‘Verris!’ said Florian. ‘You’re back!’

‘Yes, we’re back.’

‘Did you get -’

‘Yes, we got your gems from the Yarka,’ Verris answered. ‘Everything went… swimmingly.’ He paused to smile at his own joke. ‘There was a slight complication, however.’

‘A complication? Whatever do you mean?’

Verris stepped behind the curtain, and was back a moment later with Torby in his arms, still silent and motionless.

Florian looked confused. ‘Is that…?’

‘Yes, it’s the child you were prepared to sacrifice for the sake of your greed.’

The crowd murmured, but Florian looked around with an amused expression. ‘Everyone’s gone mad! Sacrifice? Seriously, Verris!’

Verris shook his head. ‘Just so everyone knows, Florian was prepared to send four of us to trade with the Yarka. But only three of us were meant to come back. Show them, Tab.’

Tab held up the book of orders. ‘It’s all in here,’ she said.

‘You shouldn’t still have… But we needed icefire,’ Florian tried to explain. ‘The city needs icefire to… to survive.’

‘That’s true, but it wasn’t icefire we were sent to get, was it?’ said Verris. ‘It was something rather different.’

‘Fire-crystal,’ said a new voice, and Amelia felt her heart leap as Stelka stepped out of the shadows of the curtains. She was without her jewels and finery, her hair had been hacked in a short skullcap, her face and arms were bruised, and her eyes were tired and sad, but it was undeniably her.

Amelia rushed forward and threw her arms around Stelka, who drew her breath in sharply.

‘She’s been through a lot, Amelia,’ Verris said. ‘Be gentle.’

Florian was clapping slowly. ‘A touching display,’ he said, ‘but could we get on, do you think? You see, I’m… We’re rather curious. We’d like to know more, so if you’re all so very clever, pray tell us all about this so-called “fire-crystal”.’

‘It’s needed for a particular kind of spell,’ Stelka said. ‘While I’ve been in the cells, your men… Wait, you know this already, so I might as well put it this way: you have been putting me to work finding the vortex that would take us to the Yarka. And once you had enough fire-crystal gems -’

‘Three, in fact,’ Tab interjected.

‘- I was to go to work on this new spell, the Spell of Infinite Transition. It is the spell which will allow Quentaris to simply appear in one world, stay for as long as it needs to, then leave just as easily, without needing to call up or search for a vortex.’

‘But surely that’s a good thing!’ Florian said, with a little too much enthusiasm.

Verris shook his head. ‘Not when your intention is to sweep in, plunder whole worlds at will, then leave before they have time to respond. That, my friends, is piracy of the first order. And believe me, I would know.’

Florian looked around, desperation now beginning to spread across his face. ‘This is all utter speculation!’

‘No,’ said Verris. ‘It’s all true. And if you’d like to go on denying it here, in front of so many of your loyal, long-suffering subjects, it will only look worse for you when you face trial.’

‘Trial? Trial? You can’t try me! This is mutiny!’

‘What would it be if I killed you, right here, right now?’ Verris asked.

‘It would be high treason, of course, and no one would deny it! High treason!’

‘I agree. And if I were to throw you to the Yarka?’

‘The same! Treason! Murder!’ Florian was turning one way then the other, his face red, his eyes bulging with anger. ‘He’s gone mad! The pirate has gone stark, staring -’

‘And what if I suffocated you with a pillow – would that be murder as well? Would that be treason?’

‘Of course it would!’ Then Florian’s face changed, just a little. ‘Why do you ask, Verris?’

‘Isn’t that what you did to our venerated Archon not so long ago?’

Florian was suddenly lost for words. His mouth opened and closed like a fish beached on the sand.

‘You seem to have lost your ability to speak, Florian,’ Verris said. ‘But Janus was there, wasn’t he? He saw you do it. And I’m sure that he’ll admit that when he is offered a reduction in his sentence for telling us what he saw. And he’ll also testify that you were acting on the old prophecy which states that to assume power is to lead, but to take power is to rule. It’s the very prophecy he was seeking to honour by arranging your murder today.’

‘But my uncle was dying anyway!’ Florian suddenly blurted. ‘I was simply speeding up the horrid, painful process! That’s not murder – that’s mercy!’

‘You killed him, Florian,’ Verris said. ‘You killed him. Which makes you guilty of high treason. Guards, take him away.’

‘They’re not your guards to order around!’ Florian screamed as two armed men stepped forward, caught him under the armpits and dragged him offstage.

‘Perhaps not, but in a matter of moments my newly-released generals will be here with the militia you locked away in your rat-infested dungeons. I have to say, Florian, I wouldn’t want to be one of these guards when those boys arrive. Soldiers need to fight – it’s what they do – and they’ve been itching for a scrap, sitting down there with nothing to do for several months. You know, your guards might be just what they’ve been dreaming about. Fresh meat, so to speak.’

The nearest guard had gone rather pale. ‘We’ll… we’ll do whatever you say, sir,’ he stammered. More guards nodded in agreement. ‘I never liked him anyway!’

‘Let me go!’ Florian shouted as he was dragged away. ‘Verris, we can work this out! Can’t we talk about it? Oh, this is so unfair!’

‘Oh, stop your whining,’ Verris said. Then he muttered, ‘That boy never did like to lose.’

‘How did you get to Stelka?’ Amelia asked, pouring another thickleberry wine for Verris.

‘It was her,’ he replied, nodding at Tab, who was reclining against a pile of stage curtains. ‘All those guards that came aboard with Rendana back on Unja Ballis – well they don’t just work out the front of the palace, you see. Once he’d told Florian about the Yarka and their fire-crystal, Rendana could do more or less whatever he wanted. He had his men in all sorts of key positions. And the thing is, being newcomers, they weren’t ready for some… experimental magic, let’s say.’

‘You don’t think I spend my entire day convincing farmers to sing to shickins, do you?’ Tab said. ‘Just because I work on a farm doesn’t mean I don’t try to keep my skills up to date.’

‘And this experimental magic involved what?’ Philmon asked.

Tab shrugged. ‘Oh, you know, just a bit of mind control…’

‘And when that didn’t work, the sleeper hold is always a good backup plan,’ Verris said, smiling.

‘I’ve got a question,’ Fontagu said. ‘The pillow over the face of the Archon – was that just a lucky guess?’

Tab shook her head. ‘Just because Torby can’t speak doesn’t mean his mind isn’t working. And as Amelia knows, if you know what you’re doing, you can get into the strangest places with your mind.’

‘Maybe I’m drunk, but I don’t understand,’ Fontagu said.

‘Torby was there,’ Tab explained. ‘He saw Florian do it. And he heard Janus encourage him, and quote the prophecy. But then, he went back to how he’d been, all… blank. He was still very fragile, and he couldn’t take the horror of seeing someone killed in front of his eyes like that. But then, in a funny sort of way, he told me, once I bothered to go into his mind and ask the right questions.’

Fontagu shook his head in confusion. ‘No, I still don’t get it. I must be drunk.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Amelia, re-corking the bottle and placing it on top of a prop chest. ‘Thickleberry wine doesn’t have any alcohol in it.’

‘It doesn’t?’ Fontagu said, staring suspiciously at his drink.

‘So what happens now?’ Philmon asked. ‘Can Quentaris go home?’

Stelka shook her head. ‘The reformed council will have to decide what we do with the fire-crystal, but if we do invoke the Spell of Infinite Transition, we’ll put laws in place that allow us to only use it for peaceful purposes.’ She leaned forward. ‘What Florian didn’t know was that there is a lot of work to be done between getting the fire-crystal and invoking a spell as big as that. I mean, what kind of mess would we end up in if any old person off the street could grab a gemstone and start throwing spells around willy-nilly?’