‘Master?’
Carnelian looked round, saw Morunasa waiting and went to join him. Squinting against the glare, they passed the second set of piers. A cobbled expanse opened before them, at its hub what appeared to be a spiked tower of bronze. The open space was ringed about by some three dozen of the stone piers as regular as the spokes of a wheel. Between each pair stretched beams upon which sat an ivory pyramid from which there rose a mast. The last time he had seen such structures they had been on the backs of dragons.
‘The Master,’ said Morunasa, pointing.
Tiny figures stood beneath one of these dragon towers. As he and Morunasa crossed the cothon floor, Carnelian felt they were a sort of insect crawling across the face of some infernal mechanism that, should it grind into motion, would smear them over the cobbles.
Nearing the figures he grew increasingly alarmed at how precariously the pyramid hung above them. The sagging beams did not look strong enough to hold it, nor the cradle of ropes. The figures were now coming to meet him. Osidian was not among them and they were not Marula. These men were honey-skinned and encased in ribbed cuirasses of black leather. Their skin, and the glint of brass at their throats, showed them to be marumaga legionaries. Instinct made Carnelian shroud his face. When still at some distance they fell to their knees and touched their foreheads to the cobbles. ‘Master.’
Carnelian hesitated. No one had made obeisance to him for years. It felt wrong, unnatural. Yet a second impression warred with the first. He became aware of how tall he was, how powerfully he stood upon the earth. Their abasement elevated him. Though he stank from the passage of the sewer, though he was clothed in rags, their posture seemed to demand from him elegant condescension, which found expression in his lifted hand: Rise.
They responded to the gesture as if the only life they possessed came from strings dangling from his fingers.
‘The other Master?’
Rising, they backed away, keeping their eyes averted. Making a barrier gesture, Carnelian stopped Morunasa from accompanying him and set off after the legionaries. As he passed under the dragon tower he glanced up. Tubes and sockets issuing from its murky base oozed a stench of naphtha. He could not imagine how this device could sit comfortably upon a dragon’s back. Emerging from its shadow, he saw his guides were moving under the second ring of piers, upon whose beams rested a squatter structure, like a table that was narrower at one end and had, at each corner, a stump foot. He realized this must be the base of the tower of which the pyramid was only the upper part.
As he passed under this second platform, a saurian musk began to overpower the naphtha reek. Wariness that he was approaching an earther, or even a heavener, made Carnelian slow. It was the hair rising on his neck that alerted him to this being a creature even more dangerous. Further, the air was tainted by something like the carrion stench that raveners gave off. He peered into the darkness that yawned before him. They were approaching one of the vaults cut into the cothon wall. Framed in its dark mouth was Osidian’s slender figure in his Leper shrouds, but Carnelian only had time to glance at him before he froze. Something vast lurked in the gloom. He began to make out a beak hanging high above Osidian’s head. From this, vast curves swept back to the swelling bows of a cranium that branched on either side into backward-curving sickle horns. There before him, vast as a baran, was a dragon.
‘He sleeps,’ murmured Osidian without turning.
Carnelian gaped at the monster. He could have believed it only a colossus carved from a cliff had it not been for the warm odour it was giving off.
‘Do you hear his heart?’
Struggling with dark memories Carnelian sought some reassurance in Osidian’s face, but could not see past his cowl. It was a tremor like distant thunder that made him gaze back at the monster. He waited. From deep in its flesh another tremor reverberated. It seemed less a heartbeat than how the pulse of sap might sound in a cedar. Deceptively peaceful that slow drumbeat, but he had seen what such a monster became when fully armed. Such stillness was the eerie calm before a storm.
Doubt gnawed at him. He leaned forward enough so that he could peer into Osidian’s cowl. How greedily his eyes were fixed upon the dragon. How bright they were. The same intensity no doubt as when he had overseen the murder of the Ochre. Carnelian pulled back, fighting panic. What had he done? How could he have helped put this terror in the hands of a murderer? He counted out the familiar arguments like beads. His breathing slowed as, grimly, he remembered what the Lepers had chosen to endure a second time so as to give him and Osidian a chance to take these dragons. Even now Poppy, Fern and Krow as well as Lily could be fighting Aurum for their lives. He had had a choice then, but now had none. He had to play the game to the end.
‘I am certain the tower had no chance to send a message into the Guarded Land,’ he said. ‘But there is another tower here beyond this cothon.’
Osidian nodded. ‘The tower of the Legate.’
‘I suspect it has a heliograph of its own.’
As Osidian turned to him, the power lust dulled in his eyes. ‘That we could keep the Wise blind to what we are doing was only ever a thin hope. Nevertheless, I still believe we have time enough.’
‘Time enough for what?’
‘To get these huimur ready,’ Osidian said, a gleam coming back into his eyes as he glanced up at the monster, ‘before Aurum arrives.’
Carnelian wondered at Osidian’s confidence. If an alarm had been sent from the Legate’s tower it would take at least a day to reach Osrakum. Much depended on the nature of that alarm. It was unlikely the Wise could be certain that it was indeed Osidian in Qunoth. Even if the Legate here had known that beyond doubt, which seemed improbable, why would the Wise believe him? By what miracle could Osidian have appeared in the Guarded Land without breaching the Ringwall?
‘Are you so certain the Wise will resort to sending Aurum?’
Osidian nodded. ‘Even if they dared dispatch one of the Lesser Chosen against me they would be reluctant to do so.’
‘Because they still hope to conceal all of this from Ykoriana?’
Osidian frowned and nodded again.
‘Most likely, Aurum is still in the Leper Valleys…’ Carnelian said, imagining again the valleys burning. A determination surged in him to save his loved ones and the Lepers from Aurum. He calmed himself. He could not afford to have his mind dulled by emotion. ‘Can we operate a legion without the Chosen commanders?’
One of Osidian’s eyebrows rose. ‘Why should we choose to do that?’
‘Surely they will not agree to fight for us?’
‘They are accustomed to obeying the House of the Masks.’
Carnelian bit back a comment that it was Osidian’s brother Molochite to whom the commanders owed allegiance, and realized he did so because he was reluctant to test Osidian’s confidence in case it should prove brittle. Things were already tenuous enough. ‘Is it not rather the Wise they obey?’
Osidian’s hand sketched a gesture of agreement. ‘The Domain of Legions to be precise, but we shall make sure to cut their link to each other.’
Carnelian looked for the Legate’s tower, but it was hidden by the cothon and its mechanisms. ‘You intend that we should storm the other tower?’
‘I do not think it will come to that.’ Osidian was smiling. ‘The Legate is the key that will open our way to that tower.’ Carnelian must have betrayed disbelief, for Osidian continued: ‘I shall summon him and he will attend me.’