won (n.) reluctance to let go off an illusion long-held.

"Do you believe that there is a world outside the walls, Khalore?"

It sounded so much like a test that, for not the first time, but with the deepest sensation of her heart sinking, Khalore doubted herself. Had this all been a mistake, a trap so lazily baited that it would not even be fair to term it such? Or was she such a paranoiac that she could not even respond to a simple question thus, which might be how Illéans spoke to one another when no one was listening, the simple devilry of doubt?

She said, quietly, "I don't know."

Better to seem dimwitted than traitorous, after all. Who would have known that a lifetime of stupidity would prepare her so thoroughly for an infiltration?

Suero said, "then where do the druj come from? In our time behind the walls, our tagma have killed thousands – hundreds of thousands – of druj. But the tide does not stem. They do not relent. Watch your step."

Khalore said, "do they…?"

"As far as we can tell," Suero said, amusedly, "they do not breed."

Khalore was silent, and hoped that he found in this silence some thoughtfulness, some contemplation, rather than the actual quiet reeling which was occupying her thoughts. Despite what her papers said, she had never been schooled here; was this something an Illéan child should know? Was this something long ago discovered and disseminated, or an honest question – something they were actually studying? Well, Khalore thought, holding back a smile, she'd never been a very good student in Irij either. As long as she could realistically plead stupidity, she might get out of this okay.

So she said, "my mother always told me that it was… dark magic. Is that something you can study scientifically?"

Suero smiled. "The Scholars engage in a form of study which is somewhere between science and mysticism. I've always been reluctant to believe in magic, Khalore, and particularly a form of magic which produces inconsistencies. I believe that the world is, inherently, bound to some kind of order – some internal logic we must merely delve deeper to discover."

"I imagine that's held you back a bit."

"Like you wouldn't believe."

The laboratory they were entering now was not as pristine as she had expected – perhaps she had expected something like the hall of statutes in Opona, which was all shining marble and sheening metal. Instead, this was a clean, but plain, space, with broad grey flagstones, a little uneven, lit by torches hanging from the brackets spaced uniformly along two long walls made of jagged dark bricks. There was a rough wooden table running the perimeter of one wall, lower than she had expected, only slightly higher than Khalore's knee, though she imagined this was more to do with practicality – the difficulty of hefting a druj body onto the examination table – than optimal academic practice. There were threadbare cushions scattered around the tiles, where generations of aspiring scholars had knelt to study whatever druj had been brought back in a whole-enough condition for examination.

The thing lying there now was in fewer pieces than Khalore had expected; clearly the cadets had already had a few hacking goes at it. It was a strange heap of tentacles, thick and black and lying limp, serrated seemingly at random such that the skin could be peeled back and the flesh beneath – dark green, veinless, just meat – was clearly visible. The wood around it was stained deeply with several generations worth of ichor, that thick and foul smelling blood-like viscera with which Illéans all, eventually, became familiar.

She couldn't help herself – she extended her hand, and very gently touched the surface of the druj's skin, half-expecting it to leap up and grab her, for the skin to roil beneath her touch, for something to happen. But there was nothing, just a dead thing on the table.

How many people had this druj killed? How many graves belonged to these dead thing?

Not people. Illéans.

And Ghju.

Where did the druj come from, anyway? The chancellery had always said that it was the work of the first king of Illéa, and of all the kings who came after them – Khalore had always supposed that it was the Radiance that created them, the final curse extending out its awful power to create strange, limb-like extensions with which to better defend their fortress. But then what would be the point of the tagma – why would the king send out so many soldiers to kill his own creations? Had he lost control of them? In that case – and Khalore was keenly aware that she was probably taking a very long time to work herself around to something that everyone else had figured out shortly after arriving in Aizsaule – where were they coming from? Why would he make more?

Suero said, "you don't seem squeamish. That's a good sign."

Khalore returned his smile, very slightly, very shyly. "I've seen much worse."

She very gently lifted one end of the tentacle nearest her, turned it over in her hand, and then dropped it back to the table with a dull squelching sound.

"This is Belikova's pet project," Suero continued. "We have a few dozen chambers, containing twenty or so specimen – we tend to go through them relatively quickly, but our excubitors have an irritating habit of carving up the druj such that they are not particularly useful for study."

He paused. Khalore could see that there was something he was not telling her. Ah. Yes. There was a surface level of operations – the Scholarly pursuits – about which he could speak openly; the citizens would have seen the cartfuls of carcasses making their ways to the Schools after every siege, every clearing operation, every clanking opening of the gates.

There was something else. They had taken Kinga alive, hadn't they? Had they known that she was alive?

They had chained her up. That was an answer.

She hastened to cover his hesitation with a question of her own. That was what Ilja would do – leap forward with some distraction that made him seem insightful, make it appear as though she was absorbing all of the information being offered. "How long does a scholar have to work before they can take on a project of their own?"

"Creativity and innovation have no time limits. If a cadet has a good proposal on their first day – a worthwhile hypothesis – we are willing to cede a carcass or two. If only to prove them wrong."

"Does that happen very often?"

"After two hundred years, it's hard to come up with original ideas. So, no." Suero shook his head. "Not particularly often."

Khalore said, "I'll wait until day two to give you my proposal, then."

He laughed. How had Zoran and Ina managed this - joking with the enemy, trading conversation day in and day out? It was exhausting.

"You can tell me whenever you want to," Suero said, "but I probably won't give you a carcass."

"Very stingy of you."

"As I said. Take it up with the excubitors."

The chambers were all linked together, so that they moved past a long series of druj carcasses, each in varying states of carnage. These were the slaughterhouses proper; they had to ascend the stairs into the body of the Schools to get a look at the scribehouses, where the Scholars, departed for the weekend, had left neat piles of handwritten papers, diagrams of the druj they had dissected, half-written tomes of notes and lists regarding not only the druj but the Walls and the history of the kingdom and the genealogy of the royal family and –

How many lies were contained in those books, in those papers?

Were the xrafstars mentioned, even once?

What about the thirteen curses?

She didn't dare to wonder about the Radiance. Not yet. That was the duty of those smarter than her: Zoran and Ina and Ilja.

Suero said, "we're waiting on the eastern corps to bring back some specimens from their poaching session near Mazda – I had hoped we might have something to get you started on, but it might be another few hours yet." He squinted at Khalore. "Can you read?"

"Very slowly."

He smiled. "Same as me, then."

This was the green marble building she had waited outside, and the columns, the mosaics, the beautifully ornate doorways, were all embellished with the same strangely veined emerald stone, so that these studies were awash in pale green light. She had expected more blue, like the coat worn by the Scholars; she had expected, she admitted to herself, a more refined degree of color co-ordination. A disappointment, truly.

"Do you want to take Horobets' desk, have a look at some of his notes, and let me know if you have any questions?"

Khalore said, "I don't even know what I don't know."

"You'll learn to bluff before long, Angelo."

"Doesn't seem very scholarly," she said, "telling your students to be deceitful."

"This is the tagma," Suero said. "You are not my student, and I am not your teacher. We are…" He paused, and he smiled. "Comrades."

"Comrades," Khalore echoed. The word seemed to bounce around her skull as she sank into the indicated seat. Comrades.

Yeah, sure. She almost felt sorry for the bastards.

Every part of her hurt. This was an old friend – not this pain, though it was not a stranger either, but the confusion that came with it, the distinct sensation that this pain came only as a consequence of something she could not remember and that something had the potential to be very important indeed. This was how she had felt the day that Kate had died, the day that Gregory had been eaten, the day that Harriet had lost her mind and Evie her leg. This was how she had felt every day that had mattered to her, really mattered to her.

What could it have been? The Selection – the ball – the explosion –

Pjotr.

Fuck. Pjotr.

She was already trying to sit up by the time that she managed to wrench her eyes open, but she wasn't even able to struggle herself up onto her elbows before there was someone trying to ease her back onto the couch and someone saying, "stay still, don't move," and someone tapping at her elbow, preparing to inject her with something – inject her? Kate had died without any painkillers, they had taken Evie's leg without any anaesthesia, they had something to inject her with – but she resisted, pushed back, without even realising why she was doing so except that some contrarian streak embedded deep within, very far below the sunny exterior she had depended on for survival all this time.

Oblivion was trying to draw her back, but she felt the needle skim past her arm, gouging a deep line into her skin but not quite getting her, and she managed to get one hand flat onto the couch, like some kind of leverage.

"No," she said, "no, you don't understand, I saw him – "

But when she tried to rise fully, a hand tightened over her shoulder. It was strange, how quickly that physical contact calmed her when none before had – but it felt so familiar. It felt like Shae; it felt like Jovan. It felt, instinctively, like a friend – or a commander. She paused, and blinked, slowly, painfully, her head still pounding.

She said, "You're Eunbyeol's friend."

He smiled. It was such an oddly bland expression, but there was something in his eyes that suggested he hadn't really expected to be recognised. He was the strangest looking fellow for how normal he looked – handsome, really, roguishly so, but whenever her eyes slid away from him, she couldn't quite picture him, imagine his features, recall what colour his hair or eyes were. Truth be told, she had just recognised the tattoo on his forearm, the outstretched finger upon which a butterfly had alighted.

He said, "I'm Eunbyeol's friend."

"Where is she?"

"I'm not sure."

Then why was he here? Why wasn't he looking for her? Civilians, Evie thought irritably, and then realised that, despite his lack of a grey coat, Eunbyeol's friend was actually a guard. Not much better than a civilian, then. Had they ever faced a crisis before? Had they ever seen a druj before?

He should have been looking for Eunbyeol, for Sherida, for the other Selected, for Petja. Not here. Evie was alive. The same couldn't be said for the others.

They were in one of the opulent drawing rooms which made up the third floor of the palace, with deep, soft red carpeting and pale purple wallpaper embossed with tiny orchids and long-beaked hummingbirds. There were people here, very many people, but they weren't really doing anything, if that anything was lying, like Evie was, and suffering, as many of the wounded were doing. They were just fluttering back and forth, speaking softly in high pitched voices, and darting glances about. Truth be told, there weren't all that many wounded in here; there were just guards, guards and paqudus and the odd Watcher, all still in formal dress, all flitting about like tiny birds stirred into a frenzy.

That was usually how people acted when the druj were at the door. That explosion – had it taken down the Wall? Was this why everyone looked so scared – was that why everyone looked so uncertain? Were the druj here, in Ganzir?

No. Surely, if they were, then everyone here – the courtiers as well – would have been armed.

"Is Pjotr okay?" Evie said.

"Pjotr?" He pronounced the word as though he suspected it might be a curse word in an unfamiliar language.

"The Watcher. He was right beside me, when..."

The way he was watching her, Evie rather felt like she was missing something.

But he just said, "I don't know."

Evie said, irritably, "who would know?"

This time, when she rose, he didn't try to stop her. It wasn't just her head; her entire face was in agony. She went to touch her face, very gently, which sent tiny bolts of pain shooting behind her eyes; her fingers came away with pieces of peeling skin stuck to it. She was almost glad that there were so few mirrors in the royal palace; she had the sneaking suspicion she didn't want to see what she looked like right now. Little black dots were swimming in the vision in front of her right eye; everytime she spoke, she was acutely aware that her words were coming out slightly slurred, as though spoken through only one side of her mouth.

Eunbyeol's friend looked like he wasn't inclined to answer even this simple question, but then, behind him, Lieutenant Morozova strode into the room, their face thunderous. "Is she awake?"

She? Evie snuck a glance around the room, and was unhappy, but not surprised, to find that most people in the room were staring back at her, looking uncertain and – this surprised her a little more – wary. They were watching her like they weren't sure what she would do. Well, whatever it was, she was sure she would do it slowly; every part of her ached and protested against her sitting up, and planting her feet on the floor – someone had taken her shoes – and starting to stand, very slowly. "She's awake," she said dryly, and then, remembering her manners, "sir."

Lieutenant Morozova stood over her. "You've got a good poker face."

"If I knew what you were talking about, I'd be complimented."

Lieutenant Morozova was an austere figure, with short-cropped hair, pale eyes and an unnerving tendency to twirl a knife in their hand when they were thinking. They weren't thinking now; they were watching Evie, as a wolf regards a rabbit. They said, "you're either slick or stupid."

Evie smiled beatifically. "Both?"

Eunbyeol's friend said, "she's still concussed, sir."

"I can tell."

They had taken her prosthetic; Evie couldn't do much except stand there, relying on the arm of the couch for her balance as she cast about for where they might have hidden it. She said, "cryptic comments won't get us far."

There was a bruise in the shape of a hand on her forearm, four black lines curled about her wrist like someone had held her with the strength of a manacle. She wasn't sure who - or what - had left it there. She couldn't remember.

Eunbyeol's friend spoke before Lieutenant Morozova could stop him. "The stone druj appeared to shield you from the explosion, Lady Obušek – there are concerns that –"

"That what?" Evie couldn't hold back a laugh. The stone druj – she had glimpsed it from afar several times over the past seven months, and some cowardly part of her had been glad that it was no longer her job to determine a plan of attack against that garagantuan thing. An even larger part of her hated that she was in the palace, enjoying this limited form of opulence, while the tagma had that to contend with. She had begged feverishly to be let back into the tagma, when she had been injured; she would have joined them again in a single heartbeat if she was allowed to do so. And they were saying that she had made a friend of this monstrous thing? "Druj don't shield people. Druj cannot even think."

The image of Petja, his blue eyes stained that strange gold colour, fractures creeping across his sallow skin, his jaw jagged as though a piece of him had broken off, granite spreading across his cheekbone like a bruise – it flitted across her thoughts swiftly, and vanished just as quickly. She banished it; she would think about it later, when she had her leg back, when she knew what was going on, when her head didn't pound thus and Morozova wasn't in front of her, twirling a knife calmly.

But whatever part of her that had conjured that image was also whispering druj cannot think, druj cannot think.

Lieutenant Morozova said, "we'll have an answer soon enough. The excubitors are on their way to bring it down, as we speak."

The excubitors were capable of much – Evie knew that much. She had been one. She had fought alongside them. Each of her comrades had been as kind as she was, but twice as smart, three times as intelligent. If they said they were going to take down a druj, then they would die trying.

They were going to die trying.

Her mouth was dry. She said, "in that case, surely you cannot consider me such a threat – and you can give me my leg back."

Morozova quirked an eyebrow. "Surely," they drawled in reply.

"If I'm here," Evie said, "where are the other Selected?"

"You should enquire first about the health of their majesties," Morozova said, "that's only polite."

If there was anything amiss with the royal family, Evie thought, Morozova would not be here bothering her – of that, Evie was certain. Nonetheless, she continued, "I trust they are safe?"

"They are safe."

And ah, the way Morozova said it - for a split second, Evie doubted it. The way she bit out the words, the strange shine in her eyes - there was something there. There was something wrong. But she did not pry further; she merely said, "I am so glad. What about the Selected? Seo Eunbyeol, Mirabelle Yannis?"

Morozova was staring down Evie with an expression that suggested the golem druj appearing in the middle of the royal ball was less of an irritation than the diminutive Selected girl was currently making herself. "I wouldn't know," they said, finally, languidly, those mercury eyes cold. "We're still collecting the bodies."

"I can help," Evie said.

"You're missing most of your face, Chae." If her injuries were so grave – she wasn't exactly sure how she had survived, let alone managed to stand up only hours later. Was it hours later? It was hard to tell, but it rather looked like it was still night-time. Perhaps she had lost the whole day, or many days.

Chae. Not Lady Obušek. In a strange way, she liked it; it was an acknowledgement, no matter how small, no matter how slight, of who she was. Of what she was. Of what she could do.

"I don't need a face to clear bodies," she said.

"And the leg?"

For a split second, she was tempted to pretend she hadn't noticed. Scream in shock. What about my leg? Oh my god, what happened? Why did no one tell me? Instead, she just said, "it's an old injury, sir. I'm not really sure that it can get worse at this point."

"It can always get worse," Reiko said. "No matter what. It can always get worse."

They had chased the sun west as though hunting it, and the sun had played its part and fled; Sanav hadn't even realised that there was still some faint hints of sunlight to be found in the star-stained night, but there it was, still bruising the horizon at the very edge of Wall Alliette, as though luring the golem towards it with the promise of daylight and salvation.

Sanav remembered a desperate sprint like this one, once before – when they had gone to Mag Mell, to defend against the winged monster which had laid waste to the city without warning. There was a similar taste of terror in the air now, although there was a strange sense of greater focus. Unlike that previous battle, when the real threat had been the onslaught of druj that had overswarmed the Wall and destroyed the district's defences, here and now they had a singular target and a singular objective.

Stop the stone druj.

They were a small group; the other excubitors would still be scrambling to get into the air, would still be racing to join them from the far-flung districts in which they still persisted. After Mønt, after Mag Mell, after Aizsaule – druj killers were hard to come by these days. This knowledge did not panic Sanav as it ought to have, even as he caught sight of how hard Rakel landed, how she stumbled on the tiles and how she limped forward for two steps before that hiss whipped across the horizon and she was in the air again. She was still here, wasn't she? They were all here.

Only a few weeks ago, he had been a trainee. Only a few weeks ago, he had fled Mag Mell.

He had come back. Wasn't that what mattered?

They were on the edge of Gjöll now; if the druj brought down Wall Schreave, Sanav thought, then only a single layer of defences would lie between the royal family and the roiling herds of druj which still lingered in the outer rings. Never, in all their history, had the darkness come so close. The monsters were on the threshold; the monsters were right here.

That thought was nearly enough to stir old, familiar panic in his chest; when he landed on the edge of Wall Schreave this time, Kinga had to put out a hand to catch him by the shoulder and stop him from stumbling straight off the roof. What a start to the battle that would have been, he thought, desperately.

"Sanav," Kane said, tersely. "Are you sure about this?"

He wasn't asking out of any deep-seated sense of concern, Sanav knew; he was asking, because the risk that Sanav might lose his grit – might buckle at the last moment – was a considerable one. Rakel and Kinga were watching him; they must have been thinking the same thing. That knowledge had a physical shape, pointed and granular; he tried in vain to shrug it off as he squared his shoulders and steeled his jaw and said, determinedly, "I'm sure."

Rakel put a hand on Sanav's shoulder. They were a motley bunch, but none moreso than the red-haired excubitor, who had borrowed a pair of trousers from a guard and a golden coat from a local paqudu, so that she seemed to shine like something celestial whenever the sun caught her lapels. "Look on the bright side, Mahesar. This will make one hell of a story if we live."

Captain Hijikata said, very darkly, "no ifs."

He had brought his sword to the ball; the others were using borrowed weapons. Sanav was sure that, if they lived to see the sunrise, there would be a few "I told you so" thrown about. Never again, he thought, never would he allow vanity to part him from his own blade. This guardsword was already bringing up blisters, throwing him off balance; he spun the sword in his hand, the same way Torsten used to, and caught Rakel's eye, giving her what he hoped was a confident nod.

She smiled back, splitting the cut on her lip as she did so. "There have been worse odds."

"Usually ours."

"It's intelligent," Kane was saying. The golem – Sanav had never seen it up close before, not until it had exploded into existence in the palace. It was enormous, as tall as the Walls which had blotted out light for as long as Sanav could remember knowing what light was, enormous and broad and strong. It had seemed totally composed of stone when he had first glimpsed it from afar, but here and now, it seemed more armored – like stone had been layered over stone. That made sense, Sanav thought, if only to allow for movement – stone tended to stay still, after all – but any hope that the gaps between these plates might offer a weak point for attack was swiftly dashed by the realisation that it seemed overlayered, such that gaps between sections of armor were themselves armored a single layer lower. "Moreso than most."

The captain had gone for the eyes; the golem had snatched him from the air like nothing at all, and hurled him aside, and it had only been fast instincts that had prevented him from ending up a stain on the marble floor of the ballroom. Not all had been so lucky – so many dead, Sanav thought, and then recoiled from the thought like it was a physical threat. Not now. Not yet. Not when they still had work to do.

"Not that intelligent," Rakel said, "it hasn't killed us yet."

Kinga said, pleasantly, "please don't give it any ideas."

"Why aren't the cannons firing?" Sanav glanced about; the Wall was abandoned, desolate, empty. That wasn't right – that wasn't correct. Especially on a night like this one, when the sheer mass of humanity coalescing in Ganzir would surely draw out the hordes desperate for meat and blood… "Where are the watchers?"

The captain said, "we just need to slow it down. Keep it from the wall."

"Until?" Sanav said. Until the other excubitors get here. Until the watchers scramble. Until it tires.

But the captain didn't say any of those things. He just said, "an Ezer pincer should do the trick. Open up its face."

Kinga said, calmly, "there's a weak point on the nape of its neck."

The captain looked at her, but did not question where this knowledge had come from, ask whether it was mere intuition or something more introspective, something deducted rather than assumed. He simply said, "then get above it, Kunegunda."

It couldn't defend both points, Sanav thought, but it could certainly defend one of them, and defend it well. The first would be stopped; the second had a chance of striking true.

Was it just a question of which excubitor would be quicker to fling themselves into certain death?

Rakel and Kane went first – the lieutenant skimmed low, while the captain vanished among the buildings, barely visible between the chimney stacks, only appear as a faint dark streak of green that was gone as soon as it was spotted.

Sanav went to the edge of the wall, until the toe of his boots overhung the precipice. It was a very long way to fall, he thought, but you were guaranteed a death if you fell from here. Not like Torsten, who had the misfortune not to fall from the sky but from a roof; not like Ghjuvan, who had dropped from a few metres up. No, Sanav thought, from here, you would have time to come to terms and then – instant.

If you fell.

Kinga wasn't smiling. "You heard the boss, Sanu. No ifs."

Sanav said, "my sister calls me that."

She looked at him, cocking an eyebrow.

He hastened to clarify. "Sanu."

That was Chandra – she had been annoying, as a child, always noisy, always demanding attention, always out and about the town stirring up trouble. But that was preferable to a dead sister, which was what he would have had if she hadn't been out of the house on the day of… He hadn't really realised how much he loved her until it had come time to leave her, and go the training corps. Always, that drumbeat in his head – is it worth it? Will it ever be worth it? This was the best he could do for her – this was how he could protect her best. He knew that, and yet, he doubted. Sanu.

Kinga said, "my brother used to call me Kingusia."

Used to.

The golem had blocked out the sun now. With that long stride, with that enormous stone shape – it had crushed houses. The street buckled under the weight of imminent destruction. How many dead, with each step? How many left to die? Those strange golden eyes overspilled with honey-toned light; it was so strangely human, the way it walked, the way it moved its arms, the way it moved its head. There were many humanoid druj – Sanav still had nightmares about the red-robed thing that had taken the girl across the street – but this one seemed…. human.

The destruction seemed all the more wanton when he thought that. The druj could not help their nature – they were, in a sense, a force of nature. That was what Sanav had always considered them. But this…

Sanav said, "do you have many siblings?"

"I had," Kinga said, "I had very many."

She was only a year older than him, if that; every so often, that struck him, like he was staring the next twelve months hard in the face. It wasn't obvious on Rakel, who had still kept some of her soft edges, despite the best efforts of the world around her to make her callous; it wasn't so obvious on the captain, who seemed, in moments like these, so much older than Sanav that the exhaustion in his eyes seemed like a weariness you would need a lifetime to earn. Not like Kinga, who must have burst a blood vessel – her eye's sclera was stained dark, almost black. There was a black bruise creeping out from under her hairline.

She said, "most of its strength is in its torso. It can't kick worth a damn. Stay low with Rakel. Impede it."

Sanav risked a weak smile. "While you take the high road?"

"I tend to," she said with a tone of mirth in her voice. She ruffled his hair, and then she was gone. Building height, he expected, and hoping that the golem's enormous size and thick neck meant that it wasn't easy for it to look up.

Sanav took a deep breath, and followed. There was always that first moment, after you had heard the hiss and clank of the hooks finding purchase when your fall was nonetheless aligned with the direction you wanted to go and you feared, for a split second, that the harness would fail, that you would just keep falling and falling and falling, like a star unmoored from its constellation. Then – a tightening around the thighs and biceps and waist – and you were pulled, so fast that all the air was ripped out of your lungs and the world dissipated into blurs of colours and impressions of sound around you. For a split second, at your apex, you would be weightless, hanging in the air as though born to it, and then you would start to fall again, always either falling or about to fall.

It made Sanav feel powerful, the way he could traverse the city in only a few sparse moments and minutes, how quickly he could rise about the rooftops or drop low to the street. This was an old favourite move of Rakel's, skimming along the street with one leg extended so that you seemed perpetually on the verge of throwing yourself into a sprint instead, but many less skilled had snapped femurs trying to imitate her. Sanav had the sense not to risk that today; instead, he skirted around what might have once been a school, now just a mess of broken tile and fallen timbers, and threw himself towards the druj, barely knee-high, skirting it at the last possible moment and circling it in a rapid movement as he scanned for some sign of weakness. For humanoid druj, they often tried to slice open what would be, on humans, tendons, or muscles, to cut across the ankles and calves to try and drive the monsters onto their knees and then, again, onto the ground.

But nothing. Though there was a gap in the armor which flexed open with each step, the material below was hard and shiny, like marble. Sanav didn't bother risking his swords on such a hopeless endeavour; instead, he signalled Rakel, who had no such compunctions. She shattered a sword on that marble as she flashed past, a faint swear following in the enormous arc she was tracing across the cobbled square.

They crossed one another's paths, once and then again and then a third time, forming a lattice of chain and cord, leaving their hooks embedded in the walls as they zig-zagged back and then again. They were so close to the golem that, if it had been a warm-blooded creature, they surely would have felt the heat from the surface of its skin. Instead, there was only the awful rumble and crush of its movement, the sense that the world itself was closing in on top of them while they, desperately, tried to slow it down.

Desperation. That was the right word.

Then it was on top of them, right over them, right there, so that when Sanav tipped back his head he could see only that awful golden light spilling across the stone and marble. Rakel yelled something – Sanav hadn't realised his hooks could carry him so quickly as he reeled himself backwards, rapidly backwards, hoping he could move fast enough to escape that long reach – the golem had, impossibly, caught itself on their cord lattice, and stumbled – staring, Sanav hadn't realised he was holding his breath until –

It was like the golem was deciding whether or not to fall, caught for a single instant, frozen, trying to keep its balance.

Above it, some awful piece of the sky coming detached from itself: Kinga, descending, knife-first.

Below it, an emerald-and-smoke blur, too fast to mistake as anything but itself: the captain, ascending, his sword aglow with golden light.

And then – two things happened at the same time.

First, in the split seconds before the two excubitors could strike – smoke. Not from the cannons, as Sanav had hoped, not from any smouldering remains on the ground, but from the druj itself, like it was burning up from the inside out. Thick black smoke began, in a sudden deluge, to pour from its eyes and then, when it opened its mouth, from its mouth as well, like its very heart was on fire. Smoke engulfed the druj, and though Kane succeeded in veering aside, recognising this change in visibility as a potentially fatal tactical error, Kinga's momentum carried her straight into the darkness.

Then – there was a low, dull explosion which felt as though it had come from very far below the district, and the city seemed to fold up on itself. That was the impression Sanav had – that the streets were curling up as though alive, rising up to match the walls, forming a strange second boundary to the south and then a third to the north. The streets were rising, straight up into the air, curling protectively over the golem. Sanav stumbled back, not entirely certain of what he was watching –

The dark smoke swept forward, obscuring all from view. The captain was scanning the darkness, searching for Kinga, for any hint of the druj, for any hint of life within the strange storm of smoke and stone which had been created around the fallen golem.

Beside Sanav, Rakel was recalling her hooks. "Stay here," she was saying, sounding slightly dazed, like she couldn't quite believe what she was saying. "Stay here, kid –"

"Rakel," Sanav said, "you can't – "

She smiled. "We never leave our own behind, Mahesar."

And with a hiss, Rakel Sjoberg disappeared into the darkness after her fellow Illéan.