gave them leave to enter and the ammonite crept in.
The Lady Urquentha was the first Chosen woman Carnelian had ever seen. Her beauty lit the chamber like a lamp. A jewelled halo that framed her face took all its glimmer from her skin. The rest of the chamber was dark.
'You are not my son.' Urquentha's face thinned to fragile alabaster.
'Lady,' said Carnelian and made a clumsy bow. 'Did they not tell you?'
She gazed at him. 'Who would tell me? It has been my fate to know of the world only as much of it as I can see through windows. Rumours are the only communication to penetrate this house.'
'But your letter, my Lady, it came so swiftly.'
She frowned a little. That was delivered by my keeper ammonites. But how came it into your hand, my Lord?'
'I am the son of your son.'
Urquentha's face loosened but quickly tightened again.
Her hand began sending a series of quick signs to the ammonites which Carnelian could not read. He turned to see the creatures nodding, and when he looked back
Urquentha was gently beckoning him. He went as a moth to her flame. When he was in range, she asked permission with her eyes before reaching out to catch his chin. Her fingers were warm. He returned her gaze. Her eyes were peepholes on to a violet sea. She turned his face with her hand as if it were a vase she was checking for imperfections.
The hand released him and receded into a pearl-crusted sleeve. She looked sad. 'I can see nothing of my son in your face.'
Carnelian blushed.
She smiled. 'That at least is his. The rest is wholly your mother's. I should have recognized her beauty when you came through that door. Who else could you be but Azurea's son?' Her smile warmed him. 'Have you been made comfortable?'
'Yes, my Lady.'
'You may call me Grandmother, child.' Her eyes darkened to purple. 'You have spoken with the second lineage?'
'Lord Spinel came down to meet me, Grandmother.'
'Did he indeed,' she said, souring, showing the cracks in her marble face. She chuckled without humour. 'I would very much have liked to witness that fish floundering in the net he knotted for himself.'
A movement caught the corner of Carnelian's eye. He glanced round at the watching ammonites. With their numbers and fixed expression, their yellow faces could have been cast tallow.
'Where is my son?'
Leaning close to his grandmother, Carnelian whispered, 'Could we not be alone?'
'You wish to be free of my chaperons?' She turned a thin smile towards the little men.
Carnelian nodded.
She laughed like a girl. 'I more than you have wished to be free of those jaundiced faces, but it is forbidden by the purdah. But do not worry about them, Carnelian; they may have eyes but they have no ears.' She smiled at him. 'We were talking about your father.'
'My father, Lady… Grandmother…'
His grandmother used her hands to tease out his words as if they were a ribbon he had stuffed in his mouth.
'He has gone to the Halls of Thunder.'
Her lips narrowed as they pressed together. The jewelled structure around her head rustled and glimmered like a flight of beetles. She sighed. 'It seems it is always to be thus?' She looked through him as if her eyes were seeking the edge of the sky. 'Always it is the Masks that win the greater part of his affection.'
'He was hurt.'
Fear washed across her face.
'Wounded.' The word squeezed out of his mouth like a pebble.
'Will he die?' The words were flat and lifeless.
Carnelian could see the pain in her violet eyes. The Lord Aurum is confident the Wise will save him.'
Urquentha threw open her hands. 'Of course, that one would be in this.'
Carnelian was a little dazzled by the flower of her fingers. He tried to find a thread to pull, some way to unravel their journey for her, but she seemed almost to have forgotten him.
'Is it not enough that he should have my daughter to lock up in his coomb but that her brother should also conspire in his intrigues? My son has always been a fool.'
'His honour-'
'Aaah, yes,' she said, and the halo behind her head quivered. 'His honour. Fifteen years this House has suffered for his precious honour. He told me he would be but a little time away. His honour demanded that he leave Osrakum before the Apotheosis: that he remain in the outer world long enough to give the new Gods time to consolidate Their reign free from the entanglement of Their love, the same entanglement that another, less honourable man would have used to his advantage. His honour, taagh! What of the honour of this House and its first lineage? Fifteen years we have been a pale power among the Great. For fifteen years at the dividing of the flesh tithe we have had to stand at the end of the line, lost there without distinction among the Lesser Houses. For thirteen long years I have been imprisoned here
…' Urquentha subsided, looked forlornly around the chamber as if seeing it for the first time. 'In his absence, I was to maintain the ascendancy of our lineage in this House. He left me the Seal…'
Carnelian nodded.
'He told you that, Carnelian?'
'No, Fey did.'
'Fey.' Her eyes narrowed. 'When my son went off into the wilderness, I begged him to leave you with me. What kind of life can the bleak outer world provide a scion of the Great? Besides, with you and the Seal together I could have ruled. Without you my hand was weak enough for Spinel to snatch the Seal away. Your father said that he would leave Fey to be my support. It did not take more than two years for Spinel to bring her over to his cause. I was told that House Suth would fall even lower if we did not participate in the festivities and masquerades of the Great, and that in such society men were essential. Men will always claim this and it is always a pretext. It was nothing but greed and power-lust that made Spinel take the Seal.' One of her hands crushed the other. 'If that usurpation was not enough, he buried me here in this house, though my womb had long been an empty husk.'
She looked up and the smile that came through her tears allowed Carnelian to see the girl that she had once been. That girl had a look of his father that put a stone in his throat.
'But now you are here, Carnelian. The damage will be difficult to repair but not impossible. It might not be too late for us to secure for you a worthy blood match. She will be a child destined for years to remain barren to your seed, but what matter that? You are as youthful as the morning.' She smiled a cold smile. 'Spinel had begun to believe that you would never return. He thought his usurpation all but complete. He and the Lords of the third lineage support the Empress in the election. She has made sure of gathering about her all the lower orders by making extravagant promises of the blood and iron she will give them once she rules through Molochite. I suspect Spinel actually hoped to have the Imperial Power aid him in becoming the first lineage in this House.
'Now, whether Ykoriana triumphs or not, it is all over for Spinel and his hopes. With my aid, Carnelian, you shall rule until my son returns. Together we will push Spinel and his sycophants back into the shadows where they belong. With the Seal in our hands House Suth is ours. Tell me quickly, what arrangements have you made to have the Seal returned?'
Carnelian opened his hands in something between apology and a shrug.
His grandmother's eyes lost their colour. Her skin's light dimmed. 'But why?'
'I did not think it appropriate to act without my father's sanction.'
'But without the Seal, we can do nothing. I will have to stay here.'
She bent visibly under the weight of her years. Carnelian could see the tears she tried to hide. He reached out, took her hand, stroked it as if it were a dove. The ammonites stirred in alarm. 'On my blood, Grandmother, I
