‘The Gral speaks.’

‘Now you truly mock me. This is unlike you, Icarium.’

‘The sounding of bells, their increments established by the passing of sand or water through a narrowed vessel. As you say, a conceit. An arbitrary assertion of constancy. Can we truly say, however, that time is constant?’

‘As any Gral would tell you, it is not. Else our senses lie.’

‘Perhaps they do.’

‘Then we are lost.’

‘I appreciate your intellectual belligerence today, Taralack Veed.’

They moved on, wandering slowly alongside the canal.

‘I understand your obsession with time,’ the Gral said. ‘You, who have passed through age after age, unchanging, unknowing.’

‘Unknowing, yes. That is the problem, isn’t it?’

‘I do not agree. It is our salvation.’

They were silent for a few more strides. Many were the curious-at times pitying-glances cast their way. The champions were also the condemned, after all. Yet was there hope, buried deep behind those shying eyes? There must be. For an end to the nightmare that was Rhulad Sengar, the Edur Emperor of Lether.

‘Without an understanding of time, history means nothing. Do you follow, Taralack Veed?’

‘Yet you do not understand time, do you?’

‘No, that is true. Yet I believe I have… pursued this… again and again. From age to age. In the faith that a revelation on the meaning of time will unlock my own hidden history. I would find its true measure, Taralack Veed. And not just its measure, but its very nature. Consider this canal, and those linked to it. The water is pushed by current and tide from the river, then traverses the city, only to rejoin the river not far from where it first entered. We may seek to step out from the river and so choose our own path, but no matter how straight it seems, we will, in the end, return to that river.’

‘As with the bells, then,’ the Gral said, ‘water tracks the passage of time.’

‘You misunderstand,’ Icarium replied, but did not elaborate.

Taralack Veed scowled, paused to spit thick phlegm onto his palms, then swept it back through his hair. Somewhere in the crowd a woman screamed, but the sound was not repeated. ‘The canal’s current cannot change the law that binds its direction. The canal is but a detour.’

‘Yes, one that slows the passage of its water. And in turn that water changes, gathering the refuse of the city it passes through, and so, upon returning to the river, it is a different colour. Muddier, more befouled.’

‘The slower your path, the muddier your boots?’

‘Even so,’ Icarium said, nodding.

‘Time is nothing like that.’

‘Are you so certain? When we must wait, our minds fill with sludge, random thoughts like so much refuse. When we are driven to action, our current is swift, the water seemingly clear, cold and sharp.’

‘I’d rather, Icarium, we wait a long time. Here, in the face of what is to come.’

‘The path to Rhulad? As you like. But I tell you, Taralack Veed, that is not the path I am walking.’

Another half-dozen strides.

Then the Gral spoke. ‘They wrap the cord around them, Icarium, to keep them from breaking.’

Senior Assessor’s eyes glittered as he stood amidst a crowd twenty paces from where Icarium and Taralack Veed had paused in front of a potter’s stall. His hands were folded together, the fingers twitching. His breathing was rapid and shallow;

Beside him, Samar Dev rolled her eyes, then asked, ‘Are you about to fall dead on me? If I’d known this walk involved skulking in that Jhag’s shadow, I think I would have stayed in the compound.’

‘The choices you make,’ he replied, ‘must needs be entirely of your own accord, Samar Dev. Reasonably distinct from mine or anyone else’s. It is said that the history of human conflict resides exclusively in the clash of expectations.’

‘Is it now?’

‘Furthermore-’

‘Never mind your “furthermore”, Senior Assessor. Compromise is the negotiation of expectation. With your wayward notions we do not negotiate, and so all the compromising is mine.’

‘As you choose.’

She thought about hitting him, decided she didn’t want to make a scene. What was it with men and their obsessions? ‘He is in all likelihood going to die, and soon.’

‘I think not. No, most certainly I think not.’

Icarium and the Gral resumed their meander through the crowds, and after a moment Senior Assessor followed, maintaining his distance. Sighing, Samar Dev set off after him. She didn’t like this mob. It felt wrong. Tense, overwrought. Strain was visible on faces, and the cries of the hawkers sounded strident and half desperate. Few passers-by, she noted, were buying.

‘Something’s wrong,’ she said.

‘There is nothing here that cannot be explained by impending financial panic, Samar Dev. Although you may believe I am unaware of anything but him, I assure you that I have assessed the condition of Letheras and, by extension, this entire empire. A crisis looms. Wealth, alas, is not an infinite commodity. Systems such as this are dependent upon the assumption of unlimited resources, however. These resources range from cheap labour and materials to an insatiable demand. Such demand, in turn, depends on rather more ethereal virtues, such as confidence, will, perceived need and the bliss of short-term thinking, any one of which is vulnerable to mysterious and often inexplicable influences. We are witness, here, to the effects of a complex collusion of factors which are serving to undermine said virtues. Furthermore, it is my belief that the situation has been orchestrated.’

Her mind had begun to drift with Senior Assessor’s diatribe, but this last observation drew her round. ‘Letheras is under economic assault?’

‘Well put, Samar Dev. Someone is manipulating the situation to achieve a cascading collapse, yes. Such is my humble assessment.’

‘Humble?’

‘Of course not. I view my own brilliance with irony’

‘To what end?’

‘Why, to make me humble.’

‘Are we going to follow Icarium and his pet Gral all afternoon?’

‘I am the only living native of Cabal, Samar Dev, to have seen with my own eyes our god. Is it any wonder I follow him?’

God? He’s not a god. He’s a damned Jhag from the Odhan west of Seven Cities. Suffering a tragic curse, but then, aren’t they all? A figure well ahead of Icarium and Taralack Veed caught her attention. A figure tall, hulking, with a shattered face and a huge stone sword strapped to its back. ‘Oh no,’ she murmured.

‘What is it?’ Senior Assessor asked.

‘He’s seen him.’

‘Samar Dev?’

But he was behind her now, and she was hurrying forward, roughly pushing past people. Expectations? Most certainly. Compromise? Not a chance.

One of the sconces had a faulty valve and had begun producing thick black tendrils of smoke that coiled like serpents in the air, and Uruth’s coughing echoed like barks in the antechamber. His back to the door leading to the throne room, Sirryn Kanar stood with crossed arms, watching the two Tiste Edur. Tomad Sengar was pacing, walking a path that deftly avoided the other waiting guards even as he made a point of pretending they weren’t there. His wife had drawn her dark grey robe about herself, so tight she reminded Sirryn of a vulture with its wings folded close. Age had made her shoulders slightly hunched, adding to the avian impression, sufficient to draw a half-smile to the guard’s mouth.

‘No doubt this waiting amuses you,’ Tomad said in a growl.

‘So you were watching me after all.’

‘I was watching the door, which you happen to be standing against.’

Contemplating kicking through it, no doubt. Sirryn’s smile broadened. Alas, you’d have to go through me, and that you won’t do, will you? ‘The Emperor is very busy.’

‘With what?’ Tomad demanded. ‘Triban Gnol decides everything, after all. Rhulad just sits with a glazed look and nods every now and then.’