Osidian glowered. ‘Blood and iron, what is going on?’
‘Fern?’ Carnelian almost barked at him.
As Osidian regarded him, Carnelian saw in his face that old familiar pain. ‘He is safe enough, Carnelian. I left him commanding Heart-of-Thunder in my place.’ He lifted his arms to show the dirty Leper shroud. ‘While I came here in his.’
Carnelian found this news alarming. ‘Do the other commanders know you have left?’
Osidian shrugged. ‘If things go badly they might find out.’
Carnelian saw how precarious things were, but then what had he expected when he had sent his message to Osidian?
‘Tell me what has happened. Why am I lying here?’
Carnelian told him about the drugged smoke; the destruction of the ammonites; Legions’ plot against them.
‘You are sure it is Legions himself?’
Carnelian described the finial on his domain staff and Osidian’s face went pale, his eyes blinded by thought. He shook his head in wonder. ‘Only this morning I chose to reveal myself to the Wise by heliograph. I was awaiting their reply when Fern came with your message.’ He shook his head again. ‘It was hard to believe.’
‘But still you came.’
Osidian focused on Carnelian. ‘So it is to you, once again, that I owe my salvation.’
Carnelian spoke quickly to quench the light of love that was stirring in Osidian’s eyes. ‘The Grand Sapient tried to buy me. Had he promised to spare the barbarians, I would have given you to him.’
Sadness returned to Osidian’s face. He lowered his gaze. ‘He would never promise you that. He could not.’ He looked up. ‘So you continue to fight at my side?’
‘As you said, did I not just save you from falling into his power?’
‘Don’t expect me to make war, Carnelian, without your precious barbarians suffering casualties.’
‘As long as you don’t deliberately cause them to be hurt.’
Osidian held Carnelian’s gaze. ‘We understand each other?’
Carnelian gave him a nod. ‘Release the Lepers from their agreement.’
Osidian made a gesture of negation. ‘I cannot. We need them.’
Carnelian saw there was no moving him. He had not expected to, but had had to try.
‘What did you tell him?’ Osidian said.
Carnelian related what he could remember of his conversation with Legions.
‘Nothing more?’
‘I wasn’t feeling very chatty.’
Osidian seemed blind again. Carnelian watched the muscles working in his jaw as he rehearsed what he would say to the Grand Sapient.
The Grand Sapient was in the vault. In the lamplight he appeared to Carnelian exactly as he had before. Displayed upright in his capsule, seemingly no more alive than a mummy, his homunculus between his legs. As Osidian unmasked Carnelian did the same. Revealed, Osidian’s rapt expression was difficult to read. Wonder tinged with awe, but there was something else. Carnelian nursed an emerging impression, then realized, with shock, what it must be. Love.
‘It is you, Legions,’ said Osidian.
The homunculus murmured behind its blinding mask. Legions’ fingers worked its neck and throat. ‘It is, Celestial.’
‘I feared we would never meet again, my Lord.’
‘We shared your fear.’
Osidian gazed up at the Grand Sapient. ‘You searched for me with your childgatherers, but I made sure to remain well hidden, never guessing you would send a legion. That I had not imagined possible.’
‘We have often had to transcend the possible.’
‘But to send the Lord Aurum, surely that was a terrible risk?’
They waited for Legions to take the sounds from the homunculus’ throat.
‘To use one of the Lesser Chosen would have been no less a risk, Celestial. Besides, we had used him before. He was an instrument who came easily to hand.’
Carnelian wondered if he meant that it was the Wise who had been behind sending Aurum to fetch his father from exile.
‘My brother knows nothing of this?’ Osidian said.
‘Nothing.’
‘That you have come yourself, my Lord, suggests your mind was primary in this affair. It suggests also the Wise are desperate.’
‘It was Suth who kept from us the knowledge of your disappearance until it was too late. Our trust in him led us into error and left us exposed to your mother.’
Though the voice of the homunculus was free from emotion, Carnelian sensed the menace in Legions’ words. So it was not only Ykoriana who had been his father’s enemy. Carnelian would have challenged the Grand Sapient, but Osidian, sensing this, stayed him by touching his arm. As the homunculus continued, Osidian gave Carnelian a look of reassurance.
‘She forced us to gift the City at the Gates to the Brotherhood of the Wheel.’
‘She dared parade her guilt before you thus?’
Once he had understood that, Legions turned his eyepits on Carnelian. ‘Without evidence, we could not touch her. Suth’s sin had made her invulnerable. Though that brought him no gratitude from her.’
Carnelian would no longer be restrained. ‘So you aided her against him?’
‘It was she who had the Clave impeach him. We merely did not raise a finger to defend him.’
‘Aurum was as much her enemy,’ said Osidian.
‘She commuted his deposal to exile, Celestial.’
‘Why, my Lord?’
‘Our thought combined has not yet been able to deduce a reason.’
‘My mother is given neither to whim nor mercy.’
‘Some factor is missing from our computations.’
Osidian frowned at this. Either he was disturbed by this failing of the Wise, or else he sensed the Grand Sapient was keeping something from him. ‘And how did you persuade Aurum to do your bidding?’
‘It has been our experience’ – the eyepits glanced towards Carnelian again – ‘that those of the Great will do almost anything to regain entrance to Osrakum.’
Osidian regarded Legions with a fixed concentration. ‘It seems, my Lord, we have the same enemies, the same goals.’
Once the homunculus had echoed these words, they waited, but Legions’ fingers remained so still that the homunculus could have been wearing a collar carved from alabaster.
Osidian looked up at Legions, uncertain. ‘Join with me, my Lord, give me back the Masks. Once I am They, I will rid you of my mother. .. and make you other concessions besides…’
The alabaster fingers came alive. ‘Surely, child, you know that what you ask is beyond our power to grant. You have been too long in the wilderness, too long free. Even I am a slave to the Law-that-must-be-obeyed and what you ask you must surely know the Law forbids.’
‘But now that your scheme to take me captive has failed you cannot hope to keep your plotting concealed from her and, once she and Osrakum know of that, the power the Wise have to counter hers will be seriously diminished.’
‘I am curious: what caused my scheme to fail?’
‘Carnelian…’ Osidian turned, puzzled, to Carnelian. ‘How did you know…?’
Carnelian shrugged. ‘I was warned of it in a dream.’
Osidian looked incredulous. ‘A dream?’
‘A dream?’ echoed the homunculus.
Carnelian and Osidian turned back to the Grand Sapient. ‘Have there been other dreams of warning, Suth Carnelian?’
Carnelian felt uneasy at having become the object of the Grand Sapient’s interest. His thought became tangled as he tried to work out what to say. In the end it seemed easier to simply state the truth. ‘There have been others.’
‘What does it matter? It did fail!’ cried Osidian. ‘And without me you are exposed to my mother.’
The Grand Sapient seemed to have withered back to a corpse. Carnelian’s unease grew. He turned to Osidian for help, but was shaken by how young he looked, how helpless. Osidian’s face sagged into anguish. ‘It was I, not my brother, who was elected to wear the Masks. Surely my mother’s plot cannot be allowed to overturn the expressed will of the Chosen?’
As the homunculus echoed Osidian’s words, Carnelian regarded Osidian with increasing horror. After everything he had done, after all his claims, he appeared now to be merely a child demanding fairness.