Down in the courtyard the prisoners were still, all but one. Irisis was struggling, ignoring the cuffs and kicks of the guards. She would do so to the end. Irisis was a rebel and could never be anything else, and Nish loved her for it. The realisation shocked him. He did love her and that made it so much worse.

Nish had expected the search of Fiz Gorgo to take some time, but shortly the scrutators emerged, along with the remainder of the soldiers, and were lifted up to the air-dreadnoughts in suspended baskets. The prisoners and their guards remained in the yard, shivering and stamping their feet.

The inferno below him had begun to cool, but the broken beams on the floor were smouldering, coating him with soot and catching at his lungs. Nish shifted on the rods, trying to find a way down without cutting himself to shreds. He could see none. He might have broken one or two glass blades with his boots, but the ones below were out of reach and dropping onto them was out of the question.

He climbed up under the roof, trying to see if any of the rods could be unfastened. They were fixed solidly, but while he was there Nish happened to glance up through a cracked roof slab and saw that the scrutators' mechanicians were building a vast ropework construction, like a horizontal spiderweb, above Fiz Gorgo.

They had begun by anchoring the air-dreadnoughts to the outer walls with vertical cables as thick as a big man's biceps. Now, working a good fifty spans above the ground, suspended ropers were hauling across horizontal ropes, stretching them drum-taut and lashing them into a network.

The instant the great rolls of canvas were lowered, Nish understood what they were doing.