An army marched through the southern gates, each a twenty-foot behemoth of wood reinforced with bronze in a constellation of stars; a grand procession of fluttering banners and field-repaired armour. Soldiers marched in neat formations, locked in place around their two hundred prisoners. The constant rattle of chainmail and rhythmic thud of boots upon the flagstones disturbed the morning quiet and sent songbirds scattering away from the trees that lined the streets.

  They had entered through the Crown District, known to some as the Guild District. It was one of three districts in the city, each divided from the other by rivers; it sat to the south-west and, as its nickname suggested, was dominated by the merchant-caste guilds. Craftsmen’s shops, guild halls, merchant stalls and even well-respected schools huddled around the numerous souk markets adorning the streets and squares that formed the largest district in the city. Mavan knew it was here that the central square, and the court of Nerkai, could be found atop the city’s geographical heart.

  However, aside from this cacophonous procession, the streets were almost abandoned. No cheering crowd welcomed them home. No friends, lovers or clutch-mates watched with hawk eyes for the one they recognised. No hatchlings gaped in awe at this expression of order, discipline and power.

  In fact, the only people Mavan saw were Nerkai’s bakers preparing for the inevitable morning rush as they passed along the main east-west thoroughfare and on through arched squares, where blacksmith’s apprentices worked the forges to readiness.

  Mavan marched, as befitted his station, at the forefront of the prisoner column. His twin praetorians remained mere inches from his shoulders, having closed back in the moment they had passed between the gates, moving in perfect lockstep with one another.

  Though they had not said a word, they had begun to relax during the long march, even warming somewhat to their infinitely more vocal counterparts in Daiss and Cleonar. Passing through the gates and into the city proper had brought all their paranoia and instinct back to the fore in an instant, and their clawed fingers were curled tightly around their blades.

  They huddled around him, ready to draw their blades at a moment’s notice, as though they burned with a singular need to single-handedly butcher their master a path to freedom.

  And If I asked them, they may just succeed, Mavan thought, though he had no intention of giving the twins what they so sorely desired.

  He spent much of his time in this lengthy procession admiring the city’s lavish sandstone architecture. Street after street of grand homes and broad manses lined the way, flat-roofed to allow their occupants to soak in the sun’s warmth. The ornate halls of the city’s guilds rose into the sky, engaged in a battle of opulence with their neighbours.

  “Awfully quiet morning,” he muttered, breaking the silence that had fallen the moment they entered the city. He’d moved up the column by this point, sliding in amongst Aiur’s cadre of command staff.

  “It’s always like this of late,” Aiur replied, after letting Mavan’s words hang long enough to make his reluctance to engage with him clear.

  Mavan let his gaze wander, looking out for their destination. The architecture was pleasant but unfamiliar. It had been too long since he’d been in Nerkai, he thought.

  The city had grown so much in his absence that the only building visible in the skyline outside his immediate surroundings, was the immense pyramid that was the city’s main temple dedicated to Aten. Its smooth, featureless face soared high into the sky ahead of them, its gold-encased tip shining brilliantly.

  “Some might consider this a lack of loyalty to house and home…On the rare occasion an army returns to Amexal, there is always a celebration, the streets teeming with people.” Mavan commented absent-mindedly.

  Daiss looked away, feigning interest in one of the bakeries they were passing, and Cleonar made a low, rumbling sound that was doubtless accompanied by a scowl. “I think you know full well why,” Aiur growled, barely sparing Mavan a glance as he increased his pace.

  “I don’t actually. Perhaps, after so many ‘victorious’ campaigns of late, the people grow weary of it, and cannot afford the extravagance,” Mavan commented. “That would be understandable, expected, even. But it could just as easily be embarrassment, disdain, and a waning love for the Archon who rules them.” Mavan continued, closing the distance Aiur had created between them “You have, however, already given me the answer.”

  Aiur sighed deeply. His voice suddenly became low and tired as if he carried an immense weight on his shoulders. “And yet, everyone blames me. Again, and again, and again…”

  Mavan straightened his back, and gestured toward the marching army at their backs. “You are the instrument that brings him these countless victories, you are the reason he is so powerful. You, and you alone.”

  Aiur turned to look at Mavan, his eyes narrowed into accusatory slits. “You truly believe so?”

  Mavan shrugged almost nonchalantly. “He succeeds in your shadow, not the other way around. Stepping out will hurt him, not you.”

  “If I abandoned my oaths, Ra’ven would simply find another Consul with a basic level of competency, likely a far less humane one at that! I keep casualties low with my continued loyalty, lest he find another ‘young protégé’.”

  Mavan blanched. Aiur’s eyes gave away the likely existence of a list of people being groomed to replace him if he ever stepped out of line. “You truly think so lowly of yourself? An amateur at the art of war? Ra’ven’s puppet dancing to his macabre tune? Next thing I know, you’ll be proclaiming incompetence with a blade! Just because I was without my steed does not mean you have not achieved, have not improved.” He paused, taking a long breath and lowering his voice. “You diminish yourself needlessly. It is your propensity for merciful warfare that has kept the knives from Ra’ven’s back for so long.”

  “You have a point to make, thank you for making that clear. I ask that you wait until your audience is over,” Aiur growled.

  Mavan nodded, and gave a brief smile. “I shall wait, out of respect if nothing else. We must simply hope I am not clapped in irons and thrown into a cell.”

  Aiur gave him a strange look. He glanced up at the two praetorians, who stared directly back at him, and decided to say nothing.

  ***

  It took a further half hour of marching and a northerly turn at a grand crossroads to reach the city centre where the court lay.

  It was an impressive sight; it sat at the northern zenith of the largest square in the city magnificent in its opulence. The flagstones of the street had been replaced with a colossal twelve-pointed star, the holiest symbol of Aten. The star was rendered in polished bronze and surrounded by carved marble, each of its metallic points carefully engraved with gentle script, noting distances as trivial as a street, and as magnificent as five hundred miles.

  The edges of the square were lined with stores selling goods befitting royalty: three tailors, each from rival guilds, two bakeries that from the smell were preparing fine cakes and sugared treats and two bookstores with windows crowded full of tomes both mundane and magical. There was even a blacksmiths workshop, lurking at the southern edge next to a trinket shop whose contents were concealed behind tinted glass

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  The court proper, sat upon a raised foundation of stone with a wide marble staircase leading up to the entrance. The stairs were lined on each side with statues of men and women from generations ago, the finer details of their features eroded away by the sands of time. The main building was immense in its proportions, taller and broader than any other structure in the square. It was only overshadowed by the pyramid of Aten directly to the east, sitting majestically atop the nexus where the Mossul river split into the A’at and Ahbek.

  From the front the court was a stern, austere building carved from the best desert stone with a grand colonnade holding up the overhanging greenery of its roof gardens, and doors so large a dragon could likely squeeze between them. It exuded palatial wealth, stature and power, but Mavan knew this place well enough to not be intimidated by this brooding facade.

  “So, how long do you think we’ll be waiting? It’s not exactly bustling,” Mavan asked, breaking the silence that had fallen between the two Consuls.

  “Waiting?” Aiur replied. “I doubt we’ll be waiting at all. He’ll have been here at the crack of dawn every day since the runner delivered the news of our victory.” He sighed. “Which is why, despite us taking the fastest route home, suffering minimal casualties and bringing half a cohort’s worth of men and women considering his amnesty, he will not be in a good mood.”

  “Ah,” was all Mavan could say, swallowing audibly. “And what might put him in a good mood?”

  “Well, if you were to submit to his every demand without questioning him in the slightest, that would make him happy.”

  “Perhaps something that would put him in a good mood without crippling me or my house?”

  Aiur looked across the square as though it might spark off a recollection of some half-remembered event in his mind. Finding no such inspiration, he came to a sharp conclusion. “No.”

  Mavan sighed, beginning to ascend the stairs with praetorians in tow. Aiur remained behind, albeit briefly, to set the process in motion of the prisoners accepting a place in the Zerkash cohorts or returning home with a merchant’s caravan. The column trudged off together to the numerous Zerkash barrack houses clustered against the southern and western walls.

  The grand doors were flanked by Spatharii temple guards, marking it as a place of holy peace. Each stood silently in full scale armour, clutching bladed polearms, as upright and still as the statues that watched over them.

  They went without helmets, and the pair on duty this day were a slim-faced blue-scale clearly not far beyond their twentieth summer, and a hard-jawed yellow-scale that was at least double that age. Both had eyes of a deep green, framed with slices of the same hue along the ridge of their eyebrows to mark their caste.

  Mavan passed through the doors, feeling their hard stares upon him, and slipped into the main hall.

  The main hall was the central meeting space for all the nobles and their houses in the region. It was here where public audiences were held and nobles deliberated over treaties, agreements and land rights. All while the houseless, those young fresh-faced nobles straight from the academies, advertised their skills and potential to prospective houses. It was where the guilds bartered, offering skills and loyalty in exchange for coin, trade contracts, and the promise of profit.

  Contrary to the quiet of the square, the hall was almost full. Men and women of every age and shade met amongst the booths, tables, chairs and divans, the air filled with their chatter.

  Mavan let loose a contented sigh at the familiar atmosphere. Every major city he knew of had a courthouse like this in some shape or form. It was, rather pleasantly, exactly as he hoped it might be. The air was filled with amicable discussion, vocal debate, and the wonderful smells of hot, spiced food and copious drink. Small groups clustered around low tables, planning and scheming, and brown-eyed servants darted amongst them with refreshments, intermingling with garishly-robed diplomats bustling back and forth.

  Hanging from the vaulted ceilings were a series of banners, each above the entrance to a noble house’s inner sanctum. Six such banners fluttered gently in the breeze from the open doors. The silver tower of house Zerkash, and five more Mavan did not recognise; an unwinding spiral with a scorpion’s barb, a shattered horseshoe, a farmer’s crook, a lotus flower and a heron. Minor houses of the region, Mavan decided.

  He strode towards the entranceway beneath the Zerkash banner, shoulders back and head held high. Ignoring the clatter of Aiur, Daiss and Cleonar following in his wake, he shoved the doors wide open and passed through a long corridor, lined with heavy doors of imported oak. The spoils of countless wars lurked between carved stone archways; elegant weapons, battle standards, and suits of armour with the punctures and tears that killed their bearer left for all to see.

  At the end of this winding maze of corridors, offices, staircases and minor audience chambers, lay the inner sanctum. The doors were protected by chainmail-veiled guards, draped in tabards in the purple and red of house Zerkash. At his approach, they snapped to attention, blocking the doors until Aiur marched up and waved them away.

  The inner sanctum was a close, intimate space. A low, domed ceiling met the sloping walls, where light filtered in through stained glass windows. The entire space was dominated by a huge stone table carved into an inordinately detailed map of the entire continent of Kailai, and the titular desert that forms its heart. Eight major cities, at least twenty large towns, and innumerable villages and hamlets scattered across the sand and stone, each with a tiny simulacrum of a flag hanging static above it.

  Sat in a large, high-backed chair, leaning over the vast map, was a man.

  He was draped in a tight fitted, formal jacket of purple silk edged with crimson thread. It was simple, clean, and stately, a stark contrast to the rest of him.

  He had the atypical crimson eyes of a noble and scales of praetorian purple, though very few were visible thanks to the close cut and tight fit of his clothes. His face had perhaps once been a stern, dignified thing. Now it was a mess of old scars, sutured tears and missing scales, revealing the pink flesh beneath. Every expression on his face was twisted into little more than a rictus snarl.

  He rose to his feet, stepping forward with a noticeable limp in the left leg; the priesthood’s healing arts had grown it back warped and malformed. It was partially disguised by abnormally tall leather riding boots which transformed the natural tap of clawed feet into a harsh snap with every step.

  “My lord Ra’ven,” Aiur said with a bow. “This is- “

  Ra’ven raised a hand, and began to speak in an unpleasant rattling voice. “I know full well who this is.” He took a slow, sucking breath and placed one hand on the table before him. “I wish to know why he is not in irons.”

  Mavan’s praetorians immediately drew their blades and took up wide stances, putting themselves between Ra’ven and their charge.

  Aiur cleared his throat and smiled. “I believe that is why, my lord.”

  A hideous smile spread across Ra’ven’s face. “You are in no position to make demands.”

  Mavan bowed. “Of course, but my position allows negotiation. You have demands yes, but we shall temper them to be…palatable.”

  Ra’ven made a disconcerting sound that couldn’t quite be called laughter. “You have some backbone at least.” He looked past the assembled group to the doors behind them, and raised his voice. “Ezerkal!”

  An awkward quiet descended while they waited. The slow grind of metal-on-metal as the twins shifted posture was slowly overtaken by the rhythmic tapping of approaching footsteps. With a respectful yet self-satisfied smile, and draped in his flowing robes of office, Ezerkal elegantly strode into the room.

  He bowed extravagantly, lowering and raising himself with a flourish of his hands. Ra’ven simply grunted and motioned to Mavan. “We have acquired ourselves an…ambassador from house Krie. Remind me of their holdings outside Amexal. I shall set my terms, and you will then create a peace treaty that our esteemed ‘guest’ may take back to his master.”

  Ezerkal cocked his head to one side, wetting his lips before he spoke. “Despite their slim ruling majority holdings in the city of Amexal, and recent financial troubles, house Krie still owns thirty-four percent of the farms in the seaward lowlands on the western side of the Ifrit pass. Their stake in the spice trade in the region recently dropped to eleven percent.” He took a small breath, raising a hand to his chin.

  Mavan was impressed that the research was spot-on. He had heard rumours of Ra’ven’s new diplomat, but to see him in action was inspiring.

  “They have fourteen major mines of mundane materials in the lower slopes of the Jiitai mountains and double that in smaller pits in the surrounding land, primarily iron, salt, copper and tin.” He lowered his hand, moving it behind his back. “And finally, owing to a peculiar financial…predicament, their stake in the Drakkar nesting grounds around the city has fallen to zero in an effort to balance their accounts.”

  Ezerkal took another breath, opening his mouth to speak again when Ra’ven interrupted. “I want the mines. Find out how many Krie is willing to give up, and then force them to offer more.” He turned to Ezerkal, looking at him for the first time since he entered the room “Now get out.”