Karigan bristled. “Your welfare depends on my seeing him well and healthy.”

Silk looked amused. “If I were you, Miss G’ladheon, I would focus more on your performance than on absurd threats. Look around you, and perhaps you will recall your situation.”

The corridor was populated by a large number of guards who wore no-nonsense expressions on their faces and were armed with guns. They looked well-trained and disciplined.

Silk grabbed her wrist with his unnatural hand, concealed in its black leather glove, and squeezed bones and tissue that had healed not so long ago in the refuge of the professor’s house. The even, mechanical pressure of his grip strained her wrist, threatening to re-break it. Her knees buckled, and she sank to the floor, tears slipping down her cheeks. She gasped in pain.

“Remember,” Silk said, towering over her, “who is master here.”

The next thing she knew, he had released the pressure and was helping her rise. He offered her a handkerchief, which she refused, holding her throbbing wrist to her body.

“Now we do not wish to go before the emperor with any signs of distress, do we?” Silk reached to dab her tears himself, but she jerked away.

“Miss G’ladheon,” he said sternly, “have you not yet learned your lesson?”

“You won’t ruin your gift for the emperor.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I won’t? I always do what is necessary. It would be unfortunate to damage you, of course, but there is always the Eletian to please His Eminence.”

But, he did not attempt to minister to her again. She used her sleeve to wipe the tears, and she glared at Silk.

He leaned down and said in a low voice, “In the history we do not speak of, it is said the Green Riders were stubborn, very difficult to track down and kill. Intractable under torture, causing them unnecessary grief. There is no sense for you to make matters more difficult on yourself, though I see the Green Rider character runs true.”

Karigan clenched her fists, forced herself to remain calm no matter what he said about killing and torturing Green Riders, her friends, no matter her desire to lunge at him and rip his throat out. Patience, she told herself. Silk would pay. She was going to get Cade and herself, and Lhean, too, home, and she would make sure Lord Amberhill never came to power. The future of her land and others would never have to know the iron-handed rule of the emperor and his cronies.

The gold door opened. Cold air pushed into the corridor, and a man in a fur coat and hat stepped out. “Dr. Silk, we are ready for you now.” His face barely poked out from the fluffy fur, and it would have been funny except for the circumstances.

“Remember,” Silk told Karigan, “no reason to make matters worse for yourself.”

He was right, she decided. After all, he was nothing compared to Amberhill, and she must not waste her energy on him. She obediently walked through the doorway and into the throne room just a few paces behind him, Mr. Howser following.

She was startled by how frigid the room was and looked around in amazement at the crystalline frost that coated the floor, the walls and columns. Icicles hung from chandeliers and the frames of paintings. They grew from the ceiling like stalactites. The stream they had followed in the corridor continued into the throne room, but was sealed in black ice. A fountain’s water had frozen in motion creating an otherworldly sculpture of ice. Why was the room kept so cold?

They walked atop a runner that prevented them from slipping on the floor. At the far end of the room sat several men, each attired in varying styles of fur and hats, some with muffs to cover their ears. The guards who stood vigil in the room were also garbed warmly. The only two men who were not dressed for the cold were Lord Amberhill, sitting relaxed in a well-cut suit, and the Eternal Guardian in his light armor and leather.

Silk paused, and she halted obediently behind him. A scraping noise grated through the room and the floor vibrated as a section of it retracted, breaking away a layer of ice.

“Right on time, Silk,” one of the fur-wearing men called out.

A mechanical dragon the size of a horse reared out of the opening on a platform, the floor trembling with the grinding of gears underneath. The platform was encircled by numerals, just like the professor’s chronosphere but on a much larger scale, and the inlaid ivory all scored with scratches. Was this a giant chronosphere?

“I do like to make a point of being punctual,” Dr. Silk said.

The dragon lifted its head, the sound of mechanisms ticking inside it. Its eyes flashed red, and it unfurled its wings with an ingenious belt and pulley system, the membranes between the wing fingers fashioned of chain mesh that sounded like rain as they moved. The dragon’s tail lashed with articulated metal plates, and it swiveled its head. Karigan jumped when it roared and spouted flame, steam hissing through its nostrils.

“Don’t worry,” Silk said. “It won’t hurt you. It’s just a time piece.”

Just a time piece? Even if its movements were not terribly lifelike, it was cunningly crafted. To pick out the time, the dragon scratched the numbers with a forefoot, roared and spouted flame once more, and withdrew into the floor. It was certainly a dramatic device for keeping track of time.

They proceeded toward the throne till they were abreast of the seated men in their furs, about a dozen of them. Amberhill’s inner circle, his Adherents.

“Bow to the emperor,” Silk said, doing so himself.

When Karigan didn’t immediately obey, Mr. Howser shoved her to the floor, so that she lay sprawled before the throne. She rose on her elbows, but Howser’s foot to her back pushed her back down.