The crown neither resisted nor aided her. In truth, it seemed pleased, though it didn’t speak. Images and memories not her own washed over her in benediction, and she saw the truth of it all at once. She saw the unmasked face of what lurked within that iron circlet, and heard its lustful glee as it contemplated its future. Not her future or Ushoran’s, but rather the future of the thing that it would make of them.

Ushoran howled as her claws found his eyes and he flung her over his head. She crashed into the floor hard enough to crack the stone. Ushoran turned, his body undulating as if it were trying to twist itself into a new shape. Neferata scrambled to her feet and yanked her sword from its sheath. She drove it with all of her might into Ushoran’s chest, propelling him backwards up off the floor and against one of the columns in a cloud of stone chips and dust. His talons fell on her arms, lacerating her pale flesh and forcing her to stumble back. Ushoran writhed like a bug pinned to a board, his limbs wriggling independently of one another. He howled and snapped like a wounded wolf, his eyes weeping terrible energies which coruscated around his form.

‘Treachery,’ one of the Strigoi roared as he lunged for her.

‘It’s not treachery,’ Neferata said, backhanding the vampire with enough force to shatter the front of his skull. ‘It’s a mercy killing.’ But even as she said it, doubts rose fierce, stinging her. The crown seemed to reach for her as Ushoran thrashed, calling to her, crooning.

I will ride you through the gates of the world, it said, each word a dagger of pain. You will be queen, Neferata, queen of Lahmia, queen of Mourkain and queen of the world, if you but take me up. Throne and crown, Neferata… TAKE ME UP!

And Neferata, all at once, knew her answer. She spun, tearing herself away from the seductive voice, away from its promises of an eternity of powerful servitude, away from the dark fate laid out for her. She would be queen, but on her own terms.

‘Kill her,’ W’soran shrieked. ‘Rescue your king!’ Neferata turned at the necromancer’s howl and saw shapes heaving in the weak light of the braziers, casting mutated shadows across the stones. W’soran’s ghoul-creatures had entered the throne room on stealthy claws and now they loped towards her, slavering.

An arm, impossibly long, whipped towards her and the talons attached to the blunt fingers gouged the wall as she ducked and spun, plunging her sword into the hollow gut of the ghoul-thing. It screamed and staggered. Rasha and Layla were on it in the instant, hacking and stabbing at it.

Another of the beasts lunged, the bone spurs jutting from the ruptured flesh of its forearms scraping along the floor as it sought to snatch Neferata up. Recalling the strength such creatures possessed, Neferata leapt. Her feet touched its wrist and she bolted up the length of its arm. It reared back as she slid across its shoulders, weasel-quick. Taking her sword in two hands, she drove it through the back of the creature’s skull, and the tip emerged between its jaws.

It grunted, coughed and slumped. She yanked her sword free and dropped to the floor before it. Anmar and Naaima had a third beast down on its hands and knees. It groaned piteously and fell, tongue protruding and the fire in its eyes guttering out.

Neferata glimpsed W’soran fleeing the chamber and prepared to follow him when she caught sight of Anmar and saw her handmaiden’s eyes widen. Anmar screamed, ‘No!’

Neferata turned and gasped as a tearing agony ripped through her. Blood burst through her lips. She looked down at Khaled’s sword as it wriggled deeper into her belly. She grabbed the blade and looked at her Kontoi as he stared blankly at her. ‘What—’ she coughed.

‘Why didn’t you take it?’ he rasped, staring at her accusingly. ‘Why couldn’t you just take it?’

Neferata staggered back, pulling herself off the sword. She pulled the blade as she went, yanking it from Khaled’s hands. Around her, her handmaidens were battling Ushoran’s guards, but she couldn’t focus. The thwarted screams of the crown pounded on the surface of her mind, making it hard to think. She stumbled and turned, bringing the sword up. Ushoran… She had to kill him. He couldn’t be allowed to wield the power she had felt.

Ushoran had freed himself, however. He glared at her, hand pressed tight to his belly. But it wasn’t Ushoran, not entirely. Something else looked out from behind his eyes and it hated her now, because she had spurned it. Just as Khaled hated her, just as she had hated Alcadizzar. She saw the whole story of it in Ushoran’s eyes and she chuckled.

‘You were right,’ she said, grinning. ‘Spite. It was all for spite.’ Then she screamed as Khaled brought Razek’s axe down on her shoulder, slamming her to her knees. She dropped the sword and fell onto her face as her flesh burned. As she screamed, her handmaidens raced to her aid.

Ushoran raised his hand and said, in a voice that was not his own, ‘STOP.’

And then Neferata knew nothing more, as the darkness that had once been so welcoming crashed down on her like the blows of a spurned lover.

FOURTEEN

Neferata moved gracefully across the coloured tiles of the plaza, her robes trailing behind her. Her servants strode just behind her, shading her from the sunlight with a silk curtain held aloft on poles. ‘The druchii can be bargained with,’ she said, stirring the air with her hand-fan. ‘Who will miss a few hundred fishermen, Abruzzi?’

‘Their families, I would assume, Lady Neferata,’ Abruzzi of Sartosa said. He was a stiff-necked, heavy-faced man, and he looked uncomfortable in his coarse robes of state. ‘I do not know how things are done in Cathay, but here, we do not like to surrender our own folk to beasts from across the sea.’

‘Nor do we,’ Neferata said, touching his arm. ‘But needs must, Abruzzi. Sartosa has no strength at present. The druchii control the seas where the Arabyans do not. We must change that. More, we must have the time to change that,’ she said. ‘What are a few innocents in comparison to an empire that controls the seas?’

‘You say it so prettily, my lady,’ Abruzzi grunted, eyeing her. ‘Are all women so cold-blooded in Cathay?’

‘Needs must, my lord,’ Neferata said again. She sighed and tapped her lips with her fan. ‘Then, there are… things that could be done.’

‘Such as?’ Abruzzi said, stopping. Neferata paused before replying. The palazzo was a monument to the alliance of form and function. The walled garden was open to the sky and water burbled in the aqueducts that ran along the top of the walls. There were thick, fleshy plants and brightly coloured flowers everywhere she looked, and caged song-birds sang sweetly.

She wondered whether Abruzzi could smell the effluvium of the dungeons beneath the garden, or whether the gruff former-soldier knew what strange nourishment her garden received. A few months after her arrival on a night of chaos and fire, Neferata had used what wealth she had managed to bring from Araby to set herself up as a noblewoman from Cathay in the heart of Sartosa’s wealthiest district. Now her daughters and sisters danced with merchant-princes and senators at moonlit galas and some had spread beyond, entering the lands to the west and the north.

Some few yet remained in Araby, lurking within harems and as the young brides of old merchants and noblemen. The news they sent her was invaluable in building her fortunes anew, and she could now predict the activities of the pirates of the gulf with a startling accuracy. She had increased the wealth of Abruzzi as well, among others.

‘There are… secrets, known to me, my lord,’ she said, feigning hesitance. ‘We could provide the raiders with their tribute without sacrificing a single Sartosan.’