Loveless approached from the direction of the gatehouse, head low and hooded, keeping to the shaded part of the road. She’d slept in the cart for the early part of the morning, and seemed a little restored. In fact, she’d spent almost more time in the cart than out of it in their frenetic cross-country journey to the Serican border, joined by a rotating cast of whoever was struggling most with the brutal pace that Rennic had set: Tarfel, Kosh, and on one occasion, Lemon, although she blamed an underdone breakfast for that episode. Chel was as glad as any of them that their journey’s end was in sight – his legs and feet were almost as sore as his shoulder – but the knowledge that they were hunted kept any thought of relaxation at bay. They knew Corvel’s agents pursued them – several times they’d had to change their path at the last to avoid sure ambushes, and had more than once taken it in turns to haul the cart beside the mule to keep up their pace – but they’d at least skirted direct confrontation in their frantic journey. ‘Wake the prince,’ she said.

A moment later, a bleary Tarfel was beside them, descended from the wagon, dust-streaked and blinking. Momentary confusion was swiftly replaced with habitual anxiety. ‘Can we pass through? Our enemies are on our heels!’

‘They’ll see you. You’d better impress them.’

‘What are all these people waiting for? Why do they shamble like corpses?’ Tarfel looked up and down the road, at the dusty throng, the evenly spaced pairs of spearmen keeping idle watch on the shuffling crowd. Hawkers moved up and down the shifting line, crying their wares. The smoke from a handful of food stalls drifted over, mingling with the dust. Somewhere a group of pilgrims was singing, discordant and jarring over the sound of distant bird cries. Traffic was sparse in the other direction, barely a handful travelling south-east on the silk road.

‘Each is vetted at the gateway, highness,’ Foss said, maintaining a measure of deference in his speech that had long since fled that of the others. ‘Their means and motives assessed. It takes time. The Sericans are a careful people.’

‘They’re avaricious arseholes,’ Loveless replied. ‘With me, princeling. You too, cub.’

The slope steepened and the gloom of the fortress’s shadow enveloped them, then they entered the blissfully cool darkness of the gatehouse. Loveless, her hood kept low despite the relative cool and quiet beneath the first of the massive gates, gestured to one of the gild-armoured guards. He was taller than those around him, his armour finely wrought, his silken surcoat emblazoned with a shape of a winged shadow. He sported a long, droopy moustache, as did many of the other guards. In Korowan, moustaches were in.

‘The captain.’

Tarfel approached the man. ‘Captain! I am Tarfel Merimonsun—’

The guard stared at him blankly.