A glyph [https://i.imgur.com/ZLENX3y.png]

Night fell, but it was not night. The city burned with a thousand fires and the light reflected from low cloud to turn the sky a dirty orange, without darkness, without stars.

Andra walked and stared. When she left Simon and his family outside the city, he had told her to hide her face, to tell no one she was lasker. So she kept her hood raised despite the warmth, and walked swiftly, avoiding crowds.

On every street stood iron trees burning with blue flame, adding more heat and smoke to the thick air. She had stared at these at first, at the waste of fire that turned night to day, but her staring attracted attention, and so she stopped, and now, having seen many, she strode by without a glance.

Already she had climbed far above the gate where she had entered the city, and when she stopped to look back, it spread beneath her like a dream of shadow and fire.

Athanor was a mountain, a great hollow cup broken on the side toward the sea, and all of it stone, all in the square lines made by men. Stone paved the streets, and stone built houses loomed like cliffs, climbing in tiers all the way to the rim of the cup, flowing down to the edge of the sea. She had been told it was large, but she could walk so far in half a day, if not for the walls and people in the way.

From the sea came a salt-scented breeze, but even that was warm, too warm, and loaded with the stench of humans, their filth and foods and perfumes, and the smoke of fires, and strange, metallic odours she had no name for. She searched for her sister’s scent, and found only foulness and confusion.

A knot of humans approached, laughing and talking loudly. Outlandish creatures, these young men and woman, stinking of alcohol and spices, wearing reds and blues and yellows in layers of thin light fabrics that shifted in the breeze to expose bare skin, their faces painted, eyes and smiles unnaturally bright. They glanced at her in passing and laughed even louder, as if she amused them, though she couldn’t imagine why.

A child thrust something at her. ‘Bracelet? Buy a charm bracelet, pretty lady?’ It was a scrawny sharp-eyed animal, filthy and ragged, grinning at her with no fear at all. Loops of string threaded with wooden beads dangled from its hands. ‘New in town? You need a guide? I can show you all the sights, cost you nothing.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Go away.’

‘Show you all the sights. The Arcanum, the undercity. You want wine? Food? Drugs? Anything. I know the best places.’

She seized the child’s arm. Her fingers dug through thin flesh to the bone beneath. A little more pressure would snap it like a stick. She bared her teeth. ‘Go.’

The child stared at her wide-eyed. ‘Lemme go. I never did nothing.’ It wriggled and shrieked, ‘Lemme go, lady, I din’t do nothing.’

Other humans walked past. They heard the child screaming and turned away.

She pushed the child from her. ‘Go.’

It ran.

Andra walked on. Humans were everywhere: their things, their strangeness, their filth. Her skin crawled. She had expected fewer humans would be about at night. If this was few, she couldn’t imagine what the day would bring.

Yet somewhere in this human nest was her sister, Cara. She had to find her, to take her revenge, and if she must wade through human filth to track her, so be it. Somewhere in the city, there must be a trail to follow. She just had to keep searching.

Clean wide streets gave way to dirtier narrower ones, where humans eyed her from doorways and windows. Noise and shouting spilled from brightly lit buildings: jangling and banging in a rhythm too fast for comprehension, slurred voices and over-loud thumps and clattering. She steered away into streets narrower yet, where rats squeaked and rustled along the gutters. Like her, they preferred quiet and shadows.

She slowed, relaxing into the relative peace. Her feet ached from walking the hard stone streets, which had seemed easy going at first, much easier than traversing deep snow. Her heart ached too, to be alone and so far from home among so much strangeness, and knowing her hunt might be far from over.

She was hungry too, her stomach savage with emptiness. The last dog meat was eaten days ago, and she’d shared that with the humans. They had offered her their own food, but it smelled bad, and she hadn’t touched it.

Ahead, another iron tree flared blue flame into the night. A shadow shifted, and a man stepped into the light, a serrated blade glinting in his hand. He bared his teeth. ‘Well, hello darling. Looking for company?’

Blood pulsed warm beneath his skin. To her hunger-sharp hearing and smell, he was transparent, this beardless youngster, who gazed at her as if she was his helpless prey, as if the mere possession of a knife made him strong and her weak. If she was human, perhaps he would be right to be so confident — but she was not human, she was lasker, and she was hungry.

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She smiled and drew her knife, the waning-moon blade she had sharpened that morning.

An iron tube clung to the side of the building, all the way from the gutter to the roof high above her. The painted metal was cool on her hands as she climbed, using the points where it was attached to the stonework as footholds. An easy climb: in moments she was twice her height from the ground.

White light shone from within, through a window. She paused to examine it. The window hole was covered with small squares of transparent hard material set in a wooden frame. Inside, an old man hunched over a table, a globe in his hands. It burned with a cold light, like the moon, so bright she could see the bones of his hands through the skin.

She had wondered why the buildings were so tall. Now she saw the inside was sub-divided into smaller spaces, though how they were reached was a fresh puzzle. Ropes, or ladders perhaps.

On and up she climbed, onto the roof which slanted to shed snow and rain. She clambered to the highest point and sat down.

The air was a little cleaner and cooler up here, the sea-breeze stronger. More importantly, though she knew humans were nearby, though she could still hear and smell them, she was alone.

The city contained too many new things, too many humans, too much filth and noise. It filled her with strangeness until she couldn’t think or breathe. In the relative peace of the rooftop and with the edge taken off her hunger, perhaps she could straighten the tangle of thoughts in her head and consider what to do.

She drew her knife and began sharpening it, to keep her hands busy while she thought.

Simon had told her the truth, she saw. The city had swallowed her sister and the human men who had taken her. To find her she might have to walk every street, which would take many days, and all of them unpleasant and uncomfortable.

She could do it, if she must. Surviving in the city would be easy; there was meat for the taking, though it wasn’t good. But she would rather finish her hunt quickly, and that would only be possible with the help Simon had offered.

Si glyph [https://i.imgur.com/mHhTdaF.png]

Simon had forgotten Athanor, and that was a shock. When he’d left his home and family behind, the city in his mind had remained the same, with all its beauty, comfort, and safety preserved in amber. And now, twenty years later, those remembered streets were hard beneath his aching feet, and he was a stranger in what had once been his home.

Last night, they’d stayed with relatives of Patla in their farmhouse outside the city. This morning, he’d washed himself and dressed in the best of his remaining clothes. Yet he still felt dirty and dishevelled, out of fashion and out of place.

Crowds buffeted him. He gaped at the luxuries piled in shops, and at swaggering youths in parti-coloured capes and pointed shoes. The holes in his mental map bemused him; when he stopped to puzzle out the maze he was beset by hawkers and beggars offering directions, for a price.

‘No, no.’ He side-stepped yet another whining urchin. ‘I have no money. Go away, damn you.’

Clanging bells and banging drums warned of a procession approaching. Muttering people squeezed to the side of the street to let a column of swaying cultists go past. They wore green flowing robes. Simon didn’t recognise the sect, though that was no surprise. The city bred mystics like flies, all offering to reveal the mysteries of creation for nothing but soul-sworn devotion and all the money you possessed.

He crossed the street when the procession had passed, and stopped by a gas-lamp to get his bearings. The solid familiarity of the cast-iron pipework and the rotten-egg smell of leaking gas reassured him. Some things, at least, had not changed, and never would.

His thick coat hugged warmth around him. Too warm—he sweated. Outside the city, winter reigned, but Athanor was cosseted by the mountain’s deep fires and the sea’s mild wet winds. What on the plains might be a blizzard fell here as dirty drizzle, insinuating damp into his collar and cuffs.

Yellow-tainted clouds hung above the rooftops, and the air was gritty and acrid, bringing tears to his eyes and a burning sensation in his nose and throat. And this also he remembered, though it had never bothered him before. Perhaps he would grow accustomed to it again, given time.

As he climbed up through the city, following the streets round the curve of the crater wall, the air cleared somewhat and he breathed easier. The crowds thinned and vanished as the houses grew bigger, older, and grander.

Naturally, the wealthy clustered on the heights where the sea-wind cleared the smog and one could enjoy, by right of ownership, fine views of the city spread below and the endless grey-green sea beyond.

Simon’s destination was the oldest and grandest mansion of all. House Oryche, which he had once called home, was a rambling hodge-podge of architecture crouched high above the city, distanced from its almost equally grand neighbours by extensive gardens, all surrounded by an eight-foot wall topped with iron spikes. A guard dressed in black House livery stood to attention by the open wrought-iron gates.

‘What do you want here, fellow?’ the guard said. He was a sleek young man, built in the dark-haired, saturnine Oryche mould—undoubtedly a relative of Simon’s in some degree.

Simon straightened his coat. ‘My business is with Lord Oryche.’

The guard sneered. ‘Get on with you.’

Simon bit back a surge of irritation. The guard’s job was to turn away beggars and hawkers, and doubtless Simon, even dressed for a Sark feast-day, appeared to be just such an undesirable. ‘My name,’ he said quietly, ‘is Simon vai Oryche. I am here on House business, and you will admit me to see your Lord. Or if you prefer, I can wait while you consult someone of more than minimal intelligence.’

‘I know no Simon.’

‘Neither your ignorance nor your bad manners are my concern.’

The guard shrugged and opened the gate. ‘Light, you’d better not be here to beg. Stick to the path, and do not go beyond the entrance hall.’

Ignoring him, Simon strode toward the house, his boots crunching on the gravel path.

The familiarity of the scene brought an almost overwhelming flood of emotion and memory. The last time he’d approached the house this way, he’d also been going to see Lord Oryche, blissfully unaware of what lay ahead.

That was the day his old life ended, the day he learned of his father’s death and dishonour, the day family, home, and future had been ripped from him.

And now he returned, to face Lord Oryche once again.