in all-black armour watched the Menin regiments. They were alone in the forest except for their horses, tethered nearby.
‘These tactics are somewhat familiar,’ Koezh commented. ‘Perhaps someone should tell King Emin what happened last time.’
‘I suspect he is fully aware,’ his sister said. ‘No doubt it was part of the attraction.’
‘Ever contemptuous of men of war, dear sister - I thought you had a higher opinion of him than that.’
Zhia turned to look at her brother, but Koezh’s helm was down and she could discern little from the whorled black metal. ‘Genius has its own concerns. Would you wager King Emin has never refought Aryn Bwr’s wars in theory and wondered where he could surpass him?’
‘Perhaps not,’ Koezh admitted. Without taking his eyes off the soldiers ahead, he sat down on the raised root of the oak tree shading them from the afternoon sun. With fingers made clumsy by gauntlets Koezh unfastened the baldric holding his sword on his back and placed the weapon on his lap.
‘The birds are silent,’ he said after a long pause. He looked around at the trees. The forest was unnaturally quiet. ‘Do you think that’s our fault, or the soldiers?’
‘You know the answer,’ Zhia said sharply, ‘so save the banalities for your servants back home.’
‘Really, sister, it’s not like you to get so emotional over a pretty face.’ Koezh leaned forward to look at her face. ‘Do you intend to intervene?’
‘You would prefer me to leave him to his fate?’
Koezh made a noncommittal sound. ‘He was present at Aracnan’s death, a man I have known for a long time.’
‘A man who deceived you over his allegiances,’ Zhia pointed out, ‘and one I doubt you owed a debt of any significance.’
‘It sounds like you do intend to.’ When Zhia didn’t respond Koezh leaned back against the trunk of the oak. ‘I take it back; I have seen this sentimentality of yours before - once, at any rate.’
‘Careful, Koezh,’ Zhia warned, ‘let’s not discuss the past too deeply. Of those left to blame for my curse, you are principal among them.’
‘I do not deny it. I merely sought to remind you that sentimentality in war can only ever lead to hurt. I joined Aryn Bwr out of belief; you followed him out of love.’
Zhia touched her fingers to the Crystal Skull fused to her cuirass. The Skull was flattened to a disc on the metal’s surface, the round plate underneath it etched to show a death’s head when covered by a Crystal Skull. She had never been able to decide whether that was a joke of Aryn Bwr’s, or not. The last king had forged both, and each of the Vukotic suits of armour had a similar plate, but his humour had sometimes been alien and unknowable, even to the young woman who shared his bed for so many years.
‘Saving him does not mean I join a cause,’ she said, and Koezh tasted magic blossom on the air, ‘but nor will I stand by and watch him die.’
Koezh didn’t reply as he watched his sister deftly sculpt a spell. It was far beyond the skill of most mages: a complex, intricate blend of arcane words and shapes that he sensed hovering in the air like a cloud of moths drawn to her flame.
Indeed it does not, he thought as Zhia drew the spell into the body of the Skull, placing one hand over it and crouching to place the other flat on the ground. What will force you to choose, I wonder? Love brought you to ruin during the Great War; is that why you avoided Doranei before the Farlan arrived outside Byora? Do you fear making the same mistakes again, or are we beyond mistakes, just as we are beyond redemption?
CHAPTER 26
Corl went to the window again and peered down at the street below. Sundown had come and gone without remark by those outside, only Corl and his two companions seemed to have noticed. Within their room all was calm, outside reigned chaos more frenzied and desperate than usual. Tirah was draped in the colours of high summer; a haphazard network of ropes linked the rooftops, from which trailed twists of ribbon and cloth - in bright greens and yellows, for the main. In the sky, long furrows of cloud whipped by overhead, swallowing starlight like ravening dragons.
From his narrow window Corl could see effigies of half a dozen Gods, hanging from the ropes and painted on walls. Nartis was present, of course, but this