When they had all left, Orhan went to his books, tried to work. The ancient tomes of the Imperial ledgers. Give himself something else to worry about.

Any fool could assassinate someone, if they really put their mind to it, as the history of Irlast so often proved. Making things better. That took effort. That was the work. March Verneth is dying. So what? The weary business of remaking the world, that must still go on. This city is dying, the richest empire the world has ever known, her beggars wear silk and satin, eat rotting scraps off plates of gold. Immish and Chathe and the other great powers laugh at us and do not bother to cover their mouths. Sorlost is a dead man’s dreaming. A useless heap of crumbled rock. Weak and defenceless and worn down. But I, Orhan lied to himself every night in the dark, I am a capable man, a learned man, I can change that.

Several streets had been destroyed in the rioting that had followed the attack on the palace. Fine, lofty shops and town houses, and, behind them, tenement buildings with broken-down walls and ceilings, floors running with human sewage, whole families crammed into single windowless rooms. “Tear them all down,” Orhan had ordered, “rebuild them, clean them up.”

“And the cost, My Lord Nithque?” Secretary Gallus had asked him.

“Levy a tax on something. Appeal to the goodwill of the high families. Borrow it.”

“And the cost of expanding the Imperial army, My Lord Nithque?”

“Levy a tax on something. Appeal to the goodwill of the high families. Borrow it.”

“We do not need an expanded army. We do not need to rebuild a few ruined houses. This is Sorlost!” the Emperor and the Emperor’s High Lords told him curtly, when he suggested any of these things.

The outbreak of deeping fever in Chathe had flared up again. Worse than before. The gates must be closed again to Chathean travellers, trade would suffer, everyone from the hatha addicts in the gutters to the High Lords who refused to fund his army would complain.

The Immish were outraged by the accusations made against them concerning the attack on the Emperor, demanded compensation for their people’s losses in the riots, had expelled several hundred Sorlostian merchants from Alborn as tit-for-tat. Some of them spoke little if any Literan. Most of them were now destitute. All of them blamed the Emperor and the Emperor’s Nithque for their plight.

The rains had failed in Mar and the grain harvest this year would be poor, raising prices. Even if one ignored the fact that Chathe acted as the middle man for the Empire’s grain trade with Mar. Those who didn’t riot for lack of hatha might well riot for lack of cake.

The guard house at the Maskers’ Gate to the east of the city had finally fallen down. A family of exiles from Alborn had been killed when it collapsed. The merchants had gnashed their teeth at the tax levied to pay for repairs. Nobody now knew where the tax levied to pay for repairs had been spent.

Futile. Great Tanis: Lord Emmereth and Lord Rhyl and Lord Verneth had locked themselves in the death struggle, for this?

Charge your guards’ upkeep to the palace and award yourself a new stipend or two, Orhan. You can do that.

Gold ink and old leather, all the words blurred. Here, look, on the cover of one ledger: a smear of honey, where Darath had sat reading it and stuffing himself with candied apricots. Would it be too symbolic, Orhan thought, to note the dirt now stuck to the honey, on the leather that was said to be human skin? But “stipend” reminded him: Orhan turned the pages, found the list of March Verneth’s Imperial stipends. “First Lord and Viceroy of Riva.” “Protector of Maun.” Comic, absurd, empty lies. Orhan crossed them savagely out. A whole six talents saved with one pen stroke!

At the bottom of the page a human hair was stuck to a smear of honey. Bile rose in Orhan’s throat.

He threw up his hands. Slammed the book shut.

Watched the dusk come. The bell rang for the twilight. Seserenthelae aus perhalish. Night comes. We survive. The little girl in the Temple, killing. Bringing death for those who are dying, life for those waiting to be born. From Bil’s rooms came the sound of a boy singing, Bil listening to songs and music to nourish the child in her womb.

I’ll go out, Orhan thought. Go for a walk. Get out of this house.

Foolish, he thought, to go out alone. March and Eloise will be wanting vengeance.

I don’t care, he thought. If it’s dangerous. He dressed simply; simple to disappear by removing a few gems, donning a cheaper cut of coat. An anonymous man walking the streets.

The wind had dropped, leaving sand piled everywhere, the leaves of trees and bushes ripped to shreds. The city was slowly working to right itself, sweeping off the dust, setting awnings and scaffolds back where they had fallen, clearing up broken glass and damaged stone. Still very hot, but the air felt cleaner, after the wind.

He walked towards the palace. Habit, the path he so often now walked. At the gates to the palace Orhan stopped and looked at it. The golden dome haunting in the moonlight. The silver towers. The white porcelain walls. But the palace windows were dead and empty. No longer glowed with mage glass. There were dark streaks on the white and the gold and the silver, where no man could reach to scrub it clean. I did that, Orhan thought. My shame. My guilt. Incomparable, irreplaceable, the mage glass windows of the Imperial Palace of the Asekemlene Emperor: by which, of course, he meant that there was no money to spend on getting them replaced.

He went back away from the palace, into the Street of Closed Eyes where people were moving, sliding through the shadows, shimmering in flickers of torchlight. Flash of jewels, the rustle of silk, the chime of women’s bells. Onwards into the Court of the Fountain, where the knife-fighters circled. One had been fighting, lay dying with his hand still closed on the hilt of his knife, bleeding wounds turning the dust of the flagstones to mud. Orhan flicked a silver dhol onto his chest. Burial fees. The dying man blinked back weakly, moved his lips. I could, I suppose, kill him, Orhan thought. End his suffering. But I won’t. We don’t. Not even a drink of water from the fountain he’s dying beside.

He stopped his walking at a street corner off the Street of Yellow Roses. The noise of a wine shop caught him, a man’s voice singing, the music of a flute. Stood and watched the light moving through the thin curtain covering the door. The poet sang of the desert hills of the east where the sun rose over golden sand, ending in a long wordless ululation of sorrow in imitation of a bird. His audience applauded; the flute picked up again, calm and soft. Good taste, these musicians. The listeners too. Orhan pushed the door curtain aside, went in. A small, crowded place, clean and well kept, mostly old men sitting over tiny cups of spirits, lined faces nodding to each other silently, listening to the song. In the corner a man and a woman played yenthes, clattering ivory tiles. A few of the others watched them, murmuring quietly as the game flowed. A faint smell of keleth seeds.

People turned to look at him, saw nothing of especial interest, turned back away. A woman looked him over with greater interest. She was not attractive and was aging, her hair streaked with silver, her body sagging to parched fat, but she moved elegantly, a calm soft tone to her like the flute. Orhan shook his head at her. He bought wine and a plate of cinnamon sweets, sat down to listen to the flute then found his attention drawn to the yenthes game. The tiles rattled past. Chance, as much as skill. A game of luck. Not something Orhan really had much interest in playing, but he liked the sound the tiles made. The woman drew green, spread green and blue tiles in a spiral on the table top. The man sucked his teeth. The man drew blue, set out a square of blue over the woman’s spiral. Their audience nodded approvingly.

The game went on for a while, patterns moving across the table, the clatter of tiles, the quiet of the old men content to sit, the music of the flute. Then the poet rose to his feet again to sing. Older than his voice sounded, his black skin had an ashy grey tint, his hair was white. Wearing a woman’s coat of pink and silver peonies, threadbare. Oh, but his voice was beautiful. He sang unaccompanied this time, a slight waver at the end of each line, deep and clear like a bronze bowl.

The last tremor of the voice died away. Orhan shivered. A few of the men wiped tears from their eyes. The lament for the city. The secret fear of all who lived in Sorlost, that they would waken from their shared illusion and never see her again. The bronze walls, the golden light, the corridors of the Great Temple: the perfection of this place in which we live that is a memory of a memory of a dream. To live in the sublimity of ruins, the eternity of never quite dying, dust and dust and dust gilding the beat of our hearts. Thus how can any other place in all the world compare?

Really, of course, the grief of exile is only a metaphor for the inevitability of death. Why we sing these songs. Mourn the city we will never leave. A reminder that all is futility, and yet we go on.

Tam Rhyl’s family were exiled somewhere. In Immish, living hand to mouth. Abandoned and alone there.

A desperate desire in Orhan to speak to someone about something normal. Outside himself. He turned to the person nearest him: “He’s very good, the singer.”

The woman who had been playing yenthes. She was chewing keleth seeds, her breath smelled milky sweet. Flakes of dead skin clung in her hair.

“Would he be insulted if I offered him silver?”

The woman laughed. “No. But he’d be best off without.”

The poet had returned to his corner, drinking from a cup from which tendrils of smoke seemed to rise. A firewine drinker. Older than most survived to be. Orhan could see, now he knew, the tremor in the man’s hands, like the tremor in his voice. The same note of slow poignant decay.

“He sang for the Emperor once, in his youth,” the woman said. “The Emperor gave him an arm-ring of pearls. ‘The Pearl Singer,’ he was called, after that.”

“The Pearl Singer? But I have a book of his poems! That’s him?” He it had been who compared life to the sand wind, teetering on the edge of never achieved relief. God’s knives, Orhan thought, he must be ancient. Not this lifetime of the Emperor, or even the one before.

“That’s him.”

Orhan gave the woman a handful of silver dhol. “Would you give these to him slowly? Or, no, see that the owner gets them, gives him food?” She took the coins with a smile. She might, of course, keep them. Spend them herself on keleth seed.

“I’ll see to it.”

“Thank you.”

The poet sang again a little later, another song of exile. His voice was more tremulous, slurring, losing the note; several times he forgot his words. Orhan left when the song was over, began walking home in the thick hot night. The wind rose again, scattering dust, banging shutters, showering Orhan with dead leaves. His skin prickled in case a knifeman or a blast of mage fire was waiting for him. It had been very foolish to go out alone. For a moment, passing the Street of All Sorrows, he thought of turning up at Darath’s, throwing himself at Darath’s feet. Or perhaps he should go to the House of Silver and throw himself at March’s feet. Forgive. Forgive. Forgive.

The streets still ran with people, whores wrapped in bells creeping across the marble, street sellers offering cool drinks rank with dust, a knife-fighter in white with the hatha scars was circling, looking for someone to kill him and let him feel again for a moment a man. From a dark alleyway a child’s voice called. One of the women stopped staring down into the dark. Things moving. She took a few steps, cried out something, fled away into the lights of a square where a conjurer made coloured birds race on the wind. The voice turned to laughter. Something there best left unknown.

I should go to the Temple, Orhan thought. Pray. Remind myself of the mercy of the God.

I should go home, he thought. So March is dying. What of it? I knew from the beginning that he would end up dead. Him or me. I should have told Darath I was grateful. I should have told him about the child. I’m a fool. It’s late. Go home.

Instead, he stopped again to watch the conjurer. Afraid of returning to his house and his life: if I stay walking forever none of this will come to be real. An eternal dream. The man wasn’t a bad performer; a small crowd clapped in applause. The woman was watching. Beside her, a young man, turning to look at Orhan, feeling him see him back. Orhan caught his breath.

A young man in the flower of his manhood. Glossy deep black skin, long black silky curls. Lips as red as the juice of pomegranates. Eyes as big as the night sky. A narrow waist, fine smooth muscled arms and legs. Like an antique statue. Like a painting on ivory. Too beautiful to be real. Men did not look like this in the living world.

The young man’s mouth opened, smiling. Orhan shuddered. Smiled back. Go home. Go to the Temple. Go home. Go home. The young man moved over towards him, graceful, lilting like the music had been. The same fine slurred tremor in his movements as in the poet’s voice. The same cause. Rotten teeth in the perfect mouth, stained with firewine, fragments of keleth seeds on his lips. Sweet drugged desperate breath. His fingers drummed on the cloth of Orhan’s sleeve. “Five dhol.” Go home. Go home. As beautiful a waste as the poet. Too beautiful for this. “Five dhol. Or for you, amber eyes, four dhol.” Go home. Go home. “Who sent you?” Orhan almost asked, “just kill me, please don’t do this. Not this first.” “Four dhol.” Orhan’s hand went to his purse. “Four dhol.”

It was dawn when Orhan returned home. The house was silent. A few early house servants scurrying across the hallways with cloths bound to their feet to damp any noise. Birds were singing in the gardens. He had had to knock, of course, to rouse the door keep; the door keep stared yawning, looked mortified that he had been asleep. Orhan went down to the cold bathing rooms and scrubbed at himself. Dirty. Cheap heavy perfume was smeared on his skin and clothes. Sweet and sensual and rancid, like the smell between a man’s legs. He rubbed himself with salt and oil to try to cover it. Abrade it away. A bathgirl, woken in a panic by the door keep, came in to take over; there were distant footsteps as others ran to stoke the fires, get the water hot. Orhan sent the girl to bring him tea.

His eyes were gritty with tiredness, his head aching. Do I feel guilt? he thought. Do I? I should. Did I enjoy it? he thought then slowly. I don’t know.

The cold water was beginning to wash some sense into him. By the time the girl came back with the tea jug he was shaking. After his bath he sat in his bedroom and stared at his hands.

God’s knives, he thought. God’s knives. Why?

Bil came in without knocking, dressed in a night robe. Showed her breasts very white. The huge curve of her belly. She’d agreed never to come into his bedroom. She sat down on a couch and stared at him.

“Orhan … Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“I’m fine.”

“Do you want me to send a messenger for Darath?”

“No!” Far louder than he meant. Bil flinched. “No. Just leave me alone.”

“One of the bathgirls woke Nilesh. She woke me. They were frightened for you.”

“Just go away. Tell Nilesh and the bathgirls to mind their own business.” I will not, Orhan thought wretchedly, be an object of pity in my own home.

“It’s not Darath, is it?” Her scars coloured, real fear in her face. “Lord of Living and Dying! Nothing’s happened to him?”

“No! It’s nothing! Just go away. Leave me alone.”

“I’m your wife, Orhan. I do care about what happens to you.” Bil got to her feet with a sigh. “I’ll go, then.”

As she moved towards the door Orhan almost cried out to her to stay. To tell her. Ask her what to do. She stopped in the doorway, like she was waiting for him to speak. A pause held between them. Both waiting for the other to speak. But he didn’t speak.