One of her trusted lieutenants stood at the last portal. As Spax approached, the lieutenant shook his head. ‘Can it not wait, Warchief?’

‘No, Gaedis. Why, is she bathing?’

‘If she is, the water’s long since boiled away.’

What did that iron woman say to Abrastal? ‘Brave enough to announce me, Gaedis?’

‘It’s not bravery that makes me say yes, Warchief, but then stupidity’s gotten me this far and I’m a conservative man.’

‘The offer still stands,’ Spax said.

‘I doubt my Queen would take kindly to one of her court lieutenants shucking all this to wear turtle shells and dance naked under the moon.’

Spax smiled. ‘Saw that, did you?’

Gaedis nodded.

‘It was a show, you understand. Don’t you?’

‘Warchief?’

‘The Queen’s clutch of scholars—we made something up to give them something to write about and then ponder its meaning for the rest of their dull, useless lives. Spirits below, a man’s grapes get tiny in the cold night—why’d you think we kept jumping over the fire?’

After a moment’s gimlet regard, Gaedis turned and slipped through the drapery.

Spax hummed softly to himself.

Gaedis’s muffled voice invited him to enter the Royal Presence. Naked in the bowl? wondered Spax. Bah, the gods are never so kind.

She stood in her underquilting, armour discarded, her long hair still tousled from the ride. The quilting was tight against her curves. ‘If eyes were paint,’ Abrastal said, ‘I’d be dripping right now. Barbaric bastard. What’s so important you’d dare my ill humour?’

‘Just this, Highness,’ Spax replied. ‘She struck sparks from you and I want to know how, and why.’

‘Ah, you’re curious, then.’

‘That’s it, Firehair.’

‘If it wasn’t that your rabid warriors might complain, I’d see you strangled with your own entrails and perhaps—just perhaps—that would satisfy my desire in this moment. Arrogance is a strange thing, Spax. It amuses when it cannot reach, then stings to rage when it can. What in the Errant’s empty skull convinced you that I’d yield to your shit-fouled curiosity?’

Spax glanced across at Gaedis, saw the man’s face and the expression that seemed carved from stone. Coward. ‘Highness, I am Warchief of the Gilk. Each day I am under siege from the clan leaders, not to mention the bolder of the young warriors—who’d wage war on the wind if they had any chance of winning. They don’t complain of the coin, Highness. But they want a fight.’

‘Bolkando is at peace,’ Abrastal replied. ‘At least, it was when you were first hired, and now it is so again. If it was war you wanted, Spax, you should have stayed with the other White Faces, since they went and jumped with both feet on to a hornet’s nest.’ She faced him and he saw all the places he could put his hands, given the chance. Her expression darkened. ‘You are Warchief, as you say. A proud title, one with responsibility, one assumes. You are under siege, Spax? Deal with it.’