He could keep his stupid Guilds, I didn’t care! He’d never wanted my help anyway, just taken pity on me. Poor little refugee boy. All that had ever made me useful was the Disc – my Disc – once I’d worked out what it did, and with that gone all I was to the Viceroy Chief Engineer was a nuisance. And a risk. He’d probably wanted rid of me before the campaign even began, no wonder I’d ended up on front lines!

Cheek hot and itchy where he’d slapped me but refusing to touch it, I ran up through the Deep levels. I didn’t care that things of mine were still down there on fifth, he could keep them all too. Eflan’s knife was on my belt. I should give it to Taflan, I thought, and wondered if she knew now he was dead. I should’ve told her on Ergmouth.

All the things I should have done.

Done better. Been better and braver. Never abandoned my people in the first place. Well I’d fix it and go back now where I belonged. Even if they hated me too.

I came up from second level through the southward access tunnel that linked the Deep with the martial barracks; Plamen’s old shortcut. Tazen barked and wagged his tail as if in welcome when I pushed my way into the chartroom, while a scraped and dusty ferikh and several marszals turned to see. They all looked wretched and exhausted from the retreat they’d just survived, but I tried not to think about all that; the war or that I cared and should have been there. I simply pulled off my army-issue fusil in its holster, and its ammunition bag, and slammed them down on the table. Then I strode towards the door.

Gudgeon was there. ‘Florian?’ His voice was hoarse with dust behind me.

I turned around and snipped—‘Where’s Taflan?’

Even the ferikh and his marszals paused their conversation. A little absently Gudgeon picked up my weapon. ‘Infirmary,’ he said. ‘But boy, her rest’s important. Her legs were set again, last night.’

I headed out through the barracks doors, then realised it was quicker going back the way I’d come. ‘Florian . . .?’ But he didn’t follow.

Between the royal stables, wagon depot and a servants’ bathhouse, a series of interconnected rooms and healing wards on the ground floor made up the citadel infirmary. I’d been here only once before. All afternoon there’d been a pall of heavy smoke over the Inner City, and as I got nearer I realised it was coming from that chimney; a climbing pillar of grey and black from the pyres.

I’d been expecting to find the place full of broken, wounded soldiers fresh off the front, but it wasn’t. Most of those soldiers were dead already, burned or burning even now. Among the labouring healers, across the beds, gurneys and pallets, were no more than a hundred men and women of the Mooncircle Army. Most were jhendra. How would the Engineering Guild even go on after this?

Did I care?

No I didn’t. I was here for Taflan. Give her the knife, tell her what I owed her and say goodbye. Then it was finished.

‘You again.’

The chilly greeting from the gowned figure nearby shook me out of my staring.

My anger surged.

‘Yes me!’ I yelled, not half a second after seeing it was Khalyl. Why did he hate me? ‘I never bothered you again, just like you said! I’m here for my friend, alright, my friend!’

That Antissan scowl I knew flopped off his clean-shaven face, frown-lines upending until he looked almost concerned. ‘Your friend?’

‘Taflan.’

‘Oh. Yes.’ I didn’t like the sound in his voice there, as he set down a pestle and mortar. ‘She’s not here, boy.’

My dreading eyes drifted to the pyre chimney. Please no. ‘But I thought her legs were set again. Gudgeon said she was resting.’

‘That’s true, they were. She was,’ he said. ‘And woke this morning, much improved for her rest. Indeed, dealing better with her pain than I’d thought possible for one so young. Tough girl, that one. Strong Vedish spirit. She’s gone home.’

‘Home?’ I dashed the tear.

‘To her family.’

‘Where’s—?’

But at that moment two cowled nurses shuffled close to Khalyl’s elbow, passing some message. Khalyl took up his mortar. ‘I don’t know where,’ he told me briskly, the sympathetic look still holding. ‘You must ask her master.’

But a word I’d heard the nurses say had snared attention. Refugees.

‘Wait,’ I said. Khalyl was coaxing me to follow. So I did, understanding that he didn’t really hate me after all. He was Antissan; they were rough, cold people: always had been.

I kept close behind them, past more moaning beds in gloom, stale chambers full of the seeming dead, beyond the wide foot of the chimney. The pyres weren’t on the surface but a level under this. Connected to the Deep’s furnaces maybe?

I struck the thought out of my head—it didn’t matter!

We came into a room where what almost looked like a shaft of daylight reached through pores of a high lattice. But it wasn’t daylight; only filtered triglycerate. The place smelled thick with chemicals, and there were surgeons hunched over the bedsides of patients. A gurney came in through the far door, carried by four brown-robed people, and followed by a small train of other folk from the North District. A tall, slight figure, fully cloaked, spoke to Khalyl, tone hushed and hurried.

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Behind the group was a Naemian face. It was so gaunt as to turn her cheekbones into points, and browned by the dirt. Miss Nindry stood clutching the hand of her small son. Though I’d been on my way back to them anyway, my heart lurched. Back in the borderlands, back at home, hers had been the hut closest to our own.

‘. . . and now infested with vermin,’ the cloaked woman was pressing. ‘Conditions must improve there, as must quality of fare, or we’ll face nearly a hundred sick refugees in that warehouse. This is in no one’s best interests.’

‘I understand,’ replied Khalyl. ‘Petition the Yieldmaster as you will, I’ll do my part.’

Nods were exchanged and, spirit-like, the cloaked woman turned and left the healing wing. The wardens followed without a word. Khalyl turned round. I followed his eyes to the stretcher where a grey person was lying—a carcass almost—scraping shallow breaths. It was Mother Far.

Miss Nindry had seen me. ‘Is it really you?’

I met her eyes, glad of my hood, and gave a nod.

A nervous smile flickered on her lips. ‘They said you’d been sent into the war . . .’ There wasn’t hate or disappointment in her face, but I could see she found this hard and didn’t quite know what to say. ‘It’s good to see that you are safe.’

Her son was obviously sick; he practically dangled from her grip on his hand, his breathing laboured too. Khalyl gently pried her hand from his and, with the help of another, lifted the boy onto a bed. I heard his whimper. He was so thin, they all were. How had it got so bad? They were supposed to have been looked after without me. Rusper promised.

Even through the miserable gloom Khalyl must’ve read what I was thinking. ‘City’s hazardously overcrowded, boy,’ he told me seriously as he poured a cup of water for the child. ‘The situation was severe before the hosts came from the south for this so-called gryphon miracle. Now conditions in the districts create a crisis. Food is short. Water, as you know yourself, remains strictly rationed. Domiciles in all but the wealthy quarters are overflowing. Filth and waste are abundant. Your people, I assure you, are now but suffering the same hardships as every other of modest means. We are doing what we can.’

I looked round the dismal ward of weak and sick Antissans, some clutching their stomachs and groaning, others struggling to breathe, and others still marked with ulcerous sores.

As Khalyl tended to the child, I swallowed down my shame and slowly went to join Miss Nindry at the old woman’s gurney. A nurse was gently wiping grime and sweat from the paper-thin skin of her knuckles. Her eyes weren’t clear but she was awake.

Miss Nindry placed a hand on top of hers. ‘Evelyn, can you hear me? It’s the Flints’ boy, Evelyn. The Flints’ boy’s here, do you see? Do you remember?’

The pallid eyes trembled a little before settling on my face. I moved in closer, not knowing what I’d say. What could I say? The old woman, although I’d known her all my life, was dying. But then her withered lips cracked open in a smile and she chuckled. The chuckle caught her throat and snagged a cough. The nurse brought water and Miss Nindry helped her sip.

‘Bless you, Moraig, if you’d not said, I mightn’t have known. Sarah’s lad.’

‘Yeh,’ I said.

‘And look at him.’ As she kept smiling, I doffed the lip of my hood to check it hadn’t fallen. ‘Daresay your own Sarah, the dear, would needs look twice at you to know.’

That knocked my eyes straight to the floor.

‘A hard thing, lad, to lose them so, and I was sore for it. Would I could’ve had their place that night, I’d have done it sure-hearted, in a spring-tide step!’

Again I looked at her pale eyes. I couldn’t remember a time when her body hadn’t seemed fragile to me, but she’d always had her wits and even now hadn’t lost them. A spring-tide step, I’d forgotten that Naemian saying. And I did know she meant it. Still I mumbled, ‘Shouldn’t say that.’

Another chuckle, two crisp notes, as she held down another cough. To look at her, I’d not have thought she’d have the strength even for that. ‘Erik and Sarah were the best of us, you know. Always they were.’

Miss Nindry set her other hand atop the first.

‘Why?’ I said.

Her smile drew closed, carving dry rivets in her lips, and her eyes went distant. ‘They gave,’ she said. ‘Always they gave. What were those other two lads called . . .?’ She looked the question to Miss Nindry.

‘Con,’ I answered for her, ‘and Jerome.’

‘Yes, them’s the ones, I always liked them.’ Did she even know that Con was dead, or where Jerome had found himself? I stayed silent. ‘Course, never half as serious as you.’ A lid fell closed in a wink but she’d stopped smiling. ‘Now just look at that face.’ She breathed in deep, or tried, then carefully out. ‘Them eyes have seen things.’

I ignored that.

‘They were only children,’ I shrugged back. ‘They’d lost their family. Someone had to take them in, look after them, couldn’t just leave them.’ I searched her face for more, now . . . would she know? ‘But why me? Why’d they take me?’

‘Why shouldn’t they?’ In her surprise she scored her throat and coughed again, needed more water. It was brought and she sipped more. Caught back her breath. Focus was dipping in and out behind her eyes. I should leave her to her rest. Khalyl would make sure she was cared for, comfortable.

She’d not go back.

‘I just don’t understand . . .’

‘You weren’t the first, that’s right enough,’ said Mother Far. ‘After the first they swore they wouldn’t take another. But then they did. Course they did, it’s who they were. It never mattered where you came from.’

I froze, fighting the urge to demand more. Did she think I knew what she meant? ‘What . . . Mother Far, what do you mean, where I came from?’

If only I could remember that name—the name the ghost had called me back at the Spectres! Not little spark, but something else. Maybe she’d know what it meant.

‘Mother Far?’

Her eyes were clouding, thick breaths sticking and crackling. I shouldn’t be doing this but had to know.

‘Where did I come from?’

‘South, lad, south,’ she murmured. ‘Them peoples there . . .’ Her shrivelled head shifted on the pallet. ‘Cruel thing their ways, unfeeling. Sarah . . . vowed, but . . . it was friendship in the end. Gift of love and friendship.’

Miss Nindry gave a tender squeeze to the woman’s hand, then stroked her hair. The moth-wing eyelids didn’t close, not all the way, but now she slept.