TWO

The horses didn’t like her, which was fine, because she didn’t like them either. She wondered who they belonged to – likewise the cart, a valuable capital asset. Mine now, she decided. Twenty-six gold angels, two horses and a cart; in any town in the empire that’d make you upper middle class, if not downright rich, and she’d inherited all that against her will. Made you wonder why anybody bothered going to work. And the sword, of course, she’d forgotten that. It had to be worth an angel of anybody’s money, though of course everywhere was awash with surplus military hardware these days. I could go somewhere and set up as a carter, she thought: it’s a good trade, people will always want stuff moved from A to B. Or I could go to Permia; in which case, getting there would burn off every last stuiver of twenty-six angels, and she’d have to trade in the horses and rig to pay for her passage, steerage, assuming she could find a ship going there.

Pointless thoughts; so she crumbled the beeswax off the lid of a jar of pickled cabbage and pinched out a couple of mouthfuls of the foul stuff, just to keep her strength up. It gave her raging indigestion, a circumstance which for some reason she found hilarious.

*

The road had kidnapped her. Four days since Porpax died, and she was having to ration the pickled cabbage. Her knowledge of the geography and her memories of relevant maps told her that she should have crossed the Timoin some time ago – it ran directly east–west and it was forty yards wide at Angersford, not something you could easily overlook – but apparently the road knew better. She was still climbing a hill that shouldn’t be there, invisible from the normal roads, marked on no map, unknown to the Imperial Survey; how could you keep something that big and tall a secret? Maybe it was a Lodge road, and the Lodge had carefully suppressed all knowledge of it – a sure sign that she was coming to the frayed end of her rope, when she seriously considered a theory like that.

Besides, if it was the Lodge’s road they’d have taken better care of it. There were ruts in it eighteen inches deep – she didn’t like to think what sort of carts had gouged them, or in what frequency; someone had used this road to shift a large amount of very heavy stuff, and nobody knew about it. At least the terror of guiding a seven-foot-wide cart along a road with a six-foot-six span between the ruts kept her busy, and took her mind off the appalling mess she was in.

In the end, the road cheated. It filled up a wider than normal rut with black, brackish water, seeped up from the underlying peat. The first she knew about it was a sudden bone-jarring jolt that made her teeth snap together and nearly slid her off the box into the ditch, as the left side of the cart dropped away. Then the whole rig stopped dead.

She climbed down and took a look. The left back wheel had gone in a pothole, and the force had splintered the axle. The wheel was bent up at forty-five degrees, retained by a thicket of torn wooden fibres. She dropped to her knees and yelled in fury. Then she forced herself to be calm and examined the damage.

In theory – in theory she could unlimber the horses, prop the bed of the cart up on stones, lever out the massive iron staples that pinned the broken axle to the chassis, take the backsabre, cut down a sapling and rough-hew it into a new axle, pin it back in place and remount the wheels. Piece of cake. For some reason, though, she didn’t fancy that, so she cut a long piece out of the reins and used it to tie the necks of the three remaining pickled-cabbage jars together, slung the water bottle round her neck, picked up the jars and the sword and walked away.

The top of the hill came as a complete surprise, probably because it was artfully hidden in a wood. She’d been steadily climbing all day, and now the sun was just about to set. She looked up, and to her amazement she noticed that the skyline wasn’t shrinking away as she approached it. On the contrary, it stayed put, and every step brought her nearer to it. This was significant. From the top of the hill she could look down, possibly even recognise something and figure out where the hell she was. She was too tired to break into a run but she lengthened her stride just a little. Each time her right foot touched the ground, she could feel the blister on the sole of her foot compress and squash. They’d been very suitable shoes for walking from the inner courtyard of the Department to her ridiculously splendid lodgings, but fifteen miles uphill on mud and flint had robbed them of their youth and beauty.

The last twenty yards or so were vindictively steep; then she stumbled on to the skyline and looked down. Immediately, a black cloud of crows got up off the heather – she was out of the wood at last – and streamed into the air in an angry, closing screw-thread. There must have been hundreds of them, thousands even.

If it involves birds, it’s an augury and it can’t be avoided. She knew what a thousand crows in a small area means. It’s one of the less inscrutably coded symbols in the divine vocabulary.

Over the years she’d met a number of men who’d have been able to read it like a book; the degree to which the crows had stripped the flesh off the bones, the absence of stench, things like the effect of damp on cloth and leather, the beginnings of mould, the colour of rust – all useful and pertinent information, things she needed to know in order to make informed decisions about what to do next. Well, you can read the text or you can just look at the pictures. She sat down on a large stone. The crows had retreated about a hundred yards up and were wheeling in open formation, like light cavalry, yelling abuse at her. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen a battlefield. You get used to things.

After a while, she pulled herself together and dragged her attention away from the foreground and on to the horizon. That big pudding-shaped lump over there could only be Hopelstanz; and the sun, considerately setting smack bang on top of it, hinted that it was due west. In which case – she felt stupid, as though she’d just walked into a wall without looking. Hopelstanz due west; in that case, the long, weary hill she’d dragged up could only be the outer foothills of the Dis Hexapeton – which made sense, in a crazy sort of a way, because the moor that separates the two ranges is about forty miles wide, and Hopelstanz looked to be about forty miles away, give or take; and she was twenty miles further north and about sixty further west than she had any right to be, and in a different province, formerly a different country, not to mention perilously close to the front line—

She got up from her nice stone and picked her way through the heather clumps and couch-grass tussocks. Hell of a place to try running away from anything; every two yards or so, you’d trip up and land on your nose. She picked over a few dead bodies, and accumulated some useful information.

They’d been shot, and whoever had shot them had been round retrieving the spent arrows, but hadn’t bothered to strip off tens of thousands of angels’ worth of armour, clothing and other saleable kit. Nor had Ocnisant been along to work his sanitary magic; but Ocnisant went wherever the Belot boys happened to be, so if he hadn’t been here—The equipment was Western standard issue, the third-grade junk they were sending new recruits out in these days. Ambush and arrow-storm; probably what she was looking at was just the hopeless end of one breakaway unit, who lost their nerve and ran for it, and picked up a squadron of horse-archers. The rest of the battle, the main event, would probably be down the slope somewhere, and maybe that was the bit the West won, with this mess just an irrelevant sideshow that didn’t affect the practical outcome.

Like she cared. Three weeks was her best guess, and by now the survivors, winners and losers, could be hundreds of miles away, making the spectacle before her none of her business. Meanwhile, if that really was Hopelstanz, if she wanted to reach civilisation (assuming some dangerous lunatic hadn’t burned it to the ground), she needed to hold north by north-west, so aim for that cluster of low hills over there—

Who did she know who’d retrieve every last arrow but leave a small fortune in plunder to the damp and the rust? She stood stock still and tried to think. Surely not. The Lodge was finished, at least as a strategic force. They’d picked a fight with the big boys, realised their ghastly mistake and gone scuttling back to Mere Barton to build very high walls and very deep ditches. Most certainly they weren’t sending out field armies to slaughter Western regulars a few days’ ride from the walls of Rasch. They didn’t have field armies to send. You can’t just conjure up troops of armed men by scattering dragons’ teeth. It was impossible.

The sun had almost disappeared, drenching the moor with red light. True; but you can hire armed men, if you’ve got the money. And if until relatively recently your people were staffing the Treasuries of two empires, maybe you’d have enough money to hire all the mercenaries you could possibly want; Cosseilhatz and Cure Hardy and Rosinholet, specialist, born-in-the-saddle horse-archers who’d kill anyone you cared to point out for a stuiver and a pail of milk. The thought hit her like a slingstone. The Lodge wouldn’t have started a war it had no chance of winning, and one thing there was never any shortage of was mercenary soldiers. True, when last heard of they’d been working loyally for the two empires, but a subtle redistribution of funds discreetly arranged could change a lot of things. And it’s easier to massacre a column of infantry when they haven’t yet realised you’re the enemy. The bastards, she thought. The clever, clever bastards.

While there was still light to see by, she poked around and found some more money. It was all just copper, of course, but she guessed they’d been paid just before they got their marching orders and hadn’t had time to spend it on anything. She filled a small canvas satchel, somewhere in the region of six angels, and decided it was compensation for the loss of her cart and horses. Then she made herself a nest out of damp, stinking greatcoats and went to sleep.

She had a dream in which she was a princess walking along the seashore. She found a dead man lying face down in the sand, wearing rich robes of brocaded silk, sodden with water and crusted with salt, and a golden crown set with rubies and pearls, of which two were missing. She turned him over and he woke up, and so did she. But the dead men all around her were still dead, and she still wasn’t a princess; she cursed herself for letting the sea get into her sleep, because dreams about the sea tended to mean she was scared about something and gave her a headache for the rest of the day.

A final rootle around among the dead produced a pair of boots which, padded with bits of torn-up scarf, sort of more or less fitted, and she blessed the fact that she had large feet, something her mother had always taken as a personal affront.

Hunger, according to the approved commentary on the Lesser catechism, is a spiritual experience which should be undergone by everybody at least once in their lives. Extended experience of hunger, the anonymous commentator says, sharpens the senses, clarifies the mind and allows one to redraw one’s ethical map, with Life itself as the magnetic north.

Not true, she decided. Hunger just makes you think about food, all the damn time. Furthermore it saps your energy, and you can’t see what’s so important about putting one foot in front of the other; after all, the road goes on for ever, there’s no end to it and no destination, so why bother?

So she gave up, and sat down on a clump of couch grass, and took her boots off, because they hurt her feet and she wouldn’t be needing them any more; and, mostly because it was the only thing she hadn’t tried yet, she closed her eyes, clasped her hands together like she’d been taught when she was a little girl, and prayed. Great Smith, she said (she made no noise, but her lips moved), if this is because I disobeyed your orders about killing Oida, I’m very sorry, and if this is the end I know I deserve it, but if You’ve still got a use for me, could you please send me something to eat, because I’m so very, very hungry. And when You’ve quite finished punishing me, which might well take a long time, I realise that, but when I’ve finally paid in full, could You please send a cart or a horse or something, because I really don’t want to walk any more. Or if You’d rather just finish me off, that’s fine too, only please do it now, because this is miserable.

She opened her eyes. Nothing. She felt stupid. Proving nothing, she said to herself, because the Great Smith doesn’t answer prayers; it’s the Invincible Sun who does that, and he doesn’t exist. But you can pray to the Smith till you’re blue in the face, and if what you’re asking for isn’t part of His design, you’re wasting your breath. Also, the Smith neither rewards nor punishes, He just uses the useful material and discards the useless. In fact, whatever were you thinking of? Stupid.

A horse neighed. She turned round slowly.

There were four of them; and she should have been able to tell by the design of the bridles and the way they did their hair whether they were Rosinholet or Doca Votz or Cure Hardy, but she couldn’t remember which was which, and it really didn’t matter. They were all young, no more than twenty; short, goldenhaired, with long, braided ponytails; grey-eyed, slim-waisted, broad-shouldered, slender forearms with fine, almost invisible golden hair and long, delicate fingers; painted saddles with no stirrups; long, thin linen shirts belted at the waist; soft moccasins sewn along the seams with thick square leather laces; pale white skins that had caught the sun and burned red. Three of them held their bows in the right hand, one in the left. All four had an arrow nocked on the string, thin dogwood shafts with short, needle-pointed square-section bodkin heads. They were looking at her as if she didn’t make sense in a rational universe, and they were wondering what if anything they were supposed to do about it.

Oh, she thought. “Hello, boys,” she said. “Looking for me?”

Clearly they didn’t understand Imperial, which was probably just as well. Nomad humour is basic and physical – cutting off a goat’s feet and setting the dogs on it, or tying a prisoner to a wooden stake and pelting him with bones. There’s no word for joke in any of the seventy-six dialects.

“Are you lost?” said one of them, and the syntax was Cure Hardy but the accent was no Vei. In which case, they were probably Aram Chantat – Oida would know, damn him; for some reason he knew all about bloody nomads.

“Yes,” she said, trying to remember if the Aram Chantat were one of the tribes that had strict rules about helping strangers. No, that was the no Vei. Pity.

“So are we,” said the horseman. “We want to get to Pithecusa. Do you know where that is?”

Where? “Sure I do.”

All four looked happy. “How do we get there?”

“Ah,” she said. “You can’t actually get there from here. If you want to get to Pithecusa, you have to start from Cornische, or Ennepe, or Boc Afon.”

“We’ve just come from Boc Afon,” said a different horseman.

“Splendid,” she said, and smiled. “Take me there, and I can show you how to get to Pithecusa.”

They looked at each other. “How are you going to get there? You don’t have a horse.”

“That’s all right.” She broadened the smile. “I’ll climb up behind one of you boys.”

“No,” the first horseman said, “you can’t, you’re too heavy. The horse would go lame.”

Fair point, she forced herself to concede; she was taller and bigger than all of them, and the horses were little more than ponies. Her feet would nearly touch the ground. Even so. “Well,” she said, “one of you could walk, and I could ride his horse.”

“We don’t like walking. We aren’t used to it.”

“Do you want to get to Pithecusa or don’t you?”

She’d shouted, and that was a mistake. Very bad manners, and, among the nomads, uncouth people don’t live very long. They were looking at her sternly. “I’m sorry,” she said, “please forgive me, I’m tired and hungry and you know what we’re like, no idea of how to behave. I shouldn’t have raised my voice. It was very wrong.”

There was a still silence, maybe four heartbeats, and then one of the horsemen nodded; fault forgiven, just this once. “We do want to get to Pithecusa,” the first one said, “but we’re late already; we can’t afford the time it’d take with you walking along with us. I’m sorry. I don’t see what we can do.”

“You’re lost, though. You don’t know the way. You’ll be very, very late if you just ride around at random.”

The second horseman shook his head. “You said, go back to Boc Afon. So we’ll do that, and when we get there, we’ll ask the way to Pithecusa. Someone there’s bound to know. We don’t need you to tell us how to get to Boc. We’ve just come from there.”

She tried to think, but there was a sort of thundering inside her head, like waves breaking against a rock. “You can’t just leave me here.”

They didn’t answer. They didn’t need to.

“Fine,” she said. “In that case, just give me some food. I’m starving. It’s the least you can do.”

One of them shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “We’re a bit low on supplies. We need what we’ve got left.”

“But I’ll starve.”

“We’re sorry,” the first rider said. “I wish we could help, but we can’t.”

Then he pulled his horse’s head around and rode away, and the others followed immediately, as though they were all limbs of one invisible body. She stooped for a stone, but by the time she’d found one big enough to be worth throwing, they were well out of range. Then she found she didn’t have the strength to straighten up, so she sat down instead.

The horsemen were receding fast, losing human shape, turning into geometric points on the straight line of the infinite road. She thought; I can follow their trail, and that’ll take me to Boc Afon, and everything will be all right. So that’s fine, then, she thought, and passed out.

She woke up soaking wet. There were puddles all round her, and the air smelled of rain. There was a man crouched over her. He was taking off her left boot.

Careless, or new to the profession; he had a knife in a sheath on his belt, and its handle was closer to her hand than his. She made a grab for it, but a sort of tearing pain in her back and neck made her freeze and whimper. The man looked round. He was clearly embarrassed. He drew the knife and threw it away, about three yards. “Sorry,” he said. “Thought you were dead.”

Behind him she saw a horse, its reins tied to a heavy stone. The man wore a Western military gambeson with rust stains down the front and sides, and Eastern cavalryman’s breeches. His boots were wrapped in tattered scarves. “Well, I’m not,” she said. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“You look like you’re in a bad way,” he replied, getting the boot clear of her heel with a little tug. “What’s the matter?”

“I’ve been walking God knows how long with no food.”

“It’ll be all right,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll ride back to Boc Afon and tell someone you’re here. You’ll be safe and sound in no time.”

“Give me my boot back.”

“You’re not going anywhere, the state you’re in. You don’t need them. But if I’m going to ride to Boc to get help for you, I need decent footwear. Mine are a mess and the stirrups don’t half chafe your feet.”

The satchel of money wasn’t where she’d left it, and she was prepared to bet the gold angels had evaporated from her pocket. “You realise what you’re doing is murder.”

He laughed. “Don’t be silly,” he said. “I’m going to see to it that you get rescued. Trust me.”

“At least give me some food. I’ve paid enough for it, God knows.”

“Sorry.” He did look genuinely sad. “But I’ve hardly got anything left, just enough to get me to Boc. Wouldn’t be any good if I fainted from hunger, fell off and bust my head open. Then we’d both be screwed.”

The knife was only four yards away. It would get her the horse, not to mention her boots and her money back, and her life. Surely, she thought, I’ve got the strength to crawl four stupid yards. But apparently not.

“You just lie there and get some rest.” He was fishing out the padding she’d stuffed in the boots. “Boc’s only a day’s fast ride away, so you’ll be just fine, I promise you. I give you my word. Everything’s going to be just fine.” He lifted his foot, hopped around comically while he pulled the boot on. It was a bit too small. “You’re lucky I happened to come along.”

He got the other boot on, scrambled on to the horse. “Just take it easy,” he called back to her: “save your strength.” Then he splashed away through the puddles, and in due course the straight line swallowed him up, as though he’d never existed.

Two peat-diggers, an old man and his sister, found her. They were on their way to Eubine, a small village ten miles off the road, but when they saw the state she was in they reckoned it’d be better to take her to the doctor in Boc Afon. They wrapped her up in blankets and the old woman made some vegetable soup.

“She’s waking up,” the old man said. “Now then, just lie still. You’re going to be fine.”

He was small and thin, with a dark brown face and bushy white hair. He spoke Imperial with an accent you could’ve plastered a wall with.

“Who are you?” she replied in Tembe.

The old man smiled. “I’m Thunderbolt and this is my sister, She-Stamps-Them-Flat. Fancy you knowing Tembe. There’s not many as does in these parts.”

She smiled as best she could; her face didn’t seem to be working. “You’re a long way from Blemya.”

“Too right. We came out here, what, forty years ago, for the seasonal work, got stuck, been here ever since. It’s all right, apart from the cold and the damp.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“That’s all right. We’re about sixteen miles from Boc. We’ll take you there first thing in the morning. There’s a doctor there.”

“I haven’t got any—”

“Our treat,” the old woman said. “Look at the state of you, out on the moor on your own like that. What happened to your boots?”

She shrugged. “A man stole them.”

The old woman scowled. “Some people,” she said. “Anyhow, you’re all right now. You’re going to be just fine.”

*

The doctor said there was nothing wrong with her, and charged the old man sixty stuivers. She grabbed her finger, to pull off the ring that Oida had given her in Lonazep, and found it wasn’t there any more. So she thanked them instead. They laughed. Anyone would’ve done the same, they said.

There was a white stripe where the ring had been. It would fade, in time.

There was a remote chance that she might be able to kid the Knights into writing her a letter of credit on her account in Rasch, so she went to the tavern where they did business in Boc, but the local agent wasn’t there; he’d left three days before, they said, on business in the city, and nobody knew when he’d be back. The man who told her that was very careless with his purse. He left it lying around in his coat pocket. Inside it was an angel twenty. Back in the money again.

She hurried out and tried to find the peat-diggers, but they weren’t in the market square, and they’d paid their bill at the inn and moved on. Damn them, she thought; so she went down to the taproom. No, they didn’t have any tea, no call for it, so she asked for a small red wine. The man gave her a funny look, and said he’d see what he could do.

The mail coach was in, and the driver was sitting by the fire telling everyone the latest news. There had been one hell of a battle, he said, at some village called Pithecusa. Four regiments of Imperial regulars and a squadron of auxiliary cavalry had been wiped out by the horse-archers—

“Hang on,” someone said. “They’re on our side, aren’t they?”

Not any more, apparently. The driver had got it from a couple of survivors, who’d flagged him down beside the road; one of them was in a hell of a mess, he’d taken them to the Brother’s house at Imea. On the way they told him all about it, how the horse-boys suddenly fell out of the column, rode away at top speed, then looped and came back in shooting. Until the arrows started to hit, everyone thought it was some sort of showing-off display, and by then it was too late. The cavalry were shot down where they stood; the regulars formed a square, but the horse-boys rode into point-blank range, and their arrows went through regulation coats-of-plates like they weren’t there. Of course, the regulars had no archery support – at least, they did, that’s what the horse-boys had been for – so there was nothing they could do except stand there and get shot. Right at the end they tried a charge, which just made it easier for the horse-boys to finish them off. The two stragglers got out alive by shamming dead under a pile of bodies. No, they had no idea what made the horse-boys turn on them like that. Something someone said, maybe. That’s savages for you: you never know what they’ll do next.

“Four regiments,” someone said, after a very long silence. “I didn’t know we still had four regiments.”

“Where the hell is Forza Belot?” someone else wanted to know. An apparently well-informed man replied that he was consolidating his forces for the big push, which was going to drive the Easterners into the sea and end the war by midsummer. There was an awkward pause, and then someone bought the driver a drink and changed the subject.

She moved to the back of the taproom, where three men were playing cards for money. She asked if she could join in. They laughed, and someone pulled out a chair. She asked what they were playing. I’m not sure I know that game, she told them. That’s all right, they said, you’ll pick it up as you go along.

Which she did, to a remarkable degree. Not all that much later, there was just one man, and his tall piles of copper had melted down to one little stub, like a cheap candle. On the table between them sprawled a brown sea of small, worn coins.

“Remind me,” she said. “What do I do if I want to see what you’ve got?”

Pay double the bet, he told her, so she did that. He laid down five cards, one of which was the four of swords. There is no four of swords in an orthodox pack.

He leaned across the table to scoop up all the money. “Where the hell have you been?” he said. “We’ve been looking for you all over.”

“I got lost.”

“Really.” He scowled at her as though everything that had ever gone wrong since the Creation was her fault. “You do realise you’re putting the whole operation in jeopardy. You were given one simple thing to do—”

“I was arrested.” She’d raised her voice; not, perhaps, the best way to change his obviously poor opinion of her. “They grabbed me and put me in jail. What was I supposed to do?”

Maybe he hadn’t heard about that. Maybe he wasn’t interested. “If it was up to me,” he said, “this assignment would be taken away from you and given to somebody else. But it’s not, so you’re just going to have to pull yourself together and get on with it. Do you understand?”

“Look.” She tried her pleading face, but it had been a while and she hadn’t been practising it. “Can’t we go somewhere a bit less public and talk about this? People are staring.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Let’s talk about it anyway. Please?”

He thought for a moment, then sighed. “If you insist. All right, stand up and slap my face.”

Ah, she thought, right. She did as she was told. He belted her right back, making her head spin, then grabbed her wrist and pulled her across the room to the stairs. Behind them, people were cheering. Savages, she thought. And they’re wrong; the thing about savages is, they’re so predictable.

The stranger had one of the better rooms, with a view over the stable yard. “Let’s bypass the dancing around,” he said, sitting on the bed and pulling his boot off. “My name is Corason and I’m a Commissioner of the Lodge, so if you’re going to plead superior orders, forget it, because I outrank practically everybody on Earth.”

She stared at him. “You’re dead.”

“No I’m not.”

“Yes you are. You wandered off just before the big battle between Senza and Forza, the one that led to the relief of Rasch. You got shot by a horse-archer. Someone saw your body.”

He nodded. “Perfectly true. Only I wasn’t dead. I had a perfectly miserable ten days, and then Ocnisant’s people found me and fixed me up, and now here I am, live, kicking and giving you a direct order. Here,” he added, pulling up his shirt to reveal a shiny purple blotch the size of a dog’s paw. “Will that do?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“And I didn’t wander off. I was doing a job of work. And Commissioner Axio and I saved Rasch by doing a deal, as you well know. The battle was just something personal between the Belot boys.”

He said it so casually: I saved the city, the battle and all its dead were neither here nor there. “And you’re here to find me.”

He nodded. “You’ve got a job to do, and the decision is, you’re the only one who can do it. Which means I have to spend days on end in this rat-hole, when I’ve got a mountain of work I ought to be doing, waiting for you to condescend to show up. And then I’ve got to take you to Blemya.”

Wax in her ears? “Blemya. You mean Permia.”

He looked at her as though she was stupid. “Oida’s not in Permia,” he said, “he’s in Blemya. So that’s where you’re going. And me, too, to make sure you don’t wander off again.”

“What’s he doing in Blemya?”

She’d said something amusing; he was grinning. “Buying the Blemyan army. No, seriously. We’re hiring forty thousand heavy infantry for the Lodge.”

She’d heard him loud and clear, but what she’d heard made no sense. “That’s impossible,” she said. “We haven’t got—”

He shook his head. “That kind of money, no, of course not.”

“So—”

He hesitated; not supposed to talk about it, but the story was too good not to share. “The East is bankrupt,” he said. “So’s the West, of course, but the East has actually run out of cash money: you walk into the Treasury vault and all you can see is marble floor. So, a few months back, the chief financial officer of the Eastern department of the Exchequer arranged a loan from the Knights; twenty million angels. Biggest loan ever in the history of international finance. Of course, the Knights couldn’t carry that much on their own, so they laid off about half of it on the Scholars, the Poor Brethren, the Sword-blade, the Crown of Gold, all the major banks this side of Mezentia. The cunning of it was, quite apart from the East getting enough liquidity to run the war for nine months, it’d dry up all the spare money in the world, so when the West goes looking for a loan, there won’t be anything left for anyone to lend them. Smart move, don’t you think? Of course, it was a Craftsman who thought of it.”

She had a feeling she knew what was coming. “Before—”

“Oh yes, naturally. And then, just before the trouble started and he had to make himself scarce, our man in the Eastern Treasury wrote the whole lot in strict-form letters of credit and sent it to our account with the Merchant Venturers in Blemya. So, when we send our newly hired army to obliterate the Eastern empire, we’ll be paying for it with their own money. Smart.”

She felt as though she’d been kicked in the face. “That’s—”

“Yes. Of course, there’s a downside. It’ll be the end of the Knights, and eight or nine other major banks. It’ll be a long time before there’s any money circulating anywhere, it’ll be barter and sea shells anywhere outside the main cities for the next fifty years, and that’ll be very bad for pretty much everybody. But, as the saying goes, omelettes and eggs. And we did more or less the same thing with the West and the horse-soldiers, except they didn’t have to borrow. We managed that with the very last of their cash reserves.”

She breathed in slow and deep, and out again. “So what’s Oida got to do with it?”

“What? Oh, didn’t I mention that? His idea. I told you, didn’t I, it was a Craftsman who thought of it.”

She needed her mind to clear, quickly. “So he’s single-handedly won us this stupid, suicidal war. We’re actually going to beat both empires.”

Corason frowned. “Don’t count your chickens,” he said. “Both the Belot brothers are still very much alive, and we found out the hard way just recently we can’t touch either of them, not directly at least. And either of those two lunatics could crunch up our pretty new army, and then where would we be? But, yes, Oida did well there, and that’s why it had to be him in Blemya negotiating the deal. Like I said, he’s a smart boy. Like his brother.”

“He did all that for us,” she said, “and you still want me to kill him.”

“Yes. You know why. It’s necessary. The fact that he did us a good turn doesn’t change a thing.”

“Mere Barton? Oh, that’s all finished,” Corason said, as they clattered over the rickety bridge over the Finamor. “The Western army got there, found it deserted, burned it to the ground. Just like they were supposed to. It was only ever meant as a decoy. You know, make them think that was our home, base of operations, whatever, give them something to attack when they came after us. Of course, we had to make it look convincing, which is why we spent all that money and effort making it look nice. But you know as well as I do, the Lodge can’t be confined in any one place. It’s everywhere.”

He was, she felt, being disturbingly informative; whatever happened to need-to-know? Except that nothing he’d told her would be any use to an enemy, once they’d tortured it out of her. And it didn’t matter that she knew all this stuff, because before very long she’d be dead. Which explained why he was being so informative.

“Corason,” she said. “Am I going to get out of this alive?”

He shrugged, as though the point was trivial. “That’s up to you,” he said: “depends on how cleverly you go about it. You have our permission to survive, provided your survival doesn’t prejudice getting the job done. Everybody reckons you’re pretty smart. The secret, I’ve always found, is having several independent escape routes planned before you start. Lots of eggs in lots of baskets. Always worked for me.”

The ship waiting for them at Languil was Blemyan, but the crew were all Lodge, from both empires. It was small, low in the water and very fast. They rounded Cuir Point with a perfect following wind, which obligingly turned southerly exactly when it was supposed to and blew them across the straits to Glous; it was obviously a tame wind, it would probably feed from your hand and lick your face if you told it to. “There’s a problem,” she told Corason, as the red sandstone cliffs appeared on the skyline. “About me in Blemya.”

“I know all about that.”

“And?”

“You’ll think of something.”

She clawed hair out of her mouth. The wind was playing with it, like a naughty kitten, but this wasn’t a good time. “Are you coming with me to the city?”

“You bet. I don’t let you out of my sight until we find Oida.”

It was time for the awkward question. “You know Axio pretty well, don’t you? You were telling me last night, you’ve worked with him a lot.”

He pulled a face. “Feels like half my life.”

“What’s he like? I’ve never met him.”

Corason took a moment to get his words into formation. “They say he’s off his head, but that’s not true at all. Or, at least, it’s a gross simplification. He’s no loon, that’s for sure. I guess you could say he follows different rules. What I mean is, there are things he would never do, even if doing them was to his advantage. Just, not the same things you or I would have trouble with. And by the same token, lots of things we’d have problems with wouldn’t bother him for an instant. His tragedy is, every bit of him was designed and bred for one purpose, being a mid-rank nobleman, but the Great Smith had other uses for him. It’s as though a carpenter set out to make the best flagpole he possibly could, and inadvertently designed the perfect spear.”

She thought about that for a moment. “What does he want?”

“Nobody knows. Him least of all. But one thing’s absolutely sure and not susceptible to doubt in any shape or form. He’s Lodge to the core, and he’ll do exactly what he’s told, without a moment’s hesitation. That’s why he’s got to be the emperor.”

“Does he want to be?”

“Ah.” Corason grinned. “We haven’t told him about that bit yet.”

The first thing she did when she reached the city was borrow three angels from Corason to buy a knife with—

(“That’s a lot of money for an everyday utensil.”

“I’m an artist. I need exactly the right gear, or I can’t realise my full potential.”

“Yes, but three angels. This is my money we’re talking about, not Lodge funds.”

“You’ll get it back.”

“I’d better.”)

It was for her brother, she explained to the man on the cutlery stall. It was his eighteenth birthday, and the family wanted him to have something special. The man gave her a cold stare, then pulled out a box from under the table. She took her time and chose carefully.

“You know a lot about knives,” the man said. It wasn’t meant as a compliment.

“My father told me what to look for. Have you got anything else?”

“No.”

“Oh. In that case, I’ll take this one.”

“Fifty stuivers.”

“My father said, don’t pay more than thirty-five.”

The man wanted to get rid of her. “All right. What does your brother do, then?”

“He’s assistant huntsman to the Duke of Aurec.”

Leaving her with two angels sixty-five; to which, add ten stuivers if she sold the boots Corason had bought for her on the ship and replaced them with a cheap pair from the dead-men’s-shoes stall – not enough to get far enough away in the very short space of time available to her once Corason realised she’d run out on him. But the trouble with Blemya is, there are only three directions: downtown, the sea or the desert. And she couldn’t walk on water, and sand wasn’t much better. Killing Corason was an option, but there was an annoyingly high level of law and order in Blemya, which meant homicide wasn’t something to rush into. Also he was a Commissioner of the Lodge, whereas Oida was just another Craftsman—

So she crossed the square from the cutlers’ market, followed the main street up as far as the Painted Column, then the left fork – the heat was stifling – then a short cut through the alleys that brought her out in Horsefair. The Western Embassy was the single-storey sandstone building with the iron gates.

The sentry sent for the duty officer, who recognised the five-word code that meant Imperial Security. He went white as a sheet and took her to see the deputy proconsul.

“The ambassador’s not here,” the proconsul explained. “He got called back home for a briefing.”

She ought to have known that. “You’ll have to do, then,” she said. “Do you know who I am?”

The proconsul shook his head, but she could see his mind slowly grinding away: a woman, who knew the top-level code. If he knew anything at all about Intelligence, he’d realise there was only one woman of such exalted rank in the Service, and she was a wanted fugitive. But why should he? The ambassador would’ve known – probably – but he wasn’t there, was he? She decided to make it easy for him.

“My name’s Telamon,” she said, and watched for a reaction, which didn’t happen. “A while back, I was arrested on a murder charge. I broke out of the Guards’ barracks. People died in the process.”

The proconsul stared at her. “I’m not making this up,” she said. “If you want, you can go away and look it up in despatches. I don’t mind waiting.”

“I believe you,” he said.

“Splendid. Well, I’m here to give myself up.”

He didn’t move or say anything. She wasn’t sure he was even still breathing. “I said, I’m giving myself up. Arrest me. Now.”

“I can’t do that.”

“What?”

She couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. “I can’t,” he protested. “For a start, I haven’t got the authority, I’m only diplomatic grade six, I don’t have that sort of authorisation. Also, we haven’t got the facilities, or the staff. This is basically a trade delegation. We’ve got six rooms, three sentries, a clerk and a local woman who dusts and cleans. I’m sorry, but we just don’t have the capacity here.”

Calm, she told herself, calm and peaceful. “You can hand me over to the Blemyan authorities,” she said, as gently as she could. “As a matter of fact, they probably want to talk to me about a couple of murders.”

“I can’t do that.” He was genuinely horrified. “I can’t go surrendering custody of an Eastern citizen without a formal warrant.”

“Then get one.”

“A warrant from home. Do you have any idea how long that would take? And I’m not allowed to request one, I’m only grade six, I told you. You’d need the ambassador for that.”

She breathed out slowly through her nose. “Maybe I forgot to mention,” she said, “I’m also a double agent for the Lodge. And there’s a three-line directive about Lodge traitors, which gives you authority.”

“No it doesn’t.”

“Yes it does.”

“No it doesn’t.” The poor man was sweating. “Besides, if that’s true, there’s no way I can hand you over to the Blemyans: that’d be unlawful rendition, that’s a criminal offence. Please,” he said, gazing at her desperately, “can’t you just go away until the ambassador gets back?”

“When?”

“Not more than three weeks. Six at most.”

She stood up. “I’m sorry,” she said, “clearly I’m wasting your time. By the way, none of it was true. I’m not Intelligence, and I’m most definitely not Lodge. I was just playing games with you.”

That left the Blemyans. She went to the Watch headquarters in Belltower Yard.

“I’m a criminal,” she said. “Arrest me.”

The duty sergeant looked at her and sent for the captain. “Fine,” he said. “What did you do?”

“I murdered a government minister. And several soldiers.”

The captain smiled. “Sure you did. What were their names?”

She realised she couldn’t remember. Nor could she call to mind the dead minister’s portfolio. “It was about a year ago,” she said. “When Oida came here to give Her Majesty a copy of Procopius’ symphony.”

The captain frowned; a bell tinkling in the back of his mind. “No,” he said, “that wasn’t you.”

“Yes it was.”

But he shook his head. “No,” he said firmly, “because they caught the man who did that.”

“They couldn’t have.”

The captain sighed. “They did,” he said. “It was my old CO who made the arrest. Look, I don’t know what your problem is, but I don’t think I can help you. Maybe you’d be better off with a priest, or a doctor.”

“All right,” she said. “Arrest me for wasting Watch time.”

“Please go away,” the captain said.

“Assaulting an officer?”

He grinned at her. “Maybe if I wasn’t so busy.”

She drew the knife and lunged at him. He sighed, smacked it out of her hand, tucked her arm behind her back, marched her to the street door and shoved her out. He shouldn’t have been able to do that, but he had. She picked herself up, put her tongue out at the people who were staring at her and went back to the cutlers’ market, where she bought another knife at a different stall.

“Good choice,” said a voice directly behind her. She turned and saw Corason grinning at her. “Better than the first one. Shorter, and better edge geometry.”

She scowled at him. “You were following me.”

“Me personally? God, no, I haven’t got the energy.” He laid a gentle hand on her arm and led her across the street to a teahouse. “Out of interest,” he said, “was that just for my benefit? Because if not, you weren’t trying very hard, were you?”

“Wasn’t I?”

He shook his head. “If it was me,” he said, “I’d have stabbed a perfect stranger. Two, probably, to be on the safe side.”

She slumped back in her seat. “Yes, and then they’d have put me in the Watch lockup, which would’ve been a real pain to get out of. Also, it’d have been murder.”

“That doesn’t seem to have bothered you in the past.”

“That was orders.”

He smiled gently. “So’s this. But you could’ve done something a bit less dramatic. Robbed a market stall, or got in a fight without actually killing or maiming anyone. Face it,” he said, “your heart’s just not in it.”

She didn’t answer that; not straight away. “If I’d succeeded,” she said, “what would’ve happened?”

“If you’d got yourself locked up, you mean? I’d have had to get you out again, at God knows what level of aggravation and expense. I’m really glad it didn’t come to that.” He poured the tea. “It says in your file that you’re a real pain in the bum.”

That shocked her. “Does it?”

“Oh yes. Fifteen operatives who’ve worked with you say, never again. You’ve got forty-seven discommendations and twelve provisional demerits. Also, they say you’re not to be trusted with money.”

“Thank you for telling me that.”

“That’s perfectly all right.”

“Does it say anything nice about me?”

He grinned. “Now, then,” he said. “This is what you need to know. Oida is at the palace, right now. His room is on the seventh floor of the West wing, with a window facing out over the main quadrangle. The windows are shuttered, and he bolts them every night before he goes to bed. The good news is, there’s a hypocaust directly under the floor – of course, I forgot, you know all about the heating system, so that’s probably your best way in, except he’s put his travelling chest on the grill, and it’s oak with heavy iron fittings, weighs about four hundredweight. Otherwise the only way in is through the door, and the only way through the door is if it’s opened from the inside. Three-ply oak, cross-grained, it’d take half an hour to cut your way in with an axe.”

She’d never known Oida to travel with cumbersome, inelegant luggage. A thought struck her. “Does he know?”

“That someone’s after him? Good question. We have no reason to believe he does, but he’s been acting like he’s scared of something. Clever precautions, though nothing explicit enough to give offence to his hosts. Like pretending he’d gone to Permia. We didn’t tell him to do that.”

She frowned. “I’ve known him a long time,” she said, “and he never seems to bother about anybody wanting to hurt him. I mean, why should he? Everybody loves him; he’s the most popular man in the whole world.”

Corason sipped his tea, then put his bowl down gently in the middle of the table. “It’s odd, isn’t it? All right, yes, I personally believe that he’s scared of something or somebody. I don’t think it’s you. If that had been the case, he’d have arranged for you to be put in the Guards, not broken out of it.”

“You know about—?”

He confirmed that with a slight frown. “But,” he went on, “he’s skittish about something, that’s reasonably certain. Not the East or the West, because they’ve had plenty of opportunities to nail him since the trouble started, and they’ve shown no interest in doing so. And apart from about a thousand outraged husbands and fathers and maybe a few of the more perceptive music critics, he has no other enemies I’m aware of, so if someone’s on his case, it has to be the Lodge.”

“Which is true.”

“Yes,” Corason said irritably, “but we know he doesn’t know about that. About you, I mean, and you’re the only officially sanctioned move against him, and you’re on the narrowest possible need-to-know basis, and we know that’s rock-solid. Also, this furtive dodging about started before the decision about him was taken, so it can’t be that.”

The tea was strong and a bit too spiced for her liking; also hot enough to take all the skin off the roof of her mouth. She put the bowl down again. “All right, then,” she said. “In that case, it can’t be anybody.”

But Corason just frowned, as if a nagging tooth had started playing him up again. “Actually, it could be.”

“What? You just said—”

“Be quiet and listen.” He closed his eyes and opened them again. “There’s something odd going on, actually inside the Lodge. Yes, I know, that’s impossible, it could never happen, and I’m imagining the whole thing. But I have a horrible feeling I’m not.”

She opened her mouth, but no words came.

“Cast your mind back,” he said, “to that time I wandered off, as you so sweetly put it. I had an errand to run, and this dreadful woman attached herself to me. I had no idea who she was, basically she was just a nuisance, until she kicked me in the head and stole my horse. And then I found out – I won’t bother you with how, just take my word for it – I found out she was Lodge. One of us. A Craftsman.”

She stared at him for a long time. “That’s—”

“Impossible, yes. So everybody keeps telling me: my fellow Commissioners, my superiors, everybody. I’ve made a point of asking everybody who had the authority to send her to spy on me, and they all said, no, that wasn’t me, and I believe them.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“No, of course it bloody well doesn’t. In order for it to make sense, you’d have to posit the possibility of factions inside the Lodge, differences of opinion, a division, schism, something less than an absolute unity of mind and purpose. God’s right hand not knowing what His left is doing.” He sighed and shook his head. “Accordingly, I must have imagined it, or else misinterpreted the slender piece of evidence on which I based my conclusion that that bloody woman was Lodge. Except that now here we have Oida, acting like he knows something about Lodge business that we don’t. Which is why I’ve condescended to tell you about it.”

She looked at him. “I was wondering about that.”

“Yes, well. Orders are, you’re to be given all possible necessary facilities to do the job, and in my judgement, knowing about this business is a necessary facility, just in case it’s relevant. Not that I think it is, but since I don’t know what all this is about, I can’t form an informed judgement as to whether it’s relevant or not—” He made a despairing gesture. “I asked Axio,” he said. “I asked him, would Oida take to lugging around a bloody great iron-bound chest unless he had a damned good reason. Axio just looked at me. No, of course not, he said, Oida travels light.” He shrugged. “You know what this feels like? It’s like I’ve just happened to stumble on a dirty great crack in the back wall of the Universe, and if nothing’s done about it the sky’s going to fall into the sea and the sun will go out and that’ll be that, finished. Only, who can I tell about it? Nobody, because it isn’t bloody well possible.”

The waiter was hovering. She beckoned him over and paid for the tea, and he went away. “Have you asked—?”

“Who?”

“You know.” She realised she had no idea how to put the concept into words. “Him. The boss.”

She’d lost him. “You mean prayer?”

“No, I mean whoever’s the top man. The very top. The head of the Lodge.”

He gazed at her as though she was stupid. “Have you been listening to a single word I’ve said?”

“Yes. But—”

“In that case, no. No, of course I haven’t, because I haven’t got the faintest clue who he is. You know that.”

“Yes, but you’re a Commissioner.”

“So bloody what? I don’t know who the head of the Lodge is. Neither do my superiors, or their superiors. I think, but most definitely don’t know, that the next layer up knows who he is, but for all I know there’s another two, three, four levels after that.” He glared at her. “You sit there and tell me you honestly believed that I know who’s running everything? Dear God. You think, if I knew something like that, they’d have me running about loose? You’re an idiot.”

“I’m sorry.”

He sighed. “Forget it,” he said. “Doesn’t matter. My fault, for talking to you under the misapprehension that you’re a grown-up. Anyway, you now have all the information you need in order to do the job that’s been assigned to you.” He gave her a big, unfriendly smile. “And so,” he said, “I suggest you get on with it.”

The Tembe women traditionally wore voluminous gowns, head to foot, like the men’s but with a scarf wrapped round the face. The idea was to protect them from sandstorms and the blistering heat. Upper-class Blemya city women had recently adopted the fashion, although in silk rather than cotton and not in desert white: flame red or saffron yellow, even actual sky-blue for the prodigiously wealthy. For an angel, she bought a yellow one second hand. It didn’t quite reach her ankles, so she had to lash out forty stuivers on smart embroidered-silk flat pumps, with the moon and seven stars picked out in sequins. Possibly the ghastliest footwear she’d ever seen in her life, but they were a good fit and remarkably comfortable. The scarf tickled her nose and made her want to sneeze all the damn time, but only her eyes were visible. She inspected herself in the tinned bottom of a copper preserving pan, then spent her last remaining money on a tiny jar of kohl. She was no good at makeup and hated anything anywhere near her eyes, and it took her several goes before she got it looking right, but she reckoned she was unrecognisable.

The knife was a problem. Its unmistakable profile showed up under the thin cloth. In the end, she strapped it to the inside of her calf with strips torn from a silk handkerchief that Corason had carelessly left drooping out of his pocket. It moved when she walked and chafed annoyingly, and would almost certainly slide down her leg and trip her up if she had to run.

“Why are you walking like that?” Corason asked. “Have you hurt yourself or something?”

She lifted her hem. “If you’ve got a better idea.”

“God, that’s hopeless.” He scowled, then grinned. “What you need,” he said, “is a copy of Mardonius’ Analects.”

Inspired suggestion. It took an hour of hard work to cut out the middles of the pages, but the knife fitted snugly in the hollow and fell out as soon as she opened the book. And he’d been quite right. Only the Analects were bulky enough. “Though what a fine society lady would be doing with any book of any description is beyond me.”

“I’m giving it to someone as a present, of course,” she replied. “My brother. In the army. Something to read in his tent after a hard day.”

Corason pursed his lips, then opened his travelling bag and took out a book. She didn’t get a look at the title. It was held shut with a little brass clasp, which Corason carefully levered off with the point of her knife; then he hammered it delicately on to the cover of the Analects with the heel of his boot. After he’d bent it a bit, it closed just fine and stayed shut even if you shook it quite hard, but she could open it with a brush of her finger. Corason was grinning like a dog, absurdly pleased with his small triumph of craftsmanship. “My father always said I was good with my hands; he wanted to apprentice me to a jeweller but my mother wouldn’t have it.” He flipped the catch open and shut a couple of times, just to hear the faint click.

Corason liked the present-for-my-brother idea, though she was rapidly going off it. Don’t be silly, he told her, and set about procuring her a brother in the Royal Guard.

“His name’s Emmon,” he said; “he’s a junior captain in the third day watch. Go to the south gate of the palace and ask for him, he’ll get you inside. After that you’ll be on your own, but I know you prefer it that way.”

“Actually—” she said, but he wasn’t listening.

She spent an hour memorising a detailed floor plan of the palace – you could buy one, quite openly, for a stuiver in the booksellers’ yard – until she could close her eyes and see it perfectly clearly. The original architect had designed it so that, to the Invincible Sun looking down from the bar of Heaven, it looked like a five-petalled rose, each of the petals being represented by a gilded dome, the stigma or central boss being the porticoed circular cloister. Subsequent rulers had been more interested in convenience, efficiency and being able to get from one room to another without walking all round the circumferences of internal circles, so the flower was now worm-eaten with transverse corridors and passages; also, two of the five domes had collapsed under their own weight and been replaced by slab-sided blocks of guest rooms, reception halls, kitchens and barracks for the Guard. Her freshly minted brother would get her into the barracks area on the south side. Oida’s room was on the west side, directly overlooking the central cloister. To get there, she could take the main thoroughfare, a heavily used enclosed corridor paved with the legendary Blemyan blue and white geometric tiles; or she could follow the original peripheral route, as the first architect had intended, most of which was deserted now and visited only by the servants who swept it; or she could follow the Clerks’ Road, a composite agglomeration of passages that threaded in and out like cross-stitch between the offices that occupied the third and fourth floors of the South, East and West wings. There was, of course, no map of the Clerks’ Road; it was one of the mysteries of the craft, something you had to learn for yourself as a rite of passage, or be shown, just the once, as a special mark of favour by a kindly superior. As an option, everything was against it except that the Blemyans did employ female clerks, and she wouldn’t look out of place there carrying a book.

Black clerical subfusc just about fitted under the shining yellow gown, though it made her sweat like a pig. Her brother greeted her with great joy at the gatehouse, hustled her into the barracks, led her up four flights of vertiginous spiral stairs and abandoned her without a word. She peeled off the yellow gown and dumped it down a garderobe. The shoes were now a problem; far too dressy for a woman clerk. She rubbed them with dust and grime mixed with spit and cut off the sequins. Just as well she wasn’t on a schedule.

Getting onto the Clerks’ Road was no trouble at all. She wandered around until she saw a clerk – rather, she heard him before she saw him, the clip-clop of his hard soles on the tiled floor giving her plenty of time to stoop and mime tightening a loose shoelace. He swept past without noticing her, and she followed discreetly. He led her to what was clearly some sort of hub, corridors branching off in all directions. She picked up another clerk heading west and followed him for a very long time, until she caught sight of the cloister roof through a broken pane in a stained-glass window. She waited till she had the corridor to herself, then crouched on the floor and peered up, trying to catch a glimpse of the sun. No dice; but the length and angles of the shadows on the cloister roof were just as helpful. She now knew that she was south-west, on the inside, three floors below where she needed to be. A group of four clerks surged past her, talking loudly about the insufferable cruelty of their supervisor. She tagged along behind them unnoticed until they went left and she needed to keep on bearing right, and then she came to a staircase.

She looked at it. Well, why not, she thought. It was one of those horrible screw-thread staircases with triangular treads, and there was no guide-rope or handrail. Up three flights, and she found herself confronted by a massive oak door, which was locked.

Ah well. But the thought of retracing her steps down the loathsome staircase made her feel ill, so she picked the three inches of stiff wire out of the hem of her sleeve and had a go at the lock. To her great surprise it was a piece of cake: a very old lock, therefore a very simple one, dating back to more innocent times. She opened the door carefully and found herself in a long, high gallery, with tall yellow-glazed windows, overlooking the cloister. Simple as that.

The room numbers were painted on the doors in gold leaf. She’d come out at number 46. Oida was in 238. Of course, he wouldn’t be there at this time of day, but sooner or later he’d come back, and—She realised she couldn’t lift her foot. Sudden cramp, pins and needles, possibly a trapped nerve, or it might just be that she didn’t want to. She’d been relying so much on getting caught, but the skill and the instincts and – be honest – the simple thrill of the chase had swept her along, and now she was actually here, and of course there was no way on earth she was going to go through with it—

“Are you lost?”

He had to be a guest, not a local; the voice was wrong, also the manner. A local would be suspicious, not pleasantly amused. She turned round, and recognised the face.

“Telamon? What are you doing here?”

She couldn’t actually remember his name. He was some official in the Western diplomatic service, and they’d shared a long coach ride three or four years ago; she’d been assigned to keep an eye on him, so she’d turned on the charm. No surprise that he’d recognised her immediately.

“Keep your voice down, for crying out loud,” she hissed, and he looked guilty and sad, like a naughty boy. Then she flicked Corason’s beautiful catch, caught the knife as it dropped out of the book and stuck it under his ribs.

She caught him before he fell – three cheers for black, which doesn’t show bloodstains – and dragged him, heels trailing, as far as the garderobe, thirty-two staggering yards in the wrong direction. He looked like a small man, but she nearly broke her back heaving him up and posting him through the slot. The splash he made gave her the shivers. My trouble is, she told herself, I know far too many people for my own good.

She walked quickly up the corridor, wiping her hands on the front of her clerical smock, the book wedged securely under her arm. Maybe, she thought, that should be the other way around; too many people know me, knew me, for their own good – is there anyone I’ve ever known, had anything to do with, who’s ever come out of it well? Not many; offhand, couldn’t name one. That stopped her dead in her tracks, even though she was in a hurry to get out of sight. Everybody I’ve ever known long and well enough to have an effect on has suffered as a direct consequence. Everybody I meet, I injure. And I’ve only just realised that.

Yes, she thought (200, 201, 202) but I work for the cause, the greatest and most wonderful, the only true, the sublime, the supreme cause, I’m a tool in the hands of the Great Smith, and some of us are cutting tools, some of us are hammers, some of us are weapons. She stopped again, opposite Door 213. Do I really believe that? In Him, the Father of all Purposes? As a living being, an entity, a big, broad-shouldered man with a beard? She pressed on, Door 219. There is no big man with a beard, but there is a pattern, a shape, a force, a process, and I’m part of it and necessary to it, and I do what I have to, I do as I’m told. I’m a soldier in an invisible army, led by an invisible general; I can’t see the soldiers on either side of me in the line, but I know my shield is locked in with theirs to form an invisible wall against the assault of our enemies; I know that everyone I can see is the enemy, and this is war. Room 225. I do as I’m told. The arrow doesn’t second-guess the bowstring. Orders come down. I do as I’m told.

Room 238. She couldn’t breathe. She picked the wire out of her sleeve. Her hands were shaking, but as soon as the wire entered the keyhole they became docile, obedient. Another old lock, with naïve, obliging wards. She felt the last one click back and gently pushed the door.

And saw Oida, who shouldn’t have been there. But he was. He was squatting on a chamber pot in the middle of the floor, his kingfisher-blue robe tucked up around his waist, a strained expression on his face. He looked up and saw her.

There never was a man like Oida for comical expressions. His face went from stunned surprise to horror to deep, ineradicable shame. He hopped up, dragging his robe down his legs, tripped, stumbled, staggered back three paces, collided with the bed, lost his legs, sat down hard, overbalanced and ended up flat on his back; scrabbled upright and stared at her. She could feel her face burning red as coals on the bed of the Smith’s forge. He’d knocked over the jerry; a nasty looking pool was spreading on the floor. “Shut the door, for God’s sake, shut the door,” he howled. She did as she was told. She was good at that.

He was deep-breathing, his eyes closed, getting a grip. Whatever he’d been eating lately, it hadn’t agreed with him, not one bit. Probably all those cream and clarified butter sauces for which Blemya is so famous. She wanted to laugh, which was stupid.

Three long strides took her well within distance. “What’s the matter?” he asked, as she flipped the catch on the book. The knife fell perfectly into her hand, no fumble. “Are you all right?” he said. “You look awful.” She stabbed him.

But the knife wouldn’t go in. The point stopped dead, then skidded sideways, ripping the silk of his robe. The knuckle of her thumb ran over a small, hard lump, with enough force to gouge out a small flap of skin. The head of a rivet, she realised; he was wearing a brigandine under his clothes. Then a fist appeared, and quickly grew so big it blotted out the world, and hit her eye socket. She felt her brain move in her skull, then a horrible bump as her head hit the floor, and then everything was a bit vague for a while.

She opened her eyes and saw Oida’s face, alarmingly close; he looked scared to death. He was shouting her name. “Are you all right?” he bawled at her. “Look at me. How many fingers am I holding up?”

Her left eye closed, all on its own. “One,” she mumbled.

“Does this hurt?” His hand reached past her, and she felt his fingers gently probing the back of her head. “You stupid bloody cow, I could’ve killed you. I’m so sorry.”

She looked past him, for the knife. It was almost close enough for her to stretch out and reach, but Oida was in the way. He must’ve seen her, because he looked round, jumped up, grabbed the knife, quickly scanned the room; he went to the door and stabbed it hard into the oak doorframe about eighteen inches off the ground. Then he lifted his foot and stamped on the handle. The blade twanged. He stamped again, harder, and it snapped off. She felt every muscle in her body relax, as though he’d just killed a scorpion or a poisonous spider. There, now; it was all the knife’s fault, after all, and we’ll say no more about it—

He came back and knelt beside her. “Are you feeling dizzy? Nauseous?”

“I’m fine,” she croaked. “For God’s sake stop fussing.” She could see the small steel plates of the brigandine quite clearly through the hole in the gown; very small plates, such as you only get on the very finest, top-of-the-range bespoke jobs. Nothing but the best, naturally.

The look of terror in his eyes had faded into deep concern. “Telamon,” he said, in that damned annoying serious voice, “listen to me, this is important. Did you have orders to kill me?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “Listen. Those orders were false: they didn’t come down through the chain of command.” He was having trouble finding the right words, which he found infuriating. “The order to kill me could only come from the very top, and it didn’t, I promise you, trust me.”

She managed a valiant attempt at a grin, though it hurt. “You would say that, wouldn’t you?”

“It’s true. I asked him. He told me, quite categorically. He never gave any such order.”

He? Who was he talking about? “Oh come on,” she said, “don’t be silly. You don’t know the head of the Lodge. Nobody—”

“Actually I do.”

It hit her harder than the punch had done. But she knew him so well. He was telling the truth.

“Long story,” he said quickly. “But the important thing is, you don’t have to do it.”

“You know who the—” Oh, it was so typical, she wanted to hit him. “Prove it. Tell me. No, don’t shake your head at me, tell me, I want to know.”

He sighed and did the hand-spreading appeasing thing. “If you must know, it was purely by accident. The fact is, I’ve known him for years, before I found out, I mean. And he said something without thinking, which he never ever does, and suddenly it all made sense. So I asked him. And he admitted it.”

“Just like that?”

“Like I told you, I’ve known him for years and years.” He looked at her helplessly. “You know I can’t tell you.”

Her head was splitting. “No, I suppose not.”

“I knew you’d understand.” He breathed out slowly and rocked back on his heels. “Anyway, that’s it, now you know. And you don’t have to do it, do you understand? It’s a false order.” He stood up, went away, came back with a dear little porcelain tea bowl half filled with water. “Drink this,” he said. In his other hand was a damp piece of cloth. He started dabbing at the corner of her eye, and she slapped his hand away.

“I tried to kill you,” she said. It came out like whining; like they were married or something.

“Yes,” he said, “I know. And I hit you. Let’s call it quits.”

That was another thing; utterly trivial, but she had to ask. Why did she find the details of his life so irresistibly interesting? “Good left,” she said. “But you can’t punch your way out of a cobweb.”

He grinned. “Catalauno’s,” he said, “just off the Goosefair in Choris. Twenty angels for a crash course of ten lessons. All the best people go there, naturally. He reckons I show great promise.”

She couldn’t help laughing, and it made her yelp, and he ordered her to hold still while he dabbed at her eye, and she said, oh go on, then, and let him. The cloth came away rose-coloured, so he’d broken the skin.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll never be able to get my head round you as a bare-knuckle fighter. Or armour next to the skin, come to that.”

He pulled an unhappy grin. “I was expecting you,” he said. “And believe me, I take you very seriously.”

“Thank you. Actually, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me, in context.”

“In context.” He put down the cloth and made her sip some water from the exquisite bowl. “I know you had to obey a direct order,” he said. “It’s like the time I got ordered to kill Senza Belot. Did I tell you about that? Well, anyway, luckily I didn’t have to go through with it, obviously. But I knew if I did, that’d be it, the end of me.” He shrugged. “It’s like putting a hood over a candle, you just blot out what’s in your mind and press on anyway; you know you don’t want to do it, but somehow it’s not up to you any more. Tools in the hands of the Smith, and all that. Except it does actually feel that way, at the time.” He grinned. “I still wake up sweating in the middle of the night about it, but I’d have done it.”

She smiled at him. “You weaselled your way out of it, didn’t you? You always do.”

“No. Well, sort of. Actually, no, I was let off. Otherwise—” He drew his finger across his throat. “Something like that, it really pulls you up short.”

So that was it, then, was it? Forgive and forget and promise not to do it again? Was it possible that he truly understood her, right down deep, past all the thousands of tiny interlocking steel plates? She deliberately called to mind what she’d been told about him, the first time they were going to work together. Don’t trust him further than you can spit.

“It was the truffles in hazelnut and fig sauce,” he said with his mouth full. “I love them, but they don’t like me. They go straight through me like an arrow.”

She looked up at him and pulled a stern face. “Don’t eat them, then.”

“It’s not that easy. The queen, bless her, knows I like them, so we get them at every meal. And you can’t refuse, it’d give offence.”

Oida had sent down for a light snack: six kinds of fancy cured meat, baby cucumbers sliced lengthways in yogurt, little fried onion cakes with some sort of utterly delicious herbs and spices that you could only get in Blemya, and soft white wheat bread, still warm from the oven. She’d had to hide under the bed when the servant brought in the tray. Her head was aching, but she could see straight again. “You shouldn’t be eating with an upset stomach,” she said.

He gobbled the last of the cucumber. “Just being sociable,” he said.

No further than she could spit, remember? “Sometimes I play this game,” she said. “What would I do if there wasn’t a war?”

He frowned. “Tricky one,” he said. “Well, actually, no, it’s not. If it hadn’t been for the war, you’d be married to some farmer. Right now you’d probably be chopping up two hundred cabbages for pickling, or washing out guts ready for the sausage-making.”

She laughed. “No farmer would’ve married me, with no dowry. I wonder, would the Lodge have come for me if it hadn’t been for the war, or would I still be picking berries on the moor?”

He frowned slightly. “I know it’s your game,” he said, “but I think you said the rule was, what would I be doing now if there wasn’t a war? Which I take to mean, if the war suddenly ended and we had peace.”

“Ah well,” she said. “In that case, I’d probably look round for the one big score that’d set me up for life, and then, I don’t know. Probably I’d buy a small estate or a big farm, a long way out in the sticks.”

“One big score.”

She nodded. “Rob someone, or a swindle, or maybe just a really good game of cards. You know, I’ve been so close to it, four or five times over the years, but it’s like someone’s playing with me like a puppy with a bit of string. Just when my jaws are about to close, it twitches away.”

“It doesn’t have to be criminal. You could marry money.”

She scowled at him. “Don’t be silly. Also, if I did that I’d be saddled with a husband.”

“Would that be so bad?”

She shrugged. “Depends. Probably.”

He ate the rest of the cold meat. “I see you in a big old house, sitting in a library. West-facing, naturally. For some reason, it’s raining outside and there’s a big log fire. You’re sitting at a desk, reading one book and with two others open in front of you, and every now and then you stop and write something in the margin.”

She laughed out loud. “It’s a stupid game,” she said. “And the war will go on and on for ever, so what’s the point?”

But Oida shook his head. “Glauca has six years to live,” he said. “He dies, the war’s over. But it won’t come to that, because long before then the Lodge will have taken over both empires, and someone – I have a horrible feeling it’ll be my brother – will be emperor over the whole lot. At which point, no doubt, new and different wars will break out. But they won’t be this one.” He dabbed his mouth with the hem of his sleeve; his one vulgar habit. “Which reminds me.”

She looked at him. Just the slightest change in tone of voice, but it was like a tiny creak in a house that ought to be empty. “What?”

“All this is very pleasant,” he said, “but you’ve got work to do.”

“I thought we’d agreed I haven’t.”

“You need to do a job for me.”

Her eyes widened. “Is that right?”

He nodded. “For a smart woman you can be a bit stupid sometimes. Two things. One, you don’t seem to have grasped the significance of what I told you. You got a direct order, but it didn’t come from On High. Do you know what that means?”

She nodded. “Commissioner Corason told me,” she said. “Schism inside the Lodge. I didn’t believe him.”

“Do you now?”

She paused before answering. “If I don’t,” she said, “then I don’t believe you either, in which case my orders were valid and I’ve got to murder you. So, yes, I choose to believe.”

“Belief isn’t about choice. See Monomachus’ Ethics, books one to three.”

“Screw Monomachus. What was the other thing?”

He gazed at her for a moment, then went on; “You were ordered to get rid of me. I think it would be best all round if you succeeded.”

“Got you. Won’t that be a problem with the negotiations?”

He shook his head. “Fortuitously, you killed me just after I’d wrapped up all the salient terms of the deal. Now, the queen really likes me at the moment, probably because of all that money and the fact I rescued her boyfriend for her—”

“We rescued.”

“I left you out of it,” he said, “safer for you, in the long run. Anyhow, she’ll play along if I ask her nicely. I expect she’ll give me a state funeral, quite possibly a mausoleum. I always fancied a mausoleum, on a hilltop somewhere, with lots of white marble and a free-standing alabaster sarcophagus and a shiny copper roof, only I thought, the hell with it, I wouldn’t be around to see it.” He grinned. “Anyway,” he said, “that’ll convince everybody except everybody who actually matters. What they’re going to need is positive, unassailable proof.”

“What?”

“My head preserved in a jar of honey would be optimum, but I don’t think that’s practical. This, though, would do almost as well.”

“What?”

She noticed he’d raised his right hand and was pointing to his index finger. “You’ll notice,” he said, “this scar here. It’s quite distinctive, like a clover leaf. Had it since I was nine, and Axio trapped it in a door. Packed in salt, it’d keep quite nicely.”

She didn’t follow. “Where are you going to get a finger just like that from?”

“Think about it. And the beauty of it is, Axio would know I’d rather die than lose this finger.”

His plectrum finger. Without it, he couldn’t play. “But—”

He shook his head. “Axio’s a fool,” he said. “He overestimates my vanity. The truth is, of course, that I’d far rather lose this finger than die, but he couldn’t see that. So.” He shrugged. “We’ll need some salt. And a little box.”

She stared at him. “Are you serious?”

“About the box? Absolutely. A bag wouldn’t do nearly as well.”

“Well?”

Corason’s eyes were shining, or glittering; she could see the candle reflected in them. She sat down heavily. “I need a drink.”

He reached for the teapot, but she shook her head. “Something stronger.”

Corason raised both eyebrows. “You don’t drink. It’s in your file.”

She looked past him, caught the barmaid’s eye. “Peach brandy,” she said. “Bring the bottle.”

“We haven’t got any.”

“What’ve you got that’s like it?”

The barmaid thought for a long time. “Applejack?”

“Is that stuff fit for human consumption?”

“Well, we drink it.”

“Fetch me a bottle anyway.”

The barmaid didn’t move. Corason produced money. She went away.

“Well?”

She nodded.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She didn’t speak or move until the barmaid came back with the bottle. “Job done,” she said, filled a tea bowl with applejack and swallowed it.

“Meaning?”

From her sleeve she produced a small rosewood box, the sort high-ranking clerks use to keep pen-nibs and sealing wax in. She opened the lid.

“For God’s sake,” Corason said. “Put it away.”

“Not till you’ve had a closer look. Here, see this scar? Seen it before?”

He reached over her hand and closed the lid. “Yes.”

“That’s what I meant by job done.” She refilled the bowl and gulped it down. “But you don’t have to take my word for it. The news’ll be all over town by this evening, I expect. He was a well-known public figure, and all that.”

Corason had gone as white as a corpse. “Well, then,” he said. “That’s that.”

She looked straight at him. “No thanks? Praise? Well done, thou good and faithful servant?”

He shook his head. “If you want. Well done.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

He leaned back, and the chair creaked. “You got out all right, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“What happened to your eye?”

“There were a few minor mishaps. Want to hear about them?”

He shook his head. “Not really.”

“Then don’t pretend you care.”

He looked as though he’d just come home to find his mother in bed with the stable boy. “Seriously,” he said, “well done. It was a job that needed doing. I know you hate me and the Lodge and everybody in the whole world because of it, but—”

“I did as I was told.”

“Exactly. It’s what we all have to do. The hammer strikes, the saw cuts, otherwise there’s no point to their existence.” He massaged his forehead, as though he had a bad headache. “Pour me a drop of that stuff, will you?”

“Buy your own.”

“I might just do that.” He gestured to the barmaid, but she hadn’t seen him. “Well, then,” he said. “Time for your next assignment. They want you to go to a place called Malla Polla—”

But she shook her head. “I’m excused duty,” she said.

“Oh.” She’d shocked him. “Why?”

“When Oida was dying,” she said quietly, “he made me promise him something. I have to find his brother and give him a message.”

“What?”

“Family stuff. I’m not allowed to tell anyone except Axio.” She poured another bowl. “Don’t even think about telling me I can’t do this, unless you want your throat cut right now.”

He shrugged. “Not up to me,” he said, “I’m not your control. I’ll tell them you asked for a leave of absence, on compassionate grounds.”

“Compassionate. Now there’s a word. Yes, you do that. Oh, and I’ll need money.”

“What? Oh, all right. How much?”

“How much will it cost to get me to where Axio is?”

“I don’t know.”

“Find out.” She stood up, wobbled, caught the edge of the table. The box slipped out of her sleeve and fell on the table. Fortunately, the catch held and it didn’t spill open. She retrieved it and shoved it down the front of her dress. “Be here same time tomorrow.”

“I’m not sure I can get you that information.”

“Here. This time tomorrow.”

On her way out of the city, she stopped at the booksellers’ yard and found the man who had the best selection of maps in the whole of the West. “I want a map,” she said.

The man smiled. “I have many fine maps. What sort would you like?”

“I want one that’s got a place called Engoi on it. It’s not for me, it’s for my brother.”

The man’s smile only wavered for a second. “We’d better look in the gazetteer,” he said.

Engoi turned out to be a small village in Eysi Celeuthi, three miles east of the border between East and West. “I can sell you a map of Eysi,” the man said, “but it’ll be a bit out of date. Half the cities in Eysi aren’t there any more, and I seem to remember Forza Belot diverted the course of the Haimon river during the Field of Crocuses campaign.”

She gave him a weary look. “Noted,” she said. “How much?”

The map came in a dear little brass tube embossed with flowers and vine leaves. She found a teahouse, spread the map out on the tabletop and studied it carefully. Maybe there’s more than one Engoi, she thought. She rolled it back up again, and had a lot of trouble getting it back in the tube.

A shadow fell over her, making her shiver. Then a man appeared at the edge of her vision, and sat down opposite. “Hello,” he said. “I don’t suppose you remember me.”

He was young and ridiculously tall. “Of course I do,” she replied. “You’re the thief. No, don’t tell me. I never forget a talent, but names take a little longer.”

“I’m Musen,” he said. “Corason told me you’d be shopping for maps.”

She smiled at him. He’d changed since she’d last seen him. There were scars on his face and arms. His nose had been broken. It improved him. “You know Corason.”

“Yes. I worked for him. He says you’re going to see Commissioner Axio.”

“If he says it, I guess it must be true.”

“Can I go with you?”

There was one particular scar, in the middle of the palm of his left hand. She’d seen several like it over the years. It came from having your hand nailed to a plank or beam. It’s a job that calls for skill and judgement, to avoid skewering the big veins on the other side. “Why?”

He grinned. “Everyone says you’re the best in the business.”

“Liar.”

“They say you’re good at getting to places and finding people. I don’t like doing long journeys on my own.”

“You get into trouble.”

“Yes.”

“That’s because you steal things and get caught.”

“I used to.”

“Get caught?”

“Steal things. I don’t do that any more. Not unless I’m told to.”

She put the map in her sleeve. “Corason sent you to keep an eye on me.”

“Yes. And because I want to see Axio. He’s my friend.”

He’d put his hands on the table. It didn’t look a particularly comfortable way to sit. “When did you work for Corason?”

“I stole the pack of cards they used to buy off the siege of Rasch. Then, when he got shot after the big battle, I found him and brought him back. I’ve been with him on and off ever since, running errands. He knows I want to see Axio again, so he sent me to go with you.”

She frowned. “Axio’s your friend.”

“That’s right.”

“Did Corason tell you why I’m going to see him?”

“No. Just that it’s important Lodge business. I don’t need to know.”

“No, you don’t, but what the hell. Listen. I have to take something for him to see, and give him a message. It’s very important. If there’s two of us, it doubles the chance of one of us making it. We’d be going to a very bad place. There’s no people there any more, it’s right on the front line, so if soldiers don’t get us, we’ll probably starve. What Axio’s doing in a place like that, I have absolutely no idea.”

He shrugged. “I don’t mind. I’m used to roughing it.”

“Good, because I’m not. I don’t like getting wet, I hate sleeping in ditches, I’m pathetic at setting snares and spit-roast squirrel gives me the shits. I’m a girl, for crying out loud, I shouldn’t have to do all that.”

He grinned. “I might be able to help,” he said.

“How could you possibly—?”

“There’s this man I know.”

*

It was essentially a fairy story – the lion with a thorn in its paw, or the poor fisherman’s son who throws back a fish that turns out to be the Dragon King in disguise. But this time it was true.

The slave dealer Saevolus Andrapodiza, the second richest private individual in the world, had a penchant for dressing as a carter, drinking in low dives and losing large sums of money in card games. Originally he’d done it to annoy his father, and now that the old man was dead he found he couldn’t break the habit. Just occasionally, though, he won large sums of money in card games, whereupon he would celebrate by getting drunk, which made him aggressive. He’d just threatened to fight any man in the bar, and an ex-soldier had advised him, in the friendliest manner possible, that he shouldn’t really say things like that if he didn’t mean them. But I do mean them, Saevolus replied, whereupon the ex-soldier picked him up and threw him across the room.

Sitting in a corner was Musen. He’d noticed that the little thin man had just won forty angels, and, despite having bought drinks all round three times, it stood to reason that he had most of it left. So Musen got up quietly and, as the ex-soldier lifted his boot to stamp on Saevolus’ ribs, gently barred his way. Musen was a head taller than the soldier and a handspan broader across the shoulders, and he was smiling in a context where nobody would normally smile. The ex-soldier hesitated.

“You won,” Musen said. “You made your point. Why spoil it?”

The ex-soldier had four friends with him, but they hadn’t moved. Serving under Forza Belot, he’d learned a bit about tactics. He took a deep breath and let it out again.

Musen smiled. “Let me buy you a drink,” he said.

That done, he helped the little man up off the floor, bustled him out into the street, picked his pocket and asked if he was all right. The little man groaned. Musen noticed a gold signet ring, and recognised the emblem. Far too recognisable to sell; but it occurred to him nevertheless that his new friend might prove profitable in other ways. “I’ll take you home,” he said. “Where do you live?”

The next morning, Saevolus woke up feeling ill. He’d forgotten about his winnings, a sum so trivial that it slipped through the meshes of his mind, but he distinctly recalled the brave stranger who’d saved him from certain death and then vanished, leaving behind no trace of his identity. It was rather miraculous, therefore, that the first person he met as he staggered out into the daylight some time later should be the mysterious hero in person.

“I wanted to know if you were all right,” Musen said shyly. “Only, I couldn’t very well call at the front door. Your people would throw me out looking like this, and quite right, too.”

So, he went on, he’d been hanging about outside on the off chance; he was greatly relieved to see that no serious harm had been done, and now he’d be on his way.

No chance of that. I owe you my life, said Saevolus. Oh, that’s all right, it’s what anyone would have done. Saevolus offered money. Musen looked shocked and offended. Well, anyhow, Saevolus insisted, if ever there’s anything I can do for you, anything at all – Musen thanked him, said that so long as he was all right, that was the main thing, and walked away. And if Saevolus even noticed that he’d lost his gold cloak pin and come out without any money, he certainly didn’t make the connection.

“You said you were done with all that.”

Musen shrugged. “I saved his life. He owed me.”

“He offered you a reward and you didn’t take it.”

“He’d paid already.” He scowled. “So I keep my hand in now and again, that’s not the same as regular thieving, like going out and looking for stuff. And I really am finished with all that, I promise.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Anyhow,” she said, “that’s all very well, but how’s that supposed to help us get to Engoi?”

“Simple. We hitch a ride with the caravan.”

Which put her in her place good and proper. Brilliant. Both emperors had made it known that Saevolus’ caravans, performing as they did a vital economic function, had unequivocal safe passage. Saevolus never sent his stock anywhere without a substantial escort, and it was cheaper in the long run to ship them in carts, thereby cutting transit times and preventing them from losing condition. Two civilians on foot wouldn’t last ten minutes on the Great East Road, which ran straight through the heart of Eysi province, but a well-armed and supplied caravan with diplomatic credentials would have nothing to worry about at all.

“But what makes you think he’s sending a caravan in that direction?”

“That would be the favour.” Musen grinned. “Like I said, he owes me.”

*

She assumed it wouldn’t actually work. Either Saevolus would have forgotten Musen, or would pretend he had, or the favour would be too much to ask, bearing in mind the substantial cost of fitting out a caravan; or maybe he simply wouldn’t be at home when Musen called, and wasn’t expected back again for nine weeks.

She assumed wrong. Musen went to call, and Saevolus was at home. He was delighted to see Musen again. His debt, he said, had been weighing heavily on his mind ever since the night in question. Permians believe that if you die while under a serious obligation of honour, the person to whom you die obliged gets control of your immortal soul, and can conjure you to appear and perform magical tasks. Actually, very few Permians still believe that, and Saevolus definitely wasn’t one of them, but it rankles, like a grape pip between the teeth.

Sure, Saevolus said, I can do that. In fact, it just so happens that I have an order to fill at Ana Straton, on the western edge of Eysi, so Engoi would be less than a day’s ride out of my way. Then a depressing thought struck him: you wouldn’t mind desperately if I didn’t come with you myself? Only I’ve got so much to do here, and—

Musen assured him that that wouldn’t be necessary. Saevolus, looking mightily relieved, promised to send his best man to lead the caravan; Bidens, splendid fellow, tough as old boots, he’ll see you get there and no messing about. Then he sat down at his desk and wrote a letter of recommendation in his own handwriting, which Musen presumed Bidens could read, through dint of long practice; to him, it looked as though a mouse had fallen in an inkwell, then chased its own tail across a sheet of paper. “The plan was to leave the day after tomorrow,” Saevolus said, “if that suits you. If not, I can easily reschedule.”

“That’ll do fine,” Musen said, thanked him and left without stealing anything.

A small, high-value consignment: all skilled men, twenty to a wagon, ten wagons plus two supply carts, escorted by thirty Mi Chanso horse-archers and fourteen men-at-arms. To which was added Saevolus’ personal carriage – not his best or his second-best, but his third-best was still a degree of luxury and sophistication which she hadn’t encountered before, even when travelling with Oida. In the back of the coach was a tent – no, you had to call it a pavilion – with enough rugs and cushions and tapestry draught-excluders to furnish a house, not to mention the portable stove, with its incredibly ingenious telescopic flue. It was the sort of rig the emperor would’ve had, if only he could’ve afforded it. On the box there was room for a driver and two guards, who doubled as butler and lord high chamberlain; an aristocratic Blemyan by the name of Phrixus, and a gigantic Permian with decorative scars criss-crossing his cheeks and a real knack for folding napkins in the shape of roses.

“This is stupid,” she said, as they rumbled along the Great East Road in gorgeous sunshine. “We’re supposed to be slipping out unobtrusively, and we look like an embassy from the Great King of the Sashan. We couldn’t be more conspicuous if we were on fire.”

Musen shrugged. Sitting in the coach made him bored and restless. “If anyone’s watching out for us,” he said, “this is the last place they’d look, because of what you just said. So really, it’s a good way of not being seen.”

Idiot’s logic, to which she had no answer. “What did you manage to find out about the cargo?”

“Not much,” he replied. “Tried asking the guards, but they don’t know a lot either. They’re Easterners of some kind, but that’s all I know.”

She’d caught a few glimpses of them, nothing more; rows of men, middle-aged or older, sitting on benches in the wagons, their feet shackled to a steel bar running the length of the wagon bed. Her impression was that they were too pale for farmhands, so presumably artisans of some description. “There used to be a foundry at Straton before the war,” she said, “though I’m pretty sure it got burned down. I don’t know, maybe there’s enough of it left to be worth rebuilding. Still, it’s a bloody funny place to build a factory, right in the middle of a war zone.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Musen said, “I’ve never been there.”

Helpful as ever. “I can’t believe you actually arranged all this. First-class travel door to door, all expenses paid.” A thought struck her. “Is this Andrapodiza a Craftsman?”

Shrug. “Don’t know.”

No, and why should he? She should, though; a prominent public figure, rich and well-connected. It would make sense if he was. After all, Saevolus and the Great Smith were in more or less the same line of business, making even the most improbable people useful, and not giving them much say in the matter. Oida would know if Saevolus was Lodge, of course. She turned her head and looked out of the window. This close to Rasch, the landscape should be a well-ordered grid of carefully tended fields (good growing country; had to be, to feed the biggest city in the world) but it was a long time since they’d seen a human being, and the fields were waist-high grass, nettles and briars.

It wasn’t like travelling with Oida, who always carried spare books and foldaway chess sets and backgammon boards that just seemed to materialise when needed out of his minimal luggage. Musen seemed content (no, wrong word; resigned) to sit staring at the floor for hours on end; occasionally he’d pull out a cheap pack of cards and stare at them instead, but he never suggested a game of anything. She had no great interest in talking to him, but on the third day of their improbable journey the silence started to get to her.

“What do you do with all the money?” she asked.

He looked up from the cards. “What money?”

She smiled grimly. “You’re always stealing things,” she said. “Usually small and valuable. You don’t drink or gamble; you hardly spend anything. So, what do you do with it all?”

There was a short battle inside him. Then he smiled. “I put it in the bank. Where it’s safe.”

She blinked. “The bank.”

He nodded. “I got an account with the Knights. And another one with the Sword-blade. Sort of like hedging my bets.”

The Knights and the Sword-blade; oh dear. Just before she left Rasch she’d removed her trivial savings from the Knights and lodged them with the Trani Brothers, too small to be invited to join the syndicate to cover the Imperial loan. Pointless, though, because when the Knights went down—” That’s very sensible of you,” she said.

“Well,” he grunted. “I worked hard for that money. When all this is over, I want something to show for it.”

It had been Oida’s bright idea, of course, to bring about the end of the world. Looking out of the window at the derelict fields, the end of the world was something she could actually bring herself to believe in. A comforting thought, in a way. If everything comes to a sudden and violent end, we won’t have to clear up all the messes we’ve made.

Everything went fine until they reached the Mafaes, which they should have been able to cross by way of the magnificent stone bridge built by Gauda IV three hundred years earlier.

“It must have taken them weeks,” she said. “Probably longer than building it.”

A remarkable feat of engineering, certainly. To break the bridge, someone had had to undermine the central span, which had meant digging a shaft deep underneath the river, a hundred yards through the living rock, in order to collapse the mighty granite columns. “It was fine when we came through this way last month,” Bidens assured her. “This is all new. Beats me why they bothered. I hadn’t heard there was any serious fighting in these parts.”

At its narrowest point, where the bridge used to be, the Mafaes is two hundred and ten yards wide and fifteen feet deep. The nearest crossing point is twenty-six miles upstream; and if you go that way, in order to get back on the Great East, you have to scramble up the Pig’s Head and down the other side, which isn’t possible in a wheeled vehicle. “Isn’t it lucky,” Bidens said, “that we happen to have with us a hundred and five professional carpenters.”

She looked at him. “You’re kidding.”

“No shit.” He turned and nodded towards a stand of tall, spindly birch. “Of course, we don’t have any woodworking tools. But we do have twenty-five blacksmiths, and twelve sledgehammers.”

The smiths used the sledgehammers to forge links from the spare sets of shackles into hand-hammers and tongs, using salvaged granite blocks from the bridge as anvils. Then they used the hand-hammers to forge the sledgehammers into axes, with which the carpenters cut down and rough-shaped trees into beams wide enough to span the gap, while the smiths forged iron scraps and offcuts into nails. They worked quickly and efficiently, never saying a word to the guards or each other, except when necessary for the furtherance of the job in hand. When their shifts were over, they went and sat in the wagons, with their shackles on. The work took two full days and half a morning. Musen had offered to help, but was politely told he was a passenger and mustn’t exert himself.

Bidens the overseer had taken to riding with them in the coach. He hoped they didn’t mind; it made such a pleasant change to have someone cultured and intelligent to talk to – apparently Musen was officially included in this category, though Bidens ignored him most of the time. He wanted to talk about the plays he’d seen in Rasch, most of which she’d missed because she’d been out of town. Bidens’ idea of discussing a play was to give a detailed blow-by-blow account of the plot; and when he ran out of plays he started discussing books, most of which she’d never heard of. He was clearly a voracious reader and playgoer, though she suspected that nearly everything he read and saw went over his head like a flock of migrating geese; still, he evidently managed to get pleasure from it, in the same way as the gold miners pulverise a whole mountain to get a cupful of gold. His voice filled up the silence, which had been starting to get to her, and his regurgitated narratives of hate, lust, greed, cruelty and revenge, all wildly melodramatic and unreal, had a curiously soothing effect as they passed through the briar-smothered ruins of town and villages, or camped for the night beside thickets of the tall, red-flowered weed that grows on the site of burned-down buildings. Listening to Bidens, you could kid yourself into believing that violence was like dragons or gryphons, an imaginary monster invented to account for phenomena for which there was, in fact, a perfectly normal and natural explanation; we pretend there’s this monster called war, but really it’s just the houses and people dying off in winter so they can come back to life in the spring.

You can’t tell someone the plot of the entire Maricas Cycle and not warm to them just a little bit. So, when she felt the time was right, she started delicately fishing for facts, and eventually she got them. The slaves were on their way to join up with the Third Army, the last, best hope of the West; their job was to build siege engines for an assault on a major Eastern city, whose fall would end the war at a stroke. The idea was, it was far easier to take the engineers to the job than lug the finished product halfway across the empire under constant harassment from the enemy. By the same token, the sight of a fully-equipped siege train would put the enemy on notice and give him time to prepare. Which city? Bidens frowned and confessed that he didn’t know, although these days there weren’t that many left to choose from. But she shouldn’t read too much into their destination; this caravan was one of twenty, all heading east by circuitous routes, twisting and turning about and eventually meeting up where they were supposed to be. Senza Belot – this was Bidens’ theory – always got his results by dashing along terribly fast in a straight line. Like a dog, he couldn’t really see something unless it was moving. The best way to hide something from him, therefore, was to shift it slowly and meandering along in loops and circles; anything like that wouldn’t register as a threat, and he’d ignore it.

“But Forza’s just like his brother, isn’t he? He thinks in lightning flashes.”

Bidens shrugged. “Maybe this isn’t his idea. Maybe they’ve got a new general. After all, Forza’s done nothing at all to win the war; he just keeps it going on and on for ever. About time the West tried a new approach, if you ask me.”

“I thought Saevolus was supposed to be neutral. That’s why he’s got safe passage.”

Bidens shrugged. “Yes, I wondered about that. Wouldn’t look good if he got found out. But it wouldn’t come to that. I’ve got perfectly legitimate bills of sale that say this lot’s consigned to a sawmill in Eysi. It’s not there any more, of course, it got burned down five years ago, but I don’t know that officially.” He ate an olive, offered her the jar. “My guess is, by the time it all comes out, the plan will have worked and the war’ll be over and Saevolus will be well in with the winning side.” He grinned. “More likely, he’s doing something equally devious for the East at the same time, so they sort of cancel each other out. Fact is, everywhere’s so desperate for manpower these days, nobody’s going to pick a quarrel with Saevolus, no matter what he does, so long as he’s not too blatant about it.”

“Now that’s not something you see every day,” Bidens said.

She looked up from the book he’d lent her – she already knew the story, in great detail, but something to read is something to read – and glanced out of the window. At first, nothing registered; just open fields, with men cutting down briars and loading the brash on to carts. Then, “My God,” she said. “People.”

They hadn’t been at it long, to judge by the area that had been cleared. “Probably some of ours,” Bidens said, with a hint of pride. “Though we haven’t sold many farmhands in the empires, you just can’t get the stock. Still, it’s nice to see waste being put back into productive use.”

One of the field hands stooped and picked something up. He was maybe thirty yards away. Without thinking, she threw herself on the floor. “Get down,” she yelled.

Musen followed her, dragging Bidens down with him. “What’s going on?” he asked, as the coach stopped suddenly. “What the hell are you playing at?”

Tough as old boots, Saevolus had said; well. “Shut up,” she said, and Musen put his hand over Bidens’ mouth.

The carriage door swung open. “Out,” someone said. He sounded confident, and in a hurry.

They were piling the bodies of the horse-archers on to the piles of cut briar. The men-at-arms had made a show of throwing away their weapons as soon as they realised what was going on, and had been spared, but the aristocratic looking Blemyan had been shot in the stomach and wasn’t expected to live. They’d laid him out on the grass, and stepped over him as they went about their business.

Someone was cutting iron with a hammer and cold chisel. The man who’d ordered them out of the carriage looked them over and obviously reached the conclusion that they were no bother to anyone. “Stay there,” he said and walked away. There seemed to be no reason not to do as he said. Like a dog, or Senza Belot, they only seemed disposed to attack moving targets.

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Bidens muttered under his breath. “That’s why we have the armed escorts: we’re carrying a valuable commodity.” He pulled a sad face. “I always wondered what it’d be like, to be one of them.” He nodded towards the nearest wagon. “There’s irony for you.”

They hadn’t bothered to tie up the surrendered men-at-arms, who were standing around looking forlorn and keeping out of the way. Bidens could be right, she told herself, but somehow she didn’t think so; if they were just stealing the slaves, why bother to cut off the shackles?

A short, bearded man was fiddling about with a tinderbox, trying to light one of the impromptu briar pyres. He gave up and handed the box to the huge, red-headed young man who’d been watching him struggle; a moment later there was a curl of smoke, then crackles and a spurt of flame. She noticed that Musen was looking very hard at the giant fire-raiser. “Know him?” she said.

“I think so.”

“That figures. They’re Lodge, aren’t they?”

Musen shrugged. “Well, he is if he’s who I think he is. Don’t know about the rest of them.”

The short man was heading towards them. At twenty-five yards she recognised him, though the name temporarily escaped her. But she’d seen him once, at a mission briefing.

“Sorry about this,” the man said, and his voice was familiar. “Now you’re Musen, and I’m guessing you must be Telamon. Sorry, I don’t know your friend.”

Musen did the little head shake that meant Not-Lodge. The short man turned to Bidens and gave him a pleasant smile. “Perhaps you’d like to go over there and join the others.”

By which he meant the men-at-arms. He didn’t like the sound of that; but the tall, red-headed man was now standing behind the short man; she couldn’t see his face, but Bidens could. He slumped and walked away.

“I think we’ve met,” the short man said.

Her memory stirred. “Myrtus.”

“Commissioner Myrtus,” he said. “I remember now, you did that job for us at Beloisa.” Then he turned to Musen. “You I’ve heard a lot about.”

Musen looked past him. “Hello, Teucer.”

The red-headed man didn’t answer. “Axio’s looking forward to seeing you again,” Myrtus said, and she realised he was talking to Musen. “I don’t know, is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“He’s my friend,” Musen replied, and she thought, that’s not an answer to his question. But that was none of her business. “Is Commissioner Axio near here?” she interrupted, raising her voice a little. “I need to see him.”

She’d reminded Myrtus of her existence. “Official business?”

“Very much so.”

“In that case, yes. Tell you what,” he went on, “we’ll use that fancy carriage of yours. Mind driving?”

That was apparently addressed to Teucer, the red-headed man. He nodded, his eyes still on Musen. Tact, she thought; if he’s driving, he doesn’t have to share space with Musen. Still none of her business. “Excuse me,” she said, “but weren’t you—?”

Myrtus grinned bleakly. “No need to rush,” he said, “but we might as well get on.”

Myrtus: appointed commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the Lodge, when they made their unilateral declaration of war against the two empires. Not heard of since; hardly surprising, since the Lodge’s army had melted away and Mere Barton had been evacuated without an arrow being loosed, because, of course, the war had turned out to be a very different kind of war. She wondered if they’d told him in advance and decided, probably not.

“The Lodge doesn’t hold with slavery in any shape or form,” he said, as the coach started to move. “Therefore, we intercept slave caravans wherever we can and set the slaves free.”

“In the middle of an uninhabited moor.”

Wry smile. “No, of course not, that’d be next best thing to murder. No, they’re coming back with us to Engoi, as soon as we’ve got the shackles off. We need them to do a little job for us, and then they’ll be free to go. Home, or wherever they like.”

“A little job.”

“You’ll see when we get there.”

He found talking to her boring and mildly irritating; he wanted to talk to Musen, but Musen didn’t seem to want to talk. Not that it mattered. The object of the exercise was to find Axio and give him the little box. After that – well, presumably there would be a return journey, but she hadn’t given it much thought. She’d be going back to Blemya – would she? No reason why she should, as far as anyone else was concerned, and quite possibly the Lodge, as represented by two Commissioners in one obscure moorland village, had some other use for her. Under normal circumstances she’d be resigned to that. She wondered what the bad blood was between Musen and the other Rhus – Teucer, though she’d have forgotten his name by this time tomorrow. If she knew Musen, she wouldn’t want to be the other man; except that he seemed to be in high favour with Commissioner Myrtus, loyal sergeant and right-hand-man, and Musen, whatever his faults, seemed to have a healthy respect for the Lodge’s chain of command. But if Teucer owned any small, portable items of value, he’d probably do well to keep them well hidden. And undoubtedly he knew that already, if he knew Musen. Still none of her business, but you can’t help being just a tiny bit curious.

You can’t tell from maps, but the picture of Engoi she’d formed in her mind was a single street, maybe a couple of dozen buildings, a single-storey thatched Brother’s house, possibly a village tower, for the villagers to huddle in during cattle raids. She hadn’t expected—

“That’s why we need carpenters,” Myrtus said. “And stonemasons – you had ten of them with you, didn’t you know that? And you can never have too many smiths on a major construction project.”

A fortress; or at least it would be one very soon, once they’d dug the spur from the river to flood the moat and capped off the walls with crenellated battlements. “People look down on mud brick for defensive architecture,” Myrtus said, “but actually it’s got a lot going for it, provided you think massive. We’re using stone for the gatehouse and the guard towers, naturally, but brick makes a damn good wall, soaks up a hell of a pounding. More give in it, you see, it crumbles rather than shatters.”

No shortage of raw material; they’d dug a huge ditch, made bricks out of the spoil and a moat out of the trench. “It’s a lousy position compared to Mere Barton, but so what? Who needs Nature when you’ve got manpower?”

And they had that all right. Slaves, naturally; but freed slaves, from both empires, doing one little job for the Lodge and then they were free to go. Myrtus wasn’t entirely sure how they were being fed (Axio was looking after supply) but he had an idea they were bringing stuff in down the river on barges, from stockpiles the empires had built up (without knowing it) shortly before all the supply clerks defected … “No,” Myrtus said irritably, when she plucked up the courage to ask him straight. “No, I didn’t. It was need-to-know, and they felt that if they told me, it’d cloud my judgement. So what? It’s all working out fine, isn’t it? And you’ve got no idea how relieved I was when they finally let me in on the secret. I was fully resigned to getting slaughtered.”

“You’re a Commissioner.”

Exasperated sigh. “Meaning nothing, as you well know. Commissioner means you get given five times as much work, that’s all.”

She’d been watching. Musen and the red-headed man, Teucer, hadn’t exchanged a single word since they’d got here. Teucer, apparently, was the best shot in the Lodge and both empires, but instead of training recruits at Beal he was here, running errands for the Commissioner. Apparently, if the Great Smith wanted to use a pair of tongs to drive in a nail, nobody was prepared to argue.

“Axio’s probably on site somewhere, shouting at the foremen,” Myrtus said. “He’s good at that. They’re all scared stiff of him, for some reason.”

The one thing she had left to do, and then the rest of the day was her own – would the end of the world be marked by a big, showy red sunset? Hard to say. Of course, someone might still have work for her. I want to go back to Blemya, she realised, and the sudden insight left her feeling giddy and stupid, like a blow to the head.

You’ll know him when you see him, Corason had told her: just look for the most handsome man in the world. Yeah, right, she’d thought; but, yes, actually, he was. She first saw him standing on a low stone wall, haranguing – no other word for it – a bunch of timid looking men in stonemasons’ aprons. She was too far away to hear what he was saying, but she didn’t need to. He finished his remarks and the masons walked away quickly. He stayed on the wall, peering at a plan or diagram; he held it at arm’s length. Long-sighted, she diagnosed. He could do with one of those magic glasses the Mezentines used to make; you screw them into your eye and suddenly you’ve got close vision like a twelve-year-old.

She cleared her throat. He looked up and saw her. “You’re Telamon,” he said.

“Is there somewhere we can talk?”

Exactly why he was so good-looking she couldn’t say. She’d read a book about that once. Apparently, someone had studied the subject in detail and with proper scientific rigour, and had concluded that the difference between butt-ugly and drop-dead gorgeous was a hair’s breadth short of a quarter of an inch. Well, then; move his nose up a bit and widen his mouth just a touch and round his chin off just a smidgeon and you’d have Oida.

“Sure,” he said, jumping down off the wall. “This way.”

He led her to a lean-to shack full of barrels. “Well?”

Her fingertips found the lid of the box. She took it out, put it on top of a barrel and opened the lid. He frowned. “A box of salt,” he said. “What about it?”

Her skin crawled as she brushed away the surface layer, but as soon as he saw the finger his eyes lit up. Then he looked at her. She said nothing. He emptied the box out, picked the finger up delicately, as if he was afraid it might break if he dropped it, and held it up to the light. Then he smiled the most beautiful smile.

“You did this?”

“Yes.”

“Good girl.” He put it down, fished about in his coat pocket and produced – guess what, a Mezentine glass; rather a good one, in a plain gold setting. “That’s him all right,” he said. “How did you know about it?”

Good question. “The scar? Oh, he told me.”

Big grin. “Of course, you knew him quite well, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“The one that kept getting away. I can see how that would’ve driven him wild. Did he tell you how he got it?”

“He said you had something to do with it.”

He laughed, then tucked the finger behind his ear, like a carpenter’s stick of chalk. “You know what,” he said, “this is probably the happiest day of my life. Allow me to buy you a drink. And a big house in town and a country estate. Unless you’d prefer a gold mine. Or both.”

Remember who you are, she told herself. Remember who your file says you are. “I’d rather have cash,” she said.

“Sure. How much?”

“How much have you got?”

The smile became a beam. The sun was never that bright. “Not nearly enough,” he said. “I can give you a hundred angels in your hand, but that could only be a token down-payment.”

“That’s fine,” she said. “Can I have it now, please?”

“Of course. Stay there. No, come with me, I don’t want you wandering off. This way.”

He walked quickly, with a bounce in his step. People got out of his way, but he didn’t seem to notice. “I gather you brought my friend Musen with you,” he said. “Was he any trouble?”

“No.”

“Splendid. He can be a bit of a nuisance if you don’t know how to handle him.”

A plain oilskin tent. He dived in and came out again with a cloth bag the size of a spring cabbage, but significantly heavier. “Thanks,” she said. “Do you want the box?”

He thought for a moment. “Might as well,” he said, “to be going on with. When I’ve got five minutes, I’ll have them make me one of those, what’s the word, what you keep saints’ bones in.”

“Reliquary?”

“That’s it, reliquary. I saw just the sort of thing once, it was a fair-sized box carved out of a lump of coal. Working hinges and everything. Of course, traditionally it ought to be a drinking cup made from his skull. Or I read in a book somewhere about someone who made a bow out of the bones and sinews of his enemy, which I’m not sure is actually possible, but it’d be great to hang on the wall.”

She gave him a bleak smile. “Wasn’t it a chair?”

“Different book.” Suddenly he liked her; shared taste in literature, presumably. “A chair would do fine, actually, though you couldn’t rely on it. A footstool would be better. You could always rely on my brother to fold up in a heap whenever the pressure was on.”

She held out her hand. He’d forgotten about the money. “Sorry,” he said, and gave her the bag. She needed both hands. “Don’t wave it about,” he said, “properly speaking, it’s six weeks’ wages for the masons, but let’s not worry too much about that. Shame you didn’t come a week earlier, before I paid the brickmakers.”

“Give me the reading glass,” she said suddenly, without knowing quite why.

His hand went straight to his pocket. “There you go,” he said, and held it out to her. She put the bag down on the ground, took the glass, slipped it into her sleeve and picked the bag up again. “Don’t you need it?” she asked.

“Yes, actually, but what the hell. I can get another one. There were more of them made than people think.” He closed his eyes, breathed out, opened them again. “And now let’s have that drink.”

“No thanks.”

“Sure? Sorry, forgot, you don’t, do you? Very sensible. If there were more people like you, the world would be a better place. You know, this is wonderful. I feel like an enormous weight’s been lifted off my shoulders. Thank you so much. You have no idea how much this means to me.”

The weight of the bag was making her arms ache. “I didn’t do it for you. I don’t even know you.”

“Of course not. Sorry, I’m just happy, that’s all.” He sighed. “Look, you must be worn out after your journey and everything, why don’t you cut along to the mess tent and get something to eat?”

She looked at him, and just for a moment she had a vision of his body on a butcher’s oak cutting table as she carefully jointed the carcass. It wasn’t the sort of image that haunted her as a rule, and she wondered if she’d caught something from him. Oddly enough, though, she realised she was hungry. “Mess tent?”

He pointed. “Down the midway, third on the left. It’s horrible, but you can eat as much as you like.”

Actually it wasn’t bad at all; there was a big all-day tureen of soup, all-sorts-of-things soup, with dry army bread that expanded to double its size when immersed in liquid, and rock-hard salt pork, and cartwheels of white crumbly cheese with a thick plaster rind. She ate till her jaws ached.

“There you are.” Myrtus; she’d been busy with food and hadn’t seen him coming. He looked round, then sat down beside her. “Something rather unpleasant has happened.”

She swallowed her last mouthful with an effort. “What?”

Myrtus hesitated, then said, “Commissioner Corason’s been murdered. They sent the news by special courier. Stabbed to death in his bed in Rasch.”

It wasn’t me, she very nearly said, because he was looking at her carefully. “That’s terrible,” she said. “Who did it?”

“That’s the thing: we don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense. It wasn’t robbery or a street brawl, he had no personal enemies.”

“He was a Commissioner,” she said, without thinking.

“Nobody knew that outside the Lodge.”

“Then it must’ve been Imperial Security.”

Myrtus shook his head. “You know better than that.”

True; we’d have arrested him, not stabbed him in his sleep.

“You were the last Lodge officer to do business with him,” Myrtus went on. “Did he say anything to you? Tell you anything?”

She went cold all over. The man asking the question was a Commissioner of the Lodge, and she was just about to lie to him.

“We discussed the job I’d just done,” she said. “And he gave me my orders for this job.”

“That was all?”

She couldn’t bring herself to say yes, but she found she could nod.

Myrtus was tugging at his beard. “Makes no sense,” he said. “People don’t just get stabbed for no reason.”

“Maybe there was something we don’t know about.”

That wasn’t worthy of an answer. “Presumably he helped you, with the job you did in Blemya.”

“Yes, of course. But that all went very smoothly.”

“He’d have had friends, though. Dangerous people.”

It took her a split second to figure out who he was. “No, actually, I don’t think so. Plenty of friends while he was alive, but nobody who cared enough about him to do anything about it after he was dead.”

(Except me, of course; and I have the perfect alibi.)

Myrtus sighed. “You’re probably right,” he said. “I never met the man, but I gather he didn’t have any really close friends, and no family. It’s a strange thing to say about the most popular man in the world, but I guess we can’t really look there for a motive. Anyway.” Myrtus took a deep breath, as if nerving himself to do something distasteful. “His death obviously leaves a vacancy, and you’re it.”

“What? Sorry, I don’t—”

“They’ve decided to make you a Commissioner,” Myrtus said. “Report to headquarters immediately for further orders. Oh, and congratulations, if you want them. Actually, it’s a bloody awful job. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

He stood up; he was just a blur, because her head was swimming. “Me?”

“Yes, you. It goes without saying, your fellow Commissioners had no say in the matter. I imagine it’s a reward for the Blemya thing, absolute loyalty and so on and so forth.” He gazed at her as though she was an ugly new building spoiling a famous beauty spot. “You’d better be on your way,” she said. “They don’t like to be kept waiting.”

She felt as though someone invisible was hitting her. “Headquarters?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s that?”

That got her a scowl of pure contempt. “Rasch,” he replied. “You do know where that is, don’t you?”

More news, delivered by a courier who died shortly afterwards from his wounds; Forza and Senza Belot had met in battle, sixteen miles south of Choris. They fought each other to a standstill; no reliable casualty figures yet, but the courier (who’d seen at least some of the action before running into a stray platoon of Eastern lancers, who left him for dead) reckoned that at least half, probably more, of both armies had been cut to pieces; later, on the road, he’d heard that Forza’s Iron Brigade had broken and run on the left wing, while Senza’s Immortals had done more or less the same on the right – impossible, because these were the great generals’ crack troops, the best soldiers in the world, who’d rather die a thousand deaths than run … In any event, there were uncorroborated rumours that Senza had withdrawn to the city, while Forza had been left with no alternative but to follow what was left of his retreating army, even though (strictly speaking, according to all the best scoring systems) he’d probably won the battle.

Myrtus and Axio immediately got out the maps; apparently she was included in the meeting, though she couldn’t see she had anything to contribute. “Let’s say they’ve each lost fifty per cent of their effectives,” Myrtus said. “That’s, what, twenty thousand each, give or take?”

Axio was grinning broadly. “More to the point, it sounds like they’ve reached the point where their best men just can’t take it any more. I told you it’d come to that.”

“If it’s true,” Myrtus conceded irritably. “But, yes, it looks like it, otherwise they wouldn’t have pulled back.” He’d been doing arithmetic on a scrap of paper. “They must be out of their tiny minds.” He handed the paper to Axio, who whistled and gave it to her.

“What does this mean?” she said.

“It’s our rough tally of how many men each side has left,” Axio replied. “These columns on the right are what they’ve got in the field, and these are reserves they haven’t called on yet. We’ve been keeping score for the last eighteen months.”

She stared at the paper. Obviously she wasn’t reading it right, because on the right-hand side, after scores of crossings-out, there were bottom-line totals of less than ten thousand under each heading, and nothing at all on the left. “I’m being stupid,” she said. “Please explain it to me.”

Myrtus snatched the paper back and glared at her. “It’s obvious,” he said. “Forza’s got about nine thousand, Senza’s down to about seven and a half, and there’s no more reserves.”

“No more—”

Axio shook his head. “Nobody left to enlist,” he said. “Dead, deserted, made themselves scarce before the recruiting sergeants got to them. Both empires, by our calculations, have finally run out of men.”

“No, but—” She broke off. Whatever she’d been about to say would have made no sense. “You mean, everybody’s—”

Axio nodded. “Dead, or hopped it. Which means the military capability of both empires combined is sixteen and a half thousand men. We’ve just hired forty thousand from Blemya, and we’ve got thirty thousand horse-archers—”

“More like forty-five,” Myrtus interrupted.

“All right, say forty thousand horse-boys. All paid for, all more or less in position.” He smiled. “Which doesn’t mean a damn thing,” he added, “because Forza with nine or Senza with seven and a half could chew us up and spit us out, no bother at all, so we’re not home yet, not by a mile. Still,” he added cheerfully, “that’s all right, because we aren’t looking to pick a fight with either of them.”

She looked at him. “I don’t understand.”

“We do nothing,” Myrtus said sadly. “We hold our forces in reserve and avoid contact with either side. That’s been the plan all along.”

Axio laughed. “The plan they didn’t tell him about when they made him commander-in-chief. That’s why he’s looking so miserable.”

Nobody left; all dead, or run away. But that didn’t seem to interest her fellow Commissioners. “So what’s the plan?”

Axio shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he said. “Now if I was running the show, I’d be looking to take out the Belot boys. Only, since that hasn’t already happened, I’m guessing it’s not possible, or, at least, not possible yet. Of course, we have the ace up our sleeves.”

They looked at her; presumably she was supposed to be able to figure that one out for herself, if she was worthy to be a Commissioner of the Lodge. “Lycao,” she said.

Axio clapped his hands. “Good girl,” he said. “Yes, she’s got to be the key, it stands to reason. Senza will do anything to get hold of her, that’s one thing we can be sure of, and Forza knows that as well as we do. Therefore, Lycao’s got to be it. How they plan on going about it, however, is anyone’s guess. I don’t know, maybe they’ll tell you all about it in Rasch.”

“I’m still going there, then.”

“Of course you are,” Myrtus said. “You’ve got orders. This doesn’t change anything. Talking of which, it’s time you were on your way. You can have that fancy coach you came in.”

She was about to object when Axio said, “Tell you what, I’ll come with you. Me and the boy. See to it that you don’t come to any harm.”

“You’d be a bloody fool if you did,” Myrtus said quickly. “Rasch isn’t safe for you and you know it.”

“Safer than you think, actually,” Axio said. “Everyone there who could make trouble for me is dead.”

“There’s a warrant out—”

“Six, actually, but that’s old news. I don’t suppose anybody remembers that far back. Besides, I’ve got friends there who’ll see me right.”

“You can’t just go wandering off—”

Axio looked at him, and he fell abruptly silent. “Just had a thought,” Axio said. “I’m my brother’s next of kin. He must’ve been worth an angel or two. I wonder, did he make a will?”

She thought about it long and hard, when she should have been sleeping. Basically a matter of time and geometry. Three times out of five, when she imagined the scene in her head, she was able to kill Axio before Musen killed her. She considered various options for improving the odds – kill Musen first, surreptitiously half open the coach door and then kick him out, then stab Axio as he tried to catch him, find some excuse for leaving Musen behind at a way station, poison him the night before; poison Axio the night before. Try as she might, she couldn’t get the odds to come out better than three in five. Also, Oida hadn’t asked her to do it. Would he? She had to admit, she didn’t know.

While they were loading the coach with supplies and Axio’s luggage, she asked if she could have a word with him. “Sure,” Axio said, and she followed him into a stable. “By the way,” he went on, “I should be able to raise money in Rasch. I still owe you.”

“I’ve got a message for you.”

“What?”

“From your brother.”

Axio frowned. “Before or during?”

“He asked me to deliver it just before he died.”

“Ah. Right, let’s hear it.”

“He says, he forgives you.”

“Does he indeed?”

“And he said to tell you,” she went on, “the fifth card was a four.”

Axio went bright red in the face. “Bastard,” he snapped. “God damn it. I should’ve known. I really should have known.”

She backed away a step. “You don’t have to explain if you don’t want to.”

“He screwed me, is what it is. He took me for a bloody fool, and I let him.” Axio sighed, and sat down on a rail. “I guess I was about sixteen, so he’d have been, what, thirteen and a bit? We were playing cards. He was a lousy card player. At least, I always beat the shit out of him. But there was this one time. We were playing Fives. You know the game?”

She shook her head.

“It’s the same as ordinary Dragons’ Teeth, but with five cards. And he had jack, ten, nine and some piece of rubbish, a two or a three, and I had three queens and a pair. Mine were all showing, of course, he had one card hidden, and he bet me his whole pile – sixty stuivers, I think it was, anyhow, a lot of money for us in those days. I couldn’t match the bet, so I had to fold. Go on, then, I said, show me what you’ve got, and he refused. Said he didn’t have to. I told him, he’d won, even if he’d been bluffing, and I wanted to see what he’d got. He said no, I wasn’t entitled to. So I made a grab at him, and he jumped up and danced round the table a bit, I got a hold on his shirt front, and you know what he did? He ate the bloody card. Stuffed it in his mouth and chewed it up, just so I couldn’t see. So I told him, tell me what it was or I’ll smash your face in. He wouldn’t tell me. And I kept on and on at him for years after, and he was just plain stupid-stubborn. I stole his best shirt and his new shoes, told him I’d put them on the fire if he didn’t tell me what the card was. Fine, he said, go ahead, and he just stood there and watched them burn. Cracked two of his ribs once, and he wouldn’t tell me.” Axio sighed. “He had this nasty streak, you know, he liked to torment people, and it was the only way he knew he could get back at me. And all along it was a bloody four.”

She drew a deep breath and let it out again. “You believe him, then.”

“What, on his deathbed?”

She shrugged. “In his place, I’d have lied. If I’d had a queen or an eight, I mean. I’d rather leave you thinking I’d been screwing you all these years.”

He gave her a look that genuinely scared her. “Four of what, did he say?”

“No. Just a four.”

“Bastard. But that was always his problem. He never would admit it when he was beaten.” His face stopped being scary and turned very sad. “You think he was lying?”

“I don’t know. I just told you what I’d have done.”

Axio shook his head and turned away. “You know what,” he said. “I never realised he hated me so much.” And then he burst into tears.

Read on in The Two of Swords: Part 18.