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They climbed onto the same platform that Andik had used on the first level, but this time they were led back to the square. Along with the sun, the temperature was dropping rapidly.

A gust of wind loosened the knot holding Andik's long red hair. As he returned it to its place, he met Nalia's gaze. The woman stared at him as if she wanted to keep an image of him in her memory forever. "These red locks make me so angry," she teased him.

"And why is that?"

"That's a question only a man like you could ask."

"I don't follow."

"Of course not." The Ensin twisted the tip of a braid. "I couldn't get a color or texture like that if I married the best hairdresser in Larsa."

"Would you be willing to travel all the way to the capital for a haircut?"

"Maybe I would."

"What's wrong with Urookite hairdressers?"

Nalia leaned against the metal railing of the moving platform and let her eyes wander over the square that was growing larger and more imposing beneath them. "Nothing, nothing at all. But I am convinced that certain kinds of mastery are destined to flourish in more suitable places than Urook. We are a warrior people. There has never been much room for finesse in our lives."

Andik nodded. He could hardly blame her. The Tutors had adopted a utilitarian lifestyle and influenced the priorities of all peoples loyal to them. Perhaps there were times when he would have enjoyed some of the luxuries Larsa seemed to flaunt so brazenly. And sometimes he was curious to watch the spectacles that, it was said, lit up Napur every night. But his heart was in Urook, in the solidity of its customs, in the simplicity of its strength. He stood beside Nalia. "Why did we talk about my hair?"

"Because I was looking for a topic to distract me from your rudeness."

"I've already said I regret it."

"You did." The woman turned. She put one hand on the railing and the other on her side. "Did you really find a clue?"

"Yes. This time it's not a diversion. This time we are not wrong."

She asked him no more.

"What have you done?" Nalia looked at him, her eyes wide. She turned her back to him and rubbed her temples.

"I hate to repeat myself."

The dim lights illuminated the quarters without much conviction, making the atmosphere far too intimate for Andik's taste. They had only just arrived, but he felt he was being forced to say the same words over and over again. He rose from his chair and crossed the small living room, stopping his arms in mid-air just before he opened the curtains that covered the window. Nalia kept them closed to ward off prying eyes, and rightly so, of course. "How long have you owned this place?"

Nalia leaned her back against a liquor cabinet and looked at him. "You're avoiding my questions."

"No. I thought I had already given good answers. But if you keep asking me the same things, I will say the same words in return."

She shook her head, grabbed a bottle of dark, thick liquid and two glasses and placed them on the table in the middle of the small room. As she poured the drink, she motioned for him to return to his seat. "You'd better get away from the window. To answer your question: I bought this apartment shortly after I was appointed Ensin. A trusted person told me long ago that secrets need a place to hide, or they are short-lived. And they cause harm. So I decided to find a place where I could keep certain things safe, where I could lock myself away when I needed some peace and quiet. You could be my first valued guest, Ensin Thawill."

"What do you mean?" Andik took the glass, but held it at a safe distance from his mouth.

"I may have brought a different kind of company in here. And if I'm not completely sober, I don't feel like sleeping alone," she explained, bringing the glass to her mouth. After a long swallow, she coughed and smiled at him. "I can't believe you killed High Prelate Yalael Revenne."

"Neither can I."

"It must have been quite a show."

"It happened very quickly. As I've told you to the point of exhaustion, it was an accident."

"Some people might think that a man of Revenne's age was a totally inadequate opponent for a well-built big man like you. They will say that you went too far. They'll question your priorities."

"Bureaucrats do not frighten me. Besides our Lord Zayr, there are few people in Urook powerful enough to make disturbing accusations against me, or who have the means to prove any negligence on my part."

"You are a braggart, Thawill."

Andik shrugged. "Now you're the one deflecting from the main topic. The situation should be clear to you by now, shouldn't it?"

He saw doubt in the woman's expression, but also a desire to get rid of it.

"I wouldn't mind talking to the Dagger. Perhaps it would be easier now. I understand your reasoning, but I don't want to jump to conclusions," she mused.

"And I'm not asking you to. But I can no longer act alone. There are areas of this matter that are beyond my authority, and the last thing I need right now is a diplomatic row."

Nalia took a chair, turned it around and straddled it. She rested her elbows on the back and leaned her chin on her clenched fists. "I'm still trying to figure out how this all relates to the Spice Rooms."

"You'd have a much clearer idea if you hadn't interrupted me and forced me to say the same things over and over again."

Nalia raised her hands in surrender. "I will be as mute as a corpse. Go ahead."

Andik rubbed his jaw and ran a hand through his hair. "The story stuck in my throat like a too big bite. I thought about it all the time and always had the feeling I missed something important."

She nodded.

It had been a few months since Andik and Nalia had visited the room of a small inn on the outskirts of Urook and found an unmade bed on which a dark-haired girl with milky-white skin lay.

She was beautiful. And definitely dead.

Her father, a relly influential Lugalen, was reduced to a heap of tears, grief and remorse.

Andik remembered exactly what he had felt as he read and reread the letter Suna Monning had left, the feeling that he had come too late, that he could almost have grabbed the girl and saved her, as if she had been on the edge of a precipice and not already lost.

It seemed to be a very simple story. Sad, yes, but very simple.

Nalia had taken it upon herself to hold off the brigade commander, who had been the first to arrive at the scene of the tragedy. Then, together, they had made contact with higher authorities. It was an unpleasant, painful affair.

Even worse had been the moments when Andik had broken the news of the girl's death to her lover, lieutenant Jaesh Rebi.

Would he ever be able to forget the tears the young man had shed? And the sobs that had shaken him?

Nalia stared at him, motionless, as if to emphasize that no, she would not breathe and that yes, she would remain quiet only to please him. She waited for him to ask her a direct question before she broke her silence.

"Do you ever find yourself unable to distinguish a dream from reality?" asked Andik.

She shook her head, sketched a lascivious smile. "No. But believe me, sometimes I really wish I could take a little bit of reality and push it into the world of illusions. Maybe then we wouldn't need to take everything so damn seriously."

Andik nodded. He moved his head slowly, feeling the caresses of fatigue and his body aggravated by the weight of events.

"What did you dream?"

"That girl. Just last night I saw her in my dreams. She was sitting beside me on my bed. She was so young, so beautiful despite her tears. She drank the poisoned wine without making a sound, and I felt a pain in my chest, like it was burning. I woke up screaming and the image of her face haunted me all day. Perhaps my mind was trying to tell me something. Or maybe I had an omen. Was I blessed with a vision sent by the gods?"

Nalia narrowed her eyes to two inquisitive slits.

"When the Dagger told me of Lugalen Jan Hura's fears, I felt something. It was as if someone was whispering a clue to me, a key to a hidden message she didn't even know she was guarding.

"Poetic. But wordy. Try to get to the point, Ensin Thawill. Don't make me swallow all this stuff while I wait to understand your ramblings," she urged him, pouring herself more liquor.

"I'll try, but first I have to tell you something you won't like."

Nalia huffed. "That's all you did."

Andik raised his eyebrows and agreed. He was testing the patience of one of the few people he really trusted. Despite the cocky attitude she flaunted and her poor taste in lovers, Nalia Korr remained an Ensin of undoubted value and talent. Andik needed her more than ever in these moments. He tried to be brief.

"I spoke to him again."

"With whom?"

"Jaesh."

Nalia put a hand to her forehead, stifled a groan and drank again. "Why on earth?"

"Because of the dreams. Last night was not the first time I dreamed of Suna. To be honest, she visited me every time I went to sleep, for weeks. As I told you, I had the impression that something had been left unresolved in this matter. The thought of not really knowing what had happened haunted me."

"We cannot always know everything, despite what we try to make people or our enemies believe. We are not perfect, we have limitations. There are crimes that will remain unsolved." Nalia seemed to be talking more to herself than to Andik.

"I know, I know. Anyway, Jaesh told me about the first time he saw Suna, how he fell in love with her, the letters they wrote to each other. That's when he told me about the other disappearances."

"What disappearances?" Nalia looked at him with narrowed eyes.

"Apparently Suna told her lover everything that happened to her and everything she felt: how she spent her days, about the preparations her family made for the Trials and how she wanted to escape, to run to him. In one of those letters, she also told him that she was afraid.

Andik paused. The words he spoke floated between him and Nalia like a gust of cold wind.

"Afraid of whom? Of what?"

"Strange rumours circulated among her and her friends. There were whispers of other high-profile young women vanishing overnight. At first it was thought that these were just escapes dictated by family disagreements or forbidden love affairs."

"Ironic, isn't it?" chuckled Nalia.

"Macabre. Because there have been some pretty strong denials. Anyway, according to Suna, the disappearances became more and more numerous until the first corpses started to appear."

"Corpses? Of young noblewomen? Thawill, why didn't you tell me about this before? And why didn't we hear about it?"

"What was I supposed to say? He seemed sincere to me, there was no reason to believe he had any reason to lie, but I also knew his words were worth very little. You said it yourself: no such facts have reached us, officially or unofficially. It could be the gossip of spoiled girls or the ravings of a young man with a broken heart.

"There's a 'but' you didn't say. Spit it out."

"There is no but. Just gut feeling. Yalael told me, 'The children of traitors will be our heralds. Shield in a blanket of thorns, our faith.' Come on, Nalia, I can't be the only one who sees the connection."

Nalia slammed her glass down on the table and stared at him, her face dark, her voice reduced to a hiss. " The bastards could be real. This could all be their doing."

Andik nodded. He finally raised the glass to his mouth and took a gulp that set his throat on fire. "They were not just legends. We underestimated the extent of the threat, and we may already be paying the price. It's them. It's them, and the more time that passes, the more certain I am. I can feel it in my veins."

He looked into Nalia's eyes. Without realising it, he pronounced the name with her:

"The Ashen Shields".

"Legends are distorted reflections of ancient truths, often terrible in their simplicity."

Andik could not remember when he had first heard this saying, but he found it fitting to the facts at hand.

Suna's was just one of dozens of tragedies that claimed a place among the whispers, suspicious glances and fingers pointed in the dark by those convinced that Kenjir was on the brink of civil war.

Of course, even attempting to discuss such an eventuality aloud was blasphemy and an offense punishable with the utmost severity. Therefore, those who prophesied the end of the millennial reign of the Masters did so in secret and before complacent audiences. Kenjir had incubated countless groups that had striven to be invisible. But to succeed in such an endevor was impossible.

The Masters, gods and children of gods, could probe the hearts of their subjects and discern their motives, their deepest feelings. For several hundred years, there had not been a shadow of an uprising or organised protest against the established regime within the borders of the gods' realms. It seemed that anyone with a modicum of intellect understood how dangerous it was to show any form of dissatisfaction with the rulers.

So Andik was sure that those who spread such rumours must either be incredibly stupid or wish with all their hearts for a horrible and inevitable death. The few groups that had gone any further than a few meetings had been suppressed with great care by military ranks far less prestigious than his own. Any handful of would-be conspirators had been weeded out and crushed long before they became a nuisance, before they could even dream of becoming a threat.

They all ended the same way.

Still.

Still, the relentless procession of searches, interrogations and raids that had swept through all groups deemed 'undesirable' by the authorities had not even touched the Ashen Shields. There was a large fringe of those authorities who continued to deny the existence of the Shields, yes. But there was also a small group of prominent military figures, like Andik, who refused to believe that it was all just legend. He had risen to the highest ranks of the Urook armies precisely because of his ability to avert certain threats, as well as his strategic and martial skills. And now he smelled the stench of blood as if it had been sprayed right into his nostrils, its metallic aftertaste lingering in the back of his throat.

Perhaps even Nalia was beginning to believe that. She emptied the glass and set it on the table, but continued to stare at it as if it could transfigure reality and give her all the answers she wanted.

"They'd take us for fools," she said, touching the wet rim of the glass with the tip of a finger, moistening it with a drop of the remaining liquor and raising it to her mouth. "Do you understand? If we told the other Ensins about this, we could lose our credibility. It would be the end of our careers. I don't even want to imagine what might happen if our Lord Zayr found out."

"Maybe. Maybe not. If I'm right, we have enough elements to start an unofficial investigation."

"Careful, Thawill," she cut him off, "don't play with the original story. There never was a riot. You remember wrong."

Andik's eyes were heavy, lacking the usual dexterity. "Nalia, listen to me. You and I were trained by the same people. We fight for the same values and worship the same gods. I know that you still listen to me because of what unites us. And I also know that you are divided. Part of you wants to forget this whole thing, to pretend that it was just a figment of some drunkard's imagination or bad taste. Another part of you knows that perhaps it would take very little to erase the doubts and finally find some answers."

Andik put his hand on the table and met Nalia's gaze again. Then he continued, "Murder, theft, vandalism. For more than a year now, we have heard such crimes attributed to the Ashen Shields. How would you feel if one day you learned that there was any truth to these stories?"

"They always turned out to be rumours. Accusations denied after a few days. My conscience is more than clear," she objected.

"All of them? Are we looking in the wrong direction? Are we not acting fast enough to contain a crisis? If we are wrong, would your conscience be clear?"

Nalia gave him one of her looks, halfway between contempt and disbelief, but waited for him to explain himself.

"We just have to ask the right questions, to the right people."

"Do we?" she asked him with an eyebrow so arched it seemed determined to flee.

"We do. You and me. "

"So I should have your back. Is that why you're bothering me with these conspiracy theories?"

Andik shook his head. "I want so much more. I want your strength. I want your wit. And I want your authority. If you are with me, everything I discover will be backed by two Ensins. No one could ask for more. And as the gods are my witness, we need a hand as steady as yours in this mess. I say Suna did not take her own life. Someone killed her, Nalia. Perhaps she saw or heard something she shouldn't have. And her escape from Napur must be connected to the disappearances she mentioned in her letters. What are the chances of all these events happening so close to the start of the Trials? We cannot ignore everything. We simply cannot."

Nalia held his gaze. "Shield in a blanket of thorns, our faith," she quoted. "I've always thought that was far too poetic a motto for a rebel group that shouldn't even exist."

"I agree."

The woman shrugged off the complacency she was displaying by getting up from her chair. "You treat me like a virgin whose virtue you wish to steal."

"I have never stolen anyone's virginity."

"Not even Vinna's?"

"You could say she was the one who stole mine." Andik stood and faced Nalia. He put his hands on her shoulders, hoping not to come out with a broken nose. "I only ask for three days. If we don't find out anything, I will forget about the Ashen Shields. Forever."

Nalia looked into his eyes and squeezed hers. She did not object to his hands on her shoulders, nor did she hit him. Maybe she believed him and wanted to give him a real chance. Or she was already drunk. "I still don't know if I believe you, Thawill. I could break your wrists, throw you out of here and forget you ever existed. It would be so easy."

He nodded, "But you haven't yet."

"I'll regret it," she told him, stepping back and pulling away from his hands. "And I won't be able to blame anyone else."

"Is that a yes?" Andik found his mouth widening in an inappropriate smile. There was no joy in the circumstances. But just the prospect of Nalia's help gave his heart a new confidence, a determination he desperately needed.

"I just hope you don't make me waste three days and force me to break your jaw."

"That's good enough for me," he agreed, without breaking his smile.

"If it's really about asking the right questions of the right people, who do you want to start with? "

Andik's smile turned conspiratorial. "Not with whom. From where."

Nalia did not hide her annoyance. She raised her eyebrows.

"There is a way to shorten the time. A way to talk to many Lugalens and their children without travelling from town to town."

Nalia's eyes suddenly lit up. "The Black Amphitheater!"

Andik nodded, his smile becoming one of a magician's delight at the audience's amazement. But the satisfaction was short-lived. The sound startled them both. It was uncertain, barely audible beyond the front door.

Nalia's face broke into a mischievous smile. "Tomorrow, Thawill. Your three days start tomorrow. Now I must keep my word," she said, pointing to the door. She threw it wide open and pushed him out. Andik almost bumped into the servant he had seen earlier that afternoon, drowning in Nalia's attentions.

The young man was dragged inside in an instant and the door slammed shut behind him.

Andik did not even have time to thank Nalia.