7

In the Dark

Sleep, which normally fell upon Jamshid like a hammer, did not come easily. What go wrong? he asked himself again and again. Timur tell Jamshid attack; Jamshid attack; Jamshid’s men die. Why?

The question nagged away in the Grand Malik’s ponderous brain all the way back to Filna. As he entered the forest that cloaked the ruined town, he stopped and leaned heavily against a tree. What sort of reception awaited him? The old Timur rewarded failure with harsh punishment. How would the new Timur, the Over-Malik, react? He had ordered Jamshid to lead an assault on Alba, hadn’t he? And the mysterious Malika had agreed, saying Jamshid’s role was very important.

He lifted his fur cap and scratched angrily at his lice-ridden scalp. Something was not right. He didn’t know what it was, but he was starting to wonder whether it might involve Malika Xsani. She couldn’t possibly be deceiving Timur, could she? There was only one way to find out. With a final rub of his head, Jamshid replaced his hat and set off again into the forest.

Immediately the Eyes spotted him, they informed Xsani, who ordered him to be brought to her before he made contact with his fellow Grozny.

“Tho you have returned,” she began when the burly Zed was kneeling before her on the balcony. “Alone, I thee. What happened?”

Jamshid explained, to the best of his limited ability, how he had obeyed Timur’s orders and attacked Alba. Xsani raised a quizzical eyebrow when she heard how his force had marched out into open ground and been shot down like sheep. In future operations, she decided, the Grozny would have no task involving either strategy or skill.

“And how did Jamthid ethcape?” she asked.

The Grand Malik twisted his hands anxiously, expecting a blow or stab. He ran away, he confessed – but only so he could fight again.

“You ran away?” With a wave of the hand, Xsani ordered her bodyguard to come over and stand in a silent circle round him. For a while the quiet of the afternoon was broken only by birdsong and the sound of urine trickling down Jamshid’s legs, soaking into the hem of his fur coat and gathering in a pool about his knees. The Malika wrinkled her nose in disgust.

“Are you afraid of me, Malik?”

“Not understand!” he blurted. “I obey Timur orders. He tell Jamshid –”

“Ah! Tho it ith the Over-Malik you are afraid of, yeth?”

“Yes!” he gasped, before denying it with equal force. “No!” As he raised his eyes to hers, his great, ugly, scarred face twitched like a sleeping dog. “Jamshid lost!” he wailed, almost pitifully. “Not understand nothing!”

Seeing he was out of his depth emotionally and intellectually, Xsani had a decision to make. Dispense with him or keep him to control the Grozny? She opted for the latter, binding him tighter to her with what she hoped would be a powerful pact. They would not tell Timur about his failure – his running away would be their own little secret.

The speed of Giv’s development surprised everyone, including himself. His skill in mimicking the sound of Timur’s voice was matched by an extraordinary ability to use his hero’s vocabulary. Moreover, he continued to believe the Over-Malik was speaking through him, that his words really were Timur’s and that he, the humble Captain Giv, was merely a mouthpiece. This gave his pronouncements real authenticity. Noticing this early on, Jinsha had used it when planning the recruitment of Malik Ogg. She knew of Ogg’s obsession with women, and added the temptation of naked women to honey the trap. She did not see the danger of making Ogg a promise they had no intention of keeping.

Giv kept up his performance the next morning when he marched boldly into the Gurkov camp as an emissary from Over-Malik Timur. Ogg, still burning with memories of the previous night, received him at once and agreed to join the Grozny–Kogon coalition under Timur’s generalship. An assault on a Constant community was just the sort of thing he enjoyed. He wasn’t entirely sure what the Soterion was – nor was Giv – but the idea of defying the Death Month was certainly appealing.

Throughout the discussions, Giv trod carefully around the subject of Xsani. He mentioned her name, calling her Timur’s ‘officer’. But knowing Ogg needed educating in the new ways, as he himself had been, he avoided the word ‘Malika’ and reference to the gender of the Kogon and their leader. This was just as well. As the negotiations were drawing to a close Ogg asked about the slaves he had been promised. Feigning ignorance, Giv asked what he meant.

“In the night,” drooled Ogg, “Timur showed me two slaves with thighs like gold and –”

“Ah!” interrupted Giv. “Yes, mighty Timur has a whole tribe of slaves like that, all unused and all for Ogg.”

The Malik grinned and rubbed himself in a primitive fashion. “Where are they?”

“Waiting with Mali – er, with Officer Xsani. The sooner we get there, the sooner they will be yours, great Ogg.”

The promise of giving Ogg female slaves annoyed Jinsha and Yalisha; but since the original idea had been theirs, they went along with it. They were delighted with the rest of Giv’s bargaining. Like Teach, they wondered how different he might be had he not been born a Grozny.

The journey back to Filna passed without incident. On arrival, the Gurkov were settled some distance from the town and from the Grozny. Ogg stayed with his men until nightfall when Giv, guided by the calls of the Eyes, led him to the smoke-filled sty. After the leaves had had their effect, he was introduced to the Timur totem in much the same way as Giv and Jamshid. The ceremony differed only in three small but important details. Xsani, Sakamir and the two Zektivs masked their faces and wore shapeless clothing, the word ‘Malika’ was omitted and, on Jinsha’s recommendation, Giv spoke the words of the totem. The show left Ogg wedded to the coalition, besotted with the Over-Malik and in awe of his mysterious officer, Xsani.

Nevertheless, he was a man of very basic instincts. A fuzzy head, mysterious rituals and moonlight were all very well, but they were only part of the reason why he had brought the Gurkov to the coalition. The vision of the naked slaves still haunted him. Timur had promised them to him and he wanted them. Right now. So, when after two days’ camp near Filna they still had not appeared, he grew restless. Someone was thwarting the will of the Over-Malik, he decided. But who? The obvious people to ask were his new allies, the Grozny.

The fire in the Alone brought Yash hurrying up the terraces to see what was going on. When Sammy explained to him, he glared angrily at the blaze for a while before confronting Cyrus. “Suppose you think you can do that sort of thing now, eh?”

Cyrus was too exhausted to take in what he meant. “Sorry, Yash – what sort of thing?”

“Setting fire to Alban property without my permission.”

“Oh that! The hut was doing more harm than good – and with luck it won’t be needed any more.”

Yash snorted in frustration. “Listen, Cyrus. You tricked your way out of trouble that time, didn’t you? I’m not stupid, you know: you got Sammy to set up that little test which you knew you’d pass. And it’s made you a bit of a hero. Clap, clap!”

His eyes narrowed and, staring straight at Cyrus, he continued, “But I warn you, it’s the last time you make a fool of me. Got it?”

“Come on Yash, you’ve got it all wrong,” began Cyrus. “Sammy and I didn’t set up anything –”

“And you expect me to believe that? Huh! Just watch it, ok? Next time my authority’s challenged I won’t be so understanding.” So saying, he turned and strode off into the darkness.

Cyrus shrugged and joined Sammy and Miouda as they returned to the settlement. Before going to his dormitory, he called in at the Ghasar to think over what had happened. The building’s interior was dark and still. Groping his way over to his customary chair, he sat wearily down and let the evocative smell of books wash around him. It reminded him of the moment he had opened the Soterion door and for the first time encountered the magical aroma of leather, ink, glue and paper. He thought of it as the ‘scent of learning’. Sometimes he was content simply to bury his nose in a book rather than read it. He wondered whether the Long Dead had ever done the same. Perhaps, because books were so common then, they had simply taken them for granted?

His mind turned to Jalus and the information in First Aid and Basic Medicine. Wasn’t it strange how black marks on a white page – ‘squiggles’ Yash had dismissed them as – had saved a child’s life? How clever it was to think of making words into shapes so others, at different times and in different places, could understand them! How many people’s ideas and dreams and reasonings were stored in the volumes stacked around him? It was beyond his conception. And Yash had talked so casually of carting them all back into the vault.

Cyrus lay back in his chair, yawned and closed his eyes. Why couldn’t the Emir see what a tragic waste it would be to lock the books up again? He had no imagination, that was his problem. He was also a fool. When the books were returned to the vault, only the person with the key would be able to get at them… And that, of course, was Yash…

In his dream, Yash and Timur were coming out of the Ghasar with armfuls of books. Cyrus was down the well in Lion Square, shouting at them to stop what they were doing. “Leave them!” he cried, his words echoing round the shaft without ever reaching the top. Bahm’s laughing face blotted out the sky above and he threw down a round and heavy object that struck Cyrus on the shoulder. He looked into the water where it had fallen to see Timur’s face staring up at him. Now he was climbing out. In the thronging square, mocking Zeds had replaced the Albans, and Roxanne and Miouda were being paraded before him, both cruelly bound in chains.

He was running through crowds of Zeds who chanted something incomprehensible about Timur’s head. They clawed at him as he fought his way along the path in a desperate effort to reach the Soterion. Yash and Sakamir, with oversized and bloody Z tattoos branded into their foreheads, were guarding the steel door. “It’s ours!” they taunted. “All ours!” He tried to get at them, but the Zeds pulled him back, tearing his clothes with nails like talons.

“It’s not yours!” he shouted. “Not yours! Not yours!”

He woke with a start in the darkened Ghasar. It was only a dream, thank goodness, a fantasy like in The Odyssey where men were turned into pigs. Things like that just don’t happen, he told himself. Sakamir and Yash were Constants – they had been raised as Constants and thought like Constants. It would be inconceivable for such people to have anything to do with Zed barbarians…

Curling up in his chair, he decided not to return to the dormitory but to spend the night where he was. The place inspired him, gave him strength to continue. He had already shown how the knowledge of the Long Dead could improve the daily lives of all Constants. It was his duty to carry on.

An opportunity came the next day, when one of the four Konnels responsible for Alban children under the age of eight approached him and asked whether the cure that had worked on Jalus would work on others. Of course, he replied – and before long he found himself instructing those who ran the nursery in the basic principles of avoiding and treating diarrhoea. In the afternoon, he began going through first aid with his students. The idea was to make them capable of doing what he had done with Sammy and Miouda. The entire class would become healers of the sick.

Cyrus had a new status, too. When he first arrived in Alba, he was seen as an exotic Outsider, a good-looking and brave man who had helped Roxanne open the Soterion. This position was then undermined by Yash’s hostility and Bahm’s criticisms. The burly conservative blamed Cyrus for upsetting the regular pattern of their lives, and scorned the quest for the Salvation Project because it threatened to replace the quick, clean and certain Death Month with a protracted, slow and uncertain end.

The Jalus incident had not just restored Cyrus’ prestige, it had increased it considerably. The entire community was moved by the recovery of a child whom they had believed to be dying. Slowly, as more people were healed of their illnesses and injuries, death came to be seen as something to be fought against. And Cyrus, the inspiration behind the reform, was hailed as a hero. He was almost what the Long Dead would have called a prophet. His judgement was asked on all kinds of matters, such as whether he thought so-and-so would make a good copemate. The five boys born since his arrival were all named Cyrus.

Bahm, always straightforward and honest, went along with the new thinking. “I still don’t like the idea of living on and on until I’m a rotting bag of loony bones,” he confessed when Sammy had told him what life was like before the Great Death. “But I suppose a fair bit of that Soterion stuff is pretty useful.” He had a special interest in firing pottery in a charcoal kiln.

Only Yash resisted the general trend. The more praise was heaped on Cyrus, the less civil the Emir was towards him. As the days passed, he became increasingly tetchy about Sakamir’s absence, too. Even his military skills, previously second to none, began to falter. He reduced the number of lookouts on the walls and turned down requests for patrols. “We’re quite safe enough,” he retorted on one occasion, “unless Cyrus goes bringing in some Z-marked woman again.” He tried to cover the insensitive remark with a laugh, but no one was taken in. Roxanne’s star had risen alongside Cyrus’: to mock someone who had sacrificed her life for the Constant cause was in very poor taste.

“He’s just plain jealous of you,” Bahm declared one day. “And I don’t like it.”

“Maybe,” replied Cyrus. “But I can understand how he feels. To be honest, his decision-making’s a greater worry.”

“Aye,” Bahm agreed. “You know, only yesterday I was certain I’d seen summat moving out beyond the Patrol Gate. It weren’t a wolf and it weren’t so small as a rabbit. Hiding in the trees, it was. Watching. It were a Zed, as sure as my name’s Bahm – but the Emir said no patrol was going out, so that was it.”

“Yes, it’s infuriating. But we’ve got to be so careful, Bahm. Yash was chosen by the people. If we undermine that principle, everything falls apart.”

Bahm frowned. “Suppose so. But it makes me very uncomfortable, Cyrus.”

Me too, thought Cyrus. It was almost as if Yash was weakening Alba’s defences deliberately. But that was impossible, wasn’t it? Things like that happened only in nightmares.

Cyrus spent his mornings working on ways to improve Alban life, and his afternoons reading and teaching. He had never been so busy. With Bahm and Sammy he was experimenting with metal smelting, building a water mill to grind corn, and setting up two furnaces for firing pottery. Other members of his class, headed by the fifteen- and sixteen-year-old ‘seniors’, learned about candles and lamps lit by vegetable oils. Their first attempts resulted in more burned fingers than light. In time, when they had mastered how to make a wick, they provided all the sleeping quarters with an emergency night light. Miouda’s personal triumph – a sundial that stood beside the well – came from her study of how the Long Dead divided a day into hours and minutes. She also explained the term ‘Death Month’ by discovering that ‘month’ was the Long Dead term for what the Constants knew as a ‘moon’.

The afternoon school was no longer a matter of Cyrus standing and dictating. His role had developed into that of principal teacher among several. Four more young Albans had joined Jalus, Poso and the other beginners. Two seniors took it in turns to instruct them in reading and writing. Miouda and the fourth senior worked with the middle group. All the older students, including Sammy and Yash, studied on their own. At the end of the day, they met together to share ideas and discuss what they had learned.

An individual was invited to lead the daily discussion – ‘seminar’, Cyrus called it. With Yash the talk was nearly always about the Salvation Project or the Long Dead’s weapons. What fools their ancestors were to have destroyed all firearms as they were dying out, he declared. He had read of a device called a ‘machine gun’ and dreamed of positioning one on the walls of Alba. The only other subject he raised was a drink he had researched called ‘wine’. He wasn’t yet sure of the details, but the Long Dead seemed to have great fun with it. When he had time, he announced, he’d do further research.

Cyrus urged him to be careful. “I’ve read about this wine stuff, too,” he explained. “It changed people’s minds. Made them happy, yes, but also made them sad – and violent sometimes. Probably best to leave it for the moment, Yash.”

“Thank you for your wise advice, Mister Scholar,” drawled the Emir in a voice that dripped with sarcasm. “But with your permission, I’ll decide for myself what I do.”

Cyrus exchanged glances with Miouda but said nothing.

Sammy’s topic was based on his upbringing with the Children of Gova. Their settlement was protected by a very powerful electric fence. Roxanne, who had come across electricity in the IKEA catalogue, one of the three books she had read, was the first to understand the force behind the fence. But she had not seen the relationship between the electric current and the settlement’s huge solar panels. It needed Sammy’s patient research to figure this out.

“Now, this is how I see it,” he told the seminar on one occasion. “This stuff ‘electricity’ is a sort of power made of ‘particles’. I looked that word up but it didn’t help, so let’s forget it.

“Anyway, electricity goes through metal wires like water through a pipe. It runs along really, really quick. And you can’t see it, which makes it pretty weird stuff. When it gets to the end, it can stop or do something.”

“Eh? ‘Do something’ – what’s that mean?” asked the man on Miouda’s right.

Sammy thought for a moment. “Well, it’s a sort of force, right? Like the wind. The Long Dead got it doing loads of things, like powering lights and making cars go.”

“Cars?”

“Sorry. You’ve not been far out of Alba so you’ve never seen one of them rusty things with wheels, have you?” The young man shook his head. “Cars is what the Long Dead travelled in. I’ll show you a picture of one after this.”

“Thanks.”

Sammy resumed his presentation. “What I’m really interested in is making electricity. They did it in the Gova place I come from with a whopping great panel. Black, it was, and made of a sort of glass.

“On our way here,” he went on, waving his hands about in excitement, “we saw smaller panels like that on the roofs of Long Dead houses. They were mostly all covered by ivy and other stuff, but if we went out and got one, and brought it back here, I reckon –”

“No!” It was Yash. Standing up and pointing at Sammy, he went on angrily, “Don’t you understand? I’m the Emir of Alba and I decide whether a patrol goes out or not. You and Cyrus come in here and think you can take over the place. Well, you can’t!”

With that, he left the building and the seminar came to an early close.

After the others had gone, Cyrus and Miouda were left alone with their books. They often sat like this, quietly reading together until it was too dark to continue. Their friendship was deeper, more relaxed since the evening, several days previous, when they had drawn back the invisible curtain hanging between them.

“Miouda?”

“Yes?”

“It’s about Roxanne…”

“I wondered when you’d mention it, Cyrus.” She paused. “I know she was exceptional, a remarkable person in every way. And I’m not like her. I couldn’t be even if I tried – and I’m not sure I’d want to be. Everyone’s different. But I’m not a child and I’m not jealous.” She smiled. “And it doesn’t stop me liking you.”

“Nor me you, Miouda. A lot. And I’m so glad you understand. But you have someone…”

“Had.”

“Ah! I hoped so.”

Miouda made rapid progress in her literacy and they had got into the habit of reading the same book, one after the other, then talking about it. Frequently it was not the stories or the information they discussed, but the meaning of individual words. So many were alien to them because the concepts they represented had been lost.

In the years immediately after the Great Death, while the Constant settlements were fighting off Zed attacks almost daily, there was no place for weakness or sentimentality. Survival was everything. At this time, duty, courage, obedience and constancy were paramount: the community came before the individual and the leader before all. In a number of settlements, Alba included, words considered ‘weak’ and ‘selfish’ were frowned on and gradually dropped out of use. It was these, often the words of poetry and emotion, that fell like rain onto the thirsty soil of the couple’s imagination.

On the evening that Yash had stormed out of the seminar, they had been reading for a while when Cyrus looked up from his book and asked, “What’s the difference between ‘ignorant’ and ‘innocent’?”

Miouda shrugged. “Have you tried the dictionary?”

“No. I thought you might know.”

“Well, ‘ignorant’ is not knowing something. But I haven’t a clue what ‘innocent’ means. Go on, look it up.”

Cyrus did as she suggested. “Damn!” he exclaimed, using one of the Long Dead words he had learned recently. “It’s got masses of meanings: ‘not hurtful; inoffensive; pure; harmless; guileless; simple-minded; ignorant of evil…’ And I don’t even understand half of them.”

“The book you were reading might give us a clue,” said Miouda, moving over to sit beside him. “Who did it say was innocent?”

Cyrus put an arm round her shoulders. “A child. This man said his adult sister was as innocent as a child. What do you think he meant?”

Miouda looked over at the dictionary and thought for a moment. “I suppose he was saying she was simple-minded, a bit stupid. None of the other meanings fit. I’m not sure about ‘guileless’, but you couldn’t say a child was ignorant of evil, could you? A tiny baby, maybe; but not a child.”

“No. And it’s strange because the Long Dead seemed to think it was good to be innocent, good not to know about evil.”

“They wouldn’t last long in our world. Maybe that’s why we don’t use the word ‘innocent’ – it doesn’t apply to us.”

They sat in silence for a while, each wrapped up in their own thoughts. Eventually, Cyrus said, “There are other Long Dead words the Albans don’t use any more, aren’t there?”

“Yes. Words that don’t fit in with our way of life. At least, that’s what people like Yash say. He calls them ‘baby words’.”

“We used some of them back in Della Tallis. And they’re here, in the books all around us.”

She looked up into his face. “What words are you thinking of, Cyrus?”

He smiled. “Lots. But one especially. The Albans don’t use it but I think you know what it is.”

“Do I?”

“Yes. It begins with an L.”

“You mean ‘like’?”

“Sort of,” he said, leaning over and kissing her forehead. “Except more so.”

She sighed and snuggled up closer to him. “Ah! That one. We’d better not say it in case someone hears us and we get into trouble.”

“Alright. But perhaps we can show it?”

“Yes,” she said dreamily, “perhaps we can.”

And there, in the darkening hall, Miouda discovered the meaning of a word she had met only in books and on the lips of Cyrus. If she broke with custom and whispered it out loud, no one heard. The only witness to their movements was the carved and sightless head high on the beam above.

Ogg’s men took two days to locate the Grozny. When they had done so, the oak-limbed Malik set out at once with a small escort to pay his allies a visit. Zed instincts were not easily suppressed and violent scuffles broke out when the Gurkovs appeared at the edge of the Grozny camp. Several men were injured before Jamshid brought his tribe to heel. The two Maliks sat down side by side on the trunk of a fallen tree and began to talk.

They felt a common sense of unease at what was going on. The alliance under Over-Malik Timur was a fine idea – but was it really under him? Jamshid was very proud. His defeat before the walls of Alba had upset as well as confused him. He reasoned, in his simplistic way, that since the failure could not be Timur’s fault – nothing was – it must be someone else’s. That it might be his own did not even occur to him. The responsibility, therefore, must somehow rest with Malika Xsani.

Ogg was thinking along similar lines. The delicious slaves Timur promised him had not shown up. As this couldn’t be Timur’s fault, whose was it? The only possibility was the mysterious Xsani whom he had met only in the blurry obscurity of the Timur ritual. Listening to Jamshid’s account of the Alba expedition, all became clear. The Grozny operation had been agreed by Malika Xsani, Jamshid said, and –

“Who?” thundered Ogg, gasping and slapping a heavy hand on Jamshid’s forearm.

Jamshid looked blank. “Who I say – Jamshid. Me.” To make himself clear, he banged his chest. “This one.”

“No, no, no!” cried Ogg. “Who said you should attack Alba?”

“Ah!” Jamshid nodded. “Timur order, Malika agree –”

“Malika?!” Ogg hammered his fists against the tree trunk they were sitting on. “Malik-a? A slave Malik?”

Jamshid frowned. “Timur say she good flabtoad, great flabtoad,” he replied, annoyed by Ogg’s interruption. “She clever, she hurt Jamshid very much. Look!” He pointed to the scars on his face left by Xsani’s whip.

Ogg was not impressed. Slowly, step by step, he spelled things out for his fellow conspirator. Twice, what Timur had promised had not happened. There could be only one reason for this. Somehow this Xsani slave – “flabtoad,” interrupted Jamshid – alright, flabtoad, had managed to trick the Over-Malik into trusting her.

“Slaves cannot be trusted,” Ogg declared. “They are good only for games and breeding.”

Jamshid, running his fingers over his scarred face, was still not wholly convinced. “Jamshid speak Timur,” he muttered, groping for the right words. “Malika speak Timur. Malika strong.”

Ogg leaned back thoughtfully. “Right, Jamshid, answer my questions. One, is Xsani a slave?”

“Maybe breeding slave?”

“Good. But when I met Timur, she did not show me her slave face. She did not call herself ‘Malika’. Why not, Jamshid? Why not?”

“Not know.” Though this was the truth, Jamshid sensed the conversation was leading to another humiliation. He didn’t have the wit or the skill to stop it.

“Malik Ogg is smart, Jamshid. He will explain. This Xsani slave is afraid of me! She hides from me! She knows I understand her trickery!” He pounded the tree again, this time in jubilation. “Is Ogg right, Jamshid?”

Jamshid had to admit the idea made sense. Moreover, to his relief, the great Gurkov did not tease him for his stupidity at allowing a woman to deceive him. Instead, Ogg declared the revelation to be proof of his own intelligence. Now he had found the source of their problems, he declared, he would tell Jamshid how they would solve them. The Grozny’s new Malik, always more comfortable receiving orders than giving them, began to cheer up.

“Tomorrow morning,” Ogg said, “I will bring the Gurkov here. Understand?”

Jamshid nodded. “First sun, Gurkov here.”

“Good. The Gurkov and the Grozny will fight as one.” The word ‘fight’ cheered Jamshid further and he jumped to his feet.

Ogg rose to stand beside him. “We will hunt the Kogon!”

“Hunt Kogon!” Jamshid echoed, waving his arms in excitement.

“Kill false Malika Xsani!”

“Kill Xsani!” Jamshid was almost dancing.

“Rescue Over-Malik Timur!”

Jamshid rolled his eyes in joy at the prospect. “Over-Malik Timur!” he gasped.

“With him at our head we will march on Alba and seize the Soterion! On to victory!” concluded Ogg with a tremendous flourish. Carried away with his own rhetoric, he clasped Jamshid to his trunk of a chest and heaved him off the ground.

Half-crushed in the arms of his new friend, Jamshid could only pant, “Sotion! Sotion! Sot-i-on!”

For several generations the Kogon Zeds had survived in a bitterly hostile world through guile and extreme watchfulness. Every fibre in Xsani’s body warned her against trusting a man, especially one marked with a Z. It was only natural, therefore, that she should order her most skilful Eyes to keep the two Zed camps under constant surveillance. When Ogg set off to meet with Jamshid, she knew immediately. And when she heard the two men had been locked in discussions that ended in a fiery bonding, she suspected the worst.

Alright, she said to herself. If my allies want to play false, I will have to teach them a lesson they can never, ever forget.