‘No, I suppose not. What are my concerns, then?’ she said.

‘Preservation and expansion,’ Ushoran said. ‘I have promised my people an empire worthy of the great barrow-kings of awful memory, or that of the dwarfs at their height. And Ushoran does not break his promises.’

‘No. And neither do I,’ Neferata said.

‘Beautiful,’ Khaled al Muntasir breathed, stroking the surface of the ornate sarcophagus that leaned at an angle against the wall.

Inside, Neferata raged silently at the gloating tone in his voice. She yearned to split the iron body of the sarcophagus and strip the meat from his face a piece at a time. But such was not to be, not while the shaft of broken lance remained in her chest. The sword had apparently been too dangerous to leave in her, and someone had replaced one with the other. And not just any shard of wood, but one treated with strange unguents and ointments, so that its very touch leached the strength from her and rendered her immobile. Now she stood in darkness, a prisoner of her own body, unable to even seek respite in oblivion or madness. And all thanks to her once-champion, Abhorash.

She remembered his eyes, watching her die. For that was what this was — a living death. Why had he done it? He had not visited her afterwards. Indeed, from what little she had gleaned from her captor, Abhorash had departed as mysteriously as he had arrived, wandering to the coast with his coterie. He had been in Bel Aliad only long enough to help train their Kontoi.

W’soran, Ushoran, Abhorash… The names hissed through her mind like spilling sand. They had all betrayed her, and for what? Spite?

She would show them spite.

But first, she had to escape.

Even locked in the darkness like this, she could feel the faint touch of Naaima’s mind. Her handmaiden prowled through the dark places of Bel Aliad even now, searching for her. Loyal Naaima, if she could but call out to her—

Light stabbed her eyes as the lid of the sarcophagus was shifted. Khaled stared at her, his dark eyes wide. He licked his lips. He reached out a trembling hand, and then yanked it back. Beyond him, she saw his chamber; it was strewn with mystical-looking bric-a-brac, preserved monkey’s paws and shrunken heads. There were tiny ushabti standing at attention in silk-lined boxes and strange, formless shapes squirming in glass jars. Khaled was not only a warrior, it seemed; he was also something of a scholar. ‘I know you can hear me, witch,’ he said, after a moment. ‘Lord Abhorash said you would be able to, at any rate. He said that you cannot die. That you are immortal and ageless and evil.’

Evil! Neferata snarled in her head. How dare that self-righteous fool call her evil! She would take great pleasure in hunting her former champion down and flaying him from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. She would wear his treacherous skin as a cloak and make combs of his bones!

Khaled blinked and stepped back. ‘Yes… I see the hate in your eyes, witch. The Sand Snake, that was what those dogs of the desert called you. I wonder why you were squatting with savages in the wilderness. Could you tell me, if I jostled that stake of wood, ever so slightly? If I nudged it from your heart, just by the length of a fingertip, would you share your secrets with me, Sand Snake?’

Neferata watched him, unable to do anything else. Khaled chuckled. ‘Or would you kill me? Yes. You would, wouldn’t you? You’d butcher me like a goat. Sleep now, Sand Snake. We will talk more, later.’ He closed the lid, and she was once more left in darkness.

But she didn’t rage. She had seen something in Khaled’s eyes. A greed that she recognised easily enough; he wanted something. Something she possessed. In the darkness and the silence, she began to plan…

Steam rose off the stones scattered across the bronze grill of the oven set into the far wall of the bana as Naaima poured a dipperful of water across them. The rocks were heated by a rack of red-hot coals which were occasionally stirred by whoever was closest. A series of long bronze pipes carried the heat from the oven into the water of the communal bath, heating it to a temperature that would have boiled a mortal alive. The vampires didn’t notice. For them it might as well have been an icy pond.

Neferata sighed as steam filled the bathhouse, drawing forth sweat and the smells buried in the wooden planks that made up the roof. The bronze plates set into the stone walls reflected the heat back at the women soaking in the bath. The Strigoi bana were, for all intents and purposes, overlarge ovens, lacking the graceful function of similar structures in Sartosa or Araby. The art of the bathhouse was yet to infiltrate these savage climes, Neferata mused. Yet another thing she would be forced to remedy in the coming years. Still, for the moment, the bathhouse had its uses.

Vampires, unlike men, neither sweated nor secreted the oils that clung like pernicious perfume to the skin of the living. That did not mean, however, that they could not stink just as badly as any unwashed peasant. The odour of old blood never quite went away. But the scalding baths, followed by a splash from a bucket of perfumed water, hid the predator’s odour quite well.

The bana were sacrosanct in Strigoi society. They were places where one could be at ease. It was not unusual for violence to occur in one, but it was frowned upon. It was also one of the few places that Ushoran’s spies could not follow her.

Neferata settled in the water, letting it envelop her. Ushoran’s spy apparatus was like an onion; the more layers she stripped and tossed aside, the more there seemed to be. Then there was W’soran, who had his own methods of spying. Not to mention that every Strigoi ajal and agal had at least one spy in their retinue. Most of those she had co-opted, but there was always another somewhere.

But not here, and that was why they had come.

‘You should have seen the look on that greenskin shaman’s face,’ Stregga chortled. Her palm came down, slapping the still, steaming waters of the bath. ‘Eyes bulging and tongue waggling as Rasha crushed his throat.’ She gave a bark of laughter. She and Rasha had just returned from a routine expedition into the lands to the east, where the great orc migrations originated.

‘Tasted foul, that one,’ Rasha muttered, leaning back against the edge of the communal bath. ‘Their blood tastes of mould and mushrooms.’

‘We all make sacrifices, my sisters,’ Neferata said.

‘Some more than others,’ Naaima added, drawing the bone comb through Neferata’s hair. Neferata ignored the comment.

‘Continue, please,’ she said, gesturing languidly.

‘You were right, my lady,’ Rasha said. ‘They thought it was an omen, a leopard killing their shaman like that. Uzzer’s lot are in control of the tribe now, and they’re moving east, towards us. The timagals in that region are already squawking for help. The orcs will press them hard over the winter.’

‘Good,’ Neferata said, tracing circles in the surface of the water. The greenskins were pawns of prophecy and omen, at the beck and call of their feather- and bead-bedecked shamans. And the shamans took every leopard-mauling or giant-bat attack as an omen to wage war. It was a simple enough matter to stir them up. ‘We’ll see to the defences in the region. Perhaps Vorag…?’ She glanced at Stregga, who made a face.