‘No one has doubts,’ said Cardinal Bock, who was tall and kindly but seemed always to have her mind on other things. ‘What was her name?’

‘Alex,’ said Duke Michael.

‘No one has doubts, Alex.’

It wasn’t quite true to say no one had doubts. Alex had massive ones. She was nothing but doubts. Any moment now they’d realise that instead of a long-lost princess they’d found themselves a piece of shit. But Gal the Purse always said, Never give up the lie. Admit the truth, you’re fucked. Cling to the lie, you never know. Lie all the way to the scaffold, lie with the rope around your neck, let them bury your lying corpse still sticking to its story. The truth is a luxury the likes of you can never afford.

‘There is your half-coin,’ said Cardinal Bock, leading the way through the chilly maze of the Celestial Palace at a hell of a pace, ‘and your birthmark, and your uncle is entirely convinced—’

‘Entirely,’ said Duke Michael, giving Alex a grin she was quite grateful for.

‘—so no one here has doubts, but when you get to Troy … if you get to Troy … they’ll want to be absolutely sure. I mean, one can understand it. You’re not inheriting granny’s cheese shop, are you?’

‘No,’ said Alex, with a slightly wistful chuckle. Cheese shop would’ve been nice. She reckoned she could handle a cheese shop. That was about the right level of responsibility.

‘So it’s just that extra little certainty. Just the icing on the bun.’ Bock thoughtfully patted her stomach, then glanced towards one of the silent priests hurrying after them. ‘Sister Stefanu, could you make a note to go out and fetch me a bun? I’ve given myself a hankering. Anyone else? Bun?’ Alex had a policy of never turning down food, but before she could say yes Cardinal Bock stopped dead before a hefty door flanked by armoured guards. ‘And here we are.’

She began to wave her hand around. ‘Azul saz karga with this rod this oil this will this word I sanctify the portal. Droz nox karga I shall permit no unclean thought to pass amen. Locks, please.’

Each of the guards turned a wheel and there was a grinding as toothed bars slid back. Funny, to have the mechanism on the outside. Like it was made to keep something in. The door opened with a hiss of escaping air and Bock stepped through. Alex didn’t care for magic one bit, whether it was White Art, Black Art, or some grinning liar with a pack of cards. There’d been that mess when she was hired to steal that book off that sorcerer and it had not turned out well. This felt like a much bigger and more serious business altogether and her short hairs were all prickling. But when she looked back Duke Michael was giving her that smile again, so encouraging, like he actually believed in her, the damn fool, and she reckoned he’d be disappointed if she made a run for it. What could she do but go in?

Right away she wished she hadn’t. The room on the other side was huge, round, domed, all painted white, so bright it was almost painful after the gloom of the corridors. The polished floor was set with a crazy confusion of rings, and lines, and symbols of polished metal. Nine monks stood evenly spaced against the walls, each holding something in their clasped hands: a candle, a sickle, a bunch of some herb, each face beaded with sweat, each set of lips constantly moving, the heavy air full of the echoing whisper of their ceaseless prayers. Alex jumped as the door crashed shut behind her, bars on the far side grinding back into place.

For someone constantly thinking about running for it, it was amazing how she always missed her chance.

Cardinal Bock was already striding across that expanse of sorcerous floor, past a very nervous-looking clerk sitting at a portable desk, towards a priest with a shaved head near its centre who was kneeling with a book open in the crook of her arm, obsessively polishing the floor with a rag, then breathing on it and polishing again.

‘Lovely,’ murmured Bock. ‘Lovely, lovely, good good good … seals all triple-checked?’

The priest clambered up, tucking her rag away. ‘And triple-checked again, Your Eminence.’ And she handed Bock some sort of crystal on a handle.

‘Braziers full, in case of another incident?’

‘They won’t get past us this time, Your Eminence.’

Bock shut one eye to peer around the room through the crystal. ‘Those bastards are always picking at the seams, remember. Always.’

The shaven priest swallowed. She shaved her eyebrows, too, Alex noticed. ‘How could one possibly forget, Your Eminence?’

‘Good, lovely, excellent.’ Cardinal Bock waved Alex over. ‘Now don’t worry, there are no wrong answers here.’

Alex tried to smile. In her experience, there were always wrong answers, and she’d very likely soon be giving them.

‘One thing, before we begin …’ Bock took her by the shoulders and guided her forwards a few steps, then back an inch or two, until she was satisfied. ‘Stay inside the circle.’ Alex followed her eyes down, and saw her rather lovely borrowed shoes had been positioned within a circle of brass in the very centre of the floor. ‘Stay inside the circle, at all times.’ Bock stepped backwards, towards the priest with the book, beckoning to Duke Michael. ‘And if you could join me here, Your Grace, we need to be south of the principal of course. Don’t worry a bit … what was her name again?’

‘Alex,’ said Duke Michael.

‘Don’t worry a bit, Alex, this is all entirely standard. Even if standard still represents colossal risks, of course, we are all well aware of the risks …’

Alex swallowed. ‘Er …’

‘Just stay inside the circle. Whatever happens. You can bring them in now!’

Two doors at opposite sides of the hall were opened and two teams of four guards shuffled in, each carrying a chair on poles. Alex had a feeling the nine monks were sweating more, praying more, looking more pained than ever.

In the chairs, in white shifts, blindfolded and with wrists and ankles chained, were two people. One was a man, she thought, one a woman, though it was hard to tell, they looked so starved, skin and bone, and unhealthy skin at that, scabs about their withered lips. They were limp as rags, heads lolling, bouncing slightly with the movement of their chairs. They looked like paupers’ corpses. Things she’d been close to more often than she’d have liked. Things she’d been close to being more often than she’d have liked.

The guards set the chairs down, one on each side of Alex, and hurried back. As if they’d carried in two barrels of oil and Alex was the spark. Eight hard-bitten veterans, and they all looked terrified.

‘Er …’ muttered Alex, glancing around for some way out. But, you know. Locks on the outside.

‘Begin,’ said Bock.

Chains rattled as the blindfolded man and woman lurched forwards in their chairs together, clutching Alex’s hands. She flinched, almost stepped back, then realised she might step from the circle, and stayed where she was.

In a ringing voice, the woman spoke. ‘I see the elves!’

‘The elves come!’ wailed the man. ‘Their blind mad hungry gods come!’

‘God save us, the elves come!’ screeched the woman, gripping Alex’s hand painfully tight. ‘Hungry, hungry, hungry, laughing.’

Alex stared wildly at Bock, but the old woman waved it away. ‘Don’t worry. They always say that.’

‘And that’s a good thing?’ squeaked Alex.

Bock hooked a finger to scratch under her crimson skullcap. ‘Long term it is definitely a concern, but for the time being—’

‘I see a great building!’ The woman twitched, head flitting this way and that. ‘An ancient building with buildings upon it with buildings about it feet in the sea head in the clouds I see rivers in the heavens gardens in the sky.’

‘The Pillar of Troy,’ said Cardinal Bock, with a significant glance towards Duke Michael. Her priest had pulled a stub of pencil from behind her ear and was scribbling furiously in her book.

‘I see an ordeal,’ whispered the man, in a papery wheeze, ‘I see tests and trials.’

Alex didn’t much like the sound of that. But if these withered ghosts had talked about cake, it likely would’ve come over sinister.

‘A tower a high tower the highest tower and there burns a light a light to guide the faithful a false light a true light a light reflected.’

Cardinal Bock stood, eyes narrowed intently, like a miner sifting gravel for gold.

‘A hunt within a hunt without a crooked path by land by sea.’

‘I see teeth,’ said the man.

‘I see teeth,’ said the woman. Was it getting hotter? Alex was sweating. ‘I see a monk and a knight and a painted wolf I see death and no death I see blood I see a circle.’

‘I see a wheel.’

‘I see flame!’ barked the woman, making Alex jump. ‘I see fire I see fire I see cleansing fire I see fire at her end.’

‘I see fire at her beginning,’ said the man, softly, hard to hear over the prayers, whispered louder and louder.

‘Fire at her beginning.’ Bock and Duke Michael exchanged another glance. ‘Born in the flame …’

‘Pyrogennetos …’ And Duke Michael began to smile.

‘The elves!’ wailed the man, gripping Alex even tighter. God, his hands were burning. She had to bite her lip. His blindfold was smoking, two charred brown spots spreading over his eyes. ‘The elves come!’

‘Enough!’ snapped Bock, and the Oracles’ fingers went limp at once and dropped away, and their faces went slack, and their heads rolled back, and they were two starved corpses again. The initiates hurried forwards with buckets to throw water across the floor, and where it hit metal it went up in hissing steam. The shaven priest checked something that looked like a compass and made another note in her book, then puffed out her cheeks with relief and gave Bock a nod.

‘Good, good!’ Her Eminence peered thoughtfully up at the distant ceiling. ‘Great … so … on this day, the twenty-first of Loyalty …’ The clerk’s pen began to scrape on paper. ‘I, Cardinal Bock, being certified of sound mind uncorrupted by Black Art or demonic powers et cetera, et cetera, assert that the candidate has been examined in a purified pale chamber under nine seals by paired Oracles of the Celestial Choir. Blast it!’ she called over. ‘What’s her name again?’

‘Alex,’ said Duke Michael.

‘You can leave the circle now, Alex, we’re all done!’

Alex backed away from the limp Oracles, nervously rubbing her hands, fingers still pink and tingling from the heat of their touch.

‘You did well.’ Duke Michael was smiling as he squeezed her shoulder.

‘All I did was stand there.’

‘That’s nine-tenths of what an Empress does.’ And he led her across the echoing floor towards the desk.

‘What’s Pyrogennetos?’ she whispered.

‘The title granted to royal children born in the Imperial Bedchamber, high in the Pharos of Troy, directly beneath Saint Natalia’s Flame. Only Empresses and the firstborn of Empresses are permitted to give birth there. It is the ultimate mark of legitimacy.’

Bock was leaning down over the clerk, one hand on his desk as she continued to dictate. ‘… Her Holiness Benedicta the First, therefore, invested with the full authority of the college of cardinals and speaking by papal bull and holy writ with the sanctified voice of God on earth and so on and so on, proclaims her to be none other than the Princess Alexia Pyrogennetos, born in the flame, eldest offspring of Irene, eldest offspring of Theodosia, and the one and only rightful and legitimate heir to the Serpent Throne of Troy.’

Alex blinked as she watched Bock pluck the pen from the clerk’s hand and scribble out a flamboyant signature.

‘And there … we …’ She slung pen back into inkwell, spraying black spots over the clerk, and gave Alex a beaming smile. ‘Go.’

‘Right.’ Alex swallowed. ‘Fuck.’

‘They will eat us all …’ whispered one of the Oracles as she was carried past, tears leaking through her singed blindfold and trickling down her hollow cheeks.

Alex kept her face near her plate and her fork moving between the two fast as she could. She’d have loved to use her fingers as stuff kept falling off the cutlery, but as long as she was getting something down her gullet she called it a win. Duke Michael watched, slightly pained, from the opposite side of the table. Likely this was no one’s idea of eating like a princess. But once you know what proper starving feels like, when someone offers food, you eat all you can quick as you can in case they change their minds.

‘The elves will rise again,’ Cardinal Zizka was saying, from the big chair at the head. ‘That is the terrible inevitability we must all face. Against that implacable, insatiable, unholy enemy, Europe must stand together … or forever fall into darkness.’

‘Uh,’ grunted Alex, around her latest mouthful. She’d no doubt the elves were real bastards. Who wasn’t? But they seemed a long way off. Hadn’t been their pliers in her face the other day, had it?

‘All I want – all Her Holiness wants – is to close the great schism, heal the great wound, and bring the Empire of the East back into the loving embrace of her Mother Church.’

Schism and Church and blah, blah, blah. Alex couldn’t have given a smaller shit about all that if she’d gone at a turd with tweezers, but she knew better than to say so. She could tell this Zizka was high up, from the big, dark furniture in her dining room, polished by centuries of holy arses. From the great paintings of martyrs piously suffering on the high, high walls. From the plate, and the cutlery, and the candlesticks, and the candles in ’em. Gal the Purse would likely have pissed her pants at the sight of it all. Then there was the gold chain with the jewelled circle she’d so carelessly slung over the back of her chair.

You have to be rich to have a thing like that. But to be careless with it? That meant power.

Alex wouldn’t have minded sleeving a couple of pieces. Wouldn’t have been thieving at all in her book, just a noble effort at redistribution. But sadly, the dress they’d belted her into was cut more for sitting still and smiling than redistribution, and had tight sleeves.

Might be she’d spot a chance to palm a spoon or two when dessert arrived.

‘The Saved must be united against the enemies of God,’ the cardinal was burbling on. ‘Beneath the banner of the Saviour. Beneath the banner of the Pope. Ready to march all one way when the heavenly trumpets herald a new crusade, so we may drive the elves back into the abyss from whence they came!’ She glared over, making Alex pause with her fork halfway to her mouth. One long drip of gravy spattered on her plate.

The cardinal had this way of looking at Alex that was making her worry this might be a sex thing after all. Priests might not be allowed to fuck, but that only seemed to encourage some of them. A servant kept drifting in from behind and pouring more wine and Alex had the same policy on drink as food so she’d sunk a few glasses. Now the room was a bit spinny and her ears were all hot and her nose had a dewy sweat on it she kept having to wipe on the back of her sleeve.

‘Happy to help,’ she muttered around her latest half-chewed mouthful. Much better to agree with powerful folk then weasel out later than to risk vexing ’em up front. ‘With the crusades … and all …’

The cardinal raised one brow. ‘Your commitment to the cause of the Church will be rewarded, in this world and the next.’

Alex coughed as she tried to swallow too much in one go and had to thump her breastbone then slurp some wine to wash it down. ‘You can hold off on the heavenly rewards,’ she said, grinning, ‘if I can cash in on the earthly ones now, eh? Eh?’ No one laughed.

Oh God, she was drunk. She thought the answer might be to drink more, and drained her glass.

‘We should set out for Troy as soon as possible,’ Duke Michael was saying. ‘My dear friend Lady Severa stayed in the city after the civil war, she served as Warden of Eudoxia’s Chamber.’ He held up a folded little sheet of paper. ‘She’s risked everything to keep me informed ever since.’ And he did what Alex had been afraid of, which was to hand the paper to her.

‘Lady Severa,’ she muttered, ‘very good. Very good.’ She shook the paper open and frowned at the writing, the way she’d seen priests frown at the writing in holy books. It all looked very neat and careful but meant about as much to her as the patterns the pigeon shit made on her windowsill. ‘Mmm. Hmm.’

Duke Michael looked slightly pained as he leaned close, took the letter from her hand, and turned it the other way up so he could read it. ‘She tells me Eudoxia’s sons are moving to cement their positions. If it wasn’t for their own bitter rivalries, one of them might already—’

‘What?’ Alex stopped waiting for the last drops of wine to trickle into her mouth and lowered her glass. ‘I’ve got cousins?’

‘Eudoxia’s sons. My nephews. Four dukes, and each a bigger bastard than the last. Marcian, Constans, Sabbas, and Arcadius.’ He bit the names off with narrowed eyes, the way a preacher might’ve listed the deadly sins.

‘Don’t they want the throne?’

‘They will stop at nothing to get it,’ said Cardinal Zizka.

Alex sucked half-chewed food from her teeth. Wasn’t tasting so fine as it had. ‘They’re dangerous?’

‘Powerful men in the Empire of the East,’ said Duke Michael. ‘Men who delighted in inflicting Eudoxia’s reign of terror on the people.’

‘Men with land, and money, and influence.’ The cardinal forked a piece of meat with deadly precision. ‘Men with soldiers, spies, and assassins at their command. Men with no care for their immortal souls. Men who will not balk – if the rumours are to be believed – at employing forbidden magic, trafficking with devils, and worse.’

‘Worse?’ muttered Alex.

Duke Michael was looking uncomfortable. As well he might. He’d said nothing about cousins till now, let alone forbidden magic. ‘My sister Eudoxia not only murdered your mother and usurped her throne, she was also a sorceress of terrible power. After she won the civil war, she founded a coven in Troy.’

‘She and her apprentices performed Black Art.’ Cardinal Zizka scowled down the table. ‘Openly, mark you! Offences against God, committed within sight of the hallowed ground wherein the heroes of the grand crusades are buried!’

Duke Michael shook his head. ‘Eudoxia was always obsessed with the soul.’

‘That sounds …’ Alex squinted. ‘Sort of pious?’

Zizka gave a snort of disgust. ‘The soul is that part of himself that God puts into each one of us. To tamper with it is the worst heresy.’

‘How do you tamper with a soul?’ muttered Alex, definitely not wanting the answer.

‘She conducted … experiments,’ said Michael.

‘Obscene experiments,’ said Zizka.

‘She began … to combine man and beast.’

‘Like a dog’s head on a man’s body?’ Alex was about to laugh, then saw Zizka and Duke Michael exchange a glance to kill all humour dead. ‘Wait … like a dog’s head on a man’s body?’

‘People are given souls,’ said Duke Michael, ‘beasts are not. Eudoxia believed … that by fusing the flesh of the two, she could locate the soul. Release it. Capture it. Harness it.’

‘She sought to enslave a splinter of God.’ Cardinal Zizka glared down the table. ‘In fifteen years as Head of the Earthly Curia, it is the most depraved sacrilege I have heard.’

‘Oh,’ croaked Alex.

‘Now you see, Your Highness, why we cannot suffer one of Eudoxia’s sons to sit on the Serpent Throne. Why her cursed legacy must be ripped up by the roots, and the holy ground of Troy purified once again.’ She watched Alex while she chewed, looking like a woman who never bit off more than she could swallow. ‘It is such a brave thing you are doing, Your Highness. A noble, a righteous, and a brave thing.’

A breeze seemed to whip through the room, or at any rate Alex got gooseflesh up her arms, tight sleeves or no. ‘No one said I’d need to be brave,’ she muttered.

‘In an empress,’ said Duke Michael, ‘I think it goes without saying.’

‘But bear in mind you are a step ahead of your cousins,’ observed Cardinal Zizka. ‘No one outside the Celestial Palace even suspects Princess Alexia is alive, let alone found. You will approach Troy in secret, under the protection of a handpicked group. Copies of the Papal bull confirming your identity will be sent ahead of you to Lady Severa, to be circulated shortly before your arrival. Until then Eudoxia’s cursed brood will be engrossed by their struggles against each other. You will fall on them like a bolt from the heavens!’

Alex didn’t feel much like lightning. ‘What if one of ’em wins before I get there?’

‘No one denies there are risks,’ said Duke Michael. ‘It is near a thousand miles to Troy, and we cannot be certain what support you will have when you reach the city. The stakes are huge, and our enemies powerful, and they will move heaven and earth to stop us—’

‘Look, I grew up out there.’ Alex jabbed at the window with her fork and a pea flew off and stuck to the wall. ‘In the slums. I’ve done …’ None of what she’d done seemed quite right for the surroundings. ‘All sorts … of stuff, but I don’t know a fucking thing about being a princess—’

‘I sense you are a quick study,’ said the cardinal, unmoved. She struck Alex as a woman not likely to be moved by anything short of an earthquake. And probably not far even then.

‘But these four cousins, with all the soldiers and the money and the land, won’t I have to fight them, sooner or –?’

‘I’ll fight for you.’ Duke Michael gave her an encouraging smile that made her want to pee. Or maybe that was all the wine.

‘A famed hero taking your part!’ said Zizka. ‘And you will enjoy the support of Her Holiness the Pope, and with her,’ and she rolled her eyes towards the ceiling, painted like a cloudy sky at twilight, hopeful rays breaking through the gloom, ‘the aid of the Saviour, blessed daughter of the Almighty. They may have spies and assassins, Your Highness, but you have saints and angels in your corner!’

In Alex’s experience, the Almighty sides with the favourites, and once you’re hoping for angels to even the odds you’re proper fucked. But she had a sinking feeling she’d been proper fucked for a while and had only just realised.

Duke Michael leaned towards her. ‘And never forget that you have something those four usurping dukes never will.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Alex, sounding very small.

‘The right!’ He thumped the table with his fist. ‘You are the Princess Alexia Pyrogennetos, born in the flame, and through the Oracles of the Celestial Choir endorsed by God himself!’ And he hit the table even harder, making the cutlery jump. Would’ve been a good moment to palm one of those little forks but Alex hadn’t the heart.

‘I’ve got the right …’ She was pretty sure the right would fetch nothing on Gal the Purse’s table. She’d known there must be broken glass hidden in the cake, but she’d chomped into it even so. She’d been dazzled by the big score, so fixed on reaching for it she’d tripped over her own feet. Tripped over and straight down a mineshaft. A mineshaft filled with deadly cousins, heretical sorcery, and stolen souls.

She made one more whingeing effort. ‘But they’ve got sorcerers, you said, and folk who are somewhere between man and beast, and, you know, devils—’

‘They do.’ Cardinal Zizka smiled. It was the first time she’d done it and Alex reckoned, on balance, she’d preferred her frown. ‘But we have devils of our own.’