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  Serese followed him outside where, in the brighter light of the corridor their faces shone with perspiration, and their hair clung in rat tails from the steam. They stopped, exchanged looks. His heart was still racing.

  He wanted to touch her.

  'Serese?'

  Baracha stood in the open doorway that lead out into the courtyard.

  The girl rolled her eyes. 'Goodbye,' she murmured smiling an apology. She went to join her father, looking back just the once.

  Baracha glowered at Nico, his expression dark.

  *

  It was a slow Firstday afternoon, and Nico and the other apprentices were sweating through their cali manoeuvres as usual. The training ground was crowded with assembled Rshun all working their skills to a finer degree, the open space barely large enough to hold them all, while up in his tower, Osh could be seen watching from the window overlooking the courtyard.

  The apprentices were confined to a far corner, panting heavily from the drawing strokes they had already been rehearsing, and now moving through some simple in-stroke, out-stroke combinations, as Baracha barked them through the drills.

  He seemed his usual short-tempered self that day, no better or worse than normal, and his hand had clapped more than a few of them moving too sluggishly for his mood. At one point he yelled into the face of Aleas, for not paying attention to what he was doing, not unusual that, for he always pushed his young apprentice harder than the rest of them, but it disturbed Nico to see it, and the others too. They knew Aleas to be the best of them, and that he did not deserve such treatment.

  It was in the midst of this tirade that a sudden hush fell upon the training ground. Baracha stopped in mid-flow, his angry eyes flashing about to locate the source of this new distraction.

  There, striding on to the dust, Ash had appeared, with a sheathed sword in his hand, coming out to train with the others for once, rather than performing dawn exercises on his own.

  The assembled Rshun quickly got back to business, but the apprentices now found their concentration less focused. Many watched from the corners of their eyes as the old man in his black robe practised along with the rest of them, his naked blade flashing and glittering in the sunlight, through a series of moves too fast for most of them to follow. The distraction only served to worsen Baracha's mood, and he slapped a few of them back into order, until they returned in proper earnest to their exercises.

  After a while he allowed them to break for water and to take a breath.

  'I see the old man plays with the rest of us today,' he called out to Ash, loud enough for all nearby to hear. Ash met his eyes for the briefest moment, then continued with his routine. He henceforth ignored the big Alhazii, and Nico could see how this lack of response stung the big man's pride.

  During the break several of the other apprentices gathered around and asked Nico what his master was like in action. Nico waited for their eager questioning to descend into an expectant silence, then proclaimed in a hush: 'He is like the calm centre of a storm,' and the other boys nodded, seeing it in their own imaginations. And Aleas chuckled.

  *

  The next morning, Nico encountered Baracha again on his way to archery practice. The Alhazii was just leaving the armoury, and stopped dead in his tracks as he spotted Nico walking towards him.

  'You!' he barked.

  'Me?'

  'Yes, you. Come with me.'

  'I have a lesson to get to. I'll be late.'

  'Come!' Baracha barked impatiently.

  Nico swallowed as the Alhazii strode off along the corridor. For a moment he considered making a dash for it, but that would look stupid and childish. Instead, he propelled himself along in his wake.

  They marched through the kitchen area, steamily hot. The two cooks paid little heed to them, engrossed in a tug-of-war over use of an empty pot. Towards the back of the kitchen Baracha bent and opened a trapdoor in the floor. He stepped down into darkness.

  Nico peered down at the stone steps, and the massive form of Baracha vanishing into the gloom. He wondered what this was about. But then, he already knew what it was about.

  An angry, over-protective father.

  'Down here,' echoed Baracha's voice, and it tugged Nico forward so that he placed a foot on the first step. He descended the rest as though in a dream.

  It was a storage room, stone-clad and cold. The only light came from the stairwell behind him. In the dimness, Nico could discern shapes hanging from iron hooks fixed to the wooden ceiling: joints of wild game, smoked and salted, next to sacks of flour, spices, or dried vegetables. Something swung on its hook just to the right of him. A bird ready plucked and gutted.

  He stepped that way, stilling the bird with one hand as he passed by. It felt cool and fleshy beneath his fingertips.

  Ahead, a shape shifted in the darkness. He saw a sudden flash of whiteness: Baracha's grinning teeth.

  I did nothing wrong, Nico reminded himself. We merely talked for a moment.

  It hardly reassured him, and sweat began to prickle his forehead.

  'Over here, boy.'

  Nico swallowed nervously. In a daft moment of fantasy he wished he was carrying a blade on him.

  The silence was heavy like that of a tomb. Baracha leant back against something, arms crossed. As he drew nearer, Nico saw it was the raised lip of a stone well, perhaps six feet across, covered by a rusty iron grille. Within it, deep down, he could hear the echo of fast-flowing water.

  Without a further word, Baracha turned and laid his hands upon the grille. With a grunt of exertion and a squeal of hinges he pulled it open.

  Nico stared down into darkness. Water rushed down there, unseen but frightening. He felt the coolness of it against his face. It was an underground stream running right beneath the grounds of the monastery.

  Nico took a quick, involuntary step away. 'What do you want of me?' he demanded.

  Baracha bent to lift something from the floor. It was a bucket, green with algae, fixed to a rotten rope. The end of the rope was tied to the iron grille.

  The Alhazii lowered the bucket down into blackness.

  'My daughter may have lost something yesterday,' he explained. 'I want you to climb down there and find it.'

  Nico took another step away from the well. 'I'm fairly certain I will not.'

  The rope almost yanked itself from Baracha's hand, suddenly caught by the flow. He tightened his grip on it. Nico could hear the bucket bouncing against stone, the sound of water even louder as it rushed past the obstruction.

  'You will,' said Baracha. 'One way or another, you will climb down there.'

  Nico stared dumbfounded at the man's shadowed face. He couldn't tell if he was being serious.

  If he's trying to frighten me, he is succeeding!

  Nico wanted to run but his feet seemed rooted to the stone floor. Baracha took a step towards him, dragging the rope with him. Still, Nico could not move.

  The young man opened his mouth – to shout for help, to plead his innocence, he wasn't sure – as a large hand fell on his shoulder. Baracha's fingers grabbed a fistful of his robe. The cloth tightened against Nico's throat. Without any visible effort, the big Alhazii pulled him back towards the well.

  'Get off me!' Nico shouted, as he felt his feet dragging across the floor. He struggled then, trying to break loose of the man's grip. 'No!' he yelled in anger, as the dark opening of the well reared towards him. He tried to get a hand up to Baracha's face, fingers groping wildly for his eyes. The man lifted his face out of reach. His strength was staggering as he shoved Nico's head down into the well, tried to get the rest of him inside too. Nico's hands flailed for a grip against the slimy rim, while the unseen waters crashed deep and cold through the earth below him.

  And then, mercifully, Baracha's grip loosened and with a surge Nico broke free. He staggered away from his tormentor, catching the amused look on the man's face. 'Bastard,' spat Nico, retreating in a rush, batting aside the hanging obstructions, as Baracha's laughter flaye
d his back with mockery.

  Nico did not stop until he was outside in the fresh air, gulping deeply, squinting in the sunlight and cursing himself for the fool that he was.

  Serese, he later heard, was sent away from there that same day.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Divine Assurances In the windowless antechamber of the arena known as the Shay Madi, Kirkus watched his mother holding court before the priests gathered about her.

  Her two years as Holy Matriarch of the Empire had begun to take their toll on her, in spite of the Royal Milk she paid for so handsomely to sup each morning. The noticeable lines across her forehead could only come from frowns generated by worry, though here today, in public, his mother preferred to smile, and smile often.

  This visible aging had been the first thing Kirkus had noticed upon his return from the state progress with his grandmother, when laying eyes on his mother for the first time in many months. It had been the first thing he had commented on, bringing a laugh to her lips and a gentle kiss to his forehead.

  Save for the priestly fine-link chains of gold that dangled from the lobes of her ears to her nostrils, and the light-reflecting sheen of her shaven skull, his mother might have been the madam of some bawdy city brothel at the high point of a comfortably busy night. Sasheen's plain face was flushed from the heat of so many bodies crammed together in close proximity, the many gas-lights in sooty alcoves along the walls, and the lack of any breeze coming through the sunlit portal in the wall behind her that led out to the imperial stand. She stood with one hip aslant, a bent wrist resting on her pelvis. Beneath a chin held high her heavy breasts thrust through the white cloth of her robe.

  Alluring but dangerous, was the first thought that came to the minds of most men. She was, perhaps, the only thing Kirkus knew about his father – in as much as she indicated this man's taste in bedfellows.

  The male and female priests thronging the room talked amongst themselves, except for those gathered closest to the Holy Matriarch herself. These listened respectfully to Sasheen but spoke in their turn with a lack of formality common to the High Priests of Q'os, and which had surprised Kirkus on the first occasion he had attended the court of the previous leader, Patriarch Nihilis. Kirkus had expected a greater degree of pomp and ceremony, as was shown during official ceremonies of state.

  Instead, the high priests of Q'os acted like uneasy comrades involved in a grand and impossibly ambitious conspiracy: the ruling of the entire known world no less. What deference they chose to show to their Holy Matriarch arose not simply from their respect for her position, having risen as she had to the leadership of Mann as though from nowhere, but from awe at her readiness to snuff out any least sign of disloyalty, as manifested in the deaths of so many of their former colleagues.

  A threat they remained close to even now, in the form of her two massive bodyguards, their eyes masked by goggles of smoky glass so none could tell where they looked, and their hands sheathed in poisonous scratch-gloves.

  Kirkus only half-listened to what his mother or the others had to say. This wasn't an official gathering of court today, only an afternoon of leisure here at the Shay Madi, in which members of the higher caste took the opportunity to socialize while watching entertainments in the public arena. Still, they were men and women of lofty positions and they could not help but continue manoeuvring for advantage amongst themselves.

  Kirkus allowed such petty concerns to wash over him as he chomped the soft flesh of a parmadio fruit, quivering at each spike of narcotic pleasure as he crunched down on its bitter pips. Occasionally his eyes would rove the room, and study its occupants as they inhaled from steaming bowls or imbibed cooling liqueurs. But always, his gaze would end up watching the large double doors at the far end.

  Lara would not be appearing today, he suspected. Indeed her latest lover, General Romano, had arrived by himself, and was now standing in a corner in deep discussion with General Alero. Even as Kirkus studied the young general, the man turned his head and locked eyes with him across the distance of the room.

  Something of hatred passed in the look between them.

  Romano was nephew to the last Patriarch, and considered the leading prodigy among one of the oldest and most powerful families within the order. Young Romano was the foremost rival to Sasheen's position, though it was understood he would wait for her reign to come to an end before making his own attempt at the leadership, a time when Kirkus himself would be expected by many to assume the position of Patriarch; in her own way, Lara could not have chosen herself a new lover placed more firmly against Kirkus than this one.

  Across the chamber Romano inclined his head towards Kirkus. Kirkus bowed in response, his eyes guarded.

  Lara would have come with Romano, if she was coming at all. Obviously she was still avoiding Kirkus. His latest public outburst, in the upper baths of the Temple of Whispers on the day after his return, had been an embarrassment for them both.

  He had hoped that, upon seeing Lara again, he could be calm and mature about their situation. He felt he had developed that much, at least, during his ventures abroad. Instead, as soon as he laid eyes on her, his body had suffered some overwhelming reaction of shock, so that, standing there in his tower, stunned as she walked by him without the merest glance in his direction, Kirkus had found himself shouting at her departing back, his voice so shaken with rage that it took long moments for him to decipher exactly what he had said.

  'I will require your consent soon, Matriarch,' the priestess Sool was murmuring to his mother. 'It is little more than a month now before the anniversary of the Augere el Mann.'

  Kirkus swallowed around a painful lump in his throat. He dragged his gaze from the closed doors at the rear of the chamber, and refocused his attention on the general conversation around him.

  The priestess Sool had her head bent low, playing the loyal subservient, as always, though Kirkus sometimes suspected otherwise. 'I will need to know if our plans for the commemoration are suitable. After all, this is the year in which we commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Mannian rule. Perhaps you have some ideas yourself.'

  'Oh, don't hark on so,' replied his mother with a throw of her hand, the other holding her robes hitched over one extended thigh, cooling off. 'I leave all such decisions to you and your people, you know that. Believe me, I have other things to concern myself with just now.'

  'Yes,' said Sool submissively, her head dipping a fraction lower. 'I suspect I may have heard of them. This new petition of Mokabi's: another invasion plan for the Free Ports. The old warrior grows restless in his retirement, no doubt.'

  'As always, your ears hear only whispers borne on the wings of boredom.' There was impatience in his mother's tone, and a weariness that Kirkus noticed ever more often these days.

  'Still. Even so…' Sool continued, then checked abruptly.

  Kirkus was laughing at her. 'It is just as well you and my mother are the closest of friends,' he quipped. 'Who else would listen to both your nagging?'

  Sool smiled, though it may have been a grimace. 'Your mother gave birth to you in her time,' she said. 'You might show some respect, young pup.'

  His reply was another crunch of seeds between his teeth. He did not say what he might have said next.

  Kirkus had watched this interchange with interest. In her own subtle way, Sool had been like a maternal aunt to Kirkus as he was growing up, or at least as much as any woman could be maternal within the order, where such bonds were nurtured by loyalty and necessity – certainly not love and seldom kindness. As a boy, Kirkus had lived in the Temple of Whispers, in the extensive apartments of his mother and grandmother, one of them the latest glammari, or chosen consort, to Patriarch Anslan, the other a long-trusted advisor in the ways of the faith. Sool had often visited the women there, sometimes accompanied by her daughter Lara. On summer evenings, Sool would tell them stories from the past, he and Lara, as they sat together on the balcony of his personal chamber, with the many animals he had collected ove
r the years squawking and clattering in their cages, while evening light hung like a shroud over the city of Q'os below them.

  From that high vantage point perched on the flank of the Temple of Whispers, the full shape of the island-city was visible to the eye. On the coastline to the east, a natural protrusion of land stabbed diagonally into the sea; to the north could be seen the four manmade landfills that so closely resembled fingers: all the Five Cities, as they were known collectively, each teeming to the water's edge with buildings. As a child, Kirkus had scanned the landscape from east to west: it was possible to see the island as shaped in the form of a great open hand, its palm facing skywards, its end-digit of land truncated to represent the shortened little finger of the followers of Mann. He had never bored of this sight, as a boy, perched there at the city's very heart.

  On those long-ago warm evenings, Sool had recounted her tales in a harsh whisper, as though her words were precious things that needed guarding. She had told him of the time when her own mother and his grandmother had been young women working secretly for the cult during that time of famine and pestilence known as the Great Trial, each of them wild at heart, kindred in spirit, their recruitment into the order the result of having a lover they both shared without contention.

  Both had taken part in the Longest Night, that evening which had followed the destruction of the city by fire. Acting as a pair, they had murdered one of the city's highest-placed officials, living in opulent splendour in his palace while the city lay in ruins and starvation all around it. They had both witnessed the frenzied execution of the girl-queen, indeed had taken their own small part in it. They had knelt prostrate and panting at the feet of High Priest Nihilis himself, as he was anointed first Holy Patriarch of Mann.

  Sool had told him and Lara these things, and many others, proud it seemed of the closeness of her family and his, of their rise to power together. It was only when he was older that Kirkus learned of other sides to these stories. He recalled his grandmother, half broken after a purging, lying on her bed speaking out in some kind of delirium, grasping Kirkus's arm to detain him as she told him of the murder of her oldest friend, Sool's mother, for falling from the ways of Mann.