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

Andra stalked across the roof. The sky was a dirty orange bowl of smog lit from below by the city’s lights. Still warm air carried a thousand smells, a thousand stories to choose between.

She paused to glance behind. Sam hadn’t followed her; that was good. The boy was only a boy, and human, but she liked his company. In an odd way, he reminded her of her sister Cara. Once Cara had followed her as Sam did, full of innocent questions and chatter.

But that was long ago and far away.

Lying on her belly on the cool, hard tiles, she peered over the edge of the roof. Her breathing came faster and her heart sped at the nearness of her prey. She stilled herself. The hunt was not over: she must find a way into the building.

There were several windows on the upper floor. She worked her way along the roof, checking each, until she found one that had only darkness and silence behind it.

She hung from the edge of her roof. The raucous strains of an accordion drifted up from the street below. Her feet found a toehold on the window sill and she transferred her grip to the wooden frame. An uncomfortable position, holding on by toes and fingertips, hanging above the hard street, but she only needed a moment.

Down the street, a woman shouted in drunken rage. A dog barked.

The wood, soft with rot, splintered as Andra levered the window open with her knife. Once the gap was large enough, she sheathed the knife and used her hands to open the window. It juddered and squeaked against the frame as she lifted it, but nothing moved inside.

She slipped through the half-open window. Her feet landed on the wooden floor of a long, narrow room running the length of the building. There were doors on either side, all closed. Muffled voices came from behind them. The smell of human sweat and filth was thick in the air, along with human foods. Mixed in with it was the scent of the man Chase — sour and strange.

Soundlessly, she prowled from door to door. He had been here, not long before. He was close. She stopped. From this door, his scent was strong. Two human men were inside.

Instinct urged her to barge through the door, to take the prey by surprise. Her heart thumped, sending blood surging through her veins. She was strong and ready, the humans unprepared. Still, she hesitated. The man Chase had a gun.

Sam had explained to her what it was, this weapon that spat fire. Chase had killed a lasker with it before. He could kill her too.

But the gun, as she understood it, required preparation. The men behind the door were not expecting an attack, so they would not have the gun ready to use. She would be on them before they had time to think or move. So she need not be concerned about the gun.

She examined the door. It was wood, and old, the handle a bar of black iron. Doors were a thing she had learned since coming to the city. One of many things she had learned. Humans had such complicated lives, full of so many unnecessary made things. Doors, at least, she understood now. She gently turned the handle.

The door didn’t open.

She stepped back, frowning. Turning the handle should have opened the door. It had always worked before. But something in this door had lodged against the frame — it was stuck.

Someone moved inside the room. The door clicked and swung open, and the man Chase stared at her. His mouth opened as if he were about to say something.

She punched him in the throat. He stumbled back, his face turning red. She shoved him into the room, followed him in, and shut the door behind her.

Another man lurched to his feet. He was like Chase, but shorter and his bulging eyes stared in different directions. He seized a chair and swung it at her. The leg hit her shoulder and snapped.

She kicked him in the stomach, and followed up with a punch as he folded. He sprawled on the floor.

Chase snatched up the remains of the chair. She drew her knife.

‘You’re going to regret this,’ he said. ‘Whoever you are. No one messes with me or my brother.’ The words were loud but his gaze was fixed on her knife.

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‘Answer me,’ she said, ‘or you die.’

He stared at her and laughed. ‘I know what you are. You’re a long way from home, lasker. What are you doing here?’ He frowned. ‘Is it something to do with that lasker girl we caught?’

‘Where is she?’

He laughed again. ‘Stupid savage. You come all this way, and you have no idea what you’re doing. Your little friend’s gone. You’ll never see her again. Forget it and run along home, while you still can.’

‘She is my sister.’ On the floor, the other man groaned. Andra pointed the knife at him. ‘Your brother? I only need one to talk.’

Chase flinched. ‘Don’t. Don’t touch him, or I swear I’ll—’

She had the knife against his throat before he could move. ‘Answer and he lives. So will you. I swear it.’

‘All right.’ Chase swallowed. ‘The truth is, I sold her. On Lamp Street, at the sign of the Chained Serpent. Underground, that’s where you’ll find her, if she lives. But she’ll be dead by now. They never live long.’

She pressed the knife a little, so he could feel it. ‘Humans lie. You speak truth?’

He nodded fervently. ‘I have no reason to lie to you. The business is done. I was paid well. She’s gone. Are you satisfied now?’

She smiled. ‘Good.’ And she slit his throat in one smooth cut.

The brother screamed, one short yell of fear before she stabbed him too.

She sat on the bed and watched them die. Humans lied. Lasker also could lie. She had learned many new things in the city.

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

Simon broke from his trance and looked around wildly.

Jonas added a cask of powder to the stack and dusted off his hands. ‘All right?’

‘No. Start climbing.’

‘Do we have enough?’ Jonas glanced at the stacked casks.

Riga approached with another two casks.

‘There’s no time for more,’ Simon said. ‘The wyrms are coming. We have to go. You can set the powder off from a distance, can’t you?’

‘Of course. Nothing easier.’

Riga dropped the two casks onto the stack. Jonas started up the narrow ramp Simon had built to descend the shaft, and Riga followed him.

Simon hurried after. The lamps they carried threw exaggerated shadows onto the wall of the shaft as they spiralled round and up and up. The descent, he remembered, had taken a long time, but then he had been making the ramp as he went. Now he just had to climb as fast as he could until he reached the lift cage.

Once they were all in the lift cage, Jonas could send his signal to Vikki, who was hopefully waiting and not asleep. She would start the hoist.

When should Jonas set off the blast powder? Too soon, and the explosion would kill them all. They had to be at a safe distance themselves, but catch the wyrms in the open shaft. The explosion should damage them, at least. It might also collapse the shaft, but the wyrms wouldn’t be slowed by that. Earth was their element.

Simon limped on, chasing the two lamps that bobbed farther and farther above him. A sharp pain stabbed his side with every breath. All he saw was the ledge beneath his feet, a few yards of shaft wall, and those two dim points of light receding upward into the dark.

Perhaps the others had reached the lift cage already. He felt he’d been climbing forever, trapped in the sort of nightmare where one moved yet went nowhere.

One of the others stopped and reversed their course. The lamplight bobbed downward in brisk strides.

Riga — she was coming back to help him. He waved her away. ‘No, go on. Don’t wait for me.’

Ignoring him, she descended the spiralling ramp. She stretched out her hand to him and grabbed his arm, her grip painfully tight. She jerked him forward.

‘Hey!’ His boots slipped on the narrow ledge. ‘Riga!’

She twisted and pulled, and the ledge was no longer under his feet. He was flying, falling, air rushing past flailing limbs.

I’m going to die.

He slammed into the hoist chains. They brushed past him, rusty steel links racing past his horrified gaze, and then he grabbed. The chain ripped through his hands.

The weight of his body yanked on his shoulders, but his grip held. He wasn’t falling. He dangled from the chain, swaying slowly.

Above him, Riga’s lamp receded. He looked down.

A long way down, at the bottom of the shaft, a hazy light shone about the figure of a man. He tipped his head to look up at Simon and shouted: ‘Well, hello, Adept. Fancy seeing you here.’

The distance between them seemed to telescope. Simon saw the man’s face with preternatural clarity; and knew him, as he knew that insolent voice. It was the young miner, Cal, and on either side of him, a stone-wyrm writhed in slow and sinuous motion.

Simon wrapped his legs around the hoist chain and started to climb. He didn’t look down. He just climbed, pouring every ounce of strength he possessed into getting higher up the chain.

His hands slipped on the rust-crusted links. Pain stabbed along his arms and across his shoulders. He glanced down. At the bottom of the shaft, the hazy light remained. The walls of the shaft rippled like the sunlit water of a lake stirred by a breeze. The wyrms were coming.

Terror leant him new strength. He swarmed up the chain, swaying with the force of his movement.

Above, a point of light bloomed. His heart leapt.

He climbed, and his hands bled, his arms and legs cramped, and still he climbed. The walls of the shaft leaned inward; he was approaching the narrow point, and there was the life cage. The lamps shone out through the bars, and two dark figures swayed against the light. They stood face to face, mouths open, fingers jabbing.

‘The blast powder,’ Simon yelled. ‘Jonas, set off the damn powder.’ He hauled himself higher. In the lift cage, Jonas turned, his hair blazing red and his face pale in the lamplight. ‘Now, Jonas. Now.’

Simon climbed, though he didn’t know why. Another few feet wouldn’t save him. He ought to use the last seconds of his life to think of his family.

Jonas raised a scrap of paper. It flared. A bolt of blazing light spat past Simon’s ear. He jammed his metal fingers through a link in the chain and scrunched them closed.

How strange, after all this effort, to die in Sark…

He counted his last thumping heartbeats: one, two, three… The explosion came from below like a furnace-blast, a roaring hammer of burning air, bringing darkness.