hovering behind her. Her emerald dress was open at the neck in the fashion her father told her was favoured in the capital, showing just the right amount of her perfect, pale skin, and her raven hair spilled in gossamer curls around its ruffled shoulders. She felt cleaner than she had in weeks, and her skin was soft and smelled faintly of some flower she did not recognise, doubtless as rare and desired as it was expensive. She smiled as she came, an excited flush on her cheeks. Her father waved her down extravagantly as she arrived at the top of the stairs, beaming a thin smile from his rounded cheeks, his men standing ready nearby in their polished mail. She caught her excitement, then, and bottled it away in that place her mother had taught her, behind a smile of demure grace, and glided down the stairs like silk over a tailor’s arm. The eyes of the room were hers, as they should be, and she felt the touch of them prickle against the nape of her neck as she walked. Halin bowed. Her father smiled his smug smile. Had she been looking, Sara might have seen the Keeper of the Inn flashing dark looks after the Lord and his men, but only once a jingling purse had been dropped into his hand. Then they were away, off into the light beyond the open doorway, and the city loomed head of them in the midday sun, tall and fierce.

‘You remember your lessons?’

‘Yes, father.’

One of Halin’s men held the carriage door for them as they climbed into the cushioned compartment. Sara held the hem of her dress as she put her foot on the step, and favoured the boy with a grateful smile. His cheeks reddened as he closed the door behind them, latching it, and the sounds of readiness filled the little stable yard. Chainmail shifting, saddles creaking, hooves chomping at the dirt. With that, they began to move, falling into the throngs of travellers lining the road to the city; walkers, riders, wagons, sleds, all manner of donkeys, ponies, horses, strapped high with wares wrapped in leather and cloth. The dirty faces of the walkers looked up at the carriage as it passed, and the steady hubbub of the crowd chased their heels ahead into the shimmering haze of rising dew. Sara sat, and she watched, with little feeling, as the broad slab of stone that was the King’s View drew out of sight beyond her window, behind her now for good.

*

When she would try to recall it later, Sara remembered little of the Rings of Uldoroth that day. They arrived not an hour past midday, filing through city gates embossed with Temur’s Steel in patterns that swirled like spring-water, guarded by men in black and gold. She remembered the stones of the battlements, that had seemed so white from afar, were dirty at the edges, worn to a dusty grey. After that, the streets passed her in a pale blur, ring after ring, smaller and smaller towards the shadow o the Heartspire at their centre. Past the guardsmen in their dark chain, surcoats of black thread laced with the sigil of the King’s house, a golden sun and tower in a sea of black. Past streets and streets without end, higher and higher, climbing towards the Heartspire’s sheer cliffs, lined with trees greener than emeralds and the silver flash of steel. The people parted before their carriage, a wall of sound rising out of their midst, calling and hollering and rushing about them as they trotted on. Her father was smiling, she remembered, watching the people as they went past their window, but the road wound on, ever upward, and the pale stones wound with it, full of noise and sound and smell, an overwhelming intoxication of colour and life.

Her father spoke to her as they drew on, putting names to the walls beyond their window. First, the Keeper’s Circle, the narrow ring of half-way stops, brothels, inns and bathhouses pressed against the outer walls that hosted the small nation of temporary residents in Valia’s capital; the further from the battlements, the more grand they became, until each inn was fronted with a facade of pillared grandness, and the bathhouses belched steam fragranced with storm roses. They wound around the edge of the Shapers’ District with its air of sparks and seared metal and blacksmith’s hammers, picking out gemstones glittering in shop fronts and carpenters whittling dark wood like it was clay. Then, the Clockwork Forest, home to the Forgers and their craft; a dense labyrinth of narrow streets lined with strange clockwork designs, cut from bronze, grumbling as their gears turned endlessly in the gleam of the sun. What they all did, Sara could not be sure, but she was transfixed all the same, watching water race over the rooftops in an organised chaos of aqueducts and channels, spilling in little waterfalls onto the brass wheels of the designs below.

Through it all, the people of Uldoroth were moving; a hive of movement and sound that demanded an eye to watch it, a thousand more to see it all. Sara had never seen anything like it. How many lived here, she wondered. A hundred thousand? A million? More? The people’s indifference to their carriage might have irked her, had she not been so giddy with the sheer number of them. She had thought her father’s hall large, but the few hundred homes of Westmere dwindled behind her like the passing of the dawn. This was not the home she had left.

The day was drawing well on into the afternoon when they came at last to the centre of the Rings, the place where the Heartspire rose like an altar out of the white stone. It sheared upwards into the pale sun, five-hundred-foot, more, a monolith of dark rock that rose unbidden from the hive of life below. They halted for a moment there, and Sara found herself staring up out of the window, eyes wide. The size of it. This close, it was more mountain than cliff. She couldn’t make sense of it.

‘Where is the gate?’

Her father snorted. ‘No army can take a keep without a gate.’

‘Then how do we…’

‘You will see.’

They set off again, skirting the edge of the rock, and the carriage rumbled and jumped over the road. The street here was broader than the ones they had passed so far, a wide avenue paved with stone and lined with tall tree. The flood of people had grown as they went, too, and the going was slow now, peeling back the crowds who swarmed around the carriage. There were even one or two trying to catch a glimpse of the Lord and Lady through their little window, but her father’s men held them back, pushing away the bubbling throng. The cold of the coming winter outside the city walls was far behind them, and the heat of the crowd rose in waves around them, rippling and rumbling in the air, flushing against Sara’s skin.

‘Look.’ her father said suddenly, and Sara did. Ahead of them, a broad square had opened up beside the cliffs, and there, pressed against the dark walls of the Heartspire, a number of broad, tall cages, twice again as large as their carriage, at least. Sara looked closer, and saw that each had a maze of chains and pulleys secured to its roof, trailing away into the distant heights of the dark cliffs above. She had never seen anything like them, before, but she found herself suddenly very light, stomach full of butterflies. She turned to her father with wide eyes.

‘What are…’

‘Sky-cages.’ he told her over the sound of the crowd, not bothering to look.

‘You cannot mean…’

He chuckled, nodding upwards. ‘How else did you think we would get to the top?’

‘I…’

‘You’ll get used to them. No country girls on the Heartspire.’

Sara hesitated, then nodded, eyes following the chains up through wispy threads of cloud. She swallowed hard, and they rumbled on through the throng. There was a crowd in the square by the cliffs, like there was everywhere else, but these ones were watching them as they approached, parting around the carriage as it drew unsteadily over the cobbles, eyeing them with eager eyes. Sara did her best not to seem like she noticed. Halin’s men peeled them back before the carriage, making room, and they spilled out into the open space beside the cliff, rumbling over the stones.

‘Who goes there?’

There were King’s Men before the dark rock of the Heartspire, lined in rows of black steel, golden tower and sun of the King embossed at their breasts. The one that had spoken had a dark plume sprouting from his helm. Sara had never seen armour so fine.

‘Nordin, son of Malin, Lord of the Westmere.’ Halin called back. ‘Come to pay respect to the King and his house.’ He pressed a curled fist against his chest. ‘May it never fall.’

‘May it never fall.’ the King’s Men chorused back. One of the guards swung open their carriage door, and her father sagged heavily out onto the cobbles. Sara hurried after him, blinking.

‘We have been expecting you, Lord Westmere.’ the soldier with the plumed helmet called, stepping to one side and beckoning them forward. The other King’s Men stepped back, ushering them towards the open door of one of the sky-cages. Behind them, the crowd bubbled excitedly, and Sara felt a little thrill on the nape of her neck. Her father had a half-smile on his thin lips. Halin and his men formed up around them in a little circle, and they went together through the opening. They left their carriage behind, leading their horses with them into the sky-cage. Jingling King’s Men in their mirror-black armour latched the doors behind them, and the chains overhead clinked and twisted. Inside, the sky-cage felt as much like an ornate cage as anything else. A latticework of grey steel full of gleaming sunlight. Sara looked back through the bars at the roiling mass of people beyond the King’s Men, blinking. For some reason they didn’t seem to be looking back. She looked up at the chains overhead, watching them trail, shifting in the breeze, towards the endless mass of dark rock beyond.

‘Can’t show these city folk we’re afraid, now can we.’ Halin said at her shoulder, giving her a reassuring smile. She smiled back, forcing herself to look away from the cliffs. Outside the sky-cage, the soldier with the plumed helmed was gesturing to someone away in the crowd. Sara followed his eyes. There was a low tower at the edge of the square, its turret girded in grey steel, a little swarm of black soldiers hurrying around the parapet. Below, the crowd stirred excitedly, clapping their hands over their ears.

‘What are they…’

The air split like a thunderclap as the peel of an enormous bell shook the square. Sara threw her hands over her ears, a moment too late, and the sound vibrated through her skull, her fingers, her teeth, setting her hair on end. The crowd in the square jumped and shouted soundlessly, grinning giddily at each other, and even the King’s Men seemed to flinch. The horses skittered nervously, butting against the cage. Sara stared with wide eyes. The sky-cage shook, and, overhead, the sound beat again and again against the dark cliffs, echoing up into the sky. The bell tolled again, a little quieter this time, and Sara turned to see her father grinning smugly, soft hands clamped over his ears.

‘Lord Thunder!’ he told her, pointing at the bell tower. ‘Bigger than a house, thicker than your arm! Nothing holds sound like Moonsilver.’

Somewhere high above them, another bell answered, and the chains began to clink again, stretching taut against the sky. Sara winced, rubbing at her ears, as the echo began to die away. Her father’s men were doing their best to calm the horses, blinking and working their jaws ruefully. In the square, the crowd cheered, indifferent to the occupants of the carriage. Sara frowned. Is that what they had come for? The chains clinked, groaned, whispered, and the sky-cage began to rise away from the stones, wobbling upward unsteadily. Sara put a hand on her father’s arm to steady herself, looking uneasily towards the slender metal cords above her.

‘Don’t worry, girl.’ he told her. ‘Sky-cages have been here a thousand years. Not one has ever fallen.’

Sara hesitated, then let go of his arm, undecided whether that made her feel better or worse. The carriage soon settled itself, though, and began to rise, clinking, out of the indifferent crowd. Soon the heads of the common folk had slipped beneath the rim of the cage, and the King’s Men’s dark helms with them. Sara found herself looking out over the Rings beyond, grey swirls of smoke spiralling out of pale buildings, a puzzle of a thousand rooftops blinking back at her in the sun. The bronze maze of the Forger’s Quarter gleamed hotly, spitting sparks.

‘They’ll have their work cut out for them, before the month is out.’ her father was saying, patting his rounded gut. ‘King’s nameday feast. Half the Lords of Valia climbing the rock. You’ve not seen a feast till you have seen one in the City of the Moon. It’s been years since I was last…’

‘With mother?’ Sara asked quietly.

Her father glanced at her, eyes flashing for a moment. Then he caught himself, turning to look away over the rooftops.

‘Yes.’ he said quietly. ‘With your mother.’

Sara said nothing more. The city was dwindling into the air below them, and, though she dare not come closer to the edge of the carriage, she could see the distant outer walls slipping below it, and the river beyond, gleaming in the dwindling afternoon sun. Not for the first time that day, Sara found herself squinting at the brightness of it all.

*

It took them nearly an hour to reach the top. Sara stayed well away from the edge of the carriage as it rose into the sky, thinking instead of the silver streets above, of the feasts and finery and noble folk who sought them, and found in her thoughts an escape, a giddy excitement at the closeness of such things. The sun was behind them, gleaming around the rock of the Heartspire in strands of amber evening blur, when finally the dark face of the cliff gave way to the cool touch of pale stone once more. A shout went up beyond the wall, the chains overhead creaked and groaned, and the carriage came to a halt. Sara rushed to the edge of the cage, eager to look out over the keep beyond, and found herself facing a broad courtyard. A gate twice the size of a house stared back at her from the other side, dark wood banded in the golden sun and tower of the King’s house. There were more guards in the courtyard, grander here even than they had been below, lined up motionless to receive them, black helms flashing, bearing dark shields tall as she was, each embossed with their own golden sigil. There was an arched gatehouse overhead, and the chains of the carriages were moored there in iron rings big as plates and thick as her wrist. She stared at the walls, breathless. They were seamless, like they had been hewn from one single piece of rock by hands the size of men.

‘Come, Sara.’

‘Yes, father.’

She folded her hands in front of her and followed him into the silent stone courtyard. The waiting guards came to attention all at once, setting their shields against the flagstones, and sound of them rang like a bell against the immense walls. Sara hid her flinch, trying her best to look composed.

‘Who goes there?’ one of them called. Sara looked at him curiously. He was girded more grandly than his fellows. The golden hilt of his sword was twisted ornately, and his black helm was worked with gold.

‘Lord Nordin of the Westmere.’ Halin called out. ‘And his daughter, the Lady Sara. Come to pay their respects to the King and his house. May it never fall.’

‘May it never fall.’ the ornately dressed guard finished. ‘Welcome back, Lord Nordin, and welcome to your kin.’

‘Greetings, Sir Varos.’ her father replied formally. ‘A fine welcome.’

Sara blinked. The stories of the Silver Wolf, Captain of the King’s Black Guard, were near legends. There wasn’t a man or woman better with a blade this side of the Sea of Storms. Well, maybe one, but the stories of Bloodless didn’t bear thinking about. There was an efficient courtesy to the Captain of the Black Guard’s voice, and his movements were restrained and smooth. As she watched, he lifted his helmet away, setting it against his hip, and the leathery silver of his face creased into a smile. He must have been more than fifty.

‘I am to escort you, M’Lord.’

‘It would be our pleasure, Sir Varos.’ her father replied politely. Halin and the other men disembarked the sky-cage behind them, leading the horses. One of the guards shouted up to the gatehouse, and there came a sound of groaning gears from somewhere inside the stonework. Then the golden sun emblazoned on the dark wood split down its centre, and the doorway spilled open. Sara almost gasped.

Beyond the courtyard, the City of the Moon caught the pale evening light like sparks against steel, a maze of stone and sky, thick and seamless as a mountainside. Towers and spires of every shape and size, roadways and avenues wide as the Arq; all of it risen from the rock without any mark of a mason. It was… huge. All of it. As though shaped for giants, not men, made with a kind of brutal, unbreakable simplicity, untouched by a thousand years and more of wind and rain and worse. Sara could not believe the size of it. Even the walls that encircled it were taller than the city battlements below, with parapets wide enough for carriages, and the towers of the great keep at its centre rose out of the buildings around them like trees from grass, scraping against the dimming sky as if to open the heavens and spill the light of the stars. Sara’s mouth fell open, wide-eyed and staring. The Rings below were a crowded, bustling, raucous affair, but the City of the Moon felt empty by comparison, pedestrians and vehicles alike dwarfed by the scale of the place. Even the sound had faded, like the height of the Heartspire rendered it wholly separate from the city below.

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‘Sara…’ her father whispered pointedly at her side, and she closed her mouth, suddenly self-conscious. Several of the black guards, led by Sir Varos, formed up before her father’s men, leading them away through the gate into the city beyond. Sara did her part, walking demurely at her father’s side, but her eyes darted wildly as they went, racing over every avenue, every tower. The City of the Moon was older than Valia itself, some said, but the pale stone was smooth and sharp as glass. It seemed to her as if the sky was somehow closer and brighter here on top of the Heartspire, above the world, and it gleamed in her eyes as though she had just left a dark room, leeching the colour from the vast, monochromatic maze of stone. Even the air seemed rarer, clean like sea wind after rain. There were gardens, she saw, amongst it all, flashes of manicured green and silver water in the dusk, but even they seemed touched by the colour of the air. Her father walked on beside her, smiling his small, proud smile, but the other men seemed almost as giddy as she was. Many of them had never seen anything larger than the weather-worn grey rock of her father’s keep, and by comparison that was barely a farmer’s hovel. Even Halin seemed a little taken aback, hand looped reflexively over the hilt of his sword.

The road they followed curved gently through the buildings, wide enough for several carts across, lined with silver-barked trees and the eerie sound of vast spaces. There were few on the way at that hour, but those that did seemed to Sara like ants between the immense walls. They were all finely clothed, and clean-shaven, even the servants with their Keeper marks, hurrying across the stones without a word. Some stopped to look at them as they passed, but quickly returned to their tasks, and Lord Nordin’s party drew on into the rising buildings unmolested. Her father pointed out some of them as they passed. There was the Temple of the Makers, with its facade of pale pillars taller than pine trees, proud dome capped with silver. The Gardens of Phalia, spiral fountains of clear water rising out of the grass, broad trees throwing shifting shade across the gear-worked stones. The barracks of the Black Guard, larger almost than her father’s keep on its own, manned by tall men in full helms, faces masked in black steel. Then the Street of Jewels, Bard’s corner, the Marketplace of Faelon, where it was said that every delicacy from the Teeth to the Great Sands and everywhere between could be found by the wagonload. The University of Uldoroth, too, square lawns dotted with studious looking old men in dark robes, the Library of Ulwe at its centre, looming tall over the other buildings, round walls fringed with sharp towers like a crown of white stone. Moonsilver was everywhere. Capping the prickly black shapes of the stormtowers, but more, besides; statues emboldened by it, veins of it snaking over the domes of the grander buildings like the roots of some vast, invisible tree. Sara marvelled at it all, new and ancient and silver and white, eyes gleaming, half-breathless with excitement.

‘Look.’ he said, pointing. Sara looked and saw that one tower of dark rock rose above all of the others, pressed against the eastern edge of the Heartspire, its rounded summit flashing with silver. ‘That is Temur’s Tower. Tallest stormtower in Valia. They say it is where Princess Talia was kept, during the Rebellion. Before the betrayer Aerolf murdered her.’

The Westmere had stormtowers. Everywhere did. But even they were taller here, grown tall in the perfect clarity of the air. The street wound on until, at last, they found themselves before the King’s seat itself. At the very centre of the rock, a keep within a keep, rising proud and pale out of the city around. More black-helmed guards patrolled the parapet. Attendants bustled about the open space around the walls, and Sara saw that the grandest houses of the city had found their place in the ring around the innermost keep; only the highest of nobles, so close to the King’s seat. Their escort led them on towards the gate, and her father leaned close, voice hushed.

‘The Keep of Eranor.’

‘Why is the gate closed?’ she asked.

‘The gate is always closed.’ her father answered.

‘Wonder if the men here are quite so tall as their walls?’ Halin whispered at her shoulder, and she stifled a laugh. The Silver Wolf and his men led them on over the pale stones, approaching the gate with its rows of more guards in their black and gold surcoats. Matching flags flew from the parapet overhead, rippling and twisting in the breeze. The gate itself was tall as a barn and crisscrossed with steel, broad enough for several wagons across. At its very centre, a Moonsilver shield was emblazoned across the dark wood; Ulwe’s Gate, her father whispered, the largest and grandest entrance into the keep. A shout went up behind it at Varos’ instruction, and the chains strained, groaning against the weight of it, winching it inch by grinding inch out of the stones. Sara almost couldn’t bring herself to look. She felt all of a sudden unready, spent with the endless incredulity of the day. Her heart beat against her breast like a drum, and her eyes blurred into endless walls of white stone.

But the gate was open, and there was nowhere else to go. So she followed the Captain and his men through the yawning opening, blinking up at it all with wide eyes, the sounds all around a muffled murmur in her ears. Keepers spilled out into the courtyard beyond the gate like blurry apparitions, vanishing the horses away to invisible stables, magicking flasks of clear water into the hands of Halin and his men, then disappeared off again into the maze of tree-high cloisters around them with words of thanks chasing their heels. Sir Varos was already moving again. Her father followed him, Sara close behind, flanked by clinking Black Guard, leaving Halin and her father’s men to their rest. On, on, they walked, through a broad corridor of stone that speared away into the huge towers and archways of the keep, lined with silver-green trees and flashes of sparkling water. She stared at every great archway as they passed, blinking. Ahead, she could see Temur’s Tower rising above the palace domes, smooth and black as jet. Somewhere below it all, the King was waiting. Waiting for them. Sara felt another little thrill ripple through her breast, and she forced herself not to smile.

‘You remember your lessons?’ her father asked her again as they approached. Around them, silence clung to the pale, seamless facades like a heavy veil, softening the edges of the stone. The dying sun had filled the white corridors with a light the colour of amber wine. The few Keepers she could see hurried about their business with downturned faces, silent and somber. There was no music, no laughter filling the vaulted cloisters, no soft trickling of voices spilling from the recessed alcoves. The washed-clear air was thick with the weight of the seamless stones, heavy and still. She frowned.

‘Sara?’

‘Yes, father.’

They had come to another enormous door embossed with the King’s sigil, just like all the others. Sara looked up, squinting into the reddening sunlight, and saw a vast, vaulted roof looming over them as they approached. Sir Varos held up a hand ahead of them, and the men either side of the doorway peeled it open, straining against the weight of it. Sara blinked. Beyond, a room full of torchlight, and another door waiting, smaller than the first and banded with Moonsilver. It was quiet in the room between them, and Sara could feel eyes on her from within, watching in silence.

‘My Lord.’ Sir Varos said smoothly, gesturing them towards the open doorway, and then followed them inside with two of his men. Sara blinked at the light of a dozen braziers, doing her best not to look out of place. There were more guards in the room, pressed against the walls, spears in hand. She wondered how many hundreds she had seen already.

‘Here we part ways, m’Lord.’ Sir Varos told them, bowing his silver head smoothly as the door closed behind them. ‘The Keeper of the Hall will meet you.’

‘Our thanks, Varos.’ her father told him, inclining his head.

The old warrior nodded, then approached the smaller door, the one banded with silver, and the attendant guards drew it open, just wide enough for him and his two men to pass through it. Sara squinted over their armoured shoulders. A glimpse of marble. A gleam of black stone. Amber rippled and silent. Then the door drew shut again behind them. Sara waited, and her father twitched his narrow lips impatiently. She could feel the eyes of the remaining Black Guard on her, faceless in their full helms, so she took to looking at the tapestries on the walls, instead. The dim light of the braziers receded towards the high ceiling, but she could still make out the battles raging back and forth across the weave, silver warriors with proud banners against a horde of dark giants, the city walls of Uldoroth standing tall against flames, Heartspire wreathed in cloud. She frowned.

‘Do you like them, M’lady?’

Sara blinked, looking up. A small door in the side of the chamber had opened, and through it had stepped a man with skin the colour of tanned leather, looking back at her with smooth, dark eyes. A Westerner. He was not tall, nor was he small, and his amber doublet was worked with intricate lace about the shoulders. His head was shaved smooth, save a small tuft of pointed black hair at his chin, cheeks rounded about his half-smiling mouth. There was a brooch at his breast in the likeness of a curled fox, worked from silver.

‘I…’ she stuttered, suddenly self-conscious. ‘I do not recognise the scene.’

‘Ah, but of course you do, M’lady.’ the man told her, stepping away from the doorway and over to one of the nearest weavings. His voice was soft, but keen, precise as a knife-edge, and there was a faint lilt to it Sara could not place. ‘It is the end of Rebellion of Tears. The night the tyrant Talor was slain and our new King broke the siege of the savage Northmen.’ He paused, glancing over at her, and his smooth skin caught the candlelight darkly. ‘Have you ever met a Northman, M’lady?’

‘Of course she has not.’ her father shot back, and Sara looked up to see him scowling.

‘Of course, why would you have?’ the man replied off-handedly, turning for a moment and running his dark fingers over the lower edge of the tapestry. ‘They are quite fearsome, in person.’

‘Are they as tall as they say?’ Sara asked suddenly, ignoring her father’s reproachful look.

The man beside the tapestry turned then, meeting her eye with a half-smile on his curved lips. Up close, his eyes were sharp, like a hawk’s, and Sara found herself suddenly self-conscious. ‘Taller, some of them.’ he told her, soft voice dropping to little more than a whisper. ‘They say the Lord of Tarling and his son the Stonesplitter charged into battle with a legion of hounds bigger than wolves, and that his men shook the earth with their footsteps.’

‘But King Dekar defeated them.’ Sara said under her breath, looking up at the tapestry again. The armies of Valia stood pale and proud against the dark hordes of the North with their blood hounds, and there was the King, at the vanguard, black-greaved and bearing a spear of gold thread. She felt a little thrill at that.

‘Indeed.’ the man replied, smiling. Sara could feel his dark eyes on her, sharp as arrow tips, and she almost shivered. ‘The traitor Aerolf broke every bond of hospitality the Makers set for us when he stole away King Talor’s daughter from his own hall. They say Temur himself threw lightning from the heavens in anger. Dekar was the Makers’ champion. His victory was their will.’

‘I see you’ve lost none of your dramatic flair, Royce.’ her father interrupted. Sara looked up to see him eyeing the dark-skinned newcomer with a barely concealed frown.

‘Stories have always interested me, Lord Westmere.’ the man replied, turning the sharpness of his dark eyes towards her father. ‘They can tell us much, though rarely what they try to. They are a lot like people, in that regard.’

‘I thought you were in the North, entreating with the savages?’ her father asked dismissively.

‘You are well informed, my Lord Westmere. I arrived back in the capital the day before yesterday.’ the man paused, smiling thinly. ‘My work was predictably… unwelcome.’

He turned back to Sara, still smiling.

‘Forgive my rudeness, M’lady. I am Lord Royce of the Rift, by his King’s grace.’ His silver brooch flashed in the light of the braziers. ‘But those that speak of me call me the Fox.’

Sara blinked, hesitating, suddenly understanding her father’s frown. She had heard the name. Lord Royce was quite the story, in Valia. The man with the western father, raised up from scorn by his service to the King. He had inherited what remained of the Rift after the Rebellion, but he was no match for her father’s station, not with the King’s favour, anyway, and the dry edge to his tone would not be welcome.

‘Ah, do not fret, M’lady.’ the Fox told her, tapping a finger to his brooch. ‘I find the moniker rather amusing. Not the greatest resemblance.’

Beside her, her father took a step forward, a slow smile tweaking his narrow lips. ‘I hear you are now Keeper of the Hall, Royce.’

‘Ah, yes.’ the man replied, bowing his smooth head dryly. ‘Another honour our King has seen fit to bestow upon me, in his wisdom. I wear the title with pride.’

Her father scowled at that. ‘A glorified servant.’

‘We are all the King’s servants, Lord Westmere.’ the Fox replied in the same dry, measured tone. ‘With no sons of his own, the King has the luxury of choosing who to toy with. ‘

He waved his hand at the King’s sigil emblazoned in its gold circle over the door. A tower reaching towards the sun.

‘I remember this room when it belonged to another man. When another flag hung from the towers on the Heartspire.’

‘You are not the only one who remembers.’ her father told him curtly.

‘No, I suppose not.’ the Fox frowned, looking up at the King’s mark thoughtfully. ‘Strange. It is often the small differences that remind you the most.’

Her father’s scowl deepened. ‘Will you present us?’ He demanded impatiently.

‘Of course.’ the Fox replied, turning abruptly and striding over to the door. ‘I have taken up enough of your time already.’

Her father did not reply. The guards already had their gauntleted hands on the door, ready to pull it open.

‘Ready?’ the Fox asked, suddenly cheery. His hunter’s eyes were in shadow, and his smooth skin gleamed darkly. Sara hesitated, but her father took another step forward.

‘Get on with it.’

‘Your servant, my Lord.’ the Fox replied with just a hint of a smile. He nodded to the guards, and they set their shoulders against the door, splitting it open. Sound swelled through the opening with the softness of countless whispers, voices, footsteps, clinking steel. Sara tried to peer over the shoulders of the guards, but could only see the thin beams of red sunlight arcing over the vaulted black ceiling of the hall. She blinked, staring at it. The stone looked like it was moving.

‘Ready, Sara?’ her father murmured at her side.

The guards stepped back, and suddenly the hall stretched away ahead of her in a long, pillared pattern of black and white stone, marbled and gleaming in the light of countless braziers. Sara blinked. It was enormous, like everything else she had seen in the City of the Moon, and the air was heavy with the weight of immeasurable stone. A broad staircase led down to the floor of the hall, and there the great and the good of Valia had gathered in wispy clouds, dwarfed by pillars the size of buildings, girded in gold, wax-smooth faces upturned silently to the open doorway. Overhead, set high in the distant rafters, galleries, more watchers, more curious eyes. Between them, the ceiling gleamed, a black lake of moving glass, wreathed in the smoke and luminescence of the braziers, hundreds of little shimmering sparks floating on a lake of obsidian. Sara had heard stories of the nightglass ceiling of the King’s Hall, but seeing it was something else altogether. Like the rippled reflection of the night sky in water. Beyond it all, another shape, in the distant recesses of the far end of the room. The great black rock of the Night Throne, with its edges like shattered glass, full of shadows, framed by the dying red light of high windows behind it. It was the only natural light in the hall; there were no windows save those that rose behind the King’s seat. She squinted at it, trying to make out the man beneath the shadow.

‘Sara?’

She took a deep breath. Shifted her feet. Her emerald dress rustled, and she reached down self-consciously, smoothing it.

‘Yes, father.’

Beside them, the Fox took a step forward through the doorway, coming to the top of the stair. He raised his voice, louder than Sara would have thought him able, and it echoed off the silent walls like a bell.

‘Nordin, son of Malin, Lord of the Westmere.’ he announced, smiling broadly, teeth gleaming. ‘And his daughter, the Lady Sara.’

Silence. Sara peered down towards the assembled nobles, watching without a word, and a hundred eyes prickled against her skin like blades. But there was someone else, there, too. Another pair of eyes, watching. There, at the far end of the hall. Dark and tall and silent as stone. Somewhere outside, clouds shifted, the red light behind the seat of Uldoroth swelled, and there he was. The King, reclined in the giant black slab of the Night Throne, flanked by a dozen guards in black and gold, bathed in red light. Overhead, the immense nightglass ceiling of the hall blinked, inky black and shifting, and the Night Throne moved with it, surveying the immense silence of the hall below. Sara took a little breath.

Her father started forward, and she put a hand on his arm, following him. They stepped past Lord Royce alone, descending the stair at a stately pace, and Sara felt her heart quicken in her chest. The assembled nobles shifted back from them as they came, murmuring, watching, but there was an eerie quiet in the air that clung to the shadows of the vast pillars like weighted silk. Sara became suddenly very aware of the evenness of her footsteps against the stone, the movement of her dress about her legs. They were all watching her. He was watching her. She took another breath, steadying herself, and her heart thundered in her ears.

‘You see them looking at you, Sara?’ her father murmured at her side. She looked up to see him eyeing the watching crowd greedily, smiling. The giant pillars of the hall shimmered and swayed, throwing great shadows across the black and white throes of the floor, and the nightglass ceiling blinked, watching. But the hall seemed very far away, almost silent, tiny beneath the looming height of the distant throne, the weight of the man who sat in it. Waiting. Waiting for her.

‘Yes, father.’

At last the nobles peeled back, then, and the dais rose away from them into the gleam of evening sunlight, and out of it rose the Night Throne, a single block of nightglass tall as most buildings, rising jagged and sharp into its halo of red light. Into its shifting face, a seat had been carved, and there the King sat, lounging idly against the stone. He was not an old man, barely past forty, with pale skin and fair, thinning hair draped over a face of sharp lines and a broad, square jaw. A great warrior, in his youth, her father said, and beneath the patterned lines of his armoured doublet she could see the strong lines of his chest. There was a golden ring at his brow, clasping a ruby shaped as the sun in golden claws. He had a bare sword across his knees. A simple thing, smooth, grey, mirror-sharp, and he was trailing his fingers over the blade, playing the reflections against his dark eyes.

As they approached, the Black Guard that flanked the throne took a step forward, stamping their spear hafts against the stones. The sound echoed around the vast silence of the hall like thunder, and her father took the cue, drawing to a halt. The King did not stir, still staring at the sword across his knees. Sara felt her heart quicken again, staring at it. The greyness of it caught the light, a line of smooth steel. Moonsilver, she realised with a start. Temur’s Steel. A Chosen sword.

‘Your Majesty.’ her father said, bowing low. Sara started, dipping low beside him.

‘Nordin.’ the King replied coolly. He looked up, at last, eyeing her father from beneath the edge of his gold crown. ‘How long has it been?’

‘Three years, Your Majesty.’ her father replied, dipping his head again. ‘The beauty of your hall has grown with every passing day.’

‘Fickle thing, beauty.’ the King mused idly, as though there weren’t more than a hundred nobles watching his every breath. ‘Though few beauties have lasted longer than this one.’

‘Very true, Your Majesty.’

Sara looked up at her father, surprised by his tone. Softer, careful, smooth as polished amber. For the first time in her life, he was the servant. His pride had vanished, in its place, the apprehension of a man who knows he is no longer in control.

A silence hung over the hall for a moment, and the King looked down from throne, fingers still running over the grey steel of the sword. Then he leaned forward, setting its point in the stone before him, and a small smile curved his lips.

‘Welcome, then, Lord Nordin.’ he said, pushing himself to his feet, sword in hand. He was not overly tall, but the red light from the windows threw a broad shadow over his shoulders. ‘How goes it in the Westmere?’

‘Three wet winters and three warm summers. It goes well indeed, Your Majesty.’

The King smiled thinly.

‘Then why are you here?’

Her father hesitated, turning to her, and Sara lowered her eyes nervously.

‘May I present my daughter?’

Sara blinked into the beams of red light, suddenly unable to make out the King’s face. But she could feel the weight of those eyes boring into her skin, prickling, and she lowered her head, dipping into a graceful curtsy. Then she thought of what her father had told her, and forced herself to look up. The King stood motionless before the Night Throne, a statue with a face of shadow. She was suddenly very aware of the silence of the hall around them, as though there were some veil between the little congregation of the dais and the nobles behind them. Their own world. Separate, silent, alone. But for the two hundred eyes stabbing at her back, anyway.

‘So this is the sister.’ the King said at last.

‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

The light from the windows dimmed, then and she found herself looking directly at him, framed by the enormous black face of the throne, and he stared back, unmoving, grey sword held loosely at his side. Their eyes caught together for a moment, and she felt the weight of his gaze, the power of it. She forced herself to stay still.

‘Quite the beauty, this one.’ the King was saying. ‘What is your name, girl?’

Sara hesitated, and for a moment the word caught in her throat. She swallowed, taking a breath.

‘Sara, Your Majesty.’

‘A pretty name.’

Sara forced herself to stay still. The air was heavy. The room waited.

‘A rose from the marshes.’ a new voice said suddenly, and Sara blinked, looking back to the dais. Another shadow had appeared beside the Night Throne, coalescing from the gloom beside the row of Black Guard in their glinting steel.

‘Your Majesty.’ her father said, bowing quickly.

‘Greetings, Lord Nordin.’ The Queen took a step forward, then, and the light of the windows fell across her tall frame like dusk over ebony. Queen Eliana was dressed all in black, with gold thread traced across the slender lines and jet sequins of her dress, and her black hair was shaped into a small shield of curls behind her head. The white flesh of her neck was bare, showing the thin lines of her collar bone pressing against her skin. Sara had heard stories of the Queen’s beauty her whole life, and standing before her now, she felt a little flutter in her chest. She seemed a statue given breath, sharper than marble, and there was a coldness in her dark gaze that cut Sara to the bone. A line of gold was bound tight around her neck, and rubies encircled it in mosaic shards, catching the light as she turned. ‘Brought another handmaiden for me, have you, Nordin?’

‘Your Majesty, this is my daughter-’

‘Sara.’ the Queen interrupted, coming to the edge of the dais to look at her. ‘Prettier than the last one.’

Sara blushed, and tried to curtsy again, but found herself suddenly light-headed, naked beneath the inky black whirls of the nightglass ceiling, the cold probing of the Queen’s eyes. Her hand gripped her father’s arm.

‘Very kind, Your Majesty. My house is blessed.’ he replied, smiling broadly. ‘How is Dana?’

The Queen did not smile. ‘She is well. Her duties keep her away.’

‘Of course.’ her father said politely, dipping his head. The Queen laid a hand on her husband’s arm, and the King glanced at her, eyes leaving Sara. He frowned, then waved a hand at one of the Black Guard.

‘Fetch Lord Royce.’

The man hurried away into the hall, armour clinking. Sara leant on her father’s arm, swallowing the lump in her throat. The strangeness of the King’s Hall pressed in around her. The red light of the windows. The distant glistening of the nightglass ceiling, shifting blackly. There must have been close to a hundred men and women between the impossibly large pillars, including more than two dozen Black Guard, but it felt closer to empty than full, and the quiet had gathered around the throne like it were only four of them, caught in a blink between clouds, stranded in the eye of a storm. The King was looking at the sword again, fingering the dull gleam of the blade. The Queen had not stirred. She stood watching Sara her with cold, dark eyes. Sara felt exposed, bare, and found she could not meet her gaze, so instead looked at the floor. The light from the windows was dimming as the evening drew on, and the shadows grew.

‘Your Majesty, if I may.’ her father began. ‘There are matters we must discuss. You received my letter?’

‘I did.’ the King replied, unmoving, eyes on the sword. It gleamed, spiral patterns shifting on its edge, like rippled water, and Sara found herself staring at it too, transfixed.

‘Then you will understand my urgency.’ her father went on, lowering his voice. ‘I wish my visit were under less pressing circumstances, but-’

‘Later, Nordin.’ the King interrupted him, pressing the tip of the sword into the stones with a faint scraping sound. ‘The day has been long, and the night is coming.’

‘But, my King-’

‘Ah, Royce.’

Lord Royce had appeared beside them at the foot of the dais. As the King spoke, he smiled demurely and dipped at the waist into a graceful bow.

‘How may I be of service, my King?’

‘Have chambers prepared for Lord Nordin and his attendants. In the East wing.’

‘As you command, Your Majesty.’ the Fox replied, bowing again. He flashed Sara a small smile as he turned on his heel and hurried away.

‘My King, I really must…’ her father began again, but the King held up a hand to silence him.

‘You have come a long way, my Lord Westmere. You and your daughter must be weary.’ The Queen stood still as a statue beside him, her sequined dress gleaming in the dying light. ‘Rest.’

Sara could feel the tenseness of her father’s body next to her.

‘My King.’ he said at last, lowering his eyes.

The King watched him silently for a moment, then turned back to the shifting stone slab of the throne.

‘You may leave us.’ he said quietly. ‘We will speak later.’

Her father hesitated, beside her, opening his mouth to speak. Then he swallowed, closing it again, and dipped his head.

‘Rest well.’ the Queen added to Sara, dark eyes gleaming like blades. ‘I will call on you soon, girl.’

Sara’s father bowed low beside her, holding his pose for several long moments. She had stood quietly throughout the exchange, half-frozen, heart quick as cricket-legs in her breast, feeling sweat begin to dampen the pits of her arms. Now she remembered herself, dipping her head and lowering herself into a curtsy. She could feel the Queen’s dark eyes on her again, and it was with a touch of relief that she turned away from the Night Throne, hand on her father’s arm as they made their way slowly back through the vast hall. His arm was taut as a lutestring, and when she looked up at him she saw that there was a barely concealed frown on his brow. Sara felt oddly light, drained away by the excitement of the day. She had waited so long for it, and now, at its end, the feeling was not as she had expected. The nobles shifted back from them as they came, watching, but no one spoke, and the nightglass ceiling shifted, swirling like water.

The red light of the windows drew slowly away behind them, and the eerie silence of the King’s Hall followed them out into the gathering dark, tugging at their heels. Sara glanced back, just once, and found the King sitting again where they had found him, turned small by the immense hall between them, shoulders framed by the great black rock of the Night Throne. The strange sword was lying across his knees again, and his fingers trailed idly along the grey-gleam blade. Of the Queen, there was no sign.

Then the door slammed shut behind them, and the hall was gone.