The Second Empire

“So there it is.”

“So there it is. You see now the sense of what I am suggesting? As King you would be untouchable.”

He jumped to his feet, stalked across the room with his mind in a maelstrom. Himself a king—absurd, utterly absurd. He would be a laughing-stock. Toru

And marriage to this woman. Oddly, that disturbed him more than the idea of the crown. He turned and looked at her, to find that she was standing before the fire staring into the flames as though waiting for something. The firelight made her seem younger, though she was old enough to be Corfe’s mother. That old.

“Would it be so terrible to be married to me?” she asked quietly, and the prescience of her question made Corfe start. She was a witch, after all. Could she read minds as well as everything else?

“Not so terrible,” he lied.

“It would be a marriage of convenience,” she said, her voice growing hard. “You would no longer have to come to my bed. I am beyond child-bearing age so there would be no question of an heir. I do not ask you for love, Corfe. That is a thing for the poets. We are talking about a route to power, nothing more.” And she turned her back on him and leaned her hands on the mantel as a man might.

Again, that pain in his heart when he looked at her, and imagined the golden hair turned raven, the green eyes grey. Ah, Heria. Lord God, I miss you.

He did not want to hurt this formidable yet vulnerable woman. He did not love her—doubted if he would ever love her or any other woman again. And yet he liked her, very much. More than that, he respected her.

He strode over to the fireplace, stood behind the Queen and placed his hands on hers so that they were standing one within the other. She leaned back into his body and their fingers intertwined, the ornate rings on hers digging into his flesh. Pain, yes. But he did not mind. Nothing good came without pain in this life. He knew that.

“I would have you as a wife,” he said, and in that moment he believed he meant it. “But the kingship is too lofty a prize for me. I am not the stuff of Royalty.”

Odelia turned and embraced him, and when she drew back she looked strangely jubilant, as though she had won something.

“Time will tell,” was all she said.

F IFTY leagues from where Corfe and his Queen stood the new winter camps of the Merduk army were almost complete. Tens of thousands of men were toiling here, as they had toiled ceaselessly in the days since the King’s Battle. Their redeployment—it was not a withdrawal, or a retreat—entailed a massive labour. They had felled a fair-sized forest to raise a series of stockades which stretched for miles. They had dug ditches and set up thickets of abatis out to the west, all covered by dug-in batteries of artillery. They had erected tall watchtowers, created roads of corduroyed logs and set up their tents within the new defences. A veritable city had sprung up on the plains west of Orma

Aurungzeb himself and his household were not in the winter camps, but had relocated to Orma

“Shahr Johor,” Aurungzeb boomed.

One of the gaggle of soldiers and courtiers who hovered nearby stepped forward. “My Sultan?”

“Do you know how many of our men died trying to take this fortress?”

“No Highness, but I can find out—”

“It was a question, not an order. Almost thirty thousand, Shahr Johor. And in the end we never took it, we only outflanked it, and forced its evacuation. It is the greatest fortress in the world, it is said. And you know what?”

Shahr Johor swallowed, seeing the flush creep into his sultan’s swarthy cheeks. “What, Highness?”

But the explosion did not happen. Instead, Aurungzeb spoke in a low, reasonable tone. “It is utterly useless to us.”

“Yes, Highness.”

“The Fimbrians, curse their names, constructed it that way. Approaching it from the east, it is unconquerable. But if by some chance you happen to capture it intact, then it is worthless. All the defences face east. From the west, it is indefensible. Very clever, those Fimbrian engineers must have been.”

The courtiers and soldiers waited, wondering if this strange calm were the herald of an unprecedented rage. But when Aurungzeb turned to face them he looked thoughtful.

“I want this fortress destroyed.”

Shahr Indun Johor blinked. “Highness?”

“Are you deaf? Level it. I want the dyke filled in, I want the walls cast down and the tower broken. I want Orma

Shahr Johor bowed, u

A flabby, glabrous palace eunuch piped up, “My Sultan, do you truly believe that the accursed Unbelievers could ever push our glorious armies back to the Searil? Surely, they are in their death throes. We shall soon be feasting in the palace of Toru

Aurungzeb stared moodily out at the ancient fortress below him. “I wish I had your optimism, Serrim. This general of the red horsemen. My spies tell me that he is now commander-in-chief of all the Toru

“Who is this man, lord? Do we know? Perhaps our agents—”

Aurungzeb snorted with mirth. “He is, by all accounts, a hard man to kill.”

Then his mood soured again. “Leave me, all of you. No—Ahara, you will remain.” He broke into halting Norma