The Marula had resumed their guarding of the watch-tower. As he moved through them, they abased themselves. He took his time and was rewarded by a black face momentarily glancing up at him: Sthax showing he had survived.
From the road, Carnelian descended a ramp made from compacted rubble. Larger fragments of the demolished section of leftway formed a boulder field on either side, from which he emerged on the edge of the new Leper camp. Their multitude seemed a colony of gulls. He lingered, gazing at them, wondering if Lily was there and, if she was, how he might find her without exciting a riot. Near the edge of the crowd, a figure rose and must have noticed him, for it came directly towards him. As he recognized it was Fern, Carnelian’s heart misgave. He knew that what he had come to say could only serve to tear open yet again the wound of Fern’s grief. However, it was Fern who would understand better than anyone else what terrible danger the Lepers were in and Carnelian needed all the help he could get to persuade them to leave.
‘Is Lily there?’ he said as Fern came near.
Fern nodded grimly, so that Carnelian became afraid for her. ‘Has she recovered?’
‘As much as can be expected. Wait here and I’ll bring her to you.’
Carnelian watched Fern as he returned to the crowd. When he came back, there was a smaller shrouded figure with him. Carnelian led them both into the shadow of a boulder and there unmasked. The others responded by freeing their heads from their shrouds. Carnelian regarded Lily, saw how aged she looked, how fragile.
‘You’re going to have to leave now.’
Lily looked up at him, haunted. ‘Give us Au-rum and we shall go.’
Carnelian regarded her bleakly. ‘The Master’s not ready to give him to you.’
‘He’s not going to keep his promise?’
‘He’ll send him to you once he has no further need of him.’
Lily, frowning, looked close to angry tears. ‘When?’
He rejoiced at the return of some of her spirit. ‘I don’t know.’
Her frown deepened. ‘He’s not going to give him to us at all, is he?’
Carnelian wanted to contradict her pessimism, but when he imagined Osidian far away, imagined him having achieved his aims, then he could not see him sending Aurum back to the Lepers. ‘You must leave while you still can.’
‘Do as he says,’ Fern said, the pain raw in his voice.
Lily looked at the Plainsman, bewildered. ‘We can’t return empty-handed, we simply can’t…’
A look of shame came over Fern: ‘We can still sack the city?’
Carnelian did not feel he was in any position to lecture them and was trying not to judge them. ‘As long as you don’t interfere with his supplies, I don’t imagine the Master will care what happens to Makar.’
Lily was shaking her head, staring. ‘This makes a mockery of all we’ve suffered. How can we add this defeat to that which destroyed so many of my people? If we return defeated, we will fade, slowly, broken. We may as well die here.’ Her pale lips formed a thin smile. ‘And wait here in hope that we’ll remind you and the Master of your honour.’
Carnelian could think of nothing to say.
Lily set her face. ‘Besides, too many of the wounded are not ready to be moved.’
Carnelian nodded, feeling hollow. ‘Once he has his supplies we’ll be marching north.’
Lily nodded absent-mindedly and, then, pulling her shrouds back over her head, began walking away. Carnelian and Fern caught each other’s look of despair. Fern grunted something, then followed Lily.
Standing on the northern edge of the heliograph platform, Carnelian gazed down into the camp. On his right the chaos of the new Leper camp; on his left, the far greater expanse of the auxiliary camp that faced the Lepers through the gap in the leftway wall.
He glanced round to where Osidian was sitting in the shadow of the heliograph. Beside him was the homunculus, ready to operate the device. When Carnelian had come up onto the platform he had hidden nothing from Osidian. He had said that, justifiably, the Lepers were reluctant to leave without that which they had been promised. He had tried to make light of this, saying, What does it matter? Osidian had growled that he would starve them, refuse them water. Carnelian had pointed out that their wounded needed time to build up the strength to make the move. In a few days’ time the supplies would have arrived from Makar and they would leave the Lepers behind, who would then have no choice but to return to their valleys. Osidian had made a loose gesture that Carnelian chose to see as agreement.
He focused on their camp. What would they be returning to? He could only hope Lily was wrong, that her people would manage to rebuild their lives even without Aurum as a symbol of justice. He grew grim at the thought that in a few days he would have to part from Fern once more, for ever. He wondered if he should attempt to send Poppy and Krow back to the Valleys with him.
He squinted north along the road, as if hoping to see the future and Osrakum. All there was to see was the road narrowing away to a thread from which, far away, there rose the peg of the next watch-tower. He willed it to begin flashing. His feelings were too much in turmoil for him to know how he would react to seeing Jaspar again, but at least he would provide some distraction, though not necessarily a pleasant one. Osidian seemed to be awaiting Jaspar’s arrival with the predatory patience of a spider sitting at the heart of its web.
The Master approaching seemed enveloped in red flame. With his vast cloak he could have been the sandstorm made flesh. Two figures flanked him, glimmering as if they were clothed in sunlit water. Behind came slaves with dragonfly tattoos upon their faces. They had descended from a dragon, all sweeping slopes of rouged hide, sickle-horned, bearing upon its back a castle of bone from which rose a mast that held aloft a rayed sun gleaming in the dusty air. Behind the monster stretched a field of lances that flickered scarlet pennants north along the road as far as Carnelian could see. Drifts of aquar plumes, the long volumes of their beaked heads, the casques of their riders, spired and feathered, gold collars at their necks, their half-black faces: everything combined to make an ever-varying tessellation that confused the eye. This spectacle was flanked by an avenue of Osidian’s dragons that stretched down the side of the road to hazy distance.
Though Carnelian wanted to glance round to see the reassuring bulk of Earth-is-Strong and Heart-of-Thunder, he could not take his eyes from the advancing scarlet apparition. He had had a notion of remaining aloft in his command chair in case Jaspar should be planning some treachery, but Osidian had insisted they must confront their enemy together. The scarlet apparition raised its hand to show the emberous red jewel of the Pomegranate Ring like a wound through its palm. From the right eyeslit of its mask rays radiated across the golden skin. The last time he had seen that perfect face, it was his father who had been behind it. For a moment he expected it to be his father who spoke.
‘I have come, Celestial, as we arranged. Are you prepared to make the same oath to me now that you made by means of the heliograph?’
Carnelian knew that voice, but it was not his father’s.
‘On my blood I swear I shall not harm you, Imago,’ said Osidian.
Carnelian flinched, shocked, but said nothing.
‘Honour now your part of our agreement, my Lord.’
Jaspar hesitated a moment, then glanced to one of his lictors and made an elegant sign with a gloved hand. The lictor bowed. ‘As you command, my father.’
The lictor turned to the massed Ichorians and, raising his standard, he angled it down until it nearly touched the road. The nearest aquar ranks sank first, this movement sweeping back along the road. In their thousands they climbed out from their saddle-chairs. The striking of their feet upon the road was like a sudden hailstorm. Jaspar, who had turned to watch, waited until the sound was faint in the distance, then turned back. For moments that perfect face gazed imperiously upon them. The only sound a creaking as one of the monsters behind them caused the tower on its back to shift. Carnelian was trying to grasp what he was feeling when, suddenly, Jaspar fell to one knee. His cloak floated for a moment then settled. He offered up something that glimmered in his hand. ‘I give the Ichorians to you, Celestial, with myself.’