He had been riding for eleven days, up from the imperial capital, with messages and a mandate for power. A barbarian would have taken a dozen retainers and a train. But it was already raining in the South; the bridges and the tracks were all washed out, and he had been glad to leave his regiment to underlings and ride on alone. Nothing ever gave him as much pleasure as riding, the horse staggering off-balance and half mad with fatigue. He stripped the glove from his hand and stroked the animal lovingly, and looked out over the city. It belonged to him. He was free.

His other hand was just a steel claw; he cursed and shook it, but in fact he remembered the city only vaguely. It had been a long time since he had seen it, and then it was only through eyes darkened by ignorance and hate, through the bars of his cage as they dragged him through the streets after the cannibal war, the barbarians spitting and shouting. He barely remembered because as always, the past was to the present as the rider to the horse, unimpressive and mean, though it cut with the whip, kicked with the spur.

A group of monks and soldiers gathered near the gate, and he watched them with a mixture of impatience and delight. He himself bore the message of his own arrival. They gestured and talked among themselves, frightened by the giant stranger on the giant horse. Down below, he had jumped the wall. Here, he watched their faces widen and contort as he brought his horse back down the slope, and when he reached the flat he spurred it to a gallop again. The soldiers scattered, reaching for their pistols, though one stood firm, an old sergeant at the middle of the gate. A brave man, thought the biter. He would be rewarded for his bravery. But in the meantime, the biter lashed him in the face with his whip as he galloped through the gate into the first of ninety courtyards, where the guard was turned out to greet him.

They stood around him in a circle, awaiting the order to fire. He reined his horse so sharply that it almost collapsed, then sat still and glowered at them while they stared open-mouthed along their rifle barrels.

The sergeant came in, limping, with the blood running from his cheek, but before he could give the order, the biter stripped his white scarf back from his collar to show the crimson star, the crimson dog’s head at his throat. He dismounted stiffly, and as the sergeant came up, tossed him the reins. “My name is Aspe,”

he announced in his harsh voice. “I have orders for the bishop.”

* * *

The elevator ride to the heretics section took twenty minutes. The captain had brought a book, so Thanakar sat silent on a stool, swallowing periodically to release the pressure in his ears. When the doors opened, they were almost at the top of the mountain, near where one of four uncompleted towers broke from its base, up towards the spiderweb cathedral hidden in the clouds.