I stood on tiptoe and looked down the length of the Austringer Wing; over the roof of the Austringer building at the end. I could just see a dark green pattern of tall hedgerows-the labyrinth. It was enormous; lemon hedge on one side of the path and box on the other, so if you got lost you could smell your way around it to the great trellis and pergola in the centre. They are covered in vines drooping fat clusters of purple grapes. The tendrils hang down like a screen of falling water, and it is wonderful to push through them to the hideaway inside, where you can sit among statues in its shade.

Past the maze grew the long, unkempt grass of the ‘wilderness’-nothing of the sort but a well-designed meadow where Lightning held garden parties. I’d rather have kept it natural than have it look so through artifice and expenditure. Beyond that rose the belvedere, once copied by the Rachiswaters in their circular style. I wondered why it was that the richer people became, the more sequacious?

At the end of the Eyas Wing, in the other direction, a slope went down to ‘the farm’ by the river, a few kilometres distant but the clutch of aslant roofs looked more like a small town. Most of the estate workers lived there, tending beehives, kitchen and herb gardens, a phasianery for peacocks and pheasants, a rabbit warren, brick kilns and a dovecot. Lightning calls the estate office ‘The New House’, although it is four hundred years old. The Alula Road passes through to Micawater town itself, which was disguised behind another well-placed copse. Lots of townsfolk were here, watching the festivities and loving it. They were the sort of Awian citizens who hold street parties on their lord’s birthday.

People were converging on the archery stands. From up here, parasols over women’s shoulders looked like little circles. I noticed a knot of people heading from the refreshment tent and in their midst I recognised Eleonora’s confident stride. Beside her was my little, dark-haired, vivacious Tern. The Challenge is about to start. I had better go join them.

I stepped off the balustrade and tilted out in a long, slow glide. I swept over the terrace onto which the palace’s doors opened; then the water gardens below them, a round central spring framed symmetrically by four limpid pools.

The ground dropped away and steps led down to a parterre, with the sky-blue roses of Awia in flower beds bordered by low hedges. More box hedges looked like embroidery, clipped into lacy flowing designs, scrolls and plumes against the rich, loamy earth. From that level stone hounds guarded a balustraded double staircase descending to the avenue. People walking on the paths between the flower beds looked up as my shadow sped over them.

I focused on Tern and Eleonora and the courtiers surrounding them, who were settling on the lowest seat of the stands nearest the archery ground, reserved for the Queen’s use and covered with samite silk. I came in above the rounded end of the awning and veered wide to the arena’s grass, flared wings and touched down. My landing drew a little tentative applause from the crowd.

I hopped over the ropes and Tern came forward to meet me. ‘My love,’ I said over her shoulder as we hugged. ‘My dear, dear love.’

‘Isn’t this exciting?’ Tern exclaimed. ‘What a magnificent day!’

Eleonora nodded contentedly. ‘It’s a Lakeland summer all right. Three fine days and a thunderstorm. It’s like clockwork.’

‘Well, the sooner we get this over with and on to the party the better.’ She passed me a glass of sparkling wine. ‘I pestered Lightning to give us some real Stenasrai. “You must have had Stenasrai in six twenty,” I told him. “It’s better than that ridiculous mead.” It’s a wonder anyone in the seventh century had any teeth.’

I was enjoying the party but I still had a lot to do. Since the slaughter of the battle there had been more people hiding from the draft. There was a groundswell of sentiment against the war and criticism of the Emperor, which the Emperor was ignoring until it gradually subsided.

Eleonora had covered herself with glory and was full of pride. We hadn’t regained so much land since the Miroir battles of the last Tanager dynasty. No wonder the Rachiswaters had been so keen to match them by making advances in Lowespass, but Eleonora had taken more than any of them. Our shared knowledge of how awful the battle had been brought us together in this warm sunlight, whereas Tern, who could never understand, just kept talking. ‘I worried about you when the Circle broke,’ she said. ‘Although worry is quite an inadequate word for what I felt.’

‘I was fine, my love. I saw the flood. I never want to go back to Slake Cross though. Every time we go there we get massacred.’

Tern said, ‘Some people are talking about an odd phenomenon. My warden says god appeared to the Emperor on the battlefield.’

‘Really?’ I said casually. ‘In what shape?’

‘A very strange one. A tall column of smoke, and trees made of worms.’

‘Mass hysteria.’ I shrugged. ‘People report all kinds of visions under battle stress. It’s terror that causes it. Lowespass generates more folklore than it can use.’

‘Well, I don’t see why it should have to export it.’

I said, ‘Some fyrdsmen say that you can still hear the winch tower bell, tolling underwater in the river. Fyrdsmen will tell you any old crap.’

I was interrupted by three flights of whistling arrows being loosed on the other side of the lake in honour of the victor of the chariot races. Eleonora shook herself. ‘Lightning slept through the dam breaking,’ she said. Tern and I laughed. It’s a joke that Lightning is such a sound sleeper Insects could be eating him and he wouldn’t wake up.

‘You dare wake him, Jant,’ said Tern. ‘Why didn’t you?’

‘Um…I was busy.’

‘And the Emperor asked Lightning to have dinner with him. At least, I heard so…Is it true?’

‘Yes. That is true.’

‘But it’s unheard of! For Lightning, for anybody! Well, come on. Tell me. What did they talk about?’

‘I asked Lightning, but he wouldn’t say.’

‘I would never have thought anything like a one-to-one conversation could ever happen.’

‘It was in the hall at Slake,’ I said. ‘No one else was there.’

‘Couldn’t you have spied? No, stupid question.’

Eleonora spun the key to her suite around her finger on its ribbon. ‘This place is quaint. I like the marble bathrooms. But it’s not as big as Rachiswater. Or as grand as I’ve planned Tanager to be. It’s odd to think it was the capital once.’

‘It’s not bad for five four nine!’ Tern said.

‘Lightning’s town was even bigger than Hacilith back then,’ I added. ‘Hacilith took a hundred years to overtake it. He never wanted to extend it; he wanted to preserve it and the palace too.’

Eleonora spun and spun her key. ‘What a shame. Lightning rattling around in the house alone for fourteen hundred years. One hundred and forty bedrooms and no woman to share any of them with. It’s enough to turn a man’s mind. Why hasn’t he ever married? Does he bat for the other team, or what?’

Tern laughed. ‘No-oo. He’s just looking for the perfect match.’

‘Well, we’ll have to do something about that.’ The two women looked at each other. ‘He just needs to relax. Perhaps his Queen could…command him to.’

‘I think he wants some kind of red-haired huntress,’ Tern said as we settled ourselves in the stands.

‘Nonsense. He just needs the attentions of a woman au fait with her desires.’

From here was a much better view uphill to the palace. It was all warm, shortbread-coloured Donaise limestone, from the rusticated stonework on the lower storey to the rich carving in the great pediment; many strips of decorative mouldings surrounded a smooth bas-relief of the winged hounds bearing the lozenge coat of arms. Each column led up to a statue on the roof as if supporting it. Between the columns two levels of windows proclaimed how many rooms could house Lightning’s guests. The Eyas and Austringer buildings at the ends of the two wings had enormous windows with round arches giving on to the ballroom and stateroom respectively. It was built in the most regular manner rare in the country today; Awia has gone straight from Micawater’s classical to neoclassical, and now Rachiswater’s art nouveau, without ever having been through a rustic phase like the Plainslands.