'It is not too late, Ferro. You do not need to die here. I brought you. I can still take you away. I go where I please, and I take who I please with me. If you stop killing now, who knows? Perhaps God will still find a place in heaven for you.'

Ferro was becoming very tired of Yulwei's preaching. She and Bayaz might not have trusted each other a finger's breadth, but they understood each other. Yulwei understood nothing.

'"Heaven"?' she sneered as she turned away from him. 'Perhaps hell suits me better, did you think of that?'

She hunched up her shoulders as footsteps echoed down the hallway outside. She felt Bayaz' anger even before the door was flung open and the old bald pink stormed into the room.

'That little bastard! After all that I have given him, how does he repay me?' Quai and Sulfur slunk through the doorway behind him like a pair of dogs creeping after their master. 'He defies me before the Closed Council! He tells me to mind my business! Me! How would that cringing dunce know what is my business and what is not?'

'Trouble with King Luthar the Magnificent?' grunted Ferro.

The Magus narrowed his eyes at her. 'A year ago there was no emptier head in the whole Circle of the World. Stick a crown on him and have a crowd of old liars tongue his arse for a few weeks and the little shit thinks he's Stolicus!'

Ferro shrugged. Luthar had never lacked a high opinion of himself, king or not. 'You should be more careful who you stick crowns on.'

'That's the trouble with crowns, they have to go on someone. All you can do is drop them in a crowd and hope for the best.' Bayaz scowled over at Yulwei. 'What of you brother? Have you been walking outside the walls?'

'I have.'

'And what have you seen?'

'Death. Much of that. The Emperor's soldiers flood into the western districts of Adua, his ships choke the bay. Every day more troops come up the road from the south, and tighten the Gurkish grip on the city.'

'That much I can learn from those halfwits on the Closed Council. What of Mamun and his Hundred Words?'