NINETEEN

 
 
 

Life was good. Thaiburley had survived its darkest hour in more than a century and there was a palpable sense of relief among those who had lived to tell the tale. The very air seemed redolent with the heady scent of optimism; society was in the mood to celebrate. By all means grieve the fallen, but not today. There was no room for sombreness or regret at this event. It marked a fresh beginning, and the survivors of the recent horrors saw themselves as the buds of a new spring, intent on bursting open to brighten the world.

  Carla Birhoff studied her image in the restroom mirror and liked what she saw. She ran her hands down the sides of her figure-hugging dress, taking in the trim tuck of her waist and the blossom of her hips. For her age, she looked magnificent. The latter part of that sentence delighted her, while the first was something that couldn't be helped. Given that one caveat, she could not have been happier. Her star had risen dramatically during the crisis, her position as liaison between the council and the assembly gaining her enormous credibility, while the way she'd survived the massacre at her own party against all odds and alerted the authorities to the Rust Warriors' return had caused many to revise their opinion of her. She was now seen as something more than merely the supreme socialite, the decorative fluff at the Assembly's periphery. To cap it all, the survivors of the mission to the city's core had reported first not to the council, but to her. All of which meant that people were taking her seriously for once and her opinion carried weight. She loved this newly acquired status and revelled in the limelight. This was her time and she intended to grasp the opportunity fate had presented with both hands.

  Affirmation of her newfound celebrity came when she was invited to present the honours at this, the official celebration of the city's triumph. Naturally she'd accepted, allowing herself to be persuaded after a suitably brief moment of feigned modesty. Who was to say that one day, if she made the most of current opportunity, she might not be in line for a position on the council itself? Imagine that: Councillor Birhoff.

  Odd how cyclical life could be. For her this whole business began with a society event at which she was the star; and here it was about to culminate in another such gathering at which she was, if not the star, certainly a star. So much had changed in the interim. Little had she known as she crawled on her hands and knees among the dead and dying of her autumn ball how propitious ensuing events would prove to be.

  She was seated at the top table, not so very far from the new Prime Master, Thomas; the youngest man to hold the position in centuries. Carla remembered Thomas from his time with the assembly; handsome enough in a soft-faced sort of way but he took life far too seriously. The man was so dedicated to the job that she doubted he had room for much else. Relaxing and having fun seemed alien concepts to him.

  The Council Guards on the other hand tended to know all about having fun. They were renowned for working hard and playing hard, as she'd learnt to her considerable delight over the years. She always did have a weakness for a man in uniform, and only men in their prime ever made it into the Council Guard. Take the second officer she had to present a medal to today – the guard who had accompanied the street-nick Tom all the way to the core, the same man who had been among the party that materialised so unexpectedly in her bed chamber. Tall, well-muscled, ruggedly handsome, with a chiselled jaw and the sort of strong features she favoured… so dashing in his white and purple dress uniform. She would happily melt into those arms any day. And he'd already seen her semi-naked. She'd love the opportunity to remove the word "semi" from that statement. She smiled warmly at him and made a mental note of his name, which she hadn't really paid attention to before: Jayce. She determined to seek him out later. The third officer to stand before her received a far more perfunctory acknowledgement. She'd met Captain Verrill before – a cold-faced, rigidly formal man, a total bore who seemed impervious to her flattery and wiles. Apparently he had triumphed in some pitched battle with a force of Rust Warriors and then brought a wounded man – the only other survivor of the skirmish – back safely. So what? Wasn't that the sort of thing an officer was supposed to do?

  The meal that followed the ceremony was sumptuous: a wild duck terrine served in a cradle of crystallised ailie-bloom petals, with a piquant chutney on the side and still-warm rolls which smelt wonderful as they were broken open. Next, tiny wine glasses, no taller than a finger, which proved to be fashioned out of tiger berry sorbet. Each "glass" held a drop of a clear, potent spirit. Next came a dainty selection of smoked and pickled river fish, mere slivers of each, arranged tastefully around the small, halved egg of a ketzal bird – boiled but with the bright orange-yellow yolk still soft at the centre – which itself was topped with beads of oily black caviar that exploded like salty bombs on the tongue. The fish selection wasn't entirely to Carla's taste but she recognised several to be rare delicacies, including a smoky mouthful of claw meat from the mighty blue claw, the giant crab that was one of the Thair's most formidable and elusive denizens. The main course was beef baschelle – prepared by a chef from the Familé Perdan. Carla detected the trademark touch with her very first mouthful. That infusion of herbs and spices and the way the meat melted on the tongue but remained succulent and packed with flavour was unmistakeable. She had been trying to wheedle the recipe out of the family for decades.

  Dessert consisted of an assortment of fruits, delicate patisseries and ices. Mouth-watering no doubt and certainly colourful, but Carla rarely found room for such things. Besides, while the meal may have been of the highest quality, the conversation around her proved to be anything but. It was the price one paid for such a swift elevation in social rank, she supposed.

  She breathed a discreet sigh of relief when the final crockery was cleared away by attentive serving staff, which heralded the start of the less formal part of the evening.

  Able to leave her seat and mingle, she made a beeline for the young officer she'd noted earlier. What was his name again? Jayce; yes, that was it.

  He was deep in conversation with some elderly woman, being polite, no doubt. Perfect. The poor man was most likely as bored as Carla had been during dinner and would surely welcome being rescued.

  "Ah, Jayce, isn't it?" she said as she joined them, adopting her most dazzling smile.

  "Assembly Member Birhoff!" The lad looked startled that she'd addressed him. Flattered, perhaps?

  "Please, call me Carla."

  The old crone was still standing there. Couldn't she take a hint? Carla prepared to take the young officer's arm and steer him away, when he said, "I believe you know my aunt, don't you, Assembly Member?"

  His aunt? Oh great. Carla spared the woman a glance. Perhaps she wasn't as old as she'd first assumed, and there was something vaguely familiar about her now that he came to mention it, though Carla couldn't place where from. Couldn't be bothered to, truth be told. She was more concerned with taking this handsome young officer away from prying ears to somewhere she could charm him unhindered.

  "Aunt Arielle?"

  Arielle? Carla's head whipped around again and she looked at the old woman more closely. Impossible. It couldn't be, surely, not after all these years… but it was. Here stood the one woman in all of Thaiburley who knew enough scandal to ruin her. How? Carla had dismissed the artist from her life, hadn't thought about her in years until she stumbled on that old painting, and had supposed the artist dead when she did, or at least banished forever. What was this woman doing here, now?

  Carla was suddenly conscious of the strident beat of her own heart, so rapid, so insistent – as if trying to burst free of her ribcage – while the room started to draw away from her. It was as if she viewed the young guardsman and this vengeful ghost from her past through a telescopic, distorted tunnel, which grew longer by the instant. Her perspective tilted and she caught a glimpse of startled onlookers and then the ceiling, as her knees buckled.

  Words came to her from a long way off, as the world dimmed and darkness closed in. "Oh dear," said the last voice she'd ever wanted to hear again. "I do believe the assembly member's fainted."

 

Night had settled over the City Below. The streets were all but deserted, fear and superstition keeping folk indoors at this hour. Only those with good reason to be abroad dared to venture out. Twin wrought iron gates creaked open in the squat, solid block of the under-City's principle gaol, allowing a small coach pulled by a team of four burley oxen to exit. They made slow progress, the coach evidently heavy despite its compact size. The coachman held the reins loosely, giving every impression he'd rather be somewhere else. Not that Kat could blame him. She stayed motionless in the rooftop shadows, but he didn't once glance up towards her.

  Kat studied the main body of the coach: lacquered wood braced by a lattice of iron bands and bolts, no windows. No getting out of there without help.

  The oxen made their plodding way up the street, paced by the uncertain shadows cast by the street lamps. At the junction it turned left, heading for the docks. Kat followed, using the rooftops as her highway, easily keeping pace with the prison cart on her right, conscious of the looming presence of the grand conveyor to her left. The place where she'd so nearly died. One of the places, she corrected herself.

  The cart made its ponderous way down Chisel Street, passing the conveyor's terminal before turning into North Wharf Road, which skirted the Runs. Soon after, it came to a halt, having evidently reached its destination. The driver stepped down wearily and strolled around to the back of the coach, where he fiddled with a bunch of keys attached to his belt, selecting one and using it to unlock the carriage door.

  Fittingly, the hinges of the wooden slab creaked ominously as the guard pulled it open. Kat watched impatiently as the set of concertinaed steps slid from a slot in the carriage floor to unfold in staggered stages to the ground. A guard stepped down, one foot on a middle step but otherwise disdaining to use the short flight. He turned to face the door even as he exited. Behind him came a tall, slender man, hands cuffed before him. The prisoner took advantage of every single one of the four steps, as if to demonstrate how it should be done. He trod carefully, almost daintily, taking his time, and, on reaching the bottom of the steps, he paused to look around, assessing his surroundings. Kat pressed further back into the shadows. She didn't want to be seen, not yet.

  The man said something she couldn't catch from her vantage point, the voice carrying through the still night but the words themselves lost to the air. Neither of the guards responded, though the driver stepped forward and, finding a smaller key from among the bunch tied to his belt, released the man's cuffs. At the same time, the guard refolded the small flight of steps and closed the cart's door.

  Both men then climbed onto the driving board and, with a flick of the reins, the oxen started forward.

  "Hey!" This time Kat could hear the man's shout plainly. He stood with feet firmly planted, hands on hips, staring at the slow moving cart. "What about my sword?"

  After a brief pause, the guard flung a belt supporting a scabbarded sword out onto the roadway. Muttering to himself, the man strode after the cart, snatching up the weapon and tying the belt in place.

  Kat was glad. At least now she wouldn't have to kill an unarmed man.

  As the cart turned a corner and disappeared from sight, the man straightened his shoulders, adjusted his clothing, and started walking the short distance towards the wharf at the end of the road, where a barge waited, lights still burning bright.

  Night sailings were rare but hardly unheard of. Presumably this was one such, clearing the scum from the city before the sun globes warmed up. The City Below was used to scum, and Kat for one had no objection to this particular piece staying in Thaiburley, so long as it was no longer breathing.

  She stepped from the shadows and strolled out to stand in the centre of the road, between the man and the barge. She stood with arms crossed.

  "Leaving us already, Sur Brent?"

  He'd stopped walking as she appeared, and now smiled. "Sadly, I have little choice." He pulled down the neck of his shirt to display a thin, snugly-fitting metal band which encircled the base of his neck. "I'm told that if I'm not a significant distance beyond the city walls by the time the sun globes start to warm, this charming piece of jewellery will sever my head from my torso."

  "And you believe this nonsense, do you?"

  He shrugged. "I don't think I'll bother putting it to the test; particularly as my work in the city is done. They want me to leave, I want to leave; why fight over it?"

  "Ah yes, and you doubtless have to report back to these mysterious 'employers' of yours."

  "Exactly so."

  Kat nodded. "So that's it, is it? After all you've done, the powers that be are just gonna exile you, are they? Rather than tying you down, cutting your body open from throat to balls while you're still alive and letting the spill dragons feed on your innards."

  He laughed; a loud, brief exclamation. "A colourful punishment, no doubt, but presumably your authorities don't have the, ehm… shall we say stomach for that sort of thing. Now, it's very kind of you to come to see me off, but this collar is itching a little and I'd hate for it to get any tighter, so, if you don't mind…?"

  He stepped forward as if to brush past Kat, but she moved quickly across and continued to block his way. "Maybe you're right, maybe they don't have the stomach for that sort of thing, but then I'm not the authorities, am I."

  "Get out of my way, Kat."

  She did step back then, hands straying towards her sword hilts. "That's never going to happen."

  "You don't really want to fight me," he said. "I was more than a match for your sister, remember, and they tell me that of the two of you, she was comfortably the best."

  Kat's smile was thin-lipped and cold. "Thank you so much for mentioning my sister, not that I needed any reminding." She drew her blades, moving with deliberate slowness so that the sound of them sliding from their scabbards spread through the night like a protracted sigh.

  With a resigned look, Brent drew his own, longer sword. "You'll forgive me if I make this brief, only I have a boat to catch."

  Kat smiled. "As brief as you like. I wasn't planning on hanging around long myself."

  His blade flickered out, like the silvered tongue of a serpent. She blocked it with ease but this had only been a feint. The very instant steel struck steel his sword turned to attack from another angle, only to be met by Kat's other blade. As those clashed, Kat struck with her free sword, but found only air as Brent danced out of the way. He stepped back, seeking to create some room and thereby give his longer reach the advantage. Kat followed, determined not to let him.

  Kat knew what to expect – she'd seen him fight Chavver, after all – but watching someone and actually facing them were entirely different things. During these initial exchanges Kat took his measure, as he doubtless did hers. He was strong, fast, confident and well-balanced, never overextending. His footwork was as proficient as his swordplay, the co-ordination of hand, eyes and feet apparently faultless. In short, this wasn't going to be easy.

  Good. His death would be all the more satisfying, then.

  Kat moved onto the attack, launching a rapid series of strikes, first one sword then the other, in a familiar pattern that had overpowered more than one opponent in the past. Not this one, though. He moved and swayed and blocked and parried with a nonchalance she couldn't help but admire. She felt certain that Brent was fighting within himself, and put enough effort into her own swordplay to hope that he wouldn't suspect the same of her.

  Their swords locked, leaving them glaring at each other over the crossed blades. Kat's second sword had been stopped in mid-strike, her wrist gripped in Brent's free hand. It became a wrestling match between a wiry man and a teenage girl, each attempting to overpower the other.

  He might have been bigger than her but Kat was stronger than she looked; not as strong as Chavver, perhaps, but strong enough to surprise him, she hoped. For long seconds they struggled, Kat straining to hold him, feeling that her arm was about to pop from its socket and knowing that she couldn't keep this up for much longer.

  Then he did something she'd never seen before; a twist that looked impossible and must surely have dislocated his wrist. Suddenly their blades unlocked and his longer sword flicked out towards her. Taken by surprise, her own effort nearly carried her forward onto the tip of his blade; but speed of reaction saved her, enabling her to twist out of the way. Instead of being impaled, she felt steel rake across her front, slicing through her tunic to cut a bloodied gash in her skin, running in an oblique line from somewhere between her neck and chest to her left shoulder.

  She jumped back, both swords raised.

  "First blood to me," Bryant said, eyes gleaming.

  Brecking obviously, so why waste the breath to crow about it?

  He was quick, he was clever, he was skilful and he was confident. No wonder Brent had given Chavver such a hard time. But Kat was all of those things too, and she was only just getting started.

  Spurred on by the piquant sting of her wound she moved to the attack again, feet dancing, twin blades weaving intricate, synchronised patterns as she probed for an opening. Brent matched her move for move, his single blade seeming almost alive as it blocked a thrust here, parried a cut there, and arced round to deny her again. Kat was impressed. Not many would have been able to live with her at this speed. So she started to work harder, steadily winding up the pace of the attack while sacrificing none of her skill or aggression.

  Through the shifting veil of steel formed by their blades Kat saw Brent's eyes widen. She'd surprised him, unsettled him. He'd thought that he had her measure, that she'd shown him all she had. More fool him. She ramped things up still further and finally breached his guard, her hand twisting past his blade, her own sword inflicting a shallow cut to his forearm; at the same time her other blade struck, slashing into his other arm, cutting deep enough to damage the triceps muscle – Kat knew about wounds, knew about damage inflicted and taken. She heard his sharp intake of breath as he stepped quickly back, disengaging.

  She let him, giving him the time to doubt, perhaps enough to take the edge off his reactions. She wanted that arrogance to fracture, to let a little fear seep in, along with the realisation of how severely he'd underestimated her.

  "Much better; now we've both been bloodied," she said. Now who's pointing out the frissing obvious? But she couldn't resist, and upped the ante of their verbal sparring by promising, "For every cut you land on me, I'll pay you back double."

  Before he could reply she attacked again, not holding back anymore, wanting to keep him off-balance and determined to finish this quickly. He was quick, but not this quick. The attack sent him stumbling backwards, his defence becoming more ragged, more desperate. She sensed the end was near. He knew that too, she could see it in his eyes.

  Again one blade slipped through, even as the other was parried, cutting Brent in the side before he could dance out of reach. She grinned and pressed forward, her twin blades a blur.

  He was weakening fast. Whether this was due to his recent time in jail or the wounds, Kat couldn't say. Perhaps he would have been tougher before his imprisonment; she couldn't have cared less. Life didn't deal in might-havebeens. Hers didn't, at any rate. A thrust with the left hand, a twist with the right. She felt one sword scrape his ribs while the other sent his own weapon flying from his hand and clattering to the ground.

  Brent stumbled back a pace, sweating, panting for breath. "Enough," he gasped, holding up a defensive hand. "I yield. You've bettered me and I'm at your mercy." Perhaps he saw it in her eyes. For the first time, she saw a hint of fear in his. "You wouldn't kill an unarmed man, surely."

  "Really; you think? Not the man who distracted my sister long enough for the Soul Thief to sneak up and kill her; I wouldn't kill him, you reckon?"

  "Look, I had to," he burbled. "My orders were to keep the Soul Thief alive… she was a Demon, you see…"

  "You knew she was a Demon? Breck, why am I always the last one to know anything?" Kat took a menacing step closer. "Who are you working for?"

  "I don't suppose it matters now. The Misted Isles… the Demons contacted us offering…"

  As he spoke, his hand came up again as if to ward her off.

  No! Too late she caught the glint of something is his palm as it shot forward to punch into her upper arm. The pain was excruciating. She cried out. At the same time, she reacted. Instantly, instinctively. He tried to grasp her good arm but she was too quick, his fingers slipping away from their attempted hold as she struck at him, her sword lashing out once, twice and a third time, doing damage at every turn.

  For a split second Brent stood before her, blood pumping from the slit in his throat, hand reaching, struggling futilely to stem the flow. He might have tried to speak, to tell her something, but any final words emerged as nothing more than incoherent gurgles.

  "Sorry, I lied," Kat said. "For every cut you make, I'll pay you back more than double."

  Brent collapsed to the ground, though Kat was no longer paying him any attention. "Shit… Shit… Shit!" She examined her wound, which was bad, she'd realised that straight away. There was a lot of blood – it must have severed something important. The "it" in question was a homemade blade, not a proper knife at all but the shard of something pilfered and sharpened. She could testify to exactly how sharp the result was. The offending article was currently embedded in her arm, just above the elbow. The sensible thing to do was leave it there, she knew that. Removal would only risk further injury. But as well as hurting like mad this crude makeshift blade offended her, and she wanted it out of her body as soon as possible. Common sense be hanged. Wrapping a cloth around her good hand to give her better purchase, she grasped the shard, took a second to brace herself and then pulled, yanking it out in one firm swift movement. Another scream escaped from between her clenched teeth and yet more blood welled forth, but she ignored the pain, knowing she had to work swiftly.

  She wrapped the same cloth around her arm just above the wound, using her teeth and her good hand to pull it as tight as possible, forming a tourniquet. Not perfect, perhaps, but it was the best she could do.

  She straightened up, sheathed both her swords and – turning her back on Brent's corpse, dismissing the bastard from her thoughts – walked away, cradling her injured arm. She headed towards Iron Grove Square – Charveve Court, she corrected herself – and the Tattooed Men; she headed towards Shayna. Had she been fit and healthy, the distance would have been nothing, but in her current condition this was going to be a challenge, no denying it. She couldn't afford to stop, couldn't afford to rest. This was the City Below; if she fell down the chances were she'd never get up again but would instead become just one more corpse for the spill dragons to pick over and the body boys to collect come morning.

  But that wasn't going to happen, not to her. She was Kat, leader of the Tattooed Men, last of the Death Queens, and she was going to make it. She had to make it.

 

…To the topmost Row, the Upper Heights,

Where stars and Demons frequent the nights,

The end of this verse, fair Thaiburley's crown,

From which lofty peak you can only fall down!

 

  He loved it here in the Upper Heights, the roof of the world. It was morning and Tom had arrived early, to stand by the city's outer walls and gaze out across the mountains. He had travelled a long way of late – in more senses than one – and he'd seen any number of wonders, things which the street-nick he'd been a mere month ago could never have conceived of; but nothing he'd encountered could compare to this. Thaiburley's crown, the very place he'd been trying to reach on that day which now seemed a lifetime ago, when he'd scaled the city's walls and witnessed what appeared to be a murder.

  He still recalled the first time he'd been brought up here by the Prime Master – the old Prime Master. Then the sight had taken his breath away, and it still did.

  The wind today was stronger than on that first visit and the air colder, though not enough to cause him to regret choosing this as the venue for the meeting. It seemed fitting.

  He turned to consider the city's roof. A panorama of decorative spires, artful crenulations, slender towers and elegant chimneys opened up before him, stretching away as far as the eye could see. According to the Prime Master, one man had conceived all this, someone called Carley. For a while Tom had wondered if this might be Thaiss's brother, but it wasn't, he knew that now.

  A number of things had tumbled into place in the aftermath of his renewing the core, almost as if some part of his mind had deliberately held back a welter of information gleaned from the goddess, knowing that he needed to concentrate on the job at hand and only releasing this final flood once the work was done. Perhaps it wasn't his mind, perhaps this delayed knowledge had always been the goddess's intent. So many things that had puzzled him or that would have puzzled him once he'd found the time to think about them now made sense. Not everything, unfortunately.

  The Jeradine, for example. He knew that they were an ancient race whose civilisation had once spanned the stars, now reduced to a dwindling population content to live out their days in the shadow of others. Why had they settled for such placid obscurity? Their ambitions and their motivations were completely alien to Tom, beyond his ability to understand. The more he discovered about them the more he became intrigued by his own ignorance on the subject. He determined to learn all he could about these enigmatic neighbours, hopefully with Ty-gen's help, but he couldn't do that from up in the Heights.

  His attention returned to the inspirational vista before him, slipping back to that first time he'd been brought here. Seeing the city's roof had fulfilled a lifelong dream, though there had been one disturbing element; he'd found the Upper Heights haunted by elusive will-o'-the-wisp figures intent on teasing him. The Demons.

  They were gone now, of course, and the new generation had yet to establish itself, but if anything the place felt more haunted now than it ever had then. Tom kept expecting to glance around and find the familiar face of his mentor beside him, to hear that gentle voice offering him insights and wise words. Instead, he had just the wind for company.

  That was set to change, though, as Tom spied the Prime Master's successor striding towards him. The man's brown hair was being blown into ragged wisps by the wind, as if mussed by some gigantic invisible hand.

  Thaiburley's new de facto ruler smiled as he approached. Tom felt a lurch of loss at the sight. He still couldn't believe the Prime Master he'd known was gone, and it felt odd addressing anyone else by the same title, especially someone he knew.

  "The view is extraordinary, isn't it?" Thomas said as he reached Tom.

  His younger namesake could only agree. The cloud cover was high this day, giving a spectacular view over the mountain peaks. Tom could even follow the course of the Thair for a little way. It was odd to gaze down upon a stretch of river which he must have travelled along while aboard Abe's barge. The Thair seemed so small from up here. He wondered whether the Prime Master might have come up here to watch the barge the day he'd left. He didn't dwell on the view, though, not wanting to risk a return of the vertigo that had troubled him in the past. Instead he returned his attention to the city's rooftop.

  "There's still a place for you on the council, you know," Thomas told him. "You'd make history: the youngest councillor the city's ever seen, by a decade or three."

  Tom smiled but shook his head. "Thank you but no. That's not for me and we both know it. Just thinking about it scares me worse than the Rust Warriors ever did. Whatever powers I can or can't call upon, I don't know enough to make decisions for the whole city. I'd only end up making a mess of things."

  "You have good instincts, Tom. I believe you'd do a lot better than you suppose."

  Tom snorted. "I doubt that. Besides, where's the fun in being stuck in stuffy meetings the whole time?"

  "You've got me there," Thomas agreed with a wry smile. "Where indeed?"

  "Look, if you meant what you said about plans to regenerate the City Below, let me get involved in that. I could do some good down there. I know the streets and what's needed for the people in them. At least that way I wouldn't be sitting around wondering what the breck everyone else was talking about, which is what would happen if I sat on the Council."

  "Yes, I am serious about rebuilding the City Below. It's been sorely neglected over the years, and this seems the perfect opportunity to do something about it. So much major work is going to be needed in different parts of the city, especially the Heights, that we might as well expand that to include the under-City as well, to roll everything up into one big redevelopment project. Your help with that would be greatly appreciated, thank you."

  Tom felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from him. The prospect of spending the rest of his life in the Heights had grown ever less appealing as time went on. He knew that some people would be expecting him to do exactly that and had almost been willing to go along with those expectations, particularly given his own growing sense of alienation from the streets. The more he considered the possibility, though, the more he realised that it simply wasn't what he wanted. In fact he hated the idea. As he'd determined en route to the core, it was high time he shed the mantle of others' expectations and started determining his own destiny. Tom wasn't a street-nick anymore, but nor was he a cloud scraper, and the streets were still his home.

  "I hear you met Thaiss herself," Thomas said, a little too casually. "How did you find her?"

  By walking a brecking long way, Tom felt tempted to reply. Instead, after a moment's thought, he simply said, "Odd."

  Thomas smiled. "I'm sure. Living that long must be… difficult; I mean, it must have a profound effect on who you are. What I suppose I'm getting at is, did you think her entirely sane?"

  Tom considered the question for a moment, largely because he didn't really know how to reply. "I'm not sure I'd have any way of knowing," he said at last. "How do you judge the sanity of a god?"

  Thomas laughed. "There is that, I suppose." After a slight pause he added, "One thing I don't understand is why she didn't come back with you. I mean, if Thaiburley means so much to her and she knew the city was in such deadly peril, why didn't she return here in all her glory and sort the situation out herself?"

  She did, Tom thought, if only in my head. "I don't know," he replied. "I've wondered about that myself and, well…"

  "What?"

  "I'm not honestly sure she could. She's lived in that citadel for so long, relying on her machines to keep her alive… I wonder whether she can live anywhere else anymore."

  "Dependent on the machines, you mean… in effect confined within her own citadel? Now there's a thought."

  A strange look passed across the Prime Master's face just for an instant and then it was gone.

  "What?" Tom asked.

  "Oh, nothing. I was just thinking that perhaps it's as well Thaiss never visits her city these days, that Thaiburley might be better off with a goddess who only wakes up once every century or so, allowing our society to develop without constant interference. That's all." He smiled at Tom. "Anyway, I've a meeting with the reconstituted council to prepare for. So, if you'll excuse me." With that, Thomas left him.

  Tom reflected on what struck him as a strange conversation. He thought back to the questions that had troubled him during his time at the ice citadel and the suspicion that he wasn't being told everything. He'd learnt a lot since then but still didn't have all the answers by any means. However, he was young, he was powerful, he had access to the city's core and knew how to reach Thaiss's citadel. The answers wouldn't elude him forever.

  He watched Thaiburley's new and vigorous Prime Master walk away and couldn't help but wonder… would it really have mattered who had won here? After all, from everything he knew, Thaiss's brother had never sought to destroy Thaiburley as such, merely claim it as his own. He'd used some pretty nasty tactics, true, but perhaps he'd needed to in order to stand any chance of success. From the point of view of those living in the city, particularly in the City Below, would one god be any worse than the other?

  When Tom had replenished the core, he'd felt the corrupting influence – the essence of Thaiss's brother – flee to the City Below. Everyone assumed that it had fled to Insint, a natural ally, but Tom wasn't so sure. After all, it now emerged that Insint had been linked with the Maker in some way and ultimately been responsible for sending Tom up-City in search of a Demon's egg, which Thaiss's brother would surely have known was a myth. So perhaps the two were never actually allies in the first place.

  Someone else, though, had been in the City Below at the time.

  Tom had done a lot of thinking in the past few days, about Thaiss, her brother, the city, and the core. Everything he'd learned had been fed to him through the filter of the goddess's own prejudices, and one thing he'd learned from a life spent on the streets was that there were always two sides to any story. Memories of his merger with the core still troubled him, and he realised this was far more than just an energy source. How much influence did it have on events? Had it got what it wanted? Had the core decided that Thaiburley was due a change?

  One thing Tom had come to realise about Thaiss and her sort was that they played the long game. It seemed to him that if an intelligence as old and cunning as her brother was supposed to be had gained controlling influence over the core, that intelligence would have made contingencies, preparations in case its grand scheme failed.

  There were many in the streets who maintained that a name held power. Certainly Tom had felt a kinship with his namesake, the arkademic now the Prime Master, ever since he heard Magnus call his victim "Thomas" and realised that he and this man shared the same name. Yet he could have sworn he'd witnessed that Thomas being murdered, stabbed to death and then flung from the city's walls – the event that changed his life forever. He'd been told afterwards that only the skill of Thaiburley's finest healers had saved Thomas. But healers drew on the core for their talent. A core which, by that time, had been corrupted by the intruding essence of Thaiss's brother and which, Tom was becoming increasingly certain, had a will of its own. What if it wasn't the healers' skill alone that so spectacularly brought a man back from the brink of death?

  Thaiburley's new Prime Master looked back, smiled and waved as he entered a stairwell and disappeared from sight. Tom reflected on something, one of the titbits of information that had bubbled to the surface as all the knowledge and history he'd assimilated at Thaiss's citadel finally settled into place. Buried within so many other facts was a detail that had otherwise been conspicuous by its absence.

  He now knew the name of Thaiss's brother. His name was Thomas.