Higher they climbed until they came to a landing where they were challenged by guardsmen bearing the Legate’s cypher on their faces. Osidian stayed the Marula with a command then climbed the last few steps towards the guardsmen and their levelled spears. If his height had not been enough to alert them that he was a Master, his disregard for their weapons proved it. Their spear blades clattered to the floor as they knelt.
‘Clear this level. These chambers I claim for my own. Any creature left behind shall be slain.’
Carnelian had reached Osidian’s side and could now see the great door upon which the men had been standing guard. Abandoning their weapons they fled through it into the chambers beyond. He noticed that the stair continued climbing. ‘The roof,’ he said, remembering the heliograph he suspected to be up there. Osidian nodded and bade Morunasa approach him. He selected some of the Marula to stand guard upon the door. ‘Take these others,’ he said to the Oracle, ‘and bring me anyone you find up there.’
The Oracle was about to scale the steps when Osidian stayed him. ‘I want them alive.’
The Oracle darted a nod and soon he and most of the Marula had disappeared up the stairs. Carnelian waited with Osidian as the Legate’s household cowered past to scurry down the steps. The guardsmen were the last to leave.
‘Nothing living?’ Osidian asked them.
‘Nothing, Master.’
As they ducked past him and away down the stair after the others, Osidian indicated to the Marula the recesses flanking the door in which they were to stand guard. Then he and Carnelian passed into the chamber beyond.
They emerged into a suite of rooms more humanly proportioned, graced with gilded furniture, with hangings of featherwork, walls pierced by ivory doors. Wandering, they came into a chamber in which bronze lecterns shaped like hands cradled books. Osidian took one, opened its jewelled cover and read. He looked at Carnelian.
‘An inferior edition,’ he said, stroking the binding.
There were tears running down his face. This sadness, that was also joy, made Osidian look young again. As they explored further together Carnelian watched him sidelong. Osidian professed disdain for such provincial architecture, aloofness towards the minor treasures that were all about them, but when he turned his gaze from something his fingers would linger on it a while as if he feared that, should he lose touch of it, it might disappear. Indeed, the polished stone in which they moved as shadows, the hanging silks that floated on the breeze like smoke, the narrow views some windows gave down into the hazy infinities of the land below, all these things seemed unreal, so that it was as if they moved together through a dream.
At last they came to a chamber in which water ran in channels in the walls. Here Osidian let his marumaga robe crumple to the floor and soon was standing in an iris-scented waterfall. He beckoned for Carnelian to join him. The eyes looking at him had something of the boy in the Yden, but now they were set in a face that had been hardened by pain. The water was making Osidian’s maggot wounds redder than his mouth. The mark of the rope was livid round his neck. His once flawless limbs had been weathered by the margins of garments into different shades so that he seemed assembled from unmatched pieces of ivory. Pity became an ache in Carnelian’s chest. He felt anew the agony of loss for what Osidian had been and sadness for what he had become. Undressing, he joined him in the waterfall. They stood together, sheathed in its warm pulsating embrace. Osidian’s eyes seemed emeralds lost in the sea. ‘Forgive me.’
Carnelian’s heart responded to the appeal. There was still a part of him that yearned for the way it had been between them, but he could not so easily forget the dead. ‘Forgiveness is not in my gift,’ he said and endured the hurt that came into Osidian’s face.
‘At least, stay with me.’
Compassion and the dregs of their love fought within Carnelian with what his heart felt he owed the dead. At last he yielded nothing more than a nod though even that felt like a betrayal.
A clanging brought them back to the outer door. Putting his ammonite mask over his face, Carnelian opened the door. Morunasa was on the landing. He moved aside to indicate a huddle of ammonites ringed by Marula. There was another ammonite laid out on the floor. Carnelian approached the prone figure, crouched, then, using one hand to hold his own mask, with the other he released the ammonite’s. Beneath was a sallow face marred with examination tattoos. Carnelian leaned closer. ‘He’s dead.’
Osidian had followed him. ‘It is the quaestor of this city.’
Carnelian turned to look up at him. ‘How can you tell?’
Osidian interpreted for him some of the markings on the corpse’s face. Then he turned on Morunasa. ‘Did I not tell you to bring all of them to me alive?’
The Oracle presented a stiff face. ‘We found him like that on the roof.’
Carnelian leaned closer to the corpse. ‘Look at how his tongue is swollen.’
Osidian crouched to see for himself. ‘Poison.’
Carnelian was about to ask how Osidian knew that, but then remembered that he had grown up at court where such things were not uncommon.
Osidian rose and stood statue still. Carnelian sensed he was pondering something and chose not to disturb him. Instead he addressed Morunasa. ‘On the roof, you say?’
‘Beside one of those sun machines.’
That was suggestive. Carnelian turned his mask on the huddle of ammonites. They drew away from him as he approached. ‘Have any heliograph messages been sent or received from here today or yesterday?’
He saw himself reflected in the silver of their faces. He raised his hands and signed the command: Unmask. They did so, hesitantly, glancing round at the Marula, their sallow tattooed faces sweaty with fear.
‘Answer me.’
One braver than the rest shook his head. ‘We do not know, Seraph. We have been forbidden the roof.’
‘By the quaestor?’
The ammonite’s eyes flicked to the corpse and back again. ‘That is so, Seraph.’
Without a word, Osidian turned to the stairs and began climbing them. Carnelian assured Morunasa that neither he nor his men had done any wrong, then, telling him to wait, Carnelian followed Osidian.
When they reached the roof the dizzying view drove everything else from Carnelian’s mind. He approached the edge. Laid out at his feet was the Earthsky, turned to copper by the setting sun. Osidian was squinting into the west. Carnelian joined him. Against the liquid gold horizon the limestone margin of the Guarded Land, scored and gouged by gullies, seemed gnawed and incised bone. Away from its rim, the rock became stained with earth like a crust of dried blood. Further inland, his eyes found the knife slash of the Ringwall. He followed this until he came to a thorn. Another watch-tower. He glanced back at the heliograph and saw that it was to that tower it was aligned. He made the inevitable deduction. ‘The quaestor sent a message to Osrakum, then killed himself.’
Osidian shook his head. ‘It seems more likely that he received a command to kill himself.’
‘From the Wise?’
Osidian turned to him. ‘Who else?’
‘But surely there wasn’t enough time for the signal to get here-’
Osidian turned back to gaze at the watch-tower. ‘No, there wasn’t.’
Carnelian felt suddenly exposed, as if at that very moment the Wise had lifted the roof off the world and were peering in at them. ‘How could they know we were coming?’
Osidian shook his head, a look of resignation on his face. ‘It is a fool who underestimates the Wise.’
Carnelian contemplated their situation. ‘But why would they want the quaestor dead?’