in the ball and now amused herself with a wooden top decorated with colourful designs that blurred into a mesmerising spiral as she spun it.
“This park was built at my father’s order,” Lian Sha said, causing Vaelin to blink and look away from the spiral. The old man stood with arms crossed as he regarded the placid waters of the pool and the verdant hills beyond. “It was necessary, for it was here that the greatest damage had been inflicted upon the old palace. The savages of the Iron Steppe came before, you see. A coalition of tribes from the eastern plains. Ironically, it later transpired they had been forced to migrate when the Stahlhast expanded into their lands. So they came for ours, leaving a scar of blood and ash across the Venerable Kingdom that reached all the way to this palace.
“They didn’t understand it, this huge camp of stone that never moved. To them it was sickening, abhorrent, so they sought to destroy it. It’s said three thousand courtiers were herded into the complex of temples that once stood here, to have their throats slit, whereupon the savages set the whole place on fire. When my father eventually vanquished the tribes and deposed the dullard who held a throne he didn’t deserve, he found it odd that this ruined part of the palace had since grown rich in grass and flowers. My scholars tell me it’s thanks to the bones of the courtiers. Somehow in their deaths they managed to enrich this soil. So instead of rebuilding the temples, my father ordained that a park be crafted instead. It didn’t endear him to the monks but he was never of a particularly spiritual bent. ‘The monks clutched their beads and beseeched Heaven for deliverance,’ he told me once. ‘But only steel and cunning will be your saviour when the savages are at your door. Remember that when they come again, for they will, my son.’”
Lian Sha paused, silver moustache twitching as his lips formed a smile of fond remembrance. “And so my father is proven once again to have been a very wise man. A war unlike any before is upon this kingdom. The Steel Horde will not stop at our border. The other Merchant Kings delude themselves, imagining the horde will oblige them by destroying a competitor before scurrying back into the Steppe with their spoils. But only a fool thinks the tiger is ever sated. A storm of evil design has come, and to fight it my subjects must believe victory is possible. I have lost an army fighting the Stahlhast, it is true, but by the dawning of the summer months I will have half a million fresh recruits ready to march. The question is, how will they fight?”
“It’s my experience,” Vaelin put in, “that soldiers will fight well if they are well trained and well led.”
“Even if they know the favour of Heaven has been taken from them?” The old man shook his head. “I know the temper of my own people. There have been too many omens of late, too many unseasonal storms, too many sightings of the Harbingers of Heaven.”
“I have heard this phrase before. What exactly are these harbingers?”
“Beings sent by Heaven to warn of impending doom, or so it’s believed. They tend to appear in times of crisis or calamity. For example, a swarm of winged foxes was seen flying over the Qan Li estuary the night before a tidal wave destroyed most of the villages along its banks. In my father’s time a huge bear was witnessed prowling the northern hills shortly before the tribes won their first battle against us.”
“Winged foxes and giant bears.” Vaelin pursed his lips. “I see.”
Lian Sha squinted at him, his eyes betraying a faint glimmer of annoyance. “Is that scorn I hear in your voice? Does the barbarian imagine himself more rational than the people of the Far West? I know a great deal of you and the land you hail from. It is a place where for centuries people have killed each other in the name of ancient scribblings and imagined gods. Do not presume to test my patience with your judgement.”
He turned to Vaelin, his face taking on a masklike immobility that told of a man speaking with utter sincerity. “You think I wish you to fight my war, lead my armies perhaps? What arrogance. I would no more put my soldiers in your hands than place my granddaughter in the