You were expected, one signed while the other lifted his hand shaping the sign, Close.

Carnelian felt the shudder in the air as the door shut behind him. On its other side, the guardsmen were resecuring the locks.

Seraph, all the standard procedures are to be observed.

Carnelian lifted his hands. I do not know the standard procedures.

The ammonites moved aside and indicated the wall behind them. In the stone, glyphs burning with jewel fire read:

The Wise certify this house appropriate to the sequestering of fertile women of the Chosen. To ensure blood line integrity, all creatures who are fully male are forbidden entry. Chosen males are permitted visits to the sequestered under the following, specific conditions:

First, before the visitor is admitted to this house, the sequestered shall be placed in a chamber of audience to which the visitor shall then be admitted accompanied by two ammonites;

Second, the visitor must submit throughout to supervision by the ammonites;

Third, the visitor must not touch the sequestered unless such touch is sanctioned by conjugal rite;

Fourth and concurrently, the visitor and the sequestered may make no exchange of any kind unless that exchange has been declared legal by the observing ammonites and recorded, said record to be submitted to the Wise;

Fifth, before the sequestered is removed from the chamber of audience, the visitor must have quit this house; all this by order of the Law-that-must-be-obeyed.

The words chilled Carnelian to the bone. One of the silver masks angled to one side. Shall we proceed, Seraph?

Carnelian broke his immobility with a nod. The slicking of bolts made him look to see them locking the door behind him.

'Seraph?' said one of the ammonites in a strange voice.

He turned to follow the creature's narrow back into the gloom. He could feel the other padding behind him carrying his train. He climbed a stair. On his right side, tunnelling slits were glazed at their further end with the brilliant colours of the crater. On his left, the stone was pierced to form screens behind which was a world of shadows.

They came to a door inlaid with red stone. The ammonite ahead of Carnelian scratched it. A woman's voice gave them leave to enter and the ammonite crept in.

The Lady Urquentha was the first Chosen woman Carnelian had ever seen. Her beauty lit the chamber like a lamp. A jewelled halo that framed her face took all its glimmer from her skin. The rest of the chamber was dark.

'You are not my son.' Urquentha's face thinned to fragile alabaster.

'Lady,' said Carnelian and made a clumsy bow. 'Did they not tell you?'

She gazed at him. 'Who would tell me? It has been my fate to know of the world only as much of it as I can see through windows. Rumours are the only communication to penetrate this house.'

'But your letter, my Lady, it came so swiftly.'

She frowned a little. That was delivered by my keeper ammonites. But how came it into your hand, my Lord?'

'I am the son of your son.'

Urquentha's face loosened but quickly tightened again.

Her hand began sending a series of quick signs to the ammonites which Carnelian could not read. He turned to see the creatures nodding, and when he looked back

Urquentha was gently beckoning him. He went as a moth to her flame. When he was in range, she asked permission with her eyes before reaching out to catch his chin. Her fingers were warm. He returned her gaze. Her eyes were peepholes on to a violet sea. She turned his face with her hand as if it were a vase she was checking for imperfections.

The hand released him and receded into a pearl-crusted sleeve. She looked sad. 'I can see nothing of my son in your face.'

Carnelian blushed.

She smiled. 'That at least is his. The rest is wholly your mother's. I should have recognized her beauty when you came through that door. Who else could you be but Azurea's son?' Her smile warmed him. 'Have you been made comfortable?'

'Yes, my Lady.'

'You may call me Grandmother, child.' Her eyes darkened to purple. 'You have spoken with the second lineage?'

'Lord Spinel came down to meet me, Grandmother.'

'Did he indeed,' she said, souring, showing the cracks in her marble face. She chuckled without humour. 'I would very much have liked to witness that fish floundering in the net he knotted for himself.'

A movement caught the corner of Carnelian's eye. He glanced round at the watching ammonites. With their numbers and fixed expression, their yellow faces could have been cast tallow.

'Where is my son?'

Leaning close to his grandmother, Carnelian whispered, 'Could we not be alone?'

'You wish to be free of my chaperons?' She turned a thin smile towards the little men.

Carnelian nodded.

She laughed like a girl. 'I more than you have wished to be free of those jaundiced faces, but it is forbidden by the purdah. But do not worry about them, Carnelian; they may have eyes but they have no ears.' She smiled at him. 'We were talking about your father.'

'My father, Lady… Grandmother…'

His grandmother used her hands to tease out his words as if they were a ribbon he had stuffed in his mouth.

'He has gone to the Halls of Thunder.'

Her lips narrowed as they pressed together. The jewelled structure around her head rustled and glimmered like a flight of beetles. She sighed. 'It seems it is always to be thus?' She looked through him as if her eyes were seeking the edge of the sky. 'Always it is the Masks that win the greater part of his affection.'

'He was hurt.'

Fear washed across her face.

'Wounded.' The word squeezed out of his mouth like a pebble.

'Will he die?' The words were flat and lifeless.

Carnelian could see the pain in her violet eyes. The Lord Aurum is confident the Wise will save him.'

Urquentha threw open her hands. 'Of course, that one would be in this.'

Carnelian was a little dazzled by the flower of her fingers. He tried to find a thread to pull, some way to unravel their journey for her, but she seemed almost to have forgotten him.

'Is it not enough that he should have my daughter to lock up in his coomb but that her brother should also conspire in his intrigues? My son has always been a fool.'

'His honour-'

'Aaah, yes,' she said, and the halo behind her head quivered. 'His honour. Fifteen years this House has suffered for his precious honour. He told me he would be but a little time away. His honour demanded that he leave Osrakum before the Apotheosis: that he remain in the outer world long enough to give the new Gods time to consolidate Their reign free from the entanglement of Their love, the same entanglement that another, less honourable man would have used to his advantage. His honour, taagh! What of the honour of this House and its first lineage? Fifteen years we have been a pale power among the Great. For fifteen years at the dividing of the flesh tithe we have had to stand at the end of the line, lost there without distinction among the Lesser Houses. For thirteen long years I have been imprisoned here

…' Urquentha subsided, looked forlornly around the chamber as if seeing it for the first time. 'In his absence, I was to maintain the ascendancy of our lineage in this House. He left me the Seal…'

Carnelian nodded.

'He told you that, Carnelian?'

'No, Fey did.'

'Fey.' Her eyes narrowed. 'When my son went off into the wilderness, I begged him to leave you with me. What kind of life can the bleak outer world provide a scion of the Great? Besides, with you and the Seal together I could have ruled. Without you my hand was weak enough for Spinel to snatch the Seal away. Your father said that he would leave Fey to be my support. It did not take more than two years for Spinel to bring her over to his cause. I was told that House Suth would fall even lower if we did not participate in the festivities and masquerades of the Great, and that in such society men were essential. Men will always claim this and it is always a pretext. It was nothing but greed and power-lust that made Spinel take the Seal.' One of her hands crushed the other. 'If that usurpation was not enough, he buried me here in this house, though my womb had long been an empty husk.'