Emperor of Thorns

The burned half of my face pulsed with warmth, a heat on the edge of pain, the light of it filling my eye and making something new of the flame-cloud, lending it an ethereal beauty and the aspect of a gate, or fissure in the world, opening onto something that could be heaven or could be hell.

‘It would take you two days on camel back to stand dead centre beneath that explosion,’ I said.

‘I don’t understand.’ Ibn Fayed stood from his throne.

‘Have Marco’s trunk brought here,’ I said.

The caliph nodded. His Voice called out the command.

We had no need of small talk while we waited. The explosion demanded the eye. None of us spoke. Even the servants laid down their feathered poles to watch. And after five minutes we saw the dunes rise, the sand leaping into the air, one after the next, bang, bang, bang, faster than an arrow in flight. The sound hit us, a wall of it, loud enough to take every shutter from its hinges and leave a finger’s width of sand across each inch of the marble floor. The rumble that followed drew out for an age, deep and full of terror.

Qalasadi and Yusuf came through the great doors, six guards behind them carrying Marco’s trunk. If they knocked we didn’t hear them.

They set the trunk beside Marco’s corpse.

‘You have checked this?’ The Voice pointed at it.

‘We have.’ Qalasadi nodded. ‘In any event, nothing of the Builders’ magic can pass the gates and seals set upon this palace.’

‘That’s n—’ I bit off the words and patted my chest. Gone! The view-ring wasn’t there. ‘How in hell—’

‘I cut the thong just before we left the mathema,’ Yusuf said. ‘Kalal stayed to pick it from the floor.’

‘A light touch, Brother Yusuf. I hadn’t taken you for a thief.’ It unnerved me to think he had held a blade at my neck, but I supposed they had had me in a noose since I set foot on the quay at Kutta port.

‘Theft is about timing, Jorg, and timing can be calculated.’ He seemed unashamed.

I remembered the bell sounding as we left the tower, holding my attention, drowning out other senses, over-writing the clink of view-ring striking floor.

‘Besides,’ Yusuf continued. ‘It would have been detected and taken at the palace gates, casting you in a very bad light. A friend couldn’t let that happen to a friend.’

I shrugged. There seemed little else to do. In any event, they hadn’t detected my gun. Perhaps when they spoke of the Builders’ works they meant the ones with more magic and less mechanics. The ones where lightning ran trapped in metal veins.

‘Open it.’ Ibn Fayed, returned to his throne, gaze flicking from window to trunk, trunk to window.

Qalasadi kneeled, undid the catches, worked some magic on the lock – a lock I knew to be very tricky – and threw back the lid.

‘Sand?’ The caliph leaned forward.

The desert taught me many things. Two of those things were about Marco. The desert is a quiet place. Not silent. There is always the wind, the hiss of sand, the plod of feet, and the complaint of camels. But it is a place where a man can be heard and where a man can listen. When I listened to Marco I noticed that he whirred, he creaked, and he ticked. All these sounds existed on the edge of hearing, but once noted could be found in any quiet moment, especially if he exerted himself, then I would hear it more clearly, that whirring, like the cogs in my watch.

And in discovering this strangeness I found myself watching Marco Onstantos Evenaline, the white man in his black suit, unburned by the sun, sweating but never wilting, a man curiously unsuited to what should be, excluding the harshness of ledgers, a business of warm handshakes and human bonding.

The second thing I learned at night, watching the infinite stars. I noticed that they shimmered. Only to be expected of course. Stars twinkle. But it seemed to me, in the dead of night, with the sands about us cooled and the air cold enough to set me deep into my blankets, that the stars above Marco’s camel twinkled too much. And I remembered that heat haze I had seen in the Iberico Hills, with just the eye ringed by the burn that Gog left me by way of a thank you. The haze I saw with a second sight. The haze that warned of secret fires.

A week later, in the dead of night, two days out from Hamada, I rose from my blankets. The Ha’tari were used to men leaving the caravan to water the sands. In the Margins we had a trench cut to save us wandering out amongst the fissures and the horrors that lurked there, but in the desert we could find a quiet spot among the dunes. It was far less common that a man should lead his camel out into the sand. And I wasn’t even leading mine, I was leading Marco’s. Perhaps they thought me a city boy, too long without the company of women, and tempted beyond reason by the twitching rear of the camel ahead. Probably they thought I wanted to steal from the banker. Either way, none of them liked him, and they liked my gold.

I didn’t go far. In the dip between two moon-pale dunes I hefted the trunk from the camel’s back and set to working at its tricky lock with tiny picks I keep from my years with the brothers. There’s little call for anything more sophisticated than an axe when faced with a lock on the road, but they always fascinated me and I learned a few techniques from men in our band who had found their way into disgrace through less violent paths than mine. I worked veiled, with the sand gauze across the eye-slit, using only touch.

In time I had the case unlocked. I dug a grave in the sand, more of a dent – you can’t scoop a deep hole in the dunes any more than you can dig in water. It took much of my strength to tip the trunk onto its side. The view-ring’s capabilities told me plain that only a fraction of the machinery before me was required to manufacture Michael’s image. I had to wonder at the weight of the rest and the wisps of hidden fire rising from it.

I guessed that the contents would separate from the container easy enough. No ancient’s hand had stretched the sharkskin over its frame, nor wood panelled the interior. Marco would want to be able to change the casing without effort in order to disguise his cargo when required.

I opened the lid from the side and tipped the trunk forward so it fell open-mouthed into the pit … into the dent at least. Some fiddling, the application of my knife’s point in two places, and enough shaking and grunting to alarm Marco’s camel, soon won the trunk free of its contents. I used a stolen plate to heap sand over the rectangular block of silver-steel and plasteek. The machine buzzed once during the process then fell silent.

With sand mounded smoothly over the device I turned my attention to filling the trunk. Half an hour later, sweaty and dry-mouthed, I near killed myself hauling the thing onto the camel’s back once more.

‘How did you know the Builder-ghosts would not just explode the device while you were burying it?’ Qalasadi asked.

‘How could they know what was happening? And such things are of immense value – they cannot be made again. They would not destroy it unless all hope of recovering it had gone,’ I said.

‘Why would they allow the banker to detonate it if it were not close enough to the palace to destroy Ibn Fayed?’ Yusuf asked.

‘I didn’t know for sure that they would,’ I said. ‘It seems though that the Builder-ghosts see less than we might think, especially in the desert and where their works have been targeted for destruction. They must have placed their trust in Marco to act in their interest. Even if they knew where the device lay, they could not with certainty say that the caliph had not entered the radius of destruction. Or perhaps they expected it to be more devastating.’