Nilesh went to the library in search of Janush. He would know what was happening. Four of the new guards stood outside the door she had come from, one of Lord Emmereth’s body servants prowled the corridor biting at his nails. Two girls were lighting candles in the hallways, looking nervously about them, expecting some great terror to come rushing through the walls. In the library Nilesh found Janush staring at a book without seeing it. He started as she put her hand on the desk in front of him. He, too, looked grey and older. He’d been Lord Emmereth’s bondsman for a long time.

“You startled me, Nilesh. What is it? Does Lady Emmereth want to see me? Is the baby fretting again? Tell her I’m too sick to come and speak.”

“Janush. What is happening?”

Janush sighed. “Why do you want to know, Nilesh? Lady Emmereth will tell you soon.” What he meant was, she wouldn’t understand what was happening.

“Please tell me.”

“Did you not hear me? I’m too sick to speak. And I don’t even know, for sure. Only spies’ whispers. Though I’m told the Emperor shouted loud enough to be heard through a closed door. Lord Emmereth is dismissed as Nithque, Nilesh. Lord Tardein replaces him.”

She did not understand clearly what the title of Nithque meant. Power. More guards. Her mistress happier. Yet also more strained.

And Lord Tardein, she thought. The Lord of the Dry Sea. He had recently broken off his daughter’s marriage to Lord Emmereth’s nephew.

Bilale shouting at Lady Amdelle: You should have got Symdle married off to Zoa before. He’d have a stake in it, then. Lady Amdelle shouting back: That was Cam’s choice. And it’s obvious why, if he knew any of this. Or started the rumours himself.

Lady Ventuel saying sweetly to Bilale: The Nithque’s refusal to let anyone from Chathe inside the city is costing Aris a fortune. And not just Aris. He’s been talking about it to Cam Tardein. Cam is not happy either. Your husband has made a lot of enemies recently.

Our enemy, Nilesh thought. Our enemy. In power in my master’s place.

Nilesh said, “Why?”

Nilesh said, “Will he burn us?”

“The rumours grow and grow, Nilesh. A man from a village in the eastern desert came to the Emperor seeking audience this morning. He had a long, tangled story about a young man who walked out of the desert, having come from the direction of Sorlost. A beautiful young man with black-red hair and a scarred hand, rich enough to buy half the man’s village, he ordered the villagers to kneel to him, he had a sword that shone with mage light. He had a woman with him, rapturously beautiful, black hair, brown skin, blue eyes. Her left arm was covered with scars. As though she had been cut by a knife.

“The Altrersyr demon, they say, has a scarred left hand. From where he killed a dragon with his bare hands, they say.” Janush shook his head. “The man was an ignorant farmer. The story was old, he was confused over the details. Could not explain why he had waited so long to tell. ‘I did not think it was important,’ he told the Emperor! But then, he was an ignorant old man from the desert. He wanted a reward, it seems. I would suspect that he is now dead.”

Nilesh said, “If the Altrersyr demon truly was here, in Sorlost, then surely Lord Emmereth saved us all. He saved the Emperor’s life. He warded the demon off. He cannot be blamed if the High Priestess betrayed us.” They say he is the most beautiful man in the world, Lady Amdelle had said to Bilale.

Janush sighed. “Indeed. That would seem the rational conclusion. But the rumours go on. The Altrersyr demon is raising a war fleet, Nilesh. Recruiting troops. They say he has started to call himself the King of All Irlast. The King of Death.”

“But that is not Lord Emmereth’s fault!” shouted Nilesh.

Janush laughed. “No, Nilesh. It is not.”

“Lord Emmereth is a hero who saved the city. I don’t understand. Any of this.”

Janush sighed. “Neither do I, Nilesh.”

“What will happen to us, Janush?”

Janush shook his head. “I do not know.”

Nilesh went back to Bilale’s rooms. Servants bustled about, finding things to busy themselves with, looking round and staring hoping to see and hear. The baby’s wails drifted through closed doorways. Banished, Nilesh thought. A child should not be present to hear of his family’s ruin. Bad omens. Dangerous to the baby’s mind and heart.

“Where have you been?” Dyani the perfume girl hissed at her. “She’s looking for you.” The boy who sang for Bilale slunk past, weeping. Dyani gestured: “You see the mood she is in?”

Nilesh went into Bilale’s bedroom. Her mistress sat on her bed, she had opened up her boxes of jewels and was looking at them. A boy scattered cedar wood and lavender oil on a brazier. Soothing. Calm. The coals flickered and hissed. Bilale also had been crying. Her eyes were very red. “Where have you been?” she snapped at Nilesh.

Nilesh knelt at her feet. “I … Walking around the house. I was frightened. Forgive me, My Lady.”

Bilale said, “He’s gone out. To see him. Lord Vorley. He can’t be at home even now, didn’t even look at the child, he has to go and see him, tell him he’s fine. It’s all his fault. Lord Vorley’s fault. If he wasn’t so blind with love for him …”

Did Lord Vorley then make it all happen? Nilesh thought. Betray us to the demons? Trick My Lord Emmereth into helping them? I don’t understand.

“He cheats on him, you know? Celyse’s spies have watched him at it. He weeps as he comes. And Darath knows about it. Maybe he’s watched him too.”

Bilale picked up a heavy necklace of turquoises. A rope of green pearls, made two months’ journey away in the impossible to imagine sea. Citrines in gold, carved into the shape of flowers, tiny as children’s teeth. A ruby pendant the size of Nilesh’s closed fist. “I’ve never even worn some of these. My bridegifts, some of them.” She threw the pendant across the room. It struck the wall by the curved lattice of the shutters. A chip in the painted plaster. A clink as it hit the floor.

“Better I had died in childbed,” said Bilale. “Better my son had died in my womb.” Her voice was savage. But she frowned, picked up the tangled useless lacework, took a long deep breath. “What shall I do, Nilesh?”

“What did … did Lady Amdelle say, My Lady? And My Lord Emmereth?”

“Nothing.” Bilale placed her hands over the jewels again. Her nails clicked against them. “Nothing! We will do nothing. The Emperor has accused him of nothing. They are all equally as weak and afraid.” Her hands went back to her scabs. “He is dismissed. There is nothing we can do.”

The next morning, Bilale went to the Temple. Lord Emmereth had not come home; Nilesh guessed, from the looks on the guards’ faces, the way the servants took an eternity preparing the litter, that he had forbidden anyone in the household to go out. Bilale was already forbidden to go out. Bilale shouted at them to be ready. She was wearing the ruby pendant, a dress of gold and silver silk. Her face was like a mask, with dry, white-edged lips. She kissed the baby tenderly before climbing into the litter. “My baby baby baby boy,” she whispered. Her eyes ran with tears.

In the streets the litter went fearfully slowly. The curtains were tightly closed, yellow silk making the world beyond like honey or amber or Bilale’s citrines. The soft warm pleasure of holding closed eyes up to the sun. It gave Bilale’s whiteness a sickly look, though it shaded away her scars. The shadows of the guardsmen moved on the curtains and they could see nothing beyond them. The noise of the streets drifting in distantly, like sounds in dreams. Bilale twisted her hands in her lap. Touched at her scars.

We will all die, Nilesh thought. Not yet, but it will come. I am her servant. My whole life, nothing but her servant. And now when she dies, I will die.

“We only exist because they exist,” Janush had said to her once. “We are like lice crawling on their bodies, for whom Bilale’s beautiful red hair is the earth and the sky and the house of God. If they were to stop commanding us, do you think we would disappear, Nilesh? Cease to exist?” He’d been drunk on firewine. She’d had to call servants to put him to bed. His words had terrified her. Terrified her now.

The litter came to a stop. They had been recognized: voices shouted. “Murderer! Traitor!” They had at least not been spat on. An attendant handed Nilesh and then Bilale down. Bilale moved so awkwardly, her body rigid with fear. She looked so pitiful, thought Nilesh. So vulnerable. So weak. Her hands shook, as she steadied herself on the attendant’s arm. The guards drew close around them. Morning light on their swords. Bilale looked at them with indrawn breath, tears welling in her eyes again. More of them every day. They did not look at her or at Nilesh, looked stone faced at the muttering crowds in Grey Square.

They did not look, Nilesh, thought, as if they would disappear if Bilale or Lord Emmereth stopped commanding them. It came to her, with a dizzying stab of shock, that they could as easily decide to kill Lord Emmereth, or the baby, or Bilale. They had very sharp swords.

She followed Bilale up the steps to the Temple. The last time they had been there, their hearts had been so full of joy. It loomed over them, vast dark bulk as high as eternity, cold with sorrow, oh, Great Tanis, it was itself alive. Nilesh had heard stories of lands far away, Chathe and Ith and Tarboran, where the ground itself rose up hugely to meet the sky. But nothing, surely, nothing could be as high and as huge and as vast as the Great Temple of Great Tanis the Lord of Living and Dying, He Who Ruled All Things, the Sekemleth Empire’s God. Bilale went forward through the Temple door that looked at them with wooden eyes. A high, narrow doorway, a narrow passageway, dark as night. Nilesh held her breath as they walked. Bilale’s hair showed faintly in the darkness, her jewels, she turned her head towards Nilesh and her skin was visible like white shadows. The dark: is this what it will be like, Nilesh thought, when we die? Then out into the light of the Great Chamber, the bronze walls, a thousand scented candles burning, everywhere gold and bronze and gems. So bright and blinding. Nilesh gasped. Almost spoke her fear and joy aloud.

“From the fear of life, and the fear of death, release us,” Bilale whispered. She reached out, almost took Nilesh’s hand.

A priestess was singing before an altar, a high soft song whose words Nilesh could not catch. Far, high up at the ceiling, pethe birds fluttered in a shaft of sunlight.

Before the High Altar, the little dark-robed figure of the new High Priestess was kneeling. She rocked back and forth. Silent. Her body was hunched, very thin, Nilesh looked at her and saw how thin she was, how tiny, her hair was matted and lank. Her body rocked. Twitched. They said she did not leave the altar now until she fell asleep and could be carried away. But that was surely only servants’ gossip. The figure rocked, raised thin fingers to pull at her hair. Her fingers were bloody. The people in the Temple looked anywhere but at her. Bilale made a noise in her mouth. Bilale’s hands went to her belly, where his body had lain.

“My Lady?” A priestess stood before them in her mask. Her eyes through it were sad, she too tried and tried not to look at the child. It was like trying not to look at a beggar with a rotting face.

Nothing can be proved against Lord Emmereth, Nilesh thought. She tried to lose the thought away.

“I wish to make an offering,” Bilale said. Her eyes went to the child and away and back and away, her hands moving to pick at the scars at her mouth.

The priestess tried to smile. “Very well, Lady Emmereth.”

They went over to one of the many altars, a high one adorned with golden flowers, crowned with rose buds and hyacinth. Opposite to the High Altar, so that Bilale knelt with her face turned away from the child. Someone had placed as an offering a jewelled cage holding a scarlet bird. It trilled as Bilale knelt, showing a green mouth.

“Tamas bird,” said Bilale. “Pretty.”

“Nane elenaneikth,” the bird chattered. “Nane elenaneikth.” It beat its wings. The undersides of its wings were black.

“What is it saying?” asked Bilale. She looked frightened.

The priestess said, “Nothing. It makes sounds that sound like human speech. But it is not human speech. What is it that you wish to give, My Lady?” the priestess asked. Bilale had dedicated a life-sized gold statue of a baby when they came here to give thanks for its being born. Janush said Lord Emmereth had bought a thaler’s worth of candles as an offering once.

Bilale reached behind her neck. She unclasped the great ruby pendant on its golden chain. She stretched her white neck as it came off. “Here.” She held the jewel up to the candlelight then placed it on the altar. After the necklace, she stripped off her gold bracelets, her rings, placed these too on the altar. She said loudly, “Great Lord Tanis, Great Lord of Living and Dying, Great Tanis who rules all things, protect me and my child, that by your gift of living was given life and birth, protect us and keep us safe and guard us from harm. Oh Great Lord Tanis, Lord of All Things, protect us and keep us from death today.” She bowed her head, her voice dropped. “Great Lord Tanis, from the fear of life and the fear of death, release us.”

“Great Lord Tanis, from the fear of life and the fear of death, release us,” Nilesh whispered.

“Ethald emn enik,” the bird chattered.

Nilesh thought: we are like lice crawling on their bodies, for whom Bilale’s beautiful red hair is the earth and the sky and the House of God. And what will we be, when the earth and the sky and the House of God are fallen to dust?

They travelled back to the House of the East. Shouts and murmurs, dust and stones rattling off the litter, sharp drawn swords visible through the yellow silk. Yet Bilale looked almost peaceful, comforted by her prayers. The God must listen, Nilesh thought, to Lady Emmereth. She is so great, so powerful. She must be close indeed to the God. Bilale went to her dressing room to change. Chattering eagerly about playing with her child, some new song she must sing him, how she must tell the nurse to eat more honey to make her milk sweet. “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful baby. Baby baby baby boy. Baby baby baby boy.” Tears running down her face. Nilesh sat in Bilale’s bedroom on the floor by the window, closing her eyes, letting the breeze from the gardens play on her face. Honeysuckle, jasmine, roses; underneath a foetid odour where they must be cleaning out one of the fountains. A rhythmical clanging as they worked. Bilale came in in a loose dress of pale green like milky jade. The nursemaid came with the baby. Bilale fondled it, kissed its tiny fingers, crooned a song, exclaimed again in marvel at its tiny curled toes. “What will Great Tanis name you, beautiful one? My baby boy, my baby boy, my baby baby baby boy.” A girl scattered spices on the brazier. Ammalene resin, calming to the mind. The baby made a beautiful babbling noise. “He’s smiling!” Bilale cried in delight, “my baby!” Bilale sang, “That’s Mummy’s hair, little one! Mummy’s hair!” Nilesh began to doze.

Bilale screamed.

Nilesh opened her eyes.

There was a man in the room. He had a sword.

Nilesh stared at him.

“Death to traitors!” the man shouted. He waved the sword at the girl by the brazier. The girl fell down with blood coming out of her throat. Bilale screamed. The baby screamed. The man was on Bilale with the sword. Nilesh stared at him. Bilale threw up her left hand, it struck the sword blade and made the sword waver but he grabbed her hair, yanked her head back. Her face stared up at him. Her body was arched back, clutching at the screaming baby, she was making a horrible noise in her throat.

Nilesh threw herself at him, pounding with her hands. A terrible blazing pain in her body. She fell back screaming. Bilale was screaming. Everything was blind with pain. The sword came down on Bilale’s arm. Bilale fell down on the floor. On top of the baby. The baby was screaming. Blood was pouring from Bilale’s arm. Nilesh hit and hit and hit at the man’s legs. Bilale’s screaming went on and on. Another voice shouted. There was another man in the room. He had a sword. Nilesh stared at him. Nilesh’s head felt very light, like it was floating, her vision fading to dark and movement, her body drifting, numbness in her arms and in her legs. She couldn’t see things sensibly. There were lots of men in the room. She was watching patterns, water ripples, shadows, voices were shouting and screaming on and on. Her body was in pain. Something struck her, a voice shouted, she tried to roll away, they were fighting like the knife-fighters in the streets, something fell on her, there was more pain. Bilale’s voice was still screaming and the baby was still screaming and a man’s voice was shouting and her vision was fading away to white light.

She saw jewels. Candles. Bloody child’s fingers, and the creased tiny face of the baby, and Bilale’s red hair.

Her vision. Fading away to white light.