Breathing dust.

Crawling.

One step at a time. One meter at a time. One grab at a time.

Mother.

Mother!

Carved wall. Taller than Tvorh was. Concrete ground surrounding it? So hard to see, in the dust and the rubble.

Fingers feeling over it. Yes. Carved. “Public Archives of Duchy of Acerbia.” Figures and scenes in bas relief beneath the words. Didn’t matter. He knew where he was.

Safe. After a fashion. Tvorh collapsed back against the wall, drew a deep breath, and immediately fell into a deep coughing fit.

They had reactivated the defensive systems and turned them against the Archives themselves. It was madness. And somehow, Tvorh had managed to survive, dragging himself off the lawn to the long-disused vehicular entrance. He and his father had never driven in— without a biomobile, naturally, they couldn’t have— but he’d walked past the sign every day, riding on his father’s shoulders into this place. Closing his eyes, he could imagine the Welcome Frieze: twenty meters long, four meters high, made of a strange crystalline material that nothing, not bullets nor bombs, could scratch, strange carvings swooping across its face.

They said the work itself dated from the Last Era, and that Gens Nethress had merely repurposed it as a signpost, an ignominious betrayal of the work of art.

But all that it said to Tvorh right now was that he was, for the moment, safe against the defenses. Unlike his mother.

Mother!

He climbed to his feet and staggered forward into the street, where a few bystanders were beginning to gather and gaggle. He glanced back, peering through the detritus at the massive building. His bones shuddered as the defensive emplacements brought the edifice down. He could hear Ripper Vines crawling up the walls and tearing at them; shattering rumbles from bombs of unstable chemicals traversed the ground.

And the fire, too.

Senrii and Piotr.

But… Mother!

Hands reached for Tvorh, grabbed at him as he stumbled into the crowd. He was nothing more than a Sodalite novice to them, one who’d been caught too close to the blast. Or did they think he’d caused it?

“Back now, back. Come, come,” a voice came next to him, and a hand, firm but gentle, closed on his arm and guided him forward, left, right. “Easy now. We wouldn’t want to stumble, now, would we?”

The crowd fell away. Should he make a break for it? Could he manage, in his weakened state, to shrug off the cloak and run? When they were clear entirely of the crowd in a narrow alley, his rescuer/captor came around in front of him; when the voice said, “Tvorh Ortus Acerbia,” he knew he’d been made. Tvorh tried to tug his hands back into the generous folds of the garment, hoping that the excess fabric would force the man to release his hands, but his assailant held on tight, even redoubling his grip as he felt Tvorh shift.

So Tvorh brought his shin up into the man’s groin. The grip fell away as the man let out a pained cry, and Tvorh turned and stumbled toward the entry of the alley.

The man had to have accomplices. Should he get on the roofs? He didn’t know if he could make it.

Then his ears caught the sound of his assailant gasping behind him. “Your mother… is in danger!”

Mother!

Tvorh turned slowly, shook his head, rethought where he was and what he was doing. The man was kneeling on the ground, gripping his crotch and drawing in breath after agonizing breath. “I am…” the man wheezed. “Markos Tutela Nethress Ortus Ferres.” Every syllable sounded like agony. “We received… new intelligence. My Erus dispatched… me, but I was… too late. I am sorry. Gens Nxtlu grows impatient. They intend to… break through. I was to… override the Maga’s orders… and command her to… proceed immediately to—”

But Tvorh was already running down the street, shedding the Sodality garments as he went. As he raced toward the nearest fissure, as he powered through it, one overriding thought drove him forward.

Mother!

He oriented himself by second nature as he raced the shattered halls of the Chasm. The map he’d formed in his mind of the twisting caverns guided him subconsciously as he descended into the Labyrinth. His feet refused to relent, and he never asked them to do so; his whole body was in agreement that there was no time to spare. He refused to notice the burning in his lungs or the shakiness of his legs until, an eternity later, he stood before the pink quartz door.

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He opened it, and as it dilated to reveal the vast cavern of the libraratory, he fell to his knees. The miles-long run had taken from him what little strength he had had remaining. His lungs begged for oxygen; his muscles begged for rest. Would he be able to make the descent down the wall?

Questions were useless. He had to act or lose his mother forever. Tvorh placed his hands on the ground, grunted, and stood.

The back of his head rose into the barrel of a gun. A gently menacing voice intoned, “Gens Nxtlu thanks you for your aid, commoner.”

Then there was darkness.

***

“Our guest appears to be awakening.”

Where…? What…?

Pulsing pain in the back of his head.

“Forgive me, my Erus.” A familiar voice, straining at the edges. Figures swimming into focus. A man-shaped blur, standing at an odd angle. Markos—? “If I linger longer, I may be missed.”

“Go, then.” A dark blur, a wave of a fuzzy hand. The words were smooth but bore a dangerous edge. “I dismiss you. Your daughter will remain under my protection.”

Hesitation. “Thank you, Erus.”

The dark figure moved closer as Tvorh blinked away the dryness and the pain. A door shut somewhere in the distance as a bald head came into focus. “Good boy. You are a very good boy.”

“Iiii…”

“I did not give you permission to speak.”

Ten thousand suns’ worth of heat and pain burst through Tvorh’s veins. He screamed and bucked as the fire coursed through his body. All at once, the agony vanished, and his muscles went limp as he tried to catch a breath.

“And well strapped in, too.” The face— Dux Ilhicamina; he recognized it now—

Dux Ilhicamina—

—smiled, and Tvorh felt a touch near his wrist. He jerked his hand back.

It refused to move.

“As I said, you are well strapped in. Do not resist. That would merely indicate to me that you are still feeling intractable.” Ilhicamina enunciated every syllable softly, perfectly, as if he were an indulgent parent lecturing a recalcitrant child. A chill coursed down Tvorh’s spine.

Ilhicamina glanced upward, his eyes fixed on some point that Tvorh couldn’t see, and smiled. “Ah, there we are,” the Dux said. “Fear demonstrates respect.” He fixed his gaze again on Tvorh. “And it is only natural to feel fear in your position. You ought not to fight it.”

Tvorh was standing, though he had no strength. Something held him up in an upright open sarcophagus of vines and veins. His feet were stuck; so were his hands. No matter how he struggled, he couldn’t free himself from his prison.

Ilhicamina reached to the side of the verdant sarcophagus where Tvorh couldn’t see, and something wiggled at the back of Tvorh’s neck. “That,” the Dux said amiably, “is an external vein. The Citran Fire-vine is an old pedigree, a design from the Last Era, which produces a number of industrial saps. Alcoholic, naphtha, and stranger substances.” He wiggled the vein again. “Which I may direct anywhere I in your body I like. And I may watch your body’s reaction through the nerves in that vein, which have bonded to your nervous system.” He looked again at the point above Tvorh’s head. “So brave, but I can see your shuddering. There is more to the control of fear than merely preventing its outward signs. But why so fearful? I promise, you have nothing to fear from me. Go ahead. Speak.” The man leaned back magnanimously.

“You’re hurting me,” Tvorh croaked.

A horrific pulse of burning agony raced up and down his spine, growing stronger and stronger at each turn, until Tvorh feared it might break him in half. Then it vanished into nothingness.

“I have made a mistake of clarity,” the Dux said. “You have nothing to fear from me so long as you speak in turn and address me properly. A dog licks its master’s boots; the least I expect of you is to address me deferentially. Now, as to your pain: I apologize for the precautions, but I thought it more prudent to take them unnecessarily than to lack them at a necessary moment, and you must admit that you have been unconscionably presumptuous during our interview thus far. In the interests of more quickly addressing our matters of business, however, I will forgive you.”

Tvorh said nothing.

“The proper response for a beast would be, ‘Thank you, Erus.’”

Tvorh held his tongue. Ilhicamina’s dark visage grew stormy, but Tvorh didn’t speak a word.

Pain flooded his body again, and his teeth crunched together so powerfully that he imagined they might shatter. Someone in the distance was screaming. No, it was him, wasn’t it? He fought back the cries, tried to fold them into a hum, to bleed away the pain through the wordless noise of the throat, but the screams would not cooperate.

“My, my,” Ilhicamina clucked from a universe somewhere beyond the fire. “This is an inauspicious beginning.” The torment ceased, and Tvorh sagged back down. “I had hoped to ask you for your aid in opening the doors of this ancient place. I have heard it said you believe your mother to control its operations? A curious superstition, but in accordance with the evidence. The entryway locked entirely immediately after we brought you into our custody. Not even you can open it now. It is well that I had the foresight to jam open the doors, or else we would be trapped in here. Can you imagine the horror of that? In any case, superstition or no, I was willing to indulge it by offering both of you safety and freedom, but how can I make such an offer to a beast too stupid to recognize a human? Tell me, Tvorh, what will it be?” The Dux spread his hands wide. “Safety? Freedom? All I ask is your help.”

If the Dux was being honest, then Tvorh could take his mother and go. Perhaps…

“Yes.” The Dux smiled as he looked above Tvorh’s head. “There is a good boy.”

What was he thinking, cooperate with Nxtlu? Who was responsible for his family’s exile into the lower levels of the Chasm in the first place? Who had rounded up hundreds of the disenfranchised in an attempt to find his sisters? Who had poisoned Tvorh’s lungs and tracked him all the way across the city?

Tvorh gathered up a deep breath, but before he could spit his defiance, sledgehammers of agony were shattering his bones once again.

“If you are listening, mother of this dear boy,” Ilhicamina said distantly as Tvorh’s body was being pulverized into atoms, “I do hope you know that my offer still stands. That’s enough for now, my good boy. I shall see you soon.”

Tvorh drifted through an ether of torment, preferring the feverish dreams to his waking state. Consciousness meant pain. Even so, when his exhaustion or the echoes of agony or whatever they were pumping into his body did overwhelm him and throw him into the darkness—

‘What is the password, Markos?’

‘Thank you, Aoife. Is our vessel ready?’ ‘Of course, just as you asked.’

‘No, Hrega, hold the fork like this and the knife like this.’

—The dreams only left behind a greater gaping hole of regret as he second-guessed the choices that had brought him here.

Trapped, alone, immobile, there was only one thing certain to him, only one way to honor his father’s memory.

He would die in this place rather than let Gens Nxtlu take his mother.