.

am missing my home, my lord, as noxious as that home must be to you.”

      Ishbel was pushing Lixel a little too far with this statement, but she knew that his response would tell her a great deal about the man, as also, possibly, his master.

      “A home is a home,” Lixel said, leading Ishbel out the door and down the long corridor towards the main reception room of the house, “whatever its strangenesses. I do not think Maximilian will begrudge it in the slightest if you yearn for a home you have lost.”

      Not lost, Ishbel thought. I will return to Serpent’s Nest one day.

      “I would not have thought him so generous towards the Coil,” Ishbel said, pushing just a little more.

      “I was not speaking of the Coil,” Lixel said quietly, and led her into the reception room.

      Ishbel might have responded to that, she still had time before they met the gaggle of people standing at the far end of the large chamber, but just then she caught sight of the leading member of Maximilian’s delegation, and she stopped dead, unable to repress a gasp.

      It was a birdwoman. An Icarii. Ishbel had heard about them, and had heard about the land from which they had come, but had never seen one.

      The birdwoman turned, looking directly at Ishbel with a discomforting frankness. She was clad all in black — form-fitting leather trousers and a top which allowed her wings freedom. She moved again, taking a half step forward, and Ishbel had her first glimpse of the stunning grace and elegance of the creatures.

      The entire group had turned at her entrance now, and Ishbel tore her eyes away from the birdwoman long enough to see that several other Icarii were within the delegation.

       Maximilian controlled Icarii?

      Ishbel took a deep breath, hoping it wasn’t obvious, set a smile to her face, and walked forward.

       She was the archpriestess of the Coil, and she would manage.

      “You were very surprised to see me,” StarWeb said. “You paled considerably.”

      They were alone, standing on the glassed verandah that opened off the reception room. Everyone else was still inside, talking, drinking, negotiating, but as soon as practicable after the introductions and initial chat, StarWeb had requested Ishbel join her for a private word.

      “I have never seen one of your kind,” Ishbel said. “I was shocked.” Her mouth quirked. “The Icarii are almost myth here in the Outlands.”

      StarWeb thought about being offended at the “your kind”, but decided that for the moment she would accomplish more without assuming affront. Full-on confrontation would prove far more effective.

      “Then in your marriage,” she said, “you shall have to get used to us. There are many of ‘my kind’ at Maximilian’s court.”

      “You know him well?”

      “I am his lover.” There, Ishbel, StarWeb thought, make of that what you will.

      To StarWeb’s surprise, Ishbel showed no emotion whatsoever. “That does not mean that you know him well.”

      “But I expect that,” StarWeb countered, “should you become his wife, you shall come to know him well.”

      “I expect,” Ishbel said, “that any man who has endured what Maximilian has experienced in life will be a man who lets only those he truly loves know him well. If he allows me that privilege, then I shall be honoured.”

      “That was very good, my lady,” said StarWeb. “You managed to be self-effacing and insult me all in one. You shall do very well at a royal court, but I do not know that it should be Maximilian’s.”

      “Will all Escator welcome me as generously as you, StarWeb?”

      “Let me be frank with you, Ishbel — I may call you Ishbel, yes?”

      “I would prefer that you did not.”

      “Very well then, my lady, let me be quite frank with you. None of us here,” StarWeb gestured to the Escatorian delegation inside the reception room, “nor any back in Ruen among Maximilian’s inner circle, entirely trust this offer. We don’t trust who it comes from — the Coil are universally loathed —”

      “Not by me,” said Ishbel quietly. “The Coil took me in when no one else would. They nurtured me, and were kind to me, and subjected me to none of the practices in which I hear rumoured they indulge.”

      “Apparently so, my lady, for I believe your belly is still intact under that silken gown of yours. But allow me to return to the point, if I may. There are many about Maximilian who wonder about this offer and its timing. We wonder why a lady as lovely as you, and with such a dowry as yours, has only now decided to put herself on the marriage market, and to such a minor player — no, no, don’t protest, Maximilian isn’t the haughty kind — when she could have tempted a much nobler man, an emperor perhaps, or maybe even the Tyrant of Isembaard, for I have heard rumour he is looking for a new wife.”

      “My dowry,” said Ishbel, her tone low, “would attract no emperor or tyrant. Particularly with, as you have been so kind to point out, such a home as I have enjoyed these past twenty years. Yes, the Coil is universally loathed, but not by me. I owe them a loyalty, StarWeb, that perhaps you cannot understand. It is one of love and gratitude. It is one of family. If you want a reason why I have not married in the past eight or nine years, when one might reasonably have expected me to take a husband, then it is because no man has interested me enough.”

      StarWeb looked at her carefully. “Yet Maximilian does.”

      “I think a man who has spent seventeen years in a black pit thinking his life at an end will have more understanding, more tolerance, than most.” Ishbel paused, her eyes glittering. “Yet perhaps I am mistaken, if the kind of woman he takes as lover is any indication.”

      “Maximilian is a quiet man, of manner and mind,” said StarWeb, “and you are a very unquiet woman, Ishbel. I do not know how I shall report you to him.”

      “Report me as a woman who can speak for herself,” snapped Ishbel, “and who does not need an arrogant and threatened lover to speak on her behalf.”

      And with that she pushed past StarWeb and rejoined the reception.

3

       PALACE OF AQHAT, TYRANNY OF ISEMBAARD

      Isaiah, Tyrant of Isembaard, walked along the wide corridor of his palace of Aqhat. He’d returned from Lake Juit a few days earlier, together with his maniac Ba’al’uz, his ten thousand men, and the man he had pulled from the lake.

      It was this man that Isaiah now went to visit. He had not seen him since he’d deposited him, dripping wet, on the wharf of Lake Juit for his servants to attend.

      He approached the entrance to an apartment, and the guards standing outside stood back, bowing as one and touching the tips of their spears to the floor.

      Isaiah ignored them.

      He strode through the door, through the spacious room that served as the day chamber of the apartment, then into the bedchamber. He stopped just inside the door, more than mildly displeased to see that Ba’al’uz hovered just behind the physician who bent over the man lying on the bed.

      Both Ba’al’uz and the physician bowed when they saw Isaiah, and the physician stepped back from the bed.

      “His condition?” Isaiah said.

      “Much better, Excellency,” said the physician. “The nausea has subsided, and his muscles grow stronger. I expect that within a day or two he can begin