friend apart, as they are the last ones left alive in the fortress.’ Salwa turned his attention to a half-full spherical container being lugged over by the sailors. ‘Why do you still have poison left inside there? The womb mages calculated the precise dosage to wipe out the guardsmen’s entire stable.’
‘Apologies,’ said the lead officer, raising his face from under his peaked cap. ‘Your men weren’t thirsty enough to drink any more.’
Omar’s eyes widened at the sight of Farris Uddin’s face. There was a sudden exchange of bullets between the guardsmen dressed as marines and Salwa’s men, the rasp of steel being drawn and the confusion of crashing blades. Omar was rolled about, the draks thrashing around in confusion amongst the melee, the troops controlling them having abandoned the reins for their weapons. His cry of relief at being reprieved from execution by Salwa turned to one of agony as his limbs were twisted beyond their natural tolerance.
Omar felt a burning pain lash across his arms and legs as the severed straps of the chords that had bound him to the drak whipped across them. Rolling to his feet he caught a scimitar tossed from one of the disguised guardsmen. Boulous rose to his feet beside him, then Omar ducked reflexively as a shadow buzzed overhead, the wind of a passing drak ruffling the hairs on the back of his neck. He barely had time to register a whole talon wing in the air before a series of detonations from the battlements on the other side of the bailey filled the air with dust and flying rock fragments.
One of Salwa’s men came sprinting towards Omar, his steel blade twisting in an intricate pattern in the air. Omar ducked down and kicked out with both his legs, going under the arc of the scimitar and sending his attacker flying. He rolled along the ground and pulled up into a guard stance to be greeted by the sight of Farris Uddin plunging his blade down into the man’s chest, swift and sure, as merciless as an executioner.
Omar yelled in frustration as he saw Salwa retreating back into one of the battlement’s turrets with a handful of his men.
Farris Uddin’s hand fell heavily on Omar’s shoulder as he made to sprint after them. ‘Let them go.’
‘But he’s murdered half the guardsmen in the fortress!’
Farris Uddin pointed down to the corpse-strewn bailey. ‘Look closer.’
Omar did as he was bid and noticed something strange about the guardsmen’s bodies; their arms were locked behind their backs by ropes, a line of cloth tied around the mouth of each corpse.
‘The only guardsmen down there were volunteers,’ said Farris Uddin. ‘To make enough noise that the Imperial Aerial Squadron wouldn’t notice we had already captured the marines they had waiting outside. Salwa was firing on his own men down in the courtyard.’
‘You knew the guardsmen were going to be dissolved!’
Farris Uddin held up the empty vial Omar had seen the grand vizier use to make the Caliph Eternal beg like a whipped dog. ‘I intercepted this, along with the grand marshal’s murdered body and the grand vizier’s men charged with disposing of the evidence. The grand marshal was killed by a poisoned needle thrust into the back of his neck — an assassin’s kill. Everything else, your blade through his gut, was for show. The grand marshal would have known what this vial meant as well as I. Its existence meant that our demise was inevitable.’
‘They have the Caliph Eternal addicted, master,’ said Omar. ‘I saw him bowing and grovelling before the grand vizier, as if the ruler of rulers was no more than a slave … The Caliph Eternal, himself.’
‘He is not an addict,’ said Farris Uddin, ‘and you saw something very different.’
Omar started to speak, but Farris Uddin silenced him. ‘Later, boy. There is one truth here. We are now apostate — as rogue and rebellious as any bandits of the Empty Quarter. Boulous, back to the stables. Mount up and follow the talon wing out of the capital. All of you, go, two to a drak if you have to. Any who stay here will be hunted down by the grand vizier’s men and silenced.’
‘Where will we go?’ asked Omar.
‘We regroup and we run,’ said Farris Uddin. ‘That is our duty now, just to survive.’
Omar was glad to be off the drak when it landed, the creature’s tail thumping the ground in irritation, resentful of Omar supplanting whoever had been its blood-bonded guardsman. Probably one of their brave volunteers, lying dead in the inner bailey of the fortress. Stable hands came running forward to take the reins dangling from the drak’s snake-like neck, dust from the ground under its four stubby, sharp-clawed feet rising up like a veil of mist around its green scales.
Omar followed after Boulous and Farris Uddin, vacating the open clearing outside the hundreds of tents so more riders could land. Everyone who had survived the guardsmen’s betrayal had regrouped here — all the planning for a campaign that they had never been called on to execute now put to use in fleeing the capital as fugitives. How long could they survive as a rogue army in the field, raiding for supplies after their stores ran out? That was the question. And how long before the shadow of the Imperial Aerial Squadron’s new airships passed over them with their bomb bays open?
‘How long will we be here, Master Uddin?’ called Omar, catching up with the guardsman commander and his retainer.
‘We have a period leave of grace,’ said Uddin. ‘The grand vizier likes to announce victories, not defeats. He was set to announce the dissolution of the guardsmen, not their flight intact from the capital. Perhaps the dog will try to claim we have been sent into the field against the Jackelians after all.’
‘The grand vizier just has to wait for our supplies to run out, master,’ said Boulous, miserably. ‘An army of foot soldiers might be able to live off the land, but with draks to feed we need the wagoneers of the army supply corps to stay in the field.’
‘Your grasp of logistics does my teachings credit,’ said Uddin. ‘Although watch the impact your words might have on the morale of our people.’
‘The grand vizier will wish to finish us off out of sight,’ said Omar. ‘He does his work in the shadows.’
‘Quite so,’ said Uddin, walking up to a large collection of tents covered with netting the same colour as the barren rocky ground they were pegged into. ‘But we have enough supplies to last for one battle — we will just have to choose that one battle wisely. You have heard the old adage that my enemy’s enemy is my friend?’ He opened the flap to the tent. ‘Meet your enemy’s enemy.’
Omar stared in amazement. Inside were four prisoners tied up against the tent posts: a shaven-headed giant of a man wrapped in tight chains; a statuesque woman with the look of both beauty and danger — one who might almost have passed for a Cassarabian; an old salt-bearded fellow; and a young man who looked about Omar’s age. The faces of the men mottled where skin dye had been rubbed off to reveal a skin as light as a jahani’s, like Boulous.
Omar caught a movement out of the corner of his eye — from Farris Uddin. The guard commander’s skin was changing colour, darkening to ebony. It moved and flexed as if parasites were rippling under his cheeks and forehead. Omar stepped back in astonishment, the guard commander raising a hand to calm him. Astonishingly, Boulous seemed unconcerned by the changing features of Farris Uddin, as did all the prisoners except the youngest of them, whose look of horror must have mirrored Omar’s own.
‘So, Udal the smuggler and Uddin the soldier are one and the same,’ said the salt-bearded prisoner on the floor of the tent. He laughed and looked towards Omar. ‘What’s the matter, lad? Didn’t your officer tell you that he’s a shape-switcher and an agent of the Pasdaran to boot?’
Omar found the scimitar in his hand, drawn and pointing at the man-thing. ‘Who are you, what are you?’
It was Farris Uddin’s voice answering, but with an uncharacteristic tone of amusement. ‘Everything he said, everything that you know, and more.’
‘Ah, they’re the only Pasdaran who made it through the recent purges,’ said the bearded foreigner. ‘Those who were buried deep in the guards and the army and the jahani, with other faces and identities to hide behind.’
‘How perfect,’ snarled the woman, in a tone that indicated she considered it anything but. ‘A smuggler and the guardsman who is meant to catch him, poacher and gamekeeper, both rolled into one.’
Omar remembered the snake tattoo he had seen on Farris Uddin’s neck when he first saw him that had vanished by the time they had journeyed away from Haffa. He looked accusingly at Boulous. ‘And you knew, all this time?’
‘Do not be too hard on Boulous,’ said Uddin. ‘I told you when you first arrived at the fortress, I picked my retainer for his discretion.’
Omar’s head was left spinning by the implications.
