Prologue

Her grandfather lived to a great age. Harriet was the youngest of many grandchildren, and still Jibril did not die until some months after she had seen her ninth birthday. He had been a renowned scribe, a learned man, and, as was normal amongst the people of Cropansil, the old man had worked until only a few months before he died.

Many people had come to see him on his sick-bed; to bid him farewell; to sit and to reminisce; to hear the stories that only he knew so that they might not die with him. As his time drew near, his room was often crowded with people Harriet did not recognise. In some cases they came to just gently touch the old man’s brow and to wish him a peaceful passage. Finally, almost as the harbinger of death, The Master came to see Jibril; to silently let the old man know that his duty had been done. The rest of the house was hushed, but still all that could be heard from the room was the old man’s laboured breathing and the slight movements of The Master’s feet on the stone floor.

Whilst Jibril was ill his youngest grand-daughter, who had grown up in his household, and who loved the old man dearly, would go to the place where he had always worked: one of Cropansil’s larger scriptoria. His desk was untouched; his last work left in progress. He had long since finished his days of working on the mundane matters of city administration, and Harriet would sit and gaze at the beautifully illuminated history that he was laboriously copying.

The other scribes knew Harriet well. Even in a city the size of Cropansil her lineage was well known in the relatively small sub-caste of the scribes. One day she might very well sit at one of these desks herself, and no-one thought that harm would come of the girl acquiring her Grandfather’s eye for detail. ‘A good scribe does not just copy Harriet”, Jibril had often said to her, “but seeks to improve. A good scribe adds beauty and clarity even to the dullest report.’

Jibril died just before dawn after a mild spring night. In the wide streets the city was just coming to life. Harriet’s mother and her sisters were with the old man. The women did not cry. At the moment that the life left Jibril’s body they started to sing a simple song. Outside of the door Harriet and her cousin Aldar listened to the happy chorus. Harriet quickly wiped a hot tear from her eye; there must be no sign of grief at the time of her Grandfather’s going; even at her age she understood that.

The body was left throughout the daylight hours, and for the first time in many weeks the household ceased to revolve around the needs of a sick old man. A little before dusk Harriet’s mother called her to join the assembled household in the courtyard on which so much of her life was focused. There, held by two servants, was Jibril’s washed and simply wrapped body. Her aunts and cousins; two uncles and a few other scribes prepared to leave for the heart of the city.

There was a little quiet but cheerful conversation amongst the adults as the small procession made the journey of a few minutes towards the central square. The shadows lengthened, and overhead, erestrils, just black shapes in the gloom, flew back towards their colonies in the city’s largest trees. As the square came into view Harriet realised quite suddenly that her family did not have the streets to themselves; at first she saw one and then several similar processions, all heading towards the open space and the towering structure that dominated it.

In the centre of the square there was a stepped black structure. Each terrace was the height of a grown man, and there were perhaps twenty five to the top. The base of the edifice was as wide as it was tall. It bore neither decoration nor ornamentation. In a city of squat grey stone buildings this breathtaking monument was starkly unique; a stunning sight even for those who could not fail to see it in their everyday journeys through the city streets.

As the funerary processions approached the edifice greetings were exchanged between them. Harriet had never been as close to this massive structure as she was now and she was awestruck; she had forgotten all thoughts of her Grandfather’s wrapped body, and she simply stared upwards. The flawless angles of the black terraces towered over her, assuming monstrous proportions against the splashes of stars in the soft darkness of the night sky.

The servants quite unceremoniously rolled Jibril’s corpse from their shoulders on to the first terrace, and the procession immediately turned for home. Within a few steps a song was begun. Harriet had not heard it before, but it was a joyful tune. Halfway back across the square she turned her head to see if she could still see her Grandfather’s body; she caught a glimpse of his white shroud and then her Aunt Temir forcefully pushed her head forwards again and, between lines of the song, said ‘Walk away Harriet. Just walk child.’

There was a merry gathering in the courtyard that night. It seemed that most of the people who had come to see the old man on his death bed now came to give their respects to the living; to have one drink and a plain biscuit while talking to Jibril’s daughters and then to make way for the next visitor. Harriet stayed a while and then took herself to bed, still thinking about her Grandfather’s body.

Early the next morning, in the pale light, before she would be missed at breakfast, Harriet ran to the square through city streets still haunted by the cold mists of the night before. Now there were no funerary processions there, but soldiers, and messengers making their way in all directions to the large buildings that lined the open space. Harriet was the only child there, and she darted, weaving across the bustling space.

She aimed for the very place where they had laid down Jibril’s body, but it was difficult to be sure exactly where that was. The crowd changed the geography of a place already transformed by daylight, and, as Harriet neared the bottom terrace, disorientated, she nearly ran fully into the front of a woman soldier who stood very still, and had her eyes fixed upon the young girl.

Harriet swerved and side-stepped as the soldier stuck out an arm to catch her. She very nearly fell; turned her head as she felt the soldier’s hand clasp her tunic, and then crashed into a solid form, unyielding. The impact knocked her to the floor.

Harriet opened her eyes and immediately wished that she had indeed run into the soldier’s arms. She was looking up into the inscrutable face of one of The Masters. The Master bent down, slowly extended two of its arms towards the child and picked her up. Its hands were firm and strong, hard like metal, and it set Harriet on her feet. She looked into its eyes but saw there only a myriad of her own reflections. The Master straightened, and watched the child for what seemed to be a very long moment, and then simply turned away back to face another Master by its side.

The soldier took Harriet firmly by the shoulder and asked ‘What are you doing here child? Where is your home?’

Although she did not know how she found her voice, Harriet spoke up: ‘I have come to look for my Grandfather’ she said. She pointed to the black terrace only a few paces away and added, on the verge of tears ‘We left him there.’

The woman took her helmet off, and looked much less frightening without the nose guard obscuring her face. She said ‘Your Grandfather is gone then child and you will not see him again.’ She bent closer to Harriet, her expression softening, and added ‘Be pleased for him girl, he will suffer no more.’

Harriet slowly made her way home. Looking back after many years she could never remember being late for that breakfast; what she told her mother or even if her mother was angry with her. Of course she still wondered where her Grandfather’s body had gone; many children wondered where the bodies went. Adults never talked about it, at least no adults that Harriet knew. Death was greeted with a quiet happiness, and the funerary processions never looked back.