‘No!’ barked the bodyguard. He yanked her away by the back of her collar then rummaged at her shirt. His hand brushed her small breast. She smiled to unnerve him but his eyes remained empty of emotion.

‘Hattar…’ her target murmured reprovingly.

She peered up at him. ‘Yes. Hattar.’

He found the scroll then shoved her over and pressed one knee down on her shoulder. His weight drove all breath from her. The scroll crackled as he tore at it.

‘Hattar,’ the man sighed, ‘you cannot read.’

Hattar grunted something.

‘Let her up.’

Unwillingly, he eased his weight. She gasped a deep breath, choked on dust and dirt she sucked in. Her side ached, pressed firmly into the uneven stones.

‘I will speak with her.’

‘Hunh?’

‘Raise her up.’

‘My Lord…’

Silence. Kiska waited. A look from the Lord perhaps? A gesture? Hattar knelt within her sight. He held a wicked curved blade to her face. His other hand twisted a grip in her hair. He brought his scarred nut-brown face close to hers.

’You and my master will speak,’ he whispered. ‘But this dagger,’ and he wagged it before her eyes, ‘if you twitch, it will reach your heart through your back before you are even aware of it tickling your pretty soft skin. Do you understand me?’

She nodded, wide-eyed.

Hattar returned her nod. He raised her up and shifted her round. His master held the scroll in one hand and was tapping it against the other. The lips were curved downward ever so slightly. ‘My apologies for Hattar. He takes his duties very seriously.’

Kiska almost nodded, stopped herself. ‘Yes. He does.’

The man sighed, rubbed his fingers over his eyes. ‘What is your aunt’s name?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Agayla.’

‘What does she do at Winter’s Turn – Rider’s Retreat, I understand you sometimes call it here.’

Kiska stared. Had she heard that right? Winter’s Turn? She almost shrugged but felt a prick to one side of her spine and held herself rigid. ‘Ah, she… she consults the Dragons deck for the coming year.’

‘Yes. Many do. And?’

A test. He was challenging her obviously. Why Winter’s Turn? What was so… she remembered then. One eve sneaking down the stairs and watching from the cover of the landing while Agayla sat up all night, from midnight’s bell till dawn’s light. The side to side woosh of the shuttle. The click and rattle of the loom. Weaving. All night. Kiska licked her dry lips. ‘She weaves.’

Her target nodded. ‘And what is your name?’

‘Kiska.’

The brow arched. ‘Your real name?’

‘What? Is it in there?’

He just waited, patient. Kiska could sense Hattar at her back eagerly tensed for the killing blow. ‘Kiskatia Silamon Tenesh.’

He nodded again. ‘Very well, Kiska. You may call me… Artan.’

‘Artan? That’s not your real name.’

‘No. It isn’t.’

‘Ah. I see.’ Kiska stopped herself from asking his real name; he wouldn’t tell her anyway.

Artan opened the scroll. He started ever so slightly, surprised, and Kiska decided that whatever was written there must be startling indeed to have broken through his iron control. He let out a breath in a long hiss while tapping the scroll against his fingertips.

‘Does she say how I saw your meeting?’ she asked.

Artan did not answer. It seemed to Kiska that his gaze stared into the distance while at the same time was turned inward in meditation.

‘Artan?’

He blinked, rubbed again at his ancient, tired-looking eyes. As if struck by a new thought, he studied her. ‘No. That is not its message.’

‘Then what does it say?’

He held it out to her, open. ‘Does this mean anything to you?’

There was no writing on the scroll. Instead, a hasty rectangle was sketched on the parchment. Within the rectangle was drawn a spare stylised figure. Kiska couldn’t quite make it out. A mounted warrior? A swimming man?

Curious, she looked closer: blue, she saw. Gleaming opalescent colours. Plates of armour shining smooth like the insides of shells. And ice, the growing skein of freezing scales. ‘I see ice,’ she breathed, awed.

‘Truly?’ Artan plucked it back. It withered into ash in his gloved hands. He brushed them together. The gesture troubled Kiska; she’d seen poor street conjurers use the same trick.

‘So. Your message?’ he asked.

Kiska stared. ‘Wasn’t that…’

Artan cocked a brow and Kiska saw that she was right: his mouth did little more than remain a straight slash. ‘No. That was her message. Not yours.’

‘You know her?’

‘We’ve met. A few times… long ago.’

‘Really? Well, my message is about Oleg.’

Both thin brows rose. ‘You know his name?’

‘He told me.’

‘I see. Go on.’

‘I, ah, I followed you to your meeting with him.’

Artan sent a look over her shoulder to Hattar. Rueful? Accusatory? A growl sounded behind her.

She hurried on. ‘After you left he was killed by a man in grey robes.’

Artan’s lips almost pursed, the dark eyes narrowed. ‘Then pray, how did he tell you his name?’

‘Ah. Well. You see, I waited, then went into the garden and looked at him.’

‘And he spoke to you?’

‘Yes.’

Artan sighed. ‘The Shadow Moon. Of course. What did he say?’

Kiska frowned. ‘Well, it was strange and rambling. And the words – I don’t know what they mean. Anyway, Oleg said the message was for you.’

Artan jerked, surprised. ‘He named me?’

‘No. He said it was for the man who was just with him. And he – well, he did call you an irresponsible idiot.’

Artan allowed his lips the slimmest cold upturning that could generously be called a smile. He touched his gloved fingers to his lips. ‘Go on.’

‘He said that, ah, that now he was dead he could see that he’d been right all along.’

’A rather unassailable position,’ Artan observed dryly.

Kiska continued: ‘He said that Kellan-’

Something cracked off her skull from behind.

‘Hattar!’

Kiska blinked tears from her eyes.

‘My apologies,’ Artan said, ‘I should have told you. We do not say that name.’

‘Obviously. Well, what I was trying to tell you was that he – that is, Oleg – said only fools think he is returning for the Imperial throne.’

Artan’s gaze rose past her shoulder to Hattar. ‘Then, pray, what is he returning for?’

‘For a different throne. For the throne of Shadow.’

Artan’s jaws tightened – the masked expressions of a lifetime of guarding one’s thoughts. ‘I’m sorry. But this is nothing I haven’t heard from Oleg before.’ He stood, brushed at his pants.

‘It’s true!’

‘I’m sorry, Kiska. But how do you know?’

‘Because someone else confirmed it.’

Artan paused. His face did not change, but Kiska could tell she had caught his interest. ‘Who confirmed it?’

‘While I was in town I was swept up in something – a Changing – and I was in Shadow. I met someone there. An old creature like a walking corpse, or like an Imass, named Edgewalker. He said many people have tried for the Shadow throne.’ She waited expectantly, but the information seemed to signify nothing to Artan.

‘And did he say… the emperor… would?’

‘Well, no. He just wasn’t surprised. He-’ Kiska’s shoulder’s slumped. Damn! She had told him!

‘I’m sorry. I need more evidence than this.’

Artan was right, of course. It was all just the babbling of a man who’d admitted hating Kellanved. She was a fool to have believed him.

’We must be going.’

‘Wait! He said that during this conjunction the paths between realms are accessible.’

Artan nodded. ‘Yes. But that was not our dispute. I acknowledge it, in theory.’

‘Ah, yes. Well, Oleg said that during transubstantiation existed the greatest possibility for… ah… for entombment. That then lay the greatest opportunity to entrap him. That you should act then.’ Kiska frowned. ‘Do you know what that means?’