#

# WULF

## BOOK ONE OF THE FIFTH PLACE

##

### By Set Sytes
I got a slow rollin low

Ain't a mother would want me

Done got me so down, bent out of round

Don't know my head from my toes.

Ain't a hand here to hold

Ain't a shoulder to cry on

Ain't a lesson to learn or a corner to turn

Twixt the dyin and me

Lord I wanted to be

Something you could depend on

Lawdy lord woe is me

Ain't a body would care.

Waylon Jennings – Slow Rollin' Low

Lycanthropic survival instincts

Embrace the beast and shun the weak

Awake the primal one that sleeps inside

Or feel the shiver running through your spine

My hands are painted red

My future's painted black

I can't recognize myself, I've become someone else

My hands are painted red

Schizophrenic amnesia

Bid goodbye to all you knew and loved

Forget the only life that you knew outside

They bought the ticket, now you take the ride

Lamb of God – 512
All across the world, philosopher scientists united, having finally discovered the Ultimate Secret: the meaning of life, the meaning of existence, and the meaning behind the universe, all of which amounted to pretty much the same thing.

In reaction to this monumental breakthrough the Earth was racked by waves of suicides. Countless others were numb and silent. Many stayed in denial.

The deniers would convert the fastest.

It was around this time things were Reshuffled, as they sometimes were.

The order of things is moved around. Different minds to different bodies. Some of it is repair work, but most of it is experimental. Memories are changed to fit the new build, the _mould_. Lost or buried, and then adopted anew from their host. You will always remember things _just as they have always been_ , even if the way things have been has only been true for a day. A mould that once housed a kind, sensitive soul now holds a rough, arrogant mind – and everybody remembers them as this new sort, and an entirely new shape takes its effect on the lives of everybody that comes into contact with it.

Needless to say, a Reshuffling takes an enormous amount of work. A lot of it is simple presets, now, but there are always new configurations to make, new hiccups to consider. The debug program points out any gaps or mistakes, any potential bogeys let through before the changes become live. And afterwards, mistakes can always be quickly rectified, or at least smoothed over somewhat.

A great deal of change can be enacted simply by putting different minds into different people occupying different positions. A small alteration in personality of a single individual can change the course of history.

It is no wonder the world is so confusing, and people struggle so. Their minds and lives have gone through so many changes, and many people's minds are not in their original bodies. Some people may never be directly touched by the Reshuffle, and some people's memories will be rewritten over and over as their brains or the brains of their friends and family find themselves with new occupants.

Thankfully, Earth had never achieved interstellar contact or cross-dimensional exploration, and so the latest Reshuffle was localised to the planet. That said, it was the greatest single-planet Reshuffle ever yet done. Some would say it was in response to Earth's self-claimed Ultimate Discovery of the Ultimate Secret, while others might point out that the plans had been in motion for a long time, and Earth had been due a Reshuffle for a while.

Afterwards, the Ultimate Discovery would be seen to be bogus, a piece of nonsense so derided that people thought it was a wonder it had ever been taken seriously, and noted both the 'discovery' and the resulting reactions as an unpleasant black spot on modern history. The philosopher scientists were blamed wholeheartedly, and they in turn blamed each other, and all tried not to broadcast their own personal shame.

It was almost perfect. And it would have been, if not for one oversight.

That oversight was one man.

He was Reshuffled, but his memories were left more-or-less intact, and his mind was sent to the wrong place. It was not sent to one of his friends, or his friend's sister's boyfriend's dog's groomer, or someone in Africa or someone in New Zealand.

It was sent to another world.

# PART ONE
## ONE

He woke up standing with a gun to his head.

Desert plain, sand-coloured rocks, a stunted shrub of a tree. The touch of hot metal against his temple.

There were two men in front of him, also with guns, smiling toothy, dirty smiles.

He blinked, and opened his mouth. 'What the fuck—' he started, before immediately changing to 'Oh my—' and then 'What', and finishing with ' _This isn't my voice!_ ' as his knees buckled.

The smudge of a man in his corner vision who held the gun pressed to his head grabbed him roughly by the neck, keeping him upright. 'Don't even think about pullin' some trick,' came the growl in his ear.

The men looked like mercenaries from an old age. They were dirty and ragged, yellowed cloth and brown belts and heads covered in bristles. They leered and snarled at him.

'Wha – what's going on?' he managed to breathe, and he trembled again as he heard another person's voice form the words.

The pistol barrel nudged harder into him. 'Cut the shit, Wulf.'

'Please. I have absolutely no idea what's going on.'

'You're gonna die, that's what. And not before time.'

He didn't delude himself into thinking it was a dream. The gun against his head felt all too real. It seemed to be heating up under the glare of the sun. His hands were tied behind his back, and the rough knots bit into his skin.

It was then when he saw the lilac sky, a bright, alien colour that ringed the sun's circle in purple flame.

He looked down, blinking as velvet motes danced over the sand and the rocks. He saw high boots and pants the colour of bark. His hair felt different, his face felt different. His whole body felt different. He was . . . stronger.

'Wait,' he said, licking his lips, trying to understand the voice. The accent seemed vaguely familiar – something southern, and yet exotic, a voice of spiced incense and long burning days and silks stained with blood – and yet nothing he could put a country's name to, or even a definite region. His new voice was deeper, tougher, and instinctively he flexed his jaw and then the muscles in his arms. It felt good.

He squinted back up at the day's light, that soft white-purple haze that quilted the land. The terrain lay about him like a bruise. There was no horizon; everything led to one slope or another. The astonishment of it all, the incredulity taming itself through a rising awe, was almost enough to make him forget the gun.

'Time to die, _tabaca._ '

It was then that he realised nobody was speaking English. Not even him. He hadn't realised because while he was hearing another language, something he'd never heard before, he was _understanding_ it in English. Words – his own words too, circling back on him – had been hitting his ears in whatever-the-fuck-it-was and appearing in his brain perfectly sensible.

_Is this what being fluent is like?_ He figured not.

The gun clicked, ready for the end.

He wanted to say, 'There's been a huge misunderstanding.' He wanted to say, 'I've just woken up like this and I have _no fucking idea where I am who I am and more precisely who I am to you and you're about to kill me, possibly forever unless this really is the biggest most expensive whopper of a trick ever played on someone._ ' He wanted to say a lot of things, a lot of things that wouldn't have done him one bit of good, and yet in the end all that came out of his new mouth was, 'Wait,' again.

One minute in a new body in a new world and I'm gonna die. Just my luck.

'Goodbye,' growled the reprobate in front of him.

'This is ridiculous.' He looked surprised for a second at himself, the words as unfamiliar as the voice. _Well, at least I'm not crying at the end._

He tensed, closed his eyes, there was a small _thuk_ and the pressure of the gun fell away.

He opened an eye, then both. The two men in front of him were looking around wildly, pistols in their hands. The man who had been about to pull the trigger on him was laid out on the sand. A fine breeze was picking up and throwing the grains to stick to the blood.

This time he saw the arrow; it whistled in and went through the eye of the beardiest. And before he knew what was happening he had charged forward into the man remaining, headbutting him to the ground. He straightened and stamped on the man's fingers, kicking the gun away, then kicking down hard on his neck. He put all his weight on one foot, crushing the man's windpipe, then hopped his tied wrists over one leg, so his hands were now hooked around his crotch. He quickly switched feet before the man could draw a breath, and did the same movement with the other leg.

With bonded double fists he made to punch the man out, but by the looseness of the neck and the open eyes it seemed the man was dead.

He sat down, unsure of what had just happened. He wasn't a fighter, but he'd just gone for a man with a gun. He could have waited; why get in the way of his mysterious saviour and his arrows?

He'd gone for a man and he'd killed him in a matter of movements – movements he'd never made before. What was worse, he didn't feel like he thought he would, those times when he'd lay in bed and wonder what it would be like to kill another human. He tried to summon the shock, the numbness or hysteria, the overpowering guilt and regret, the anger . . . none of it came. It was as though there was a new part of him, a part that dominated and reacted to the murder with a mere shrug of the shoulders.

He looked at his hands. _A new part of me? I'm all new part_ s. His hands were red, not just the rawness around the ropes but everywhere, a deep, dark red with even darker nails. It wasn't a dyed red, or a sunburned red. It was a skin colour red, a red like blood.

'He dead?'

He looked up, and stared. His archer was a she, a woman – that much was obvious right from the get-go. He didn't think he'd seen anyone like her, except possibly as some kind of fantasy art back on . . . back in . . . back where he came from. She was an Amazonian: that was his first thought. He was taller in this new body, he could tell, but even though he wasn't yet sure of his own height, she might have been his equal. It balanced the lurid curvature of her caramel body with an intimidating aura of dominance. A long black bow hung around her, its black string tight across her cleavage.

She raised one dark eyebrow at him, then, as he continued to look on dumbly, she stepped over to the man he had felled.

'Yes,' she said simply, returning to him. 'Cat got your tongue, Jay?'

_That's my name. Or rather, that's the name of this body. Jay . . . Jay Wulf_. The name came to him, tumbling up from somewhere inside.

'Who are you?'

'Fuck off,' she said. She sat down on the rocks. 'I know you have a dog's eyes Jay, but this is jerking around even for you. Close your stupid mouth. You look like you've never seen a Savvi before.'

_Jerking around_. His brain was making immediate connections, translating into the most recognisable of forms, slang and all. _Learning American_.

'What's a Savvi?' he said.

' _I'm_ Savvi, you dickbag.' Her eyes narrowed as there was no sign of recognition. ' _Sav_. What's the matter with you? You get hit on the head again?'

'I take it we're supposed to know one another.'

'No shit. Oh for crying out loud. I'm not hanging around for all this.'

'Please!'

She stood up. 'I'm going.'

He offered his hands up pitifully. 'Can you at least cut me free?'

She hesitated, then shook her head. 'I'm not getting that close to you.'

'You've got knives all over you, just pass me one . . . gently.'

The woman who called herself Savvi, or Sav, laughed. 'You really must have hit your head if you think I'm going to give you a blade.'

He wanted to weep, but it seemed Jay's body had little time for such things, and he resorted to falling to his knees and putting his head in his hands.

'Aw, poor baby,' she said.

'I've only been here a few minutes,' he said into his hands. He tried to make it sound self-pitying to earn some sympathy, but it didn't work with his new voice; he just sounded frustrated. 'And already I've barely escaped dying, killed a man who was probably going to kill me, and now left for dead by a . . . a woman who . . . by my own saviour, who, who won't listen to me,' he finished lamely.

She rolled her eyes. 'What rubbish. I'm not leaving you for dead, there's all fucking manner of sharp rocks you can cut your bonds on. Then you're free to go back to town, or wherever the fuck you want. The key word you used is "saviour". I really should stop saving your life, it's getting to be quite a bad habit.' The words were slow and lazy, like syrup from her lips. But they also carried sourness and scorn, or at the very least the pretence of such, and they betrayed a hard undercurrent that at times seemed to put her words just on the threshold of being spat out.

He watched her walk away from him. He didn't know if she was swaying or he was. He could smell blood on the breeze.

She picked up speed, and soon she was running over slope and scree, arrows lightly quivering. He marvelled at the way she moved, like she was half elf half . . . panther. Her ebony form seemed to fade in and out of the rocks, the black and brown of the straps and scraps of her clothing the perfect camouflage. Her black hair lay as still as a dark pool, and crossed the land like a shadow of a great bird.

_I wonder how many men have spent too long looking at her,_ he wondered, _and not at her arrows and knives._

He rose suddenly. 'Wait,' he cried out. 'WAIT!' _My new favourite word._

'I'm still not gonna fuck you!' Her voice sailed back at distance, before she was lost to him.

He stood still, bewildered. _Who am I?!_

Jay Wulf. That's who I am. That's who I am in this world. I'll find out more about me, what kind of person I am, but I'm starting to get an idea.

_I'll find out everything. Where I am, who I am, who_ she _is, and what the fuck happened to me._

_And how to get home, and back to my old body_ , said a smaller voice in him.

'Steady on,' __ he said, feeling the strength in him like a second sun. Overhead the pure lilac sky was carrying away a single coupling of indigo clouds. 'Let's not be hasty.'

*

He'd discarded what he could only call his shirt – he supposed once upon a time it was a distant relation to the colour white – and wrapped it around his waist, after sawing away his bonds on a rock. They were in bad condition and it didn't take long. The sweat dripped down his skin, as the white yolk of the purple-frayed sun rose higher in the sky. He'd forgotten to ask for directions from Sav to the town, but he wondered if she'd even have helped. Whenever he thought of her, he got this slightly sick feeling, low down in him. A kind of bristling, impatient warmth that was nothing to do with the sun. He wondered how much of this feeling was him alone, and how much belonged to this body.

Jay Wulf was going the wrong way.

He inspected for the hundredth time what he could make out of his chest and arms. He couldn't stop – it's not every day that the body you've grown up with, grown wearyingly used to seeing every day in the mirror or whenever you look down, is suddenly entirely different and novel.

Past his hands – which were solid red gloves of skin, trailing past his wrists in flames – most of his skin seemed tan coloured, except where the same doomy scarlet marked him in its twisted abstractions and patterns, if patterns there were.

_Burn victim?_ He wondered. _Pigmentation . . . port-wine birth marks?_ Somehow he thought not, not with the variety and wildness that these blood stains draped and dappled his skin. He resolved to find a mirror as soon as possible.

He'd hung around the dead men for a while, a task not as grisly as he'd have expected. He took money from their pockets – a handful of round red coins like poker chips. It wasn't until later that he even thought twice about this.

The men had been a single colour, all hairy and beardy. They looked very barbarous, but he figured they could have passed for half normal Earth-people if you'd stripped them (which he hadn't). That was until he found the second set of ears half hidden by their hair.

Now, panting under the midday sun as he leaped the land with newfound agility and vigour, he realised that was another thing he should have asked her. He should have asked her if he was human.

He heard a scrabble of pebbles from behind him, and span around. There was nobody there.

'Show yourself!' he said, his voice showing the kind of no-bullshit aggressiveness his previous voice had never had.

There was silence.

'I warn you, I've got a gun!' He meant this as a lie, but then realised he'd taken a gun off one of the men. The same gun that meant to take his life. It was another thing he'd done without really thinking about it, on an autopilot he had no truck relying on, not this soon after an entry into a new world of _fucked up_.

He pulled the gun out of his holster – another thing that had been there all along. Little fragments of Jay Wulf were revealing themselves to his attention, as though in a queue, all waiting to come into play at their intended time. The pigmentation, the strange pendant hung from his neck, the hair shaved at the sides and long at the top. The array of muscles that shone tan and red and purple in the light. The gathered weight in his loins. The holster on his belt.

And what does that tell me? It tells me I'm the kind of man who is used to carrying a gun.

He'd never shot a gun before. Hell, he'd never even handled one. But now he clutched it with undeniable familiarity, the grip comfortable in a palm that was the driest part of his body. It looked old and worn and ugly, like something belonging to a previous age of the Earth, but it was nothing he could name, short of 'pistol'. It looked very loud and very lethal.

A tiger slunk out from a boulder. It was black with red stripes; not the red of his skin but a bold, bright scarlet that seemed like jags of red lightning over the fur of the night. The claws, even the teeth were red. It moved calmly, carefully, sweeping its tail in the dust. But its dark gaze didn't leave his face, and its teeth were bared.

He waved the gun. 'Get back!'

The tiger stopped, but continued to glare at him. It was crouching now, tense.

'Don't even —'

The tiger sprang.

He was bowled over by the full weight of the thing – _are all tigers this big?!_ – was his thought as he hit the ground with a thud. He was surprised to find a lack of savage teeth sinking into his neck. There was hot breath on his face. He opened his eyes tentatively, to see the tiger's glaring eyes two inches from his. Its claws were gripping him tight, but not puncturing – not yet.

His arms were pinned beneath the weight of the tiger. The gun had fallen from his hand. He couldn't even struggle – not with those teeth so sharp and so close to his jugular.

For a few seconds there was nothing but the breath of the tiger and the thump of two hearts. He could feel the tiger's heartbeat through his own chest, and wondered if the tiger had the same sensation.

It roared, a sound that seemed to fill the world. It lasted a long time, and that was the second time that day the newly thinking Jay Wulf would cringe and expect a gory death.

Even now a whimper wouldn't come. _Even at my own demise I'm a hard-ass, apparently. Not a man for whom whimpers come easy._

The tiger's eyes retreated, the weight lifted. He rolled away and backed up in a crouch. He looked to the gun but the tiger growled, and then went over and sat on it. It never took its eyes from his.

Cats never had the most tell-tale of expressions, but he had never seen such a curious look to one. That it was angry, that was certain, but there was more than that, hidden behind the impassive features . . . Annoyance? Frustration? And . . . confusion? Wonder? The tiger was staring at him with wide imperious eyes as though Jay was a marvel, a profoundly irritating source of amazement, something it'd never really seen before.

Maybe it hasn't?

Every so often it growled low in its throat, or flexed its claws, or shook its head, as though trying to dispel an illusion. _But_ _if it meant me harm, it'd have done it already._

He stood up. The big cat did too.

'I'd like my gun back,' he said.

The tiger shook its head slowly.

He blinked. 'You can understand me?'

The tiger just looked at him.

'Okay . . .' He felt like he was slipping, talking to a tiger. _Relax, you're doing pretty good for someone completely out of their depth_.

He took a few steps back. The tiger took a few steps forward.

'Are you going to follow me?'

The tiger did not reply.

'Well. What should I call you? Tigger? Stripes?'

Growl.

'Blackie?'

The growl rose, and so did haunches.

'Alright alright. I guess you'll just be a tiger then.'

Receiving these words, the beast laid back down on the gun and put its head on its paws. It finally took its eyes off Jay and sank them to the ground.
The man with the green eyes raised his head. 'An oversight,' he repeated simply.

The man with the green eyes stood stiff. 'We don't quite understand sir. Not yet. But we're missing someone. He's inaccessible – completely off the Grid.'

The man with the green eyes nodded. 'It has happened before.'

The man with the green eyes looked a little surprised. 'It has, sir?'

The man with the green eyes looked at the man with the green eyes. 'How old are you?'

'Six hundred, sir.'

'You are very young.'

'I know sir. I'm good at what I do, sir.'

'When you get as old as me, you see a lot of mistakes in the universe. A lot of problems, especially when it comes to Reshuffles.' He paused, then stroked his smooth head with a forefinger, as though slicking down invisible hair. 'I don't think there's anything in the universe or out of it that can surprise me. I've seen everything.'

'Yes sir.'

'Find out what happened. If there's a culprit, find them. And find whoever went missing. Nobody gets to leave the Grid. And nobody is untraceable.'

'He was from Earth-502, sir. His name is —'

The man with the green eyes looked coldly at his inferior. 'I do not care what his name is. Find him.'

'Yes sir.'

## TWO

Any fool could tell you not to fall asleep beside a wild tiger, but Jay Wulf had gone and done just that. It wasn't as though he'd planned to. There had been no point when he'd yawned and settled down, thinking 'I'll just close my eyes for a wink, I'm sure I'll hear if the tiger gets up to maul me.'

It had merely been the case that one moment he was awake and the next, as the lilac sky deepened and the indigo clouds drifted back from the horizon, he was not. There was a sensation in his head of a whirlpool: circling it, and being sucked ever downwards.

His last thoughts were nothing concrete, merely a spiral of tigers of all colours, and the report of guns everywhere, and of alien technology, lasers and leviathan ships. And then just the desert, and the woman Sav coming from out the sand, swaying towards him, and how his insides _breathed_ for her, how he _ached_.

Eventually the tiger closed its own eyes and began to purr next to him in sleep.

The mind of Jay Wulf was a mess. It stank – sweet smells and sour, all carrying a familiarity that he could not put his finger on. There was clutter everywhere; he moved through a room filled with pelts and ripped silk, with leather half cut into holsters and saddles. There were bloodstains on the floorboards and hung on the half rotting walls were guns and knives and swords. The furniture was a hodgepodge of old and new, and was piled high with trinkets and semi-valuable treasures. There was what looked like an old ship's wheel resting against the wall, almost the size of him. A nearby fire burned low in a grate, casting flickers on the wheel that made it look like it was reliving past battles of sword and flame.

On blankets and furs strewn in the centre were several naked women. They were beautiful in that vague, dream-like way, where no one aspect can be concentrated on enough to provide any real kind of definition to the person, no sense that any part of who they were could survive awakening.

'Hello, Jay,' purred one of the women. _Just like the tiger._

'Hello,' Jay replied. 'Where am I?'

The women just smiled at him. 'Come to bed, Jay,' they said.

'Who are you? No, for that matter, who am _I_?'

They giggled. 'You know who you are,' said one.

'Jay Wulf, I suppose,' he said.

'The greatest fighter in the world,' cooed one of them.

'The greatest lover in the world,' said another.

'The greatest man —'

'With the biggest —'

The final words were gurgled as the room blew away like smoke.

*

'Get off her,' he said.

The man glanced behind him to see a gun pointed at his head. 'What's this?' he growled, after a hesitation.

'Off.'

The man spat, half on the bed, half on the woman. 'It's got fuck all to do with you.'

Jay Wulf looked down at her, then back at the man. 'Lady says no,' he said simply.

'Lady,' the man snorted. 'When a whore says no she says yes.'

The woman punched him in the side, and he grunted and drew a knife on her. 'Do that again. Do that again.'

'Sometimes, sure,' Jay said. 'But when this whore says no she means no.' His gun remained trained on the man, unwavering.

'And you can tell how?'

'You can tell by not being a fuckin idiot.'

The man moved his knife from the woman's throat and turned it quickly in his hand, and Jay shot him in the forehead.

He shoved him off the woman and lifted her to her feet.

'You got blood all over my fuckin dress,' she said.

'Don't I get a thank you?' He holstered his gun.

She looked him up and down. 'You want a thank you for stoppin him rapin me? You ain't serious. That's duty, not heroism.'

'Not in this place it ain't. Duties like that, they don't stay around forever with lack of reward. Aye, well. I suppose.' He leaned against the wall and spat. 'You stayin here? Want me to take you someplace else?'

'No,' she said. 'What d'you want, you wanna try your luck too?'

'Maybe I do,' he replied. 'But not tonight, I reckon. Tomorrow, perhaps. But it'll be all luck and tryin, and nought else.'

He yawned as she scowled. 'But another whore will do,' he said. 'Willin and paid in more than good coin, have no fear. Fact, think I'll go for it now, takin your leave miss. Shootin that fella off you and meetin your fine self got my blood up and my dick hard.'

She stared at him in disbelief and anger. 'You're turned on preventin rape by way of murder?'

Jay laughed huskily. 'Sounds a lot worse the way you put it. I wouldn't put too much by it, though. My dick is always hard. It gets hard at someone openin a door, gets hard at another closin it.'

She looked down and said in a scathing tone, 'It don't look hard.'

Jay laughed. 'Aye, down for one minute, out of respect.' He nodded at her and stood up off the wall. 'I'll be going now. Don't mind him no more' – he kicked the dead body – 'I'm sure you can sleep around him. Get some rest. Whores need their rest.'

'Whores need a day where they ain't whores.'

'That too.' He touched his brow and left, leaving bloody footprints on the wood that got fainter and fainter with every step.

*

He woke up to the tiger once again a few inches from his face, upside down and glaring, with an insistent rumbling kind of purr that was closer to growl. Jay yelled and sprang up, and the tiger watched him disdainfully as he scrambled to get to the uncovered gun.

Jay picked it up and – under the tiger's watch – slowly put it in his holster. Finding out that he hadn't been ripped apart after he'd passed out had given him enough reason to believe that his life wasn't in danger any more. Well, not from the tiger at least. No doubt the rest of this land (wherever the hell it was) wanted to kill him.

'Let's get this straight,' he said.

The tiger yawned at him. A long yawn, too long by Jay's count.

'Are you done? Neither of us, I think, wants to hurt each other. But I mean, well, am I crazy here? You're a smart cat, ain't you?'

The tiger licked his lips.

Jay sighed. 'Be that way. I'm going on. I may be in a new body in quite possibly a new world, but I sure know what hunger and thirst feel like. I feel . . . not good, and I need saving. I need to get to the nearest town, and the sooner the better or I'm gonna die out here.'

The tiger watched Jay stand up wearily and turn away.

'Leaving me to it?' Jay said, then shrugged his shoulders and continued on.

Jay was about to pass between two shelves of rock when he felt teeth on his leg. He yelled out and kicked away, and the tiger backed off, snarling.

'Listen, fuck off!' Jay said, removing the gun from his holster and waving it ineffectually once more. He replaced it back in its holster and made to move on.

The tiger darted in and bit at his leg again, but this time it just caught the light cloth of his pants. They didn't rip, but the tiger was dragging him, and Jay staggered, trying to keep his balance.

'What is it!' _More like a dog than a cat,_ he thought. _The kind of dog move that means something . . ._ 'What's that boy?' he said, leaning down. 'Timmy fallen down the well? Ouch!' He lifted his leg and rubbed it where the tiger had bit him, harder than before. 'Alright alright! What do you want?'

The tiger padded away a few steps, then looked meaningfully back at him.

'You want me to go that way? That's the way I came from!'

The tiger said nothing, but waited impatiently.

'Let me think for a second.' The tiger flopped to the ground. 'Well,' Jay pondered out loud, 'if I follow you, you might just lead me back to my starting position, you might lure me into an ambush and eat me . . . although I suppose you could have killed me at any point . . . But you could just be taking me back to your lair, which wouldn't exactly do me much good, unless . . . unless you know where water is? I'm not gonna feast on any raw critter you have waiting for me, I'll have you know. Then there's the other hand, I suppose if I ignore you you'll just keep biting and dragging me, won't you?'

The tiger nodded.

' _Do you understand what I'm saying! I know you do! Hello!_ ' Jay waved his hand in the tiger's face.

The tiger looked at him balefully, then stood up and walked off.

'Alright, I'm coming. All I'm saying, is if you lead me into a trap, or worse, to nowhere at all, and I die because of you, I'm gonna be pretty mad. I'm just saying.'

Jay picked his way back among the rocks, his throat aching. _I need drink soon. The tiger has to keep hydrated too. I just wish that Sav woman hadn't fucked off . . . no doubt a tendency to quickly fuck off has served her well in the past._

She saved me, though. So that must mean at least one person is on my side. Somewhat.

Unless she just wants to kill me herself at a later date.

He remembered the dream. Walking slowly amongst the room of junk and treasure, guns and blades and blood, the room of animal furs and naked, flattering ladies.

Then he remembered what came after, and he knew _that_ hadn't been a dream, not really.

It had been a memory.

## THREE

The town came up first as a mirage. Only when Jay crawled closer did the clutter of shacks that occupied the long stretch of dry valley prove their firmness, their intent to stay.

His mind was screaming at him, but he wasn't listening to it. He wasn't listening to it because his throat was screaming louder. On hands and knees he shuffled through sand and along dusty rocks. The temperature was a little cooler now, but his head swam and he was starting to see dots that looked like a swarm of winged black demons coming down at him from far off in the sky.

He squinted and made out a few people in the street. There was a main thoroughfare that led alongside structures with hard to read signs, though their meaning came easily enough. The buildings were all made of a black wood that shined in the calming sun. A dog barked and raced from one side of the street to another.

Jay got to his feet slowly, groaning and shutting his eyes for a few seconds until the demons floated off. He looked behind him. The tiger was asleep. It had been noticeably impatient with him, and on this last crawling stretch it had simply laid down and shut its eyes.

Turning back, his eye caught the promise of water. There was a trough where a few horses were tied, right at the edge of town. They took turns to gulp it gratefully – taller horses than he'd ever seen before, and slightly . . . pointier. There was a white mare with these big lazy pools for eyes, an imperious red with dark socks, and an exotic looking stallion as black as pitch, with flaming scarlet hair that burst all about him. He looked at Jay as he approached, and seemed to nod. His hooves stamped the ground.

Jay was in no sense to avoid the horses, nor to play nice. He budged up beside the mare at the end, which whinnied at him, water dripping from her mouth. Then he sank to his knees and plunged his head into the trough. He barely noticed the taste of horse, only half-cared that the water was warm and had likely been sat out all day. Flies that sounded like fizzing soda hopped and skipped over his neck and shoulders, and he let them. Under the water his gullet moved as he swallowed.

Just before he was ready to come up and drink with his hands he was pulled back and away by tough hands. He fell onto his elbows, the hair that lay long about his forehead streaming little trails of trough water to the parched ground.

'What in the name of fuck are you tryin to do?' said a shadow over him.

Jay blinked. A man with a fat moustache and a bent hat was dragging him up to his feet.

'I was thirsty,' Jay said.

'A lotta people get thirsty,' said the man. 'You know what they do? They go to the saloon. They don't try'n drown 'emselves in horse spit.'

'Was desperate.' Jay tried to brush his wet hair away from his face, and he wiped away the droplets that clung to his nose and chin.

'Come in from the Wastes huh? Didn't plan the journey? Look at the state of you. Tough but stupid, that's it.'

'I don't know this place. At all.'

'Yeah, well. This place is called Nohaven.'

'It doesn't sound too welcoming.'

'That's cause it ain't.' The man stared at him with small eyes. 'Go on, get. To the saloon, to a bed, to the gunshop to blow your brains out, or right back the way you came, I don't give one single golden fuck. Just get away from my horse and away from that trough. I ain't havin to fish you out again when you've drowned and befouled the water for my ride.' The man put a hand on its soft white coat.

'I've already got a gun.' Jay said. He pointed at his holster.

The small-eyed man snorted. 'Call that a gun? I bet you could lay that piece of crap right against my forehead and pull the trigger and two seconds later we'd both be still standing wonderin where the bullet went.'

Jay's hand played about his side, and the man opened his jacket slightly. 'I dare ya,' he said, as Jay glimpsed a bulging hunk of steel: an obese firearm strapped to his chest. Jay moved his hand from his holster to his waist and untied his shirt, walking off with feigned nonchalance as he wriggled back into it. He could feel the man's eyes on the back of his neck.

The people were a motley scuffery of beaten jackets and shirts, plain half-cut dresses and makeshift skirts. Farmer garbs and fighting suits. Every outfit, every look seemed a hodgepodge, a DIY of appearance. They were everyone, it seemed: blacks and browns and reds, half-and-halves and the quartered, those whose pink or grey complexions were tinted or mottled a nearly seaweed green. There were the tattooed and there were the disfigured. There were even a couple of chalk-like figures – god knows how they didn't tan under this sun.

A woman with lashes that curled out far from her face like spikes watched him, amber eyes flecked with crimson. As he drew closer he saw her carelessly tickling the two dozen knives that ringed her belt. A younger girl sat in the shadow of an overhang with an old man grinding blades. She looked about fifteen, with exceptionally pale blue eyes. Her hair hung white in four pigtails, and she stroked a gun that rested its butt on the ground and could well be nearly as tall as her standing. The old man glanced up, spat and went back to his work. His hair was tangled all the way down his back, and his mouth had been cut into a permanent scowl.

They watched him from all about, from windows and porch chairs, passing him in ones and twos on the thoroughfare. He was the outsider.

He walked into the saloon. It was only slightly cooler in the shade; in here there was a kind of dank, heavy gloom, and a permeating odour of sweat and hard spirits. Jay's eyes adjusted slowly. He imagined that there might be a tinkling rag-time piano that suddenly stopped, and the faces of a dozen plus rogues turned to him in silence.

It wasn't like that. They looked at him, but only for a second. There had been no music, only a constant hubbub of chatter running at different levels: low murmurs and clandestine mumblings right up to raucous shouts and cat-calls. Just like outside, they were not cowboys, not exactly. There was the bandit in a number of them, there was no doubt about that, and other tropes he could recognise – _two prostitutes in the corner, or my name's not (JAY WULF)_ – but nobody's style he could easily label; he was reminded clearly of things from Earth and its history, and nothing here seemed _particularly_ absurd or otherworldly in that regard, but there was nevertheless the unmistakeable feeling of something _other_ ; naturally developed and stained with the dust and labour of this land's own history, and yet wholly new.

He sidled up to the bar in the most unobtrusive way he could manage, and found himself elbow-to-elbow with a middle-aged man with a square-ish bowler hat and a loosened tie, and all the demeanour of a merchant banker with more love for the drink than the job. Jay nodded at him and grinned – _even my smile feels different, it feels more . . . wolfish_ – and the man shook his head, not making eye contact. Jay tried to look sympathetic, but the banker only shook his head again, raising his eyes only to stare wistfully into the faded bottle in front of him.

'Well?' The bartender was drumming her fingers, a motion of irritability not heard against the background noise.

'Erm, whiskey,' Jay said. 'Please,' he added, and then regretting it as the barrel-bodied woman gave him a funny look.

He watched her pour it in front of him, a chest like two diving bells resting on the bar-top. He knew the word that had actually come out of his mouth wasn't "whiskey". The glass of muddy gold before him was only the nearest translation. He hoped it was nicer than neat whiskey; he'd only asked for the stuff to fit in, and could really have done with more water.

'Three kings,' she said.

'Huh?'

'That'll be three kings you owe.' She affixed a tried-and-true _don't-fuck-with-me_ expression and puffed herself up, not that any more notice could have been given to that full-buttocked chest. She may have been shorter than most of the patrons there, but she sure as sin was wider – and deeper – and even presuming no weapons with slugs the size of sword hilts lay within easy reach of those big, clasping hands, she could no doubt barrel most trouble out the door. A scar on her cheek stood testimony to at least one altercation she'd survived.

Jay dug into his pants pocket and found the red poker-chip coins he'd stolen off the dead men. It seemed that a few had gone missing, no doubt lost in his scrabbles. Now he could see that they were of three different sizes and abrasions; each textured uniquely to the touch.

'Which ones are the kings?' he said.

The bar woman raised an unimpressed eyebrow. 'The big ones.'

He plucked out three of them and deposited them in her outstretched hand. She closed her fist and quickly snapped it back, looked him up and down and turned away to serve another further down. Jay sipped his drink. He grimaced. Yep, that was as bad as whiskey. A dirty, warm whiskey carrying a flavour reminiscent of slightly off berry . . . one of the berries, one of the ones nobody remembered . . .

He picked up his glass and gave the liquid a swirl. There were waves of a darker colour, that glided phantasmal and elfin. He caught the reflection, and turned to his right, where she was sitting.

'You.'

'You took your time,' Sav said, long fingers with close-cut nails the colour of chocolate curled around a wide mug. She looked amused.

'You left me! In the middle of nowhere!'

'Oh, nonsense,' she said. 'You got back alright, didn't you?'

'I nearly died! Why couldn't you just have led me back?'

'Because you know the way. Or should have done.'

'Well I didn't. I don't.'

'I see,' she said, in a bored tone. 'But you still made it.'

'Only because of the tiger —'

'A tiger?'

'A tiger led me back.'

'Of course it did. I don't see one with you, though.'

'It's sleeping just outside of town. Or at least it was when I left it.'

'Mhmm. Ah well.' She took a gulp from her drink.

Jay took a deep breath. 'I don't think you realise the situation I'm in.'

'Oh, boo-hoo. If I knew you were going to be such a little bitch about it I wouldn't have saved your life this time. What gives?'

'Look,' he said, stopped, and then tried to start again. 'Look.'

'What am I looking at? If this is another one of your lengthy come-ons . . .'

'I have no memory of who I am or where I am.' He had quickly decided this was a better course of explanation than 'I appear to be in a different body in a potentially alien land.'

'That's unfortunate,' she replied, dryly. 'You don't remember me, then?'

'I remember —' he paused. 'I remember scraps, just like half-formed ideas, or dreams. Many things seem faintly familiar. You, for instance. I feel I have this connection to you. That doesn't quite explain it, and maybe it's just that you saved my life, even though you didn't exactly stick it through, but —'

'That's sweet, honey, but you're not the first man to tell me you have a connection to me, or whatever. I suppose you've also forgotten all the times you've tried to get into my pants?'

A blush failed to materialise. 'I'm sorry,' he said, in what he thought might pass for an abashed tone.

She stared. 'Who the fuck are you and what have you done with Jay?'

He shrugged. 'Am I right in thinking I can trust you?'

Sav laughed, the kind of unsubtle laugh that's done right in someone's face. That face being his own. 'Trust me?' she cried gleefully. 'Listen my poor bitch, you can't trust me an inch. And that's an inch more than you can offer.'

'But you must like me, surely?'

'Not really.'

'But then why save my life?'

She shrugged. 'I suppose you amuse me.' She banged her mug down. 'Bar keep!' she yelled. 'Another!'

The bartender bustled over to her and refilled, smiling lopsidedly at Sav. She glared at Jay, then took the call from a woman chanting for what Jay's mind translated as "black beer".

'You didn't pay anything.'

'Course not,' Sav said, face half-hidden inside her mug. 'She knows who I am.'

'And who _are_ you?'

'Don't make me repeat myself.'

Jay sighed. The woman was hard work, but beggars couldn't be choosers. It struck him as funny – odd funny, not ha-ha funny – that he could consider himself a beggar when it came to a lady – _a_ _woman_ , he corrected himself, _not a lady_ – of such looks. Erotic appeal dripped from her, right down to the semi-contemptuous expression she fixed him with.

'People here are strange,' he said, looking back to his glass and taking another sip.

'Speak for yourself, cock-smith.'

'Can't you be nice? It's already a really fucking hard and confusing day, and I'm completely by myself here.'

'Poor baby.'

'What I _meant_ was that, well, when I came into town everybody looked at me. I mean everybody. Do they not like outsiders in this town?'

'Honey, they looked at you because they _know_ you. You've been in this town for months. That, and you look like shit.'

'They can't know me . . . A man with a big moustache pulled me out of the water trough and didn't know me, he looked fixing to kill me.'

'That'll be Remembrance Ed. Edder Van Took. He's only got the short term memory. And he hates just about everyone, least of all anybody darker or redder than him. Sometimes he remembers people, but only if he really, _really_ hates them.'

'Oh.' Jay took another drink. 'But if they know me, why all the stares? Just for looking a bit rough and thirsty?'

'No. Because you were hauled out of here your hands behind your back kicking and screaming early this morning.'

'By who! Oh. Ah.' He tapped his fingers on his glass. 'So they're all dead then?'

'Well, the three brothers are, yes.'

'They were brothers? Oh.'

'So it's just the dad left.'

'Shit.'

'I'd say he's old and won't be a bother, but he got their mother pregnant at twelve. That's him twelve, I should say. She was a lot older and dead now. And he's still going, leading his boys.'

'Can I talk to him about it?'

'He's a murderous cunt and his three sons have just died. He won't have heard about it yet, but he will. You had a hand in one, he's gonna believe you had a hand in all three. What do you think?'

'I've really got enough to be worrying about. What did I _do_ for them to want to kill me? I mean originally?'

'You fucked their sister.'

'Is that all? I mean, _their_ sister? Christ, I bet she was a bit of a sight. I hope she didn't have a beard too.'

'I doubt it would have stopped you.'

'You make me sound like an animal. Wait – she did _want_ to be fucked, didn't she?'

'You tell me.'

Jay felt his shoulders slump. 'I really don't know anything.'

Sav clapped him on the back cheerfully. 'There you go, you do know something! You have remembered that you know nothing. This makes you as complete as you ever were.' She drained her cup and got up. 'For crying out loud, finish your _whiskey_ already, you wet fucking blanket.'

'I have a feeling —' he started.

'Better stop it then,' she interrupted, picking up the glass and tipping it to his face. Before he knew it the last mouthfuls of whiskey-substitute was speeding towards his mouth. He gulped twice and Sav let go of the glass; it bounced off his knee and hit the floor, smashing.

His throat roared with fire and instant bile that he struggled to push away. The broken glass hadn't concerned the other patrons, but the bartender was already over, shouldering past Jay with a broom in her hands.

'I got it Savvi,' she said with a beaming smile that crinkled the corners of two rather beautiful big eyes.

'Thanks, Sal,' Sav replied. 'Sorry about Jay Wulf.'

'It's fine, fine,' Sal said, not looking at Jay. 'Up to his old tricks, I assume?'

'If you mean being a dick, then yeah, why stop now?' Sav put a hand firmly on Jay's back and pushed him out the bar before he could respond.

'I've seen you drink better men and women under the table,' Sav muttered as they returned to outside. The lilac sky had deepened and reddened to a rich magenta. The sun was hidden behind the peaked two-floored building signposted REST HOUSE, giving the edges of the dwelling a vibrant purple glow. It was on the other side of the street, and she steered him in its direction.

'Tell me something, Sav.' When she didn't reply, he turned to her. 'Savvi?'

'Uhuh.'

'When you see me, what you see?'

'Is this a test?'

'No. Yes.'

'I see a cunt.'

'No, I mean . . . What am I? What . . . race . . . species . . .'

She looked at him askance. 'You're a Rathian . . . a human.'

'A human,' he repeated. 'How interesting.'

'Why is that interesting?'

Jay hesitated, and Sav pushed open the door to the rest house. It swung in with a long, coffin creak. 'Where I'm from,' he said under his breath. 'They call me and people like me human, too.'

'Have you always been this mad?'

'Yes,' he said. 'More so recently. You better get used to it.'

Jay waited as the two of them stood by the door. A small spectacled man behind a desk was filling in some forms, and hadn't investigated his new customers.

'Well?' Sav said. 'What are you waiting for?'

'Oh. I thought, I thought —'

'Are you an invalid? Do it yourself.'

Jay approached the desk, and pulled out the rest of the money from his pockets. 'Erm, one night, please.'

'He'll stay for as long as,' Sav said. 'And pay once a week.'

The man peered out at them like a mole. 'Do I have your word on that, ma'am?'

'No. If he doesn't, kick him out. Just don't come to me asking for money. You won't get it.'

'Charming,' Jay said.

'First week up front,' the clerk said stiffly. 'Ten queens. Plus five queens deposit.'

'Steep,' Sav said. 'What's this town coming to, that's what I want to know.'

'Feel free to take your business elsewhere, ma'am. You know how I feel about this one.'

'What about me?' Jay said. 'Do we know each other?'

'The _gall_ to ask that,' the clerk said, his eyes cold. 'No, you do not know me, Mr _Wulf_ , but I do believe you know my wife.'

'Oh.'

'He's been saying that quite a lot today,' chipped in Sav.

'I'm sorry,' Jay said. 'I don't remember anything. Where is your wife?'

'Kept _away_ from _you_.'

Jay took Sav aside. 'I'm not a very nice person, am I?'

'I told you you were a cunt.'

'Do you not think it better to go someone where else? A place perhaps where I haven't fucked the owner's wife? Or sister, daughter, mother, horse, or any other relation of.'

Sav put her finger on her lower lip and pulled it down thoughtfully, showing the bottom array of little white stones. 'Hmm,' she said. 'I'm not sure that gives us many options'.

'Come on. Can't I stay with you?'

'Are you joking?'

' _Fifteen queens_ ,' repeated the clerk. ' _Please._ '

'Stop faffing, my horny little beast boy.' Sav pinched his side and he yelped, dropping a coin. 'All he wants is the money. Pay up and trouble over.'

Jay picked up the coin and laid them all out on the desk. 'This is what I have.'

'You have five kings and ten queens,' the clerk counted. 'And four jackals,' he sniffed.

'Good. That sounds like enough.'

'Well it isn't.'

'Really?' Jay pawed at the coins. 'How many queens to a king?'

'There are five _kings_ to one _queen_.'

'Oh. Um. So I have . . . eleven queens. And four jackals. Which makes . . .'

'Eleven queens and four jackals.'

'Unfortunate,' Sav said. 'Give him your gun.'

'My gun? Won't I be needing that?'

'You'll just have to take your chances, until you find another.'

'Whereabouts am I to find another gun, without any money?'

'Perhaps you can wrestle one off the next person who tries to kill you.'

'Sounds great,' Jay said. He pulled out the gun and laid it on the table with the coins. 'The gun for the deposit. The queens for the week.'

The clerk wrinkled his nose. 'Not the finest specimen in the world.'

'Will it do for the deposit?'

'Of course it fucking will,' Sav said. 'It's still a gun. People usually want their guns back.'

'I know the feeling,' Jay said.

The clerk stooped and placed the gun under the counter, inside a box that he locked with a _click_. Then he swept the coins off the counter and into his hands, before carefully depositing them one by one (counting all the time) into the till.

'Your room is upstairs, last on the right.'

'Do I get a key?'

'No. There are no keys.'

'How am I supposed to get in?'

'You could try pushing,' the man said flatly, in that kind of polite sarcasm aggravated service staff were so adept at the universe over. 'That usually works. If that fails you could always try giving it a good hard _ram_. It seems to be your go-to move, don't you think? It certainly served you well with my wife.'

'I'll be off now,' Jay said. 'Sorry again.'

'Stop apologising for things,' Sav said. 'It's getting boring.'

He turned and noticed she wasn't following him up the staircase.

'I'm going back to the saloon,' she said, noticing his expression. She was sat up on the desk; the clerk was trying to busy himself with his forms, and not lose himself in the contours of her lower back and sides that beckoned smooth and honeyed in the gaps in her clothing. 'And no, I am not sharing a room with you. Not now, not ever.'

'I didn't mean —'

'I'm sure you didn't.'

'Where will I find you tomorrow?'

'Saloon.'

'Alright,' Jay said. 'And Sav . . . Thank you.'

'Pft,' she said, and she blew him a sarcastic kiss, smirked, and was gone.

Jay trod with heavy feet up to his room. He still felt awful. He pushed open the door, worried for a second that he would intrude upon some barbaric couple mid-coitus who would nail him to the wall and make him watch.

_Don't be an idiot,_ he thought. _They'd probably just shoot you._

The room was empty, though. He was going to consider that the room really couldn't be much plainer, but that's before he noticed the sink. _A bed and a sink. That's enough luxury for today._ He rushed to it, turning the single tap on. There was a protesting groan, a rumble, and then to his relief came a trickle of not entirely lukewarm water. He cupped his hands and drank every time they filled up, until he had satiated himself and then some.

He lay on the bed. The door had closed itself. There was a flat white pillow on the bed, and a brown woollen blanket, but no sheets or duvet. He wasn't about to complain. He got up only to close the curtains, barely registering the now bloody-red sky. What he did see was down on the street; the dog that he had seen from a distance yapping and rushing about was back.

Only it wasn't a dog. For a start, it had six legs.

Jay shut it out of his sight, and fell back on the bed. The room was starting to lose focus, and he felt a great shuddering yawn run through him, a yawn that never left his mouth.

That creature wasn't like anything I've ever seen before.

Those little black demon spots appeared again. They always danced away from him, seeming to be mocking him.

_The sky was purple today_.

He felt heavy, like he could sink right through the mattress. The bed propped him up only in the sense a still ocean propped up a floating body.

I'm on another planet.

I'm on another planet, and I'm not even me.

Jay felt the room spin, and his eyes closed, but whether it was by his own volition or not he wasn't sure.

## FOUR

A gush of warm blood soaked his hand. He twisted the blade deeper, felt a sickening snag, and ripped through it with the saw-edge. His hand was almost inside, and the blood, eager in its will to leave the body, ran all the way to his elbow. There was a foul smell: a symptom of a rended stomach.

The woman made a small imitation of a grunt, an echo of surprise. Her lips hung loose and her eyes were bright and looked right into his as she died.

With one aggressive pull his Rathian knife was free, and the woman slipped to the ground. Jay touched his side. He was bleeding himself; her sickle had been . . . provoking. Unlike her, though, he would certainly live.

He wiped his knife ( _Ugly_ was its name, carved into the handle, for ugly was its work) on her breeches, and started to look through her pockets. He found what he was looking for: a drawstring bag of yellow jewels. They shone like bright little suns of piss.

Jay placed the bag in an inside pocket of his jerkin, scanned the horizon, and walked back to his horse. Khyber stood like a shadow under a small stunted _alacia_. There was a light pink blossom in the topmost branches, and it had decorated the ground around him. Some of the petals lay on his back and adrift in his mane, but he made no move to shake them off. His body was sleek black velvet and very warm to the touch, and the hair poured down his shoulders like lava.

'That's three down Khy,' Jay said as he hoisted himself up. He needed no stirrups or saddle. 'Three down, eight to go.'

Khyber made no noise in reply, but he lifted his head and trotted towards the horizon.

He remembered.

He saw faces of all the people he had killed, faces of the people who had tried to kill him. They were mostly the same, but not always.

He saw many women he had lain with, many women he had hunched against, thrust against, pulled forwards, bent over, women whose cheek he had touched and women who he had stripped: all those creatures whose morsels he had tasted. Women who had tried to murder him before, or afterwards. The men who had interrupted, to their shame and anger, and often to their mortal regret.

He remembered why Sal at the saloon didn't like him.

He pictured his laugh: part of him cringed, and part of him didn't care; only the parts were blending, sipping at each other and spitting back.

He saw perfection, and as he did storm clouds gathered and the lilac in the sky darkened to a bruised magenta, and she became shadowed and lost to him.

Under the Circle's Shadow . . .

He saw horses rearing in fire and flame as guns cracked around him and cannon fire threw up volcanos of dirt. He remembered scrabbling, coughing, trying to make out the shapes in the smoke and the sprays of blood, and the endless, endless cries.

He heard the _kill, kill_ chant that rumbled through the very soil, rising to bounce back and forth off the high yellow rocks that looked down on them. _Kill, kill, kill_ from hundreds of the lizard-like things, the Grey Ark warriors crawling stickily over the stones and splashing in the twin streams that wound towards him. He remembered a great brick of a man, dark red mottling covering his back in scenes of Hell, standing tall and beating his bare chest, screaming 'KILL! KILL!' back at them, raising fat double chambered guns wrapped in leather strips and firing slug after pounding slug at those grey-green fish-people that continued to chant, hurling spears like javelins and some firing their own guns: loathsome squid rifles and sharp anorexic weapons loaded with metal scrap.

He remembered hiding, waiting with a knife in his teeth and two cocked pistols pointing at the slip of daylight that broke the cave wall. Waiting for those filmed yellow eyes to block the light, the first reptilian gaze to be shattered into sunken yolks. _Kill, kill, kill._ As the others lay dead. Their Red Serant – _his name was Babric Twofist, and he had really loved those guns, what had he called them again? That's it: Bet Fist and Babby Fist. Bet & Babby, the Two Fists_ – his head was now no longer a part of his body. Not that he'd felt it: he'd already taken three harpoons through one way and out the other.

He saw Savvi, lit under the glow of a blue lamp, the light making her darker, and colder in that beautiful way, like an icicle. They were in a tent, drinking heavily, and it was warm, so warm, they had taken off their shirts . . . He saw himself pawing at her, leering and laughing and making crude come-ons into jokes, and jokes into come-ons. He showed her his new sword: a wicked thing, a saber as yet without a name, and perhaps too nice for one. He showed her his guns and he showed her Ugly. She seemed most interested in the knife, purring in his ear that she liked ugly things.

'You won't like me then,' he'd said. She'd laughed at him and batted his hands away. When he came on too strong, pushing her to the ground, she explained to him, with a smile on her face, how very quickly and easily she could give his penis a _snip_ – well, she added, _serrated_ was a better word, or _sliced_.

The next day he had woken up with a saber without a name (he never did give it one before it broke, but then again nor did he with any guns; only Ugly carried the honour), two guns, his knife, some ammo, and a furious libido. He was minus all his money (and it had been quite a _lot_ at that point), almost all of his food, the last bottle of _vhiskat_ , and the tent.

At no point did Savvi appear to make him breakfast.

He dreamt, and he saw, and he heard, and he remembered. They were not pure memories, only their shades, their fragments – or more correctly their imprints, for they were left behind in the body, ghost copies for the new owner. Something inside was pushing them at him, aggressive but not hostile. He tried to grab at them, but there was so much, and all he could think was _heat_ and _sex_ and of two pistols thick with rust, chambers revolving slower and slower, never stopping. Then his mind saw a stream of gore, and of old friends with sightless black eyes. He thought _The Eyes of Rath_ and he thought _Grey Ark_ and he thought _Jay Wulf._

A ring of mountains, a swarm of peaks like the black hunch of crow wings.

Savvi the harlot that never gave.

A tapestry of fucks surrendered.

Cold winds and –

empty space.

Much of what he had dreamt, much of those half-memories that had bubbled up from inside his brain (a brain that had long been used to another mind, and still carried its luggage, still had its pictures hung on the walls), in fact, almost none of it would be remembered the next day. At least not at first.

There was one dream that would keep coming, and it surfed around his other dreams, waiting for its turn.

Eventually it got impatient, and it swooped in.

He looked at his alarm clock after he'd put his book down and turned the light out. _3:32_. The sheets felt unclean, just like they had felt unclean the night before. There was a faint glow in the corner of his room; he never knew the name of it, only that it didn't need batteries because it charged itself with daylight. Tucked away as it was, away from the window, it never got much of the solar power it desired – but it was never going to provide enough light to read by, anyway.

Sleep came, as it always did, with excruciating delay. But, thankfully (and perhaps it had been that rare walk to the shops earlier), in an hour he was asleep.

There was a battlefield of broken cars, all used wrecks, all grey and rotting with weeds that cracked and burst like dust when the birds landed.

The birds were diseased ravens with gristly red veins that throbbed over white feathers, and all of them would fly up silently wherever the green eyed man appeared.

The green eyed man was –

'Wait,' said a voice. The voice of a young woman. 'How do I do this . . . Oh, it's on. Well . . . This is weird, but here goes.'

The cars were all gone, so were the birds, so was the man. There was just the sand, and the lilac sky, and the words that were written as she spoke.

Under the Circle's shadow

Inside the happiest hawk

Beds the key that is hidden

The key that unlocks the door

The wind took up as she chanted. Something somewhere rattled.

When she was done, there was a pause, broken only by the wind. Then the voice laughed, and said, 'I expect you want more than that, don't you? No problem, I've been meaning to fix this . . . I mean _a whole year_ , what a waste of time . . .'

There was another pause.

'Shit,' said the woman. 'Sorry, gotta go. Good luck, please don't hate me.' There was a click, and then the world exploded.

Red, green, black, blue

White, orange, yellow, purple

Faster and further

Distance travelled in colour

Sound as picture

Light as thought

The key that unlocks the door

Red green black blue

White orange yellow

Purple

Over hill and under stars

We're going on an adventure

RED GREEN BLACK BLUE

This hurts

WHITE

ORANGE

Stop

YELLOW

PURPLE

We're going on a

## FIVE

He woke up to the sound of melodious squawking and bright rays of white-lilac light. He'd left the window open, and a bird had pushed the curtains aside, letting in a stream of morning glare.

It hopped on the sill and continued to squawk, chirrup and yap to some kind of half-tune. The bird was about a hand high, purple-feathered with a hook beak and a tall, jagged white crest. It shifted feet constantly, cocking its head at him.

_A trill_ , Jay's mind remembered. _Native to Appalia . . . Is that where I am?_

He got up, stretched, and shooed the trill away. It yapped again, and then took off, the curtains left flapping behind. He opened them wider, letting in the expanse of the day. There were not many people walking the thoroughfare, and those that did blinked and squinted in the sun. He had slept early and he had woken early, and Nohaven was not a morning town.

A new day, a new world.

A big grin came to his face, and then turned into a grimace as he caught the smell of what could only be himself. He had slept in his clothes and he stank of sweat. He resolved to find a way to wash himself as soon as possible. For now, he removed his shirt and ran the tap, splashing water on his face, neck and pits.

A glint in the corner stole his attention. It was a mirror laid on the floor. He saw the hooks above the basin and realised it had been taken down for some reason. Perhaps the last occupant did not like their own reflection. He picked it up and put it back in place, then he stood and stared.

Whether he felt a chill or a shuddering warmth he could not say, perhaps both. A shiver certainly passed along his spine, but he would not say he felt unpleasant. Looking at a completely different reflection to what you have been used to your entire life is an experience some would call disturbing, others mesmerising, and they'd both be right.

He'd seen bits of him before, of course. He'd seen his arms, looked down at his torso, and been aware of his face in that vague, shadowy way people perceive themselves without a reflection, the blur of the nose and the cheeks and mouth with a presence so permanent to our vision that we forget they are there. He'd almost seen his face reflected in Sav's eyes.

Here, though, was the full article, and minus the cracks in the mirror it was as clear and defined as it could ever be. He felt like he was looking through a window into another world, seeing another person mimicking his movements.

Then both of you are in another world, for this side of the mirror sure ain't Kansas.

His face stared back at him, mockingly. A smirk lined his face, carrying up to the dark, glittering eyes. _Stop laughing at yourself_ , he told himself sternly, but he couldn't help it. His mouth opened in a rogue's grin, and he shook his head. The man in the reflection did the same.

The same red markings, the tribal wine stains that careened over his body were present on his face. They lined his cheeks and brow like war paint, and yet the effect was more, well, _wild_ , wild and mystical, than savage.

At least I don't have a red nose.

He spent long minutes inspecting himself, dividing between marvelling at his skin design – the patterns made him want to call them extensive tattooing, but they were all-natural ( _just look at those hands_ ), and miraculous for it – and his new face: a tough, dark-eyed and somewhat Middle-Eastern looking face, an on-the-dark-and-dirty-side-of-handsome face. He pleased himself thinking it possessed a kind of heroic villainy.

He resolved to let his hair, a stallion black mane on top, grow at the shaved sides, before he would untie the knot that held it back. Facial hair, too. A face like this needed some thick stubble. _That's razors off the shopping list, and good thing too, for a man with no money._

He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out four tiny coins. _Scratch that, I have four jackals. Something tells me they're not worth a loaf of bread._

The coins were replaced, but the hand was found moving inward. _One last thing to check_.

Jay glanced at the door. There was no lock, but it was at least firmly shut. It wasn't entirely reassuring, but he couldn't see why someone would barge in on someone else's rented room. _Unless it's Savvi?_ _But then again –_ the voice continued, in a sleazy kind of way – _maybe her catchin you pants down is exactly the kind of –_

'Shut up,' Jay said out loud. But he pulled down his pants anyway. He was, after all, still a man in a man's body. _And there are some things a man's gotta know_.

He stood there, no shirt and his pants around his ankles, a stupid smile plastered to his face ( _but it's not so stupid, is it? It's better than the last guy's smile, remember that? . . . No_ ) as he looked at and touched himself with investigative measure, inflicted with the kind of small amazement that beds well with amusement.

Fronting this amusement, however, there came first relief. Jay was relieved to see that his package didn't look vastly different to what he was used to. The thing that struck him most, quite aside from the size (his grin increased, although his only comparison beyond the hints of Jay's memories were those of Earth men), was the _bendiness_ ; it was quite pliable even when hard, he noticed, and almost stayed in the positions you left it, like plasticine. It had that rubbery quality, both look and touch. The head was tapered slightly. Apart from that, though, it was both recognisable and appreciable as a cock and balls. _Thank god for evolutionary similarities, and not giving me tentacles._ The only immediate sense of _alien_ was that the whole area was a dark, streaky red.

He enjoyed himself for a while manipulating himself into vague turns, revelling like a child with a toy snake or one of those bendable figurines. He had only meant to check himself out, but found himself quickly carried away.

There was a pressure, an _insistence_ in his lower body that he hadn't really noticed until its sudden absence. He felt clearer, and he did some stretches as he washed out the sink, wondering at how he could take the time to masturbate, given his utterly incredible situation, and all the things around to discover. But there'd been that _urge_. His body seemed to belong to that of a wild man turned teenager.

_I'm glad red genitals don't give rise to_ _scarlet semen, or I'd be continuously paranoid I'd ruptured myself._

The stretching felt good. He'd always hated exercise before. But now his muscles were strong, and he felt powerful.

He put his clothes back on, gave one final, eager glance in the mirror – a glance that turned into a searching look – and left the room.

The clerk audibly sighed as Jay walked down the stairs. He was tight-lipped as Jay smiled at him in an attempt to be friendly.

'Yes?' the clerk said, raising his bushy eyebrows.

'Good mornin. I was hoping for a shower. Well, to wash myself.'

The clerk sniffed. 'I am sure you need it. Well. The washroom is out that door.'

'Oh, good. Is there hot water?'

'Do we look like a Sturm chamberhouse?'

'Um, no. I guess not. Thanks.' Jay pushed through the door. Behind a curtain there was a series of bronze pipes that twisted in wheels before joining up to a spout that hung overhead. Jay found a valve and turned it. A crank increased the pressure until a steady light rainfall of water pattered down into a drain below. It wasn't cold, more a lukewarm temperature that, if not exactly enjoyable, didn't make his teeth chatter.

After his shower, he replaced his baggy brown pants (there had been no undergarments) and his boots (sockless, but something about the make of the boots made his feet feel just fine without them; even on his journey to Nohaven his feet had not sweated. In the shower he'd noticed a rubbery hardness to his feet. They were as red as his hands, making his only socks skin-deep). He gave his shirt a cautious smell, but it seemed okay; it had been only him carrying the scent. Perhaps in this world they actually made shirts that resisted odours, or just sweat. Not that the shirt smelled like a rose garden; it spoke to his nostrils of horse, and sand, and a slight spice that he couldn't place, but felt oddly comforting in the same way home does.

The clerk was gone when he returned, and Jay left the rest house and emerged into the light. He was surprised at how quickly he was becoming accustomed to the colour, although the purple-ringed sun still sent a shiver through his body whenever he looked up. Everybody looked slightly different outside than inside – but then he supposed that was true on Earth, too. There was a transformative quality about it – something that lent a faintly mystical, secretive, almost furtive air to everything – although he had as yet little comparison, for he had not seen this outside world in Earth's pale light.

He made to go over to the saloon, but found himself wandering. _After all_ , he reasoned, _she might not even be up yet_. He walked along the thoroughfare, and then aimlessly through the town, along dusty streets, turning corners, turning heel and walking back on himself. He drifted in a daze, entranced with no small measure of wonder. People stared at him strangely, for he looked at things like a man born anew.

As he walked his usurped memory offered up morsels, shadows of remembrance. There was the Bone Bin, a windowless establishment – if establishment would ever fit such a jumble of timber. It had been made with boards and bits of boards, stakes and sticks – all made from some kind of – _the white gumba tree –_ and affixed all over with thousands of bent nails. The wood lay crooked off each other, broken planks attached more by spirit than strength to mere shards. It was a ribcage of a house, and seemed to come in layers: for there were many gaps between the bones, but inside he could make out a second shell, one that seemed just as pale and hapless. Inside, he knew, they smoked every kind of smoke there was, and the air within seemed to float with ghosts.

On his left now came the red doors of the brothel, The Drain (his nose wrinkled at the sign). Opposite was a throng of small black children arguing over a furry ball that rolled about on its own volition – _a bracker-ball, livin games to some_. The leader was taller than the rest, with a gap where his nose should have been. His sunburst eyes flared as he caught sight of Jay, and waved to him. Jay waved back. _That's Jonner, a ragman. He's alright. He don't wanna kill you._

There were Appalian mountain men, with their curly hair and square-cropped beards, and silver-haired wardancers with their long locks and naked, studded bellies. He was passed by a couple of cowpokes he knew only by name – _Jag and Burl_ – and reputation as bad news to all sizeable women. There were stalls selling produce of all colours, some that smelled sweet, some like the soil, and some that stank like rotting fish ( _fasher beans)_. There was a pink, hairless creature like a bony mole rat the size of a greyhound – _erm, somethin, a sab, saber, no, cather-, catmol, no, I'll get back to you_ – that skulked past him with arched shoulders, led on a leash by a high-hatted woman with dangling earlobes. He was reminded of that dog from yesterday, that six-legged dog, except it was called a – _a dog – oh, okay._

More than not, he simply felt _déjà vu_ , and Jay's catacombs of memory obstinately turned its back on his questions. If he remembered, it came naturally, in slices, pages so torn they might as well be shreds. He could not force it. Even when he knew a name, or a purpose to something, it was not a real understanding, not a memory he could connect to as though it was his own. It was as though reading about something in a book a long time ago – except the book was in him, and the long time ago only ended yesterday.

There was a rumble behind him, and he stepped out of the way of a carriage drawn by two huge yellow horses with long muzzles. The cart was roughly spherical, of a silver dulled long in the desert. In the centre was an opening covered by rich purple curtains. Only a hand was visible, clutching the fabric, as though the owner was undecided about pulling the curtain back. Jay heard raised voices coming from within, as it rolled past with spoked wheels the size of uppity mole-eyed clerks. A woman's voice and a man's; it was the woman's hand, and it withdrew.

Jay saw he was back on the thoroughfare. He could just make out the rest house and the saloon – _Buha's Tap & Griller_ – up ahead. That was another interesting thing: just like spoken words that immediately translated themselves into his thoughts, the words written on these signs were not any language he could recognise, nor alphabet, and yet . . . there they were, in plain English in his brain.

_Griller_. That meant meat, and meat meant food. He might only have four jackals to his name (his mind seemed unwilling or unable to call up an exchange rate, but then he supposed one would have little purpose here), but maybe Sav would lend him some money, at least for one half-decent meal. He figured that even though she might have been a . . . mercenary kind of girl, if you tried often enough the mercurial sometimes granted you boons, and surely a wilderness woman like her would know what it was like to go hungry.

_Hungry? I'm starving_. He suddenly felt lightheaded, feeling himself sway. He put out a hand on the side of a building to catch himself. When had he last eaten? A lifetime ago? When had _Old Jay_ (as he had started to name the last owner of this body, and the imprints and voices left behind) last eaten?

He entered Buha's. Sal was there, and she scowled at him when she saw him approach. 'Yes?' she said.

'Hello again. You work here too, huh? Is Sav about?'

'No.'

He sighed and sat down on a bar stool. 'What can I get to eat, for four jackals?'

Sal turned her back on him. When she turned again, she had a wooden bowl that she placed in front of him. He looked in it. It was empty.

'What's this?'

'It's nothing.'

'Ah.'

Sal dropped a spoon in the bowl. 'Better than nothing, in fact. Nothing is what you deserve. For four jackals. Instead, you get a good bowl full of clean hearty air.' She dropped a spoon in the bowl. 'Eat up your air. Don't let it go to waste.'

Jay looked forlornly down at the bowl. He stirred the spoon, while Sal shook her head slowly at him. He got to his feet. 'I need to find Sav. It's an emergency.'

'You need her to buy you some food.'

'Maybe.'

'Well, she's not here.'

'Any idea where she might be?'

'No. She left town.'

'What? What do you mean she left town?'

'She left town,' Sal repeated.

'Where to?'

Sal shrugged.

'But . . . she said she'd be here today.'

'And you believed her?' Sal arched her brow. 'She's not much interested in keeping pets, not if they need looking after. And not if they're always trying to hump her leg.'

'Great,' Jay said. 'Just great.' Sal looked at him without pity, folding her arms. 'Look,' he said. 'I mean . . . I'm sorry. For how I was with you, that time. Times? I don't remem- I mean, I'm just sorry.'

Sal sniffed and took the bowl from him. 'Savvi was right, you have changed.'

'For the better, I hope?'

'That remains to be seen. Could hardly have got much worse.'

Jay smiled. 'Fair enough. I'm gonna go and see what I can get in this town for four jackals.'

'Right.'

He left the saloon and headed further along the thoroughfare. The fruit of the stalls he had passed earlier did not encourage him; too much of that and he'd get the runs. He needed something substantial – bread or meat, ideally. There was a whole host of smells on the breeze, familiar and foreign, but after a hundred yards his nose picked up on the right one, and he followed it.

A stall selling what looked like bread. The loaves were cut into ovals and cylinders, and even spheres, and it looked rather soft and spongey, but the smell was good. The vendor – _male or female? Or both? Neither?_ – had four breasts like shelves on the chest, and a black-and-white beard that was forked in all directions. The eyes were big and lidless and without irises.

'Good morning, Rathian!' the vendor said, in a high, squirrely voice, clasping two four-fingered hands together. 'What good crust can I offer such a warrior like yourself on this fine hour?'

'Um,' Jay said, taking his hand out his pocket. 'What can I get for four jackals?'

'A host of loaf, Rathian!' the vendor cried, arms sweeping the assortment of breads.

'Oh, good. What do you recommend?'

The vendor picked up a big ball of bread, spotted orange. 'A sunbursted loaf for a sunbursted man! A handsome Rathian, with such beautiful patterns! Four jackals, just for you!'

'Thank you,' Jay said, raising his eyes and handing over the coins. The vendor placed the bread in his hands as though it were the sword of Excalibur.

'Treat it well, eat it well!' called the vendor as Jay, thanking him once more, hurried off, munching into it as he left. It _was_ soft, but it was very good, and with a bit of a . . . kick, too. It was bread-and-not-bread, just like so much else he had encountered: both known and not known.

He stopped at the side of the street, leaning against a wall, his mouth full, his jaw working avidly away. On the other side of the thoroughfare a grey-whiskered man in a tall black hat and red cravat was inspecting some trinkets from a stall. They flashed in the light of the sun as the man turned them over in his hands. Beside him was an attractive younger woman, in her early twenties perhaps. Her back was against the stall, and she looked around as she talked off-and-on with the man. By the age differences, and the familiarity and manner that existed between the two, Jay guessed that the older man was her father.

He couldn't take his eyes off her. Truth be told, she wasn't another Sav. With Sav he always felt like he shouldn't be looking at her, that her appearance drew the male (and any other) gaze, much against its will, and it turned men like him – _not me, Old Jay – no, you too fella, don't kid yourself, you too_ – into, well, walking in dumb reverie; you had to make sure you kept your lips closed so as not to drool. Sav commanded attention from _everybody_ , and rode all over anybody who gave it. _Hmm, ridden by Savvi, now there's a happy thought . . ._

This girl was another matter. She wasn't _classically_ beautiful, not in that statuesque, instantly stunning way. But to Jay she was pretty, that kind of pretty where it wasn't clear how others saw her, and who knew if she might only affect a handful, or him and him alone. Her hair was the colour of sand and sunset; a beach blonde kissed by ruddy swathes that seemed to move as she did. Her skin the colour of pinkened milk. She had a loose green dress on, wrapped around a body that was short and just shy of festively plump. Jay mentally slapped himself for the phrase.

Her eyes roamed the street, seeming to float all over before quickly darting to him. He looked away, but couldn't help but look back up a few seconds later. She still had eyes on him. He was relieved to see she was smiling, in that quizzical _do-I-know-you?-not-that-I-much-mind-you-looking_ way. He grinned back, really trying to avoid looking sleazy. She turned and gave her father a big hug, and then –

Oh god, she's walking over. Finish your mouthful finish your mouthful.

Good for you, now fuck her and be done with it.

What?!

'Hello,' she said. 'I saw you staring.'

Jay swallowed. 'I'm sorry. I . . . couldn't . . . didn't mean to . . . I mean, hello.'

She laughed, and Jay couldn't remember the last time he'd heard such a lovely sound. She had blue-green eyes like a tropical lagoon and they creased at the corners when she smiled. Old Jay was busy making being-sick noises.

'Relax,' she said. 'For someone who looks the way you do, you're awfully . . .' She hesitated.

'Awkward?'

'You said it, not me!' _She looks so happy when she talks. Why didn't I ever look that happy?_ She seemed to be waiting for him to say something, and when a couple of seconds of silence had passed, they both laughed.

'Good, is it?' she said, nodding to the loaf of bread Jay was holding with a series of big bite marks in it.

'Aha, yeah. I was starving. I only had four jackals on me.'

'Well, that won't do.' She gave him that curious look again. 'Tell you what, if you throw that thing away, I'll buy you a proper meal and a drink.'

'Oh, no, I couldn't accept that. Besides, I can't just throw away good food!'

'Of course you can. Plus, I insist. My father is boring me to tears, and most of the people in this town . . .' She trailed off with an ominous tone. 'But you. Well, I'm not sure about you. How you look and how you act are at odds.'

'I'm not sure about me either. But you don't need to spend money on me.'

'Oh, stop talking.' She smiled again, and he felt another sense of weight, another burst of warmth in him – higher up this time. 'You can either gnaw on your loaf in the street like a beggar, or we can both go for a meal and a drink. Besides, you're not putting me out one bit. Check this out.' She reached into her dress and pulled out a wad of red-and-white notes from her cleavage.

'That's a lot of money,' Jay said.

'It's a nice amount.' She fanned her face with it.

'Ain't you afraid of getting robbed?'

'My father wouldn't like that. He's quite the shot with his pistol, and he has some tough friends. Besides,' she patted the top line of her dress. 'It was hidden.'

'First place I'd look,' Jay said, immediately regretting it. _I'd never have said something like that_. _It's this body. It's Old Jay making himself known._

No. Old Jay doesn't live here anymore. It's just you shaping yourself. Filling out in a new environment. A room, a house, catacombs . . . Swords and guns on the walls, bloodstains on the floorboards, and naked women on furs.

He hadn't apologised, as he should have; he'd punctuated the line with a grin, and it must have worked, for the girl was laughing. With him or at him, it didn't really matter.

'I'm sure it would be,' she said, still smiling, her eyes so perfectly creased. Part of him wanted to tickle her, just to keep it going, to push her smiles and laughter further and further.

'Alright,' he said at last. 'Thank you. It would be my pleasure. I'll owe you.'

'The pleasure will be all mine,' she replied. 'And yes, yes you will.'

They started walking. 'Do you need to tell your father you're heading off with a stranger?'

'I'm a big girl,' she said simply.

'Let's go here,' Jay said, as they approached Buha's Bar & Griller.

'You read my mind.'

'I haven't asked you your name.'

'That's right, you haven't. It's —'

'Alexia!' The man in the tall hat had run after them, panting slightly. 'Alexia, my dear, I have been robbed!'

The girl clapped her hands to her face. 'Father, no! Are you sure?'

'It is as I have said. I am short changed, considerably so.'

'Can you remember when you last had it?'

'In the carriage, my dear. I swear, if that scoundrel Jerrens took it —'

'Jerrens is a good man, father. You know he wouldn't. Perhaps you should ask around everywhere you were from leaving the carriage up to now. Start with the rest house. Maybe you dropped it and somebody has handed it in.'

'Perhaps. I will do that now, I think. If I have lost it for good then . . . no harm done.' He sighed. 'It is just vexing. I seem to have been losing money as of late. I fear I am growing old.' The man seemed to only just notice Jay, and he raised his brow. 'And who is your friend?'

'Do not judge on looks, father. He is a close friend of Cam, and I have met him before, back in Stoneswell.'

'Then I say how do you do to him,' the man bowed stiffly. 'And now I must busy myself accounting for fallen money. Likely the wind has it now, if not ruffians. I will see you back at the rest house.' He tipped his hat to Jay and departed, his long legs carrying him briskly along the thoroughfare.

'That's unfortunate,' Jay said.

'It is, isn't it,' Alexia said, fanning herself with the money once more, which had magically slipped away during the conversation.

Jay's eyes widened. ' _You_ stole it.'

Alexia yawned. 'Oh, come on. He's got far too much money for one man.'

'But he's your father.'

'And you're not. Don't be boring. Let's go eat until we're sick.' She pushed open the door to Buha's. 'Oh,' she said. 'What's _your_ name?'

'I'm Jay. Jay Wulf.' The name came naturally to his lips, without hesitation.

'Pleased to meet you Jay.'

'Likewise, Alexia.' 

## SIX

Alexia ordered some kind of vegetable mash, while Jay got himself a bull steak; he had meant to order it medium, but Old Jay had wanted it bloody ( _I've got to stop thinking like this. It's just me. Two become one_ ). It came thick and red and swimming in its own pool. Every time he speared it with a fork it oozed like it was still alive. It tasted fatty and a little sour, but also pretty damn good.

They talked, or rather, Alexia talked and Jay listened and ate. She told him of her father, and the mining company he headed: Slade Mining. She told him of their journey from the city of Stoneswell to Appalia, and her father's business in Nohaven setting up a new mine on the outskirts. Looking at new prospects in the mountains. She told him of the time they had been waylaid by a couple of bandits, and how she had watched her father's man Jerrens shoot one of them in the chest, how the blast had torn open the woman's ribcage and spattered the horses with her blood. Jay saw her eyes were alight as she told him, how it kept replaying in her head when she slept, but she didn't make any mention of nightmares or horror. She seemed simply . . . fascinated. Drawn. She'd spoken to Jerrens differently after that.

She had a clear, well-spoken voice, almost posh, and it was obvious that she had been raised with good manners, manners that Jay did not have. She took in small mouthfuls of food every few sentences, swallowing quickly before she'd open her mouth to continue. She kept match with Jay as he chewed stolidly through his steak, and her eyes rarely left his. He got the feeling she was analysing him as she talked, that she was engaging in several things at once, most of them behind the scenes. Behind those green ocean eyes.

'So,' she said at last. 'Why are _you_ here?'

'Should I not be?' he replied, smiling. 'I kind of . . . found myself here. A spot of trouble with the locals.'

'Now why does that not surprise me? Where are you from? Rath, I assume?'

'Rath . . . I guess so.' _That's where the tiger is from. The black land._

'You guess? You don't know?'

He chewed thoughtfully, wondering how much to tell her. 'The truth is, well, the half-truth, is that I don't remember much. I've got . . . amnesia. I just opened my eyes one moment, and there I was, in the desert, with a gun to my head.'

Alexia leaned forward. 'My my, you _are_ interesting. I don't regret taking you to eat. Assuming you're not lying, of course. Which is a distinct possibility. Or that you're just mad.'

'You have no idea. Tell me something. Where _am_ I?'

'Nohaven, but then you know that.'

'I mean, outside that. Go bigger.'

'Appalia.'

'Bigger.'

'The Westlands . . . The Basin.'

'I'm afraid I still need the bigger picture here. What planet am I on?' He grinned.

She looked at him hard for a moment, her spoon lying on her plate, temporarily forgotten. 'Earth,' she said at last. 'What is this, some kind of con? Are you making fun?'

'Did you just say Earth?'

'I believe I just did.'

_Was that what her mouth said? You're too quick to make sense of things –_ your _kind of sense, the most effective and remedial kind – to hear the actual word. Chances are, it just means the same thing. I wonder how many worlds are out there, with intelligent life, and how many of those worlds call their home by a word that means 'Earth'._

'So you're an alien, are you? You come from another planet?'

He looked up, brightening. 'Does that happen here?'

'No.'

'Oh. I'm . . . just joking. Let's go back to saying I'm an amnesiac. That was more agreeable.'

'Yes, it was. You are very curious. I like this, even if it is a joke.'

'I'm afraid it's not a very good joke.'

'No, I suppose not. And if it's some kind of setup, I should tell you I'm not dumb enough to fall for it. You got a meal out of me, you're not about to get more.'

'I told you this _after_ you bought the meal.'

'That is true.' She softened. 'I believe you, anyway. Or maybe I just want to. Or perhaps I am just very good at pretending. I don't believe you're an alien. You don't look like an alien, you look like a Rathian. But I do trust that you're not a wind-up merchant. I think you _have_ lost your memory – I can see by the way you look around you, how you looked at things when you were outside, that something wasn't right. You looked like a newborn baby.'

'A good look, I'm sure. Thank you for believing that much, though. You've only just met me.'

'I have. But then again, I'm bored too often. You have, at least for an hour, relieved this.'

'I'm glad to know the great struggle I've been having since yesterday trying to understand what the hell is going on has helped relieve your boredom.'

She grinned. 'An amnesiac with a wild, silly imagination. And so I expect you'll need showing around, helping you understand everything, pay your way?'

'Oh, that would be —'

She held up a hand. 'I'm joking. But I'm sure I'll be about. At least until my curiosity is satisfied. Or my father has finished his business.' She ate her final mouthful and stood up. 'You might see me again, you might not.'

'I hope I do.'

'Maybe.' She gave him a cheeky look, her eyes gleaming and her face pursed. He wanted to give her a hug, but he held back awkwardly. They had, after all, only just met.

'Thanks for the meal,' he said.

She opened her mouth to reply, but shut it again as there came a great _BANG_ from outside the saloon. It was followed by a cluster of sounds, all wrapped in chaos: the whinnying of horses, cries of alarm, and what sounded like the crunch of huge wheels. Alexia looked startled, and then her eyes shifted, her face grew harder, and her lips moved oddly. She turned away from Jay without speaking and walked quickly to the door, as outside the cries were punctuated by one long, trailing scream.

Jay got up and followed her, leaving the remains of his meal. Outside there was a group of people gathered around the front and sides of a carriage. It was the same carriage with the purple curtains he had seen earlier. The heads of the yellow horses reared over the onlookers. They were shifting frantically. A large black woman in a shawl was standing on tiptoes and speaking softly to the horses, stroking their flanks in an attempt to calm them. He couldn't hear the words at first, there was too much noise, but it seemed to be dying down, as though of a falling wind. The throng were standing in silence. Now all you could hear was the woman's soothing words, but they were in another language – a language he couldn't interpret.

Alexia was standing outside the thick semi-circle of people, with her back to him. She wasn't moving. Some of the crowd shifted away, shaking their heads. There were gaps. Gaps showing high wheels, and a pool of burgundy blood that looked dark and unnatural. The body of the carriage was trying to hide it in shadow, but the bright bruise of the day was everywhere, and there would be no hiding.

Bathed in the blood, just behind the wheel arches, was Alexia's father.

Alexia moved through the crowd as it parted, as stiff as an automaton. Her feet scuffed the dust behind her, at one point almost tripping her up. She walked to the side of the carriage, where the light pointed to her father's stony face and his broken torso. Pointed to the rut of the wheel that had grooved his body as though he were only a patch of mud. She went slowly to her knees. She went in silence.

Jay moved closer, caught the side of her face. The pink flush of her cheeks was gone, now she was only white. Her lips were pale, her eyes hidden by the fall of her hair that no longer glowed of sand and sunset, but echoed the gore and the mocking of the morning light. Translucent tears streaked down her face and dripped to the ground, where they diluted her father's blood. This was where she kneeled, as it continued to flow around her.

Jay stood by her. 'I'm so sorry,' he said. She didn't seem to have heard him.

There was a mumbling behind him. He turned to see a long whiskered old man clutching a weather-beaten hat in both hands. 'I didn't mean to,' he was saying. 'It was an accident. It went off. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.'

'What do you mean?' Jay said, grabbing the man by the shoulders.

'My gun, it went off . . . just went off in my hands. I didn't mean to. Spooked the horses. They . . . they took off.' He brushed past Jay and approached Alexia. 'I'm sorry miss. It was my fault. It was an accident.'

'Tell him he must go. He must go right now,' Alexia said. The words came out very slowly. She did not move her head.

'Leave,' Jay said. The old man nodded, but continued to stand there, wringing his hat. There was a gun in his holster.

' _Go,'_ Jay commanded, standing tall and fierce before him. He wished he had his old knife. A flash of Ugly and this man would be running. Running with a new scar.

But it was not needed. The man saw something in Jay's eyes, and he shuffled off, just a small thing with a stiff leg and a hunched back.

When Jay looked back at Alexia, she was reaching inside her father's jacket. He saw her pull out a leather wallet. She took a wad of money from it and secreted it inside her dress. 'What are you doing?' he said.

'Robbing my dead father.' She stood up and faced him. The tears had dried on her cheeks. 'I will need this money, if I am to survive now. He would not have begrudged me taking it.' She was not looking into his eyes. 'I want you to go now.'

'I —'

'I want you to go,' she repeated. 'I will collect what I need from the carriage, and I will see to my father's body. He will be interred in the Nohaven Cemetery. It is not where he is from, but –' She glanced back at the body, and seemed to stiffen. 'But then that is not my father.'

'Will you be okay?' It seemed a silly question, once he'd asked it. Suddenly, he was slightly scared of her.

'Yes. I want to do this on my own. The fewer eyes, and the fewer words, the better. I will take care of what needs to be taken care of – short of wiping the blood from the street, I'm sure the desert will cover it in time – and then I will retire to the rest house. Do not disturb me today, and do not disturb me tomorrow. I will not want company. Do you understand?' She said all this very calmly and deliberately, without meeting his eyes. She was looking at a fixed point, or maybe she was not looking at anything at all.

'I understand,' he said. 'I will be around, if you need me.'

'I know,' she said. 'Goodbye.'

'I'm sorry,' he said.

'It was an accident.'
'What more do we know?' the man asked, his eyes closed.

'We are no closer, sir. We have been investigating the network. It is turning up nothing. The fault . . . it is not there sir.'

'Not there?'

'There is no log of the event on the network. There might be a malfunction. But personally, I believe it has been deleted.'

'Then there is a culprit.'

_'I think so sir. But without a record we cannot localise it to a particular machine. Not only do we not know where the event transpired, but we do not know_ when _. I mean, in which time window occurred the hacking of the machine, if that is how it happened.'_

'You must check all the Doors.'

'But sir, that could take . . . forever.'

'The event will likely have taken place at a time harmonious with that of the missing subject's timeframe, corresponding also with the timeframe of the body his mind is now occupying. Have you recovered the subject's original body on Earth-502?'

'Not yet sir.'

'Find that first. It is one planet. I want boots on the ground – eight thousand Servants. Look for the recently comatose. Particularly the strangest cases.'

'Yes, sir.'

'As for the Doors . . . As I said, we can expect that the subject and the target were both alive when the event occurred. The machines guard with strict measures against the corruption of the universal time flow, and no Servant would be stupid or insane enough to break a life's instruction and training, and cause such jeopardy. Taking a Door to the past in order to Reshuffle a now dead subject is made impossible. We know what happens when a universe breaks and we learned precautions from it.

'The event on our side likely occurred during or after the most recent Reshuffle on Earth-502, that is, most recent in the universal time flow, else the missing subject would have been noticed previously. Investigate the Doors for all the time windows opened during that Reshuffle. At the same time use the Doors to investigate all the time windows after the Reshuffle, up to . . . let's say, one hundred years. Allowing for a standard lifespan.'

_The man with the green eyes blinked. Even after six hundred years, he still sometimes struggled with understanding the complications of how time worked, or rather_ didn't _work in this place. Whenever he felt lost, he remembered his training, reminding himself to focus on the universal time flow, that steady beat of the great beyond. That was always the most important._

'And if it all turns up nothing, sir?' he queried.

'Then we must look at other possibilities. Time loops, copied data sent back to past machines to trick us, or something we haven't encountered yet. But I am confident that the answer will be found simply enough. It will merely take time. And time . . . time is very much on our side.'

'And the subject himself sir? The absent mind?'

The man with the green eyes stroked his bare chin. 'How many Servants are available, not working on Reshuffles for the current thread?'

'We have sixteen million, sir.'

_'That is not enough. Not enough at all. Pull out any Servant not working on a Top Tier Reshuffle. Put them on this. I want at least three billion to start with. One million will work the machines, scanning for anomalies. Look through all our subjects._ All _of them. Anything we can find that doesn't fit, that raises questions. The rest . . . boots on the ground. Cast the net. Hide in plain sight, they'll know the drill. Search the universe.'_

'Sir, that would take . . .'

'I am aware of how long that might take. We cannot let this corrupt the flow. There will already be enough fallout. Hopefully the machines will find something.'

'When we find him, can we not use a Door, catch him in the moment? Catch him before it even started?'

'His mind is off the Grid. That means it is unreachable through the entirety of the universal time flow. Past, present, future. Simplistic way of putting it, but that is all we can do. When he is back on the Grid, the moment will not matter.'

'But if – when – it is back on the Grid, then it should be reachable now . . . Doesn't the fact that it is isn't accessible mean that we fail, that it is permanently off-Grid?'

'You are young and inexperienced, but even the oldest models do not have the capacity to comprehend how our artificial time and its nonlinearity works here. It seems to us that when the subject is reclaimed it will then simultaneously exist on and off the Grid, both accessible and inaccessible at all moments. But it is nothing so simple. It is best not to try and think about it. All that matters now is that it is not under our control. Its absence is a hole in the timeline, nonlinear, always existing in its non-existence, and perpetually departed from the path of Her Direction.'

'Sir . . . Is all this really necessary? It is only one mind . . .'

'You do not understand the importance. That one mind has in all likelihood pushed out another mind, which has been driven out and pushed into another . . . It starts a chain. If we are unlucky, that chain could continue on, and on. More and more minds behaving not according to Direction. The clean-up work required has the potential to be vast, even limitless. Damage control . . . The universe is already chaos. We do our best to reign in that chaos, to shape it to Her Direction. But no matter the ability of our machines to predict, to calculate, there will always be unpredictability. There will always be chaos.

'It is not merely in the movement of minds that there is a chain. The chain is in the effect one mind can have on the universe. Somewhere, a baby dies. That is an entire life not led, a destroyed potential, not influencing in every small way countless others, for better or worse. The common individual remains dumb and blind to their ripples, how their life shapes the world around them. And all those worlds with interplanetary or cross-dimensional travel. A butterfly flaps its wings, somewhere a storm. This is why we exist. We exist to control this. A mind loose, untethered, unpredicted, changing everything . . . The Mother's work could be ruined.'

'But stopping work on the Reshuffles, sir? Will that not make it worse?'

'There is no point continuing work on the lesser Reshuffles. We have no idea which world this mind had been sent to. How can we have Direction if one or an endless chain of minds are set free, causing their havoc? It would be futile, continuously wrecking our work. Hole after hole in the system, widening, turning against us. I can only hope that the target world is not an advanced, space-faring one. If it is, and the ripples are interplanetary, maybe even cross-dimensional . . . the effect could be ruinous to all our efforts.'

'I understand, sir. And the Mother? Does She know of all this?'

_'I have spoken with Her. I have been charged with solving this, with bringing Order. I have all the Servants but Hers at my disposal. This . . . This is_ my _Direction.'_

## SEVEN

Jay didn't follow Alexia to the rest house. Instead, he walked through the town, along progressively narrower streets, down shadowed alleys, awnings forming tunnels over his head. Eyes watched him as he went, but he paid them no heed. He couldn't stop thinking: _It hasn't even been two days, and four people have died around me. One by my own hands._ And the follow-up thought: _Do I invite death?_

As he moved away from the open parts of Nohaven, the air grew staler, the smells unpleasant. Holes in crumbling walls formed windows, most of them boarded up. Faces leered at him out of the gloom; the sun's presence was only felt in brief patches, and for most of it he felt he may as well be underground. The alleys seemed to become labyrinthine, every path sprouting ten more. Whores ( _people, they're people)_ of the underclass writhed from doorways, all shapes and all aberrations. Some may have been pretty, in a painted kind of way, but some looked sick, and some were clearly starving. They called to him, and he looked away.

Occasionally the air would become thick with the stench of disease and decay. Here hung clouds of insects, whirling in circles like halos over their heads. It wasn't clear if the people were deformed, or separate species. Here, there was something for everyone undiscerning, everyone shallow of pocket.

Four dead. How many more to come in this place?

He pushed up his sleeves and unbuttoned his shirt halfway down. He wiped an arm over his brow. The heat, the atmosphere was stifling. Even his breath felt harsh and dried of oxygen. _This place. This sauna of death_.

The alleys opened into a small square, the centre glazed by a circle of sunlight. Here there was a waterless stone fountain, the stone cracked in a dozen places. On the fountain's basin there lay a cluster of well-used money, held together by a clip. Assuming all the notes were the same, it looked around . . . quite a lot.

Jay hesitated. His instinct told him not to take it. But he had no money. He couldn't rely on Alexia; for all he knew, he might not even see her again. He would need to eat again before the day was out. And in a town like this, what else might he need the money for?

He looked around. There was nobody about. He heard shouting, but it was far off, too distant to make out the words. He picked up the money, and thumbed through, counting. Forty-five kings, made up of seven fives and ten ones at the back. Less than he thought, thanks to the deceitful one-king notes, but still good money. This was somebody's of course. But if he left it, what were the chances they'd get it back? _Somebody else would take it. Somebody who needed it, really needed it, maybe. Somebody who deserved it? Who knows._ All he knew for sure is that he needed that money. Jay Wulf needed that money, and Jay Wulf was going to have it.

He looked up. _Ah_. _And here we go. Of course._

Six kids, four girls and two boys, had surrounded him. They'd moved silently, out of the shadows, blocking off the exits. They may have been kids, but they were older kids, with a feral intensity about them. They'd been viciously sharpened by hunger, by an uncertain life living under the breadline, a life in the dark backstreets of Nohaven.

'He armed?' said one of the girls, matted hair down to her waist, a butcher's knife in her hand.

'Not armed,' another girl said, crouching as she paced in a circle around him, with what looked like nails strapped to her knuckles. 'He got nothing.'

The first girl grinned, showing a mouth of big gums and black teeth. 'Good,' she said. 'Money.'

When Jay didn't say anything, she growled and slashed the air with the knife. ' _Money_.'

'Ain't got none.' The pattern of words came quick to his lips. His head was pulsing.

'Wrong answer. We take it from you.' She screamed, pointing her blade out, and the three not holding the exits rushed in at him.

Jay dodged the nailed fist that came flying upwards to his chin, his back arching backwards to evade the blow. He twisted, a stiletto blade of the youngest boy missing his side by less than an inch. His foot lashed out, kicking the other boy in the chest before he had a chance to strike with his stick; he dodged the nails again, and his balled fist connected with the girl's stomach, lifting her up into the air. He withdrew and leaped back from another slash of the blade. The boy overbalanced, and he grabbed the boy's arm and twisted it, disarming him. The boy cried out at him as his head was grabbed, as Jay's knee met it with a _crunch_.

The black-toothed girl yelled in fury and ran in herself, as did the two others. The exits were uncovered, and he could have evaded them and ran, perhaps, but he didn't. They would know these streets like the back of their hands, and they could come at him from the sides, from above, perhaps even from below.

But that wasn't why he stayed. He stayed because he could fight. Because he _wanted_ to fight. And he wanted that money.

His movements seemed pre-ordained. His body did not wait for instruction, did not wait for the seconds of thought that would serve him an early death. It merely _did_. A girl with shaved black hair and exceptionally long arms pounced on him from behind. She heard the _snap_ before she felt it. She screamed and wept on the floor, holding her broken arm with nobody paying any attention to her.

His elbow took out the boy he had kicked, and he disarmed the stick from the fourth girl, using it to chop at her neck. She backed off, choking, as black tooth was upon him. He dropped the stick and grabbed her wrist with one hand, grabbed her hair with another, pulled it, and headbutted her in the face. Her nose burst and she fell away, wailing. With a quick movement he was behind her, pulling the knife from her hands and holding it to her throat.

_Stop_.

The knife razed her throat, drawing a thin red line. About him the gang – the _kids_ – were crying and moaning in pain, clutching themselves. The girl who had taken a stick to the throat was retching.

Stop.

'I'm takin the money,' Jay said. 'It belongs to all of you, I know. Or maybe just you – you're the leader right? You use it as bait to get more. Maybe I'd have left it all if you hadn't attacked. But now I'm takin it.' He paused. 'I'll leave you ten. I shouldn't but I'm gonna. Share it out, _use_ it, get food. Here's some advice. Dissolve the gang. I get it, you're hungry and you're fightin to live. But so am I. You come at me again, I'll fuckin kill all of you.'

He pushed the girl from him, sending her sprawling into the choking girl. She looked back at him from the ground, furious, pained . . . scared. He picked up the money again and separated the ten ones from it, which he sent fluttering towards the dead fountain. The rest he put in his pocket.

He looked at the knife. 'I'm takin this, too,' he said. 'Not cause I much want it. But cause I don't want you to have it.' He slid it into a hook on his belt, just hidden behind his empty holster. Then he walked away, back the way he had come, back to the wider, sunnier streets, knowing that if any of them got themselves in a fit enough state to come after him he could easily, easily take care of them.

An hour later, in the medicinal light of the thoroughfare, he put his hand to his face, his shoulders hunched, finally accepting what he had done.

*

Past the red doors, he found himself moving through a swamp of scarlet light. Incense seemed to pour from the walls, wreathing the insides in pungent fog. Any further than a foot, and he could only make out vague shapes. The occasional body would move past him, but he was never sure they weren't tricks of the light, dreams hidden in mist. Music hummed in the background, composed of long, lulling notes, and he felt increasingly relaxed, while at the same time almost deliriously aroused. _Hypnotic, and . . . and is the incense an aphrodisiac?_

He stepped carefully around soft, scattered cushions. There was someone, a woman in barely enough silk to robe a baby, reclining on a sofa. Her lipstick matched the velvet. She seemed fast asleep, her chest rising and falling with the musical notes.

'Welcome to The Drain,' breathed a voice behind him. He turned to see a beautiful woman smiling at him. She was dressed all in beads, glowing like rubies in the light. The fog cloaked her, wisping around her arms and legs and hiding her secrets.

'Hey,' he said. 'I – I'm not sure why I'm here.'

'That's okay,' she said, still smiling. 'That's just fine. Can I get you a drink?'

'I guess. Yeah. Please.'

She swept away, and once more he was lost in a house of lust. A house that seemed to live to its own time, its own crimson pulse.

He was feeling light-headed, his loins throbbing, aching. He was about to sit down on a cushion when the woman reappeared, carrying a glass. The colour was impossible to tell in the light, but smoke seemed to rise from the top of it, and yet when he took it the glass was cold.

'It is only five kings,' she said softly, sweetly, touching his arm with a trailing finger.

'Ah, right,' he said. Without pulling out his whole wad of money, he used his fingers inside his pocket to pluck a single note. He handed it to her. 'I'm not gonna be drugged by it, am I?'

'It is only beneficial,' she smiled. 'Everything in this house is in the interest of our patrons, and our staff.'

'You know, I kinda expected a place called The Drain might be a bit . . . seedier.'

She said nothing in response, merely blinked at him, slow and indolent, with long jet-black lashes. Her mouth looked rich and wet in the light, and he saw it twitch and purse.

He swallowed. It was too late to leave, and besides, his insides were on fire. He didn't want this – _like hell you don't_ – but he _needed_ this, needed it to think clearly. His mind was swimming with lurid visions.

'How much?' he said.

'That will depend,' she said. 'On what you want, and who you want it with. How much do you have?'

_This kind of transaction sure ain't gonna go in my favour_. 'I have . . . well . . . how about just, you know, regular, uh . . .'

'How much do you have?' she asked again.

'I got twenty,' he lied.

She sniffed, and her finger dropped from tracing patterns on his arm. 'That will get your cock sucked,' she said.

'By you?'

'No. By . . . male or female, or other?'

'Female.'

'Species?'

'Uh. Human.'

'For twenty, you don't get to be picky about race, or anything else.'

'I'm not picky.'

'Then go downstairs, knock on door three.' She jerked a thumb behind her.

'Okay,' he said. He made to go, but she put out her hand to stop him. 'Money first,' she said. 'Please.'

He carefully picked out all but two notes from inside his pocket. Her face read _I'm not stupid, you know._ She took them from his grasp and immediately disappeared again into the swirling haze.

He navigated his way to the back of the open room. Here there was an array of doors, and some steps leading down. 'Here goes nothin,' he said.

As he descended, he left the fog behind him. The red lights were still here, but without the incense to veil them they seemed glaring, like baleful eyes. He opened a door at the foot of the stairs, and found himself in a stone corridor lined with more doors, each daubed in white paint with a number. It was damp, with a cloying, unclean odour. Some of the doors were rotting. They did not block out the sound: the noises of violent, bestial fucking.

_The shades are up_ , he thought. _Curtains back_. _Welcome to The Drain_.

He approached Door Number Three, hesitated once more, and then, driven by his own pounding libido, knocked.

## EIGHT

It was late afternoon, and the purple cast of the sky had deepened, yet still shone bright and warm. The thoroughfare was busier now, the crowds seeming ever more exotic to Jay Wulf's gaze. There were hulking men and women in great overcoats, their trailing ends yellowed with dust; diminutive chittering creatures, covered in hair, with rusting shoulder plates and ugly muskets strapped to their backs; a fellow Rathian (also covered in skin patterns) who ignored his eye; a figure that seemed like a walking shadow, as black as the night, with a domed head and four obsidian orbs for eyes. There were people with squashed, beaten faces, and there were people without noses, at least not as he knew them; many-holed protrusions ran the length of their jaws and flared as they sniffed.

He was passed by two bird-like figures, their noses long and hooked, almost like beaks, their skin leathered and cracked. Their shoulders were high and arching, adorned with long tattered cloaks. Their eyes were invisible beneath darkened goggles. He could only understand one side of the conversation, the other figure's voice too harsh and croaking to easily comprehend. He could tell that here he was listening to an entirely separate language to what he had otherwise been hearing and speaking, and yet like inescapable subtitles in his mind it may as well have been English, just like everything else.

'Just outside town,' one of the ( _krayt, they're krayt_ ) was saying. 'It was there last night, too.'

The other krayt asked a question. It sounded like a squawk.

'It keeps out of the way. I saw a _tabaca_ try and get close to it, it near bit his fucking hand off.'

The two cawed with laughter. The harsher-voiced krayt said something then, as they turned off the thoroughfare onto a side street, and Jay thought he recognised one word, though he could have imagined it.

_Tiger_.

Jay hesitated for a while, and then made his way to a nearby meat stall. He used the last of his money to haggle a slab of raw meat from the vendor, a sexless looking creature with scaly, sickly yellow skin and rapidly blinking eyes. He also bought a cooked burger from the same stall, both purchases wrapped in separate foil. He considered later the wisdom of buying raw and cooked meat from the same stall, in this heat, but there had been no flies or unpleasant smells, and the truth was he hadn't truly cared.

He tucked the slab under his arm and held the burger in his hand, and he strode off purposefully to the edge of town, the same way he had entered yesterday. He passed the horses and their trough; thankfully there was no sign of Remembrance Ed. Some of the horses were different now, but the black stallion with the flaming mane was still there, and it lifted its head to look at him as he passed.

Jay left Nohaven behind him, and sat down on a rock. He unwrapped his burger and took a bite. It was on the third bite that he looked up to see the tiger standing before him.

'So, you're still here,' Jay said.

The tiger growled low in its throat.

'Might be I'm wrong, but I reckon you were waitin for me. You can't enter town without trouble, but you don't want me to leave without you.' He took another bite, speaking with his mouth full. 'Is there only one way out of this town? I don't know. Maybe you know the ins and outs better than me.' He peeled back the foil from the raw meat and grinned as the tiger's expression changed. It padded closer.

'Hungry, huh?' He dropped the meat on the ground, and the tiger immediately tore into it. It disappeared quickly before his eyes.

'I have to go back, you know,' he said, as the tiger ripped into its meal. It glanced up at him, but continued to feast. 'I still ain't sure if you can understand me,' Jay continued through his mouthfuls. 'But I can tell you're smart. There's someone I need to see. But not tomorrow. I'll bring you more food tomorrow, although I'm sure you're findin your own prey.' Jay swallowed the last of his burger. 'And after then . . . well, we'll see. I'm takin things as they come, less one day at a time, more one _minute_ at a time.'

The tiger finished, licking its bloody teeth, and gave him a long, silent look.

'You can of course, I mean, if you get sick of this, you can always just stop followin me.'

The tiger seemed to shake its head, almost sadly, and moved away between the rocks.

*

Jay returned to the rest house as the rich purple of the sky stained itself red. He had sat outside town for a while, watching the colours thicken and grow bloody. Afternoon washed into evening, and he tried to battle his weariness, wanting to see the stars come out. He regretted that he had never really sky-gazed before, so he knew that if there were any points of reference, he would not know them.

Eventually, though, the tiredness stole him away. His body may be strong, and he may have been getting used to it much faster than he would have thought, but experiencing the wonder and perils of a new ( _half-new_ ) world were taxing. He was not exhausted physically, but mentally; his mind was in constant flux, constant challenge and learning, pulled and buffeted by opposing forces. He was split, and yet whole; twin spirits treading in unison through two mirror mazes that threatened to intertwine.

The biggest worry was not adapting to Jay Wulf's life and memories. The biggest worry was in losing his own.

He sat on his rented bed, in silence. For the first proper time he let himself think of his home, his _real_ home. No, he didn't "let" himself. He _fought_ with himself, pushed away the visions of murder and escaped the house of blood and swords. He was in the open, and he was breathing fresh, chill air under a blue sky. Friends and family with vague faces sat on fences around him, sharing the space with blackbirds and sparrows.

_Why can't I see their faces? Why can't I see their faces?!_ A tear fell from his eyes, and it broke something in him, and more came, all silently. He fell on his side and curled up like an infant.

_You might not ever see them again_ turned inevitably into a facing of the facts: _you will never see them again_.

'I can't see them _now_ ,' he mumbled. 'I can't see them now.'

He closed his eyes and looked at the house. It was an ordinary house, and he had spent many, many days clutching at his own sadness within those walls, always wishing for something more, and yet that had never made it not his home.

Now he had something more, he had everything more, but . . . there was a difference to be made, something that in all those years of fantasy he had never once considered. There was a difference between being able to return home, and not wanting to, and of the question of returning home being thoroughly impossible.

_It's not just another city. It's not just another country. It might not even just be another planet. It could be another galaxy, for all I know. Another . . . another universe. I don't know anything. I remember things but I don't_ know _anything, it's all alien, all of it, even, even_ me _._

I can't get home. I can't get home. I'm alone. I can't get home. I'm alone.

He contorted on the bed, gnashing his teeth as though in the throes of an exorcism. He felt like he was going insane, that the madness and true bottomlessness of despair would never end, that he would be caught like this, falling ever down, into a succession of plugholes of infinite blackness. He felt pain, actual physical pain in his heart, and his nails drew blood from his skin.

He tried to imagine himself, how he had looked in a mirror every day and saw that same old same old, and he couldn't even remember that.

'Leave me alone,' he cried. 'I need to _know_!'

The evening passed into night, and the body of Jay Wulf shook and shook.

## NINE

He dreamt of fire and thrusting, of gored flesh and dripping blades, and the endless pounding of black hooves. When he awoke he sat straight up in the late morning's heat, his sheets soaked in sweat.

'Oh shit,' he said. 'He's mine.'

*

Jay approached the horses by the trough. He ignored all but the black stallion. The horse snorted softly as he put his hand out and stroked his flank.

'Hey boy,' Jay said. 'Sorry it took me so long to remember.' He mounted the horse bare, for a true Rathian needed no saddle, nor desired one. It was only then he realised that, naked as the horse was, he had not been hitched to anything, but had simply stood and waited patiently for his return.

He gripped the horse between his legs, and stroked the horse's back, feeling the emanating warmth. The stallion backed up and turned towards the town's exit, and started to walk.

'What in the hell do you think you're doin?' yelled Remembrance Ed, as he stepped out from behind the other horses.

Jay twisted in his seat. He raised his finger and with his arm outstretched pointed back at Edder Van Took. 'Fuck off,' he said. 'He is mine.'

Ed stared at him, stunned into furious silence, as the horse rose to a trot.

Jay and his mount left Nohaven behind them, and, as expected, the tiger leaped into view. Its pitch black coat with vivid red stripes was a poor camouflage in the brightness of the day among the rocks and sands of the Appalian Wastes, and yet until it showed itself he had seen not a glimpse of its hide.

'I'm going ridin,' Jay said. 'Explorin. But I'll be back here later. You don't have to follow me, I ain't really going nowhere.'

The tiger moved closer. 'I guess you do,' Jay said. 'But I ain't gonna slow down just for you.'

The horse returned to a trot, and behind him the tiger followed, bounding between rocks and along gulleys as the horse eked out his own path. There was a broader flatness that appeared on the northern side, no doubt where the carriages travelled to and from Nohaven, but he ignored it for now, pushing up slopes and down dry beds where once water ran. At first he watched for the tiger, but he lost sight too often as it loped its own way in his wake. Sometimes it would stop, and he wondered if it had given up, but then a little later he would see it appear again from an unexpected direction. Eventually he ceased to look and ceased to care.

He traversed at the foot of ochre cliffs that grew steadily higher and paler before him. When the land was flat he put the horse to a canter, closing his eyes as the wind blew through his hair. He trusted the horse implicitly. The horse responded to his lightest movements, the twitch of his legs, a touch on the back. Sometimes it seemed as though he needn't move at all, that the horse would know what he was thinking. And then there were times where the horse changed pace or made slight turns before he had even considered them. The stallion was thinking for himself, or thinking for the both of them.

As hours passed and the sun beat down on them, the truth became far simpler. Jay and the horse were _in sync_ , a pairing between man and animal unlike anything he had experienced before, and yet feeling wholly natural. _More_ than natural. It felt _right_. He had never ridden a horse before, not during what he now thought of as his "other" life. But here, now, he felt whole, the horse and he a jigsaw that moved through the land as one beast, a two-headed centaur.

The stallion's red mane wisped and flew in the breeze as they galloped down a slope into a white valley. Jay laughed out loud, lifting himself up with his hands and feeling the hot-blooded thump of the horse's heart.

He rode and he rode, paying little attention to the wearing of the day, only to the colours that framed the two of them: a bold shadow racing against the violet-shaded whites and oranges of the Wastes, the sky so deliciously vivid and alien against the fantasy, this lurid Old West dream.

Afternoon slid into evening, and still he drifted through the country, lost and yet not lost, not caring, alive with thrill and love for the sensation of true, boundless freedom, and for a world endlessly new; yet it felt as though he had seen and felt it all before, many times in his dreams.

*

They journeyed slowly back under the setting sun. Jay had a vague inkling of where Nohaven might be, but he let the horse guide. He was very tired, and doubtless the horse was even more. They had found running water, a small spring flowing out of some underground passage beneath the cliffs, and they had both drank greedily, but that had been hours ago. His throat was parched, his body felt, well, _baked_ , and as his stomach growled he realised he hadn't had a bite to eat all day. He felt weak and slightly dizzy, and he swayed as the horse plodded on. He smiled as he considered the reaction he'd get from Remembrance Ed if he repeated his dip in the trough.

_Soon be home,_ he thought.

Home? Well, good enough.

He was thinking of Alexia when he noticed two black figures on a ridge above him, silhouetted against the crimson evening. He made to move the horse away, but they were both too sluggish, and the figures had dropped down before them, rifles pointed at his chest.

'Let me guess,' Jay said wearily, before either of them could speak. 'My money or my life?'

'He learns fast,' said one of the men. The other grunted.

_Appalian mountain men . . . and bandits._ Jay quickly tried to conjure up what he might know about them. He knew that they lived in collections of huts on mountain sides, and sometimes in caves, and that their women were rarely seen. _Might be incestuous communities_ , _they say._ He couldn't think of anything to help him in the current situation.

'Hey, tabaca, give us it now.'

'That's the second time I been called that. What does it mean?'

'You gonna do as we say or we gonna shoot you?'

'I don't know what _you're_ gonna do. But I got nothin. Search me if you like.'

The other man grunted again, and scratched his beard. 'Take the clothes off 'is back. Take 'is 'orse.'

'You ain't takin my horse.'

'You got to the count o' three,' the first man said.

'This ain't gonna work out for no-one involved,' Jay said in a low voice. His fingers touched the butcher's knife under his holster. It had been pressing into leg the whole ride, perhaps now he wouldn't regret bringing it along.

'One.'

Then again, he didn't think much of one knife versus two aimed guns, fast reflexes or not. He could hurl it at one and maybe score a hit, but not before the other had shot him at close range.

'Two.'

He steadied himself. The horse was tense under his legs, also ready. He'd just have to hope the men were a bad aim. _Appalian mountain men . . . hunters . . . they grow up with their guns._

' _Thr—_ '

A huge shape came leaping out of the darkness, sending one of the men sprawling to the ground, pinned beneath a great gnashing weight. The other man cried out in alarm, turning his gun sights on the black beast.

Jay threw his knife at the man, and saw with a kind of hungry fascination how it sped in perfect form through the air and sunk itself in the back of the man's neck. The Appalian wheeled around, choking on blood and metal, and Jay saw how the throw had actually taken the knife all the way through: the end of the blade emerged from the larynx, where blood was dribbling fast.

The man stayed up for too long, stumbling around in desperation as his companion's throat was torn out. Jay saw frightened, confused eyes staring at him, staring at the country around him as the man tried to make sense of the pain. A sudden change in fortune, and two lives ending, ended. The man dropped to the floor, and was still. The tiger left its own target in spasms, kicking away in some awful last dance. Its muzzle was dripping.

Jay breathed slowly in and out, watching from horseback as the cadaveric spasms slowly ceased, while the tiger watched him, licking itself.

'Thanks for savin my life,' he said at last.

The tiger paced away, looked back, paced again.

'You want me to follow,' Jay said.

The tiger gave the slightest nod.

'Alright. Give me a moment.' Jay dropped to the ground, and approached the bodies. The blood looked black in the dusky red twilight. Like some kind of evil had leaked from the men's souls. Jay searched them, avoiding the faces. They carried nothing but their rifles. He took one. He reached out his hand to pull the knife from the man's throat, his face averted, but he withdrew before his fingers had so much as touched the hilt. He had a gun now; that was enough. No need for butcher knives from the backstreets. Besides, he'd heard enough horrible sounds for one day.

He got back on the horse, and it stepped forward after the tiger, calmly weaving between the two bodies as though nothing had happened.

*

The bandits' camp wasn't far. He got off the horse when he saw the fire, putting a hand on the horse's neck to ask him to stay put. He didn't need to speak.

The tiger and he moved side by side through the darkness, as silent as phantoms. As they got closer, Jay made out the figure of another mountain man, his back to them. He was turning a spit over the fire.

'Smells good,' whispered Jay. The tiger's eyes reflected the campfire.

They approached, Jay almost in a crouch. He hesitated again just below the crest of another ridge. 'What are you expectin me to do? I can't just assassinate him in cold blood.'

The tiger closed its eyes.

'Well, I ain't gonna.' Jay held the rifle tight to his chest. 'Listen!' he shouted, and the mountain man immediately stood up and whirled around, holding his own gun. 'Your friends just tried to rob me,' Jay called, 'and they —'

A gunshot interrupted him, hitting the top of the ridge a few feet to his right, and he ducked. 'And they didn't come off so well!' he finished.

'Come out from the dark, coward!' the bandit yelled back. 'Come out so I can shootcha!'

'Temptin offer!' Jay shouted, as another gunshot hit, closer this time. 'Look, it don't have to be this way! Put your gun down and we'll —'

The man fired again, and swore. 'You killed my friends!'

'They were bad people!' Jay cocked his gun. 'Aw, fuck this.' He stood up, held the rifle up to his chin, and fired. The man's head collapsed.

'Damn,' Jay said. 'Powerful shot.' He headed forward. 'Still, not like I didn't try to avoid the outcome.'

He searched the camp. There was a large canteen of water that he drank from, spilling some down his front in his haste for hydration. His horse opened his mouth and, with a little difficulty, Jay poured some in a few times. Avoiding what once counted for the Appalian's head, he ran his hands over the torso and found a leather water flask, which he refilled from the canteen and hooked on to his own belt.

There was a box in the camp, or rather a satchel framed like a box, made of animal pelts. Inside was a beggar's treasure trove. Assorted clothes, tools, ungainly weapons (most of them rusting or in pieces), cheap-looking jewellery and metal scrap. He rummaged through, trying to ignore the sounds of the tiger eating the pieces of the bandit's head behind him. He found a dark brown greatcoat that he put aside, but swapped it when he saw a high-collared open black jacket lined with red, with red stitching and hems. He put it on over his shirt, admiring it. It hung loose, tapered at the sides and longer at the back, though it was lighter than an overcoat. There was a slightly military quality to it, although if it was once designed to fasten together it no longer had that capability. It had certainly seen better days, but Jay felt that only meant it suited the rest of his somewhat haggard appearance.

He found little else of interest in the box, contemplating and trying on a hat for a while before a look from the tiger changed his mind. Elsewhere in the camp he found a leather purse of money to the count of almost twenty queens, and a box of shells that fit the rifle he had taken. He took the purse and tied it to his belt on his side, covered by his jacket. There was an empty pouch on the belt that had been there all along, and he dumped as many shells for it as he could into it. The rifle itself he kept slung over his back.

Finally he relaxed by the fire. There was a metal pincer and a knife lying by the spit, and he used them to cut off pieces of the meat. The animal was unidentifiable, already with parts hacked off. He doubted he could have recognised it even if it was whole and unskinned.

With grunts of pleasure he chewed on the meat, tossing some of it to the tiger, which seemed still hungry even after snacking on the head and throats of two men. Jay refused to look at what the man in the camp looked like now, and tried to push away his nauseating vision of burst fruit.

The horse nudged him from behind. 'You want some too? You eat meat?' Jay said, unsure. The horse nudged him again, and jerked its head towards the spit. 'Alright,' Jay said. He cut off most of the rest of the animal and deposited it in front of the horse, which stooped to eat. There was the sound like the crunching of bone, and Jay grimaced. His eyes closed as he swallowed. When you were this hungry, all that mattered was that it was food, and pretty much anything tasted good, even unidentified-desert-creature-on-a-stick.

*

Jay Wulf arrived at the rest house almost dead on his feet. There was no way he would have let himself sleep in a bandit camp; for all he knew there were others out there who might return to the camp. He did not expect there to be anybody manning the desk at this time, and in his weariness he did not notice the woman. She called his name when his foot hit the first step. He looked back, and then walked slowly and unsteadily to the desk.

'I board here,' he said. 'I've paid.'

The woman smiled at him. She had a slightly piggish face, with a large mouth and slightly upturned nose. Her ginger hair was thick and curly, half of it piled on top of her head and the rest of it falling down to the top of plunging cleavage. Cleavage that, as Jay's eyes travelled inescapably down, fell nearly all the way to her belly button, taking her top with it. In fact, its ending was only a guess, for it carried on past the cover of the desk. If her modesty relied only on the coverage of nipples, then in that she was spared, but the laced white top could not have had such pendulums in mind when first designed.

'I know,' she said, leaning forward so that half of her was pushed up. 'I checked the book. My husband kept it from me.'

Jay blinked a few times, and then cottoned on. 'Ah. Well, he would, wouldn't he?'

She licked her top lip. 'Yes he would,' she said. 'Perhaps I should come up . . . check everything in your room is to your satisfaction.' She kept on smiling, with a devilish cast to her eyes and a growing flush to her cheeks. Her entire demeanour seemed shameless to Jay, perhaps even wanton.

'I . . .' Jay started. He swallowed, and shook his head slowly. The room seemed to sway with him. 'I am sorry. I am very, very, very, _very_ tired. I feel I would fall asleep on you instantly.'

'I'm sure I can find a way to wake you up.'

'Mrs, um,' – _Havisha_ – 'Havisha . . .'

'Call me Pearl,' she said, slipping a finger in and out of her mouth with small wet popping noises. 'I think we – _mmph –_ know each other well enough for it.'

'Um. Pearl. I shouldn't. I can't. Your husband warned me to stay away from you.' _And he might have a point_ , he thought to himself.

She sniffed and waved a hand in the air dismissively, and then something came into her eyes and she leaned in once more. 'Don't you think,' she said, slightly huskily, 'that makes it even better?'

Jay opened his mouth, but before he could find the words she had emerged from behind the desk and moved close to him. When he saw her head to toe his exhausted brain gave up, and gave the reins back to his libido.

'Come up then,' he said.

She grinned widely, thoroughly pleased she had won. 'I'll be up in a few moments,' she said.

'I may be asleep.'

'We'll see.'

*

He woke up to her riding him. He felt confused and drugged, still a victim to the blurry currents of deep sleep. The room seemed to be circling, as though he was on a merry-go-round after hours, all lights turned off.

No, there was one light: a silvery moonlight that illuminated the body heaving on top of him. She was panting like something wounded, and when she saw his open eyes she leaned in and bit his ear, screaming through clenched teeth. He found himself hard inside her; maybe he always had been.

'You're bigger,' she said. 'You're so much bigger than my husband.'

'Uh-huh,' Jay muttered. He lay silent as she repeated herself. Her breasts seemed everywhere, a whole torso of breast. She grabbed his hands and put them on her, and he squeezed without thinking, not knowing which part to squeeze.

His hips started to buck under him, or maybe he only imagined it; the bed was shaking so hard little was certain about his own movements. She bounced wildly, and he felt himself rising to orgasm.

'Get –' he started, but she planted her mouth on him, dwarfing his lips in hers. A tongue drove into him and thrashed around. She cried out into his mouth as her body rocked, and then he too was gone.

There was shuddering, accompanied by sudden blinking photographs of clarity. He saw Alexia's face, and then he saw Savvi, and finally he saw Pearl Havisha. The weight was lifted off him. He felt feathery, even buoyant; a moment later he only felt wet, and as fogginess stole him away it seemed to him as though he was drowning in moonlight.

## TEN

Jay approached the clerk at the desk cautiously, but Mr Havisha gave no sign that he knew of his wife's late night activity. Jay had woken alone and had washed and dressed. He hoped his sheets would get changed, but he didn't count on it.

'Yes?' Mr Havisha said, barely looking up as Jay laid his fingers on the desk.

'I was hoping you could tell me which room Alexia Slade is occupying?'

'You were hoping, were you?'

'Yes.'

'Then your hope was ill-founded. We do not give out the names or rooms of our residents.'

'She is a friend.'

'A man like you,' the clerk said, 'does not keep friends. Especially with pleasant ladies of fine repute.'

'Ah, so she is here. Look,' Jay said, as the clerk frowned, 'She _is_ a friend. But I don't need you to believe me. Here.' He withdrew five queens from his purse and put them on the desk. 'An encouragement. But if you'd rather not take it, I'll tell you now, I don't need your permission. I can knock on every door in this rest house, disturb all your paying customers. Who knows what chaos I can cause. How many other "pleasant ladies of fine repute" I might encounter.'

The clerk swept the money off the table. 'She's in Room 20,' he said stiffly. 'Top floor. Don't make me regret it.'

_The only thing you should be regrettin_ , thought Jay, as he ascended the staircase, _is lettin your wife take the nightshift at the desk._

Jay knocked on the door of 20. After a few seconds it opened. He smiled, and truly meant it, though he knew how grave she might be feeling.

To his relief, she smiled back, although not as widely as he.

'Hey,' he said.

'Good morning,' she said. 'Come in. I need to put my boots on.' She stood aside as he entered.

'How you doing?' He looked around the room, at the clothes and assorted items stuffed into an open saddlebag. A bigger case was lying next to it, but it was empty.

'Fine,' she said. 'I mean to leave this town Jay, and I mean to leave it today.'

'Oh.' He watched her put on a dark coat over her green dress, and push her small feet into high strapped boots. The coat hid the bulge on her thigh, where she had strapped a holster with a gun. The dress had been cut to allow easy access to the holster without pinning the loose silk to her.

'You can come with me, if you want,' she said, looking at herself in the mirror. 'Or not, it's up to you.'

The cold feeling that had been trickling through him drained away, and was replaced with something warm. 'Where are you going?' he said.

'Nowhere,' she replied. 'Anywhere. Just away from this town. I don't want to spend any moment longer in this place.'

Jay let a few seconds slip by, though his decision had already been made. It had been made two days ago. 'I'll come with you,' he said.

'Good,' she said, giving him a quick smile. She adjusted the holster on her leg. 'Though it is not a permanent arrangement. We part ways, we part ways.'

'Of course.' _My way is yours._

'Do you have a horse you can ride?'

'I do.'

'Good, as Jerrens sold our carriage and horses. Too slow and conspicuous, and individually they're too big for me to ride. I'll buy a new one, but I would rather not share a ride, nor spend more money than I have to. A good horse does not come cheap.'

'Jerrens? Oh, your father's . . .'

'Dol Sander Jerrens. My father's right hand man. I told him to meet me at the North Eye. We will head there, get out of Appalia. Then wherever the wind takes us.'

'Where was this Jerrens when . . . when . . .'

'When my father was killed? You do not need to dance around the topic. Jerrens was doing father's business elsewhere in Nohaven, setting up an appointment or something. I don't know. It is not always clear what he does.'

'Is he okay with you going off on your own?'

'I'm not on my own. I'm with you.'

'Even worse.'

'Jerrens was my father's man, not mine. And he trusts my judgement . . . more or less. This isn't the first time I've come out from under my father's wing. Besides,' she added, 'I'm stubborn. He didn't get much choice in the matter.' She stretched and yawned. 'Come on, I'm ready if you are.'

*

They stood by the horses. Jay had retrieved the rifle and his jacket from his room and slung them both on. He'd also rescued his gun from the clerk, who was pleased to see the back of him. He hadn't expected to get any money back for the rest of the week, and hadn't asked. Finding the purse of money left by the bandits was good enough for him not to care. And with the pistol back in his holster and the rifle on his back he no longer felt ill-prepared, naked in a savage world. He checked the chamber of the pistol. Six shots. Six more people who could die in his presence.

'I see you made a new friend.'

'Huh? Oh.' Jay realised his horse was nudging him affectionately. 'Ain't he amazin? His name's Khyber.'

'And whose is he? Sorry, whose _was_ he?'

'He's mine. I reckon he's always been mine.'

'Really? Sorry, I guess I thought you'd be riding some dusty old mare on its last legs.'

'So did I, before I remembered I had him.'

'So you are remembering things.'

'Took me long enough. One more tiny piece of the puzzle. I spent all day ridin him yesterday. It felt like I was born to ride him.'

'Rathians and their horses,' Alexia said. 'Some people say Rathians love their horses more than their women.'

'After yesterday, I ain't surprised,' Jay grinned. 'Then again, women can do some things that horses can't.'

'Not for lack of trying, I bet.'

'Ha. Tell me, what does _tabaca_ mean? I been called it twice now.'

'It's an off-and-on racial slur,' Alexia said. 'It means, literally, "he who sleeps in blood".'

'Sounds kinda badass,' Jay said.

'That's what quite a number of Rathians think. It was supposed to be an insult, but a lot of them adopted it for their own, calling themselves and each other it.'

'Fair enough.'

'Ah,' Alexia said, spying Remembrance Ed sitting nearby eyeing Jay maliciously. 'Just the man I'm after.'

'Him? I don't think so.'

'He mans the trough and hitching post and tends the stables, does he not?'

'I thought he was just a sour old bastard who can't mind his own damn business.'

'The two aren't mutually exclusive.' She approached Ed, whose manner changed to one of ingratiation and servility. Jay mounted his horse and watched the two of them. He couldn't make out the words but there appeared to be some haggling going on. Eventually Ed stepped away and brought her a saddle, and she handed over to him a wad of money. His eyes widened in delight as she withdrew it from her under her dress. She walked back to Jay holding the saddle as Ed snuffled the money.

'What horse did you buy?'

'This one,' Alexia said, saddling the white mare that had been there since Jay first arrived.

'Ain't that one his?'

'It's mine now. You know, you're talking different to before.'

'I am?'

'Yes.'

'Huh. Maybe.' _You know it. Swords and guns and women on furs._

Jay patted the mare. 'Surprised you didn't just steal it from him. I'm sure he didn't deserve the price you paid.'

'He hasn't yet counted that money. We should probably get riding before he does.'

Jay grinned as Alexia mounted, and the two of them took their horses trotting out of Nohaven. They heard a yell from behind them, and without turning their heads they sped to a canter.

'What'll you call her?' Jay said, ignoring the shouted curses coming from behind.

'Lander,' Alexia shouted over the sound of hooves pounding out of the valley. 'My father's name.'

'But your horse is a woman.'

'You're a woman,' Alexia replied, overtaking him.

*

They travelled along horse trails that wound through towers of yellow rock and stunted white shrubs. Overhead flapped huge vulture-like creatures. They ascended a bluff and came up on a wide plain, beaten flat by the sun. A ragged thing the colour of bone trotted after them for a while, but soon gave up and lay down panting. They followed the ruts of a passed carriage, tracks not yet stolen by wind and sand and time, and drank as little water as they could stand. The sky rippled. They spoke little.

Alexia led them off the plain and towards a range of mahogany cliffs, offering shade. They rode alongside as the cliff's jagged shadow shortened, and then lengthened. Alexia pointed out the vultures nesting on the crags. He understood the word she called them as vulture, though they were too large, too cruel to be vultures of Earth, and he did not doubt two or three together could take down a fighting man.

'How much further?' he asked.

'Do not ask such a question,' she said. 'There may be no end to this road.'

They stopped soon after and broke up bread from Alexia's pack, and shared it between them and their steeds. They drank from their flasks, and poured a little into the mouths of the horses.

'They do not need much,' she said, holding out her hand to stop him. 'And until we find a water source, we don't have much to spare.'

'Will they not dehydrate?'

'You have forgotten even the nature of horses?'

'Think of me as a newborn,' he said.

'A tall, muscular baby, holding guns.'

'Just that,' he said.

'Lucky me. Well. Dehydration . . . You would have to be a cruel rider, or in a crueller land. Worse than this place. Lander will need watered a little more, but yours – Rathian horses are adaptable animals, long evolved to hard climates, and to the unpredictability of this world and its riders. Even more so than Appalian breeds. They retain water for a long time, and take in moisture from the air if they can.'

'Like camels,' he said.

'I do not know what they are.'

'A horse with a hump. Pretty much.'

'I see.'

They sat close to each other while they ate and she taught him things. He asked questions and she answered them. Everything she said made sense, in some distant, half-imagined way. An old man's recollection of his youth.

She told him the leafless white branches that stuck up out of the ground like fingers were called _windil_ or _elv-root_. That the creature that had followed them was a _doyot_ , a scavenger. She told him that the Eye was the northern border of Appalia, and past it they would enter a greener country, a land of prairie, woodland and homesteads known as Sol Ghoum. The land was a ring, she said, around a lake. In the middle of the lake the Isle of Ghoum, where nobody ever went. He asked her why and she shook her head.

She told him of Stoneswell, the brick city. She was born there, in that place where rubble was laid on to rubble and became architecture. The streets were paved with gold, she said, that was what travellers believed. But it was not so. They were only paved with stone. In the Eastern Quarter the factories belched smoke and it hung over that part of the city in great clouds. In the North Quarter everybody had money and fine dresses and spoke like they were royalty, and many of the stones were painted white and silver and pale blue, yet it was still only stone.

'That's where you're from,' he said.

'No prizes for guessing that,' she said. 'We should get go—' she started, but broke off and stood up. '—ing,' she finished. 'There appears to be a tiger coming towards us.'

'Oh shit,' Jay said. 'I completely forgot.'

'You forgot to tell me that you had a tiger.'

'It ain't mine. It's nobody's, I reckon. A wild tiger. Or maybe it ain't. I've no idea. It's smart. It's real strange. It's been followin me ever since . . . ever since I found myself with a gun to my head and no understandin of who I was.'

'I get the feeling there's a lot you haven't told me.'

'Sorry. There's a lot I'm havin to deal with these days.'

'Tell me about the whole gun to your head situation. I remember you mentioning it in Nohaven, but I never asked further.'

'Can it wait?'

'Give me the short version.'

He told her as they both kept eyes on the tiger walking slowly along the base of the cliffs towards them. Now that it knew they weren't moving, it seemed to be in no hurry.

'So you killed someone,' she said.

'In defence.'

'Anyone else?'

He hesitated.

'Just tell me.'

'I was attacked by bandits yesterday, when me and Khyber went for a ride. I killed them.'

'How many?'

'Three.'

She didn't reply. The tiger was close now. It looked annoyed. It was walking slower the nearer it got, taking measure of Alexia.

'Are you okay?' Jay said.

'With you being a murderer?'

'Hey, it was all in defence!'

'Settle down. I'm just kidding. I knew you were a killer when I first saw you.'

He was taken aback. 'And you were okay with that?'

She rolled her eyes. 'I've known more than one killer in my life, Jay. Jerrens is a killer. My father killed once. In defence. To go your whole life making friends only with the innocent . . . leaves one alone. Such is the measure of this world.'

'And you? Have you killed anyone?'

Alexia tapped the side of her coat, which cloaked the gun on her thigh. 'Not yet.'

The tiger stopped in front of them. It looked Alexia up and down, and then turned its head to Jay silently.

'I'm sorry,' Jay said. 'We left Nohaven in a hurry and I . . . forgot about you.' The tiger stared at him impassively.

'It was outside Nohaven?' Alexia said.

'Yes. Somewhere. It was with me when the bandits attacked. In fact,' he said, 'it jumped one of 'em, so that wasn't me. That makes my count only three in total. I mean in the last few days.'

'Quite the saint,' Alexia said. 'I can't believe you left your friend alone.'

'My friend? Oh. The tiger.'

Alexia crouched down and patted the tiger on the head. It looked slightly alarmed, but made no movement to escape. 'Poor thing,' she said. 'I bet it's _starving_.'

'I bet it's eaten half the fuckin creatures in the Wastes,' Jay said. 'I never thought it'd let someone touch it.' He bent down with his hand out but the tiger growled at him and he backed off.

'Just not you,' Alexia said. 'Who's a good tiger? Who's been left all alone by horrid old Jay?' She tickled it under its chin and it licked her hand.

'Good god,' Jay said. 'I'm about to be a third wheel.'

'You were never a second wheel.' Alexia smiled at him. 'Bless.' She took some dried meat out of her pack and fed it to the tiger.

*

The horses picked their way through a rocky landscape, led by the tiger. Jay thought it was a mistake to be following the beast, rather than the other way round, but Alexia had overridden him. 'It wants us to go this way,' she'd said. 'It has to be for a reason.'

'What makes you think you can trust it?' he'd replied.

'Nothing,' she said. 'But look how furry it is!'

'Try and cuddle that, it'll bite your face off.'

'Maybe _your_ face. I have a nice face.'

After around an hour, a figure became visible to them. It was a person lying on their side at the top of a bluff, in the full lavender glare of the sun. They would have seen her – for it was distinctly a _her_ – a while ago if they'd known what to look for, but she'd been quite camouflaged. One hand propped up her head, and the other lay on her hip. She yawned as they left their horses at the base of the hill and climbed up after the tiger.

'Is this the woman who saved your life?' Alexia asked.

'It couldn't be anybody else,' Jay said. 'I'll tell you now, she ain't the most sociable of people.'

'Well she certainly looks the part,' Alexia said. 'A bottle of wine and _I'd_ fuck her.'

'Don't say that again for a while,' Jay muttered. 'I'm tryin to walk here.'

They were sweating by the time they stood up straight at the top. Thankfully there was a slight breeze. It was dry, but it kept the heat of the sun from roasting them.

'I see you picked up a new tail,' Savvi noted dryly, nodding at Alexia.

'Were you followin us?' Jay said, before Alexia could open her mouth.

'I've been lying here watching you plod along for hours. I had a sleep, woke up, and you'd barely moved.' She glanced at the tiger as it lay down at her side, looking expectantly up at her.

'So you were just waitin for us?' Jay asked.

'Yes Jay,' Savvi said. 'That's what I do with my time. I sigh, and wait around for my prince. You're my whole world.'

'Right. So why _are_ you here?'

'Am I not allowed? This hilltop doesn't belong to you. Besides, I'm bored, and you amuse me. Oh, and I have a couple of things for you.' She reached into the satchel beside her, and quickly tossed two things at Jay. His hands shot out, catching the gun in one hand and the knife by the hilt in the other.

'You could've killed me!' Jay said.

'If I had, it would have been a mercy killing. Your reflexes get so shit you can't even catch, and you won't be surviving much longer anyway.'

Jay turned the gun and the knife in his hands. 'These are mine.'

'No shit.'

'Where did you find 'em?'

'The brothers' camp. I went looking for it. I knew they'd have stashed your stuff somewhere in the Wastes.'

'I would've thought you'd have just kept it all. Or sold it.'

Savvi grinned. 'Is that so? Well, the knife isn't worth shit. I like it, but I have enough knives. The gun . . . the gun is alright, and maybe it'd sell. I guess I'm soft on you.'

'Well, thanks for not stealin from me. Was there anythin else of mine you found?'

Savvi's eyes narrowed. 'What's going on with you?'

'He's got amnesia,' Alexia interrupted. 'He doesn't remember much.'

'Is that so,' Savvi said. 'Hmm.' She tapped a finger to her mouth. 'How far back does it come clear?'

'It don't,' Jay said. 'Not from any way back.'

'Interesting,' Savvi said. 'Well, let's call the gun a trade.'

'You're trading me my own gun? For what?'

'The weapons weren't all they took. I took all your money.'

'I retract my previous thanks. You took my fuckin money?'

'Here's me thinking you're sounding a bit more yourself. Jay never used such fancy words as _retract_ ,' Savvi said. 'I doubt he even knew the meaning of the word. And hey,' she added, 'teaches me to be so honest. Give over. You got your weapons. You're not getting more than that. If it weren't for me you'd not even have them. Call it finder's fee.'

'Call it fucked by a bitch,' Jay said.

'Ow, that hurt.'

'Whatever. Anythin else you stole?'

Savvi smiled. 'Not that I recall.' She stretched, pushing her chest out as she did so. Jay averted his eyes and Savvi laughed. 'I've heard of robbed memory,' she said. 'But robbed personality? Don't you remember who you _are_?'

'Not really. Just in bits.'

'Allow me to clarify.' Savvi crawled up to Jay on hands and knees, her rear arched behind her. He swallowed as she came within a few inches of him and pressed her finger into his chest. 'You, Jay Wulf,' she said, 'are a complete bastard. A murderous, whoremongering bastard.' The tiger rumbled in its throat as though in agreement.

'Yes, yes. I got all that.'

'Did you get that too, girl?'

'I have a name,' Alexia said.

'And that is?'

'Alexia.'

'Pleased to meet you, Alexia. Call me Savvi. Jay always has such uncommon luck with the ladies, it's quite bizarre.' She leaned in. 'Here's a tip, Alexia. Don't fuck him. However much he wants it. Trust me, you'll enjoy it more in the long run. I've been enjoying it for years.' She leaned back. 'Jay's a dick with legs. He'd fuck a hole in the sand if he thought it was giving him the eye.' She looked at Jay, curling a strand of black hair around one finger. 'Me and Jay have history. Don't we Jay?'

Alexia looked at Jay. 'You've had sex with her?'

Savvi laughed. 'He wishes. He lies awake at night wishing it. It's very entertaining.'

'Not anymore, Savvi,' Jay said.

'Bullshit. Just because you got yourself a posh bit of skirt, doesn't mean you won't come crawling back to sniff around my feet.'

'Excuse me?' Alexia said. 'I am not just a _bit of skirt_.'

'But you admit to being posh? You might want to run along back to your daddy, little girl. He'll protect you from all the big bad Wulfs out there.'

'My father died three days ago,' Alexia said coldly.

Savvi raised her eyebrows. 'Oh? Well, I can't stay for a sob story, I'm afraid. Got to be going.'

'You're a nasty piece of work, aren't you?'

'And you're . . . you're quite lovely,' Savvi replied, crawling up to Alexia. She maintained eye contact for a few seconds, smiled as though to a joke only she knew, and then she stood up and walked off without another word, with the movements of someone who knew full well that more than one set of eyes was watching her leave. The tiger made as if to follow her, but then lay back down, looking forlornly after her.

Jay called out. 'Will we see you again?'

'Where are you going?' The shout back already seemed distant.

Jay glanced at Alexia. 'We're not sure.'

'Then it's unfortunately possible.'

'What do you think of her?' Jay said at last, when he was sure she was out of earshot.

'I think she's perfectly nasty.'

'Don't tell her that. She'll focus on the "perfect" part.' Jay opened the chamber of his returned gun. Fully loaded. He snapped it shut.

'Why do you think she gave you your weapons back?' Alexia said, watching him turn the pistol in his hands.

'You don't believe what she said?'

'She's given me no reason to believe anything she says. Do you trust her?'

'Yeah. No. I don't know. It depends on what. I don't think she'll kill us. I'm pretty sure we can't trust her to much help us though. Why do _you_ think she gave me my weapons back?'

'Maybe she gave you them back because she thinks you're going to need them.'

They descended the slope and returned to their horse, tiger in their wake. 'I thought Lander might have run off,' Alexia said.

'Khyber's been lookin after her,' Jay said.

*

They travelled on under the thick purple of the late afternoon. Along the scars of the land. Past strata layered yellows and reds and oranges like they were slices of cake fallen from heavenly plates. Strange formations twisted and towered, in shapes of monsters and old things made before men. Some rocks and pathways veined as though living beings.

The windil branches began to appear more often, and in clusters. The land grew darker, richer. Doyots scampered around them, growing in number, but a gunshot from Jay sent them yowling away. Vultures were replaced by flights of small brown birds, and wrinkled one-eyed mole-like things popped their heads out of pores in the stones. They drank from their flasks as the horses plodded on. Mirages came and faded away, as did the heat.

'The sky is beautiful here,' Jay said.

'Most people forget. They stop looking upwards. But it is.' She glanced at him. 'You look like you're seeing it for the first time. I wish I could see it that way.'

Jay didn't reply.

The sun lowered and the sky bled crimson, then scarlet. Redder and redder, as though the gods were stoking a volcano below the rim of the Earth, and then quickly darkening under the fall of the night. They found a place to camp when the colour was almost gone, only embers on the horizon.

'I have blankets,' Alexia said, passing him some more bread. 'You can have one, if you like. Though Rathians usually sleep on the bare ground.'

'A blanket would be nice, thanks.' He laid it on the ground and stretched out with his hands behind his head and looked up at the stars. He didn't recognise anything, just as he knew he wouldn't. He felt like one tiny pinprick in an infinite ocean. _So many worlds. How many more Earths? Hundreds? Thousands? Millions?_

There was silence for a while. The temperature was cooler now, but still too warm for them to cover themselves. Jay turned to see Alexia laid on her side looking at him.

Jay said, quietly, 'I'm really sorry about your father, Alexia.'

She smiled at him. Nearby the tiger was snoring with its back to them.

'I just want you to know . . . well . . . I don't really know much. I only remember things in bits. I think I was a bad person, or at least part bad. Maybe I wasn't someone you'd have wanted to know. And maybe I'll slowly become more like that, the more I remember. But I don't think I will, not fully. I think I can control it. I don't know, it comes in and out like a tide, washing over me then leaving me dry . . .'

'I can tell by the way you talk. Sometimes.'

'Yeah. I guess it depends what's pulling me. But I think you can trust me. I want to be a better person. I don't think I'll ever be perfect . . . or anywhere close . . . but I won't let down my friends. I just . . . I want us to be friends. You don't have anything to fear from me, but if you ever grow uncomfortable with me, with who I am or what happens to those around me, you should leave. I'd rather that happen than see harm come to you.'

Alexia was silent, and had looked away.

'What are you thinking?' he said at last. 'Only opened myself up to you here.'

'I was thinking,' she said slowly, 'about kissing you. On the forehead,' she added.

'If you do that, I don't think I'll _ever_ sleep.'

'Then I'd better not,' Alexia said. She turned onto her back and closed her eyes.

'I meant –'

'Shush Jay. I know what you meant. But it's time for sleep.'

Jay turned to the vast open blackness above him, and he grinned at the stars.

## ELEVEN

They breakfasted the next morning and stretched their backs and legs. There was no escaping the daylight. Alexia moaned at her stiffness, but Jay felt surprisingly okay. All day riding bareback had not caused him hurt to his legs. _That's because you're a Rathian, and you're riding Khyber._

By midday they came to the North Eye.

It was a hole in a cliff that walled off the land for as far as he could see. A huge hole, a round tunnel driven through the rock that caravans could enter with ease. It looked natural, eroded, one of those wonders of nature he'd have understood if he'd ever researched them, if he ever wanted to dissect the mystery or stop pretending they were made by giants.

'Onwards,' Alexia said. 'Through the Eye and into the brain. I mean Sol Ghoum.'

They exited the Eye and saw across a new land. They stood in dirt but in front of them the dirt sloped down and laced itself with grass; in tufts at first, but quickly spreading and lengthening, overwhelming the brown soil and turning it to pale prairie. In the distance the colour shifted steadily to green, painting grasslands and rolling meadows littered with trees. It was richest towards the east; there the ground seemed to glow under the sun like a vast emerald, climbing hills until blocked by their ascent into mountains. From that direction wandered a river – _The River Karth, flowing from its source in the Rathian Mountains_. Far westwards were great forests the colour of copper, and further still a black line that trailed the horizon like a border, no doubt a formidable range.

In front of them a road made from the tracks of cartwheels ran from the Eye onwards north for many leagues, rising and dipping over low hills. It disappeared into woodlands and re-appeared again on a bend to the northwest, and escaped past the edges of his vision. Here and there across the country were tiny dotted towns, and across the grasslands were clusters of strange green mounds that from far off looked like pimples on the land.

And there, in the far centre distance, past the woodlands, a great lake. Lake Ghoum. Jay squinted and could just make out a small island. The Isle of Ghoum, to which Alexia said nobody went, and wouldn't tell him why. _Go to the Isle of Ghoum,_ came the voice in his head. _Go to the Isle of Ghoum, and while away your doom._

Yeah, no thanks. I've got enough doom.

'I thought your guy was meeting us at the Eye?' Jay said, suddenly remembering.

'And there he is,' Alexia replied, nodding her head forward. Jay turned back to the prairie and saw someone he hadn't noticed. _The kind of person who chooses when to be noticed._

He came dressed in the colours of crow and slate. Long black coat, long black boots, a shirt of grey silk and darker cravat. A black hat turned up slightly at the sides and hanging crooked and low on his brow. His hair flowed around his shoulders, a pure white, and his eyes seemed sunken and deathly tired in darkened sockets, though his skin was smooth and grey. As he came closer Jay could see black speckling on the lower right side of his face, but that was the only pigmentation noticeable.

His eyes. Black sclera with big white pupils and no irises, framed by long lashes. He moved towards them, his eyes never leaving them and rarely blinking. He was lean, and he was lithe, moving with an almost supernatural lightness that seemed to come wholly natural to him. He smoked as he walked, flicking it away with long fingers when he stopped in front of them.

'Glad you could join us, Jerrens,' Alexia said. Jerrens nodded his head. 'Jay,' Alexia turned to him, 'this is Dol Sander Jerrens. Once my father's right hand man . . . so to speak.'

Jay put out his hand. 'Good to meet you, Jerrens . . . Should I call you Jerrens, or . . .?'

Jerrens looked at Jay's hand, and just when Jay was about to withdraw it in awkwardness he reached out and shook it. His handshake was light and quick yet not loose. It felt like shaking hands with someone made of paper. 'Call me what you want,' Jerrens said, his voice soft and whispery. 'Or nothing at all. The late Mr Slade called me Jerrens. Miss Slade follows his example. Others know me as Dol Sander. I care not.'

'You're not really what I was expecting,' Jay said.

'And who were you expecting?'

'I pictured a stocky, older man, in a suit and a bowler hat.'

'What's a bowler hat?' Alexia asked.

'Doesn't matter,' Jay said. 'It is good to have you with us. Come, let's eat.'

*

They ate, while Jay tried to strike up a conversation with Dol Sander Jerrens. The man was not talkative, preferring to get on and eat, and he swallowed each mouthful before replying. Jay couldn't make head or tail of him, only that he seemed both careful and graceful with his movements, not wasting them just like he did not waste words. The tiger was watching him carefully.

Despite Jerrens's reticence, Jay was glad for the extra company – and yet quietly disappointed he wouldn't be alone with Alexia anymore. When Jerrens had sat down to eat he had removed a thin sheathless sword from his side, previously hidden beneath his coat. It was a silvery rapier with a black hilt. When the coat shifted aside Jay also made out a holster and the butt of a pistol, and it was confirmed what he already knew: this wasn't someone to cross.

Jerrens had brought dried meat, and he shared it with Jay and the tiger, neither of whom asked what kind of meat it was. Alexia declined and kept to her bread.

*

The pale prairie passed slowly beneath them. Dol Sander strode while their horses walked, and he never seemed to show any signs of tiring. They followed the line of the road but stayed off it more often than not, in part due to Dol Sander's warning not to draw attention to themselves (for where attention came trouble inevitably followed), but mainly because they enjoyed picking their way through the countryside, which grew steadily more beautiful. It was a welcome change from the dryness of the Appalian Wastes.

They slept on the prairie, hidden by long stalks that clustered in around them as the sun fell and the moon rose. The next day they were moving again.

They took their time. They were in no hurry, content to amble along, going nowhere but forward. The land began to swell and ebb under their feet, like something breathing. They passed crops of trees; wild-looking things that clawed up at the sky and some decorated in pastel blossoms. Things scurried in their shadows.

On the edges of their vision they saw ghostly cat-like creatures pacing, and birds flit and whistled high overhead, but by and large the world was quiet and serene. From time to time there was a rumble as carts came and went on the road. The tiger no longer stuck so close to their sides, but exercised greater freedom, exploring and hunting. From time to time they saw patches of black and red, watching, waiting. The tiger's coat was more suited for camouflage in Rath and the jungles of Doth than here, but it seemed to be doing alright nonetheless.

That night Jay laid his blanket closer to Alexia. He was aware that Dol Sander – who never seemed to be fully under – might be listening, even if through a shade of sleep. Watching through closed ( _are they closed?_ ) eyes.

Jay shuffled closer to Alexia. The fire was within him. It was only because he was tired from being on horseback morning to night that he had been able to sleep before. He put his hand on Alexia's arm as she laid there and her eyes seemed unnaturally bright in the darkness.

'You're very unsubtle,' she said. Her face was only inches away.

'I . . . like you,' he said, awkwardly.

'I know,' she said.

'I find it hard . . .'

'I bet you do. You realise Jerrens is right here?'

'Yeah.'

Alexia kissed him on the nose. He moved his head and found her mouth. She turned her head but he turned with it and kissed her lips. He put an arm around her and drew her closer to him.

'No,' she said. 'Not now.'

He continued to kiss her and pull her in, his hands moving down her body, gripping her hard. He thought she was kissing back. He felt his mind completely distinct from his body, both operating independently of each other, and he tried desperately to mend the rift between them. _No. No, no, no, no. Stop it. For fuck's sake no._

She put a hand on his shoulder and finally they came apart. He was breathing hard through his nose. He closed his eyes and opened them and then opened his mouth to apologise, to try to apologise despite the fog that had descended on him, but she shook her head at him.

'I knew you'd stop,' Alexia said. 'Born Rathian or not. I could see through your eyes that you were battling it.'

'And if I didn't?'

Alexia patted her blanket. 'I sleep with my gun,' she said.

'I want the best for you,' he said. 'I could never let myself break that.' The beast growled within him and slunk back to its caves. Jay kept drawing in fresh air through his nose and mouth. The fog was lifting.

'I know.'

'It's just, sometimes . . .'

'I get it, Jay,' Alexia said. 'Why don't you go and lay with Jerrens, if you're so desperate.'

'I ain't interested in men,' Jay said under his breath. He looked at Dol Sander, but he gave no sign that he was listening, no sign that he was in anything but a light sleep.

'But he is not a man,' Alexia said. She laughed at his reaction. 'Oh, I refer to him as such, and indeed I can't help but say _he_ and _him_ , but he is one of the Duna. Some know them as Grey Devils, others call them incubi. You do not remember?'

Jay shook his head.

'Duna are hermaphrodites, both male and female parts – though they do not think of them in such a way. They do not have a word for hermaphrodite in their language, and they learned words like "male" and "female" from other races. They have no home, for they have always been wanderers, and have never truly fit in. It is unclear if they even want to anymore, or if they ever did. They are rarely seen, and many people do not know of their existence, and few understand them.'

'I thought of him as a . . . him, as my impression of him was of a man. But now I think of it, he seems quite unique. How'd they refer to each other?'

'It is uncommon that they meet, and when they do they often seem to drift apart. Perhaps they have learned independence. But, as far as I understand it, they have no gendered words. Their language is different from ours. Much more . . . streamlined, you could say.'

Jay exhaled slowly. 'Damn,' he said.

'You fancy him?'

'Oh, go to sleep.'

'I will when I can't feel your breath on my face.

'I'm movin, I'm movin.'

After a good while tossing and turning, listening to Alexia's deep breathing, Jay got up and went for a short walk. Somewhere just out of sight. When he returned he saw the tiger watching him. He ignored it and settled back down, and sleep finally crept over him.

*

'Tell me, Dol Sander,' Jay started, slowly, as Khyber waded through thick grasses, the stalks brushing against his boots. 'When referring to you, should I say him or her? Do you prefer to be . . . noted a male or a female?'

'I am neither,' Dol Sander said, brushing the grasses aside with his hand. They seemed to part gracefully with every step, not a stalk broken. 'The common languages are needlessly complex, and so lacking. To the Duna it appears somewhat . . . childish. Though it does not matter. Say whichever makes you most comfortable. Usually people talk of me as a man. Though not always, not among all people, all cultures.'

'But you must have a preference?'

Dol Sander looked at Jay with abyssal eyes. Each white moon floating on an ocean of night. 'My preference is for people to use what they wish, what comes most naturally and easily to them. I care not.'

'Does it not ever offend you?'

'I do not get offended,' Dol Sander said. 'No such word exists in the Duna language. The concept is foreign to us. We learned it only from other races. It seems a truly wasteful idea.'

'I see. I can't help but think of you as a man.'

'As you say. You cannot help but.'

'I'll continue then, until you tell me otherwise.'

'As you wish,' Dol Sander said, disinterested. 'You other races do make such a fuss.'

'I guess so,' Jay said. He squinted at Alexia, who was riding apart from them by a couple of dozen feet and seemed lost in her own reveries. 'How do you think of yourself, then?'

'I am Dol Sander Jerrens. My parent was Baal Sander Jerrens. I am a Duna. What more is there? I am a person, not a gender. You want to know more about me, you ask. Perhaps I answer.'

Jay shrugged. 'Fair enough. That's all, I guess. I just wanted to be sure. I don't want to slowly make an enemy.'

Dol Sander nodded slightly. 'If you become my enemy, you will quickly know. The time for conversation will be past.'

*

By the time the sun had fallen the prairie had begun to flush green, flourishing ahead of them into full grasslands. They stopped to camp under a lone tree, scaring off the three-legged strangely loping animals that were stretching their necks to nibble on the leaves.

They lay blankets on the ground and ate in the gory dark. The loping neck-twisting animals were called (striped) _garaths_ and by the time the moon was at its brightest and bluest they were everywhere, and the three wanderers fell asleep to the sound of their gentle chewing.

*

'We seem to be headin north,' Jay said.

'And what makes you think that?' Alexia said.

'Well, we passed through the North Eye and have been travellin roughly in the same direction ever since.'

'I was being sarcastic,' Alexia said. 'Silly.'

'So where are we going? Or are we just aimlessly wanderin, in only one direction?'

'We're going to Stoneswell.'

'Where's that?'

'Northwest, past the lake.'

'That's where you're from, ain't it?

'Yes.'

'You don't sound too happy to be going back.'

'That's because I'm not. We need to get supplies, and I need to go to the house and . . . sort out some things. But I don't want to. I don't want to see it again.'

Jay was silent for a moment. Then he said, 'You've been taking it very well. What happened.'

'You mean my father's death.'

'Yeah. You've been very strong.'

Alexia's eyes flicked over his. 'You don't know what I am,' she said. 'You don't know how I've been taking it. You never saw me when I shut myself in my room for two days in Nohaven. And even now you can't see inside me. Don't think a calm face is the same as being strong. I don't feel strong.'

'Well. I think you are, anyway. But you know, if you want to talk about it, you can to me. I think you should, even. If it'll help.'

'Thank you Jay. But you didn't know him. If I was going to talk to anyone it would be Jerrens.' She looked ahead, where Dol Sander was striding a hill away.

'Him, then.'

'It would be no good,' she said at last. 'My father was not his, and so even he would not understand. And you might think you would, but you wouldn't. No matter who either of you have lost. He was nobody's father but mine.'

'I know,' Jay said. 'I just thought it might help.'

'It might help _you_ ,' Alexia said. 'I appreciate it Jay, I do. But they'd just be words. Inside me . . . right now inside me is _everything_. I can feel it there, buried and wanting out. Sometimes it . . . it rages. It wails. It tries to tear itself apart. Sometimes it feels like a beast, and sometimes it feels like a bubbling volcano, boiling and acidic, all grief and anger. But it can't ever leave. Not just because I don't want it to, but because it _can't_. Words are so pathetic in comparison. They are such small, weak things. They could never in any way give form to what's inside, they can only make a mockery of it. A pantomime. I would feel more frustrated for not being able to do justice to my feelings. And so I tend them inside. And bury them in ice.'

'I understand. Honestly. I may not completely agree, but I get it. Whatever's best for you.'

'Who knows what's best for me,' Alexia said. 'I just go on.'

Their horses rose over the hill Dol Sander had already ascended and descended. Before them, hidden in a valley, lay a silvery-green meadow, patterned that way from the silver flowers that trembled and glittered under the sun.

'Besides,' Alexia added, 'we all have our own burdens to bear.'

'What about Savvi?'

'The heaviest burden may be the least mentioned.'

'You might be right. She couldn't always have been this way. What about Dol Sander?'

'He is a Duna,' she replied. 'That is burden enough. Things are better in this world than they once were. Maybe. But there will always be people who hate what they don't understand.'

'The world can be a cruel one,' Jay said.

'Don't blame the world. It didn't choose to have us.'

*

Later that day they approached the green mounds they had seen spotting the grasslands from afar. Neither Alexia nor Dol Sander had remarked on them, no doubt having been long accustomed in this world to the sight, and so Jay, expecting simply a strange feature of the landscape, kept his mouth closed and simply eyed them curiously.

At first he thought it was a trick of the light, or of his vision, or the wind. But it was only when they were closer that he realised with alarm that some of them, very, very slowly, were _moving_.

'They're _alive_ ,' he said in an awe-inspired whisper.

'Really?' Alexia said. 'They're just mossbeasts.' She said it like somebody on his old Earth might say _they're just cows_.

Jay was left open-mouthed as he directed Khyber towards the nearest one. Every so often he was confronted with a powerful reminder that this world was an alien one. It was in these moments that his fascination and awe overrode the mould of Old Jay's familiarity; shivers ran up his back and he felt almost dizzy.

He dismounted Khyber and walked to the huge mound. Close to he could see it was hair, or fur, thick and straggled. The name was apt. The beast's coat could have been mistaken for moss, and he wasn't sure that moss itself wasn't layered into the fronds of hair.

He reached out with a hand and touched the hide, tentatively at first, and then running his hands though it with delight. It was incredibly soft. It wasn't quite like any other animal he'd touched before. Despite, or perhaps because of the softness, it felt in part as though he was pushing his hands through rich undergrowth, a green bed for tiny bugs and flowers. There was no visible face or feet to the mossbeast, for the hair reached down to the grass, and seemed almost tied to it, simply an uprising extension of the land.

'You really love these things, huh,' Alexia said from behind him. Her horse Lander snorted and he felt the breath ruffle his hair.

Jay looked about at the other mossbeasts. It seemed to be a herd, he realised, and they were on the move. A herd of roving hills.

'They're like,' he waved his hands in the air, trying to express himself. 'They're like woolly mammoths, crossed with Cousin It. But green. Well, nothing like that in fact. They're like _living hills_.'

'You say a lot of things that don't make sense,' Alexia said.

'Don't I fucking know it,' Jay said under his breath.

They stayed amongst the herd as it shuffled slowly along, until Jay finally allowed himself to leave them behind. There were more herds to come, though, and solitary mossbeasts whose hair had turned a darker green (from age, Jay presumed). Familiarity crawled slowly back into his consciousness, until once more he was drifting in that semi-bewildered déjà _vu_ zone where the seen-it-done-it co-existed with staggering amazement.
'I found an anomaly, sir.'

'Go on.'

'You remember the experiments into lower lifeforms? Lending them the minds of the more advanced?'

'I remember.'

'We were looking for a chain, and found nothing. That is because I believe the chain was cut short. I found readings that were reminiscent of those we encountered during those experiments.'

'Yes?'

'The missing subject, sir. I believe he – or another mind in the chain – may have entered the mind of a lower lifeform.'

'I thought the experiments proved a failure?'

_'Overall, yes. There were mixed results.' The man with the green eyes hesitated. 'It was shown that two minds could co-exist in the same mould, that one is_ not _pushed out, providing one mind is substantially less complex. The new mind can take or share the reins of the less sentient. And so . . . and so the chain breaks.'_

'I am familiar,' said the man with the green eyes. 'What is this lifeform?'

'It is unclear, sir. It is not advanced enough to have been monitored. Nevertheless, the machines picked up the anomaly. It might be nothing, sir, but I think it could merit checking out further.'

'We need eyes on the ground. Where were the readings?'

'They have been narrowed down to Earth-706. Kajik in their Rathian tongue, Kaja in Dotha, Carn in Appalian – and then out of the Westlands –'

The man with the green eyes held up his hand. 'I care not what the ants call their hive. All I am hearing is the same word repeated. You are not special for speaking All-language, even at the age of six hundred.'

'No sir.'

'Your interest in these cultures is a weakness. We must be detached, objective and clinical.' The man with the green eyes paused. 'You know the region of the anomaly? Or only the world?'

'It is coming from the Westlands, sir. They call it the Basin. That's as far as I know.'

_'_ They _?'_

'Sorry sir. I have been investigating.'

'I'm sure you have. I want you down there. Find the anomaly. Find the chain. Find the missing subject . . . the oversight.'

The man with the green eyes nodded. 'I will leave straight away. Sir.'

## TWELVE

The grasslands were only a memory. The woods were light, the trees not too close together to not let in the sun or make progress awkward for the horses, but the longer they walked the more crowded the trees seemed. Dol Sander had kept them from taking the road through the forest, telling them that he sensed eyes on them, and had done for some time. He told them that the woods would cloak their path to any interested parties, any who might be curious (aggressively so, was the hint) as to why a Stoneswell girl, a Rathian, a Duna and most bizarrely of all a _black tiger_ would be travelling northwards together.

Alexia knew the risks of bandits on the roads, and agreed with Dol Sander. It was clear she trusted the man – _you just can't help yourself can you_ – implicitly, and so Jay trusted him too. Not entirely, but enough. Jay got a strong feeling, though, that the second Dol Sander believed he posed a danger to Alexia he would find his throat cut before he could blink.

_She doesn't need you. She's got me now._ He shook his head for the stupid, selfish thought. _We're allies. It's not a competition_ , he reminded himself.

A competition for what?

For Alexia's –

Aha.

No.

Jay stole glances at Alexia as her form appeared and disappeared behind the thick trunks, a horse riderless and then once more ridden.

They slept amongst grey ferns and pink flowers that nuzzled against the trees. To conserve their supplies (Jay was glad nobody had made a point of his horse being saddleless, and thus unable to carry a pack, as he enjoyed riding Khyber bare far too much to leash him) Dol Sander and Jay hunted in the woods while Alexia foraged for mushrooms and stranger foodstuffs Jay wouldn't touch.

He had never hunted before – unless you counted hunting for items down supermarket aisles – and thought he'd make a complete hash of it, but trained instincts and reactions got him his prey. He found, without really thinking, he even knew how to prepare the meat. He wrinkled his nose at the blood and guts, but this was more because he felt it was a motion old him would have done than any genuine disgust. It was, after all, little in comparison to the butchery of the mountain men back in Appalia. And it was clear Jay Wulf was a man who had long become accustomed to the insides of things.

Nights and days slipped by them. They walked and rode through groves of smooth bronze trees where twisting white and orange plants choked the undergrowth, and over brooks where they washed their faces and pits, disturbing spectral fish that disappeared downstream. From time to time the trees would open up around them, and they heard with a sudden clarity and volume the songs of the birds and the chitter of the reptilian creatures that flew and scampered from their advance.

The trees glowed as though bruised and half aflame under the sunset, and when Jay was lost in contemplation and Dol Sander was nowhere to be seen a hairless dog-like creature all sharp bones and snarls bounded towards them, but the tiger took it down and shook its neck in its mouth until the eyes died. As the tiger feasted on easy prey Jay recognised the creature as the same one he'd seen leashed as a pet in Nohaven. _A molcath._

They had molcath for a late dinner, turning it on a spit over a fire. The spits Jay would sharpen and throw away afterwards; the campfires Dol Sander seemed to be able to conjure up with little to no effort. Alexia speared and toasted her own concoctions, sharing them on occasion with Dol Sander. Jay ate the bread but recoiled from most of the things she'd found in the woods.

Dol Sander hadn't said anything more about anybody watching them, but he remained as alert as he always was. When Jay asked him about it, he would not give any reply.

*

'And . . . what is it?' Khyber stopped in his tracks as Jay turned. Lander did the same. They were in the centre of a clearing, circled by a dark treeline that suddenly spoke to Jay of hidden threats.

Dol Sander was crouched on one knee, his hand raised in the air. 'Say nothing,' he said. He seemed to be listening, one hand on his gun. Then he stood up.

'Enemies?'

'Yes,' Dol Sander said. 'No, put away your weapons. It is of no use.'

'What d'you mean?' Jay said. 'We can fight!' He looked down at the tiger growling at his side, its ears back and its tail up. It suddenly looked a lot bigger.

Dol Sander shook his head. 'I count at least thirty,' he said. 'I should have heard them sooner, but they must have given us a wide berth, some going on ahead, eventually encircling us. Only now can I hear them, for they are closing in. These are no ordinary bandits.'

Jay listened, and now too he heard the soft crunch of leaves from all around. 'We can still fight,' he said.

'I will not throw my life away,' Dol Sander said. 'Not unless there is no other choice. Let us see what they want, and who they are. If they have guns, we will have no chance.'

'And if they don't?'

'We will see.'

Jay and Alexia dismounted, and the three of them waited, their guns holstered and blades hidden. Soon they appeared from out of the treeline, walking as one towards them from all directions. The circle did not change diameter.

They were all men, rough and bearded and mercenary, the same ilk that had first put a gun to Jay's head, back when the world was first fresh and terrible. But he was stronger now. He looked around him, counting the men with guns. He knew Dol Sander was doing the same.

'Ten guns,' Dol Sander said. He did not need to add that they were all aimed and ready to fire, from the front, sides and behind.

'I've heard of better odds,' Jay said.

'If it comes to a fight. If. Then go for the gunmen first. All of them.'

'We'll be shot to shreds in seconds,' Alexia said.

'Yes,' Dol Sander said.

The men stopped and stood around them. All of them had their weapons in their hands. The ones without guns had swords, axes, knives, sticks, maces, and uglier weapons that Jay couldn't even name. Some just held stones to throw, or plated fists. A few of the younger ones had nothing, but flexed dirty fingers and bared brown teeth.

'Jay Wulf!' The voice came from behind them, and they all turned.

'Three guesses for the leader,' Alexia said.

A man covered in black and grey hair stopped in front of them. He was shorter than Jay and Dol Sander, and only slightly taller than Alexia. He wore a stringless metal eyepatch seemingly hammered into in his face, which itself looked like it'd taken a lifetime of beating. Scars criss-crossed his nose and upper cheeks; the rest was lost in bristles.

He spread his arms, thick muscle networked in faded tattoos, and he grinned a foul grin. 'Jay Wulf,' he said again. 'The great Jay Wulf.'

'You're too kind,' Jay said.

'Do you know what my name is?'

'No. Alexia?'

'The pleasure escapes me,' Alexia said.

'My name is Yellar,' the man said. 'And I'm the man who's been huntin you.'

'Yellar,' Jay said. 'Old Yellar.' He started laughing.

The man punched him hard in the face, and Jay reeled backwards. 'Hey,' he said. He saw the tiger baring its teeth, claws out and ready to spring. The man did not appear to notice.

'Do you know what happened to my daughter, Wulf?'

Jay stood straight once more. 'The one I had sex with? Rumoured had sex with, 'cording to local gossip? There's been a terrible mistake . . .'

'That's the one,' Yellar said. 'You defiled her. Defiled her with Rathian seed. Made her a _tabaca_ _whore_.'

'Nobody's perfect,' Jay said.

'She is dead now. Her brothers – the ones you killed – raped her to death. She met her punishment, now you will meet yours.'

'Sounds like you got only yourself to blame,' Jay said. 'You _sick fuck_.'

'Wrong.' Yellar leered at him. 'I got you to blame. You know what I'm gonna do to you?'

'Shake me by the hand?' Jay said.

'Give him a hot bath?' Alexia said. 'He needs one.'

'Maybe introduce me to another daughter?' Jay said.

Yellar backhanded him across the face once more. Jay's lip began to bleed.

'That hurts,' Jay said. 'I don't think you realise that that actually hurts.'

'You fancy yourself a comedian,' Yellar growled.

'He does fancy himself,' Alexia said. She glanced at Dol Sander, who was saying nothing, but his eyes were restless, taking everything in, looking for a weakness.

'You won't be laughin soon. I'll tell you what I'm gonna do Jay. I'm gonna cut out your eyes. Then I'm gonna cut out your balls, and replace 'em in your eye sockets. I'm gonna skin your face, peelin it off real slow. Then pull out all your teeth, then cut off every finger, and then me and my boys are gonna rape you to death, just like my daughter. And it ain't gonna be one by one.'

'Sounds a bit excessive,' Alexia said.

'You got it the wrong way round,' Jay said. 'You should cut out the balls first. That way I can still see it happenin. The eyes should really come last.'

'Why are you helping him?' Alexia said.

'I don't know. Is it too late to say I'm sorry?'

Yellar grinned. 'I'm gonna enjoy this.'

'Can the rest of us go free?' Alexia said. 'Sorry Jay.'

'What do you think,' said Yellar. 'You'll get the same.'

'Hardly fair.'

'Minus the balls part,' Jay said. 'She don't have none. Dol Sander?'

'He's welcome to try and look,' Jerrens said quietly.

'Enough,' Yellar said. He pulled a curved knife from his pocket. 'I got ten guns trained on you if you so much as make a wrong move. Don't think my boys don't know how to shoot. Throw your weapons down. Cause this beauty,' he turned the knife in his hand, 'is gonna peel up Jay's cheek.'

'You've changed the order of things,' Jay said. 'I thought it was eyes first.'

'Hardly a good reason to give up our weapons,' Alexia added. 'Sounds like we could die quickly or get tortured to death.'

'Great options all round,' Jay said.

'What makes you cunts think my guns are trained so as to kill you?' Yellar said. 'We pick better targets. Enough to leave you helpless and beggin.' He put the knife to Jay's throat. 'This is the time when you —'

Jay saw the man's neck part in the middle, sprouting a black point. Something barbed. Yellar's eyes opened wide, but all Jay could see in them was bewilderment. _All men die confused_.

Yellar was still standing and the blood had barely begun to bubble out before two others behind him – both gunmen – gave birth to their own arrows. Jay felt a rush of air past his neck, and a small sound told him a man on the opposite side of the circle had been struck.

Time had seemed to slow down, or maybe he was just moving faster. Yellar was the last to drop out of the four men, but by this time everyone was moving, and arrows were still flying. The circle was broken, as every man saw in alarm their comrades dropping, and tried to understand who and where the enemy was. There were gunshots from all around. The horses were charging to the treeline, knocking down any in their way. Jay was spinning, firing his pistols; blindly, he thought, but more men were dropping. Dol Sander was firing, Alexia was firing; Dol Sander was running and Alexia dropped to the ground. At first Jay thought she'd been hit, but she was shooting instantly from the ground. A man was blanketed by a raging black mass of tiger. Everywhere there was senseless noise: screams and yells, wails and chokes, the crack and blast of gunfire, the madness of the wounded and the dying and the living.

Jay took to his feet. The last bullet in his chambers took a man through the forehead as he raced forward. He got to the dead man before he fell and shoved him into a crying youth, twisting round off the dead man in a single motion and coming in at the youth from the side. His gun had holstered itself and Ugly was out, slipping neatly between the ribs. He pulled out and before the youth had fell Ugly had jab, jab, jab, split the neck of a wild bear of a man with metal in his teeth.

The arrows were no longer coming. He saw the tiger savaging a man on the ground. He saw a woman clothed in blood ripping and slicing, falling off the backs of men and puncturing them from behind. Knives whistled from her and took down charging beasts. Gore spilled out around her as she danced death among the warriors.

He made to move to her as he recognised her, an ebony temptress no longer, now a real taker of hearts, and more; she wound intestines about her like streamers and they fell writhing at her feet like snakes. But he did not want to approach this devil and he didn't. Savvi did not need help.

All gunshots had ceased. Dol Sander was taking victims, quickly, silently, flitting with whirls of his coat from one to another, never in one place for more than a second. Alexia was reloading, her face muddy from rolling in the grass . . . reloading as two men came at her. Jay threw his knife, and one of them clutched desperately at his back, trying to grasp the demon that had taken his spine. He failed and fell. Jay was sprinting to Alexia but she rolled from the man's axe thrust and kicked him in the crotch. She snapped her chamber into the gun and took the man in the belly. She saw Jay and cried out and he turned and ducked and Dol Sander was there like a shadow sprung from the grass and his rapier flashed in the sun as it slashed the enemy down.

Dol Sander was reloading: calmly, methodically, as though he had all the time in the world. He clicked it shut and he aimed and fired steadily, taking out runners, taking out the wounded. Jay had forgotten he had a rifle on his back, so used to the weight, but now he unslung it and held it up. He did not shoot. He let someone escape through the trees. On the other side of the clearing the tiger was eating someone's face. At the treeline Savvi was pulling out the throat of a man. Someone grabbed her from behind and she stabbed the man's hand and then stabbed him over and over in the chest. Three times, five, ten. She took her bow off her back and shot an arrow. One more. She stood for a moment, searching, taut and controlled. Finally her shoulders lowered, and she grinned like a wolf as she approached the three of them.

'You got red on you,' Jay said.

'Good one.'

'You know this woman?' Dol Sander asked.

'Unfortunately, yes,' Alexia said.

'Unfortunately?' Savvi raised an eyebrow. 'I saved your life.'

'You followed us,' Jay said. 'You knew what would happen. That's why you gave me my weapons back.'

'Be glad I did.'

'Why did you do it?' Alexia said. There was a flush to her cheeks and she was shivering despite the warmth. Jay noticed and put his arm around her lightly, and she drew in closer.

Savvi patted a drawstring bag on her waist. 'Yellar had some nice things he didn't deserve.'

'When did you take that?'

'During the fight,' she said casually.

'You _were_ busy,' Jay said. 'They're mine too, ain't they?'

'He took them from you,' she said. 'But they never belonged to you. You didn't make them. And I claim them. The least I should get for saving your lives.'

'Lives you put in danger. Why couldn't you go after him on your own?'

Savvi shrugged. 'This way seemed more fun.'

'You needed our help killin his men.'

'If you say so.'

Jay cast his eyes down to the drawstring bag. 'What are they then, worth so much bloodshed? Jewels?'

'You don't remember?' Savvi narrowed her eyes.

'I told you, I don't remember much.'

'I do not appreciate being used as bait,' Dol Sander said.

'That's unfortunate,' Savvi said. She stepped up close to him and trailed a finger along his grey chin.

'And your charms are lost on me.'

'My charms are lost on nobody.'

'Let this be a first.'

'A challenge,' Savvi said, smirking. 'Good. Life was getting too easy. Maybe one day I'll have to fuck you.'

'How much are you willing to pay?'

Savvi laughed. 'Oh, I like you. I do.'

'Thank you for saving us, anyway,' Jay said from behind. 'Even if you did –' His sentence was broken off as Savvi whirled around and put a knife to his neck, pushing him back from Alexia. He gulped, and felt a sting. A small drop of blood touched the blade.

'Get away from him!' Alexia cried, drawing her gun. Her hand was wavering, unsteady.

'You are not right,' Savvi whispered in Jay's ear, ignoring Alexia. 'Not right at all. Thanking me? Tell me _Jay_ , what happened to your son?'

'I have a son?'

She looked hard into his eyes, and then let the knife fall away. 'Not anymore,' she said.

Jay massaged his neck, and found his fingertips came away red. 'What the fuck?' he said. 'What happened to him?'

Savvi had her back to him, looking into the trees. 'You won't hear it from me,' she said. 'It is Jay's tale to tell. And he does not tell.'

'What?'

Savvi turned slowly back around. 'I can understand losing some of your memory. But losing your personality, your character? Everything about you has been off since I rescued you from Yellar's sons. Least, it's been dipping and diving all over the place. But _your_ son . . . Nothing would make Jay forget what happened to his son. If the real Jay had been asked about it, he would have drawn his blade, on instinct if nothing else. I have seen him shoot a man merely for continuing to speak of it. Amnesia would not take something so etched in who he is.'

'What are you talking about?' Alexia said. 'Jay, what is she – Are you saying this isn't the real Jay Wulf? That doesn't even make sense.'

'I'm saying just that. The body is the same. The voice, kind of. And other hints, from time to time. Movements, mannerisms. The way you fight. But not enough. It is a weak copy of who Jay was. As though . . . as though he had been studied, and impersonated . . . though not well enough. You cannot fool those who knew him best.'

'Jay?' Alexia gave him a searching look.

'Sit down,' Jay said. Everybody was staring at him: Savvi, Alexia, Dol Sander, even the tiger, come back to them from its feast. 'I've got some explaining to do. And you'll think me completely mad for it, but it's the goddamn truth. Or the truth as I remember it. I am asking you to take my word for what has happened to me. Though I understand if you can't.'

'Who are you?' Alexia asked. 'What's your real name?'

'I . . . I do not know.'
'Report in,' came the voice in his ear. 'Give me good news.'

'Sir. I have agents in every city and major township in the Westlands. I have them under coordination.'

'And their reports?'

'Many, sir. Everybody is on the lookout for unusual activity of lower lifeforms. And other anomalies. Confused activity of lower and higher lifeforms. Many reports come in. There is little order here.'

'Reports of interest.'

'I have confirmed nothing as of yet, sir. A diphin – a monkey – in Rath turned thief. A drunken bovine. A mindless old Dotha-Rathian half-breed.'

'I am not interested in negatives. I see your position is the border of Rath and Appalia. What is your movement?'

'Crossing west into Appalia now, sir. Over the Eastern Pass. Towards Red Heath, investigating the report of a krayt who has lost her memory. Though she is on the system. Then a report of a doyot turned docile. Then to the township of Nohaven, looking into reports of a trill flying in circles and a black Rathian tiger seen hanging around the outskirts and acting odd. Then I will head north to the city of Stoneswell to investigate a few minor anomalies. With a few vague reports on lower lifeforms in Sol Ghoum to attend to on the way.'

'Hardly much to go on.'

'No sir.'

'We need this resolved sooner.'

'Sir, I need more agents. There are too many gaps.'

'Can any possible targets escape the Westlands?'

'No sir. It is impossible. We are very lucky in that.'

'There is no such thing as luck. I will send more agents through the Doors.'

'Thank you sir. I will make good use of them. I will send them into the wilds. Can you –' he hesitated. 'Can you use a Door forward in time and see if – and when – we are successful?'

There was a pause. 'No,' the voice said coldly. 'Still you do not understand. The Doors are not our plaything, Servant. The work must be done now. You should know by now the perils of using the Doors. Of seeing what is to come. Of cheating Her Direction. The work must be done. It must be done in accordance with the universal flow. Otherwise lies only chaos and ruin.'

'Yes, sir. Sorry sir.'

'You are young. Do not make me regret appointing you for this task. I can easily find others to lead.'

'I won't let you down sir.'

'Use the Doors only as necessary gateways there and back. They are not your crystal balls. Remember. Your success is not in question. It is merely a matter of time. Time and work.'

'Yes sir.'

'Do not forget. Capture the subject alive. If that proves beyond your means, terminate the subject. That is an imperative. The subject is the priority. Lower lifeform or not.'

'And if there is a chain?'

'Report the immediates. We'll take it from there.'

'What if the subject is under guard? If it has companions.'

'If they are not part of the chain . . . expendable. When necessary. If they are . . . terminate as a last resort.'

'Sir, will deaths not affect Order? Her Direction?'

_'Still you do not understand. All other concerns are secondary. There will always be clean-up. Always Outside chaos to be controlled. But an incomplete system is a flawed system, and a flawed system sows chaos from the very centre. A single person off the Grid is the greatest threat to the system. Wholly unpredictable, entirely uncontrolled. He_ must _be taken in.'_

'Yes sir.'

'Servant?'

'Yes sir?'

'Tighten the net.'

## THIRTEEN

He told them. Of waking up with a gun to his head, in an unrecognisable body in an unrecognisable land. Under an unrecognisable sky. He told them of Earth, _his_ Earth. He didn't go into detail, because he did not have detail to give. His Earth was like a dream, a fancy. He told them of blue skies, which Alexia declared amazing. He did not tell them of computers and television and planes. There was already enough madness to speak of.

While he talked, Alexia prompted them to move. The place smelled of blood and death, she said. They were sitting among bodies they themselves had slain, and insects were beginning to crowd. They followed her into the depths of the forest, and he talked on. Khyber came out of the trees and he was leading Lander. In the chaos and its aftermath they had forgotten about the horses, after they had galloped from the battle without neighs or whinnies. In their return they were calm and stoically chewing something, as though all those screams and gunshots had never happened.

Savvi and Dol Sander began to set up a light camp. Jay was surprised to find Savvi did not once interrupt him. He had expected her to call bullshit on every sentence. Alexia alone asked questions, and he did not have the answers she wanted. He told them if he knew he'd tell them to himself first. He was lost in another world, with only a vague idea of who he used to be. Just a knowledge that this was not his home.

He told them that nothing was wholly alien to him, and some things not at all. He saw new species here, but most things had at least something in common with his planet, not least the land. He had thought aliens would be tentacled monsters, but they were just people. That perhaps evolution followed paths, and was predictable, coming to similar answers in similar environments. That the only people on his planet were humans, and they looked more-or-less like the humans here.

'So I would fit in?' Alexia said. She seemed calmer now, and had ceased shivering. The shock of killing had worn off _. Thanks to this distracting bombshell of a conversation,_ Jay figured.

'You'd fit in perfectly,' Jay said.

'And Savvi?'

'Savvi might turn some heads.'

Savvi said nothing. Jay continued. He said that the strangest thing here was the sky. But that no thing flabbergasted him, that everything was tempered by the lifetime of familiarity of Jay Wulf. Gravity might be the same and it might be different, but he couldn't really know for sure, because Jay's body was entirely accustomed to it. He told them of the spectral chill that ran down his spine when something reminded him that he was on another world, seeing alien things. That things could be both familiar and amazing was the greatest contradiction he had ever known.

He stopped. 'Well,' he said at last. 'You wanted an explanation.'

'That's some explanation,' Alexia said.

'I guess it's no use asking if any of you believe me.'

'I . . . don't have an answer for that. At least not a yes or no answer. The way I see it, there's the truth, and the truth will always be what it is. Believing or not believing won't change that. No sensible person would believe what you've said, not without a string of proof a mile long. Which you don't have. But you know that. I'm guessing that's why you kept this to yourself.'

'Yeah. Sorry.'

'No need. I wouldn't have told you if it'd been me. Although I do remember you mentioning something back in Nohaven. We dismissed it. But I didn't know you at all then.'

'It was a little soon to bring something like that up. Maybe it still is.'

'It's good to get it out of you,' Alexia said. 'But like I was saying, I'm not going to tell you I believe you. Or that I don't believe you. I don't know. The truth is out there. Maybe one day we'll know, maybe we won't. All I can do is accept what you've said, and go with it. Until shown otherwise. But I won't be made a fool.'

'The last thing you are is a fool,' Jay said. 'Thank you.' He turned to Savvi. 'Dare I ask what you think Savvi?'

Savvi yawned, one arm on the tiger's flank. 'You've been talking a while.'

'That's right.'

'Well. Chances are, you're either lying or you're mad. And I'm good with liars.'

'It takes one to know one,' Alexia said.

'Yes it does. Lying is one of the best skills you can ever learn. I wouldn't be alive if I wasn't good at it, both myself and recognising it in others. Either this man – if he even is a man —'

'I am, yes.'

'Either he's a fucking amazing liar, or he's deluded himself. The latter seems more likely. He's got his story straight, handy that he's confused about just about everything and doesn't remember most things. Covers up the gaping holes. But who the fuck knows? Like Alexia said, the truth doesn't change no matter what people think. And I'm not sure I care what magical space story he's got going for him. He could declare himself the King of the Dancing Trees for all I care. All I know for sure is that you are not Jay Wulf. Maybe you are responsible for taking his body, but you seem too weak and confused for that. If that's an act you deserve a fucking medal. But I know people. I can read them. I knew Jay for a long time, and this isn't down to only delusion and amnesia. You're someone else, that's all.'

'Okay. That's good enough for —'

'I'm not done. There's one more thing to say. The most important. If you or your warped, rambling fantasies ever put me into harm I can't get out of I will slit your fucking throat.'

'Fair enough,' Jay said. 'Dol?'

'It's Dol Sander,' said Dol Sander. 'I am of a similar opinion. As long you continue to endanger your enemies while posing danger to neither Miss Slade nor myself, I care not. You're the only one who might know the truth, and if you are deluded, even you won't. It is likely none of us will know the truth. In which case, it is a waste of time picking sides.'

'Oh,' Jay said.

'You're disappointed you didn't get to argue the point, aren't you?' Alexia said.

'I wouldn't have had any way to win that argument,' Jay replied. 'But yeah, I guess. It's one thing being believed or not believed. But I didn't really get either from any of you.'

'I'd argue if you wanted,' Alexia said. 'But I'm quite tired.'

'It's what comes of listening to him,' Savvi said.

'If it came to doubting things, I'd start with Savvi's assertion you're not Jay Wulf. Stands more to reason that you are, and she's wrong.'

'I'm not,' Savvi said.

'She's not,' Jay said.

'Trust me,' Savvi added.

'Hands up, anyone who trusts Savvi,' Alexia said flatly.

Savvi looked at the others and kissed the air. 'Aw, well if you aren't all learning fast. You might just survive a few more days.'

'Uh-huh. One thing I don't get,' Alexia said, turning back to Jay.

'Only one? You're doing a lot better than me.'

'Well, the foremost one. How do you know the languages?'

'I don't fully understand it,' Jay said. 'I understand, I think, what Jay Wulf understood. His mind grew up with these words, shaped itself to them. It left an imprint, just like with the memories, the instincts, the abilities . . . But it's as though my mind has formed this connection with the imprint, linking up the words as he understood them with the only language _I_ know – English. When you talk, or when I talk, I may as well be hearing and speaking English, for how my brain is interpreting it all. It sure feels odd though, or does when I pay attention, as I can see how your mouths and my own are forming the actual words but . . . it just gets ignored, or bypassed. I dunno, somehow it all seems to come together right. I'm no linguist, but seems it's full of similar concepts . . . tones and patterns, even common phrases, maybe.'

'And it's the same, even when you switch languages?' Savvi spoke up.

'Switching languages?'

'Don't tell me you can't tell when you're speaking _Dotha_.'

'Now that you mention it . . . there did seem to be something different when I've talked to you at times. More . . . exotic.'

'More exotic,' Savvi said. 'More _exotic_. Fuck. Dotha is the oldest language in the Westlands. Its history is lettered with blood. Even our ancient holy texts were written in archaic Dotha. The greatest queens rose and fell speaking these words. Dotha screams came every sunset from the steps of the Black Temple in the city of Doth, before they were sacrificed and their bodies would roll the fuck down. Never tell me you find my language "exotic" again.'

'Sorry. I'm speaking it now, ain't I?' He turned to Alexia. 'Can you understand me now?'

'You've switched back,' Alexia said, smiling. 'I can't believe you can't tell. They're so different.'

Jay shrugged. 'A whole new world,' he said. 'Alien speech. My English is the only common thread I can hold onto. But I can tell . . . sort of. Increasingly so.'

'Well yes,' Alexia said. 'I can understand Dotha well enough. So you and Savvi can't have any secret chats behind my back.'

'More's the pity,' Savvi said.

'And you, Dol Sander?' Jay asked.

'The Duna are wanderers. We know all languages in the Westlands.'

'Well alright then.'

*

Savvi went off into the forest while Jay and Alexia talked. When she came back it was with a large spotted bird over her shoulder, which she proceeded to skin and gut at the edge of the camp. Dol Sander had started a fire in the meantime, and Savvi sharpened sticks to roast the meat. Jay was salivating at the smell, and realised too late that Savvi intended this food for herself and the tiger alone.

Thankfully, after Jay's complaints and protestations went unheeded, Dol Sander went out and hunted, and shared the meat with Jay (and the tiger, who wanted some of what they were having as well as Savvi's birdmeat). Alexia gathered some mushy pink and grey fungi that lay just outside the camp, and speared and roasted them, and together with the foodstuffs in her pack the whole party filled their stomachs with their chosen meals.

'So is there anyone else that might be comin for me?' Jay asked Savvi, his mouth full. 'Anyone I should know about who wants my balls as decoration.'

'Well,' Savvi said. 'Anybody else you might have pissed off in your life?'

'We're doomed,' Alexia said.

'Alexia gets it,' Savvi said.

Jay studied Savvi. 'How you gonna get all that blood off you?'

'Does it bother you? Big man like you afraid of a little blood shouldn't be with a woman.' Savvi grinned. 'Normally, soil and grass. You get dirty to get clean. But there's a luxury not far from here.'

'A river,' Jay said, his ears, now concentrating, picking up the lightest traces of running water.

'A stream,' Savvi corrected. 'But well done. You're using your senses. Jay was always at least somewhat sharp. You . . . less so. But you're still alive, so you can't be all shit.'

'High praise indeed,' Jay said. He looked around, and then down at himself. 'We're all pretty damn filthy, and no doubt we can be smelled a mile off. This stream seems like a good enough opportunity to get clean. And wash these stinkin clothes.'

'I second that,' Alexia said, finishing her meal.

'I'm off first,' Savvi said. 'Follow your ears Jay, not my ass.'

'Not staying with us?' Alexia asked impassively.

'As much fun as it might be to watch Jay get a heart attack seeing me naked . . . not this time. He'll just have to imagine it.'

'I ain't going to —' Jay started.

'Watch his face,' Savvi said. 'Watch his face.'

'He's thinking of it,' Alexia said.

'He can't help himself.'

'Can you please both stop watchin my face,' Jay said.

*

The stream was wide and deep and lazy (and arguably a river), drooling through the forest and tinted red in its reflection. The horses trotted to the water and stooped to drink, and Jay followed them, taking his shirt off. He realised then that he was stripping naked in the company of a woman and a hermaphrodite, and expecting them to do the same. He paused.

Alexia, too, seemed to have reached the same conclusion. 'I'm . . . going to head further downstream, find Savvi,' she said. 'Female solidarity and all that. Even if she is a royal bitch.'

'Keep safe,' Dol Sander said.

'I'm gonna fart in the water,' Jay said. 'And it's gonna travel downstream and hit you two.' _Oh my god did I actually just say that, I fancy this girl for fuck's sake._

'I'll tell Savvi that,' Alexia replied. 'She'll kick your head in.' She shook her head as she walked away, but couldn't completely hide the grin from her face.

Jay stripped down to his long bark coloured pants and removed his boots. 'I ain't, uh, wearin nothin under these,' he said to Dol Sander.

'I didn't expect you to. Do you want me to tell you I won't look?'

'That sounds like it wouldn't be the truth.'

'That's because I know you're going to look at me. Like Savvi said, you can't help yourself. I, on the other hand, can, but won't.'

'I ain't got no interest in —'

'You know I'm a hermaphrodite, as you people put it. You're curious. Truly, you are the only one who will care.'

'It's fine,' Jay said. He kicked off his pants and waded (rather quickly) into the stream. It reached his waist at the deepest point, which worked well by him. It seemed freezing at first touch but as his body got used to it he found it surprisingly pleasant. He splashed water over his shoulders and chest and then dunked himself entirely under. He rose, freshwater running in lines from his hair and thickly stubbled chin. It felt good, clearing away all that blood and dirt and sweat.

Jay opened his eyes and saw Dol Sander naked and washing himself, closer to the bank. His skin was as grey and sleek and baby smooth as his face. The waterline was at his thighs.

'Get your fill,' Dol Sander said. ' _I_ have.'

Jay looked away.

*

'What's it like?' Alexia asked. 'Being in two minds.'

'It ain't two minds. It's more like one mind in another mind's environment.'

'But you have Jay's memories.'

'Yes and no. I got ghosts of memories. No, imprints. Like if you press a shape into clay it'll make an impression. A mind . . . and its mould. That's what I'm left with. I can't explain it better, I ain't never known anything like it. Knowin two different truths. Being me and not me. For all I know I am mad. A Rathian dreamin of being an alien.'

'Do you remember your home? I mean, Jay Wulf's home. On Earth. _This_ Earth. This is confusing.'

'You're tellin me. Do I remember where Jay was born? Yeah. No. I don't know. That's gonna be the same answer for it all I'm afraid.'

'Close your eyes. What do you see?'

Jay closed his eyes. 'I see volcanoes. A land of volcanoes.'

'Rath.'

'Yeah. I see homes built on the slopes, on cooled lava. Forges, so many forges . . . they're in the volcanoes. Using the magma to smelt metal. Weapons.'

'You went to war over those forges, a long time ago. The Steamgant wanted them to build their machines. The Rathians wiped them out. Off the face of the Earth.'

'Who started the war?'

Alexia shrugged. 'Who knows with old wars.'

'Or new ones. The Steamgant, were they scaly, like fish people? Yellow eyes . . .'

'You're thinking of the Grey Ark. You warred with them also.'

'Seems we are a war-like people.'

'That's putting it mildly.'

'And yet you still approached me in Nohaven.'

'Nobody's perfect,' Alexia said. 'This world is a savage one, and every individual should be judged alone. Rathians have taken many lives. Yet you . . . I looked at you and I did not see a berserker, some common blood warrior. I saw uncertainty. And wonder. Like you were seeing things for the very first time.'

'I guess I was. And wasn't, too.'

Alexia put her hand on his. 'I'm glad I came over.'

'So am I. You believe me, then?'

'I told you,' Alexia said, squeezing his hand. 'Right now, I don't think it matters.'

*

Jay watched Dol Sander and Savvi in turn as they slept lightly, each capable of being on their feet with weapon drawn in an instant. Savvi was twitching in her sleep, her face narrowed, the tiger snoring softly at her side. Dol Sander was completely still, a sleek black form, his features strangely delicate and alluring in the low light of the dying campfire.

Jay turned his sight to Alexia, whose eyes were open against the sky. She felt his gaze and looked over at him. He smiled, and for a second as she looked into his eyes he didn't think she was going to smile back.

She got up and walked over to him on the other side of the campfire, and lay down.

'Hello,' he said.

'Shut up,' she said, and kissed him.

*

As they entwined themselves Jay thought with a sideways glance that more than one pair of almost-closed eyes were watching them, but he tried to put it out of his mind.

*

'Sometimes, some of the people I have encountered, or heard about . . . I think they should die. Is that normal?'

'I reckon it is.'

'I think of killing them,' Alexia said.

Jay nodded as Khyber weaved his way through the trees. He blinked in the growing sun. 'I think it's more common than it seems. Just most people keep it to themselves.'

'Have you thought that way? Well,' she said, before Jay could answer, 'of course you have. You're a killer.'

He was about to add, _So are you now_ , but he stopped himself, though he sensed she knew what he had been about to say. 'I reckon it's different,' he said, speaking the words without being sure what they were going to be. 'Imaginin killin someone, and then being there, faced with it, staring it in the face. Their death and your own death. Your body takes over, tries to save itself. Then it learns, though you never meant to teach it. Eventually you find yourself attacking first, attacking before they do.'

'If they ever were going to.'

'Yeah.'

They were quiet for another moment, their horses stepping through red flowers after Dol Sander. Savvi was nowhere to be seen, but Jay had a good idea that she hadn't left them entirely.

'You handled yourself well, in that fight,' Jay said at last.

'Thanks. I was scared.'

'I know. That's normal.'

'I mean scared after the fight. When I was fighting there was no time to be scared, it was all happening at once. I was just trying to survive, like we all were.'

'I guess that's all fights really are.'

'But afterwards, that's when I had a new fight, fighting to control the shakes. To control my own mind.'

'You recovered well.'

'You helped, with your insane revelation. Took my mind off it. Didn't mean I could sleep, though. I guess at that point I never expected to again.'

'I see their faces too,' Jay said.

'Does it get easier? I want to be like you. And Savvi, and Dol Sander. I know I'm the weakest in the group, and I hate it.'

' _No_ ,' Jay said, more forcefully than he meant. 'You don't wanna be like me. You really don't. Yeah it gets easier. It gets too easy. Killing should never be so easy. Please, Alexia, for your own sake, you don't want to go down this path any more than you have to. Mercy, compassion, even hesitation, these are more important than the skills of killing. I know you don't agree. But by the time you see the other side, _really_ see the other side, it might be too late.'

'You seem to think I'm a better person than I am.'

'You are a _good person_ Alexia. You may not believe that, but I'll believe it for you. You _are_ strong. Do not let the company of killers make you believe otherwise. Sometimes the strength comes not in taking a life, but in saving one.'

'Where's all this coming from?'

'The real me,' Jay sighed. 'Well, a guy named Gandalf said something similar. But yeah, this is me. The me who isn't a murderer.'

'Are you still not a murderer? Are you going to lay all the blame on Jay Wulf? And do you still not remember your real name?'

'No,' Jay said. 'My name is Jay Wulf. I think I've accepted that. And no . . . I _am_ a murderer. I have to take the responsibility. Nobody else killed those people but me.'

They cleared the last trees, emerging from the outliers of the forest into a glimmering and fertile land that seemed to steadily grow paler and rockier. The great lake was closer now, but still a long way away; the land on the northern horizon, far beyond the lake, seemed veiled in a silvery-blue sheen. They had left the road far behind at Alexia's request, ignoring its north-western route to Stoneswell. She'd told them she wasn't ready. There were no complaints; the country was beautiful and rich and full of game.

'That land,' Jay said, pointing north. 'What is it? Is it still Sol Ghoum?'

'That's the Crescent,' Alexia answered. 'What southerners call the Blue Waste. Land of krayt and Pale Ingri – the white gaunts. And haskans, of course. Lots of haskans.'

'Of course . . . and beyond that?'

'You don't know _that_? Look west. You can see it from here.'

Jay saw the black line that ran on the western edge as far as he could see. He had studied it many times since passing out of the North Eye, as though his eyes were drawn to it. 'A mountain range?' he asked.

Before Alexia could reply, Savvi appeared before them, as though born from the land, and she came in closer at an easy jog, with a smirk on her face. The tiger was at her side.

'Jiggle jiggle jiggle,' Alexia said.

'Hadn't noticed,' Jay said.

'Of course not.'

'Hey Savvi,' Jay nodded at her. 'Thought you'd left us.'

'No you didn't,' Savvi replied.

'Hoped,' Alexia said.

'I'm waiting around to find out just how nuts he is,' Savvi said, gesturing at Jay. 'Maybe if he's completely insane I can take advantage of him somehow.'

Jay rolled his eyes. 'More than you do anyway?'

'Did you ever wonder where the real Jay Wulf went?' Alexia said. 'I mean, the original.' Lander was trying to nuzzle Khyber and Alexia tugged at her reins.

'I thought, perhaps, he might still be here, in me. Pushed into some deep corner and struggling to be heard.'

'Yeah, I don't think so,' Savvi said. 'If the two of you are in a brain together, he's the one that's going to be in control, and you're the one that's going to be squashed. You gotta face it honey, he's by far the stronger of the two.'

'You might be right. But then what, he's just gone forever?'

'Maybe. But . . .'

'The Dotha shamans,' Alexia said.

'That's what I was thinking.' Savvi glanced at Jay's blank expression. 'There's this . . . practice in a couple of the poorer villages around the city of Doth. It's ancient but you still hear about it. These shamans, they say they can, well, switch minds. I've seen it once. Two people are put into some kind of trance, and then they wake up and look at each other in astonishment. Most people think it's just a scam, self-delusion.'

'And you? Do you believe them?' Jay asked.

'I didn't.'

'So what, do you think it's possible somehow that his mind switched with mine?'

'No, I think it's impossible. But in my life, I've seen more than one impossible thing happen. And maybe . . .'

'Maybe he didn't swap,' Alexia said.

'Let me finish my own thought will you? Yes, maybe you didn't swap. Maybe, whatever happened, _however_ it fucking happened, you pushed his mind out, and his ended up somewhere else. Hey, quit it.' She pushed away the tiger, which was pushing its head insistently into her leg.

'Interesting theory,' Jay said. 'Where would it go?'

'Fuck knows,' she said. 'Piss off, I told you,' she complained, as the tiger continued to butt her. 'Damn thing won't let up. But if I was a mind suddenly untethered and free, I don't know, that's not a natural state, might be I'd find myself swallowed up, maybe instantly, by the closest thing that'd . . . that'd . . . take me . . .' She trailed off slowly.

'What's —'

'Shut up,' Savvi said.

'Wait a second —' Alexia started.

'You too.' She knelt down and grabbed the tiger's face, and stared hard into its eyes. It didn't pull away, but looked back into hers. Dol Sander had stopped ahead of them and had turned to look at them.

'Oh fuck,' Savvi said.

'Oh,' Alexia said.

'What is it?' Jay demanded.

'Shut up,' Savvi said again, not looking at him. Her eyes widened in astonishment. 'Are you . . . Is your name . . . Jay Wulf?'

Jay opened his mouth, and left it hanging open as the tiger nodded its head emphatically.

'Well fuck me,' Savvi said.

'No fucking way,' Jay said. 'No fucking way. It's a – a _tiger_.'

'He's you,' Alexia said. 'You're _him_.'

Savvi continued to hold the tiger's face. 'That guy,' she said. 'He's an imposter, isn't he? He stole your body?'

The tiger nodded vigorously again. He threw back his head and roared long and loud, a sound less aggressive than completely relieved.

'And is he a complete ass for not having figured this out sooner?' Another nod. The tiger licked her face and Savvi laughed.

'Oh come on!' Jay cried. 'How was I to know!'

The tiger shot him a glare from between Savvi's arms, and then turned back to her as she rubbed his face. A low rumbling nose began to arise from its throat.

'Is that – is it _purring_?'

'That _it_ is a he, you cunt,' Savvi said. 'And his name is Jay.'

'Wait a second . . . _My_ name is Jay.'

'It fucking well isn't.'

'It may as well be. I'm more of a Jay Wulf than _him_ , he's just a tiger!'

The purr turned into a growl as the tiger looked at him again.

'Can't you both be Jay Wulf?' Alexia interjected.

'It'll get too confusing. Why don't we just keep calling him . . . the tiger.'

'Because his name's Jay Wulf,' Savvi said. 'And yours isn't.'

'I can't remember my real name. And I'm not sure it'd fit this body, anyway. After all this time, I _feel_ like a Jay Wulf. You can't just give me another name. I mean, what do you propose you'd call me? '

'How about fuckface?' Savvi said.

Alexia couldn't resist a small laugh.

'Hey, don't gang up on me!' Jay said. 'Look . . . let's call the damn tiger . . . J.W.'

'Why not call _you_ J.W.?' Savvi said. 'He was here first.'

'Because,' Jay said, thinking, 'everybody knows me as Jay Wulf already.'

'Who's everybody? A few whores?'

'I hope you're not including me in that,' Alexia said.

'Don't take it so hard. Nothing wrong with being a whore.'

'You'd know.'

'Alright, alright,' Jay said impatiently. 'Look, you call me what you want. You're only gonna call me a cunt anyway. We each call me and the tiger by whatever we want.'

'Gonna get confusing.'

'Then don't!'

Savvi seemed to be considering. 'Alright New Jay. Calm your dick.'

'Fine. New Jay. Maybe I'll call the tiger Old Jay. That's what I've been calling the guy who used to occupy this head.'

'Original Jay,' Savvi said.

'Think I'll still just call you Jay,' Alexia said. 'I'm used to it.'

Jay smiled at her. 'I reckon I heard enough of my name being said to last me a couple of days.'

' _His_ name,' Savvi said.

'Oh will you _just_ — !'

*

They kept on, going nowhere but forward, each quiet and coming to terms with the fact that one of them was a pretender, that the person he was supposed to be had been with them all along, unable to communicate.

'It ain't really him though,' Jay had said. 'Not _really_. He's more tiger now than Wulf.' The tiger had bared its teeth at him.

'And you're more soppy cunt than Wulf,' Savvi had replied.

'He's at least half-beast. I may not be all Jay but at least I'm all man.'

'Honey, you're not any part man.'

Jay gritted his teeth. He used his knees to try to encourage Khyber to pull out in front but the horse ignored him. Even Khyber had been preoccupied with the tiger, and seemed to have a vague sense of what was going on. The tiger had rubbed against Khyber's legs making the stallion snort with what Jay felt was a mixture of confusion and pleasure.

Sometimes the party travelled close together, but more often than not they trailed apart. Alexia and Jay spent the most time together, but not all the time. Alexia was always the first to come apart, to lag behind or trot ahead. Jay sometimes saw Savvi and Dol Sander walking together with the tiger. Savvi's initial presses at conversation, her jibes and teasing, slowly lapsed into silence, yet it did not cause her to separate from his company. Jay would look on them, the two glowing in the sun-kissed fields, and wonder if there was not some calmness about Savvi during those moments.

He would entirely forget about these tranquil scenes whenever Savvi was around him. Her teasing and torments were irregular, but just when they seemed to have faded away they came back with renewed vigour. Jay attempted to ignore her, but this only made her worse. He could not seem to act convincingly unaffected for her to grow bored. Whenever she lost interest in fucking with him it was always unpredictable and rarely to do with his own responses or lack of. Alexia sometimes came to his defence, but more often than not she didn't, and sometimes she joined in, although never with any kind of venom.

'Get off your horse,' Savvi said on one long afternoon.

'What? Why?'

'I want a go. You want to stretch your legs don't you?'

'A normal person would say please,' Jay said.

'Fuck off,' Savvi said.

'Why would I swap with you when that's how you ask?'

Savvi came close to him and put her hand on Khyber. Jay felt the horse tremble ever so slightly. Savvi hooked a finger on the centre strap of her chest and pulled at it. It moved fractionally down. Not enough to reveal any more skin than what was already visible, but enough to draw Jay's attention. As though he hadn't already drunk his fill again and again whenever he thought she wasn't looking. _As though I could ever be full of her._

'Come on,' Savvi said softly, her dark eyes blinking slowly and burning into his. 'Come down.' Her mouth was balanced on the very edges of a smirk.

Her eyes . . . those lips . . . hair . . . breasts . . . Make it stop.

'Fine,' Jay said gruffly, dismounting quickly on the non-Savvi side. 'Have it your way.'

'I always do,' Savvi said. She walked around to the other side of the horse, where Jay was standing awkwardly, and she put her hand on Khyber, her back to Jay, her body slightly arched. She put her other hand out behind her. 'Help me up?' She smiled at him.

'Stop it.'

Savvi laughed at him and pulled herself up onto Khyber in one fluid movement. She leant down and pressed the horse between her thighs, her fingers tangling in his mane. Khyber began to walk, a little stiffly Jay thought.

'Why do you dress like that?'

Jay turned. He had forgotten Alexia was even there.

Savvi sat upright. 'You mean like a whore? That's what you're asking, isn't it? Have you any idea how often I've been asked that question?'

'Sor—'

'Save your apology. What do you know of my culture? Have you ever even been to Doth?'

'No. But I have seen Dotha people from time to time.'

'And how did they dress?'

'Depends on where I saw them, how warm it was. But not much, usually. Some not much at all.'

'Men and women?'

'Yes. Both. I suppose it's more noticeable with women.'

'It always is, isn't it. Look, Doth is so humid that your clothes would be sticking to your fucking skin within minutes. Modesty is something the Dotha – _some_ Dotha – learned from the West. Westerners – not least Stoneswellers – think we should all dress like them. I see no reason to put on clothes unless I need to. Even our neighbouring Rath, their people do not wear so much. A lot of bare chests there. But then,' she added, 'the Dotha always were more attractive than Rathians.' She glanced at Jay who rolled his eyes.

'I suppose that's —'

'I'm not done,' Savvi said, holding up her hand. 'One more reason. I'll tell you now, I will take _every_ single opportunity to give myself the edge. I don't care what it is, if it means I can come out on top. This body has kept me alive. The power over others, and not just men. The distractions it causes. The ease with which you can rob an enemy who's too busy staring at your tits to see your fingers taking his money. Too busy watching your bent over ass to see the knife you're retrieving ready to stab in his fat fucking stomach. A party of bandits sees you coming over the hill, they're too busy salivating to give a thought to how many arrows they're soon going to be filled with. Not always, but often enough. A second is all I need. Besides,' Savvi yawned, 'We can't all be dumpy princesses.'

' _I. Am. Not. Dumpy!_ And _don't_ call me a princess!'

'Who said I was talking about you?' Savvi said. 'Don't get excited.'

'Alright ladies,' Jay said. 'Let's be friends.'

'Oh do fuck off New Jay,' said Savvi.

*

He dreamt of hate and lust, of black tigers prowling in ever decreasing circles about him, of haskans howling and bounding through the Waste like huge blue-pelted wolves, and the sky flashing colour after colour.
'Tell me everything,' said the man with the green eyes.

'Are you huntin him?' Edder Van Took said.

'Hunting who?'

'Jay Wulf,' Edder Van Took replied.

'I'm looking for a black tiger.'

'It followed him. I saw it follow the red bastard when he left.'

'Jay Wulf. A Rathian?'

'Yeah. Are you huntin him? If you are, I'll tell you everythin.'

## FOURTEEN

'What _is_ that?' Jay asked, staring once more at the black line to the west that ran on and on and faded into mist. He could see neither beginning nor end. It was bigger now, more defined – whatever it was it must be of immense size. 'You never answered me before. If it's a mountain range as I guess it must be, then where are the peaks? It's more like a wall . . . but it must be _huge_. How far does it go?'

'You really don't know?' Alexia said. 'You're serious?'

'Let's skip the "how can you not know this" routine, I thought we were past that.'

'I know, it's just . . . Jay, it's the edge of the world.'

Jay stared at her and then back at the black wall. 'You're not serious.'

'No. Well, a bit. It's the edge of any world that any of us know. You ask how far it goes. It goes _all the way round_.' She pointed with a finger into the distance and turned slowly three hundred and sixty degrees. 'You see Jay? It's a _circle_. The Black Circle, to be exact.'

'The Black Circle . . . But . . . but that's impossible . . . Well, not impossible, but . . . What the fuck is it? It's a wall? Who built it?'

'Nobody knows.'

'Huh? You must know.'

'Jay, the Circle is far higher than anything anyone in the Basin has ever built. The Basin, that's what people here call the Westlands. It's the whole world within the Circle. It has never been crossed, despite thousands of attempts throughout history.'

'Then . . . why do you call this the Westlands? If you have never crossed this wall, how do you know there is anything else? That this ain't the whole world?'

Alexia sighed. 'Because we are not stupid. Just like we know of the magnetic poles, and of the sun, and space, and stars, and other worlds. And please stop calling it a wall. You do not understand its . . . immensity.'

'I'm still getting my head around the fact that everyone I've met here and everyone throughout this land's entire history has lived their whole existence in a goddamn basin. There's no way through? No gate?'

'I'll pretend I didn't hear that last question. About a hundred years ago, the biggest attempt to tunnel through began. It lasted ten years, and they got no more than about twenty feet into the rock, if you can call that black metal-like substance rock. Nothing else of its kind has ever been seen, neither natural nor made.'

'They stopped tunnelling then?'

'They gave up. It had only got harder the further in they cut. For all we know it goes on for miles. It's a popular destination now, or at least it was, that short tunnel. There's even a few stores there. I doubt anybody bothers these days, not for a mere twenty feet.'

'Can you not fly something up to try and see over it?'

'We have nothing that has gone high enough, not with someone there to see.'

'Ah yeah, you don't have planes. Or cameras. What about using lasers to cut the rock? Ah no, no lasers either . . .'

'Sounds like your super advanced world wouldn't have much trouble,' Alexia said dryly. 'What are lasers then?'

' _Pew pew_.'

'Pew pew,' Alexia repeated.

'Or . . . _bzzz_.'

'Pew pew. Or bzzz. My, the wonders of your machine world. Somehow I get the feeling that your world would not pick you as an ambassador to another planet.'

'Probably not. It's not all machines though. There's lots of people too.'

'A world of you. That must be thrilling.'

'And grass and trees and things. There's more similarities with this world than there are differences. This is like us, but in the past. Except for all the aliens and weird shit. Like that fucking wall. Can we visit it?'

'Maybe later. If we're still in each other's company.'

'I'm sure we will be,' Jay smiled at her. Alexia rolled her eyes, but smiled back.

'Alexia, I got to ask, completely pointless as it is, I feel I have to. In this world, do you have . . . spaceships? Or anything like it?'

'What's a spaceship?'

'I thought as much,' he sighed. 'Space travel.'

'You mean aliens and travelling to other worlds and all that?'

'Yeah.'

'Yes, we do actually.'

'No fucking way. Really?'

'No.'

'Ah. Well. Thanks. There goes my chance at getting home.'

Alexia put a hand on Jay's shoulder. 'You've got me,' she said.

He put out his hand and laid it on top of hers. 'Thank you.'

'So what's a spaceship? I get the space part. What's a ship?'

'You're kidding right? A ship. Like a boat, but bigger . . . Sails the open sea.'

'I know boat. There are some that fish or ferry on the lakes. Lake Ghoum and the Northflood. I do not know what you mean by sea.'

'No sea,' Jay said. 'Well I'll be fucked.'

'Explain it.'

'It's like a lake, but vastly bigger, and more unpredictable. Very deep. My world is mostly covered by water.'

'Sounds wet.'

'We try not to build our homes in the water.'

'I see. Tell me more about your home.'

'I don't . . . I'm finding it harder to remember it. I'm not sure it even matters that much. Not anymore.'

'Homes should always matter.'

Jay shrugged.

'You don't sound like you care all that much about going back.'

Jay scratched his neck. 'I do and I don't. I don't know. I feel like this is my new life. Either way I'm giving up something. And like you say, I have you.'

'Hmm.'

'Thanks for the optimism.'

Alexia smiled. 'How was your life? Did you have a good life?'

'Yeah . . . It was okay.'

'Just okay.'

'Well, you know. I try not to dwell on it. Yeah, it was okay. I shouldn't complain.'

'That's not like you.'

Jay reached out and ruffled her hair. He drew her to him with one arm for a walking-hug, and let her go with some reluctance when she pulled away.

*

A bottle smashed against the wall. It was quickly followed by two more. Shards of wet glass showered down to the carpet in small angry explosions. Other things were thrown, or punched, or brutally swept from the table. Important things, pointless things, pathetic things.

He was shaking, his fists clenched so tight he wondered if he was drawing blood. He hoped so. He dug his fingers in tighter and looked at the mirror.

'Who are you?' he said. 'Who are you?'

There was a blur and the mirror cracked; his hand came away bleeding.

'There was never any chance,' he said. His face was ugly and snarling, the truths told through grinding teeth. 'I was never going to make it. I was never going to be a success. I was never going to be happy. Not here, not now. All because of _this_ ,' he stabbed a finger repeatedly at his temple. ' _This_ versus this world. It was all against me from the start.'

His hands slapped down onto the table and he leaned and stared at his broken reflection. 'Give me another world, another time. Not here. Not now.' He went to pick up a piece of glass from one of the bottles and looked at it.

Stop.

He turned the piece in wet hands, as though considering its purpose.

Stop.

'Who are you?' he said.

I'm me.

'I see.'

You're remembering.

'And you're dreaming.'

Maybe.

'Can you tell me who I am?'

I'm afraid I can't be much help with that.

'Then what am I supposed to do?'

I got no fucking idea. Sorry.

'You're a big help.'

What did you expect? It's me. Put that thing down.

He sighed and put the piece of bottle on the table. 'Is there a future?'

Yes. Trust me on that one.

'I mean for me.'

I know what you meant.

He sat down and put his head in his hands. 'It's stupid,' he said. 'I want to kill myself, but I can't. I just can't. I want to kill myself, but I don't want to stop living.'

_And to think, now you're a murderer._

'What? No I'm not . . .'

Not your now. My now.

'When's that?'

Three years from now. You're a murderer called Jay Wulf, living on another planet.

'Another planet . . .'

Under a purple sky.

Silence drifted through the room like a cobweb.

'Three years. I can't wait that long.'

_But you do._ I _did. You'll wait like nothing will ever happen._

'What do you propose I do in the meantime? Who am I? Who am I supposed to _be_?'

Fuck. Just make it up as you go along. That's what I did.

'Not working so well so far, is it?'

Not so far.

'Yeah, well.' He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. 'I think you should leave now.'

I've overstayed my welcome?

'Pretty much.'

Alright.

'Enjoy your new planet. And killing people or whatever.'

I will. Enjoy your breakdown.

'I will.'

*

'So are you stickin with us for a while?' Jay was stopped, allowing Khyber to chew on the _graji_ that feathered the hillside. Alexia was a few feet ahead, feeding Lander from her hand. Dol Sander was sat cross-legged cleaning his gun (a little obsessively, Jay felt).

'I'll be around,' Savvi said, skinning a bird she had shot from the sky. 'For now. I mean, Jay's a tiger. He's a fucking _tiger_.'

'That the only reason you're stayin?'

'What more reason do I need? The man I've known for years _is a tiger_. Do you understand? In its own way it's hilarious. I'm not going to jump ship when things are more interesting than they've been in a long long time.'

'So we have the pleasure of your lovely company for the next god knows how long?' Alexia said in a tired voice, turning around.

Savvi bounded up and over to Alexia and put her arm around her, pulling her in and kissing her cheek as Alexia tried to pull away. 'You and me princess,' she said. 'New best friends!'

'Save me,' Alexia said.

'The happy couple,' Jay said.

'I do not like this place,' Dol Sander called out suddenly, his back to them. 'I feel watched, but I see no-one.'

'He's a bit paranoid,' Alexia said under her breath, after nobody else replied.

Jay nodded. 'You gonna share that bird, Sav?'

'I'll give you three guesses.'

Jay sighed. 'I'd share mine with yours.'

'I bet you would, you whore.'

'I should keep a book of all the names I been called since I arrived here.'

'You'd run out of pages.'

Alexia laughed shortly. 'Do you think Jay would put up with it all if you were uglier?'

'He's a weak, shallow man,' Savvi replied. 'With two heads, and only one of them is ever working.'

'Fuck you,' Jay said, eyes narrowing. 'You treat me like shit sometimes. You got no fuckin sense in how to keep friends.'

'Friends? Oh, I am fond of you New Jay,' Savvi said, smiling at him.

'What? That's the first time ever —'

'You are like a puppy,' she continued. 'A lost little puppy.'

'I see.'

'Looking for his mama.'

'Yes. I get it.'

*

'I've seen how often your eyes wander over me, trying to be subtle. At least the real Jay was honest about his desires.'

'I didn't wanna be rude,' Jay said, trying to keep the volume of the conversation low. _She's too close. Don't look at her . . . but . . . you can't help yourself. Her skin glows with the dying fire . . ._ _So perfect . . . I bet it'd be so warm to touch . . ._

'Rude,' Savvi repeated, then snorted. ' _Rude._ You and the princess are suited to each other. High-society types.'

'Her name is Alexia.' _Think, imagine, drive yourself insane . . ._

'I know her name.' Savvi put her fingers on his leg and tapped them slowly up to his upper thigh. She leaned into him and he felt her hot breath in his ear. 'This world is a savage one. There's no need to tread lightly on glass, you'll still get cut. You're gonna need to get _harder_ _fast_ if you aim to live out here.' She moved in fast and stuck a warm wet tongue in his ear.

'Hey!' he cried, falling backwards and rubbing the side of his head with his wrist. 'What the fuck?'

Savvi laughed in delight. The firelight danced on her face.

'I don't wanna have sex with you, Savvi.'

'Oh, my sweet J.W., keep telling yourself that,' she said, standing up. 'Maybe one day you'll believe it.'

'J.W. now is it? You just want me to make a fool of myself so you can laugh at me.'

Savvi grinned, hands on hips. 'But I've been doing that anyway. Besides,' she added, 'your lips may lie but your body tells the truth.'

Jay watched Savvi walk off into the darkness, towards wherever she laid her head. He looked at Alexia sleeping, a slight frown on her face, her blanket pulled tight against her, and he looked away. He meant to crawl to his own blanket, but caught Dol Sander's black eyes watching him from the other side of the campfire and he sat back down on his haunches.

'Is there a problem?' Dol Sander said as Jay made no further sign of moving.

'No problem,' Jay replied, continuing to sit. _Damn you Savvi. Damn your incessant teasing. Damn your body and damn_ this _body. I mean to throw water on the fires in me not stoke the flames._ Dol Sander's eyes eventually closed but not before Jay saw a shadow of a smile appear and disappear.

Instead of going to his blanket, Jay walked off silently, the opposite way to Savvi. He had business to take care of, if he was going to sleep.

*

Jay could feel his temper rising with the morning sun. _It's too early for this. Too fuckin early._

He tried to blot out Savvi's stream of insults. His hand was itching to grab his gun, and he briefly imagined everyone's reactions if he obeyed his twitching fingers, whipped it out and put a bullet in her head. _Yeah, you'd whip it out alright . . ._

'What . . . are . . . you going on about?' he said through gritted teeth.

'How useless you are these days? I thought that was obvious. I'm hungry and I wanted that fat little puff-tailed _baloot_. I'd tracked it, I'd got downwind, and you saw me, you _saw me_ with my bow drawn. And that's when you decide, "I know, I'll stumble along into her like a great big daydreaming cunt and let it get away". How the fuck are you still alive?'

'Come on,' Alexia said. 'Leave him alone. It was an accident.'

'He's a string of fucking accidents! His whole existence is an accident! I bet wherever he was actually born, he was an accident then too! Who'd want him? And why are you defending him? What the fuck do you see in him?'

'More in him than I do in you,' Alexia said, her face stony and tight.

'Well, you have shit taste.'

' _Why_ – why in the name of everything in this crazy fucking world must you _be_ like _this_?' Jay shouted, reeling on Savvi. 'Ever since I got here you've been nasty to me. Even when you're pretending to be nice it's only so you can be nasty later. Are you devoid of any sympathy, empathy? One bit? I never met anyone more goddamn selfish and sociopathic. For fuck's sake, I've lost _everything_. My home, my family, my friends. I woke up in this place with a _fucking gun to my head_.'

'Poor you!' Savvi cried suddenly, taking him by surprise. 'Poor fucking Jay substitute being a cry-baby _again_ because his home is gone and he can't go back.' Her voice was rising to a shout, and for the first time since he'd met her she looked genuinely angry. 'You know what? All our homes are gone! My home is gone, Alexia's home is gone, Jerrens's home is gone. _Poor you_ , you woke up in a new world with a gun to your head, let's all cry about it. I was eight years old when I first had a gun to my head. And the world sure wasn't the same again. Shit happens, and lives change. That's what happens! If you don't roll with it you should just roll the fuck over and _die_!'

Savvi stopped, breathing hard and showing teeth, aware that the others were staring at her. She turned and strode off, her head down and fists clenched. ' _Fuck,_ ' she said as she left them behind.

'I should go after her,' Jay said, but he hesitated.

'You know she'll bite your head off,' Alexia said.

'I know. But I think I should try. This seems like it's about something bigger than me. She's given me a lot of shit but never got actually angry before.'

'Good luck.'

'Thanks.' He walked off after her.

Jay found Savvi not far off, sitting on a bank just past a grove of trees. He sat down next to her and together they looked over the green fields, the stalks shivering in the breeze, the sun glowing on their faces.

'What happened?' Jay said, when it was clear Savvi was not about to speak. 'What happened when you were younger?' He said it softly, calmly.

'It's none of your business.'

'I know.'

There was a long pause. 'When I was eight, a man and a woman approached me,' Savvi said. 'The man's name was – his name was – was —'

'I don't need to know his name,' Jay said gently.

'You don't need to know shit,' Savvi snarled, her eyes flashing as she turned to him. 'Nobody does. You just _want_. Everybody wants something. Everybody always does.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Yeah, real sorry, I bet.'

Jay hesitated. 'What happened to the man and the woman?'

'I found them.'

'What did you do?'

Savvi looked at him and he looked away. He couldn't bear those eyes for more than a second. Not now.

'Did they, did they . . .' Jay tried, hopelessly. What was in his mind was too awful to say. Too awful when faced with the grown adult of that once little girl.

'Goddess _dammit_ Jay,' Savvi said. It was the first time she had called him plain Jay since they found out about the tiger. 'Privacy means nothing to people, does it? You're a vulture, everybody's a fucking vulture. Only satisfied when they can feed on other people. You want a story, go read a fucking book.'

'I'm sorry to have upset you.'

'Stand up,' Savvi said, with forced deliberation. 'Turn around, and walk away.'

'I was just trying to —'

' _Stand up. Turn around. Walk. Away._ ' She looked at him again with that unbearable gaze. Her hand was on the hilt of one of her blades. 'If you don't, I will put a knife in your chest. You think I'm joking. Go on, tell me I'm joking. Tell me I'm joking.'

Jay stood up quickly and walked away. He didn't say another word, but he felt her eyes burning the back of his neck.

'I know what you were thinking,' she called after him, and he stopped, not turning. 'What you were thinking didn't happen. And if I had a choice, between _that_ and what _did_ happen, I would have chosen the first. And it would have been a mercy.'

Jay nodded as though to himself, and when no more words came he continued back to the others.

*

That night he dreamed of his home, of Rath. Women passed him on either side. They were no longer naked and nubile, but inked and clothed in leather and armour, their eyes blackened and knives and axes and guns at their hips. They no longer fawned over him but stared cold and black as he walked through their centre. They smelled of ash and sweat and old metal.

He was just a boy, and a hand bigger than his face thrust him against the ground by the neck. His nails dug into the hot rocks as a fist smashed into his face again and again. His nose burst into blood. A woman was holding him down by the arms. All around there were women and men and children watching.

'Stop,' he tried to say, but the fist came again, harder.

'You ain't no man,' the deep voice came, the beast above him. 'Not yet. You are young and you are _weak_. As long as you are crying you will feel my hand.'

'No,' Jay said. Blood was running into his eyes, running down his throat.

The beast stood up. Jay gasped for breath. He opened his eyes and looked into that huge dark figure standing over him with a dripping red fist. The woman let go of Jay's arms and put her hand on her husband.

'Bring the whore,' his father said.

He sat in a scrapyard of ancient cars sprawling with weeds. He was old and tough, his body a mass of muscle. Before him sat Savvi and Alexia, their legs swinging off skeleton hoods.

He felt an overpowering sensation of weakness and sadness, and the longer he looked into their calmly judging eyes the more the feeling metamorphosed into anger.

'Jay Wulf,' Alexia said. 'You need me more than I need you.'

'He's not a Wulf,' Savvi said. 'He's pathetic. He whines more than a newborn baby.'

'Jay,' Alexia said. 'You need me.'

Savvi got down off the car and shifted her weight, one hand on her hip. She sneered at him. _You're weak,_ she seemed to be saying. _You'll never get me. Not ever._

'He loves me,' Alexia said. 'It's kind of funny, when you think about it.'

'He's a little whore.'

There was a –

Black spot

Savvi was on the ground, and he had her by the neck. He was huge, a giant of muscle and power. His first punch missed as she twisted her head but his second took her in the jaw. She was wriggling like a worm on a hook but he kept punching, harder and harder. She weakened and he had his other hand low down, tugging and tearing, at her and at himself. He felt like a bull pinning a deer.

'Jay,' Alexia was whispering in his ear, her hand on his shoulder. 'Jay. Jay.'

Savvi was looking at him, suddenly falling calm and still, and he backhanded her across the face so hard he tore the skin in his fingers. His hand fell to her chest while the other grabbed himself and as he moved to begin the ritual Savvi reached up with a small hand to his own neck, that solid block of muscle, and she twitched her fingers and snapped his neck.

He was lying on his back with his head hanging loosely to one side. His eyes were open, unblinking and unmoving. In the corner of his vision he could see Alexia and Savvi standing near him looking down at him. They seemed impossibly tall.

'Looks like he finally found his fire,' Alexia said.

'You play with fire, you get burned,' Savvi replied.

'What shall we do with him?'

'He's just a dead whore,' Savvi said. 'Leave him for the crows.'

'Under the Circle's shadow,' Alexia said.

They walked away out of his sight. Overhead the sky flashed red, then green. Black, blue. White. Orange.

'Yellow,' Jay whispered. 'Purple.'

'Skrist is it?' said the man with the green eyes.

'If that'ss how you pronounce it,' hissed the Grey Ark.

'And your companion?' He looked up at the huge iron black figure. Even sitting at the table she was a hulk.

'Fist,' rumbled the woman.

'I need a tracker and a warrior,' said the man with the green eyes.

'That'ss uss,' Skrist said.

'Sell yourselves. I can afford it.'

_'All Grey Ark can track. But I can_ find _. You will not find a better hunter of prey.'_

The man with the green eyes turned. 'Fist. I need somebody who can protect me. Who can protect themselves, against everything. Against good warriors. Somebody who cannot be taken down.'

'That is me.'

'How many have tried to kill you?'

Fist paused, her brick of a jaw moving slowly. She seemed to be thinking. 'Many,' she said at last.

'And how many have you killed?'

'Same number.'

'What is the highest number you have taken on at once? By yourself.'

Another pause. 'Many,' she said again.

'More than five?' He held up his hand.

'Yes.'

'Ten?' He opened up another hand.

'Yes.'

He closed his hands. 'You will both need to travel fast. Fist will not fit on a horse.'

'I run,' Fist said.

'You will not tire?'

'No.'

'I will run too,' Skrist said. 'I can run long wayss, for long timess.'

'Then there will be no horses for anyone. No attention. Minimal sound.'

'You can keep up with uss?'

'I can do more than that.' The man stood up. 'I will take on the services of you both.' He reached into a pocket and handed over a small case. Skrisk clicked it open and his reptilian yellow eyes widened in greed.

'We have a deal,' Skrisk said. 'Where are we going?'

'North. To Sol Ghoum.'

'When do we leave?'

'Now.'

'And what are we hunting?'

'A problem that needs to be addressed,' said the man with the green eyes.

## FIFTEEN

The days wore on. They moved ever closer to the lake, as though each of them were drawn by some intangible magic. The weather continued to grow cooler, the baking heat of Appalia only a memory. Savvi sometimes walked with them, sometimes far apart, and sometimes they never even saw her for half the day. The first time she brought meat that she gave to them to share they were a little dumbfounded. She had shrugged dismissively, and said it was too big an animal to eat herself and shouldn't let it waste. Despite this, she still refused to eat meat Jay or Dol Sander (whose kills were much cleaner than Jay's) had brought. She had told them that if she was going to take advantage of a life, she should damn well be the one to take it. Because of this, Savvi increasingly became the principal supplier of meat (sometimes even allowing one of them to join her for the hunt) and Jay and Dol Sander took turns foraging with Alexia.

They never said it out loud, but Alexia was rarely left unaccompanied and out of sight for long. It was the unspoken, uncomfortable truth: she could defend herself, sure, but that didn't mean she was a warrior. Jay noticed Dol Sander seemed even more protective of Alexia as he was himself, and guessed he was still following an order from her father out of a sense of duty. Maybe his loyalty would always be to the Slade family, for better or worse. At first Dol Sander had been loathe even to leave Alexia alone with Jay, but as time went on and the land of Sol Ghoum passed beneath them he had grudgingly (no doubt encouraged by Alexia) opened up his trust to Jay, and then even Savvi. Jay assumed this trust, at least, for Dol Sander continued his reticence, speaking little of himself except when pressed, and then giving them little. Even Savvi had given up trying to get a rise out of him, and so spent a good deal of her conversations teasing, berating and laughing at Jay.

Even so, Savvi's abrasiveness had abated somewhat, though it still flared up often enough, and likely always would. She was, Jay was surprised to notice (and admit), growing on them all, as he guessed they were on her.

*

They left the countryside to take up beds in a muddy town near the lake by the name of Doul, one Alexia had stayed at a number of times when she was younger, during travels with her father. All but Dol Sander had voiced desires for the various things civilisation could offer – namely drink, and a change to the usual company (which at times was proving a little grating, largely thanks to Savvi, although Alexia too sometimes seemed tired with Jay's accounts of his world and questions of this one).

They drew many looks as they rode, strode (or sauntered, in the case of Savvi) past scattered buildings, their shadows cast in the blue light of torches. Strange enough that a rogue tabaca would keep company with a Dotha warrior-woman in a typical state of undress, along with a Grey Devil and a comparatively well-dressed and clearly well-bred Stoneswell girl. Any of these first three alone would have been cause for attention (and, given the collection of weapons, possibly alarm). Add to that the black tiger that padded along beside them, and it was little wonder the townsfolk clustered together to gawp or shield their children from harm. It was well that it was evening, and less people outside to make a commotion.

Jay had considered asking the tiger to stay outside the town, but Savvi and Alexia would have none of it. Alexia stabled the horses and bought them their rooms, using her familiarity with the owner to assure him as best she could of the tiger's completely docile nature (to which Old Jay made a point of licking his teeth). With a lot of money as extra persuasion, it was settled. Savvi and the tiger would get one room (Jay felt the tiger seemed too pleased with this), Dol Sander and Alexia another (she the bed, him the chair), and Jay a third.

They stayed in the town for over a week, and the townsfolk got so used to the tiger, initially accompanied by one or more of the travellers, that many would stop to pet him. He would always purr with satisfaction if it was an attractive woman, and walk off if it was anyone else. The good people of Doul quickly learned that their troubles were never going to be with the tiger, but with Savvi.

Over the course of the week, Savvi got in nine different bar fights – at least those were the ones Jay knew about. It was never completely clear if Savvi was genuinely in a rage or merely doing it for the fun of it. She would drink others under the table, taking on any challenge, as well as lechers and thugs, with gusto. When even the toughest of regulars had learned not to provoke her, she'd kick up a fuss at the slightest thing, as though a night of drinking without a fight was a waste. Once Jay saw her laughing as she cracked a man twice her size over the head with a beer jug. Another time she was spitting and screaming, calling an astonished man a _cabaja cunt, fucking cabaja fuckhead fuck_ , telling him she'd rip out his eyes and replace them with his balls; Jay had her by the waist trying to hold her back, and for his trouble got scratches on his arm that welled with blood, and a backwards headbutt that made him see stars.

It was on that night he left her to it, and returned to the rest house. He knocked on Alexia's door, and was pleased when she answered and told him that Jerrens was on a walk. He closed the door behind him. The bout of intimacy they had shared round the campfire had not quite come to sex, nor had it done since. Alexia fell asleep too quickly, and with the others sharing the camp, good opportunities to make full-blooded attempts were few and doomed to fail. Sometimes he felt like he was going to go mad with his passions (particularly with Savvi's teasing), but other times he managed to rein himself in, thinking of anything he could that would throw a bucket of cold water over his libido – or heading away from the camp by himself to take the edge off. But it made him uncomfortable; he always felt like he was being watched.

He had lain next to Alexia in the bed as she talked about god-knows-what, and he tried to respond at the appropriate moments. The truth was his brain was near dead at such times, the blood displaced somewhere else. But eventually they got closer; he had kissed her and she'd responded with interest. He had started to slide the top of her dress off.

A creak from the door-handle made Alexia sit up. 'Who's there?' she said.

The door opened a few inches, and there was a thump as something fell to the ground. The door then widened as the tiger, having successfully navigated the handle, butted the door open and padded in.

'Aw no no no,' Jay said. 'This ain't a good time. Fuck off!'

The tiger ignored him and leaped up onto the bed. Alexia threw her arms wide and hugged the tiger around the neck. 'Don't be so mean, Jay!' she said. 'Who could kick out such a fuzzy cutie?' She tickled the tiger behind the ears to the accompaniment of loud purrs. As Jay lay there willing his erection to go down, the tiger turned his head and looked at him with an expression Jay could not misread.

'Alexia, you should see the smug face he has on.'

'Don't be silly,' she replied, ruffling his neck. 'He's adorable.'

'Fuck off Old Jay,' he muttered under his breath. And then, louder, 'I'm going to bed.'

It was on the last night before they'd left that he'd had the conversation with Savvi. With several of the locals seriously injured, the town had a committee organised to subdue and jail Savvi. Word had got to Alexia just in time, and knowing the bloodshed that might have resulted if someone tried to put cuffs on Savvi, they'd beaten a hasty retreat just as the townsfolk were coming for her. The stables had been barred at night, and Jay had whispered to Khyber through the wooden slots that he'd come back for him and Lander, although he didn't know when that could be, but to stay strong. Khyber had snorted at him in the horse's equivalent of a scoff, and they'd left just before the 'pitchforks and torches' had appeared, as Jay had worded it to the others (not that he was far off).

Before that night-time evacuation, though, he had sat with Savvi, just the two of them in the smoky far corner of a deserted saloon. It had been after closing time, but Doul's bartenders had understood Savvi came as an exception to this rule.

She'd been talking into her _hoskol_ (beer, Jay had decided), and when he'd realised just what she was talking about he'd stiffened despite his intoxication, careful not to do or say anything that might jeopardise such a moment, least of all for his own safety.

'Do you know what it's like to be afraid of death as a child?' Savvi had started. 'Not just afraid . . . _terrified_. Dumb with fear when confronted by its possibility, or even by imagining it. A true . . . a true phobia.'

'I don't,' Jay replied slowly. 'But as a phobia it seems . . . a fairly rational one.'

'It's not. It's not. Not when you are stricken numb with it, when it keeps you awake at night. Everyone dies. They have died before you and they will die after you. It is the natural and unavoidable end to all life.' Savvi took a deep breath. 'But children should not be thinking of it, not like that. I didn't sleep, but I didn't want to sleep either. Sleep seemed to be . . . to be entering a realm too close to death. That is what they say about death, that it is the final sleep. What if I wouldn't wake up? How would I know?'

Jay nodded, and said nothing. He waited until Savvi was ready to continue.

'When I was eight,' Savvi said, heavily, as though testing each word, 'I was approached by a man and a woman. It was bright and hot in the village that day. It always was, but this day . . . this day the light seemed to be especially strong. Like it was trying to stab through your eyes. Most of the village were sheltered from it, on some special hunting expedition in the jungle. Someone married, I think. The chieftain, maybe. I don't know. All I know is that the village seemed empty. Our family had stayed. My mother was sick, and my father was looking after her, and us. Our hut was apart from the others anyway. We weren't often bothered.'

As Savvi spoke, the words came out staggered, sometimes rushed and sometimes slow. She looked ahead with eyes slightly unfocused, as though seeing something that wasn't there.

'It was the day after my birthday. My father had made me a necklace and I left the hut, wanting to show my friend.' Her hands moved to her neck and absently fingered something hidden under other necklaces and pendants. She didn't draw it out. 'I didn't know them. The couple who came. They were partners . . . I know that now. Lovers. If ever people such as them could contain a thing such as love without mutilating it.'

The next cluster of words came quickly, almost tripping over themselves in their haste to be said and over with. 'They put a gun to my head and told me I'd die if I didn't do what they said. I did what they said. They took me back in the house. The man pointed a gun at my father and the woman kept the gun at my head. I could feel the metal on my temple. I'd seen people die from being shot in the head. The woman gave me another gun, a third gun, a small one I could hold. She told me to shoot my father. I was hysterical. I would have done anything not to die. Anything. I was eight years old. Just a child but then I felt more like a baby. Or not even human. The woman pushed the gun harder into my head. The hammer back. I couldn't breathe. I felt like I was dying already. Drowning. They shouted at me and whispered to me both. I shot him. I didn't even say anything to him. I couldn't make words. They made me shoot my mother next. Then my . . . my baby sisters. Twins. I did it all. It never would have gone any other way.'

Savvi took a long, shuddering breath. Everything she said she had said blankly, robotic, disconnected by a supreme effort of will. Just to not appear weak in front of another. In front of herself.

'That's it,' she said. 'There you go. I hope you're happy now.'

Jay didn't say anything for a moment. He didn't know what to say. What did you say? That it was okay? That it'd be okay? It wouldn't. They both knew that and he didn't want to insult her.

'Don't worry,' Savvi said. 'I know there's nothing you can say.'

Jay put his hand on her knee. He expected her to push it off but she just looked at him and away and left it there.

'I guess that's why you don't use guns,' he murmured. It was the only thing that came to his head.

'Is that so,' Savvi said. 'Amazing. Hadn't thought of that.'

Jay smiled. 'There's that Savvi I remember. It's good to use sarcasm to . . . to . . .'

'Is it. You might want to think about that.' Savvi shook her head slightly. 'The world deserves my sarcasm. That's the very least it deserves. The world deserves my scorn. My spit.'

Jay nodded. 'Are you . . . are you still afraid of death?' He himself felt afraid, a fear of her response. He expected her to lash out at any moment. Her calmness was deeply unnerving.

'I'm not afraid of the pain,' Savvi said quietly. 'I'm not afraid of slipping away. I'm not afraid of losing everything and everyone . . . leaving it all behind forever. Because I don't have anything or anyone left to lose. Nobody will mourn me when I die. Nor would I want them to. '

Savvi swallowed, and when Jay glanced at her he briefly saw two fragile dark brown eyes glossy and almost shining before she turned her head.

'I'm not afraid of nothingness,' Savvi said. 'But I am afraid of an afterlife. I'm afraid . . . terrified . . . that I'll see their faces again. The faces of my family.' She put her hand over her face, shielding herself from his gaze.

'You don't have nothing,' Jay said. 'Now you have us.'

'Oh goddess,' Savvi said. 'It gets worse.'

Jay grinned. 'And what about Jay Wulf? Now a tiger. He was your friend.'

'Jay Wulf was a plaything.'

'Well, we're your friends. Or playthings, if you prefer.' Jay squeezed her knee.

Savvi brushed his hand off. Her face was still covered by her fingers. 'Go away Jay,' she said. 'You stupid bastard.'

'Are you smiling behind that hand?'

'Fuck off Jay.'

Jay put a hand on Savvi's hair, and then pulled away before she said anything. He walked away, glancing back as she brought her other hand to her face to join the first. 

# PART TWO

#

She stood at the top of the rise against the red-black sky as storm clouds gathered behind her. She stood with her hands on her hips and looked down at the three travellers. She could tell immediately that at least two of them were veteran warriors. The Grey Ark and that black behemoth of a woman. The third though, the pale bald man, he was unreadable. That made him a third threat.

'Where are your companions?' the man called out.

'What companions?'

'I am looking for a Rathian male going by the name of Jay Wulf. You have been travelling together. Where is he?'

'A Rathian? Sounds familiar. Or not. What's it worth to you?'

'How much do you want?'

'How much you got?'

In the man's hands appeared a money-case, which he opened towards her. 'Enough,' he said.

'I'll be the judge of that dickbag. Toss it over.'

'First, tell me where Jay Wulf is.'

'Throw the money first, and then I'll tell you.'

'You will keep the money, and you will not tell me.'

'Really? You're too kind.'

'Enough of thiss, we don't need thiss whore,' the Grey Ark said. He raised his rifle.

She dropped to her knees as the shot parted her hair. 'Rude,' she said. 'Another business deal gone sour.' She whipped the bow off her back, notched an arrow and fired, but the Grey Ark had shrunk behind the huge woman and the arrow buried itself in her leg. The woman did not cry out, but tore the arrow out and crunched it in her hands. She began to lumber up the hill.

'Kill her,' the bald man said.

'What do you think we're trying to do?' the Grey Ark spat, as he took another shot from behind the form of the approaching barbarian.

She felt a sting, like that of a dagfly, as the bullet cut along the side of her arm. It wasn't deep enough to give her pause, not when her adrenaline was up.

'Sstay sstill, whore,' the Grey Ark hissed, reloading.

'Why you little fucking bogey,' she said, falling to one knee and firing an arrow that slipped under the armpit of the woman-hulk and knocked the Grey Ark's rifle from his hands. 'I wipe my fucking shoes on things like you.' She notched another arrow and sent it flying towards the imminent arrival of the barbarian, towards the exposed neck.

The arrow bounced off and fell to the grass.

'Right, well, fuck,' Sav said. 'Time for a tactical fucking retreat. Let's go and say hello to my little friends.'

## SIXTEEN

The sky was furious and black, boiling over with the weight of all that rain. The moon looked like somebody had spat on it. On the ground thunderbugs crawled over each other in their black masses, carapaces shining as blue lightning cracked the sky.

Jay peered through the veil of rain as a figure emerged from the darkness, running towards them. He hoisted his rifle but Dol Sander put his hand on the barrel and lowered it.

'It's Savvi,' Dol Sander said.

She didn't stop when she got to them. 'Get the boat out,' she said, and by the tone in her voice and the look in her eyes they all ran as one to the shoreline of the lake. They pushed it out and jumped in one by one. The tiger was first, the water pouring off his fur. Dol Sander was the last to jump in, wading through the shallows and sliding over the rim of the boat as Alexia and Jay pulled on the oars.

'What happened?' Jay asked in between breaths. Savvi didn't reply, but he didn't need her to. Framed against the hillside were three figures.

One was man sized, the other smaller, the third was a bulk, some huge man or monster. Jay couldn't make out their features; their bodies were lost in a stormy haze.

They started moving, running. The big figure lumbered like some kind of troll, the man loped stiffly, unnaturally, as though unused to human movement. The small figure moved . . . Jay didn't know quite how to describe it, but it gave him the chills. It raised something in the air and Jay's oar splintered close to his hands.

'Oh fuck,' Jay said.

Savvi shoved him out the way and took the oar as Jay sprawled in the boat. He raised his head only for a bullet to catch the tip of his ear. He cried out and lay flat, cocking his rifle and balancing it on the edge of the boat. The rain was soaking his vision and he could barely see.

A lightning flash lit up the scene. They had pulled themselves out onto the lake, but at the shoreline were the three figures, almost clear in that instant. There was a thin, bald man standing tall next to a slimy thing . . . an old memory of Jay's surfaced and he knew the creature was a Grey Ark. He had fought them, long ago. Both the man and the Grey Ark were shooting at them. Even through the stormy night and the sheets of rain pebble-dashing the lake their accuracy was far too close to comfort.

The third figure was big and bulging, skin reflecting no light, huge muscles under leather armour. It had four arrows stuck in it, and it was moving along down the shore, away from the others. But it wasn't a man.

Jay looked with eyes just above the rim of the boat to where the hulk was headed, and saw another boat tied further down the shore. _They don't plan to wait for our return,_ he thought. _They want to take us right now._

A gunshot right by his ear alerted him to Dol Sander firing back at their attackers. Jay looked down the sights of his rifle and fired himself, at the Grey Ark, but the creature was too fast, nimbly dodging the shot like a spider. It raised its squid rifle again and fired in response, catching Dol Sander's hat. He picked it up and put it back on his head and resumed shooting, though at this range and murkiness his pistol had little hope.

Jay held his breath and after another snapshot of lightning pulled the trigger at the man on the bank this time, sure of success. But where the man was, suddenly he wasn't. The dodge had seemed so alien that Jay felt a shudder run over his neck.

Jay looked behind him and saw Savvi and Alexia as flat on the boat as they could go and still pull the oars; though they couldn't get them deep enough to go as fast as they needed they were still putting distance between themselves and the bank. Savvi was bleeding from her arm, but the downpour was washing the blood away as fast as it could come.

'Now's not the time to eye me up,' Savvi grunted. 'You've got a gun, use it.'

Jay turned around but Dol Sander had stopped firing and the gunshots from the man and the Grey Ark were hitting the side of the boat, and then only the water around them. Jay raised his head and saw through squinted, rain-plastered eyes the two of them lower their weapons. He scanned his view to the hulk who had reached the other boat.

'You shot that beast four times,' Jay said, as Savvi and then Alexia sat up higher and dipped the oars lower in the water.

'Six times,' replied Savvi. 'Six fucking arrows. The first one she pulled out. The second one just bounced off. She's got skin like rock.'

'That's why you ran,' Dol Sander said.

'That's what you do,' Savvi replied, as they skidded across the water towards the centre of the lake. 'No sense being a martyr. Heroes don't live as long as me.'

*

They crashed through the water and onto the island as the rain chattered on the stones. Jay dropped to his knee and hefted his rifle, but there was a swirling white mist wrapped around the shoreline and he couldn't see the second boat. Savvi grabbed a hold of his collar and dragged him away, and he stumbled after the others further up the stony shore.

They crouched with their backs against sharp rocks, clutching their weapons in tight hands. The island in the middle of the lake was small and grey, entirely rock and scree. It was a dead place, devoid even of weeds and insects. There was only the sound of the rain.

'Did we wanna land here?' Jay said. His hair was soaked and sticking to his face. 'Couldn't we have kept going to the other side of the lake?'

'In case you weren't paying attention,' Savvi said, 'the currents pulled us in.'

'Currents? On a lake?'

'Something pulled us towards it. And the others would have caught us up, too.'

'Well. Now what?'

'There.' Dol Sander pointed. Jay's eyes followed the finger and saw a black gap among tall fallen stones. They were etched with symbols and words, but nothing that made any sense. There was only the feeling of something ancient and terrible. _Is it a warning? A curse, maybe? Or . . . a seal? To keep the inside out . . ._

Go to the Isle of Ghoum, and while away your doom.

'What's there?' Jay said, after a moment.

'We need to go into the island.'

'You have to be kidding me,' Alexia said, wiping the rain from her brow and shivering.

'We are not going in there,' Savvi added. 'Unless we want to die.'

'We'll die out here,' Jay said.

'This place is doom, Jay,' Savvi said. 'You don't understand. We need to leave and we need to leave now.' The sight of the gap in the stones seemed to have affected her, and for the first time Jay saw Savvi afraid.

'What about the currents?' Jay said.

'Fuck the currents. Fuck all of you.'

'Let's take the boat to the other side of the island and set off again,' Alexia suggested. 'Head to the opposite end of the lake.'

'We won't get the damn boat off the island before they're on us!' Jay shouted. 'We ain't got time for this! You saw that monster, we can't go toe to toe with that _and_ be gettin shot at. Our weapons won't be enough, not before we're dead.'

Dol Sander put his hand up and they looked into his pearl black eyes. 'We can lose them in the tunnels. In the tombs. They will be loud, and we will be silent. We will move in the darkness. They will attract all the attention, and we will move through the place like ghosts. We will come back out and they will stay, hopefully forever.'

'This is insane. We'll be blind as fucking _nizzocks_ down there,' Savvi said.

'I can see in the dark,' Dol Sander replied. 'I will guide you.'

'This is a really bad idea,' Alexia said.

'I can hear the oars,' Jay said. 'We got to go now. _NOW!_ ' He ran to the opening in the rocks. Up close, it looked like a broken and tumbled down archway. He crouched, then fell aside as the tiger bounded past him and slipped into blackness.

Jay looked back at them. 'Well there you go. Last one's in a chicken.' He crawled into the hole.

'Fuck fuck fuck. _Fuck_ ,' Savvi said.

'He doesn't understand.' Alexia shook her head. 'He doesn't know what he's going into.'

'I will guide you,' Dol Sander said again, getting to his knees.

'What the fuck's a chicken?' Savvi said.

*

'No,' Fist said.

'We're not going in there,' Skrist said.

'Yes you are,' said the man with the green eyes.

'No,' Fist said again.

'How about we just kill you, take the rest of your money and leave?'

'You think I'd keep all the money on my person? Half on completion, and that half is back in Appalia, very well hidden. Nobody knows where it is but me. And before you think of it, torture would not get me to say anything at all. That's if you could even take me alive, which is doubtful.'

Skrist cursed. 'Thiss iss a place of doom.'

'I don't care. For what I'm paying you, you will enter Hell itself.'

'It'ss not far off.'

'Too small,' Fist said. She was looking at the gap through which their quarry had entered.

'Then make it bigger. Or are you not as strong as you appear?'

Fist grunted and heaved her weight at the rocks. Veins rose to the surface of her skin as the fallen tombstones began to shift.

The man with the green eyes looked at the markings with mild interest. 'Tell me, what is so terrible about this place?'

Skrist shivered as he stared into the blackness, where the rain-dashed moonlight touched the first of the steps leading down. 'Thiss iss the home of the ghoumss,' he said.

*

'How far down we going?!' Jay protested.

At first they'd trotted down the stairs, but all too quickly, as total blackness enveloped them, this proved impossible to keep up. Dol Sander had passed Jay and was in front with the tiger, but his night vision was little help to the others in navigating steps in a hurry. They reached out blindly with their feet, hoping each time that there would be something to meet them, and not some bottomless pit. Every so often Dol Sander would whisper to them of taller or shorter steps, and would watch out for them (or so he said, they had no idea) to make sure they didn't stumble.

'I forgot to say. No guns,' Dol Sander said, as they descended. 'Not ever, not until we are off this island. They are far too loud.'

'No guns, great,' Jay replied. 'Who are we fightin?'

'Nobody at all, if we can help it. But if our nightmares do come true . . . it's blades only. And Savvi's arrows, perhaps.'

'As if I could shoot a damn thing now.'

'Go by sound. Prove your skill. Or just use your blades.'

Savvi sniffed and didn't reply.

'I'm the one that should be complaining,' Alexia said. 'Without a gun I've got nothing.'

'I'll protect you,' Jay said.

'Excellent,' Alexia replied. 'A damsel in distress, just like I always wanted to be.'

'Isn't he sweet?' Savvi said. 'What a fuckhead.'

'He tries, bless him. But seriously, what am I going to do? Shout at them until they leave me alone?'

'No shouting!' Dol Sander said.

'Kick them in the balls, princess.'

'Whose balls are we kickin?' Jay said.

'We are not kicking any balls,' Dol Sander replied.

'Then whose balls ain't we kickin?'

'Shut up Jay, before I push you down the stairs,' Alexia said.

When their legs were aching and Jay was about to begin some serious complaining, Dol Sander called from ahead that he had reached the bottom. 'Finally!' Jay said, but Dol Sander hushed him, and his relief was quickly squashed.

'We must be as quiet as the grave,' Dol Sander told them, when all their feet were on flat ground. 'Nothing must know we are here. We are shadows. We are the rocks. If you hear something, stop dead. If I touch you on the arm, stop dead. I will be your eyes. I will be your first and last warning.'

'Thanks for the pep talk Dol,' Jay whispered. 'I'm suddenly real confident. What the hell _is_ this place? What's down here? Dol Sander, if you touch me on the arm in pitch blackness I'm liable to kill you, that's if I don't have a heart attack.'

'Stop whining,' Alexia said. 'You wanted to do this. We're all scared, talking about it isn't going to make that go away.'

'Everybody shut the fuck up,' Savvi hissed through gritted teeth. 'I cannot _believe_ I am down here. I should have never stayed in your company. I should have known two Jay Wulfs together could only bring doom.'

'Doom, doom,' Jay said. 'I keep hearin about doom. Put some bright lights up, some couches and pictures on the walls, and I bet this place would look lovely.'

'Jay,' Dol Sander said, suddenly very close to him. 'Some places, their history is forgotten deliberately. This is Old Ghoum. The beginning. People do not want to remember such things. Now it is more dark myth than fact, but it is real. Do not ask more questions. Know merely that I fear there are still creatures living down here, perhaps very many of them. The _ghoums_. They were the First Ones. Let us hope we do not see one.

'Now, all of you listen. You must all speak only when absolutely essential, and then as low as you can. I do not say that lightly. If you feel my touch, again, do not move, do not speak, do not even breathe if you can hold it.'

'Like Jay said, how do we know it will be you touching us and not a ghoum?' Alexia said, a shiver in her voice.

'A ghoum will not be so gentle. No more questions.'

'Will they not be able to see in the dark too, if they live down here?' Savvi said. 'We'll be walking dinner.'

'I believe, given their permanent environment, these creatures will be blind. Their ears will have evolved to be their primary, perhaps only means of detection.'

'You believe.'

'Yes. _No. More. Questions._ Even as I speak, our hunters will be coming down the stairs. The big one, I hope, will gather any attention there is to be gathered. The Grey Ark can see in the dark like myself, and perhaps the man too. But then, they do not have a Duna with them. We must go. Now. Walk lightly, with your hands on the shoulder of whoever is before you. I will lead, of course. The tiger is the only one who will not depend entirely on me.'

'I really do not like this,' Savvi said. 'I do not rely on people.'

'You do now.'

'I want to be outside. Right now.'

'The quickest way to get there, short of fighting three deadly opponents – one near invulnerable – on the stairs in pitch black, is to do what I say. Now, hand on my shoulder, like that, now . . . _go_.'

'Whose hand is that?'

'Mine.'

'I hate you Jay.'

'Why me?!'

'Do you _still_ need to ask that?'

'That your hand Alexia?'

'No, I'm a ghoum, pretending to be Alexia. I'm about to eat your face!'

'Please don't joke about that.'

'If you two lovebirds back there don't shut the fuck up _I'm_ going to eat your faces.'

'This is like leading children,' Dol Sander said. 'We are all going to die.'

*

'I do not like thiss,' Skrist muttered, as he sat on Fist's shoulders, guiding her along the tunnels. Fist had not said a word since they had taken the first steps down.

'You are not paid to like it. I can see this place as you can, and I am not afraid. I have traversed worse.'

'You do not know our legendss of thiss place.'

'Superstitions for a superstitious world.'

'And where are you from then? The Blue Waste?'

'I am not from anywhere you know of. This is not a time for chatter. Are we still on their trail?'

'Yess. But death iss all around uss. I smell it. We should have waited for them to come out.'

'And if they didn't?'

'Then they die.'

'As I told you, I want the Rathian alive. The tiger is non-essential but preferred captured alive. The others can die. Her Direction can be mended in their wake.'

'It'ss going to be hard to take him alive. He iss a born warrior.'

'Then wound him. I did not say he had to be in one piece.'

*

'This place is worse than Moria,' Jay murmured, as he ran his left arm along the wall, feeling the cracks with his fingers. His right arm gripped Savvi's shoulder, after enough of her attempts trying to shake him off.

'You've done something like this before?' Alexia said behind him.

'Well, no. I just read about it. Never mind.'

'Unnecessary conversation,' Dol Sander said, for what seemed like the hundredth time. 'Stop talking.' His voice was starting to sound irritated.

They were all silent for another long stretch, but it was agonising. _At least the blind get to know their environment, find familiarity_ , Jay thought. _They don't journey deep underground with potential vicious monsters watching them from every nook and cranny. I don't even know what to expect of them. What if they're gigantic? What if . . . oh shit, what if the wall I'm touching now is its_ back _?_

Jay was already certain that this was the worst time he'd had since he'd first woken up on this world, and one of the worst overall in both his lives. It was the no-talking rule that made it so much worse. There was no lightening of the spirits, just a steady march into oblivion. He only retained his sanity – or let it slip away, depending on perspective – by talking to himself in his head. Without sight or sound, it was the only place that still seemed to be halfway working. The only place to retreat to.

Just imagine you're walkin through a beautiful corridor in a goddamn luxurious mansion with your eyes closed. It's got carpets . . . chandeliers . . . the works. Is that the kind of fancy soft shit you like?

But my eyes aren't closed.

Then close 'em.

No fucking way.

Then imagine the lights are turned off.

Why aren't I turning the lights on?

The power's gone out.

This is starting to sound like a horror film. Like what's actually happening to me.

Alright. You're . . . It's a surprise party.

Surprise for who?

For you. Who the fuck you think.

For me? Wow.

That's goddamn right. All your friends are there.

Which friends?

Erm. Alright, Savvi and Alexia and Dol Sander are there.

Can Dol Sander not be there?

You don't like him?

I like him. But can this be a . . .

A girls only party.

You said it.

That's more like it. Maybe we're at . . . let's see what you got . . . Hugh Heffner's Playboy mansion? Hey, where is this place?

Another good idea. A little crude, but . . .

Oh fuck off. It's me you're talkin to. In your head you're free to think whatever the hell you want.

I'm free . . .

That's right, Jay. Now, in what states of undress are Savvi and Alexia? What are they up to? Let's think details, here.

Why are the lights still off?

Work with me here, for the love of god. There's only one sure way for you to combat this situation, and that's through mis-fuckin-guided horniness. Just so happens that's what I'm good at.

'Jay, stop touching my bottom,' Savvi said, interrupting his thoughts.

'I am not. I am not! Alexia, she's just —'

' _Unnecessary conversation.'_

*

Jay bumped into Savvi, and Alexia into him. Savvi had stopped.

'What's going on?' he said.

Nobody answered, and he felt a touch on his _other_ shoulder that, if he was a lesser man than he was now, would have made him piss himself. _It's Dol Sander. It's Dol Sander. He's telling you to shut up._

Jay listened. The blackness around him seemed to swallow all noise.

There it was. A slight slapping sound, like wet leather. He could not tell how close it was, only that it was to his right. Perhaps there was a passage that intersected with this one. Or maybe they were no longer in a passage at all, but standing in a vast hall. He had no way of knowing. Maybe Dol Sander was leading them past the sleeping quarters of hundreds of ghoums. The First Ones . . .

They stood frozen for what seemed like forever. Time as a measurable concept disintegrated, swallowed up by a bubble of empty night. His fingers dug into Savvi's shoulder, and Alexia's nails dug into his. He almost cried out loud when he felt something brush past his leg. _It's the tiger. It's the fuckin tiger. It's furry, it's the tiger. Why the fuck is the tiger movin? STOP MOVIN YOU FURRY FUCK!_

The scrabbling had disappeared into the distance, but still they were motionless. Eventually (and who knows how long it was in the end? An hour or a mere minute?) Dol Sander must have moved forward, for Savvi began to move also, and then they all were, a motley line of beings entirely out of their depth, walking on fear.

*

At first he thought he was imagining it, or that it was a trick of his vision. But no, there it was: light. It was very faint and low, but there was a green glow coming from up ahead. As they approached he began to make out the outlines of the others, and the hand he waved in front of his face. The relief was palpable, but it was not to last.

The glow came from the rocks, he found. Some luminescent mineral. It was still barely enough to see by, but that was enough. He felt Savvi's shoulders relax, and he let go. Alexia's hand fell away from him.

_Some kind of cave system_ , he thought at first, but as he looked around he saw the work of a fallen civilisation: sharp corners and smooth stones, crumbled doorways, pillars disappearing above them into oily heights. The glowing substance crawled and climbed over the place like weeds. _Maybe it's not a rock at all, maybe it's some imitative fungus. Either way I'm thankful._

He was reaching out to touch one when Dol Sander stopped in front of them, a dagger silently appearing in his hand. Jay looked past him and saw the ghoum.

It emerged from between two rocks with a slick, wet sound, its bald head bobbing from side to side like a moored boat. It shuffled closer, each of them holding their breath, staring directly at it or straight ahead in fixed terror. Jay was the former; he couldn't keep his eyes off the creature. Dol Sander was right: it had no eyes, and only a small slit for a nose, but its ears were like deep gills cut into the sides of its face, and they seemed to tremble in the glowing darkness.

Its entire body was thin and fleshy, skin stretched over wasted muscles. Its hands and feet webbed, extended arms hanging loosely at its side. The way it moved seemed almost boneless.

Jay didn't know what sound alerted it; someone must have breathed. Its head jerked up and it flopped, slopped towards them with a terrifying burst in speed. Its mouth yawned open displaying dripping gums and hundreds of needle-like teeth.

Everybody's hands went to their weapons, but Dol Sander got there first. He flashed forward and the creature's neck split open. Thick goo oozed out and the creature dropped – but not before it had made a hollow, reverberating groan, a disgusting _oooooom_ noise that seemed cavernous.

_Oooom_ , came the replies. _Oooom. Ooooom._

'Where are they coming from?!' Alexia cried. 'It's everywhere!'

Ooooooom.

'Silence, Alexia!' Dol Sander said, his thin sword now clutched in his hand.

'Too late now,' Savvi said. 'They've found us.'

'It's never too –' Dol Sander started, but ducked as a pillar shattered by his head. If the creature's dying call had seemed loud, the gunshot that boomed and echoed could have filled the world. It temporarily drowned out the ghoum calls, but as it faded they returned, tripled in number and in intensity.

'Who the fuck was . . . It's them!' Dol Sander exclaimed, and they all turned with him to face what was behind.

'Think they'll band together with us against the ghoums?' Jay said. He reached for his rifle but Dol Sander put his arm out and stopped him, dragging Jay to behind the pillar where Savvi and Alexia had darted. The tiger was already there, Alexia aggressively stroking his back, more likely for her comfort than his.

'What do you think?' Savvi said, hoisting her bow.

'This is good,' Dol Sander said. 'No, it is. They will summon the ghoums. This was the plan. I had just hoped we would not have been with them at the time.'

'So what, we run and hide?'

'How quietly can you run?'

'Never measured. You?'

They heard now a _thum-thum-thum_ , and knew it as the hulk loping towards them, picking up speed with the single-minded force of a battering ram.

'Everybody,' Dol Sander said. 'Run and hide. In my general direction. _Go_!'

'Ghoums versus bad guys,' Jay said, in between breaths as he took off. 'Let's stay out of it.'

*

'They're getting away!' the man said.

'Let them go!' Skrist replied. 'We'll find them again, if we live through thiss! Lesss talk and —' he fired his squid rifle at a ghoum, bursting its head like soft fruit '— more shooting!'

The man fired shots at the slavering ghoums that rushed them. In front of them Fist was trying to hold back the tide, beating them to a pulp with huge hands. The monsters split and were squashed, sacks of skin like water balloons that first gnashed and then were pulverised.

'Weak!' Fist bellowed, with each punch. 'Soft! Weak!'

Oooom! Oooom!

'They're everywhere!' the man cried. 'The tunnels, the doorways – oh Mother, the ceiling! They're climbing down the pillars!'

*

Jay sliced a ghoum open from neck to waist, turning aside to catch another and tear through it with a sickening _slurrrt_. The tiger was at his feet, savaging two at once on the ground. Jay was dimly aware of Savvi to his left, fighting her way through three of the foul things, her knives flinging slime as she span.

'Keep going!' Dol Sander said, hurrying forward with Alexia at his side, thrusting through a ghoum that leaped with a high pitched _oooom_ out of the blackness above him. Alexia twisted away from the splash of gloop and in doing so caught another attacker creeping up on them with clawed arms outstretched. She kicked out with her foot and the ghoum's stomach ripped. Dol Sander finished it with a sword through the mouth.

'What did I say,' Savvi said, catching up with them. 'Kick them in the balls.'

The five of them ran, dodging and ducking from the clutches of ghoums that loomed out at them from the dark, cutting down any in their way.

'I thought,' Jay panted, 'that the ghoums were supposed to be going for the other guys?'

'Oh they are,' Dol Sander said. 'The gunshots are fainter, but they're still firing. Trust me, they're having the worst of it.'

'Lucky us. So do we want 'em to keep firin?'

'Yes we do. Until we're getting out of this place, and then we want them dead and buried.'

'Dead and eaten, more like,' Alexia said.

'Yes. The ghoums are cannibals. I saw them eat their dead. They must breed fast to have lived down here so long, and be their own food supply. But no more talk. Slow down everyone. They are not following us. Now is our chance to be shadows once more.'

'Where are you takin us?' Jay asked. 'You're leadin us away from the light . . .'

'And away from them, I believe.'

'Really not enjoying myself here,' Alexia said. 'Just wanted to say. From dead father to this. This is a bad time in my life.'

'I don't know which is better, light plus ghoums or no light at all and possibility of ghoums,' Jay said.

'Trust in me,' Dol Sander said.

'Great job so far,' Savvi replied.

'You're alive aren't you? Stop talking.'

'I'm glad you're tellin her and not me,' Jay said.

'Jay.'

'Shuttin up.'

*

_'_ Fist! FIST! _' Skrist screamed as ghoums crawled over his companion, sinking their teeth and claws in. Fist was throwing them off but only more came. They tugged and ate at her legs and she fell to her knees._

Skrist was shooting as fast as he could, but where one died three more appeared. Their thick blood and burst skin decorated the floor, the pillars and the walls.

The man who had took them on this fool's task moved quickly around the room, blasting with his gun, but concentrating only on himself. He seemed to be putting distance between himself and the masses that swarmed Fist.

_Skrist saw the man beckon at him. At first he didn't understand, but then he realised. 'He wantss me to leave her,' he murmured. 'No . . ._ No! _'_

Leave them to her, _the man was saying._ Save yourself.

'Weak! Soft!' Fist's cries were muffled now, and drained of energy.

'Keep killing them!' Skrist cried. 'We can kill them all! You are invincible my friend!'

A ghoum flew past him shrieking as Fist flung it off her back, but two more fell from above and tore into her neck and face. Her eyeball was plucked out and swallowed before the ghoum was ripped in half.

_'_ FIST! _'_

_' Weak . . ._ _Soft . . . Too late . . . for me. Skrist.'_

*

He shuffled with his feet like an old blind man to a suitably smooth enough patch of ground to lie down. His fingers dancing over his knife, expecting at any moment for his outstretched hand to touch the sickly skin of a ghoum.

'Hey!'

'Fuck, you nearly gave me a heart attack,' Jay whispered, catching himself from stumbling over Alexia's legs. 'I can't find a place to lie down. Are you on a blanket?'

'Yes. Do you want to share?'

'Yes. Please.'

'Then lie down you fool.'

He lay down carefully next to Alexia, at first on his back, and then he turned until he was facing her, smelling her hair. He closed his eyes, not that it made any difference.

After a minute he became aware that she was pressing against him from behind. He put a hand out and down, in the approximate position of her waist. She responded by slowly moving against him. _Is she grinding me_? He put his hand round her stomach and pulled her closer, spooning her.

There was the lightest of movements around his legs, and a shifting of Alexia's body, and as he moved his hand down he was surprised to feel cold skin. She had pulled her dress up. And whatever it was she wore under it – he moved his hand along her legs – that had been pulled down.

He had already removed his belt when he'd lain next to her, and now he tugged his pants down, not anywhere nearly as smoothly or silently as Alexia. He ran his hand over her ass, shivering in cool delight at the feel of her, and then used his fingers to find his destination. He took himself in his hand and pushed against her. He shifted, and rubbed, and he teased, and finally he entered.

They ground back and forth, both of them trying to control their breathing, but every so often a small moan would slip from Alexia's mouth, and he would bite his lip and roll his eyes back, pulling her further against him. _In absolute darkness, amongst the worst of dangers, this is the best feeling in mind and body I have ever had. In_ either _of my lives._

He wanted to tell her how amazing she felt – inside and outside – but he held back, rubbing his hand in circles against her soft stomach.

'Are you two actually _having sex_?' Savvi's harsh whisper cut through to them. They froze.

'. . . No. Alexia?'

'No. Not even a little bit. That doesn't sound like me at all.'

'Fuck me dead,' Savvi said. 'We're in pitch blackness hundreds of feet underground, where the slightest noise could summon a horde of flesh-eating monsters, who may well be creeping up on us right this second, and you two pick _this moment_ to decide to fuck each other.'

'I'd say that was pretty bang on,' Alexia said. She ground her hips back against Jay, who grunted. 'Jay, be quiet.'

'I hope you both die,' Savvi said.

They waited a few moments. 'Are you gone?' Jay whispered. There was no reply. 'Do you think she's gone?' he asked Alexia.

'I have no idea. She can be very quiet when she wants to be, can't she?'

'She might still be watchin us.'

'It's pitch black. It's only from you talking that I know you're not Dol Sander.'

'I hope he wouldn't try doing what I'm doing. What if Savvi's right in front of us listenin?'

'You'd like that wouldn't you. I felt that. You just got harder.'

'I fuckin did not. Shut up.'

'Make me.'

He moved his hand from her waist and held it against her mouth. She bit his finger, and he let her.

*

He woke up not knowing if his eyes were open or closed. He had to blink several times to make sure. 'Alexia?' he said hesitantly, as he did up his belt. 'Dol?'

'Dol _Sander_ ,' said Dol Sander.

'Thank god. Thought I was alone for a second. Is everyone else awake?'

'We were just about to leave you,' Savvi said. 'But you had to go and wake up.'

'Charming. Who would you have to mock then?'

'I'm sure I could find some small rodent to replace you.'

'What about the tiger?'

'You leave Jay alone. _You_ were trying to replace _him_. We like him more than you.'

'He is nicer to stroke,' Alexia admitted.

'Hey, I didn't hear any complaints last night.'

'Everyone,' Dol Sander interrupted, sounding thoroughly weary. Jay wondered if he had been awake all night, keeping watch. _I sure hope he wasn't keeping watch on me and his young ward . . ._

'I am going to lead you out of here,' Dol Sander continued. 'I need you all to be patient, as I find a way. There will be dead ends, there will be retracing of steps, and in your visionless states it may seem like we are going nowhere but in circles for hours. Do not try and make sense of the direction. Again, trust in me for this last stretch. The going will be hard, as we must ascend a great height. Please do not joke. Do not speak. Do not test my own patience. I am tired, we are all tired. This place suffocates me like it does us all. But we _will_ see daylight again.'

There was silence from the others.

'You may thank me for the great speech,' Dol Sander said. 'As your last words for a long time.'

'Good speech Dol,' Jay said.

'I trust you Jerrens,' Alexia said.

'Clap clap,' Savvi said. 'Let's get on with it. First one to speak gets offered up as a ghoum sacrifice.'

Jay felt something pressed into his hand, and squeezed it to find out it was bread. He chewed it gratefully, suddenly aware of being half-starved. He swallowed as he put his hand on Alexia's shoulder, and with his free hand took his flask from his belt and drank. It was nearly empty. Perhaps it was good that they were surviving on so little. His hunger had sharpened his other senses, to the point that every bootfall, no matter how careful, seemed apt to raise another legion of monsters.

Then again, he felt the weakest that he'd been since Savvi stranded him in the Wastes. Hunger was one thing, but his head was muddled from dehydration, not to mention the oppressive, fetid and lightless surroundings. He couldn't help but look forward to the rare moments when the darkness ebbed in the face of a green glow, despite knowing how close the creatures might be. Light may have been a warning of a death too horrible to contemplate, but it was still light. It was a scrap of safety net in the clutches of growing insanity.

When cloaked back in the abyssal blanket, he imagined himself shuffling along like a ghoum himself, all of them ghoums. Perhaps they would never get out of this place; the days, weeks, years would pass and still they would be shuffling, dragging their feet, groaning and moaning, turning step by step into creatures of the underworld, deformed in body and mind.

He shook his head and tried to concentrate on what it would be like to leave this place. To see the violet sky again, the crimson sunset – _No, don't think of the night, think of the day._ _The sun. The grass. The sweet breeze._

Savvi's fantastic breasts.

Hey, you're back.

Never left.

You know I want to be with Alexia, right?

Let's not kid ourselves. You want many things.

She deserves a good man

Which you ain't.

I'm not going to get with Savvi.

Well, that's good, cause she ain't never gonna get with you neither.

I get the feeling you don't understand monogamy.

_Neither do you. Monogamy don't mean not wantin to fuck others. It means_ choosin _not to._

Then I choose Alexia.

We'll see. Watch out for the ghoums all around you. They're only a foot away. Dozens of them. Hundreds.

Fuck you.

It's pretty crazy how Dol Sander is leadin you right through their town hall. Like, don't he realise those ain't statues?

Can we go back to when you weren't being evil?

Let me think about fuckin Savvi, and maybe I'll leave you alone.

Fine.

Promise I won't tell Alexia.

Oh go away.

Make me.

Oh stop it. We're the same goddamn person. As long as we keep moving.

Just keep movin.

Just . . . keep moving.

Just keep . . . movin.

Moving. Ghouming. Ooooming.

Nobody is saying anythin.

We're actually listening to Dol Sander for once. Nobody wants to tempt fate. Not now we know the danger.

This is fun, ain't it?

I think this actually might be the worst time in my life. Death might be preferable if this keeps going on. I've never been so tense and afraid and hungry and thirsty and tired for so long. I feel like I might pass out.

Maybe you already have.

Maybe I already have.

Just keep ooooming.

That's the ticket. Man, those guys in those zombie movies never knew how good they had it. What I wouldn't give for a torch.

You think they'd feel the light passin over them? Why were they all by the green glowin shit? Maybe they can detect light?

Let's not think about ghoums anymore.

. . . Worst time in your life though? What about the time when . . . let's see here . . .

Stop going through my old memories!

Why not? Let's see . . . worse than the time Biff Tannen bullied you in front of the girl you loved? That sure was brutal.

. . . That was George McFly. Look, you're in the wrong part of my head.

Wait a second . . . time-travel?! Well, fuck me blind. Hey, what if you not only travelled to another world, what if you also travelled through time?

The distance I probably travelled would surely mean I moved in time too, right? If I moved instantly? I don't know, I didn't do physics at college.

Uh-huh. Well you're screwed whatever, really.

Yes yes yes yes yes.

Sooooooooooooooooo how about this Savvi?

ALRIGHT.

*

The air became steadily fresher as they trudged up the sloping tunnel. For a long time they didn't even notice. When they did, none of them dared get their hopes up; they barely acknowledged it to themselves. Hope had become a thing of dreams, nothing that could survive in this tomb. They lived a new existence, a ghoulish one of endless walking in an empty afterlife. Their minds floating and disembodied, detached from the pain of their feet and the static in their heads. All of their water was gone a lifetime ago; they sucked the moisture from the bread but even that had turned dry and crusty in this underworld.

It was only when Alexia jerked in front of him and cried out that the spell was broken.

'I can see!'

It wasn't an eerie, mucous glow this time; daylight had dripped its way down the tunnel until it was all but exhausted. They let go of each other and ran laughing forwards, ignoring the scream of their legs and the thump of their heads. Even Savvi was laughing. Only Dol Sander restrained himself, and in their excitement they ignored his pleas as they overtook him.

Oooom.

They looked back, the smiles slowly fading from their faces. Dol Sander pulled out his pistol and cocked it. 'Run, you fools.'

They took off, Jay and Alexia pulling out their own pistols, and Savvi holding her bow. Jay called upon his body with furious force and it obeyed; it obeyed with a gun in its hands and a sight to its eyes, drawing upon physical and mental strength from a reserve that had no right to exist and perhaps it didn't. He felt it as though it were the very seconds left to his life dragged out screaming. _Don't collapse,_ he thought. _Don't die. Nearly there. Don't die._

They saw daylight as they turned a corner, and their shouts died half-uttered as they saw the rubble that almost buried the exit. The light was coming from a dozen gaps but not one was big enough to take any of them. That is, except apparently for the tiger, who took one, almost apologetic look at them and then against all odds wriggled and clawed himself through, leaving them for the ghoums.

They stared at the spot where he vanished and for a moment none of them could think of anything to say.

'Don't blame him,' Savvi said at last. 'I'd have done the same.'

_Ooooom. Ooooom. Oooooom._ They heard the slopping patter of many feet running towards them, echoing up the tunnel and multiplying to a sound like thunderous rain.

'Miss Slade,' Dol Sander said quickly. 'You must move these rocks. Free our escape.'

'What? Why me? I can't do that on my own!'

'We will need to hold them off for as long as we can. You are the worst shot, no offense intended. And this is a job for guns.'

'And bows,' Savvi said. 'I'm better than the both of you.'

'Arguable,' Dol Sander said. 'But now is the opportunity to prove yourself.' He raised his gun and aimed down the passage, and Jay and Savvi raised their weapons and took up positions on either side.

'Can't any of you help me?' Alexia said, a note of plea in her voice.

'We will if we can,' Dol Sander replied. 'But I fear it will need all three of us shooting to hold them back. If they get on top of us, it is over. They will not cease. They will swarm over us in their thousands. You can _do_ this Miss Slade. I believe in you.'

'I don't believe in me. I am exhausted and weaker than I've ever been in my life.'

'No. You are strong. And you will save all our lives.'

Oooooooooooooom.

The ghoums came into view, white and emaciated with flapping skin and huge mouths like sharks. They rubbed shoulders with each other in their frenzy, packing the width of the tunnel, and the skin peeling off like wet tissue.

The weight's off.

What?!

Your pistols are fuckin empty!

_Fuck!_

Rifle, now!

Fuckfuckfuckfuck

COCK

Dol Sander was the first to fire, Jay and Savvi a second later firing their shell and arrow in unison. Three ghoums burst and fell, and the tide rolled on.

Then, it was madness.

*

Jay's ears rang with the gunshots that thundered continuously. _Lucky if I ain't deaf after this_ , he figured as he fired again and again. Beside him Dol Sander was reloading at speed, and Savvi was notching and releasing arrows quicker than he thought was humanly possible.

The ghoums were stumbling over their fallen brethren, making Jay's job both easier and harder; rather than miss a shot, he aimed for those two lines back, to further the chaos. Increasingly, though, they fired at the monsters as a single, writhing mass, for as they pressed and surged it seemed impossible _not_ to hit something.

The tide was faltering, but bullets and arrows couldn't last forever.

'Princess!' Savvi yelled over the din. 'Tell me you're nearly done!'

'Almost!' Alexia panted. 'These rocks are fucking heavy! And don't fucking call me princess!'

'Such language,' Savvi said, putting an arrow through a ghoum's eye. 'Wherever did she learn it.'

A silver pistol appeared to the side of Jay's head. He jerked back as it fired, and watched in ringing horror as a creature tumbled from the ceiling before him.

'I'm done,' Alexia said, raising the gun.

Jay looked up, his hands on autopilot reloading. 'God, they're above us! They're fuckin crawlin up there! Oh god. Oh fuck. Look at 'em! This is worse than . . .' He had a horrible flash of the movie _Trainspotting_ , that baby crawling across the ceiling . . .

'Less talky, more shooty,' Savvi said, stringing arrows and sending ghoums tumbling, moaning to the floor.

Dol Sander glanced behind him at the gap as he thumbed the trigger in front of him. 'It's not big enough, Miss Slade.'

'That's what she – _fuck!_ ' Jay yelped as he shot down a ghoum point blank that had leaped out at him. _Don't just look at the ceilin! Now you got brain pulp in your hair!_

'How is it not big enough?' Alexia shouted. 'Hands and knees, everyone can fit!'

'Whoever goes last will die,' replied Dol Sander.

'They'll get their ass torn out,' Savvi added.

'We need an exit we can run out of. Ideally backwards.'

'Right, right,' Alexia said, firing again. 'I'm on it.'

'Rock 'n roll,' Jay said. _Friendly fuckin reminder: if you ever get out of here, get ammo for your fuckin pistols. This ain't a job for a rifle no more. This is a goddamn liability._

Dol Sander was reloading, and in the gaps between Jay's rifle shots they could hear Alexia's throaty groan, rising in volume as she put her back into a boulder.

'Didn't hear her make those kind of noises when she was with you,' Savvi said. 'I think the rocks are giving her more pleasure.'

Jay ignored her, concentrating on not dying. Which, second by fragile second, seemed increasingly unlikely. He could smell the monsters' foul breath, see in grotesque detail every wet bubble and crease of their skin. They slapped and slithered forward across ground, walls and ceiling. It seemed to be only the light streaming in from the gap in the rocks that was making them slow; the closest ones, only a few feet from him now, visibly shrinking from it despite their apparent blindness. Nonetheless, the distance was closing, and before half a minute was up they would be swarmed.

There was a crash behind them, accompanied by a brightening, and an exultant, exhausted cry. 'Come on!' Alexia yelled. 'Everyone out!'

'Lead the way!' Dol Sander called back, but she was already gone. The three of them backed up.

_Ooooooooooom_! The ghoums moaned as the light stung their skin.

'Keep my ass safe!' Savvi said, turning and sprinting away.

'Go Jay,' Dol Sander said, continuing to shoot. 'I'll be right after you.'

Jay didn't even hesitate. He didn't think on it, but all he cared about right then and there was his own survival, getting out in the open. Dol Sander, Savvi, hell, even Alexia be damned. He wanted out. A return to the sun, and an end to the nightmare.

The light stunned him. He span back around to face the rocks, to cover Dol Sander, but he was living in a world of white. His eyes watered and everything was blurred. He was only vaguely aware of Savvi and Alexia at his side, pistol cocked and bow drawn and both of them pointed like quivering statues.

For one precious second there was nothing.

Then Dol Sander burst out into the fading world – but still such a rich, colourful world, such a beautiful . . . grey, miserable island, but still . . . _alive_ . . . And the _wind_ . . .

'They won't follow,' Dol Sander breathed. 'They won't come out in the day. Still . . . weapons close at hand.' His face was silver in the gleam of the sun, a sun that he took and twinned and kept in his eyes as brilliant white stones. Hair like snow swept across his face in the breeze as he looked at them.

'Kept my hat on,' he said. 'The whole time.' He smiled at them then, a huge lovely grin of perfect teeth, and Jay put out his arm and steadied him as he stumbled.

'Thank you Dol Sander Jerrens,' Alexia said. 'You have saved us all.'

'Yes. Thank you,' Jay said. 'The nightmare is over.'

'Probably shouldn't have led us in there to begin with,' Savvi noted. 'But . . . remind me to buy you a drink.'

'I'll do just that,' Dol Sander said. He took a deep breath and let it out in an exhausted sigh. 'Let's not celebrate yet. For all we know our original pursuers are hot on our heels.'

'Then they'll have an army of ghoums to get through,' Alexia said.

'Come on. To the boats.'

'Did you say _back, back, foul demons, spawn of evil_ , before you left?' Jay asked, as they walked across the stones, swaying like drunks in the pale day. 'I'm sure I heard it.'

'I'm afraid I forgot.'

'What about _go back to the darkness from whence you came_!'

'That too, slipped my mind.'

'Surely you managed at least a _you shall not pass_!'

'I feel I have disappointed you.'

'It's nothin,' Jay said, taking him by the arm as Dol Sander stumbled again. 'You did good.'

'I am glad.'

They caught up with Savvi and Alexi, sitting in the boat, with the tiger sprawled out next to them. Savvi was gulping water from the lake. Alexia was flat on her back. Next to the boat was . . .

'The idiots,' Jay said.

'Only left their boat right next to ours, didn't they?' Savvi said, grinning. 'Do you two want to take that one?'

'I reckon we just might. Even though I feel like I'm gonna collapse any second.' Jay knelt down to fill his flask, not caring if the lake water was bad to drink. It was still water. _But can I get back up again?_

'Savvi . . .'

'Don't worry, princess,' Savvi said, ruffling her hair. 'I'll do the rowing. You close your eyes and have a nice sleep.'

'Much . . . appreciated.' Alexia yawned.

'Get out the fucking boat first fatty, I'm not pushing the boat _and_ you to the water.'

'Now you're _definitely_ rowing. And I'm going to be difficult the whole . . . way . . . there . . .'

'You'll be asleep is what you'll be.'

'I'll row too,' Jay said to Dol Sander. 'You rest.'

'Thank you Jay. I feel I might be a little beyond myself.'

'As a heads up, if I stop in the middle of the lake, it'll only be because I passed out.'

'That'll make two of us I believe.'

Jay looked behind him as he pushed the boat out into the water. 'You know, I almost feel bad for 'em.'
'They took the boat,' the man said.

'I hope you can swim well,' Skrist said. 'Then again, the thingss that might be in that water . . .'

'You must wait here with me.'

'For what? And why would I? I could swim out of here and leave you to be eaten by those monsterss come nightfall.'

'You want your money don't you?'

'You left Fist to die. Three yearss we had been together. And you left her.'

'And so did you.'

'You made me. You . . . you took uss down there . . . into that horror. For what? We could have all died. Death iss not worth any amount of money.'

'You want to go through all that and not get what you're owed? What would Fist want you to do?'

'Nothing anymore. The dead don't want thingss.'

'She was brave and fierce and she sacrificed herself for you.'

_Skrist's hands balled into fists. 'Do not speak such wordss when they are so hollow. You led her to a slaughter._ You _sacrificed her. For yourself.'_

'Wait here with me.'

'For what?'

The man turned away and closed his green eyes. 'Reporting in. Servant XA9123.'

'Speak, Servant.'

'The subject has temporarily escaped, sir. We are pursuing. But we need assistance.'

'Assistance with what?'

'We are . . . stuck, sir. On an island in the middle of Lake Ghoum.'

'Disappointing.'

'Yes, sir. Have you pinpointed my location?'

'Yes. I will notify the nearest agent to find and direct a boat towards your position.'

'Thank you sir. Will I have direct contact with this agent? An ally would benefit my Direction.'

'No, you will not. Their orders stay the same. They watch, they report. Are you telling me you cannot do this alone?'

'No, sir. I can do it. Please tell the agent to tell the boat-keeper that I will pay ten times the rate for coming to the Isle of Ghoum. They fear it, sir.'

'Noted. Is that all?'

'Yes, sir. Thank you sir.'

'See that you do not fail. Or you will be replaced.'

There was a click, and silence came once more in his head. He turned back to the Grey Ark.

'We wait,' he said.

## SEVENTEEN

'Just let me die,' Jay groaned, his face in the grass.

'We need . . . we need to get the horses back,' Dol Sander murmured for the second time. 'Can't . . . waste time.'

'Let us sleep Jerrens,' Alexia said. 'Just for a few hours. They don't even have a boat. They're stranded.'

'They might swim. We must get far away . . .'

'We can't do anything in this state. Least of all you. Look at yourself, you can barely keep your eyes open. Savvi's already asleep.' Alexia gestured to her side, where Savvi had her arm wrapped around the tiger, both of them snoring away. 'And we took their boat.'

'Two hours,' Dol Sander sighed. 'Two hours . . . then we make up for . . . time . . . lost.' He closed his eyes and fell still.

'I thought he'd never stop,' Jay said. 'My ass two hours.' He yawned, and pure, crippling exhaustion shuddered through him. He meant to say something to Alexia, but there was a drowning sensation, and a blackening of the world, and he fell back and was pulled under.

*

Six hours later, and they rose up in the night at the prodding insistence of Dol Sander, and walked like the dead after him, out of their hiding place and back to Doul. Their eyes barely opened, their limbs creaked in protest. For a while Jay and Alexia were wincing with every step, until their bodies warmed up and accepted the prolonged torture. Waking at this time felt for a brief, horrible window like waking back in the underworld, if not for the gaze of the moon and stars.

Jay was too tired to even complain. And when he thought about it, he felt proud that Alexia was doing so well, given that in all likelihood she was suffering the most. The rest of them were lifetime warriors and survivalists, with the tough experiences and physical conditioning to go with it (despite Jay's bad habits of old letting him down). Alexia was a rich man's daughter, and she had not only braved the horrors of Old Ghoum, but was up with the rest of them and, if not holding her head high exactly, she was at least maintaining a forward momentum.

'I hope Khyber is okay,' Jay mumbled, as the lights of Doul neared. It was the first thing anybody had said since they'd set off. 'If they've sold him or – or whatever . . .'

'He'll be fine,' Alexia said. 'He's probably already impregnated Lander and is raising a horse family.'

'That's the last thing we need right now. Bad Khyber.'

'How are we gonna get them back?' Savvi said. 'Also, what the fuck am I doing? I don't need a horse. Why am I still here?'

'I don't think any of us can answer that, Savvi,' Dol Sander replied. 'Maybe you actually like us? Who knows. As for the horses, _we_ are not going to get them back. Alexia is.'

'Break and enter, honey,' Alexia said. 'Bit of an expert here, no lie.'

'And how is she gonna do that? Anything of use gotta be in those saddlebags of yours. And _someone_ thought it'd be a clever fucking idea to leave them with the horses.'

'If you thought I was going to be carrying them all this way . . . no. But they'll have taken them I guess by now.'

'I don't know,' Jay said. 'I bet Khy wouldn't let them. Come to think of it, I bet nobody's even got near him yet.'

'Maybe they just killed him,' Savvi said.

'Nobody kills Khyber. Look at him. The price you'd get.'

'Anyway,' Alexia said. 'I don't need what's in the bags. I've been breaking out of my room since I was nine.'

'For the record,' Savvi said, 'that's not breaking _in_. It's not exactly master burglary. It's just being a brat.'

'Whatever. I saw that stables lock. It's old and near useless. I can pick that lock with anything, with a splinter.'

'Off you go then.'

Alexia rolled her eyes and left them sitting outside the town. When Jay next looked up she had disappeared from sight, and he struggled not to sink his head down onto his knees, knowing how little he'd want to be roused a second time, especially if Alexia was caught and they needed a quick exit.

He shuffled on his knees across to the tiger, which was lying in the grass alone, eyes shining in the dark. 'Hey,' he said.

The tiger glanced at him and made a low rumble in his throat. It didn't seem a threatening sound; rather, it sounded kind of sad.

'Saved your own skin back there,' Jay said. 'Running out of that hole like that and leaving us behind.

'. . . Yeah, I know. Maybe I would have too if I had the chance. I know I've got you in me . . . or me in you . . . but maybe I'd have done it anyway even before I was Jay. Then again I guess I'd never have gone down into those tunnels in the first place. I think all of us had a whole lot of courage doing that. Courage and monumental stupidity. A fine line.'

Jay sighed. 'I'm sorry. I can't imagine how hard it is for you. I've . . . stolen everything from you. I'm reminded of it every time I catch myself talking like you, and not like . . . not like . . . I have so little grasp on who I really am anymore, who I used to be. Sometimes it feels like I've never been anything other than Jay Wulf. Jesus. I didn't play any part in it, you know that. I've lost everything too. But I guess I'm still a human, at least. There are a lot worse people to be than you, Jay Wulf.'

The tiger looked so forlorn just then that Jay couldn't resist but put his hand out and stroke the tiger's head. To his amazement the tiger let him. The furry black head sank to the paws and the eyes closed, not in tiredness, and assuredly not in contentment, but blocking out the world, shutting out what reality had done. Jay knew the feeling.

'Maybe we'll wake up one day, and it'll all be back to normal,' Jay murmured. _Do you even want that?_ came that familiar inner voice once again.

Jay moved his hand from the tiger's head down to the back, where he let it stay. _He'll protect you forever, you know._ _Short of savin himself._

He?

Me. He. I don't know. Make it all stop.

I wish I could.

No you don't.

I think . . . right now . . . I do.

*

The horses returned, Alexia leading them quietly out the town and to their position. No alarms were raised. Jay stroked Khyber's neck and they put their heads together as though in silent prayer. After sharing a quick bite between everyone from Lander's re-acquired saddlebags, Jay and Alexia mounted their steeds and led the company away from Doul, over hills and out of sight.

They travelled west to Stoneswell, with the lake a reappearing dismal presence on their right, every time hills dipped and trees thinned. Eventually those ethereal waters that spoke of past terror were entirely lost to them as the forest took them back in its clutches.

They kept to the road this time: now they knew their enemies, they knew they could not hide. If the Grey Ark was still alive, if their mission, whatever it was, was still on, and they had escaped from the Isle of Ghoum, then they would continue to be tracked by the best. Jay hoped that all three had perished down in the darkness. He had seen the thin bald man in the lightning flash in the pounding rain, and he knew that if the man was still alive he would not stop or stray from coming back to them and finishing his work.

Yes, the road was theirs, and while it dipped and wound around the twists and mounds of the forest, they could see further and clearer than any other route. This way, their hunters had the least chance of sneaking up on them (and yet, even with Dol Sander's rightly-paranoid guardianship, still a chance). They did not press their speed, not at risk of further exhausting themselves, but neither did they amble along. They camped by the side of the road; it was not completely uncommon to see other riders and carts doing the same, but they made no friends, and slept little. Distrust was thick with their regard to strangers, and their own spirits were seldom lighted. Jay's mind still felt trapped in those monstrous tunnels, and looking in the eyes of Alexia and Savvi he saw the same. In the day, the road was in sunlight for only a brief window of time before it fell back into shadow. The trees clamoured towards them, greedy and always whispering of hidden terrors. In the night it was awful. Once, Jay fell to the ground, dizzy and sick. At first Savvi half-heartedly mocked him, but then she too stopped and leaned against a tree, shaking her head, and later Alexia had to sit down and be calmed.

One morning they woke up and Savvi was gone. This was not something new to them, as she often took off hunting, or just for her own company, but she always came back. And yet the day passed, and then the night, and when they woke up under the leer of ugly boughs, sniffed at by an ambitious two-tail rodent, Savvi remained absent.

Her disappearance was barely mentioned. A depression and illness had stolen over the group. Dol Sander seemed the least affected, or perhaps he was simply staying strong for them. Even the tiger plodded with his head down, rarely bothering to look at the prey that passed pointedly before him, let alone pounce. Only the horses continued as before, saved as they had been from experiencing Ghoum's underworld.

They grew thin. Jay felt itchy and kept scratching himself, sometimes feeling like there were bugs in his clothes. He heard Alexia talking in distress in her sleep, in some forgotten dream language. He slept next to the tiger and Alexia next to him, united in protective hopelessness.

*

When the trees parted and the road opened out onto the high walls and chimneys of Stoneswell, spires sparkling under the brightest midday sun since Jay could remember, it was like coming out of a fog. They wandered a few steps, and then Jay dismounted off Khyber and sank to his knees. A tear stole to his eye and he looked at Alexia and smiled warmly and genuinely for the first time in what seemed to be the longest time. He reached out to her and she hugged him.

'Let's get in the city,' Dol Sander said. 'And then we can, if not relax and be safe, be at least as safe and relaxed as we could hope to be from now on, until we're sure we're not being followed anymore.'

Jay laughed. 'I bow in the face of your eternal optimism, Dol Sander.'

Alexia pinched him. 'I vote that we get in, get a room and a wash – best not stay at my father's house – and then go straight to the nearest tavern for as many drinks as we can drink while still standing, and then a few more.'

'Shit. At what point did you swap bodies with Savvi?'

'Ahem,' Alexia said, putting the tips of her fingers to her throat. 'My dear Wulf, there comes a few times in a lady's life where she truly needs, and indeed _deserves_ , to get utterly annihilated. This is one of those times.'

'Well, it sure sounds like a hell of a good idea to me. Speaking of Savvi, you think we'll see her again?'

'Of course we will. She's tied to us now, like it or lump it. She's like _alpits_ , she always comes back.'

'Alpits?'

'Sexually transferred parasites. These little critters, called —'

'Alright alright, wish I'd never asked.'

'Well, look after them, because you've got them now.'

'What?'

'Giant alpits, too,' Alexia said. 'Forming colonies in your pants. Give it time and they'll invent the wheel.'

'Oh har har.'

'We have fun.'

## EIGHTEEN

'Don't tell me Jerrens is _still_ sleeping,' Alexia said as Jay walked back to their table.

Jay shrugged. 'No answer to the door. Either he's still fast asleep, or he's gone back out the city to check on the tiger, make sure he ain't gettin himself into any more trouble.'

'Out the city? We've only just got here.'

'You know what, I bet he's just gone off for some alone time. Whatever entertainment a Duna serial killer might look for in this city. Whatever he's after, he's sure as hell earned it.'

'Don't call him that.'

'Call him what?'

'A serial killer. Don't call him it.'

'Alright. I'll get us some more drinks. Uh, d'you have any money?'

'Don't you have any?'

Jay checked. 'Oh. Yeah, I still got fifteen queens, but . . .'

'That's to last you the rest of your life.'

'Yeah.'

Alexia leaned back in her chair and slapped some coins on the table. 'Mine's a – a – anything purple looking. Oh, _redkurve and kafka_! Two of them. With a slice of white _lanom_.'

'Alright miss fancy pants.'

'Hey, I'm not wearing any pants.'

'Is that American pants or British pants? Tell me it's the latter.'

'I don't know the difference, but knowing your mind I can guess. This dress though, ah it's so nice to have a change of outfit! I felt _disgusting_ wearing that other one. And it used to look so nice!'

'You ain't thrown it out have you? Give it a wash and it'll be fine.'

'Jay, it was torn in at least four places. Including my ass.'

'That's why I liked it. It had character.'

'My ass had character, you mean.'

'Your ass always has character.'

'Go and get us drinks, you pervert.'

Jay nodded and clutched the coins in his fist. 'Well, I reckon you look nice in this, too. Purple suits you.'

'Well, of course it does. At least you washed your clothes. And yourself. Even if you still look like you've fallen off a cliff a few times, at least you don't stink.'

'I never stank!'

'Off you go Mr Wulf, drinky-drinky!' Alexia waggled her glass at him.

'I'm going!' Jay walked slightly unsteadily to the bar and leaned into it. 'Barkeep!' he called, hitting the top with his fist and burping. 'Barkeep, I wish for – for four kurves and redka. Two with a slice of lemon.'

The bartender looked at him dryly. 'Is that four redkurves and kafka, two with lanom?'

'If you say so my good man, if you say so!'

The bartender nodded, eyes rolling, and turned away to mix the drinks. Somebody tugged at Jay's sleeve and he twitched, narrowing his eyes at the newcomer. 'What?' he said, towards a squat little man with a crooked hat.

'There's someone asking for you,' the man said. 'Out back.'

'And who am I?'

'Jay Wulf. The description was very specific.'

Jay clenched his fingers, and tried to blink himself sober. _I told you you shoulda refilled your pistols already, seein as keepin the rifle on you got everyone so damn upset._ 'Who's askin?' he said, trying to be cool.

'A woman. Didn't give her name.'

'What kind of woman?'

The man sniffed. 'A most unpleasant kind. Not from around these parts. Not a _lady_.'

'Dotha?'

'I expect so. It's all foreign to me.'

Jay relaxed. 'Alright. I'll go to her.' He pushed back off the bar to straighten himself. 'Hold the drinks, puh-lease,' he told the bartender. 'I'll be back.'

The squat man slid away from Jay's hand clapping him on the shoulder. 'Go by yourself.'

'Ain't you gonna show me the way?'

'It's just out back.' The man pointed. 'I'm not going near her again. She's _mean_.'

'Heh. Yeah, she is a bit. What description did she give you about me then?'

'She said "total bastard",' the man called over his shoulder as he walked off.

'Charmin,' Jay muttered.

He found Savvi lying sprawled in muck next to the bins. There was vomit around her. There didn't seem to be any sign of life, but as he moved tentatively closer her eyes snapped open.

'Who's that?'

'It's me, Savvi. Jay Wulf. You called for me.'

'Did no such thing. Who'd want you?' Savvi slurred. She moved her head up, seemingly at great effort, and then let it fall down with a thud.

'Do you need help?' Jay asked, knowing the answer before it came.

'Fuck off.' Savvi blinked at him, her eyes focusing and unfocusing. 'No possssition to judge.'

'I ain't judgin. I'll help you up, or if you tell me to fuck off again I'll leave you here in your own vomit.'

'Fuck off.'

Jay sighed, and knelt down, putting his arms under her own. 'Up you get – _ow!_ What the fuck!' Jay reeled away as blood dripped from his wrist. Savvi had pulled a knife and was brandishing it at him.

'Fine, stay here you bitch,' Jay growled, and he kicked her. She didn't flinch, nor speak, but waved the knife back and forth, as though cutting the air. Her eyes kept opening and closing. He looked back at her before he re-entered the tavern. She hadn't changed, still fighting off unconsciousness as she held off an invisible threat.

Jay paid for the drinks at the bar and took them over to Alexia.

'Where did you go? And why are you bleeding? Here, take a tissue.'

'It was Savvi. She's near-passed out at the back of the tavern, in the street. Fuckin cut me when I tried to help her.'

'Oh. Shit. So she made it to Stoneswell. How did she find us?'

'No idea. Maybe she's been keepin tabs. We're pretty noticeable in these parts.'

'She doesn't know what she's doing, Jay. We have to help her.'

'I told you, I tried that. She knows exactly what she's doing, drunk or not.'

'We can't just leave her there.'

'You think anyone's gonna get at her, way she is?'

'Someone might kill her.'

'Then she dies.'

' _Jay_.'

He took a long gulp of his drink and set it back down. 'Alright, sorry. Look . . .'

Alexia stood up. 'I'm going to her.'

'Okay. I'm gonna go steal a smoke. Out front. I need it.'

'Right.'

'I'll come out back with you after.'

*

'We meet again,' the man with the green eyes said.

Savvi squinted at the shadow hanging over her. 'Dickbag,' she said at last.

'Where are your friends, Dotha?'

'Don't have friends.'

'You know who I mean. The Rathian, the Duna, the young woman, the tiger.'

Savvi hiccupped, which turned into a cough, and then a retch. Her hand rose to wipe her face, but slumped before it could accomplish the task.

'Well?'

'Saw 'lexia.'

'Where? When?'

'Jusssst now. Here. Was – was trying to help . . .' Savvi made another awful sound from her throat.

'Where did she go? Was she with anyone? The Rathian?'

'You sssaw it too?' Savvi smiled. 'No . . . Dead romance . . . Can't trust anyone . . . these days. Leave you alone.'

'Where did she go?'

'You'll . . . kill me. Try to.'

'I don't care about you. If you stay away from me, and tell me what I want, I'll spare you.'

'And kill them.'

'Where did the woman go? Tell me.'

'Back in . . . tavern.' Savvi's eyes closed and her mouth dropped open slackly.

'Which tavern? This tavern?'

*

Jay returned to the tavern, two long smokes later, to find an empty table, but for their unfinished drinks they'd left unattended. Jay frowned, took another couple of gulps to soothe his dry throat, and went out back.

Savvi was gone, and there was no sign of Alexia, either.

Jay looked up and down the back alley, then re-entered the tavern.

'Hey,' he said to the bartender. 'What happened to my friend?'

'What friend?'

'The girl I was with. In the purple dress.'

The bartender shrugged. 'Haven't seen her.'

Jay walked back to the table, sat down and put the redkurve and kafka back to his lips. _She's just having a piss. Give her five._

Ten minutes later, Jay wandered the place, checked out back, out front, and finally pushed open the door to the bathroom. A woman yelled at him, and he kept the door open long enough to observe that there was nobody else there.

She's gone back to the room. Gone to check on Dol Sander, that's all.

She coulda told me.

She's sick of you. You're not good enough for her. You kicked Savvi when she was nearly unconscious, when she didn't know what was going on.

Fuck her. She cut me! Besides, Alexia didn't know I kicked her.

She could read it in your face. Kicking her when she's down, what a big warrior.

Whatever. I was here before you invaded and I'll be here after you've fucked off. Don't forget we're on the same side.

_Same side? Who's who? I'm_ you _and you're_ me _. There's no other sides, there's just . . . this. Jay Wulf. This body. This_ mind.

So stop blamin your actions on me. You kicked her. I kicked her. Whatever, it's the same.

Let's just go back to the room. She'll be there.

Where d'you think I'm takin you?

*

Jay banged on Dol Sander's door, cursing the lack of mobile phones in this world.

'Who is it?' came Dol Sander's voice.

'Me.'

'Can you come back later?'

'Is Alexia in there?'

A few seconds later Dol Sander opened the door, with no clothes on. Jay blinked at him, kept his eyes upward, and saw half-hidden behind Dol Sander's smooth naked form a figure sprawled in the bed.

'You've lost her,' Dol Sander said.

'She just disappeared. Thought she'd come back here.'

Dol Sander's hand shot out and gripped Jay by the throat, pinning him against the open door. 'You were supposed to be watching her.'

'So . . . were you!' Jay struggled against the hand, before it let go. Dol Sander flexed his fingers.

'I trusted you,' Dol Sander said.

'It's not my fault, one moment she was there and the next she wasn't! We saw Savvi and —'

'Savvi's back? Alexia will be with her then. Now if you don't mind . . .' Dol Sander made to close the door.

'Savvi was unconscious when I found her, or just about. She could barely speak let alone sit up. Alexia went to check on her, and when I went a few minutes later to check on the both of them . . . they were gone.'

'Perhaps Alexia helped Savvi up and they took her somewhere.'

'Perhaps.'

'You don't seem convinced.'

'Nor do you.'

Dol Sander paused, touching his face with his hand. 'Okay. Give me three minutes and I'll be out, and we'll look for her together. Look for the both of them.'

'Three minutes is all you need.'

Dol Sander glared at him. 'Wait outside.'

'Fine.'

'In the street.'

'Al _right_.'

*

Three hours later, as late afternoon bled into evening, they returned to the rest house, their search hopeless. Jay had stopped off on the way back from Alexia's father's house to feed the horses at the stables, and murmur things into Khyber's ear that were supposed to be comforting but instead came out fearful.

Those they asked that had seen Savvi or Alexia led them only to dead ends. A couple had mentioned seeing someone who matched Savvi's description an hour or so ago, but that she'd been alone, as well as drunk to the point of near incapacitation. They had no idea where she had gone to, as they had left her well enough alone (and Jay couldn't blame them).

Nobody had seen a young woman in a purple dress that matched any time after Jay had parted from her.

Dol Sander stopped outside Jay and Alexia's room door. Jay, tired and starting to run sober, was about to ask what it was when he saw it also.

There was a note pinned to the door. The writing on it – well, it looked closer to _computer-typed_ than any handwriting had a right to.

'It's him,' Jay said. He took the note. It was short and to the point, and as Jay read it three times over a chill began to run down his neck.

Jay Wulf.

I have taken the woman Alexia. You can get her back. Exit via the West Gates, head down the bank, and seek the tree that stands on its own.

I will be waiting.

'No signature,' Jay said under his breath.

'Get your rifle,' Dol Sander said. 'Make sure it's loaded. And reload your pistols.'

'I never got more ammo for them.'

'I know. I did. Wait there.'

Dol Sander disappeared into his own room, and then emerged a few seconds later carrying a bandolier. He threw the bandolier at Jay.

'Around your shoulder. It's got pistol bullets and rifle shells that'll fit your weapons, but it's only half full right now. When you get time, if you get time, I recommend transferring the bullets to the pouch on your belt and the rest of the shells from the pouch into the bandolier. Keep them as separate as you can. There's more bullets for you in a case in my room, if we return.'

'What do I owe you for this?'

'Do you have any money?'

'Fifteen queens.'

'How long is that to last you?'

'Till I'm dead.'

'Then if you've got any of it left, pay me back when you're dead.'

'Thanks.'

'Yes. Let's go.'

*

They stood under the tree that stood alone. The grass was short here, a dry yellowy-brown, colours that reminded Jay of the Wastes. Further out, the land was as rich and green as the rest of Sol Ghoum, but here, spread out around this ugly alacia tree, something else had taken the earth, and it made and extended its grasp under the burn of the sun and the drowning rain.

'He ain't here,' Jay said.

'He will be,' Dol Sander replied.

The sunken purple of the early evening was blistering itself red. A sky wounding itself. And the man had still not shown.

Jay took out his pistols, opened them, span the barrels and closed them again. _You know they're loaded. Trust in them._

'You look like you're ready to shoot him as soon as you see him,' Dol Sander said.

'I am.'

'Don't.'

'I know.'

Dol Sander folded his arms and looked into the dying sun, while Jay paced back and forth.

There was no sound, but as one they turned. The man approached them. He was alone, and without a weapon in his hand.

Jay and Dol Sander drew their pistols. 'Stop there,' Jay said.

'Where is Alexia Slade?' Dol Sander asked.

The man with the pure green eyes put up his hands, smiling slightly. 'She is safe,' he said. 'She is unharmed.'

'What do you want from us?'

'I don't want anything from _you_. Except your death, if you intervene. I am willing to let you go, if you are indeed _willing to go_. Jay Wulf, or the person standing here claiming to be Jay Wulf, for that matter . . . I want _him_.'

'Fuck you,' Jay said. 'It's all me then, is it? What d'you want me for? Why have you been huntin me? I got a good sight right on your forehead, you bastard. Followin me this whole way, going into Old Ghoum for god's sake. How was any of that worth _me_?'

The man lowered his hands and clasped them around his waist. 'Not _just_ you, Jay Wulf. Not just you.'

'Savvi?'

'No. I left her alone, just like I promised. I keep my promises, Dol Sander Jerrens. When it does not corrupt my Direction.'

'Who then? What direction?'

The man raised his head and looked over their shoulder. 'Ah,' he smiled. 'What excellent timing.'

'Dol Sander, please look over our shoulders while I keep my aim on this son of a bitch.'

'It's the tiger,' Dol Sander said.

'Inhabited by the original Jay Wulf,' the man with the green eyes said. 'The second part of my Direction.'

The tiger brushed up against Jay's leg, growling at the man. 'It's alright, my friend,' Jay said. 'He ain't going nowhere.'

'That is where you're wrong,' the man said. 'And you, and the tiger, are coming with me.' He glanced down. 'Why, he's quite loyal really, isn't he?'

The tiger roared. Its hair was standing on end and Jay was fully aware of just how big and intimidating the black cat really was.

'I wouldn't make him mad,' Jay said.

'Seeing as I've got your woman, I'd keep him on a short leash if I were you.'

The tiger roared again, padded the ground, claws out – and leaped.

There was a thin _crack_ of sound that seemed to echo in Jay's ears. He darted forward, then stopped fast as the man shoved the dead weight of the tiger off him. Its eyes were still open, and the blood from its head was running down into them.

The man got up, patting himself down. He was holding a small grey gun.

'Stupid animal,' the man said. 'Its instincts got the better of it. How disappointing. I had wished to capture him also, but it was not a failure of my mission if he died. He was merely _displaced_. I thank that the chain stopped with him. It was fortunate that Jay Wulf's mind did not take refuge in that of a higher – is there something wrong?'

Jay was shaking. 'You . . . killed . . . him.'

'It was either that, or be killed myself. Surely you were not attached to this lower lifeform?' The man kicked the furry black body.

' _Don't do that_.' Jay was dimly aware he was baring his teeth. He felt his blood bubbling inside him, and his head swimming in a searing red sea. He felt strong, powerful, angry – more fury than he had ever imagined could be held in a man. And perhaps it couldn't.

'Do what?' the man with the cold green eyes said. 'Do this?' He kicked the tiger again. 'May I remind you that I have —'

Kill.

Jay fired his gun, but wherever the bullet went the man wasn't there, and Jay was charging, Ugly brandished in his fist, not caring about anything but brutalising this man, stabbing him, carving him, tearing him apart with his teeth . . .

There was another sound, a thump in his head, and Jay's momentum stopped short. He staggered, looked at Dol Sander, and dropped to the ground.

'Tis but a scratch,' he whispered.

_Gunshots._ He was aware, as though from a great distance and through a thick, blackening fog, of a blur of movement, of a friend shouting, crying out for someone who wasn't him, and so many noises like he was on a battlefield, slipping away under cannon fire, the smoke in his nostrils and in his eyes, and

close your eyes

quieter now, on a boat in the lake, and the fog before him was the Isle of Ghoum, and he was coming back to it, coming back to the darkness, the endless

Wastes, riding Khyber across those silent desert lands, the wind in his hair, laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing across reds and greens and blacks and blues and whites and oranges and yellows and purples.
'You needn't worry about your Rathian friend any longer, Miss Slade. He has been taken care of. Oh, and the black tiger who contained the mind of Jay Wulf. They have both been extinguished. A shot to the head alike. Not according to plan, but perhaps this was the only way this could have ended.

'As for you? Why Miss Slade, after the nuisance you and your company has caused me, I feel I am owed a reward. Do you know that Her Servants are not rewarded? Not truly, not like on your world. We are told it is our duty, and it is. Perhaps I could hope to rise in rank, despite the mixed success of my mission, but I will still be a Servant, and all that might change will be my duties and responsibilities, who gives me orders and who I give orders to.

'No, I wish for something more . . . physical. Visceral, you might even say. I admit to jealously of you worldly beings, for all your uselessness.

_'Alexia Slade, it is my delight to inform you that you will not die today. You are, in fact, coming with me. You have lived your whole life in the Westlands, Earth-706, just like everyone you have ever met, and everyone_ they _have met, and every person you have ever read about in the history books of your land. Soon it will be your greatest fortune to see what all the subjects currently living on all the sentient worlds in this universe cannot._

'There is so much similarity in the vast majority of these worlds, so much repetition. Histories unfold with the same wars, the same politics and religions, the same sense of cultural and personal identities, and the bigotries to go with them. Languages evolve with the same patterns and rules, tones and even expressions. Physiologies keep to the same paradigms. Clothes. Architecture. Measurements of time and space. Tools. Weapons. Despite the chaos, the universe – for the most part – keeps familiar structures.

'But soon . . . soon you will get to see what lies beneath, what lays beyond. The curtain comes up, the veil drops – and there it is, Miss Slade. You see behind the scenes of your sad, insignificant little life, and all of us who pull the strings.'

The man with the green eyes leaned closer. 'I hope you thank me, in time.'

## NINETEEN

He woke up in his own bed, in his own house. He turned sleepily and looked at the alarm clock. _3.32 PM_. Was he reading that right, or just imagining it? He shook his head and sat up. The room was bright, the sun trying to force its way through the curtains.

Home.

He got out of bed and walked to the front door of the house and opened it, wearing nothing but his boxers. Outside the sky was a swimming pool blue, touched with the odd wisp of white cloud.

He tried to remember his dream, but it had been so long, so rambling, and even now it was falling away from him, its details disintegrating in his memory. He ran his fingers through his hair and he breathed in deeply and felt the Earth air. There was a slight pang in his heart, but he ignored it in the face of a beautiful day.

Home.

Time passed. First slowly, then faster and faster, like a car without brakes coming down a hill. The world outside flashed by, but the important things stayed put.

He met someone. Six months later she moved in with him, and two years after that they were married. They lost what was to be their first child, and they supported each other through that difficult time. They both cried.

They had twin daughters, and before he knew it he was taking them to school for the first time. He lost both his parents, and he grieved for each. He found out one of the daughters was getting bullied in secondary school, and he handled it himself with an assertiveness he never used to have. She was the first to marry, a woman with red hair and a studded nose. Tears came to his eyes at the ceremony. And at the ceremony of his other daughter, who married two years later a short mild-mannered man considerably (he felt) younger than her.

This second marriage ended in divorce, and he supported his daughter through it while at the same time helping the older daughter (counted in minutes) and her wife through the adoption process. He and his own wife became proud grandparents.

They grew old together. Every time he looked in the mirror he saw more grey, more wrinkles. He no longer quite recognised his face as he once did. His mind still felt young; tired, but young.

His wife died first, and six months later he was on his own deathbed. His whole family – which by now was very great – gathered around his bedside and his twin daughters held each of his hands.

'I never did tell her I loved her,' were his final whispered words, his eyes closed. He heard the murmur of confusion from those around him; had he not told his wife, their mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, those words so many times? But the murmur was already growing distant.

He walked in an arena of blackness. Feeling a peace like he had never imagined before. Out of the darkness came someone.

'Alexia,' he said.

She smiled and took his hand, and together they went in search of somewhere where the sun was still shining.

## TWENTY

Under the Circle's shadow

Inside the happiest hawk

Beds the key that is hidden

The key that unlocks the door

RED GREEN BLACK BLUE WHITE ORANGE YELLOW PURPLE

He woke up.

'Where am I?' he murmured, feeling as though he was struggling up through a thick bank of fog.

'Stoneswell,' came a voice. 'A hospital.'

He looked to the side and saw Dol Sander sitting beside the bed. 'Dol!' he said, thinking it'd be a loud cry, but he was simply too tired. The sound of his voice carried with it a wave of dizziness.

'Dol Sander. Good to have you back, Jay.'

'Jay . . . Jay Wulf. Oh my god. I thought this was all a dream.' He tried to sit up but couldn't. _So weak, so weary._

'Sorry to have disappointed you.'

'But my life . . . my whole life . . .' Already it was slipping away, becoming fragments that quickly tore up and blew away in a forgetful breeze.

'This is your life,' Dol Sander said.

'How long have I been asleep?'

'You have been in a coma for five months, one week and two days.'

'Oh my god,' Jay said again. It was all coming back to him. The gunshot. The man with the green eyes . . .

'Alexia!' he said, and this time his voice was a cry. 'What of Alexia? Is she back?'

Dol Sander lowered his head and did not meet his gaze. 'Alexia is gone,' he said. 'I do not know if she is alive or dead. Just gone. I searched for her and for her captor for four months. Over all the Westlands. I went everywhere, asked everyone.'

'And?'

'Nothing. She is gone.'

Tears came to Jay's eyes. 'She can't be gone! You couldn't have looked everywhere! You must have missed something, she must be hidden . . .'

'It is no hope,' Dol Sander said quietly. 'You must accept it Jay.'

'Why did you give up the search?' Jay then saw the bottle in Dol Sander's hand as he raised it to take a drink. 'What have you been doing since, Jerrens?'

'Drinking,' Dol Sander replied. 'What else is there to do? I failed her father. I failed her. And . . . and still I do not understand.'

'You stopped searching for her so you could wallow in your own self-pity? Become an alcoholic?' Jay's voice was hard now, and cold.

'It seemed as fine a profession as any. Alexia is gone, Jay. Your anger at me will not bring her back.'

'I will find her. And I will not give up.'

Dol Sander said nothing, and Jay managed to prop himself up into a sitting position. _So weak . . . Be strong for her._

'What of Savvi?' Jay asked.

'She stayed by your side here in Stoneswell, but when I returned to the city she was gone. I was told she had left after only two days. She told no-one where she was going. I have not seen her since. I heard the occasional thing in my travels, but I never sought her out. She went her own way. My priority was Alexia.'

'Maybe she went after her herself.'

'Maybe she did. But she never came back. Nor did Alexia. So she failed too.'

'Five months. _Fuck_ ,' Jay moaned, putting his head in his hands. 'I can't believe I've been out that long. I can't believe she's been captured that long. We let her down. We all let her down. God knows what she's gone through, what she's still going through. We never appeared to rescue her.'

'It is safe to assume she is dead now.'

Jay hit the bottle and knocked it out of Dol Sander's hands. It flew through the air and smashed against the wall. ' _Don't fucking say that again!'_

For a very rare moment Dol Sander looked shocked, before his features fell back to their glum state. He said nothing, but looked at the shards of bottle and their black-red contents spilt down the wall and onto the floorboards.

'If she's not anywhere in the Westlands,' Jay said, 'then she must be outside it.'

'Nobody can get out of the Westlands, you know that.'

'Maybe they can. I think the man took her through. I don't know how, but he did. In fact, I'm _sure_ of it. He wasn't from this place, not at all.'

'Don't waste your life on an impossible task. Not one point of the Black Circle is less than a mile high. A smooth, completely vertical face. It cannot be climbed. It cannot be tunnelled through. You know all this.'

Under the Circle's Shadow . . .

Oh my god. I remember.

'Life finds a way,' Jay said.

*

He travelled west on Khyber out of Stoneswell and on and on through the changing landscape of Sol Ghoum, along the road that crawled through the great Sol Forests that glittered copper and gold under the sun. The road became paths, splitting and splitting until they vanished into the wilds. He rode until he could go no further. The Black Circle rose up before him like the cliff face of the gods. There was no visible end to it in any direction except where it hit the ground. He wondered if it did not continue, all the way into the roots of the world, into its very core and out the other side. Touching it was like touching cold, blacked out glass.

When the sun rose he awoke in a shadow that seemed to blanket the land. He stayed there the whole day, eating fruit from the trees and hunting and spit-cooking a _goltack_ as the shadow shrank to nothing around him, and then grew and grew to behemothic, continental proportions.

At night he travelled north. Keeping close to the Circle. The colours flashing through his mind.

The land grew ever colder, and he buttoned up his jacket as he passed into the Blue Waste. The grass paled and shortened and turned into tundra. Wiry blue plants covered the ground, and he rode ahead into a cerulean carpet. He saw no-one and he didn't know if anyone in this bare land saw him either. His eyes stayed on the wall. Always the wall.

He was looking for a way through.

*

He gazed through stinging eyes at the expanse before him, the wind rushing in his ears. He couldn't stop shivering.

'It's no use Khy,' he said. 'It's only gonna get colder. If I keep going north I'm gonna die. Be it death by goosebumps or death by those haskans on my tail. I can hear 'em you know. Not just the howls. Their feet. Paddin towards me in the night.' He shook his head. 'I'm gonna need some winter clothin.'

He said nothing for a while, while Khyber picked at a dry tuft of brush.

'No,' he said at last. 'I'm going the wrong way.'

Khyber put his head up.

'It's south, not north,' Jay said. 'I just got this feelin. Or am I convincin myself so I can be warmer? I don't know. I really don't know. I just wanna go back to Appalia, Khy. There's nothin for me up here.'

Khyber snorted, and turned around and started back the way they had come.

'We can look again,' Jay murmured to himself. 'Double check. Maybe we missed somethin.'

*

'Go on,' Jay said. 'You can do it.'

Khyber shook his head emphatically.

'Go on,' Jay said again. He pushed his knees in and Khyber stiffened under him. Jay looked up at the Appalian Mountains. They were lower at this western edge, shoved up against the Circle, more foothills in places, but Khyber was struggling. Time and time again he had failed to ascend a particularly steep or rocky slope. Jay wondered distantly how long it had been since Khyber had last eaten. _Since either of you have last eaten_. He touched his chest and felt his ribs. _You're wastin away._

Alexia is all that matters.

And the colours. The red and the green and the black and the

The Circle. My shadow.

Jay dismounted and took Khyber's face in his hands, but the stallion neighed and backed away from him.

'So. This is what it's come to.'

I'll walk you up.

'I'll walk you up.'

We can do it.

'We can cross this thing.'

Khyber shook his head.

'You're leavin me.'

On a fool's errand.

'On a fool's errand am I? Is that what you think? You're just leavin Alexia to die? You're leavin the Circle? Leavin _me_?'

He's only slowin you down.

'You're slowin me down anyway,' Jay said. He tried to spit on the ground but his mouth was too dry. 'Go, then. Traitor.'

Why's he look so damn sad? Bet he's pleased to be rid of you. That's right, watch him walk away. Away from you.

'Khy, I —' Jay started, but the horse ignored him and walked on.

_You're all by yourself now_.

No.

I got the Circle.

*

When Khyber was there, he could at least have fooled himself that he was having a conversation. Now completely alone, scrambling down the other side of the mountains, his muttering only intensified. He cursed himself, he cursed Khyber, and everything else too. _Fuck these rocks. Fuck the midday sun. Fuck that lizard. Fuck that whatever the fuck it is. Fuck the man with the green eyes . . . He's gonna get it . . . Ugly right in his spinal column . . . twistin . . . twistin . . . and then a kiss for Alexia, more than a kiss, more than it all put together, more than me . . . and fuck Dol Sander, the fuckin drunk, and fuck Savvi_ hard _. . . and a kiss for Alexia, more than a kiss, a kiss for all the worlds . . . a kiss for all the colours in the world, for the oranges, the yellows, purples . . ._

Don't forget to watch the wall.

A door!

A door a door

Anywhere somewhere here

He reached flat land and took a draught from his flask, recently filled from an old mountain well. He hadn't realised how much his throat was burning. 'Least it's warm here,' he said.

It'll get too warm, soon.

'Nope,' he said, leaning against the Circle and patting it. 'I got me my shade.'

*

Sometimes he would walk on for weeks without stopping. Other times he would retrace his steps, going back and forth over long sections of wall, examining it, stroking it with his hands, then beating it in sudden fits of rage. Days were spent staring at it, cross-legged in front of it. He passed the southern-most point of the world – _the Basin . . . may as well be the whole world . . . I'm trapped here_ – and kept going. And returning. And going again.

Madness stole him bit by bit. __ His progress dwindled and then retreated entirely. His hair and beard had grown long and ragged. He did not notice his own stink. He lay topless in the sun and let his brain bake and his vision blur. His own name – any name – began to escape him. When he slept it was fitful, with delirious visions of car wrecks and sick ravens with pulsing red veins repeating over and over until he woke up retching.

me me me me my my my my mo mo mo mo

He chewed on insects and grinned and spat and sucked the water from desert plants, and the days swept away under him.

*

_'_ Under the Circle's sha-DOH!' he sang.

_Time to move on. Which way, sir? Which_ war? _Left or right? Up or dowwwwwn into the grouunnnd?_

'Inside the happiest whore-KA!'

How long have I been here

'Beds the key that is hid-DUN!'

You don't even have a fuckin key

'The key that unlocks the door gore four more . . .'

ma ma ma ma ma ma ma

The Black Circle was his companion. It'd always been there. Always in the back of his mind, since he first awoke on this Earth. But now he could touch it, feel its cool surface so welcoming, its calming whispers.

Alcove

'What's this?' he croaked. 'Another dream.'

Follow your dreams.

'Ha ha. How funny. Look. S'all these eagles . . .'

He stood in a cave, looked down upon by the sculpted faces of hundreds of birds set into the wall. It wasn't part of the Circle, he realised, but a sandstone mound that stuck to it like a limpet. The mound was hollow, and he was inside it.

'How funny,' he said again. 'Birds . . . I wonder who . . . I wonder who made this.'

Birdies

'So many . . . woulda taken a while.' He stroked the beak of one, then shuffled on to another. He stroked each in turn. They rose high above him, covering the cave like hunting trophies.

'Can't reach those birdies,' he said. 'But these ones . . . Well look. Different expression. So angry this one! Grrrr! What happened to you? What did your creator do to you? Did he stick his cock in your mouth?

'And this one . . . Are you laughin at your neighbour? What is so amusin Mr. Eagle? Or are you a hawk? Oh . . .'

Oh

My

Jay Wulf put his hand in the sculpture's mouth, and his fingers touched metal. He closed his fist round it and pulled out a key.

'Right,' Jay said. 'Am I hallucinatin?' He slapped himself. The faces stared at him. The key stayed in his hand.

'Right,' he said again. He looked around the cave with fresh eyes, and they fixed themselves on the corner. No bird heads there. Just a smooth wall . . .

He walked over in jerking motions, trying to focus once again on his task. He ran his hands over the wall and lo-and-behold, there it was. A keyhole. In the gloom of the cave, only searching fingers could have found it.

'And good job too,' he said. 'Cause if the door were on the opposite site of the world I reckon I'd of done gone completely insane.'

He turned the key in the lock, and the sandstone door slid open without a sound. Inside was the black glass of the Circle. A corridor.

He entered, and the door slid shut behind him.

The perfectly smooth, perfectly flat wall on his left was painted, in a grid of about two hands square, a palette of every primary and secondary colour. Each panel was bold and distinct, almost lambent in quality. He reached up his hand to it, and then withdrew it quickly as the colours seemed to brighten at his approach, as though they were alive. There was a slight _popping_ effect, of them rising ever so slightly from the wall to meet his touch. _It's not paint_ , he realised. _It's somethin, but it ain't no kind of paint I seen before._

It was then, as he waved his fingers in front of the grid and felt the – the _energy_ , the _eagerness_ – that he realised that it was no artwork, they were buttons . . . It was a touch pad.

Red, green, black, blue . . .

'Oh my god,' Jay breathed. 'It's a _code_.'

He took a breath and moved his finger to the red panel, which bulged and flushed in readiness.

'No, wait.' He withdrew again. 'I should probably go for a piss first.'

He dribbled the opposite wall with what little was in him, his mind feeling tense and excited. He had no idea what was going to happen – perhaps the wall would open for him – but he knew he'd finally found a way.

'Why do I get the feeling that things have only just begun to get weird,' he muttered as he put himself away. He stood in front of the colour-code pad and took another deep breath.

'Red,' he said, and pressed the red panel. It glowed instantly and fiercely.

'Green,' he said, and pressed the green panel. It joined the red in warm, alien brilliance.

Black.

Blue.

White.

Orange.

Yellow.

He took a deep breath. 'Open sesame,' he said, and touched the purple.

And just like that, he was no longer on the planet.

END OF BOOK ONE
Streams of colour – he was an intangible thing without ears or eyes, and yet his mind sensed colours and shapes and grand vistas and deafening avalanches of sound. He sailed through black oceans, falling in and out of consciousness. Time had dissipated, and in his mind thousands of years and nanoseconds were the same.

His identity was adrift, and he flitted through other lives that came to him without form and left without memory. His mind began to shut down from the strain – and so came the death of self, spiralling into abyssal permanence. There was an unknowable _gap_ – a stretch of utter absence, and when cognition returned any 'I' was missing.

The black oceans swept over the black shores. Still, something out there, moving along fifth dimensional lines, kept on its journey.

Things were lost, but not gone forever.

## ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Set Sytes was born in the misty, Arthurian woods of England and was raised by bears. He never grew up, meaning that his ambition is still to become Emperor of the Known Universe (to start with). When he's not spending his time plotting how best to achieve this and more, he is composing stories – warnings of sorts, as to what we might expect when he finally succeeds in breaking down the barriers between worlds.

Set has authored many stories of darkness and weirdness and flights of fancy, including the adult sci-fi/fantasy _The Fifth Place_ series, the pirate fantasy _India Bones_ series, the twisted dystopian thriller _Moral Zero_ , and the fantasy/horror short story collections of _Faces in the Dark_ and _Born to be Weird_. He is also the author of the non-fiction anti-depression handbook _How Not to Kill Yourself: A Survival Guide for Imaginative Pessimists._

For updates on his books (and assorted other weirdness), you can follow Set Sytes on Twitter @setsytes

For something more in-depth, including parts (or wholes) of his stories made available to read (even before they're published!), you can also drop by his website: www.setsytes.com

If you liked this book, please consider leaving a review on Goodreads and/or Amazon!

**THE SEQUEL TO THIS BOOK,** SLADE **, IS AVAILABLE NOW** **!**
