‘It’s big,’ said Alex.

In the darkness before dawn, the distant pinprick of Saint Natalia’s Flame had seemed to float over the horizon, like an overbright star. Now, as the sun poured golden over the mountains in the east and their fat-bellied ship wallowed towards its final stop, the mystery was explained.

‘It’s really big,’ said Brother Diaz.

The Pillar of Troy was so colossal that it was less building, more landscape. A tree-stump-shaped mountain of masonry thrust out of the sea, a froth of green at the top where the famous Hanging Gardens grew, the spikes of smaller towers rising even higher above it, like the prongs of a crown.

‘It’s fucking immense,’ said Vigga.

And some genius had decided it’d be a great idea for a piece of shit like Alex to rule it. She pressed at her churning stomach, as if she could squeeze the nerves out. She’d always known it was a mad notion, but assumed sooner or later everyone else would see it too and come up with a better idea. Then they’d all have a good laugh. Remember that ferrety fool we were going to make Empress? What were we thinking?

Only here she was, about to arrive in Troy, and no one was laughing.

Certainly not her.

‘There are so many things in life …’ Balthazar had an oddly boyish look of wonder as he watched the sun rise over the city. ‘That have somehow acquired an overblown and undeserved reputation—’

‘Like the third best necromancer in Europe?’ asked Baptiste.

The third best necromancer in Europe gave a long-suffering sigh. ‘—but the Pillar of Troy is plainly not one such. A relic of a grander epoch, in the shadow of which ours appears a petty afterthought.’ He narrowed his eyes at Alex. ‘Who built it?’

‘The Witch Engineers of Carthage,’ she said, instantly, ‘though it’s rumoured they bound the demon prince Hoxcazish to serve as architect.’

‘Why was it built?’

‘Depends who you ask. Merchants say to control trade routes by land and sea. Priests say as a temple to diabolical powers. Nobles say to strike awe into the hearts of the conquered. Soldiers say as an eastern fortress against the elves.’

‘We all see the world through the lens of our own obsessions,’ murmured Jakob.

Balthazar was giving Alex the faintest nod of approval. The highest praise he offered. ‘I am gratified to see that you were listening. According to the histories, ancient Carthage itself boasted three pillars on an even grander scale, but they toppled when most of the city was sucked through a gate to hell.’

‘A bad day for property values in general, one imagines,’ observed Baron Rikard, running fingers through his raven-black hair and letting the sea wind take it like a shining banner.

‘When Carthage fell Troy’s Pillar wasn’t finished.’ Alex pointed out the line of tiny arches that linked it to the mountains east of the city. ‘It was Basil the First, later named Basil the Builder, who completed the Grand Aqueduct, planted the Hanging Gardens, and began work on the Pharos. Saint Natalia’s Flame wasn’t lit at its top until fifty years after his death. Not long after that the foundation stone of the Basilica of the Angelic Visitation was laid, following … wait for it … an angelic visitation.’

Balthazar gave a sour grunt. ‘Now you’re just showing off.’

‘Well, that I learned from the best,’ said Alex, staring towards the Pillar, one side in shadow, the other bright with the light of the rising sun, a spreading carpet of newer buildings, tiny by comparison, beginning to show around its base. ‘What if they despise me?’ she murmured. ‘My …’ She could hardly say the word. ‘… subjects.’

‘Then you’ll be no worse off than most rulers,’ said Jakob.

‘It is not the role of an Empress to be liked,’ said Balthazar, ‘provided they are obeyed.’

‘Maybe you’d feel differently about being liked,’ said Baptiste, ‘if you knew how it felt.’

Balthazar opened his mouth, as if to disagree, then shut it, as if he’d realised he couldn’t.

Alex wriggled at another surge of nerves, plucking at the gilded fabric of her dress again. Baptiste had been apprentice to a dressmaker in Avignon for a few weeks and had spent the morning with a mouthful of pins, swaddling her in cloth from Sabbas’s cloak. It was too tight at the waist and too bulky at the chest, as if it had been cut for a better shaped version of her. Gal the Purse used to say, Pretend to be what you want to be, one day you might find you’re not pretending any more. Always sounded wise to Alex, who spent a lot of time pretending, but she had her doubts it’d make anyone’s tits bigger.

‘I feel like a fucking birthday present,’ she muttered.

‘And who doesn’t like getting those?’ said Baron Rikard. ‘Never fear, Your Highness, you could not be better prepared.’ He indicated himself with a flourish. ‘You have received expert instruction in etiquette,’ waving to Balthazar, ‘showing off,’ pointing to Brother Diaz, ‘letters,’ indicating Jakob, ‘frowning,’ waving towards Vigga, ‘indiscriminate slaughter—’

‘Indiscrimmy what now?’ she grunted back at him.

‘It means thoughtless,’ said Baptiste.

Vigga opened her mouth, as if to disagree, then shut it, as if she’d realised she couldn’t.

‘Then there are whatever lessons Sunny has been giving you.’ The baron flourished his pale fingers towards nothing in particular. ‘Invisible cunnilingus, for all I know—’

‘Cunny what now?’ grunted Vigga.

‘It means—’ began Baptiste.

‘We know what it means,’ said Brother Diaz.

‘And last, but by no means least,’ finished the baron, waving towards Baptiste, ‘everything else.’ And she, as comfortable around high society as low, performed an exemplary curtsey, though it looked a bit odd in knee boots.

‘Do bear in mind,’ the baron went on, ‘that some of the most charmless, talentless, luckless people in history have made quite passable monarchs once crowned. You really are no worse than average material.’

‘That’s a huge encouragement,’ said Alex.

‘Of course.’ He smiled, showing perfect white teeth, if not to say fangs. ‘Thank God for me.’

‘But I’m not crowned yet.’ Alex felt another ugly surge of nerves as she looked back towards the Pillar. ‘I still have one living cousin …’

‘Arcadius,’ growled Jakob.

‘The eldest,’ said Balthazar.

‘And by all accounts most powerful,’ added Baptiste.

‘The brothers were bitter rivals for the throne.’ Brother Diaz scratched worriedly at his beard. ‘Killing the others will only have made him more dangerous.’

‘Great,’ said Alex. ‘That’s great.’ She’d been expecting his galleys to surge from every inlet, his mercenaries to shoot arrows from every town, or his winged lizard-men to swoop from every cloud they’d passed on their voyage. The fact they hadn’t only made her certain there must be an even more horrifying attempt on her life to come. She pressed her hands against her bubbling stomach. ‘That is so great I might puke.’

Like most things, it was worse close up.

Ships swarmed the harbour, jostling at the wharves like famished piglets competing for the teat. Beast-prowed ships of the north, lean and vicious, dwarfed by triple-decked galleys from Afrique, the Five Lessons stitched in golden thread into their sails. Greetings and threats were hurled between passing sailors in tongues Alex couldn’t understand and hand gestures that left no room for doubt.

The Pillar towered over everything, casting one edge of the harbour into its mighty shadow and dwarfing the jagged line of foothills behind. In places its walls were like natural cliffs, great sheets of seamless rock, in others they were built from crumbling masonry on an inhuman scale – buttresses big as bell towers and arched vaults with whole streets huddling beneath – all rain-stained and dropping-streaked, splattered with rashes of green fern and red creeper, swarmed by flocks of multicoloured birds roosting in the heights.

Dwellings had been chiselled out up there, stairways and doorways and smoking chimneys cut from the stone, or built out on dizzying scaffolds, garlanded with ladders and teetering walkways, with ropes and chains dangling to the city on which breakfasts were winched up in buckets. Everywhere water flowed, channels in the Pillar’s flanks made frothing sluices and glittering waterfalls, their spray darkening the roofs of the streets below and casting rainbows over the city. Within those channels Alex saw mighty wheels moving, monstrous gears turning, as though the whole had clockwork guts, as much machine as building.

The sails were brought in, the ship drifted closer, and Alex began to see the people. Mobs, wedged onto every roof, quay, and wharf. Closer still, and she began to fear those thousands of faces might be aimed directly at her. ‘Are they waiting …’ she whispered, ‘for me?’

‘Well, they’re not waiting for me,’ grunted Jakob.

‘Oh God.’ A city full. An Empire full. Alex chewed at her sore bottom lip, all dry and cracked, like an overdone sausage. As far from Empress lips as could be. Worst lips you ever saw. ‘Is it too late to head back to the Holy City?’ she muttered.

‘I’m wondering the same thing,’ said Vigga, peering out from behind the mainmast as timber scraped on stone and sailors hopped to the shore to make fast the ropes.

‘Merciful heavens, we have a bashful werewolf.’ Baron Rikard’s sigh was a chill breeze on Alex’s neck as he leaned in. ‘Now remember, Your Highness, there are no strangers to you, only beloved old friends to whom you are delighted to be reintroduced.’

‘Oh God.’ There was a welcoming party, baking in the already fierce sun – sparkling guards, horses in glittering harness, led by a woman stately as an Empress. An actual Empress, rather than a laughable impostor.

‘An explosion of generosity and good humour will ignite behind your eyes at each introduction. I want to see social fireworks. And straighten up, for pity’s sake, you have come to lead a nation, not hunt for a lost earring.’

‘Sorry,’ mumbled Alex, forcing down her endlessly hunching shoulders.

‘And never say sorry.’

‘Sorry. Shit!’

‘And never say shit.’

The gangplank slid across to the stones. There was a horrible silence.

And … we walk. Exactly the way the baron had taught her. As if she had a priceless jewel between her collarbones that everyone deserved the pleasure of seeing. She floated across the gangplank. She glided across the quay. The pitiless glare of the sun and the even more pitiless glare of hundreds of eyes and an ever-worsening itch in the small of her back that in this dress she’d never be able to scratch were exactly the things she most enjoyed.

And … we smile. Happiness and good humour and she was not at all worried she was going to shit herself in front of several hundred of her future subjects. We smile. Everything was just the way she wanted it, and she was absolutely not going to shit herself. We smile. Warmth and well wishes and her bowels were absolutely under control, but if she did shit herself no one would be able to say she hadn’t looked like she enjoyed it.

She swore this woman grew with every step she took. She was almost as tall as Jakob, but with way better skin. Empress skin if ever there was any. Best fucking skin you ever saw. Alex felt like a ridiculous beggar-child in her presence. Not even a piece of shit. A smear. A speck. God, could she feel her nose sweating? A speck of shit with the complexion of a wormy windfall squeezed into a golden sausage skin made from a dead man’s cloak.

Alex was expecting the woman to burst out laughing as she stopped in her unnaturally long and slender shadow, then for everyone else to join her. No, really, bring out the real one. Instead, she sank into the most respectful of curtseys, skirts settling in a shimmering pool, as smoothly as if she’d been lowered on a hidden platform.

‘Princess Alexia, it is my honour to welcome you home. I am—’

‘You must be Lady Severa,’ said Alex. ‘Warden of the Imperial Chamber. My uncle spoke of you often.’

‘Not too harshly, I hope?’

‘He said you were a dear friend. That you risked everything to send him letters. That he trusted you with his life, and I could trust you, too.’

Lady Severa sank a little deeper, if that was possible. ‘Your uncle is too kind. But in my experience … an Empress is wise never to trust anyone too much. Might I rise?’

‘What? Shit, yes! I mean, shit. Yes! Sorry.’

‘Your Highness need never say sorry.’ Lady Severa glided upwards to tower over her by at least a head, and what a head it was.

‘Any chance you could …’ Alex squinted up at her. ‘Rise a bit less?’

‘Would Your Highness prefer that the soldiers of her guard bring her a box to stand on? Or dig me a trench to stand in?’

Alex began to grin. ‘I’ve a feeling you may be joking, Lady Severa.’

‘It has been known on special occasions. But there is no need for Your Highness to use the Lady. Severa is quite enough.’ She leaned down to murmur, ‘As Empress, Your Highness will be free to call me bitch, mare, sow, or harpy without fear of correction, indeed your predecessor frequently did, and I always thanked her for the kind attention. Whatever Your Highness desires, it is my duty and pleasure to provide. For now, it is my duty and pleasure to conduct you to Duke Michael—’

‘He’s here?’ asked Alex.

‘He has been here for several weeks, making arrangements for your entrance into the city. He is waiting for you at the Grand Lift of Heraclius, at the end of the cavalcade.’

‘Cavalcade?’ Alex’s voice cracked slightly. She’d been half-expecting to be beheaded the moment she stepped off the boat.

‘The people of Troy wish to greet their Empress-to-be.’ Severa gestured towards an immense white horse. ‘Do you ride, Your Highness?’

‘Very badly,’ muttered Alex.

Some bird’s droppings noisily spattered the cobbles as she set off towards that fortune in horseflesh. The silence was going from odd to worrying. She thought she heard somebody murmur, ‘That’s her?’

‘Wait.’ Jakob held out an arm and Alex froze, heart in her mouth as she wondered what threat he’d seen. He stepped forwards, left hand gripping the hilt of his sword. He took a great breath, like a man about to order a charge against impossible odds, and roared at the very top of his gravelly voice, ‘A cheer for Her Highness, the Princess Alexia Pyrogennetos!’

‘Princess Alexia!’ A child’s voice, shrill with innocent joy, and as if that was the raindrop that caused a dam to burst, whooping, whistling, cheering went up everywhere, birds clattering from the roofs in alarm.

Jakob gave an approving grunt. ‘They just needed a nudge.’

A pair of bearded priests led the way with two icons on gilded poles, Saint Natalia and Saint Hadrian, according to Brother Diaz, who knew a saint when he saw one. Next came a pair of nuns, one carrying a crystal case with a mummified foot inside, the other wearing a golden breastplate with a pickled angel’s feather set into it. Next tramped a dozen guards, the breeze stirring their purple plumes and the sun twinkling on their ceremonial weaponry. Next, exhibited side-saddle on a spectacular white horse with a jewelled harness, came the heavily sweating centrepiece of the whole event, a thief who once got badly beaten for trying to steal a leper’s crutch, accompanied by a vampire, a werewolf, and an immortal mass murderer.

Only went to prove that other one of Gal the Purse’s favourite sayings – Tell the right story, people will buy any old shit.

Troy was a city of dazzling sun and even more dazzling colour. Polished domes twinkled, burnished doors flashed, gold and silver tiles winked in the mosaics of saints surrounding chapel doors, at the feet of which beggars lurked. They passed through a market where everything on earth had its price: strangely striped and spotted animals prowling cages, gaudy plate and gleaming glassware, bowls of pungent spices big as baths in vivid green, brown, orange, gold, bolts of bright white linen and shining silk in every colour. They passed a great dye-works, where waters from the Pillar were channelled into pools stained strange shades, the near-naked workers wading in them stained strange shades, too. All about them on a forest of poles endless swags of cloth were gathered to dry like the sails of great galleys, seas of bright blue and vivid red and shining green billowing with the breeze. They took a curving boulevard around the base of the Pillar, new vistas of grinning faces endlessly revealed, sweltering in gaudy feast-day clothes till Alex was dizzy with their dazzle and their cheering. There were almost as many bells as in the Holy City, pealing from churches with green-streaked copper domes, echoing from chapels clinging to the top of the soaring aqueduct like barnacles to a harbour chain, clanging from shrines with flaking paintings of smirking crusaders putting elves to the sword.

That made her wonder where Sunny had got to. Weaving subtly through her honour guard? Slipping unnoticed through the crowd? Clinging to the underside of her horse? Maybe later she could get Sunny to cling to her underside. She found herself smiling at the thought. But the smiles were coming easier by then, as the parade passed into a wide square at the foot of the Pillar and the cheers grew even louder.

‘Do they … like me?’ she murmured to Jakob, whose scarred frown was a grey anchor in the multicoloured madness.

‘Oh, they love you,’ he grunted. ‘The way you can only love someone you’ve never met and never will. They love the idea of you. The thought of becoming their best selves. Being redeemed. Made whole.’ He shook his head at the crowds lining the square. ‘No matter who rules, the world will still be the world. People will still be people.’

Baptiste snorted. ‘Take no notice of this grumpy fossil.’

‘So it’s happy endings all around, then?’ asked Alex as the priests with their icons, then the nuns with their relics, then the gilded guards halted before a platform set into a channel in the Pillar’s side, where a party of brightly dressed grandees watched her ride closer.

‘Oh, I doubt it.’ Baptiste blew a kiss to the crowds. ‘Happy endings are just stories that aren’t finished yet.’

‘Uncle!’ Duke Michael’s familiar face jumped from that party of rich folk, smiling more broadly even than the rest. Alex right away forgot all the proper etiquette, slithering from her horse while two footmen were labouring over with a set of gilded steps, running between two carved columns commemorating victories of long ago and straight into Duke Michael’s arms.

He caught her, lifted her, swung her around, holding her tight.

‘It’s so good to see you,’ she murmured into his shoulder. Took her by surprise how much she meant it. She hadn’t seen the man in months, had only known him for a few days then, but he’d always been on her side.

‘I’ve been dreaming of this day for so long,’ he said. ‘There were times I thought it would never come. I know the road was hard. I’m so sorry I wasn’t with you.’ He gave her a squeeze, then held her out at arm’s length. ‘But I hardly recognise you! You have grown. I cannot tell you … how much you look like your mother …’

‘Pray do not be greedy, Duke Michael,’ said a holy-looking old bastard whose beard nearly reached his belt. ‘Allow the rest of us to welcome the princess home!’

‘Of course!’ Duke Michael might’ve been dashing a tear from his eye. ‘May I introduce the Head of the Church of the East, Grand Patriarch Methodius the Thirteenth.’

Alex was sorely tempted to nudge the Grand Patriarch and ask what had gone wrong with the other twelve, but for once she thought she’d better stick to Baron Rikard’s script, and she sank to one knee, pretending very hard to be a princess. ‘Your Beatitude, Her Holiness the Pope asked that I convey to you her sisterly greetings, her wishes for your continued good health, and her hopes that two such servants of the Saviour, and the two branches of the one true Church you represent, may soon be united again as one family.’

The Patriarch raised his bushy brows. ‘Pious sentiments, Your Highness, warmly expressed. It will be a profound relief, after a period in which our faith has been sorely tested, to have the rightful heir of Theodosia once more sitting the Serpent Throne. You were examined by two Oracles of the Celestial Choir, I understand?’

There was a calculating glint in the Patriarch’s eye as he helped her up, but Alex kept smiling as if he was a dear old friend, and proof of her legitimacy was her favourite subject. ‘I was, Your Beatitude.’

‘In a properly purified pale chamber?’

‘Well, I’m a princess, not a magician, but it was a big white room.’ Alex laughed, and sprinkled smiles around, and was pleased to see several of the noblemen laughing along.

‘You have seen the bull confirming my niece’s status as Pyrogennetos.’ Duke Michael unrolled a copy now to display its weighty seal and overwrought signatures. ‘Signed by Cardinal Bock and Her Holiness the Pope.’

‘The ten-year-old Pope?’ asked the Patriarch, smirking slightly as he gave the bull a thorough look over.

‘The Pope,’ said Jakob, not smirking at all.

‘And that is the birthmark?’ Methodius peered at the skin behind Alex’s ear. ‘I hope it is not too forward of me to ask, but might I see the famous coin?’

Alex pulled her half from her collar and lifted the thong over her head to offer it out. Duke Michael produced his half and handed it to the Patriarch. They didn’t look much alike, as he held them to the light. Michael’s tarnished dull brown, Alex’s polished bright, Empress Theodosia’s face worn to a blob by years against her skin. But you could see their ragged edges matched. One of the noblewomen gasped. A man with a huge moustache gravely nodded. A fellow with a heavy golden chain about his shoulders muttered softly to a neighbour.

Wasn’t much proof of anything, really. Alex had run cleverer cons on pilgrims for the sake of a few coppers, let alone a whole Empire. But it doesn’t take much to prove what folk already want to believe. Patriarch Methodius looked at Duke Michael, and Duke Michael looked back, and Alex could see that whatever her uncle was selling, the Patriarch had already bought.

The Head of the Church of the East thrust up the two halves of the coin in one hand and the Papal bull in the other, for the crowds to see. Even if at that distance they could’ve been one of Brother Diaz’s letters to Mother and two halves of a bull’s bollock.

‘Princess Alexia Pyrogennetos!’ he thundered. ‘Firstborn of Irene, firstborn of Theodosia, examined by the Oracles of the Celestial Choir and declared first in line of succession, has returned to Troy! Has returned to us. Has returned to claim her birthright, to protect the realms of men from the terror of the elves and lead our Empire into a new age of prosperity!’

Who could doubt something said so loud in such a deep voice? A great cheer went up as everyone in that crowd thought how they might benefit, and simply as that, Alex was acclaimed by Pope and Patriarch as rightful heir to the Serpent Throne of Troy. She did her best to pretend she believed it, and the high and mighty crowded in, beaming for the honour of being introduced.

To a piece of shit thief.

Strange world, eh?