‘Are you going to make the gates disappear by magic, Komier?’ Emban asked. ‘I know the Church Knights are trained to do many unusual things, but this is the Holy City, after all. Would God really approve of that sort of thing on his own doorstep?’

‘I never even thought of magic,’ Komier admitted. ‘Actually, I wasn’t going to use anything like that. It’s very hard to batter down a gate if there are two or three collapsed houses piled up behind it, isn’t it?’

‘Almost impossible,’ Abriel agreed.

Emban grinned broadly. ‘Isn’t Makova’s house fairly close to the east gate of the inner city?’ he asked.

‘Now that you mention it, Your Grace, I do believe it is,’ Sir Nashan replied.

‘A fairly substantial house?’ Komier said.

‘It certainly should be,’ Emban said, ‘considering what he paid for it.’

‘What the Elenian taxpayers paid for it, Your Grace,’ Sparhawk corrected.

‘Ah, yes. I’d almost forgotten that. Would the Elenian taxpayers be willing to contribute that very expensive house to the defence of the Church?’

‘They’d be delighted, Your Grace.’

‘We’ll certainly look the house of the Patriarch of Coombe over very carefully when we’re selecting the ones to tear down,’ Komier promised.

‘The only question now is the whereabouts of King Wargun,’ Dolmant said. ‘Martel’s blunder has bought us some time, but it won’t keep him out of the inner city forever. Could your messengers have gone astray, Ortzel?’

‘They’re good, solid men,’ Ortzel said, ‘and an army of the size of Wargun’s shouldn’t be hard to find. Besides, the messengers you and Emban sent earlier should have reached him quite some time ago, shouldn’t they?’

‘Not to mention the ones the Earl of Lenda sent from Cimmura,’ Sparhawk added.

‘The absence of the King of Thalesia is a mystery,’ Emban said, ‘and it’s becoming increasingly inconvenient. ’

The door opened, and Berit entered. ‘Excuse me, My Lords,’ he apologized, ‘but you wanted to be informed if anything unusual was happening out in the city.’

‘What have you seen, Berit?’ Vanion asked him.

‘I was up in that little house on top of the dome of the Basilica, My Lord –’

‘Cupola,’ Vanion corrected.

‘I can never remember that word,’ Berit confessed. ‘Anyway, you can see the whole city from up there. The ordinary people are fleeing from Chyrellos. They’re streaming out through all of the gates in the outer wall.’

‘Martel doesn’t want them underfoot,’ Kalten said.

‘And he wants the women out of town,’ Sparhawk added bleakly.

‘I didn’t quite understand that, Sparhawk,’ Bevier said.

‘I’ll explain it to you later,’ Sparhawk told him, glancing at Sephrenia.