Concerning the outbreak of deeping fever in Sorlost, a thousand explanations were given. The God’s anger at the turmoil in the city. The God’s anger at the elopement of the High Priestess Thalia with the Altrersyr Demon King of the White Isles. The God’s anger at the idiot blasphemers who believed such a patiently absurd lie.

As far as Orhan could see, however, the explanation was glaringly obvious. Cam Tardein’s first act as Nithque had been to rescind every restriction on travellers from Chathe. The hatha addicts and the rose oil merchants and the High Lords had all been delighted. March Verneth’s death, it would seem, had not been entirely in vain.

Orhan occasionally wondered: all I did, all my crimes, and they brought about my dismissal as Nithque over a travel ban?

From the Street of the South and Yellow Birds Square, the disease spread like flood water. The Gold Quarter. The Bloody Echoes. The Dead Harbour. Starlight By The Gateways. The Street of Bones and Longing. The Court of Evening Sorrows. The Court of the Broken Knife. The air rang with screaming. Bodies piled up in alleys and doors. People running mad to escape watching their children dying. Fighting to drink at the fountains to cool their fevered heat. Death stench began to permeate even the seclusion of private gardens. The rich locked themselves away and burned mint and lavender and sysius berries. The poor staggered about with rags clutched over their mouths.

For the first few days, bizarrely, predictably, the city had seemed entirely unconcerned. People were reported dying. But not real people. Not like real people were really dying of something real. They themselves wouldn’t get sick and die. All lies, anyway. Another attempt by someone to cause alarm. Someone would start saying next it was caused by the ex-Nithque, or the dead High Priestess, or the dead Altrersyr king.

Then panic. Cam Tardein ordered the Emperor’s soldiers out onto the streets to board up plague houses. A man fell down in a pool of his filth in the Court of the Fountain, cursing Great Tanis and the Emperor as he died. A woman killed her three children in the Grey Square on the steps of the Great Temple, screaming she would rather cut their throats than see them take sick.

People crowded into the Temple. Trampled the children’s bloodstains under foot. Lit candles scented with herbs and spices. Gave offerings of jewellery. Said endless begging prayers.

The price of lavender and sysius berries and mint leaves doubled. Good candles cost a silver dhol each. People began to hoard bread.

The numbers dying started subsiding. The God had answered their prayers! The Sekemleth Empire would stand against any dangers. The Lord of Living and Dying protected them. The Asekemlene Emperor loved his subjects. What was mere illness, beside the power and wealth of the Golden Empire of the Eternal City of Sorlost?

The gates were barred to Chathean travellers. The price of lavender and sysius berries and mint leaves halved.

The disease flared up again. More savagely than before. Rumour had it that half the population of Fair Flowers were dead or dying. Children wandered the streets crying for their parents. The bakers’ shops and food stalls began to close.

Lord Caltren took sick. So did Samneon Magreth. The Emperor ordered all the doors of his palace locked.

Everyone knew the villages of western Chathe had been the centre of the last outbreak. So anyone from Chathe was sought out and hunted down and killed.

Everyone knew the villages of western Chathe were the chief producers of hatha. So hatha eaters were sought out and hunted down and killed.

As the days went on, this came to mean anyone with a funny accent or funny clothing, or anyone who was seen publicly rubbing their eyes.

The price of lavender and sysius berries and mint leaves trebled. Good candles cost five dhol. Even the wealthy began to run short of bread.

A fire started in a boarded-up house on the Street of the Butchered Horse. The whole street was burned to ashes before it could be put out. Rumour had it that the dying had fought back the bucket chains to hurl themselves into the flames.

Ameretha Ventuel took sick. Samneon Magreth died.

Lavender and sysius berries and mint leaves were traded for family heirlooms, sexual favours, food. Good candles cost a talent each. People fought in the street for bread.

Bil shut herself in her bedroom with the baby. Ordered servants wearing gloves and silk masks to leave food in covered dishes outside the door. She would eat only milk curds, fresh mint leaves and raw gilla fowl eggs. Burned lavender oil day and night. The cost would be crippling Orhan, were he not certain it would all end very soon when they both died. Through the door he heard the muffled sound of her crying. He wept himself, when he thought of the baby kicking its pathetic legs in its clout cloths, that would die before it had really been alive. The smell of it. The odd inhuman sounds it made, that tore his heart to pieces with love. It seemed so … unfair.

Such an absurd word to use. Like every other word in his vocabulary. Language was pointless in the face of such endless disasters. “Dead.” “Unfair.” “Sad.” “Hurt.”

Ah, Orhan, you grow too bitter. Don’t you know that bitterness is bad for the blood? You need to keep happy and smiling. That will help you keep your health. Burn lavender flowers and sysius berries. Repeat the chant of Semethest. Bind to your chest the ashes of peacock chest feathers dipped in honey. Smile. Keep your pecker up. Live in hope any of this rubbish actually works.

It would be nice if Darath could survive somehow, he thought to himself occasionally, when he and Darath weren’t arguing again. And Bil. His sister. The useless lump of his sister’s son.

Tam Rhyl’s family would probably survive, it occurred to him, since they were safely tucked up in isolated starving poverty in rural Immish forbidden to leave their house. The irony was biting. Tam’s death ultimately not in vain. Tam might, Orhan thought in his most generous moments, have been happy to see it end this way for them. His death saving his children’s lives.

Or not.

“Let’s run away to Immish,” Darath said that evening. They sat in Darath’s splendid bathing chamber, trying not to breathe on each other even as they kissed.

“We’d never make it.” Streams of people crowded the gates each day, running away to Immish. The desert dwellers killed them, or just the desert; if they made it through to Immish, the Great Council had placed armed guards on the roads and in the border towns. Sensible safe precautions, when he’d insisted on the same thing for anyone coming into Sorlost from Chathe.

“We could bribe the Immish soldiers. For a sack of diamonds a man, they might close their eyes.”

“I suppose we could …” The idea astonished him. Run away.

“Just the two of us. Buy a house somewhere in Alborn. We could.”

“We can’t. What would it look like, to the city? The two of us leaving? What about Bil, and Bil’s child, and Elis, and everyone?” Bondsmen. Servants. Hundreds of lives tied to their own. “It would panic people beyond anything, the two of us leaving, the Lord of the Rising Sun and the Lord of All That Flowers and Fades. There’d be utter panic. Where would we go, anyway? We couldn’t just go and live somewhere else.” Orhan thought: I’m the Lord of the Rising Sun, Servant and Counsellor of the Emperor, Warden of Immish and the Bitter Sea, the custodian of the House of the East, the former Nithque of the Sekemleth Empire of the Eternal Golden City of Sorlost. I can’t just leave and go and live somewhere else.

“Change your name,” said Darath. “Stop being all that. Darath and Orhan, two men living together with nothing but a lot of money to their lack of a name.”

“But …”

“Fuck the city,” said Darath suddenly. Irritably. Orhan looked at him in astonishment. “Fuck Elis and Bil and her baby and everyone and everything, who’ll probably all die in agony anyway pretty soon. The Emperor publicly humiliated you, Orhan. You saved his eternal life and he showed you no gratitude at all. Eloise Verneth wants to kill you. The city either laughs at you or wants her to succeed. You almost destroyed the both of us thinking it was for the good of the Empire. The Empire ignored you. So fuck it. Leave them to it. Come away with me. Leave.”

We could. We really could. Orhan’s head spun at it. Be two people living in a house together not having to think about the wider world. Darath and Orhan. Read and write poetry and talk and go food shopping together and just … not care.

The baby, he thought then. My son. I …

I’m sorry, he thought, to the baby. If you’d had a chance to live, I would have loved you so much.

“We’d have to go soon,” he said slowly. “Today, even. Cam’s finally said to be considering closing the gates.”

Darath’s turn to look astonished. Sat bolt upright, splashing water. “What?”

“You’re surprised?” God’s knives, the look on Darath’s face was almost comical.

Breakdown of words again.

“Closing the gates?”

“Yes. Closing the gates. Obviously.”

“Obviously? Obviously?”

“He should have done it days ago. I’d have done it the day the plague first broke.”

Darath stared at him. Trying to see he was joking, perhaps. “But … We’d be sealed in. To die. The whole city. Would die.”

“Yes. As you said yourself. We’ll all die in agony pretty soon.”

“But … The whole city? The whole city? You … you callous bastard, Orhan.”

Darath really hadn’t thought it. How could he still be so naive? That’s what power is, Darath, thought Orhan. What I almost destroyed us both for. Choosing who lives and who dies and why and when and how. Buying and selling people’s lives. Hoping it’s worth it. Knowing it’s probably not. “Yes. The whole city. But not the whole world. Tam Rhyl, for the good of the city. The city, for the good of the Empire. The Empire, for the good of Irlast.”

Darath’s face still look horrified. Shocked. Could feel them coming on to arguing again. Anything they said to each other now always ended up going wrong.

“An apple, for five cimma fruit! A cake, for a cup of wine! God’s knives, Orhan! Where does it end? All of Irlast for …?”

For you, Darath. For Bil’s child. For myself. Like we all would. All Irlast, for a few more brief moments of my life.

“Stop it, Darath. Please.”

“Your whore died,” said Darath.

“What?”

“Your beautiful beautiful filthy whore. He died.”

Like a knife blade. His hands twisting the wound in Tam’s belly, squeezing out every drop of pain. “I know.”

“Heartbroken, are you?”

“I …”

“I paid a man a talent to bury him. With a wreath of copperstem round his beautiful beautiful filthy neck. A talent, for a dead whore.”

Orhan got up. “I think I should go now, Darath.”

“Run away, then,” said Darath. “You callous, cheating, cowardly bastard.” Got up too. The two of the facing each other, dripping wet, stark naked, warm sweet scented oiled twilight dark with birds cooing and fluttering in their cages in the walls. Absurd.

Had to get dressed before he could go. Further absurdity. Orhan stood in the dressing room damp and sticky, holding out his arms while a body servant wrapped his clothes around him. Sticking to his skin. Just go back, he kept thinking, just go back into the bath chamber and tell him you’re sorry again, like you always do. In the corridor he heard splashing from the shade pool. Darath trying to show him how well he could be happy alone.

The onyx gates of the House of Flowers opened smoothly and silently before him. Carved huge petals of precious stone. The last heat of the sun clung to their surface, butterflies and flies resting enjoying the warmth. Green lizards with red legs eating the flies. Every time he left, now, he imagined it was for the last time.

The gates swung closed again. Sealing themselves. Crowd of flies rising buzzing, then settled back to bask on the hot stone. There were a lot of flies, now, in Sorlost. Big and fat. The city of Tyrenae was reported a fly-blown wasteland. Flies buzzing in clouds over the White Isles and Ith. Flies flies flies eating the ruin of the world.

I just wanted to make things better, Orhan thought.

The streets were largely empty, even the Street of Flowers. The low distant background noise of screaming hung in the air like the dust. Like the dust, one hardly now noticed it. One day soon, thought Orhan, it will stop and the silence will drive the last few survivors mad. A dead man lay sprawled on the flagstones, hands thrown out, his shirt torn, blood running from the cracks in his head. A hatha addict, or a Chathean merchant, or one of the Sorlostian merchants banished from Immish, also somehow being blamed. Or a man selling candles, or lavender flowers, or sysius berries, or bread. Desperate people will kill for desperate things. Fever and despair are already driving us mad. Orhan walked slowly with his entourage of guardsmen around him. Costing him a fortune, and the chances were one of them would go down with it and bring the plague raging into his house. No need for them, given the number of different ways he was dying. But not even a dying man wants to die.

He found himself stopping in the Court of the Fountain, watching the water plashing, silver pale on the marble. Pretty. A warm gust of wind blew water droplets into Orhan’s face. Cool and sweet. A soldier with a sword stood beside the fountain, watching the few people milling around still trying to buy and sell and walk about like the world wasn’t coming to an end. Four people had drowned throwing themselves into the water to soothe their fever. Bad omens. Must be stopped.

In your embrace I dream of water! Orhan skirted round it, trying to avoid looking at the fountain or the man’s blade.

The Grey Square, alone in the city, was crowded. People came to the Temple day and night to pray and beg. A new rumour had it that the disease could be avoided by lighting a candle while repeating the Chant of the Sun. It was noticed, also, that the priestesses were not dying, so this must surely mean something. Orhan wished like the rest to believe that it was the God’s kindness. Knew really, like the rest, that it was some kind of pious lie. The priestesses wore masks, apart from the High Priestess. So no one could really say how many of them there were.

A rational man, Orhan Emmereth. Darath would even say a cynic. But trying to cling to some broken fragment of hope.

“Candied lemons. Candied roses. Candied salted cimma leaves.” A street seller, her tray piled high with sweets. All the pretty colours, the yellow-green of the lemons, pink rose petals, plump green leaves. Flies, fat and excited, buzzed around her, sated with dead flesh. Some things cost so much now no one could afford them. Other things no one wanted, and their sellers starved. “Candied lemons,” she called hopelessly, “candied lemons, a dhol a bag.” Orhan bought three bags, handed two over to his guardsmen. Dry and too chewy. Not sharp enough. The sugar crunched in his mouth.

“Thank you, My Lord, thank you,” she said. Her voice was pathetic. “Here. Have a bag of roses with my gratitude, My Lord.” Orhan took the bag carefully, passed that too to his guards. Beautiful big petals, a deep glowing pink like the morning sky. All the flowers were blooming in rich profusion. Like a plant with silver-rot, the city seemed to be decking itself in beauty before it died.

The square fell silent. From deep within the Temple, the twilight bell tolled. Scent of incense on the wind.

A sacrifice night. A little girl with old, old eyes and bloody hands.

The bell tolled again. In the Small Chamber, a man had just died.

“Every night!” a voice shouted from the square. “We should be making a sacrifice every night! As we once did.”

“We were a great power, then!” another voice shouted. “Never had the plague! Great Tanis is angry! We neglect the God, and this is our reward.”

“Every night!” More voices shouting. “Every night!”

And you’d volunteer, would you? Orhan thought.

The first voice shouted, “I have a daughter. Great Tanis would be happy, to see her sacrificed. Strong, she is, to help the God. Every night! Every night!”

“Every night!” More and more voices.

“The Lord of Living and Dying! The living remain living, and the dead may die! Every night!”

“This blasphemy, the High Priestess abandoning the Temple! Great Tanis is angry! Every night!”

“Every night! Every night!”

God’s knives, Orhan thought. Is this now what we’ve come to?

If it makes them feel better, he thought then.

He walked on. Empty streets. A knife-fighter wounded and panting, sweat clinging to his brow. Two more fighting together in a courtyard, a handful of spectators gathered round shouting, chanting one of the men’s name. As Orhan watched, the taller figure slipped, stumbling; the other was on him, cutting down hard with his knife; the loser fell back in a mass of blood. His eyes stared round imploring his audience to help him. Dying. Dying. Don’t want to die. The victor raised his arms. Bloody sweat on his forehead. His face fever bright. Two child whores drifted past the spectators with bells tinkling. Like the knife man, their faces oozed sweat beneath their paint. A man in a green coat pulled one of them roughly towards him. Child’s lisp: “One dhol. One dhol.” She’s dying, Orhan almost shouted. She’s dying, can’t you see? Man and child went off together down the street into the shadows. The air around them seemed to moan and laugh.

Is this now what we’ve come to?

He drifted aimlessly with his guards around him. Floating in the golden dust. A group of women kicked a man to the ground on a street corner, shouting that he was a Chathean plague carrier. Two children ran past, dressed in rags. Two houses boarded up and screaming. A shop boarded up. The planks had been smashed open to loot the shop. A cloth merchant’s, from the look of it. Orhan bent down, picked up a length of vivid pink and gold embroidered silk. Flowers, stems intertwining, the spaces between one picture the outline of the next. The same colour as the candied petals. The gold thread unravelling in his hands. A beetle was clinging to the embroidery. Fat and black. Bloodstained. He made a choking sound and dropped it back to the ground.