architect, for which he was as qualified as any man about, having fortified more
towns than K-adakithis had years. The prince had proposed the site; the soldier
examined it and found it good. Not satisfied, he had made it better, dredging
deep with oxen along the shore while his imported fortifications crews raised
double walls of baked brick filled with rubble and faced with stone. When
complete, these would be deeply crenellated for archers, studded with
gatehouses, double-gated and sheer. Even incomplete, the walls which barred the
folk from spit and lighthouse grinned with a death’s-head smirk towards the
town, enclosing granaries and stables and newly whiled barracks and a spring for
fresh water: if War came hither, Tempus proposed to make Him welcome for a long
and arduous siege.
The fey, god’s-breath weather might have stopped work on the construction, but
Tempus worked without respite, always: it eased the soul of the man who could
not sleep and who had turned his back upon his god. This day, he awaited the
arrival of Kadakithis and that of his own anonymous Rankan contact, to introduce
emissary to possible figurehead, to put the two together and see what might be
seen.
When he had arranged the meeting, he had yet walked in the shelter of the god
Vashanka’s arm. Now, things had changed for him and he no longer cared to serve
Vashanka, the Storm God, who regulated kingship. If he could, he was going to
contrive to be relieved of his various commissions and of his honour bond to
Kadakithis, freed to go among the mercenaries to whom his soul belonged