As Osidian gave commands, Carnelian was drawn to peer at these contraptions. Hanging in the air, a mass of leather strips wove around some metal ribs. Stepping round it, he saw this was a chair floating in mid air upon a limb of brass that came into the cabin like an oar into a baran. He could imagine the rest of it projecting out from the tower and knew it must be the end of the flame-pipe. He peered at some handles set upon its barrel. Taking hold of one, he found the pipe so finely counterbalanced he could swing it easily. Sliding his hand along the barrel, he touched the tube that curved from it down to a vessel of copper as large as a pumpkin. From the rear of this vessel a brass tube ran up to and back along the ceiling and out, presumably to emerge from the tower as one of the chimneys.
‘My Lord, please move away from the furnace. It is about to be lit.’
Osidian was waiting for him by the ladder. Carnelian watched him climb it even as legionaries were opening hatches in the copper vessels and striking flints. As he followed him up, one of the furnaces roared into life.
He emerged into a second cabin partially filled with trumpets the size of canoes. Climbing further he came up into the brightness of a third cabin. He clambered up onto the deck. He was pleased to find he did not need to stoop. The front wall was a delicately pierced screen that curved round to open up the front half of each side wall. A single chair faced this screen, upon which sat Osidian. Carnelian had to avoid some contraptions lying on the floor to the side of the chair as he approached the screen. His eyes adjusted to the glare enough for him to be able to see out through the web of fine rods.
Below him the two flame-pipes pointed forwards. Beyond was the open cothon, piles of empty render sacs forming a ring around its hub. The hub itself was now only a scaffolding rack almost entirely denuded of the flame-pipes it had held. He could smell something burning. Gazing back into the cabin he almost expected to see it smouldering. A legionary had come after them and crept forward to kneel on one side of the chair. Another appeared through the floor and hesitated, a look of agony on his face. Carnelian realized he must be standing in the man’s place. He moved back to stand behind Osidian and the legionary rushed forward to kneel beside the chair, then lifted a tube from the floor and connected it to his helmet.
‘The pipes are ready for testing, Master,’ the other legionary announced. Tubes snaked from his helmet also.
Carnelian noticed both legionaries were crouched over a kind of fork they held before them and from each of which two tubes hung. Osidian’s gloved hands closed on the armrests of the chair. ‘Target the render sacs.’
The legionary at his right hand leaned down and murmured into one prong of his voice fork. Carnelian heard a sound and looked up to see the flame-pipes lifting.
‘Flame,’ said Osidian.
The legionary spoke again into his voice fork. From the bowels of the tower there rose a choking and gurgling. Then a high whine that made Carnelian grit his teeth. Screaming arcs of sunlight erupted from the mouths of the flame-pipes. A mist of smoke. Then the sacs began detonating. Their fiery brilliance was almost immediately concealed behind a mass of black smoke that boiled into the sky. A wall of heat struck the cabin, carrying a stench as if from a funeral pyre.
Night had fallen when Carnelian accompanied Osidian on a final inspection of all twenty-four dragons. Smoke obscured the stars. The incessant testing of flame-pipes had hung a pall over the fortress that had turned day to murky twilight. The fires of the Marula camp guttered across the cothon floor, where Osidian had insisted they must all spend the night. Carnelian had agreed to stay with him. He shared Osidian’s anxiety. Now the dragons were fully armed, he did not want them out of his sight. Lit by the torches attached to the piers, the bellies and legs of the monsters formed a continuous portico that could have been the edge of the Isle of Flies. Carnelian shuddered. He gazed up at one of the monsters. Though its upper horns were now bound to its tower with a hawser, its lower horns were still tethered to the cothon floor. The sickly pale tower with its pipes, chimneys, mast and rigging seemed a sinister ship in a fog. For some reason he was recalling the fear Ebeny had felt on that night, long ago in the Plain of Thrones, when she had been chosen from the flesh tithe.
Carnelian awoke on Heart-of-Thunder’s pier. He and Osidian had slept there so that they could be free of their masks. Dawn was running blood down the mast of the monster’s tower. Osidian was gone. Carnelian put his mask on and rose to face the day.
He found Osidian down on the cothon cobbles talking to Morunasa. Osidian was instructing the Oracle on how he and the Marula were to seed the fortress with naphtha sacs. Listening, Carnelian was struck by how thoroughly Osidian was planning his act of sabotage. He could not keep silent once Morunasa had gone. ‘Is it necessary to destroy this place so utterly?’
Osidian’s mask turned its imperious glance on him. ‘This fortress must provide no succour to my Lord Aurum.’
‘Is it not rather that you wish to send a message to the Wise?’
‘My Lord, you will take your grand-cohort out immediately.’ Osidian indicated the dozens of lesser huimur chained one to the other, each bearing a fully laden render frame. ‘Take our supplies with you to safeguard them. When you reach open ground, deploy your huimur to cover my exit from the city. Do you understand?’
Carnelian frowned behind his mask, angry at Osidian’s tone. ‘No news of Aurum?’
Osidian made a gesture of negation, then indicated the brightening sky. ‘The smoke we have been releasing will be visible from a great distance.’
‘As far as Osrakum,’ Carnelian said, knowing it must be clearly visible to the nearest watch-towers.
Indeed, signed Osidian.
‘And while I am screening the city, you will be here incinerating this place?’
‘I shall do nothing myself.’
Carnelian could hear the smile in Osidian’s voice. ‘You will make the Lesser Chosen commanders do it so as to fully implicate them.’
‘There are more ways to bind others to one’s cause than love.’
Carnelian would not allow himself to be stung by Osidian’s bitterness. ‘Which huimur is to be mine?’
Osidian made a summoning gesture and two legionaries rose from among the rest. ‘These are your Righthand and Lefthand. They will guide you to your command, my Lord.’
‘Until later then.’ Carnelian indicated to his officers that they should lead and he set off with them across the cothon floor.
As he approached the dragon Carnelian judged that, if it was less massive than Heart-of-Thunder, it could not be by much. Gazing up between the swelling arches of its eye-ridges, he found the scar glyphs of its name: Earth-is-Strong.
Carnelian turned to his Lefthand. ‘Have you ridden him long?’
‘She, Master,’ the man said, then shrank away at his presumption.
‘You were right to correct me, legionary,’ Carnelian said, gazing back at the dragon. He had not thought they could be female.
‘Nine years,’ the man was saying when Carnelian’s chuckle interrupted him. He was amused to find he was detecting feminine curves in the monster’s horns, her beak, the sweep of her crest. Her lower right horn was just a stump, so she really only had three.
Carnelian became aware of the legionaries’ confusion. ‘Come, let’s take her out.’
He followed them to the rear of a pier, where they opened a door for him. He dismissed them and began to climb the stair alone. No doubt its form was intended to remind a commander of the Law. He used its spiralling path to compose his mind. He must be careful how he managed those under his command. When he reached the summit, he saw before him the bone pyramid of her tower upon her massive back. He could not help feeling a stab of elation that she was his.