Lightning dismounted and threw himself at the Emperor’s feet, on both knees. I heard his greaves grind on the cobbles. I stepped my leg over Pangare’s saddle, hopped to the ground and knelt beside him. A couple of quick jingles behind me told me Cyan had done the same.

Seeing us, all the Shivel fyrd dismounted and knelt in a great swathe either side of the road.

Lightning and I looked up to San’s face, clean-shaven and expressionless. He wore an open-faced sallet helmet that pushed his fine white hair close to his hollow cheeks, but the wind blew the ends that protruded from underneath.

Every plate of his armour was lustrous-enamelled white with no ornament but the fastenings of a billowing white silk cloak. Suns were damascened on the bare steel scabbard of his ancient broadsword which hung with his shield from the saddlebow.

I managed one glance and bowed my head again.

Peach-coloured shafts of sunlight shone between our horses’ sinewy legs. Their musty, sweaty bellies and withers hemmed us in, their hair brushed against the grain in dark streaks, their hocks covered in drying mud. Their shadows were no more than small patches directly beneath them. Pangare flipped her docked tail and pawed the road too close to my head. I looked up to the underside of the Emperor’s horse’s long chin, as it chewed its bit imperiously.

The first company of the Imperial Fyrd raised a cheer, then the second company, then the third, and when all ten companies had cheered separately, the five hundred men cheered together; a great, deafening wordless roar that went on and on until San raised his free hand. The cheering straggled into silence.

‘My lord,’ said Lightning, so dry-mouthed I could hear his tongue clicking. ‘I’m sorry-we are-that it’s come to this. Please…And we’ll…We will bring the Insects under control. We will mend our error.’

San rested his reins on his scrollwork saddlebow. ‘Lightning, Comet, to your feet. Every second we stay the numbers in our rearguard diminish.’

San’s long limbs were encased in armour and, once I’d recovered from the shock of seeing that he actually did have legs, I noticed how thin they were; no muscles on his shanks at all. He must be wearing the cloak to make himself look bigger. I risked a closer glance and saw beads of sweat on his neck. He must be feeling the exertion of wearing armour and riding after fourteen hundred years in the Castle, but it did not tell in his noble bearing. He showed no sign of strain on his face: his self-control was absolute. He conveyed the same majesty under the open skies as he did sitting at the focal point of the Throne Room.

The pennant-bearers behind him were whey-pale and poker-faced, their jaws clenched, their mouths firm lines. They were telling themselves this wasn’t happening. Their set expressions were partly pride that such a role had fallen to them, part anxiety from riding for days in far too close proximity to the Emperor, but mostly the blank-eyed denial of men determined to carry out a job they really didn’t want to do.

The Emperor asked Lightning, ‘Have Insects flown again?’

‘They flew every day for three days. There have been no more flights since.’

‘Good. I must talk with Frost immediately.’

I stammered, ‘Er, Frost has changed. She’s…well…she’s somewhat stressed.’

‘Is she still the best architect?’

‘Um…I think so.’

‘She will be the Architect until she loses a Challenge. I will make a new Lawyer, Artillerist and Master of Horse from the best in the town to complete the Circle. We will need them in the coming days, but when times are easier I will open their positions to worldwide competition.’ San gestured for Lightning to ride on his left, level with Tornado. The Strongman was calm-faced and expressionless, looking straight ahead, his hands invisible under the circular vamplate on his axe haft.

Lightning beckoned to Cyan with a smile, asking her to join him, but she turned her face away. She seemed overwhelmed.

San said, ‘Comet, ride ahead and announce our entry to the town.’

I don’t remember climbing back onto Pangare but I must have done because the next instant I was on a level with the Emperor’s face. I gave a quick nod and with shaking hands I unlaced my dented post horn from the saddle, where it shone like a New Year’s decoration. I gave Pangare a single word and she leapt down the road.

Behind me the whole Imperial Fyrd and Shivel fyrd began to move again, with the jingle of tack and clop of hooves.

The Emperor San here! I thought as I rode. The Emperor San in armour! I had seen his white panoply before; it was displayed, by tradition, in the Castle’s armoury but nobody ever thought he would actually wear it.

When a new Armourer joins the Circle it is always his first honour to make a perfect suit of armour for the Emperor to the highest specifications, copying the measurements of the last. Sleat had put so much effort into creating San’s perfect armour that I am surprised he ever made anything again.

I heralded San’s arrival into Slake Cross. People lined the roadside, leant out of windows, clustered in the hoardings, stood on the new earth ramparts. I slowed and cantered Pangare through the gatehouse arch, and hundreds of people dropped to their knees in a great swathe as I passed. I could get used to this.

I rose before dawn and went to the washroom to have a powder bath. Those of us who have wings moult and re-grow flight feathers continuously, one or two at a time, but in the last few months I had lost six or seven, leaving me with great gaps in my wings. It made flying more laborious and I was at the stage of exhaustion when, no matter how much I ate, my meals didn’t provide energy any more. San had asked me to sleep in a pavilion in the canvas city because he thought my presence might curtail the fyrd’s drinking (ha!), the inter-manor rivalries, brawling and petty theft breaking out there.

As I rubbed handfuls of talcum powder between my feathers I reconsidered the problems of the last few days. I had been gathering information for the Emperor, everyone was bombarding me with questions, and I had to think one step ahead. The Rachiswater fyrd vied with Tanager, and the Carniss fyrd stole things from everybody. The Awndyn fyrd had been arriving all night, stomping past my tent. The carpenters had been hammering, by firelight, while the Emperor slept-presumably-in my bed. It was bloody bizarre. On the positive side, he had waived most of the formal courtesies, so I spent less time kneeling on the floor.

The powder relieved some of my itching. I took a shower, preened and oiled my feathers into a glossy iridescence. I tied back my hair in wet black rat-tails, lit a cigarette and returned to the hall feeling much more relaxed.

The hall had become a small, austere version of the Throne Room. Most of the Eszai were listening attentively as the Emperor, with Tornado and Frost beside him, discussed our situation.

Tornado was so huge that usually his very gravity pulled everyone’s attention towards him, but now he managed to look humble and our concentration focused on San’s gaunt figure. Nobody dared question the Strongman’s self-styled role as San’s bodyguard, testimony to his profound faith although I thought he was overdoing it.

Frost, on the other hand, looked cadaverous. She spoke clearly although much too fast: ‘M-my lord-I have estimated the number of eggs in the lake. Given the parameters my approximation is, of necessity, rough. Rayne dissected an Insect and and and she thinks they’re hermaphrodite. I have calculated the capacity of air w-which one Insect needs to fly, then figured the dimensions of the flight, and therefore the number of Insects in that volume of air, and what percentage reach the lake, and since they seem to contain between ninety-eight and one hundred and fifty eggs, assuming all eggs are v-v-viable, I-’