Carnelian registered the look of horror on the half-black faces of the lictors. One took a step back, staring at their kneeling master. Carnelian was not sure whether it was the statement or the action of kneeling that had shocked them. For He-who-goes-before to offer himself to one of the House of the Masks was inconceivable. But then, so was such an act of abasement before one who was only a Jade Lord. After all, Jaspar had been elected to incarnate the majesty of the Great. Such a being should kneel before none but a fully consecrated God Emperor.
Movement made him glance round to see Osidian accepting from Jaspar what Carnelian saw was the Pomegranate Ring. Osidian seemed to be examining it even as he raised his hand. Carnelian was trying to read its shape when twined voices of brass from behind him blared so thunderously he was bent by their gale. Heart-of-Thunder’s trumpets. A signal, then.
He sensed Osidian’s expectation. His masked face was fixed towards the road before them. With increasing alarm, Carnelian followed its gaze and, at first, he could see nothing but a swirling consternation among the Ichorians. Then he saw the pall drifting up from the dragon towers all down the road. Their pipes were being lit. His gaze darted to the road, where men were running, trying to mount their aquar, crying out. He moaned with horror as a whining almost beyond hearing swelled into a choking scream and the first pipe spat fire. All down the line, flame jets ignited. He inclined his head so that the slits of his mask shielded his eyes from the glare. The space between the dragons and the leftway wall began to fill with rolling black smoke that, as it frothed and boiled, allowed glimpses of the furnace in which the Ichorians and their aquar were burning like tinder.
The flame-pipes guttered, spitting a few last gobbets of liquid flame, then, silence. Stunned, Carnelian watched the smoke lift from the road, ripping, thinning as it rose. The road was black, but covered with lumps, riddled with threads of smoke that unravelled into mist. Flames sprinted through the crusted mess. Red-rimmed gold fissures gaped, puffing steam sprinkled with sparks. The tar tide washed all the way up the leftway wall.
Redness swelling near him made him jerk round to see Jaspar rising. At the same time the lictors dropped, releasing their standards with a clatter onto the road. Tears and phlegm glazed the nearest half-black face. The man’s mouth released a moan as if he were deflating. His unblinking stare of loss made revulsion rise in Carnelian like vomit. He turned on Osidian. ‘Why?’
Osidian’s hands framed appeasement. ‘They would have harried us all the way to Osrakum. Besides, they had lost their use.’
‘But we could have brought them over to our side,’ Carnelian nearly screamed.
Osidian shook his head. ‘They were the creatures of the Great, brought up since childhood to adore them. Nothing would have persuaded them to take up our cause.’
Jaspar’s mask was gazing at the massacre impassively. Carnelian wanted to understand. ‘You brought them here for this?’
Jaspar turned to him his rayed eye. His hand rolled an elegant gesture, as if he were about to pronounce on some dance he had just watched that was skilled, but not quite perfect. ‘They failed me, cousin, neh?’
Staring at that hand, Carnelian became blind with rage.
‘Carnelian. Carnelian?’
He turned to Osidian. ‘I give Imago to you. Do with him as you will.’
Jaspar’s voice: ‘Surely you jest, Celestial… your oath…’
Osidian’s voice: ‘I swore an oath to you. The Lord Suth Carnelian did not. I am sure you have not forgotten the part you played in our fall. You did not realize we knew? As much as you have wronged me, my Lord, you have wronged him.’
Carnelian saw Jaspar haloed by blood. For a moment he savoured tearing that mask off like a shell, rending the face beneath. He feasted on fantasies of furious tortures. He felt his passion ebbing. It was not just Jaspar who was a monster, but all the Masters.
Carnelian extended his hand. ‘Give me your mask, Jaspar.’
The sun-rayed gold face turned to Osidian, but there was no help there. It turned back to Carnelian. ‘You cannot-’
‘I will not ask again.’
Jaspar pushed back his hood, then fumbled behind his head. The mask came away to reveal a joweled, glistening, pasty face. He put his mask in Carnelian’s hand then shrank away, fear putting a curve into his shoulders and back, his eyes fixed on Carnelian as a bird might regard a serpent arching above it.
Carnelian hardly recognized the man he had once known. He no longer felt rage, just contempt. ‘You two, lictors, bind your betrayer.’
The two men looked up, blearily, their faces blank.
Carnelian was patient with their shock. ‘He brought you all here to die…’ He pointed at the smoking charnel field. ‘To die like that. You no longer owe him service. Look into his face, see what kind of man he is.’
A hungry gleam came into the eyes of first one, then both as they fixed upon him whom they had so recently called father.
Jaspar, trying to stand his ground, shrieked: ‘You shall not lay your unclean hands upon me!’
Everyone could smell his sweaty terror. Taking hold of Jaspar’s cloak Carnelian yanked at it, over and over, pulling the Master off-balance, until the silk came away in his hands. Finding an edge he began tearing it into strips. He gave these scarlet ribbons to the lictors. ‘Bind him with these. For what he’s done, we’ll have to determine a fitting punishment.’
When they had finished, Carnelian forced the sun-rayed mask into the hand of one of the lictors. ‘Use this to buy yourselves new lives.’
The last of the Red Ichorians glanced at the metal face they had spent so much of their lives in awe of, before gazing back at their dead with empty eyes.
‘His consciousness rises,’ said the homunculus.
He released his grip from behind the Grand Sapient’s heel, rose from his knees, backed away. Strapped in, Legions stood in the open capsule that was propped up against the wall, his skeletal arms crossed over his chest, his skin like bleached leather, his face concealed behind his one-eyed mask.
Carnelian found it hard to believe this was anything more than a huskman. A tiny movement made him peer through the myrrh smoke uncurling in languid spirals. Legions’ left fist was opening its pale flower a petal at a time. The four fingers splayed, then recurled. The right hand, blossoming, was joined by the first opening again. Soon both were opening and closing, opening and closing. Then the wrists slipped a twist into this motion, turning the hands into the wings of a bird in flight. Then the hinges of the elbow opened and closed, moving this flight away from, then towards, the chest. Crossing, recrossing the arms several times. The motion slowed and died. The arms crossed, the elbows began rising, falling. This turned into a sinuous opening of the arms as if they were seeking to embrace someone. Closing, opening, closing, opening like seaweed in a tide. At last the hands came to rest, open, slightly apart, their heels resting on the bands wrapping round the Grand Sapient’s stomach.
Carnelian’s trance was broken by the homunculus, now wearing his blinding mask, backing towards the capsule. Reaching behind him to grip one of the bands, he raised his heel and placed it next to one of the Grand Sapient’s cadaverous, yellow feet. With a grunt, the little man pulled himself back and up to stand within the capsule. As he nestled his neck into the waiting hands, the fingers meshed about his throat and immediately began to flex.
When they stopped, the child mask of the homunculus murmured: ‘Lord Nephron has it.’