'I bet you thought those four-horned monsters on the road were dragons, eh, Tain?' He could hear the flat emptiness of his words.
His brother shrugged, bit his lip and continued to adjust the riding cloak.
Carnelian drooped as if his bones had been removed. He put his hand on his brother's chest. 'How are you feeling, Tain?'
His brother looked up, furious. 'How do you think?'
Carnelian looked at those bright angry eyes and imagined them replaced with dead stone. 'It's not my fault,' he shouted. 'It's not.' The last word tailed off. He could see that Tain was close to tears.
'I'm sorry, Tain,' he said gently. His legs felt too weak to hold him up. Reassurances were on his tongue but he remembered Crail and swallowed them. He reached out to touch Tain, but his brother drew away.
'A Master might see us.'
Tain held out his mask. Carnelian took it, put it on, drew the cowl over his head then walked out into the morning.
A dewy fragrance overlaid the smoky stink. Clinks and voices sounded sharp, seeming nearer than they were. The throng was fidgeting into motion.
Soon Carnelian was mounted with the other Masters and filing back through the camp. Tain sitting on the baggage found a smile for him. It hurt Carnelian as much as if his brother had thrown a stone. Men levered wagon wheels into turning. Pots clacked as they were stowed. Urine dribbled on embers, hissing steam. Laughter and the shrilling of babies pierced the swelling hubbub.
The Marula jogged their aquar onto the road. Mist hid the animals' bird feet. Another of the way-forts lay a little distance back along the road with its sinister fence of punishment posts. Carnelian looked out over the stopping place. Its brown flood of travellers was leaching towards them. A diamond-bright gash had torn between earth and sky. Chattering clouds of starlings flashed down from the trees. Then he turned as he felt the Masters moving and they were off: amidst the trundling chariots, the creaking axles, the chatter of the women, they were off into the south, to where the Naralan met the Guarded Land.
For days they rode the road's relentless rhythm, pounding into endless dusty distance. Night brought hri cake, incense, weary hope. Carnelian looked across a chasm at his father. The other Masters were quick to anger. The Marula cordon beat away the hucksters and the curious. Tain's eyes dulled as if they were already stone. Carnelian hid in his cowl, blood pulsing in his head. The thud and thump of huimur feet. Sandals scuffing, scraping. Wheel rims always rising always falling. Litters rocking. People dragging squalling infants. Hand-carts hard pushed to keep in chariot shadow. Swaying horned saurian heads. To kill time, people quarrelled over trifles. Heat. Unbearable heat desiccating everything to chalk. Out from the haze far behind them the road's procession bubbled. Up ahead, it simmered away to nothing. Carnelian sagged dozing, sometimes sucking furtive gulps of water in the shadow of his cowl, brooding, licking without caring the stone of salt that had been pressed on him as protection from sun madness. His legs, his back, his neck nagged aching. His head nodded bobbing, keeping time with the rhythm of the road.
Tain was wasting as thin as Jaspar's boy. Carnelian had tried to make him eat, to comfort him. All this had to be done in snatches, for at night Jaspar was always there and in the day Tain was lost amongst the baggage.
Carnelian wore a face of patience over his anguish. He kept Tain away from the tent when Jaspar was there, hoping that the sin might be forgotten. Sometimes, when Carnelian had to undress himself, Jaspar would give him his indulgent idol smile. It was then that Carnelian's self-control wore thinnest.
Jaspar persisted in finding fault with his own slave. It had been agreed that there were to be no punishments on the road and so instead the Master amused himself by describing to the boy those that were waiting for him in Osrakum. Carnelian turned from the slave's sweaty trembling, bit his tongue, struggled for deafness. Their tent stank of the boy's fear.
Pulsing cicadas, buzzing flies, the sounds of the road, all were muffled by the lazy heat. Even in the cedar's shade the air was stifling, but Carnelian was thankful for the tree. The throng shimmered along the road. Away towards the melting horizon the towers of Maga-Naralante danced their dark flames. The city was like a mirage. Vennel pointed towards it.
'My Lords, there we could find discreet comfort: a welcome respite from the road. We would resume our journey refreshed.'
'Sometimes legionaries collect the tolls,' said Aurum. They might see through our disguise.'
The markets, the narrow streets,' said Suth, 'all would be inimical to secrecy.'
Vennel muttered his discontent. His aquar echoed him with a rumble in its throat.
The shadow-dapple fused each Master and aquar into a single fantastical creature. Carnelian chewed his lip. Even though their saddle-chairs were almost touching, his father was beyond his reach.
'However much we may share your desires, Vennel, the risk must be avoided,' said Suth.
Carnelian fixed his eyes back on the road. He was always on the lookout for Ykoriana's assassins.
'Again I am overruled,' said Vennel, 'and again I think the diversion will prove the more delaying choice.'
'Does my Lord wish to have the matter put to the vote?' said Jaspar.
Vennel turned to him. 'Would there be any point?'
'I would vote with you, Vennel. I have a notion to spend a night in something like comfort.' He turned to Suth. 'Whatever the risk.'
'So be it,' Aurum said sharply. 'My ring I set against yours, Jaspar.'
'And mine against Lord Vermel's,' said Suth.
Jaspar looked at Carnelian. 'It seems then that it is you, cousin, who is to decide the matter.'
Even muffled by his cowl and mask, Carnelian could tell the Master was smiling his damned, self-satisfied smile. He surveyed the four Masters in their saddle-chairs. It occurred to him that if he voted with Jaspar it might help the Master forget Tain's sin. There would also be the pleasure of voting against Aurum. The most important consideration, though, was that he would be voting against his father. His father was to be pitied. Every day he showed more clearly the power Aurum had over him.
'Carnelian,' Suth said. 'How shall your ring fall?'
It was the first time that his father had said anything to him for days. Carnelian looked at him, wishing he could see his face.
'Why do you delay?' said Aurum, as if he were talking to a boy.
'I shall vote with my father,' said Carnelian.
'One is not surprised, my Lord,' said Jaspar, 'but a little disappointed. Now that you have come of age one did not think that you would so blindly follow your father's lead.'
Carnelian started at the emphasized word. As they rode back into the crowds, he wondered if there was anything Jaspar would take in exchange for Tain's eyes.
They left the road within sight of Maga-Naralante's black gate. Rolling dust broke over them. Wheels rattled violently as they jolted into the ditches that criss-crossed the track. Foul stenches rose with the flies. Hovels all sticks and wattle leant over into their path. When the air cleared a little Carnelian saw more of this debris sloping up towards the city's mud rampart like a scree. There were too many vehicles squeezing along the track. A chariot snagged a hovel and tore it down. Its wheel collapsed, swerving the chariot into the path of a huimur. Bleating, the monster swung away, crushing into a crowd of travellers. The wagon it pulled tipped over. Bundles rolled into the gutters. Filthy urchins appeared and swarmed the wreck. The traffic built up behind. Annoyance swelled to anger then burst into riot. It was easy for Carnelian to imagine assassins in the crowd. Aurum must have shared his fears for he ordered the Marula to slay a path through the mob. People were cut down screaming. Carnelian stared into a face foaming blood, then he leapt his aquar over the wagon pole and loped off along the track after his father.