Meoraq kicked the gate again and paced like a hungry ghet, back and forth, glowering in futility through the doors. Indeed, it could have been within one minute that he heard returning feet in the echoing tunnel, but his temper, if anything, tore further. He began to feel flame at the back of his skull and forced himself to stand still, to take deep breaths, to be the man who could save his Amber.

It was a young man that came to admit him, scarcely out of his ascension, unscarred, wearing no House’s colors and no great name’s standard, just a simple gatekeeper’s uniform. He took a set of keyplates from his belt, but drew the blade from his back with his strong hand and came no closer than two arms’ reach.

“Open at once,” ordered Meoraq. “I am Sheulek. I claim this city. Where am I?”

“Praxas,” said the gatekeeper.

So. Meoraq bent and retrieved the wristlet from his boot, thrusting it between the bars for the gatekeeper to see. “This Praxas?” he demanded.

The gatekeeper studied the trinket and the metalsmith’s mark without reaching for it. “I know the shop. Does that satisfy you?”

“Then Praxas is mine. Submit and open to Uyane Meoraq of Xeqor. Give me your oath!”

“It is Chasa Onahi before you, sir,” the gatekeeper said calmly. “And if you are who you claim to be, you will understand why I will not open without proof.”

Meoraq spat, but raised his fist and turned it so the sign of House Uyane and the mark of Xeqor showed on his wristlet.

“This could be stolen,” Onahi said, although he did draw a book of names from his sleeve and hold it up for comparison.

“I can give my lineage back to the Prophet’s Uyane himself,” Meoraq said. “Send for the steward of Uyane to hear it.”

“There is no Uyane in Praxas.”

If he had been told there was no air in Praxas, he could not have been more astounded. For a moment, even Amber was cut from his mind. “Impossible,” he said.

“All of the great Houses are closed here. Even the governor is of House Rsstha.”

The name was a stranger’s. After ten years in service, fifty-three cities, hundreds of trials…he’d never heard of such a House. “What does that mean?” he asked.

“I do not say there is any meaning to it,” Onahi replied. “I say only that there is no one here to hear you, sir.”

“Then summon your governor and let him send a champion. God will give my proof. I am Uyane Meoraq and I will have this city. Open the fucking gate or I’ll kill you through it.”

Onahi, undisturbed, folded away his script. “If you are Sheulek, sir, my life is yours to take. However, the law of my caste allows me to pray.” His eyes narrowed. “Perhaps you will pray with me?”

Meoraq struck the lock-plate with the side of his fist, then folded his arms and said, “Have you any particular prayer in mind?”

“The prayer of Eshiqi.”

Meoraq’s spines twitched, caught midway between amusement and offense. “That’s a woman’s prayer.”

Onahi merely waited.

“Hear me, O Sheul, most loving Father, by whose eternal light we are all raised out of darkness. Breathe into me, for Your breath is life. Lay Your hand over me, for within Your open hands are found all shelter. Look down, O Father, and see me, for I am blessed in Your sight. Lo, You are the master at my husband’s forge and I rejoice. Lo, You are the lamp my husband raises over me and I exalt in Your light. Lo, Yours is the hand that shapes all clay—”

“That will do.” Onahi unlocked the gate and stood aside, saluting. “Praxas is yours, honored one.”

‘Be merciful,’ was the customary way to end this exchange, but the gatekeeper, so meticulous in every other respect, did not say it. And by the look in his steady eye, the omission was deliberate. Another time, this would have been curious. Today, Meoraq had time for only one investigation.

“You will tell me everything you know of the raiders who trade with this city,” he said.

“Raiders?” the other watchman echoed, attempting alarm.

“I am not permitted dealings with them,” Onahi replied calmly. “I would guess that they were here four days ago, because I was then held from my usual shift.”

“No one held you! Honored one, no one held him! They were changing mats in the barracks, is all! Hands were needed!”

“Suspicious work for a man out of his ascension,” said Meoraq.

“There aren’t enough boys!”

“Truth, so far as that goes.” Onahi gestured in a general way at the city enclosing them. “Praxas had scarcely five thousand souls at last census, with perhaps three hundred under the sign of the Blade.”

“That answers why I saw no one on your wall, why I met no sentries on patrol.”

For the first time, Onahi’s mask of cool civility slipped to show the real fury beneath. “My watchmen stand their posts. My sentries make their patrols.”

“And where are they today?”

“Turning sheets,” said Onahi, with only the slimmest trace of a hiss, “on all the new mats in the barracks.”

This was not the man he wanted, Meoraq decided. He was too honest. Meoraq turned away from the gatekeeper and studied the watchman instead. He looked nervous. That was only to be expected under a Sheulek’s hard stare, but what betrayed the man’s anxiety the most were his eyes, in which the pupils had contracted to mere points.

It wasn’t only nerves that did that.

“Show me your hands,” he said.

The watchman blinked rapidly, his flat spines twitching in confusion. Hesitantly, he raised his fist in salute.

Meoraq caught the man’s wrist, pried open his hand and examined the discoloration on the thin scales between his fingers. Fresh burns. And the thicker, misshapen scales where old burns had healed.

“Open your mouth,” ordered Meoraq.

The watchman glanced back down the tunnel, where running boots could finally be heard, but if it was rescue, he knew it wasn’t going to reach him in time. He cracked his mouth open, trying not to breathe.

His teeth were still good, if yellowed. Meoraq worked his hand in and forced the jaws open, waiting until the man’s need for air gave him that first bitter exhale and the stink of phesok.

“So.” Meoraq drew his samr.

“Sir, I don’t know them! I swear I don’t!”

“Not another word!” boomed a voice in the tunnel. “I’m the warden here and if you want to deal with that sniveling son of a slave, you’ll deal with Myselo first!”

“He’s Sheulek,” said Onahi without emotion. “He holds Praxas in his shadow.”

“Piss if he is! Piss if he does!” Myselo came into the light—a great belly of a man bulging out of suspiciously fine clothes for a warden’s modest wages—and pulled a samr of his own. “Sheulek comes through mid-summer and this looks nothing like him!”

“It is Uyane Meoraq of Xeqor before you, a Sword and a true son of Sheul,” said Meoraq coldly. “And it is Uyane Meoraq who will be cutting the head from your neck if you don’t cover your blade.”

And, by God and Gann, even here:

“Uyane of…?” Warden Myselo’s spines flared as far as they were able. “Are you…any kin to…to Rasozul?”

“His son,” said Meoraq, trying not to hiss.

Myselo’s sword lowered. He looked at it in some alarm, as if it had only just now materialized in his hand. His spines flared again. He sheathed quickly and wiped both hands on his broad belly. “Eh…We’re honored to welcome—You honor us, sir. I’ll see you to, eh, to the governor’s House to host you, if it please—”

“Who stood as warden to these gates four days ago?”

Myselo glanced at the watchman, who had pressed himself to the tunnel wall in an attempt to disappear within it, then at Onahi, and finally down at the sword still drawn and ready in Meoraq’s hand. His spines lowered and shoulders fell. “I have the keeping of every gate in this city when its keeper is otherwise occupied, sir.”

“Then you admitted the raiders who brought their phesok to trade.”