‘The powder is difficult, time-intensive and dangerous to make, and the recipe I gave them was the hardest of all. They should have struggled to procure reagents in sufficient quantities, and lost many batches along the way.’

‘Is there a chance you could have been wrong about the difficulty of, uh, procurement? Or could one of Corvel’s own alchemists have experimented and refined the recipe?’

Kosh pulled at the end of a dyed and frayed tangle of hair, her lips pressed together. ‘Maybe.’ Her next words sounded like they were being dragged from her by a straining team. ‘It’s possible I may have miscalculated, in my duress.’ The flash of her eyes dared him to make something of it. He did not.

‘If they still have stores or witchfire, powder, whatever, they will be keeping it in those armoured wagons, yes? Well away from fire, out of the reach of anything we might try to lob at them.’

‘Likely, yes.’

He turned to one of the silken butterflies, a miracle of gilded orange and green, rotating on the faint breeze from the upper window. He ran his finger along it, pulled it back, let it rock and spin on its thread.

‘I was in Denirnas when your people’s ships arrived,’ he said, eyes fixed on the twirling artifice. ‘And I saw something significant …’

THIRTY

Chel watched the heaving mass from the rampart of the second gatehouse, the jostling flock fighting their way into the city, leaving the fearful plains and the bridge behind. The guards, resplendent nonetheless, jockeyed and bellowed at the incomers, directing and harrying them, keeping the flow moving, and occasionally intervening in a shove too far. The crowd felt at the edge of panic, but holding there, tingling with adrenaline but in sight of safety. Those behind, still shoving their way off the bridge, did so with wild eyes and frequent backward glances, but at last the warm yellow stone of the bridge shone through at its far end.

Chanting reached Chel’s ears, a sudden, lurching shock, and he turned to see a column of drab-robed refugees thudding their way through to the next gate, eyes downcast, their rhythmic chant in time to their plodding. Many of them carried charred branches, or had marks like spreading tree roots adorning the visible skin of their arms. Most of the other refugees gave them a wide berth, but others joined them, taking up the chant, until they passed through the second gate and out of his sight, their dour singing lost beneath the call of the wind. Their song disturbed Chel; it wasn’t a church dirge, one of the confessors’ threnodies, but something keen, yearning, undulating like the breath of the wind.

‘Happy now, Chel of the South?’

Matil was there, mailed and gleaming in the slant of the sun. She wore a new breastplate, its reflected sunlight too scorching to scrutinize, and a tall, plumed helmet that framed her face with burnished steel.