His valet helped him slide the baldric of his rapier over his shoulder, and then he sipped wine and watched the stranger in the mirror preen himself. He had never been a handsome man, though there had always been something about him which the fair sex had found not unattractive. But now he was an emaciated, scarred scarecrow with a brown face in which a lipless mouth curled in a perpetual sneer. Governor of New Hebrion. His Excellency. Discoverer of the New World.

“The carriage is ready in the court-yard, my lord,” Glarus ventured from the door.

“I’ll be there in a moment.”

It was barely midmorning. Only a few hours ago he had been a beggar on a sinking ship with the scum of the earth for company. Now he was a lord again, with servants at his beck and call, a carriage waiting, a king ready to receive him. Some part of the world had been put back to rights at least. Some natural order restored.

He went down to the carriage and stared about himself avidly as it negotiated the narrow cobbled streets on the way to the palace. Not too much evidence of destruction in this part of the city, at least. It was good of Abeleyn to see him so promptly, but then the monarch was probably afire with curiosity. Important that Murad’s own version of events in the west was the first the King heard. So much was open to misinterpretation.

Glarus had told Murad of the war, the ruin of the city and the King’s illness while he had pounded his seed into the rump of the whimpering maid. A lot had been happening, seemingly, while he and his companions had been trekking through that endless jungle and eating beetles in order to survive. Murad could not help but feel that the world he had come back to had become an alien place. But the Sequeros were destroyed, as were the Carreras. That meant that he, Lord Murad of Galiapeno, was now almost certainly closest by blood to the throne itself. It was an ill wind which blew nobody any good. He smiled to himself. War was good for something after all.

The King received him in the palace gardens, amid the chittering of cicadas and the rustling of cypresses. A year before, Murad had sat here with him and first proposed the expedition to the west. It was no longer the same world. They were no longer the same men of that summer morning.

The King had aged in a year. His dark hair was brindled with grey and he bore scars on his face even as Murad did. He was taller than he had been, Murad was convinced, and he walked with an awkward gait, the legacy of the wounds he had suffered in the storming of the city. He smiled as his kinsman approached, though the lean nobleman had not missed the initial shock on his face, quickly mastered.

“Cousin, it is good to see you.”

They embraced, then each held the other at arm’s length and studied the other man’s face.

“It’s a hard journey you’ve been on,” Abeleyn said.

“I might say the same of you, sire.”

The King nodded. “I expected word from you sooner. Did you find it, Murad, your Western Continent?”

Murad sat down beside the King on the stone bench that stood sun-warmed in the garden. “Yes, I found it.”

“And was it worth the trip?”

For a second, Murad could not speak. Pictures in his mind. The great cone of Undabane rising out of the jungle. The slaughter of his men there. The jungle journey. The pitiful wreck of Fort Abeleius. Bardolin howling in the hold of the ship in nights of wind. He shut his eyes.

“The expedition was a failure, sire. We were lucky to escape with our lives, those of us who did. It was—it was a nightmare.”

“Tell me.”

And he did. Everything from the moment of weighing anchor in Abrusio harbour all those months ago through to mooring the ship again that very morning. He told Abeleyn virtually everything; but he did not mention Griella, or what Bardolin had become. And Hawkwood’s part in the tale was kept to a minimum. The survivors had pulled through thanks to the determination and courage of Lord Murad of Galiapeno, who had never despaired, even in the blackest of moments.

The birds sang their homage to the morning, and Murad could smell juniper and lavender on the breeze. His storey seemed like some cautionary tale told around a sailor’s fireside, not something which could actually have happened. It was a bad dream which at last he had woken from, and he was in the sunlit reality of his own world again.

“Join me for lunch,” the King said at last when Murad was done. “I also have a tale to tell, though no doubt you’ve heard a part of it already.”

The King rose with an audible creaking of wood, and the pair of them left the garden together, the birds singing their hearts out all around them.

T HE message was brought to Golophin in the palace by a breathless boy straight from the waterfront. He had eluded every footman and guard and was bursting with news. The Gabrian Osprey had returned at last, and her captain was having some precious form of supercargo sent to his tower in the hills. It would be there around midafternoon. Captain Hawkwood would like to meet with him this evening, if it was convenient, and discuss the shipment. The whole dockside was in a high state of excitement. The surviving crew members of the Osprey were being feted in every tavern that still existed in the Lower City, and they were telling tales of strange lands, stranger beasts, and rivers of gold!”

Golophin gave the boy a silver crown for his pains and halted in his tracks. He had an idea he knew what Hawkwood’s cargo was. He snapped to an eavesdropping palace attendant that he wanted his mule saddled up at once, and then repaired to his apartments in the palace to gather some books and herbs that he thought he might need.

Isolla found him there, packing with calm haste.

“Something has come up,” he explained. “I must leave for my tower at once. I may be gone a few days.”

“But haven’t you heard the news? Some lord who went off to find the Western Continent has come back. He’s to be the star of a levee this afternoon.”

“I had heard,” Golophin said with a smile. “Lord Murad is known to me. But a friend of mine is… is in trouble. I am the only one who can help him.”

“He must be a close friend,” Isolla said, obviously curious. She had not thought Golophin close to anyone except perhaps the King himself.

“He was a pupil of mine for a time.”

A pageboy knocked and poked his head around the door. “The mule is saddled and ready, sir.”

“Thank you.” Golophin slung his packed leather bag over one thin shoulder, clapped his broad-brimmed hat on his pate, and kissed Isolla hurriedly. “Watch over the King while I’m away, lady.”

“Yes, of course. But Golophin—”

And he was gone. Isolla could have stamped her foot with frustration and curiosity. Then again, why not indulge herself? Much though she liked Golophin, she sometimes found his air of world-weary superiority infuriating.

She would miss the levee and the explorer’s tales, but something told her that Golophin’s urgent errand was tied into the arrivall of this ship from the west.

Isolla strode off to her chambers. She needed to change into clothes more suitable for riding.

ELEVEN

T HE army woke up in the black hour before the dawn, and in the frigid darkness men stumbled and cursed and blew on numbed fingers as they strapped on their armour and gnawed dry biscuit. Corfe shared a mug of wine with Marsch and Andruw while the trio stood and watched the host of men about them come to life.

“Remember to keep sending back couriers,” Corfe said through teeth clenched against the cold. “I don’t care if there’s nothing to report; at least they’ll keep me updated on your location. And don’t for God’s sake pitch into anything large before the main body comes up.”