He swept his spear over the line of greenlanders. ‘You wear chains because my warriors do not believe you care. They believe you will not even fight to save yourselves, so they mean to stake you in the path of the alagai.’ He pointed back to the wall of the inner city. ‘But it is not just our women and children behind those walls! I have offered my protection to all who cannot fight, even your greenland women and children. They are crowded and cramped, but so long as we hold the walls, they are safe.’

He could sense a change in the men’s hearts, and grasped for it, holding aloft his spear and drawing on its power to make it shine bright with magic. ‘I will go into the night to fight for your people! I ask the same of you, but if you do not have the heart, you are no use to me this night.’

He pointed the spear at the centre of the line, its light flaring even brighter, and men pressed to either side in fear, opening a length of chain between them. Jardir drew a ward with the spear’s tip, and a bolt of white energy leapt from the weapon, shattering the chain.

‘Stand or flee,’ he shouted, ‘but remember you are men, and not dogs!’

The fear and doubt in the hearts of the men turned to awe, and many of them fell to their knees. Shanjat, astride his black charger next to Jardir, thrust his spear into the air. ‘Deliverer!’

The other Sharum took up the chant, followed by the kneeling chin, and then, a moment later, the rest of them. They thrust their spears skyward with every call, and their voices carried far into the night.

‘Those are the voices of men!’ Jardir boomed. ‘The servants of Nie will hear you, and quail in fear!’ He dropped back into his saddle, kicking off for the wall, followed by the Spears of the Deliverer and hundreds of roaring chin.

‘Everam curse me,’ Qeran muttered from atop the compound wall as he watched the Sharum march. ‘Waning is upon us, and here I stand, useless.’

‘Nonsense,’ Abban said. ‘The Deliverer needs his forges and glasseries guarded, that he may continue to arm his men after Waning. There may yet be fighting here.’

Qeran shook his head. ‘You have done well in hiding yourself, khaffit. There is no tactical advantage to this place, no reason for the alagai to test your walls. And the walls,’ he stamped his spear on the rampart, ‘are stronger than those of the inner city. The Deliverer’s … craftsmen are safe.’ He made the title seem a foul taste he could not scrape from his tongue.

‘You said yourself the men are not ready,’ Abban said, ‘nor yourself. You have barely had your new leg a fortnight.’

‘I said the men were not yet at their full strength,’ Qeran said, ‘nor me. But my hundred and I are still more fit than nine-tenths of the warriors out there.’

‘Your hundred?’ Abban asked.

Qeran looked at him, and Abban remembered how brutally the man had treated him in sharaj. He waited patiently, and savoured the slight nod Qeran gave him. ‘Abban’s hundred.’

Abban nodded, turning his gaze back to look out from the walls one last time before leaving the drillmaster to command as he limped back to the safety of the underpalace growing beneath the squat building in the centre of his compound.

Inevera found Asome and Asukaji in their private chambers in Ahmann’s underpalace. The two were playing with Asome’s infant son, Kaji.

‘What is it now, Mother?’ Asome glared at her as she entered, Ashia at her back. ‘Has not humiliation enough been heaped upon me?’

Inevera looked sadly at her son.

– The only thing that exceeds his potential is his ambition – the dice had said when she cast them eighteen years ago, bathed in his birthing blood. It told her he would be powerful, but spoke a warning as well.

‘Your wife and I will walk the walls during the battle, my son,’ she said. ‘I invite you to come with us.’

Asome looked at her as if sensing a trap. ‘Hasn’t Father ordered his wives and the dama’ting into the underpalace as well?’

Inevera shrugged. ‘Perhaps, but who will dare stop us?’

‘I might,’ Asome said.

Inevera nodded. ‘Or you might follow me … for my own safety. Surely your father would forgive you that.’

Asome turned to Asukaji. ‘Just you, my son,’ Inevera said.

The two men looked back at her, mistrust in their eyes once more.

‘Ahmann has not dissolved your marriage, Asome. At least, not yet. I would walk with my son and daughter-in-law at my side as Alagai Ka walks the night.’ She looked to Asukaji and infant Kaji. ‘Surely while we are gone, my nephew will protect my grandson as if he were his own.’

Asome darkened a bit at that, but Asukaji laid a hand on his arm. ‘It is all right, cousin. Go.’ His voice dropped to a whisper, but Inevera, her senses sharpened by magic, heard him. ‘I will keep our son until your return.’ He kissed Asome with such tenderness that Inevera’s heart ached for them both, but Ashia’s shifting behind her was a reminder that there was a third side in the triangle.

She looked to her grandson. And poor Kaji in the middle.

They walked in silence to the wall of the inner city. Inevera wore opaque robes of white silk, looking much like her dama’ting robes of old, but she wore her hood back, and her veil was gossamer. The warded gold coins were warm at her forehead, and she wore considerable jewellery, not all of it decorative. Her robes shimmered with wards of unsight stitched in electrum thread. The wards were Mistress Leesha’s, stolen from Ahmann’s Cloak of Unsight, but even knowing the Skull Throne would hold the alagai from the wall, she could not deny the comfort they gave her in the naked night.

Take her power and make it your own, Manvah had said, and Inevera silently thanked her mother once more for the lesson. She would have been a fool to turn away such magics simply because she despised the source.

But even without the protections of her robes and the Skull Throne, Inevera felt safe so long as Ashia was at her side. Enkido had told Inevera he could not be prouder of the girl’s fighting skill if she had been his own daughter.

Born to sharusahk, his nimble hands had said.

Ashia had a short, stabbing spear over her right shoulder, along with a small quiver of arrows. In her left hand, the same arm where she strapped her round shield, she gripped a short bow. The weapons were banded with warded gold and strips of hora. The armour beneath her black robes was indestructible warded glass, moulded to accent her feminine figure rather than mask it. Asome’s expression was unreadable as he regarded his wife.

The Mehnding Sharum guarding the gatehouse began buzzing among themselves as the trio approached. A moment later a kai’Sharum appeared, blocking their path with a deep bow. ‘Apologies, Damajah, but …’

Asome was moving before the man could straighten, taking his chin firmly in hand as he threw. There was an audible snap, and the man hit the ground, dead. ‘Does anyone else wish to hinder the Damajah?’

The remaining Sharum fell to their knees, pressing foreheads to the cobbled street. After a moment, a red-veiled drillmaster rose with a bow and escorted them up to the wall.

The Mehnding tribe was third largest of the twelve tribes of Krasia, due in no small part to the mastery of war engines and ranged weapons that kept them from the close combat other Sharum engaged in. They were more engineers and marksmen than warriors, but they manned the walls of the inner and outer city with the steel-eyed vigilance of trained killers.