Heat and humidity clung to the day long after the sun had set. Ingo sat high on a walled platform jutting from one of the tall buildings, enjoying the first flutters of a cool, Southern breeze.

  He looked around at the great city from above. Every building, it seemed, was taller than his village watchtower. This one was high enough to see where the Tower of a Thousand Follies disappeared into a veil of fog. Every high place in the city bristled with faces poking out from behind each other. Gavan, Hesio and Ingo had more space than most on their platform, or ‘balcony,’ as they called it.

  “Did you visit the Institute?” Hesio asked.

  “Not yet.”

  Ingo had walked the city freely from morning to night. He'd passed the Institute a dozen times, but did not yet feel ready to enter. There were enough wonders still outside. He marvelled at the buildings of this place; the beauty and care that went into every carving and statue that adorned the streets.

  “Hm,” grunted Gavan. "We'll take you there tomorrow."

  “I have a question about the Institute, though,” Ingo ventured. “The Priest's Question. You mentioned it when we passed there. Was it just a joke, or something serious?” Ingo's curiosity had been aroused by the mention of a priest, here in the Godless City.

  “Ah.” Hesio let out a dry laugh and glanced at Gavan. “Well, it’s not a big deal really. Just a sort of riddle here in the city. Especially amongst those of us tied to the Institute.”

  “I like riddles.” Ingo sat up. “Go on.”

  “Alright,” said Hesio, “but don’t bring this up with Demetos, ok? He’s not fond of it. It started with him. When he became Advocate of the Institute, way before his time as a general, he started a project.”

  “A very laudable one,” Gavan cut in.

  “Yes, yes,” Hesio agreed. “He wanted a catalogue that separated theories from what has become proven truth. He built a new annex behind the Institute library, in which every document would be stamped with the symbol of the tower. He called it 'the mark of truth.' A board judged each book and scroll one after another. Some were easy. Thesta’s classification of human organs got the mark right away. There's no debating what a stomach is for. Number studies were simple, too. Either the sums worked or they didn’t. But some were harder. They deliberated over Garato’s Political Analysis for weeks. But if there was any doubt, the seal could be withheld, so no controversy was insurmountable.”

  “Until the priest's question,” Gavan mumbled.

  Hesio nodded and continued: “A scroll arrived at the gates of the city, delivered by the travelling followers of Sindrah. But the message was not from them. It came bearing the seal of the Consecrate Library. The Abbot, the high priest of Manafel himself, had heard of Demetos' venture through his spies and sent a scroll of his own to be considered. If that scroll had come from any other temple, it would have been burned outside the city gates. But of the six living gods, Manafel alone did not attack our city, nor even once send his followers to do so. Demetos allowed the scroll to be entered, and he's regretted it ever since. When the board opened it, they read only a single sentence:

  This scroll is not given the mark of truth.”

  Hesio paused and watched Ingo closely. Ingo wondered what he was waiting for.

  “What was his point? That he wouldn’t get involved?”

  “Oh no. He got involved alright. He’d sent them a trap. An insult if you ask some.”

  “How?”

  “Well, try to decide,” explained Gavan. “Would you mark it?”

  Ingo opened his mouth to say ‘no,’ then hesitated. If the scroll itself claimed not to earn the mark, then it should not get it. But then, if you did not give it the mark, the statement it contained became true! Without the mark, it should earn the mark. With the mark, it no longer deserved it. He thought through the paradox out loud, testing all the ways he could respond:

  “Ok, if you put the stamp on then you contradict what the scroll says, which means you should take the stamp off again. But then if you leave the stamp off it becomes true, so you should put the stamp on... That’s clever! How did Demetos take it?”

  “Like I said,” replied Hesio. “You shouldn’t mention it to him.”

  Ingo looked at Gavan, who cast him a wry smile. “It seems impossible, doesn't it? But the problems of logic are no different to those of construction, medicine or war. There will be a solution, and glory for the one who finds it.”

  Ingo looked away and felt for the second time since he entered the city a strange and disquieting irritation. He had felt it first beneath the tower, where they misunderstood his comment - that the Republic had not yet reached heaven. Gavan later explained how the listener and his court had admired his admonishment, that they had a long way to go before they rivalled the gods. Yet, he had not intended that. He had meant to say they would never rival the gods. He felt a tenderness, as well as frustration, towards these people, who knew so much more than him about so many things, and yet who nurtured so childish an ambition. He felt the same about Gavan now, misunderstanding the priest’s riddle. Some problems couldn’t be solved by humans. Some limits had to be realised. Perhaps when they had taught him all they knew about numbers, machines and the building of roads, he could teach them this one thing. Perhaps then there could be real peace.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Or perhaps this too was a childish ambition.

  Hesio started saying something else when a chorus of ‘Oohs’ and ‘Aahs’ from the surrounding buildings drew their attention. Something had appeared in the sky. A glowing green light rose slowly upward, towards the blanket of cloud, and disappeared inside it. For a long time, a pinpoint of light shone through before it was finally swallowed. Ingo was too amazed to think about how they could have made it, too amazed to ask where it came from and how or why.

  And then that one, tiny light was subsumed in the splendour of what followed. From all over the city, floating points of colour bobbed on currents of air and drifted upwards. One passed their spot, close enough to see a flame burning behind a screen. It was a torch encased in paper that somehow flew without wings. The lights danced higher and higher, until the layer of cloud above the city glistened brightly, like a dark shirt studded with brilliant diamonds caught in the moonlight.

  “Many years ago,” Gavan whispered, “when the first of the faithful founded this city, the Lord of Heaven tried to punish them.”

  Ingo half listened as he watched the light points fade.

  “He sent clouds over the city to block out the stars. He sent his messengers to tell us that when we missed the heavens, the clouds would open for us again. We never missed the stars, Ingo. We made stars of our own.”

  Ingo watched the last lights diminish into a pin-prick through the blackness, and then vanish completely. Where had they gone? How high would they fly? Would the gods look down from heaven and see them?

  Perhaps some childish ambitions could be realised, after all.

  Ilargia Landstrom leant against the windowsill, gazing up at the mesmerising colours over the city. She did not feel like celebrating.

  “I’ve never seen the lights from afar before,” said her assistant. Ilargia smiled to herself, then turned.

  “I am sorry, Carya, to have spoiled your plans.”

  “It’s ok. The lights are beautiful from here, too.” Carya turned away from her and continued pushing the sample of powder into the barrel of the firearm. They stood inside the oldest of the forges with the huge, black machines resting silently around them.

  Ilargia scrutinised the younger woman’s face but could not determine whether she was being mollified or mocked. There were few people she could not read. Whenever she met one, she kept them close and well rewarded.

  “They are still beautiful from here.” Ilargia returned her gaze to the bobbing lights above the city. “But it's different, isn’t it? When you look at them from below, they seem to fill the whole of the night. From here, they’re like sparks flying off a fire into the darkness.”

  “You’re disappointed.” Carya was not talking about the lights anymore.

  “I was sure that we were two steps ahead of him. The whole time, he had me duped. He knew that powder could be found in the forest. All along, that's what he was there for. I gave him the plans for our weapon, safe in the knowledge that he'd be forced to buy his saltpetre from me. And now he does not need it.”

  "Let's see," Carya replied. She finished loading the weapon with the sample that her spy had finally brought to them, too late to be of any use. Carya pointed the weapon down the hall, at a clay dummy of a person. Ilargia examined her slim body stood with her feet placed wide, looking down the barrel of the weapon they had made together. She desired her, in that moment, then pushed the thought aside. Carya fired.

  A jet of green fire issued from the barrel and the head of the clay dummy exploded.

  “He's got what he needs," Carya stated.

  "He has," Ilargia replied.

  Carya placed the firearm to one side and turned to face her directly. She never flinched when she looked Ilargia in the eyes, despite the grotesque appearance of her face.

  "The deal he made with you is still a good one, Ilargia. You'll be elected a member of the Conclave under the Tower. I saw it in the letters that he sent to the others. He's honoured his word."

  "I'll be impotent there. One step behind him, yet again."

  "You'll be one step behind a man who's a few steps from the grave," Carya said.

  Ilargia nodded. This was another reason she kept Carya close. She applied the same dispassionate logic to politics as she did to manufacturing. But she was wrong to view this as nothing more than internal power struggles. She turned again to the window and watched as the last points of coloured light blinked out, and the sheet of blackness covered the city again.

  “What if he drags us into a war?” Ilargia asked. The darkness over the city seemed to make it disappear, smothering it as though it had never been there. "It's clear now that's what he wants. He'll try to overthrow the listener next. He'll try to make himself an emperor, and if we don't stop him he'll destroy us all in the process."

  “You think even with firearms we cannot face the Serviles in open war?” Carya cocked her head to one side. They had both seen the power of their invention. But Ilargia had seen other things which she had kept to herself ever since. She rubbed her false arm where it joined the flesh.

  “Everything that lasts is built slowly,” she said. Her voice lowered and Carya moved closer, looking at her as though she were about to deliver a sermon.

  “The Republic was built slowly," Ilargia continued. "Demetos taught me that. 'Careful, careful,' he used to say. 'Go slowly, Ilargia, and plan every step.' But he has forgotten his own advice, just as I am starting to heed it.” She turned to face Carya and fixed her with a cold stare. “He plans to fight the enemies he sees: that frail old king on the Western throne, or that preening peacock in the South who calls herself an Emperor and a Prophet. Our true enemies are their protectors. Their gods, Carya. Never forget that. If we ever stumble and fall, it will be that mistake we catch our step on.”

  Carya stared back at her with the same look everyone gave her when she talked about the gods. Bemusement. They had not attacked the city in over a century. Earthquakes, tempests and lightning strikes were memories of the past. Even their servants, the Western armies and the raiders of Maralon, had not been sent recently. The stars of their constellations slowly faded. A school of thought had arisen in the Republic that the gods were abandoning humanity. Retreating from it, the thinking types at the Institute said. 'The tower stands,' they would say to each other, smiling and complacent.

  But Ilargia knew better. She rubbed her false arm again. What if it were not weakness, but compassion which stayed their hands? And what if Demetos was about to destroy the fragile peace they took for granted?

  Ilargia knew the power of the gods, and she feared it.

  here!