Bold words in Serican drifted over from where the council gathered, Ghiz’s strident tone unmoderated by the elegant tongue. Mira bowed her head. ‘We should sally, now before they are entrenched,’ she translated, her voice carrying some of his shrillness.

Matil responded, calm, firm. ‘No,’ Mira said in her voice.

A horn blew below, half-lost on the wind, then a bell tolled once from somewhere within the lead engine. Eyes on the rampart focused on the wedge of dark iron, and voices muttered as an uneasy hush descended. The seneschal’s commentary dropped to a murmur with it.

‘Do they mean to drive that thing at the gates? We’ll burn it on the bridge. Ready the archers, light the braziers.’

A messenger streaked past them, dropping to one knee before the Keeper. ‘Last chance to surrender the prince,’ said Mira, eyes scrupulously averted. Tarfel cleared his throat, but did not look over.

A fresh messenger departed, and a moment later a great blast of a deep horn echoed from the walls.

‘Exalted Matil has demurred.’

Down on the plateau, the black pennant dropped from view. In its place rose a new standard, a white pennant emblazoned with a golden star and crown. Tarfel stirred.

‘The imperial standard. My brother has truly lost his mind.’

The confessors and their pennant fell back, lost behind the dark lump of the engine. Chel thought he saw Vashenda’s silver crop among them, and thought back to her words at the parley. She’d been about to tell them something when Hurkel arrived, something important. Something the Pentarch’s arrival had precluded.

‘What happens now?’ he asked the seneschal.

She offered an optimistic smile. ‘They lay siege. They are repelled. Eventually our outriders will cut their supply lines, and they will starve, while we sit safe within the walls. Then we will treat again.’

A thin wisp of smoke rose from the lone engine, carried back toward the mountains by the incessant wind. Chel’s memories stirred.

‘And just what kind of engine is that?’

Something whiffled out from the engine, a dark shape that fizzed up in an arc from behind the black iron shield, rising into the clear blue morning sky. The crowd on the walls held their breath, Chel among them, watching the object’s passage. It flew wide of the gate, wide even of the walls, reaching an apex somewhere over the gorge, struggling against the headwind, then dropping into the darkness beneath. The jeering from the walls obscured whatever sound its distant impact made.

‘It’s not a ram, then.’ Tarfel had drifted forward, one hand on his chin, the other on the pale stone of the rampart. ‘Nor are they intending to come at us with their demon-kegs.’

Mira the seneschal was smiling. ‘Lord Ghiz once again asking to sally. Exalted Matil has demurred. We have little to fear from such feeble engines.’ It was unclear whether these were Matil’s words or her own.