Braemar was at war, again.

Green ghosts streaked down the street, mouths agape in the rain. The people huddled inside, beyond their shutters and locked doors as the weaver magic held the spirits at bay. Black-clad assassins ran headlong at royal guards and city soldiers, who swung swords and clubs at their assailants. Some bodies lay dead on the cobblestones, but some had stood again with grey fire in their eyes, to return to the fight on the Queen’s side.

The Queen herself stood on the trade road, hooded but dry, despite the rain still beating down on the city. Brown-and-grey swathes of water rushed before her at her command. Her arms shook, but her stance was firm and her eyes were fixed on a broad man in a black cloak, slipping away from the Court Judge, seeing that his way forward was impassable and that the girl who had fired the arrow at him seemed to be protecting something in the bathhouse, where thralls were flailing down the stairs towards him.

And beyond the gate…

Giants.

Two enormous, glorious, handsome, impossible beings, stomping down towards the city, their long hair flowing and tangled with vines and trailing flowers.

Centaurs with bows raised.

Pixies, wings invisible in flight, diving onto faces and necks.

The air, alight with aria magic. A cacophony screamed in the bells. Green and white and gold and orange sparked through the night sky. The sheer force of the energy in the atmosphere shattered glass and disintegrated roof tiles. A giant raised his fist and threw it down into the field, lobbing lumps of sod fifteen feet away.

Below, in the sewers, the brickwork was giving up.

*

Idris’s head rang and ached. He touched the sewer wall, saw the weaver magic struggling, and he knew he had to find a place to settle before the whole ceiling came down on him. The water was moving up the walls, no doubt to Cressida’s flood. It was easier to think of these things than of what happened if Lila bumped into the dagger-wielding maniac coming to the sewers after him.

He clutched his stiletto knife and the cane and he walked. Every few steps, the earth shook.

For a way to die, he thought, I would not pick ‘buried alive’ as a preference.

“Are you down here, boy?” came a voice.

It was not in the centre of his head, this time, and it made his skin prickle. Quickly, he turned. He could not see the speaker but it was the same voice, that man’s voice, echoing through the sewer.

“Scurrying like a little rat?” it said. “What’s down here, hmm? What are you trying to lead me to? You think I will follow you wherever you go?”

Idris took a deep breath.

“You are nothing but a charlatan,” he said, as clearly as he could. “You pretend at magic you could never do on your own. I see you for what you are. A fraud.”

The voice laughed.

“Try this,” it said.

The weaver magic shook, then glowed green, and the awful tainted aria blasted through his ears.

“Bells,” Idris whispered.

He almost tripped over himself running backwards to escape the travelling cracks of bright green that hurtled across the brickwork. The crumbling sounds grew deeper. The ground shook again.

Panic and instinct gave way to despair the moment he saw the light overtake him. It would not have mattered if he had been given a head start. Within seconds, all of the sewer wall was crackling with green, and when the first few chunks of brick fell, Idris hugged the cane and the knife to his chest and threw himself down into the water channel.

Then the gold light went out, and the bricks gave up.

It could have been another tremor, or a giant’s footstep, but whatever it was, it knocked the wall to Idris’s right straight down and over him. Bricks punched his back and shoulders; he dug his head between his elbows and gritted his teeth. Dust scratched his cheeks. Without thinking, he tucked his good leg into his stomach.

When the noise was over, he coughed and wriggled. To his relief, the broken brick shifted when he moved his arm. He dragged himself, very carefully, forwards, pushed his head up and through the layer of rubble.

It was thinner than he had thought – it seemed only the fascia of the sewer wall had dropped – but his appreciation was short lived when he tugged his right leg and it did not come.

Idris swallowed, calmed himself. He twisted onto his back, sat up, looked at the wall. It had covered the channel like a misshapen bridge, but he was not trapped. Not yet, anyway. Another tremor might kill him. One brick on his skull and this could be over.

“Did that do for you, necromancer?” the voice called. “No?”

Breathing hard, now, Idris pulled his leg harder. Nothing.

There was not a lot of time. He supposed he should be thankful that it was only his good boot that was trapped, and not his one remaining leg.

Quickly, he took his stiletto and sliced his trouser leg off. Above, brick dust sprinkled on his head. The rest of the sewer wall was going to come down right on top of him if he did not move.

Beneath his trouser fabric was the special girdle, hooked to the belt on his waist. If he was not careful, he was going to slice an artery with his left-handed grip on the dagger, but he had no other option. Idris slid the stiletto blade beneath the leather on his thigh and pulled up, hard. The leather did not give.

“Come on,” he whispered, slicing frantically.

A brick slammed down by his left elbow. The green glow invading the weaver magic pulsed; the aria pounded in every heartbeat, slightly off-key, weirdly paced. In the odd light, the slither of blood from the accidental nick in his thigh looked black.

The strap finally snapped. He wriggled his thigh loose and pulled. Still, his stump would not come free.

“Curse you, you useless lump of meat,” he hissed, leaning forward further to get the lower belt. “Should have taken you off at the hip –“

He flinched as the right wall burst off the foundations. A piece of brick slammed into his cheek, taking his breath, misguiding his cutting hand. In the dust and the flashing lights in his eyes, he could not see the shin strap. It was getting hard to breathe.

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With the cane still in his right hand, he used his fingertips to feel for the leather. His breath sounded fast; he was starting to get dizzy. Somewhere, his assailant was gaining on him. He had to make this count.

There – the shin strap. He shoved the blade beneath it, feeling his skin slice with his haphazard aim, and he cut upwards.

His stump finally came loose, almost upending him with the momentum.

“Move, Idris,” he whispered to himself, using the cane to drag himself back to his only foot.

The shaking in every limb was terrible. He only stood for a moment before another tremor threw him to his knees hard and he coughed all of his breath out.

His last stand, then, would be here.

He turned to face the wall of rubble, shifted his weight and sat deep into his stance.

“Left leg, two more degrees,” he whispered, correcting himself. “Arms parallel, shoulders tight, head high.”

It had worked on the crow, hours before. It could work again.

Idris balanced the cane on his palms, held it high, gripped it with white knuckles and breathed deep and long, into his stomach.

The aria felt awful, broken and stilted. There was noise everywhere, smashing through his consciousness like a hundred cymbals crashing at awkward times. This time, though, he knew the dance. He was not off-guard. He had expectations.

“This is the plan, correct?” said the voice, sounding closer now, inside and outside of Idris’s head. “I follow the bait and the bait catches the bad man. I wonder what a necromancer’s soul inside this dagger might do. Shall we find out?”

“How about,” Idris whispered through the notes of the aria, “you come and try it?”

“Ah, there we are,” said the voice, dripping with satisfaction. “Finally, an even playing field. You are a boy no longer.”

“Braemar is where I cut my teeth,” said Idris, feeling the heat in his mouth, on the back of his lips. “You are nothing. They call me The Puppeteer. I won a war. You have killed men with the curtain of parlour tricks and false magic. I killed men with their dead friends.”

“Oh, you are brave now, little morsel of bait.” The voice laughed. “I want to know how brave you will be with my dagger at your throat.”

“Then stop stalling and come kill me.”

Idris dug deep inside the notes, pulled complex incantations to the front of his mind. The fire of the aria flushed his cheeks, dripped sweat from his brow. His legs twitched. His phantom foot burned and throbbed.

“Music of mortal man,” he said, each word tasting like bonfire smoke, “dress this weapon with your sweet melody.”

Grey fire enrobed the cane’s shaft from his fingers, gathered from the air. Idris blew the notes out, but he was not done.

He had to make the Nexus of Control work. There would be no mistakes, not like at Harran Pass. This time, he was going to tear the aria away from the faux-necromancer and use the disorientation to destroy the Spirit Dagger.

If he failed…

The Queen knew what to do if he failed.

Focus.

He tilted his right thigh just half-an-inch further out.

He had taken his biggest, most important breath when he saw the black figure leap over the rubble wall and spin the green-glittering dagger around his fingers.

“Easy pickings,” the figure said, and raised the weapon.

Idris abandoned his Nexus and thrust the cane, hard, upwards. The power of his shove and the added cushion from the death aria around the weapon took the black figure by surprise. He staggered back, dropped into a fighting stance.

“Oh, you can fight,” he said, laughing again.

Idris lifted his right leg, as if to stand, and was a moment too late in remembering that he had cut his prosthetic clean off.

He slammed the cane down on his right side to stop himself falling, and, open, he watched helplessly as the black figure came at him again. He had to sacrifice his position for his safety; he had no idea what would happen if the dagger cut him. Quickly, he snatched the stiletto up from where he had dropped it and, with a back-hand grip in his non-dominant hand, punched it towards the thigh of his assailant.

The black figure darted out of the way at the last second, hissing. His hood fell back and he stood, gasping, gazing upon Idris.

The black clad figure was no more than a man maybe Idris’s age, but harder, sharper. His dusty-brown hair flopped just above his eyes as he took his beat, waiting for Idris’s next move. He looked familiar, but Idris could not place him.

“I’ve killed aria magicians better than you,” the man said.

“Better, or with a full contingent of limbs?” said Idris, his voice raspy from the magic. The man laughed.

“You are funny, little man.”

“How embarrassing it must be, being unable to stab a man who cannot rise from his knees,” spat Idris, holding his cane in front of his body, again.

“What is your play, here?” said the man, his face a mixture of bafflement and spite. “You cannot best me in combat. You cannot relax into your stupid little songs without leaving yourself defenceless. You are dead, you know that, don’t you?”

“Death is temporary.”

The man chuckled. “This is hardly even fair. How pathetic.”

He brought a knee up, fast and vicious, to Idris’s temple, and hit only the cane, but Idris felt the wood give under the strike. He could not focus on the aria and the fight at the same time. Either he fell into the Nexus or he gave it up entirely – but without the Nexus, there was no guarantee that he would have the protection and the power necessary to succeed.

“You are fast,” said the young man.

Idris made his choice.

He drove the stiletto dagger right through the top of the young man’s boot.

The flesh gave with the power of his punch; the young man howled as the blade went through skin, muscle, and out the other side. Idris, with the moment he had gained, settled back into his stance, forced the breath into his body and let the aria fill him completely.

Most aria magicians warned against the Nexus of Control. To give oneself so freely to the inherent magic in the air was to give oneself over to chaos. Aria magicians had burned themselves up from the inside out with a single wrong move, a misplaced foot, a casual word, a slip of concentration. In the safety of the guard captain’s office, Idris managed it one time, and was able to strip the death aria completely out of a reanimated crow.

Here, he was sure he was about to burn.

The heat flooded through his outspread arms, radiated through his open hips, his watering eyes. The young man, gazing at him, both hands trying to wrest the stiletto from his foot, had his mouth agape. Every muscle felt warm and separate from the others. Every bone hummed. Idris felt the tainted aria running around behind his eyes and he turned his hands upward, breathed deep again and said, in a resonant, cold voice,

“Loose.”

This time, he felt it scorch his vocal chords, his windpipe, as the word entered the air.

The green in the bricks disappeared.

The young man raised the Spirit Glass dagger high.

Idris wrenched the orb on the top of the cane open and the terrible screeching maelstrom assaulted his every sense.

And the aria he had not fully released, not properly, gripped his stomach hard and squeezed.

He choked, gasped, and the young man drove a knee right into his face.

Idris felt the back of his head connect with brick and the aria tear out of his body in a hard gasp, and above him, through the tears streaming from Idris’s eyes, was the young man, and the dagger came down.

He braced the cane against the back of his left arm and the Spirit Glass bounced off the wood once more, but the shard in the head was right by his ear now and it hurt, boring into his consciousness with a hundred sharp drills. His mouth tasted like blood. His nose stung.

Snarling, the young man kicked the cane. It splintered into two halves.

Idris forced the sharp end in his right hand into the back of the man’s leg. He howled, blood spurting.

“Stab me!” Idris screamed. “Do it!”

The young man obliged.

The Spirit Glass dagger pierced the fleshy part of Idris’s shoulder. He cried out – it felt like ice and hot oil – and he pushed the shard right against the blade.

The vibration was fierce. The young man, eyes wide, tried to pull the dagger away, but Idris grabbed the hand on the hilt and held it in place and forced the shard against its brother. It resisted, like trying to push a cork underwater. Idris screamed from the centre of his gut. The sound was terrible, as if every one of Idris’s thoughts was replaced with the screams of dying cats. The exertion made white dots pulse over his vision.

A blurry, hazy circle of energy whirred around the shard, around the dagger.

“Let go of me!” the young man said, his voice desperate.

“We go together,” Idris said, but his voice was not his own. His mouth tasted of hot iron, of bubbling fury.

Grey lines appeared in the veins in the young man’s hand. They twisted through Idris’s wrist, plain against the whiteness of his skin. The shard and the dagger hummed beside each other. Idris was certain he was going to die before the weapon destroyed itself, or he was going to pass out from the strain –

And there was a bang, and a shattering sound, and the sensation of pins cutting into his cheek and wrist, and the heaviness in the air burst. All that was left was a dim, muffled ringing in Idris’s ears.

The young man, moaning, sobbing, grabbed at his hand and fell to his knees at Idris’s side. Idris lay, each breath agony, dry-heaving on his back. His stump, strangely, felt like it was bleeding, or on fire, or dissolving, or…

“Idris?”

“Lila?” he mouthed, unable to form coherent sound.

“Idris?”

He wanted to see her face, to tell her everything was fine, but the more he wished it, the more the grey light invaded his eyes. He drifted out of consciousness to the sound of Lila calling his name and gave in to the dark and the deep.