Jezal swallowed sour spit. He thought about the mismatched defenders he had seen near the western gate, in a square now presumably overrun by Gurkish legions. Ordinary people, who had looked to him with hope and pride. Then he tried to picture what a thousand corpses might look like. He imagined a hundred of them, side by side, in a row. Then ten such rows, one above the other. A thousand. He gnawed at his thumbnail, already down to the painful quick.

'And many more wounded, of course,' added Varuz, in a sudden twist of the knife. 'We are very short of space for them, in fact. Two districts are at least partly occupied by the Gurkish and the enemy are landing incendiaries almost in the heart of the city.' Jezal's tongue sought out the still sore gap in his teeth. He remembered his own pain, out on the endless plain under the merciless sky, the stabs through his face as the cartwheels squeaked and jolted.

'Open the Agriont to the wounded, to the homeless. With the army away there is room to spare. Barracks for thousands, and ample provisions.'

Bayaz was shaking his bald head. 'A risk. We have no way of knowing who we would be letting in. Gurkish agents. Spies of Khalul. Not all of them are what they appear.'

Jezal ground his teeth. 'I am prepared to take the risk. Am I king here, or not?'

'You are,' growled Bayaz, 'and you would be well advised to act like it. This is no time for sentiment. The enemy are closing on Arnault's Wall. In places they might be within two miles of where we stand.'

'Two miles?' murmured Jezal, his eyes flickering nervously towards the west again. Arnault's Wall was a fine grey line through the buildings, looking a terribly frail sort of a barrier from up here, and worryingly close. A sudden fear gripped him. Not the guilty concern he felt for the theoretical people down there in the smoke, but a real and very personal fear for his own life. Like the one he had felt among the stones, when the two warriors advanced on him with murder in mind. Perhaps he had made a mistake not leaving the city when he had the chance. Perhaps it was not too late to—

'I will stand or fall alongside the people of the Union!' he shouted, as angry at his own cowardice as he was at the Magus. 'If they are willing to die for me, then I am willing to die for them!' He turned his shoulder towards Bayaz and quickly looked away. 'Open the Agriont, Marshal Varuz. You can fill the palace with wounded too, if you have to.'