I didn’t meet her eye. ‘Eleonora, I’m the Messenger at your beck and call but I’m not your call boy.’

‘Pity. Still, there are others. Merganser’s here but he’s not as good as you’re said to be.’ She turned away.

‘No!’ I said. ‘Wait.’

She gave a sidelong glance. ‘Go to the Onyx Room…no, that’s occupied. Go to the Topaz Room, remove your clothes and fold them on the chair. Then kneel on the bed. Await me there.’ And she was gone, like a caravel in full sail back into the party.

Eszai have seen most things but I’d never encountered anyone like Eleonora before. (My curiosity will be the death of me.) Some Awians were starting to object to her hedonistic rule, for all that she saved them from the Insects two years before. If the previous King, now exiled in Summerday, living in a garret and writing bad poetry, ever had offspring who could claim the throne, then Eleonora would need to spend even more on guards and spies.

I turned a handstand and walked on my hands through the party, and I ran up to the room. A bottle of wine was already opened for me.

The warm summer evening backlit the curtains drawn over open windows. Eleonora kept me waiting. When she entered, she seemed pleased that I was kneeling. She swung the door shut behind her and fiddled with her skirt. It fell to the ground, revealing her bodice and some riding boots extending over her knees, tight to the shape of her legs.

I could only see her silhouette as she crossed in front of the curtains, tapping the stem of her mask on her gloved hand.

She started to lick my feathers; she ran them through her mouth and tongued between them until I was in ecstasy.

‘Put your hands on the bedpost.’

‘Why-hey!’ She grabbed my balls.

‘Put your hands on the bedpost!’

I followed her command. ‘Why? Bloody let go!’ Before I had finished protesting she whisked a cord around my wrists, tied an ingenious knot and bound my hands to the post.

I struggled, but I couldn’t free them. I leant forward and bit the cord-but she was pulling another one from under the pillow. She looped it around my wings, leant back and pulled it tight.

I gasped, beginning to lose the feeling in my wings’ fingers. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Now you can’t cover your pretty backside with your wings, when I sodomise you with my riding crop.’

‘What?-Ow!’ She cracked me across the backside. It wasn’t her mask-she was holding a whip! She passed it over my mouth and I tasted the leather, and felt the little gold ferrule on the end. Suddenly I was dangerously sober. ‘Let me go!’

‘Please let me go, my lady.’

‘Ow!…My lady.’

Eleonora smiled. ‘You’re a fast learner. Not so loud or they’ll hear you downstairs. If you dare kick, I’ll call for an audience.’

She tilted her head, appreciating her handiwork, studying me closely. She stroked the whip into my arse crack and ran it up and down. I pleaded, but it delighted her; no matter what I said she wouldn’t let me free.

She bent her knee up between my thighs and pressed it on the inside of my legs. The sparse light picked out shiny creases in the leather. She pushed me flat and straddled my arse, riding my cheeks as if fucking me until my backside was wet with her juices. My cock stiffened despite myself as it rubbed against the sheets.

Her breathing quickened. I heard her sigh and felt her shudder.

Then-oh, but I won’t go into it-she…no, I can’t say…What am I telling you this for, anyway?

Finally she left me kneeling, my cock sore from her quick, expert tugs, because she didn’t like the way I kept growing soft. She had flicked my come out of me and it was helplessly dripping off my chest. I felt as if I had been milked, and my arse was…raw.

She said, ‘I’ll send word around the party to come up and view you.’

‘No!’

‘Yes. They would laugh to see the Messenger so…compromised. Oh, and your wife’s downstairs, isn’t she?’

‘Please, Eleonora.’

Smack!

‘Ow! Please, my lady.’

She lowered her mask onto my face and pulled its string tight, restricting my vision to a few centimetres of rucked sheet and my breathing to a warm hiss. She sighed with a beautiful facsimile of sadness, ‘Now you’re used up. I’ll have to leave you on your knees until you’re ready again.’

‘Again?’ I whispered, muffled.

‘I’m taking your clothes, so even if you bite yourself free you won’t be able to leave the room. Unless you want to join the party naked, on a leash?’

‘No!’

‘I will leave the door unlocked. Anyone could come in…I’ll leave it to chance.’

She slipped out of the range of my vision. Music leaked in from the party, then the door clicked shut. Rays filtered through the curtains. Flies buzzed in the open window and landed on me. They puddled their sucker mouthparts on my skin. The tracks of their feet tickled me infuriatingly as they crawled, but I was too abandoned in my shame to shake them off. I felt squandered…And I felt beaten…I was tricked. Deceived. Eaten.

Hours later Eleonora returned, dropped my clothes on the floor, and untied me without a word.

I flew reconnaissance flights over the seemingly never-ending procession of troops. Far below me, the Peregrine General Fyrd were marching into the gate. Behind their line came the Summerday Select Fyrd, clad in dirty brigandines that had once been saffron yellow. They were driving oxen pulling room-sized espringals on wheels, capable of shooting a vireton spear through the Insect Wall. The Summerday Select were excellent at demolishing Insect paper and they knew the whole front well.

Behind them came the Shivel Select, mustered weeks before for the advance. Their columns were in close order between the lines of outriders and, further off in the distance, another body of men whose colours I couldn’t see. I winged closer and looked down to the road. After the leaf-green of Shivel rode the crimson column of the Imperial Fyrd.

The Emperor had kept cohesion in their formation and the five hundred men rode perfectly spaced. All the other fyrds had become one mass, trailing baggage carts tens of kilometres behind.

I glided lower and saw the Emperor. He was leading, on his black stallion, and the diffuse sunlight gave his figure an unnatural luminosity-he was wearing full plate. Two spearmen rode behind him on either side, each steadying with one hand his pennant in his saddle rest. Reflections darted from their helmets. Their banners with the Castle’s red sun on yellow flickered forward above them.

I wheeled away and found Tornado with a division of horsemen patrolling the road’s north verge. I half-folded my wings and came tearing down helter-skelter a hundred metres in a few seconds, rocking and side-slipping, legs dangling, to the ground.

Tornado looked down from his enormous, ivory-clad saddle. His worn armour had a raised design that replicated the stitches and hemming of denim.

I said, ‘The Emperor’s in sight.’

‘How far?’ he boomed.

‘About five hours away.’

‘You tell Lightning that I will go to escort him.’

‘Of course.’

‘The Imperial Fyrd will be looking to me for their lead.’

I heard the excitement in his voice; he was absolutely prepared for some unspecified apotheosis. ‘You want to stay close to San in case he conjures up god, or something.’

Tornado smiled. ‘My place is at his right hand, whatever happens. No Insect or madman will harm him in Lowespass, where I was born and bred. He’ll be safe like he was inside the Castle’s walls. And you, Comet; you’d better make sure everyone hears his words. And, like, acts on them.’

‘Lightning and I will come out, too.’

‘I’ll be first to San’s side…I’ll be certain to witness any revelation.’