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stumps of scrubby trees in her woodland were burned flat to the ground. Every building and foundry in Wrought was destroyed, none of her possessions escaped the flames. Wrought was her birthplace and the scene of our honeymoon; Tern now aspired to rebuild it completely. Luckily, her designer fashions sold well on the Hacilith cat-walks and as far as she was concerned Wrenn joining the Circle was an opportunity for trendsetting. She caressed my wings as I peeled off my tight trousers and changed clothes. Long wings are considered the most attractive, and as feathers need a lot of preening, Awians look after their high-maintenance bodies with care.
    “I didn’t see the duel,” Tern said. “I needed the time to get ready. I heard from Rayne that the Challenger gave Serein a good nick to remember him by.”
    “It was a first-blood duel,” I said. “Those were the rules, so Wrenn had to.”
    “I hear that Wrenn is scrumptious,” she commented. I shrugged. I seated myself in front of the mirror and let her brush my black hair that reaches to my waist, removing all the tangles caused by flying. It was agony. When she finished I crossed feathers through it like windmill sails and underlined my eyes.
    “Listen.” Tern raised a finger at the clatter of coaches vying for space in the courtyard far below. “I hear some ladies inviting themselves to his reception. Those can’t be reporters or they would never have managed to sneak past Tawny at the gate.”
    “We have an hour. I’ve been on my own in Scree for weeks. I want you.”
    Tern pulled away—so as not to ruin the painstaking work of art she has made of herself. I gave her the full benefit of my cat-eyed look that she found so exotic. “We should clear a space to sit down…Perhaps lie down.”
    “Come and join the clamor,” she said.
    Tern, you and your diamond self-sufficiency.
     

    U nlike the stately homes of Awia, the Castle’s sarsen outer bastions were thick, sturdy and unassailable. The Castle’s purpose was defense of the entire Fourlands; it protected every manor, growing gatehouses and curtain walls while they bloomed balconies and arched dance halls, ornate turrets and painted bartizans.
    The ground around the Castle was thrown into immense earth-works to ward off Insects. A channel of the Moren River was directed into a double moat around its man-made hill. The twin exterior walls that ran around the Castle’s eight sides were strengthened by huge cylindrical smooth stone-faced towers decorated with crenellations and with shallow pointed roofs. Along the walls flags rustled and furled; the heraldry of the Fourlands’ current sixteen manors and two townships. Fifty pennants flew under the Castle’s sun, each with the sign that an Eszai had chosen for his or her position.
    The Emperor’s palace fitted inside the Castle like the flesh in a nutshell. Its marble towers stretched up from inside the impenetrable curtain wall. The Throne Room spire was the tallest; farmers who worked the demesne saw the sun glint on its pinnacle and they knew the Emperor occupied his throne beneath.
    As Tern and I walked from our austere tower we saw only glimpses through the cold fog; its attendant hush muted every sound, drawing all the luster from the palace. We saw lights shining behind sash windows and the oculus ovals made to look like portholes of the Mare’s Run wing where Mist had her rooms. A stone-balustraded balcony ran along the length of its top floor, like the gallery on a ship. The Mare’s Run was built between the outer walls and the palace five hundred years ago; it filled some of the space where gardens used to be. Several other buildings were shaped to fit into the western side of the gap: the dining hall and a theater with its scalloped bronze dome topped by a white wood lantern-turret.
    I did not take the rooms owing to me as Messenger in the palace’s Carillon Court when I joined the Circle. I preferred to move into the unused apartment at