Kosh sniffed again. Matil noticed, but instead of irked, she seemed amused. She ran a finger over her fine-wrought breastplate, picking out the detail of the rearing swan in dark metal. ‘You would not consider this well-made?’

The Nort pursed her mouth in equivocation, her gaze following the path of Matil’s finger. ‘Well-made, of course. Advanced, well …’ She moved to the gantry rail, surveying the steam-obscured activity beneath. It was very, very hot within the workshop, the channelled breeze from the vented windows on high doing little to disperse the warmth of the forges into the blaze of the day outside. Chel felt the sweat dripping from him, and from Tarfel’s pallor he suspected the prince was devoting all of his energies to staying upright.

‘What’s down there?’ Tarfel was doing his best to maintain the fiction that the tour was of some benefit to him. He gestured to a menacing-looking set of double-doors at the workshop’s end, flanked by a pair of sturdy house guards dressed in far too much armour for the room’s heat.

Matil started, as if surprised to find the prince still there. ‘The looms, highness, and access to the waterways below the city. I’m afraid they are off-limits to outsiders.’

Tarfel pouted. ‘Surely—’

‘You can understand, highness, that our peerless silk production is the source of Arowan’s wealth, the seat of its power. We wouldn’t wish to put the city’s lifeblood at risk, would we?’

‘Ah, no, quite so, quite so.’

Kosh had approached a rack of mail shirts. ‘I can see your people are doing their best. This is reasonable stuff, if a little antiquated. Tell me, are you rolling the steel hot or cold? What is its proportion of kaarban?’

Matil wrinkled her nose, still amused, her eyes narrowed to their crinkling corners. She was older than Chel had first thought, perhaps even Rennic’s age, although she moved with none of his creaking force. She was light on her feet, languid, rarely seeming to move without purpose. Chel guessed it was too hot in Arowan to waste energy on excess movement.

‘I could not tell you.’

‘Who can? Who is in charge here?’

Matil despatched one of her attendants, a seneschal she called Mira who struck Chel as having kind eyes, to summon the chief artificer. The artificer duly appeared, a hunched, shrivelled woman in singed robes, her thick head of curls bound in a waving tower from the top of her scalp. She met Kosh’s interrogation with terse and defensive answers, translated via the ever-more amused Matil. Kosh herself became increasingly condescending with each retort; had Chel not witnessed it, he would not have thought it possible.

Smirking to herself, the Nort paused at a long workbench containing crossbows in various states of assembly. ‘How far can one of your bows shoot?’

‘More than three hundred and fifty strides,’ came the proud reply.

‘And what is the lethal range?’