‘Or barbarians from Ae-Beyond-the-Waters, with well-hung stallions gripped between over-muscular thighs, set on rape and pillage and fun for all?’
‘God’s knives, Darath!’
‘Yes, yes, I’ll be serious … The Empire has survived like this for centuries, Orhan. Unconquered. Unconquerable. The Godkings, the World Conqueror, the Salavene Wars … none of them have ever touched us. The Seven Years War ended in stalemate and no one even looked at us the whole time. So why in Great Tanis’s name now? Twenty years, the Long Peace has lasted.’
That’s exactly why, Darath, Orhan thought wearily. Can’t you see? Can’t you see? There’s been peace for too long. We’re so smug and certain. So convinced nothing will ever change. They won’t even need twenty thousand. Certainly not a mage. All this is illusion. One touch and we’ll crumble to dust. Orhan sighed and chewed on roast meat. A nasty gristle feeling between his teeth. But Tam’s right, too, he thought. The Immish are just a pretence. An easy way to say what I can’t explain. I’m afraid, Darath. I don’t know why, or of what, but I’m afraid. Shadows. Sorrow. Death. Something’s coming. I don’t know … But I’m afraid. We’re too weak, the way we are, sitting on our piles of gold pretending nothing exists beyond our walls. We need to be ready. And yes, that does mean blood. We’re too far gone for anything else.
‘It was them who killed the dragon, of course,’ said Darath.
Orhan started, lost in his own thoughts, visions of flames. ‘What? Who? Oh. Yes. Yes, I imagine so. Unless there are two lots of armed men out wandering around the eastern desert. Of all the wretched luck …’
‘They probably thought so at the time, too.’ Darath prodded at him with a meat skewer. ‘Three thalers. I told you I’d find out when and how. Enough blades to kill a dragon, Orhan? A bit much for one man, even an immortal one, I’d have said.’ His face changed. ‘Lord of Living and Dying, you really are going to do it, aren’t you? You really are trying to change the world …’
‘Not the world. Sorlost.’
‘Sorlost is the world. And what in Great Tanis’s name does Tam Rhyl think this is about? He’s not looking to change the world, surely?’
Tam? Change the world? ‘He just wants power. And March Verneth humiliated. But I couldn’t do it alone.’
‘You could have come to me,’ Darath said.
‘Could I?’
‘Ha. No. Probably not. ‘
They turned into Felling Street, still strolling slowly, gazing idly in the shop windows at expensive sheets of silk paper, old books, pretty silverware with a patina of refined age.
‘But now that I know … If we’re doing it, we’re doing it properly. If I’m in, I’m in. So … how many men? And where did you find them? Even I’ve not bought that kind of service before. Wouldn’t know where you even begin, or what a likely price would be. I’d imagine it’s rather more complicated than buying a new coat, somehow.’
Orhan snorted. ‘Even you …! So daring and wicked and corrupt your very name is a byword for idleness. It is strangely like buying a new coat, to be quite honest, if that doesn’t disappoint you. Get a recommended name, describe what you want and by when, negotiate over details and price, sit back and wait and hope the man cuts your cloth straight and knows where to stick his pins. Forty men. The Free Company of the Sword, they’re called. Absurd name. They were recommended by one of my acquaintances in Immish, ironically enough. The High Council has used them a couple of times. They were key to the Immish recovery of Telea during the Winter War. Specialize in … interesting work like this.’
‘And you trust them?’
‘Of course I don’t trust them. I don’t expect to trust them. That’s what they do. Betray people for money. They’re inherently untrustworthy, in fact. Except that I’m paying them, and they don’t get paid if they betray me. That’s how they operate.’
‘Like buying a whore, then. They’ll get a bad reputation if they don’t go through with it, or pick your pocket or whatnot.’
‘If you really must put it that way, probably, yes, I imagine it is.’
Darath grinned at him again. ‘Now I’ve put you out, haven’t I? So sweetly fastidious as always. Even plotting murder you have to be purer than I am … They’re arriving soon, then, I take it?’
‘I had word yesterday. They’re coming in in small groups. Two or three days, it will take.’
‘Hmmm … This doubling of the guard. Dangerous. Very bad timing. Why in the God’s name did Tam suggest it? And why in the God’s name did you agree?’
‘Because I don’t particularly want to die of deeping fever, probably.’ Orhan took a last bite of meat and spoke as he chewed. ‘And it’s actually extremely fortuitous, as far as I can see. Excellent timing. The guards will be so preoccupied looking out for Chathean accents, they won’t look too closely at anything else.’
‘I suppose so … You’ve got a lump of gristle on your chin, by the way.’
Orhan rubbed at his face in irritation. The spices were beginning to sting his lips. ‘We could have just had this conversation in my study. Without the need for all this flim-flamming about.’
‘Your study … Now that’s somewhere I haven’t been for a while. What would people say? Quite an eventful day you’d be having. And I don’t trust even your men not to be peeping at the keyhole. Especially your men, if they really do only charge six dhol.’
They paused in the street, standing with the charred skewers in their hands, sticky with grease. Before them the small green square flanking the House of the East. A magnolia tree bloomed in its centre, its petals were beginning to fall and lay like skin on the marble ground. The air was very still, as though the city had stopped breathing. A bell tolled over in the west. Dusk. A ferfew called loudly; he heard a woman laugh. A dog barked and the bird flew up with a frantic beating of wings. Orhan thought: a little way over to the west, a child is dying. Always a perilous time, the border between day and night. He looked at his ex-lover, who was more worn now, more haggard, more alive.
‘Why don’t you come in, Darath?’ he said.
Darath looked back at him. The tension that was between them flickered like the tongue of a snake. ‘Damned erotic thing, plotting the overthrow of one’s Emperor. Or did the pretty serving boy earlier stir you up? I saw you eyeing him. Lovely lips, he had.’
They turned together in through the gates of the House of the East, which opened smoothly at Orhan’s approach. Amlis and Sterne and Darath’s escort followed behind them, knives drawn.
They line up in long rows, stretching away into the horizon. Rank upon rank of them. Gleaming silver armour, silver-gilt bronze over fine white cloth. The blood shows through the white and marks them as His soldiers, who will fight until they’ve lost every drop of blood in their bodies and beyond.
They carry the long spear, the sarriss, its jagged point a thing to rip flesh going in and coming out. A short wide-bladed sword that