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

A squad of Phylaxes guarded the gates of House Oryche. Riga marched Simon past them and dragged him into the entrance hall. A Phylaxes troop-captain passed them, on his way out, pointedly ignoring Riga. Another Phylaxes descended the stairs — if Simon hadn’t known better, he might have thought himself in the wrong House.

A middle-aged woman glided toward them. She at least was Oryche: dark hair, tailored black clothing, and dark suspicious eyes. ‘Riga.’ Her gaze flicked to Simon. ‘If you have business with his lordship, it must wait.’

‘Is he in his study?’

‘He’s in a meeting. He’s not to be disturbed.’

Riga’s hand tightened on Simon’s arm. She strode toward the stairs.

The woman bustled after her. ‘His instructions were to admit no one.’

‘Get out of my way.’ Riga stomped up the stairs. ‘I am not no one.’

The woman pursued them to the door of Eranon’s study, the familiar door marked with the labyrinth symbol, sparking memory: Jonas and Vikki and his own furtive, guilty fear as they crept about the gloomy House. And now Jonas was dead, the codex lost, and here he was again. It felt like something that had happened to another man altogether, in another lifetime.

Riga flung the door open. Eranon sat at his desk, facing an older Phylaxes man, his red hair fading to yellowy-grey. Both turned at the interruption.

‘I told her you weren’t to be disturbed,’ the woman said breathlessly.

Eranon waved his fingers at her dismissively. ‘It’s all right, Galet. We were about to conclude in any event.’ He eyed his visitor. ‘Were we not?’

The older man stood stiffly. ‘The essentials have been covered.’ He nodded. ‘Lord Eranon.’

‘Lord Lavan.’ Eranon inclined his head in return. ‘Galet will see you out.’

So this was Lavan, Lord Phylaxes. By reputation, a man with more than the usual amount of prickly Phylaxes pride, yet Eranon had him on a string.

Riga pushed Simon through the door and set him in the chair before Eranon’s desk. He didn’t resist. He’d learned the futility of that on the long walk across the city; she was a lot stronger than him. He was glad to sit, anyway. The forced march had been hard on his bad knee, which pulsed in sullen agony.

He fixed his gaze on the desk, on the world laid out in coloured minerals — such a simple, beautiful world, and how unlike reality.

‘A successful trip then?’ Eranon addressed Riga.

‘The woman lives.’

‘No matter. She’s unimportant. The Wardens?’

‘Contained. The rats never come aboveground anyhow. I don’t know why you’d bother with them.’

Eranon grimaced. ‘You don’t need to understand my decisions, Riga. Just do what you’re told.’

She grunted.

Eranon eyed Simon. ‘You’ve caused me a great deal of trouble. Where is the codex?’

‘I don’t know,’ Simon said. ’Jonas had it. What did you offer the Phylaxes to make them your lap-dogs?’

Riga struck him a stinging blow on the ear. Her fist was like a sledgehammer.

‘Who killed Jonas?’ Eranon asked.

Simon rubbed his ear. ‘I wasn’t there. Ask your pet Snakes.’

‘Where is the codex?’

‘I don’t know,’ Simon repeated sullenly.

‘Riga would like to kill you,’ Eranon said. ‘I’m happy to let her. The only reason you aren’t already dead is that I also want to know where the codex is. Sadly, I don’t think I can rely on your truthfulness. So Riga will now hurt you until you say something useful to me. Or die. Either is acceptable.’

Riga’s fist thumped into the side of his head. Simon rocked with the blow. It felt like his neck was dislocated. This would be a good time for an angel. But that wasn’t going to happen. A man could only expect one miracle in his life… perhaps two, certainly not three. This time, he was on his own.

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Sa glyph [https://i.imgur.com/plK5EWM.png]

Sam blinked and opened his eyes. He lay on sand. It was dark; a faint grey light came from above. His mouth felt like he’d been eating the sand, his face hurt, and his head was crowded with vague, chaotic images and the pressing feeling of something terribly wrong — with him, or the world, he wasn’t sure which and didn’t want to know.

Andra loomed over him. There was blood on her face and arms and matted in her tangled hair. ‘Sam. Are you well?’

Someone else huddled against the wall nearby. Even wilder looking than Andra, but under the filth and hair he glimpsed a skinny teenage girl. Andra’s sister, Cara — the memory surfaced like a fish gulping air.

More memories: this was the fighting pit at the Chained Serpent, through strangely changed. A crude stone stairway climbed to the balcony. The mouth of a tunnel gaped to one side, with rubble spread before it, as if something had blasted through the wall. A man lay among the loose stones, unmoving and bloody. Dead. The realisation stirred the sense of awful dread.

He felt like he’d woken from a nightmare, and on waking, the memory of it had slipped away, leaving only tattered fragments tinged with terror — only worse, because the nightmare had been real, and he hadn’t truly forgotten. The details were there if he chose to look. He just didn’t want to, not yet.

‘Sam,’ Andra repeated. ‘Are you well?’

He sat up. ‘Yeah. Thirsty.’

‘No water here.’ She sat back on her haunches. ‘We should go. This is a bad place.’

Sam stood. He felt shaky and light-headed, but the dizziness passed after a moment. His face hurt. When he touched it, he found blood drying on his cheek and the sharp sting of cuts.

Andra offered her hand. He froze, staring at her claws: long, curved, black claws. She had blood on her hands, and the spacing of the claws matched the cuts on his face. And there was blood on his hands too. Perhaps his own. Perhaps someone else’s.

‘Come,’ she said softly. ‘We go.’

He let her lead the way up the stairs. Cara slunk behind him, half crouching, her injured arm bound with rags.

At the top, Sam stopped to stare. He remembered the low, gloomy room thronged with swaggering men, thick with the smell of sweat and alcohol. The stairs to the street had been over there, he thought, but now it was the bottom of a pit, a hole torn open to a grey sky far above. Half the ceiling had collapsed. Legs and arms protruded from piles of rubble.

‘What happened?’ he asked.

Andra hesitated. ‘I don’t know.’

Sam felt he should know. Perhaps he did, if he thought about it — but he preferred to recall the older memory. To think he’d come alone into this place, not knowing what it was! And Dad came to find him and drag him to safety, and they’d both been rescued by the world’s greatest poet. Dad had been so angry.

It wasn’t long ago, that adventure, yet how very young and foolish he had been then. That younger Sam seemed a stranger.

More bodies caught his eye. His stomach twisted and he tasted acid at the back of his throat. He really hoped the world’s greatest poet wasn’t down here with the dead.

Andra stood in the pale daylight, looking up at the hole. She beckoned to him. Sam joined her.

Blocks of rock and masonry fallen from above made a rough stairway up to the street. Andra went first, and Cara picked her way up, careful of her injured arm. Sam scrambled after them on hands and feet.

Somewhere below them, something growled and scrabbled — human or animal, he couldn’t be sure. He glanced at Andra.

‘Hurry,’ she said.

He hurried and hauled himself the last few yards to clamber out onto the street. The sky above the roofs was leaden grey, the air damp and cool with the promise of rain. Sam turned his face upward and breathed. How long had it been since he’d seen daylight, and breathed the outdoor air? Forever, he thought.

It was late afternoon, judging by the light, but the street was deserted. Sam’s wandering gaze followed a black scorch mark on the paving stones across to a dark man-shaped lump lying in the gutter. A huge shaggy wolf nosed at it. The wolf looked up and for a heartbeat, its yellow eyes met his, then it glanced from him to Andra and Cara, and turned and loped away.

Thick grey cloud, darker than the sky, mounted above the rooftops. Smoke, he thought. Smoke meant fire.

‘Where now?’ Andra asked.

Sam’s first thought was to go home. He could return to the storeroom in the undercity — but from what Lorie had said, he didn’t think Dad was there. His frown deepened. Lorie had been with him, and she’d said… His thoughts slid past the memory.

If Lorie had been here, she had certainly gone, since she wasn’t here now. He had the impression he hadn’t wanted her to go, that it was dangerous.

‘Where did Lorie go?’ he asked.

Andra shrugged.

‘Could you follow her?’

Andra glanced around. A dull explosive thump sounded several streets away. Sam started. A pillar of thick black smoke rose above the rooftops.

‘I think,’ Andra said. ‘She will not be hard to follow.’

Andra loped tirelessly through the narrow alleys of the slums, past the workshops and factories of the industrial district, onto the broad well-paved uphill streets. Sam trotted after her, panting at the relentless pace, and Cara slunk behind.

The way was marked by burning buildings and charred bodies, ash in the air and the acrid smell of smoke. Evidence, too, of older troubles: broken shutters and looted shops, smashed windows offering glimpses of blackened rooms. The streets were deserted. Even the street-vendors and beggars were lying low.

Andra stopped suddenly. Sam slowed to a walk, glad for a chance to get his breath back. She cocked her head on one side and turned to face the way they had come. ‘Men,’ she said. ‘Many.’

Sam stood and listened. His mind still felt full of echoing spaces, his thoughts unfocused, but not so bad as at first. The run across the city had helped pull him together.

Faintly, the sound of marching boots came to him. Many men, as Andra had said. They’d probably ignore him: in Athanor, adults generally ignored children, a fact Sam had often used to his advantage. Andra and Cara though — despite a brief wash at a water trough in the slums, they were still bloodstained and wild looking.

Andra headed for a side-street. He followed her down the side of a building. A man dumping rubbish into a bin saw them, froze for a moment, then bolted through a door, scattering vegetable peelings in his wake. Andra ran on.

Sam slowed. This back street paralleled the main road. They could avoid the men they’d heard while still following Lorie’s trail, but he was curious. He whistled to Andra. She looked back questioningly.

He pointed to the roofs. ‘Let’s climb. I want to see what’s happening.’