Officially, the tour was for Tarfel’s benefit, but it was to Kosh that Matil directed her words.
‘Our workshops are the envy of the civilized world, as you can see. From the wind-drivers above and the water mills below, we combine the power of the elements with the latest in machinery—’
Even over the hiss of steam and clanging of metal, Chel heard Kosh’s disdainful sniff.
‘—to produce fine-milled steel, here within the city. Our cavalry, house guards and archers are the finest-equipped force across the mountains and the plains. With our steel and stonework, we have kept the tribal raiders long at bay, allowing ever-more intensive farming across the expanse and the formal protection of the trade roads. And you have seen Korowan, our jaws on the throat of the southern pass. Arowan controls the trade for six regions and provides protection to an ever-growing area of the expanse. We have the finest artisans, the greatest merchants, the most advanced production of arms and armour.’
Kosh sniffed again. Matil noticed, but instead of irked, she seemed amused. She ran a finger over her fine-wrought breastplate, picking out the detail of the rearing swan in dark metal. ‘You would not consider this well-made?’
The Nort pursed her mouth in equivocation, her gaze following the path of Matil’s finger. ‘Well-made, of course. Advanced, well …’ She moved to the gantry rail, surveying the steam-obscured activity beneath. It was very, very hot within the workshop, the channelled breeze from the vented windows on high doing little to disperse the warmth of the forges into the blaze of the day outside. Chel felt the sweat dripping from him, and from Tarfel’s pallor he suspected the prince was devoting all of his energies to staying upright.
‘What’s down there?’ Tarfel was doing his best to maintain the fiction that the tour was of some benefit to him. He gestured to a menacing-looking set of double-doors at the workshop’s end, flanked by a pair of sturdy house guards dressed in far too much armour for the room’s heat.
Matil started, as if surprised to find the prince still there. ‘The looms, highness, and access to the waterways below the city. I’m afraid they are off-limits to outsiders.’
Tarfel pouted. ‘Surely—’
‘You can understand, highness, that our peerless silk production is the source of Arowan’s wealth, the seat of its power. We wouldn’t wish to put the city’s lifeblood at risk, would we?’
‘Ah, no, quite so, quite so.’
Kosh had approached a rack of mail shirts. ‘I can see your people are doing their best. This is reasonable stuff, if a little antiquated. Tell me, are you rolling the steel hot or cold? What is its proportion of kaarban?’
Matil wrinkled her nose, still amused, her eyes narrowed to their crinkling corners. She was older than Chel had first thought, perhaps even Rennic’s age, although she moved with none of his creaking force. She was light on her feet, languid, rarely seeming to move without purpose. Chel guessed it was too hot in Arowan to waste energy on excess movement.
‘I could not tell you.’
‘Who can? Who is in charge here?’
Matil despatched one of her attendants, a seneschal she called Mira who struck Chel as having kind eyes, to summon the chief artificer. The artificer duly appeared, a hunched, shrivelled woman in singed robes, her thick head of curls bound in a waving tower from the top of her scalp. She met Kosh’s interrogation with terse and defensive answers, translated via the ever-more amused Matil. Kosh herself became increasingly condescending with each retort; had Chel not witnessed it, he would not have thought it possible.
Smirking to herself, the Nort paused at a long workbench containing crossbows in various states of assembly. ‘How far can one of your bows shoot?’
‘More than three hundred and fifty strides,’ came the proud reply.
‘And what is the lethal range?’
‘Greater than seventy strides.’
‘Against armour? Say, that breastplate of yours?’
Matil and the bent woman conferred for a moment. ‘Depending on the quality of manufacture, still lethal at twenty-five strides.’
Kosh’s smirk was uncontainable. ‘Have our effects been brought up, yet? I would like to show you something.’
***
With the crossbow and sundries from the cart came Lemon, Foss ambling in her wake, as curious and amused as Matil. Chel was glad to be back on the plaza, the fierce breeze cooling his cheeks and blowing the sweat from his neck.
‘Oh, aye, crossbows, is it?’
Kosh ignored her, collecting only her exhibition piece. Lemon continued to chatter, following along. ‘As it happens, I have an invention of my own, a highly-functional piece for the warrior outnumbered in the field. It uses two—’
‘Thank you, that will be all.’ Matil waved a hand, her attention solely on Kosh. ‘Your servant is quite outspoken. My mother would have her whipped.’
Kosh’s smirk broadened, but she said nothing. Eyes wide and nostrils flared, Lemon stomped over to Chel and Foss, making a sort of hissing sound.
‘That steam coming off you, friend?’
‘Servant? Servant? Fucken hells, man.’
Matil summoned a house guard, who then paced out twenty-five strides. Kosh gestured, and he paced five more. Then another ten. Then another ten, with increasing disbelief. From the workshop’s darkened arch, the chief artificer watched proceedings through scrunched eyes of deep distrust.
The house guard stopped at sixty-eight strides, only because he had run out of room. The pillared balustrade pressed against his back, the only barrier to the drop to the winding streets below. The man set down a marker, then stood, looking nervous.
Kosh nodded to herself, pleased. ‘Who is the best bowshot in the city?’
‘Perhaps I am,’ Matil said with a mischievous smile.
‘Perhaps you are. Your breastplate, please?’
Matil looked down in surprise, one hand on the armour, protective.
‘Come, what do you have to fear at that range?’
The tall woman hesitated a moment, then started on the straps. ‘What indeed?’
The relieved house guard propped the breastplate on two stacked barrels at the balustrade, then withdrew. Matil raised one of the bows from the workshop, aimed, and held, waiting for the wind to drop. After several moments, it did, the constant whisper of the distant trees and snap of the city’s silken trails falling suddenly quiet.
Matil fired. The bolt streaked from her bow, whistling in a flattening arc across the plaza. It struck the base of the breastplate with a clang, rocking it on its perch. It teetered for a moment, then fell back against the barrel, little to show for the impact bar a faint smudge. With a rueful shrug, Matil passed the weapon back to a guard, who relayed it past the glowering chief artificer.
‘A good shot,’ Kosh said with affected indifference.
‘Wasn’t it? Your turn, I believe.’
‘One moment.’ Kosh called back the guard, who approached only after Matil’s nod. She muttered to him and passed him something, then bent to unbundle her own weapon.
‘May I see?’
‘Afterwards.’
The guard had reached the stacked barrels. He thumped a bolt into the topmost, its fletching stripped. Instead, a set of long, fabric tassels of various colours flowed from it, dancing on the wind.
Foss stirred. ‘I’ll be.’
Chel stared at the flapping tassels, mesmerized. ‘A wind-marker. Like Whisper.’
Kosh had extracted her crossbow and was kneeling, fiddling with something on its upper edge.
‘I forget she spent time with the old girl,’ Foss said, his voice tinged with melancholy. For a moment, they rested in silence, each ambushed by their own memories of their departed friend.
Kosh lifted, sighted and fired. The bolt was a blur, a black smear over the plaza. It struck the breastplate with a crunch, slamming it back against the barrel, the dark fletching jutting from the ragged hole in the neck of the swan.
Matil’s mouth was open. ‘Gods …’
Kosh stood, beaming, her cheeks flushed, the crossbow cradled in her arms. She looked almost girlish in her proud delight. ‘You see,’ she said, to Matil or to the world, ‘it has an adjustable sight, placed over the prod, which allows the shooter to see their target even at flatter elevations.’
‘Gods …’
‘The mechanism can’t really be improved from here, but I’d like to concentrate on the construction, test out lighter materials and try to reduce the carry weight without sacrificing power. Efficient and robust construction is really the key, and I was thinking of separation into modules, so it could be stowed in the wet, or better yet some kind of replaceable—’
‘My armour!’
The house guard had separated the breastplate from the barrel and approached, funereal, the stricken plate in his hands.
‘My … armour …’ Slowly, Matil’s gaze returned to Kosh. If before it had been curious, now it was reverent. ‘You made this?’
‘This? Yes. Yes, I did. Of course, the skeleton was cannibalized from other—’
‘Can you make more like it?’
‘Like it? This is a mere prototype, not something to replicate. My new design—’
‘How fast can you make more?’
‘Very fast. I am extremely efficient. I could make as many as three or four in a week.’
Matil’s smile was tinged with mania. ‘Can you instruct others? If you had the run of the workshops, and our artificers, could you instruct them?’
‘You must understand, increasing those under instruction is lost production time, and I could really be—’
‘We have twenty artificers in these workshops, and more across the city. Would, of course, that we had more. How fast can you build bows?’
‘Assuming the availability of materials, I could probably oversee up to ten in a week. The assistants would have to be excellent though, good listeners, able to do exactly as they are told. I have no time for egocentrism.’
Lemon snorted at that. ‘Aye, right, now you know me,’ she said, swaggering back into the plaza, ‘I don’t want to widdle on any parades, but … Splendid as that little twangy-stick is, you may yet be staring down a world of witchfire in the none-too-distant, and I’m not sure how much difference a dozen more twangers will make …’
Matil gave no sign of being aware of her existence. She held her ruined breastplate up to the light, inspecting the jagged rent the bolt had made. ‘You owe me a new breastplate, engineer. Can you afford to buy me a replacement?’
Kosh met her eye, bold, teasing. ‘I will make you a replacement.’
Matil grinned like a tiger. Chel looked to Foss and Lemon. ‘What’s going on with those two?’
Foss only chuckled, while Lemon wrinkled her nose. ‘I dunno, maybe it’s for the best. Could be getting her velvet tipped might make her less of a pain in the wossname.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind, wee bear, never mind.’
***
They heard the raised voices, anger through dark wood, long before Mira the seneschal stopped at the door to the rotunda.
‘Your chambers. Her radiance, Exalted Hayal bids you rest while she resolves the matter of the southern force. Please await a summons.’
Loveless and Rennic stood on opposite sides of the circular antechamber, bristling like alley-cats. They froze when the others entered, the atmosphere in the room frigid despite the day’s warmth.
‘Everything all right?’ Tarfel asked, calculatedly blasé.
Loveless ignored him, switching her focus to Lemon and Foss, and to a lesser extent, Chel.
‘We need to leave this place.’
‘What? We only just arrived.’ Lemon flopped down on a bloated cushion; silken, of course.
‘And staying here is poison. It will consume us, one way or another.’
‘What are you talking about, friend?’
‘I’m talking about the fucking army at the threshold, the one that wants yon princeling’s blood. I’m talking about the venomous lizard that rules this place, and her sow of a daughter.’ Kosh stirred at this, ready to dissent, but Loveless left no space. ‘I’m talking about this vile, constricting place, its scheming lords and poisoners. It will choke us all if we stay more than a breath.’
‘Lot of snake imagery there, friend.’
‘I can’t think why.’
Rennic stepped around the cushion pile, into the patterned light of the upper windows, their blinds like frozen spiderwebs. ‘Why the hurry, Ell? Why the desperation?’
Her gaze fixed him with cold fire. ‘You should know that better than anyone what this place is to me.’
His hands were up, palms down, his approach slow as if to a cornered animal. ‘For the first time in as long as I can remember, for a while at least, we are safe. Does that count for nothing?’
‘No true safety exists in this city.’
‘Corvel and his confessors will be held, maybe even routed. Things in the south will escalate. And even if they’re not—’
‘For the last time, Gar, this is not our problem to solve!’ She waved a hand at Tarfel without looking at him. ‘Even princeling himself isn’t certain he wants to challenge his brother, it’s written in the sweat of his pallor. Maybe “safety” is good enough for him. But this place isn’t safety, it’s a trap, a pit. They will scheme and they will plot and they will use us then throw our husks to the wolves at the gate. Did we learn nothing? What happened to Whisper can happen to any of us, and the closer to this insanity we are, the closer to alchemy and witchfire, posture and plotting, the greater the chances.’
‘You’re saying “us”, but—’
She wheeled on Rennic. ‘You want to face the confessors, don’t you? Kill Corvel, save the kingdom.’ She threw up her hands. ‘What are you trying to prove, Gar?’
Rennic’s placatory demeanour vanished. ‘We’ll fix nothing by running away. We’re staying, that’s final.’
‘I’ll make my own choices, Gar Rennic.’
‘We’re. Staying.’
A throat cleared at the doorway. A different seneschal stood there, a study in precise uninterest. ‘At his earliest convenience, the Exalted Keeper requests the presence of Prince Tarfel and his retainers in the upper gallery.’ The seneschal filed away before she could hear anything that might incriminate her.
‘Aye, well, that didn’t take long, eh? The matter must be resolved already.’
Loveless hadn’t moved, and when she spoke it was with the growl of a feral beast. ‘You stay if you want, old man. But don’t count on me sticking around.’