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I glanced down at myself. ‘Heh. Well I guess I picked up a few things in Afrique. A pretty good tan for one.’ I set my dark wrist to his pale one.

‘Afrique? Are you never still?’ He glanced back at the column halted in the street. ‘Anyhow, you must come with us. You can ride beside Elin. You remember my sister Elin?’

Oh I did. Visit us in winter, she had said. ‘My horse is back at the inn,’ I told him. ‘And where are you bound? And for what? Has it grown too cold in the north?’

‘Getting married.’ He grinned. ‘Walk with me, if it’s not beneath a king’s dignity.’

‘Dignity?’ I matched his grin and flicked a splinter from my shoulder.

Sindri rejoined his column on foot and I took the place of the warrior beside him. ‘My lady.’ I nodded up at Elin, pale in black velvets, white-blonde hair cascading behind her.

‘You’ve not met my uncle Thorgard, and Norv the Raw, our bannerman from Hake Vale?’ Sindri indicated the other riders, older men, grim, helmed, scarred.

I smacked a fist to my breastplate and inclined my head, remembering the low opinion such men held of the courtesies traded in Vyene. ‘And your father?’

‘His duties keep him in Maladon. Dead things rising from the barrowlands. Also his health is—’

‘A chill, nothing more.’ Duke Maladon’s brother leaned across his nephew.

The column restarted with a blast of serpent horns. We marched on into the silence left in their wake. ‘Married?’ I asked. ‘To a southerner?’

‘A lass from the Hagenfast, good Viking stock. One of Father’s alliances, but she’s a pretty thing. A hellcat in the furs.’

Elin snorted on the other side of him.

‘So you’ve all trooped down to Vyene … ?’

Sindri reached up and flicked one of the bull’s horns on his helm. ‘We’re traditionalists. Frozen in our ways. We’ve barely let go of the old gods three thousand years after the Christ came. In the north any marriage of great consequence must be witnessed by the emperor, and that means coming to court. Even if there’s no emperor. Or steward. So here we are.’

‘Well it’s good to see you.’ And I meant it.

45

Five years earlier

I came to the Gilden Gate dressed in Sindri’s spare cloak and tunic, with boots from one or other of his warriors, my rank recognized by the Gilden Guard on Sindri’s vouching. The Gate lay deep inside the palace, not an entrance but a rite of passage. I had always imagined the Gate would tower, stand wide enough for a coach and horses, require ten men to open.

‘That’s it?’

‘Yes.’ Hemmet, Lord Commander of the Gilden Guard, didn’t elaborate. He must have met this reaction dozens of times.

We stood, Sindri, his inner party, Hemmet and I, in an antechamber the size of Father’s throne room and appointed with more grandeur and more taste than anything most of the Hundred could aspire to. And in the expanse of the west wall, set with the busts of emperors past, each in white marble deep in its niche to watch the ages, stood the Gilden Gate. A modest entrance in which an ancient wooden archway stood unsupported. Oak perhaps, black with age, any carving smoothed away by the passage of years.

‘Why?’ I asked.

Hemmet turned his gaze on me, very blue, crinkles at the corners. He scratched at the white stubble on his chin. ‘Go through.’ He gestured with his staff of office, a rod of steel and gold, ending in a strange crest of red velvet tongues.

I shrugged and walked toward the arch, no taller than nine foot or so, a little narrower. Nothing until the last two steps. One more and the raw agony of my burn woke again in old scar tissue all across the left side of my face. At the same time the sharp and critical pain of Father’s knife thrust pierced my chest once more, spreading through my veins like acid. And the thorn-patterned box at my hip grew so heavy it made me stagger, dragging me down. I managed to reel back, a hand clasped over my burn scar, cursing and spitting.

‘Nothing tainted may pass,’ Hemmet said. He tucked the rod of office into his belt. ‘When the Hundred meet no magics can be taken within, no mind-sworn can enter to sway men’s loyalties, none tainted with ungodly powers can enter to threaten their fellow rulers with more than men should possess. Any influences exerted on a person will be wiped away should they be able to pass through the gate.’

I straightened, the pain fading as quickly as it had come. ‘You might have warned me.’ I wiped spittle and blood from the corner of my mouth.

Hemmet shrugged. ‘I didn’t know you were tainted.’ A big man, solid in his years. The golden half-plate he wore hardly weighed on him. A stunning piece of work, lobstered over the shoulders and around the back of his neck where it rose to a helm that bore more than the suggestion of a crown.

‘You try it,’ I told him.

He walked on in, turned and spread his hands. You could see he cared little for the Hundred, whether they call themselves king, or duke, or lord. There were many of the hundred, more names than most men could summon to mind, and but a single Lord Commander of the Gilden Guard. Hemmet.

‘So I’m to be left out here?’ I tried not to make it sound like whining.

‘Captain Kosson will show you in through one of the side passages.’ Hemmet smiled. ‘It’s only at Congression that you will be excluded, or should you seek to petition the Emperor when the throne is occupied again.’

And so I took the longer route into the emperor’s throne room. Whilst Sindri, Elin, and the other untainted nobles were led in through the Gilden Gate, poor Jorgy had to slink in around the back like a servant. Kosson led me through long dark corridors holding a lantern to light the way.

‘Most palaces can afford better lighting.’ It seemed a far cry from Ibn Fayed’s grand home.

‘Most palaces are inhabited by royals,’ Kosson replied without looking back. ‘Nobody lives here save a few servants to keep the dust stirred up. The guard come in and out during the years between Congressions, but we’re soldiers, we don’t need oil lamps in every niche. Shadows don’t scare the guard.’

I was about to say that perhaps they should, but something took the words away. ‘There aren’t any niches.’ No place for lamp, lantern, or even torch, nowhere to display statuary, baubles, or any form of wealth as nobles are wont to show.

Kosson stopped and looked up. His gaze led me to a small glass circle set flush with the white stone of the ceiling. ‘A Builder light,’ he said.

I saw them now, every few yards.

‘They don’t work though.’ A shrug and he carried on walking, swinging shadows around us.

‘This is a Builder hall? But—’ It hardly seemed possible. ‘It’s so … graceful. The dome, the archways and antechambers …’

‘Not everything they made was ugly. This was a place of power. Some kind of legislature. They built it grand.’

‘I learn something new every day,’ I said. ‘You think they might have had souls after all then, these Builders?’ I only half-joked.

‘If it’s learning you’re after, I’ll show you something most visitors don’t get to see.’ Kosson made a sharp left into a smaller corridor and then another left.

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