‘Not the kind you’re thinking of,’ she snapped. ‘He beat me black and bloody in Nennifer, a dozen times at least.’

‘Ghorr beat you?’ Klarm said incredulously.

‘He was too clever to let it show, but after each visit I couldn’t stand up for a day, or sit down. He inflicted all manner of excruciations on me and enjoyed every moment of them.’

Klarm frowned. ‘I –’

The mist parted up above as if Yggur had blown it away and Nish saw the remaining air-dreadnoughts straining at their cables like party balloons in a gale. They were swinging back and forth in the wind, their multiple airbags bouncing against each other and the rigging in mortal danger of tangling. Their motions jerked the cables and rippled the deck, and sent the ropes of the hanging chairs and baskets swinging in wild arcs.

‘There’s Ghorr,’ said Irisis. ‘They’re finally pulling him up.’ The chief scrutator was swaying in the air halfway between his air-dreadnought and the deck.

‘I wonder what the matter is?’ said Nish. ‘They started hauling him up ages ago.’

‘Get on with it, you fools!’ screamed Ghorr, his face purple with rage.

‘The windlass has jammed,’ said Irisis, who had exceptionally keen eyes. ‘Or broken. Looks as if they’re trying to move his rope to a hand winch.’

‘Surely they’d have to lower him first,’ said Nish, whose artificer training had taught him that much. He tried to see across to where Flangers was cutting the other cable but mist still clung to the deck.

‘You’d think so,’ said Klarm. The rope dropped sharply, whereupon Ghorr screamed at the operators. ‘But … he’s afraid!’

‘Afraid?’ Nish glanced down at the dwarf scrutator. There was a strange light in his eye. Revelation? Could they sway Klarm in so little time?

‘The chief scrutator has failed in front of the witnesses he was trying to impress.’ Klarm shook his head in disgust. ‘This whole spectacle – the attack on Fiz Gorgo, this marvellous amphitheatre, the trial and punishment – was designed for one purpose. To impress the artists, recorders, tale-tellers and witnesses with Ghorr’s power, reach and implacable resolve to extinguish all opposition. But he overreached himself and the failure only reveals his folly.’

‘The air-dreadnoughts had to be close together to hold up the amphitheatre,’ said Nish.

‘Which shows what a vainglorious notion it was. The Council advised him against the scheme,’ Klarm said quietly. ‘I suggested a less extravagant trial, but Ghorr had spent too long planning this spectacle and would not be dissuaded.’

‘Why didn’t he take us back to Nennifer or Lybing, for public trial?’

‘I cannot say. I –’ Klarm broke off as something else occurred to him. ‘Can Ghorr have been afraid of Flydd?’

‘Perhaps he was,’ said Irisis.

‘And now he’s failed in front of his own witnesses,’ Nish added. ‘And he knows the penalty for failing the Council.’

‘Not to mention losing his carefully constructed place in the Histories,’ said Irisis.

‘There’s nothing he can do about that,’ said Klarm.

‘Unless …’ Nish looked Klarm in the eye and knew that he’d reached the same conclusion. ‘Unless Ghorr should be the only one of the Council to return.’

‘He wouldn’t go that far,’ Klarm said unconvincingly. ‘Ghorr is a man who knows his duty.’

‘All the witnesses would have to die as well,’ said Nish.

‘Just the artists and recorders,’ said Irisis. ‘His own people from Nennifer won’t dare talk.’

High above, Ghorr’s rope had been looped over the side of the air-dreadnought while the artificers unwound it from the partly dismantled windlass. They fed the slack onto a hand windlass, which spun under the load, tearing the handles out of the attendants’ grasp. Ghorr dropped a couple of spans before being brought up with a tooth-snapping jerk. He squealed in fright, then roared at his officers to take personal charge. A pair of burly captains hurled the attendants out of the way, took hold of the winch and began to wind furiously. Ghorr rose into the windy zone, where a gust sent him swinging through a long arc. He yelled at his officers, who wound harder, but he swung the other way into the path of three witnesses who were being lifted in a rope basket from the other end of the air-dreadnought.

‘Get out of the way!’ he shouted, but they could do nothing to avoid him. Ghorr smashed into the basket, his chair began to spin, came back the other way, and the basket and chair whirled around and around each other as their ropes spun together.

The chief scrutator tried to rotate his rope chair the other way but it wouldn’t go. The amphitheatre gave a convulsive heave that snapped the cables as taut as wires and pulled Ghorr’s air-dreadnought down by a good span and a half. Nish, Irisis and Klarm were thrown to the canvas.

‘It’s going,’ Ghorr cried. ‘Pull me up, then cut the cable.’

Nish picked himself up. Ghorr’s captains were trying to heave the twisted ropes apart but they wouldn’t budge.

‘Cut them loose!’ said Ghorr.

A shiver went through everyone on the air-dreadnought, as well as the witnesses crowded on the amphitheatre. The officer in charge of Ghorr’s air-dreadnought drew himself up. ‘Those are the recorders, Chief Scrutator,’ he called frostily.

‘And doing their duty to the end,’ Irisis said softly. ‘Look, the blonde one is writing her record even now.’

Ghorr’s reply could not be heard, though his stance said it all. There would be a penalty for that defiance. He threw his cloak off, followed by the securing rope harness, and climbed onto the sides of his rope chair, which swayed dangerously back and forth.

‘What’s he doing?’ said Nish.

‘He’s trying to untangle it himself,’ said Scrutator Klarm. ‘It can’t be done one-handed. He’ll fall.’

Ghorr stood up, hooking his injured arm around the rope with a gasp of pain, and reached up.

‘He’ll never get enough leverage,’ said Klarm. ‘Not on a moving chair.’

The wind was whistling through the rigging of the air-dreadnoughts, whose sides were crowded with staring people. The witnesses on the amphitheatre deck were equally silent and still.

The twisted ropes, with their human cargo, began to swing like a pendulum. It had grown very cold. Ghorr reached up, again and again, and his hand went back and forth. He wasn’t trying to free the ropes – he was sawing at the rope holding up the recorder’s basket.

The recorders realised it at the same moment but none of the women screamed or pleaded. They stood up, holding their scrolls with simple dignity, and kept writing.

‘There’s an image that will live in the Histories after we’re gone,’ said Irisis soberly.

Their end wasn’t long in coming. The ends sprang out of their rope, which began to untwist under the weight, before pulling free.

‘If they hit the deck they may still survive,’ said Irisis hopefully.

Nobody contradicted her, though Nish knew that such a fall, a good thirty spans, must kill them. The basket fell, the three women still standing and recording all the way down. It plunged through the mist, hit hard near the edge of the amphitheatre, the women crumpled into a mess; then basket, rope and contents went over the side.

‘Up!’ said Ghorr in a hollow voice, sliding back into his chair and fastening the ropes about him.

The crew of his air-dreadnought did not move.

‘Up, damn you, or you’ll all taste a scrutator’s quisitory.’

They remained as silent and still as the figures on a painted jug. The crew must have been as shocked as those on the deck.

‘He crossed the line,’ said Irisis. ‘He’s finished.’

‘Not if he reaches his craft before the other scrutators do theirs.’

Klarm turned a strained face to them. ‘I’ve served Ghorr for many years, and he would not go against the best interests of the Council. It’s all that’s kept us alive, the past dark decade.’ He didn’t sound as though he believed it any longer.