That and other things. Their demands just don't stop. We've already started digging into our reserves. If they stay even a few days they'll eat into our stores, and you know as well as I do that there's nowhere to get more before the ships come.'

Carnelian nodded. He knew how carefully they had always had to husband their resources, especially in winter. He was still brooding as they walked back into the kitchen.

There you are,' a voice cried.

Carnelian's heart sank. His Aunt Brin was sweeping towards them across the kitchen.

'You do know it was the Master himself who ordered you to stay in your room?' said Brin as she reached him. She turned on Keal. 'And I would've thought you at least would show more sense.'

Keal flushed. Brin was not only the Master's sister but she also had control of all the household except for the men of the tyadra. That did not stop them fearing her tongue. The kitchen clatter faded away as people turned to stare.

Carnelian grew angry. 'Don't you dare take this out on him, Brin. I was the one who forced him to talk to me. He was all for getting me back to my room.'

Brin grunted, scrunched up her face. The legs of her chameleon tattoo disappeared into the creases in her cheeks. 'Look at the way you're dressed, Carnelian. Do you have any idea at all what might happen if any of the strangers were to see your face?'

Carnelian drew his cloak back to reveal the mask hanging at his hip.

'It's a lot of use there under your cloak. Besides, the Master's command is the Master's command. Go back to your room.' She turned to Keal. 'And you, since you're so easily forced away from your tasks, maybe you'd better give up what you're doing and escort him. Make sure he gets where he's going, then go and tell Grane that I don't want to see you or any of his other boneheads in my kitchen for the rest of the day.'

Keal hung his head. 'Yes, Brin.'

Carnelian lost his anger. He knew Brin was right and already had enough to do without having to run around looking out for him.

'What are you lot gawping at?' bellowed Keal, glowering.

Brin made just enough room to let them pass. The clatter resumed as they fled her disapproval.

For most of the morning Carnelian fretted in his room. Tain went out several times but each time came back with nothing new about the visitors. They both became sullen, infected with the general foreboding.

When the summons came at last, Tain dressed him in the grey robe and handed him the circlet, the Great-Rings. When Carnelian was ready an escort came for him from Grane, gleaming in their polished leather cuirasses, their hair freshly oiled, their blades honed and waxed. Carnelian said he was proud of them and they all beamed. He marched between them through the Hold. Every door, every arch Carnelian saw was warded with a freshly painted eye and the Suth chameleon. Only the three doors that stood on the alleyway's final stretch were any different. They too had the warding eye but below it the cypher of the Master who had taken possession of the halls that lay beyond: Vennel’s disc and crescent evening star, Jaspar's dragonfly, the horned-ring staff of the Lord Aurum.

In the past, Carnelian with the other children had sneaked into those dismal halls with their views of the anchorage and the bay. All his life they had been a haunted, musty hinterland of the Hold. He tried to imagine them transformed into mysterious luxury by the households the visitors had brought with them, and failed. It was far easier to imagine the Masters lying in dusty state like kings in their tombs.

Carnelian was relieved to find his father alone. He formed a pillar of shadow against a rectangle of glowering sky. Carnelian crossed the hall towards the window. A carpet of embers glowed in the round hearth. The nearer he drew to his father, the louder spoke the wind and sea.

'I am come, my Lord, at your command.'

The apparition turned. The face looking down at him was like a lamp. The eyes seemed of a piece with the sky. 'I wished to speak to you before the conclave.' His father turned back to view the sea, a vast slate-green plain stretching off into the south. 'It is likely that we shall be returning to Osrakum.'

That name reverberated through Carnelian like a bell. Visions flashed through his mind with the quickening of his heart. He saw a memory from childhood of his father cupping his small hands in one of his. The little bowl of fingers was Osrakum: a crater hidden within a mountain wall. Circling the inner edge, his father's finger had let him see and feel the coombs cutting into the rim where the Masters lived. Tender pressure for their own coomb. A swirl showed where the sky lake filled the bowl. A touch at the centre where the edges of his palms met allowed him to feel the Isle with its Forbidden Garden within which lay the Pillar of Heaven and the Labyrinth.

Carnelian realized that his father's bright face had turned to him again. The storm eyes were deeper than the sky.

'Long have we lived here remote from the turning of events across the sea. But now they reach out to us and we can no longer remain untouched.' His father became granite. 'A time of peril comes for me

… and for you, my son. In the days to come we will have need of every resource.'

'What danger have our guests brought here?' 'Amongst many, themselves.' 'Lord Aurum?' 'He most of all.'

'Even though he is aligned to us by blood.'

'Blood trade insures neither amity nor alliance. My father gave my sister to be Aurum's second wife because he sought a son to replace the one who died in infancy. She has borne his House three daughters, a vast wealth should they live. But still, he has no son.'

'I did not know the children of the Chosen were so frail?'

'It is a curse of our race that so few come of age. Though the ichor of the Gods is watered down with mortal blood its fire cannot easily be contained by human veins.'

'I suppose it is that fire that kills their mothers too.'

'Your mother would have died a thousand times to give you life,' said Suth, misreading the look in his son's face.

Father and son examined each other's eyes. This was a subject they never spoke of.

Carnelian broke the silence first. 'And if Aurum were to die without a son?'

The second lineage of his House would inherit its ruling and House Aurum would be diminished among the Great.'

Then he should get himself another wife.' 'Do you forget that high blood-rank brides are the rarest commodity?'

'He has daughters that he can trade.' They are too young.' 'Iron then?'

His father's eyes pierced him. 'If he could have used such wealth, he would have.' 'And what of Imago Jaspar?'

'His House once ranked among the highest of the Great. More than two hundred years ago it sold the Emperor Nuhquanya a wife from whom today all those of the House of the Masks descend. Yet in the crisis over the succession of Qusata they lost their ruling lineage.'

'Slaughtered at his Apotheosis?'

His father nodded. 'Many Houses suffered.'

'So we are linked to House Imago's second lineage?'

'For more than a century it has been their first.'

'What is the nature of the linkage?'

'My grandmother was sister to his grandfather.'

'But our blood is purer than his?'

'Not so, in spite of your mother's blood having gifted you a blood-taint almost half of mine.'

Carnelian nodded. Irrespective of her august blood, he valued the father that he knew more than the mother he had never known.

'As you know, like all Chosen of blood-rank two, your taint has zeros in the first two positions. The largest fraction of your blood that is tainted is the eight-thousandth. In this third position you, Aurum and Jaspar have a one in contrast to my three. It is only in the fourth position, or the sixteen-thousandth fraction, that your blood differs from theirs. Whereas you have a nineteen in this position, Jaspar has a sixteen and Aurum has a fifteen.'