protest left to them. But even that would not last long.
It was next the turn of the grandmother, Kira. With a snap of her fingers she set the Acolytes on to the hostile populace. Soon, people were scattering in all directions, away from the sudden violence, as the warrior priests began dragging bodies out of the fray.
'Wonderful,' sneered Kirkus. 'Now you frighten away our sport.'
'It is a large city. It has many streets.'
She was right, of course. Other streets, in different quarters, were calmer than those left in the procession's wake. Word must surely have already reached them, though, for the streets were emptier than might have been expected. Still, people went about their daily business, perhaps figuring rumour for exaggeration, or they were simply not in a mind to be chased from their own ground. By now, no one looked directly at the passing procession.
'Do you see anything else of interest, my child?'
Kirkus shook his head within his sharp-contoured mask. But he stared with fascination, appraising everyone that he saw, waiting for something further to grab his attention.
'I sometimes wonder,' mused Kira, as she studied the young girl captive now walking in chains at the rear, 'if we have not lost something in the gaining of an empire. At least, it seems that way to me sometimes. For every gain there is a loss. And every loss a gain. Once upon a time we had to do this through stealth and deceit: drunks stumbling home from the inns, street children out late, unwary travellers on the road. But that was long ago. In my memory, it seemed somehow better.'
Kirkus was barely listening, his gaze still intense – waiting, waiting.
The palanquin finally halted in a noisy market square. This was the city centre, Kirkus knew – for where else would one expect to see a one-hundred-foot rusting spike rising sheer from the stone flagging? He stared at the great pole towering above the marketplace.
His grandmother noticed his wonder. 'It was Mokabi's idea,' she began. 'After the town fell he-'
'I know.'
The locals seemed to pay the monument little heed as they went about their business. He could see wreaths of flowers piled around its mottled base, where soldiers stood guard, eyeing the crowds.
The city of Skara-Brae had been the final Nathalese stronghold to hold out during the Third Conquest. Hano, the young queen and military genius of Nathal, having been defeated at last in the field, had bolted here to Skara-Brae with the last of her forces. Archgeneral Mokabi, commanding the Fourth Army, had given chase and laid siege to the city, demanding the gates be opened, else all within would be slain. At this, it was said, the young queen had offered to surrender herself, but her soldiers and the city's population refused to let her go. They paid the ultimate price for their defiance.
When the city finally fell, at great cost to the Fourth Army, Arch-general Mokabi decided to hold a celebration for his conquering troops, one befitting those who had sacrificed so much during the campaign. First, they turned the town into an open brothel, slaying what they finished with or did not want in the first place. Then, in a stroke of inspiration, the archgeneral ordered a great spike to be forged from the melted armour of all those men of his army who had fallen during the siege. Fashioning a spike running a hundred feet in length, they fastened a great plug of concrete to the base of it, then positioned the entire thing, on its side, in the city square for all to see.
On the fifth night following the fall of the city, amidst an orgy of drinking and excess, the archgeneral's men forced the defeated officers and the town leaders one by one on to the spike's point. Impaled sideways like this, the male and female victims were drawn along its entire length, most dying in the process, until the spike was entirely filled by them. At its very tip, they placed Hano herself.
At a signal from the archgeneral, and with a shouted salutation to the defeated queen – at least, as Valores told it – the corpse-laden spike was hoisted vertically by three hundred enslaved townsfolk, there to be planted as a permanent monument to conquest.
It was a rousing tale and, years later, when Kirkus finally met Mokabi at a celebration for the birthday of the Holy Matriarch, Kirkus's own mother, he had found himself stuck for words in replying to the old man's kindly questions concerning his youthful studies – struck with awe at being in the presence of a living, breathing legend. But there had been something else too, something more subtle that had stilled his young tongue as he stood in front of the archgeneral and which took him several sleepless nights in his bed in the Temple of Whispers to fathom. For when young Kirkus had held the man's large hand in his own, something about that fleshy touch, cool and a little sweaty, had terrified him. Suddenly, all the stories of the general's exploits had become more than mere words on a page. This very man, his grip living and pulsing against his own, had commanded the slaughter of thousands; and not only defeated soldiers, but women and children, old men and babes. In that moment Kirkus had felt repelled by his touch, as though a mere handshake might infect him with something dreadful, something tainted. Afterwards, he imagined he could even smell blood on his hands. No matter how often he scrubbed at them, he could still smell it faintly, the metallic scent of it, when he lay alone at night with his own thoughts.
That sensation only diminished as his fourteenth birthday came and went, and he was allowed to share his bed with his temple friends at last: Brice and Asam sometimes but, after a while, mostly Lara. With such heady new experiences to explore, he allowed himself to forget about the imagined taint of blood on his hands. During the same period his lessons in the rituals of Mann intensified. He underwent his first purging. His mother, increasingly, allowed him to witness the intrigues and responsibilities of her newly seized position on the throne. Kirkus, over time, began to lose his inner sensitivities. He learned to appreciate the necessities of the ruthless act, and the basic selfishness of compassion. And when, on those rare occasions he again found himself seized by a sense of corruption – whether a greasy door handle or a glass of wine shared between friends, even a bathing pool already used by others – he would make sure to withdraw into the privacy of his chambers before he succumbed to the compulsion to scrub himself raw. After all, he was an initiate priest of Mann, and next in line for the throne. He could not afford to appear weak.
'Coming?' asked his grandmother, as she climbed down from the palanquin.
Kirkus tore his gaze from the mammoth spike, and in particular the patches of rust that stained it. He stared at her for several beats of his heart before her words sank in.
He shook his head, and watched as the old priestess wandered about the market, accompanied only by her personal slaves, freely sampling sweets and local wines. She declined an armed escort, staking her life on the intimidating power of her white robes alone, which parted the crowds everywhere as she went.
For some time Kirkus merely sat where he was and savoured the possibilities, playing fantasies in his head of those citizens that took his fancy. At last, when he was certain of who he wanted, he rose to his feet.
More quietly this time, he pointed out those who had caught his attention: two pretty sisters with manes of blonde hair sweeping down almost to the ground; a fat butcher who handled his cleaver like a veteran, and might offer some fight; a young man who reminded him of his boyhood friend Asam; an old fishwife with a body still lean and strong and interesting.
The Acolytes swept through the crowds, snatching those indicated where they stood. Shouts went up, only to be lost in the general clamour of the marketplace. Kirkus watched the ensuing commotion, following its stirs and eddies spreading throughout the square. He was mesmerized by it all, as distraught friends and relatives clung to those being taken away from them, crying out for help from others crowded around them. Each was apprehended in turn and the sounds of alarm rose higher, finally beginning to usurp even the din of the busy marketplace itself.
Kirkus knew, in that moment, that for the rest of his long life he could never grow bored of days such as this one.
As Kira returned accompanied by a hamper filled with choice goods, she left behind her a market square of depleted stalls and baskets still spinning where they had been dropped, their owners shouting as they fled the scene, intent on passing the alarm to adjacent streets. Behind the palanquin, the sense of shock felt by the newly acquired slaves emanated like a palpable force as in turn they were fixed to chains.
Several streets later, a man dressed in the faded leathers of a courier rode up to the head of the column, his striped zelback made jittery by the brooding atmosphere all around. The rider spoke briefly to the Acolyte captain, then handed down to him a scrap of folded paper, before he turned and kicked his mount into a canter, heading away.
Kira read the note with growing bemusement in her eyes.
'It would seem that word of our arrival has stirred more than just fear in this city. Listen to what it says: This evening, when you meet with High Priest Belias, study closely the fit of his robes. You will find underneath only a
