Ingo stepped across the threshold of the Godless City with his eyes closed. The dusty, barren landscape outside and the high, black walls that frowned down upon it did not give him hope of a warm welcome inside.

  Nothing could have prepared Ingo for the sight inside the walls. The fragrance of incense struck his nostrils before he looked around. He had expected a stench like the one in Scursditch, but he saw nothing in front of him that could create such a smell. No filth in the streets, poured from open windows above. No refuse rotting near the back of houses. The place was immaculate. The ground was paved with sheer, clean stones like the road they had arrived on, but it seemed to spread across the whole open space in front of him. Huge stone buildings held up by columns of rock as thick as trunks stood around the edges. Everywhere, in great, curved containers that must have been filled with earth, the colours of spring bloomed into brilliance. Something in the centre of the space tore his attention away from the festival of colours. It was something so improbable that his mind had not allowed him to see it at first. It had no way of grasping and interpreting what his eyes showed it.

  A large, circular basin of water in front of him housed a huge stone cistern, above which sat a ball of rock. And from that ball of rock at the top clear streams of water shot upward in jets which arched down to fall into the cistern beneath. That in turn overflowed into the basin and the effect was a smaller version of how Ingo imagined the Levon falls. He stood, mesmerised, until Gavan spoke to him.

  “It’s called a fountain.”

  “Where does it come from? How did you build this basin around it?”

  “It comes from under the ground and we put the water there, too. All of it.” Gavan waved his hand in front of them, encompassing the scene. “We built all of it.”

  He felt Hesio tugging on his sleeve and he followed them past the fountain and into the city. As they passed it, he looked around. He walked for a while with his head turned backward until he tripped and had to look away. How could anyone walk past a wonder like that, without stopping to stare?

  They made swift progress into the heart of the city, apparently with no time to waste. Ingo forgot his aching feet. He felt he could have walked up and down those streets forever. On either side of the broad road that cleaved down the centre of the city, grand buildings faced them like two rows of vigilant giants, watching them as they walked toward the base of the tower. People bustled and hurried, argued and chatted, or relaxed and watched as they passed. They wore flowing robes so that most of them, ironically, looked like priests.

  “That’s the magistrate’s hall,” Hesio commented as they passed. “There’s the tax collector and the treasury. Just a library that one. Oh, this is land registry.” Most of the words meant nothing to Ingo, but when they passed a smaller, square building with flat sides and a simple door, Hesio named it with a word that made Ingo take notice. He had heard it before. “That one is the Institute. Not so impressive, is it? That’s because it’s old. One of the oldest in the city. All the other buildings were designed from in there.”

  “What does it mean, ‘Institute’?”

  Hesio furrowed his brow.

  “An institute is a, well, it’s a place for learning or...”

  He trailed off, searching for the words and Gavan cut in.

  “A society formed around a common purpose.” He pointed at the building, where the three of them had stopped. It was low and built with stone but not decorated with columns like the others. Outside stood statues of two men. One craned his head upward, looking into the cloudy sky. The other stood higher up on a pedestal and stared down with an austere expression on his face. A group of men and women emerged from the entrance, locked in debate. “Technically, the institute is the society, not the building. The Institute for the Furthering of Humanity’s Knowledge.”

  The name sounded grand, and it was clear too from the expressions of his companions that they stood before something which resembled a temple to them, or the site of some holy ritual.

  “Can I visit it while we're here?” Ingo asked.

  Gavan looked at Hesio and they both smiled knowingly. Hesio replied: "Part of the reason you are here is to visit that place. The Advocate thinks that once you've stepped inside, you'll never want to leave. Who knows, perhaps you'll solve the Priest's Puzzle while you're there."

  They both chuckled at some shared joke, which Ingo did not understand.

  “There's no time now though. You see there?” Hesio pointed ahead. “That’s the Conclave under the Tower. You’re coming to meet someone very important.”

  “Almost as important as Advocate Demetos,” Hesio joked. Gavan shot him an acid glance. Hesio reddened and looked down. They did not speak until they arrived at the entrance.

  Up close, the tower stood out as different from every other building in the city, like an ugly thorn in the middle of a meadow. They approached it across a mound of blackened, jagged rubble that had been cleared in some places and pushed together in others, giving the impression of a building site. The lowest section, a cuboid of stone, buckled under the pressures above it, bulging out at the edges and pushed back in with triangular walls on all sides. Stone, metal and wooden pillars rose in a disordered pattern around them, propping jutting parts of the structure up. Huge shards of metal poked out of crumbling stone like broken bone exposed through torn flesh. They passed beneath shadows that seemed about to fall from the air. Ingo felt that he was entering the raw heart of the city, a place where its vulnerable, wounded soul set the weather for its people. A simple, door-less entrance stood before them, wide enough for only one person to enter at a time. An orange glow came from inside. Ingo hesitated.

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  “Is it safe to go in?”

  “The grand listener is responsible for the tower,” Gavan replied. “If it’s safe for him to sit in there, it’s safe enough for you to enter. Poor repairs fall on his head first.”

  “Why am I coming to see him?”

  “I have a report to bring him, and you might as well meet him, too.” Gavan stopped and turned to Ingo. He placed a hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eye. “Demetos needs support here. The listener is not our king. We don't have anyone like that. But it's he who hears what each of the advocates has to say and he who ensures all views are considered. If he wants to stop something from happening, he can stop it. If Demetos is going to do what he must, he needs the listener to know that he's got everything under control.”

  Ingo nodded. He was here to represent the interests of his people, and that meant giving Demetos a helping hand. He felt a little proud. A little grown up.

  They entered in single file.

  Though low, the chamber was larger than it looked outside. Blocks of stone with flames resting on the surface, like larger versions of the fire lighter, illuminated either side of the entrance. In the centre, on a simple stone bench with no back, sat a man who looked only a little older than Gavan. Surrounding him were identical benches, arranged in concentric circles. It gave the impression they were crowding in on him. The occupants of the benches dressed differently from the soldiers. They wore white cloaks tied at their waists with thin ropes. They looked poor, compared to some of the city folk. They stopped several yards in and everyone turned to look at them.

  “Grand Listener,” Gavan began. “We bring report from Advocate Demetos.”

  The man in the centre lifted a thin hand and beckoned them closer. As Ingo approached, he saw the sharp lines of his ascetic face but read no expression in them. When he judged they had come close enough, the grand listener dropped his hand and Hesio and Gavan stopped. Ingo waited with them. Someone arose and took a letter from Gavan, which he brought back to the listener who read it in silence before folding it carefully.

  The grand listener looked at Ingo through grey eyes.

  “You’re the forest dweller he speaks of. Is that right?”

  “I am from the forest,” Ingo replied.

  “Tell me,” the listener leaned forward. The eyes of the audience flitted between him and Ingo. “Is it true that you do not suffer to have priests amongst you?”

  “It’s true.” Ingo bit back the reasons why. Clearly, Demetos needed these people to hear that.

  “And it’s true that you can read?” His voice carried a note of scepticism. Ingo looked around the room and saw an inscription on the back wall. He craned his head to read it behind the listener, who leant to one side obligingly.

  “For the power to be free and the knowledge to be powerful.”

  He read fluently. The words were simple enough. The gathered crowd issued a few noises of surprise before the listener spoke again.

  “Can your people exist alongside ours?”

  Ingo hesitated this time. He knew what answer Demetos would want of him. He felt Gavan twitching beside him at the delay. Could they really? He had to believe so, because what was the alternative? He pictured flames rising from the forest clans’ homes like they had risen from the Sullin tent when Ilargia took a dislike to it. He recalled what Demetos had hinted at, that others in this city wanted to wipe his people out, that such an act of murder seemed simpler to them than reaching an agreement. Just a month ago he would never have dreamed of this. But he had grown up in that month. He had to make the adult choice, the hard choice, for the sake of his clan.

  “I hope so,” he eventually murmured. “I believe so.”

  The listener sat back. He thought for a while and then addressed a question to Gavan.

  “How is your master’s expedition progressing? Will it become a war? There are some here who call it a waste of resources. A dangerous provocation.”

  “The main challenge is the forest itself, but that in turn is ripe with discoveries. It contains the catalyst we need to propel ourselves further. More so than most imagine.”

  Ingo did not know what a catalyst was but was not concerned with that anyway. Something in the listener’s phrasing had surprised him. Your master’s expedition. Was it not the Republic’s expedition? He almost opened his mouth to ask the question, but the listener had one more query for him.

  “What do you make of our works, forest dweller?”

  He thought of the fountain at the entrance to the city. He pictured the little flame leaping from a cube of metal in Demetos’ hand. The maps, the roads, the books with titles that hinted at vast oceans of knowledge of which he had thus far taken but a taste. He looked up and thought of the tower above them, held up as if by magic and prayer. But he knew there was no magic in it, and certainly no prayer. These works were of human hands.

  “They overshadow anything our people have made,” he stated. “But they do not yet reach the heavens.”

  The grand listener permitted the briefest smile to pass across his lips. It remained glittering in his eyes as he looked, for the first time, to the colleagues who surrounded him. Ingo had meant his statement as something of a reprimand – he was willing to learn from their works, perhaps even to work with them, but they would not replace the gods for him or his people. The audience smiled though, just as the listener had done. One or two of them even gave a soft clap, as though Ingo had delivered an excellent speech. The listener turned his attention back to Ingo and his companions.

  “Only when we reach the heavens and rival the gods will our work be done," he said, in a tone that sounded as though he were quoting from a scripture. He looked at Ingo directly and added: "Welcome to the Sundered Republic, stranger. Perhaps you won’t be a stranger for long.”