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

Simon crashed into the floor. Blood trickled from his nose and dripped onto the rug.

‘You know, that rug was really quite expensive,’ Eranon said.

Riga hauled Simon back onto the chair. He slumped, his head on his chest. The taste of copper filled his mouth. His face hurt. His body hurt. Even thinking hurt. He didn’t react when Riga gripped his hair and pulled his head back.

Eranon drifted in and out of focus. Sometimes it was Simon’s father on the other side of the desk, with the same slight smile and dark distant eyes.

Riga released him. ‘Worthless idiot. I don’t think he knows anything.’

Worthless. Yes, that’s me. Thought flickered: maybe he should try to make something up about the codex. But then Eranon would probably kill him, so that would be stupid. Or would it? He wasn’t sure he cared anymore.

‘I’d like to recover the codex, but you’re right. This grows tiresome. Perhaps—’

A loud bang rattled the glass window. Explosion, Simon thought. Some distance away. And then another bang, and another.

Eranon stood. ‘What—’

An explosive boom shook the house. The floor shuddered; the glass windowpane cracked from side to side.

Riga clutched Simon’s chair. Eranon clung to the desk. From outside came shouts, the slamming of doors, the rapid hammer of boots on floorboards.

Silence fell. Eranon straightened. ‘Go see what’s happening.’

Riga eyed Simon.

‘I don’t think he’s any danger to me,’ Eranon said. ‘Go.’

No danger to him. No danger to anyone. Simon doubted he had the strength to stand. A small child might knock him down. He couldn’t run. Couldn’t fight, even if he had a weapon. He was so weak, so helpless, they hadn’t even bothered to tie his hands. He fumbled his left hand to his trouser pocket, found the smooth steel of the bodkin pinned into the seam.

Riga left the study, closing the door behind her.

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

Andra stepped through the ruined doors of the house.

Lorie stood in the middle of the hall, burning. Fire wreathed her, the flames rippled by a breeze that was cold, not hot, thick with the smell of death and terror.

Though Andra had made no sound a human would hear, Lorie turned. Andra froze. ‘Lorie,’ she said quietly. ‘What you do?’

‘Andra.’ Lorie frowned. ‘Sam?’

Cara crept into the doorway. Andra glared at her. Why was Cara here, still following Andra like a puppy? Did she think herself forgiven, because Andra hadn’t killed her in the pit? If so, she was mistaken.

But then, why was Andra herself here? Sam had told her to help Lorie, yet Lorie was clearly in no danger. The girl had power, too much power, the irresistible power of an angel or an ice-storm in its fury. One didn’t help such things: one hid from them and prayed to be ignored.

Such was Lorie, who had told Andra to look after Sam. Which Andra hadn’t done, not exactly. ‘Sam is well. What you do here?’

Movement caught her eye. A woman stood at the top of the stairs. She was tall and thin, pale skin stretched over bone. Her hair was shaved close to her scalp. She wore black metal and a red cape, and her eyes were the eyes of a predator.

‘There’s something I need,’ Lorie said. ‘Do you intend to stop me?’

Stop her? Andra shook her head emphatically, her gaze fixed on the woman who was descending the stairs. The stranger smelled of blood, Simon’s blood. ‘Simon is here. Up there.’

Lorie turned to face the stairs. Fire flowed from her into wavering shapes almost like animals, though not of any sort Andra had seen. The flame-beasts bounded up the steps toward the woman. Where they passed, wood charred and smouldered.

The woman leaped over the banister. Twice her height she fell, and landed on her feet, and she should have crumpled with broken legs — but did not. She straightened from the crouch she’d landed in.

Lorie’s fire-beasts prowled the staircase, which now burnt fiercely. Flames licked higher and sparks drifted in the air like snowflakes.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Andra looked from the woman to Lorie to the burning stairs. Simon was upstairs, and hurt, perhaps badly. Her heart thudded, and she understood suddenly, why Cara followed her. Cara was scared of the city, scared of humans. All was strange to her, except Andra — her kin. A lasker alone, without kin, was nothing.

And Andra had been without her kin for too long, so she had attached herself to Simon and his family. Although they were human, and untrustworthy, and would never treat her as kin in return, or even understand what it meant, she had felt for them as if they were kin.

She had been insane, and still was. Instead of running like any sane person should, she stood in a burning house beside the sister she had meant to kill, and a human girl with enough power to frighten angels. All of them insane together.

The mad-eyed woman who jumped like a cat drew her sword and grinned as if she knew how the joke ended.

‘Go to Simon, Lorie,’ Andra said. ‘He needs you.’

Lorie climbed the burning stairs. The fire gathered to her as she passed, clothing her in billowing flame, leaving behind only charred, steaming wood.

Andra flexed her claws. Her heart beat strongly. Blood surged in her veins, and she smiled with the exultant joy of being alive and strong. She beckoned to the tall woman. ‘Come. Come and die.’

Sword held low, the woman closed. She eyed Andra. Cara lurked to one side. ‘What manner of creature are you?’

‘The same as you.’ Andra bared her teeth. ‘Only better.’

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

Eranon regarded Simon from behind the desk, his fingertips resting on the agate islands of the Sothron Empire. ‘You really don’t know where the codex is, do you?’

Whatever had caused the explosion, there was silence now. No more panicky rushing through corridors, only a wary settling of dust. Blood dribbled from Simon’s nose. He didn’t know where the codex was, had no idea, not even a plausible lie to offer. He shook his head.

Eranon sighed. He picked up a knife that lay on top of some loose papers and strolled round the desk to Simon’s side. He set the blade to Simon’s throat. It was a slim polished-steel dagger, double-edged like a paperknife. ‘I regret this, you know,’ he said. ‘You were always my favourite cousin. Any last words?’

The blade was cold against Simon’s skin. Simon looked Eranon in the eye. ‘Yes…’

‘Well?’

Simon grabbed Eranon’s knife arm. Eranon pushed against his strength, trying to bring the knife to bear. With his left hand, Simon drove the bodkin as hard as he could into the fleshy base of Eranon’s thumb.

Eranon yelled and wrenched himself from Simon’s grip, somehow still keeping hold of the knife. He backed away.

‘You haven’t changed at all.’ Simon lurched to his feet, grabbing the edge of the desk to steady himself. The knife had nicked his throat; he felt the sting of the cut and the warmth of trickling blood. ‘You were never any damn good in a fight.’

A white-hot ball of fire crashed through the door, flew between them, and exploded against the window. Glass shattered; the curtains burst into flame. Lorie stepped through the burning remnant of the door.

Simon and Eranon both stared, equally shocked.

Lorie pointed at Eranon. ‘You,’ she said. ‘It is you.’

Eranon cringed and raised the knife. Fire boiled from Lorie’s fingers, the flames reflected in Eranon’s terrified eyes.

Simon stepped between them. ‘Lorie, stop. What are you doing?’

She frowned. ‘What I must. Do not obstruct me, Father.’

The knife dropped to the rug with a soft thump. Eranon scrambled to the corner of the room and wrenched at the bookshelf. A door-sized section swung outward and he dived through. The shelf swung shut behind him.

Light. Simon gazed after him, too astonished to think until the fact of it sunk in: Eranon had fled. Huh. He really does like his secret doors. He sank back into the chair, breathing in a vast relief. By rights he should be dead. He really expected to be dead, and instead he was alive: bruised and battered but alive, and free.

Lorie still stood on the rug, burning. The curtains framing the shattered window were well aflame and fire licked at the bookshelves. Before long, the whole room would be in flames and the house with it. Leaving before then seemed a good idea.

The whole House might burn down. Simon thought he ought to care, but he didn’t. People mattered, not stone and mortar, not things. The desk with the inlaid map, he’d mourn that, perhaps. It was probably irreplaceable.

Lorie stared at the corner where Eranon had disappeared. ‘I need him.’

‘What?’ Simon straightened his bruised body. ‘No, you don’t. Let’s get out of here. What’s going on?’

‘I must have him.’ She strode toward the hidden door.

Simon put his hand on her arm.

She glared at him. ‘If you obstruct me, I will destroy you.’

‘What?’ Simon shook his head. Lorie would never say such a thing — not to him, not to anyone. ‘Are you all right? What’s happened to you?’

‘I am a vessel of Power,’ she said. ‘Do not try to stop me.’

The flames around her flared hotter and higher. He snatched his hand back. The blood-stained rug smoked and charred with the pungent smell of burning wool.

Simon swallowed. ‘Lorie, you don’t want to kill anyone. Not even Eranon.’ Only what looked at him through her eyes was not Lorie, not entirely. He didn’t know what it was, but it was powerful, and dangerous, and quite capable of killing him. He just had to hope Lorie was still in there, somewhere. ‘What Power?’

‘The Makers buried me deep, that I might survive,’ she said, her tone strangely detached, flat and impersonal. ‘The girl carried a seed from Sark. The seed grew in her. The boy too was a vessel. He passed the Power to her, that we might be complete. Only the last part remains and we will be ready.’

None of which made any sense to Simon, except for one thing. ‘Sark? Is the Power in you the one from the tomb in Sark?’ Impossible, surely—

He felt he’d wandered into a play having missed most of the second act. Only this was a tragedy, and his own family were somehow the principal actors, and… the analogy really didn’t help. It was all too confusing. He had never enjoyed puzzles. In his classes, he’d plodded where other boys raced, wrestled with concepts others easily grasped. He’d persevered anyway—partly for love of the art, mostly out of sheer stubbornness.

But Lorie had seen the inscriptions in the tomb. Only for a moment, and she’d said she’d seen nothing, but Lorie had the knack of remembering what she’d seen and read. A glance might have been enough.

A cold hand squeezed his heart. ‘Listen to me. That thing inside you, it destroyed Sark. It was in Cal, like it’s in you now. It ripped the town apart and it killed everyone. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

Her puzzled expression was heart-wrenchingly familiar. ‘Evil must be destroyed,’ she said. ‘To protect the good.’

‘No one in Sark was evil.’ He gazed into her eyes, searching for something of Lorie, some spark of human feeling. ‘You remember. You had friends, people you grew up with. Everyone died, even little children. They weren’t evil.’

She blinked. The fire around her faltered and subsided, and suddenly she was Lorie again, her face alive with grief and horror.