‘He’ll probably fall back on fairly standard siege tactics,’ Abriel replied. ‘Most likely he’ll settle down and let his siege engines pound us for a while. Those fanatics were just about his only chance for a quick victory. This may drag out for quite some time.’

They all sat quietly, listening to the monotonous crash of large rocks falling into the city around them.

Then Talen burst into the room. His face was smudged and his clothes were dirty. ‘I just saw Martel, My Lords!’ he said excitedly.

‘We’ve all seen him, Talen,’ Kalten said, sprawling deeper into his chair. ‘He rides up outside the walls now and then to have a look around.’

‘He wasn’t outside the walls, Kalten,’ Talen said. ‘He was in the cellar under the Basilica.’

‘What are you saying, boy?’ Dolmant demanded.

Talen drew in a deep breath. ‘I – um – well, I wasn’t entirely honest with you gentleman when I told you how I was getting the thieves of Chyrellos out of the inner city,’ he confessed. He held up one hand. ‘I did arrange for a meeting between the thieves and those church soldiers on the wall with their rope. That part was completely true. About the only thing I didn’t tell you was that I found another way as well. I just didn’t want to bore you with a lot of extra details. Anyway, not long after we got here, I happened to be down in the lowest cellar under the Basilica, and I found a passageway. I don’t know what it was used for originally, but it leads off to the north. It’s perfectly round, and the stones of the walls and floor are very smooth. I followed it, and it took me out into the city.’

‘Does it show any signs of being used as a passageway at all?’ Patriarch Emban asked.

‘Not when I went through it the first time, no, Your Grace. The cobwebs were as thick as ropes.’

‘Oh, that thing,’ Sir Nashan said. ‘I’ve heard about it, but I never got around to investigating it. The old torture-chambers are down in that cellar. It’s the sort of place most people want to avoid.’

‘The passageway, Nashan,’ Vanion said to him. ‘What’s it for?’

‘It’s an old aqueduct, My Lord. It was part of the original construction of the Basilica. It runs north to the River Kydu to carry water to the inner city. Everybody tells me that it collapsed centuries ago.’

‘Not all of it, Sir Knight,’ Talen told him. ‘It runs far enough out into the main city to be useful. To make it short, I was looking around and I found this – what was it you called that passage?’

‘An aqueduct,’ Nashan supplied.