—<FOUR>—

Necessary Evils

Lahmia, the City of the Dawn, in the 98th year of Tahoth the Wise
(-1300 Imperial Reckoning)

 

 

The night air was sultry in the Travellers’ Quarter, redolent with sweat, cooking spices and sour wine. Crowds of immigrants—mostly from the struggling cities of Mahrak or Lybaras, but also a few from as far away as drought-stricken Numas—mingled with dusty caravan drivers and scowling sell-swords as they plied the tightly-packed merchant stalls in search of everything from fine saddles to silver jewellery. The singsong chants of the merchants seemed to drift like smoke through the humid air, rising and falling over the muted buzz of the crowd.

The night bazaar stretched for six winding blocks through the quarter, and was anchored at the eastern end by a wide, paved square lined with ale-houses, wine-sellers and incense shops. Lord Ushoran sat at a table beneath a faded linen awning of a wine-seller’s shop, idly fingering the cracked rim of a clay cup filled with date wine as he studied the faces of the passers-by.

Tonight he chose to wear the face of a well-to-do scholar: a dispossessed Lybaran noble, perhaps, driven from his home by the steady decline of the collegia there and forced to continue his studies in self-imposed exile. The serving girls and the other patrons of the wine shop saw a man of middle years, stooped with age, his pate gone bald save for a thin fringe of white. His nose was crooked, his eyes watery and deeply set. His cheeks were pocked from a bout of river fever, and starting to show the rude blush of a man who indulged in too much wine. A dark brown robe hung from his hunched shoulders, the fabric rich but faded from years of hard use. Around his thick neck hung a chain made of elongated links of gold, decorated with more than a dozen brass-rimmed lenses of glass and faceted crystal—one of the many tools of the scholar-engineer’s trade.

In the past, he’d had to be far less ostentatious with his disguises, for there was only so much one could do with a change of clothing and a bit of face paint. He’d tried to blend with the teeming crowds, quickly dismissed and easily forgotten. Now, he was limited only by his imagination and he could switch guises with but a moment’s concentration. Ushoran could cloud a mortal’s mind simply by willing it, placing any image in his or her mind that suited him. It was a gift that none of his fellow immortals possessed and, more importantly, one that not even their supernatural senses could penetrate. Which was for the best, as far as he was concerned. He doubted that Neferata or Ankhat would approve of what he had become.

Ushoran was nothing like the acerbic, cerebral W’soran, but he still considered himself a scholar of sorts. Mysteries and secrets intrigued him, and the process of death and rebirth was one of the greatest mysteries of all. Though Neferata had forbidden the cabal to create immortal progeny of their own, he had made a few discreet experiments over the centuries and suspected that the others—especially W’soran—had as well. He’d made good use of the dozen or so safe houses he’d established throughout the city, with their deep cellars and sets of stout chains fixed to the walls.

Along the way, he’d learned a great deal. Their kind could only draw sustenance from living blood; animals could serve, but the vigour they possessed was far less potent than a human’s. Starvation steadily weakened them, but did not bring extinction—merely a kind of nightmarish torpor, which could only be broken by the taste of blood. The vigour gleaned from living blood gave them strength and speed far surpassing any mortal, and allowed them to swiftly heal any wound save outright decapitation. If their heart was pierced, or rendered unable to beat, they became torpid until the offending object was removed. As a result, they were nearly impossible to kill. Fire inflicted lasting injury; direct sunlight sapped their vigour with terrible speed, and especially intense sunlight burned like a brand. Ushoran suspected that sorcery could harm them as well, but had to wait to test the theory himself.

Such qualities were common to all immortals. In addition were the unique gifts that manifested in Neferata and the rest of the cabal—those who were transfigured by the complex and gruelling mixture of poison and magical ritual that Arkhan the Black had used to resurrect the queen herself. Neferata’s goddess-given beauty and allure had increased tenfold, lending her powers of seduction and mental domination far beyond mortal ken. Arkhan, the aristocrat and political creature that he was, demonstrated his own sense of eerie charisma and razor-keen perception. In life, Arkhan had been a well-known hunter and breeder of horse and hound, and Ushoran wondered if perhaps his gifts had developed along those lines as well. W’soran, the secretive former priest, was entirely the opposite. He had been transformed into a repellent, skeletal creature, more corpse than man, but his grasp of the arcane—and necromancy in particular—possibly rivalled that of the infamous Nagash himself. That left Abhorash, the former king’s champion, and Zurhas, the feckless cousin to the late Lamashizzar. Abhorash had fled the city almost immediately after his transformation and Ushoran could only speculate on the particulars of his transformation, but given his dedication to the arts of warfare, Ushoran suspected that Abhorash had gained a degree of physical prowess equal to—or possibly greater than—the fabled Ushabti themselves. If true, there was no deadlier warrior anywhere in the world.

As for Zurhas, Ushoran hadn’t a clue. The former nobleman seemed more furtive and rodent-like with every passing year. Perhaps his gifts extended to gambling and whoring, two of his favourite pastimes. It stood to reason. Every one of them had changed in ways that reflected their true natures, for good or ill.

Lost in thought, Ushoran didn’t notice the lean, travel-stained man at first. He’d slipped from the crowd milling in the square with the practiced ease of a cutpurse and unobtrusively ducked beneath the wine shop’s low awning. The man’s flinty, appraising stare swept over Ushoran, stirring him from his reverie.

This was the one he’d been waiting for, Ushoran realised at once. The man had the look of a desert bandit, clad in dusty, tattered robes and ragged leather sandals held together with cheap twine. A battered khopesh and a pair of curved daggers hung from a wide leather belt about his waist, partly concealed by a thin, sand-coloured cloak that hung nearly to the man’s feet. His face was narrow and gaunt, the leathery skin tanned a deep brown by years of exposure to the harsh desert sun. With his narrow chin, hooded eyes and brooding brow, he reminded Ushoran somewhat of a jackal—which, considering his profession, wasn’t all that much of a surprise. The Lord of Masks met the tomb robber’s gaze and placed a bulging leather bag on the table next to the wine. The coins inside clinked softly as he set the bag down.

Even then, with his reward in sight, the thief didn’t immediately react. His gaze swept past Ushoran and studied the rest of the shop for a full minute, searching for signs of a trap. When he found none, the man wove among the tables and took the chair opposite Ushoran. He studied the Lord of Masks silently for a moment. Ushoran returned the stare with a placid smile.

The thief grunted to himself. “You’re not what I expected,” he said.

Ushoran chuckled. The thief and his companions had been hired through a sprawling network of intermediaries stretching all the way to Khemri, one entirely separated from his conventional network of informants and spies. He’d been careful and patient, building the links over a period of decades, until he was certain that their actions could not be traced back to him. The consequences of discovery—for Ushoran, and for Lahmia in general—would have been too terrible to contemplate.

“I hear that quite a lot,” the Lord of Masks said with a smile. “Wine?”

The thief shrugged. Ushoran beckoned, and a girl quickly appeared at his shoulder with another cup of wine. About fourteen, the nobleman reckoned, admiring the girl as she bent over the table. Fine skin, firm of flesh and lean of limb. A bit old for his tastes; in the old days he might not have cared—the older ones lasted longer, after all—but now he could afford to be choosy. The girl met his gaze, smiled innocently, and hastily withdrew.

“To your health,” Ushoran said, raising his cup in a toast. He feigned taking a sip. The thief raised his cup and likely did the same. “It’s been months. I was beginning to grow concerned.”

The thief’s upper lip curled in a sneer. “There’s a damned good reason why nearly all of the great pyramids are still intact, and Khemri’s are the worst of the lot. Go barging inside and you’ll be dead before you’re ten steps past the door.” He shook his head. “None of the other fools you hired made it past the first antechamber.”

Ushoran nodded. There had been four other gangs who’d accepted the job over the years. Khetep’s pyramid had simply swallowed them up, one after the next. “Truth be told, you were my first choice all along, but since you proved extraordinarily difficult to contact, I had to make do with lesser talents.”

The thief grunted noncommittally, but Ushoran caught a glint of pride in the tomb robber’s eye.

The Lord of Masks spread his hands. “So. What do you have for me?”

Once again, the thief glanced warily at the other tables. When he was satisfied that no one was watching them, he reached within his cloak and produced an old, wooden box the size of a small wine jar, which he set on the table between them.

Ushoran glanced sceptically at the box. “That’s all?”

The thief barked a laugh. “If you’d wanted the whole thing, you should have said so,” he snarled. “You’re lucky we managed that much.”

The Lord of Masks sighed. “I suppose it will do,” he said, though in truth W’soran would have to be the judge of that. “You’re certain it’s him?”

The tomb robber shrugged. “As certain as I can be,” he replied. “It was the right tomb, sure enough, but… well, let’s just say it wasn’t your typical internment.”

Ushoran cocked his head quizzically. “He wasn’t interred with the typical grave goods?”

“Hardly.” To his surprise, the thief shifted uncomfortably. “He wasn’t even dead when they sealed him up.”

“Ah. I see.” Ushoran had heard tales of Nagash’s brutal usurpation, but there had been no way to tell fact from rumour at the time. He picked up the heavy bag of coin and set it down beside the thief’s cup. “I’d say you and your people earned every bit of this.”

The man picked up the bag and hefted it. “Only four of us made it out of that damned place,” he said grimly. “There were traps everywhere. Poor Jebil died on the way out, just three steps from the entrance. Toppled over dead with a dart in his neck. Never did find out where it came from.”

Ushoran nodded sagely. “Sad, indeed,” he agreed. “And your three companions?”

A slow, wolfish smile spread across the thief’s face. “Well. The Golden Plain’s a dangerous place,” he said slowly. “Bandits everywhere, you know.”

“How tragic,” the Lord of Masks replied. “I suppose you’ll just have to keep their shares as well.”

“I suppose so,” the thief said, slipping the bag beneath his cloak. He rose quickly from the table.

Ushoran laid a hand on the wooden box. “You aren’t the least bit curious about this?” he asked.

“I couldn’t care less,” the thief said, his attention already focussed on the square.

“Well, I suppose that’s it, then.” Ushoran leaned forwards, extending his hand. “Safe travels, my friend. You have my thanks.”

The thief turned back to Ushoran, looking down at the immortal’s outstretched hand as though it were an especially venomous snake. He started to sneer—but something in the immortal’s eye gave him pause. After a moment’s hesitation he reached out and gripped Ushoran’s hand.

“I have your gold, and that’s enough,” the thief growled. “Goodbye, scholar. I don’t expect we’ll see each other again.”

With that he turned and slipped into the square without a single backwards glance. The thief blended into the milling crowd and within moments was lost to sight.

Ushoran watched him go with a smile. His hand was still faintly damp from the thief’s sweaty grip. He raised it, palm inwards, to his face and breathed deeply, drinking in the man’s scent.

“I hear that quite a lot, too,” the immortal said. He chuckled softly to himself and licked his palm lightly with the tip of his long, grey tongue.

 

The Temple of Blood was a fortress within a fortress. Situated within the walls of the Lahmian royal palace, the huge, roughly pyramidal structure fully enclosed what had once been the Women’s Palace, where the daughters of the royal line were kept in virtual seclusion from the rest of the mortal world. The stepped sides of the temple were comprised of solid blocks of sandstone, each one twelve feet high and weighing many tons. The only entrance was sealed by a pair of immense bronze doors and was guarded day and night by a company of dour-looking warriors from the queen’s lifeguard. To all outside appearances, the monumental structure seemed more impregnable than the royal palace itself, but, like much else about the temple, such impressions were deceiving.

The hour of the dead was fast approaching as Ushoran stole across the silent palace grounds towards the temple. There were few mortals about at such a late hour, allowing him to pass unobserved along the north wall of the mammoth structure until he reached the hidden entrance set cunningly into the stone. The door was very heavy, and set so snugly into its frame that its seams were nearly invisible to the naked eye. Pressing with both hands and exerting his unnatural strength, he swung the portal silently inwards, revealing a dark, narrow passage carved into the foundation stone.

There were at least a half-dozen secret ways into and out of the temple that Ushoran knew of; only Neferata herself could say if there were more. He followed the passageway through the temple’s foundation, emerging a short while later into the ground level passageways that wound secretly among the storerooms, dormitories and halls of meditation used by the initiates of the cult. The immortal moved down the dark corridors swiftly and surely, aided by supernatural senses and more than two centuries of practice. Finally, many minutes later, he passed through another hidden door and into the temple’s vast inner sanctum.

In truth, the inner sanctum was actually a sprawling complex of chambers that had once comprised the most opulent rooms of the old Women’s Palace. It was here that Neferata ruled, issuing edicts from the Deathless Court through successive generations of Lahmian queens who were enslaved to her from birth. But that wasn’t the only secret concealed within the inner sanctum’s walls—and, in Ushoran’s opinion, far from the worst.

There were many libraries in the former palace: small, quiet rooms piled with sumptuous rugs and surrounded by shelves atop shelves of histories, fables, romances and more. They were nothing like the one Ushoran now sought. It was located in a largely isolated part of the old palace, far from the corridors frequented by the temple priestesses and initiates. Its walls had been reinforced with slabs of dark, heavy granite, which in turn had been engraved with layer upon layer of arcane wards designed to keep out even the most determined intruder. The door, likewise, was stone, and far too heavy for mortal hands to open. It was also covered with potent runes of binding, strong enough to seal the library shut for all time, but for the last fifty years the sigils had been cold and inert. The Lord of Masks took a moment to compose himself, putting on the bland, neutral face that his fellow cabal members were accustomed to, then laid a hand upon the door and pushed it silently open.

As always, the chamber was dimly lit and wreathed with acrid incense smoke, shrouding the walls and ceiling in darkness and rendering the dimensions of the room uncertain. A dense arrangement of worktables and reading stands filled the chamber, piled with precise stacks of parchment and priceless, leather-bound tomes of varying size. Some of the books were fairly new, having been written within the past half-century, while others were larger and far, far older.

Ushoran eyed a stack of such volumes on a nearby table as he slipped inside the room. They had been bound in pale leather once, but the centuries had caused the covers to wrinkle and darken to a deep reddish-black. Their edges were ragged from age and rough treatment; in their time they had travelled with armies, and been fought over like ghastly treasures. Their thick pages were likewise roughened and rendered grey with age, but Ushoran had no doubt that if he were bold enough to turn back one of the covers, he would find the notes and diagrams within still perfectly legible, despite the passage of years. These tomes had once belonged to Nagash himself, plundered from his Black Pyramid outside the ruins of Khemri after the war. Some of the volumes were at least five hundred years old, Ushoran reckoned, and yet they lingered when other books would have long since turned to dust.

W’soran stood at the far side of the chamber, his macabre form lit by wan candlelight as he paced about the perimeter of a complicated magical circle that had been laid down with silver dust on the bare stone floor. He was a hideous figure, bearing more resemblance to a poorly mummified corpse than a living, breathing man. What little flesh he’d possessed had melted away, leaving his grey, parchment-like skin stretched tight against ropy sinew and sharp-edged bone. The immortal moved with a strange, angular gait, almost like a spider, and his bald head swung from side to side in furtive arcs as he surveyed the handiwork of his thralls. The circle was, in truth, more like a nested set of complex bands of magical runes, each one laid down with exacting precision and carefully arranged in relation to one another. It was the culmination of a half-century of effort, shaped by the most astute arcane mind in Nehekhara. Ushoran hoped that it would be enough.

W’soran’s head rose as the Lord of Masks stole into the chamber. His fleshless lips were plastered against his teeth, exaggerating his needle-like fangs and lending the immortal a permanent snarl. He drew a rasping breath. “Will you never learn to knock, my lord?”

Ushoran smiled coldly. “I don’t see why I should,” he replied. “Neferata certainly won’t.”

“Neferata,” W’soran sneered. “She thinks of nothing but her young prince these days. I doubt she even recalls opening the library at this point.”

“Let us hope so. Because we both know what she would do if she realised what you’ve been up to these last fifty years.”

W’soran hissed derisively, but Ushoran caught a flash of unease in the immortal’s deep-set eyes. Necromancy had been forbidden even when Lamashizzar was master of the cabal, but Neferata had even gone so far as to take the worst of Nagash’s tomes and lock them away in a separate vault elsewhere in the inner sanctum. W’soran had been trying to circumvent her restrictions ever since. He had persuaded her to open the library solely to learn the rituals of summoning and communicating with spirits, and so far as it went, he had spoken the truth. If she knew precisely who W’soran intended to call up from the lands of the restless dead, her wrath would be terrible to behold.

Ushoran had known what he was up to from the beginning. W’soran had never been secretive about his ambitions. But instead of betraying the would-be necromancer, Ushoran had become an uneasy ally. As terrible as the risks were, he was certain that Neferata’s obsession with Alcadizzar would ultimately lead to disaster. They needed leverage to persuade her to abandon her ridiculous scheme—or, failing that, the power to supplant her and seize control of Lahmia themselves.

W’soran’s gaze fell to the wooden box tucked under Ushoran’s arm. His pale eyes narrowed. “Is that it?”

The Lord of Masks stepped forwards, setting the box on one of the tables. “You tell me.”

W’soran made his way across the cluttered chamber, weaving among the tables and reading stands with his strange, spider-like gait. His ghastly face was lit with a dreadful sense of anticipation as he unfastened the catch and opened the lid of the box.

Ushoran folded his arms. “I’d thought he would have brought more,” the Lord of Masks said with a scowl. “Will it be enough?”

A faint, hitching rattle rose from W’soran’s throat. It took a moment before Ushoran realised the immortal was chuckling to himself.

“Oh, yes,” W’soran hissed, reaching into the box with knobby, clawed hands. “Yes. This will do.”

He lifted from the box a human skull, still covered in scraps of yellow flesh and matted black hair. The eyes were empty sockets, the nose, lips and ears gnawed down to little more than tattered nubs by the work of hungry tomb beetles. The jaw hung open, as though frozen in the midst of an agonised scream; the taut, leathery tendons of the jaw muscles stood out in sharp relief beneath the papery skin.

Buried alive, Ushoran thought, recalling what the thief had told him. The thought sent a chill down his spine.

“Is it him?” he asked.

W’soran nodded. “Thutep, last true king of Khemri,” he said with certainty. “And brother to Nagash the Usurper.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“Because his death is etched here.” W’soran traced a clawed fingertip along Thutep’s skull, from forehead to chin. “The agonies he suffered in the tomb left their mark in flesh and bone before Thutep’s spirit passed into the dead lands.” He turned away from the table, still holding the king’s skull, and beckoned with his free hand. At once a gaunt, robed figure shuffled out of the shadows near the circle, bearing a short stand made of bronze. As Ushoran watched, W’soran plucked the stand out of the thrall’s hand and stepped carefully into the summoning circle. The would-be necromancer set the stand at its centre and placed the skull atop it.

Ushoran’s eyes widened. “You’re going to attempt the summoning now?”

“Why not?” W’soran beckoned again, and another pair of thralls placed a heavy wooden lectern a few feet from the edge of the summoning circle. “The hour is right, and the position of the moons propitious.”

“Well.” The Lord of Masks eyed the ritual symbols dubiously. “Are you certain the wards will hold?”

“As certain as I can be,” W’soran replied. He opened the heavy tome resting upon the stand and began searching through its pages.

Ushoran fought the urge to start edging towards the door. This was what they’d been working towards for decades, after all. If the summoning worked, they would finally be in a position to challenge Neferata. “But, what if… I mean, suppose there is an accident—”

The would-be necromancer glanced back at Ushoran. “You wish to leave?”

Ushoran paused. The smug note in W’soran’s voice was enough to steel his resolve. “Certainly not,” he answered coldly. He folded his arms and drew a deep breath. “Go on. Call to him. Let’s see what he’s got to say.”

W’soran’s leathery cheeks wrinkled, creaking like old saddle leather as he attempted a smile. “As you wish,” he said. Chuckling to himself, he turned back to the open tome and spread his skeletal hands wide. He drew a long, whistling breath and then began the invocation.

The arcane words rolled easily from W’soran’s withered tongue and his voice grew stronger as he spoke, until the invocation rang from the chamber walls. Ushoran tried to follow the awful litany at first, but the words scarcely left an impression upon his mind. The passage of time seemed to slow, then failed to register altogether.

The temperature began to fall within the room. The chill came on quickly, like the cold of a desert night. Sheets of parchment fluttered atop the table next to Ushoran, stirred by a sudden breeze, and suddenly he realised that W’soran’s voice no longer echoed through the shadow-haunted room.

At some point, the candles had gone out. What little illumination there was came from a pillar of pale, shifting blue light that hung in the air above Thutep’s screaming skull. As Ushoran focussed on the light, he became aware of a faint sibilance emanating from the circle, like the stirring of a nest of snakes. The more he listened, however, he realised that it wasn’t hissing, but whispering. A multitude of voices, young and old; some of them were insistent, others fearful. Some were angry. Very angry.

W’soran’s shout rode above the sea of voices. “Come forth!” he cried. “Nagash, son of Khetep, I call you! Nagash, priest of Settra’s cult, I call you! Nagash, usurper of Khemri, I call you! Heed my voice and come forth!”

The chorus of spirits broke into wails at the sound of Nagash’s name. Sheets of parchment flew into the air; a cold wind rose up, buffeting Ushoran’s face. A heavy stack of books tottered, and then fell to the floor with a crash.

“Heed me!” W’soran shouted into the building gale. “By the blood of your brother Thutep, I command it! Come forth!”

The pillar of light began to waver. Thin screams issued from it. Voices howled in despair, or spat curses, or begged for release. One of W’soran’s thralls was hurled away from the circle like a straw doll; he flew more than ten feet through the air and hit one of the wooden tables with a bone-jarring thud.

W’soran flung a hand out towards the shifting column of light, as though he could steady it in his grip. “You must obey!” he shouted. “Show yourself!”

The wind continued to rise, until it roared in Ushoran’s ears like a hungry lion. The voices of the dead swelled in volume as well, until he could make out individual voices, each one clamouring to be heard above the din.

Within the circle, Ushoran could see tendrils of smoke curling around Thutep’s skull. The hair and skin were blackening, as though from the heat of a fire, even though the room was as cold as the abyss itself. The pillar of light was growing brighter, even as its outlines grew less stable. Ushoran felt a pressure against his chest—light at first, but growing stronger and more tangible with every second, until it felt as though dozens of hands were clutching at him. The more distinct they became, the more frantically they reached for him, as though he were becoming more substantial—more solid—to the ghosts themselves.

There was an anguished cry—for a moment, Ushoran thought he’d uttered it himself, but then realised the sound had come from W’soran instead. The would-be necromancer clenched his fists and spat a string of angry words and the pillar of light grew tall and thin, as though squeezed in a giant’s fist. Ushoran felt the unseen hands clench desperately at his robes, and then they were torn away as the pillar vanished in a brittle crack of thunder.

Darkness fell. Ushoran heard W’soran mutter a sulphurous curse, and then the sharp sound of splintering wood.

By the time the thralls were able to relight the candles, W’soran was bending down and picking up Nagash’s tome from the floor. The heavy reading stand had been smashed to splinters; jagged bits of wood jutted from W’soran’s palm, but the immortal didn’t seem to notice.

Ushoran smoothed his rumpled robes. Belatedly, he saw that they were torn in places. A chill went down his spine.

“What happened?” he asked.

W’soran inspected the ancient book carefully for signs of damage and then set it aside. The immortal stepped carefully into the circle and picked up Thutep’s skull. “I held open the doorway as long as I could,” he said absently, studying the grisly artefact. “Much longer, and we might have lost the skull. The amount of energy focussed on it was… considerable.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Ushoran said. “What went wrong? Why couldn’t you summon him?”

The immortal did not reply at first. His shoulders tensed. “I don’t know,” he said at last.

“I thought you said—”

“I know what I said!” W’soran snapped. He turned to Ushoran, his withered face a mask of rage. “The skull was the perfect link to Nagash. It should have worked! The rite has never failed me before. Never!”

Silent, shuffling thralls emerged from the shadows and went to work restoring some order to the wind-wracked library. Ushoran absently watched them as they worked, trying to force his stunned mind to function. “If not the rite, then what else could it have been?”

W’soran shook his head slowly. “An unforeseen complication. A… temporary setback. Nothing more,” he said. He stared at the skull for a moment more, then turned and placed it carefully into the hands of a waiting thrall.

“I must think on this,” he said at last. “Perhaps it has to do with the vibrations of the third enumeration…”

The immortal’s voice drifted away as he turned back to the summoning circle. He stroked his pointed chin with a clawed hand as he studied the dense bands of ritual symbols. It was not a dismissal as such, but Ushoran could see that he had been clearly forgotten.

That suited the Lord of Masks. He slipped silently from the library and swung the heavy stone door shut behind him. It was nearing dawn, and he had one last bit of business to attend to.

 

The tomb thief was clever and cautious, but nevertheless predictable. His scent led from the Travellers’ Quarter to the Red Silk Quarter, down by the city docks. With little more than an hour to go until dawn, many of the district’s dice houses and brothels had shut their doors. Dozens of revellers lay in the filthy streets, overcome by too much wine, or lotus root, or both. Bored-looking men from the City Guard checked each insensate form in turn; those who were clearly members of Lahmia’s noble class were lifted from the gutter and urged on their way, while the others were efficiently searched for valuables and left where they lay. A few small knots of leathery-skinned sailors followed along behind the guardsmen, looking for stout bodies to fill the rowing benches of their merchant ships.

Ushoran took two long steps and leapt from the edge of the dice house’s roof, clearing the narrow alley with ease and landing in a crouch on the pleasure house next door. He paused there for a moment, his hulking form hidden in deep shadow, nostrils flaring as he tasted the hot night air.

He followed the thief’s scent to the far side of the roof, keeping low and creeping along on hands and feet like a jungle ape. It felt good to hunt again, he thought, feeling the salt breeze against his bare skin. He found it ironic that, despite what he had become, he had less opportunity to indulge his appetites now than he’d had as a mortal.

Ushoran intended to savour the next few minutes as much as possible. The failed attempt to summon the Usurper’s spirit had left him deeply unsettled. He and W’soran were playing a dangerous game, one that could threaten Lahmia just as much as Neferata’s obsession with Alcadizzar, but what other choice did they have?

Swift and silent, he paused at the low parapet and peered over the edge. The rooms on this side of the building looked out over the wide harbour and the slate-grey sea. Ushoran paused, his large, lantern-jawed head swinging from left to right until he caught the scent of his prey. In one fluid motion, he planted a wide, clawed hand on the parapet and swung out over the edge. For a delicious instant he hung in empty space, thirty feet above the ground, then he dropped like a cat onto the wide ledge of a window directly below.

The window to the bedchamber had been left open to let in the cool sea breeze. Ushoran’s gaze swept across the dimly lit room. The air was still tinged with blue streamers of incense and lotus smoke. A trio of figures lay tangled in the silk sheets upon the low, wide bed.

Ushoran ran his tongue along jagged teeth as he climbed silently into the chamber. It was the work of a few moments to find the bag of coins he’d given the thief just a few hours before. He hefted the bag in his hand and smiled, then set it carefully beside the bedchamber door.

There was more than enough coin left to pay for the mess he was about to make.