sometimes giggling and sometimes weeping. The weeping became a sad song crooned hoarsely in a language none around her understood. She lay cradling the bag for some time.
Atop Despot’s Barbican, Aman, Taya and the shade of Hinter made their way through the maze of ruined foundations to return to their master’s side. Aman fell to his knees in obeisance, saying, ‘Yes, Father?’
Hinter bowed, as did Taya. Her eyes shone with wild exhilaration as she peered up at the masked figure. She noted the body of the scholar lying nearby and kicked it. The man grunted, stirring. ‘This one lives?’ she asked aloud.
The masked creature gestured. Aman grunted his understanding. ‘He will speak the Father’s will.’
The girl sneered. ‘This one? Him? He is nothing.’
‘Exactly,’ Hinter said. ‘A slave. He will never be a threat.’
‘And speaking of slaves!’ Aman suddenly crowed, peering down the hill.
Among the ruins some
‘No,’ said Hinter. ‘It is Barukanal.’
The grin inverted to a pout. She searched the hillside. ‘No others?’
‘They appear to have eluded the Call,’ Hinter mused, thoughtful. ‘For the moment.’
Taya straightened from the smoking body. ‘What is to become of him then?’
‘He is to be punished,’ came a new voice and the three turned to regard Scholar Ebbin, who was now sitting up, a hand over his stomach, the other over his mouth, horrified shock on his face.
After a moment of silence, the city eerily still beneath them, Taya cleared her throat. ‘So,’ she asked Aman, ‘is that it? Is it done?’
‘It has merely begun,’ Hinter said. And he pointed an ethereal arm to the sky.
Taya looked up and her face lit with child-like pleasure. ‘Ohhh … Beautiful!’
At first Jan thought he dreamt. A voice was calling him. Distant at first, it seemed faint, gentle even. He saw his old master, the last First, sitting cross-legged before him. On his face was not the pale oval mask of all other Seguleh, painted or not. Instead he wore coarse wood, unpolished and gouged, worn to remind its bearer of the imperfection and shame of his people.
As always, the dark sharp eyes behind the mask studied and weighed him. Then, alarmingly, the mask tilted downwards as if in apology.
Then the image exploded into smoke and a far more distant figure now stood in the darkness, cloaked, tall and commanding. Upon his face was not the child’s crude wooden mask, but a beaten golden oval that shone cold and bright, like the moon. And in his dream Jan bowed to the mask.
Yet it was not the bended knee and lowered head of devotion freely given to his old master. In his dream Jan was sickened to find that he had no choice.
He awoke, his body shivering in a cold sweat. A light tap at his door sounded again. He reached out and drew on his mask. Rising, he picked up the sword that lay next to his bedding and crossed to the door. A servant was waiting, head lowered.
‘Yes?’
‘The Third and Fourth await without, sir. And … others.’
‘Thank you.’
Jan slid the door shut and threw on a shirt, trousers and sash. He went to the front. There in the night, their servants holding torches aloft, waited his fellows of the Ten, the ruling Eldrii. They bowed.
‘You felt it?’ Jan asked.
Six masks inclined their assent.
Jan answered their bow. ‘We are called, my friends. As was promised us so long ago. Ready the ships.’
And they bowed once more.
CHAPTER IV
And he who knew many conflicts
spoke these words:
Where have the swordsmen gone?
Where is the gold giver?
Where are the feasts of the hall?
Alas for the bright dome!
Alas for the fallen splendour!
Now that time has passed away,
dark buried in night,
as if it had never been!
Where lay the servants,
wound round with wards?
Brought low by warriors
and their cruel spears.
Now storms beat
at rocky cliffs,
the bones of the earth
harbingers of storm.
All is strife and trouble
in earthly kingdoms.
Here men are fleeting.
Here honour is fleeting.
All the foundation of the world
turns to waste!
Antsy spent the night on the common room dirt floor. Malakai paid for that and a room for Orchid. Money, it seemed, wasn’t an issue for the man. She woke him up in the morning bleary-eyed and hung over; he’d brooded far too long into the night over far too many earthenware bottles of cheap Confederation beer. That the ale went on to Malakai’s bill made the drinking all the easier, and his funk all the greater. His friend Jallin made no reappearance and Antsy decided that maybe he’d seen the last of that skinny thief.
Malakai brought down six fat skins of sweet water, two bulging panniers and a coil of braided jute rope, and piled the lot beside Antsy and Orchid. Antsy took the majority of the waterskins, the rope, and one pannier to balance his own. He wondered resentfully whether the man had taken them on merely to serve as porters. Malakai wore his thick dirty cloak once more, but now, in his black waist sash and on two shoulder baldrics, he carried as many knives as you could collect from shaking down an entire bourse of Darujhistani toughs. Each was shoved into a tight leather sheath so it wouldn’t fall out or rattle. The man caught Antsy eyeing the hardware and smiled, waving a leather-gloved hand. ‘For show,’ he said.
Orchid took the second pannier. She too was unable to look away from all the pig-stickers. Malakai led the way, and though Antsy listened he didn’t hear the faintest rattle or tap. The man still moved as silently as a shade. Antsy shivered, reminded of certain assassin-types he’d served beside over the years; then he shrugged and
