The Night of the Swarm

12

15 Modobrin 941

Eberzam Isiq awoke to the laughter of the witch. She was in the next cabin, Gregory’s cabin, and so was Gregory himself. Isiq could hear them plainly; the interior walls on the Dancer were as flimsy as the rest of the boat.

Twilight, the Gulf flat and still. They stood becalmed off the Haunted Coast; the last stage in their journey to the Empress would happen in the dark. Isiq was obeying an old dictum of the Service: When there is no task before you, your task is sleep. He’d been a champion napper since his tarboy days; he could sleep through combat drills. So why had Suthinia Pathkendle’s laugh woken him so easily, cutting through his sleep like a knife through muslin? She was laughing at her husband’s yarn, something about a dog and a dairy maid. At Isiq’s bedside, the dog from Simjalla City gave a low, offended growl.

‘Did you hear that? “Lazy cur”, indeed! Lazy notions about all things canine, more like.’

Suthinia laughed again, and Isiq experienced a moment of ridiculous jealousy. They were sounding very much like a couple, that former couple. And now they had apparently retreated to the captain’s tiny chamber to wait for nightfall.

The dog stared in the direction of the voices. ‘Every time he speaks of someone low or despicable, it’s “The dog!” or “That stinking dog!” Well you’re no rose garden yourself, Captain. You smell like old socks, dead fish and someone’s nappy shaken together in a bag.’

‘He doesn’t mean it,’ said the little tailor bird, standing in the open porthole. ‘In fact I think he’s fond of you. He beamed when you told him you wanted to come aboard. Only don’t expect too much of him. He’s not an educated man like our friend Isiq.’

The dog scratched behind an ear. ‘If he says “lazy cur” once more. I’ll give him a mouthful of education.’

Isiq sat up and groped for his boots. ‘Dog,’ he said quietly, ‘you know human nature, and how to survive on human streets. That is fine knowledge, and hard-earned to be sure. But you know nothing of life at sea. There is a code we must keep here, because it governs our own survival. Respect the captain, even a captain you hate — and never speak idly of rebellion. It will be no idle day if ever you are forced to stand by such words. Now let’s get above.’

Nothing had changed on the topdeck save the light, which was failing fast. The clipper was surrounded, as before, by mist: great rafts of white mist, so thick in places that one could imagine parting them like curtains. They were famous, these mists of the Haunted Coast: ambulatory mists, Gregory had called them. And it was true that they seemed to wander this part of the Gulf like flocks of sheep, independent of the winds and one another, capricious in what they obscured or revealed.

Just as well that they had anchored six miles out. For when the mists did part, one could catch a glimpse of the sprawling graveyard between the Dancer and the shore. Men had perished here in untold numbers — upon the jagged reefs, the shifting sandbars, the countless rocky islets that loomed suddenly out of the mists. The rumours were many and fantastical: rip tides so powerful they could tear a ship free of its chains. A black mould in the seaweed that turned one’s flesh to grey slime that sloughed off the bone. And sea-murths, naturally, directing all these calamities, and more.

He looked down at the grey-green waters. Sea-murths, right below them? Half-spirits, elementals, a people of the depths? Could they have provided the “help” Thasha had spoken of, when Pazel and the other tarboys probed these waters for the Nilstone? Were they the guardians of the Coast?

Isiq believed in murths, but only in the way he believed in the monstrous sloths and lizards whose skeletons graced the museums of Etherhorde: creatures from long ago, creatures who had made way for the advance of humankind. Yes, strange beasts remained in Alifros; he had seen a few in the Service, in the more distant stretches of sea. But here, sandwiched between the Empires, so close to the world’s busy heart? He didn’t like to think so. It made civilisation appear fragile, like a scrim that might fall at any time. But something kept sinking those ships. Something more than wide reefs and poor seamanship.

He stood and watched the dying light. He could still hear the booming of guns, distant and sporadic; the massive engagement had concluded one way or another. He thought of the wreckage and the death behind them, the corpses in the water, the poor sod or two (or ten or twenty) lost overboard, still breathing at this minute, still clutching at a fragment of his ship.

So familiar, so shamefully comforting. War was a state of affairs he understood — a state he liked, admit it, for the razor it took to social pretence: minced words, delicate non-promises, games of maybe and speak-with-me-tomorrow. Not in wartime, not for soldiers. You lived or died by your good word, by the trust you generated, by aspects of character that could not easily be faked.

But did he have the character of a peacemaker? When this righteous fire burned out, would he be emptied, useless as an old gunner, the kind who retired with weak eyes and weaker hearing and any number of fingers blown off over the years? Before the Chathrand sailed, he had told Thasha that even old men could change. That he had become an ambassador and would work for a better Alifros. That he had, once and for ever, hung up his sword. He had underscored the point by thumping the table and turning red in the face.

‘Peaceful out here, ain’t it?’

Gods of death, there was a boat alongside! A slender thing shaped like a bean pod. A canoe. Just two men aboard her, large ruffians, grinning like boys. They had glided out of the fog in perfect silence.

‘Bosun!’ snapped Isiq.

‘Don’t shout, Uncle,’ said the second man. ‘Didn’t Captain Gregory make that clear?’

He had, of course: no shouting, no loud noises of any kind. In short order Gregory himself appeared, still buttoning his shirt. The newcomers touched their caps, and Gregory answered with a nod and his wolfish grin.

‘You rascals. Not dead yet?’

‘Can’t die when we owe you forty cockles, can we, sir?’ said the man in front.

‘Forty-two,’ said Gregory. ‘Interest.’

‘What’s moving today, Captain?’ asked the other.

‘No goods,’ said Gregory, ‘but there’s a package for you about here somewhere, I expect.’ He twinkled at them, then turned to Isiq. ‘Get your things, old man, and be quick. You’re going with Fishy and Swishy here.’ He pointed at the men. ‘Fishy here’s a Simjan, rescued from a felonious past by our brotherhood. Swishy’s a halfwit from Talturi.’

‘Those aren’t our real names,’ said the Simjan.

‘And your passenger here has no name, see, so don’t ask him,’ said Gregory. ‘Keep calling him “Uncle”, that will do. And see that he stays out of trouble all the way to the Hermitage. Your word as gentlemen, if you please.’

Hermitage? thought Isiq.

The newcomers looked him over dubiously, but they gave their word. Then Gregory smiled and declared that their ‘Uncle’ had just paid off their debt, and Mr Tull came forward with a bundle of tobacco for each.

Isiq turned aside and muttered in Gregory’s ear: ‘Are we truly to visit the Empress in a hollow log, like savages?’

‘Savages!’ said Gregory. ‘That’s blary perfect. We depend on such ignorance from Arqualis, don’t we lads? Now grab your things, duffer! I won’t tell you again.’

Isiq had few things to grab. His weapons from Oshiram, his boots and jacket, the purse of gold that was presumably forty-two cockles lighter than when he came aboard. The dog and the bird watched him anxiously.

‘I would welcome your companionship,’ he told them, ‘but I do not know what is to come. If you go with me now there may be no chance of your returning to Simja for a very long time. Nor can I be sure that the ones who will receive me are — how did you put it, Tinder? — educated. They may not know how to relate to woken beasts.’

His words added greatly to their distress. ‘I will go with you regardless, friend Isiq,’ said the tailor bird at last. ‘My brainless darling has forgotten me, as she does every spring. Let her nest with someone else, someone better suited to matrimony. I have other things on my mind.’

‘And I will stay on the Dancer,’ said the dog, ‘if you will ask Captain Foulmouth to return me to the city at his earliest convenience. The witch has said enough about your cause to make me want to help. But Simjalla is the place I know. Her streets, her smells, her gossip. That is where I can be of use to you, if anywhere.’

‘Then go well,’ said Isiq, scratching his muzzle, ‘and see that you don’t bite the captain.’

‘No promises,’ said the dog.

On deck again, Isiq faced the great indignity of needing to be helped into the canoe. His knee did not want to support him on the rope ladder, and the crew had to improvise a sling and ease him down the Dancer’s side. Isiq knew he was scarlet. He thanked the Gods that Suthinia had stayed below, and then felt perfectly desolate because she had. Apparently he was unworthy of a goodbye.

Gregory leaned down the side, trying not to smile. ‘You’re a force of nature, Uncle,’ he said. ‘We’ll meet again, I’m sure of it.’

‘On the battlefield,’ said Isiq, ‘if we live that long. Today I can only thank you for your deeds. They were strange but well executed.’

Gregory humbly dipped his head. ‘Need a job done, call a freebooter,’ he said.

On an impulse, Isiq tossed the purse of gold back up onto the Dancer. ‘Take what you need to rebuild your house,’ he said.

Gregory looked abruptly chagrined. ‘Oh, as for that-’

‘He took it already.’

Suthinia was there, bending to snatched the purse from the deck. She was wearing her sea cloak, and a headscarf of fine black lace, and before Isiq’s startled eyes she threw one leg over the rail. Astride it like a jockey, she looked her husband in the eye. Isiq knew he should turn away, but didn’t. Suthinia moistened her lips.

‘Hopeless,’ she said.

The captain grinned. ‘We figured that out a long time ago, didn’t we?’

‘Not us, Gregory. Just you.’

‘Now that is unfair. From a woman in your position.’

‘There’s only one position you care about.’

She leaned nearer, eyes half-closed; she placed a hand on his chest. ‘Brush your teeth, next time, darling,’ said Gregory. Suthinia turned away, furious, groping for the ladder with her heel.

They sat like cargo in the bottom of the canoe, the witch and the admiral, enemies and allies. Suthinia, in front, gazed fixedly at the Talturin in the bow. Isiq’s knee ached. He wondered if he could ask her to soothe it with a touch, as she had done the night they met.

Then he heard her spitting oaths, soft and venomous. Perhaps later, he mused. Perhaps in a week.

The young men paddled in silence. They did not aim for shore but zigzagged in the growing darkness, as though pursuing a wayward thought. The Gulf was still remarkably flat. It was very weird, to be gliding soundless among the fog-blanketed shipwrecks, the coral knobs and giant fist-like rocks. The men showed no fear of the shipwrecks, and threaded a course so close among them that Isiq could have leaned out and touched the rotting hulls.

‘We’re no closer to shore than when we started,’ said Suthinia, breaking her silence at last. ‘Are you lost, or is this a tour of the Haunted Coast?’

The young men glanced at each other, suddenly uneasy. ‘We’re not lost,’ said the Simjan, who sat aft. ‘Just waitin’ on the signal.’

‘Whose signal?’

The men shuffled uneasily. ‘I imagine they have more secrets to guard than the one Gregory asked for, Lady Suthinia,’ offered Isiq.

‘How piercingly clever you are.’

She had a knack for asphyxiating conversation. They glided on. A crescent moon began to wink at them between the clouds. Isiq put a hand to his vest pocket, felt the trembling of the tailor bird. The distant cannon had stopped booming at last.

They were passing between a reef and the black shell of an Arquali frigate when Suthinia asked suddenly, ‘Will you start again with the deathsmoke?’

At the bow, the Talturin fumbled his paddle. Furious, Isiq gripped the sides of the canoe. How dare she. In front of strangers. If she knew what the fight had been like! The months of terror, the racking pain, the mind squeezed in a tourniquet, squeezed like bread in a fist. . And to think that this poisonous witch had inspired fancies in him. Longings. That he had imagined them together, someday, when the fighting was done. He should tell her to go rot in the Pits.

‘No deathsmoker ever intends to start again,’ he said through clenched teeth.

‘That’s right, Uncle!’ said the Simjan. ‘But to answer your question, Lady Suthinia: I don’t know. I look for the Tree of Heaven every night, and send my prayers up to Rin. Two good months I’ve had, but you know I’ve kept off the drug this long before.’

Isiq stared into the darkness, abashed. The witch had not even been speaking to him.

‘You must stay strong for your little ones,’ said Suthinia to the addict. ‘Come see me at the Hermitage, as you did last year.’

‘Oh, Lady-’

‘Don’t thank me yet; the charm may not help. And it will not, unless you fight on.’ She twisted about now, pulling the headscarf back to let her see the Simjan. ‘You will fight on, I’m certain. You’ll make us all proud, and what’s more you’ll win your own pride back — with interest, as Gregory would say.’

Isiq wished someone would strike him in the face. He had nearly exploded at this beautiful witch. Even now she had the courtesy not to notice, not to mock his error; why had he imagined her cruel? She had not been cruel, she had been honest. As bluntly honest as any warrior, any man.

‘Oppo, m’lady,’ said the Simjan, his voice close to breaking.

By the Gods, thought the admiral, I want this woman in my life.

Then he saw the child on the reef.

It was a boy, and it was sitting on the just-submerged coral, staring at them. When the next swell came it rose to its feet. It stood no taller than a man’s knee. It had arms and legs and eyes and fingers, yet nothing could have been less human. In the moonlight its flesh was the colour of old pewter. Its face, so much like an infant’s, sported a mouth full of pointed teeth. The boy-creature’s limbs flexed in ways no human limbs could, as though they were not jointed but ribbed like snakes.

Suthinia made a small sound of fright.

‘Don’t worry, m’lady,’ said the Simjan, ‘that’s what we were waiting for.’

‘It’s a murth!’ she said.

‘Of course. A sea-murth. They’re in charge here, you know.’

The little creature made a clicking sound in its throat. Isiq thought it looked angry, and then thought that he was a fool even to speculate on its emotions. Suddenly the murth bent at the spine and flipped backwards, otter-like, into the waves.

The bowman pointed. Fifty yards away, two figures sat crouched on the wave-washed deck of the frigate, serpentine arms hugging knees. They were elders, a man and a woman. Just beyond them, Isiq saw delicate hands rise to grasp the timbers. A young murth-girl pulled herself up beside the other two. A strange beauty, Isiq thought, as she stared at the humans with wide green eyes.

‘Put one hand in the water,’ said the Simjan.

Isiq and Suthinia gaped at him. ‘Are you quite cracked?’ said the admiral.

‘No, Uncle, it’s the way,’ said the other, plunging in his hand. ‘Do it quickly, or they won’t let us ashore.’

Suthinia leaned away, terrified. ‘This is what Gregory was teasing me about. Jathod, I hate that man! No wonder he’s not here.’

The two elder murths slipped back into the water and vanished, but the young girl remained, watching them sorrowfully. Isiq muttered a curse, then put his hand in the water. ‘Come, Suthinia,’ he said.

‘You don’t know these creatures,’ she said. ‘You’ve never crossed the Ruling Sea. They’re a race of orphaned spirits. They’re the stepchildren of the Gods.’

‘They’re fussy, too,’ said the Talturin. ‘Put your hand in, lady. We’ve got nowhere else to go, unless we paddle out to sea.’

Isiq leaned forward and touched her shoulder with his free hand. She stiffened but did not pull away. She put her hand in the Gulf.

The four of them sat there, awkwardly balanced, and the canoe bobbed like a cork. Suthinia was trembling. Isiq felt like a fool. What did Emperor Magad have to fear from them, exactly?

Nothing happened for a time: the lone murth-girl stared across the water. Then it came: a touch, cold and otherworldly and electric. Small hands were gripping his own, turning them, feeling his swollen knuckles through the flesh. Suthinia jumped; they had touched her too. She started to shake and Isiq tightened his grip on her shoulder. What in Pitfire happened to her on the Nelluroq?

The murth-hands withdrew. ‘Done!’ said the Simjan, and Suthinia jerked her hand from the water and cringed. ‘No fear, Lady S, that’s all that’s required of us. A bit like signin’ for your pay, says Captain Gregory, or askin’ permission to board a boat. And the beauty of it is that the murths don’t let no one cross their territory but us freebooters. Captain Gregory struck a bargain, the wily old — Uch!’

A murth-man breached like a seal, right beside Suthinia. The witch did not cry out but flung herself away, and came close to overturning the canoe. The murth showed its teeth. It had a snow-white beard and solemn eyes, and shells adorned the raiment on its shoulders.

Suthinia was still flailing. Isiq threw his arms about her. ‘Be still! He’s not attacking!’ But even the smugglers were aghast; this was no part of the routine. The murth placed a glistening hand upon the gunwale, and spoke.

Everyone winced. The voice was part wooden ratchet, part shrieking albatross. The murth watched Suthinia expectantly, but the terrified witch just shook her head. Frowning now, the murth raised a finger to point at the sky.

‘Baaa. .’ The creature’s mouth and neck strained with effort. Now vaguely human, the sounds it produced came from deep in its stomach. ‘. . b-baaaaaa-’

‘Back?’ whispered the Simjan.

‘Baaaaaad. Baaaaaaad reeepestreeeeee.’ The murth raised his finger higher, still looking at Suthinia.

‘Bad what?’ asked the Talturin.

‘Yoooo…helllp. . weeee. . helllp. . or alllll. . m-m-muhh-’

‘Muh-?’

‘Muh-murrrrrrrrrr.’

‘Murth? Sea-murth?’

‘Murrrrrrd! Muuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd!

‘Murdered,’ said Isiq.

The sea-murth pointed at him. Then he turned the pointing finger on himself, the others in the canoe, and finally swept his hand in a wide, encompassing arc.

‘Everyone,’ said Suthinia. ‘Everyone murdered together, by something from the sky.’

The creature nodded. ‘Yoooo helllllp,’ it repeated, and this time the words sounded like a plea. It submerged, and they saw no more of it. But as they paddled off, the young murth-girl still sat watching them upon the wreck, and now Isiq thought her green eyes were sad.

Isiq smacked his forehead, and bloodied his fingers by the deed. The Crab Fens. A mystery hell-hole, unexplored by Arqual’s navy, hidden behind the death-trap of the Haunted Coast. Isiq had imagined a short journey up a tidal stream, then a hidden deep-water vessel with the Empress in the stateroom, surrounded by Tholjassan guards. But as they rode the swell in among the bulrushes and black trees, the Simjan remarked casually that he hoped they’d arrive in time for dinner. ‘No one dines this late, surely?’ said Isiq. The man looked back at him, confused. Then he smiled. ‘I meant dinner tomorrow night, Uncle. And that’s if we hurry, and there’s not a squall.’

Isiq feared it would be a torturous trip. His knee was on fire and he could not straighten it, and the night was frigid, and he had nothing to do with his hands. But things turned out much better than he expected. The canoe had impressed him already among the corals and shipwrecks; here in the Fens it proved a revelation. It cut water like a knife, turned like a damselfish, skimmed through shallows where a rowboat would have run aground. And when the stream narrowed and the insects found them, the two men sprang into action, rearranging their cargo and urging the passengers to lie flat. Blessed relief! His leg was straight at last! He passed the tailor bird to the Simjan; the creature was fond of any man who, like ‘friend Isiq’, had done battle with deathsmoke. Then the young men stretched a kind of cheesecloth over the top of the canoe and secured it at both ends, leaving themselves exposed but protecting Isiq and Suthinia from the insects, or the bulk of them.

To call it undignified was an understatement: Isiq had to rest his face on the canoe’s damp and grimy floor. Suthinia’s back was to him. When he turned over and brushed her foot by accident, she kicked.

‘Stay clear of me, you old mucking lizard!’

‘Madam Suthinia!’

‘Go to sleep! This night’s going to be rotten enough without any of that!’

Isiq almost laughed. Sleep was out of the question. His mind was galloping, intoxicated. They had probably gone ten miles already, and would cover fifty or sixty more at this rate. Sixty miles into the Fens! That meant the Empress wasn’t underestimating the threat posed by Sandor Ott. It meant she had some grasp of what it took to stay alive.

‘He visits whores,’ said Suthinia, apropos of nothing.

Isiq made a sound of polite surprise.

‘These days he scarcely bothers to hide it. Maybe that’s better than expecting me to say nothing, to pretend not to notice what he does. Still, I hate him. I’ve hated him since the day we married.’

Isiq’s heart was hammering. He said, ‘What I saw did not look like hate.’

‘He’s a lecher and a pig,’ said Suthinia. ‘But it’s something, you have to admit — making peace with the sea-murths, enjoying their protection, winning free movement through this land.’

‘He made the peace? Gregory, personally?’

‘On behalf of his beloved freebooters, of course. Little by little, year after year. He went about it like a child, but somehow it worked. He would toss sacks of gold among the shipwrecks, and glass jewellery, and beads. He’d put his face close to the water and shout, “Presents for the maneaters! Go ahead, play dress-up! None of us will laugh. And we’re not thieves, or colonists, or even fishermen. We’re just orphans like you.” And he’d walk, Eberzam — walk from Cape Coristel, thirteen days up the beach, and then just sit in the shallows and call out to the murths, sing to them.’

‘Sing?’

‘Love songs and praise songs, drinking songs, and he’d say how much more he respected them than human beings. He didn’t even see one for the first four years. And if they heard him they surely didn’t understand. They didn’t speak a mucking word of any human tongue.’

‘But they do now?’

‘Gregory taught them. He taught Arquali to the mucking sea-murths, that man.’

She fell briefly silent, then added, ‘I never believed him, until tonight. I thought this sea-murth business was another lie, one he invented because he knows I fear them. It kept me out of his hair, kept me away from his real family here in the Fens.’

‘But why such extraordinary fear?’ asked Isiq. ‘Courage blazes from you like heat from a bonfire.’

‘Very pretty. I’ll tell you why. It was during our crossing of the Nelluroq, twenty years ago. One freezing night we lay becalmed, and they surrounded us and swept aboard, and all our lamps went out together. They moved among us silently, inspecting us, touching our clothes and faces, and no one on deck breathed a word. And there was a lord among them, a very ancient murth. When the moon sailed out from behind the clouds I found him staring at me. He hobbled near and touched my hand, and it burned. Then all of them slipped back into the sea.’

‘A bad burn, was it?’

‘Not at all,’ said Suthinia. ‘But when we had the lamps burning again I saw that there were faint lines on my palm. Symbols. They were already fading, so I copied them out on paper before they disappeared. And years later Gregory showed them to these murths, here at the Haunted Coast.’

To Isiq’s almost unbearable joy, Suthinia reached back and took his hand tight in her own. ‘I’d garbled the words a bit,’ she said, ‘but the murths took a guess at their meaning. It seems they meant, “This one will descend among us and remain.” ’

‘Oh, rubbish,’ said Isiq.

‘Yes, well. That’s what most everyone says about their blary existence. And Gregory, he grinned when he brought me the translation. Like I said, I thought he was lying, just trying to scare me. He loves my weaknesses, the cur.’

‘Do you truly hate him?’

‘I hate most men, most of the time. When I dream of a better world it has no room for you. The horrid mess you make of everything, the wars.’

‘I was born into war,’ said Isiq. ‘I could have walked away from the Service, pretended that Arqual was not threatened with annihilation. But that would not have made the threat disappear.’

For the first time he heard amusement in her voice. ‘Walked away like me? Gregory told you, didn’t he? How he charmed me right into his bedroom? How I quit magecraft to be with him?’

‘He hinted,’ said Isiq.

‘Well it’s true: you can have magic, or a life and family. Not both, never both. But it’s also true that if I hadn’t walked away from magecraft, Arunis would have found me, and killed me, as he did almost all of us. So I burned my spell-scrolls, poured my potions into the sea. And I managed to be a mother and a wife. Until a certain doctor came to Ormael, that is.’

Isiq had wondered if she would ever mention the doctor. ‘Chadfallow reveres you above all women in Alifros,’ he heard himself say.

‘We were lovers for years,’ she said. ‘Pazel always talks about the day Gregory introduced us. But that only happened because Ignus had finally struck up a friendship with Gregory, down on the waterfront. By then, credek, I’d been with him almost seven years. I was trying to leave him, not for the first time. I could have killed him for approaching Gregory like that.’

‘Why did he?’

‘Why do you think? So that he could cross my threshold. I’d never brought Ignus around the Orch’dury. I didn’t want the children to know about him, although Neda suspected I had someone. A lot of sailors’ wives do, you know.’

‘You can’t mean it.’

‘Go ahead and laugh, but Neda was furious; she wanted me dead.’ Suthinia paused. ‘And then there was Pazel. He idolised Gregory, the man who tossed him in the air when he came home, who tossed gold around like a sultan; the man who captained a ship. Of course Gregory forgot about him as soon as he walked out the door, but I couldn’t tell Pazel that. Any more than I could tell him who his real father was.’

‘Chadfallow.’

‘What if he’d known?’ asked Suthinia defiantly. ‘He’d only have begun to doubt Gregory’s love for him, and Rin knows there was reason to doubt. He’d have learned that Neda was only his half-sister. And Ignus — he could have been recalled to Etherhorde at any time. He threatened to go often enough. To wash his hands of the whole “sordid Ormali chapter in my life”, as he put it. To go back to something familiar and safe.’

Suthinia drew a long breath. ‘I was fighting for a normal life, too. For Pazel, Neda, myself. I should have known it would come apart in my hands.’

‘Because of me,’ said Isiq gruly. Then, correcting himself: ‘Because of the invasion.’

‘And because the choice was never truly before me. I was still a mage in my heart.’

‘And now?’

‘Now it’s not just my heart. It’s everything. I’ll never be much of a mage, probably. But while this fight continues I can’t be anything else. I was saying goodbye to Gregory, tonight on the Dancer. It was the first time I had touched him in years. And the last.’

She withdrew her hand, and they both lay still and silent. There was, finally, perfect understanding between them. He could not argue with her, could not tell her she was killing him with her beauty, with her flood of simple trust. He would not chatter, would not remark on her honesty, or his amazement (face to face with honesty now) that he could have failed to notice the honesty’s absence during all his years with Syrarys. They would never be lovers, that dream was gone. But as he lay there he sensed with awe that a new being had appeared beside him, a sister maybe, even though she came from the far side of the world.

‘Our children,’ he said at last, ‘my daughter, your son-’

‘Yes,’ said the witch, ‘isn’t that the strangest thing?’

Twenty hours later the Simjan toed him gently in the ribs. ‘Wake up, Uncle,’ he said.

He rose stiffly, blinking. The sun was once more going down, but now it was setting over a vast lake, dotted with hummocks of greenery and flocks of waterbirds, and bordered on all sides by the Fens.

In the centre of the lake was an enormous building made entirely of logs. At first Isiq thought that it stood on giant stilts. But no, it was afloat, built atop a number of conjoined barges. It was square and plain and four stories tall, with rows of windows on the two upper floors. It reminded Isiq of a warehouse in Etherhorde, complete with the look-out towers at the corners by which the bosses could keep an eye on the stevedores. A number of vessels — sailboats, rowboats, pole barges, canoes — milled about it; others were scattered over the lake.

Suthinia was kneeling; the wind tossed her sable hair. ‘The Hermitage,’ she said. ‘It’s been two years for me.’

‘How did you manage to visit, without ever laying eyes on a murth?’ asked Isiq.

She smiled at him. ‘There are many paths to this lake,’ she said, ‘though none is easy to find. I used to come here from the Trothe of Chereste, before my children were born.’

‘Was there a. . hermit in residence, even then?’

Suthinia raised an eyebrow. ‘We brought the Hermit here, Gregory and I. Fourteen years ago, that was.’

As they drew nearer, Isiq caught the sparkle of glass from one of the towers. A telescope lens. Someone’s taking a good look at us.

They rounded a corner. On the western side of the great structure a wide gate stood raised, its iron teeth catching the last of the evening sun. ‘I hear music!’ said the tailor bird. ‘It is coming from that arch!’

The structure was open at the centre, Isiq saw now: the barges formed a great floating square, like a villa with a watery courtyard. They neared the arch. Festive noises, a piano banging drunkenly, the scent of onion and frying fish. They passed under the iron gate, and the Talturin said, ‘We’re home.’

Sweet Tree of Heaven.

It was like stepping into a bustling town on market day. The inner walls were entirely made up of balconies: four unbroken balconies running around the structure, and crowded with people of all kinds. There were many rough-looking freebooter men and women, to be sure, but also children, mothers with babies on their hips, toothless elders leaning over the rails. The crowd spilled out onto docks and tethered boats. There were streamers of laundry, buckets raised and lowered for water; tankards lifted in welcome as the paddlers were recognised. Everyone was poor, that was certain: the children’s clothes were made of neatly stitched rags. But winter was ending, and the day had been fair, and there appeared to be plenty to eat.

‘Where’d you find the fish-head?’ shouted a portly man nibbling a sausage, looking down on Isiq.

‘He’s a friend of Captain Gregory,’ shouted the Talturin. ‘Be civil, you! He’s here for some peace and relaxation.’

‘So naturally Gregory sends his witch along,’ quipped another.

Suthinia’s glance cut the laughter short, but even in her eyes there was a flicker of amusement. ‘Nobody sends me anywhere, as you people know well,’ she said, ‘but if Old Lumpy has any crab cakes left, tell him to send them to our chambers, with some bread and ale.’

‘Lots of ale, lots of bread!’ bellowed their guides. ‘And cheese, and butter, and marmalade!’

It was all arranged by shouting, here, apparently. The paddlers shouted to their sweethearts; the children shouted questions about the murths; the old women shouted to Suthinia, complaining of their toothaches and gout. Pure anarchy, thought the admiral. Maisa can’t possibly be here.

When they docked, the mob pressed close around them, and Isiq feared they would be trapped and chattering until dawn. But somehow in short order he found himself in a damp, plain, utterly delightful cabin on the east side of the enclosure, slicing bread with his dagger while Suthinia bathed in the washroom at the end of the hall.

The bird pecked at fallen crumbs. ‘Bread is good,’ he said, ‘but insects are better. I will go to the roof and feed properly.’

‘Go then, but be careful,’ said Isiq. ‘I will leave the window open.’

The bird vanished into the night. When Suthinia returned they pounced on the food, and talked easily of their children. They even laughed a bit — though surely that was a mask for fear. Isiq was flabbergasted when she told him that Neda had become a sfvantskor. But Suthinia only shrugged.

‘It makes a kind of sense. Neda used to scorn me for not committing. “You’re half-mage, half-mother. Who wins, if you’re living half a life?” Well, she’s found something to commit to, that’s certain.’

She looked at him very seriously. ‘You must stay close, Eberzam. These are good people overall. As Gregory’s friend you’ll not be harmed or robbed. But they are wild, and not always wise. They will try to sell you ten thousand things, and to borrow money; they will offer services you don’t need. They will send girls to your bedchamber, and failing that, boys. They will try to sell you deathsmoke.’

He nodded. ‘I expected that. But the drug is everywhere, Suthinia. I can’t avoid it unless you keep me in a cage.’

‘Turn to me when the craving starts. I may be able to stop you in time.’

‘A bull elephant could not stop me, if I am ever brought so low as to reach for deathsmoke again.’

‘Will you let me try?’

He sat there, trembling with the memory of pain. ‘I will,’ he said at last.

She smiled and squeezed his hand. Then a strange look came over her face.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

She blinked at him. ‘In the South, there is a thing called the nuhzat. A kind of dream-state in which we lose our minds a little, but gain something else — insight, second-sight, other powers now and again. Few humans experience the nuhzat, but I used to. It happened even after I came north, even after Neda and Pazel were born. They were frightened of me. It can be terrifying, the nuhzat. In my case it usually was.

‘But in one of those nuhzat-visions I saw this moment. A strange, hard man, a former enemy, alone with me in a small room, eating crab cakes, laughing with me about our children. I knew that I had long hated him; that I blamed him for the course of my latter life — at least for all the parts that went wrong. And I knew that just the night before I had refused him as a lover.’

Isiq dropped his eyes, colouring.

‘I knew also,’ she said, ‘that I would have to hurry to tell him, even before the meal was over, that he must believe in himself as never before. That he must trust not only in his wisdom and martial skills, but in his heart. Trust your own heart, Eberzam, remember. I am glad the memory came back to me in time.’

‘In time for what?’

She turned and looked at the door. Isiq put down his plate. There were footsteps, then a loud, impatient knock.

When Suthinia opened the door Isiq thought for a moment that he had lost his mind. Before him stood a man slightly older than the admiral himself, with a face that was intensely, eerily familiar. Two younger men with light halberds stood behind him.

‘Leave your weapons,’ said the older man. ‘Wipe the crumbs from your beard. Close your mouth. Leave the hat.’

Military.

‘Stand up; you’re expected at once.’ The man glanced briefly at Suthinia. ‘He’s to go alone, Mrs Pathkendle.’

Not just a soldier, but an Arquali soldier. His Dremland accent was a giveaway.

‘Don’t I know you?’ asked Isiq.

The man hesitated, biting back some retort. ‘Irrelevant,’ he said at last, and turned on his heel.

Isiq looked at Suthinia; she nodded. Impulsively he took her hand and kissed it. Then he followed the old soldier down the corridor, with the guards walking behind. They passed the washroom, a busy kitchen, open doorways where cards and wrestling matches were underway, a little booth where a cobbler sat hammering nails into a well-worn sole. The old soldier rocked a little to the left as he walked, and that too was somehow familiar. Who in the Nine Pits is he?

At last they came to a temple chamber where a few elders were bent at evening prayers. They slipped around the dais into the sacristy, and a young monk stood up from his desk and welcomed them, smiling. He shut the door, then turned to a heavy rack of vestments and parted them like curtains. Beyond it was a plain wooden wall, but when the monk pressed the wall it swung inward. The old soldier stepped through the gap without a word.

Now they were climbing a staircase, very narrow and dark. Isiq was perplexed by the heavy carpet. Then he thought: To deaden our footfalls. Good, very good.

After three flights the staircase ended before another door, this one heavily padded. The old soldier gave a precise series of taps, and Isiq heard the sliding of bolts.

They stepped directly into a barracks. Forty soldiers in varying states of dress turned and stared at Isiq. ‘That’s him!’ they murmured. ‘By the hairy devils below, that’s him!’

Isiq was looking at a medley of Imperial faces. There were some Etherhorders and other men of inner Arqual, but many more Ipulians, Opaltines, and folk of the Outer Isles. All of them decades his junior. There were also a great number of Tholjassans — their slender features were unmistakable. All of them stared in fascination.

The old soldier shut the door. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This is Admiral Isiq. Now stop staring like a gopher pack.’

But the one who was staring now was Isiq. A gopher pack. The phrase unlocked his memory at last. This old man, incredibly, had been his drill sergeant on his first deployment. Gods of death, that was fifty years ago! When he has just a midshipman, not yet eighteen.

When Maisa was still on the throne.

‘Bachari!’ he cried, astonished. ‘Sergeant Bachari! You went with her into exile!’

‘And you,’ said the old man, unsmiling, ‘did not.’

The complex occupied the entire northern third of the Hermitage: a great warren sealed off from the freebooter’s floating village, except for a few well-hidden passages like the one they had just used. ‘Of course they all know something strange is afoot here,’ said Bachari gruffly, ‘and a few have perhaps guessed its nature. But only a very few. It is the best compromise we have been able to manage, but I do not like it, not at all. I am in charge of her personal security.’

The men looked fit and well fed, but their bearing worried Isiq: the salutes they gave Bachari came too slowly for his liking. They wore uniforms of a sort — plain trousers and ill-fitting shirts, canvas jackets stained at the wrists, patched at the elbows. Only the officers wore proper Arquali attire, and even theirs was faded.

‘We have three hundred men within these walls,’ Bachari told him, ‘and twice that many on vessels secreted about the lake’s periphery.’

‘Nine hundred?’ asked Isiq, his heart sinking to his shoes.

Bachari looked at him sharply. ‘That is twice the force we had a year ago. But I did not say that was all Her Majesty could call upon. Do you think I should tell you everything, Isiq? By what merit, pray? Thus far you have only proven your need of a refuge from the Secret Fist.’

His words stung — what words did not, from a man’s first drill sergeant? — but Isiq could not refute them. ‘Turachs?’ he asked dubiously.

Bachari was growing irritated. ‘Why ask such a question? You know as well as I do that the Turach Legion never splintered when Her Majesty fled. As it happens we have one Turach, a recent addition to our number. But I do not have full confidence in the man. He admits to having fled his unit on the eve of a deployment.’

Isiq sighed. ‘Just take me to the Empress,’ he said.

They passed through the rest of the meagre barracks, a gymnasium, a humble officers’ club. Isiq felt despair circling him like a tiger, hidden but inexorable, waiting for its moment to pounce. Nine hundred men at arms! Less than the complement on four Arquali warships! And the navy boasted some five hundred vessels. They’ll be mucking exterminated. Unless this man truly is hiding much from me. Gods, let it be so.

They came at last to a heavy wooden door, guarded by six more halberd-wielders, who stood aside for Bachari. As he opened the door the old man put a finger to his lips.

The room they entered was the largest he had yet seen in the complex. It was also profoundly elegant — but no, that word did not suffice. The walls were draped in rich red tapestries: Arquali tapestries, clearly of ancient workmanship, depicting hunts in primeval forests. The furnishings too were splendid relics. A table on doe’s legs, its surface a mosaic of ivory and rosewood and mother-of-pearl. A small golden harp on a marble pedestal. Twin bronze statues of the Martyrs of Etherhorde.¹⁰ Portraits in gilded frames, men whose faces swam up dimly from the murk of memory: the first kings, the heroes of Unification.

The word you’re seeking, Isiq told himself, is Imperial.

At the back of the chamber, an Arquali flag hung from the ceiling. It was huge: the golden fish was nearly man-sized, and the golden dagger pointed straight down at the one plain object in the room: a wooden chair. It stood alone upon a dais. Other chairs, far more sumptuous, were arranged beneath it in a semicircle.

Upon that simple chair sat Maisa, Empress of Arqual. She was straight and proud and bright of eye. And old, very old. Isiq felt stabbed to the heart. She was not yet thirty when you saw her last.

She had visitors seated before her, and did not glance up at Isiq. Bachari stabbed a finger at the spot where they stood: Do not move. He was to wait on her pleasure. Fair enough; he only wished that he’d bathed.

Bachari left without a sound. Isiq could hear Maisa’s voice but did not recognize it. How could he? Only once in his life had he stood this close to her, and on that occasion she had not said a word.

The image returned with arresting force: a hooded figure exiting the Keep of Five Domes, holding the hands of two small and frightened boys. The mass of soldiers around them, looking fearfully over their shoulders, urging them on. The harsh wind as they rounded the fountain, its spray blowing out over the Plaza of the Palmeries, striking the cobbles like a hard rain. Striking the dead bodies that lay at her feet.

There were four of them, slain at a distance by archers dispatched by Sandor Ott: the first casualties among Maisa’s loyalists. Isiq had watched her from the edge of the Plaza, standing with a group of astonished, off-duty navy men who had just wandered in from the port. He was nineteen, which meant he was a man — childhood ended when one left for the Junior Academy at thirteen. He came from wealth; he was officer material. He thought he knew something of the politics of the Imperial family. But he could make no show of comprehending this. Staring, abashed and mute, he wondered if his Empress would walk left or right around the bodies. She had done neither; she had stopped and knelt before each one, studying their faces, touching their hands. Then she had thrown back her hood and swept her eyes across the gawkers in the Plaza; and Isiq, thirty feet away, had marvelled at her striking intelligence, her magnificent calm.

Thundering hooves: a cortege of nine carriages swept into the Plaza, almost at a gallop, and Maisa and her sons climbed into one of them, and the cortege raced out of the square. Isiq had never seen the monarch again.

Until tonight. Look at her. Fifty years in the shadows. Fifty years hunted by the ones who stole her crown. And yet if anything she looked prouder than before.

The conversation at the dais concluded with a peal of laughter from the Empress. The guests stood and bowed, and the old woman rose to her feet and raised her voice: ‘You must dine with us, gentlemen, and forgive the menu’s shortcomings, this once. They will be amended when we receive you at Castle Maag.’

An escort appeared and led the visitors out by another door. Isiq studied them as they passed: two black men, young and lithe and wary, and behind them a much older man wearing a monk’s round travelling cap. Isiq straightened his jacket. Empress Maisa was descending the dais. Still she did not look at him, but walked instead to an ornate secretary desk near the statue of the martyrs, and scribbled something. Two servants approached her, and she glanced distractedly at the men.

‘White goose, I think. And the doors, Hectyr. That is all.’

The servants withdrew, and Maisa went on scribbling. Isiq glanced about the chamber and saw that they were entirely alone.

His eyes snapped forward, she was approaching quickly. Trying to hide his pain, he sank to one knee.

She slapped him, hard. ‘That is for your unwavering loyalty to the usurper, Admiral Isiq. Not as a young naval cadet half a century ago. As a decorated officer, a hero, who has surely known for the past several decades that his Empress was alive and well. Oh get up, will you, and look me in the eye.’

Isiq rose stiffly to his feet. And slapped her with equal force.

‘That,’ he said, ‘is for embroiling a young girl in your deadly plan without ever informing her father. I do not yet know how Thasha factors in your schemes, but I know that you have been elaborating them with Ramachni and Hercol Stanapeth since her infancy, if not her birth. As for my loyalties, of course I knew you were still alive. All Etherhorde knew it. Stanapeth himself spoke of you, as did Chadfallow. They praised you often — but they never breathed a word about your activities. Restoration! The idea never crossed my mind! I thought you’d found sanctuary in Tholjassa and would remain there until you died. If you wanted me to join this campaign, you might have started by letting me know it existed.’

Empress Maisa’s hand was on her cheek. She was gaping at him, speechless with rage. Isiq met her eyes, unflinching. There was no hope without perfect honesty. Not at this hour. Not in this life.

Then Maisa laughed. ‘I will benefit from this exchange. No one has dared lay a hand on me since my mother passed, when I was twelve. It is a very long time since I was twelve.’

‘I did not come here to serve you,’ said Isiq.

‘What then? To strangle me? You had better do it now, don’t you think? I have made it very easy for you.’

‘I will never be your pawn, Empress. Never your unthinking tool. I was long a tool for Magad the Fourth, and even longer for his son. I committed atrocities because I did not let myself think. My beloved wife was killed, murdered by Sandor Ott, because I could not imagine that I was merely a device, a puppet worked by unseen hands.’

‘Neither could they,’ she said. ‘I mean our enemies, yours and mine. That is the greater tragedy. Ott has been the unwitting tool of Arunis, and worked tirelessly to undermine the very Empire he thinks he defends. Magad agreed to a war conspiracy centred on the Shaggat Ness and your daughter, never dreaming that he too was dancing on a string. A failure of imagination, partly. And yes, you were guilty of the same.’

She laughed again, turned away, ran her fingers over the exquisite table. ‘So was I, Admiral. Fifty years ago. The barons and the warlords and the great men of Arqual — they were jackals, hyenas. Next to them you’re a cultured philosopher. They only let my father crown me because we were losing the war. That was still a great secret. We were going to lose, we were going to be routed, our children would all speak Mzithrini. But soon, they knew, it would burst out onto the streets of Etherhorde. And when it did the hyenas did not want the blame. Let the street think it was a woman’s incompetence. Let them hang her when the Black Rags close in for the kill.’

‘But you did not lose the war.’

‘No, the Shaggat saved us then. His rise crippled the Mzithrin when they could least afford it, and gave us time to rebuild our forces. I did not fail — how they hated me for that! And even more so for not wishing to stab the wounded Mzithrin Empire through the heart when it was down. My peace emissaries were real, Isiq. Chadfallow’s mission to Babqri City was real. This half-century of madness need not have happened, this world need not today be so blighted and burned — if only thinking had been valued over tribalism and blind allegiances. Over unthinking service, as you say.’

She gazed up at the great flag over her chair. ‘I accept your declaration, Admiral. It is what I hoped for. But I could not possibly have let you know about my enterprise.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because if you had not joined that enterprise I would have fallen. One word from you to the Emperor would have sealed my fate. Magad has never ignored your warnings, Eberzam Isiq.’

‘And now that I am disgraced?’

‘But you are not disgraced,’ said Maisa. ‘You are presumed dead, and that is altogether different. As everyone in Alifros knows, you were last seen following the bearers of your daughter’s corpse through the streets of Simjalla, on Treaty Day. All was terror and confusion. Perhaps you were picked up and tortured by the Mzithrinis.’

‘I was tortured by Ott.’

‘Ah, but that is no tale to warm the hearts of Magad’s subjects. No, yours was a tragic death. If the Black Rags did not get you, then surely you collapsed of a broken heart, and were stripped of your wedding finery by a mob, and buried with the many beggars and tramps who perished that day. Or you returned to the Chathrand in secret, to accompany your beloved daughter to her final rest in Etherhorde, only to go down with the ship off Talturi. Such are the rumours in the capital.’

‘Ott said he would poison my name.’

‘Ott said whatever he thought would break you. But here is where fate has sided with us at long last. The Secret Fist truly believes that you are dead. How that miracle was accomplished I would very much like to know. I gather it has something to do with that plague of rats?’

Isiq closed his eyes a moment.

‘Never mind, never mind. Why would the Secret Fist pillory a dead man whom the Empire adores? Why waste a hero, when his death can provoke such a frenzy of patriotism? Magad did quite the opposite: he lionised you. He sent his own son, blind Prince Misoq, to the temple to pray for your soul. There is a bust of you already in the Naval Academy-’

Isiq looked up. She has a spy in the Academy!

‘-and when they open the little garden commemorating the wreck of the Chathrand, there is to be a tribute to you engraved in stone. You are still their tool, Isiq. You cannot escape them even in death.’

Isiq’s breath had grown shorter as she spoke. He was slipping. He should have foreseen everything Maisa had just told him. Great heroes like Magad needed the shoulders of lesser heroes to lift them up.

‘As for involving your daughter in my plans, that is quite absurd,’ said the Empress. ‘Sandor Ott and Arunis manipulated your family, Isiq. Ott selected Thasha to be the sacrificial bride; Arunis turned the plot to his favour.’

‘Ramachni does not serve you?’

‘Oh for Rin’s sake. His mistress was the great Erithusme, and none other. I haven’t the least idea what your daughter is to him. Mages guard their secrets as fiercely as monarchs, it appears. Ramachni came to me a decade ago and begged for help in guarding her. “I need a man of flawless honesty,” he told me, “but a fighter, too, and a thinker.” “Why not ask for a demigod and be done with it,” I said. All the same I gave him my right arm: Hercol of Tholjassa, and sorely have I missed the man.’

‘You must have suspected that there was more at stake than the life of one girl.’

‘Of course I did. And now I’m sure of it: Suthinia Pathkendle has been able to verify that much merely by watching her children’s dreams. Your daughter is somehow extraordinary, Isiq. Erithusme herself was the first to notice.’

Isiq looked at her dubiously.

‘I know,’ said the Empress. ‘You thought Erithusme was a figure out of fairy tales. But she was as real as Arunis, and indeed more powerful. Suthinia tells me she owned the Chathrand outright, long before the ship passed into Arquali hands. What’s more, the mage came to Etherhorde less than a year before Thasha’s birth. Don’t ask why: Suthinia doesn’t know, and Ramachni never breathed a word about it.’

‘You never had plans for her? For Thasha, I mean?’

Maisa shook her head. ‘None at all. Though I was practically the only one in Alifros without them.’

‘And now?’

Maisa looked at him a moment, then stepped to the wall and pulled on a rope. Isiq heard no bell, but moments later a servant appeared. ‘Rum,’ said the Empress. ‘Two glasses. The better stuff, the Opaltine.’

When the servant was gone she looked back at Isiq. ‘This is a special occasion. I have a small fortune in liquors, here, for my guests. One must try to keep up appearances. But I almost never drink. This will be the first time since early Umbrin.’

‘I am flattered that Your Imperial Majesty chooses to make an exception for me — with me.’

‘And were you impressed with Gregory and his freebooters?’

‘I have never been more masterfully smuggled.’

She gave a sudden laugh. ‘He is good at what he does. His buffoonery is an act, and so is his selfishness. He may not much care for Arqual or its fate, but he cares very much about his own beloved Ormael — so near at hand, and yet closed to him for ever. That is true patriotism: to go on loving the land that spits you out, reviled. They still call him Gregory the Traitor there, you know. But Gregory Pathkendle is also a man of vision. He married Suthinia, and he knew when to leave her. I began to court his help at Suthinia’s urging, and little by little I gave him my trust. Of course that culminated with Treaty Day.’

‘And your visit to Simja,’ said the admiral. ‘I remain astounded that you hazarded so much, merely to show your face to a handful of princes.’

‘Can you really believe that was all?’

When Isiq said nothing, she waved a dismissive hand. ‘Soon enough, soon enough. Gregory came through brilliantly, that’s what counts. And yet there was still a chance that he was helping us for purposes strictly his own: revenge, maybe? Revenge on the Empire that had burned Ormael? Even after he returned me safely to these Fens, I thought that might be the case. Now of course we may dispense with that particular theory.’

‘Why is that, Your Highness?’

‘Because he had you under his thumb for a week. If he wanted revenge for that bloody massacre he would have started with you.’

Isiq flushed. Perhaps he always would at the mention of Ormael.

‘Gregory is of course just one of my operatives. As this is just one of my strongholds. It has all been excruciatingly slow. How could it be otherwise, when a single betrayal would end it?’ She looked at him, chin high, and her gaze was bright and steady. ‘We are almost there, Isiq. Almost ready to strike.’

The admiral nodded, but his eyes flicked away. Nine hundred soldiers. Perhaps this was all a great vanity, an old queen’s way of jeering at death.

‘Your Majesty,’ he said (for one had to say something, before the silence did), ‘when did you learn that I was alive?’

‘Nine or ten weeks ago,’ she said. ‘King Oshiram informed me, of course.’

And was that, Isiq wondered, when you had your last drink?

‘I decided then and there to give my trust to Oshiram,’ she said. ‘I have not rued the decision. He was a fool to let himself be played so long by the Secret Fist, but it was hope for peace that tempted him, and to that temptation only the noblest yield. Besides, he will not be played again. As with you, his pride has been deeply stung.’

Maisa paused again, considering. Then she said, ‘He did it, you know. He put Syrarys in jail.’

‘Thank Rin for that,’ said Isiq quickly.

‘He is not thanking Rin. I am told he fell very hard for that creature, and struggles with despair.’ She smiled darkly. ‘Perhaps that is why he does not mind entangling his fate with my own.’

‘He has joined the cause, then?’

‘Not officially, not as King of Simja. But yes, I believe he has. And he knows more of how I shall achieve my aims than any other monarch alive.’

‘Then I am sure he knows more than I do. Will you tell me, Empress?’

‘Of course not. But here’s our rum.’

The servant was advancing with a silver tray, which he placed on the table. Maisa poured, then handed Isiq a glass. He smiled his thanks (the good stuff, if she only knew how he needed it) but the Empress did not smile in return. They stood silent until the door closed again.

‘Forgive me,’ said Isiq. ‘My loyalty has yet to be sufficiently tested, isn’t that so?’

‘Correct. I am impatient to confide in you, as it happens — but I have conquered nothing in my exile if not impatience. No one learns my plans until they prove themselves, and you are not yet on par with those freebooters out there, gobbling clams on the balconies.’

He bowed his head. He deserved this much censure, it was true.

‘Tell me, Isiq: has Magad kept up the gardens in Etherhorde? Do the flying foxes still roost in the silk trees?’

‘I have heard that they do.’

‘And the arch of roses still shades the Pilgrims’ Esplanade?’

Isiq hesitated, then shook his head. ‘No, Empress. The arch collapsed under its own weight, five or six years ago.’

She looked stricken. He tried to imagine her as a young girl, arms spread wide, running the length of that bee-busy tunnel of flame. But the girl his mind was showing him was Thasha, always Thasha. He cleared his throat.

‘May I at least know if your plans have gone beyond the theoretical?’

Maisa nodded slowly. ‘Yes, you may know that much. They have gone far beyond it — to a point from which there is no return.’

Nothing could have pleased him more.

‘I will be blunt, Isiq,’ she said. ‘I do need a tool. If you will not be that tool I expect my campaign to fall to pieces. It is not blind obedience I ask for. But you may be certain that I wish to use you, terribly and cruelly, in the pursuit of a better world.’

‘And how can I prove myself worthy of your confidence?’

The Empress gazed at him sternly. There was a resolve in her that put his own suddenly to shame. ‘To begin with,’ she said, ‘you can marry me.’

With that she threw back her rum.