Night fell, but Demetos did not sleep. He paced the palisades, completing the perimeter of the four sides of the fort – twenty yards each – and peering into the forest at each corner. From the North a clear, flat road now ran the length of the river and led to the Lawbreakers’ Pass. That used to mark the outer border of the Republic’s territory but Demetos had since rewritten the map. Half of Saltleaf Forest lay under his control, and his wall along the outside cut its denizens off from any further escapes since that first battle.

  To the West, the fort looked out into thinner trees, but the land in that direction was still untamed. To the East and South the Levonin and Lujin clans roamed freely. The Levonin bore the brunt of the war and it was towards their heartland – the so-called Lake Silence – that Demetos forged.

  He completed his circuit and started again, this time looking down for movement at the edges. He was expecting a visitor: one who should have arrived before the end of the day, one who could help him with a dangerous task. A reckless task, some would say. The flames of the guards' torches illuminated only a small circle around them. The shadows moved as the wind pushed the trees back and forth, and Demetos could not tell if anyone approached or not.

  At the North-eastern corner of the fort he paused. He thought he saw something, or felt it, out among the trees. He shivered and pulled his cloak tighter. Then from behind him a guard gave a shout.

  Demetos hurried to the South wall where ten men emerged from the darkness in a tight cluster, glancing around with wary eyes. None let their guard down until they were safely beyond the gate and even once inside the fort they were not entirely at ease. The men wore black leather armour and carried long swords on their backs or axes at their sides. They were taller than most Republican soldiers. The leader had long, blonde hair that hung in braids around his shoulders, matching the braids of his beard. Demetos neatened his own straight, combed beard and pushed his grey hair back. He caught the leader’s eyes as they approached. The Sullin clan were turncoats who had declared for the Republic at the start of the invasion. Demetos did not trust them, but that did not mean he would not use them. Their leader was determined to prove himself again after his failure in the Spring. Demetos descended the steps to wait for them in the square below.

  The guards outside the East gate called on the Sullin warriors to halt. There was a quiet moment while they exchanged greetings and information, and then the gate swung open. The leader entered first, sauntering in with his followers behind him.

  “Welcome back, Erlends,” Demetos greeted him. “Why have you returned with so few men?”

  “For speed, General,” Erlends replied. His green eyes glinted in the torchlight. He had some news he was proud of. “The bulk of the Sullin remain in the South, where they have carved out the beginnings of a new fort.”

  Demetos nodded approvingly, though he knew what they called a fort would be nothing more than a clearing in the forest with a few sharpened stakes set around the circumference. A freshly trained Republican soldier on his first expedition could plan a basic fort better than this rabble. They did have their uses, though. Their leader, Erlends, in particular.

  “Send your men for some rest and food, Erlends,” Demetos said. “But you and two of your best, stay with me.”

  Erlends waved his men away, gesturing at two to remain. One was a broad-shouldered giant with a huge sword on his back and the other a shorter, black-haired warrior with keen eyes and an axe on either side of his belt. Erlends’ perceptive eyes strayed to the sheet that lay over the metal cage in the middle of the courtyard. He looked at Demetos inquisitively.

  How much has he heard? Does he suspect what’s inside?

  “Follow me,” Demetos instructed. He led Erlends and his two chosen warriors to the centre. No sound came from the imprisoned creature and Demetos hoped that it wasn’t dead. The previous time he’d extracted the venom too late and it had none of the potency he needed. He reached to the ground, took up three pairs of heavy, long-handled pliers and handed them to Erlends, who handed one each to the two men beside him.

  Demetos reached for the grey sheet, barely illuminated by the moon above them, and paused before pulling it back. He looked at Erlends. “You told me once that they recognise anyone who has slain one of their kind. If that is true, and your feats are as you have described them, our next task should be a little easier.”

  Erlends looked at him quizzically as he pulled the sheet. It made a whoosh as it slipped away, then it billowed in the air and fell to the ground. Demetos’ eyes flicked between Erlends and the creature inside, keen to read the reaction of each to the other.

  The sleeper hissed at the sudden exposure and pressed itself against the far side.

  Erlends gaped in shock. Then a slow smile of disbelieving, dark joy spread across his face. The sleeper’s tiny, black beads of eyes swivelled. Was it looking at Erlends? The fear of a moment before melted from its body. It sprang at the side of the cage where they stood, colliding with such an impact that Demetos feared the cage would tip over. Every muscle in his body tensed, but the cage held. The hiss lowered and it tried to force its limbs through the tiny gaps in the mesh. Its eyes fixed on Erlends and its mouth, usually hidden, pressed against the side of the cage and opened. A ring of white, needle-thin teeth quivered in front of them.

  Erlends’ two men took a step back but Erlends, like Demetos, stood his ground. He stared at the creature with satisfaction.

  “I need its teeth, Erlends, but I don’t want to kill it. At least, not yet.”

  The warrior nodded without challenge. Hesio would have complied, but would have wanted to know why. Erlends took the order in his stride without question. Demetos had counted on that. He had hoped, too, that Erlends’ history with these beasts would provoke some kind of reaction from it, making the dangerous task a little easier. On that account, he had gambled correctly.

  Erlends stepped forwards and reached towards the cage with the pliers. The ends of the sleepers legs pushed out and sought his fingers, arms and legs. His two warriors joined him, at times probing and gripping what they caught, at other times eschewing the pliers for their axes or sword to fight the ends of the limbs back inside.

  As they grappled and groped with the frenzied creature, Demetos paced around the cage. He examined the captive from all sides, noting its movements, its dimensions and its frightened, furious and irrational behaviour. For centuries the forest clans had shared their home with these monsters, each trying to wipe the other out. Even Ingo spoke of them in a hushed tone, full of awe and horror, as though they were a force above the normal laws of nature. But nothing in this world could not be understood. Everything was just the sum of its parts. He would dissect this monster until it was nothing more in the minds of his people than another dangerous, wild beast. The sleepers would be tamed or destroyed, and so too the hoarders for that matter.

  Erlends stepped back. In the teeth of his pliers he held a long, white, quivering needle. Other broken teeth lay trampled on the ground. The sleeper slunk back, injured and, to Demetos’ mind, caught between fear and hatred.

  “Put the sheet back over,” Demetos commanded. He took the pliers and tooth from Erlends and held it up to the moonlight.

  It looked like an elongated pine needle the colour of ivory. When he tilted it down, a black liquid gathered at the end and he tilted it back quickly. He did not want to waste a drop. He took out a silk cloth he had prepared earlier and wrapped it carefully.

  A hiss from the cage pulled his attention away from the venomous needle and he turned to look.

  Erlends had drawn his sword and was poking it in through the mesh. It drew blood from one of the sleeper’s limbs and the creature scuttled to the other side. As soon as it did so, one of the other Sullin stabbed at it from there.

  “Stop your playing,” Demetos snapped. “I told you to cover it.”

  “Why should we care about its comfort?” asked the big warrior. “Those things have killed hundreds of our people.”

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  Blood rose to Demetos’ cheeks. The insolence of these people infuriated him. No Republican soldier would have dared to answer back when he took such a tone. But then, no Republican soldier would have provoked the creature to such a rage or been familiar enough with its mysteries to do what he needed.

  Erlends looked at him and understood his mood. His eyes dropped to the ground.

  “That’s enough sport, men,” he growled. “Leave it alive for another day.”

  They threw the sheet over the cage and the two warriors went to join the others in the canteen, from where laughter emanated. Erlends lingered, watching and waiting.

  Perhaps he wants an explanation, after all.

  “Thank you, Erlends. You may join the others.”

  Slowly, with several backward glances at the covered cage, Erlends went to join his men. Demetos stood alone beneath the moon, looking around the silent courtyard. One soldier was awake in the watchtower, as were the guards on the gate. They looked studiously outwards into the forest.

  Demetos lowered his gaze and it fell on the door opposite the canteen: the hospital rooms. He pushed the silk cloth under his cloak and approached them, his heart thumping against his chest with unexpected force.

  He entered and sniffed, smelling the smoke of the doctor’s poppy seed medicine.

  A pity. He wasn’t bad enough to need it. But he will be after this.

  He padded around the narrow corridor, into a room lined with four bunks on either side. Gavan was the only patient this evening, since the wounded from the hunting party had been treated and released to their own quarters. The hospital room was practically Gavan’s private room, now. Doctor Darius, a trim, neatly groomed man of fifty years with keen, curious eyes, strode around the corner to meet him.

  “His condition worsens when he’s close to one of them,” Darius said with a note of admonishment in his voice.

  Better that he’s not involved in what’s next.

  “I understand. We won’t be holding our guest forever. But there is more at stake, Doctor, than the sanity of a single man – even one as dear to me as Gavan.”

  Darius frowned and stood aside as Demetos passed. His eyes strayed to the silk bundle in his hand but he did not ask what it was. If he had, Demetos would not have answered.

  “Leave me with him, Darius. Go and get some rest.”

  Darius moved towards the exit but looked back uncertainly and Demetos masked his frustration beneath a reassuring smile.

  “I know how to prepare the poppy seed inhalation. I’d like to talk with him privately. I am his commander, after all. As I am yours.”

  Darius nodded and backed out.

  Demetos waited until his footsteps passed out of hearing, then carefully closed the door. He turned into the dimly lit room and looked at Gavan, lying on his bunk in the corner. He lay on one side beneath the sack cloth with his knees curled up, facing the wall. He looked as though he wanted to get as far into the corner of the room as possible. His body rose and fell only slightly with fast, shallow breaths.

  Demetos sat beside him and placed a hand on Gavan’s forehead, gauging his temperature. He was cool and clammy. The soldier mumbled something inaudible.

  Gavan had not always been a soldier. He only became one when Demetos raised his army a little over a year ago. The young man was a student of cartography when Demetos first met him. He had a talent for the mathematics of shape and space and he first suggested what no one else had been able to see: the reason none of their world maps worked. Gavan had suggested it was because the surface of the world was not flat, but curved, and Demetos had supported the outlandish theory that was yet to be proved. Gavan did something similar with their maps of the forest. He understood that space within Saltleaf bent and moved in unusual ways, and he’d managed to map paths which had hitherto been mystical mysteries, known to the locals but not understood even by them.

  Now another discovery lay before his protege. It was a shame, Demetos reflected, that it might undo his brilliant mind.

  “I need you to do something for me,” Demetos said.

  Gavan mumbled and opened his eyes, but the doctor had sedated him with too much of the tranquiliser.

  “I must wake you from this dreamworld so you may enter another.”

  Demetos spoke to himself as much as to the insensible soldier. He rolled Gavan onto his back and pulled the sackcloth away from one side. The doctor had stripped the soldier’s armour and dressed him in loose-fitting nightclothes. That made things easier. Demetos pulled up the sleeve to reveal his thin, pale arms. He searched for a place where the blood vessels rose close to the surface, like roots poking up from the soil. Slowly, holding it horizontal, he removed the needle-like tooth from the silk cloth. He held it close to his face and tilted it, watching the venom collect at the end.

  When Demetos had first spoken to Gavan after he returned from the forest, freshly bitten and raving, he had spoken to him as though he were someone else. Demetos had the feeling he'd been speaking through the soldier, rather than to him. The feverish fits and crazed ramblings had returned at times since, though never as strong as that day. Demetos had never forgotten. He had started a conversation that he intended to finish.

  He reached down, pricked the vein and tilted the tooth slightly. This would be a small dose – nothing like what the soldier suffered when he was bitten. But that first bite had forged a connection – one which had never been entirely broken. Demetos hoped that a taste would revive it.

  He waited. Gavan’s head lolled. He reached across with his left hand and scratched the place where the tooth had pricked him. Demetos wrapped the tooth and hid it in the folds of his cloak. He reached for the poppy seed pipe and prepared to administer it if Gavan reacted uncontrollably. The soldier strained to sit up, then groaned and fell back to the pillow.

  I must try again, when he has slept the effects of this narcotic off.

  Gavan opened his eyes wide.

  At first, the pupils were like two tiny pin-pricks in his light, hazel eyes. He looked up in recognition at Demetos and his lips curled into the beginnings of a smile. The smile faltered and his pupils shot wide, becoming like black pools ringed with red and white.

  “Release her child!” Gavan implored. “She cannot bear the metal. She needs darkness and cool soil.”

  Gavan spoke as though he himself felt the pain of the creature. Demetos placed a hand on his forehead and pushed his damp hair back.

  “Easy, Gavan,” he soothed. “You are not in there. Its troubles are not yours. Who sends you these thoughts? Who is ‘She’ on whose behalf you entreat me?”

  Gavan squeezed his eyes closed and rolled his head from side to side.

  “Don’t ask… Don't ask… Don’t draw her closer,” he pleaded.

  Demetos took hold of Gavan’s shoulders and squeezed. He placed his face in front of the soldier’s and commanded loudly and firmly: “Who are you? Speak to me directly! Speak!”

  His heart quickened and his blood rose. I am so close to knowing. He held Gavan down with his left hand and fumbled with his right for the tooth. He jabbed it roughly into the soldier's bare arm and held it upright.

  Gavan sucked in a deep breath.

  The air in the smoky hospital room cooled. The smell of earth filled it and the walls and ceiling suddenly seemed close and constricted.

  Gavan’s face looked calmer, but his eyes had become pools of almost total darkness. “You dare to summon me?” he asked in a voice that sounded like the wind moaning across mountaintops.

  No, this is not him.

  “Who are you?” Demetos asked.

  Gavan's eyes narrowed and he sat upright, as though strings pulled his body from above. Demetos released the hand on his shoulder and shuffled back. The voice rasped: “I am the queen.”

  “Of this forest?”

  The soldier's lips curled into a mocking smile. “Of a world that has forgotten me, and forgotten it was nothing before the imposter came. No matter, she is dead now and I will soon find her child.”

  A shiver of fear and a thrill of excitement passed through Demetos. He had a card to play and now was the time. “I have questions for you. Who is this imposter? Who is the child? Tell me, and I will release the one I hold captive.”

  The voice hissed angrily through Gavan’s mouth: “I have trusted to trade with humans before, with the followers of gods. Never again.”

  “You traded with the forest clans and they tricked you. Isn’t that right?”

  Gavan’s face snarled. Demetos continued: “They are my enemy, too, as are their gods. I will teach them my ways or replace them. Trade with me. Test me. Answer my questions and see if I am different from them. See if I keep my word.”

  The room was silent. Gavan’s body went so still that Demetos feared the venom had already left his blood, or that it had found its way to his heart. Then the queen answered:

  “Two questions. Two answers. Then you free my child.”