Mage's Blood

15

Mage’s Gambit

The Studies

There are four major Studies of gnosis. These are the areas where the personality of the mage comes to the fore, affecting the types of gnosis at which they will be most competent. It has been said that a mage’s affinities reflect what manner of person they are. Indeed, one obvious example: a mage whose nature is hot-tempered is often a Fire-mage. But it should be noted that sometimes that affinity is more subtle: not all fire-magi are hot-tempered, for fire can be many things. It is not enough to know your enemy’s affinities – you must also know their soul.

SOURCE: ARDO ACTIUM, SCHOLAR, BRES 518

Brochena, Javon, on the continent of Antiopia

Decore 927

7 months until the Moontide

Elena called her single-masted war-skiff Greybird. She had given it a carved figurehead, and worked ash into the varnish to colour the sleek hull. It had swivelling wings, giving it greater stability and control, if you knew what you were doing. It was sixty feet in length, small enough for one person to pilot, large enough to bear three passengers. As she guided the craft westwards through the night skies towards Brochena the waxing moon shone down on the faces of her companions as they peered over the sides, any initial trepidation about flying long gone. Artaq Yusaini, a Jhafi warrior, sat in the prow. Harshal had recommended him, saying, ‘He can speak both Jhafi and Rimoni, Donna Ella, he’s loyal, and he’s a killer.’

Artaq had a soft face and a gap-toothed grin. His facial hair was patchy and his skin blotchy, where some disease had caused pink patches. He didn’t look like a killer – but he had more knives under those robes than Elena could credit. He was happy to work with a mage. ‘If Ahm gave you whiteskins magic, then it cannot have been for virtue,’ he told her, ‘so therefore it is just a weapon, like my knives. So let us go and skewer some Gorgio.’ He spat as he spoke the name.

Before the mast sat Luca Fustinios, a Nesti legionary. He was shorter than Elena by a head, but his compact, muscular form was well-feared in the wrestling ring; he was known to be the best in the ranks. He too was fluent in Jhafi after time in prison for strangling a rival over a woman. He had a cheery manner despite his reputation and crime, and he was Nesti through and through.

In front of Elena sat Lorenzo di Kestria. ‘I’m going to Brochena to kill magi,’ she’d argued. ‘I want killers, not chivalrous knights. Lorenzo is too soft. He’ll be a liability.’

‘I cannot let you go alone with those two, Donna Elena,’ he’d argued. ‘Both are criminals. Even if I just watch your back and guard the skiff, I will go.’ And Cera had overruled her.

Admittedly it had been nice to have someone familiar to talk to as they flew towards their destination, but she was apprehensive about what Lorenzo would see.

‘That’s Mount Tigrat,’ called Lorenzo, pointing to a greater darkness to the north. ‘Brochena is near, thirty miles maybe.’

She nodded her understanding. As the little craft creaked and tilted Luca Fustinios gripped the edge of the craft and looked back at her to ensure that this was a planned manoeuvre and not the beginning of a dive into messy death. She waved reassuringly at him. ‘I’m going to land west of the city, away from the lake,’ she told them. ‘We’ll have to move quickly then: I want to be within the city walls by dawn. Our first target – Arno Dolman – will be near there, working on the outer defences.’

Arno Dolman was primarily an Earth Thaumaturge. He was a big, strong man, and normally placid, though he had a temper if he was pushed. She had seen him scoop granite with his huge, muscular hands as if it were sand and mould it like clay. She liked Arno, regretted that he was now an enemy. He was the only other member of the team who’d been in the Revolt with her. She had disliked Gurvon’s recent recruits: they were talented, but they were also bordering on psychotic.

Getting Arno out of the way first made sense as his affinities were all about the practical and the tangible. If she isolated him carefully he wouldn’t be able to alert the others. After that, it would be harder to keep her attacks secret. But first things first: let’s deal with Arno …

She began to feel like her old self, thinking of targets and weaknesses, the strategies of killing. Since she’d saved Cera and Timori from Samir she’d felt herself becoming a different person, one she liked more, but not the person to handle this mission. For this she needed the old Elena, who backstabbed enemies, sacrificed friends and enjoyed the vertiginous highs of life on the edge. Five targets, then she could put that Elena away, like a dress that no longer fitted, and never bring her out again.

It was something to hope for. She sent her mind questing outwards, concentrating on Arno. She recalled his thunderous brows and heavyset visage, that could smile or scowl with equal intensity. He had the shoulders of a bull, but surprisingly thin legs. He was a primal, basic man: simple, strong, blunt. And reliable. Sorry, Arno – but if you didn’t want to come up against me, you should have refused to come here.

Arno Dolman found himself fighting a growing sense of anger all day. Why was it always me doing the hard work while the others mince about the palace? he thought. And why did Gurvon leave Sordell in charge, when all he ever did was pick away at the future in his tower or fawn at Alfredo Gorgio’s feet – lazy, arrogant, Argundian slime. Those two new recruits are snotty little pricks too, no use at all when it comes to practical matters, and neither is Vedya, the bitch. I’m the only one doing any work here. We’ve got to fortify this stupid sprawling mess of a city before the rukking Crusade begins.

Brochena was the capital, and it’d been sucking people in like a sponge. It’d outgrown its defences years ago. The Dorobon had strengthened the walls and the Nesti had ripped them down again – allowing Alfredo Gorgio to march ten thousand men right into the capital unchallenged.

What’s Elena doing? Why’d she screw Samir over? Is she angling for a bigger cut of the spoils – that’d be her style, the bitch. Gurvon had been furious; he’d grabbed everyone he had to hand and flown them to Javon – and ever since they’d arrived, Arno had been stuck here working on the walls. ‘Someone must rebuild the fortifications around the inner city, Arno and you’re the best there is,’ Gurvon had told him. Manipulative bastard. But what about the others helping? Hel no! Gurvon had pissed off back to Bres on some fool’s errand, leaving Sordell and his bum-boys prancing about with the Gorgios while Vedya was whoring as usual.

Perhaps he’d slept badly or something, but today all the things that irritated him were flaring up, and Arno could feel his fury rising. He used it to fuel his gnosis and plunged his hands into the rock again, drawing the stone up like toffee and shaping and strengthening it. Already a mile of new stonework enclosed most of the western side of the old city: two weeks’ solid work. Today he was sick of it.

He lifted a block of stone that an Indranian elephant would have struggled to move and slammed it into place. All day long he’d been pushing himself to the limits, eager to have some real progress to show for all his rukking effort. Gurvon said the Nesti brats were still in Forensa, but what if they were marching? You couldn’t ignore that possibility, not when that sneaky bint Elena Anborn was involved.

He spat, wishing he could trust someone else apart from Gurvon. Back in the old days he’d felt a sense of camaraderie, but not these days. When Vedya joined it all went downhill fast – that Sydian witch was pure poison.

He shook his head furiously. Where is all this anger coming from? He lifted another block and slammed it onto the first, almost staggering with the effort. If he could just finish this section by sundown … He threw everything into it, gnosis-power, muscle-power, all of his will. We’ve got a deadline to meet, damnit! He was conscious that the four soldiers guarding him were staring at him in awe. He felt a savage pride in his skills. Yes, look at me: see what a real mage can do.

He plunged his hands up to his elbows into the two massive blocks and shaped them like dough as he blended them into one, squared the edges and made ready for the next block. He felt almost dizzy with the exertion. He gasped and looked around. Kore’s Cods, it’s evening already. He looked out over the filthy hovels of the lowlife Jhafi. Unusually, there wasn’t a single face in sight. Scared of the big Rondian mage are you, you scum?

He rubbed his face, groaned. What’s wrong with me? I’m not usually like this …

But there’s more to be done, a voice whispered inside him, and he thought, Yes, there is more to be done. He bent over another block, as big as the other two, almost reeling with the effort.

Just one more, that insidious whisper urged.

An external whisper!

Rukka! It all became clear: he’d been goaded like a bull in an Estellayne arena. He spun about him as the shadows closed in, but he didn’t have time to shout more than, ‘Ware!’ before a small shape had appeared behind the backmost soldier, pulled him backwards and slashed his jugular. Blood sprayed across the stone, black in the twilight. The guards tried to draw weapons, but all about them others had darted in, stabbing at necks or beneath the left armpit, and they all fell, choking out their final breaths. The closest attacker glided towards him, her faded blonde hair caught in a pony-tail, cold eyes glittering.

‘Elena.’ You bitch, I should have realised— ‘How long have you—?’

‘All day, Arno.’ Her voice was soft, almost sad. ‘Egging you on. Got anything left to fight with?’

‘You bet I have!’ He hurled the great stone at her, though the effort made him stagger. The rock shattered against a square pillar, bringing down part of the wall he’d just erected. But she was already gone.

Behind! He swung the hammer in a complete circle that nearly took off the bitch’s head as she reappeared, but as it whistled over her head he was pulled into a spin by its weight. He steadied himself and swung again. The blow skidded off her shields, visibly unsettling her.

Ha! ‘I can take you, Elena—’ He swung again, but she somersaulted off the walls and down to the hovels below. He glared down at her, then gestured, forming a gnostic stone-serpent thrice her size from the rocks at his feet. It erupted in a cloud of dirt, and he reeled with the effort. His vision blurred, and for a second he saw three Elenas below him. He blinked dazedly: there were still three. The snake ploughed into the middle one, encountering nothing but air and illusion, then smashed into a hovel below and its head shattered. Jhafi voices screamed.

But the real Elena was running up the stonework, barely touching it. He screamed a command and the headless stone-snake lunged after her, but the bitch was too fast and his construct crashed itself against the wall and expired in a cascade of rubble. He tried to follow her with his eyes and with his gnosis, but she was heading in three directions at once. Damned illusions—

‘Stand still, you safian bitch!’ he roared, and brandished the hammer.

<Keep away from him,> she snapped into the minds of Lorenzo, Artaq and Luca. <Hold your fire.> She slipped away to the right. We have to finish this before he thinks to call for aid. She left a spray of illusory glimpses to confuse matters as she landed, catlike, ten yards from him and let him see her.

‘There you are,’ he bellowed, stupid with exhaustion. His hammer fell, but she was already out of reach, showing him a fistful of gnosis-energy before sending it at his shields, even as she called, <Fire,> into the minds of her men. Three crossbows rattled as one.

It wouldn’t have worked if Arno had been fresh: he was a half-blood Earth-mage of frightening strength. But she’d spent the whole day pricking at his mind like a gnat, enhancing his fears, driving him to exhaustion.

Her gnosis-bolt fused his shielding and centred all of his defences to the front, and the three crossbow bolts fired from the sides and behind encountered no resistance: one took him in the biceps, pinning his arm to his chest. Another took him in the neck, breaking his spine, while the third slammed into his belly. He collapsed and fell from the half-made wall to sprawl on the earth below. As Elena reached the lip of the wall he jerked and went still.

The three men walked to the edge and cautiously peered over. Elena leapt down lightly, wary of any movement, or the sudden expenditure of gnosis-energy. The others landed behind her, and as one they sucked in their breath.

Arno’s eyes flickered open. A gurgle came out of his mouth, then a gout of blood. As clearly if he had spoken aloud, she heard, <Elena – I should have … sensed you.>

<Sorry, Arno.> She could almost feel the dreadful pain he was enduring.

<Why did you … do it, Elena? Wasn’t your share … big enough?>

<It had nothing to do with money, Arno. It was about love, and right and wrong.>

His eye widened slightly, incredulous, then a sharp burst of agony nearly took him. Elena lifted her hand, gnosis-fires kindling. <Do it, Elena. Kill me—>

<Sorry, Arno. Not quite yet.> She raised her blade and cleaved his neck in two. His head rolled clear in a fount of blood. She bathed her ghastly trophy in healing-gnosis, sealing enough blood inside his head to keep his soul locked into his skull, steeling herself against Arno’s horrified mental cries.

The men above her gasped as they saw his lips and eyes moving, and Lorenzo asked, ‘What are you doing?’ His expression was horrified.

‘You’ll see.’ She took the head and rolled it into the waterproofed leather satchel she had brought for the purpose, then hefted it over her shoulder. Lorenzo looked at her and she saw his illusions about her begin to die. She felt a curious sense of loss. Faces peered out of the lean-tos, and a Jhafi warrior appeared, one of Harshal’s contacts. He saluted her wordlessly with his scimitar and vanished again.

She looked at the men. ‘Okay, one down. Four to go.’

Which one next, Lady?’ Artaq asked her quietly.

‘Sordell. Like Arno Dolman, his whereabouts is predictable. Rutt is like a man with a scab that itches him so badly that he cannot help scratching it. That scab is called paranoia, and the way he scratches it is to try and see into the future.’

‘He can do that?’ Artaq looked impressed. Luca made some primitive warding gesture.

‘Many magi can, but it’s not easy and it’s very unreliable. I like to think of it as a way of clarifying planning and rounding out the data. I did some divining myself before we left to fine-tune my plans.’

‘Did you see us as successful?’ Lorenzo asked.

‘Well, of course – but that could just be because I can’t conceive of losing, so I wouldn’t take it too seriously. But Sordell does: he’s one of those nervous types, and he can’t make a move without Gurvon holding his hand. He’ll be terrified that something will go wrong on his watch, so he’ll be up there in the Moon Tower, trying to see what it is.’

‘Will he see us coming?’ Luca asked perceptively. ‘With his spells?’

‘Perhaps. But one magi can usually hide from another, and from spirits set to observe them. A good diviner can play games with another too, feeding them wrong data.’

‘Are you a good diviner, Donna Ella?’

Elena smiled down at the little Rimoni. ‘Better than Sordell, actually, but I don’t like to boast. He thinks I can’t do it at all.’

Luca looked at her appraisingly, not the way men usually looked at women, but as if trying to strip away the flesh to the powers that lay beneath. ‘Do you have any weaknesses at all, Donna?’

‘A good cheese from the Knebb Valley gets me every time.’

The Rimoni chuckled and shook his head appreciatively. ‘Do you have a weakness for shorter men?’ he grinned.

She laughed and waved a dismissive hand. ‘Not usually, but you’ll be the first to know, Shorty.’

The starlight was sufficient to guide them as they wound their way through the pre-dawn. She wondered where Gurvon was – even the swiftest of windships wouldn’t have got him to Pontus yet if he was travelling back from Rondelmar.

‘What about we men, witch-lady?’ asked Artaq. ‘Do we survive this night, from your divining?’

She paused, losing her levity. ‘Without a scratch,’ she lied. ‘Let’s go.’

The outer limits of Brochena were alive with Gorgio patrols during the day, but at dusk they pulled back to the Inner City to provide tighter night-time patrols for the bureaucrats who made their homes there. But Elena was an illusionist and the men were used to moving stealthily. By the second hour after dusk they were in place. So far it looked like no one had noticed Arno Dolman was dead.

The palace of Brochena was a square with four great towers, each rising like a cathedral spire into the darkness. The Sol Tower was the dwelling of the Royal Family; Elena and the children had lived on the upper floors. Its golden roof caught the light like a beacon; it was the first thing people saw when they journeyed across the plains to the capital city. The Dorobon had built the towers, part of an ostentatious building programme which had nearly bankrupted the realm. There was already a pale luminescence coming from the ghostly Moon Tower, which was roofed with crushed quartz. The uppermost floor was open to the elements. Elena pointed: that’s where Rutt Sordell would be, worrying at his fears. The chief knights of the Guard were in the Angel Tower, and the Jade Tower housed the guest-quarters for visiting dignitaries, as well as Elena’s Bastido, in the top room.

Elena led them up the walls, creating footholds with Earth-gnosis as she went. She slipped behind the sentry at the foot of the Angel Tower. A single blade flashed, and as he fell, she muffled the sound with gnosis. He looked about seventeen, but Elena felt nothing but relief at having silenced him without giving themselves away. Lorenzo’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the dead sentry, and his glance at Elena was troubled, but he stepped into his place without a word as Luca and Artaq dragged the body aside.

Sorry, Lori, but I was never the woman you thought I was, Elena thought regretfully. She took the leather bag from her back and took out Arno Dolman’s head. The mage’s eyes flickered open as she turned it in her hands. He was too far gone to speak, but that didn’t really matter. Vedya had once told her that the Sydians used to be head-takers, believing they gained the strength and knowledge of those men whose brains they consumed; she had talked like she’d tried it herself. To a magi, the brain housed the gnosis, and that meant she held Arno Dolman’s waning powers in her hands. His intellect was fading, but for a short while longer his powers were hers to command, if she had the stomach for it.

She glanced up at the tower and along the walls: there were sentries, but none were too close: the Gorgio had grown complacent, confident their enemies were far away and that Gyle’s magi would keep them safe, a mistaken notion, and one she intended to correct. She looked at the Moon Tower, grey under the starlight without Mater-Luna to wash her opalescent walls white. It had been one of the first things she had noticed when she came here four years ago: that the towers of Brochena Palace stood over sixty yards tall, but only forty yards apart. She smiled and went to work with Dolman’s head.

Rutt Sordell was nervous. It was a familiar feeling, this perpetual state of queasy unease, that somewhere, some unexpected factor was about to make itself known. Right now he was concerned about the Jhafi relations: the blithe contempt of the Gorgio lords for the race that outnumbered them eight to one irritated him. All through dinner Alfredo Gorgio had stroked his silver goatee with self-satisfaction as he voiced his ambitions for the return of the Dorobon and the restoration of his family’s dominance beneath them. His smugness was sickening.

Some days Sordell wished their mission was to ruin the Gorgio instead, but then he remembered he despised the Nesti equally, albeit for different reasons.

Abruptly he decided all these Gorgio lordlings around him were unendurable. He stood and without a backwards glance stalked away. If that wasn’t ‘diplomatic’, well bugger them and rukk Gurvon too, for going off to Bres at this crucial stage of the plan. He waved to Benet and Terraux and his acolytes fell into place behind him as he stomped out of the hall. They were recent graduates from an Argundian college, his own picks, neither yet twenty. The dining hall fell silent until he and his acolytes were out of sight, then redoubled in noise, but he didn’t care. He was a weak-chinned man with lank hair. Worry was ageing him early, lining his pallid brow, plucking at his retreating hairline. He had shaping-gnosis, and when he exerted it he could make himself look younger, more handsome, but it took so much energy that he could rarely be bothered. And he could be charming if he felt like it, but he rarely did – what did the opinion of lesser men matter to someone like him? Let lesser beings like Vedya Smlarsk barter their powers for beauty; he had a higher purpose. Tonight he wanted the company of the stars, not mere humans. He needed to examine the future, see what the latest events portended.

He wondered what Elena Anborn was doing. He loathed her, for so many reasons. He hated that she was senior to him in Gyle’s cabal despite being only a half-blood. That sickened him: that he, Rutt Sordell, a pure-blood mage of an old house, was forced to play second fiddle to a mere woman just because she spread her legs for Gyle, who had always been blind to her faults. He hated the way she was always undermining him, pouring contempt on him whenever he made even the smallest miscalculation. It had given him a real feeling of satisfaction to see her show her true colours in betraying them. Now, at last, he had been recognised as Gyle’s number two. Arno Dolman had never been in the running, but he had worried that Vedya would use the same wiles as the Anborn bitch to win preeminence – but fortunately Gyle had seen sense.

Gyle’s absence worried him – what if something had happened? He glanced back at Benet and Terraux. They were good enough at parlour seductions and blackmail or blasting helpless spearmen, but they’d be no use in a real fight, not against someone like Anborn. He’d been divining furiously all week, but despite being almost certain she was penned in Forensa, the worry persisted.

Fuls was the guard at the door of the Moon Tower, a fellow Argundian, his flowing brown hair half-covered by his traditional conical helm. He let Fuls start reaching for his keys before unlocking the doors himself with a small gesture. He enjoyed these little demonstrations of power; they set him apart and made people nervous to be around him: they made up for so many things.

Benet was laughing at one of Terraux’s quips. He glared at them, gesturing at them to hurry up, then, fuelled by nervous energy, bounded effortlessly up the stairs, leaving his acolytes behind.

The Moon Tower’s top room had three great windows. Though they looked as if they were open to the skies, they were permanently warded, preventing birds, insects, even the wind, from intruding. Divination worked best under starlight – it was all to do with energy flows and disruptions; he’d written his thesis on it in college … ah, he missed the college where he had been regarded as heir-apparent to the headmaster until that unfortunate event when he’d been caught practising Necromancy – but they were orphans, not even real children … All those lost years, wasted years, until Gurvon Gyle had taken him in, restored his periapt, given him a new purpose. Gyle deserved his loyalty for such friendship, for valuing him properly. One day he would replace Gyle, when he retired, but he was prepared to wait, not like others, who’d made foolish plans to take over. They’d always resulted in bloody demises; Gyle always knew when someone was plotting against him.

He shut the door on Benet and Terraux. Tonight he needed to concentrate: there were rumours of Harkun movements in the north, where they were seldom seen. He lit the brazier in the centre of the tower room, added powders to the flames, then used the currents of smoke to channel his questions into visions. Time soared by unnoticed as he conjured visions and interpreted them carefully, determining the status and hostility of the natives. News flooded in from the spirit world: visions of campfires in the deserts, of Jhafi moving in larger than normal numbers – it was worse than he had thought. He would advise Alfredo Gorgio to send some of his men back north, maybe even send one of the team. Arno perhaps? But the walls … He cursed. Vedya, then. It would be well to get her out of the capital before she damaged relations with the Gorgio further through her mindless promiscuity.

He registered in passing the tiny flare of Dolman’s Earth-gnosis-powers, over to the west, beside the Angel Tower, but his mind was scanning the future, trying to determine where the Jhafi might be massing, where they might strike, who might lead them … suddenly some deep instinct made him look up, just before the Angel Tower lurched and he heard men screaming as the whole tower fell towards his own Moon Tower with irresistible, inevitable force. A more resolute mage than he might have had time to act, but he was frozen, both body and mind, unable to make the transition from the metaphysical to the material before all around him disintegrated as one tower struck the other.

Elena was already running above the courtyard, on a path formed from Air-gnosis, her three warriors following the trail of sparks she left, not daring to look down as they ran on nothing, held aloft by her powers alone. She had marked exactly the right spot on each of the towers, years ago, and now she had called up Dolman’s fading gnosis and expended most of it on the Angel Tower, to set it toppling in just the right direction. The Angel Tower wobbled, and for a moment it looked like it could go either way, before falling exactly as planned. She caught her breath as horrified screams erupted from inside, echoed from without as the men patrolling the battlements became aware of the unfolding destruction.

The cupola of the Angel Tower struck the Moon Tower a third of the way up, shattering against it and sending debris flying outwards, over the moat and into the plaza beyond. She felt lives being extinguished as people were crushed and prayed they were the enemy, not innocents. A crossbow bolt glanced off her shields and spun away. ‘Keep up,’ she screamed over her shoulder, trying not to think, One counter-spell and I’ll lose all three of them. She plunged into the clouds of dust billowing from the ruined edifices and out to the plaza before the keep, where the Moon Tower had fallen.

The plaza which had been so dark and silent a few seconds ago was in chaos. Lanterns were appearing in windows and faces peered wide-eyed at the debris strewn everywhere. The cobblestones of the plaza were shattered, and wooden beams jutted here and there from the piled rubble like the bones of some giant fallen beast. There were only a few bodies – the Moon Tower was not used for general accommodation. She could see the shattered body of a serving woman, and an Argundian, Rutt Sordell’s personal guard, Fuls. She sprinted down the currents of air, sending gusts ahead to clear the dust and reveal her prey.

She found Terraux first. The nasty little snot was already dead, pulped beneath a shattered wall. She couldn’t find Benet at all, but she’d felt him die; no loss there either. But where was Sordell? There! She landed lightly and fired a gnosis-bolt into the broken body. It jolted the prone, twisted form, but Sordell didn’t stir. She still approached cautiously, though his body was a pulped mess of torn flesh and shattered bone. He’d been trapped inside the falling tower and unable to use Air-gnosis to fly free. With no affinity to Earth-gnosis, all he’d been able to do was wrap himself in shields and hope. Such protection might work for instantaneous impacts, like weapons or missiles, but shields couldn’t withstand tons of rock raining down, and the result was the broken shape before her.

But Sordell had other resources: he was a Necromancer, and they were tougher to kill than cockroaches. She had seen him rise from apparent death before and she was taking no chances now. She fired another bolt into him, and this time she heard a tiny sigh even as Artaq closed in on him.

‘Artaq, stay back!’

‘He’s dead, lady. I’ll take his—’

Black light flashed from a twitching finger and caught the Jhafi warrior in the face. He screamed, his back arched and he fell. Even as Elena ran towards him she fired more bolts of energy at Sordell. His flesh was quivering in some unseen wind, rising up with jerking, unsteady movements. A soul-drain! Rukka! There was no help for Artaq; she could see that already.

As Sordell’s eyes opened she flung herself at him, her sword gripped in both hands. She punched through his shields in a flare of coruscating sparks and buried her sword in his gut. Blood sprayed and his flesh writhed frantically, trying to close itself. Sordell hurled a soul-drain at her too, but she met it with healing-wards, which weakened his attack. But she could not escape his ferocity unscathed: she felt the skin on her face dry, felt her hair wither like desiccated grass. Her lips split as she screamed in defiance and her fingers twisted, even as she threw her weight onto the pommel of her blade and drove it into his chest, through his heart. He flailed beneath her, and the skin on his face peeled away to reveal the muscles and tendons and sinews beneath, pulsing red and purulent yellow, as he howled.

‘Take his head!’ she screamed. ‘Cut it off!’

Sordell tried to climb up her blade, his heart spitted but his body, fuelled by Necromancy, fighting on. One purple-lit hand reached for her and gripped her throat, and as it tightened it seemed to be drawing the blood from her veins. Energy throbbed down into his arms, healing them, reviving him even as she struggled to counter his attack. ‘Kill him!’ she croaked as the fangs of his spell sucked her vitality away. He grinned madly up at her, his body reforming about him despite her efforts.

A blade swung, a sweep of silver that cleaved Sordell’s neck in two, wielded by a man screaming in fury. As the steel severed the neck it struck the stone beneath and the blade shattered. Sordell’s dreadful visage emptied and his fleshless skull rolled sideways. Elena fell to her knees over his body, propped up on the blade that still skewered his heart. Her hands were twisted with age, like knotted firewood. She felt hollow, broken, and it took all her strength just to look up at Lorenzo, who stood beside her, his broken sword in his hand.

‘Lori—’ Her voice was a withered croak. He backed away, raising a hand. Gods, how bad is it? Beyond him, Luca was backing away from the fallen Artaq. There was a hole in the Jhafi’s head where his face had been. That would have happened to her without her shields and healing-gnosis. All around them bells were ringing and voices shouting.

Luca gasped, ‘Donna Elena!’ and he pointed to Sordell’s head.

She half-glimpsed an eight-inch-wide multi-legged insectoid thing sliding from his mouth. She raised her twisted right hand and sent a weak bolt, but she was too slow; the hideous thing scuttled into the rubble and was lost from sight. Damn!

‘What was that?’ Luca gasped.

‘What’s left of Sordell,’ she rasped. She tried to find Vedya mentally, but she had no strength left. ‘We must go – Vedya will come, and if she catches us, we’re done.’

Luca bent over Artaq, said a few words, then left him where he lay. Lorenzo was still staring at her. ‘Elena, can you—? What happened?’

‘This is … nothing. I’ll be fine … just took all I had.’

‘Your hair,’ he said. He looked almost nauseous.

‘What?’ She tugged a strand from her ponytail and sucked in her breath. It had gone silver-grey. ‘It’s nothing, Lori … could have been much worse.’ She climbed to her feet, feeling desperately frail. Sordell’s attacks had pushed her to the very limit.

Lorenzo came over and reluctantly put an arm about her and helped her up. He looked like he could scarcely bear to be touching her. ‘Sorry, Lorenzo,’ she cackled mirthlessly. ‘I guess you won’t be wanting my kiss any more.’ She grimaced inside at how hysterical and hideous her voice sounded – and at the self-pity of her words. As she clung to the young knight, he looked at her, his face unreadable, but he didn’t let go of her. ‘I’ll claim one later,’ he said in a low voice.

‘Get us out of here and I’ll freely give it,’ she croaked, her sword shaking in her clawed hand.

Luca Fustinios suddenly took to his heels, leapt a pile of broken masonry and started rummaging around amidst the strewn rubble. ‘Lady Elena – look!’

‘What? Luca, we have to get out of here, now—’

But the little Javonesi was ignoring her. He bent over something, then straightened carefully, holding something in his arms. He turned towards them with a beaming grin. He was holding Solinde Nesti. The princess was unconscious and battered, but she was undeniably alive.

Lorenzo squeezed Elena’s arm and whispered, ‘Sol et Lune, the princessa!’

Elena stared, stunned. She must have been in a lower room of the Moon Tower, she thought, but how could she possibly have survived? Was she shielded, or imprisoned in a warded cell? But all her questions could wait; right now they had to get out of there. ‘Let’s get her away from here,’ she rasped.

<Elena – is that you?> Vedya’s mind teased hers.

Damn. ‘We’ve got to go, now – Luca, can you carry the princessa? Come on—’ She tottered free of Lorenzo’s arms and poured what last scrap of energy she could summon into her legs, trying to counter Sordell’s spell. She felt utterly stricken – an unwanted preview of old age. Her limbs felt like frail twigs, and it hurt her tortured throat to breathe.

But fear whipped them all along and they broke into a slow trot. At first they ran through empty streets, then hooves clattered behind them and they swerved into an alley. After another block Luca handed Solinde to Lorenzo and loaded his crossbow. He ran back a few steps, dropped to one knee and fired down the alley they had just left.

A horse shrieked, and they heard it crash to the cobblestones, its rider screaming.

Elena? Ah, there you are. Vedya’s tinkling giggle filled her mind.

‘Faster,’ she croaked, screaming inside in frustration and terror. We can’t survive Vedya, not when I’m so far gone …

Booted feet echoed behind them. Luca had already reloaded; now he fired again, and as they heard another death-cry, someone yelled, ‘It’s a dead-end! They’re trapped!’ from somewhere nearby.

It better not be a rukking dead-end, Elena thought as her mind filled with images of what Vedya would do to her if she caught her. ‘Run!’ she whispered.

<I’m coming, Elena,> that insidious whisper cooed in her mind again, and she sensed the Sydian witch’s approach, three hundred yards above and behind them and closing by the second. ‘Get through the walls, Lori, and then run,’ she croaked calmly. ‘Take the princessa to safety.’

Luca ran past them, guiding them to the gap in the walls where they had slipped through, one of the many points Dolman hadn’t had time to fix. He pushed Elena through, then helped Lorenzo carry Solinde through. An arrow flew out of the darkness, struck the wall and pinged away, followed by another that flew through the gap. Luca grasped a support strut in the half-completed structure and pulled with all his strength until a section of the wall fell inwards, sealing the gap. They turned away from the blockage and found themselves at the top of a slope that led down to the close-packed shacks of the Jhafi.

Lorenzo led the way, Solinde in his arms, mercifully still unconscious. Luca helped Elena down. Though his eyes betrayed his horror at what Elena had become, he didn’t falter. Barely had they reached the Jhafi shanties when an incandescent shape appeared above the walls. Vedya wore a silk dress, red as blood, and her waist-length black hair flew about her like the wings of a raven.

‘Do you have a plan, Ella?’ Lorenzo whispered, pulling her into the lee of a half-built wall. Luca knelt and reloaded his crossbow, as his eyes tracked the witch.

Not really. ‘Get under cover, damnit, before—’

Vedya swooped over them and a vivid blast of blue fire erupted from her finger and struck Luca even as he fired. His bolt was snatched away by the torrent of energy that picked him up and flung him against a mud-brick wall. His mouth was open in voiceless agony and he started twitching, as if being moved by the invisible strings of some puppet-master.

Vedya vanished behind a roof, no doubt wary of a counter-strike, but Elena didn’t have the energy.

Lorenzo put Solinde down and stood over her, his broken sword in hand, scanning the skies. ‘What is the plan, Elena?’ he demanded.

I had a plan, but in that plan I was fresh and undamaged. ‘We have to draw her in, Lori, and take her down with weapons. She isn’t a fighter.’

‘But all she has to do is stay up there and the Gorgio will be on top of us!’

‘I never said it was a good plan.’ She struggled to put one foot beneath her. On the ground Solinde moaned. I do this for you, Princessa. She grimaced in pain as she stood, then tottered out into the narrow alleyway. A bright shape swooped towards her like one of Kore’s angels.

Vedya Smlarsk first met Gurvon Gyle at Northpoint, the tower placed by the Ordo Costruo where the Leviathan Bridge was anchored, south of Pontus. She had come with her man, Hygor, to look upon the great tower – the Tower of the Eye, the Sydians called it, Ureche Turla, where the hated magi gazed out eternally over the Bridge. The Bridge itself was deep beneath the waves, midway through its tide-cycle. Ureche Turla was a mighty sight: as delicate as an ivory carving, yet a mile high, festooned with massive cables and platforms where windships could dock. The blue light in its uppermost tower room shone like a star.

Vedya’s mother had seduced a Bridge Builder mage nineteen years previously, though she was already married. There was no shame in the seduction – all knew that to bear a mage-child was to bring wealth and status to the clan. Her mother had been nubile and skilled in the arts of the flesh. She was often called upon to consecrate the sacred union with the priests on feast days, when they would mate before the tribe to bring blessings upon the harvest – though they were nomads, horse herders, they would settle in spring to grow a single harvest of barley, oats and wheat to sustain them through winter.

Vedya grew up a privileged child, one whom men fought over. The few magi the tribe had managed to breed lived together in the Sfera, or Circle, sharing an intense rivalry and kinship, teaching each other what snippets of mage-craft they learned. All the Sfera were part-Rondian, of course, mostly quarter-bloods and eighth-bloods, but Vedya was a full half-blood, with affinities to water and animals. When she bled, she was married off to a powerful man, Hygor of the Armasar Rasa clan, as his fourth wife. He took her virginity before the whole clan at the height of the wedding celebrations while his three other wives watched her with dark unreadable eyes. He was twice her age. She was thirteen.

That night in Pontus she became aware of another man watching Ureche Turla. Hygor had already noted him, wary hunter that he was. At first she thought the stranger, clad in Sydian leathers, one of the clan, but as he approached, the wind pushed back his hood, and the moonlight revealed that he wasn’t Sydian at all; he was Rondian. And he wasn’t watching the tower. He was watching her.

Hygor growled: an outsider looking openly upon a Sydian woman was an unacceptable challenge to her husband’s manhood. This man didn’t look like a fighter, but neither did he cringe when Hygor strode angrily towards him. He was smallish for a Rondian, with a ferret-like face and a compact body. Hygor no doubt intended to kill him – until he saw the crystal pulsing at his throat. The man was a vrajitoare, a mage.

Vedya had feared for Hygor. He was a good mate: he was virile and protective and he favoured her above his other wives. But the vrajitoare had raised a hand in peace, and he and Hygor had talked. The vrajitoare knew the Sydian tongue. When Hygor returned, it was with a stunned look upon his face. In his hands were three woven leather bracelets, each set with twelve diamonds, each stone alone worth one hundred horses. She remembered the tremor she felt when she saw them. Hygor reached out and broke her bridal necklace, spilling the pottery beads onto the rocky hillside. ‘Wife, you are no longer my wife. You belong to this man.’ His eyes were like plates, luminous in the moonlight.

She had fallen to her knees and wailed – it was expected. But her mind was already moving forward, even as Hygor walked away.

‘My name is Gurvon Gyle,’ the vrajitoare told her as he silenced her grief-cries with a gesture. ‘You belong to me. Come.’

She missed Hygor and the simplicity of tribal life sometimes, but her first child to Hygor had left her barren, so she could no longer strengthen the clan. Her daughter would enrich the Sfera, but she brought Hygor nothing more now. She was worth considerably less than three thousand six hundred horses. Hygor had got a very good price for her.

At first she had been confused: this man Gyle would not consummate their marriage, instead spending his nights with a tired older woman who was also not his wife. But gradually things became clearer to Vedya: she was merely Gyle’s servant; the other woman, a hostile, cynical creature called Elena Anborn, was his lover. Gyle had purchased Vedya not for his bed, but to teach her, to realise her potential, he said, to make her useful to him. So she learned how to shield, and how to blast enemies with energy, and other skills even those of the Sfera didn’t know: wonderful things; how to fly, how to read minds, how to deceive people. They opened up her horizons, clever Gyle and his cold Elena.

Gradually the thought grew in her mind that were she to supplant Elena in Gyle’s bed, she would enjoy greater status and privilege among the other vrajitoare he employed. She noticed that their relationship was based on habit, old memories, remembered passions. When she spied on them, she saw the dull, uninspired way they coupled briefly, then rolled apart, and how they talked, sharing ideas but never dreams. It was easy to drive a wedge between them: she was young and beautiful, exotic, comfortable with her body and her desires. She had performed before the entire clan with Hygor many times, and witnessed others, learning new tricks to please a man – and herself. It was easy to drop hints, to expose a little flesh for his eyes only. She could be patient, for him – and there was much more for her to learn, once she understood their purpose: to kill enemies for money. That came easily to her too.

It wasn’t hard to find ways to be alone with Gurvon Gyle. The first time, in Verelon, he had fallen upon her without finesse, taken her quickly, guiltily, but the next time she had slowed him down and taught him how to enjoy her fully. And though she had no pretensions of intellect, she was a good listener; it took no great mind to know Gyle wanted to be thought wise, not to be contradicted, as Elena always did. And he believed himself to be a masterly lover – all men did. She knew better than most how to make a man feel good. With his body enslaved and his mind engaged, he was hers.

She had enjoyed watching the realisation come upon Elena Anborn that her lover was being stolen. It was amusing to witness the way she pretended it wasn’t happening, how she humiliated herself trying to look more beautiful, while Gyle found reasons to send her from him. He might have pretended to Elena that she was still important to him, but they were empty words: Vedya ruled Gurvon Gyle.

Vedya swooped above the forest of crude buildings that fringed the inner walls of Brochena, seeing with night-sighted eyes. Elena Anborn hobbled out of cover, her face hooded, her movements awkward. Is she wounded? Vedya licked her lips. Now was the time for the pupil to become the master. The little crossbowman lay twitching in the open and she blasted him again, enjoying his death-spasm. There was still no counter-strike from Elena, to her surprise.

Has she nothing left? She fought a sense of exultation and focused on the second man below: a Rimoni knight, cowering under cover… And Jhafi, hundreds of them, huddling like beetles in a rotting log. Vedya knew many ways to destroy an enemy. This will be amusing, she thought as she started building a fresh attack based upon mesmerism-gnosis.

With a harsh cry she sent a wave of despair through the minds of all in the vicinity. She felt old men and women of the Jhafi imagine their own deaths, and their hearts gave up beating. Children dreamed the deaths of their mothers and wailed in utter despair. Men suddenly thinking themselves castrated howled in agony, hands clutched to their groins as they grovelled in the dirt. Women clenched their wombs, imagining them shrivelling and cancerous. All the while she expected the bent figure of Elena Anborn to counter her, but nothing came.

She has nothing left! She concentrated next on the Rimoni knight, slid inside his mind, knew him in a heartbeat: a young man, infatuated with Elena Anborn. What is it with this shrivelled old woman? His sexual awakening had come at the hands of an older woman and in his mind he had interwoven Elena with that now-dead lover. But this night he had seen the ruthless killer behind Elena’s fair mask. Vedya crowed as she saw him relive the way Elena’s youth had been destroyed by Sordell; his mind showed her just how horrifically disfigured Elena was now, like a shattered egg, the yolk spilled, the shell broken. His confusion was a tangible thing, an easy weapon to grasp.

<She’s an abomination> she whispered into his mind. <She cares nothing for you. How she looks now: that is her true appearance! See the hag within exposed, her vileness laid bare! Strike her down, rid this world of her—>

Vedya exulted as she saw him step from the shadows behind Elena’s back. This was truly her hour. She glided down, parrying a feeble mage-bolt. Elena’s hood fell back, exposing aged skin and coarse grey hair. She was bent like an old woman, her hands clawed. The knight was four easy strides behind her, his sword raised – it was broken, but still a foot long, still lethal.

Vedya spoke to distract her. ‘Elena. You’re looking your age.’

Elena straightened slightly, her prematurely old face grimacing with effort. Behind her the knight swung, but somehow Elena twisted, did something that made the knight collapse as if deflated. Vedya recoiled in alarm, but Elena’s leg buckled and she fell to her knees, gasping for breath. The light within her periapt dimmed. She looked like some toothless granny, begging for gruel in the markets.

Ha! Vedya landed, stepped in and slapped her, her hand cracking across Elena’s face. No shields softened the attack, and the satisfaction of that physical blow was magnificent. Elena tried to raise her own sword, but Vedya stamped on her wrist. Bones snapped. Elena whimpered in agony and Vedya slammed a bolt of gnosis-fire into her. As she convulsed her mouth opened in a wordless scream as her skin seared and blistered. The energy crackled, frying her. One more would kill her.

No – too merciful. She knelt above her, the woman who’d taught her more about the gnosis than any other: her mentor in magic, her rival in love, now utterly helpless beneath her. ‘Elena, darling, do you remember teaching me the Soul-Devourer,’ she whispered, ‘how to consume the mind and powers of another? That is what I shall do to you, and your soul will dwell eternally in mine, shrieking in despair and rage as I take everything that was once yours: your powers, your memories. You will be at my disposal, helpless within me for the rest of my life.’ She slid her mind through Elena’s remaining shields. The woman’s resistance was pitiful. See, I remember the spell well … She let the snake of her gnosis coil about the tiny, fragile core that was all that remained of Elena Anborn’s power and opened her jaws to swallow.

A dry voice whispered inside her mind, <You didn’t think I’d taught you properly, did you?>

The darkness changed. The lights went out and she screamed. And kept on screaming as a billion claws pulled her into oblivion.

Elena came to herself slowly. It had been such a gamble! She had been totally emptied out, her stamina gone, her powers all but spent. Countering Vedya’s manipulation of Lorenzo had used up her last reserves – all but the one sliver she forced herself to hold back, the only slim chance she had left. If the Sydian had used mage-bolts or stabbed her, or simply sat and waited for the Gorgio soldiers, Elena would have been helpless – and now dead. But Elena had taught Vedya that the Soul-Devourer technique was always the best way to destroy a helpless mage, for it would give the devouring mage greater power. That was true, but it was also something of a trap, for it opened a path for a counter-blow, one that could only be blocked if you knew the technique. Elena had never even mentioned that to Vedya, let alone taught her that technique. Always have a plan …

Now her rival’s empty carcase was lying in the filth of the alley, her glassy eyes lifeless. She was as dead as it was possible to be: her soul was gone for ever. The spirit world would never receive her, no Necromancer or Healer could ever restore life. That tiny spark of awareness that had flowed into Elena had dissolved and gone. Beautiful, manipulative, obsessive Vedya had simply ceased to exist.

What a monster I have become. But I live and I have her life-energy, until it dissipates …

She pulled herself up. Ignoring her bloodied knees, she dragged herself through the stony dirt of the alley to Lorenzo. She rested her head on his chest. It rose and fell shallowly. Thanks be …

She used some of what she had taken from Vedya to send calmness to the surviving Jhafi, huddled unseen in the surrounding hovels. There were dozens dead, and many more who would be mentally scarred for life. She closed Luca’s staring eyes, berating herself for being unable to protect him, then turned to the Rimoni knight.

She sent a little wakefulness into him and cushioned his mind as consciousness returned. When he woke and his eyes found her face, she heard him stiffen and gasp. He threw her off him and cringed in the dirt. ‘Diablo,’ he hissed, ‘don’t touch me.’

How much was the remnants of Vedya’s spell she couldn’t tell. Oh Lori. I warned you not to come.

The hue and cry died down; the Gorgio had seen Vedya’s demise and now feared to follow. Jhafi men came out of the rabbit-warren of buildings and found Elena, huddled protectively over the prone body of Solinde, with Lorenzo in a daze nearby, his face turned away. These men were loyal to one Mustaq al’Madhi, ostensibly a trader, known as, amongst other less salubrious nicknames, ‘the Sultan of the Souks’. But Mustaq al’Madhi had a complicated personal code which currently favoured the Nesti among the Rimoni noble families. Elena and Solinde were wrapped in bekira-shrouds, then the three survivors were borne through the tangle of alleyways ripe with the smells of rotting food, human and animal waste and the sweat of unwashed bodies. The smoke of a myriad cooking fires set Elena coughing helplessly, like the oldest crone in the market.

Behind them, more Jhafi men were carrying the bodies of Sordell and Vedya and shouting in triumph, waving weapons produced from hidden caches. Drums started beating and torches lit up the night, gleaming scarlet and orange off bared scimitars and knives. They wound their way to Dom-al’Ahm Plaza, where Mustaq al’Madhi awaited them, surrounded by his fighting men. Some had brought meat-hooks for the corpses of the hated magi. His brutish face was beaming as he clapped Elena on her shoulders, nearly sending her sprawling.

‘This is a night of glory, Lady Elena!’ he shouted exultantly. ‘Five of the devils! It is a shame that Shaitan Gyle was not here too, to taste the same bitter defeat.’

If Gurvon had been here this would not have happened, she thought numbly, but what she said was, ‘Bring me scrolls, to pin on their bodies.’

Her voice was so cracked that even al’Madhi, who barely knew her, noticed. ‘Lady, you are afflicted?’

‘Just temporarily, Mustaq. You need not worry. I will be fine again soon.’

He backed away a little at this reminder of the dreaded gnosis, but he remained friendly. ‘You have given much for us, lady,’ he said. ‘We will tend you. Everything we have is yours. May Ahm bless you eternally.’

I don’t know that Ahm cares much for Rondian magi. She bowed in thanks, nevertheless. ‘I will keep the princessa with me,’ she told him. ‘She must be restored to the Queen-Regent.’

‘And put on trial, Lady,’ he added grimly. ‘She has been with them.’ He spat eloquently.

‘And put on trial,’ Elena agreed, sadly.

The Gorgio soldiers did not leave the Inner City, but ranks of legionaries manned the walls, peering out over the Jhafi dwellings as rejoicing spread like wildfire. The drums beat all night and whooping cries echoed around the shanties. Threats were called up to the Gorgio, goading them:

‘Come, come and join our celebration.’

‘All your magi-devils are dead.’

‘Would you like to mourn the fallen? Come to the Dom-al’Ahm tomorrow.’

‘Death to the Gorgio; long live the Nesti!’

Some of the Gorgio solders were visibly champing at the bit to attack, but discipline and the shouted orders of their officers held them in place.

Dawn found the Outer City wreathed in smoke. Alfredo Gorgio himself came and peered out across the city. He looked shaken. The soldiers locked down the Inner City. Paralysis gripped Brochena.

For the next few days Elena closeted herself in a room of Mustaq al’Madhi’s house. She mostly slept, and when awake concentrated on healing herself, especially the broken wrist, to make sure the bones were not permanently weakened. In the mirror she was confronted with a vision of what old age would look like. She told herself it wasn’t so bad: a gaunt face, but fine-boned, not unpleasant, but still it made her weep. Her hair was grey, but she could see blonde at the roots, so she took some shears and cut it all back to the regrowth. It made her look alien, but it was better than looking seventy. Let them think it’s a fashion decision.

After that, she set about restoring herself to the woman she had been. As the days passed, her vigour gradually returned. Full recovery would take months; for now, her face had more lines and the hair growing back with gnosis-assisted speed was a paler blonde with silver strands. She looked frightful for a couple of days as her skin flaked and peeled off, but the skin beneath was smooth and glowing – though being half-killed by Necromancy was never going to be popular as a beauty treatment.

Lorenzo did not come near her. She wanted to help him, but she was the last person he wanted to see, so she made Solinde her main concern. The princessa regained consciousness the day after her rescue, but she was sullen and refused to talk to anyone. Elena had taught Cera and Solinde mind-blanking to prevent magi from prying in their minds. Now Solinde used Elena’s own teaching against her, refusing to let her into her mind. She could not say how she had survived the Moon Tower’s fall. Perhaps she had just been extraordinarily lucky.

Mustaq and the other headmen managed to restrain the Jhafi population from assaulting the citadel, though some of the younger men fired arrows at men on the walls. The word went round: ‘Wait. The Nesti are coming.’ But it was the Gorgio who moved first, a few days after Elena’s attack. Trumpets blared and a legion marched from the Inner City, down the Kingsway to Dom-al’Ahm Plaza. As row upon row of soldiers filled the square, the Jhafi silently encircled them. A cohort secured each flank, while the fifth cohort marched in the centre. The legion commander rode amidst a plethora of shields raised about him in a tortoise formation to the meat-hooks that had been hung in the centre of the plaza. Every Gorgio legionary looked at them once, reading the signs writ large and bold, and winced.

The headless corpse of Arno Dolman hung upside down, his intestines entwined about the hook. A huge nail tacked a sign to his flesh that read The Man of Stone. Beside him hung the grisly but unrecognisable remains of Benet and Terraux, with the legend The Blasphemous Twins pinned above them, referring to a well-known cautionary Amteh parable about homosexuality. Rutt Sordell’s head was on the top of a spike, the rest of his body impaled lower down. His sign read: Slayer of the King. Beside him, Vedya’s perfect body was similarly defiled, and her scroll read: The Whore of Shaitan.

The next day, the Gorgio fled the city.

The news of the enemy’s flight spread swiftly. Mustaq al’Madhi led his men cautiously into the Inner City the next day, surrounding Elena, who was shrouded in black and carried on a palanquin. The Jhafi warriors treated her with deference and fear. The drums and cymbals beat out the rhythm of vengeance and children danced in triumph as their elders sacked any Rimoni house not flying a Nesti pennant and butchered families who had publicly aligned themselves with the Gorgio usurpers. There were few of those, luckily, but they came across some grisly sights as they wound through the streets.

When they arrived at the palace, they stepped carefully through the wreckage of the fallen Moon Tower and circled towards the main gates, which stood invitingly open. ‘My men have scouted, Lady Elena,’ Mustaq told her as he helped her down, ‘but we have found something strange. We need your assistance, if it pleases you.’

Her hands shook, but she could straighten herself again, and her sword hand and wrist had regained some of their old strength. She hobbled along using a rough staff to balance her while her mind searched ahead. There was refuse everywhere. One deserted courtyard was littered with discarded tack and harness; another held dozens of broached casks – whatever wine the Gorgio could not take with them, left to run into the drains in an act of spite. Cats crawled through the wreckage, mewling and hissing, and in one place squabbling violently over something: the right arm and leg of a man protruding from a shallow grave. His flesh was rotting in the midday sun.

At their approach, the cats backed away, yowling. Mustaq signalled and a couple of men wrapped cloth about their noses and mouths and began digging. It didn’t take them long to uncover a naked man, tall with long golden hair: Fernando Tolidi, Solinde’s Gorgio sweetheart.

Why would they kill Fernando? Elena wondered, but she was distracted by more men running into the courtyard, shouting in agitation: there were more graves in the gardens. Elena put a hand to her mouth and hurried along with the crowd.

Hundreds of crows rose like a black cloud from a square in the shadow of the Royal Tower. The Jhafi stiffened, some fell to their knees, wailing, and Elena herself reeled at the dreadful smell. The last act of the fleeing Gorgio had been to butcher the palace’s Jhafi staff. Elena felt a terrible weight of guilt fall upon her as they walked across the bloodstained square. None of this would have happened if I had not come.

She looked down on the bodies of the women and men of the servants’ quarters, their eyes sightless, their faces locked in their final expressions of terror or resignation. There were forty-eight of them. She felt tears running down her cheeks, and closed her eyes. She let grief wash through her. It wasn’t cleansing at all.

After a time she sent her mind questing ahead, seeking life. There – up, to the left!

She led the Jhafi men cautiously, but there were no hidden archers or ambushes. Each room looked partially ransacked, as if the Gorgio had seized anything they could carry of value as plunder in a hurried escape. But in one room, hidden amidst a pile of debris and fallen tapestries, she found a large locked chest. Mustaq sidled forward and gingerly prised it open with a crowbar. When the lock snapped with a crack, they all jumped.

Inside was a Jhafi girl, her dirty face tear-streaked. She shrank into the chest, whimpering pitifully.

‘Hush child,’ Mustaq murmured. ‘This is Lady Elena of the Nesti. She will not harm you.’

The girl looked unconvinced. She had a dark face, with a child’s upturned nose, and was skinny as a broom. Elena remembered her now: Tarita, one of the younger maids, fourteen or fifteen years old, and tiny, well short of five feet tall. She had been a sparkling, cheeky girl, prone to forgetfulness – once she had absentmindedly carried a pitcher of cold water up to Elena’s chambers for bathing, forgetting it was supposed to be heated. She had feared a tongue-lashing, or worse, but Elena had gently jested with her, and she had been quick to join the joke, telling Elena she could no doubt warm it with magic. She was in shock now. Elena wondered how she had escaped.

‘Tarita,’ she said softly, ‘will you heat some water for my bath?’

The girl almost smiled, then hid her face. It took time to coax the girl into her arms. As a Jhafi woman led the girl away to care for her, Elena told herself, I must not forget her. We need to know what she saw.

There were no other survivors, just rooms strewn with broken furniture and discarded non-essentials. The tower room where Bastido lay waiting hadn’t been touched. She’d primed Bastido to attack on cinque if anyone else came in, which might’ve had something to do with that. Her own room had been destroyed, of course. Someone, Vedya, she presumed, had taken the time and trouble to go through her wardrobe and rip up every piece of clothing she owned, then she’d pissed on everything. It stank and it hurt a little, but she’d expected it.

At least I was wearing my gems.

The Nesti retook Brochena in an atmosphere of carnival two weeks later. The hated Gorgio had come, and they had shown their true nature in murder and regicide, but they had fled without battle. Cera Nesti’s courage following the death of her family was already legendary, and the celebrations were spontaneous and genuine. Elena waited with Mustaq al’Madhi and his Jhafi on the main steps of the palace as Cera’s party wound through the streets. The cheering and singing grew closer while Elena sweated beneath her hooded robes.

The Queen-Regent didn’t keep them waiting too long. Elena dreaded assassins in the crowd, but Cera negotiated the throng safely, touching the hands of well-wishers, a heroine to the masses crowding the plaza. She was composed, her gestures controlled. The girl had gone; she was a woman. She is born to this. The thought made Elena both proud and apprehensive.

As Cera climbed the stairs, her eyes found Elena. She frowned at her shroud. Elena had written, but reading was not the same as witnessing. Elena’s healing-gnosis had softened most of the effects of Sordell’s necromancy, but she was not yet her old self. Her silver-blonde hair was half an inch long, her face was lined. She looked ten years older, by normal human standards.

Cera worked her way down the line, greeting the waiting nobles and heads of bureaucracy, until she reached Elena. At her first close sight of her protector, the Queen-Regent gasped and swallowed. Then she masked her features and embraced her. ‘Ella – Deo! What have they done to you?’ She ran her hand over Elena’s scalp. ‘I hardly recognise you.’

‘I heard short hair would be the look this winter.’ Elena winked.

Cera seized Elena’s hand and kissed it, then pulled her into a tight embrace. ‘You have won us back the kingdom, Ella.’ Her whisper was fervent. ‘You are a miracle-worker!’

‘Oh, it’s just my job,’ Elena replied drily.

‘I love you, Ella. You are Sol et Lune to me.’

‘Shhh! That’s blasphemy, Cera – it’ll annoy the drui.’ She patted her cheek and gave her a serious look. ‘Solinde refused to attend. I can’t get through to her – she’s shielding from me, and if I use gnostic force to break through, I’ll hurt her. The Jhafi want her executed for treason.’

Cera’s face clouded. ‘Later, Ella. Today I have to look happy.’ She leaned forward and whispered in her ear, ‘Mustaq’s people have slaughtered a thousand Gorgio sympathisers and he’s given me a list of three thousand more.’ Her eyes met Elena’s. ‘What do I do?’

Elena swallowed. ‘Say nothing. Talk to me later.’ She squeezed her hand, then stepped back and curtseyed. ‘Later.’

Cera looked at her for an instant longer, then she regained her composure and swept on to the next person, a smile once more on her lips.

Elena slipped backwards through the crowd, troubled, whilst all around her people rejoiced. She noticed Lorenzo following her with his eyes, but he looked away when he realised she had noticed.

Four of them made the decision: Cera, Elena, Comte Piero Inveglio and Mustaq al’Madhi, who had become indispensable with terrifying efficiency. After a measured beginning, the meeting became increasingly acrimonious. Finally Mustaq was on his feet, jabbing a finger at Inveglio. ‘When the Gorgio came, all manner of people in the Merchant and Crafts Guilds flocked about them, grubbing for money, shamelessly rolling over like dogs for their new masters – there must be a reckoning!’

Inveglio protested, ‘But most of those on this list – I know them! – had no choice but to comply. When a usurper places a knife to your throat, only a fool denies him!’

‘You are protecting your friends, your “business associates”,’ Mustaq spat. ‘These people got rich on Gorgio money; they suckled at the enemy teat, and now my people demand retribution.’ He redirected his demands to Cera. ‘The Gorgio slaughtered the palace servants like animals! These people abetted that by their fawning upon the Gorgio. There must be a purge, sanctioned and run by the Nesti, or blood will flow without sanction, this I promise you!’

Cera turned to Elena, her tones a little pleading. ‘Ella, what should I do?’

Elena looked at her appraisingly, thinking, This is what kingship is, Cera: not all parades and pretty speeches, but wielding the knife judiciously. ‘There was a Rimoni poet, Nikos Mandelli, who advised the emperors of Rym before the coming of the magi. He wrote extensively about how to rule an empire. The Church banned his writings, but they have been recovered and distributed among the magi. In his book Imperator Mandelli said that a ruler must be both loved and feared. Sometimes this can be achieved with kindness and mercy, but sometimes harsher means must be utilised. Your goal is to secure the Nesti in power. You cannot permit those who supported the Gorgio coup to continue without sanction; that would weaken your standing with the majority of the people. Your path is clear.’

Mustaq stabbed his finger at Elena. ‘As the jadugara says!’ he exclaimed triumphantly while Comte Inveglio buried his head in his hands and Cera swallowed, her face white.

‘Prison and trials, not killings!’ she demanded as Mustaq bowed and strode from the room.

For a week Cera gave Mustaq his head, and Nesti soldiery carried out what was required. The streets were filled with squads of men making raids on the accused merchants and the dungeons beneath the Castel Regium filled up. Inevitably it got out of hand as the lists got longer and longer. Elena suspected the bureaucrats administering the lists were taking bribes from people to settle scores. There would be months of trials before anything could be done, and in the meantime the gaol was bursting at the seams. Worst of all, possible collaborators’ names were being leaked to the public and then targeted by lynch-mobs. Those scenes took Elena back to places like Knebb during the Revolt. They were not memories she wanted to revisit ever again.

It all took a toll on Cera. The waves of guilt and sickness at what she had unleashed gave way to a new coldness and remorselessness that was frightening to see in the eyes of one so young.

Elena was scared for her. She reminds me of me, during the Revolt …

After seven days Cera lifted martial law and the Nesti soldiers returned to keeping the peace. She ordered a city-wide clean-up to wash away all traces of that week, and it went ahead alongside the funerals. She ordered the reconstruction of buildings, which took time, while the dungeons beneath the palace overflowed. The people no longer cheered her unquestioningly, and she began to dread public appearances. ‘Half of them hate me now,’ she wept into Elena’s arms.

Despite this, she presided over the endless trials of the alleged collaborators, fining all but the most genuinely extreme cases. Some saw it as leniency and weakness, others as mercy and strength. She came to terms with one of life’s truths: you can’t please everyone.

By the last day of the year, Timori had recovered enough to sleep in his own room, as long as Borsa slept outside his door. Cera had moved into the royal suite, though she was visibly uncomfortable to be sleeping where her dead parents had once slept, and Elena had Rutt Sordell’s old chambers outside Cera’s doors, which she hated. The rescued Jhafi girl Tarita became Elena’s maid, revealing a gift of laughter that Elena badly needed, especially on mornings when she came back from her work-outs bent double with pain. The girl turned fifteen shortly after they’d found her, and she appeared to have put whatever horrors she had seen behind her quickly. She knew how to play tabula and to Elena’s embarrassment she usually won. Some master strategist, whipped at the Game of Kings by a maid.

Lorenzo remained wary, whether horrified by what he’d seen Elena do, or as a result of Vedya’s mind-manipulation, though he was always polite. And Solinde continued to behave like a stranger.

Cera enlarged the Regency Council with selected Jhafi leaders, including Mustaq al’Madhi. She reaffirmed their commitment to the shihad, and envoys were sent to Salim, Sultan of Kesh. Alfredo Gorgio was declared outlaw, and they prepared for war against the Gorgio, though they were in no condition for such a conflict.

The matter of Fernando Tolidi’s death nagged at the back of Elena’s mind, but she was too busy to deal with it. Solinde refused to be reconciled, and it was beginning to look like she must either go on trial or be quietly removed from the arena. The prison beneath Krak di Condotiori in the southern mountains was the traditional place for high-ranking political prisoners. They prepared for her transfer.

It was six months until the Moontide and Brochena rang with activity. Spies told them that Gurvon Gyle had been spotted in the Gorgio stronghold of Hytel. The Gorgio were severely weakened, having been harried by Jhafi all the way home, but if the mage was still with them, that was reason for caution.

It was from Hebusalim that the most puzzling news came: the head of the Bridge Builders, old Antonin Meiros, had remarried – even more shocking, his new bride was a Lakh girl from a family no one had ever heard of. Had the old mage gone senile? It was disgusting, the old goat purchasing some poor girl. The Hebb called for his head in the streets of the villages and the Kesh burned him in effigy while singing of shihad. The few windships that flew from Pontus spoke of mustering legions. The world was arming for war, and Javon had no choice but to follow suit.