whips, tripping over baskets and sartlar. Aurum straightened, hid his face within the shadow of his cowl. The overseers cowered till he commanded them to approach. Then they fawned on him and strained to hear his every word.
Cringing guides led them up the valley. They wound through a maze of vats and channels. Carnelian watched sartlar stir a rot of shelled ammonites. Each stir gave off a stench and oozed out more yellow liquid that darkened as it flowed. Sluices let water in from above or allowed the liquid to filter down from one tank to the next. With each descent the colour deepened. In one tank he saw it had become almost black but that its edges were the colour of blood. He understood and looked around with wonder. The whole valley was a dyeworks for extracting fabled, precious purple.
A whole run of tanks was flushed clean by a flood released from higher up. Red to their waists, sartlar leaned against the current as they scraped at the rotting matter that was sticking to the sides. Carnelian knew this sewage would be channelled down to the sink from where it would stream red off to the sea.
'Do my Lords think it reasonable that I should now be given explanations?' Vennel said over the scrabbling of aquar claws.
Carnelian was exhausted by the effort of keeping in his seat. During the long, hard climb his saddle-chair had been giving him a constant bruising batter. He would be glad to stop even for a short time.
Aurum looked up at the sun. 'We must be far from here before we camp tonight.'
'Camp…?' said Vennel.
'Aurum, we have almost reached the land above,' said Suth. Carnelian saw his father turning round to look for him. 'And it might profit us to rest our beasts before we go much further.'
'As my Lords wish,' said Aurum with a tone of resignation. 'I will seek out a suitable place to stop.'
They continued to climb up the valley side. Carnelian strained to look over the juddering back of the saddle- chair and glimpsed the shimmer of the sea.
He was crossing a weir when he saw Aurum on the other side bringing his aquar to a stop. The Master set five Marula aside and divided the rest into two groups. The first he sent back down the way they had come. The second was sent ahead to spy out the land. Aurum made his aquar kneel, fastened on his ranga shoes and then climbed out of his saddle-chair. Carnelian bound on his own shoes. Aurum towered over the Maruli to whom he was handing his aquar's reins.
The river formed a lake below the level of the path. The aquar stooped to drink and the Marula bent down beside them lapping like beasts. Tain and the other slaves stood apart from the Masters who were like a copse of trees.
Jaspar struck a pose. 'One is certainly relieved to have escaped that foul factory. Though not without cost.' He pinched up his robe as if it were dung. 'In civilized circumstances one would insist on having this immediately torched. This rag could not be sweetened by all the perfumes of Osrakum.'
The wind will cleanse it well enough,' snapped Vennel.
'One fears the smell of those putrid molluscs will remain forever in one's nostrils.'
Suth looked at Jaspar. The road's perfume will make my Lord soon enough forget his putrid molluscs.'
'At last,' said Vennel.
'At last, my Lord?' said Jaspar.
Vermel's mask regarded him disdainfully. 'We come at last to knowledge of our destination.'
'Our destination has always been the same, my Lord,' said Suth.
'But not the means by which we might reach it, my Lord.'
'We all agreed we should proceed along the road disguised.'
'I recall a mention of palanquins, of the Legate's banners.'
'It has become necessary, my Lord, that we should adopt a different disguise,' said Aurum.
'Why did the palanquins fall out of favour?'
'We can no longer risk using the leftway,' said Suth.
'Why by the Two can we not, my Lord?'
'We have reasons to believe that were we to do so we should be attacked,' said Aurum.
These reasons were no doubt contained in the Clave's letter?' Vennel waited for confirmation but received none. 'Do these reasons justify this preposterous choice of route?'
'Many eyes would have seen us leaving the tower if we had joined the road, there,' said Suth.
Vennel pointed up the valley. This will bring us up onto the road, no doubt?'
'It will, my Lord.'
Carnelian could see Vermel's fury in the cast of his shoulders.
'What is this new disguise, my Lords, this wonderful concealment that will draw a veil of shadow over the eyes of our enemies?'
Aurum indicated the Marula. 'We will hide ourselves among these barbarians.'
Vennel looked at the Marula as if he were counting them. These creatures are of a type rare within the borders of the Commonwealth. Do my Lords think it wise that we should attempt to conceal ourselves in such a conspicuous hiding place?'
'Marula are rare, my Lord,' said Aurum, 'but here, by the sea, black men from round the coast are not unknown. We shall masquerade as chieftains making a trade pilgrimage to the Guarded Land.'
'One had understood the coastal blacks to be far more diminutive than these Marula.'
Suth broadened his shoulders. 'My Lord is not listening. Black men are uncommon on the road and thus few will know enough to make a distinction between their kinds.'
Vennel nodded. 'My Lords seem to have woven their schemes with some care. I can only wonder why I was excluded.'
'I too,' said Jaspar, but Carnelian noted that his voice held no edge of resentment.
Vennel’s mask turned its imperious gaze on him. 'You seem not much concerned, my Lord.'
'We are here now. It would seem foolish, not to say unpleasant, to return down this valley.'
The Ruling Lord Suth and I thought it more prudent that we should keep our own counsel,' said Aurum.
Vennel made a gesture of exasperation. This prudence was not, it seems, extended to the Legate of the Tower in the Sea.'
'We needed his assistance,' said Suth.
'A great quantity of it, my Lord, judging by our collar-less and poisoned escort and these starvelings with their grimy chairs, not to mention the cut-down ranga. Tell me, Aurum, how did you persuade our dear Legate to give you so much assistance? Did you perhaps bind him to your cause with the promise of one of your blood-high daughters?'
Aurum opened his hands in a threat gesture. 'Perhaps my Lord should consider choosing his accusations with more care.'
Vennel turned away to look at Suth. 'What of the much-vaunted need for haste, My-Lord-who-goes before?'
There is still time enough to reach Osrakum before the election,' said Suth.
'One more question, my Lord.' Vennel leaned towards Suth. 'Who are these enemies so terrible that they can force Lords of the Great to hide like thieves?'
'A conspiracy among the Lesser Chosen.'
To which, no doubt, our friend the Legate is totally immune?'
'Do you think we apprised him of all our plans?'
'And from all this caution can one conclude that these conspirators might dare to breach the Blood Convention?'
Aurum moved closer to Vennel. 'It seems that they might indeed attempt our lives, Lord Vennel, and so it behoves us all to show great care. These are evidently very desperate people. You do understand, my Lord?'
Their two masks reflected each other's for a moment.
'Only too well, Ruling Lord Aurum,' said Vennel.
Looking from one to the other, Carnelian could almost see the anger passing between them. He was sure more had been said than had been in the words.
Something touched his shoulder. It was his father. Follow me, his hand signed. Carnelian clacked after him though he was reluctant to be alone with him. Crail's blood flooded between them like a river.
