fire, flinging themselves from the ruined docks into the sea. The noise of fighting coming closer. Kahdia’s face, lit in flickering orange, the low murmur of the others praying and Temple tugging at his sleeve and saying, ‘You must go, they will be coming,’ and the old priest shaking his head, and smiling as he squeezed at Temple’s shoulder, and saying, ‘That is why I must stay.’
What could he have done then? What could he do now?
He caught movement at the corner of his eye, saw a small shape flit between two of the low stone buildings. ‘Was that a child?’ he muttered, already leaving the others behind.
‘Why does everyone pout so over children?’ Cosca called after him. ‘They’ll turn out just as old and disappointing as the rest of us!’
Temple was hardly listening. He had failed Sufeen, he had failed Kahdia, he had failed his wife and daughter, he had sworn always to take the easy way, but perhaps this time… he rounded the corner of the building.
A boy stood there, shaven-headed. Pale-skinned. Red-brown eyebrows, like Shy’s. The right age, perhaps, could it—
Temple saw he had a spear in his hands. A short spear, but held with surprising purpose. In his worry for others, Temple had for once neglected to feel worried for himself. Perhaps that showed some level of personal growth. The self-congratulations would have to wait, however.
‘I’m scared,’ he said, without needing to dissemble. ‘Are you scared?’
No response. Temple gently held out his hands, palms up. ‘Are you Pit?’
A twitch of shock across the boy’s face. Temple slowly knelt and tried to dig out that old earnestness, not easy with the noises of destruction filtering from all around them. ‘My name is Temple. I am a friend of Shy’s.’ That brought out another twitch. ‘A good friend.’ A profound exaggeration at that moment, but a forgivable one. The point of the spear wavered. ‘And of Lamb’s too.’ It started to drop. ‘They came to find you. And I came with them.’
‘They’re here?’ It was strange to hear the boy speak the common tongue with the accent of the Near Country.
‘They’re here,’ he said. ‘They came for you.’
‘Your nose is bleeding.’
‘I know.’ Temple wiped it on his wrist again. ‘No need to worry.’
Pit set down his spear, and walked to Temple and hugged him tight. Temple blinked for a moment, then hesitantly put his arms around the boy and held him.
‘You are safe now,’ he said. ‘You are safe.’
It was hardly the first lie he had ever told.
Shy padded down the hallway, desperate to run on and scared to the point of shitting herself at once, clinging to the slippery grip of her sword. The place was lit only by flickering little lamps that struck a gleam from the metal designs on the floor—circles within circles, letters and lines—and from the blood smeared across them. Her eyes flicked between the tricking shadows, jumped from body to body—Dragon People and mercenaries, too, hacked and punctured and still leaking.
‘Lamb?’ she whispered, but so quietly even she could hardly hear it.
Sounds echoed from the warm rock, spilled from the openings to either side—screams and crashes, whispering steam, weeping and laughter leaching through the walls. The laughter worst of all.
‘Lamb?’
She edged to the archway at the end of the hall and pressed herself to the wall beside it, a hot draught sweeping past. She clawed the wet hair from her stinging eyes again, flicked sweat from her fingertips and gathered her tattered courage. For Pit and Ro. No turning back now.
She slipped through and her jaw fell. A vast emptiness opened before her, a great rift, an abyss inside the mountain. A ledge ahead was scattered with benches, anvils, smith’s tools. Beyond a black gulf yawned, crossed by a bridge no more than two strides wide, no handrail, arching through darkness to another ledge and another archway, maybe fifty strides distant. The heat was crushing, the bridge lit underneath by fires that growled far out of sight below, streaks of crystal in the rocky walls sparkling, everything metal from the hammers and anvils and ingots to her own sword catching a smelter’s glow. Shy swallowed as she edged out towards that empty plunge and the far wall dropped down, down, down. As if this were some upper reach of hell the living never should’ve broached.
‘You’d think they’d give it a fucking rail,’ she muttered.
Waerdinur stood on the bridge behind a great square shield, a dragon worked into the face, bright point of a spear-blade showing beside it, blocking the way. One mercenary lay dead in front of him, another was trying to ease back to safety, poking away wildly with a halberd. A third knelt not far from Shy, cranking a flatbow. Waerdinur lunged and smoothly skewered the halberdier with his spear, then stepped forward and brushed him off the bridge. He fell without a sound. Not of his falling. Not of his reaching the bottom.
The Dragon Man set himself again, bottom edge of that big shield clanging against the bridge as he brought it down, and he shouted over his shoulder in words Shy didn’t understand. People shuffled through the shadows behind him—old ones, and children, too, and a girl running last of all.
‘Ro!’ Shy’s scream was dead in the throbbing heat and the girl ran on, swallowed in the shadows at the far end of the bridge.
Waerdinur stayed, squatting low behind his shield and watching her over the rim, and she gritted her teeth and gave a hiss of frustrated fury. To come so close, and find no way around.
‘Have this, arsehole!’ The last mercenary levelled his flatbow and the bolt rattled from Waerdinur’s dragon shield and away into the dark, spinning end-over-end, a tiny orange splinter in all that inky emptiness. ‘Well, he’s going nowhere.’ The archer fished a bolt from his quiver and set to cranking back the string again. ‘Couple more bows up here and we’ll get him. Sooner or later. Don’t you fucking worry about—’
Shy saw a flicker at the corner of her eye and the mercenary lurched against the wall, Waerdinur’s spear right through him. He said, ‘Oh,’ and slid to sitting, setting his bow carefully on the ground. Shy was just taking a step towards him when she felt a gentle touch on her shoulder.
Lamb was at her back, but no kind of reassurance. He’d lost his coat and stood in his leather vest all scar and twisted sinew and his sword broken off halfway, splintered blade slathered in blood to his elbow.
‘Lamb?’ she whispered. He didn’t even look at her, just brushed her away with the back of his arm, black eyes picking up a fiery glimmer and fixed across that bridge, muscles starting from his neck, head hanging on one side, pale skin all sweat-beaded, blood-dotted, his bared teeth shining in a skull-grin. Shy shrank out of his way like death itself had come tapping at her shoulder. Maybe it had.
As if it was a meeting long arranged, Waerdinur drew a sword, straight and dull, a silver mark glinting near the hilt.
‘I used to have one o’ those.’ Lamb tossed his own broken blade skittering across the floor and over the edge into nothingness.
‘The work of the Maker himself,’ said Waerdinur. ‘You should have kept it.’
‘Friend o’ mine stole it.’ Lamb stepped towards one of the anvils, fingers whitening as he wrapped them around a great iron bar that lay against it, tall as Shy was. ‘And everything else.’ Metal grated as he dragged it after him towards the bridge. ‘And it was better’n I deserved.’
Shy thought about telling him not to go but the words didn’t come. Like she couldn’t get the air to speak. Wasn’t another way through that she could see, and it wasn’t as if she was about to turn back. So she sheathed her sword and shrugged her bow into her hand. Waerdinur saw it and took a few cautious steps away, light on the balls of his bare feet, calm as if he trod a dance floor rather’n a strip of stone too narrow for the slimmest of wagons to roll down.
‘Told you I’d be back,’ said Lamb as he stepped out onto the bridge, the tip of the metal bar clattering after him.
‘And so you are,’ said Waerdinur.
Lamb nudged the corpse of the dead mercenary out of his way with a boot and it dropped soundless into the abyss. ‘Told you I’d bring death with me.’
‘And so you have. You must be pleased.’
‘I’ll be pleased when you’re out o’ my way.’ Lamb stopped a couple of paces short of Waerdinur, a trail of
