Drifting suddenly to one side, the mechant crashed into a tiled roof, finally tumbling to the cobbles below like an oversized discarded toy.
More mechants appeared overhead. He sent them all scattering across the sky like storm-tossed leaves, but already he felt tired, enormously so, and struggled to stay awake.
Luc looked back over at Zelia, who stared back at him with a blank expression. The red stain on her chest had grown larger. He managed to crawl over to her, despite one of his arms being useless.
‘Zelia,’ he said, collapsing against the wall beside her. ‘How bad?’
Her face was paler than he’d ever seen it, lips thin and translucent.
‘It’s not deep, I don’t think,’ she said. ‘But I’m losing too much blood.’
‘Can you get up?’
‘No, Luc. Leave me be.’
‘If you stay here, you’ll die!’
She laughed weakly. ‘I can’t die, you fucking idiot. I have backups, remember?’
‘Cheng would never let you come back.’
She stared at him with loathing. ‘Fuck you,’ she said. ‘You think I don’t know that?’
Nevertheless, she managed to struggle back onto her feet, and he draped his good arm around her, grabbing under one shoulder, holding her upright.
‘We’re nearly there,’ he said, glancing up and seeing more mechants descending towards them. The taste of gritty ash was on his tongue, carried on the wind.
With a burst of effort, he dragged her towards the doorway. The artefact was just on the other side.
Voices, calling from somewhere nearby. He glanced to one side, but couldn’t see where they were coming from.
The ground again came rushing towards him, hard enough this time to break several of his teeth. He could feel their ragged edges with the tip of his tongue. Another grenade, he guessed.
Rolling over, he saw Zelia lying motionless nearby, and that the door had opened from the inside, a darkened vestibule lying beyond.
The voices he’d heard came closer. A shadow fell across his face; a mechant, hovering less than a metre above him.
More shadows gathered around him, some people-shaped. Hands reached down and took a grip on him, lifting him up with the minimum of care.
But it wasn’t over. Not yet.
TWENTY-THREE
‘Is he awake?’
‘One moment, Father Cheng,’ said a voice in reply.
Light dazzled Luc’s eyes. He tried to squeeze his eyelids shut, but found he couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried. His eyeballs itched and burned furiously.
There was a faint hiss from close by his face, and cool vapour dampened his skin, dripping down his cheeks like tears. The itching and burning faded a little.
He twisted away from a beam of light bright enough that it felt like it could burn its way through the back of his head. Barely visible in the light were the silhouettes of figures standing around him in an otherwise darkened room. When he tried to move, he discovered his wrists had been secured to the arms of a high-backed chair with heavy straps. Other straps secured his feet to the chair’s legs.
Leaning forward, he could see that he had been stripped naked. He swallowed, pain pulsing around his broken teeth. His mouth was still full of the taste of his own blood.
For some reason, he could neither blink nor close his eyes. The urge to block out the light was maddening, but there was nothing whatsoever he could do to avoid it.
‘Yes, he does appear to be conscious,’ said the second voice.
Luc twisted his head from side to side to try and see who had just spoken.
‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ asked the voice of a third man, ‘is what you’ve done to him
‘I would say it was
‘Of course not, Father Cheng,’ Carter replied with nervous haste.
The pain in Luc’s eyes was becoming extraordinary, maddening. An instant later he felt another burst of cool
