But while such matters underscored his life, it was a more pressing call that now occupied him. Moving only his head, he scanned the objects of his responsibility, seeking out those that were being touched by, or in the probable path of, the intrusive sunlight. Not that, to an outside observer, a great deal of sunlight survived passage through the fly-blown window. What might have been direct and brilliant outside was diffuse and hesitant inside. But to Krim’s eyes – eyes that rarely ventured beyond the Moot Palace, and had not been outside its gloomy courtyards in decades – the light glared and, in glaring, menaced his domain: the Striker’s cushions. The Moot’s cushions.His cushions. Cushions designed for and used by all the Strikers that had ever been, each housed in its individual alcove in shelves which towered in serried ranks around the circular tiered floor and rose up the curved and irregularly recessed walls from floor to ceiling. Access to these upper shelves was gained from balconies which, in their turn, were linked by an intricate arrangement of ramping walkways and stairways – straight stairways, spiralled stairways and strangely dog-legged stairways, all with uneven steps twisted by age and use and neglect. The whole formed a rambling vertical and horizontal maze. The parts swayed unsteadily when trodden upon and often creaked for no apparent reason.

The cushions were laid out meticulously in accordance with the dictates of Akharim the Great – the first Cushion Bearer and Founding Striker. The original Assassin, it was he who had dispatched the last Dictator, Koron Marab, and he whom Krim had been discreetly named after, in an uncharacteristic spasm of boldness by his father.