An hour later they paused in the center of a darkening field in the very middle of nowhere. The milky way made a broad swath of light across the sky. Diadem was setting, its light glittering darkly off a lake near the horizon. There were no houses visible anywhere; other than the road, the nearest feature to the landscape was a dark row of trees along a nearby escarpment.

“There she is.” Calandria pointed to a slowly falling star at the zenith. “We’re going to have to break radio silence.”

Axel nodded. If Mounce’s ship landed back at the Boros manor, it would take them a week to reach it, and by then she would surely have lifted off again. Particularly if the Diadem Swans came down after her.

They watched the little spark overhead grow. Chill autumn wind teased at Axel’s long black hair. Neither spoke. Axel wasn’t sure what Calandria was feeling, but that dot of light represented escape to him, if they could get aboard it and evade the things that were chasing it.

“We may have to act quickly,” Calandria said. “Where would be a good spot?”

“Nowhere’s a good spot,” he said. “So we might as well flag her down right here. At least it’s level and open.”

“Here goes,” said Calandria. Then her voice spoke in his mind. “This is Calandria May calling the Pan-Hellenia. Can you hear me?”

They waited in tense silence. The brightening star had begun to drift away over the lake, following Diadem.

“Hello! Yes, it’s me, Marya. Are you with Axel Chan?”

“Yes.”

“They’re behind me, so I’m coming down at your last location–”

“No! Can you find us from this signal? We’re a couple hundred kilometers south of where he last contacted you.”

“Oh. I don’t know if I can… Yes, it says it can do that. Do you have shelter?“

Axel and Calandria exchanged a glance. He squatted down and began pulling stalks of grass out of the ground. “Shit. Shit, shit shit.”

“Why do you need shelter?” asked Calandria. “Are you trying to pick us up, or–”

“Pick you up? I’m trying to stay alive! The Swans are behind me, they’re closing in. They’ve picked off every ship that’s tried to get past Diadem. I’ve stayed ahead of them this far by skimming the top of the atmosphere, but they’re all over. Everywhere! I– hang on–”

Axel could see his shadow on the grass. He glanced up, in time to see the star brighten again to brilliant whiteness, and swerve quickly in their direction. Around and above it, a coruscating glow had sprung up, like an aurora.

All over, thought Axel. Great.

“The forest,” said Calandria. “Come on!” She began sprinting. He looked up again, then followed.

Low rumbles like thunder began. Instead of fading, they grew. The sound was familiar to Axel, and unmistakable: something was coming in to land. The sound had a ragged edge to it. Years of exposure to spacecraft told him it was a small ship. The big ones sang basso profundo all the way down.

Their shadows sharpened as they ran. Axel began to feel heat on his face. The roar became a steady, deafening thunder. On the shoreline below, the crescent of sand lit amber under a midnight dawn. Axel knew better than to look directly at the spear of light settling towards them, though it seemed as though Mounce was going to bring her ship down right on top of them.

The sky was starting to glow from horizon to horizon. He’d never seen that effect accompany the arrival of a starship.

Axel redoubled his effort, though he had twisted his ankle and it spiked pain up his leg with every step. Calandria was pulling ahead, but he didn’t have the breath to spare to tell her to slow down.

Suddenly spokes of light like heat lightning washed across the sky. Their center was the approaching ship.

A blinding flash staggered Axel. Childhood memory took hold: he counted. One, two, three, four– Ca-rack! The concussion knocked him off his feet. He came up tasting grass and dirt.

Whatever that flash had been, it had happened less than a kilometer away. He blinked away lozenges of afterglow in time to see the brilliant tongue of fire overhead waver, and cut out.

A dark form fell with majestic slowness into the forest. As it disappeared a white dome of light silhouetted the treetops, and Axel felt the deep crump of impact through his feet.

Calandria was waiting at the edge of the forest. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he said through gritted teeth. “Let’s go.” They waded into the underbrush. The darkness would have been total under the trees, except that a fire had started somewhere ahead, and the sky was alive with rainbow swirls. Axel would have found them beautiful if he hadn’t been so frightened.

Of course, if there were any witnesses to this within fifty kilometers, they’d all be cowering under their beds by now. No sane person would want to be caught in the open when the swans touched ground.

It was dark enough that Axel couldn’t spot branches and twigs fast enough to prevent himself getting thoroughly whipped as they went. Stinging, his feet somehow finding every hidden root and rock, he soon lost sight of Calandria, who as usual moved through the underbrush like a ghost. He could hear his breath rattling in his lungs, and somewhere nearby the crackling of the fire. Above that, though, a kind of trilling hiss was building up. It seemed sourceless, but he knew it must be coming from the sky. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end; so did those on his arms. He might have preferred it if they were doing that from fright, but he knew it must be the effect of a million-volt charge accumulating in the forest.

“Axel!” He hurried in the direction of the voice. Past a wall of snapped tree trunks and smouldering loam, Calandria stood on the lip of the crater Marya Mounce’s ship had dug.

The ship was egg-shaped, maybe fifteen meters across. It was half-buried in the earth. Smoke rolled up from its skin, which was blackened and charred. Neither the heat of reentry nor the crash could have cindered the fullerene skin to that degree. “She can’t have survived that,” Axel said as he staggered to a halt next to Calandria. “What did they do?“

“Can’t you feel it?” she asked. Stray wisps of her hair were standing up. Little sparks danced around Axel’s fingers when he wiped them on his trousers. “They hit her with a lightning bolt.”

“Well they’re about to fire another one,” he said. “We’d better get out of here–” He was interrupted by a flash and bang! of thunder. He ducked instinctively, though it had come down at least a few hundred meters away.

“There!” Calandria pointed. Warm orange light was breaking from somewhere around the curve of the egg. A hatch had opened.

They clambered over the smoking debris, and rounded the ship in time to see a small figure step daintily out of the hatch, arms out for balance.

“Hello!” shouted Marya Mounce. “Is anybody there?”

The woman revealed by the glow of the ship’s lights was not the brave rescuer Axel had hoped for. Marya Mounce was tiny, with pale skin and broad hips. Before seeing her face he noticed the frizz of her dun-coloured hair, which was held back by an iridescent clip. She was dressed in a blouse that swirled like oil, and a black skirt. It was evidently some inner system fashion, spoiled by the kakhi bandoliers slung over her shoulders.

What made his heart sink, though, was the sight of her feet.

Mounce had succumbed to a fashion sweeping the inner worlds, and had her Achilles tendons shortened. Her toes, the balls of her feet and calf muscles were augmented, so she stood en pointe at all times. All she wore on her feet were metallic toe-slips. He doubted she could run, much less climb over the broken trees strewn about this new clearing.

“There you are!” she shouted as Axel and Calandria fell over one last log. “See, we survived! You–you are May and Chan, aren’t you?”

“Who else would be crazy enough to be here?” he said. “Are you alone?”

“Yes, it’s just me.” Mounce turned and waved vaguely at the ship. “I was doing a demographic survey, it involved some close orbits, so that’s why I got caught in the–”

General Lavin laid his quill down wearily, and peered at the manacled prisoner Hesty had led in. “Why is this of interest?” he asked.

Hesty grimaced. “I hate to bother you with trivial matters. This man is a looter, we caught him skulking in the ruins of one of the outlying villages.”

“Yes? So execute him.” Lavin turned his attention back to his plans.

“He claims to have valuable information to sell. About the siege.”

“Torture it out of him.”

“We tried.”

Lavin looked up in surprise. The prisoner was a small man, wiry and grey-haired. He stood in an exhausted stoop, trembling slightly. His left arm was broken, and had not been set, and there were burn marks up and down his bare torso, and rope burns around his throat. He glared dully but defiantly at Lavin from his good eye; the other’s lid was bruised and swollen, as were his lips.

Lavin stood and walked around him. A large portion of the skin was missing from his back; the flesh there wept openly.

“He completely defied the torturer,” Hesty explained. “He insists on speaking only to you. And,” he shook his head in disbelief, “he wants to bargain!”

Lavin half-smiled, and came around to look the prisoner in the eye. “And why not? He obviously loves his life, Hesty. But there’s no reason to believe he knows anything.”

“Hear me out,” whispered the prisoner. He hunched, as if expecting a blow, but his gaze remained fixed on Lavin’s.

Lavin threw up his hands. “All right. Your torturers are incompetent, or this man has more character than they do.” He sat on a camp chair, and gestured for the prisoner to sit opposite. Awkwardly, as if his legs would not bend properly, the prisoner sat, hunching forward so as not touch the back of the chair. Hesty folded his arms and looked on in amusement.

“What is your name?”

“Enneas, lord Lavin.”

“You were caught looting, Enneas. We punish that with death, but we’re not cruel. Why did you choose to be tortured instead of letting us hang you quickly?”

Enneas breathed heavily, and seemed on the verge of fainting. He put his good arm on his knee to steady himself, and said, “I know something that will win you the siege without much bloodshed. But why should I tell you, if I’m going to die anyway?”

Lavin nearly laughed. The answer was self-evident: they would stop torturing him, that was why. But the torture hadn’t worked, and by the look of him, the man wouldn’t survive much more of it.

“I can’t believe you mean to bargain with us.”

Enneas tried to smile; it came across as a grotesque grimace. “What do I have to lose?”

“Your testicles,” said Hesty impatiently.

Lavin waved him silent. “I’m sure all that has been explained to Mister Enneas. Some of it done, too, by the looks of things.”

“I want to live!” Enneas glared fiercely at Lavin. “Free me, and I’ll tell you what I know. Kill me, and things go badly for you in the siege.”

“I don’t bargain.” Lavin stood. “Kill him.”

Hesty took Enneas by his broken arm and dragged him screaming to his feet. “Sorry to have bothered you,” Hesty grumbled as he pushed the prisoner through the flap of the tent.

Lavin sat brooding after they had left. He was preoccupied with plans for the siege, and it did look like it would be costly. There was an option yet to be tried but, much as he hated to admit it, that might not work. If it didn’t, a frontal assault would be his only choice.

Enneas had made a pitiful figure, sitting in his clean tent. He was a ruined man, and there would be many more like him before this was all over. Lavin had no compunction about sentencing a man like him to death; he would rather the money Enneas had taken go to feed wounded veterans, widows or children.

But sometimes he lost sight of why he was here. The siege would be bloody, and dangerous, not only to his men, but to the Queen. And that did not sit well with him.

He stood and left the tent. It was late afternoon, and cool and cloudy, but dry. A pall of smoke hung over the staggered tents of the encampment. Men bustled to and fro, carrying supplies and marching for exercise. Far away, on the outskirts of the camp, a simple scaffold stood. Someone was being hung even as he watched.

Hoping it was not Hesty’s prisoner, he picked up his pace, mindful to nod and acknowledge the greetings of his men as he went.

The scaffold disappeared behind some tents as he got closer. He hurried, but just as he was about to leave the edge of camp someone hailed him.

“Yes?” He waited impatiently as his chief mechanist ran over. The man was bowlegged and hirsute, and his helmet perched atop his head like some metallic bird. He bowed awkwardly, and pointed in the direction of the siege engines.

“General, sir! Someone punctured the water barrels last night! The supply’s shot–I mean, it’s leaked out! There isn’t enough left to run the steam cannon.”

Lavin hissed. “Sabotage? Is that what you’re saying?”

The mechanist backed away. “Yeah. Yeah, sabotage. What are we going to do?”

“What about our own rations?”

The man’s eyes widened. “The drinking water?”

Lavin nodded. “Is it safe?”

“Uh… not my department…”

“Find out. We will use it if we have to. Report back to me in an hour–and tell Hesty about this right away. Now excuse me.”

He rounded the tent in time to see them lower a body from the scaffold. Two soldiers heaved it up between them and carried it to a low pile of corpses nearby.

The rope had already been put around Enneas’ neck. The other end went up over the arm of the scaffold and to the halter of a bored horse. To hang Enneas, all they would have to do was walk the horse a few meters.

The thief’s eyes were closed. He seemed to be praying. But he didn’t beg, and he stayed on his feet, though he tottered.

Lavin was angry about the sabotage. It would cost him lives if the steam cannon were inoperable. He nearly turned and marched back his tent. Maybe though, just maybe, this man could make up for those potential casualties.

Still, he waited until the horse began to walk, just to see if the thief would break down. The rope tightened around his neck, but he didn’t struggle as he was lifted skyward.

“Stop! Cut him down!” Lavin strode over to the scaffold. Surprised soldiers jumped to untie the rope from the horse’s harness. Enneas fell to the ground, choking, dirt grinding into his bloody back.

They hauled him to his feet and unwound the rope. He coughed and gasped, and blinked at Lavin with his good eye.

“You have your life,” Lavin told him, “if you tell me what you know, and if I judge that it will be of use to me.”

Enneas’ knees buckled. He managed to croak, “Done!” before he fainted.

24

Through dusty, unventful days the passenger carriage had trundled its way south. Calandria May knew the shape of the seats intimately now; she felt her body had become moulded to conform to them, it certainly wasn’t the other way around. The primitive suspension of the vehicle sent every jolt and rattle of the wheels up her spine and into her throbbing head. And the thing was slow, stopping frequently at mail drops or to exchange horses.

Still, it was all they’d been able to afford with the last of their funds. This route would take them unobtrusively into Iapysia, where hopefully they could acquire some faster transportation. The country was in enough chaos that hopefully a couple of stolen horses wouldn’t be missed.

“My, you’ve become a paragon of caution,” Axel had said to her when she told him of this plan. “What happened to ‘get the hell down and find Armiger at all costs?’”

She’d shrugged. “What’s the point? We don’t have the weapons necessary to destroy him anymore. All we can do is observe until we can contact a passing ship and call in a strike.”

Their last reliable information had Armiger on his way to visit Queen Galas, who was either dead now, or still holed up in her palace, depending on who you talked to. Either way, it seemed unlikely that Armiger would still be going there, because her cause was doomed. They were rattling along in this carriage because the queen was their only lead. But there was no urgency to the journey now.

Axel was mostly recovered now, though you wouldn’t know it from the way he slept most of the day away. Without action to sustain him, he folded in on himself and became a dead weight. Calandria didn’t have the fight left herself to try to bring him out of his lethargy.

Consequently, when on a completely typical evening of jolting over rutted tracks, her skull computer said without warning Incoming transmission, Calandria May sat up straight and said, “Thank the gods!”

The passengers seated opposite them in the carriage didn’t look up; all three of them were nodding drowsily. They would have found it hard to hear Calandria over the noise of the wheels anyway.

She turned to find Axel staring back at her. She was just opening her mouth to ask him to please tell her he’d heard it to, when a different voice spoke in her mind.

“This is Marya Mounce of the research vessel Pan-Hellenia. Can anyone hear me?”

Axel’s face split in a wide grin. “A ride!” he said.

The other passenger on their side of the carriage mumbled something, and butted Axel with his shoulder.

The voice continued. “I’m on a reentry trajectory. The Winds are after me. The Diadem Swans went berserk a couple of days ago and they’ve either captured or driven away all ships in the system. I tried to ride it out but they’re on to me now. I’m going to try to land at the coordinates of the last transmission we received from our agent on the surface.“

“Agent?” whispered Calandria. “So there really are some researchers down here right now?”

Axel looked uncomfortable. “Well, yes, but maybe not like you think,” he said.

It took her a minute to catch on. “You’re the agent she’s referring to?” Calandria said to him.

“Yeah, yeah. Look, I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t make some money on the side, so when those galactic researchers asked whether I could feed them regular observations while I was here, I jumped at it. Why not? I didn’t think the Winds would be jumping down our throats quite so enthusiastically.”

She had to laugh. “You are full of surprises, you know that?” Usually they were unpleasant, but if this Mounce person was on her way to this part of the continent…

Calandria reached out and rapped on the top of the doorframe. “Driver. You can let us out here, please.”

They were ten alleys away from the Boros house before either spoke. “Wait,” said Jordan, holding up his hand. “Gotta rest.”

“They’ll come after us.”

“Not for a while.” He had an odd distracted look on his face. He’d had it back in the hall, too. Bemused, almost sublime. “Everything’s quiet.”

She didn’t ask how he knew that. “I’m cold.”

“Yes, we’ve got to find some shelter.”

Tamsin nearly said, “We just left shelter,” but that would have taken too much energy. It didn’t make any sense to go anywhere; there was nowhere to go now. She supposed there might be for him. But why had he come for her?

Jordan closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and smiled. “Yes,” he said, “you’ve done well. Now please return to your master. I’m sure he’ll be frantic without you.”

He opened his eyes and looked at her. She knew he was anticipating a question. Tamsin just stared at him.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

The question was so ridiculous she laughed. “No, no I’m not.” She opened her mouth to say more, but the words tripped over one another. And she didn’t know where to start, or why telling him would do any good.

He spoke, touched her arm. But something distracted her, a nuance of emotion like a thing seen out of the corner of one’s eye. Where to go. That was it.

Tamsin looked around. Nothing was familiar. She had no idea where she was. The buildings looming high around were nothing like the ones in her town. Even the air tasted different. She was lost, sliding. Drowning again. “I–” she said. Jordan had hold of both her wrists now. He was speaking to her, low and urgent, but she didn’t understand him. She had no idea who he was.

“We have to go!” Finally words she understood.

“Yes, yes.” She nodded, not to him but to herself.

Jordan began to lead her through the alleys. “Out of the city,” she said. “Take me to the desert. I have to go home.”

“Home?” He tightened his grip on her arm.

“Home, I have to go home, I have to…” She wanted to cry so badly, and she wasn’t able to. It was the most awful thing she had ever felt. She gasped for breath.

“Tamsin, don’t think me cruel for saying this,” said the young man leading her. “But your family is dead.”

“I know.” But she quailed at his words; until this night, she knew, she had never really believed it. Even now… if she could get home, find out the truth. “Maybe somebody survived. They couldn’t have killed everyone–”

“Yes, they could.”

“But you need to get to the queen anyway. To find this Armiger person. Do you know the way? No. The way lies through the desert. I can guide you. We have to go that way anyway.”

“We’ll talk about it. I promise. For now we’ve got to find somewhere to hide.”

He wasn’t really listening. Tamsin felt, if possible, even more alone. That sense of drowning came back, like a roaring, unstoppable noise in her head.

Jordan stopped, and put his hands on her shoulders. She blinked, suddenly seeing the grey crescents of his eyes gazing on hers. “I am listening,” he said. “And I’ll do everything I can to help you. We just have to take things one step at a time.”

This time she followed him attentively, and to her surprise, after she had gone ten paces in his footsteps she began, at last, to cry.

§

Jordan stood on the wall of an alley near the vertical uplands of the city. It was deep night now, but the moon was still up, and he could see its light glinting off the spires of the desal that waited half-submerged in the bay.

“You want to talk to a desal?” It was the first thing Tamsin had said since they had bedded down here. She stood below him on the nest of trash they had made. She still appeared stunned, distracted, her hair a bird’s nest and her hands grimy. Even a little curiosity from her now was an encouraging sign.

“It sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”

She didn’t answer for a while, merely chewed her knuckle and looked around herself aimlessly. Jordan returned his own gaze to the desal; ghostly in Diadem’s glow, its pinions rose from the middle of the lake like something discarded there, a sunken building or, he imagined, the shipwreck from Queen Galas’ story. Except that the spires were perfect, undamaged by time or the elements. The waves slapped against their sides as peacefully as they did the docks; there was no sign of preternatural life to the thing. Just now an ornate barque from the temple was anchored near the giant central tower. He could see the torchlit figures of priests moving about in it, but couldn’t tell what they were doing. Some kind of ceremony.

“I thought you were crazy when I saw you,” said Tamsin, so long after his own rhetorical question that it took him a moment to connect the two. He glanced at her; she summoned a smile, like an unpracticed conjurer, and hid it as quickly. “With, with your gold underwear and, and talking to things and all.”

As they ran he had given her a very sketchy rendition of his story: that he could talk to the mecha because of something Armiger had done, and that the Winds were after him. She would have heard some of it from through her uncle, if Suneil had bothered to explain why Brendan Sheia wanted him. Jordan didn’t know if she believed any of it yet.

“I can’t think of any other way to put an end to all this,” he said. “I can’t go home, because this curse will just follow me there. The Winds are hunting me because of the mecha in my head; the Boros want me as a scapegoat. The only one who can do anything about it is Armiger.”

“What can he do?” She crossed her arms and looked away; but she was listening and talking now.

“The first time I saw Armiger–saw through his eyes, I mean–he was commanding an army. It was so strange, but part of it was that he was strange. The things he looked at, listened for, and the things he said… they weren’t what I would have done. He didn’t seem to care about the battle, or the people he was commanding, he just gave orders, and they were always good. When the Winds sent the animals to destroy his army, I remember he was totally calm during the retreat. He escaped because he was as confident and calm in the middle of that butchery as he had been standing on the hillside watching from a distance.

“I’ve been watching him for weeks now, and he’s not the same man anymore. I think Calandria was right, he came here to conquer the Winds. He was the agent of some other creature even more powerful. But that one is dead, and Armiger is free.”

She was eyeing him now. He shook his head. “I can’t explain it. You have to be there, you see, to see the difference. But he has a woman now, and he cares about her. And he’s affected by things around him now, where he wasn’t before. The siege, he’s really bothered by it. People are dying, you know, starving and injured, and he’s realizing he can’t do anything to help them. He’s not thinking about conquering the world anymore.”

Tamsin frowned. “So how can he help you? Can he make the Boros’ go away?”

“Maybe. If I can convince him to help me.”

“How are you going to do that? By letting that,” she nodded to the desal, “eat you?”

Jordan took a deep breath. “Well, this is the crazy part. He went to Queen Galas to learn from her why the Winds are the way they are. Why they persecute people. She told him enough to give him an idea of where to look–but he can’t talk to the Winds, and he’s trapped in the palace with her now. But I can talk to the Winds. And I can search the places he needs to go.”

“So you want to be his errand boy!”

He winced. There was a little of her former haughtiness in her voice, though, and the thought cheered him. “Errand boy for a god is not a bad position,” he said. “I want to trade him the information in return for him getting the curse off my back.”

“Why should he trade? You said yourself he no longer wants to subdue the Winds.”

He hesitated. She did seem interested; he wondered if what he was going to say would make her dismiss him as crazy, and turn her back on her own misery.

“The thing is,” he said at last, “I think he should.”

Tamsin didn’t answer. She just cocked her head, and waited.

“This is the crazy part, Tamsin, and you have to promise to think about it before you laugh at me. See, I think we all of us could originally command the Winds. Everybody was once like I am now.”

Tamsin snorted. “If everybody could do anything they wanted, it would be chaos! Why pay for anything, if you can just summon the Winds to create it?”

“The world began in chaos,” he said. “Calandria told me Ventus was originally made for us, not for the Winds. Nobody in all the ages has ever been able to change it back, not even people from the stars like her. But Armiger could do it, if only he knew what their secret was. Before, when he was trying to find the secret for his own master, it would have been a disaster to have him win. Now it’s different.”

“You think he’d set things right?”

“He might. The man he’s become, would try.”

She didn’t answer, just made an odd noise, and thinking she was laughing at him again he turned to fire a retort back. She wasn’t looking at him, just pointing at the mouth of the alley.

“There they are!” Jordan saw a confusion of torches in the street, and the dark figures of a number of men.

“Brendan Sheia!” He knelt down. “Quickly, grab hold.” Tamsin boosted herself up and he pulled her onto the wall.

“That won’t do you any good,” said a smug, familiar voice from the ground on the other side.

Jordan looked down, into the eyes of the magician from the marketplace.

“Thief! I’ll have your head for stealing my power.”

For a second old habits took hold: “I didn’t steal him!” yelled Jordan. “I borrowed him and I gave him back.” Then he saw moonlight glint off the blade in the man’s hand.

There were six men on the alley side of the wall, and four including the magician on the other, which was someone’s garden. The wall itself ran between two buildings; there was no exit to be had by running along its top.

Three of the men in the alley had torches, as did the magician.

“Let us go!” said Jordan. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

The magician laughed. “Nice bluff.”

“Get ready to jump” Jordan hissed to Tamsin. “Torch, crack!”

Sparks and burning wood flew everywhere as the torch in the magician’s hand exploded. He screamed and fell, batting at the embers in his hair.

“Now!” Jordan and Tamsin landed in the dirt next to the magician, whose friends were smacking him on the head to put out his hair. There was an open gate at the far end of the garden, so Jordan made for that. Tamsin kept up easily.

They entered a moonlit street. In the distance he heard running feet; the others were coming around the end of the block. “Ka! Come to me.“

“Ka.” The ghost of a butterfly wafted through the open gate.

Tamsin tugged at his arm. “They’re coming!”

“I know. We can’t stay here. Ka, we need horses. Find me two of them, right now!”

“This way.” The butterfly flitted off down the street–thankfully away from the sound of running feet.

“So now I am the thief he accused me of being,” panted Jordan. “He deserves it though, the bastard.”

“What’s going on?” They entered another alley, this one shadowed by the high walls of buildings to either side.

“There! They went down that alley!”

It was too dark here to see anything. Jordan closed his eyes and looked with his other sight. “This way.” He followed Ka to a stable door; inside he could see the outlines of two sleeping horses.

“Ka, speak to the horses. I want them awake and ready to go with us if you can do that.”

“I have no power to compel. But I can present you to them as a Wind, if that is your desire.“

“Yes!”

Torches appeared at the mouth of the alley. Jordan made these explode as well, and their pursuers retreated in dismay. Jordan proceeded to saddle the sleepy horses in complete darkness, relying on touch and the ghost-light of his mechal vision. The horses were pliant and appeared unsurprised at this intrusion.

Tamsin had craned her neck out the door to watch the alley mouth; as he was cinching the second horse she said, “They’re waking the people in the houses. This house too. I think they know what we’re doing. Smelled the horses, maybe.”

“Well, we’re ready. Come on.” He led the horses outside.

“But where are we going? What about your plan to visit the desal in the bay?”

“You said there was another one in the middle of the desert,” he shot back. “You wanted to go home, Tamsin. Well, that’s where we’re going to have to go.”

He dug his heels into the flank of the horse and it bolted through shouting men, and when he looked back Tamsin was following, crouched low on her horse, wearing a grin that could be terror or satisfaction–and maybe was a bit of both.

Ka drifted from room to room, reporting what it saw. Its habit was to hover at least a meter above the heads of the empty ones, because a randomly swung arm could smash it. This had happened to more than one of its previous bodies. Ka was in its own way proud that it had survived in this one for thirty years now.

Desal 463 did not mind Ka’s servitude to the magician. Neither did Ka. Its patrol was the market anyway, where it hunted for ecological deviations. The entire city hovered on the edge of abomination, but the empty ones had learned scrupulous cleanliness over the centuries. Every now and then, however, some visitor imported something outside the terraforming mandate –petroleum, crude electric devices, most recently some cheerfully glowing radioactives stolen from a fallen aerostat–and it was Ka’s job to find the offending substance. Then other agents of the desal would act, recovering the deviation and generally killing any empty ones associated with it. Empty ones made good fertilizer when they died; it neatly balanced the equation.

The being who had called it forth from the market was something else entirely. Its voice had the power to compel in a way the magician’s could not. As far as Ka was concerned, it was a Wind.

“Tell me what you see,” it said now.

“I can relay the information directly to your sensorium, if you wish,” said Ka.

“What? What do you mean? Show me.”

Ka beamed an image of the corridor to the waiting Wind.

“Ah! Stop it!”

“As you wish.”

“Um… can you do that with hearing? Can I hear what’s going on around you?”

“Yes.” Ka began to relay sound as it travelled.

It drifted from room to room, pausing to eavesdrop on conversations, then moving on.

“…Don’t know why I’m forbidden to go into the cellars tonight. He’s up to something bad, I just know it…”

Down the hall from that room: “…I don’t think this meat is cooked through…”

Elsewhere on the same floor: “He could be useful to us, but obviously we can’t trust a turncoat like that. Especially one who’s spent his career with the Perverts. How do we know what he wants, in the end?”

“So he’s a pawn?”

“We’ll play him out a little. He could be a competent bureaucrat. When the time comes, we’ll trade him for something more valuable.”

“And Mason?”

“Mason is going to save us. There’s grumbling that our house is cursed. Cursed! –Because of what happened at Yuri’s. You and I know it wasn’t our fault. We have to convince the rest of the world that we’re innocent victims. If Turcaret was right, and the Heaven hooks were after Mason, then all we need to do is stake him out in a field in full view of the town, and wait for the Winds to come. The sooner the better; we can’t let the courts get ahold of this, they’ll tie us up in years of wrangling. No. Tomorrow, we put the word out, then the day after we put him out, and if anyone objects we put a sword to their throat. It’ll be done before anyone can mount an organized resistance. And after the Winds come down, no one is going to question why we did it. We’ll be seen as having done the Winds’ bidding. It could end up in our favor.”

Someone entered the room, and the voices turned toward a discussion of food. Ka drifted on, up the grand stairway, and towards the back of the house. There were voices coming from behind one door there, and it was made to pause and listen again.

“It’s called the Great Game, niece, and you have to play it to survive.”

“So it was a game you were playing when you led the soldiers to our town.”

“No, you misunderstand me–”

“Ha! You could have saved them. You lied to me. And I believed you!”

“You do what you have to in order to survive, niece. And you can’t get emotional about it. That’s the beginning and the end of it. If it weren’t for me, you’d be dead now. I saved you–”

“You killed them! You killed them!”

“Silence!”

“No! I won’t be silent anymore. I won’t be anything for you anymore.”

“You will. Yes, you will. Listen, do you think your life has any value in this country if people find out what you really are? Where you’re from? They won’t look at you and see a young woman full of promise, as I do, Tamsin–they’ll see a monster, born of monsters. At best a curiosity, at worst an abomination to be stoned. Now you have two choices, young lady. You can do as I tell you, learn your lines and your dance steps, and become the proper young lady in society here at Rhiene. Or, if you won’t do that, I can still get something of my investment back if I turn you in to the high court as a renegade Pervert. If that’s what you want, then that’s the way we’ll do it. Believe me, I don’t care either way at this point.”

There was no reply to this; only silence, drawn out until at last Ka was ordered to withdraw.

§

The lock made a very loud click as it turned over. Jordan held his breath past a tight grin. Had the guard heard? Apparently not. He pushed the door open slowly.

The brawny man who had hit him earlier was sitting at a table in the hall outside. He was industriously carving leaf designs into the capital of what was obviously going to be a chair leg. Three other half-completed legs lay on the table next to him.

The knife he was carving with was very large.

What would Armiger do? Jordan asked himself. The general knew when to attack, and when to be discrete. This was a time to be discrete.

It was interesting that Ka had been able to move sound from upstairs down to Jordan’s waiting ear. That implied all kinds of things about sound that he hadn’t thought before–that it was a substance, that it could be packaged and carried around. Maybe you could also choose not to carry it?

He focussed his attention on the hinges of the door, each in turn, and said, “make no sound,” with his inner voice.

Each hinge acknowledged his command, but he had no idea if they would obey. Gingerly, he pushed the door open. He could feel a faint vibration under his fingers, as if the rusty hinges were grating–but he heard nothing.

Once outside, he slowly closed the door again. Holding a torrent of Vision at bay, Jordan stepped into the earth-floored cellar behind the guard, and backed his way slowly to the stone steps that led up. His heart was in his mouth. When he got to the steps he let out the breath he had been holding, but still went up them one at a time, pausing after each to look back at the broad back of the man with the knife. He knew he wouldn’t just get a beating if he was found this time.

Upstairs, he ducked into a niche as two servants passed carrying a heap of linen. He poked his head out after they’d gone; there was the back entrance, in plain sight not five meters away. All he had to do was walk out the door, and he was free.

Except that he couldn’t do it. The conversation Ka had relayed from upstairs had been chillingly familiar to Jordan, if not in its details, in its thrust. Just as Jordan’s father had ordered Emmy to acquiesce to Turcaret’s attentions, so Tamsin’s uncle was ordering her to become his thing–bait, perhaps, to dangle in front of some high born household’s son. And though Jordan didn’t understand what threat Suneil was holding in reserve, it was obviously dire.

He owed Tamsin nothing, really. Jordan knew, though, that he would no more be able to live with himself if he left her in this situation than he would have if he had stayed in bed, those many nights ago, and let Emmy run.

§

Tamsin was drowning.

There was no water here. She could breathe, her heart still beat, she could walk and sit and even eat. Still, she was drowning.

The thing shaped like her uncle moved across the room. He was talking, but she couldn’t make sense of the words anymore. They came to her like sounds underwater, distorted and harsh.

What was drowning her was the horror she felt every time she looked at him–knowing that inside that familiar body was a soul that had helped her, sheltered her and cared for her, laughed with her and murdered her parents.

“–Get ready for bed,” he said now. “Tomorrow’s another day, niece.”

For her own survival, she needed to be silent now–but inside she was screaming at him: “You knew the soldiers were coming! You knew and you didn’t tell anyone, you didn’t tell dad you let them die you let them die…”

The worst thing was that she had known these things all along, somewhere deep in a part of her that she had told, every morning to sleep, look away.

Thinking that she had known and had gone along with this monster, her inner voice simply died out. She sat mutely, and nodded without heat, and rose to go to her sleeping closet.

As she walked she drowned a little more.

“Tamsin.” His voice held an old note of concern that she had once (yesterday?) believed was genuine and defined family. She looked back at him, knowing her face was slack, unable to raise an expression.

“Sometimes–” He had looked her in the eye; now he kept his gaze on the floor as he said, “Sometimes, you have to block out the here and now, and not think about what you’re doing. For your own future good.”

She could picture herself laughing at him, or screaming, hitting… she couldn’t summon the energy to do more than nod again. Then she knelt to open her night chest.

“Don’t scream,” said a voice from nowhere.

She froze. The voice was strange, tiny, like a whispering mouse.

“It’s me, Jordan. I’m free, and I’m leaving. Tamsin, I don’t know what you feel about me. I hope you won’t betray me.”

She looked behind the chest, up the wall, along it. There was no one here.

“Where are you?” she whispered.

“Outside the door.” Yet the door was across the room, and she heard the voice here.

“Who are you talking to?” asked her uncle. He had come up behind her. She whirled, hands behind her on the chest.

“Nobody,” she said. Her voice sounded strained to her own ears.

Her uncle’s eyes narrowed. He eyed the door, then walked over to it.

No. It all broke in her like a dam, and before she knew what she was doing Tamsin grabbed a brass vase from the table and ran at her uncle. She swung the vase up at his head with all her strength; it made a satisfying crunch, and he fell over without a sound.

She flung the door open and practically fell through it–into Jordan’s arms. “Let’s get out of here,” he said simply, and closed the door behind her.

There was only one lifeline for her now, and Tamsin took it. She grabbed Jordan’s hand tightly, and ran with him.

–And then he was in the flow of Vision, hearing the burr of Armiger’s voice in his own chest, and an overlay of chorusing identities in the walls, in the sullenly firm door and the very earth under his shoulder. It was like he’d fallen in a snake pit, with a thousand heads rising hissing all about him. Jordan grabbed his head and doubled up again with a cry.

He concentrated. This is my hand; he brought it up to his eyes. This is my sight. I am here, not in the palace, not in the walls: here.

Jordan rolled to his knees, gasping. The powers whispered and danced around him, but he had carved out a bubble for himself in their center. He could see and hear, and act. With some difficulty, he got to his feet.

Cold air lapped at his throat. He almost laughed. “You’re cruel,” he said to the Winds. “Now you’re going to listen to me for a change.”

He sat on the cot and wrapped the cloak around his shoulders. There was no need to take deep breaths to enter the visionary trance now; he closed his eyes and summoned it.

First he had to know where he was. He could see the mansion around him in translucent outline. The basement was indeed extensive, and he was next to a place with convoluted shelves that must be a wine cellar. There were several stairs leading up, and he instinctively chose the narrow servants’ way as his goal. That led from the back of the wine cellar, predictably enough.

There was a cistern down here, and a long room with a high arched ceiling. Castor’s manor had an exercise room and archery range in the basement, which was probably what this was. All these rooms opened off the same corridor as Jordan’s cell. In addition there were several side halls that ran to lockers of various sizes.

The problem with this way of seeing was that it didn’t seem to show people. Jordan knew there was a dog on the main floor, almost exactly above his head; he could see it. The rest of the rooms on that level were visible too, though in a jumble of perspective as if he were standing at the base of a huge glass model. He had to sort out what he was seeing, and if he had not had ample experience reading architects’ plans at Castor’s, he might not have been able to sort out hall from room, chimney from garderobe.

It only took a few minutes to work out the shortest route from here to the tradesman’s entrance. Night was falling; in a few hours the area would be quiet. Then he could make his escape–provided the next parts of his plan worked.

He needed to see more than just the outlines of the place. When the Heaven hooks descended on the Boros manor, Jordan’s vision had briefly expanded to include distant places. He had been able to see what was happening inside the manor, even though he was hundred of meters away. Try as he might, however, he had ben unable to repeat that experience.

There was something else he could try. Jordan focussed his mind on one name, and hurled it into an imagined sky with all his might:

“Ka!“

He waited. There was no response, and he could see nothing as he scanned the vague landscape that opened out beyond the manor.

“Ka! Come here!“

Nothing. He waited a long while, but the little Wind must be too far away to hear him. All right; on to the next idea.

Careful not to break his concentration, he rose and moved to the door. He ran his fingertip around the keyhole on the large iron lock plate. He could actually see inside the lock if he concentrated; the mechanism was simple. All he needed was something with which to manipulate the tumblers.

There was another thing he wanted to try. He had nothing to lose now, where before he had been afraid of alerting the Winds to his presence by experimenting. Jordan returned to the cot, gathering his cloak on the way; it was getting quite chilly in here.

For some time now he had known he could communicate with the mecha. He had been reluctant, however, to ask himself the next logical question:

Could he command the mecha, as the Winds did?

As he sat by the lakeside and poured water from bucket to cup and back again, Jordan had discovered something he had at the time been afraid to test. Each and every object in the world knew its name; all, that is, save for the humans who lived here, because they had no dusting of mecha within them.

The waves on the lake had known their identity as waves, but as they lapped against the shore they disappeared as individuals. Jordan had found by experimenting that when you changed an object into something else, its mecha noticed and altered its name to suit.

That had got him wondering: could you command an object to change its name; and if you changed an object’s name, would the object itself change to match it?

The cot was a plain wooden frame with thin interwoven slats to lie on. He pried one of these up and held it out in front of him. “What are you?” he asked it.

“Cedar wood. Wood splinter…“

“You are now kindling, hear?”

“Consistent,” said the splinter.

“So, burn!”

He held his breath. After a moment the splinter said, “Ignition of this mass will exhaust all mechal reserves. Further transformations will not be possible without infusion of new essence.“

“Just do it.”

He opened his eyes to watch. Nothing happened… then the splinter began to smoke. “Ow!” He dropped it, whipping his fingers to cool them. For some reason Jordan had assumed the thing would neatly sprout a flame from one end. Instead, the entire splinter was afire.

“Splinter: douse yourself.”

It didn’t answer. Well… it had said something about exhausting reserves. Maybe the mecha in it had died in setting it afire. He closed his eyes and examined it with his inner vision, and indeed the small flame was a dark spot in the mechal landscape.

Jordan restrained the urge to leap to his feet and shout. He would only bring down the guard–but then, couldn’t he just command the guard’s clothes to burst into flame too? Was there anything he couldn’t do now?

He sat there for a while, giddy with the possibilities. He picked up another splinter, and said to it, fly.

That is not possible for this object, said the splinter.

Hmm. Well, at least he knew he wouldn’t freeze now. He picked up a rock and tried to convince it to become a knife, but it demurred, listing off a dozen conditions he needed to fulfill for it to transform: heat, presence of carbon and significant iron deposits, etc.

So the mecha were limited. It wasn’t really a surprise–and he could hardly complain! He should be able to get out of this room, at least, if he could pick the lock. He might even be able to defeat the guard if he was clever–but it would be better to sneak past him, if possible.

He pried a good splinter off the bed, and said to it, “Can you become harder?”

“At an exhaustion rate of 50% it is possible to–“

“Just do it.”

The splinter seemed to shrink a little in his hand. He bent down, closed his eyes, and applied it to the lock.

“Ka,” said a voice like a chime.

Jordan turned. Hovering in the narrow window slit was the wraith-like butterfly from the market. It had heard him after all!

“Greetings, little Wind,” he said respectfully. “Can you help me?”