The Lord Lieutenant was not, of course, an impartial observer. He was the leader of the Reform faction in the politics of the city, whereas the Prefect (the object of his fulminations; as far as he was concerned, Loredan was merely the Prefect's agent) led the Popular faction. Although to an ignorant outsider the two factions were completely indistinguishable, the rivalry between them was unremittingly ferocious, and the uneasy truce that had been in place since the emergency began was starting to take its toll of everyone in the Council.

Nevertheless, the debate in the Lord Lieutenant's household was fairly representative of what everyone in the city was saying, except that the average man tended to compromise the two positions; he derided the government for its cowardice in breaking down the causeway, while wholeheartedly subscribing to the view that the walls were impregnable and the savages would soon give up and go away.

'They should be doing something,' said Stauracius, the senior deacon, as he walked off his dinner in the cloister of the City Academy. 'You're pretty thick with the Patriarch, Gannadius. You should be lobbying for some action. It's time the Order's views were given the consideration they deserve.'

'Oh?' Gannadius raised an eyebrow. 'Why? We're an organisation of philosophers and scientists engaged in abstruse metaphysical research. Why should we have a valid opinion about fighting a war?'

Stauracius looked at him oddly. 'I have to say,' he said, 'as the effective leader of the Order now that Alexius is so busy with his new duties, you don't seem to be particularly concerned with our standing in the community. Or our responsibilities, come to that. We have an obligation to guide and counsel at times like these. We should be doing more-'

'Perhaps.' Gannadius looked away pointedly. 'So you belong to the let's-zap-them-with-magic school, I presume. It's not an approach I have much time for, I'm afraid.'

'It's nothing to do with magic, as you know perfectly well.'

'That's what they're saying we should do,' Gannadius pointed out. 'Curse the savages to smithereens. Roast 'em with fireballs or turn 'em all into frogs and fill the sky with hungry cranes. I'd love to know how it's done.'

'Now you're even starting to sound like Alexius,' Stauracius replied disapprovingly. 'With all due respect, I always felt there was an underlying flippancy in his character that didn't quite accord with the best traditions of his office.'

'You mean he's got a sense of humour? Well, perhaps you're right, and perhaps it's something that gradually grows on you once you find yourself in charge of the Order. I can distinctly remember a time when I sounded just like you.'

That served its intended purpose of offending the deacon sufficiently to get rid of him, and Gannadius was able to get to his office without further molestation. He faced the cheerful prospect of a night of administrative paperwork, with a thick wedge of academic reading to catch up on if he wanted a break. He remember how Alexius had complained about such things, and how scornful he'd felt of someone who held the office but didn't fancy the work. That was all a long time ago now.

He closed the door, shot the bolts and lit his lamp from the candle he'd been carrying. The sour yellow light cast heavy shadows in the corners of the room, and the smoke from a badly trimmed wick made his eyes itch. It would have been nice to go to bed now, but if he did that all the work would still be there in the morning. He sat down and picked a sheet of parchment off the top of the pile.

Minutes of a meeting of the Joint Faculties Committee on appointments and funding.

He scanned the page, noting his name under Apologies for absence and translating minutes-talk into real language as he went along. The words on the page made a sort of sense; but somehow he couldn't see how any of it was relevant to him, or to anything anybody could possibly be interested in. The world had moved on too much since he'd last sat in a finance meeting.

Three days now; and so far, nothing had happened. On both sides of the wall, the air was filled with the sounds of hammers, saws, axes, winches and swearing; on both sides, men were hauling on ropes, lugging timber, bashing in wedges and slapping glue into mortices, trimming stones, shouting orders, standing around in groups while someone else tried to resolve the latest unforeseen disaster. Yet the distance between the camp and the wall was still the same, and nothing had dared set foot in it apart from the usual feeding birds and stray dogs. He hadn't seen Alexius to speak to since the first morning; the Security Council was in more or less continuous session, although what there was for them to do he wasn't entirely sure. At times he suspected they might have rigged up a couple of dice tables and one of those water-powered organs, just the thing if you're having a really serious party.

For some reason, though, his mind kept returning to their ill-fated drinking expedition, and the man Alexius had claimed was Gorgas Loredan. At the time he'd put it down to the rather spectacular amount of industrial-grade rough wine the Patriarch had absorbed; the idea that even if the man was the Deputy Lord Lieutenant's brother, he'd somehow managed to lure them into a tavern just so as to have a look at them had struck Gannadius as too far-fetched to be worth considering. Why bother? And even if he'd done everything Alexius claimed he had, so what? And yet the Patriarch had seemed convinced that Gorgas Loredan was somehow a bird of very ill omen, for the two of them and possibly the whole city as well.

And now I'm worrying about it too. I wonder if there really is anything in it? Or is it just a more entertaining subject for contemplation than these truly awful minutes?

To break his train of thought, he stood and made up a fire in the room's small hearth. Lately, he'd found a certain degree of pleasure in doing this sort of thing for himself (strange; not long ago, he'd regarded not having to do this sort of thing as evidence that he'd made something of his life) and he lingered over the job, taking pains to lay the wood properly. Once he'd lit the kindling and got it going, he sat down again, not at his desk but in the fat, comfortable visitor's chair, with his feet up on a large cedarwood clothes-press. He had the sheet of minutes in his hand and he was looking at it, but he wasn't reading. Soon his eyelids began to feel heavy, and he let them close- -And found himself in front of a different fire, something very hot and painfully bright; he was several yards away from it, but he could feel his skin tingle from the heat. It was like being in a forge, except that he was outside, not in. In fact, it was the building itself that was on fire.

He looked more closely, and recognised the arsenal; not a place he knew well, although he'd wandered in there once when he was a second-year student with time on his hands. Now it appeared to be burning to the ground; and outside it, using the flames to work with, was a man standing over an anvil, with a small hammer in his hand and a glowing orange strip of metal gripped in a pair of tongs. It was- 'Gorgas Loredan?'

The bald-headed man turned his head and nodded affably. 'Hello,' he said. 'Fancy seeing you here. Would you mind making yourself useful for a moment?'

'Of course,' Gannadius replied. 'What do you want me to do?'

'Work the bellows while I mix the flux for the solder,' Gorgas replied. 'Won't be a jiffy. But if it cools down I won't be able to get the solder to run.'

'What do I do?'

'Just pump these handles up and down - there, you've got it. Nice and steady, and that'll be fine.'

'All right.' Gannadius pushed the handles and raised them again. 'By the way,' he said, 'how come I know all these technical terms? I don't know the first thing about metalworking.'

'Knowledge is never wasted,' Gorgas replied, his back turned. He teased out a small pile of white powder onto a sheet of slate, spat into it and mixed up a paste with a bit of stick. 'Valuable stuff this,' he said, 'got to be careful with it. Can't use anything else with the silver solder.'

'Ah,' Gannadius replied, wiping sweat out of his eyes with his sleeve. 'I thought we didn't know how to use the silver stuff.'

'That's right,' Gorgas replied, 'but the plainsmen do. Marvellous stuff. Right, that ought to do it. Got to be the right consistency, like a cross between spit and snot, or it won't take. Keep pumping while I do the business.'

Gannadius nodded and carried on working the bellows. 'My friend Alexius suspects you of being at the root of all this,' he remarked as he pumped. 'I don't see it myself. What do you think?'

'I think Alexius may have a point,' Gorgas replied. 'But wouldn't it be easier just to ask my brother, rather than guessing yourselves silly and losing sleep over it?'

'True,' Gannadius replied. 'Or you could tell me yourself, come to that.'

Gorgas smiled. 'I'd love to help,' he said, 'but I'm only a dream, sort of like a belch of undigested wind from your own subconscious mind. If you don't know the answer, then how can I?'

'Ah, but you're not,' Gannadius said, 'because if that was the case, how come I know all this stuff about silver-solder flux and keeping the metal just the right shade of cherry red so the solder'll take? That didn't come from my memory; therefore, neither do you. So you can answer my question.'

Gorgas nodded. 'Good point. Obviously you've learnt a thing or two since you've been hanging around with our esteemed Patriarch. Either that-' Gorgas lifted his head and grinned; he was bright red in the glow of the flames, '-or I'm running you, like Alexius says I am. Come on, then, now you're so clever, you tell me which it is.'

'Why's the city on fire?' Gannadius asked.

'Search me.' Gorgas was bent over the strip of orange steel, delicately touching the stick of solder to the joint. 'On that subject, you'd have to ask my sister. She's the clever one in our family.'

'I didn't know you had a sister,' Gannadius said, waking up with a start as the pile of papers slid off his lap onto the floor. Someone was tapping on the door. He grunted, picked up the documents (which were now all mixed up and out of order) and said, 'Come in.'

A young girl's face appeared round the door; not someone he recognised. 'There's someone to see you,' she said. 'They say they're friends of yours. Foreigners,' she added meaningfully.

'Hm? Oh. Send them up here, will you? Did these foreigners have names, or are they too outlandish and foreign for you to pronounce?'

'Oh, I didn't ask,' the girl replied, and her face vanished again.

Gannadius rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, reflecting on the girl's emphasis on the word foreigners. He took it to mean that the visitors were either clan agents to whom he was about to hand over the keys to the city, or else incredibly powerful wizards who had come to help him cook up the really devastating magic by which the clan were soon going to be hexed to oblivion; probably, he decided, both. He regretted entertaining the second hypothesis when the door opened again and Venart and Vetriz were standing in the doorway.

Venart cleared his throat. 'I'd just like to say,' he announced, 'that this was entirely her idea.'

His sister gave him a scornful look over her shoulder and perched on the edge of the desk. Venart stayed where he was, close to the door.

'Please come in,' Ganadius said. 'Would you like something to drink? Please, help yourselves.'

'Oh, thanks.' The girl leant across the desk, neatly gathered the winejug and a cup, and poured. 'Mm, this is delicious,' she said. 'What is it?'

Gannadius smiled. 'Speciality of the house,' he said. 'It's a sweet wine from the south, with honey and cinnamon. But that's gone cold, and it should be warm. I'll ring for some more.'

'Thank you,' Vetriz said, ignoring her brother's pleading look. 'I'm sorry to barge in on you like this, I can see you're busy. But we wanted to see Captain Loredan-'

'Colonel Loredan,' her brother muttered.

'Colonel Loredan, and nobody knows where he is. Ven went to his office, but he wasn't there, and the clerks were terribly unhelpful, and Athli, that's his clerk, she's in business with us now, she happened to mention that the Colonel's on very good terms with Patriarch Alexius these days, so we went to find him to see if he knew where the Colonel was, and when we asked at the palace-'

'Warden's lodgings.'

'-they said you might know, since you were filling in for him while he was busy with the invasion and everything. Isn't that a terrible thing, by the way?'

'Shocking,' Gannadius replied with a smile.

'Isn't it? Anyway, we were wondering, if it's not too much trouble, do you think you could pass a message on to the Patriarch to tell the Colonel that we're back in the city, arrived here just this morning, and if he could spare us five minutes-'

'Vetriz,' groaned Venart. 'Shut up.'

'Oh, shut up yourself. Do you think you might?' she went on. 'We'd be ever so grateful if you could.'

There was a knock at the door; the young girl again. Gannadius placed an order for a large jug of warm spiced wine and three clean cups. The girl nodded, took a long look at the two Islanders, and went away.

Experimentally, Gannadius touched his fingertips to his forehead. It didn't hurt. He wondered about that for a moment, and made up his mind.

'I don't see why not,' he replied. 'Venart - that's right, isn't it? - do please sit down, I think you'll enjoy the wine. Yes, I should be able to pass a message through to Colonel Loredan. It may take a day or two, of course. You'll appreciate that with the recent developments-'

'Oh, that's all right,' Vetriz replied. 'We've got to be here for at least a week to load the rest of the rope - Ven's bought up all the surplus rope from the government, a very good deal for us. That's what we want to see the Colonel about. You see, last time we were here he mentioned they're very short of seasoned lemonwood staves for making bows, and while we were home this time we managed to get hold of a rather substantial quantity - cancelled order, actually, but please don't tell the Colonel that.'

'Of course.' Gannadius nodded conspiratorially. 'And I'm sure he'll be delighted. Of course, if you wanted to deal with the matter quickly rather than wait around to see the Colonel personally, I believe the Quartermaster's Office is allowed to do purchasing without the Colonel himself having to be involved.'

Vetriz smiled. 'Oh, we knew that. But when you've got a contact high up in an organisation, it does no harm to deal personally. Isn't that what you keep telling me, Ven?'

Venart, who was balanced on the edge of a hard straight-backed chair, nodded glumly and said nothing. For once, it seemed, he was perfectly happy to leave all the talking to his sister.

'In return,' Gannadius said, 'perhaps you might care to do something for me.'

Vetriz beamed with pleasure. 'Well, of course,' she said. 'Is it something you want brought in?'

Gannadius shook his head. 'It's more to do with the circumstances of our last meeting,' he replied. 'I have to confess, Alexius and I were rather less than honest with you.'

'What, you mean-How absolutely fascinating! You're talking about the magic, aren't you? Oh, I forgot, I mustn't call it that.'

Another tap at the door; the girl bringing the wine. 'Thank you, we'll pour for ourselves,' Gannadius said firmly. The girl left, looking cheated.

'Are you sure you won't join us, Venart?' Gannadius asked.

'No thanks, really. Spiced wine always gives me a headache.'

Gannadius poured wine into two cups and passed one over to Vetriz. 'I'll come straight to the point,' he said. 'When Alexius and I tried that experiment, the first time we met you, Alexius told you it had effectively been a failure. He wasn't telling the truth. There was-' He hesitated, stared into his cup. 'Something there,' he continued. 'Something we'd neither of us come across before, which is probably why we kept quiet about it. More embarrassment than anything else, I suppose; after all, we're supposed to be good at this sort of thing. And perhaps we both thought we'd imagined it, I don't know,' he added with a straight face. 'On reflection, however, I'm sure there was something; so, with your agreement, I'd like to try again.' He stopped fiddling with his cup and put it down before he spilt it. 'I don't think Alexius would approve, I have to say; but to be honest with you, now that we have this emergency on our hands, I feel that every avenue that might conceivably be productive has to be explored; and if it comes to nothing, well then.'

Vetriz's eyes were big and round and shining like sunlight reflected on a distant glass. 'Oh, yes,' she said, 'do let's. You're not going to be stuffy about this, are you, Ven? Because if there really is something we can do, I think we owe it to them, since they've been so helpful about everything.'

'Go ahead,' Venart said resignedly. 'I take it you mean my sister,' he added to Gannadius. 'I seem to remember that I fell asleep.'

Gannadius stroked his chin. 'The indications at the time did suggest that it was your sister who was, um, having an effect on things. But that may not mean anything. You see, I'm sure that whichever of you it is doesn't consciously know what she or he is doing. On that basis, it could quite easily be you.'

Venart shrugged. 'I'm game, then, if you think it'll help.'

'Splendid.' Gannadius sipped his wine. Still no headache. 'Perhaps it'd help if I very briefly explained how the Principle works in this regard - or at least, how we think it works. As I said a moment ago, this is effectively new ground for us as well.'

He started to explain, and although he did his best to keep it simple and reasonably lively, his monologue was inevitably rather abstruse and full of long unfamiliar words; and the room was comfortably warm and the wine was heavy and sweet, and before he knew where he was- -He was standing on one of Loredan's new bastions, apparently in the middle of a battle; there were men rushing about all round him, carrying ropes and levers and sheaves of fresh arrows with bits of straw still stuck in the feathers of the fletchings, and they were stepping over the bodies of dead men, and others who weren't dead but groaning or weeping, and some of the casualties were city people and others were plainsmen. Every now and then he could feel the walkway shake beneath his feet; he guessed that heavy stones were hitting the wall below the level of the rampart. There was a big engine, a trebuchet, over to his left and there were men fussing over it, some of them scrambling up the side of the frame or sitting on the crossbars, others handing them up tools and lengths of rope.

There were arrows sticking in the wood, their shafts facing outwards towards the plain, and other arrows sailed across the wall from time to time, some clattering against the stone and others carrying over into the streets below. There were archers on the wall, standing up straight to bend their long, stiff bows; they didn't seem to be worrying about the incoming arrows, but Gannadius saw one man fall to the ground with an arrow sticking out of his ear, and another suddenly drop his bow and clutch at an arrowshaft sticking in his upper arm. Two other men hurried up and helped him to the stairs, while a third picked up his bow and started to shoot.

Gannadius looked round, trying to see Vetriz or Venart, or anybody else he recognised, but he couldn't. An arrow flew past him, so close that he imagined he felt the feathers brush lightly across his chin. It was terrifying, but it had happened so fast and so quietly that at first he'd taken it for a breath of wind or an insect.

Damn, he thought, so now what do I do? I must have come through on my own.

He peered round, but it was hard to see anything for all the running men in the way. Presumably he'd come through at some crucial moment - that seemed to be the way it worked, you found yourself at the turning point, the moment where you could reach out and grab hold, and by so doing change the course of events. He wished he knew something about military affairs, tactics and the like. It all looked to him like a confused mess; if there was something vitally significant going on he didn't have the first idea what it was supposed to look like. That didn't help; for all he knew, he might miss it completely, or change it the wrong way out of sheer ignorance. Suppose this was the moment when the battle was going to swing decisively in the city's favour, and he was about to change that simply because he didn't know what he was doing?

Someone was running up the stairs; Bardas Loredan, with blood soaking through his hair and a bow in his hands. Instinctively, Gannadius stepped back to let him past, although logically Loredan should have been able to walk straight through him.

'The chain,' he panted. 'Which of you clowns forgot to raise the chain? Gods, we'll have to do it in the middle of all this. Right, you and you, get ready to shin out along the pole and haul on the ropes. I'll do this one here. All we've got to do is get it up onto the hooks and make it fast.'

The men he'd spoken to stepped back with terror in their eyes, not saying anything. Loredan grabbed one by the arm, but he pulled away.

'Someone's got to do it, for pity's sake,' he shouted. 'They'll have those ladders up here any minute.'

An arrow swished past Gannadius, hit Loredan's mailshirt just above his hip and glanced off. The two men turned and ran. Somehow Gannadius couldn't find it in his heart to blame them.

Oh, gods, he's going to try and do it on his own. Gannadius concentrated, wondering how exactly he was supposed to go about changing the course of events. Then he thought, Yes, and suppose Loredan succeeds, and that's what saves the city? If I stop him, we'll all be killed. Oh, why don't I know what to do?

Loredan was on the rampart, swinging one leg over, looking down to find the pole. Gannadius caught his breath. Do something! he told himself- 'Hello?' It was the Islander girl, Vetriz, and she was gently prodding at his shoulder. 'You fell asleep,' she said.

'What?' Gannadius opened his eyes. 'Good heavens, so I did. I'm so sorry. What was I saying?'

He completed his explanation; and then they all tried very hard to fall asleep and couldn't manage it. When it had started to be embarrassing, Gannadius thanked his visitors very much, promised again to pass their message on and shooed them out. Then he sat down on the edge of his bed, steadily drank his way through the rest of the wine (which was stone cold) and lay on his back, feeling ill.

He was exhausted. He didn't have even the slightest trace of a headache.

He was a very worried man.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

The next morning, Temrai gave the order to hitch up the mules and bring forward the first battery of trebuchets.

Half an hour after they'd entered the three-hundred-yard zone, all five engines were so much firewood and the ground was littered with smashed timber, stones, dead mules and dead men. In reply they'd managed to loose off precisely one shot, which had landed in the river. Very pale in the face and trying his best not to let his people see that he was shaking, Temrai ordered the next two batteries forward simultaneously. The assault had begun.

Seven engines survived the next volley from the eastern bastion; and trebuchets take time to wind and load. Say twenty minutes between volleys, enough time if they looked sharp about it. He sent in another ten engines, and nobody on the wall had anything left to shoot at them with. When it eventually came, the next volley from the city smashed another two engines, but this time Temrai's engineers had fifteen trebuchets ready to return fire. He shouted to them to take their time and remember the sighting drill. They waved back at him; don't bother us, we're busy. The first engine let slip, and its stone hit the wall somewhere near the base. There was a great cheer from the clan, but Temrai yelled for quiet. The engineers adjusted the trajectory by tightening the winch a precisely calculated number of turns. Another machine let slip, and its stone sailed over the wall, clearing it by a matter of five or six feet. The other engineers slacked off their winches a little. The third engine let slip, and this time the clan really did have something to cheer about.

'Close,' Temrai called back, 'but close isn't good enough. Keep that mark, and sooner or later we'll get those engines.'

They managed to hit one before the next volley from the bastion, which smashed another of Temrai's engines and dropped a stone onto the crew of another. That wasn't a pleasant sight, by any means; there was a man still miraculously alive under the stone, and he was screaming for help. Temrai waved a party of men forwards; eventually they rolled the stone away, but by then the man was dead. Meanwhile the artillery duel went on; and every stone that missed an engine on the bastion hit something else, while the unlucky shots from the bastion simply dug holes in the ground.