It wasn’t the information Ahmann wanted, of course. The Deliverer wanted troop sizes and positions, points of military or symbolic significance, and maps. He wanted maps most of all. The Rizonan Messengers’ Guild had burned theirs the day the Krasians attacked, and the idiot Sharum had not bothered to stop them. The maps in Duke Edon’s library were extensive for his own lands, but for those outside his borders they were a decade old. To the north, Deliverer’s Hollow was growing exponentially. Small villages were swelling with refugees, and new settlements were forming, many far away from the Messenger roads Ahmann needed to move the full strength of his forces.

‘The landscape is changing,’ Ahmann had said. ‘We cannot achieve victory without understanding that change.’

It was sound military thinking, but gullible though they were, the Hollowers were not such utter fools as to reveal such information. Yet while Ahmann might turn up his chin at gossip and bickering, Abban knew it for the power it was.

Great things can be found in small talk, his father Chabin used to say.

Shamavah had done much the same when the greenlanders came to the Palace of Mirrors. All Abban’s wives and daughters spoke Thesan, but on her orders they had pretended only a handful of words, turning simple interactions into such complicated pantomime that the Hollowers had quickly stopped bothering to speak to them despite their near-constant presence. They silently brought food, cleared away refuse, changed linens, and carried water, all but invisible.

After weeks on end, the greenlanders no longer bothered to hide their petty squabbling. Even when they thought they were alone, more often than not they stood near one of the palace’s many air vents, and Shamavah had women ‘cleaning’ the central shafts continually. Abban read their reports, detailing everything from privy habits to sexual encounters. Some he read with more pleasure than others.

Now the leanings of the Northerners’ hearts were open scrolls. Know a person’s desires, his father had told him, and you can charge whatever you wish to fulfil them.

Like the steps of a ladder, he had built their trust, keeping their secrets and offering sound advice. Occasionally he even seemed to suggest a course not to his master’s advantage, a tactic any child in the bazaar knew to mistrust. But the trick always seemed to work on greenlanders, the best of whom were poor hagglers.

Most delicious was when he could offer up a secret about Inevera, buying their trust even as he helped thwart the manipulations of the Damajah.

She was beginning to suspect his hand now, but it mattered little. He had made his opening moves too subtly for her to oppose him openly, using unwitting agents – including Ahmann himself. The Shar’Dama Ka might publicly heap abuse on Abban, but he tolerated none of it from others, brutally putting down even his sons and closest advisors when they tried to bully the khaffit.

But it was not enough. Sooner or later, Inevera or one of the others would have him poisoned, or killed in his bed, unless he vastly increased his protections.

‘I fear for you while I am gone,’ Shamavah said, as if reading his thoughts. ‘You and the rest of our family, now that we must leave the Palace of Mirrors.’

‘Look to your own concerns in the coming months,’ Abban said. ‘I can see to my own protection, and that of our women, while you are gone.’

‘And our sons?’ Shamavah asked.

Abban let out a deep sigh as he straightened his turban in the mirror and reached for his camel crutch. ‘That will be more difficult,’ he admitted. ‘But one problem at a time. For now, you have a caravan to catch.’

When he had seen his wife and the greenlanders off, Abban limped back to Ahmann’s palace. Duke Edon’s manse was the most impressive and defensible structure in Everam’s Bounty, though it was dwarfed by the palaces of the Desert Spear. Abban himself had larger holdings in Krasia, though his were disguised as crumbling warehouses in poor districts. It was unwise for a khaffit to advertise his wealth to the local dama and Sharum.

The Damaji and most powerful dama had claimed all the grandest structures in Everam’s Bounty when the city was captured, and the Sharum had snatched up the best of what remained. Abban had been left with a humble abode in the poorest and most remote section of town, the building not even large enough to properly house all his wives, daughters, and servants. His pavilion in the new bazaar was grander.

In the short term, Abban had solved the problem by moving everyone into the Palace of Mirrors while he quietly bought all the land in his poor neighbourhood. Slaves worked day and night, secretly tunnelling the perimeter. He would fill the tunnels with poured stone to found his outer wall, the materials already stockpiled. By the time anyone knew what was happening, the wall would be up, and safe from prying eyes, though even those would see only a squat block of a building with nothing to note the splendour within.

But a wall was nothing without warriors to guard it. Abban was no warrior, but he knew their value. He had many muscular chin slaves, but they were no match for true Sharum. If he wasn’t prepared, the Damaji would take his new palace from him the moment the final brick was laid.

The halls of the Shar’Dama Ka’s palace were full of dama and dama’ting, with Sharum marching to and fro, guarding every archway and door. Black-clad dal’ting scurried about carrying trays and laundered linen. Abban kept his eyes down, exaggerating his limp as his crutch thumped a steady beat on the thick carpet.

Always appear weaker than you are, Chabin had taught, and Abban had taken the lessons well. Shattered decades ago, his leg pained him still, but not half so much as he let on, even to Ahmann. A simple cane would have sufficed, but the crutch made him seem that much more helpless. As intended, almost everyone avoided him with their eyes, that they not show their disgust.

Hasik stood outside the throne room, and glowered as Abban approached. Ahmann’s entire inner circle despised the khaffit, but Hasik had a capacity for hatred and sadism that surpassed any man Abban had ever met. Tall and muscular enough to wrestle the Northern giants in Deliverer’s Hollow, he had been given special training in sharusahk since becoming bodyguard to the Deliverer. Pain meant nothing to Hasik, and even kai’Sharum feared to face him. For Hasik did not simply defeat his enemies. He left them crippled and humiliated.

They knew each other from sharaj, when Abban and Ahmann had been friends, and Hasik Ahmann’s greatest rival. Now Hasik served Ahmann fanatically, but his hatred of Abban had only grown, especially since Abban took every chance he could to flaunt the fact that Hasik was only a bodyguard, while he had the Deliverer’s ear.

Unable to strike at Abban directly, Hasik vented his frustrations on Abban’s women, coming often to his pavilion and home on some errand for the Deliverer, always making time to break some item of great value or rape whichever of Abban’s wives or daughters was nearest to hand.

In the Palace of Mirrors, his women had been safe from Hasik, and denied this pleasure the brutal warrior’s loathing had multiplied. His nostrils flared like a bull as the khaffit approached, and Abban wondered if he would be able to control himself.

‘Don’t just stand there, open the door,’ Abban snapped. ‘Or shall I tell the Deliverer you delayed my answering his summons?’

Hasik gaped and looked like he was going to choke on his own tongue. Abban watched in amusement as he sputtered, but he did at last open the portal.