predawn sky. His people were face down on the mosaic. Tain joined them there. A door hissed open with an exhalation of lily. His father appeared, narrow, tall, his face fearfully white, clad in an identical black robe. Someone with eyes averted handed his father his mask and he hid his face like the moon behind a golden cloud.
'See,' his father commanded.
Their people looked up and then rose to their knees. Keal and the other guardsmen began rising to their feet.
We go alone, his father signed, using the Lordly 'we'. He paced towards the outer door. Carnelian fell in behind him, scratching an itch on his head, startled when he touched stubbled scalp. He had forgotten the shaving. The hard edge of his mask pushed into his hand. He smiled his gratitude at Tain, put it on, then followed his father's back, watching the black samite bunch and loosen with each pace. The doors rumbled open and they passed into the gloomy hall beyond.
They walked down the centre of the hall. At the end was a tall door before which flames leaping in braziers were the only guards. Silver ammonites embossed the door like startled eyes.
'My Lord, why would the Legates use their legions against Osrakum?' asked Carnelian, feeling the need to almost whisper.
His father did not turn his head but kept his eyes fixed upon the door. The Legates and the commanders under them are all, naturally, of the Lesser Chosen. The God Emperor appoints them all. They serve the House of the Masks. It is their only source of wealth.'
'Because they are excluded from the division of the flesh tithe as well as the taxes from the cities?' said Carnelian.
His father nodded. 'Although they form no part of the Balance of the Powers, they hold in their hands almost all the military might of the Commonwealth.'
'And it is feared that they will take with force what the Three Powers would keep wholly for themselves?'
They had reached the door. Flames flapped like hands in spasm. Carnelian glanced up. Flickers of their light were trapped in each tarnished spiral.
'Quite so. We have taken many precautions against them, chief of these being that we hold all they possess and care for within the Sacred Wall of Osrakum.'
'But if they have the legions…?'
The Great have the double-strength legion, the Ichorian, and with this we hold the Three Gates into Osrakum.'
'Would it not be safer to include the Lesser Chosen within the franchise of the Great?'
His father looked down at him. Then the legions would be ours and the Balance would be broken.'
'Could Legates not be appointed from the House of the Masks itself?'
'No-one of the Imperial Power can ever be permitted even to cross the Skymere to its outer shore. If ever that happened, and they managed to escape Osrakum, they could use the legions to overthrow us and again the Balance would be broken.'
Carnelian gaped. 'What you are saying, Father, is that those of the House of the Masks are prisoners of the Great.'
His father was eyeing the gloomy length of the hall. 'Say, rather, hostages.'
The Great hold the God Emperor Themselves hostage?'
'As They in turn use their legions to hold us hostage in Osrakum. That is the Balance.'
'And how do the Wise form part of this Balance?'
They are the Law made flesh. Inside Osrakum they constrain the freedoms of all the Chosen. Outside, they maintain the roads with their watch-towers and the left-ways with their couriers. Though blind, there is nothing in the Three Lands they do not see. Additionally, it is their ammonites that form a seal across the Three Gates. They keep the inner and the outer worlds apart and form the only bridge across the divide. It is only at their sufferance that we ourselves are permitted to be here, outside Osrakum.'
The Balance must restrict their power?'
'In terrible ways, but essentially the God Emperor's guardsmen, the Sinistral Ichorians, hold them hostage.'
'And we, in turn, hold them all hostage.'
'Rings, within rings, like the ripples on a pond.'
'Moving outwards from the God Emperor, a leaf dropped from the sky.'
'Just so.'
'Father, are these quaestors then the Wise?'
His father's hand flicked a dismissive gesture. 'Of the Wise, Carnelian, but not the Wise themselves. Surely, if you noticed nothing else, you could see the quaestor still had eyes?'
'Of course… I was careless. What manner of…?'
'A failed candidate for the Wise, though he came so close that I marvel that he kept his eyes. I was not able to examine his face fully but it seemed to me that he had passed many of the higher examinations.'
The numbers?'
Their positions relate to the different lores, levels, domains.'
'And what is the Privilege of the Three Powers?'
'It is a law that allows each power the right to exclude either or both of the other two from any matter that it considers internal to its affairs, unless this exclusion should be precluded by another law of higher rank.'
'And so you included the Legate as the representative of the God Emperor while excluding the quaestor who is a representative of the Wise because you intended to overrule a law?'
Suth made a gesture of impatience. 'You ask too many questions, my Lord.'
'Knowledge is the best armour,' said Carnelian with a flush of anger.
Suth looked down at his son, recognizing his own words. There is something I must tell you.'
The tone of his father's voice made Carnelian's stomach clench. At that moment there was an echoing sound of doors closing. Father and son turned to look down the hall. The other Masters were walking towards them, hands and feet pale as the dead's. Three of them, shrouded in the same black robes, coming as for an entombing.
'What did you want to tell me, Father?' whispered Carnelian anxiously.
Not now, his father signed.
Carnelian was forced to stand silent at his father's side as they watched the Masters approach. Aurum moved out in front of the others. Carnelian and his father made way for him. The old Master moved between them to strike the door. Each blow was answered by a deep vibration. 'We are come because the Law must be obeyed,' Aurum boomed.
Exhaling camphor, the door sighed open just a body's width. One by one they rustled through. A vapouring milky pool lay on the other side. Carnelian watched his father wade through, the hem of his black robe floating round him like a slick of oil. Already past the pool's white lip, Aurum was moving off leaving a glistening track.
Vapours spread chill up into Carnelian's nose. He lowered his right foot into the liquid. Biting cold washed over it. He put in the left foot, then he dragged his train across. As he splashed out the other side, he saw that his father was ahead of him, talking with his hands to Jaspar. Carnelian turned to see Vennel walk across, his narrow hands hitching up the skirt of his robe, revealing long marble legs, so white they made the pool look yellow.
Tall bronze lamps lit benches of stone, upon one of which Aurum had sat down. Sallow creatures appeared and fussed round him. Carnelian found a place beside his father. As he pulled up his soak-heavy robe it gave off a reek of camphor. Jaspar and Vennel were setding on other benches.
'You who are Chosen shall now make ready to leave this place.' The words were spoken in Quya but did not have the rich timbre of a Master's voice. Carnelian located their source to be the quaestor in his purple samite. His face of polished silver had a mouth but only solid spirals for eyes. In his hands he held a cord like a necklace of beads.
'You who are Chosen must take all precaution before crossing the Naralan and the Guarded Land,' said the quaestor, counting the beads through his fingers as if he were using them for prayer.
Carnelian heard the other Masters answer him, 'As it has been done, so shall it be done, for ever, because
