'Speaker Hyram. It is a delight to be in your presence again.'

He nodded brusquely and waved over some of his attendants. He and Shezira walked in silence away from the eyrie, the attendants following. Mouth-watering words gushed from their lips, describing the pleasures of the mind and of the flesh that awaited her, but Shezira barely heard them. It should be Hyram telling me these things, not his courtiers. Has the sickness become so bad that it s robbing him of his speech? How long before he can t even walk any more?

Carriages were waiting to take them to the palace. Then they had to wait for Jaslyn and Lystra and Lady Nastria and the other riders Shezira had brought with her, and after that there were endless rituals and formalities to observe, and then the obligatory feast to honour guests, none of which interested Shezira at all. At least Hyram had put some effort into it. Tiny alchemical lamps festooned the vast spaces of the Chamber of Audience. There were hundreds of them, thousands, strung out on lines like little glow-worms, hundreds more studding the vaults of the ceiling like stars so that it seemed they were feasting outside under the sky. Statues surrounded them, larger than life, silent guardians carved in granite. All the speakers who had ever ruled the realms, watching over them. Above them, marble dragon heads reached out from the walls, peering down from the shadows, sullen and brooding. Little lamps were hidden in their mouths to make them glow. As they entered, voices hushed to whispers or stopped altogether, awed by the Speaker's hall. Then the feast began, the noise resumed and the hall filled with servants running to and fro with cups of wine, platters of roasted meat, huge pies and colourful glazed pastries twisted into the shapes of dragons and men.

An adequate effort.

She sat or stood next to Hyram for the entire time, yet she couldn't talk to him. At least not about what she wanted. At the end of the feast, when Hyram stood up and wobbled and declared that he was retiring to his bed, Shezira watched him go, then slipped away to follow him. The Hyram she remembered would almost always slip away to bed early after a feast, it was simply a question of whose bed. This time, though, as she watched, he staggered and meandered his way towards the Glass Cathedral. She followed him inside, half expecting to find him locked in an embrace with some dragon-priestess. Instead, she found him prostrate at prayer.

She knelt beside him at the altar and looked up at the face of the dragon glaring down at them. Hyram stank of wine.

'I should thank you for your hospitality,' she said. Hyram didn't seem to hear her. She shivered. Somehow, the Glass Cathedral was always cold.

'This p-place is a lie,' said Hyram suddenly.

'What?'

'The G-Glass Cathedral. It's a lie.' He turned to look at her. His face was flushed and he was either about to burst out laughing or fall about weeping.

'Are you drunk?'

'It makes the t-tremors better. Three bottles of wine and I c-can almost believe I am well again.'

Shezira raised an eyebrow. It was true that Hyram didn't seem to be shaking as badly now, but he couldn't keep his eyes focused on her while he was talking, either. 'Are you sure that's not the wine, lying to you?'

'Does it matter?'

'I suppose not.'

Hyram nodded, as though that was the end of their conversation. He lifted his face towards the stone dragon above them, closed his eyes and sighed. 'Please…'

Shezira shifted uncomfortably. This wasn't the Hyram she remembered at all, and she wasn't quite sure what to do with him, except maybe help him up and show him to his bed.

He started to climb unsteadily to his feet. Instinct made her offer a hand to help him, but he shied away from her as though she'd offered him a snake by mistake.

'I wouldn't even be here i-if my brother… if Antros hadn't died. It should have been Antros who got this place. You and him. H-He was supposed to be the new speaker, not me. That was the arrangement. I-I would have inherited my father's throne, not my cousin Sirion. I would have been a king. I was going to m-marry Aliphera. Did you know that?'

Aliphera? Shezira shook herself. She hadn't the first idea what Hyram was talking about. Did he even know what he was saying? She got up. 'You are drunk. Let us talk in the morning instead.'

'It had to be one of us, but everyone liked A Antros better, didn't they. Except you. And Aliphera.' He looked at her suddenly. 'I never quite worked out whether y-you had Antros killed or whether it really was an accident.'

She slapped him. He staggered back and fell over. 'You are too drunk, Hyram. You forget yourself.'

Hyram wiped his face and picked himself slowly to his feet. 'You liked Aliphera too.'

'I respected her.'

'Well I l-liked her. I was going to marry her once. But then…' His face grew distant. For a moment Shezira thought Hyram was simply going to fall asleep in front of her. 'Things happened. It would have b-been a good match, though. She was always the sensible one from that lot in the south. If I had married her, I'd have to have made her s-speaker after me, though, wouldn't I? And that wasn't the arrangement. S-So I did what I was supposed to do. I will honour the p-pact. That's what you c-came here to ask, isn't it?'

Shezira sighed. 'I came here to pay my respects to the Speaker of the Realms. I did not expect to find myself in a midnight tryst with a drunkard.'

Hyram peered at her. 'Promise m-me something.'

'Promise you what?'

'Promise m-me the truth. Tell me one thing, and I will p-promise that you will have this palace after me.'

'I am not, by habit, a liar, Hyram.'

'When Antros died, w-was it you who cut his harness?'

Shezira clenched her fists. 'Everyone who was there saw what happened. We were hunting snappers, as we often do. When we saw the pack, several of the dragons dived. His went with them. He always wore his harness too loose, and on that day, he wore it much too loose. He fell. He shouldn't have, but he did, and it wasn't the first time either. For some reason, his legbreaker rope was too long. It caught him all right, but he ended up hanging underneath his dragon. He was dragged along the ground and through the trees for about a mile before we could make his mount come to ground. I've never seen a dragon so agitated. Antros was dead when we reached him. It all happened in front of a dozen witnesses. No one pushed him and no one cut his harness.'

Hyram gave her a reproachful look. 'You n-never liked him, though.'

'Oh, I was young and he was well into his middle years!' Shezira stamped her foot. 'He was going to be the next speaker one day. He'd already had one wife and she hadn't given him any children. That's what he wanted me for. Heirs. I was a dutiful wife, Hyram, and he was a dutiful husband. I was in awe of him. I didn't have time to like him.' She sighed. 'It might have been a little different if I'd given him a son, but all I gave him were daughters, one after another. He never even saw Lystra.'

'Hmmm.' Hyram suddenly sat down. He sounded sad. 'No sons for Antros, no s-sons for me. The end of our line.'

'You can still sire sons.'

The speaker looked up at her, shaking. Shezira couldn't tell whether he was laughing or sobbing. 'L-Look at me, woman. Who would have me? Would you have me? You should have done. By rights, you sh-should have. After Antros was gone, you should have married me in his p-place.'

Shezira sighed. 'Yes. But my childbearing ended with Lystra, as you were so keen to point out.' She looked down at Hyram and shook her head. Not the man she remembered. Not the man she wanted to remember. The old Hyram had reminded her of her dead husband. This one… She didn't know whether to despise him or pity him. She turned away. 'Besides, you blamed me for Antros. You still do. Somewhere in your heart, you think I had a hand in it.'