‘More?’ The Voice drew a deep breath.

I shrugged. ‘In any event, Marco didn’t need to bring his trunk into the throne room to do its work, or into the palace. He could have destroyed Hamada from a mile off amongst the dunes. Whether his bravado before the throne was on the Builders’ instructions or what he felt to be a fitting exit from the world, I don’t know.’

‘The Builders threw their suns from one side of the world to the other on tongues of flame, and where they burned whole countries were reduced to char,’ Qalasadi said. ‘Why have one lone banker haul the weapon here on a camel?’

‘There’s not much that still works after a thousand years.’ I closed the trunk and sat on the lid. ‘The rockets and the greatest of their weapons are spent and useless. Only the triggers are left intact … the sparks that lit the suns, if you like. They need to be moved by agents to the city that is to be destroyed.’

‘And this is their vengeance for my …’ Ibn Fayed looked old, a tremor in his hands. ‘I was too proud. For my people’s sake I will—’

‘You may have put yourself at the head of the queue, Caliph, but I think there is more to it than that. Michael, he called himself. It may not be chance that he shares his name with the archangel, warlord of God’s armies. The Builders have larger worries than one desert ruler breaking what machinery he can find above the dunes. Some among them plan to kill us all. Hamada was to be a demonstration. A model to be repeated.’

‘Lucky for us that you arrived on our shores when you did then, King Jorg.’ Qalasadi bowed his head.

‘Was it luck, magician?’ I tried to see his eyes but he kept his face down. ‘You knew the Builder-ghosts were mounting some kind of attack. You thought it involved me … and you let me into the caliph’s palace, albeit declawed. And perhaps there was another hand pointing my way, working on that timing you all seem so proud of …’ I wondered, had Fexler played me, pushed me here and there across his board with the most gentle of nudges and the occasional flash of red light glimpsed through a steel ring? Had he delayed Marco, or sped his way, so that we found Port Albus together? Had I been Fexler’s agent in some contest with Michael … with the whole of his faction?

‘Explain to me,’ Ibn Fayed said, ‘why this assassin would risk so much just to let me know his mind before we all died? If my archers had not both contrived to miss his heart, he could have died without igniting …’ His gaze returned to the windows. ‘That.’

‘I don’t think there was any danger of him failing,’ I said.

‘But he died just moments after completing his mission,’ Ibn Fayed said, sharp eyes beneath grey and bushy brows.

‘Oh, Marco’s not dead,’ I said. ‘Are you, Marco?’

The modern’s head snapped up. The speed of it shocking, like a length of flexed metal flicking straight, murder in his eyes.

‘I’m far from sure he was ever alive.’ I stepped back, not drawing my sword in case over-zealous archers threaded bolts through my chest as well.

Marco got to his feet in a quick series of jerky motions. He pulled the bolts from his body and dropped them to the floor, blood-smeared but not dripping. The imperial guard drew their swords again.

‘You just wanted to hear how you were tricked, didn’t you, Marco? Before you found a good moment to finish at least part of the job.’

He ignored me and leapt at the caliph, careless of the guardsmen blocking his way. Bright blades flickered in motion, feet scrabbled on the sandy floor, blood sprayed, gobbets of flesh flew and Marco surged to within a yard of Ibn Fayed before the weight of men took him to the ground. He fought with the same frightening speed demonstrated when he raised his head, fingers rending muscle and fat, throwing grown men away as if they were less than children. The swords that fell on him sliced his blacks to tatters but beneath the red butchery of his flesh metal gleamed, copper and silver-steel. Whirs and clicks accompanied his movements, audible through the screams, the clash of steel, and the leopard’s spitting howl. The noise of teeth-through-ratchets as fingers closed on necks with the inexorable strength of the vice.

Men died. Marco found his feet again. Ibn Fayed and his Voice moved to shelter behind the throne as Marco climbed the third step, blood running down the stone in red trickles. Injured guardsmen clung to both legs, others hewed at him as though he were a tree. Before the throne the leopard and its handler hesitated. The cat had been straining at its chain, ready to attack. Now it sat back, ears flat to its skull. Sensible beast.

More guardsmen were running in from the great doors, and more behind them, but like all things it was a matter of timing. Marco had enough of it for his purpose and they had insufficient for theirs. He would kill the caliph before they stopped him.

I mounted the three steps, careful of my footing in the gore, pulled the gun from beneath my robes. With the barrel set to the back of his pale skull I put four bullets through the metal casing and into whatever clockwork served him for a brain.

He fell twitching amongst the dead and wounded as the echoes of the last shot died away.

I held the gun up. ‘Old technology.’ I pointed it at Marco. ‘New technology. You might want to rework those seals, Qalasadi.’ I spun the gun around my finger and caught it flat in my palm, displaying it to Ibn Fayed, ‘And this, Caliph, is what I have in my hand.’

36

Five years earlier

Ibn Fayed had them set a throne of silver one step down from the summit of his dais and when I returned to court, clean and refreshed, dressed in silks and a heavy chain of gold, he bade me sit there.

‘These are sorry times when the ghosts of our ancestors reach out to take our lives.’ He spoke to me direct now, slow with his words as if fishing them from the dust of memory.

‘They are not agreed, those ghosts. A war, of sorts, rages among them, deep in their machines. But few if any of the Builders have good intentions for us. Even our saviours would make us slaves,’ I told him.

‘Then you will join me? Dig out and destroy what can be found of them? Start a new era free from the ghosts of the past?’ Ibn Fayed sounded curious rather than eager.

‘A wise man told me that history will not stop us repeating our mistakes, but will at least make us ashamed of doing so.’ I remembered Lundist’s smile when he said it, as much of sadness in it as amusement. ‘Will you argue your case at Congression, Ibn Fayed?’

‘It would seem foolish to attend. What better place for the ghosts to destroy us? Can we trust the Gilden Guard to keep all agents such as the banker from coming within several miles of the Gilden Gates?’

I steepled my fingers before my mouth to hide the laugh rising there. ‘Caliph, I would bet my life that the last emperor, all his fathers before him, and every Congression since the stewardship has sat above a device more powerful than the one Marco carried toward Hamada. The Builder-ghosts would want to know they could end the empire any time they chose. The fact that they have not done so just tells us that Michael’s faction do not yet hold command amongst their brothers nor have unfettered access to whatever controls such weapons.

If the ghosts ever unite to a degree sufficient to destroy Vyene then nowhere will be safe. Marco only failed here by poor luck and by the intervention of other ghosts.’ I felt sure now that Fexler had aimed me at the modern, or clockwork soldier, or whatever the hell Marco really was.