Aleas motioned to the door. 'Well, we go no further. Even with blackpowder, I doubt we'd make it through this door.'
'Nonsense,' said the old man. 'We still have our wits.'
Without standing, Ash reached up and hammered the hilt of his blade against the iron door. He waited, then he hammered some more.
'They are finished!' he shouted through it. 'It is safe to come out!'
Aleas frowned, spoke quietly: 'You really expect them to be so foolish?'
'Always expect foolishness,' Ash answered just as quietly, 'when minds are scattered by fear.'
As if to prove his assertion, a muffled voice replied through the door. 'Who speaks this?'
'Toomes!' Ash responded without a pause.
There was no reply. They waited for some minutes but nothing happened.
Aleas wondered how they would ever find Nico now, in their current condition. They didn't even know where he was being held. It seemed hopeless.
A clunk sounded through the door. Then another. It began to open.
Ash leaned on his sword and rose swaying to his feet. He met the old priest's face with a toothy grin.
Before the priest could react, Ash shoved past him. A woman stood just within the doorway, hands pressed to her mouth, her eyes gaping.
'Do nothing,' Ash instructed them. 'Aleas,' he called over his shoulder. Aleas was checking his master's pulse which was proving difficult to find. There… a faint beat against his finger. Well, he supposed, there was nothing more he could do for him now, anyway.
He followed the old farlander inside.
*
Birds sang from silver cages. The air reeked so thickly of narcotics that Aleas felt giddy with it. He suppressed an impulse to giggle.
The chamber was bright compared to the dimness they had just left, a result of the high windows that ran entirely around its perimeter. The sky was blue out there above the fog, the sun too bright to look at.
'Kirkus!' demanded Ash.
The old priest lowered his head. The woman, a servant of some kind, glanced for a mere instant up towards the raised section above.
They passed a crackling fire in the centre of the room, moved swiftly up the wooden steps that led to sleeping quarters separated by walls of thin panelling. Each of the four rooms there was empty.
Ash stood for a moment. He raised his nose in the air, sniffed.
He spun around, then returned to the bedroom they had just checked.
Ash ducked beneath the massive bed, snaking a hand under it. He began to pull, till a leg emerged, then naked buttocks, then an entire body.
It was a young priest, his lower lip pierced with golden spikes.
'Kirkus,' announced Ash triumphantly to the terrified, drugged eyes of the young man, who held up his hands like a boy shielding his eyes from the morning light.
'Nico. Where is he?' demanded Ash.
Kirkus blinked, finding focus at last on the face of the Rshun. Ash shook him with a snarl.
'Gone,' Kirkus panted, a hand casually gesturing at the air. 'To the Shay Madi.'
He told the truth. Aleas could see it in his eyes.
Their hung heads, on hearing this, seemed to lend the young priest strength. He dropped his arms, used his palms to raise himself up. 'You're too late,' he announced. 'He's well broken, as you will be, too, if you cause me harm.'
'Finish him,' said Aleas, with ice in his voice. 'There might still be time to save Nico.'
Ash shifted his stance and set his blade against Kirkus' white throat.
'Hold!' wailed the young priest. 'You do this for gold, yes? Well I have gold, more gold than you could spend in a lifetime.'
'Then what good would it be to us?' replied Ash, and with an almost gentle motion flicked the tip of his blade across the young man's throat.
Kirkus goggled. His tongue emerged from his gaping mouth. He reached a hand to his throat, trying to fix it. A dark crimson appeared suddenly between his fingers. As it spurted, he slowly choked to death.
They watched until the Matriarch's son lay lifeless.
When they returned to him, Baracha was conscious and trying to get to his feet. Aleas marvelled at the man's resilience.
'Is it done?' he asked, as Aleas helped him up. Aleas nodded.
'What of the boy?'
'The Shay Madi,' said Aleas grimly.
'Perhaps he lied,' the Alhazii offered, more to Ash than to his apprentice. But Ash ignored him, and descended the steps.
They rode the climbing box back down.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
A Day for Rejoicing Bahn was glad of the incense that drifted through the dim atmosphere of the inner temple. He stood beneath the high windowless domed roof of the building, in a silence permeated by the low murmurs of the Daoist monks performing their ritual, swaying only slightly in the armour he had been wearing for twelve hours altogether, and which by now weighed like an extra man upon him. The rigid, contoured plates and sheaths were coated in a fine grey dust streaked with sweat, and it itched where the leather insides pressed against his tacky skin. He was aware of how badly he must smell to those around him, but he was almost glad of that, too. It would help to mask any lingering scents of sex.
His wife seemed glad merely that he had made it at last, even if their daughter's naming ceremony had already begun in his absence. Marlee knew to appreciate these chances Bahn snatched of returning home from the Shield, not least because it signified a lull in the fighting.
Part of Kharnost's Wall had collapsed during the previous week, heralding another round of infantry assaults from the Mannians as they attempted to exploit this sudden weakness in the city's defences. The Khosians, in return, had struggled to hold the invaders off long enough to repair the breach as best they could. Bahn himself had so far not fought during the week-long defence of the wall. He had been there merely in his usual capacity as General Creed's aide, his role to observe and to stand back from the fighting. When the Mannians had attacked again last night, Bahn had been stationed with the field-command team on the second wall, from where he had watched through the long darkness as the battle ebbed and flowed around the latest breach and upon the far parapet. He had perceived only dimly the fighting taking place in the flame-lit darkness, and in sudden spells of brightness made stark by shadow and light as flares had drifted from the sky, like a dream he had once had of burning misshapes of men tumbling from the stars.
Bahn had done nothing all night except for this silent watching and the regular despatch of runners to the Ministry of War with reports relating to the ongoing defence. Occasionally he had replied to one of the comments of the command team, or had shown his acknowledgement of some black joke they had made in their attempts at relieving the tension. Still, it was the sixth prolonged assault in as many nights, and Bahn was exhausted from it. As the sun had risen in the east, across their left shoulders and over the skirting wall that protected the coast of the Lansway on that side, the enemy had withdrawn, bearing their wounded with them, and the assault had at last, and with sweet mercy, faded away.
A new landscape emerged in the aftermath of withdrawal: a broken and twisted one with movement dotted all about it, though movement ragged and spent and without much direction. Bahn observed the city's men staggering around with comrades, as though drunk – most likely they were – or sagging to their knees in the mud or on the blood-slick stones of the parapet. Some called out to the dawn sky, or called out to others, or laughed, simply laughed. With the din of battle now gone, Bahn felt as though a harsh wind had been battering his flesh all these
