ELEVEN

 
 
 

Tom knew they were getting closer to the city's core. That sensitivity which the Prime Master had either instilled or brought out in him had become an almost constant throb in his mind, impossible to ignore. If he was aware of the core, he reasoned that the core was probably aware of him, which meant they should expect attack of one kind or another at any minute.

  Not that he felt any satisfaction when his assumption proved to be right; far from it, this was one instance when he'd have been happy to be wrong all the way.

  When it did come, as their company turned a right angled corner, it proved that the stakes had just been raised dramatically.

  Confronting them stood a trio of figures united in their magnificence: Demons. All were male, all were bare-chested – displaying muscular, toned physiques – all had handsome features crowned with blond or light brown hair. They stood before the party with their wings partially opened, looking haughty, regal and glorious. An enigmatic, winning smile graced their lips and their clear eyes held warmth, compassion and grace. It was hard to believe that the Soul Thief was descended from the same stock. These looked far more like gods than Thaiss ever had.

  "Goddess!" Kat murmured. "So that's what a real Demon looks like."

  "Yeah," Tom replied. Seeing the Soul Thief was no preparation, no preparation at all. This was the first time even Tom been able to get a good look at a proper Demon. Before, when the Prime Master had taken him up to the city's roof, he'd caught fleeting glimpses in the corner of his eye as the Upper Heights' denizens teased him, but seeing them in their full glory like this was something else entirely. It was all he could do not to abase himself at their feet and pay homage.

  And they glowed.

  A halo of light appeared around each of their heads, a rippling nimbus that swiftly spread to encompass their whole bodies, apparently emanating from somewhere inside them.

  The Blade closed ranks, as if anticipating something dire. They blocked Tom's view of the glowing trio, but they couldn't shut out the light, which must have built rapidly in intensity, so that the Blade were suddenly limned by searing brilliance – a dazzling luminance which punctured every crevice and gap between the black bodies and limbs of the Blade's imperfect barrier. Tom shielded his eyes, but despite himself he continued to watch through the cracks between his fingers, unable to entirely look away.

  To Tom's horror, the Blade started to disintegrate. There was no violent explosion such as when they had faced the Rust Warriors earlier – this was more a form of erosion, a stripping away of layers. Shreds of blackness seemed to peel off the Blade and fly backward, behind the cowering humans. It was as if the light acted as a powerful abrasive, scouring the Blade away bit by bit, like the grains of a sandstorm flailing the flesh from a living body all the way down to the bone. Nor was that the only effect. The walls around them started to tremble and crumble. A trickle of dust fell on them and Tom looked up to see a jagged crack opening in the ceiling directly above his head. It seemed the whole corridor was about to collapse.

  The Blade weren't going down without a fight, though. Black light – that was the only way Tom could think to describe it – erupted from the towering ebony figures, denying the blistering golden glow, holding it at bay. One of the Blade turned its head slowly to look at Tom. It said a single word.

  "Run."

  He did, the Blade's command seeming to free him from paralysis so that his legs were suddenly his own again. Nor was he alone. All three of them ran. As advice went, this seemed well worth heeding.

  Behind them they heard the groan of structure under pressure followed by the rumble of collapsing masonry. Tom didn't look back, even as the floor trembled and bucked and not even when a cloud of dust overtook them, he simply kept running for all he was worth.

  His blind funk was broken only when the guard said, a moment later, "Are we going the right way?"

  "Are you kidding?" Kat replied. "As long as it takes us away from those things, any way is the right way."

  Tom could only agree, though he knew what the guardsman meant. Unless they could deliver what Tom was carrying to the core, all they were achieving by running away was to delay the inevitable; and right now they were heading in completely the opposite direction; he could feel it.

  He slowed, considering options, which was when the second great upheaval came. Tom saw the guardsman ahead of him falter and fall against the wall and even Kat staggered, while Tom was thrown from his feet. A great crack appeared in the wall to his right, widening and lengthening at an alarming rate as it raced towards the ceiling. Chunks of masonry started to fall. The whole ceiling looked set to come down.

  "Tom!" Kat's voice, from somewhere on the far side of the mayhem, he hoped.

  Tom scrambled backwards on his hands and knees as the ceiling and walls began to collapse in earnest. He pushed himself to his feet and turned to run, when something struck him on the head. Searing pain obliterated every other awareness for a brief instant before everything went blank.

 

Tom wasn't sure how long he had been unconscious. He came to in a room, a big room, even though it was obviously part of a residential unit – a living room or lounge.

  "He's coming round," someone said, a boy's voice.

  His mouth was dry and his head was pounding. He tried to lift a hand to feel the bump which he was certain had risen just to the right of centre, where he'd been struck, only to discover that his hands were tied behind him, and his feet too – they were fastened to the chair legs.

  A face appeared in front of him, startlingly close. Ginger hair, plump cheeks, clean, pale complexion with clear brown eyes. "Hello," said the same voice that had spoken before. "I'm Ryan."

  "Ryan, leave him alone!" snapped another, older voice.

  The face quickly withdrew, enabling Tom to get a clearer view of the rest of the room.

  Chairs and sofas, soft and cushioned in a biscuity brown off-white colour, formed a false quadrangle, though the room extended well beyond that space; and it was all so bright. Was this how everyone lived in the Heights? He'd always imagined that the homes built deep within the city, with other walls and dwellings pressing in on every side, even from above and below, would be dark and claustrophobic. The corridors they'd been travelling through might have been wide and airy, but he'd somehow expected the residences themselves to be more akin to the oppressive closeness he'd experienced in the Swarbs' Row. This was anything but.

  Unfortunately, none of the well-padded, comfortable softness had been spared for him. He was sitting on, and indeed tied to, a far more functional piece of furniture; a hardseated chair of solid wood.

  There were seven other people in the room, all of them boys – no girls allowed in this gang, apparently. Ages ranged from Ryan, the lad who'd said hello – he seemed the youngest at maybe nine or ten – to the boy who now dropped into a chair facing Tom. About the same age as him, maybe a year or so older; dark haired, well-fed, every feature showing the sort of arrogance that suggested a sneer was never far away from curling his thin lips.

  They were all smartly dressed, all clean-looking and all very obviously Heights boys.

  Tom continued to work at the bonds holding his wrist, but he wasn't getting very far.

  "I'm Miles," said the sneer-faced one. "This is my gang. Who are you and what are you doing here?"

  None of your brecking business, Tom thought and would probably have said if his hands and feet weren't tied to a chair. "I'm Tom, and I'm just passing through, not looking for any trouble. Why have you tied me up?"

  Miles shrugged. "Cos we could."

  This signalled an outbreak of sniggering which rippled around the group.

  Kids, Tom thought, real kids; none of them with the maturity of a six year old, at least not the six year olds he was used to. This was the Heights. None of these boys had needed to grow up anything like as quickly as he had. "Where are your parents?" he blurted, regretting the question as soon as he'd uttered it. Why risk antagonising them? Him and his big mouth.

  Fortunately, Miles seemed oblivious to the implications and just gave another shrug. "Dead, or gone." Neither possibility seemed to matter to him. Tom felt initial dislike turning to disdain. Didn't the idiot realise how lucky he was to even have parents? Evidently not, for he continued, "It's just us now."

  At least it explained what was going on here: these kids were flexing their muscles, enjoying the first taste of what they imagined to be freedom, not caring that the city was falling apart around their ears, probably convincing themselves that it didn't affect them, that they were smart enough and clever enough to somehow survive. Doomed along with everyone else in Thaiburley if Tom couldn't get out of here.

  "Listen," he said, softly, as if sharing a secret with them, and he sat forward as best he could. "When I said I'm just passing through, that's true; I am but I'm on a mission, a really important one. I've been sent to save the city, and you can help me. Think about it. I'll make sure everyone knows that you helped me. You'll all be heroes."

  He glanced around the group and could see that one or two of them liked the sound of that, but not Miles, it seemed. "And I suppose the Prime Master himself sent you."

  "Yes, yes he did," Tom admitted, wondering even as he spoke whether truth was really the best policy here.

  Miles immediately howled with laughter, the other kids following suit a fraction later. "Now we all know you're lying. You're obviously not from the Heights – the clothes give that much away – just some kid who, in all the confusion, has found his way up here into our part of the city, and is now trying to make us let him go by spouting a pack of lies." Miles sprang from his chair and came over to thrust his face at Tom, who instinctively shrank away. "You're making it up as you go along, aren't you? Well we're not falling for it, you hear?" Spittle landed on Tom's cheek. "We're not stupid. You're nothing. If the Prime Master was going to send anyone to save the city it would be one of us, not some oik from the lower Rows."

  "Yeah, right. Stands to reason." There were nods from the assembled kids.

  Miles strutted back to his seat and pulled something onto his lap. Tom froze. It was his rucksack.

  "Now, Mr Saviour of the City, let's see what you're carrying in this little bag of yours."

  "No," Tom said. "Leave that alone."

  Miles paused and grinned wickedly at him. "Why, afraid we'll discover what a thief you are? I bet you've been looting the empty residences and taking whatever caught your eye."

  "I haven't taken anything. Don't do that," Tom said, as Miles continued to undo the rucksack. "You can't. It's dangerous… part of my mission…" Still no give in the knots that held his hands, no matter how hard he tried.

  "Nice try, but if it's dangerous for us, why has a kid like you been trusted to carry it?" Miles pulled the sack open. "Well, well, what have we got here?" He pulled out the core canister.

  "Please," Tom said, desperate for them to understand, to believe him. "I need what's in that container to save the city." But no one seemed to be paying him any attention anymore.

  They'd left him with no choice. He couldn't allow them to open that canister. Apart from the devastation raw core material would cause if let loose, this really was Thaiburley's only hope of salvation. Tom focussed and reached out with his talent. He hated to do this, remembering all too clearly what he'd done to Dewar, but he had to.

  "Looks like the sort of thing they store documents in," someone said. "Maps and stuff like that."

  Tom pushed against Miles's mind.

  "Yes, and very fine it is too," Miles said. "Look at the detailing, the studwork. It's beautiful."

  Nothing happened. Tom stared at Miles. He could sense the older boy; his consciousness was there as a solid, dense block, but Tom's talent couldn't penetrate, it just slipped around the surface without gaining any purchase, washing over it as an eddy of water might around solid stone. Perhaps it was the blow to the head, perhaps that had affected his abilities in some way. He turned his attention to one of the other boys, the one who had identified himself as Ryan, reaching out and tweaking, just a little.

  "Ow!" The boy cried out immediately.

  "What's the matter?"

  "Nothing, just a headache, I'm fine now."

  This elicited another juvenile snigger from the boy next to him.

  So it wasn't a problem with his abilities, they were still working fine. It was Miles. Miles was himself talented, whether he realised it or not, and his talent made him impervious to others', or at least to Tom's. What could he do now?

  "Clearly a discerning thief," Miles was saying. "Just the one thing taken by the look of it. Let's see what's inside this pretty little package, shall we?"

  You mustn't let him open that cylinder, the goddess said, materialising, as was her wont, to stand beside Miles.

  Don't you think I know that?

  If he does, the energies released will kill everyone here and destroy this whole section of the city.

  "No, you mustn't, you can't!" Tom wriggled in his seat, stood up falteringly, hands and feet still bound to the chair, and tried to frog-hop towards Miles and the canister. Two boys sprang forward and pushed him back down.

  Miles made tutting sounds with his tongue, clearly loving every second of this. He reached for the first clasp on the core canister.

  Tom relaxed, knowing that he had no choice. He hated to do this. The other boys were innocents really, they were just easily led. Without Miles they'd probably be perfectly reasonable, but he had to do something and he couldn't touch Miles; whereas he could touch them.

  Miles fiddled with the first clasp, appearing to move in slow motion. Tom reached out with his talent towards the other boys, resigned to what he was about to do even as he regretted it.

  "Well, well," said a familiar voice. "What have we got here? A bunch of cloud scrapers playing at being street-nicks."

  "Kat!" Tom could hear the relief in his own voice. She stood in the doorway, twin swords drawn.

  Miles looked up, startled, but he wasn't about to give ground. "Get her!" he yelled.

  "Oh, come on." Kat laughed as three of the gang started towards her, brandishing two knives and a length of piping between them. Ryan, the youngest, was among the trio, clasping one of the knives. "Is that the best you can come up with, 'Get her'?"

  "Don't," Tom said, reckoning these kids didn't need to die; they were just doing their best to survive in an impossible situation, latching onto the first authority figure that presented itself. "She'll kill you."

  "What are you waiting for?" Miles said as the three seemed to hesitate, "She's only a girl."

  "No," Tom insisted. "She isn't 'only' anything. She's a Pits warrior and a Death Queen, and if you attack her she'll kill you."

  Ryan at least paused at his words. Tom saw the boy glance in his direction, fear in the lad's eyes, but it was already too late. Kat sprung forward, straight towards the centremost kid. Her twin swords were flickering blurs to either side which ended with one of them striking forward and stabbing deep into the middle boy's torso. His body slid off the blade and hit the ground a fraction after the other two.

  Miles leapt to his feet, shock on his face, but he still kept hold of the canister. He backed away from Kat, in such a way that the chair he'd sat on was between her and him, as if that was going to stop her. The other three boys stood motionless, horror on their faces as they stared at this dark apparition who had walked in and so casually cut down three of their friends in the blink of an eye. Tom noticed a damp patch blossom on the crotch of one, clearly visible against the dark brown of his trousers.

  Kat's gaze flicked over them. "You three, get out, now!"

  None of them needed any further urging and all three scampered past Kat and out the door.

  She continued to advance towards Miles, who had backed away as far as he could, his heels knocking against the wall. "You can go, too, if you put that canister down," she told him.

  A cunning look entered the boy's eyes. "So this is important to you, is it?" His fingers again reached for the catches. "Stand back, then, or I'll open the canister and pour whatever's in here onto the ground."

  "No, you won't," Kat assured him, still walking forward, her twin swords held at her side, pointing towards the ground, her hips swaying in a slow, slinky, almost seductive sashay. "You won't live long enough to do that."

  There was an air of desperation in Miles' voice as he said, "Well what will you give me, to hand it back to you?"

  What's in it for me, again. Was Tom the only person in the world who didn't put his own interests first and ask that question at every turn, even when the stakes were so high? He was beginning to wonder if there was something wrong with him.

  "Your life," Kat replied softly, her gaze never wavering from the boy's eyes. The cunning there had gone entirely now, replaced by something that might almost have been panic.

  Miles moved suddenly. "Well you can have it, then!" He flung the canister to one side. Tom watched in horror as it tumbled through the air, one catch flapping free. If the second burst open on impact…

  Kat was moving almost before Miles. She ran a couple of steps, dropping both swords as she went, and leapt with arms extended, all in the blink of an eye. Tom saw her hands close on the core canister, watched her land and roll, coming up hard against the wall, back to the ground, one leg crooked against the wall, but with the canister cradled safely to her body. Miles had used the distraction to make a run for it, bolting not for the door but into one of the other rooms.

  "Thank Thaiss!" Tom let out a held breath on seeing the canister safe.

  Kat was on her feet in an instant and came over to cut him free. His hands tingled with returning circulation and felt clumsy as he resealed the dangling clasp and stashed the canister back into his rucksack. As he did so, his gaze fell on the three dead boys.

  "Did you have to kill them?"

  "Yes," she replied calmly, with no hint of regret. "To save the others, to save some of them at least… and to save you."

  He wanted to believe that, wanted to believe that something dark hadn't reared up from within her and taken possession just for a moment; but then he looked into Ryan's sightless eyes and wasn't sure.

  The room Miles had fled into proved to be a bedroom. A gaping hole in the back wall led into another dwelling, through which he had doubtless made good his escape.

  "Pity," Kat said.

  Tom made no comment.

  "Come on!" a voice called urgently from outside. "It's coming."

  They hurried out into the corridor, glancing to their left, in the same direction that the guardsman was anxiously staring. Tom sensed that this was where the Demons and the Blade had so recently fought, but silence reigned there now. Unfortunately, the corridor wasn't empty. Striding towards them came a winged, golden figure. Kat and Tom ran to join the guardsman, who was already at the foot of the mound of rubble where the corridor had collapsed. They scrambled up, pulling and crawling and forcing their way through, regaining their feet in the corridor beyond, where they started to run. None of them had much faith in a pile of rubble stopping a Demon.

  Tom led them down a branching corridor to the right, if only to put the wall of rubble and the Demon beyond out of their direct line of sight.

  Tom knew that his fitness levels had risen dramatically during the long journey to the Thair's source, but presumably the days of inactivity that came after had undone much of the good. His legs were feeling leaden and the warm air seemed increasingly difficult to breathe. Finally he had to stop, to lean against the wall, panting. He looked at his two companions guiltily, but was relieved to find them in no better shape than he was. Kat was covered in sweat, and she bent forward as he watched, hands on knees. She stood up again and smiled briefly, presumably not yet willing to spare the breath to speak. The guardsman was red-faced and panting worse than Tom. In truth he had no idea how the man had managed to keep up, weighed down by armour as he was. Tom knew that the armour was some sort of toughened polymer rather than solid iron, but it still weighed a fair bit.

  After a moment they had recovered to the point where they could manage a brisk walk, Tom again taking them right almost immediately, so that they were now headed in roughly the same direction they had been before the Demons appeared.

  "We don't even know your name," Tom said to the guardsman as they walked. It seemed to him that if they were all about to die, he might as well at least know who was sharing the experience with.

  "Jayce," the guardsman said after the briefest of hesitations.

  Tom nodded. "Good to have you with us, Jayce."

  Kat was looking at him oddly. "What?" he asked, irritated by her unfathomable expression.

  "Nothing," she replied. "I was just wondering when you grew up."

  Her words surprised him, though his answer was quick enough. "Must have been somewhere on the road between here and the goddess's citadel," he said.

  "Must have been," she agreed. "Did you actually meet her? Thaiss, I mean."

  "Yes."

  "Breck me! Got to admit, that's not bad going for a streetnick who couldn't even find his way across town when we first met. You'll have to tell me about it sometime."

  He nodded. "Maybe I will. When this is all over."

  She gave him a look which didn't need words.

  "We will make it," he said quietly, as much for his own benefit as hers.

  Tom's internal compass still had a fix on the city's core, and it told him that they were now heading towards it again. Hopefully the two right turns he'd led them through would take them past the Demon.

  "Nice idea," Kat said, evidently recognising his intent, "but…" She nodded ahead, to where a glowing figure could be seen at the far end of the corridor.

  "Shit!"

  Another Demon, or perhaps the same one, seeking to intercept them. And this time there were no Blade to protect them.

  "You two run for it," Jayce said. "I'll hold him off."

  "Really?" Kat said. "Very noble of you, but the last time we saw these things they were whipping the Blade's collective ass. No offence, but you wouldn't even slow it down."

  "Kat's right," Tom said. "No point in throwing your life away needlessly. Come on." He gripped the guardsman's arm and propelled him towards a somewhat plain looking door, but one that was wider than the residential door they'd passed and looked to be something else entirely. Afterwards, Tom would wonder whether he'd subconsciously recognised the deep bass vibration that must surely have been detectable had they not been distracted by the approaching Demon.

  All he knew for sure was that when he pushed that door open he was immediately struck by a wall of heat and a familiar rhythmic sound that seemed to reverberate right through him, like the beating of a gigantic heart.

• • • •

The goddess stood before him, her clear calm voice delivering information as precisely as it had in the citadel. This world is a nexus, accessible from many others. As such it has become a melting pot for various races. Many – humans, kayjele, and skimmers among them – were already in residence when the founders arrived, and without detailed genetic analysis it's impossible to say which are truly native and which were themselves earlier settlers. The Jeradine, however, arrived with the founders. An ancient people, the Jeradine have called many worlds home, but this will be their last. Those resident in the under-City are likely all that remain of this venerable race. Their knowledge helped open the way to this world and helped to make the construction of Thaiburley possible. Their reward was a permanent home within the City of a Hundred Rows, sited in the City Below by their own choice.

  Tom blinked, banishing the image and trying to blank out the voice. He was delighted that so much of the knowledge he'd absorbed at the citadel was falling into place. He just wished there was some sort of filter, a means of consciously regulating the flow of information and even to turn it off at times. When he was fleeing for his life, for example.

  If they'd found the corridors warm, this place was a furnace. It was also jarringly familiar. So much so that Tom might almost have stumbled back into his own past.

  "Where the breck are we?" Kat wanted to know.

  "In a pumping room," Tom told her.

  The oppressive heat, the reddish light, and the deep rhythmic thrum of sound that reverberated through the air and the floor alike, were all just as he remembered. As was the great engine or perhaps gigantic organ that dominated the centre of the chamber. He was seeing it from a different perspective this time, from ground level rather than a viewing balcony part way up a wall, but the memories from that mad flight down from the Heights, when he'd stumbled into a room just like this, remained vivid.

  They were much closer to the great engine than he'd been on that previous occasion, and from here its size was even more impressive. It was like a great sack – one that surely would have been large enough to hold scores of people – formed from an unknown material that might almost have been organic. The impression of something living was only enhanced by the network of wires and metal bands that encased it, which looked like veins, and the constant movement. As they entered, the pump was contracting, sliding across the floor and apparently climbing the great metal pipe that rose from its centre to pierce the ceiling. With a mournful sigh it began to relax once more, sliding back down the silver grey pipe as if the effort had all been too much and flowing out across the chamber's floor towards them.

  "Breck," Kat muttered, shying away. "I don't want that thing smothering me."

  Tom knew what she meant. There was a sense that this was in fact a living thing, or part of one, harnessed to unnatural purpose. Thankfully, the flowing mass stopped its advance well short of them and began the process of contracting once more. Tom wondered briefly where the kayjele attendant might be, but guessed it must have fled this sector along with everyone else.

  "There's no other exit," Jayce said, emerging from the far side of the pumping mechanism. He hadn't stopped to ogle the thing as they had. "The only door's the one we came in by."

  "Great," Kat said. She then stared at Tom. "Tom…?"

  He nodded. "Yeah, I know, the Demon Hounds."

  "They have hounds?" Jayce asked, looking around anxiously.

  "No, a long story – another time, another place," Tom said. "Look, you're going to have to trust me, Jayce. Huddle together. Closer," he gestured towards the guardsman. "We've all got to be touching. Okay, now don't move a muscle and keep completely quiet. I mean completely."

  "What…?"

  "Shhh…" Kat hissed at the Guardsman.

  Tom's talent, which he had believed was his only talent for much of his life, the ability to hide in plain sight, was their only hope now.

  He began his litany as soon as all of them were settled. We're not here; you can't see us, you can't smell us or hear us, we're invisible. We're not here, you can't see us… As the repeated phrase cycled through his thoughts he felt his talent well up, far more conscious of the process than he ever had been before, as it unfurled to cover them all in its protective mantle.

  No sooner had Tom felt his talent rise around them than the door burst open and the Demon strode in. Tom focussed on his litany, making sure it didn't falter and that there was no chink in the protection it was affording them. At the same time, he observed this creature from the Upper Heights, the highest level of all Thaiburley, noting that Demons weren't in fact unnaturally tall – certainly not toweringly so like the Blade. It was just that their physical presence made them seem so much bigger and imposing.

  It's working! Tom thought, daring to hope that they might actually get away with this. The Demon strode into the room, his great white wings flexing as if the drafts of warm air were tempting it to take flight. For long seconds the creature stood just inside the door, head turning from side to side, clearly searching. You cannot see us… Tom stepped up the intensity, waiting for the Demon's gaze to fall on them and stay, but it didn't. Then the creature strode forward, passing close to where the three of them pressed against each other. Still it stared ahead and not at them.

  Just a little bit further. The pump was about to relax again, which meant the vast mass of cables, pipes and tissue would flow outward to fill much of the floor. If the Demon followed the curve of the room around only a short distance further, the expanding mass of the engine would soon put him out of eyeshot, giving them a clear pathway to the door.

  Just as he was about to step past the motionless trio, the Demon paused, cocked his head, and then turned slowly to face them. He looked directly at Tom, and smiled. "You didn't honestly expect your little trick would fool a Demon, did you?" His voice was light, high, with the hint of a sneer, like Lyle when he was showing off to the impressionable younger members of the Blue Claw. One thing was clear: the Demon had been playing with them, pretending not to see them and drawing closer in the process. "I am the core personified; you seek to use talent against me, when I am living, walking, breathing talent? You are an insect, and the meagre gifts you think to command are little more than conjuring tricks."

  Tom felt his determination waiver. The Demon was right; he could feel the fundamental truth of its words. Who had they been trying to kid? They never stood a chance. The Prime Master, the Council Guards, the Tattooed Men, even the Blade, they were all powerless compared to just one single Demon. The being before them was glowing, golden, magnificent. How had Tom ever thought to defy such a one?

  He slumped to his knees, knowing it was over. His life, his dreams, his future, they all ended here. He deserved no better.

  From beside him came a strangled, tortured shriek that sounded more animal than human. A small figure leapt at the Demon, a dark wildcat starkly outlined by golden light. Tom watched aghast as two slender arms rose and fell, and twin blades flashed silver against the gold. Kat.

  "Don't listen to it, Tom," she yelled, "it's sapping our will."

  The silver became blurs as Kat attacked, her blades puncturing the golden nimbus and slicing into the body within. She danced and twisted and sliced and cut and thrust, while the Demon bellowed his rage and pain.

  "Talent!" it shrieked. "You have talent."

  Kat had talent? Of course she did. Tom had never really thought about it before this but how else could a small girl ever rise to prominence in the ranks of the city's toughest warriors? The lethargy and sense of hopelessness which the Demon had induced started to lift. Tom's limbs were his own again. He rose from his knees, as did the guard beside him. Two facts were suddenly crystal clear: Kat had talent, and despite the Demon's sneering dismissal, that talent was hurting it.

  Tom gathered himself, drawing on the well of power which he still didn't understand but was beginning to accept as a part of him. This was no Rust Warrior. He knew that to best a Demon he'd have to muster more force than he'd ever called on before.

  He was almost there, almost ready to unleash his fury, when disaster struck. Presumably tiring of fending off Kat's blows, the Demon fought back. Kat's scream sent a chill down Tom's spine. A blast of energy shot from the Demon's nimbus, catching her full on and sending her hurtling through the air. Kat struck the unyielding wall with an audible smack and then slid down to lie motionless on the floor.

  "No!" Tom seemed to see it all happen in acute detail, as if Kat's limp form had moved in slow motion. In horror, he released the shackles restraining his talent and let loose with everything he had, feeling the energy surge through him but knowing he was too late, that he should have struck a split second earlier, when he still had a chance to save Kat.

  Perhaps the Demon was distracted by having to deal with Kat's unexpected assault, perhaps he hadn't expected Tom to attack with such ferocity. Either way, Tom felt his power take a hold of his enemy, overwhelming defences and inflicting damage. But the Demon wasn't finished yet. He rallied, stalling Tom's attack before he could fully press home his advantage.

  As Tom had expected, this was completely different from fighting a Rust Warrior or a human. The first time Tom had used his power in such a destructive fashion, when he had taken down the Warrior that killed Kohn, it had been a simple outpouring of hate focussed on the monster that had just murdered a friend. What he directed at the Demon was more intense, more sustained, more draining. This time the target didn't simply tremble and fall apart as the Rust Warrior had, it fought back; and Tom sensed that if he didn't prevail in this contest and do so soon, he would be the one doing the falling apart. The snag being that he wasn't at all sure he could prevail. The Demon was pure core, a construct fashioned from the stuff at Thaiburley's heart, whereas Tom had never been more than a conduit for that same force. His initial success had been due to the element of surprise, and he'd failed to make that really count. The Demon had recovered, and Tom could feel his own efforts faltering, his grasp on his enemy's inner being slipping away. Attack slipped inexorably towards defence, as it became increasingly difficult to hold off the Demon's strengthening assault, let alone press on with his own.

  The Demon clearly sensed as much. "Prepare to die, boy."

  Sweat trickled down Tom's face. He squinted against its salty sting. He clenched his teeth and fought with everything he had, stubbornly refusing to admit the possibility that it wasn't enough. At that moment thoughts of Kat and of Thaiburley's fate were the last thing on his mind. He was fighting for his life.

  At the last moment, as his strength began to falter, a towering figure loomed behind the Demon, seeming to have come out of nowhere. Tom was so focused on resisting the pressure that threatened to break through and crush him that he only saw it dimly, the arm that rose and fell, the solid metal object brought down so forcefully on the Demon's head.

  The pressure disappeared. Tom wasn't in the mood to stop and wonder what had happened. He flew onto the attack, his remaining talent bludgeoning past the Demon's defences, only to find that he had penetrated something incomprehensible. Without meaning to, he found himself immersed in the Demon's mind, which itself was linked to the corrupted core. For a disorientated second Tom felt that he was connected to the whole city, that his sense of self had flowed and stretched to touch every point of Thaiburley at once. In that instant, Tom felt that he could encompass the whole world.

  Confused and overwhelmed, he panicked, desperate to regain some sense of equilibrium, to feel whole again. He lashed out, breaking and destroying, in the hope of triggering a return to normality. His outburst of blind violence ripped the Demon apart from within. The golden figure, driven down to its hands and knees by the blow to the back of its head, twitched and collapsed, hitting the floor face first.

  Was it dead? Was it breathing? Did Demons breathe? While Tom was considering these finer points of Demon physiology, the felled figure started to shimmer. The Demon sparkled and twinkled and melted away, fading as if seeping into the floor somehow, until it had completely disappeared. The whole process only took a couple of heartbeats, leaving no mark or sign that anything had ever been there. Tom assumed that the Demon had been reabsorbed by the core.

  Only then did he really turn his attention to their saviour. For a fleeting moment he thought of Kohn, but instantly realised this wasn't the kayjele he'd known. For one thing, the single cyclopean eye that dominated the giant's forehead was bright with intelligence and vision, not milky with the rheum of blindness.

  "Thank you," Tom said, with a shallow nod of gratitude.

  The giant still clutched in his right hand what appeared to be a huge steel wrench, which was presumably what he'd hit the Demon with. Tom barely registered the details. He was already hurrying over to where a crumpled black form lay pooled at the foot of a wall. "Kat?" No response.

  Tom crouched down and reached towards the still form.

  "Don't move her," Jayce advised. "She might be injured. If you move her you're liable to make it worse."

  Tom's hand hovered for a fraction of a second, but then completed the intended action and grasped Kat's arm. There was still no reaction. "We can't just leave her," he told Jayce. He'd left Dewar, he wasn't about to abandon Kat.

  He adjusted his grip, to hold the bare skin of her wrist. Warm, but then wasn't everything in here? Closing his eyes, he reached out with his talent, gently, a feather-light touch. Yes, she was still alive, but hurt, badly hurt, her life energy flickering and uncertain.

  Tom wiped his brow and licked his lips, tasting the saltiness of his own sweat. There was no one here to save her but him. Mildra had told him he could be a healer if he wanted, and Thaiss seemed convinced that he could do just about anything, but he'd never attempted anything like this and there was no one here to show him how. He sat back on his haunches and wiped the palms of his hands on his trousers. The bass boom of the semi-organic pump's latest inhalation vibrated through him like a mournful sigh.

  Still he hesitated, hands hovering just above her small black form. Perhaps leaving her here would be the best option after all. But then she might die of her injuries or fall victim to a Rust Warrior. No, he couldn't shirk responsibility, not this time. Sucking in a deep lungful of the warm, inadequate air, he took hold of her wrist again, closed his eyes and concentrated, attempting to feel for wrongness in her body. He sensed… something, an apparent anomaly, which he gingerly caressed away with a whisper of talent, ever conscious of how destructive his power could be and indeed had been whenever he'd summoned it in the past. He tried to be restrained and delicate, tried to smooth out the wrinkles in the flow of energy he could sense within Kat's body.

  Tom had no idea how much time passed before he sat back again. Nor did he know whether he'd achieved anything worthwhile. He wasn't a medic and had never aspired to be a healer. He hadn't received the sort of training that Mildra had and didn't know enough about anatomy to knit together bones or repair specific blood vessels the way that she was able to, but, in the absence of either training or direction, he'd done as much as he could.

  His scalp itched with perspiration and his damp clothes clung to his body. He'd have given anything for a sip of cold water, but all he could really think about was Kat. He squatted there and simply stared at her, willing her to get up, to say something, to simply move…

  Her eyes suddenly twitched and then shot open. "Kat?" He grinned, relieved and more than a little pleased with himself. "You're all right."

  "Says who?" she asked, tentatively pulling herself upright, wincing with pain. "If this is all right…" She sat with her back against the wall, breathing deeply. "… then life sucks. What happened to the golden guy with wings?"

  "Our kayjele friend over here arrived in the nick of time and thumped him with a wrench and then I finished him off with my talent."

  "Bully for you." Kat stared at the kayjele, eyeing him up and down. "Big brecker, isn't he?"

  "Yeah, they do tend to be."

  "Is he gonna come with us to the core?"

  Tom hadn't even considered that, but he shook his head, knowing the answer. "Doubt it. He'd have to crawl through the corridors. Besides, his place is here, tending the pump. That's what the kayjele do in Thaiburley."

  "Shame. I've got a feeling we're going to need muscles like that before we're through." So saying, Kat clambered carefully to her feet, face a study in concentration as she did so, one hand holding her side. "Broken rib by the feel of it. Where's Shayna when I need her?"

  "Sorry, I did my best."

  She stared at him, wide eyed. "You healed me."

  He nodded. "Sort of, at any rate."

  She grunted, still feeling her obviously tender rib. "I'd say you've still got a bit to learn."

  "Don't worry I know." He bit his lip, reminded of his own inadequacies. "Are you going to be all right to go on?"

  She gave a bitter laugh. "Trust me, kid, I've fought mire bears, dragon worms and murderers carrying far worse than this. It could do with being strapped up, though, if you want me to be much use from here on in. Have we got the time?"

  Tom nodded. "Sure." Who knew how much time they had? It felt as if they were in their own world here, completely cut off from events elsewhere. What difference would a few more minutes make?

  She obviously read his expression. "That'll be a 'no' then, but we'll make the time anyway, right?"

  He grinned. "Right."

  "Well… turn around then!" She shooed him away with her hands. "I'm gonna have to take my top off. You, too, soldier boy," she said in Jayce's direction.

  Tom and the guardsman both hurriedly shuffled round to stare at the wall. Tom couldn't help but be amused at Kat's coyness. In the Blue Claw, the kids would wash and scrub each other and change clothes without any thought of modesty, the few girl members doing so as readily as the boys. Nudity had never been an issue for him, but Kat's asking them to look the other way had suddenly made it one.

  After a short period of rustling and grunting, Kat said, "Kid, I'm going to need a hand here."

  "I'll have to turn around."

  "Of course you will, genius. I'm hardly gonna let you grope over my body without seeing what you're doing now, am I?"

  As Tom spun quickly back towards her, he just knew his cheeks were burning. Thankfully, Kat didn't seem to notice. She had wrapped her chest and side in bright white bandage, with evident efficiency. "You carry bandages with you?" he asked, impressed by such foresight.

  She looked at him, puzzled. "Doesn't everyone? Now, just hold this, where my hand is, and don't be afraid to press. If you let go the whole breckin' thing will fall apart and I'll have to start again."

  Tom gingerly reached out to where Kat's hand held a section of pristine whiteness in place against her own side. His fingers lay over hers, which then slipped out from underneath as he took over. They'd held hands once, to escape from a group of nicks, but that was then and it had just been a ruse. This was somehow more intimate. Tom's breath caught in his throat, and he struggled to keep his hand from trembling.

  "Remember," she said, "press hard."

  He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

  The seconds seemed to ooze past with viscous slowness rather than flowing at their normal pace, but eventually, after what seemed to have been an age, she'd finished, fastening the final length in place with a pin. "Thanks. You can let go now."

  "Oh, right." He pulled his hand away sharply, as if he'd just burnt it on something.