‘Where will his private quarters be?’ I asked.

‘Your room.’

‘Oh, thanks.’

‘Well, you weren’t here and we thought you wouldn’t mind…After all, you can sleep on a bookshelf.’

I picked up a bottle and poured some wine, hoping it would ease my nerves. Wrenn paced around the table and said to the room in general, ‘The boss is coming. What have we done wrong?’

‘I wonder whose head is on the block first?’

Wrenn pressed me: ‘Doesn’t San leaving the Castle mean the end of the world? I was taught he would leave to prepare the way for god. Is god returning? What will it do?’

I had met with this question in every manor and it was really starting to annoy me. I said tiredly, ‘Shut the fuck up about god.’

Lightning said, ‘Don’t swear in front of Cyan.’

I glanced across to Cyan, who smiled innocently.

Tornado spoke up: ‘I hope god returns. It’s what I’ve been waiting for all these years.’

I gave a frustrated shriek and waved my hands in the air. ‘Hundreds of thousands of troops are coming and we have no space! Let’s concentrate!’

Tornado ignored me and addressed Wrenn: ‘I know I’m prepared for god. To me it’s the whole point of being immortal-I get a ringside seat when it shows up. San knows everything I do is for the Castle so I’m damn sure he’ll give me a good report.’

‘God is an inhuman power,’ Lightning said quietly.

‘Still, I like to think it’ll be refreshed and in a good mood.’

Lightning said, ‘Please can we keep to the point?’

‘This is the point!’

He shook his head. ‘No, Tornado. In my experience stories are rarely as old as people say; and traditions are never as time-honoured as they like to believe. The idea that San never leaves the Castle originated about a hundred years after the Games. I don’t remember him announcing that he would never leave. Many opinions sprang up around that time; they became stories and then the centuries twisted them into legends. Please do not be distracted by myths of the world ending because the truth is much worse. We all know the original version deep down. Cyan, Wrenn; when San leaves the Castle it logically means the end of the Circle not the end of the world. We have failed him and he needs to take command again himself. I think-I fear-that he will disband the Circle.’

‘He took charge of the Imperial Fyrd just like a warrior,’ I said with wonder.

‘Yes. San the warrior is not so strange to me. I remember him leading the First Circle. I was introduced to him once, in the field at Murrelet, where Rachiswater is now. When I was a boy he would stop at the palace on his expeditions from the Castle to the front. Could we be redundant?’

‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘San asked for every fighter we can field. Who’ll lead them? He needs us more than ever.’

‘I cannot begin to predict what he plans.’

Tornado said, ‘I still think god might appear.’

‘Well, you are from a more religious era,’ Lightning said airily.

‘And you’re full of bullshit!’

‘What will god look like?’ Wrenn asked Tornado.

The giant man’s voice sparked with interest. ‘Dunno. I asked San to, like, describe it, but he wouldn’t. San says god made us, so it’s more powerful than us, so it can’t be Awian or human. It wouldn’t have made us anything like itself, either in looks or the extent of its power, because then we’d be able to rebel and of course god wouldn’t chance that. That’s why god is an “it”. Most books I’ve read say it can look like whatever it wants to. It, like, creates stuff. That’s what it does. So it can create forms for itself. If god was speaking to you, then I guess it might choose to look like an Awian.’

‘You’re making this worse,’ I complained.

Wrenn glanced at Lightning for support. ‘Do you believe in god?’

Lightning said, ‘I see no reason not to, because San does not lie. No one has ever given me a more convincing alternative. Besides, we are immortal. God must be behind it somewhere, or how could San have immortality to share?’

Wrenn gave a great worried sigh. He unbuckled his belt and laid his sword on the table. He ran his fingers through his hair and set off pacing to the fireplace again.

I was suddenly furious. I couldn’t believe we were talking about this crap! ‘Tornado, you’re wasting our time! Are we credulous Zascai? Are we Trisians, to be sitting here pontificating? Is this the Buncombe Beach Young Philosophers On The Brink Of Disaster Club?’

‘Don’t speak Plainslands,’ said Lightning. ‘I can’t follow you if you go that fast.’

‘Sorry. I’m just telling him that we’re in this together and god is not going to help us. Nothing is going to come and save us. We have no one to run crying to, nothing to rely on. We must stand on our own two feet. Can we just grow up, please? Why do you think San told me to muster everyone from Frass to Vertigo? The strength and resources in each of us is all we have!’

‘You used to believe,’ Tornado said. ‘I remember when you joined the Circle. You weren’t so cynical then.’

I shrugged. When I was an apprentice in Hacilith I saw how seriously my seniors took the story. What other conclusion can a child draw from the sayings of adults? I grew more experienced and I realised that adults don’t have all the answers, and in many cases they’re even more credulous and confused than children. Then I saw the Shift, then I saw the Somatopolis, and I realised how truly alone we are-not only in this world, but in all of them.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I have no proof. But if we don’t know whether god is real, we can’t depend on it. If we can’t prove anything either way, and if we’ll never know the answer, we should shut up about it and do something more practical. Instead of talking we should save ourselves! God might return and make everyone immortal, or us mortal. It could alter and revoke the laws of physics at will and leave us with a terrifying disorder. God might already have come back-remember the posteventualist heresy? Maybe San is god, watching and chuckling to himself. Maybe the Insects are god; they appeared, didn’t they? Or maybe god intended them to be the next phase of creation, more perfect and far hardier than us men.’

‘Fuck that!’ Tornado thundered. He stood up, so I did too, but I foolhardily kept going: ‘San is coming to see something new to him, that’s all.’

He patted me on the shoulders-and I sat down heavily on the bench.

‘Please!’ Lightning said.

Tornado said simply, ‘If Jant picks holes in my belief, it will shine still brighter through them.’

I sighed. ‘God coming back is nothing but a story. I’ve lived everywhere; I know a tale when I hear one. From Darkling to Hacilith to the Castle I’ve had to don and doff beliefs so many times I’ve realised stories are only ever about the people who make them up…’

‘Have you quite finished?’ said Lightning coldly.

‘I think he’s crazy,’ said Tornado.

‘No, I’m not crazy. I’ve just been around. Let me show you what I mean. Tales of god from different countries would seem as outlandish to you, as yours would to them.’

‘I have had my fill of outlandish countries,’ Lightning remarked quietly, stroking the scar on his palm.

‘You find Rhydanne strange, don’t you?’ I asked Tornado.

‘I find you strange,’ he said.

‘Rhydane think of god as looking like a Rhydanne.’

He sniggered.

I said, ‘Listen to the Rhydanne version. God the hunter made the world, the mountains, the plains, the sky; but it was empty of animals. So god made an animal to chase, and the animal she made was enormous, as if every single creature of the Fourlands, dumb and rational, had been joined together in one giant form. It had feathers and scales, skin and fur, hands, claws, wings and tails. It had hundreds of heads and thousands of eyes. It was both male and female. The beast sat on Scree Plateau and used the Plainslands as its footstool. Its heads towered above the peaks in the highest mountain clouds.