Kitabı oku: «The House of Sacrifice»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Part One: The Joy of the World

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Part Two: The Golden City

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Part Three: The Forge

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Part Four: The Knife

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Part Five: The Ruins

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Part Six: The Glory

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Part Seven: The Warmth of Her Light

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-One

Chapter Sixty-Two

Chapter Sixty-Three

Chapter Sixty-Four

Chapter Sixty-Five

Chapter Sixty-Six

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Acknowledgements

Also by Anna Smith Spark

About the Publisher

Map

PART ONE

Chapter One

Hail Him. Behold Him.

Wolf lord, lord of carrion,

Joy to the sword that is girt with blood.

Man-killer, life-stealer, death-bringer, life’s thief.

King-throned, glorious His rule:

The sea-eaten shore, the stones of the mountains,

The eagles, the fleet deer, the wild beasts,

Men in their cities, rich in wisdom,

All are bound to Him,

His word is law.

With bloody hands He governs,

Sets His rule and His measure,

A strong tree, a storm at evening,

The sea rising up to swallow a ship.

The night coming, the sudden light that makes the eyes blind,

The floodtide, the famine, the harrowing, the pestilence.

King and Warrior.

Golden one, shining, glorious.

Life’s judgement, life’s pleasure, grave of hope.

The city of Ethalden, that is the most beautiful place on all the black earth of Irlast. Its towers are made of pearl and silver. Its walls are solid gold. It stands on a great plain of rich grassland, on the banks of the river Jaxertane that flows wild down to the cold dark endless sea. It is a jewel beyond comparing. The glory of all the world. Wondrous thing! Look upon it and be blinded, dazed by its magnificence, fall upon your knees, worship, marvel, worship. Oh you who are nothing, you who are but maggots, crawling pitifully in the bitter dust. Kneel and give thanks, rejoice that you have lived to see it, that such brilliance was raised in this blessed era of the world’s end.

Perfection is built here! Kneel, kneel, cry out in terror, turn away your eyes from its radiance! Its streets are paved with marble. Its palaces are ivory and white glass. Its bells ring out in music, the air is filled with perfumes, the river runs clear, the corn grows golden, the trees are heavy with sweet fruit. Treasure houses stacked with riches. Wealth beyond mortal ken. Numberless are its herds, its flocks, its swift horses; its people dress in silks and satins, its women beautiful as goddesses, its men strong as giants, in their eyes is the light of knowledge and power over all things.

Its foundations are living bodies, flesh putrefying, bones cracking beneath its weight. Its mortar is tears and blood. At its heart there stands a palace of desolation, built in honour of a mighty king.

Such a king …

You think, do you, that he would have died somewhere, in the desert, on the shores of the White Isles, in the ruins of Ethalden, if I had not saved him? That none of this would have been? You think, do you, that without him the world would be at peace? If he died, do you think that there would be no war, no cruelty no murder, no pain, the world would be a good and loving place? ‘Why do we do this?’ I asked him once. And he looked out across the world that we have made, and did not speak. ‘If not me,’ he said at last, ‘then perhaps someone else.’

My own city of Sorlost they say has been brought low by killing violence. We did not do that. ‘The people of Sorlost deserved it,’ you will say. ‘Child killers. Blood-sodden. Their city is based on murder, go there, Thalia, send Marith your husband there to punish them.’

The people of Sorlost are wise. They merely make visible what all the world is based on.

Take the bread your children are eating, send them to bed hungry, give the bread instead to the starving poor.

No?

In Sorlost, at least, they do not lie. In Ethalden, our tower built on human suffering, we do not lie.

Osen Fiolt is a bad man, for following him, for doing as he orders, for being his friend. Osen wants power and wealth, does not care where it comes from. Oh, yes. I wish Osen was not his friend. But I am worse, because I married him? Because I live my life? Because I do not stick a knife into his throat? To me, he has always been kind and loving. To me, he is a good man. As for the rest – I turn my eyes away from it, as we all do. Refugees and beggars stagger across the world, men, women, children, their tears are a drowning flood: what do you do? What more can be expected of me? Should I be better than anyone else is?

It grieves me, yes, I weep over it, what we have come to, what the world is.

In a different life …

In a different place …

There is no different life. There is no different place. There is here and now, there is what I have, what I can be, what I can do.

Kill him? Oh, it is rather too late for that, is it not? Leave him? Why should I do that? Because it would be a better thing than staying with him? Because I should suffer, for marrying him? Because he has done harm to others, and thus I should not find pleasure in his love? Because he is a bad man and so I should not love him, because you do not want me to love a bad man because I am – what? Because I should be better than that? If I ran away to the other side of Irlast, dressed myself in sackcloth and ashes, did penance with aching hands, tended the starving, kissed the wounds of the sick – so what? So what?

You do not expect Osen to leave him, renounce all of this. You do not expect this of any of his friends.

You will still say, perhaps, that I am a fool, lovestruck, blinded, his victim, that I would flee from him if I could, because …

We sit together, talk, laugh, argue, hold great feasts and parties, walk in the gardens, ride in the fields, sit quietly to read. I am trying to improve his taste in poetry. He is introducing me to the Pernish stories of his childhood. But I should not love him, because …?

We march onwards, an army like a storm, like the clouds rushing over the sun. The world trembles. The men in their bronze armour sing the paean, hold their heads high, smile as they march. The world bows before us. Every soldier here in our army, they are as mighty as kings. Life is good, life is joyous for them.

That is not a good thing, no. It would be better indeed if we were all to be men of peace.

But we are not men of peace.

I will not be blamed for living my life.

Chapter Two

Marith Altrersyr, King of the White Isles and Ith and Illyr and Immier and the Wastes and the Bitter Sea, King of All Irlast, Ansikanderakesis Amrakane, Amrath Returned to Us, King Ruin, King of Shadows, King of Dust, King of Death

His Empire

Marith Altrersyr the King of All Irlast stood on the brow of a hill looking across towards the city of Arunmen.

It was still early morning. Soft pale light, pink and golden. In the valley the scent of wood smoke, the smoke rising to blur the light. Birds wheeled in the sky, turning, twisting like outstretched fingers. Reminded him of Thalia’s hair. They called harsh and lonely. Hungry, cold, fragile things. Moved in the sky turning and turning. Their cries muffled by the ringing of a blacksmith’s hammer. Wheeled and called, flew off to the east.

The sun caught their wing beats. Black and white in the sky. The hammer rang out loudly. Then silence. Waiting.

Waiting.

‘Marith!’

Marith turned. Looked down the hillside. Osen Fiolt, the Lord of Third Isle, the Lord of the Calien Mal, Death’s Lieutenant, Captain of the Army of Amrath. His best friend. Osen rode up towards him. A young man, dark and handsome but for the scar on his face.

‘Marith! They’re waiting for you!’

Marith rubbed his eyes. From across towards the city came a distant rumble. A flash of white fire against the city walls. The birds rushed back overhead, black and silver. Singing. He took a long drink from the bottle at his belt. Watched the course of the birds across the sky.

Ah, gods.

Osen pulled up his horse beside him. ‘Beautiful morning for it.’

‘I think it might snow.’

‘Do you? A bit early in the year for snow?’

‘Thalia would like it.’

‘The men wouldn’t.’

‘No. No, I suppose not. But it would be beautiful. Snowfall. Don’t you think?’

Osen said, ‘Are you ready, then?’

Looked back over the morning landscape. The hammer rang again. Smell of wood smoke. Another distant flash of light against the city’s walls. Dark cloud twist of birds, rising afraid.

He drank from the bottle. ‘I suppose I’ll have to be.’

Swung himself up onto his horse. A white stallion, saddled in red and silver, red ribbons plaited in its tail, gold on its hooves, sharp bronze horns decorating its head. Osen brought his own horse to fall in beside him. Reached out and their hands touched.

‘Third time lucky?’

‘Third time lucky.’

They kicked their horses into a gallop.

‘Amrath!’ Marith shouted. ‘Amrath and the Altrersyr! Death! Death!’

Before him, on the plain, the Army of Amrath stood to attention. Bronze armour. Bronze swords. Long iron-tipped ash-wood sarris spears. Their helmets plumed in red horse-hair. Dark-tempered bronze over staring eyes. Horses armoured and masked, heads like skulls, blinkered, blind to everything. Red standards fluttering. Raw and bloodied. Dripping screaming weeping over the army’s lines. In the sky above, two dragons circled. Red and black. Green and silver. Huge. Shadowbeasts danced around the dragons, formless faceless long-clawed.

The Army of Amrath.

Waiting.

All of them.

Waiting for him.

Marith rode along the front of his army, Osen at his side. He drew his sword. Raised it, shining, the morning sun flashing on the blade. White metal, engraved with rune signs. The rune letters burned in the sunlight. The ruby in the sword’s hilt glowed scarlet. Blue fire flickered down the length of the blade.

Henket. Mai. Eth. Ri.

Death. Grief. Ruin. Hate.

He shouted to the men, his voice loud as the sword’s light. ‘Soldiers of Amrath! My soldiers! Twice now, this city has resisted us! Resisted us and betrayed us! Now, today, it will fall!’

An explosion shattering against the black walls of the city. White fire, silent as maggots. White fire, silent, and then screams. The wind caught his cloak and sent it billowing out behind him. Dark red, scab-coloured, tattered into a thousand shreds of lace. Dried blood flaked off it. Fresh blood oozed off it. It stank of blood and shit and rot and smoke. He wore his silver crown but was otherwise bareheaded, the morning sun bright on his black-red hair. His skin like new-spun silk, smooth and perfect, gleaming. His grey eyes soft like a child’s eyes. Soft pale grey like moths.

‘Destroy it!’ Marith shouted to his army. ‘Destroy it! Tear it down! Let nothing be left alive!’

‘Amrath!’ the army screamed back at him. ‘Amrath and the Altrersyr! Death and all demons! Death! Death! Death!’

Columns of soldiers began to move forward. Siege engines hurled rocks running with banefire. Mage fire, white and silent. Dragon fire, glowing red. The beat of war drums. Clamour of trumpets. Voices chanting out the death song. Slowly slowly moving forward. Slow and steady, the drums beating, fire washing over them, rocks and banefire loosed from war engines on the city’s walls. Falling dying, trampled by those behind them. Slowly steadily marching on. Slow long ranks marching towards the city. Destroy it! Destroy it! The only thought in all the world in all their minds. The dead zone between the city and the encircling army. Broken bones and ruin and dead men. Banefire. Mage fire. Dragon fire. War drums and war trumpets. And now, loud and urgent, the thump of battering rams against the city’s gates. War ships in the harbour, grappling. A storm rising. Towering huge dark waves.

‘Amrath! Amrath! Death!’

Waves of men breaking against the city. Waves of water. Waves of fire. Waves of death and pain.

Snow began to fall.

White flakes caught in Marith’s shining hair.

‘Break it! Break it! Down! Down!’

The ram smashed into the Tereen Gateway. Again. Again. Again. A tree trunk thicker than a man’s armspan, carved at its end into a dragon-head snarl. Covered with bloody ox-hides, to keep it from catching fire. Obscene. Comic. Pumping away in out, in out, in out, steaming dripping bloody battering pounding raping iron wood meat. Three huge siege engines hurling rocks and banefire. Machines on the walls hurling rocks and banefire back at them.

Marith circled his horse, making it rear up. Gilded hooves sharp like knives.

‘Break it down! Now!’

A shower of boiling sand poured down from the battlements. Soldiers collapsed screaming, clawing at their skin. Inside their armour, burning. In their hair. In their mouths and eyes. The bloody hides on the ram hissed. Cheers from the Arunmenese defenders above.

The ram swung again. Off to the left, a blinding white flash and a dragon’s roar. The gate groaned. Splintering. Shadowbeasts gathered, a clot in the air. Shapes twisting, forming, dissolving, huge shapeless dark beating shrieking wings. They dived together, claws and wing beats, jaws opening faceless, clawed limbs tearing down the stones of the wall.

‘Now! Now! Break it down!’ Marith’s horse reared, trampling snow. Red-hot sand showered down around him. His horse screamed in pain. Fire arrows thudding into the battering ram. His soldiers’ bodies piling on the ground.

The sky roared at him. A thousand screaming raging mouths. Another flash. The dragon howled. The men fell back shrieking in fear. White light rising up before him. Spear-shape. Cloud-shape. Shining. Grass-green eyes opening, staring; hands reaching for him, numberless beyond counting, and in every hand a sword with a blade of silver light.

God thing. Life thing. A demon conjured up to protect the city. The great high holy god of Arunmen whose temple was gold and green bronze.

Bastard thing. Twice now, it had beaten him off.

‘Get the gate open! Now! Now! The ram!’

His sword was shrieking in his hand. Red jewel at the hilt winking at him. Glittering. Red light like the red light of the Fire Star. The King’s Star. His star. There’s your star, Marith, and there’s mine. Look! A red jewel, the sword forged for him in the Tower of the Eagle, back before he was truly king, forged in blood and ashes, forged to look like the sword the first Amrath had owned. He’d had a sword before, once, with a red jewel in its hilt, he had named it Sorrow, and this sword he had named Joy.

Marith charged his enemy. So tiny, a man shape on horseback, throwing himself headlong towards this towering raging maelstrom of light. Behind him the ram started. Drumming on the gateway. Break it down! Break it down! His siege engines loosed all together. The machines on the walls showering sand and rocks and banefire back at his men. Mage fire. Dragon fire. Dying.

Marith King Ruin met the light god with a crash.

All his vision was silver.

Slurred. Like being underwater. All the movements just a moment too slow. Cool and soft around him. It felt like Thalia’s skin. A hundred sword blades meeting his sword stroke. A hundred sword blades cutting at him. Grass-green eyes closed and opened. All staring. Sad sad eyes: they looked like the eyes of an old man. Marith fought it. Cut at it. A sword and a hand fell away and another grew up in their place. He cut it again, again a hand falling, again another hand growing up. Swords struck back at him. Glanced off him. Warded them off, didn’t feel them, and then a blade got down into the meat of his shoulder, and a wound opened up dry and ashy, and he hurt. He lunged deep into its body. The centre of it, white silver light swallowing him. His horse was screaming. His horse was dead. It reared and kicked at the light surrounding it. Gilded hooves coming down. The grass-green eyes closed and opened. Countless silver swords stabbed at him.

Bastard stupid thing. Twice now, it had beaten him.

The battering ram thudded against the Tereen Gateway. Trumpets rang for an assault on the walls. Voices shouting: ‘Ladders! Ladders! Up there! Get moving!’ Soldiers rushing up them. Fast with knives clutched in their teeth. A ladder falling backwards, soldiers falling from it dying. Spiralling down off the ladders screaming in a cloud of red-hot sand.

Snow, falling over everything. White snow, black ash, silver fire, red blood. Snowflakes silent and soft as feathers. Muting the sound.

Memory of snow falling, the day he killed his father. White blossom, falling like snowflakes, as they cheered him entering the cities of half the world.

Thalia would like the snow, he thought.

The light god wounded him. Hard, raw pain in his arm, making him almost drop his sword Joy. He cut off hands and swords and they grew up stronger, swords stabbing. Grass-green eyes staring at him. Twice, this damned thing had defeated him. Twice, his soldiers had been forced back. Fire hissed on the bloody ox-hides. The ram beginning to burn. Men dying. Men rushing up to replace them pounding it hard at the gate. The ladders trembling, swaying like bird-legs, another going over, soldiers falling, one soldier falling was burning, fell like a star. Soldiers stumbling blinded by red-hot sand.

Osen’s voice shouting furiously, ‘Break it! Break it! Destroy it! Now!’

‘Amrath! Amrath!’

White fire washing over the battering ram. The ox-hides smoking, burning, men dying, men rushing up wounded and bloody to take their place. The dead horse reared and kicked at the light god. Knife-sharp gilded hooves. Marith cut and hacked at the light god. Swords falling. Swords cutting him. Grass-green eyes opened and closed.

The gate shattered open beneath the beating of the ram. The Army of Amrath surged forward. Trampling their dead and dying. Fighting each other to be first through the gate. A trumpet rang out triumphant. Cheering. Screaming.

‘Breech! Breech!’

‘Amrath!’

‘Breech! Breech!’

The light god roared in fury. Swords and hands ripping at Marith. Marith smashed back at it.

Shouts and cheering turning to screams as the machine on the walls showered down burning sand. The shadows rose up to destroy it. A bright white flash of mage fire sent them burning back. The machine loosed more sand, shimmering as it came down.

‘Breach! Breach!’

‘In! Now!’

‘In! In!’

The Army of Amrath surging in through the gateway. Through the shower of sand falling. Through blasts of white and silver mage fire. Through shuddering falling walls. Soldiers rushing up the ladders. Up onto the battlements. Trying to get to the war engines. Mage fire crashed over them. Burning. More and more rushing up behind.

Voices shouting the war song: ‘Death! Death! Death!’

Marith hacked at the light god. Grass-green eyes staring at him. Numberless hands and sword blades. Swirling silver all around him, washing him, cool and soft. He hacked like hacking at a tree trunk. Ignored the swords cutting him. Nothing could harm him. Remember that! They cut him and they hurt him but there was nothing. Dry ash wounds, blood like rust, nothing to bleed, nothing to die. Like a dried-up river. Dry dead dust. A famine. He slashed at the thing’s shining light, cut it into pieces, over and over, all the hands and the swords cutting him. Grass-green eyes staring at him. He cut them. Destroying them. Hammering down his sword blade. Over and over and over and over. The dead horse reared and kicked at it. Bit at it with yellow teeth. Cut and cut and cut.

A burst of light. White and silver. Brighter than sunlight. The snow shining with every colour of the rainbow. Light reflected in every soldier’s eyes.

Scream like glass and bells ringing. A thousand rushing shooting stars.

White light. Burning. White shining blazing sparks of fire. Cut and cut and cut and cut.

Screamed.

Screamed.

Gone.

Twice, it had defeated him.

Third time lucky, indeed.

Marith drew his breath. Patted his horse to thank it.

Charged after his soldiers through the ruins of the gate.

King Ruin. King Death. Such joy and such wonder. The one true perfect thing.

Inside the Tereen Gateway was a killing ground. Rubble, rotting corpses, barricades, fires. A crude wall, too high for his soldiers to climb over, thrown up behind.

‘Hold!’ a voice was screaming. ‘Whatever comes at us! Hold! Hold!’ Gritted lines gritted teeth gritted spears, grey hopeless dead men. The last defenders of Arunmen. Marith felt almost sorry for them. Their swords and spears trembled in their hands. They knew. When he first crossed the river Alph, Arunmen had surrendered unconditionally, thrown open its gates, feasted and crowned him king. Hanged its last king from the gates of the palace as a welcome gift. Two months after they crowned him, the people of Arunmen had declared themselves a free city, massacred the garrison he’d left. Ungrateful bastards! Just because he’d been a bit tied-up in Samarnath city of towers and wretchedly difficult suicidal ‘freedom or death we shall not yield’ maniacs, they thought they could turn around and thumb their noses at him?

He charged into the line of defenders, hacking at them. An arrow thudded into his back; he felt the heat of its fires, shrugged it off, killed someone. The dead horse screamed. Its mane was burning. Delightful smell of burning hair. There were spears in his face, jabbing at him hitting out with his sword. The ruby on the hilt shining. White light rainbows on the blade. His face flushed, bloodied. Blood and dust in his hair. Beautiful. Shining like diamonds. Shining like all the stars in the heavens, like sunlight on water, beautiful perfect shining with rainbows, moon-white skin and red-black shining hair, killing them. White-silver blood-red scab rot filth death ruin screaming his men on in through the rubble of the gate. The men coming on behind him, grappling with the defenders, climbing and tearing at the inner wall.

He killed someone else. A third. A fourth. Shouts from the walls: they’d got a bridgehead up there on the battlements. A body crashed down in front of him. Helpfully took out an Arunmenese soldier rushing forward with a nasty big sword. A crash and a cheer off from the Salen Gateway. That gate too was breached. Osen and his men would be in.

‘Amrath!’

‘Amrath and the Altrersyr!’

‘Death!’

A horseman came riding at him, the horse already maddened by the screaming stink of blood. He struck the horse with his sword and it shattered, flew apart all these dark shapes. It was just a shadow. The rider came crashing down, the hilt of a sword in its hands, crumbled metal, crumbling away into dust, its hands were eaten away by the eaten metal. You see now, you see, even my touch is corruption, I am ruin, I am a god and after me is only death. He killed his enemies. Five, ten, twenty to a stroke. A hundred dead. A thousand. They crumbled before him, they were nothing, he is death and ruin, he cannot be harmed. Alone, he could kill them all, on and on, killing, he could stand here and kill for all eternity, every man and woman and child who walks the earth, he could kill. This is all that I am, he thought. All that I could ever be and do.

His hand moved, holding the sword. He closed his eyes. He felt things die beneath his sword strokes. Cut through them, cut the world open, they were ragged and torn apart, they looked like clouds torn ragged by the wind and the moonlight shines through them and the sky behind them is both darker and bright with light.

Smoke was rising over the city. Marith raised his face in joy as the red dragon flew overhead. A great warm wash of dragon fire. Warm soft flames caressing his face. He could feel the battering ram pounding against the Sea Gate, the storm waves smashing against the harbour. Crash as the siege engines loosed. More and more of his men coming in around him, fanning out, pushing the defenders back. The city before them burning. Dragon fire. Mage fire. Banefire. Falling from the heavens. A roar of triumph off to his left from the walls: voices shouting, hailing him. Fighting. Killing. Pressing onwards. His men pouring in. Flowing into the city, fighting, killing, tearing it down. The red dragon came down to land. Crushed bodies: soldiers, women, children; children throwing roof tiles, firewood, fighting trying to defend the city with ragged bare hands. The dragon breathed out flames and consumed them. Children throwing roof tiles. Women with kitchen knives. Smashed the buildings of the city down over them. Burned them. Cut them open in its jaws. The shadowbeasts lifted them, dismembered them, dropped them falling in pieces spiralling to the ground. Snow falling around the bodies. Red blood. White ash. White snow. Soldiers in at every breach, fighting. Pressing forward. Over and over. Endless. Rolling climax building. Wave after wave after wave. His soldiers ripping everything apart. Dismembering everything. Opening the city up like a body. Battering it like waves on rock. Marith fighting, killing, the whole city spread before him, watching it fighting, watching it falling, watching it burn and break and yield and fall into dust. On and on his men running through the city, killing everything. The storm beating against the harbour. The siege engines loosing banefire and rock.

The defenders retreating. Their city burning. Blood running in torrents. Pulling back to their own houses. Hoping without hope that their own families might somehow be saved. The snow coming thicker. Muting sound and vision. Cold sweet silent white air. The Army of Amrath spilling over everything. Wading through the city’s dying. Soaked and mired in death. That smell it had! Heavy, sweet, honeyed tang. Breathe it in, it never goes stale. The smell of the butcher’s block that is the smell of power and the illusion of living. Every death to be treasured. Hoarded. I did this. I made this.

Blood and filth and human ruin: that is the face of god. Arunmen is taken! Arunmen is fallen! And here now he is king.

Osen Fiolt and Valim Erith met him at the gates of the palace of Arunmen. Onyx towers like the city walls, high as cliffs, black as storm clouds, its roofs gold tiles but they’d stripped off the tiles to pay for their pointless futile war. Osen had a squad of men guarding it. They can have the city, Marith had told his captains, but the palace is to be kept intact for me.

‘It’s clear,’ said Valim. ‘We’ve been through it.’ Lord Valim of Fealene Isle; a companion of Marith’s father, older therefore than Marith and Osen, too cautious in his thinking but a good leader of men, as many older men are. He had been with them since the beginning of everything, had fought in every battle, had lost his son and his brother in battle, but still Marith felt something like shame around him, who had seen him as a child, been a young man armed and shining when Marith was a child staring up in awe.

Valim got down on his knees before Marith. ‘Ansikanderakesis Amrakane. My Lord King of Arunmen.’

‘I was already King of Arunmen.’ So unnecessary. All of this.

‘Come on, then,’ said Osen. ‘Let’s go and have a look, see what they’ve left us.’

‘Tell the men three days,’ said Marith. He looked at the snow falling. ‘Try and make sure they don’t burn absolutely every building down.’

Valim nodded.

‘Have they found the ringleaders?’ asked Marith.

A look of irritation. ‘We will.’

‘You hope,’ said Osen. Marith gave him a look.

They went into the palace together, Marith and Osen. Marith’s footsteps rang very loud on the tiled floor.

Hated this part, somehow. Walking through halls and corridors, walls closing around him, on and in and in. Smell of smoke. Servants’ faces. Dead faces. Dying faces. So many times, we’ve done this, he thought. But always so strange.

‘I thought Valim said it was clear,’ said Osen. He kicked a slumped body, one of their soldiers. It groaned. ‘This isn’t clear.’

They came to the throne room. Servants and nobodies in grand rich clothing, faces grey with terror, trying to protest with every fibre of their being that they’d always worshipped Marith Altrersyr as their true king. More bodies. Marith’s soldiers and the Arunmenese soldiers who had tried to fight them off.

Why? Marith thought. Why did they try to fight them off? It’s an old wooden chair.

The walls of the throne room were made of amber. Thick and drowning: Marith stared at the walls, looked through the amber like looking through water, there were flowers trapped in it, insects, encased in the walls. He put his hand on the amber and it was almost warm. It felt like skin. Not cold, like stone. The throne on its dais: wood, twisting patterns in the grain, red canopy old and cracked and dusty, that was said to be the skin of a sea beast that a king of Arunmen had once killed. The steps of the dais were thick with gold paint.

Tasteless. Like every single bloody one of them. Power awe glory power wealth! Bloodstains on the wood that nothing could scrub out. Marith climbed the dais. Sat down on the throne.

‘The King of Arunmen!’ Everyone kneeling, Osen, the soldiers, the servants and officials of the palace who had surrendered to them, all kneeling with their faces pressed on the stone floor. Gold-coloured skin in the amber light. Like they were all yellow and sick.

Yellow light and smoky, bloody chambers. Marith closed his eyes. Panicked fear he was going to throw up.

Arunmen had surrendered to him. Made him sit here once already, king and master, all enthroned in yellow light. Filthy poxy place in the middle of sodding nowhere. No desire in him then ever to come back.

‘Marith?’

Marith opened his eyes. Osen was staring at him, everyone else still prostrate heads down, crouched beetled staring at the floor. Pile of dead bodies. Dying bodies. Valim Erith had said the place was clear. Here I am seating myself on my throne in a room full of corpses. We don’t even try to pretend it’s anything else any more.

‘Get up,’ he said. Creak of armour. Creak of old men’s bones. Some of these servants must have turned their coats three times now, from the dead king Androinidas to Marith Altrersyr to the pretender who’d rebelled against him to Marith Altrersyr again.

He said, ‘Kill these people. All of them.’

Osen tried to smile at him. ‘You need a drink and a hot bath, Marith.’

Marith took the flask from his belt, discovered it was empty. ‘I do.’

‘I sent riders. Thalia will be here in a few days, I should think, unless the snow gets much worse. So cheer up. Look, let’s go and get you clean.’ ‘Don’t kill them,’ he saw Osen mouth over his shoulder at his soldiers.

They went up to the king’s private rooms, up in a tower above the throne room. The bedchamber had windows of green glass, the light cool like the light beneath trees. Marith felt easier here, breathing in the green. The walls were hung with leaves and flowers, preserved by magecraft fresh and perfect as the day they were first picked. The bed had curtains of silver tissue. The ceiling was set with fragments of mage glass to mimic the stars. Three weeks, he had spent here before, when he first came to Arunmen. Kept Sun’s Height and the feast of Amrath’s birthday. Days of peace and sweet, joyous nights.

He went over to the window, pressed his face against it. His face felt so hot. Through the window he could see trees, distorted by the ripples in the glass. A hot wind rattled the window, bringing the stink of smoke. Turned back to the room and there were bloody smear marks on the green glass window. Bloody footprints on the floor.

I remember the Summer Palace in Sorlost, burning. The smell of it. The heat of it. A column of fire, the walls were running with fire, I’ve never seen fire move like that, before or since. Not dragon fire, not banefire, nothing. It was like all the gods of the world were in that palace, consuming it. It moved like breath. I remember the people dying, the Emperor’s guards, the servants, I have no idea how many we must have killed. The Emperor on his gold throne, with a yellow rag around his head, soiling himself. A servant girl with her face opened up like a flower, throwing herself through a window to escape. Old men pleading for mercy, cowering behind piles of tattered books. The palace walls flowed with fire, my sword was red with blood, my hands ached from killing. My whole self stripped down to killing and death.

‘They’re getting a bath prepared for you,’ said Osen. A girl came running, offered wine in gold cups. She bowed her head to Marith. Her body leaning forward so that he could see down her dress. Sweat, running down inside her dress. Reached out and took the cup and his hand shook and the cup fell. Wine stain over the blood. The cup rolled on the floor. He stared at it. The girl stood very still.

Marith opened his mouth. Felt himself about to scream. A choked dry shriek came out of him.

‘Get out,’ said Osen. ‘Everyone. Out. Now.’

A man who was perhaps a senior servant, the master of the bedchamber, dripping in silk and jewels, fat face fat hands, fussing about, ‘The mess, My Lord, My Lord King, the mess, I’ll have the girl whipped, I—’

Osen said, ‘Get out. Now. Everyone.’

‘You’re not injured, somehow?’ Osen asked when they were alone.

‘Of course I’m not injured. Don’t be absurd. I’m just tired.’ Marith rubbed his eyes. ‘Three assaults in four days. Tiring.’

A strange look on Osen’s face. Osen said, ‘Good.’

‘Of course I’m not injured. How could I be injured?’

‘I said, good. How could you be injured? I was just concerned.’

Osen knelt down, began to peel Marith’s armour off him. Blood spatter, blood and gore streaming down him, flaking off him, whole bits of what had once been people, congealing in lumps, running off his skin.

‘Gods, this stinks,’ said Osen. He was as filthy as Marith was. Marith reached down and fumbled with the straps of Osen’s armour in turn.

‘Leave it. I’ll do it later. The important thing is you.’ Osen took his hand. ‘You’re shaking.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘This carpet is bloody ruined,’ said Osen. Still struggling with Marith’s armour that was stuck to him with blood. ‘It’ll have to be burned.’

The last time he’d been here, at Sun’s Height. Kneeling on the carpet at Thalia’s feet, Thalia’s face shining bronze like candles, looking down at him. Love and joy and peace.

Osen said, ‘There! Gods, wretched thing.’ Clatter of metal. The armour lying in blood and spilled wine. ‘Let’s get you next door to the bath, then. I’ll get you a drink for when you’re in there.’

Blink of hope. ‘Hatha?’

‘A bit early in the day, don’t you think?’

Marith blinked. ‘Please?’

‘You’re the king. I do as you say. But, look, maybe try to go a bit easy. Maybe?’

Marith rubbed his eyes. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You said. But, look: go easy. Alleen’s choosing the drinks tonight. We tossed for it, who got to storm the Salen Gateway, who wussed out with the Sea Gate but got to choose the victory drinks. And you do look … tired. So go easy beforehand, maybe? Yes? No?’

Marith rubbed his eyes. ‘I’m fine.’

His legs were shaking. Osen had to help him into the bath. Voices of the servants fussing cleaning up his bedchamber. His head was aching. His whole body was aching. The bath chamber had windows of blue glass. Made his skin look blue and dead. Could hear screams. Smell of smoke, sound of fire. The girl sobbing, where she was being whipped.

Chapter Three

Four years, since Marith Altrersyr destroyed the palace of the Asekemlene Emperor of the Sekemleth Empire of the Eternal Golden City of Sorlost, carried off the High Priestess Thalia the Chosen of the Great God Tanis to be his bride, bested first his father and then his uncle in battle to claim both their kingdoms, avenged the betrayal of his ancestor Amrath in the ruins of Ethalden to be crowned King of Illyr, Amrath Returned, called all the fighting men of Irlast to his banner, set out to conquer the world.

Four years.

And most of Irlast was indeed now conquered. Cities razed. Armies broken. Kings and princes and magelords grovelling in the dust. Immier, Cen Andae, Cen Elora, Chathe with its rose trees all uprooted, the Nairn Forest a thousand miles of grey ash. The sky had been red from sunrise to sunset to sunrise, when he burned the Nairn Forest. The smoke had blocked out the sun. From the Bitter Sea to the Sea of Tears, he was king and master. Always, his power was growing. His shadow lengthening. His fortress of Ethalden was built of gold and gems and human flesh. He held court crowned in mage light and emissaries came to praise him from every corner of the world. His armies were uncountable like the grains of sand in the desert. Undefeated like the sea rising in winter. Feared like a famine when the rains fail. Over the face of the world they ran like water and the world was drowning. Over the face of the world they ran and their coming was like night.

Marith the World Conqueror. God of war and ruin and grief and hate and vengeance. Dragonlord. Dragon kin. Demon born. Lord of Shadows. Death made manifest. Great king.

Four glorious, wonderful, perfect, joy-filled years.

Chapter Four

He was slumped in bed the next day when Osen came to tell him that the Arunmenese rebel leader had been captured.

‘Oh. Wonderful.’ Sat up. Lay down again. Oh gods. ‘He couldn’t have stayed uncaptured for another few hours? Just until my hangover went away?’

‘What did I tell you?’

‘What did you tell me?’

‘I—’ Osen shook his head. ‘Never mind. I can deal with it, if you want.’

‘No, no. I should. I want to see him.’ Bastard. Ungrateful stupid bastard. Marith thought: I left Arunmen untouched. I. Left. Arunmen. Un. Touched. And this ungrateful idiot decided to rebel against me. Which part of ‘untouched’ was so difficult for people to understand?

Managed to get up and dressed, just about. With Osen’s help. But, look, three assaults in four days. Tiring. And it was all Alleen Durith’s fault really, he had chosen last night’s drinks. Marith gulped watered wine, his hands shaking, fighting down nausea. The girl holding his cup stared at him trying not to look at him, like she was watching a man’s death. The palace staff kept sending servant girls to attend him, thin tight dresses and big whispering eyes. Send them away. One of them had almost touched his hand, carrying in his clothes. His hand tingled, like he’d touched something dirty, couldn’t wash it off. Sweat, running inside her thin silk dress.

He came back into the throne room. They’d spent all day scrubbing it clean. Sat here last night and the bodies had still been piled here, he’d seen them, his soldiers and the enemy soldiers, piled up in mounds at his feet while he feasted, he thought again: why? It’s a stupid tasteless wooden chair. Mounted the steps of the dais, sat down, his legs were shaking. Curse Alleen Durith. He’d put on his red cloak, all bloody, it stank like his head hurt, it left trails of slime like slug trails on the chair. The crown of Arunmen on his head, and it was irritatingly heavy, and the previous King of Arunmen must have had a really weirdly shaped head.

All very formal. The High Lords of his empire knelt in fealty before him, kissed his hands, offered him praise and gratitude as their king and as their god. Osen Fiolt. Alleen Durith. Lord Erith. Lord Nymen. Lord Meerak of Raen. Lady Dansa Arual of Balkash. Lord Cimer the Magelord. Lord Ranene the weather hand. Lord Ryn Mathen the King of Chathe’s cousin who led the allied Chathean troops. All his great High Lords, his captains, his friends, his trusted companions, the men and women upon whom he had bestowed the glory of his reign.

All nine of them.

No. That wasn’t exactly fair on himself. Yanis Stansel was back in Illyr acting as regent, raising fresh troops and overseeing the final construction of Amrath’s tomb. Kiana Sabryya was on her way to join them, escorting Thalia from Tereen.

Ten. Eleven. And perhaps once he’d have been astonished to think he might count his companions as high as that. More even than the fingers of both hands! Look, look, father, look, Ti, look at me! Eleven friends!

Valim Erith said, ‘Bring him in.’

Stirring, voices calling outside the doorway. ‘Bring him!’ A troop of guardsmen entered. A tall man chained and bound in their midst. He was naked. Dripping blood. Stinking of excrement. Hate and rage and terror on the man’s face.

‘My Lord King,’ Valim said. ‘The prisoner.’

Well, yes, obviously.

The guards dropped the man at Marith’s feet.

So.

Marith looked down at him. Pale dying eyes. Refused to meet Marith’s gaze.

Marith said slowly, ‘I left Arunmen untouched. I granted you freedom under my suzerainty. I left you unharmed. Yet you defied me. Usurped my crown. Claimed you could destroy me. Why?’

The prisoner spat at him. A great gobbet of yellow phlegm on the gold-painted dais.

‘Why?’

Clatter of iron chains. The prisoner looked up straight at Marith. Stared at him. A wild man’s eyes. Pale and dying. Filled with hate. Empty croaking voice like a fucking frog: ‘Filth. Pestilence. Poison. Better all the world died in torment, than lived under your rule.’

That’s why? That’s all? Marith stared at the phlegm oozing slowly down the steps of the dais. I call myself King Ruin, King of Death, King of Shadows. You think I don’t know what I am?

‘I am your king,’ Marith said. ‘The Lord of All Irlast.’

The prisoner lowered his eyes again. ‘You are my king. The Lord of All Irlast. So better that I die.’

‘You let a lot of your men die for you first,’ said Alleen. ‘And a lot of mine.’ He looked at Marith. ‘This is pointless. Just get it over with and kill him.’

‘Better that every living thing in Irlast dies than submits to you.’ Spat more phlegm. Opened his bowels and shat himself at Marith’s feet. ‘My soldiers were lucky, that they died before they had to look at your face.’

‘They looked at our faces perfectly happily when we marched in triumphantly a few months ago,’ Alleen snapped. ‘Threw flowers at us, made us very welcome in every possible way, then. They were perfectly happy and alive and most of them seemed to be enjoying themselves.’

A great big feast. The city’s fountains running with wine instead of water. King Marith and Queen Thalia distributing largesse in the streets. Girls wearing crowns of roses. Singing and dancing all day and all night. Yes, the people of Arunmen had seemed happy and alive and enjoying themselves. Alleen and Osen and the other generals had been virtually fighting admirers off.

‘So why? Why?’

The prisoner stared at him in silence. Shit pooling on the marble. Phlegm dripping down the gold-painted steps. Stared. Lowered his eyes, stared at the floor.

Spat again.

‘Filth. Pestilence. Rot.’

Osen rolled his eyes at Marith. Mouthed something that might have been ‘hurry up’.

Always the same. Every few months, somewhere in his empire. Someone standing up, sword in hand, promising they could overthrow the tyrant, save the world from something it was never quite clear what. Being ruled by one man rather than another, perhaps. Overthrow the rule of evil! Freedom beckons! Kill the tyrant, throw off our chains, make me king! And all the young men and women jumping up shouting agreement, muttering prophecies, singing uplifting bloodthirsty war songs. And he’d have to break off whatever he was doing, march over with an army, deal with them. And they were all freed from the tyrant indeed, and never again had to suffer beneath his yoke.

The smell and the sight of the filth dripping on the dais was making him feel nauseous. Really seriously worried he was about to be sick again in front of them all. Curse Alleen Durith and his choice of drinks.

Hang on, hang on, it suddenly occurred to him. I’d already drawn up my battle plan giving Osen command of the assault on the Salen Gateway. There’s no way I would have changed it if they’d asked me to. They tossed for it? What?

‘Shall I kill him?’ said Osen. Osen’s hand was hovering on the hilt of his sword.

Marith nodded wearily. The prisoner’s shoulders sagged. Osen drew the sword.

The prisoner raised his head, shouted out: ‘You think yourself so powerful! But one of your own generals plots to betray you! Conspires against you! Thinks you nothing but filth and death! Think on that, King Ruin! Even those who serve you wish you dead! Betray you! I know!’

The prisoner’s face leering at him.

The hate in those eyes. Why? Marith thought again. Why? I left your city untouched. I. Left. Your. City. Un. Touched.

‘I won’t tell,’ the prisoner whispered. Smiled at Marith through bloody lips. ‘I won’t tell you. Even those closest to you loathe you. Plot to destroy you. See you for what you are. Encouraged me. Gave me money. Betrayed you. I know. But I won’t tell. I won’t tell you the name.’

‘You’re lying!’ Hot desperate flush in Marith’s face. ‘I left Arunmen untouched!’

‘Filth. Rot. Corruption. They all loathe you, King Ruin. Want to see you dead.’

‘Marith—’ Alleen Durith gestured to the guards. ‘Take him away. Get him out of here. Now.’

‘Betraying you!’

‘Get him out of here now!’

Osen ripped down with his sword. The Calien Mal. The Eagle Blade. Sword that had killed mages and lords and kings.

No sound. The prisoner dead on the floor.

Alleen rubbed his eyes. ‘Marith …’

‘He was lying,’ said Marith.

Alleen said, ‘Gods, Osen, we needed to question him.’

‘He was lying. There was nothing to find out.’

Alis Nymen made a croaking sound. Dansa Arual was staring at Osen with her mouth open.

‘He was lying, he was a traitor,’ said Osen. ‘Who wanted to listen to any more of that poison?’ He shrugged at Marith. ‘Let’s go and get a drink.’

Four glorious years. Half the world broken at his feet. Broken towers, burned fields, silver crowns, gold crowns, thrones of gold, thrones of iron, thrones of wood, thrones of stone. We march on and on to the horizon, places I barely knew existed places that I cannot imagine. Impossible to think, really, that these places drawn in ink on a map are real places where real people live. Look to the far south, stare at the clouds where the land and the sky meet – there are people living there, houses, tilled fields, people dying and being born, people thinking feeling dreaming as I dream. Children, he thought, live there. And it is absurd that they are real and exist there. I cannot imagine these places these people. I march my army on. We kill them. All across Irlast my dead lie scattered, mounds of them, my soldiers, dead! Their bones lie on the dark earth for the crows and the dogs, all out of love for me. They march beneath my banners to die for me in places they do not believe are real places, killed by men they cannot imagine are real and live. Ask them why and they will give a thousand excuses. And yet they are ordinary men.

‘I need to earn coin, I need to feed my family, my children will starve unless I earn a wage somehow.’

‘I’ve got responsibilities to the rest of them in the squad. We’re a team. I can’t let them down.’

‘I swore an oath to fight for my king. I am a man of honour. I cannot break my oath.’

‘I didn’t want to do it. But I was ordered to. If we all stopped doing anything we didn’t completely agree with …’

None of us know, in our hearts, why we do these things. Because we can. Because we do. They really think I don’t know they’re all waiting to betray me?

Two more days of victory feasting. Outside in the city, the Army of Amrath swarmed over the ruins, killing everything they found. Marith took Osen and Alleen Durith with him to visit the temple of the god spirit of Arunmen. See the house of the enemy that had defied him. He had visited the temple after he had been crowned here, and the presence of the god spirit had been welcoming to him as a king and an equal. So now he must come again as victor and conqueror. Killer of the god. Have a smug but entirely justified gloat. Twice, you beat me off, but in the end I was the stronger. You promised to defend your city, and you failed, like all the weak things of life. The black stone that was the god’s physical form had shattered, they said, at the moment his blow had struck.

Also, the temple was the architectural highlight of the city, and thus of all Calchas. A very beautiful building. Huge and elegant. Loaded with beauty in gold and gemstones. Famed for its treasurers in jewels and silk. As one might expect. He was looking forward to seeing it again.

Soldiers were pouring over snow-covered rubble. Digging up lumps of melted smoke-blackened gold. A group of them were having a fight.

‘What … what happened?’

Alleen said, ‘The dragons …’

‘… sat on it?’

‘They took against it, certainly.’

Osen said, ‘I think we might have managed to get some of the best things out of the remains. I can have the rest tracked down, if you like. The temple vessels and things.’

‘No. It’s fine. The soldiers can keep it. But the paintings on the walls … it’s a shame, I liked them.’ There had been a picture of a woman done in jewels above the west window, her face was quite wrong but her golden hair, the way she held her arms – reminded him—

‘The dragons destroyed it. Good.’

Osen scuffed at the snow. A lump of plaster. A suggestion of yellow paint. Not his mother. She hadn’t been his mother. The woman who killed his mother. She did. Remember. She did. Killed his mother and replaced his mother as queen and tried to put her own son in his place as king. And so he’d killed her and hung her body from the walls of Malth Elelane. Her and her son beside her.

‘Please, Marith,’ she’d begged him.

He went next to the place where they kept the wounded. Osen and Alleen did not come. A long walk. As was only correct and proper by every rule of warfare, the wounded were housed far off from anything, in tents far from the army’s camp. A presence to it that Marith could feel pressing down on him. When he reached the place he was clammy with cold sweat.

Not so many wounded. Two days after the battle, most of them lay sleeping in the black earth with the dust between their teeth. They had marched through the Wastes and the Empty Peaks, crossed the Sea of Grief, tramped up and down Irlast from shore to shore. Desperate to share in his glory, reaching out for a tiny crust of what the Ansikanderakesis Amrakane had to offer. Four long years they had marched with him, they were the Army of Amrath and they would march and follow and pace out their lives following him. I don’t even know where I’m going. I could close my eyes, stab my knife at random into the map. And they would follow. And they lie in the black earth dead and forgotten. And they lie here in the sickhouse, rotting.

Wounds like eyes. Wounds like open mouths. He could not look and he could not look.

The flesh grew over them, wounds healing puckered and distorted. Excrescences of blood and skin. Black traces embroidering their bodies. Arms and legs pus-swollen.Their mouths moved with scabs growing over them. Mould covering their faces, in their bones, their teeth, they spat and choked and swallowed it. Mould, eating them. Hard cold as marble. Soft and damp as leaves. Rippling dry as driftwood. He heard them breathing. Saw them breathing. No face, no hands, no eyes, no mouth, no ears. See hear feel taste touch red. Where they moved, they left black trails of their flesh behind them. Shapes and words. Their living bodies seeping away into liquid. They moved and jerked, some of them. Spoke. Knew. Wounds that had once been human faces turned groping towards him. Bodies swollen up vast with fluids, bodies shrivelled down, lumps of flesh men without arms or legs. Burned men. And at those he almost could not look. Yearning reaching towards him.

The worst, he thought afterwards, were those who did not seem so badly wounded. Like fruit rotted inside with maggots. They looked even strong, some of them.

‘The king, the king,’ the wounded whispered. Their voices thick and dry with pain. An old woman with no teeth in her mouth limped between them, giving them water, pressing a wet cloth to their cold, sweating faces, smoothing her fingers through their matted hair, running her hands over the pus of their wounds.

‘Hush now, deary, my boy, my boy, hush, hush, you sleep, you rest, you’ll be fine, you’ll be fine, deary, my boy.’

‘Water … water …’ A man clutched at Marith’s arm, not knowing him. ‘Water …’ His stomach was a mass of bandages, fat with bandages, spreading blood like cracks on ice. A deep wound to the gut will kill you, sooner or later, no matter what you do. Every soldier knows that. Yes. ‘Water … Mother! Mother!’ Verdigrised hand digging into him.

‘Hush, hush, deary, my boy.’ The nurse limped over wetted its black lips, pressed her wet cloth onto its white face. ‘Hush, deary, it’s well, you’ll soon be well.’

At the far end of the tent the dead were piled. They should be taken away for burial each day. They had not been taken away. Some of the bodies must have been there since the first day of the siege. Beetles had got in there, and flies. A seething column of ants ripped the dead wounds open. Mould grew over black meat.

‘Be well,’ Marith whispered to his men. ‘Be well. You who died for me.’ He should know their names. He used to know all his soldiers’ names. After his victory over King Selerie he had visited all the wounded, thanked each of them by name.

He thought: but I had a smaller army then. That’s unfair.

He thought: half of them died within hours. Whether I knew their names or not. I stopped bothering.

Thalia arrived the next evening. Sieges bored her now; she had decided to stay in Tereen in comfort until it was done. Her party swept into the palace courtyard, red banners crusted with snow. She rode a white horse, saddled and plumed in scarlet; she was wrapped in thick white furs showing only her eyes and her gloved hands. She slid down from the saddle into Marith’s arms.

‘Thalia!’

There were snowflakes caught in her eyelashes. Marith kissed them away. Her eyes shone. The torchlight showed his reflection in her eyes smiling back at him. Dancing in the flickering light. She pushed back her hood, and the snow began to gather on her hair.

‘Thalia! I didn’t think you’d make it today, through the snow.’ He frowned. ‘It was foolish, to come in the snow.’

‘I made them press on.’ She took his hand. ‘I was worried about you.’

‘Worried? Why should you worry?’

Off behind her he noticed Osen and Alleen again exchanging glances. Well, yes, okay, so he’d only managed to get out of bed and stop throwing up about two hours ago, there’d been a nasty while when it looked like Osen might have to receive her in the king’s place. But it had been a hard few days. Tiring. And it was Osen’s fault, really, he’d chosen the drinks last night.

Thalia bent her head closer. ‘And I … I have news.’

‘News?’ Oh? Oh! A hope ran through him. And a shudder. Tried to brush it away. The things he had seen in her face, shining there, when he first saw her, and knew, and was so very afraid of her. Why have you come to me? But she had only smiled, and looked puzzled, and shaken her head. He took her hands protectively now. ‘You shouldn’t have risked it, in the snow. You’re getting snow all over you. Let’s get inside out of the cold. I’ve had men out scouring all the jewellers’ for you. Such beautiful things!’

There was a stirring on the other side of courtyard, people moving forward around another horse, helping Kiana Sabryya down. The joy faded. Watched a servant thrust walking sticks into Kiana’s hands, take her weight, help her steady herself on her feet. Kiana saw Marith watching and her eyes flashed in irritation. Osen hurried up to greet her. Marith heard her sigh.

‘Marith …’ Thalia squeezed his hand. ‘Leave her.’

Osen and Kiana seemed to be arguing about whether Kiana needed Osen’s arm to lean on. Marith turned away.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Thalia said gently.

War kills people. War hurts people. That’s not exactly a big surprise, hey? She fought a demon, it injured her. What did she think it would do?

He shook himself. ‘Obviously it wasn’t my fault.’

They went slowly into the throne room. Servants, lords of empire, all falling to their knees as they passed. Thalia’s wet furs were swept away: beneath, she wore a dress of pale grey velvet the colour of the winter sky, embroidered with a thousand tiny diamonds. She was blazing fire. Too brilliant to look at. Light rippled off her perfect face. Marith escorted her up the dais, seated her on the throne.

‘The Queen of All Irlast!’

She laughed sadly. Bored laugh. I was already the Queen of All Irlast, Marith, her face said. ‘The Queen of All Irlast.’

Everyone present prostrated themselves on the floor.

Marith gestured to Alleen. Servants hurried in carrying boxes. Poured out a river of gemstones at Thalia’s feet. Her smile was sadder even than her laugh.

She is carrying my child. My child! It will all be better now, he thought. There was a memory, he was sure of it, his mother holding Ti in her arms, newborn, wrapped in white lace. ‘Come here, Marith, look, you have a little brother, thank the gods, Marith, thank Amrath and Eltheia, you have a brother.’ A tiny pink fist waved at him, and he had bent, kissed his brother’s pink face. Such love … Such a precious little thing. They were so close in age, he was a baby himself when Ti was born, a false memory, his nurse had said, he was too young to remember, and besides an Altrersyr prince would have been wrapped in red silk, of course, not white lace. But he remembered it. A child! Oh, please. This time, please.

He reached down, picked up a necklace of rubies from the glittering pile at Thalia’s feet. Held it up and placed it around her neck. His hands shook so badly he couldn’t fasten it. It fell limply on the dais. In the light from her face the rubies winked up at him like scabs.

Chapter Five

The next morning they went out riding.

‘Are you sure it’s wise?’ Marith asked Thalia.

‘I rode here, didn’t I? I …’ She frowned. ‘I don’t want – I mean – it seems better, this time – but it could still – like before – and I – I don’t want …’

‘No. Yes. Of course.’ Had absolutely no idea what she was trying to say to him. Except that it hurt her. Saying it.

She had lost three pregnancies. Miscarried three times in the first few months. She was four months gone this time already, she said, you could see the swell of her belly through her dress if you knew to look. Waited to tell him, this time. Spare him false hope and grief. After three months, four months, the pregnancy becomes more certain, the wise women and the doctors all agreed on it.

‘The doctors say that I should keep myself strong.’ Her hand moving to her stomach, up to her throat, to the knife scars on her arm. ‘Last time, I … I didn’t go out at all. Didn’t ride. Barely walked, even. Rested in bed. You know. And—’

He grasped her hands. Kissed them. Deep luminous bronze skin. His own skin white as moonlight. Our children must have your skin, he had told her once, and your eyes, and my hair. ‘I know you did,’ he said. Don’t say it. This time it will be good and well, it will, it will, it must be. I am a king. A god. A peasant in a hovel can father a living child, if my father could father living children … I raise my sword and a thousand men lie dying. I close my eyes and stab my knife into a map and an army marches and a city falls. I can father a living child, if I can do that.

Tiny pink flailing fists … Such love.

He said, ‘Well … Come on, then. If you’re sure.’

But the riding was good, for both of them. The snow cold washing them both clean. Forget. They avoided the city, skirting out to the east towards the Ane Headland. The wind was blowing against them. Blowing the smell of smoke away. The ground rose smooth and open; thick grassland, good horse country. Thalia spurred her horse to a gallop. The wind blew back her hood, her hair whipping up. Like black bare branches. Like birds’ wings. The snow flew out from under the horse’s hooves; the sunlight caught it, made it sparkle, it looked like the waves of a churning sunlit sea. Marith raced his horse to catch her, shouting ‘Ha! Ha!’ as he went. His breath puffed out like a dragon. ‘Ha! Ha!’

Thalia pulled her horse to a standstill at the top of a high ridgeway. Marith stopped further down the slope, looking up at her outlined against the sky. The light was changing, clouds gathering, the light becoming flat and white and heavy, waiting for the snow. He trotted up to join her, looked down in delight at the plain spreading out before them like looking down into a pool. Thick with snow, untouched. And there, on the horizon, the dark line of the Sea of Tears, and what he could pretend in the blur of far distance were the fire mountains of Tarboran beyond. A farmstead with a copse of firs behind it, hawthorn hedgerows flushed red. Tiny black shapes that must be cattle. A beech tree in brilliant copper leaves. Thalia pointed and he saw a hawk holding absolutely still in the white air. The hawk dived. Fast as thinking. A dog barked somewhere below them, loud, another barked in reply. The cattle moved in their field. He thought he could see the hawk flying up again. Perhaps it will all be well, he thought. Different, this time, or the next time. Look at it there! A beautiful world. Waiting for me.

Thalia slid down from her horse.

Threw a snowball at him.

Marith laughed, threw one back, missed. Thalia retrieved it, threw it, it smacked into his shoulder and the snow stuck to his cloak. He gathered a handful of snow, tossed it up into the sky, aiming over the edge of the ridge into the world spread beneath. Tossed another handful over Thalia, showering down around her as he had showered her with gems the previous night. Snow on her face. She wrinkled her snow-covered nose. Pushed him over in the snow. Dropped snow right on his head.

‘Stop! Argh!’

‘Stop?’

‘Stop, oh my queen!’

She pulled him to his feet again. Furry with snow: he felt like a furry white bear.

‘I am absolutely bloody freezing now.’ So Thalia wrapped her arms around him. Her skin was warm as the summer sun. They looked together at the view before them, the white frozen world waiting. Our world, he thought. Beautiful for us together. And there is hope, still.

Marith said, ‘Don’t for gods’ sake tell anyone, but I much prefer it out here to Illyr. You can see why Amrath started out to conquer the world, when you look at Illyr.’

‘Oh, but Illyr’s beautiful. Everywhere in the world is beautiful.’ Strained voice. Joyful voice. Her nose wrinkled: ‘Apart from the Wastes.’

The sun broke through a gap in the clouds, a crack of light in the sky too bright to look at, so bright it was almost black. Like the cloud was the edge of the world, the light beyond a void pouring some other life in. She pointed. ‘Look! There’s the hawk again.’

Black against the white. Closer, now: they could see the frantic beating of its wings. On the top of the ridgeway they were almost at its eye level. Marith thought: I wonder if it can see us watching it? Could I call it to me, like I can call a dragon?

The hawk dived. He couldn’t see it land.

Thalia said, ‘Do you remember the hawk in the desert? I’d never seen a hawk before. And the eagles, dancing around the peak of Calen Mon. I’d never seen an eagle before, either. Or a mountain. Or the snow.’ She smiled. Kissed him. Wrapped herself around him. Warm as the summer sun. ‘All those things, we have.’

‘All the world,’ Marith said. ‘All the world, I promised I’d show you. All the wonders. And our children. The world will be for them. Heaped up for them.’

On and on. Over and over. Pressing forwards to the end.

‘We will announce soon that you are pregnant.’ He was King of All Irlast. Of course he could father a child that would live.

Thalia laughed. ‘I should think everyone in our army knows already. I see the faces of my servant women every time they come to change my sheets. The way they stare at my stomach when I dress. It’s the only thing that seems to interest them.’

Had to think about this. ‘Yes … Well … Anyway … But … Yes. Yes. We’ll announce it soon. The army: gods, they’ll rejoice! And when it’s born! It’s lucky for a baby to be born at Sunreturn. Well-omened.’

‘Is it?’ She said, ‘The doctors said after Sunreturn, Marith.’

‘Oh. Yes. Well … Yanis Stansel’s youngest son was born at Sunreturn, always complained everyone forgot his birthday. I’m sure it’s just as lucky for a baby to be born in the spring.’

She said, ‘We’re marching south, Marith. By the time the baby is born we’ll be in the south. Where there won’t be a winter or a spring.’

‘So … maybe we’ll march north again.’ It should be born in Ethalden, perhaps, he thought. Or Malth Elelane. A king’s palace for a king’s heir. It would be nice, he thought, to go home for a while. Show his child the places of his own childhood. Sit in the hall of his ancestors, watching his children play on the floor with the dogs in the warmth of the hearthfire.

I will take her back to Malth Elelane, he thought. Go home. One day. I didn’t want to go back home at all once and now here I am, king. It cannot be so very hard to go back there now. All I need to do is give an order to march north. All I need to do, he thought, is turn my horse now to ride north. Come with me now, Thalia. We’ll ride away home to live in peace. You want that, too, I think. Do you? Raise our child in peace.

It was beginning to snow again. He began to worry suddenly that the cold … She has lost three pregnancies already. His mother had died in childbed. Take care of her and the child.

‘She must not die!’ he had screamed to the doctors, the first time she miscarried. ‘If she dies, I will kill you.’

‘It is not uncommon, My Lord King, for a woman to miscarry in the first few months. There is little danger to the mother, this early. A tragedy, but not a dangerous thing, in these early months.’ Just a lump of blood. Like a woman stabbed with a sword thrust. So three times now he had wept tears of relief. But it was snowing, and she must be looked after, though she was smiling with pleasure at the snow. Put her head back, stuck out her tongue to catch the snowflakes.

‘We should go back, Thalia.’

She looked out over the frozen landscape. ‘I suppose we should. I could stand here forever.’ She sighed, laughed, put her hands on his wet snow-crusted cloak. ‘You’re getting cold?’

‘The horses,’ he said with dignity, ‘are getting cold.’

They rode back through the ruins of Arunmen. Thalia wanted to see. Always, she wanted to see.

‘I need to remember,’ she said. ‘I am not ashamed of it: they fought us, they lost. Such is the way of things. Some draw the red lot, some draw the black or the white. But … I should remember. See it for myself.’

The city was a desolation, black rubble, the great obsidian walls tumbled down. Pools of blood, frozen, black and hard like the stone, the whole city glazed in blood. Fires still burning, dragon fire so hot the very stones were cracked open, holes in the earth where the fury of the fighting had devoured itself. Bodies in the rubble, under ice and ash and snowfall, dead faces masked in snow, rimed in blood. Burned. Dismembered. Hacked up and swallowed and spat out. Marith steered the horses carefully away from the ruined temple. Fragments of yellow paint. Around the palace, a new city of the Army of Amrath was forming: soldiers’ tents, cookfires, canteens, workshops. A smithy was working: Marith heard again the ring of the hammer, breathed in the hot metal scent. A hiss that was molten bronze being poured. A boy in a scarlet jacket embroidered with seed pearls, gold at his neck and waist and ankles, his face running with hatha sores, touting offering himself for one iron piece. A pedlar shouting his wares: ‘Tea and soap! Salt and honey! Spices! Herbs! Lucky charms!’ Two women washing clothes in a silver bowl that must once have graced a lord’s table. Plump glossy children in fur and satin, playing snowballs in the ruins of a nobleman’s great house. One of them hit another straight on, got snow all over her coat, and Marith laughed.

Some enterprising person had got a tavern back open. The front wall and the roof had been completely demolished; they’d made the best of it by setting up a fire for mulled wine and laying out some brightly coloured rugs; rigged up the remains of a soldier’s campaign tent to keep off the snow. It all looked very charming. Marith nodded at Thalia, they dismounted and tethered the horses, wandered up.

Everyone recognized them, of course, so they walked through a sea of prostrate bodies, more and more people running to kneel, to be in his presence, to see him through half-closed eyes. Voices ran like seawater: ‘The king! The king! Amrath Reborn! Ansikanderakesis Amrakane! The king! The king!’ Someone starting a song of praise for him.

Bliss.

Blush rising in his face from sheer delight at it. He laughed with joy.

They sat down on the bright pretty rugs, the woman running the place rushed over with cups of hot spiced wine, a dish of keleth seeds, a dish of cakes. The cups were enamelled silver, yellow garlands around a scene of fighting birds. Very finely done, actually: he’d guess not from the tavern but looted from somewhere in the east and lugged halfway across Irlast. The wine was delicious, thick and golden. Also looted. The cakes were stale and dry as sand.

The tavern woman prostrated herself flat on her face in the snow. ‘I am honoured beyond all honour. My Lord King, My Lady Queen, I kneel at your feet, I am your slave. Take the cups, the plates, everything here in this tavern, our gifts, our token of our love for you.’

Beyond bliss. Ah, such a good thing, to be loved like this. He smiled down at the tavern woman, told her to get up, kissed her hand. Drained his cup, waved over a passing soldier: ‘Take this cup back to the palace. Have Lord Durith summoned, tell him to send a dozen gold cups to this woman in place of this one she has kindly given me.’ The woman went pink with astonishment. Tears in her eyes. Thalia laughed with delight.

‘My Lord King. My Lord King. Thank you. Thank you.’

‘I’ll take a bottle of this wine, too, then, if I may?’ Marith said, smiling at the tavern woman. ‘It’s better than the wine they served my court last night.’

More laughter. The woman said, a look of great daring in her face, ‘I need the wine, My Lord King, for my customers, who must have higher standards in drink than your court.’

Ha! ‘They do. They do. Anyone in Irlast has higher standards than my court.’

He settled himself further back on the rugs, stretching himself leaning against Thalia. Ate another stale cake. The tavern woman poured him another drink in a new cup. She was wearing a ring on every finger; they clinked musically against the glass of the bottle. She had silver earrings that jingled, her dress was green velvet. She was positively fat.

Raised a toast to her. ‘I’ll buy a bottle for a hundred thalers. Make you a lady of my court.’

‘But I’ll make far more than a hundred thalers, My Lord King, telling my customers they’re drinking wine I refused to sell to the Ansikanderakesis Amrakane the joy of the world the King of All Irlast.’

Gods, she was good. He got up and bowed to her. ‘Like the wine, you’re too fine for my court. I’ll give you a hundred thalers anyway.’

‘And I’ll give you another bottle of this wine for free, My Lord King.’ Her earrings rattled, she looked at Thalia sitting in her thick fur cloak. ‘And, if I may, if I may be so bold, My Lady Queen …’

Oh ho. Marith tensed, Thalia tensed, relaxed both together, smiling at each other, squeezed hands. The whole army knows. The tavern woman went into the back of her shop, Marith ate a third stale cake in the time she was gone.

Thalia whispered, ‘A horrible itchy baby’s dress? A blanket? A pair of absurdly tiny booties?’

‘A blanket. Hand-knitted. Shush. You’re being cruel.’

‘And you’re getting cake crumbs on my cloak. How can you eat them, anyway? They must have been baked last week.’

‘Amrath lived rough with his army …’ Wiped crumbs from the white fur, leaving a yellowy smudge. Whoops. Maybe she wouldn’t notice. He tried surreptitiously to pick at the mess. ‘Anyway, shush, she’s coming back.’

‘A blanket,’ Thalia whispered. ‘Dark red. With a sword pattern on it.’

He almost choked crumbs over her. ‘Shush!’

The woman returned smiling. Didn’t look like she was carrying a blanket … She held out a branch of white flowers to Thalia. ‘The tree behind the tavern here flowered this morning, My Lady Queen. All out of season – the dragon fire, we thought maybe, My Lady Queen, the heat. But here. Perhaps it flowered for you.’

‘Thank you.’ Thalia bent to sniff the flowers’ sweet perfume. ‘Thank you very much.’ They finished the wine, Thalia made a face of mock terror at Marith that they’d be offered another plate of cakes. When they had ridden away out of earshot they both burst out laughing. The sun rises, the sun sets, and not everyone in the world thinks only of tiny booties and baby blankets.

‘But the flowers are very beautiful,’ said Thalia. ‘How strange, that the tree flowered in the snow. Do you think it was really the dragon fire?’

‘It’s wintersweet blossom. It’s meant to be in flower now.’ He was beginning to feel rather sleepy after all the wine and cakes. ‘That’s what it does. Hence the name.’

Thalia looked down at the branch, which she had woven into her horse’s reins. ‘It’s still beautiful. We should plant it in the gardens at Ethalden.’ Looking down at the flowers, she noticed where he’d got crumbs rubbed into her cloak. ‘What’s this? My new cloak … Oh, Marith. Cake crumbs.’

He looked at her belly. ‘Get used to it. I had to have cake crumbs cut out of my hair once.’

Chapter Six

‘I had to have cake crumbs cut out of my hair, once.’

Ti’s hair. His mother – his stepmother, the bitch who killed his mother, remember, remember that – his stepmother had had to cut cake crumbs out of Ti’s hair, once. He had killed Ti and he had killed his mother. Hung their bodies from the walls of Malth Elelane. He remembered the way his mother’s hair had blown in the wind.

Three miscarriages. But after three months, four months, the pregnancy is more established, the baby is more likely to be born and live.

He felt sick. The stupid stale cakes.

The next day Marith rode out alone. The land was very empty, the burned fields blanketed in snow. A few surviving villages clinging on in the ruins, ragged-faced farmers tending their cattle. His soldiers were out, rounding up the cattle, pillaging the villages for food and men for the army to consume. A ravening beast, an army. Never ceased its hunger. Indeed, its hunger grew and grew.

Rode past a line of men and women in tattered clothing too thin for the weather, sick faces staring. Rounded up to march in his army. Men and women and children and old men and cripples and the maimed and the half-dead. It didn’t matter who they were. Whether they were strong or weak. If they had no other use, they would deflect an arrow or a sword. If they had no other use, they would die. The soldiers with them prostrated themselves in the snow when they saw him. The new conscripts stared, then did the same. Whispers. His name cried in blessing. The joy in their eyes, radiating off them, the fulfilment of their lives, to see him.

King Marith! King Marith! Ansikanderakesis Amrakane! I can die now, for my heart and my eyes have beheld him.

Marith pulled up his horse before them. ‘We will fight,’ he called to them. ‘You will march in my army, and you will fight, and you will be victorious, and you will conquer the world! This gift, I give you. All of you, you will do this. Conquer the world!’

‘Death!’ the soldiers cried back to him. Shining in ecstasy. ‘Death! Death! Death!’

He stopped around midday in a bare high place without any signs of human life. No – there, to the west where the land dropped down into a valley, a single plume of hearth smoke rose. A little village sheltering there, perhaps.

No matter. He dismounted, stood against the white sky. Raised his arms. Called out.

‘Athelamyn Tiamenekyr. Ansikanderakesis teimre temeset kekilienet.’

Come, dragons. Your king summons you.

A long silence. And then the slow beating of vast wings.

Weak things, dragons. Far weaker than he had first thought. Ynthe the magelord saw them as gods and wonders. Osen and Alleen thought of them as toys: ‘Ride it, Marith’, ‘Just use it to kill them all, Marith’, ‘Make it sit up and beg and roll over at your feet’. He himself had thought that the dragons were like him, once. The only things in all the world that might understand him. Things of love and desire and hunger and grief and need. He had been a fool, to think that.

He thought: do dragons rear their children? Care for them? Feel love?

He thought: no.

The dragons came down in the snow before him. One black and red. One green and silver. Huge as dreams. He had summoned them out of the desert along the coast of the Sea of Grief, called into the dark and they had come together side by side, their wings almost touching. They could be mother and child, lovers, siblings; what they thought towards each other he did not know and could not know. What they did, when he did not need them, he did not know. Dark eyes looked at him. Like looking down into the depths of the sea. Never look into a dragon’s eyes. Look into a dragon’s eyes and you are lost. Eyes black with sorrow. Such hatred there, staring vast ancient unblinking down at him.

He thought: I call them and they come to me.

The dragons turned their heads away from him. Lowered their eyes. The red dragon spoke in a hiss of fire. Dry rasp of pain. Its breath stank of hot metal. Dead flesh rotting in its yellowed teeth.

‘Kel temen ysare genherhr kel Ansikanderakil?’

What is it that you want, my king?

I don’t know, he thought. What is it that I want? I want to die, he almost said. The red dragon almost spoke it. The words there in the stink of its breath. I want to die: kill me, he almost said.

Or kill the soldiers. My soldiers. Come down in fire, burn my army to dust. We spread out across the world in blood and fire, we have destroyed half the world but the world is endless, the road goes on and always there is another conquest waiting on the horizon. All I need to do now is speak one word to make it stop.

Dragons are not gods, he thought then. Not wonders. There was nothing in the world that they could give him. Huge things, huge as dreams; he stood between them tiny and vulnerable. He could crush them.

‘Kel temen ysare genherhr kel Ansikanderakil?’ the red dragon asked again.

‘Ekliket ysarken temeset emnek tythet. Ekliket ysarken temeset amrakyr tythet. Ekliket ysarken temeset kykgethet,’ Marith said in reply.

What is it that you want, my king?

I want you to bring death. I want you to bring fire. I want you to kill.

Always the same words. The same commands given. Kill! Kill! Kill! On and on forever. On and on until the world ends. So close to asking. But I don’t ask. Why do we waste our breath saying it?

If my army was destroyed, he thought, I would cease to be king. What would I be, if I were not a king?

‘You are tools,’ Marith shouted at the dragons. ‘Nothing more. Things I send out to kill.’

The dragons nodded their heads in obedience. The green dragon might smile, even. Scars on it deep in its body, wounded, its body moved with the awkwardness of something in pain. The red dragon thrashed its tail. Hating him. Tired. Old. Just wanting to sleep.

The green dragon said, as it always did, ‘Amrakane neke yenkanen ka sekeken.’ Amrath also did not know why. ‘Serelamyrnen teime immikyr. Ayn kel genher kel serelanei temen?’ We are your tools. And what are you?

They leapt into the air together. Red and black, green and silver, so huge he was left blinded. The snow where they had crouched was melted. He watched them spiralling up and outwards. Off to the south, towards the Forest of Calchas, the Sea of Tears, the Forest of Khotan. Tiny jets of flame on the horizon. Or perhaps he was imagining them. But when he closed his eyes he saw it burning. The trees burning. The sea rising up in steam.

Go back four years. Marith sits in his new-built fortress of Ethalden, new-crowned King of the White Isles and Ith and the Wastes and Illyr. He has taken his father’s kingdom. Yes, well, any number of sons have done that. He has taken the neighbouring kingdom. That’s not exactly novel behaviour from a new ambitious young king with his people to impress. He has taken the kingdom of his holy ancestors, he is a king returned in glory, he has restored a blighted land to greatness, he has been revenged on the evil-doers who ill-treated him. That’s absolutely right and proper. Expected by everyone. And then …

‘Gods, this is glorious,’ Osen Fiolt says one night in the new-built fortress of Ethalden, as they sit together in a feasting hall with walls and floor and ceiling of solid gold. ‘Goodbye sleeping in a stinking tent in the pissing rain. Hello sitting by the fire with our feet up. We’re richer than gods and worshipped like gods and we’ve still got our whole lives ahead of us to do absolutely nothing but enjoy ourselves in.

‘Look at my hands,’ Osen says, stretching out his right hand. ‘Look, the calluses are finally going down. I might grow a beard, you know? Befitting my noble status as First Lord of Illyr. Or get my wife pregnant. You’re going to have a child, Marith, you should maybe grow a beard as well. Dress like a respectable family man, stop wearing all black. Kings wear long robes, have well-combed beards, feast and wench rather than drink and mope. Those pretentious boys quoting godsawful poetry and weeping over life’s burden … and now we’ve got wives and children and kingdoms to rule. Gods, who’d have thought?

‘I will do nothing,’ Osen says, ‘but sit by the fire and drink the finest wines and eat the choicest meats and fuck my wife and my servants. Raise a horde of spoilt brat children. Never pick up a sword again.’

‘It feels strange walking,’ Marith says, ‘without a sword at my hip. Unbalanced.’

‘Lighter,’ Osen says. ‘Much lighter. The joys of not wearing armour! A real spring in my step.’

‘That too.’

They both go to bed early, dozy with warmth. It’s very restful, doing nothing. It’s amazing how tiring paperwork and bureaucracy and helping your wife choose baby things can be. He goes to bed early, wakes late in a warm room in a bed of gold and ivory and red velvet, soft as thistledown after campaign beds. His bedchamber looks very much like the one he slept in at Malth Salene. He is not sure whether Thalia realizes this. Unlike at Malth Salene, the morning sun shines in on his face. He tries to put this thing he feels into words; even to himself he cannot say what it is.

Two days later he is reviewing the Army of Amrath. Dismissing most of it. Illyr is taken. The Wastes are taken. Ith is taken. The White Isles were and are his own. He is king. War is done. All is at peace.

‘You have to disband some of them,’ Lord Nymen the Fishmonger says to him. ‘They are driving the people of Ethalden mad with their brawling, the women fear to walk the streets after dark because of them, innkeeps and merchants shut up shop at a soldier’s approach. As they say: a friendly army without a purpose is more dangerous than an enemy army at the gates. Also, more seriously, My Lord King – do you know how much this army costs?’

‘I have the wealth of three kingdoms at my feet.’

There is a short pause. ‘You had the wealth of three kingdoms at your feet, My Lord King,’ Aris Nymen says.

A thousand times a thousand soldiers. And horses. And armour. And equipment. And engineers and doctors and weaponsmiths and farriers and grooms and camp servants and carters and …

‘Yes, yes, I suppose. I see. Yes.’

‘The cost of Queen Thalia’s temple, My Lord King … It being made of solid gold … Amrath’s tomb … The work on the harbour is proving more expensive than we thought …’

‘Hang the man who thought up the original cost then. No. No. I’m joking. You’re right.’ I am King of Illyr and Ith and the Wastes and the White Isles. I am invincible, invulnerable, soon I will have a strong son to follow me. What am I afraid of, that I need an army of a thousand times a thousand men? He rubs his eyes. For the first time since he took Illyr, he does not sleep well. He stands in the great courtyard in Ethalden, raised up before his army on a dais of sweetwood hung with silver cloth. They cheer him. They hold out their hands to him. Their faces shine with love.

‘Amrath! Amrath! Amrath! King Marith!’

He smiles, basking in it. They shine so brightly, his soldiers, so strong, so proud. He begins to speak.