Colours in the Steel

CHAPTER TWELVE

Loredan got the letter just as he was being led out of the cells to his first council meeting as Deputy Lord Lieutenant. He read it, felt vaguely guilty, folded it up and tucked it in his belt.

The chapter house was full this time, and there were scarcely any faces he knew. He hoped that was a good sign; even if the strangers turned out to be nothing more than stray passers-by they’d dragged in off the streets, they couldn’t help but be an improvement on the Committee for National Security.

To his extreme embarrassment he was led right the way up the steps to the bunch of seats that had arms and backs, instead of simply being stone shelves. This was where the high-ups sat; each place had the office of its customary occupant carved into the stone – Patriarch, Urban Preceptor, Dean of Offices, City Archimandrite, Archimandrite of Elissa and so on. There was an empty place marked Archdeacon of the Chapter that he was clearly supposed to sit in. He lowered himself into it, wondering vaguely who the Archdeacon of the Chapter was and what he did for a living, and waited for someone to say something.

The City Prefect stood up, looked around and nodded to the two sergeants, who closed the doors of the chamber and bolted them. ‘I think we’re all here at last,’ he said. ‘I’m pleased to be able to tell you that Colonel Loredan’s agreed to accept the post of Deputy Lord Lieutenant, so we can get started on the main business of the day, which is quite straightforward: what steps ought we to take to ensure the security of the city?’ He turned to Loredan and nodded. ‘Colonel,’ he said, ‘you have the floor.’

Loredan waited for a moment, just in case the Prefect had meant some other colonel, and then stood up. His knees felt a little shaky, until he considered that usually when he stood up in a place as crowded as this, there would be a man with a sword trying to kill him. The worst this lot could do was throw apples. He didn’t feel nervous after that.

‘Gentlemen,’ he began. Oh, gods, what am I going to say? ‘I suppose I should thank you for having faith in me; I’m not sure I agree with you, but let’s not bother with that now. The point is, I think, that you’re asking me, because of my knowledge of the clans, to suggest ways of improving the defences of the city. Well, I do have an opinion on that subject, if you’d like to hear it.’

He paused for a moment, took a deep breath and continued. ‘Everyone in this city,’ he said, ‘is brought up to believe that because we’ve got the walls and the harbour, we don’t really need to worry about attacks from inland. The people on the plains don’t like us much, maybe with good reason, but they’re just a load of savages with never a hope in hell of breaching the walls or scaling them, and a siege won’t work because all our supplies come in by sea anyway; the clans don’t know the first thing about ships, so all we have to do is sit tight and wait for them to go away.’

He looked round and nodded. ‘There isn’t much wrong with thinking like that,’ he continued. ‘That’s why we’ve never bothered much with a field army, at least not since we gave up any ideas of building a land empire between here and the Salimb mountains. There was Maxen, of course; while he was alive, he kept the clans in a permanent state of terror and they never dared come within sixty miles of the city for fear of getting cut to pieces. We were pretty smug about that at the time, I seem to remember. Well, it’s easy to be wise after the event, but if it hadn’t been for Maxen and the Pitchfork, we wouldn’t be in this mess now. As it is, it looks like we’ve got a young fire-eater of a chief who wants to make sure nothing like Maxen can ever happen again by wiping us off the face of the earth. This wouldn’t be a problem, except it appears that he’s got city people with him who are teaching his people how to build heavy engines and siege equipment. Now that’s worrying.’

Nobody was moving, or whispering to the person sitting next to him, or even looking out of the window. Loredan was surprised and impressed; maybe they were going to take this thing seriously after all.

‘Now then,’ he continued, ‘I may not be a scholar of history, but I can’t call to mind any occasion when these magnificent walls of ours have ever been put to the test by a properly equipped assault force. Maybe they’re impregnable, maybe not; we just don’t know. I suggest we assume they aren’t, and try and get inside the other man’s mind. How would we go about attacking the walls of Perimadeia? Any suggestions?’

He folded his arms and waited. There was a long silence, as his audience tried to work out whether it had been a rhetorical question. Then a short, broad man with a beard stood up somewhere near the back, more or less opposite Loredan. The face was vaguely familiar; some kind of engineer, at a guess.

‘The answer to that’s quite simple,’ he said. ‘There’s three ways. One, knock the walls down. Two, climb over them. Three, dig under them. Simple,’ he added, ‘but not easy, if you get my meaning.’

Loredan nodded. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go through them one at a time. Knocking them down; I take it you’re thinking of torsion engines, mangonels, trebuchets and so on, right?’

The engineer nodded. ‘And rams,’ he said. ‘But in order to use rams they’ve got to get across the river, which means building a causeway or floating a ram down the river on pontoons. Neither way’s easy, but both are possible.’

‘Right,’ Loredan said. ‘And you’re…?’

‘Leucas Garantzes, Deputy Municipal Engineer,’ the bearded man replied. ‘Responsible for maintaining the walls, guard towers and stationary engines on the landward side.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ Loredan said. ‘Here’s what I want you to do. I don’t actually know how effective rock-chucking engines are against heavy masonry, so I want some facts and figures – ranges, capacities, rates of fire, some indication of what each class of engine is capable of. Now, we don’t actually know anything about what they’ve got, but we can start by assuming they’re copies of the government pattern. Once we know what they can do, we’ll know what we need to do to counteract them. Agreed?’

Garantzes nodded. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said, and sat down.

Loredan drew a deep breath. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere, ’ he said. ‘Anybody here who can provide me with scale plans of the defences?’

Nobody moved for a while; then a very young man near the front stood up and said, ‘I think I can help with that.’

‘And you are?’

‘Timoleon Molin,’ the young man replied. ‘Surveyors’ Office. Really I’m in charge of drainage and flood precautions, but we’ve got lots of detailed maps in the office, which ought to do.’

‘That’s good,’ Loredan said, and Molin sat down again with obvious relief. ‘Anybody here from the arsenal?’

The man who stood up was short, bald and slightly stooped. ‘Teodrico Tiron,’ he said. ‘I make catapults.’

‘Just the job,’ Loredan said with approval. ‘I want you to get together with Timoleon over there and Deputy Garantzes and draw me a plan of the walls showing the fields of fire of all the stationary engines we’ve got in place already, and any blind spots or places where we could do with upgrading the artillery cover. If their engines look like they’re going to be a threat, our best chance is to be able to knock them out before they get going.’ He turned to his left. ‘City Prefect,’ he said, ‘while we’re on the subject, I’d like to talk to all the full-time artillery captains about what they’re capable of at the moment, and sort out some intensive training. I want us to be able to hit what we shoot at, otherwise we’ll just be wasting our time.’ He paused to draw breath, going over in his mind what had been said. ‘Now, unless anybody can show me something I’ve missed, we’ve covered their first option. Let’s turn to the second option, scaling the walls.’

As he continued, he could feel the mood of the council changing; from curiosity to a kind of stunned acceptance of all the work they were being so high-handedly assigned; and he wondered, Why are they taking all this like it was words of wisdom from some great general? Can’t they see I’m making it all up as I go along? Or hadn’t it even occurred to them to do any of these things? Why’s it all suddenly up to me, for gods’ sakes?

‘Now then, food distribution,’ he heard himself saying. ‘I know we’ve got a fair bit put by, and the Prefect’s Office is adding to that by large-scale purchasing on the open market, so that’s fine; but I think it’d help if we knew exactly how many people we’ve got to feed, and how we’re going to go about organising distribution. Anybody here from the Chancellor’s Office? Good; now, I know it’s been a long time since we had a proper census…’

Just listen to yourself, will you? Since when were you a born leader of men? If truth be told, you don’t know spit about the corn supply. Which is why it makes sense to find out, I suppose.

And what happened to all the politics? Why isn’t anybody arguing, for pity’s sake?

Things must be serious.

He suddenly realised he’d run out of things to say. He felt awkward; he didn’t know how to wrap up a speech and sit down again – well, of course I don’t, I’m a fencer, for gods’ sakes – and wasn’t sure how to work it out from first principles. So he nodded, again, and turned to the Prefect.

‘I think that’s all I wanted to say,’ he said. ‘City Prefect, over to you.’

The Prefect got up, looking slightly startled. ‘Thank you, Colonel Loredan,’ he said. ‘Well now, it seems that we all have a great deal of work to do, so I suggest we adjourn until this time tomorrow. Gentlemen.’ He dipped his head in a shallow nod, and everybody stood up and started chattering at once; the abrupt swell of noise and surge of movement put Loredan in mind of a flock of rooks suddenly put up off a field of wheat stubble. He stayed where he was, hoping he’d be left alone while he tried to make sense of it all.

‘My congratulations, Colonel.’ It was that damn fool of a Prefect, glowering at him from under his spectacular eyebrows. ‘You’ve contrived to make yourself the most important man in the city.’ He paused for effect. ‘After myself, of course. I do hope you’ll bear that in mind.’

Oh, good, threats. Now I know where I am. ‘You want to give this job to someone else, City Prefect,’ he said wearily, ‘please, be my guest. I’m still trying to figure out where all that stuff came from.’

The Prefect raised an eyebrow. ‘I imagine from your time on General Maxen’s staff,’ he said. ‘Where, I assume, you learnt to use your common sense in dealing with matters of administration.’

‘Ah.’ Loredan couldn’t help grinning. ‘So that’s what we were doing. Odd; all I can remember is a lot of sleeping rough and fighting people. I suppose you’re right, though; it is just common sense, and recognising the fact that we don’t know how to go about this, so we’d better try and work it out before we start. Is that really why I got lumbered with all this?’

The Prefect sat down beside him and leant close to his ear. ‘Partly,’ he said. ‘Mostly, it’s politics. I think I’ve been guilty of sloppy thinking; I assumed you’d have realised. It’s quite simple; you used to be a military officer, and now you’re nobody. If someone has to be given extraordinary powers to co-ordinate the defence of the city, a political nonentity like yourself is obviously the safest bet.’ He smiled unpleasantly. ‘No chance of you siding with one faction or the other and setting yourself up as a military dictator. We have to bear these things in mind, you see. And,’ he added graciously, ‘you would appear to be reasonably competent. As I said a moment ago, it’s mostly just common sense.’

The Prefect wandered away to talk to someone else, probably unaware of the heavy load of savage curses he’d suddenly accumulated. Loredan put him firmly out of mind, and had decided to try sneaking out into the city and maybe even going home for an hour or so when he noticed Alexius beckoning him. With a soft sigh he made his way across the chamber.

‘The Prefect’s just been explaining why I got the job,’ Loredan said. ‘Apparently it’s because I’m a person of no consequence whatsoever. With men like him in charge, it amazes me that we haven’t tried sorting out this business with diplomacy. He’d make a marvellous ambassador.’

‘It never ceases to amaze me how clever the fools are in this city,’ Alexius replied. ‘I’ve known Bolerun for fifteen years on and off. He’d spent his entire life getting to the stage where he can be an abject failure in the most public manner imaginable.’

Loredan looked puzzled. ‘Bolerun?’ he asked.

‘Meinas Bolerun. The City Prefect.’

‘Oh.’ Loredan shrugged his shoulders. ‘You see? I don’t even know what these people are called. In fact, I don’t know if he’s been Prefect for years and years, or if he only took office last month. I don’t suppose most people do, come to that.’

Alexius muffled a yawn with his knuckles. ‘If it’s any consolation,’ he replied, ‘by sunset tonight everybody in the city will know who you are.’

‘No,’ Loredan said bleakly. ‘It isn’t.’

Feeling slightly dazed, Venart found his way back to the inn (follow your nose till you come to the river, second turning and then immediately left) and asked for a small jug of cider.

There was more to rope, he’d discovered, than meets the eye. Rope, in fact, had turned out to be a subject of such multifarious complexity that a hundred scholars devoting their lives to its study would never obtain more than a faint and misleading shadow of understanding of the great miracle that was rope. Perimadeian rope, at any rate; back home, rope came in thick, medium or thin, hairy or smooth, cheap and nasty or good but expensive, and that was all you needed to know apart from how much of the stuff you wanted. Two whole days touring the ropewalks of the city, however, had opened his eyes, with the result that he knew rather less than he did when he’d started, but was at least properly aware of the scale of his own ignorance.

He also hadn’t bought any rope. First thing tomorrow, he promised himself, he would go out and buy some rope. Any rope, so long as it was cheap. After all, if he didn’t understand rope, neither did the people he intended to sell it to.

On the other hand, he mused as he put the jug on the fender to mull, thanks to his guided tours he now knew something he hadn’t known before, and knowledge is never wasted. Now he knew that there was flax rope, reed rope, rope made from a mixture of flax and reed, rope made from the hair of any number of different animals (except that it wasn’t called rope, and what it was called he couldn’t now remember), there was silk rope, which was surprisingly cheap, and there was cheap rope, which had turned out to be more expensive than he’d bargained for; above all, there was bulk rope, which was what he wanted to buy and what everybody wanted to sell him. It was only the incidental details, such as price, that were holding up the clinching of the deal.

He poured out half a mug of cider and drank a couple of mouthfuls, relishing the unfamiliar flavour of the nutmeg; a typical city refinement that he liked very much. There was something else, he realised; something he was missing.

Namely, one sister.

He put the mug down and got to his feet, uncertain what to do. His first thought was that something had happened to her; an innocent girl, on her own in a decadent and sophisticated city. What had he been thinking of, letting her loose on her own? Even while he was caught up in the first surge of panic, a rational voice inside him pointed out that Vetriz wasn’t entirely innocent, and it was a matter of cold fact that Perimadeia was a much safer place to wander about in, especially at night, than the Island. There was also the problem of where to start looking, in a place this size. He sat down again, and had another swig of cider to clear his mind.

She was supposed to come straight back here, and that was four hours ago. By now, she’s either dead or shopping.

Either way, continued the irritatingly rational inner voice, the chances of finding her by just wandering up and down are depressingly slim. Far more sensible to sit down, keep calm and stay put until she finally turns up. Venart had no answer to that; so he shooed away the mental image of his sister lying bleeding to death in an alleyway (feebly calling his name with her dying breath, needless to say) and finished off the cider, which it would have been wasteful to leave now that he’d paid for it. It was particularly good cider, robust without being heady, and he was just about to get another jug when he heard a loud, musical and familiar voice coming from the other room. He jumped up, tripped over a sleeping dog, swore and went through.

There was his sister; and with her another girl, pretty, vaguely familiar. Relief, good manners in the presence of a stranger and a small jug of good cider dissipated his fraternal wrath; he waved and joined them.

‘Hello, Ven,’ Vetriz said. ‘Sorry, I completely lost track of the time. I’ve been shopping.’

‘I thought as much,’ Venart replied casually. ‘Er…’

‘This is Athli,’ she went on. The pretty girl smiled politely. ‘You remember, we met her in that tavern the day we went to the lawcourts.’

Ah, yes, that was it. The fencer’s clerk. ‘Hello,’ Venart said. ‘Nice to see you again.’ Quite decidedly pretty, Venart said to himself, while Vetriz explained that they’d bumped into each other in the stationery market and Athli had been kind enough to help her with her shopping, so she’d asked her back for something to eat. Venart agreed that that was the least they could do, and made some feeble joke about maintaining the Island’s reputation for hospitality. Another part of him was wondering whether it was usual for unmarried girls in this city to go out dining in taverns after dark with chance acquaintances; a futile reflection, he decided, since here one was, doing just that.

It was a good meal, as one would expect from one of the best inns in the city; a dish of roast quails with soft white rolls followed by a fair-sized red mullet with capers and a wine sauce; then the inevitable Perimadeian main course, the ‘table’ – a round, flat, thin sheet of unleavened bread made exactly the same diameter as the table they sat round, onto which the serving boys ladled dollops of strange and colourful mixtures out of huge steaming cauldrons. Venart and Vetriz eventually managed a third of the thing between them, while their guest effortlessly dealt with the rest. In fact, she finished before they did and was happily recommending the sweet dumplings in cranberry sauce while they were nerving themselves to swallow the little dough shovels still between their fingers. However often I come here, Venart told himself, I’ll never get used to the amount they eat; which would make a siege interesting, as well as a once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity.

The first priority was to head Athli off before she could return to the subject of sweet dumplings. Accordingly, Venart launched a pre-emptive strike and asked how things were in the legal profession.

‘Oh, about the same as always,’ Athli replied. ‘Actually, we’re not in the law now. What I mean to say is, Loredan’s retired and opened a training school, teaching young advocates how to fence, and I’m his clerk.’ She frowned. ‘Well, that’s a bit out of date too. He’s working for the Security Council now,’ she added, a bit doubtfully. ‘You see, we mounted an attack on their camp, where they’re building the siege engines. It all went wrong, unfortunately, and a lot of our people were killed. It was mostly thanks to Loredan that we didn’t lose more than we did.’

Vetriz looked up sharply. ‘How wonderful,’ she said. ‘Oh, gods, listen to me, I’m sorry. What I meant was, how wonderful that he should be the hero of the hour and so forth. We’ll be able to tell everybody when we get home that…’

‘Please excuse my sister,’ Venart interrupted. ‘I only bring her on these trips in the hope of starting a war.’ He scowled across the table, and went on, ‘How serious is the situation, do you think? Everywhere I’ve been people are talking as if it’s the end of the world, but they’re acting as if nothing’s happened. Except for prices, of course; and even there it’s as if the whole thing’s just a way of stimulating trade.’

Athli shrugged her shoulders. ‘I simply don’t know,’ she said. ‘We’ve never been in this situation before. It’s hard to imagine anybody being able to storm the walls, let alone a bunch of people who are, let’s face it, little better than savages. That said, we’d be crazy not to take it seriously.’ She turned her head and looked away. ‘After all, they did make our expeditionary force look pretty silly. They’re saying now that that was because our generals made a complete mess of things and strolled into an ambush, so it can’t be taken as proof either way of whether they’re capable of giving us a hard time when we’re not making silly mistakes, if you see what I mean.’

Venart nodded. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose only time will tell. Do you know very much about these plainspeople? I assume you must do, if you’ve had trouble with them before.’

‘Not a great deal, no,’ Athli admitted. ‘The truth is, we aren’t ever anything more than mildly curious about anyone except ourselves. Up till recently, we’d never have dreamed anything like this could happen. We were quite friendly with them, in fact. There were some of them living and working here – after all, people from all over the world come here, and we don’t think anything of it.’

Venart nodded. ‘The legendary Perimadeian tolerance,’ he said sententiously. ‘Looks like it hasn’t done you any favours in this instance. After all, if they’re basically savages and now they’re building siege engines, it must have been someone from here who taught them how to do it.’

He got a cold look in return for that. ‘What are we supposed to do?’ she retorted. ‘Keep all our knowledge and skills deadly secret in case they get used against us? We’re a nation of traders and manufacturers; if we did that we’d starve. The same goes for if we took against foreigners. You, of all people, should appreciate that.’

Fair point, Venart admitted to himself; at least she’d had the good manners not to point out that the Islanders were at best the third-generation descendants of pirates who’d several times tried to attack the city. He decided to change the subject.

‘Talking of trade,’ he said, ‘you wouldn’t happen to know anything about rope?’

Athli looked at him and giggled. ‘Oddly enough, I do,’ she replied. ‘We had a regular client in the rope business. What do you want to know?’

Vetriz had felt her attention wavering while the conversation had been about politics; as soon as they started talking about rope (horsehair for elasticity; pure flax is cheaper and almost as good, but don’t let them fob you off with anything made from what they call sailmaker’s twine, it isn’t really pure flax) she let her mind wander. Fairly soon, what with the warmth of the room and the comfortable weight of the food, she was starting to doze…

And was suddenly somewhere else – rather disconcerting, until she subconsciously registered that it was a dream. The confusing part of it was that she was also still in the dining room of the inn, sitting at a table covered in crumbs and little morsels of escaped food; and there were Ven and her new friend Athli, still busily chatting about rope and oblivious to anything else. But there were other people sitting round the table as well, and she recognised them easily, as if they were people she knew well. The tall, worried-looking man was Bardas Loredan; well, she did know him, and also, regrettably, his brother Gorgas. Now that she could see them both together the family resemblance was obvious; she hadn’t seen it in Gorgas before, but they both had the same nose and the same heavy muscle in the jaw, and, most noticeable of all, the same alert, observant eyes. Nothing romantic or even particularly attractive about the Loredan eyes. They were hard but not cold, a rather dark brown (Athli had green eyes, curse her; some girls have all the luck) and neither of the two brothers seemed to blink as often as most people did. Another curious thing: Gorgas had told her he wasn’t on speaking terms with his younger brother, and yet here they were talking quite easily, just the way you’d expect two brothers to talk to each other. It was a pity that she couldn’t make out what they were saying. Whatever it was, it was bound to be more interesting than rope.

And there was a woman sitting on Gorgas’ left, between him and Ven; she was a Loredan too, the same nose and jaw (it doesn’t suit her) and unmistakably the same eyes. She was older than both of them but too young to be their mother, so Vetriz deduced she was either an older sister or a youngish aunt. Probably a sister; the resemblance was too marked for it to be anything but a direct blood line. She wasn’t saying anything, and when Vetriz decided to talk to her, she suddenly wasn’t there any more. Instead she saw a young man she didn’t recognize at all. He was no more than eighteen, shorter, fairer and slighter than the rest of them, and his features were small and a little pudgy, making him look younger still. For some reason she knew he was one of the plainspeople, and she decided he was here in the dream because they’d been talking about them and she’d fallen asleep after a heavy meal.

She studied him with interest, never having come across a genuine barbarian before. He wasn’t much to look at, certainly not very barbarous; his hair was a little greasy but neatly combed – maybe the grease was some kind of dressing; not being able to smell anything in this dream she couldn’t tell if it was some variety of scented oil or pomade – and he was wearing a rather plain-looking shirt with full sleeves, which closer inspection revealed to be made of very fine buckskin. She couldn’t see what he was wearing on his legs because the table was in the way. At any rate, his manners seemed acceptable enough; he was sitting quite still, hadn’t even got his elbows on the table, and appeared to be listening to the great rope debate with every sign of polite interest. He looks like somebody’s apprentice, Vetriz decided, who’s been allowed to come to dinner as a special treat.

Since she had nobody else to talk to, she decided to strike up a conversation with the young barbarian. She smiled and caught his eye. He smiled back, rather pleasantly.

‘Don’t say you’re a rope fancier too,’ she heard herself saying.

‘Most of it’s going over my head,’ he admitted. ‘But it’s always worth listening when people are discussing something they know about. You can learn things that way, and knowledge is never wasted.’

Vetriz grinned. ‘You sound just like my brother,’ she said. ‘That’s a favourite saying of his. In fact, that’s probably why I just dreamed you saying it.’

‘You may well be right,’ the barbarian replied. ‘As it happens, rope’s something I need to learn about. You see, we’re building a whole lot of torsion engines – catapults, that sort of thing – and it’s the rope that powers the arm and makes them go. None of us have the faintest idea what sort of rope’s best for the purpose. I imagine we want something tough and springy.’

‘Ah.’ Vetriz nodded. ‘I might be able to help you there, because just before I lost interest in what they were saying, that girl there told my brother that horsehair’s best for elasticity – does that make any sense to you?’

‘Very much so.’

‘Oh, good, because it’s wasted on me. Anyway, horsehair’s the stuff, and if you can’t get that, pure flax is meant to be almost as good, though apparently you should avoid sailmaker’s twine like the plague.’

‘Oh.’ The barbarian’s brow creased a little. ‘That’s odd, because a man I talked to at the arsenal said sailmaker’s twine was what he used himself. That didn’t mean an awful lot to me, because I wouldn’t recognise sailmaker’s twine if you wove it into a noose and strung me up with it.’

Vetriz giggled. ‘Perish the thought,’ she said. ‘And now, if you don’t mind, let’s put the subject of rope firmly on one side and talk about something else, shall we? In fact, I’d like to ask you a question, if it won’t offend you.’

The barbarian shrugged. ‘Be my guest,’ he said.

‘All right. I was just wondering: what is it about this city that you don’t like? I mean, you must hate it an awful lot if you’re going to all this trouble to destroy it. Or is that what you people do, sort of a fundamental part of your cultural identity?’

‘Not really,’ the barbarian replied. ‘I mean, we do fight among ourselves sometimes, but on the whole we’re quite peaceful. Certainly we aren’t ones for plunder and loot, like your ancestors were; all that gold and silver and furniture and stuff’d be just so much dead weight to lug around with us. No, the thing with the city’s personal. It’s something that’s got to be done, that’s all.’

‘Really?’ Vetriz raised an eyebrow. ‘And why’s that?’

The barbarian pulled a face. ‘I’d rather not say,’ he replied. ‘If you really must know, why don’t you ask those two?’

And before Vetriz could ask him which two he meant, he wasn’t there either, and Venart was prodding her shoulder with his forefinger (exactly the way he did when they were children, and she’d hated it then) and telling her to wake up because it was late.

‘Don’t want to wake up,’ she mumbled sleepily, aware that the Loredan brothers had gone too. ‘Sleep when it’s late. Wake up when it’s early.’

Venart sighed. ‘Like I said before,’ he said to Athli, who was grinning, ‘you really must excuse my sister. I can’t take her anywhere.’

Temrai, who’d been dozing by the fire, suddenly woke up. ‘Horsehair,’ he said.

Uncle Anakai looked at him over his cup. ‘What did you just say?’ he asked.

‘For the catapults,’ Temrai explained. He shook his head, felt dizzy; too much to drink, he decided. ‘I’ve just remembered, I think. Anyway, that’s what we should be using.’

Anakai shrugged his shoulders. ‘You’re the boss,’ he replied. ‘And it’s something we’ve got plenty of, though people are going to take some persuading before they’ll let you take a pair of shears to their prize bloodstock.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘We’ll have to start a fashion for bobbed manes and tails. They’ll agree to anything if it’s fashionable.’

‘Good idea,’ Temrai said. He was dimly aware that he’d been dreaming; but he never remembered his dreams for more than a split second after he’d woken up. ‘We’ll get onto it first thing in the morning,’ he yawned. ‘Right now, I think I’ll go to bed. I seem to have woken up with something of a headache.’

Uncle Anakai smiled. ‘You sleep it off, then,’ he replied. ‘You’ve earned a good night’s rest. Oh, by the way, who’s Loriden?’

‘I don’t know,’ Temrai replied with a frown. ‘Should I?’

‘You kept muttering the name while you were asleep. Some girl, obviously,’ Uncle Anakai added with a grin. ‘It’s a girl’s name, after all.’

Temrai thought for a moment, then shook his head.

‘Never heard of her,’ he said.