 
Copyright © 2013 Ciara Ballintyne

All rights reserved.

This edition published in British English.

Smashwords Edition

***

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The right of Ciara Ballintyne to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth).

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by an information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author.

Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia www.librariesaustralia.nla.gov

ISBN-13:  978-0-9923466-3-8

Cover illustration by Nadica Boskovska http://theswanmaiden.deviantart.com/gallery/

Edited by Dionne Lister www.dionnelisterwriter.wordpress.com

Edited by Nerine Dorman www.nerinedorman.com

Edited by Suah Joo www.sirraedits.wordpress.com

Published by Ciara Ballintyne www.ciaraballintyne.com
Other Books By Ciara Ballintyne

The Seven Circles of Hell

Confronting the Demon

Stalking the Demon

Becoming the Demon

Being the Demon (coming soon)

For more information visit www.ciaraballintyne.com

The Sundered Oath

In the Company of the Dead

On the Edge of Death

To Make the Dead Weep (coming 2019)

For more information visit www.evolvedpub.com

What Others Are Saying about Ciara Ballintyne's Books:

~~~

Stalking the Demon:

"...a fitting successor to Ballintyne's brilliant debut novel... It's most highly recommended." – Readers' Favorite

~~~

In the Company of the Dead:

"Ballintyne's deep characterizations make you feel for the people she's created, root for their endeavors, and gasp at their tribulations... In the Company of the Dead is an engrossing read, a good choice for fantasy fans who like a meaty storyline." – Readers' Favorite

"Some of the most notable fantasy authors create powerful reads with slower beginnings that lead up to a crescendo of gripping action—such as this story... Much like the acclaimed fantasy writer Patrick Rothfuss's productions, In the Company of the Dead evolves slowly for the first few chapters... perfect for the fantasy fan seeking depth, who appreciates a slow build-up before the fiery action begins. Such an audience will find this perfectly fits the definition of an epic saga: sweeping, complex, and ultimately engrossing." – D. Donavan, Midwest Book Review

Dedication

For Dad, who showed me the way into the worlds of fantasy. I've never come back out.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks go out to my beta readers, Melody Jones-Kauffman, M Andrew Patterson, Dee Solberg, and Melinda Chapman for their speedy turnaround and insightful comments; to my editors; Dionne Lister, for her attention to detail, her generosity, and her graciousness and thoughtfulness in explaining complex and obtuse grammatical rules in the face of my blank expression; to Nerine Dorman, for her ability to spot a plot hole at fifty spaces, for smacking my hand when random body parts go wandering around unchaperoned, and for not allowing me to get lazy with my writing; and Suah Joo, for stabbing me with her razor-sharp pen, and for her relentless pursuit of the perfect sentence; to my proofreaders, Robert Lumsden and Simone Nolan; and to my husband and daughters for tolerating all the hours I poured into this book between June and October this year.

Confronting the Demon

Alloran huddled in the shadows of the alley mouth across from the west gate, watching the guards search every man and woman leaving the city of Ehsan. He sweltered within the confines of his light dust cloak. The hood concealed his face, and a few days worth of stubble blurred the shape of his jaw. Anything to make him that much harder to recognise. Unfortunately, he couldn't hide his indigo wizard eyes from another wizard or a sorceress, though a spell concealed their colour from normal vision.

A queue of backed-up traffic wound out of sight along the Avenue of Falling Stars. Travellers, merchants, and farmers waited with resigned patience.

Seven hells, after three months, the delays were normal. Surely, they'd give up soon.

Will they? For such a heinous crime....

It was not a thought he liked to dwell on. He slouched to hide his unusual height, and squinted at the mailed guards. They represented a minor inconvenience. The quartet of three wizards and one sorceress, though, were entirely different. There'd be no escaping their notice, even though the soldiers might be fooled. Almost involuntarily, his gaze flicked to the castle–not the king's castle in the central district but the wizards'. Perched atop the mountain overshadowing the city, its turrets clawed the sky. Home, once. Now he hid from it like a beetle scuttling away from the sun. Only enough luck to fill the seven celestial levels kept him safe.

The wizards stood as the guards inspected each traveller and allowed passage. One, in linen shirt and leather pants with a sword on his hip, spoke companionably to the guard nearest him. The silk-swathed sorceress gazed down the street towards Alloran, or perhaps past him, with eyes that were yellow or purple, the mark of a woman of power. Easing back into the shadows slowly enough to avoid attracting attention, he headed to the square where Dek and the unfinished statue would be waiting.

A peaceful lassitude crept over Alloran at the thought of the statue. Three months ago, the notion of hacking a statue out of a lump of rock would have been distasteful, to say the least. Now, the act of creation gave him a refuge that he couldn't find anywhere else.

Stripping off the cloak, he tramped through the back alleys, his boots squelching through something he didn't care to examine too closely. Summer heat left the narrow streets ripe with the stench of rotting garbage. The muck would take weeks to clean from his boots, assuming he wouldn't have to traipse through the same decomposing food tomorrow. But he knew better.

He heaved a sigh for the soft leather half-boots he'd favoured in another life. Of course, they'd be ruined even faster than the heavy work boots. Oh for a clean street.

In the past, he'd waded knee-deep through any kind of muck as long as an answer lay on the other side. Two lives ago, that had been. Now, he did it in the hope of prolonging his pathetic existence one more day.

A tangled pile of crates blocked most of the alley. When he squeezed between the stack and the alley wall, the splintered wood scratched the stiff canvas of his smock and snagged his stonemason's mallet. It was impossible to avoid the rubbish piled between wall and crates, and he wrinkled his nose at the stench.

If only he could take the main streets, kept clean by an army of royal sweepers, but they'd be watching for him there and at the gates. No one at the citadel would expect to find him in this stinking back alley. No, not him. Not the man of silks and velvets.

As he slipped through the narrowest point, the crates shifted, allowing him a glimpse into the middle of the pile. An eye stared back at him. A fixed and glazed eye. He froze, clutching a box with one hand. Though he tried to peer through the tangle of crates, only the gleaming white of the eye was visible.

He uncurled his hand from the wood and pushed past into the street. Stopping, he stared at the stack and its hidden occupant.

A body. While not uncommon in these back alleys, it was a complication he didn't need. Bodies meant reports to the authorities. The authorities meant paperwork. Paperwork meant a trail. The last thing he wanted was a trail that led straight to his back door. The citadel would be watching, and so would Ladanyon.

Even odds who finds me first. Ladanyon used to be the one he relied on to help him out of a tight spot, even with an accusation such as treason and consorting with dark powers. But now, given the choice...he preferred the citadel.

Except at best, he'd be silenced. No more magic. Not ever. At worst? Death.

His palms sweated. He almost turned to go. But it wasn't right to leave a man dead in the street, buried beneath a pile of crates and sinking ignominiously into the muck. A man aspiring to even the lowest celestial level wouldn't behave so.

I shouldn't care about right or where my soul is going when I'm dead. I should care about not getting dead.

But he pulled the heavy gloves from his belt and drew them on. Still uncertain of what he'd do once he retrieved the body from beneath the fractured timber, he began unknotting the tangled puzzle of interlocking crates. The broken pieces came free, and he set them aside. The work went slowly, but gradually he cleared the mess, creating a teetering stack of warped and cracked planks.

With half the job done, more of the corpse lay revealed. A woman. Her face pressed into the oozing mud, and death tinged her skin green. Cloudy eyes stared obliviously at a blue sky. The heat had done the woman no favours, and rot had set in. Alloran pushed one sleeve against his nose, breathing in stone dust embedded in the rough fibre to avoid the choking, putrid stink of wet death.

The body hadn't decomposed enough to hide all her features. In fact, she seemed familiar. A name tickled the distant reaches of memory. Evahna! A clerk at the scriptorium he used for his ink and other writing supplies. Though he hadn't known her well, he'd known her for a decade at least. A distant pang of grief touched him through the shock, bitter as hemlock.

His memory of an animated, golden-haired woman clanged dissonantly against the reality at his feet: her stomach sliced open, entrails spilled into the mud, and lying in a pool of her own rust-red blood. Something had gnawed on the intestines, something with a taste for blood and talons sharper than any blade forged by the hand of man.

Alloran leaned closer to examine the clean edge of the wounds and the way the skin appeared to have parted almost effortlessly. A protruding rib bore a deep gouge.

Reluctant, he opened himself to the mood of the alley, allowing himself to sense moments of great emotional energy that might have transpired in this place. Assault and robbery were common in these back alleys, though mostly he blocked out the feel of them. The residue passed quickly, lingering a bare day or two after the event, but it was such an oft-repeated crime that he could always sense them if he tried. Rape and the odd murder weren't unheard of, even beneath the protection of the citadel.

The oily presence oozing its way through his pores was worse than any murder. He caught his breath.

A minor demon of the seventh circle. But this unnatural being didn't belong here, and could only be here through the intervention of a wizard, one of two wizards, to be precise. And it wasn't him.

Heedless of the noxious substances squashed beneath his feet, Alloran backed away and wrapped his arms around himself. He tried to work some moisture back into his dry mouth. He couldn't be linked with a corpse gnawed on by a demon, especially the corpse of someone he knew. The city guards wouldn't know any different, but the wizards would. Reporting a body slain by a demon would be like lighting up the sky with the words 'Here I am' and pointing a huge arrow his way. It wasn't an option.

With unnecessary force, he shoved the broken stack of timber over the corpse. The wood tumbled back into a tangle with a clatter and a thump. A barricade blocked the far end of the alley, preventing access to the square he worked in with Dek, his new business partner. Alloran vaulted over and strode into the blinding noonday sun, not once glancing back. Someone else would find the corpse sooner or later. So long as that someone isn't me.

The square lay deserted with each access street blocked to the public. In the centre, a half-completed statue stood surrounded by scaffolding. It depicted a king of legend, waving a sword and clutching a book to his chest. The sun glinted off Dek's red hair, pulled back from his face with a leather thong, as the mason scurried around the statue with a chisel in one hand and a mallet in the other. The upper half of the statue was exquisitely detailed, polished to near perfection. The lower half remained a largely shapeless lump of stone.

'Ho!' Dek waved one hand. 'Are you never gonna stop skulking aroun' those alleys?'

Alloran shrugged and clambered up on to the scaffolding. 'Don't like crowds.'

He put his left glove away and ran his hand over the stone, looking for tiny flaws. New calluses on his fingers scraped over a rough spot. His new identity as a mason had meant learning fast–faster than was possible without the assistance of magic.

'You see anything?' Dek waved his mallet towards the alley Alloran had emerged from. 'There's a damn awful stink.'

'Nothin'. You gonna dilly dally all day? This thing won't finish itself an' I'll be blowed if I do it all myself.' The words came out sharper than intended, sharper than a man might talk to his new business partner. No taking them back now. Alloran kept his eyes on the rough patch of stone and pulled a tiny chisel from his tool belt.

Dek only grinned. 'You work like a demon, man.'

Alloran flinched, knuckles whitening as he clenched the chisel. 'Ill-advised words,' he said. His voice dropped so low it almost became inaudible. 'For the times.'

Dek's pale blue gaze skipped up to the black citadel, clinging to the side of the cliff like a dark, creeping vine. No visible path led to its door. The mason's voice dropped to a whisper. 'Have they found 'im yet?'

Alloran jerked his head then bent back to work, a curtain of hair screening his face. 'He's gone.' He couldn't keep the shiver from his voice. It didn't matter, all the locals talked that way about the demon-summoning. Dek had no way of knowing it was more personal for Alloran. How had the news even made it down to the city? Servants, most likely, listening to the wizards. Even wizards wouldn't be able to keep their tongues still for a demon.

'Yeah? Says you, huh?'

'Has to be gone, if the wizards 'aven't found 'im yet. It's been more 'an three months.' Alloran drew a leather thong from his belt pouch and began pulling his hair back into a ponytail, steadfastly ignoring the citadel looming over the stuccoed houses of the city. 'Long gone if he's smart.' I wish–if only it were that easy.

With both the gates and the harbour watched night and day, he needed someone he could trust with an alternative escape route, but he had no one.

Dek pursed his lips. 'I heard as how he killed six wizards. One of them was the lord wizard's daughter.'

Alloran stopped with his hair half bound. 'Yeah? I heard it was a demon that killed them, and the lord wizard's daughter ain't dead. And it wasn't 'im as summoned it.'

Hunching his thick shoulders, Dek scowled under bushy red brows. 'What would you know 'bout it anyway? You've hardly been here that long. You came up from Maldav, what, just after it happened?' He stepped back to the statue and paused, looking towards the shadowed alley. 'What if he's still killin'?'

'What if he is?' An idea started to take hold, a way to see the dead woman decently buried without attaching his name or face to the matter. Ehvana had a family; they deserved to know her fate. 'He wouldn't be interested in the likes o' you an' me.'

'Nah.' Dek nodded. 'But it sure smells bad over that way this morning. What if it's a dead man as is making all that stink?'

'Easy fixed then, innit? Report it, and they take 'im away. And it's all roses again.'

Dek swung down from the scaffolding so fast that he caught Alloran flat-footed. By the time he climbed down, Dek was halfway across the square. Alloran broke into a trot, catching up as Dek squeezed around the barricade and headed down the alley.

Alloran climbed over the barrier and landed on the ground. Something gave under his foot, and the stench of overripe tomato wafted to his nose. He curled his lip. While he tried to shake tomato juice and seeds from his boot, he knocked over a small pile of rubbish.

He forgot about the rotting fruit on his boot. Curled up in the shadow of the wall, beneath the pile of disturbed garbage, lay something that looked like a cat–if cats came from the seventh hell. Slightly larger than a housecat, it was black and hairless with tendons cording its lean body. Ribs protruded along its flank as if it had starved to death. Oversized teeth jutted from its mouth, and the front feet appeared a little too human. Dead as last week's fish. Goosebumps spread along his arms. Nothing in this world looked like that.

Dek hunted down the alleyway, sniffing as if it were possible to smell anything in amongst all the muck. He took a turn down a side alley. Alloran left him alone and squatted down to examine the cat-thing.

Hellcat. Had to be. There'd never been one seen in this world–at least not that the citadel recorded. There'd never been any kind of demon, except that one imp. He wrapped his arms around his knees, hunched his shoulders, and suppressed a shiver. The imp was an accident. He'd bet everything he owned, which wasn't much more than the clothes on his back; this hellcat had been brought here intentionally.

Dek's muffled voice drifted down the alleyway. Cursing, by the sound of it. Alloran glanced up, but the stonemason remained out of sight. The stack of crates hiding the corpse sat undisturbed.

He poked the cat corpse. It slid an inch or two through the muck. With one finger, he turned it carefully. The wizards had spied on the hells in the past, peering through the veil, if not crossing it, so a reasonable catalogue of the denizens of the seven hells existed. This corpse matched all the features of hellcats.

Dek stomped out of the side alley. He thrust his head into another alleyway before turning his attention to the stacked crates. Focused on the hellcat, Alloran ignored him.

It matched all the physical features. While repulsive, the hellcat didn't look particularly frightening. Its most horrifying features lay in its nature, not its appearance, an insatiable hunger and the teeth to chew through bone and even metal in an endless quest to sate its appetite. A hide impervious to edged weapons. Resistance to magic. This one, insignificant-looking demon could potentially chew its way through an entire regiment.

So why didn't it? Fresh chills ran through his body as Alloran settled back on his heels. A demon with direction? The notion was almost unthinkable. Except if he'd thought it, at least one other must have too. That cast a new light on all the deaths at the citadel. What if....

'Got a corpse here.' Dek hauled the shattered crates apart with one great heave and an explosion of sound. 'Told you he's still killin'!'

Alloran jerked backwards, slamming his head against the opposite wall. Rubbing the pain away, he dimly registered Dek turning back around. What would Ladanyon be doing with a demon that didn't involve me? And has he figured out how to control them?

'What's that?' Dek closed in. He was squat and muscled, and he barely came to Alloran's chin, but he took up most of the available space with his stonemason shoulders.

'Cat.' Alloran came to life and kicked the corpse under a pile of rotting garbage. A crumpled piece of paper fluttered across the ground in the wake of his passing boot.

'Didn't look like no cat I ever saw.'

'Just a cat.' Alloran caught and held Dek's eyes.

'Stop fooling around with some dead cat.' Dek turned away. 'We got us a corpse to report.'

A flash of guilt stabbed Alloran for the use of magic on the mason. Entirely necessary. Faking the stonemason credentials from Maldav had been necessary too. 'You report it. I don't feel well.' His gaze drifted back towards the cat-like corpse hidden under the rubbish, and his gorge rose.

The paper stirred again in the wind of Dek's departure, and Alloran stooped to pick it up. Smoothing the creases out revealed familiar script. Though the once-elegant loops of letters were jagged in places, as if penned by an erratic hand, he recognised Ladanyon's handwriting.

How do I surpass you? Let us examine the matter... I have explored every facet of human existence including the ultimate journey, death.

Chilled to the bone beneath the blazing heat of a summer sun, Alloran crumpled the note into his pocket. It had no salutation, but he knew it was intended for him anyway.

What to make of it?

***

Alloran went straight home, using a complicated route of back alleys he'd never traversed before. Why make himself easy to find by retracing his steps?

Home–such as it was. The small villa was crammed cheek by jowl with similar structures. The stucco flaked from the walls, and the building badly needed repairs. Alloran resisted the urge to look at the citadel. In the lengthening shadows of late afternoon, it verged on invisibility against the rocky crag. At twilight, the castle lit up like a million fireflies in a tree. Inside, wizards and sorceresses would dine on exquisite meals prepared by the finest chefs in Ehsan, if not the whole of the kingdom. Tomorrow night was the weekly ball with dancing and music and....

His mouth watered. He shoved the door open, heedless of the crooked way it hung on its hinges, and slammed it behind him. Tonight's dinner would be mutton, tough enough to make his jaw ache, and wizened potatoes. It was pointless to dream about banquets, never mind dancing.

The chair at the scarred table was too rickety for him to throw himself into it. Dissatisfied, he retrieved his journal from a moth-eaten armchair and sat carefully. The chair wobbled but held.

Dek was probably mad at him for taking off. Too bad. He'd needed a cover, and gold had bought him a share in Dek's business while magic gave him the credentials to pull off the charade. The body of poor Ehvana had been reported to the authorities without any link to Alloran. That was the important thing. He owed Dek nothing and had no need for guilt. He didn't.

The journal was one of the few things he'd been able to grab before he fled the citadel–that and a bag of gemstones. If the lord wizard knew me better, I'd be in chains now. But none of the idiot wizards thought he'd run straight for his suite before fleeing.

Luckily, the two people who did know him that well hadn't been in a position to advise the searching wizards to check his rooms, or he'd be rotting in a dungeon right now instead of just the back alleys of the city. Gisayne was unconscious, and Ladanyon fled. No point being caught at the scene of a crime that one wanted pinned on someone else, after all.

He flicked through yellowing pages of his cramped handwriting. The book dated back decades. He'd read and re-read it dozens of times over the past three months, scouring again and again for new clues that he might've missed. It wasn't the journal he'd wanted to take. That one disappeared. This one would have likely gone with it if it hadn't been hidden separately.

Ladanyon must have taken the journal, though Alloran had no proof. None, except a missing journal containing research notes on the summoning of demons and a friend who was the only other living soul who knew where to find it, a friend who had later tried to kill him with a demon.

He flipped the page. A huge red blemish marred the paper. Alloran blinked. Where did that come from? As he watched, another line met it at an angle, then another, slowly forming the letter M. His pulse quickened, and his shoulders tensed. This was wizardry of the sort that could only be used by someone who knew him intimately. Someone had sent him a message, and he had only two choices.

Agonisingly slow, the letters formed in bright crimson across the page of notes to spell out the message: Meet me. Before the sentence was complete, the first strokes of the M began to fade, leaving only line upon line of his writing.

He slammed the book shut, breathing fast. Ladanyon, trying to lure me out? Or Gisayne? And if the latter, whose side was she on?

Gisayne. His breath hitched. So much of the events of three months ago remained unknown to him. Smoke and haze had filled her rooms when he arrived. Belly to the floor, he crawled in. The terrible fear lodged deep in his stomach like a ball of ice. Coughing and choking, he cast about with his senses, searching for Gisayne.

Instead, he found the demon, its presence like a raw, open wound in the fabric of the universe. He retched and his lunch splattered on the polished marble floor. When he finished vomiting up everything he'd ever eaten, he sucked a searing gasp of choking air into his lungs and coughed helplessly.

The sick sense of the silent demon drew closer, and Alloran scrambled away on hands and feet, dry retching as he went. The floor radiated intense heat, scalding this palms and spurring him forward to collapse on a rug. The entryway exploded in a concussive boom. Smoke eddied and whirled in the sudden influx of air. The demon's roar reverberated off the walls, and Alloran clapped his hands over his ears.

He scurried deeper into the suite. The sense of the demon stampeded towards whoever had breached the entrance. Screams pursued him in multiple voices–men and women both. Friends. Acquaintances. He tried to stopper his ears, still fumbling through the smoke for Gisayne.

High-pitched laughter echoed in the choking smog, tapering off into occasional fits of giggles. Ladanyon. Did anything remain of the man he'd called friend for more than a century?

Stumbling over Gisayne in the smoke and ash, he recovered his balance and groped with his hands until he found the leather of her boot. Pursued by a last rattling scream, he dragged her in halting bursts across the room and shouldered his way through the door to the balcony. He pressed his shaking fingers to her throat and gulped great gasps of cold, night air. There–a pulse. He collapsed to the ground next to her, limp with relief. Next to him, she began to cough, her body fighting to expel the smoke and draw in fresh air.

Inside, the lord wizard's baritone echoed. The sense of the demon vanished suddenly, banished by Ladanyon, he presumed. If anyone knew the trick of it, Ladanyon must.

He could only conclude that whatever purpose Ladanyon had in summoning the demon had been served. By the time the lord wizard had burst through the door into dissipating smoke, only Alloran remained. His boot was lodged in the ornamental grating surrounding the balcony with Gisayne unconscious at his feet. A more incriminating scene could not possibly have been contrived.

What was Gisayne thinking when she awoke? Did she believe, like everyone else in the citadel, that he'd summoned a demon and gone berserk?

So easy to blame the man who accidentally summoned a demon once before. Damn the citadel to the coldest circle of hell. Because of them, he was on the run, and for all he knew, Ladanyon reclined in his velvet couches and sipped wine.

Paper crumpled in his hands. Alloran tried vainly to smooth out the creases. Giving up, he flipped back to the page he'd been reading.

There were so many unanswered questions. He peered into the distance, past the walls with their peeling paint. Nothing Ladanyon had done could be explained, and trading with demons would leech all the humanity out of him until it became impossible to know what motivated him to summon demons and what summoning demons motivated him to do.

He dropped his blank gaze to the page as the message faded. Whoever sent it, Ladanyon or Gisayne, had been able to isolate his signature enough to send that message. If they didn't have his physical location already, they would within a week.

Which of them would be worse?

# # #

Alloran stared at the alley mouth, mallet hanging slack in one hand and chisel in the other. This wasn't yesterday's alley. It was a different one, but it felt the same. Like seventh-circle demon. Like hellcat, now that he recognised the feel of one. Hot afternoon sun fell like a hammer blow, and gooseflesh covered his bare arms. Did a shadow move in the darkness? A cat? Something else, something bigger than a cat? Surely, there couldn't be... Ladanyon wouldn't....

Yes. He would. The man he'd once known, the man who'd been his best friend for nearly a century, wouldn't. But the man he'd become, after summoning a few demons–he would. His footsteps dragging, Alloran ventured deeper into the alley.

Once he looked, the body, hidden beneath a thin blanket of rotting food and assorted garbage, wasn't hard to find. It was a man this time. He nudged food scraps off the corpse's face.

The victim had jade eyes, a nose too big for a bearded face, and almost invisible blond brows. The details hit him with the force of a hammer blow. A wizard. A mentor. A man he'd known all his life.

His knees hit the ground and his bones turned to water from the shock. The wizard, Mandron, lay close enough to touch with his belly sliced open by teeth sharper than any blade and his entrails gnawed on. The rest of him left to rot. Sweat dripped down Alloran's face. Another victim of a hellcat. Another victim of Ladanyon. What was the chance that Ladanyon coincidentally killed two people he knew and accidentally left them somewhere he would find them?

None. Every part of this had been planned, right down to the finest detail. Sweat broke out on his forehead. Ladanyon knew too much. He must be watching, watching and playing, as a cat does with its food. Alloran's gaze darted up and down the alley as if Ladanyon would pop out of an alley or appear on a rooftop. Nothing stirred.

The corpse's fist held a rolled-up piece of paper. With trembling fingers, he pulled the note loose and unrolled it.

How do I surpass you? Let us examine the matter.... I have mastered the minions of hell and enslaved them to my will.

The paper fell from his numb fingers and fluttered away.

Jealousy? Was that all? Thirty years had passed since Alloran gave up research. Ladanyon had nothing to prove, given he made every discovery worth mentioning since then.

Alloran wiped sweaty palms on the coarse fabric of his pants, his hands coming away filthy from the dust embedded in the cloth. The bodies would just keep stacking up–until Ladanyon ran out of things he had mastered better than Alloran. He backed out of the alley.

'Where'd you run off to yesterday?'

Alloran jumped and spun around, bringing the mallet up reflexively as his stomach sunk. The sight of Dek, even with his arms folded and a scowl plastered across his square features, elicited a sigh of relief.

'What's the matter with you, man? Yer white as a sheet.'

Alloran affected a frown. 'Don't like dead bodies. Don't like violence. Got the heeby-jeebies. Supposin' they come back?'

That was true enough, as far as it went. Everyone thought he'd Choose martial magic when he came of age if only because of his height and the breadth of his shoulders, but he'd never been interested. What he wanted to know was "why" and "how". Why and how for everything. It was a pursuit more dangerous than martial magic as it turned out. He licked his lips and tried not to look at the alley. This was what too much curiosity brought.

Dek was staring at the alley, squinting in the sunlight. Alloran slapped him on the back before the mason could connect the alley and his partner's nerves.

'We got work to do, aye?' He gently tried to steer Dek towards the statue. 'Where 'ave you been all mornin' anyway?'

Dek turned away from the alley. 'Answerin' questions for the hell-damned city guards, which is where you woulda been if you hadn't run off faster 'an a deer.'

'Didn't know nothin'. Don't wanna know about no bodies or talk to no guards.' Turning his back on the alley and its gruesome contents, he strode back towards the statue and hauled himself up on to the scaffolding. His arms were cold despite the heat of the summer afternoon, and he rubbed them. 'Top's all done, I reckon'. We'll be needing to break all this down and get started on the bottom half.'

Alloran slapped the rough timber with a gloved hand, trying to shunt the corpse and its message from his mind. Eyes that weren't there bored into his back. At least, he hoped they weren't there. To be sure, he glanced over his shoulder, scouring the edges of the square for movement.

Dek clapped a hand to Alloran's shoulder, causing him to flinch and fumble his mallet. 'Hey, you got a parcel, did you know?'

'A parcel?' Alloran lost his battle with the mallet, jerking his foot out of the way just in time. 'From who?'

Dek shrugged. 'How should I know? Came in the regular delivery. Down there.'

Alloran's gaze followed Dek's nod. A crate sat at the foot of the statue. He'd been so pre-occupied with the alley, the corpse, and Ladanyon that he didn't even notice. Stomach twisted in knots while he swung down from the scaffolding.

The crate was nailed shut. His breath whistling through gritted teeth, he seized a claw hammer and wrenched the nails out.

He removed the lid. A scream clawed its way up his throat and choked off into a whimper. The topaz eyes of a sorceress stared at him from a face locked in death. The pain of the crate lid falling on his toes was a distant thing.

Ismyn. Nearly eighty years ago, she was his first lover. He stepped back and stumbled, landing on his arse in the dust. Dek yelled from somewhere nearby, but the words were meaningless.

Recently dead. Her complexion was still the colour of clotted cream, and death hadn't filmed her fixed gaze. Straw filled the bottom of the box, absorbing blood from the stump of her neck, and more blood matted the ends of her red hair. Another scroll poked from rosebud lips.

Without volition, he reached out and plucked the paper free.

How do I surpass you? Let us examine the matter... I pleased her better than you ever did.

Alloran vomited onto the cobbles with ragged heaves. Someone else retched nearby. Dek. The name swam hazily up from memory. Now the mason shouted. Footsteps pounded. Alloran staggered to his feet, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. He tried to make sense of a dizzying series of impressions from the square around him. Dek, shouting, waved his arms. Men ran into the square from the direction of the royal castle. He struggled to focus on them. Guards. Of course. Someone was dead.

Not just someone. Ismyn.

Memories clamoured for attention: entangled sweaty limbs, beds with silk sheets, and the heady scent of her perfume. But the vision of her staring eyes and the bloody stump of her neck erased them all. His stomach rebelled again.

Dek shouted to the guards, waving his arms frantically and pointing at the crate. Alloran stumbled farther away, pausing to vomit again, and half-saw the guards attention switch to him.

'Hey! It's him!'

A cacophony of yells rose into the air.

'Grab him!'

'Send to the citadel!'

'We want him alive, fool!'

An arrow whistled past Alloran's head and bounced harmlessly from the incomplete statue, waking him from dazed shock. A squad of guards pounded across the flagstones with swords in hand. Dek stood to the side as his jaw dropped and eyes widened. Shock turned to certainty, and the mason crossed the intervening distance, seizing Alloran's shoulder until he almost crumpled to his knees.

Alloran twisted away, but Dek's strong fingers didn't budge and jerked him to his side. Now what? A whimper escaped Alloran's throat at the five burning points of pain in his shoulder socket. Oh...right. I'm a wizard.

Alloran shouted a short incantation, and a nearby cobblestone shattered with a sharp report. Not the one he'd been aiming for, but close enough. Fragments of stone and dust rained down. Dek jerked back, releasing Alloran. The guards recoiled before hurtling onward. Alloran flung a hand in their direction, and a harmless coruscation of light knocked them from their feet. He fled, racing into an alley.

Damn it all to the first hell. Now everything was ruined.

# # #

Alloran hovered in the shadows across from his villa, checking to be sure no one else was watching. He'd never given Dek his home address, but the guards would go to the citadel. And the citadel certainly had other methods at their disposal. It was foolish to assume the villa would stay safe.

He scurried across the street to his door. Still locked. A good sign. Even better, he detected no trace of magical residue. If anyone had broken in, they'd be unlikely to have brought a set of lock picks.

Alloran unlocked the door and shoved it open, ignoring the plaintive squeal of hinges in the twilight. Something crackled under his foot as he stepped in, so he stooped to retrieve it, pushing the door closed with his toe.

Parchment. Thick, expensive parchment–rarely used these days given the cheap, widely available papers. It was not the kind of note a simple stonemason would expect to receive, even one in partnership with a mason who took commissions from the king. He turned the folded letter over slowly, but nothing was written on the outside. A thick blob of purple wax sealed it but bore no insignia.

As cold dread settled over him, he broke the wax and opened the parchment.

Inside, the simple message repeated: Meet me.

He'd been found. But by whom?

# # #

Alloran lingered on a street corner, just out of sight of the tavern in the shadows beyond the revealing pool of lantern light. Better to spring a trap than be flushed from my hole.

The reverse of the note contained instructions on how to contact the sender. A clever spell, similar to one used to reply to citadel invitations. Once triggered, it simultaneously notified the sender of the acceptance and provided Alloran with details of the meeting.

The meeting spot was a dockside tavern at an hour when most of the city denizens would have found their beds, although perhaps not so much down near the harbour. The late hour left him vulnerable, but at the same time, he could use the darkness to make his escape. If he caught even a hint that Ladanyon lurked near the tavern, he'd be gone more thoroughly than the scent of roses in the vicinity of a midden.

He eased closer to the corner, staying as far clear of the street lantern as possible and poking his hooded head around to investigate. The air here reeked of fish and brine.

Shadow shrouded the wharf. Taverns, seedy waterfront inns and pleasure houses favoured by the sailors lined one side of the dock, and on the other hulked the dark shapes of ships, rising and falling with the waves. The soft susurration of the ocean drifted on the night air. Few lanterns hung along the pier, and no one loitered down its timber length. He'd come early, hoping to arrive first.

He hurried a short distance down the wharf and ducked into the tavern without even checking the sign–he knew the place. Sound washed over him, a hubbub of loud, drunken conversation. The streets may have been quiet, but the tavern wasn't. Most of the patrons cheered on a fight between two tar-stained sailors by the bar. Alloran wrinkled his nose in disdain at the sight and took a seat on a wobbling chair by the front windows. Even the barman was too engrossed in the fist fight to ask if he wanted a drink, so he stared out into the darkness. A roar of approval erupted from the onlookers behind.

A lantern on the far side of the wharf cast some light on the street outside, revealing a tall figure striding out of the shadows, maybe even tall enough to be Ladanyon. It walked with a certain swing of the hips though, and Ladanyon never swaggered. The shadowed shape crossed in front of the lantern, briefly illuminating its undeniably feminine curves.

Gisayne.

His chest tightened, and he shuffled his feet beneath the table. What did she want? What did she believe?

He hunched lower in his chair, as though he weren't here to meet her and could somehow hide.

What would he say?

# # #

Gisayne strode down the wharf with false confidence. Her boot heels thudded unnaturally loud on the timber, and her sword bounced from her leg with every step. She swept her gaze left, to right, and back. Guards swarmed over the city's central district, as agitated as a citadel class surprised by an examination, but she hadn't seen a guard down here.

Though she'd never ventured to the docks before, she didn't think this could be normal. She frequented other parts of the city, the poor quarter in particular, ministering to the sick, and the guards seemed ever-present. She should just be grateful. Alloran didn't need guards poking around, and if any guardsman recognised her, he'd want to go drinking–again. She wrinkled her nose. Inclusion in their fraternity was all well and good, but one more beer might make her scream. The thought of being recognised reminded her of her eyes, and she mumbled a spell to conceal their colour.

The dock district looked even shabbier than the poor quarter. The stink of tar almost overwhelmed the brine of the sea, and the buildings seemed ramshackle and somehow temporary. Rusty hinges squealed in the incoming breeze, and she pulled her cloak more firmly around her.

Would Alloran be here? He accepted her invitation, but he could've changed his mind. She hadn't seen him in three months, not since... She shrivelled at the memory: blood and smoke, the panicked fluttering of her heart, and his voice, urgent and distant, telling her he had to go. The pervasive stink of demon magic.

She'd woken to her father's desperate voice, the unrecognisable, shredded corpses of people she'd known, and a barrage of accusations against Alloran. He couldn't have committed the crime...could he? Shame filled her all over again when she couldn't be sure. Alloran had been declared anathema, and the hunt had been on ever since. Finding him before any of the searchers left her with mixed feelings.

Her nails dug into her palms, and she forced her fingers straight. A few deep breaths slowed her heart as she glanced up to check the location. Yes, The Ram Inn. She lifted her eyebrows. That wasn't the expected picture of a sheep. She coughed at the painted image of an entwined man and woman, shoved the tavern door open, and stepped into the smoky interior.

A fight wound down near the bar with an unconscious combatant tossed against a wall to sleep it off. Onlookers crowded around the victor, cheering and passing beer. The sailors were tar-smeared and villainous, not at all like her experience with the royal navy. She faltered in the doorway. They weren't like any men she'd met before. The guards were boisterous but mostly courteous. The labourers of the poor quarter were uneducated but mostly kind. The sailors, on the other hand, seemed a loud mix of all their worst qualities.

She took hold of her sword with one hand, but the feel of the hilt did nothing to reassure her of the bearded men in patched sailcloth. Every last one of them had a weapon of some kind. Sweat made her grip slippery, but she tried for a deep, calming breath. I shouldn't judge on appearances. They probably look after their grannies when they're home on shore leave.

The barman mopped the countertop with a grimy washcloth, his mouth set with boredom. His gaze flickered across her as she pulled the door shut. Already searching the room for Alloran, she ignored him.

Was he here? What if he didn't come? What if he didn't want to know her anymore? What if he had summoned the demon? What if he meant to kill her? What if–

'Gisayne?'

She squeaked, her throat constricting, and shuffled back a step. A cloaked and hooded shadow at a table near the door reached for her. She half-drew her sword, shaking so hard the blade rattled in its sheath.

'You had your Choosing, I see.' The seated man leaned forward until his visage emerged out of the shadows of his cowl.

Alloran. She wet her lips at the sight of his craggy features. A spell clouded his deep-set eyes a pale blue, but she could see through it to their true colour, so dark an indigo as to be almost black. His gaze burned hot with a feverish intensity, and the fall of dark hair seemed more unruly than she remembered. Once curled and styled into the latest fashions, his hair was hacked off unevenly above the shoulder now. Stubble roughened his cheeks; he looked to be in good company with the rough-shaven sailors.

'Alloran!' A hot flush of shame crept up her face at the relief in her voice. She cleared her throat. 'Yes, of course, you know it was my coming of age.'

Did that sound suitably mature? His name had been celebrated for huge advances in magic for more than a century; she didn't want to be just some silly girl. My classmates are "just some silly girls". I'm not.

'A sword sorceress, as expected.' He leaned back in his chair and regarded the knot of sailors at the bar.

He hadn't even looked at her. Resentment smouldered. So much time she wasted on choosing her outfit until she was satisfied with the way the leather sheathed her long legs.

'What do you want?'

The curt tone took her aback, causing her to recoil. 'I....'

This was not how she imagined their meeting. Coiled anger emanated from Alloran in waves so strong that she shut down her senses.

'Was it you? Did you do it, bring that demon through the veil?' The words tumbled from her lips like a rushing river over the precipice of a waterfall. There was no taking them back once they passed the point of no return.

A muscle jumped in his cheek, but otherwise, his face didn't change.

'You might like to keep your voice down.' He turned and smiled up at the barkeep, pressing a small copper coin into the man's hand. 'Two beers.'

Gisayne swallowed the retort. She'd not noticed the barkeep approach. Her sword master would be bitterly disappointed.

Alloran waited until the barkeep brought two mugs, slapped them down on the splintered table, and left again before returning to her original question. 'What do you think?'

A pair of sailors half-carried each other past, holding mugs with their free hands. Beer slopped all over Alloran's foot as they barged out the door. He didn't even flinch. Either he didn't notice, or he didn't care. What had happened to the impeccably groomed wizard constantly enveloped in a cloud of expensive cologne? She remembered him smooth cheeked and disdaining any activity that might even raise a sweat. How did three months change a man this much?

It wasn't fair that he should look at her so. She'd been unconscious, so how was she supposed to know what had happened? She almost pouted before catching herself. Her Choosing had come and gone. Now, she was a woman grown by citadel standards, even if twenty-one was old by city standards. What woman didn't have faith in her man if she knew him well enough? And I do. I do. It didn't matter that he wasn't technically her man. A formal courtship always followed when a couple spent so much time together.

What follows when one of you is nearly killed by a demon and the other might have summoned it?

'It wasn't you.' She put all the conviction at her disposal into the words, hoping desperately that he believed her, and squashed the rogue thought mercilessly. 'But I don't know who it was.'

'Ladanyon.'

'Ladanyon?' She stared at him blankly. The mindless repetition made her sound an idiot. Did Alloran know? It seemed harmless to start. Ladanyon was all smiles and gleaming white teeth, and his face had a blinding perfection Alloran could never hope to match. He told her that she was beautiful, magnificent, talented...a hundred other things. He was Alloran's best friend and a known flatterer. By the time she'd realised his compliments to be no more than empty flattery, it was far too late. She'd never meant it to go so far. Even the memory made her cheeks heat. 'He's out of the city on business.'

'Convenient. Out of the citadel I believe, but he's been here somewhere in the city ever since he summoned that third-circle demon, lying low, looking for me.'

Goosebumps prickled her arms, and she hugged herself. Demons. Why did he have to mention demons? She didn't want anything to do with demons. I want to pretend that day never happened.

Before she thought it all the way through, she deposited herself in his lap, slipped her arms around his neck, and tilted her head up to kiss him.

A raucous cheer erupted from the sailors. She glanced over at the men saluting her with upraised tankards. Heat burned all the way to her hairline. She ducked her chin and looked away but refused to move from Alloran's lap. The men shouted out obscenities. Or were those suggestions? The heat in her flaming cheeks intensified as she pulled her hood up to hide her face.

Alloran sat rigidly, staring down at her with an unreadable face.

She pouted. 'I haven't seen you in three months, and you don't even have a kiss for me?' Provoked by the continued catcalls, she wriggled her hips against him. Leather slid across coarse cloth. What is he wearing?

He seized her by the shoulders, pressing his fingers into her flesh hard enough to bruise. Another squeak escaped her throat. Her mouth tried to find words, but nothing came. He bent his head and brought his lips to her ear.

'Is this a game to you, Gisayne? A game? This is my life. I haven't just been vacationing somewhere, I've been running for my life, from Ladanyon, and from your father!'

The words caught in her throat, and she hung mute in his grasp. She didn't mean that, not at all. She was just... afraid. All she wanted was comfort, something to keep the fear at bay and the feel of his arms around her, to ward away the night and the memory of demons she couldn't fight.

'I'm sorry,' she whispered.

# # #

'I'm sorry.'

Alloran heard the words but saw only the stain of anger on her cheeks. He let go of her as though she burned him, pushing her from his lap and thrusting his hands beneath his cloak. Even angry, she was beautiful with her dark hair, purple eyes, and bee-stung lips. He couldn't afford the distraction of the leather pants clinging to her thighs, not with Ladanyon and his demons on the loose.

He groaned, pressing the heels of his palms to his temples. 'Ladanyon's killing people. People I know, acquaintances, friends. A former lover.'

With her hood back up, her face was hard to see. She resumed her seat in the shadows and hugged her cloak tightly to herself.

He leaned closer, trying to peer within the hood. Nothing of anger or youthful defiance filled her features now as she stared into the distance. Was he too rough with her? He assumed her father was using her to ferret him out. Was he wrong?

Gisayne turned towards him, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. She groped for his hand across the table, and he took it. Her grip was cold and clammy against his work-roughened palm.

'How do you know it's Ladanyon?'

He pulled the one note he'd kept from his pocket and thrust it across the table. She poked the paper with one finger, while her other arm remained clutched to her chest as if she were cold.

She scanned the words. 'How do I surpass you? Jealousy?'

'What has he got to be jealous of? Ladanyon's had the limelight for thirty years. I've been hiding in obscurity and a wine bottle.'

'He doesn't agree, but you won't change his mind. What do we do about him?'

'I planned to flee the city and hoped he followed me. No reason my problem should be everyone's problem.'

'You can't stop him?'

'How? No one researched demonology. It's forbidden.' Old fear ran down his spine like icy fingers. Some hows and whys weren't meant to be known.

'Liar.' The word was a mere breath of air on her lips, and her hand tightened as he tried to pull away. 'You did.'

Alloran sucked in a deep breath, thick with smoke from the sailors' pipes. It burned all the way down his throat to his gut where the old fear and guilt lingered. 'You read my work? But...that was before you were born.'

'I consider courting a disgraced research wizard, a genius by all accounts, who has done nothing but parlour tricks in my lifetime, and you think I don't want to know why?'

She leaned closer again, close enough he breathed in her perfume. He resisted the urge to take her in his arms and rest his chin in her hair. Her face settled into serious lines. It was a familiar look, the one she wore when she was crusading to open soup kitchens for the homeless or to comfort the widows of soldiers.

'It didn't even cross my mind.'

He never spoke of it. It was foolish in hindsight, but why the borrow trouble? If she weren't interested, he didn't want to make her interested. Why dredge up the shame? Why relive the tedium and humiliation of the disciplinary hearings? Reliving the horror of what he'd inadvertently brought into this world in his nightmares was quite enough.

Ladanyon built on that forbidden work to create an abomination. Guilt crawled through his soul like worms through a corpse.

'What I did was a mistake.' His voice came out harsh. 'It's what comes of asking too many whys and hows, and poking where man was not meant to poke, and trying things just because you can. Before you know it, a flesh-eating imp is in your laboratory, and your research assistant is dead. Is that what you found? Is it any better to hear it from my own lips? I killed a man.'

'You shouldn't blame yourself.' She disentangled her fingers from his and laid a comforting hand on his arm.

'Shouldn't I?' He jerked from her grasp and leaned back in his chair and from out of her reach. 'Why not? I was the first to bring a seventh-circle demon into our world. Now Ladanyon has summoned more, and the third-circle demon that destroyed your chambers. How long before he learns to summon a first-circle demon? And what will we do about that?'

'Someone has to stop him.'

'This isn't one of your causes, Gisayne. You can't wash the matter away with gold and good intentions....' He stopped with his mouth half-open. A laughable statement, but no less true for all that. Someone did need to stop Ladanyon because he wasn't going to stop until either he achieved his goals or was made to stop.

Gisayne sat with her arms folded, and a mulish look on her face.

'Clever. Very clever. So, Miss Clever, how do you propose I stop him? One demon, one very minor imp from the outermost regions of hell, ever set foot in this world before Ladanyon breached the inner circle. We can't even conceive of the power of a first-circle demon. What possible defence could there be?'

'I read the testimony. You said we should research a defence, in case someone else ever found a way to summon a demon.'

'And the council refused and burned my research.' What they found, anyway. Some, he'd kept inside his head until it was safe to write down. That was a stupid move. 'Demonology as a subject didn't exist before that, and then it was banned. Made almost as bad a crime as treason. I was happy to leave the subject alone, so happy, in fact, I never researched another serious issue again.'

For fear of the unknown. For fear of the things that go bump in the night, of things that might lie around the next corner, through the next portal, next door in another plane of existence. For fear of what other terrible things he might discover all in the name of curiosity. He glanced over his shoulder at the sailors, but no one was paying them any mind now. A heated dice game was underway.

'You expect me to believe you left it at that?'

'I did!' His hands shook, and he clutched the handle of the tankard until his nails pressed into his palms. I did. More or less. The diary hidden in his villa contained nothing but speculation. 'I...I theorised. A few notes. I never tried anything. Never tested anything. How could I test anything, even if I wanted to?' And I didn't. I don't. What if I made another mistake? 'I had no demon to test any theory on, and damn me to the seven hells if I was going to summon one.' He lifted the tankard to his lips with shaking hands and sucked down a bitter draught of beer.

'You don't need to summon one now. They're here.'

She was right. Damn her. Alloran stared into the flame of the tallow candle on the wall until his eyes ached. If only it were so easy to blind himself. Someone had to stop Ladanyon.

No one could–no one but him.

The shaking increased, until the whole of his body thrummed like a plucked violin string. Fear gaped like a black hole beneath his feet. He might make a mistake and bring more demons spilling through into this dimension like swarming flies to the honey. What if once he had the taste of it, the thrill of it, he couldn't stop? Perhaps not today, tomorrow or next week, but what if next year or next decade...he went too far?

'I can't.'

It was safer to run, to draw Ladanyon and his demons away from any populated area.

Alloran stood, and the chair legs squealed across the floor. He shoved the door open and trudged away, shoulders hunched and head down. Something squelched under his boots as he stepped off the timber of the wharf. Nothing could be as bad as the shit he was already hip-deep in. Gisayne ran after him, calling for him to wait, but he didn't turn or stop. She didn't follow any farther.

# # #

He thrust his hands back in his pockets as he walked to his villa; parchment brushed against his skin. It was too dark to read when he pulled it out, but the scent of Gisayne's perfume clung to it. She must have slipped it in his pocket.

He checked the villa over from across the street, testing it with his senses and his wizardry before even daring to approach the entry for a visual inspection. Grunting, he shouldered his way through his recalcitrant door. The screech of the hinges was so familiar it barely registered. Tossing the parchment onto the table, he dropped his cloak in an untidy heap near the door and lit a candle with a snap of his fingers.

The parchment contained only an address, one where he supposed he could find her. He shook his head. The villa wouldn't stay safe much longer, and he needed to leave. But what Gisayne wanted was more than he could give.

She'd left his mind a bewildered mess that was difficult to sort through. While he was gratified she trusted him enough to meet him and throw him her support without her father's knowledge, he didn't want her anywhere near Ladanyon. Fear that he hadn't even realised was there, hidden beneath his terror of his own addiction, reared its ugly head. Ladanyon could kill her. Given his progression through the ranks of Alloran's friends and lovers, he probably planned that very outcome.

No, he couldn't drag her into this, not while he had other options. It was best for her to stay as far away from him as possible. She might as well stand on a tall hill, waving a metal-tipped lance in the middle of a thunderstorm as be anywhere near him.

Alloran risked a few hours' sleep, tossing and turning in his narrow bed. Flaming demons pursued him in his dreams through a laboratory full of caged hellcats that he'd been experimenting on.

An hour or so before dawn, he woke sweaty and unrested. He dressed hurriedly in the dark, found his packed bags, and shoved Gisayne's parchment in his pocket as an afterthought. I'm not going to her. I'm not. He abandoned his hard cot and ramshackle accommodations.

The door protested his rough exit. Three steps from his front door, he stubbed his toe on something hidden in the darkness and plummeted face forward to the cobbles.

Instead of the hard impact he expected, he collapsed with a grunt over something soft. His vision slowly adjusted as he groped for an indication of what lay under him. Cloth met his fingers, then the dusty surface of the cobbles. What a start to the day. As if nightmares of demons weren't enough to plague a man down on his luck. What did he fall on? A bale of cloth? Whatever it was had too much give in it for him to clamber off easily. He floundered around, trying to find purchase. Something wet and sticky touched his skin.

The dark shape gradually resolved out of the shadows. Alloran made eye contact with the woman under him–a purple gaze, sightless in death.

With a shout, Alloran managed to roll sideways off the dead sorceress, forgetting the hard shape of his mallet under his hip. He grunted as it dug into his ribs. Breathless, he scrambled to his feet and backed up several steps.

Veronya. She was his second lover, the one he'd once loved enough to regard her loss as worse than dying.

The shock numbed him. Ladanyon. It had to be. How many more dead bodies before he got to Gisayne, assuming he didn't decide to start picking off Alloran's friends again? Memory failed him. In a hundred years of life, he hadn't taken nearly enough lovers to feel comforted by that buffer. Guilt flailed him, and his stomach churned. How was it preferable that other women should die instead of Gisayne? It wasn't, and he couldn't pretend it was. Still he couldn't help but gauge how much time she had left. Was it six lovers after Veronya? Maybe seven. The uncertainty left him feeling more ill than guilty.

Mechanically, he stooped and pried open her fingers until he found the scroll. He unrolled it with too-steady hands.

How do I surpass you? Let us examine the matter.... I know what to do about a woman who refuses me.

Alloran scrunched the paper up with a yell of inarticulate rage. He tossed it into the air, where it burst into flame. Damn him. Damn him to the innermost hell, and may his soul suffer for all eternity. There was no end to this, no end except one where everyone Alloran ever cared about or even knew in passing lay dead. That included Gisayne, no matter how far he kept her from him.

He pulled Gisayne's parchment from of his pocket, licked his lips, and strode off into the darkness.

# # #

The worn stone stairs descended steeply into the dark, set below a warehouse and framed by ordinary cellar doors thrown wide. Though the tannery was located outside of town, this address was close enough to the wall that a mixed miasma of urine, dung, and decomposing flesh blanketed the area and deterred casual passers-by. The laneway contained nothing else of interest.

The stairs didn't resemble an entrance to any cellar Alloran had ever seen. Admittedly, he'd never seen many because they were a piece of architecture he'd largely avoided in his long life. But the descent seemed far too steep to him. It penetrated to a much lower level than any mere cellar.

He hesitated on the brink before starting down.

When he muttered an incantation under his breath, his right fist began to glow, illuminating the way. Irregular stones formed the walls–far older than the brick of the warehouses above. He placed his feet carefully on very shallow steps, leaning back slightly to balance against the steep descent. The pack bounced against his hip as he steadied himself with one arm to the wall. Full of dust, the stairway smelt dank and unused.

The bottom revealed something else.

A large room spread before him, properly equipped and set up as a research laboratory with beeswax candles burning on the walls. Books and notes were scattered across the various tables, and unlit candelabra adorned every second workbench, leaving the centre of the room in gloom. A few of the tables held cages–small but big enough to hold an imp or a hellcat. The stench of the tannery, which had followed him down the stairs like an unwanted guest, dissolved in the stink of sulphur and other familiar compounds.

Confronted by the paraphernalia of his craft, a craft foresworn, he hesitated. Excitement bubbled below the surface at the prospect of solving the problem, but fear tempered it. Oh how he wanted this, wanted it more than anything, more than Gisayne, more than his silk sheets and rich food, more, almost, than his own life. He swallowed the lump in his throat and tried to ignore the desperate need building inside him, the craving, the fear.

Once he had a taste, there'd be no stopping.

Gisayne stood among the various tables, dressed in more modest clothing than last night, consisting of a practical shirt and pants with sword belted over the top. Thank the seven heavens. Dark rings encircled her eyes, stripped now of the spell concealing their colour, and she looked too neat to have slept.

Her cloak lay carelessly over a pile of books. Alloran picked it up and hung it over a chair, revealing the embossed, leather covers of the tomes. They were his own and retrieved from who knew where. He caressed one, closing his eyes at the soft, familiar feel of the leather and the embossing against his fingertips.

'You've gone to a lot of trouble.' He opened the book for the pleasure of seeing the words inside. 'What exactly does your father think you're doing?'

'Studying.'

Of course, she'd recently had her Choosing. All sorts of otherwise odd behaviour would be overlooked when a new wizard or sorceress began exploring possible avenues of study after their Choosing.

He cleared his throat. 'You had a lot of faith in your ability to convince me if you went to all this trouble.'

'Misplaced faith, apparently. I spoke to some friends in the guard. I can probably get you over the walls.'

'You what? When?' He tugged on his ear, thoughts reeling. A way out. Exactly what he'd been searching for these past three months. Just when he decided to stand and fight, the offer crooned to him like a woman luring him into a bed where he had no business being.

'Right after you left.'

'I...thank you. But I don't want it.' He paused. The words yet unspoken remained on his tongue. Once he said them, the commitment was made. 'I...I want to fight. I will fight.'

Her expression didn't change. 'It's the right thing to do. What changed your mind?'

'Another body.' Warm wetness ran down his face. He rubbed it. Tears? 'Veronya.' More tears welled in his eyes. He blinked, hoping she didn't see them. Grief choked his throat. 'I...time was....' A muffled sob emerged from his lips. 'I loved her very much, once. A long time ago.'

Gisayne came and took his hand and touched his face with hers. The tears flowed freely.

'He's determined to take everything from me, Gisayne,' he whispered. 'Everything. Including you. He needs to prove himself better than me, in any way he can, even crazy ones. I've never intentionally taken a human life. He thinks he's stronger because he can, and has. I couldn't control the imp I accidentally summoned. He can. Ismyn–he seduced her before he killed her, and Ladanyon thinks he made her happier than I. Veronya he killed because she refused him, I think...what he apparently now considers an appropriate reaction, and one I'm too weak for.'

The colour drained from Gisayne's face, leaving her pale in the gloom of the cellar. 'He believes he is proving himself the better man?' Her grip over his hand tightened to the point of pain. 'I may have done something very stupid.'

Alloran's stomach churned. 'You...did?' He twisted his hand free of hers.

'I didn't mean to.' Her face fell into miserable lines, and even her shoulders drooped. Still, her gaze failed to meet his, scrutinising her booted foot scuffing the dusty stone floor instead. She cleared her throat. 'But you need to know anyway. It's important. When we started spending more time together, I naturally saw more of Ladanyon. He was your best friend, and when I was with you.... So was he. Often.'

Impossibly, his stomach churned even harder and bile burned up his throat. It was clear to him where this was going, and he wished he had a way to stop her, stop the utterance of those words. If only she didn't say them, he could pretend this never happened.

'Then Ladanyon started calling on me without you.'

'No.' His bare croak sounded drier than a tomb. 'No. Stop.'

Gisayne hunched in on herself even farther. 'I thought it was harmless. He said some nice things, encouraged me, and visited more often. I look back now and think what a fool I was. His hand accidentally brushing mine or my leg, leaning into me as he showed me how to hold a sword.' Silent tears streamed down her face, but her gaze remained on the floor.

The chamber melted into an unrecognisable smear of watercolours, with himself and Gisayne the only two things with any sense of clarity. Her words continued to roll on.

'One day, he came and kissed me.' She choked and stopped to draw a deep breath as though she was trying to steady herself. Red rimmed her eyes, and tears stained her cheeks. 'I objected, mentioned you, but he said only that we weren't officially courting yet, that I didn't belong to anyone, and I could do whatever I liked. And be with anyone I liked. I said I wanted to be with you and no other. He only kissed me harder. He...touched me, did things to me, and I....'

Her cheeks flamed red, with anger, or humiliation, but he couldn't tell which.

'He left, and he didn't come back.'

Alloran stared, trapped in the storm of his own emotions. A dizzying whirl of thoughts and feelings made it impossible to process. Had his best friend seduced her or raped her? Growing anger left his skin prickling, and the hairs rose on his arms. Not only anger, but energy swelled within him, and what it wanted most was a target. But who? Who? He gripped the nearest chair, turning his knuckles white.

Gisayne lifted her head, and for the first time, she met his gaze. The whole of her looked broken and shattered, but the only thing filling him besides anger was numbness.

The mounting energy reached breaking point. Before he did something he regretted, he turned and climbed the stairs.

# # #

When Alloran descended again, dust rained down into the underground chamber from the explosive force he'd expended harmlessly into the air.

Wrapped in her cloak, Gisayne lay curled in a corner with a bundle of spare clothes pillowing her head. She'd packed for a long stay. Tears stained her cheeks in the flickering candlelight.

He pored over the papers lying scattered over the benches. They were his, all right, but nothing likely to be of any help. There were only two relevant books. One was in his rucksack, and the other was in Ladanyon's possession.

The one Ladanyon stole contained all the research the council ordered destroyed after his conviction. He'd painstakingly duplicated it from memory. Why? Because he couldn't stand for knowledge to be lost? Because he needed it to research a way to stop the demons?

Fool. It was all those reasons and more, but they seemed paltry now. No one else found what he'd found. No, Ladanyon had stolen what he'd found and used it to learn more. Without that journal, Ladanyon never would have discovered the way to hell and back.

All my fault.

The book in his bag contained the research he'd been forbidden to do but had done anyway–in secret–for a time at least. All his research into how a demon might be banished and even more rudimentary notes on defences against demons. The imp he summoned had never been banished. Instead, the demon had been cornered at great cost to the citadel, then imprisoned under close magic wards until the wizards gave up trying to kill the thing. It was dismembered and scattered.

Incomplete research. Speculation and wild theories. His fear was too great, and eventually, he abandoned it with everything else.

That journal he'd never revealed to Ladanyon. Why?

Because the best-kept secret was one you told no one, and if anyone ever knew he'd been poking into demonology again, it could have meant his death.

He drew the book from his rucksack, scratched his chin, and opened the tome. It was time to stop Ladanyon before Gisayne wound up dead and not merely hurt.

An image of Ladanyon naked and on top of Gisayne flashed into his head. He shook his head, trying to banish the unwanted vision.

Ladanyon must have already begun dabbling with demons when he seduced Gisayne. Always a lady's man, and more careless with a woman's feelings than he ought to have been, but he was loyal to his friends. He never would have fooled around with a woman Alloran was interested in unless he was already tainted by demons.

Alloran shuffled his feet. What did that accidentally summoned imp do to him? Was his soul already tainted? And if so, to what degree?

Even as the thoughts unfolded, another part of his brain analysed the research notes in the journal. He furiously penned his thoughts on blank paper with a steady hand. As soon as he noticed, he began to shake with the force of the old fear flooding back. At the same time, that old exhilaration swept him up in its embrace–the excitement of taking a problem everyone said couldn't be solved and solving it.

Only last time, someone wound up dead.

No point thinking about that now. This had to be done for Gisayne, for every other woman he'd ever loved or taken to his bed, and for everyone he'd ever called friend.

To keep all of them safe.

# # #

Gisayne opened her eyes to a blaze of candlelight and immediately squeezed them closed again. When the bright lights faded from behind her lids, she cautiously cracked them open and waited to adjust to the glare.

Alloran stood, hunched over a table, with every available flat surface around him littered with notes and diagrams. She pursed her lips at the sight. Being untidy was unlike him. Every candle in the room burned, bathing the underground chamber in an unnecessary and wasteful amount of light.

Gisayne closed her eyes. What could she do now? She half-hoped he would leave while she slept. Having to confront him again was as appealing as changing soiled bed linens, but then again, she'd done that, hadn't she? She had to do this too.

Why didn't she take a firmer stance with Ladanyon? He was so persuasive, not with his words but with his hands and his mouth. His persuasion killed her objections before she even voiced them and suffocated her will to resist. The humiliation burned. Citadel relationships had few rules, and Ladanyon wasn't her first. Why didn't she know better? Silver-tongued they called him. No kidding.

Would Alloran send her away? What if he never wanted to see her again? It would've been better if he had never come back than to hear those words.

I wouldn't want to see me again.

Alloran was her first serious relationship, but they weren't yet lovers. Never will be, now. A cold bleakness settled in the pit of her stomach as she clambered to her feet. She cast off the cloak and buckled on her sword. Alloran didn't turn, probably not even noticing the movement. As she drew closer, the dark rings beneath his eyes and the grey of exhaustion in his cheeks became evident.

Next to his elbow sat a small cage atop the rough wood planking of the table. A lean, twisted shape turned and spat at her. She clapped her hand to her sword and jumped back. A hellcat. She'd never seen one, but it had to be.

'You found one of Ladanyon's hellcats?'

Alloran jerked and knocked a sheaf of papers to the floor. Bemused, he stared at the scattered papers and dragged his gaze to her. She bent to scoop them up, avoiding his eyes. When she straightened and tidied the sheets into a neat stack on the bench, his face revealed nothing but bone-deep weariness. She shrivelled a little beneath his uncaring stare. His hatred would almost be better.

'No. I summoned this one.'

'You what?' She drew back, given a horrifying glimpse into the past. Was this the kind of arrogance he displayed when he faced the disciplinary tribunal? She tidied the stack of papers again. 'What were you thinking? Aren't enough of these things running around loose without adding to the problem?'

'I didn't want to.' His voice was terse, and his gaze was heated, even a little patronising. 'I like my soul just fine, and I won't lightly risk tainting it. But I can't practice on Ladanyon's demons. First, I need to devise a method to banish a demon. I think only Ladanyon can banish his demons, so I need to start work on a demon I have summoned. Only when I have perfected the technique can I consider applying it to his demons. Fortunately, demons are resilient, so I should only need to do this the once.'

'But...your soul?'

He rotated his head on his neck, grimacing as the muscles stretched. 'Should be fine. I hope. A hellcat is the most minor of the seventh-circle demons.'

She shivered. Ladanyon had looked at her with a cold, calculating edge to his gaze, and it wasn't something she ever wanted to see from Alloran. Even this strictly business attitude was preferable. 'About Ladanyon....'

His gaze sharpened, and for the first time since she'd woken, he really looked at her.

'You told him no?'

'Yes. Once. But I–'

'Once is enough. Ladanyon pushed the boundaries plenty of times with women, but usually older women who'd not hesitate to put him in his place, women who knew how to play the game. He should've walked away the moment you said no, not attempted to seduce you anyway. As far as I'm concerned, what he did is the same as rape.'

Calling on the calm face she wore when tending to the dying in her sickhouse, she fought the urge to burst into tears. He didn't hate her. He didn't even blame her, as incredible as that seemed. The desire to throw her arms around him almost overwhelmed her, but the stern look on his face deterred her. Though he didn't blame her, there was still no welcome from him.

Instead, she nodded. 'Thank you.'

# # #

Still reading the notes in front of him, Alloran waved the apology away with as much irritation as he'd wave away an annoying fly. 'You need not thank me. I should apologise to you.' He switched his gaze back to her. 'It's my fault he summoned a demon to attack you. It's my fault a wizard and two sorceresses are dead. I am the frivolous fool your father thought I was, or I would have seen all this coming. Ladanyon was my best friend.'

'Father doesn't think you a frivolous fool.'

Alloran snorted. 'He does. No need to say otherwise.'

Now he balked. How much should he say? She only knew the frivolous side of him. The research wizard he was once before was dead and buried long before she was born, and he wasn't always very nice. But that man was still part of him–still inside him. Would she look at him differently?

He scribed invisible shapes on the page before him, tracing out the giant loops and whirls with a fingertip. 'Understand, Gisayne, he wasn't wrong. I wasn't always so frivolous, but I had to be that man after the tribunal. Or succumb to temptation again. So long as I seemed serious, people took me seriously and kept asking me to solve serious problems. So I stopped being someone they believed could solve anything.'

He risked glancing up to meet her eyes. Their purple depths seemed bottomless as she stared back as if she were trying to make sense of a strange bug. Still, it was a step up from looking at him like something she'd scraped off her boot.

'You make it sound like an addiction.'

'It was. An addiction to acclaim, to being right, to the rush of solving something everyone said was unsolvable.' Slamming his hand down on the book jostled the glass flasks together. 'I did this right after the tribunal within days of swearing I would never research demonology again. My intentions were good, but is that the point? And the days before I started this research? I spent that time duplicating the research the tribunal had burned, transcribing it into another book. Because I needed the knowledge as the basis of this research, yes, but also because I discovered it. And I couldn't stand for it to be lost, no matter that the knowledge could only be used for harm. Ego, Gisayne, and arrogance.'

His tirade swept him along as the words poured forth like a flood. Almost too late, he realised he stood at the brink of the waterfall, and the words dried up.

Gisayne watched him with a slight frown pinching her brow. 'What happened to the other book?'

Too easy to forget she was no man's fool just because she was young and often inexperienced. 'That book,' he said, his voice quiet in the hush of the room. 'That book Ladanyon stole. I didn't even miss it until after the third-circle demon, and he was the only other besides me who knew my hiding place.'

She said nothing, but she scrutinised him narrowly, weighing and measuring him. Damn her. But she had every right to judge, though it was almost as hard to accept as it had been to kick his addiction.

'I see.'

That was all, but her judgement lashed him. He deserved every bit of it, but it stung more than he'd expected. While it wasn't entirely her fault Ladanyon had used her, he didn't know if he could move past it. But now, who was to say she could move past the fact his arrogance had nearly killed her? Had killed those half dozen wizards and sorceresses in the citadel, and Ismyn, and Veronya. Might yet kill hundreds more men and women.

And that wasn't even the whole of it.

He swallowed and forced the next words out. 'It is an addiction, Gisayne. I couldn't help myself. No excuses. I accept the blame, and I found my way to cope. But...it's still an addiction. If I don't do this research, Ladanyon will kill us. But if I do this research...I might not stop here. And next time, I might discover something worse.'

'I won't let that happen.'

She had her hand on her sword as she spoke. Both horror and relief filled him–horror that she so unhesitatingly agreed to do what needed to be done and relief that she would. Of course she would, with the same diligence she helped to clean the suppurating sores of the dying in the sickhouses she funded. It was just another unpleasant task that someone needed to do.

'Thank you.' The words emerged hoarse.

Nodding, she began to walk away but turned back halfway to the stair. 'I think my father might like you better now.'

Tears pricked his eyes at the quiet acknowledgement. He might not have completely ruined things. 'I...I liked your other clothes better. The ones you wore last night when we met at the docks. They suited you.'

Her lips curved in a half smile as she turned back to the stairs and left.

# # #

Alloran finished the explanation, the result of three days of hard research, and paused expectantly.

Hands on her hips, Gisayne regarded him blankly. 'I don't understand. I don't need to understand, so long as it works. And you think it will?'

He stacked the books and pushed them to one side. Pointless, really. Scribbled notes and open books spread across the other two tables. One stack wouldn't make any difference to the tidiness of the room, but anything to avoid looking at the hellcat, to avoid thinking about the temptations of what he was about to do. The summoning had been surprisingly easy–too easy. Banishing the hellcat would be harder but more exhilarating. That rush he feared almost more than failure.

'I think so.'

'You said that last time. And the time before.'

Her gaze went to the table pushed against the far wall, and he followed it. All the papers and books had been cleared from its surface. The burn mark contrasted starkly with the timber.

'I didn't expect the table to catch fire.'

'Neither did I.'

He grunted. 'Well, the only way to know is to test it.' His hands weren't shaking, a sign both surprising and worrying.

'Now?' Her voice squeaked, so she cleared her throat. 'You're sure?'

'As sure as I can be in theory, and we don't precisely have time to waste.' Damn, he'd stacked the incantation into the pile of books. He flipped through until he found the paper and plucked it out. He crossed to the hellcat. The demon spawn hissed at him, almost apathetically. A few days in confinement had sapped some of its vitality. 'Stand back. Just in case.'

The words rolled sonorously from his tongue. He had invented a few new words to direct energies in ways that hadn't been envisaged before, but much practising before this event meant they, too, spilled effortlessly from his lips.

The hellcat spat again, twisting its lean, hairless body around itself. Something pressed it backwards in the cage until the demon contorted against the bars. Slowly, the cage began to slide. Gisayne seized it, gasping as it continued its slow crawl across the table. She braced herself, her arms rigid with strain. The cage stopped moving, but the bars kept rattling and vibrating in their sockets. Gisayne clenched her jaw.

The air popped, and a small vortex spun out at the rear of the cage. He had a brief view of a desolate landscape–stark peaks, and fissured earth venting noxious gases. The hellcat's body mercifully blocked the hellish scene as the spell forced it into the vortex.

Alloran changed the incantation and stepped to the second stage of the spell. With a small knife, he nicked the palm of his hand and flicked a few drops of blood into the vortex. The tiny tear in the fabric of reality snapped closed.

Gisayne stretched halfway across the table in her efforts to hold on to the cage. 'It works.'

'To allow a summoner to banish his own demon.' Alloran tossed the incantation on the table and weighed it down with a glass flask. 'Banishing a demon Ladanyon has summoned, assuming it's even possible, will be harder, and banishing a first-circle demon even harder again.' It worked, but a dull sense of dissatisfaction suffused him. The job was only half-done, and the problem remained unsolved.

'Why does it only work for the summoner?'

He grimaced. 'I suspect it might work to allow anyone to have banished my hellcat. But I think Ladanyon has found a new way of summoning demons, one that compels his demon to do his bidding. I've no idea how one might seize the will of a demon already enslaved by another, except it might involve a clash of power so great that not much of the city would survive.'

Her face sagged as the elation drained away. 'So we have nothing.'

'I didn't say that. I don't know how to wrestle control of the demon from Ladanyon, but I have another idea.' He hurled a book on to the neighbouring table in frustration. It struck the candelabrum, and the candles teetered dangerously. He lunged across just in time to catch it. Wax dripped on his hand, and he sucked in a breath at the momentary hot pain. 'The problem with that idea is I need something of Ladanyon's. A hair, a nail, some skin. And I have nothing.'

Gisayne took his hand and scraped the wax off with a fingernail. 'I may be able to help.'

The touch of her soft skin against his callused palm sent shivers dancing through him. 'You can?'

'I know somewhere I might, might, find something. Ladanyon is a careful man, so I can't promise anything.'

Despite her warning, he seized her impulsively and kissed her. Her body pressed against him, her hips to his, and her breasts against his chest. Heat coursed through him, and he groaned into her hair. He released her convulsively, realising what he'd done. 'Sorry.'

She shook her head, dismissing his apology. 'It's fine.'

'Can you show me where?'

'I'll have to go. It's in the citadel.'

# # #

Gisayne climbed the stairway of starlight, taking the steps two at a time with her silk-lined cloak streaming behind her. What drew attention in the city below would pass unremarked in the citadel, and she wanted unremarkable. Above her, the wizards' castle glimmered like a constellation of stars. Every wizard or sorceress built his or her own stair; the citadel had no conventional access. Visitations were by invitation only.

She slipped through the door into a huge, abandoned entry. This was dinnertime, and most residents would be in the dining hall or on their way. Candle flame illuminated the entryway with a soft glow, leaving the far corners in shadow. Muddy boot prints stained the rich carpets. What did they mean? Nothing good, she was sure, and she padded down the hallway, scouring the shadows. The thick carpets muffled the sound of her footsteps as she padded out of the entry, into the corridors, and headed for the wing housing the suites of the more prominent wizards and sorceresses.

A huge crowd filled the hallways, clustering in small groups. A low, frantic buzz of conversation hung in the air. No one seemed to be going anywhere. The thread of hushed conversations escaped her as Gisayne passed them.

A young wizard broke free from a group of his peers and planted himself in front of her. Janez. His pinched brow and ruffled finery made him look like a distressed peacock. She would've smiled except for the anxious undertone to the hall.

'Gisayne! No one has seen you in a few days. And well, with the news, I was worried.'

'The news?' She watched his group over his shoulder. Everyone snatched covert glimpses of her before turning back.

'The deaths. Ismyn, a week ago, and Veronya. Then Larel. Now Tymana. The news just arrived. It has to be Alloran.'

Gisayne clenched the hilt of the sword so tightly she drove her nails into her palm. With studied nonchalance, she released the weapon. 'I didn't hear. I'm sorry, Janez, I must go.'

She pushed past as sweat trickled down her spine. She waited for someone to call her back or to grab her, as though her guilt were obvious to anyone watching. Tymana and Larel, more of Alloran's lovers or perhaps friends. When she glanced surreptitiously over her shoulder, no one watched her go.

Lined with opulent tapestries and candelabra of gold and silver, Ladanyon's suite was situated in one of the most prestigious hallways. No one loitered here. If the senior wizards and sorceresses discussed this latest news, they did so in private, not like clusters of honking geese in the halls. She strolled past one wizard down the hall, but he didn't even glance over.

The door was locked as she expected. She remembered one particular time when she waited here for Alloran, and in hindsight, Ladanyon used that hour to stroke her ego and relax her in his presence.

On the other hand, she did witness his spell to unlock his door–and more. The self-aggrandising fool had never taken her seriously enough. Now, Ladanyon was a peacock...if ever a man was.

She whispered the incantation and pushed through into the darkened room. Another whispered spell, this one shorter, set a candelabrum ablaze and illuminated a neatly organized room. There was no point looking around. Hair and skin were common spell components, and Ladanyon would have been scrupulous to ensure he left nothing lying around in his quarters.

After ensuring she was alone, she stepped into the bedroom. She'd never previously set foot inside, but the door was open on the day she was here. Ladanyon closed it, but not before she'd seen into the room and spotted the second door in the bedroom's far wall. She'd thought nothing of it at the time. But now...what lay through the other door?

She lit another candelabrum. Long shadows leapt to life in the light. The flame revealed a bedroom opulent even by citadel standards. Poor people in the city below made do with thin blankets, while black-tipped white wolf furs from the remote northern mountains heaped Ladanyon's bed. These were enough to keep whole families warm. She curled her lip.

She turned her back on the wasteful extravagance to survey the room. No door was evident. Gisayne pondered. Which part of the wall had she seen?

To the left of the door she'd entered by, a tapestry hung to the floor and stretched half the width of the room. She fumbled the heavy cloth aside, revealing featureless grey stone, and ran her hands along the rough surface. Here. A crack. Too regular to be natural.

How do I get this to open?

But no, the other edge of the door was slightly ajar, jammed by a small stone. The hairs on her arms lifted. Was this Ladanyon's way in and out of the citadel unseen? Why leave the door open, unless it could only be opened from his suite and he required access from the other side?

If he were using this door, he could be on the other side now. Where did it lead? A room? A tunnel? Gisayne faltered, a deep sense of foreboding settling heavily in the pit of her stomach. It didn't matter. If she did nothing, more people were going to die. Alloran, for certain. Probably herself.

She jammed her hands into the small gap and heaved the door open. Darkness yawned before her. The candle flames flickered in a breeze, so she left them there. Instead, she wrought a light out of magic, sending it racing in ahead of her.

Spiral stairs descended into the earth. Gisayne exhaled before descending, keeping the light over her shoulder and her eyes glued to the steps.

Her eyes began to ache from focussing too hard, her legs from the interminable descent. The endless stairs spiralled away into darkness. By her estimate, she must have descended out of the main citadel and into the cliff beneath. Could the stairs open up in the maintenance tunnels accessing the castle's furnace and plumbing?

What felt like a thousand steps later, the stairwell did open into the tunnels. Smooth stone walls adorned with dust stretched before her. These tunnels weren't built but chipped from the very rock. The castle's furnace, fuelled by magic, filled the tunnels with an overwhelming heat.

What did Ladanyon want down here? Though the tunnels provided no conventional access to the outside world, a wizard could likely devise one. Was that all this was, a means of access to the citadel, so he could come and go unseen?

However, a wizard fooling around with demons could use a place like this to hide any incriminating evidence. But this tunnel afforded no hiding places. She'd never ventured into the bowels of the citadel, but there had to be some sort of storage for the workers' tools or other potential hiding places.

Gisayne stepped into the tunnel. When she glanced over her shoulder, the stairs vanished. Nothing but a grey wall stood there. Panic surged, but when she stretched out her hand, her fingertips passed straight through the stone. Illusion. Of course, Ladanyon wouldn't want anyone wondering what lay at the top of the stairs.

Reassured, she advanced down the tunnel. A few other corridors intersected it, but they appeared narrow and disused. They didn't offer any better hiding places than this bare hall. But if Ladanyon had illusion at his disposal....

She heightened her senses, hopping to detect the residue of any of his magic. Anything down here would only need to be hidden from the workers, not a wizard or sorceress. The illusory wall behind her generated a distinct tingling sensation. It wasn't Ladanyon's work but far older. Perhaps, it stretched back to the time the tunnel and stairs were first built. And another tingle ahead. Yes, here, down this hall. Past a maintenance station, its rows of shelves laden with meticulously stacked and labelled jars of oil, grease, and spare parts. The walls were hung with wrenches and who knew what else.

She slowed her pace, relying on her senses again. Though there was no one there, something wasn't right. Something Ladanyon had left behind? The sensation led her a few hundred yards down the tunnel and up the wall. She ran her fingers along the top edge until something brushed against them. Cloth. A bag? Parts of her hand disappeared. There was the illusion. She got a firmer hold. Somehow, it had been fastened to the wall behind the illusion of bare stone. She yanked hard. The cloth tore. Gisayne stumbled backwards, watching her hand reappear with a small bag clutched in her fingers.

Catching her balance against the wall behind her, she knelt to search the contents.

The cache consisted of jars of ingredients and two books. The stench nearly gagged her when she opened the first jar. It was revolting, worse even than her sickhouse. She left the rest alone. Even peering through the glass revealed things so foul they didn't bear close inspection. None had a smudge of skin or a hair caught in the lid.

The books came last. One was Alloran's missing journal; she recognised his handwriting. The other appeared to have been written by Ladanyon. The cover was oddly greasy and left her reluctant to touch it. She eased the book open with one finger and searched page by page for anything useful. The pages were even worse than the cover, leaving her nauseated and an oily residue on her fingers. She only skimmed the words, intent on her search for some part of Ladanyon, but occasional phrases jumped out at her.

Inner-circle of hell...bind the demon with the blood of the summoner...imprint with a sense of the prey.

A soft hiss echoed from the darkness behind her.

Slowly, Gisayne turned to look over her shoulder. Light reflected from a pair of eyes in the shadows. She threw herself backwards. A hellcat leapt from the darkness. She fell backwards to the floor, her hands before her face. The demon's teeth sank into her forearm. Raw pain seared her flesh, an agony so exquisite that all rational thought fled. Dropping the book, she howled and smacked her arm and the hellcat against the wall. She rolled furiously from side to side. Sharp pain punctuated each blow. The evil thing clung tighter with teeth like white-hot needles in her flesh.

Gisayne panted. Worms of panic crawled through her gut. The thing could chew her arm off. Flat, black eyes stared at her as her warm blood soaked her sleeve.

With her free hand, she reached the hilt of her sword. Teeth gritted and left arm contorted, she yanked the blade free. An awkward blow glanced off the demon's side. The hell creature twisted, eyes glaring hatred and its teeth grinding against bone. The next blow struck square.

The sword tore the hellcat from her arm. She screamed at the blinding agony and stumbled after the thing, breathing raggedly. The blade screeched along the wall as her next swing went wide. Blood poured down her arm, slicking the hilt. The hellcat skittered away. The sword didn't even mark its hide.

Except for keeping the demon at bay, the weapon was useless. She retreated towards the maintenance station. Fresh waves of pain seared her arm with every step. What tools did they keep at the station?

The demon followed lazily, keeping its distance and hovering on the edge of her puddle of light. She reached the maintenance station and kept going past a rack of tools. The hellcat slunk through shelves and stacked parts. Weaving like a shadow through the leaves of a tree, it was soundless, ephemeral, and faster than thought.

Gisayne raked over the shelves and racks, finding wrenches, chisels, other tools for which she had no name...and hammers. Abandoning her sword, she snatched a hammer from the rack and engaged a flicker of her martial magic, enough to heighten her senses and quicken her reflexes. When the hellcat emerged from under a set of shelves, she was waiting.

The hammer smashed the hellcat in the ribs, driving it into the wall. The demon shrieked on the periphery of hearing. The broken body slid down the wall, leaving green blood trailing behind it. Its legs worked futilely as it struggled to move. Remorseless, Gisayne smashed the hammer down again and again until the creature moved no more.

The hammer clanked to the floor as she cradled her arm to her chest. The room spun a little. So much blood gushed from the wound. She shredded her cloak into a crude bandage and wound it clumsily around the arm. Blood, shockingly red, soaked through the silk-lined velvet almost immediately, but she kept winding. The arm felt like a crystal shattered into a thousand pieces.

She nudged the pulped remains of the hellcat with a toe. Hair or skin...or blood. The book said something about blood. Yes, Ladanyon needed blood to summon a demon. His blood would've been the first thing this hellcat feasted on to cement its bindings to the wizard. Did the demon contain enough of Ladanyon?

Gisayne wrapped the corpse in the remains of her cloak and slung the makeshift satchel over her shoulder. Retracing her steps up the hall, she retrieved Alloran's journal. Her gaze fell on Ladanyon's book. Skin crawling, she tossed it in with the demon corpse. Ladanyon's research was something Alloran could use.

Wasting no more time in the tunnels, she headed back to the concealed stair and Ladanyon's suite as fast as her feet would carry her. She stole a cloak from Ladanyon's closet and slipped out into the hall. The hour was late. The halls were almost entirely abandoned by gossiping wizards and sorceresses and half the candles were snuffed. Still, she kept her wounded arm tucked out of sight beneath the cloak.

The muddy footprints, mute testimony to the terrible news and the tragedy befalling the citadel, hadn't been cleaned from the entryway.

The stairway of starlight reformed at her command, and she slipped down the stairs. Keen to remain unnoticed, she dissolved the stairway just as she reached the ground. Landing with a jolt, she stumbled and almost fell. She righted herself and scuttled into a narrow laneway with her makeshift satchel dragging at her shoulder.

Already mapping the best route back to Alloran at the underground cellar, she strode deeper into the lane. The night was cool but pleasant.

Pain exploded in the back of her skull. The bundle fell from her shoulder to the ground and her foot knocked it against a wall as she struggled to stay standing. There was a brief impression of bright lights before her knees hit the cobbles of the lane.

# # #

Alloran paced the underground room, tap-tapping his fingers along each paper-strewn table he passed. What was taking so long? Though barely dusk when Gisayne left, dawn had now long since passed.

He shouldn't really go aboveground. Ladanyon had found him once, and poking his nose out the door, especially in broad daylight, might be extremely unwise. Terminally unwise. But he wanted to. Seven hells, he wanted to. He rubbed his temples as he made the turn at the far end of the room, trying to ignore the pounding in his throat.

Footsteps rat-tatted down the stairs, and he spun, knocking over a stack of useless books in his haste. Gisayne stepped into the room: hair in disarray, face haggard and eyes ringed by dark circles. An unfamiliar cloak draped her shoulders, and her own cloak seemed to be wound clumsily around her right forearm. Some of it, anyway. The rest she had slung over her shoulder, something hidden within its folds. Dirt smudged her cheeks and her knees. Blood, both red and green, smeared various parts of her clothing.

A curse fought its way from Alloran's throat. He lunged across the room to sweep her into a tight embrace. She made a muffled grunt against his chest, so he let go. This close, her pallor showed beneath the dirt, and her eyes were glazed. She swayed. An instant before her knees buckled, he caught her.

'What happened?' He lowered her to the floor. 'I expected you hours ago. When you didn't come back....'

He couldn't say the words. All the terrible images he'd envisioned while waiting for her–body broken and bleeding, robbed, beaten and cast aside, taken and ravaged by Ladanyon, imprisoned in the citadel, torn apart by demons.... Every one flashed through his mind, leaving him shuddering from the torrent of emotion.

'I don't know what happened,' she whispered.

Supporting her head, Alloran summoned a water flask from across the room and held it to her lips. 'Your arm?'

She sucked the water greedily and pushed it away when finished. 'Later. Someone hit me on the head.'

He examined her head until he found the lump. She winced as he probed her skull. It was swollen with a touch of blood but not broken.

'Who? Why?'

'I don't know. Never saw them. I was unconscious for hours.'

Icy fingers tightened around his heart. 'Ladanyon.' No one else had cause to take her, hold her, and release her. 'He must have seen you snooping around.'

'Even if that's true, he couldn't have known what I was up to because he didn't take this.' She shoved the bundle wrapped in her abused cloak toward him. 'I found it against a wall when I woke. Whatever he wanted, it was nothing to do with what we were doing.'

Alloran unrolled the bloodstained bundle with care. The last coils unwound with a thump, and two books fell out. A hellcat tumbled after, and he recoiled. Dead. No cause for concern.

The protruding corner of the bottom book looked familiar.... He pushed the top volume aside, despite his stomach protesting at the touch of it. Bile burned the back of his throat, but he shunted it aside and scooped up his missing journal. 'Where did you get it?'

Gisayne levered herself into a sitting position and took another drink. 'Ladanyon had some stuff stashed in the maintenance tunnels. There's access via a staircase in his quarters. I saw it once, though I didn't realise what it was at the time.'

He narrowed his eyes. 'I'm not even going to ask what you were doing in his suite.'

'Silly, you already know. It was the day you met us there.' She reached across and tapped the other book, wrinkling her nose with revulsion. A shiver ran through her body. 'No way Ladanyon would have let me keep that if he knew I had it. I might be dead now.'

Alloran pushed it around with one finger. The churning in his stomach intensified. Why did it do that? He extended his senses and gave the book a cautious poke. Ah! A sense of Ladanyon wreathed the journal. He'd worked heavy magic with it or near it. Despair and hopelessness oozed across his aura like an oil slick.

'What is it?' He lifted the cover with a fingertip.

'Ladanyon's research. I didn't read it. I didn't even like touching it.'

Alloran fumbled around on the table top above him, finally pulling down the heavy stonemason gloves he had dumped there an aeon ago. They were ill-suited to the job, but slipping one on his left hand allowed him to hold the book. Eagerness and excitement built in his chest.

'And that?' Deliberately, he nodded at the hellcat, ignoring the book for the moment. It was unwise to yearn too badly after knowledge, least of all, this kind.

He frowned as she told him, sending his mind racing through the possibilities. The book would need to be studied, and the hellcat, then some experimentation, and maybe....

What am I doing? Gisayne was injured, and who knew what Ladanyon did to her, and he was thinking about research? And enjoying it?

'I need to check you over.' He scooted over next to Gisayne and ditched the glove, but not the guilt. 'Make sure Ladanyon didn't do anything to you. Fix that arm too. Relax.'

Unwinding the bandage revealed the extent of her wound. Something white gleamed for a second before fresh blood welled in the gash. Quickly, he placed one hand on her elbow and the other on her wrist and focused. As he set the spell, an indigo sheen, visible only to his eyes, bathed her forearm. Igniting the spell triggered an aura of light. A short, sharp cry burst from her. The edges of the gash drew together, and blood oozed from the closing cut.

When he was finished, not even a scar remained. Gisayne wheezed, and sweat covered her face. Alloran slowed his breathing to calm his hammering heart. Healing was never as easy as it appeared.

'I'll check your aura now. You shouldn't feel a thing.'

She eyed him dubiously but nodded.

Alloran placed one hand on her brow, taking her hand in his, and delved into her mind. Her aura spread out before him, a complex web of everything that made Gisayne, all clean lines and vivacious purple energy. Each line hummed with harmonious energy.

Except...yes, there. One snarl tangled some of the lines, knotting them up into an ugly mess. But it was old. He swooped closer to examine it. It had the bitter taste of despair that was Ladanyon. This had been done months ago though, even before the attack on her suite.

What did it do? The pattern was unfamiliar, something of Ladanyon's own devising. It could take him days, even months, to determine its purpose. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, a very faint bell rang...and faded. This wasn't done today, whatever it was. Nothing was done today. Why did Ladanyon take her?

'Well?' Gisayne's impatient voice drew him back to the world.

'Nothing. He did nothing.' No need to tell her about something done months ago when there was no discernible effect and it was of unknown intent. No, nothing happened now, and that was the only important thing. She was here, and she was safe.

She was safe. It was a good thing he was sitting down because his knees would've given in. Nothing seemed so important or as sweet as the fact she was alive, even if bruised and bloodied. What Ladanyon had done to her in the past didn't change his love for her. It only strengthened his determination to make sure it never happened again. She was here, and she believed in him.

He hugged her tightly and leaned down to kiss her head. She tipped her head back to watch him. Her lips parted to speak, but he stooped and kissed them.

Her body stiffened then melted into him. Her arms tightened around him, and her fingers twined in his hair, preventing him from pulling back. Not that he'd want to. His kiss lingered.

When she drew back, disappointment throbbed through every fibre of his being.

'I kind of made a bed over there.' She tilted her head, her voice breathless. 'It's not much, but....'

Alloran lurched to his feet, kicking off his boots and scooping her up in one motion. 'Anywhere is perfect if you're there with me.'

# # #

Two deceptively innocent flasks sat on the table–one green from the hellcat's blood and the other red with Alloran's. Both shimmered with a faint dark blue aura, visible only at the periphery. Gisayne stood in an unconsciously provocative pose with her hands on her hips but frowning down at the red flask. Damn, she was fine to look at.

'Is this really necessary?' She touched the flask delicately with one finger.

Alloran shrugged. 'I only have Ladanyon's notes to go by and no time to test his theories, but if he's right, then yes. He's been summoning demons and using them to kill people. Still is. You tell me. To begin with, he was playing me. Now, I think he just wants to flush me out. At least, no one mentioned finding a note on either of the latest victims that you heard. When he finds me again, I suspect he'll summon a demon to kill me. Now it appears any demon tasked to hunt down a person is difficult to banish while it's under that geas. If I want to banish the demon, I need to break the geas.' He licked his dry, cracked lips. 'The only way to do that is make it think it's caught me.'

'By fooling the demon into thinking Ladanyon is you?'

'I hope so, yes. If I succeed, though, I'll need to work fast. If the demon is fooled and kills Ladanyon, then the geas is broken. The demon will be essentially unrestrained and able to do as it likes.'

Gisayne shivered. 'I don't like it.'

'I don't much like it either, but we have precious few alternatives.'

'Surely, we have better ones than baiting Ladanyon into attacking.'

Alloran caught her hand, forcing her to look at him, and squeezed her fingers. 'I'm not baiting him. I simply believe that as soon he knows where I am, he'll make his move. I can't stay down here forever.'

She sniffed and glanced away. 'I suppose not. When?'

'Tomorrow. You should rest. I'm going to put the finishing touches on the incantations, and then I'll come to bed.'

She leaned over and kissed his forehead. The view from behind as she walked away was fine too, but the puzzle of the damn spell in her aura distracted him. It was familiar, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Not a traditional spell. Something Ladanyon had shown him? Yes, that felt right. When? Snow...and a banquet, on a rooftop. Yes, the Year End celebration a few years ago. Ladanyon had been researching cures for major illnesses, exploring the possibilities of healing someone by forcing their body to mirror a healthy person....

No. He couldn't have. Dizziness washed over Alloran. The air whooshed out of him in a gasp as he rushed after her. Seizing her by the shoulder before she had a chance to lie down, he plunged his mind back into her aura. Yes, it was there, some elements of the mirroring spell Ladanyon had shown him. But it was different. It was mirroring someone, but this had a time signature, not mirroring a state in a fixed time but mirroring across time–each of the linked individuals changing together. No, no, a one way link. Gisayne changing to mirror the other person. Who?

He knew the answer even before he found it. Ladanyon's signature, not just on the spell, but also in it–a crucial element. And here was something he missed the first time. The knots were tied months ago, but part of it felt fresh. He traced the patterns of power until he found the most recent part. Not an addition, but an activation. Ladanyon had set the spell months ago at his leisure then left it dormant. He must have knocked Gisayne unconscious specifically for the purpose of waking this spell.

Ladanyon was coming for him, and Alloran could do nothing without risking Gisayne, without killing her. End game.

'Seven hells.'

Gisayne clutched his arm. Her pale face and wide eyes left her looking child-like and vulnerable. 'What? What did you find?'

He settled back on to his heels, disengaging his mind from her aura. His stomach churned. What do I tell her? How do I tell her? 'Ladanyon has....' He choked on the words.

'He's linked himself to you. I think...I think whatever happens to him will happen to you. What he feels, you'll feel. If he is injured, you will be too.'

Comprehension dawned on her face, followed by mounting horror. Her mouth worked, but no sound emerged.

'I could maybe undo it, but it would take time. Probably more time than we have.'

'Then, if the demon takes Ladanyon to hell....'

'You'd go to hell? No, but you'd feel what he feels. You might as well be in hell. Eventually, you'd be dead.' Alloran glanced away, unable to stand the pain of looking at her. 'I think closing the hell-gate would sever the link, but I can't be sure. And what if I wasn't fast enough? Either alternative leaves you dead or worse. I can't do that. The only solution is to let Ladanyon kill me. Once I'm dead, he'll have what he wants. We can hope that's the end of it.'

# # #

Words failed her. He doesn't. He can't mean that. His face, the face she knew so well, was unrecognisable. His features sagged with a bitter resignation underscored by a hard determination. The Alloran she knew had never been determined about anything more serious than getting drunk. This Alloran meant it when he said he'd sacrifice himself.

'What if it's not the end of it?' Her voice cracked. 'What if Ladanyon keeps summoning demons? Who will stop him if you're dead?'

Alloran shook his head. 'This is about me. It's always been about me from the beginning. From the moment he stole my research. He wants me dead for reasons I don't understand. But if giving him what he wants is the only way to end this, then so be it.'

He really did mean to kill himself. The beginnings of panic fluttered in her stomach, and the candle flame fluttered as well. Her emotions were getting away from her, allowing her magic to influence the room. She tried to draw a steady breath but found herself gulping air instead.

'Idiot. It may be about you, but you're not the only one it affects. What about the city, the people who live here?'

What about the poor she succoured, the sick she tended, the grieving widows she comforted? So many lives guttering like candle flames.

'Will you risk them on a theory that you think is probably right?'

He blinked. Finally, he shook his head. 'I wanted to leave the city. You talked me into confronting Ladanyon.'

'To kill him, not yourself! We have to kill Ladanyon. It's the only way to be sure.'

Alloran faltered, his lips turned down in a pensive frown. She could see in his eyes that he agreed with her, but he'd made it clear he was too afraid to risk her. And shouldn't he be?

He's doing the same thing I am. Desperation filled her: to save him, to save the city and all people she knew and cared for. He'd already lost people he cared for, friends and women he once loved. Now, he was trying to save the rest in the only way he knew how. Nothing she said would sway him.

How could anyone force his hand?

The flask of his blood sat on the desk. He wouldn't use it, but she could.

Before she could think better of it, she snatched up the flask and incantation. She ran. She stumbled up the stairs, leaning against the wall for support. Dust and dirt showered the steps, scoured loose from the walls by her frantic passing. If she could hide somewhere long enough, eventually Ladanyon would find Alloran. He had found him before; it was only a matter of time before he tracked him down again. If Ladanyon brought a demon, she'd feel it. She could use the spell on Ladanyon. Then Alloran would have to act to banish the demon, hoping that he could sever her link to Ladanyon by closing the gate.

'Seven hells, Gisayne!'

The clink of glass followed her up the stairs as he pounded after her, cursing. Why didn't she see this coming? She ran faster, but the stairs were steep. Her breath came in laboured gasps.

The door at the top was closed. She struggled with the hasp and shoved the door over with all her might. It crashed to the ground, sending clouds of dirt into the air. She dashed through, wiping grit from her streaming eyes.

The thick gloom of the early hours before sunrise cloaked the streets. Someone shouted from a warehouse nearby, probably disturbed by the crash of the door, but she ran away from the warehouses and the smell of the tannery. Her lungs burned by the time she reached a residential area.

No one stirred as she dashed by the houses, picking streets at random. She had no destination. Anywhere, as long as she gave Alloran the slip.

Her flight carried her from quiet streets onto a main boulevard lined with huge houses, visible only as sprawling shadows in the fading night. She straggled to a stop, searching the street. This place was familiar. Which street was it? The houses were wealthy with magnificent trees stretching above the walls enclosing their grounds.

The Triumphal Boulevard. It was the main thoroughfare from north to south through the city that intersected the square Alloran had told her about. This was where he worked with the mason to build the statue of King Dohnagel. A bad place to be, since Ladanyon knew about it. He'd be watching for any sign of Alloran. Which way was the square from here?

She started left, hoping the choice carried her farther away from the square.

A dog barked. Stiff-legged and hackles lifted, the animal emerged from the shadows. She recoiled, glancing over her shoulder. With Alloran behind her, and the dog in front, she was trapped. When she tried circling around, the animal growled, the sound low and menacing in its throat. Behind it, two more mongrel curs slunk belly to the street to flank the first. She stepped backwards, keeping her gaze on the dog's bared teeth. When it didn't follow her, she kept backing up the boulevard.

Alloran stepped into the intersection, calling for her to stop. She side-stepped away from his outstretched arm and lost sight of the mongrels as she did. Alloran pursued her. The dog barked again, and he recoiled, swearing. She broke into a run, looking for another side street to take her away from the square.

A barricade blocked the street ahead. No side streets beckoned her to safety. Alloran gained ground behind her. She squeezed between the barricade and the wall, and slipped into the square, clinging to the wall of the building.

Though the sun wasn't up, Alloran's partner, Dek, stood next to the statue, unpacking his tools. The back of Gisayne's neck prickled.

Dek turned. He didn't appear to see Gisayne in the shadows of the building. Instead, he looked towards the alley she came from. 'You!'

The air thrummed, and Gisayne drew in a sharp breath. Someone seized her shoulder, spinning her. Alloran. His eyes were locked on the approaching stonemason.

# # #

'Go home, Dek.' Alloran pulled Gisayne behind him.

Everything in the square seemed brighter, louder, and closer. The humming intensified, and the air crackled with energy. The hair on his arms lifted in response. His pulse quickened. Now. It was happening now. He had to get Dek and Gisayne out of here. She squirmed as he tightened his grip on her. The satchel clutched in his other hand contained the books and green flask, and made holding on to her harder. Damn her. Damn those dogs. If not for the street mutts, Gisayne would be fleeing through the trade district now.

'Go home now.'

'The guards are lookin' for you, murderer.' Dek hefted a mallet from the tools at his feet.

'I never murdered anyone, Dek.' Alloran carefully put down the satchel as the urgency in him mounted. This was taking too long. How to get Dek to move faster? 'Leastwise the lord wizard's daughter here.'

Dek's gaze switched to Gisayne, eyes widening beneath fuzzy red brows. 'I'd rather leave it for the guards to sort out.'

'Good, go get the guards–'

The sky exploded in a mass of violent, red energy, tearing asunder with a sound like worlds colliding. The magical power cleaving the hell-gate open lashed at Alloran's mind, and its foul touch doubled him over. Gisayne ripped free of his grasp and raced towards a building fronted by a wide colonnade. Dek stared, open-mouthed. Alloran lunged forward on shaking legs to tackle him to the ground. Red magic crackled around the square, over their heads, and playing across the buildings. Wind howled out of nowhere, heavy with the stench of foul things and hot as the midday desert.

When the magic died, a gaping hole into a nightmare sundered the air above the square. Yellow and green striated clouds raced against a hellish sky. A single tentacle tentatively waved from the gate.

Alloran scrambled to his feet, sprinting to snatch up the satchel in shaking hands. Where was Ladanyon? He must be close. Where was Gisayne? Damn her. He had to stop her before she could use the spell on Ladanyon.

'Run!' he yelled at Dek, standing white-faced and shaking. 'Get out of here!' More tentacles grasped the edge of the opening.

A series of small concussions signalled the arrival of wizards from the citadel, drawn by the massive expenditure of magic. With his dark cloak flapping in the gale, the lord wizard appeared several yards away. Other wizards and sorceresses materialised around the square, focused on the tentacles whipping out of the hole. Several of the suckered arms seized the statue, and the demon used the leverage to drag more of its bulk out of the hell.

'Send it back!' The lord wizard shouted over the roar of the wind. 'This is forbidden!'

'I didn't summon it!'

Across the square, Gisayne darted from the cover of the colonnade to another building. What was she doing? Seven hells take him. She was searching for Ladanyon.

Tentacles lashed from the gate and fastened to buildings. More attached to the statue and anything else within their grasp. One tentacle seized a hapless wizard around the shoulders. Another snaked around his ankles.

Look away. Look away! But he didn't. He couldn't. The tentacles tightened, pulling inexorably in different directions. The wizard screamed–a pitiful, choked-off sound. Blood and intestines rained down on the cobbles.

Dragging his gaze away, Alloran gagged.

'Murderer! Traitor!' The lord wizard's diatribe ended as he vomited.

Alloran gritted his teeth and bolted. The lord wizard shouted demands at his back, interspersed with retching, but Alloran raced out into the square as the wind snatched at his clothes. Where was Gisayne? Distracted by the wizard's grisly demise, he lost sight of her. Finding Ladanyon would be as good a solution because Gisayne would come to him, eventually. Once he had the flask of his blood back, he could let the demon take him and end the whole mess.

It was impossible to find one individual among the mass of wizards and sorceresses crowding the edges of the square. Wait, there. Across the plaza and behind the hell-gate, a wizard stood still, an anomaly amid the frantic activity. Alloran changed course. Tentacles snatched at him as though the demon sensed the presence of its prey.

I'm insane.

He dodged. Another tentacle smashed the ground in front of him, flagstones cracking with a sharp report. Too slow, he tried to stop, colliding with the tentacle instead. The satchel flew from his hand. Immediately, he scrambled after it on hands and knees. He tore the bag open in his haste. The vial of hellcat blood remained intact. Tucking it in a pocket, he slung the satchel over his shoulder. If he stopped Gisayne, he wouldn't need the blood anyway.

Ladanyon had vanished. Alloran hesitated, and another tentacle nearly knocked him over. He ducked. Red magic exploded on the ground nearby, missing the demon and leaving a smoking crater. More magic flashed across the square, striking the hell-creature with no visible effect and tearing the square apart in explosions of masonry and smoke.

'Looking for me?'

Alloran spun.

Gisayne. Ladanyon had Gisayne. Alloran's heart sank, his gaze transfixed by the rictus expression on her face. There was no sign of the flask of his blood, but the incantation fluttered across the cobbles. Ladanyon held her by the wrist in a delicate grasp, but pain knotted her features at his touch.

Bastard. Without taking his eyes from Gisayne, Alloran picked up the spell and shoved it in the satchel. Switching his gaze to Ladanyon seemed like the hardest thing he'd ever had to do.

A tentacle smashed into the ground between them, breaking the frozen moment. Alloran shrank away, and Gisayne jerked back against Ladanyon. The other wizard didn't even flinch, standing in the middle of the chaos. His white robes were in perfect order, and his sculpted face was composed. Of course, he had nothing to fear. The demon wouldn't harm its summoner. Teeth flashed white in a genial smile, and his hair fell around his shoulders in perfect, golden locks. The eyes, though, the eyes told the truth–wild, manic, and deep-set in that otherwise flawless face.

'Let her go.' Alloran shouted to be heard over the explosions and crashes of falling buildings.

A wizard raced past with a tentacle following close behind. When he ducked through a door, the tentacle smashed into the wall, showering fresh debris everywhere. A blast of green magic exploded from the building and shattered harmlessly against the demon's suckered hide.

'How about...no. Let's talk, instead.'

Ladanyon relaxed his grip, and the pained expression on Gisayne's face eased. Her mouth still worked soundlessly. He must have prevented her from talking.

'Talk?' Alloran threw himself aside as a tentacle lashed at him. He rolled across the cobbles. Stone fragments and grit pressed into his skin. 'About what?'

'You. Your imminent death. You got my love notes, I presume?'

The tentacle smashed the flagstones between them. Alloran rolled back the other way, and a flying stone fragment sliced open his cheek. The sting seemed trivial amid the turmoil. Random blasts of magic sizzled past, and one passed close enough to sear the hair from his arm. It struck the tentacle, rebounded, and blasted a crater in the ground. Alloran's ears rang. The tentacle withdrew.

'I got them.' Blood trickling down his face, he clambered shakily to his feet. He wiped it away with the back of his hand. 'This is all for what? For jealousy?'

Ladanyon's face contorted briefly with rage but smoothed into perfect geniality again. Hardly a fool proof camouflage, since the true nature of the beast still lurked in his eyes.

Two wizards and a sorceress ran past, blasting the demon with repeated magic explosions. Tentacles pursued them. One of the wizards veered towards Ladanyon. His lips moved, and one hand lifted. A tentacle writhed through the air behind him. Ladanyon spoke a single unintelligible word, and the wizard flew backwards as if a giant, invisible fist punched him. As he landed limply over a pile of broken stones, the tentacle shrank away from Ladanyon.

Alloran shook his head and stumbled back a few steps. Insane. The man was completely insane. Ladanyon turned back, regardless of the interruption. Gisayne hung limply in his grip, and her eyes were wide in her white face.

'For what? For being better and not using it! Do you know every time I did something, people would say Alloran could have done it better? And if I couldn't do something, people would say, Oh, Alloran would have solved it!'

Alloran struggled to make sense of the words. The square receded, together with the clamouring, the explosions, and the violence; receded until his whole world shrank to Ladanyon and his foul grip on Gisayne.

He didn't know that since he'd steered clear of research when possible. Ladanyon never mentioned it to him. Why? An aching regret filled him.

A tentacle surged from a nearby window, dragging the wall down in a crash of tumbling stones. Alloran threw up a hand, blasting it with indigo fire. It retreated back through the ruin it had created. A cadre of sword wizards careened towards him, yelling war cries. Alloran turned. The tip of a tentacle hovered inches from his face. He threw himself backwards, yelling. The sword wizards fell upon it with swords and magic. His heart raced, and his chest tightened painfully.

He whirled to find Ladanyon. 'Have you no conscience, no remorse? All the people who could die...that poor wizard.'

Ladanyon shrugged. 'If you are concerned for them, you have the power to end this quickly.'

Another tentacle whipped past, clutching a screaming sorceress in its coiled grip. The sword wizards abandoned their prey and raced after the sorceress, screaming and hacking futilely at the demon with blades and magic.

Alloran stared at Ladanyon, who stood in the destruction with a gentle smile on his lips as if oblivious to the shouting wizards, the smashing stones and flying magic, and the blood and guts on the cobbles only yards away.

'How many demons have you summoned?'

'Too many to count, my friend. Too many. This is my only first-circle demon though. Isn't he beautiful?' Ladanyon smiled fondly upon the tentacles filling the square.

He was beyond reason. Everything that made him human had been sucked into the pit and traded for power.

Ladanyon's grin broadened. 'Did you figure out what I've done to her yet?'

A knife gleamed in his hand. Alloran leapt forward, shouting inarticulately, but too slow and too late. Steel flashed, and blood ran. Gisayne tumbled into his arms, and they sprawled back to the ground. The sound of glass shattering echoed from nearby. Hot blood spilled over Alloran's hands.

Gisayne struggled in his grasp, and her face pressed to his chest, muffling her cries. Blood seeped between her fingers where she clutched her arm.

Damn Ladanyon to the first circle of hell. 'I was right about the spell. Ladanyon cut himself, not you.'

Alloran dragged Gisayne into the dubious shelter of a wall and ripped strips of cloth from his cloak to bind the wound. Magic still tore across the square, and more of the demon emerged from the gate. Tentacle upon tentacle spilled to the ground until the centre of the square seemed nothing but a writhing nest of suckered flesh. They branched out, scraping across the ground and up walls and tearing down buildings as they went. Another hideous roar reverberated out the gate, shaking the structures. Half the nearest buildings lay in crumbled ruins already. Wizards and sorceresses took up positions behind the cover of fallen walls and piles of rubble. A few lay in unmoving heaps.

'I have to stop this.' He stood and strode towards the hell-gate.

Gisayne grabbed him by the arm and spun him around. She shone with magic, her hair crazed with static, as she held her sword in her hand. 'No! I won't allow it. You banish that demon, Alloran, the way we agreed, or so help me I'll cut Ladanyon's head off myself!'

'Impossible. I've only half the spell now.' Alloran ducked away from a tentacle, dragging her with him.

'You will.' Gisayne pulled from his grasp. He snatched for her, too slow, and she was up and running in the same direction as Ladanyon. Her hand quickly fished something out of the rubble. The vial of his blood.

No matter. She needed the incantation, and it was in his satchel. But now that was lost during the struggle. A quick glance around revealed nothing, so he started walking towards the demon again. His breath rasped in his throat, and tremors seized his body. Fighting the rising sense of fear, he quickened his step as though he could outrun the terror by rushing towards his fate. He might outrun his faltering resolve.

His breath came quicker as he stared at the tangled mass of tentacles, the gate from which they spewed, and the horrible death awaiting him on the other side. His heartbeat hammered in his ears, drowning out even the thunder of collapsing buildings. He squeezed his eyes closed to avoid watching his doom approach, but waiting in the darkness was worse. When he opened his eyes again, a tentacle reached for him. Trepidation flooded him, and he forced himself to hold his ground.

Ladanyon hadn't gone far. He stalked the outer edges of the futile battle and picked off wizards and sorceresses from behind. A woman crumpled to the ground beneath a blast of magic, and tiny flames played over her corpse as she collapsed. Screaming at the top of her lungs, Gisayne lunged at him and swung the vial into the side of his face. The thin glass smashed on impact.

Seven hells, she'd memorised the incantation. He stepped toward her, stumbling in his haste.

Too late. The spell ignited in a coruscation of dark blue and purple energy. Ladanyon howled. The tentacle reaching for Alloran hesitated in confusion. The demon must've sensed its prey had doubled.

Damn her! Now he needed to try to banish the demon before or soon after it grabbed hold of Ladanyon and hope he could close the gate to severe the link. Otherwise, she was dead. He searched his pocket, but the flask wasn't there. He spun, scanning the square. Where did it go?

Pieces of glass glittered on the cobbles, and a green puddle drained away into the cracks. He remembered the sound of glass breaking as he caught Gisayne. The vial lay shattered on the ground.

The tentacle surged after him, knocking him to his knees. He caught himself just shy of falling on his face and flung himself forward. A thin smear of green lingered on the ground, and he ran his hand through it. He wiped his bloody fingers across his face.

Tentacles whipped towards him, and one struck Alloran in the gut. He flew backwards and into a wall. Pain, blinding pain. Blessed numbness. His limbs grew heavy and unresponsive. His thoughts moved in step with the slow wheel of the stars. Something wet dripped down his forehead.

Hellcat blood....

With a last surge of strength, he invoked his power and slurred the incantation. The blood on his face ignited in a flash of dark blue.

A single tentacle waved tentatively over Alloran before retreating.

Somebody screamed. Agony and heart-stopping fear filled the sound. Buildings trembled with the force of the demon's roar. For a moment, the wall of tentacles before the hell-gate parted, and Alloran saw the demon's face–monstrous, hideous. Tentacles sprouted from shoulders too massive to conceive.

Ladanyon's head snapped back and forth as a tentacle swung him fiercely above the square.

Alloran staggered to his feet and teetered a moment. His body was a throbbing mass of pain. When he put a hand to his head, it came away smeared in bright red blood.

Gisayne staggered out of the debris, her cheek bruised and her clothes rent and smoking. She lurched from side to side with every jerk the tentacle gave Ladanyon, but managed to touch Alloran's face with one shaking hand, just above the gash from the flying stone.

'Nice bruise.'

He pushed her hand away. Time for that later, if they survived. 'I need to finish it and fast. Are you well enough to mass the surviving wizards? I'll take whatever help I can get.'

She nodded reluctantly. 'Don't get yourself killed.'

Alloran bolted towards the front of the hell-gate. Halfway there, he found the lord wizard crouched behind a massive chunk of fallen masonry with his head in his hands. Alloran hauled him to his feet.

'No time for bystanders, my lord. Rally anyone you can find.'

Two more wizards and a sorceress emerged from nearby rubble. One man wouldn't meet his eyes. The sorceress flinched every time he looked at her.

The lord wizard stared at him, eyes wide in apparent wonder and disbelief. 'You...you were going to let that thing take you? Into hell?'

Alloran compressed his lips. 'It seemed the best solution to save lives, but it's no longer an option if you want your daughter alive.'

The lord wizard's gaze flickered around the square. 'Gisayne?'

'No time to explain. If you want to keep her safe, then we need a massive blast. Now. I'm going to work the banishing spell, but I want as much of this hell-cursed thing back through the gate as possible.'

The lord wizard turned, clapping his hands briskly, rounding up his underlings like geese. 'Let's have at it then!'

A blast of magic struck the demon in a glittering rainbow. The surviving buildings trembled. Tentacles pulled back, waving frantically. Parts of the demon smoked, and in some places, chunks of flesh were missing. No blood flowed from the wounds.

'Again!'

Another blast. The demon howled. Tentacles writhed.

'Again!'

Tentacles began to lash at the wizards when another blast came from behind the hell-gate. Disoriented, the demon stopped.

'Again!'

This time, the blast came from both directions. Some of the tentacles snapped back through the hell-gate, dragging Ladanyon with them. His shrieks lingered.

'Again!'

The blast rocked the square. Most of the tentacles retreated in a twisting mass and disappeared into the hell-gate. Silence descended.

The first tentacles remained curled around the mostly intact statue. The anchoring grip of the demon protected it. Alloran stared. When he worked the banishing spell, it should make the demon retreat and force the thing to release its hold on the sculpture. But he wasn't really Ladanyon; he only fooled the demon into believing it. Was the strength of that belief enough to force a few last tentacles back into hell?

Slowly, the tip of a tentacle emerged from the gate.

Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. If he delayed it'd be too late.

He signalled the wizards as he began the spell. In ragged formation, they hurled fresh blasts of energy at the groping tentacles. The demon retreated again.

Alloran screamed the incantation. Dark blue energy shimmered in the air around him. Blood to summon, blood to banish. He flicked blood from his head into the churning morass of magic. The hell-gate flexed and shrunk. The tentacles on the statue quivered but didn't shift. After a moment, they tightened again. Demon flesh rasped over stone.

Failed. Either the residue of Ladanyon's blood in the hellcat was too thin, or he had too little of the hellcat's blood. Perhaps, his theory was completely wrong. No, it couldn't be. The gate did flex. Was his switch with Ladanyon simply inadequate? What more could he do?

Power.... Something niggled at him. Something he'd read in Ladanyon's research? The book! Where was the book? He spun, searching. There! His satchel rested against a mound of rubble. He dove. Pain flared sharp in his hand. Ignoring it, he ripped the text out and flipped through the pages frantically. A stone shard protruded from the fleshy ball of his thumb, and he yanked it out and tossed it. Pressing his sleeve against the wound, he read the page.

Yes, here. Ladanyon theorised that the less power a wizard had, the greater the offering required to the demon, both to summon and to banish; the more blood, the more flesh, even. Alloran possessed power, but his imperfect switch with Ladanyon diluted the strength of his banishing. The base principles of magic said that made it the same as if he were weak. His stomach clenched. He had to do this, in order to save Gisayne. Her fate was bound to Ladanyon unless he closed that gate.

'Gisayne!'

She turned and saw him. Her jaw clenched against pain inflicted on Ladanyon beyond the gate. He ran towards her, seizing her sword from her belt.

'What?' She lifted a blood-smeared hand to stop him and halted. Fresh blood bloomed on the shoulder of her shirt from a gash opened in Ladanyon's flesh. Screaming, she caught herself against a nearby wall.

Alloran didn't stop to explain or to think. If he did, his nerve would fail him. Every second counted. His left arm went flat on a fallen block of masonry, and the sword came up. Gisayne screamed again.

Blood. Blood on her hand.

The sword trembled in his hand. He froze as he stared at her thumb and the thin trickle of blood. Only a trifle, compared to the blood covering other parts of her body. She swayed on her feet.

'Your hand. What happened to your hand?' He couldn't muster the strength to speak louder than a whisper.

Her gaze dropped blankly to her own palm and the blood. 'I don't know.' Her tongue tripped over the words, and her eyes became unfocused.

He knew. His hand; her hand. Same place, same wound. Why hadn't he foreseen this possibility? Something in Ladanyon's mirror spell had interacted with his own substitution spell. She was no longer linked only to Ladanyon but linked to both of them.

His arm shook from the strain of holding the sword. Ladanyon had vanished, dragged into the inner circle of hell. The demon had its prey, and now nothing restrained it. If that gate didn't close now, they were all going to hell. The whole city. Him. And Gisayne. She was dead either way, sooner or later. She only had as much time as the demon wanted to play with Ladanyon. The less, the better, really.

His gaze locked with Gisayne's. 'I'm sorry.'

He brought the blade down.

Agony seared his arm. His scream trailed off into a ragged sob. Somewhere in the background, he heard Gisayne scream. His world contracted. Blood filled his mouth. I must have bitten my cheek. Somehow, through the dizzying pain, he managed to gasp the words of the incantation again. The air sizzled and crackled with magic. Sparks flew. Dropping the sword, he picked up his severed hand and tossed it into the vortex of power.

The hell-gate groaned and flexed; it quivered and distorted. The quiver became a vibration, and the vibration became a shaking.

The gate snapped closed.

The severed tentacles turned to stone and crumbled under their own weight. The demon's remains solidified a foot from the statue, leaving stone coils around the king's waist.

In the distance, Gisayne was still screaming and sobbing. Alloran swayed on his feet, and someone grabbed him. Dek. A wizard thrust his hand against the blood spurting from the stump. A brief flare of power cauterised the wound in a moment of hot agony. A curl of smoke rose from his wrist as he collapsed.

'Guess as how you didn't kill those six wizards then,' Dek said.

Alloran tried to focus to no avail and settled for a fixed grin verging on a grimace.

Dek looked across at the statue standing wrapped in tentacles but otherwise undamaged in the middle of the destruction. More wizards and sorceresses slowly emerged, limping and blood-smeared, and their clothes ragged.

'You do good sculpting for a wizard. I reckon the tentacles 'ardly spoil it at all.'

Alloran choked on a laugh before sinking gratefully into unconsciousness.

# # #

A bare ceiling.

Blink.

Alloran tried to turn his head. No response. Something soft beneath him. A bed? He explored with his fingers, but only the right hand moved. Sheets. A mattress. Yes, a bed. Nearby, the soft scritch-scritch of someone writing.

What was wrong with his left hand? It itched something fierce, but otherwise, he couldn't feel it–not the sheets against his skin or any movement in the fingers.

Memories flashed back, and his breath caught. Grief threatened to smother him.

I cut it off.

The demon. Tentacles lashing everywhere. Blasts of magic. Tumbling walls. The flood of memories almost overwhelmed him.

Gisayne.

Slowly, painfully slowly, he turned his head to the left. An infirmary, militantly neat and stark white. Rows of beds. Yes, he could smell it now, sterile and clean. Huge windows in one wall filled the room with brilliant morning light, and a stained glass high up cast pretty patterns on the floor. The citadel. Yes, they brought him here after he summoned the imp by mistake.

Gisayne lay propped up in a bed next to his, scribbling in a journal. At his movement, she glanced over. A spontaneous smile bloomed on her face. 'You're awake.'

'Kind of.' It took some effort to keep his eyes open. 'You look better than I feel.'

'I wasn't wielding huge amounts of magical energy.' Putting the journal down on a table, she swung her legs out of the bed. Her left arm hung awkwardly at her side, bandaged from elbow to the stump of her wrist. She wore a nightgown, bandages poking out here and there–all the wounds inflicted on Ladanyon were hers to suffer.

Her hand. Alloran couldn't take his eyes off it. 'I'm sorry.'

She shrugged and looked down. 'Better handless than dead, right? I lost so much blood. They were worried I was going to die. If you didn't close that gate when you did, I'd probably be dead.'

'Yes.' Her reply didn't make his actions any more palatable.

'Yes.' Shadows filled her eyes, ghosts of things she saw or imagined in the square.

The last few days had aged her, leaving this reflective woman in place of the crusading girl. Was that a bad thing? Experience ages us all. 'You're not linked to me anymore?'

'Don't seem to be.'

'Shouldn't be. The spell that fooled the demon into thinking I was Ladanyon was only temporary but...I didn't foresee how all the spells intersected. I was worried it might be permanent.'

'I'm fine. How do you...do you feel...?' Gisayne let out a gusty sigh. 'Are you still in pursuit of the next answer? Do we need to be afraid you won't...stop?'

A good question. What did he feel? He remembered the moment the gate closed, which should have been the triumphal moment. No rush, no excitement. He felt only bone-deep dread, weary resignation, and pain–so much pain. Finding an answer, being right, wasn't much fun when lives hung in the balance–especially that of the woman you love.

'I don't think so. I think I could quite happily never learn anything new ever again. Well.' He coughed. 'Perhaps not anything. I am sure there are problems that need solving. But I don't want to learn something for its own sake. I guess demons are pretty damn persuasive.'

'Very.' Gisayne nodded with fervour. 'The quiet life sure looks good right now.'

'Your father can't be too pleased.'

'About this?' She gestured vaguely with her stump. 'No. About Ladanyon almost destroying the entire city with a first-circle demon? Not at all. About you saving us? Thrilled. The statue with the remains of the demon's tentacles is to stand as it is, and your friend Dek is hard at work on a new commission, Alloran's Sacrifice.'

'He's what?' Alloran tried to use his left arm to sit up and collapsed back to the bed. Hot agony blazed through the stump. He gasped. 'A monument? No. I won't allow it.'

'I don't think you have much say.' Her lips twitched as she leaned towards him until her breath brushed his cheek. 'The whole city is celebrating you.'

He tried to close the distance to steal a kiss, but she pulled away.

'My father wouldn't breathe a word right now if you wanted the moon on a chain and set about to make it so.'

'I...the moon? Why would I want the moon? Oh....'

Not the moon. Her. Though her father had no say in her life choices, he possessed the power to inflict misery on anyone he chose.

Gisayne leaned close again, not moving away this time when he fumbled a kiss. The touch of her soft lips against his breathed new life into him. He struggled to sit, leaning only on his right arm.

Their missing hands suddenly seemed trivial, and the temptation of hunting down just one more answer was a distant lure. The woman in front of him, though, was real. She was solid and within his grasp. He slid his one good arm around her shoulders, drawing her close until she nestled her head in the crook of his neck with a sigh. Her nearness burned through his veins like fire, making the white of the infirmary whiter and the sterile scent even sharper. Everything about her made him feel more alive, and after the demon and the square, he desperately wanted to feel alive.

'Gisayne.' He whispered into her ear. 'Would you do this sorry fool the favour of allowing him to officially court you?'

She tipped her head back, her purple eyes glowing lambent in the fading afternoon light. 'The hero of the hour? I said my father wouldn't have anything to say. But me?' She shrugged and gave him a lopsided smile. 'I'll think about it.'

A Magical Melody

Avram blinked and checked another drawer. Also, empty. No, he'd used the top one, hadn't he? The bare, wooden bottom stared back when he opened the top drawer again. He ran a finger across the wood. Nothing. No illusion. No sign anyone had been here. Rawellen's perfume overwhelmed any other scents. He glanced at her over his shoulder.

'It's not here. Did you take it?'

On the far side of the room, the colour rushed from Rawellen's cheeks, leaving her face porcelain white beneath perfectly coiffed, midnight hair. She looked like a child's doll, a frightened doll. Beside her, Councillor Eiman fidgeted with the lace on his sleeves and glanced from Avram to Rawellen and back.

Faint fingers of panic squirmed in Avram's gut. If Rawellen hadn't taken the sheet music.... His gaze unfocused as he ran through the possibilities.

'What do you mean gone?' Eiman slipped a finger inside the collar of his black frock coat. Sweat trickled down his face.

The silly councillor couldn't have taken the scores. He had the magical abilities of a toadstool–and an unfortunate resemblance to one too. Really, that tight coat did nothing to flatter his rotund figure.

Avram wrinkled his nose. 'I mean, gone.'

'But...but the orchestra is assembled!'

Snorting, Avram pushed the drawer of the mahogany sideboard closed hard enough to rattle the crystal goblets on their shelves. Better for Rawellen to deal with the odious little man.

'My dear councillor.' True to form, Rawellen released her death grip on her skirts to ease Eiman into chair and stooped to coo into his ear, turning the full force of her devastating beauty against him. 'I'm sure we can resolve this matter in short order.'

What? Did the woman not understand "gone"? Avram waved his hands to catch her attention. If she were assuming that he'd mislaid the sheet music and would momentarily remember where to find them, Avram was sure she'd be sorely disappointed. The scores were gone, vanished without a trace, and with no explanation aside from theft.

Without any change in expression, Rawellen drew Eiman back to his feet. 'On second thoughts, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to dismiss the orchestra. Or have them perform something else, a piece from last season perhaps?'

'But...' The councillor's protests were cut off as Rawellen bundled him out the carved door, closing it behind him and leaning against the wood.

'Gone? Totally gone?' Her impressive bosom heaved, threatening to spill from the lace-edged neckline of her gown. 'The whole score? Which one?'

Avram pushed his pince-nez further up his nose and cleared his throat. Why did she have to be so damn beautiful? It was distracting, and it was obvious that she knew it–knew it and used it. 'Both scores. Both copies.' The words emerged a dry croak.

Rawellen's breath whooshed from her in an explosive burst. 'The spell-annotated copies as well?'

Avram nodded. What a mess. So much for the rigid protocols designed to ensure that spell-annotated copies didn't make it to the public arena. Then again, it wasn't theft they were intended to prevent, but human error. It was too much to hope some music buff had stolen them for personal enjoyment, some ordinary musician to whom the notations would be meaningless. No, it was someone who had the talent to break in here, without a doubt. Heads would roll, and Avram's would not be one of them.

'Who? Who would have done this? This is a disaster!' Rawellen's voice climbed impressively into the upper registers as only a trained vocalist's could do. Her hands rose as well, waving to and fro in carefully orchestrated histrionics. She began to pace, twitching her blue skirts out of her way with sharp, furious jerks.

Once a performer, always a performer. Rolling his eyes, Avram tried to straighten his rumpled white coat while he waited for her dramatics to end.

Rawellen's rant wound down as she strode across the room yet again with the heels of her blue boots sinking into the thick, emerald carpet. At the brocade drapes hanging against the far wall, she spun and strode back again. Her skirts brushed against the couches with each agitated pass.

'I am well aware of the ramifications,' Avram said, seizing the moment as she took a breath. As I should be. I wrote the damn thing.

Her fingers fluttered, an affectation of nerves, and smoothed the black-striped silk of her bodice. After a moment, she settled to toying with the black ribbon tied below her cleavage. Avram dragged his gaze away. No point in going down that road again. Beautiful women like her had far better prospects than jug-eared composers like him. And would she ever grow as bored with her tantrums as he was?

Ceasing her pacing, she turned with her eyes boring into him and dark eyebrows arched. 'Have you seen her the last few days?'

'I....' His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. If only. His bed was cold without her. With a sigh, he ran fingers through his hair and grimaced. There wasn't as much up there as there used to be. 'It wasn't her, Rawellen. Only a magister can read the spell annotations or break the wards for that matter, and you know it. Only a powerful musician could do the latter. Morgane is no magister. Least of all a powerful one.'

Rawellen glanced at his hair and arched one eyebrow even further.

He snatched his hand away and scowled, regretting the expression almost immediately. It did nothing to improve a face with a nose too big and ears that stuck out like an elephant's.

'When, Avram? When did you last see her?'

'I haven't seen her since yesterday morning.' Avram rubbed his goatee then forced the hand to his side. Dammit, why it is it so hard to hide my tells around her?

'She might be working with someone else. I told you a beautiful woman like her must want something to be with a man like you. A brainless beauty, but not too stupid to miss what advantage her body buys her.'

Tactless as well, like a bull blundering through rosebushes. Tact wasn't necessary when you were so powerful. Still, Rawellen's words echoed his own thought about her, uncomfortably close. Morgane wasn't like that. She wasn't.

'Not to put too fine a point on it, Rawellen, but then you wouldn't.' His sigh followed as he pushed the slipping pince-nez back up his nose again. There was no point in having the argument with her.

Almost immediately, her expression softened, and her hand settled on his arm. 'I am sorry, Avram. I just... I just worry about you. You've been my best friend for twenty-five years, and you... deserve better than a girl who might be manipulating you to her own ends. You deserve a woman who can match you.'

Despite her hesitation, her speech rang true. Tingling warmth ran up his arm where she touched him. Avram pulled the pince-nez from his face and busied himself polishing the lenses, blinking to hide the tears pricking his eyes. Rawellen had been a good friend, the very best, even. She was right. He shouldn't have written that damned piece without Conservatory permission. Despite that, she'd stood beside him through the hearings and also won him the consent to have the orchestral version, stripped of the spell-annotations that made it work magic, taken on the tour, and the annotated version displayed to the local magisters. Even the condition that she tour with him and supervise hadn't fazed her, though she'd postponed her own performance circuit to help him.

'Apology accepted.' Polishing finished, he replaced his pince-nez. Her concern was natural. He'd felt the same when he questioned the motives of men in her life, though long years had passed since she had taken a lover. 'As for Morgane, even if she is talented, I've never tested her. She's not Conservatory-trained, nor can she read spell annotations.'

Rawellen nodded. 'Of course, and even then, she'd need a svanwa, which she doesn't have.'

A tic jumped in Avram's cheek. Morgane had a svanwa; an innocent gift only, given to flatter a beautiful young woman. When she admired his own spell focus, he'd crafted her one in gold and rubies to match her hair. A trifle. So what if she did have one? She couldn't make it work. She couldn't. A harmless gift. Unless....No, it was completely harmless. He met Rawellen's gaze, stare for stare.

'Absolutely. We agree breaking the wards is beyond her, nor would she have any interest in either spell.'

Rawellen didn't seem to notice the tic, her expression turning wistful. 'I'm surprised you never tested her. I thought for sure you'd send her to train if she had an ounce of talent. A performer wife to match your composing.'

Avram lifted his eyebrows. 'It never crossed my mind.'

Rawellen rolled her eyes, but a genuine smile curved her lips. 'Hardly surprising, given the number of distractions she presents even an intelligent man.'

Wincing, he tried to banish the memories of entangled limbs and sweaty flesh. What man approaching forty wouldn't be flattered by the attentions of a younger woman, much less a woman as stunning as Morgane? No man in his right mind, anyway. The three months he'd known her were a blur of indistinguishable moments. Despite that, the memory of her heart-shaped face, framed by flaming curls, flashed through his mind, followed by the curve of a rounded hip and a vision of full breasts.

He yanked his thoughts back to where they belonged. Rawellen regarded him with a sad, bitter twist to her red, pouting lips. A hot flush crept up his cheeks to his hairline.

'I gave her a svanwa.' The words spilled out in a rush, and the heat in his face intensified.

He braced himself for a lecture. Instead, Rawellen's skin paled even further to a pasty white that left her eyes dark, shadowed hollows. Before he said anything more, she turned and rushed from the room, silk skirts trailing on the floor behind her.

Avram stalked after her, yanking his frock coat straight. Why did he feel so foolish for giving her a svanwa? A breach of protocol, for sure, but a meaningless one. The construct was useless in Morgane's hands.

'Any theories on who might want to steal the scores?'Avram hurried to catch up. There was no doubt that he'd be tasked with hunting the thief down. Being a typical performer, Rawellen was incapable of spinning out music unless someone else had composed it first. Absolutely useless in a pinch.

Rawellen swept down the wood-panelled hallway like a ship under full sail, their passage lit by candles. 'I have a few thoughts. I'm not concerned about the time slip piece. The vocals are so difficult. Hardly anyone can sing the melody with any degree of accuracy, which would make it hard to move on the black market. But the other piece was your latest? I heard rumours.'

'Yes,' he said, tramping down the stairs behind her. No way to avoid the issue, even if he tried. The clump of his boots on timber provided a heavy counterpoint to the sharp tap-tap of her heels. 'A defensive measure composed against the Tyraxis demons. An orchestral score, far too complex, and the spells far too heavy, to be carried by anything less.'

With her face still pale, Rawellen glanced over her shoulder. Did she really think someone might try to perform the piece with anything less than a full orchestra? More likely, the thief would try to sell the score on the black market. The buyer would want a good return for their money. Not all magisters trained with the Conservatory, and a rogue orchestra, while difficult, wasn't impossible.

'What does it do?'

'Produces a targeted extreme blizzard. For dimensional gates. You direct the magic against an opening gate, and everything freezes solid faster than you can snap your fingers.' He clicked his in demonstration. 'Ice won't kill a Tyraxis demon, of course, but would keep them locked up long enough for Conservatory-magisters to close the gate.'

Rawellen paused at the bottom of the stairs, her hand poised over the handle. 'Such extreme cold is death for us, though.' Rawellen tapped long fingers against her lips. 'What if someone were to perform it without an orchestra?'

A chill ran through Avram. 'Depends on the performance. Too far from the score, and the magic will fizzle and die. Too close, but not close enough. An explosion, perhaps. Really, Rawellen, I don't think there's any point worrying about accidental misuse of the spell. It's almost impossible. No, we should be considering who might try to use it intentionally.'

Though a small smile curved her lips, nothing touched her eyes except cold fear. 'Of course, you're right. You usually are.' She pushed open the door.

Caught unprepared by the admission, he stood dumb-founded in the hallway as Rawellen disappeared outside. When was the last time Rawellen admitted to someone else being right? He hurried to catch up with her.

A roar of noise washed over him, the noise of the crowd in the stadium impatient for the performance to start. Many stood, abandoning the uncomfortable stone seating to shout down at the orchestra. A few waved the cushions they'd brought for sitting.

On the central lawn below them, the musicians milled around the conductor in disarray, shouting and calling questions. Council guardsman moved up and down the stairs, quieting the spectators and trying to keep order.

The heat of a midsummer day pounded down out of the blue sky. Already, Avram's coat clung to him, and sweat began to trickle down his forehead. The sun's brilliance winked off the gold frames of his pince-nez, and he squinted into the eye-watering brightness. Out past the harbour, clouds gathered on the horizon.

'That could put a damper on things.' Avram shaded his eyes to peer at the brewing weather. 'Or a welcome relief.'

Rawellen stood beside him. They'd emerged on the first tier, the full height of the stadium rising above. With the sun sinking west, the shadows slanted behind, leaving them without shade. Rawellen dipped one hand into her pouch and pulled out a construct of silver and emeralds.

'Just a nudge. A storm would end this debacle.'

Avram snatched the svanwa from her. 'Foolishness. Let the council sort it out.'

Seizing her wrist, he turned her away from the performance lawn, guiding her around the curve of the stadium until they reached a tunnel penetrating the exterior. He entered the blessedly cool darkness, drawing Rawellen behind him, and proceeded down the outside stairs. As they stepped down to the ground, Rawellen grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him round, and plucked her svanwa from his hand.

'You find the thief, Avram! I don't care what you do, you find him or her, and you find that music!' Hysteria edged her voice, and she clung to his shoulder desperately with claw-like fingers. 'I'm going to report to the city magister.'

Rawellen spun on her heel, leaving Avram gaping after her. The lines of her body, the tension in her shoulders, the pasty white of her cheeks–everything screamed stark fear. Why? When he first found the scores missing, she did rant, but in a calm, controlled fashion. What changed?

The performer strode down the avenue, the branches of golden-leaved trees stirring in the wake of her passage. Energy crackled around her, feeding on her fear. Did she have sense enough to keep her mouth shut until she regained control? Nasty things could happen when an angry performer unwisely let her voice run amok. Stationed to turn back those without tickets, guards at the far end of the avenue scrambled to let her pass.

The streets beyond the guards swarmed with people, and her tall, elegant figure disappeared quickly in the crowd. Should he follow her to find out what frightened her so? No. He'd rather not see the magister right now. Someone needed to start looking for the thief, although he had no clue to where they should start. His contacts might be able to keep an ear to the ground for word of scores offered on the black market.

Something cold and wet brushed against his cheek.

Avram looked into the brilliant, blue sky of a summer day, licking another cold, wet spot off his lips. The taste of winter fleeted on his tongue. His heart thudded. Snow? This time of year? Impossible!

People in the streets stopped and cried out, lifting their faces up into the thickening snow. Flakes whirled and spiralled in the air, melting as fast as they fell. Above the buildings, snow spun out thickly at the centre of the storm, causing Avram's stomach to clench. The urge to vomit almost overwhelmed him. Somewhere, someone played the music.

And they were playing it wrong.

Avram dashed through an empty alleyway, away from the staring crowds blocking the streets. Clearly, the piece hadn't been stolen for the black market. Is Rawellen right? He stamped down the thought.

Soon, the snow would thicken into a blizzard until panic ran rampant through the crowd. People might freeze to death if they were too slow to realise the danger; if he were too slow to prevent it. With luck, he could avoid the crowds by using the backstreets to navigate to the eye of the storm visible over the rooftops.

He pounded through back alley muck and rotting fruit. Noxious odours exploded with each footfall as he continued through the puddles of melting snow. The flakes fell in irregular patches and eddies. At times, the snow formed drifts, and then nothing fell for so long it all melted away, turning the dirt of the alleys to mud. A sign of a poor performance. It was likely that one unaccompanied singer lay behind the magic. If the music were performed properly by a Conservatory-trained orchestra, a tonne of ice would have already buried the city. Avram frowned. Morgane's house lay in this direction.

His pace quickened. The wind whistled in his ears, and his heart hammered in his chest. The weight of this spell was beyond a solo performer's ability. The svanwa would burn out, the singer would combust, and the explosion could destroy entire city blocks.

Ripping his own svanwa from his pocket, he hurtled around a corner, feet slipping on a patch of melting ice. He sang a few bars of music. The elaborate filigree of gold and amethysts hummed and vibrated in response. The spell tugged him toward the source of the snow, a snatch of music renewing the spell when it faded.

The vibrating svanwa led him to a small house–to Morgane's. His stomach dropped, though his suspicions had grown stronger the nearer he came. How had Morgane circumvented the wards that protected the musical score? How did Rawellen know? Here, the snow fell in thick clumps. Banks and drifts formed on the ground and against the walls of houses. Snowflakes whirling through the sky blocked any view of the sun. Avram shivered inside the thin protection of his summer coat and hugged his arms to himself.

A voice lifted in song floated in the air as he pushed open the door with his cold, clumsy fingers. Morgane's soprano rang clear and pure. The voice faltered, missing a note here and there, demonstrating her woeful lack of training. Despite that, she sang the notes as annotated for the Conservatory, and power surged with each bar. How had she learned to read the spell annotations? Memories flooded him–memories of the nights when she lovingly watched him compose. He'd thoughtlessly answered her questions, lost in the fugue of creation. Avram swore.

The smothering heat inside the house melted the snow from his shoulders, and his coat steamed. Avram shrugged out of the garment, sweat springing to his brow. Dropping the coat, he strode down the hall, and straightened his pince-nez as he pushed through to the sitting room.

With her beautiful face upraised, Morgane stood in the centre of a circle of carved chairs, the svanwa thrust out before her. Her chest heaved with each breath and burst of song. Red hair, aflame with thrumming power, cascaded down the soft curve of her back. The stolen score sat propped before her on a pedestal normally used to display a bust.

It was a beautiful scene, except for the ferocious screech emanating from the svanwa. It tainted the music and warped the spell. Red lights flickered at the edges of his vision, playing along the walls, around the mantelpiece, and in the fireplace.

'Morgane!' Avram shouted to be heard over her song and the wail of the distressed svanwa.

Jade eyes flew open. The song faltered and died, but the svanwa kept thrumming. Energy crackled. 'Avram?'

'You stole it?' Despite his intention, a note of accusation crept into his voice.

Morgane pouted and folded her arms across her chest, emphasising creamy breasts teetering on the edge of falling from her black gown. 'You never sang for me, Avram.'

He gaped, all thought of her physical charms forgotten. 'I can no longer sing just for pleasure, you know that!' Once a composer was fully trained, every piece of music became a spell. Music for pleasure was a lost luxury.

Where did she get that dress? It was modelled after the gowns the Conservatory performers wore when casting great spells, almost a duplicate of Rawellen's blue silk.

'I wanted magic, not music!' The svanwa whined as her voice lifted an octave. Now active, the construct responded to any sound from its singer. Morgane's grip tightened on the metal until her knuckles began to whiten.

'Put the svanwa down, Morgane. Please.' Avram spread his hands. 'Carefully.'

She clutched the jewelled spell focus to her bosom. 'No! I can do this.'

'You don't even know what you're doing! Have you looked outside?'

Her head jerked towards the window. Snowdrifts piled against the walls, clearly visible even through lace curtains. Her gaze locked on the snowy view as though she'd been compelled.

'I didn't... I didn't do that!' She gasped, and moisture glistened in her huge eyes. 'I thought... I thought just a snowflake or two.'

'A snowflake or two? Tyraxis demons, Morgane, Tyraxis demons! You think a snowflake or two would bother them?'

'Demons?' Her voice faltered. 'But you were giving it to the orchestra.'

'Not to play the way the Conservatory does!' Avram reached for her and grabbed her shoulders. 'Is there even a single thought in that silly little head? You watched me write that piece. Tyraxis demons aside, you know I wrote the score for an orchestra, not a soloist! The power you're attempting to harness is beyond the control of one person! Are you trying to kill yourself?'

Bursting into tears, she wrenched herself free of his hands and tripped on the trailing skirt of her gown. She clung to the svanwa as she fell, huge sobs racking her frame. The glowing rubies pulsed with each cry. The red light arced across the room with small, concussive booms. Morgane shrieked. Avram gritted his teeth. He had no time for her hysterics right now, and no time to try and spare her feelings.

'Let go, you silly girl! The spell's warping out of control. If you don't freeze the city, you'll blow us up!' Avram thrust his svanwa before him. It was a risky business to aim one svanwa at another active focus, but what choice did he have if she wouldn't let go? The spell wavered at bursting point. He improvised a snatch of tune, and the svanwa leaped from Morgane's hand. Avram caught the construct as it fell.

'I just...I just wanted....' Morgane hiccoughed on her own sobs. 'I just wanted to be a performer! She said...she said....' Her tears choked her off again. Fumbling, she pulled out a small box from inside the skirt of her gown. 'She gave me this.'

'She?' Avram scooped up the box. A fragment of stored magic played when he flicked it open. Only a few bars remained of a spell to break wards. That was all that Morgane hadn't used in her theft. He pursed his lips and set the box on the mantel. Music boxes were rare and dangerous. They gave power to the untalented and the untrained.

Shaking with silent sobs, Morgane huddled on the floor with her face buried in the carpet. What did he ever see in her? His lip curled. Her gown revealed enough to answer that question. Rawellen was right. Damn her. Brainless but beautiful. Brainless enough to allow herself to be manipulated and used, but by who? Disgust at his inability to resist his own temptations flooded him, and he turned his back. His foolishness might have frozen the city or flattened it.

Avram picked up the score. The parchment felt too thin between his fingers. He riffled through the sheets, stomach clenching tighter by the moment.

The spell-annotated time slip score was missing.

"She" helped Morgane break the wards, gave her the music box, and told her what to do. "She" must also have kept the Conservatory copy of the time slip piece.

He caught his breath, frozen as the picture came together for him.

Rawellen.

Too calm when he discovered the music missing. Frightened when she learned Morgane had a svanwa. Her insistence on Morgane as a suspect. But why? Why betray the Conservatory and him? The scandal would be huge.

Betrayal burned hot and bitter in his gut as he shoved the scores and the svanwas into his pocket. He stormed out the doorway. Damn Rawellen was a good actor. He believed every minute of her hysterics. But then, he'd trusted her above all people, trusted her with everything. He thought that she would always stand by him. Twenty-five years. Damn her. Instead, she tried to distract him with Morgane long enough to make her own escape.

The snow melted into thick mud. He floundered in the sucking goop, almost losing a boot. Wrenching his svanwa out, he burst into song, and paved his way with a platform of air. Though it was difficult to run and sing at the same time, he poured all his energy into the effort, leaving him gasping for breath enough to fuel the next few bars.

The main avenue lay deserted except for piles of melting slush. The people had taken to their houses. Abandoning his music, he ran across the cobbles and into the quiet, shaded laneways of the well-to-do.

Avram rushed into the cobbled courtyard of Rawellen's townhouse. She stood, poised with her foot in the stirrup. Seeing him, she froze with her mouth dropping open. Avram gave voice to a new tune, and a blast of air flung her away from the grey mare. The horse snorted and reared. Rawellen scrambled away on hands and knees, hampered by her skirts. His svanwa vibrated hard enough to hurt his hand. Avram screamed another blast of air at the performer, sending her tumbling across the ground.

'You set her up!' Avram's chest heaved with the exertion of running and singing together.

'Set her up, lied to me, betrayed me, and the Conservatory; everything you hold dear. Why?'

Rawellen tried to climb to her feet, and Avram blasted her back down with another tune. Rawellen was a performer, a powerful one. If she got her wits about her long enough to sing any memorised music, she'd pummel him into the earth.

'How did you know?' Her bottom lip trembled, and her eyes glazed with fear. 'I took pains to be sure she didn't know me.'

'You were too keen to convince me she did it.' Avram stalked forward a few steps. 'Why, Rawellen, why?'

'She was a silly little fool, and you demeaned yourself by entertaining her! Men. You all think with your dicks!'

Rawellen sat in the mud with her gloved hands empty. Where was her svanwa?

Keeping a wary eye on her, he sidled over to the horse. The saddlebags contained neither svanwa nor the missing score. 'Where is it?'

'Inside.' Huddled on the stones of the courtyard, Rawellen looked more tired than dangerous. Pulled free from its pins, her hair fell in disarray around her face, and her shoulders slumped.

'Inside? Why steal it, and then leave it behind?'

'I'm not running away!' Her blue eyes blazed with familiar fury before it flickered and died. 'I didn't steal the score to use or sell.'

'You didn't?' Avram rubbed aching temples. Women. A guaranteed headache every time. 'Then...why?'

'You never even knew....' Bitterness dripped from every word. 'I wanted to make you realise what a silly, brainless idiot she is.' She dropped her head. 'To hurt you. I took the time slip piece from her for safekeeping. I didn't think she could sing the other. I didn't know she even had a svanwa, or I wouldn't have risked it.'

Avram's jaw hung agape. He must look foolish. He snapped his mouth shut. 'I...me?'

Rawellen stared at him, unblinking. 'Is that so hard to believe, Avram? After twenty-five years, how can you know so little? A man isn't just about his face.' She turned hers away, one hand scrubbing furtively at an eye.

'You never said.'

Her head lifted with a touch of the old, familiar haughtiness. 'Why bother? You had so little patience for me. I tried to be there for you, but when you took up with that silly little tit, it was too much.'

Avram licked his lips. If he had known.... There had been a time, long ago...but that time had passed. Or so he thought. No wonder she hadn't taken a lover in so long. Words escaped him. 'Where is the music?'

'Drawer in the hall table.'

Dust motes sparkled in a shaft of sunlight as he opened the door. He tucked his svanwa away. The untidiness of the house revealed an owner who had her mind on other matters. Avram picked his way down the hallway to the table and slid the drawer open. The missing score, notes carefully drawn and annotated by his own hand, lay safe in the compartment. Rawellen's svanwa sat on top. With great reverence, he picked up the score. After a moment's thought, he took the svanwa as well.

Rawellen remained where he'd left her, wilting in the centre of the courtyard. Her hair trailed great, black loops across her face, and dust covered the blue sheen of her gown. Avram quirked one eyebrow at the sight of her. Why was she still here? Nothing prevented her from fleeing.

'You should go.'

Her lips parted. 'Go where?'

'Anywhere. Away from here. If you stay, I'll have to turn you in.' Avram pressed his lips together and closed his eyes at the thought. 'I assume you never went to the magister?'

She shook her head without looking up.

'I don't want to report you and your conduct, but I will. I'll not go to see the magister before dusk, though.'

Rawellen climbed to her feet hesitantly, tottering in her heeled boots. 'But I–'

'Go!' He thrust her svanwa at her face. 'Take it and your freedom. Before I change my mind.'

'Th-thank you.'

'Go!'

Rawellen fled, leaving Avram clutching a piece of music that granted access to the gates of time. The performer who held it possessed the power to rewrite history. What wrongs might be made right by using the power of such a thing? An idea that was half-formed and unwilling to be examined in the light of day skittered away. Could he? Should he?

He'd be breaking half-dozen rules, easily, some of them quite serious with severe punishments. It was enough, maybe, to be cast from the Conservatory altogether. And he'd never been a rule breaker. The letter of the law, that's how they described Avram. It would be easier and certainly safer to go straight to the magister and report Rawellen.

Easier.... In one sense of the word. He remembered the yearning of youth for a woman too beautiful, too celebrated, and too talented to even notice an unassuming composer as more than a friend. Or so he'd thought. How could he have been so blind to her true feelings? Bitter regret and disappointment coursed through him.

Easy to report her. Hard to live with what might have been.

What might still be.

Avram pushed his pince-nez up his nose. Fumbling the gold-and-amethyst svanwa from his pocket, he began to sing.

Did You Enjoy This Book?

The biggest favour you can ever give an author is a favourable review of their book (but only if you enjoyed it, of course!). Reviews make the world go round! Well, actually, that's gravity and physics and stuff but when it comes to the writing world, it's very nearly true. Want to support an author? Show them some love, leave a glowing review. It could be the best thing that happens to them all day (actually, it almost certainly will be!).

So if you liked this book, or any of my other books, do me a solid and leave me a review. Go on, put a smile on my face! Nothing makes me happier than knowing I made you happy (or sad, or afraid, or whatever other tumultuous emotions you may have experienced on your ride with Alloran this time around).

All the best

Ciara Ballintyne
An Excerpt From Stalking The Demon

Alloran rushed through the citadel halls heedless of the rich carpets crushed beneath his heavy boots. Gisayne hung limply in his arms, and her black hair trailed over his elbow. A few people watched him pass, but none offered assistance. Over the past six months, Gisayne collapsed often enough to blunt the urgency and the panic. The faces turning in his direction bore only mild curiosity, oblivious to the fact that this time was different.

Her chest barely rose and fell beneath the thin cream silk of her night gown and robe, and blue tinged the edges of her bee-stung lips. Seven hells, was she dying? As he raced onwards, he clutched her against him and her cold skin pressed against his. With no left hand, he had no way to check for a pulse. A choked-back scream of desperate frustration tightened his chest until it squeezed the breath out of his lungs.

While juggling Gisayne, he fumbled with the latch on the door to the citadel's hospice. Damn his missing hand to the first hell. When the door finally gave, he shouldered it open and backed into a long room lined with starkly made beds. The few occupied by sick or injured had curtains drawn for privacy. Breidmar, dressed in the red-trimmed white robes of a citadel doctor, bustled over at their entrance.

Orange brows pinched with concern over her violet eyes. 'Again?'

'She's...' The lump in his throat choked him. He swallowed hard. 'She's hardly breathing.'

'This way.' Pointing to an empty bed, Breidmar called out and strode to a door at the far end. Before she crossed halfway back, an unfamiliar girl in acolyte's white appeared in the doorway.

Alloran placed Gisayne on the bed with gentle care. Her slack body slid from his arms, her skin pale. When he let her go, her eyelids fluttered but did not open. Nausea knotted his gut. The last time she'd fainted, the recovery was quick. Now, she looked as if death hovered over her, waiting for the moment to snip the thread of her life.

As Breidmar began checking Gisayne's vitals, she waved Alloran off. He hesitated. What would he do except wait, patient, and idle while Breidmar tried again to determine what illness affected her? She would try and fail, most likely.

'Are you sure this is not the falling sickness? It's supposed to get worse with each successive bout.'

'She's not got the right symptoms. No seizures,' Breidmar responded in precise, clipped tones.

Alloran frowned. He wasn't an idiot. 'Then what? These collapses are getting more frequent and more severe! Seven hells take you, tell me. Whatever the illness, it can't be too complicated for me to understand.'

With her severe lips curving down, she sniffed. 'No amount of genius can assist you to comprehend a malady I cannot explain. While you've made any number of miraculous discoveries, you have no particular expertise in medical matters. Leave this to me.'

'The title of doctor is reserved only for those who have studied in the citadel, and yet you say you don't know? After all this time, you must have some notion.' Wisps of his black hair hung about his face, torn free of their bindings in his haste. He pushed them back with a rough motion. When they slid back into disarray, he tore the leather thong free and began tying his hair back with short, sharp motions.

The doctor scowled at him. At her nod, the acolyte whipped the curtain around the bed in a rattle of rings. The cloth brushed Alloran's nose; he jerked his head away.

A heartfelt sigh escaped his lips before he retreated to a waiting area that comprised a group of chairs. No, sitting still would be intolerable. He changed direction and paced the length of the room, passing the rows of identical empty beds. His boots echoed in the open space. Sterile and odourless air filled his nostrils.

Apparently, Breidmar shared the sentiments of many people in the citadel. Some blamed him solely for the demons that plagued the city of Ehsan six months earlier, and others accused him of working with the renegade wizard, Ladanyon. Although Alloran wasn't subjected to a disciplinary hearing, the council's public announcement that they were banning him from all forms of magic involving the hells only reinforced the blame.

Seven hells, the councillors banned him because some of them felt the same as the other citizens. Those residents who lost loved ones in the battle against Ladanyon's first-circle demon were the most damning. Councillor Valgon's wife died, and he made no bones about believing Alloran to be a public menace. I just can't prove it, was what he said.

Alloran rubbed the stump of his left arm, but a phantom hand couldn't be scratched. Nevertheless, he tried. You'd think cutting off your own hand would be proof enough of your innocence.

The door opened accompanied by the squeal of its hinges to reveal Gisayne's father, Lord Wizard Harlden. He appeared hag-ridden with dark circles beneath eyes the same indigo shade as Alloran's and a pinched worried expression that didn't ease at the sight of him. A flat, velvet cap sat askew upon his head, and his grey-streaked black beard hung in uncombed tangles. Even the heavy gold chain of his office as the lord wizard and head of the citadel's ruling council dangled crooked around his neck. He seemed almost lost within the bulk of his puffed velvet doublet and mantle of black fur.

Alloran shifted his shoulders beneath the simple linen of his white shirt and plain, unadorned grey doublet. Coming upstairs was like being the one dove in a crowd of peacocks. Abandoning his pose as a useless fop also meant turning his back on the complicated, uncomfortable fashion that went with the role.

To make matters worse, the mere sight of Harlden made him tense. Alloran's actions indirectly led to the loss of Gisayne's hand. Harlden never mentioned the matter to him, but it was undoubtedly the dragon in the room.

'Again?' Deep exhaustion was etched on Harlden's face, but his voice was sharp and almost accusatory.

Alloran gave a small nod. What was there to say?

'The same thing?'

'The same thing.' Seven hells, what he wouldn't give to offer some other answer—any answer. 'Inasmuch as an unknown and unidentifiable illness can be described as the same thing. Breidmar insists this isn't the falling sickness. She got quite short when I asked again. And it's getting worse. Gisayne is...she almost stopped breathing.'

Harlden grimaced, wrinkling the many new lines of stress scribed into his face, and lifted a hand to worry at his chain of office. 'Barely breathing? I thought you would have solved this by now.'

Demons and damnation. As if a wave of the hand would fix everything. Alloran bit back his response. Harlden was afraid. Hells, he was afraid too. 'Would that I could. Medical magic is not my strength.'

'You're a hell-damned indigo wizard. You'd think you'd have an affinity for healing.'

Forcing a smile, Alloran tried to ignore the fact he was making allowances for Harlden's distress while none were made in return. 'I guess one can't be talented at both research and medicine.'

'What if that benighted link to Ladanyon is making her sick?' Harlden's nostrils flared. 'What if you were wrong? What if the spell does still operate across dimensions?'

Alloran massaged his forehead in frustration. What if it did? Every test he could conceive said otherwise. Without a doubt, the lines of the one-way mirror spell continued to mar Gisayne's aura, but the link was as inactive now as before Ladanyon ignited the magic six months ago. The closing of the gate rendered it dormant, so Gisayne shouldn't be affected by Ladanyon's experiences in the first circle of hell.

Removing the spell would answer the question most definitively, but hours of study produced the same result—the lines of the spell twisted through dimensional space. The source magic was really in Ladanyon, and the threads wound through Gisayne largely originated in him. He struggled to think of a meaningful analogy. It was like...trying to stop a river here by damming the water downstream. In this instance, the river must be dammed upstream—at Ladanyon—before a stone could be dug out of the riverbed here.

He shook his head. 'It can't. It doesn't. I checked. Several times. And then I double-checked everything again.'

Harlden strode towards Gisayne's bed, stopped, and came halfway back. Momentarily halting again, he reversed direction to take one step closer to the bed. He rubbed the back of his neck, and his gaze bounced around the room without settling on any one thing. The low discussion between Breidmar and her assistant buzzed in the background.

Alloran lowered his eyebrows. What was wrong with the man? Gisayne was lying here near to death, and Harlden fidgeted like a bored child. Or wasn't that enough to hold Harlden's attention? Seven hells, Gisayne's announcement of her impending marriage to Alloran certainly caught her father's attention. The entire citadel heard the ruckus, and it was no secret that Harlden considered Alloran to possess a magnetic attraction to trouble that was likely to bring his daughter to ruin. So why did he seem so distracted now?

Still rubbing his neck, the lord wizard came back towards Alloran but stopped short. 'A message arrived from the king today.'

Alloran's eyebrows twitched before he smoothed his expression. The king ostensibly ruled the kingdom of Idras from the city of Ehsan, leaving the citadel to itself and vice versa. But in reality, the citadel held the final authority at least as far as the city boundaries and influenced policy throughout the archipelago kingdom.

Harlden was agitated—he'd never share information like this outside the council of wizards ordinarily. Alloran assumed an expression of studied disinterest. A week's worth of urgent research, long nights, and little sleep meant he was behind on the news from the city—much less the king.

'What did his majesty want?'

'To complain, as per usual. Over the last four days, the city's experienced a rash of inexplicable burglaries and kidnappings. Mostly insignificant trinkets and ordinary citizens. In some cases, rare and valuable items and personages of wealth and power.' Harlden stared at the bed where his daughter lay out of sight.

'That hardly seems a matter for your consideration.'

'So I informed his majesty. I don't expect a pleased response.' Harlden's face fell into the harried lines beginning to form permanent parts of the landscape of his visage.

Alloran chewed on his lower lip. For Harlden to share this information, and with him in particular, he had to be under significant pressure. He glanced towards the curtained-off bed, but the words of the doctor remained indistinguishable. Was Breidmar making any progress at all?

'Perhaps, someone else needs to deal with the king, at least while Gisayne is sick.'

'I tried.' As his expression slumped into glumness, Harlden heaved a sigh. 'The king says this has been going on for two months. Long enough to warrant my personal attention, he insists. I don't know what he expects from me. If the law keepers can't find a thing, why would I?'

Alloran whipped back around to face Harlden. 'They haven't found anything? By which you mean not even a single clue?'

'Nothing. The best-protected items vanished from locked and guarded strongrooms. In one case, the vault of the city bank. The same for the most important personages. No one saw or heard anything. Not so much as a footprint in a garden bed has been found. To all appearances, everything just...vanished.'

Alloran wet his lips. Eight days ago, he detected a problem in the fabric of the fifteen dimensions. Disturbances in reality were probable, and sudden disappearances could easily be the first and least severe of the symptoms. But surely, the effects weren't starting already... Then again, how long since the problem began all unnoticed? And now Harlden chose to divulge this information. Was he fishing? No, this must be common knowledge in the city.

Glancing towards Gisayne, he licked his lips again. Disappearances in the city, and now she was growing sicker. Were these events connected? They must be; he didn't accept coincidences. If the boundaries between the hell dimensions blurred, would Gisayne's link to Ladanyon activate? A leaden weight filled his belly. Seven hells, if Gisayne's health depended on him solving this problem...

Could he have caused all this? Gisayne's illness, the dimensional instability? He messed around with significant amounts of half-understood hell-magic in order to banish Ladanyon and his demon. Admittedly, that was an inadvisable course of action but desperate measures and all that. A few days of hurried research wasn't enough to understand all the ramifications of a spell. Who knew what the consequences might be?

Not this, please. Anything but her.

'I'm...sure you'll find a solution,' he said. Only silence came from the other end of the infirmary now. 'I think this may take a while, and I have some things that need doing. I'll...I'll stop back later.'

'What? Where are you going? Aren't you staying with Gisayne?' Bushy eyebrows lowered over narrowed eyes, and Harlden snatched at the sleeve of Alloran's shirt. 'You should be here for her, Alloran.'

Flinching, Alloran jerked away from Harlden's grasp. She needs me to save her. No one else can. But he couldn't say as much to Harlden.

He rushed out of the hospice, nearly slamming the door behind him.
An Excerpt From In The Company Of The Dead

Only a fool would split hairs with a god, least of all the goddess of death, but Ellaeva would count herself such a fool and consider it worth it—if she could get away with it.

She leaned across the knife-scarred timber of the tavern table.

"Are you sure?" she asked, her tone even and barely loud enough to be audible over the noise of the flute and the zither. Her work on behalf of the goddess Ahura, adjudicating the small war here in Dayhl, could only be abandoned in favour of a greater threat. If she was going to chase off after the man who killed her parents, she needed to be sure her arguments stacked up. The pursuit of personal justice wouldn't be enough.

Is it justice or revenge?

No time to worry about that now. She tugged her black hood farther down over her infamous face, even though deep shadows blanketed the common room corner. She'd chosen a table far from the tallow candles mounted in their stag-horn chandeliers. There was no point taking chances; the black hair and porcelain skin of a Tembran would be remarked here among the platinum-haired Dayhlish. Besides, someone might recognise her.

"In Ahlleyn, sure as the spring comes after winter, Holiness." The narrow-faced man across from her grinned, baring teeth more brown than yellow. The acrid smoke from the candles didn't cover his pungent breath.

She half-stood, making an urgent, negating gesture as she glanced around, but the hubbub of chatter from the patrons and the music covered his slip. No one even glanced their way. On the far side of the room, away from the two blazing hearths, tables were pushed aside for dancing. She dropped back into her seat, her black robes fluttering around her booted feet.

Ahlleyn lay on the other side of the continent, months of travel by horse. If her informant was right and a Rahmyrrim priest had been dispatched there, he would likely be gone long before she arrived—unless she begged a favour, but she'd not do that for a lark of her own. However, if it meant catching the man who killed her parents, well then maybe she could come up with an argument that would hold water for a god. Old grief and anger, stale from a decade or more, stirred in her gut, and her fingers curled around the edge of the table.

Releasing her grip, she reached to the inner pocket in her robes where rested the smudged charcoal drawing of a man. Hard work and luck had helped her obtain that picture of the man she believed killed her parents—a man she knew to be a priest of Rahmyr. If she decided to act against her standing orders, then she needed to be sure it was the man she was after, and that he was involved in some act heinous enough to attract her goddess's attention.

"Did you get the name of this priest? Or his description?" An unknown number of priests served Rahmyr, but she knew six by sight—six still alive anyway.

The thin man shook his head. "Nobody mentioned. I got the impression he's already there, or on his way leastways."

She scowled. No way to be sure then that this was the man she wanted. Begging favours of Ahura for her personal satisfaction was a risky business, especially if she neglected her duties, and perhaps it would all be for nothing.

With one hand, she flattened the map that curled on the table between them. The patrons behind them exploded with laughter at something unheard. Ignoring the noise, she stabbed her finger at an unmarked portion of the map in the foothills of the Ahlleyn mountains. If he didn't know who, maybe he knew the what. "There, you say? What possible interest could Rahmyr have there? There's nothing of interest at all."

She lowered her voice even further as she uttered the name of the goddess of decay, and glanced around again. That name spoken too loudly would bring unwanted attention. But nearly all the tavern patrons were busy whirling on the impromptu dance floor or lined up to watch the dancers, their backs to her.

The nameless man leaned forward, treating her to another stomach-clenching blast of foul breath, and touched a spot perhaps half an inch away from her finger. A tiny, unlabelled picture marked something there.

"Here, Holiness."

She squinted at the picture, letting his lapse slide. The image represented a holy place. There was an old shrine to Ahura somewhere in the Ahlleyn Borders, wasn't there? And a castle built over it. "Caisteal Aingeal an Bhais."

"That sounds like the name," he agreed. "Never could get my mouth around them Ahlleyn words. Pink castle, I heard."

She grunted. That was the one. "There's still nothing there."

Nothing of interest to Rahmyr anyway. The shrine wasn't particularly important, and the castle held no political significance.

"What's there," the man said, "is Lyram Aharris."

The premonition went through her like a blast of icy wind, stiffening her in her chair as the hand of the goddess brushed against her mind. A light caress, but from a giant, and so it sent her mind reeling. She clutched the table for support. Lyram Aharris's reputation preceded him the length of the continent: eight years ago, at the age of twenty-seven, he'd brought an end to the centuries-long conflict between Ahlleyn and Velena through a series of brilliant military manoeuvres. He'd survived the Siege of Invergahr against near-impossible odds, brought the crown prince safely clear of the conflict, and fought the Velenese to a standstill using their own guerrilla warfare tactics against them. As a novice, she'd covered the tactics thoroughly as part of her studies. The man was a military genius. That he was third in line for the throne of Ahlleyn was the least there was to know about him—at least it was, until his king dismissed him from court. The rumours on everyone's lips said he murdered his wife, even if no one could prove it.

What did Rahmyr want with him?

The answer didn't really matter. Any plot that interfered with a man who stood so close in the succession of a throne and who possessed such military genius was more important than the minor civil war in the north. The valkyr could deal with that adequately in her absence, with a priestess to serve as arbiter of justice. No one but Ahura's Battle Priestess could handle a Rahmyrrim priest targeting a highly ranked noble.

And maybe, just maybe, the one sent to deal with a man as important as Lyram Aharris was also her quarry.

"Your information, as always, is good." She pushed a gold Dayhlish dariz, the highest denomination of coin, across the table to the man.

He waited until she released the coin before snatching it up. Even a man brave enough to spy on the servants of the black goddess of decay hesitated to touch her, such was her reputation. After all these years, the over-cautiousness stung only a little.

Ellaeva climbed to her feet, drawing her black robes around her, as the informant vanished into the crowd as quick as his feet would carry him. She followed more slowly, winding her way around drinkers who instinctively avoided bumping into her even though they were ignorant of her identity. Most would take her for an ordinary priestess of Ahura, a common enough sight in any town or city where they served as magistrates and judges. One pair of dancers almost waltzed into her, the man jerking aside at the last moment and nearly knocking his partner off her feet. He stared as Ellaeva passed, while his partner scolded him loudly.

She needed to find somewhere less crowded than this tavern. If the goddess had deigned to give her a premonition, surely she would consent to speed her journey—and for that, Ellaeva required peace and silence enough to prepare the holy sword for mystic transit.

When she finally spilled out into the silence of the night-shrouded street, the noise of laughter from behind only heightened the empty ache of loneliness in her soul.
What's Next?

On The Edge Of Death

By Ciara Ballintyne

from Evolved Publishing.

~~~

All the Left Hand of Death wants is something to call her own—but to get it, she must defy a god.

Ellaeva, chosen of the death goddess, is desperate to track down her missing family but the trail is decades old. When she follows a thin rumour in hopes of finding them, she discovers only her battered and bloodied sister priestesses stumbling across the border, carrying tales of the dead and the dying. As the final arbiter of justice, Ellaeva must turn aside from her personal quest to investigate—only to find that the trail of her parents leads straight into the heart of the conflict.

Ellaeva must appeal to the one living person she can trust—Lyram Aharris, favoured son of the royal line of Ahlleyn—to help her infiltrate the enemy stronghold. As if their chequered past is not threat enough to the mission, they are joined by Lyram's crown prince, the one man he hates above all others, and a duchess intent on marrying the recently widowed Lyram.

Ellaeva and Lyram must discover the fate of her family—but can she resist her attraction to Lyram, and can he keep his vows of loyalty to his king?

At the boundary of life and death, all oaths will be tested.

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About The Author

Ciara Ballintyne grew up on a steady diet of adult epic fantasy from the age of nine, leaving her with a rather confused outlook on life – she believes the good guys should always win, but knows they often don't. She is an oxymoron; an idealistic cynic.

She began her first attempts at the craft of writing in 1992, culminating in the publication of her debut work, Confronting the Demon, in 2013.

She holds degrees in law and accounting and is a practising financial services lawyer. In her spare time, she speculates about taking over the world – how hard can it really be? If she could be anything, she'd choose a dragon, but if she is honest she shares more in common with Dr. Gregory House of House M.D. – both the good and the bad. She is a browncoat, a saltgunner, a Whedonite, a Sherlockian, a Ringer and a Whovian... OK, most major geek fandoms. Her alignment is chaotic good. She is an INTJ.

Ciara lives in Sydney, Australia, with her husband, her two daughters, and a growing menagerie of animals that unfortunately includes no dragons.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CiaraBallintyne

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/CiaraBallintyne

Website: http://www.ciaraballintyne.com

