 
## FACADE OF EVIL

## And other tales from 'Heathen with Teeth'

## by

## Jonathan Jones

Façade of Evil, and other tales from 'Heathen with Teeth'

Copyright © Jonathan Jones 2015

Smashwords edition published 2015

Cover design by Jonathan Jones. Cover created using stock images from http://danf83stock.deviantart.com/ and http://swanboy.deviantart.com/

Jonathan Jones asserts his moral right to be identified as author of this book in accordance with sections 77 & 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

#  Table of Contents

Façade of Evil

A Mutual Truth

Deluge

The Central Point of Grief

#  Façade of Evil

The house was rotting, corrupted, and spread its malignancy across a large area of land towards the centre of Caldair. As I scouted the exterior, the entire front facing appeared to be warped, the sides bowing out. It was constructed almost entirely from wooden boards, turning green and black in places and crumbling away where life was reclaiming the pillaged tree-flesh. Webs, cocoons and various secretions filled the gaping holes in the walls. Three windows and a single doorway seemed to be limitless pits of darkness that inhaled all joy and hope from the surrounding area—or, at least, what little of those things could be found in Caldair city.

One of my men, Frank Starsmore, had been pensive on the ride over. Normally the hissing and chugging of our truck would be almost unnoticeable behind his booming camaraderie. That day, the guttural motor sounds had grated on my ear drums, illuminating Frank's mood far more than silence would have.

Before we began our mission I pulled him aside, hoping he would spill exactly what was troubling him. Frank didn't have much a way with words, but he was open and emotionally honest.

"What's on your mind, big guy?" I asked. "Like you always say, don't take it into the mission with you."

"It's the missus," he grumbled, and walked back to the rest of the unit, gathered by the entrance to the house.

I made my way inside, night vision goggles activated, my unit of Purifiers following down the passage behind me in prearranged formation. Whatever, whoever, occupied this husk, we had to locate it before it located us. Wooden floorboards and wall panels were bent and splitting and, in each of that dwelling's mouldering lesions, parasites scuttled and bred.

The members of the unit were practically indistinguishable in their black and grey uniforms and all-encompassing snake skin masks, with large infrared goggles concealing all identifiable features. But behind those masks they were six very different individuals. Private Billy Prior, our youngest, newest and most conscientious member. Frank Starsmore, our Master of Ashes, deeply devoted to our faith. Then, our Obdurates: Thomas Gibbs, a headstrong and over-confident young man, who hid his intelligence; Leonard Troughton, the most private and introverted of us; and gruff and often disagreeable Adam Fisk. Finally, Corporal Brian Moriah, a fiercely loyal man that all of us looked up to. Only Fisk, Starsmore and Gibbs stood out from the rest of the unit, due to Fisk's muscular build, Starsmore's imposing height, and Gibbs' scrawny frame that he was constantly trying to enhance with exercise.

Moriah covered me whilst I inspected a room that opened up on the left. I knew I could rely on him to be diligent.

The room's door was off one hinge and the bottom corner of it rested on the remains of a blood soaked shirt. The rest of the room took several precious seconds to blur into the view as my night vision goggles adjusted, and I anticipated an attack from the unseen predators within.

Frank Starsmore stepped in alongside me. It was sometimes difficult to tell the men apart, but he was always easy to identify—over six feet tall and well built, his mask peculiarly bulging around the chin from accommodating his beard. He stepped slightly ahead of me, scanned his head left then right.

The room was empty. Missing floorboards exposed mangled foundations and an uncovered secret collection of pornography. A small table in the far corner displayed the maggot-riddled remains of a forgotten meal. Along the bottom of the wall lay a stained duvet. I was relieved for the mask I wore as a Purifier, which muted the smell of the room—the mix of decaying meat, damp fabric and urine. Remarkably, beneath all that, I caught a scent of lavender. I couldn't tell where it was coming from, but it was cloying, and reminded me of days out playing in the fields as a child.

From the passage, one of the men screamed and the others started to shout and swear. Guns cracked, and muzzle flashes shattered the gloom, dazzling supernovas in the high contrast green.

I rushed out of the room ready to perforate our foes until they were no longer a threat to anyone. Whatever had attacked us was already gone. It was not even clear where it could have come from and subsequently disappeared to. Fisk was kneeling on the floor, cradling the head of nineteen-year-old Billy Prior. Fisk had removed Billy's mask, and the boy had time to gurgle "mum" through a fountain of blood before his eyes went dead and his head lolled, revealing the gaping neck wound that had extinguished him so quickly.

Billy had been a good recruit, dedicated to upholding the ideals of the Purifiers. He had believed in what we were doing and in the importance of doing it right. Sadly, more and more of our new recruits were being conscripted. I didn't object to this in principal, in fact I thought everyone should contribute to the Realm's security, but unfortunately it had led to us recruiting too many punks that didn't want to pull their weight. Billy had been different. My temper flared.

"What are your orders, Major Turcotte?" Moriah asked.

"We press on, standard sweep and destroy routine. At least now we know what we're dealing with."

Fisk grunted, staring down at the void in Billy's neck. "Fallen."

"Exalted help us," Starsmore muttered.

*

"We have to be more careful than usual, if Fallen are involved here," Moriah said as we advanced down the corridor. Under his mask he would be sweating and tender—he had recently contracted something unpleasant in the Dilapidate region of the city, and his face was riddled with unpleasant sores.

"It's unlikely they are our target. If Andreas had been aware of them we would have been warned."

Fisk huffed, sceptically. I couldn't help but share his consternation. Luckily, all Purifiers carried Execution pistols at all times, as a precaution. Even though we rarely encountered Fallen, it was still best to always be armed with silver bullets. The one time you didn't bring one would be the time you became liquid lunch.

Starsmore was also armed with an additional weapon, one which would have limited use in our tinderbox surroundings, even as damp as they were—a flamethrower. It was an old model, fuelled by a liquid reserve strapped to Frank's back, rather than the more advanced compressed vapour tanks of modern models.

We pressed on through the creaking, cracking building. This was my first time leading a mission, as _Colonel_ Andreas Sorotos now had desk duties. I was unhappy with the vagueness of the mission brief: "Makeshift house in East Caldair, investigate and retrieve items of special interest. Expect resistance from inhabitants."

What inhabitants? If Andreas had known about the presence of Fallen, surely he would have said. What were we investigating? "You'll know it if it's there," he had said, unhelpfully. "Bring it to me."

I took off my mask and tucked the goggled, snake-skin monstrosity into my belt, provoking concerned and confused looks from the rest of the unit.

"It's no good relying on night vision when there are Fallen around," I said. "I learned that the hard way. They can see better than any human with night vision goggles can. It's better to have full use of your other senses."

I breathed in the rancid air of the house, a cold odour of damp wood, putrefying rubbish and grime. The copper smell of blood. I could already feel my skin beginning to cool, and the sweat drying on my face.

The others nodded their acceptance of my tactics but they kept their own masks on, and there was uneasy silence. Removing the mask was not just against regulations, it was blasphemy. Without it, without the Dragon's visage transforming you into a vessel of righteous destruction, were you still a Purifier? Were you an agent of the Exalted or a man acting out his own desires? Were your executions still a cleansing, or murder?

We approached the end of the corridor, slowly. I didn't need to tell Fisk and the rest to warn me if they spotted anything through their goggles. They would automatically compensate for any disadvantage, allowing me to focus on the dead house's sounds, smells, the vibrations and air currents. There was a fast, light pattering above. Rain coming in? Rodents? It was easy to imagine all manner of creatures, some twisted, light-footed Fallen freak, racing around on tip-toe, scuttling up walls and over ceilings at unnatural speeds, contorting as it went.

I shuddered, and mentally slapped myself. Stay in the moment, stay alert, stay alive.

Houses like this were becoming rare in Caldair, due to the dwindling number of people with the skill and resources to build them. More and more were finding empty rooms in the ancient hab-blocks. They were derelict and overcrowded, but they had been around since long before this house was build and would still be standing long after this slum was nothing more than a heap of sodden, rotting mulch, a feast for woodlice.

The room ahead was large, with an expansive window looking out onto the Caldair street, where a couple were screwing against a wall, and an old can clanked and whirred as it span along the cracked paving.

There was plenty of light creeping in, but little to see. A small cushioned chair lay propped against one wall, a leg missing and stuffing spilling out. The rest of the room was empty. The floorboards were sturdier here and I strode in. The wall opposite the chair housed a cupboard door, and I gestured to Starsmore to open it. He approached it stealthily, taking wide strides, and reached for it with one hand, using his other hand to keep his pistol aimed.

It wouldn't open. Given that Starsmore's strength was even greater than what you'd expect from his size, it had to be either locked or jammed tight. Perhaps the hinges were rusted.

He yanked at it again. And again, harder. Heaved at it, putting away his gun to pull with both hands, using all of his formidable strength. It should have flown from its hinges, but it didn't budge at all.

He turned back to me, shrugging resignedly. "I dunno what to tell you," he said, keeping his voice low. "Must be sealed."

"Want me to smash it down?" Fisk offered.

Troughton pushed past him. "Oh, give over. Let me try."

He tested it, tugging at it gently at first, and it immediately swung open, all the resistance dematerialised. The cupboard was empty.

"Not been eating your wheats, huh?" Fisk said. "Even Troughton could open it."

Fisk and Gibbs repressed sniggers, which quickly grew out of control the more they tried to control them. Frank's massive shoulders slumped and he wandered away, clearly actually distressed by their teasing, mumbling, "Don't know what's the matter with me..."

"That's enough." I wasn't having our mission jeopardised by an outbreak of immaturity.

I walked over to the cupboard, convinced that that there must be an explanation. Perhaps it was the entrance to a secret passage, and somebody had been on the other side, holding the door closed. A cursory inspection disproved that theory immediately. There was no handle or similar part on the inside of the door that anyone could have held onto.

"Don't know what to tell you, Major," Gibbs said. "Looks like the cupboard's bare."

A fresh round of sniggers erupted.

"Shut up," Moriah growled. They listened.

I took one last look into the cupboard. No sign of any gaps or joins within. Just an empty, enclosed space, not even large enough for a full grown adult to curl into, except . . .

There were scratch marks around the door frame, on the inside. Perhaps it was lack of sleep, perhaps overactive imagination getting the better of me for the first time in my life, but I could almost hear the moans and weeping of whoever had been shut in there.

I led everyone back out of the room and down the corridor, to the only staircase I had spotted on the way in. The route took us back past Billy's corpse, and Fisk punched a wall as we went. "Fucking Fallen," he muttered. "This is cos the Realm took in those people from Dezkary. I told everyone. I said, didn't I, Fallen would sneak in with them."

Dezkary was very tolerant of Fallen, and the fear of infiltration when we had let in those refugees had seemingly been on everyone's minds. I had forced myself to keep quiet when Fisk had started criticising the refugees—complaining about them needing our help, about the risk of Fallen being amongst them, about them causing conflict, about how the Realm should look after injured Purifiers instead, and finally about how ungrateful they were—and had to continue to bite my tongue when other members of the unit took up the mantra. Unfortunately, such attitudes were endorsed by the Realm, who were only allowing refugees in as part of a peace treaty they had been forced into. Although the _Liber Colatra_ taught that to have dissenting thoughts was as bad as rebelling openly, I was much less likely to face the agonising penalties if I kept my mouth shut.

I sidled up alongside Frank as we walked. "After this," I said, "I'm going to order you to tell me what's wrong. Until then, get yourself together."

He stopped suddenly and turned to me, arms raised pleadingly. "It's Tanya. I just... I'm all confused about our marriage."

Fisk placed a hand on his shoulder. "You two having trouble? I'm really sorry to hear that."

"We just don't seem to have anything in common, and I don't know how I feel anymore. We're just so different, and I'm worrying all the time about what if we can't be happy forever? But we made a vow to the Exalted, I can't betray it."

Troughton groaned faintly, not understanding that Frank's loyalty to the Exalted was rotted in his loyalty to his wife. His faith was deadly serious to him, but it was also his filter for all his other feelings. He would very likely put himself through a lifetime of unhappiness rather than face the guilt and wrenching loss that would come with leaving Tanya.

I sighed and patted his arm. "We'll talk it over later, over some beers. If I can help you fix things with your wife, I will."

We all turned as something sped by, down the corridor and up the stairs, faster than we could see, accompanied by a cold draft and the tang of decomposition.

Moriah gasped. "I've been hurt."

"Where?"

He released the hand that was clutching his arm just below the shoulder, to show me a deep, jagged wound.

"Fuck, it hurts."

"Pass me a med-kit." I said.

Gibbs obliged. The others were looking at the ceiling, trying to follow the scratching and shuffling that seemed to shift instantly from one location to another.

"Fucking Fallen," Fisk repeated. "I fucking hate Fallen."

While they all kept watch, I set to work on the wound, stemming the blood and applying bandages. It really did look like a bite mark from a human sized jaw, although the tearing made it hard to be certain. I noted two parallel trails where the tearing was especially deep.

*

The only route to the first floor was a rickety staircase with a third of its steps missing or damaged. Halfway up, skewered on the jagged edge of a broken step, was a child's rag doll. It was torn and covered in dry blood. Perhaps more disturbing than the state of the thing was its original form. Glass eyes shone with malevolent fury, the mouth was crudely stitched in a crooked line. The arms and legs were all different lengths and ended in metal claws. It appeared to have over-sized, misshapen genitals. In place of hair, it bore a crown of sharp-looking needles. What manner of creature had found this comforting?

We advanced up the steps—carefully, quietly—and inevitably had to take them two or three at a time, to ford the gaps. At the top, the corridor extended in both directions, and more grisly items were pinned to the wall and hung from the ceiling.

"Which way from here?" Troughton asked. Under his mask, his eyes and lips would be narrowed in thought.

"Left," I said. And then, when we reached the top, we all turned right.

It was such an innocuous error that I failed to even notice it at the time. Without any knowledge of what lay ahead, the choice between left and right may as well have been a coin toss. So did it matter that we all went the wrong way? Of course it did, because it was a mistake that we never normally would have made. Our sense of direction was honed by years of training and more years of practice. Not once had any one of us made such a basic error before. All five of us muddled our left with our right at the same time.

I got a better look at the grisly objects. Some were versions of the doll on the stairs, nailed in place like dead moths and cut, burned or otherwise mutilated. Some were strangely shaped pieces of root that appeared to bleed. As we progressed they grew more macabre, becoming gruesome trophies, body parts.

"Fucking Fallen," Fisk growled. "Sick bastards."

"Pipe down," I responded. "We don't even know for sure that this is a Fallen. Let's investigate, and deal with whatever comes our way without letting personal grievances cloud our judgement. Understood?"

"Sir."

My admonishment hid my real concern that maybe this time Fisk was right. We all knew the Fallen to be dangerous, but I had not shared his paranoid loathing of them. Now I had to acknowledge that perhaps it was warranted. On the other hand, I wasn't prepared to let this become a repeat of our last encounter with Fallen.

***

We had been searching a hab-block, following a mission brief not too different from our current one, except that we were alerted to the presence of Fallen in advance, and had encountered a family on the third floor. They were a little too quiet, just sat there twitching nervously when we entered, and they refused to speak.

"You are to vacate these premises immediately," I had ordered. "We are investigating a matter of Realm security, and your presence is detrimental to our mission. If you remain, we cannot guarantee your safety."

They had all just looked at each other, quizzically—young, old, strong, weak, female, male. A vacant, dribbling old man had sat in the far corner. In front of us was a two year old boy in a dirty nappy.

Andreas had turned his head towards me. I didn't need to see his face to know that he was thinking the same thing I was, that the nature of the predicament had dawned on us both.

"You fucking deaf or summin?" Fisk yelled, waving his gun. The other members of the unit stood their ground with weapons raised, not yet sure how to react.

"Hold your fire, Obdurate . . ." Andreas began.

"They're ignoring direct orders, Sir!" Then, to the frightened and confused occupants, he said, "Get clear! Out! Now! Comprehend?"

Andreas reached out to take him by the arm, but slowly, so as not to set him off. "No, I don't think . . ."

He never completed his statement. One of the old men had flickered, like a page turned quickly, or a leaf caught in a web in a strong gale, rapidly flitting back and forth.

And Fisk had yelled. "Fallen! It's the Fallen!"

And someone had fired the first shot—I believe it was Gibbs, eager to impress, but it happened too fast to be sure.

And Moriah, Billy and the others had followed his lead, afraid of the preternaturally fast being that would tear their throats out if they didn't act swiftly.

And the family had all rushed to shield the man with their own bodies.

And then they had started to drop, marionettes with their strings cut.

***

I cut down the gory meat-puppet that hung from the ceiling with a slice of my combat knife and watched it drop to the floor.

The tragedy was that, unofficially, that kind of overzealousness was more in line with what our superiors wanted than Andreas' merciful approach was. It allowed them to get the dirty jobs done, keep the populace afraid, without ever officially sanctioning the murder of innocents. I didn't stop to question it often—there was no way to change it, and dwelling on it was enough to drive a man insane.

"Sir?" The enquiry came from Troughton, who had walked up alongside me and was studying the 'puppet' I had cut down.

"Yes?"

"I don't feel quite right, Sir. Something about this place . . ."

"You'll be okay."

That scampering again, much louder and heavier this time. A high-speed pounding, stamping even, growing even louder as it went on. At first it was as if the Fallen was scuttling amongst us, invisible, then it was like a road drill, a relentless pounding. The men started to cover their ears.

"Forward, everyone. We press on. First room on the left."

I went first, kicking the door in and entering with gun raised. Moriah backed me up.

"Empty. Sort of."

I caught his meaning before my eyes adjusted. The smell of corpses was unmistakable, and nauseating.

There were . . . three in one corner, two in the middle of the floor? No. Two and a half.

The walls had been whitewashed before what had taken place in the room, and then daubed with the markings. The symbols.

Frank pushed past us, hurriedly. "This is, these are . . . oh no . . ."

He knelt to study the bodies.

"There's markings on them too, carved in. This was done by Ruiner worshippers."

The room was a gallery of horror. Few parts were connected, or at least not connected where they were supposed to be. An arm was the canvas for a complicated tableau of maze-like, tightly-twisting lines, like a map into madness. A palm bore the image of a demonic face, not simplistically drawn with knife cuts, but created by carving and sculpting the flesh. It had been propped upright to look upon the work of its acolytes and had grinned at each scream, each spasm of pain, each degradation and death rattle. What nightmares had infected the mind of the man who had formed that grotesque grin? What nightmares had it inspired, to be brought to life with blade and flesh and ill-intent?

Frank was still on his knees, making his head level with my chest, moaning. "I can't fight such things, I haven't the strength. Not right now. Exalted grant me strength . . ."

Moriah dragged him to his feet. "Get up, you big lug." He pulled himself together almost instantly, but I knew him well. He was compassionate and devout. The sickness of this room would burrow deeper than any surface behaviour could show.

I ushered Moriah and Frank out and shut the door. There was nothing to gain from examining the room. None of us knew the works and writings of the Ruiner and none of us should.

"We find whatever we're supposed to recover from here," I said, "and then we burn the place."

*

We pressed on, investigated every room. None displayed evidence of the same calculated sadistic rituals. Somehow, the upstairs seemed much larger than the downstairs, despite there being no difference in layout visible from outside. Perhaps there were just a larger number of smaller rooms.

"Something wrong with Dezkarians, I swear," Gibbs quipped, trying to score points with Fisk. "I mean, who messes with dead bodies like that?"

Comments like that could damage morale. I should have admonished him, but I didn't. Underneath his bravado I knew Gibbs was more scared than any of us. It was just that he was mostly afraid of looking weak.

"No evidence that this was Dezkarians," I prompted. "Focus."

"Yeah, but you gotta admit," Fisk said, "we haven't encountered a Fallen in months, and now this, no more than a fortnight after the refugee crisis." As infuriating as Fisk's sermonising on this subject could be, it was strange how he could be articulate and persuasive on this one subject, when most of what came out of his mouth was grunts. I tried not to let Fisk's paranoia distract me and bit my tongue and tasted the blood. I reminded myself that Fallen could come from anywhere, get into Realm territory in many ways, and this one could have been in Caldair for years without encountering us.

We approached the end of the corridor. A notably ornate door, deep red, stood at the termination point. The walls leading up to it had been papered a long time ago, in what may once have been a similar deep red but was now patchy, faded, fly-specked brown on peeling paper skin over disintegrating timber flesh. Fisk kept peeking into the holes in the boards, as if convinced Fallen were crammed behind them, waiting to ambush us.

The door had a patterned, golden handle and bore a grinning face, the same as the demonic face in the hand.

"I don't wanna go in there," Frank admitted.

"You don't have to," I told him, pushing him away from the room. "Fisk and I will . . ."

"I'll go in," Gibbs said. "What are you all afraid of? More bodies? Big deal, nothing we haven't seen before. If it's some kind of Ruiner hoojoo, doesn't bother me, I don't believe in that crap."

"Thomas!"

"Well, I don't. Does believing in the Exalted really mean I have to believe in all that boogeyman Ruiner side of it? Letters in blood can't hurt us. If the Fallen is in there, you guys have my back, right?"

"What if it's something worse?" Moriah asked.

"What like some evil, nasty demon? I already told you, I don't believe in that crap. There's nothing supernatural going on, just a particularly twisted psycho Fallen."

Before I could stop him, he turned to the door and twisted the handle.

Inside, all was in light, as bright as day. Thomas Gibbs dawdled in, tentatively, not believing what he was seeing. The planks of wood that the room was assembled from were newly chopped and planed pine, straight and smooth and clean. They still smelled of forest and sap. The room was empty. Dust floated thinly in the air, dancing in the beams of sunlight that stole through the gaps between each plank of wood. They pierced the room from all angles, even through the ceiling and floor.

Sawdust and glue and evening air fought for my attention, and that cloying smell again, like the lavender in the hay field, taking me back to a day when I'd been out playing, chasing my brother through the sunbeams, both of us laughing.

Gibbs reached the middle of the room and removed his mask to gaze around in wonder. The room emitted such terrible tranquillity. Compared to the gloom and squalor exuded by the rest of the house, the contrast was shocking. The floorboards creaked slightly as Gibbs shifted weight.

The sunbeams were coming up through the floor.

"Gibbs," I said, "let's get out of here, right now."

There had been no difference in layout between the first floor and ground floor, I was sure of that. I had circled the building before we had entered. It was a uniform shape and size on both levels. Even if we had been in there all night, long enough for the sun to rise (and I was certain we hadn't) there was no way that much light would be coming up from an internal space. This room was unnatural.

Gibbs started to turn back towards me, sluggish sleepwalker movements. "It can't be real, Turcotte, can it? It isn't possible." His voice was cracking. As he turned side-on to me, I could see that he was crying.

"No, it isn't. That's why we have to leave, Thomas." I kept my voice gentle, reached out to him.

He was facing me now, grinning dreamily. "But I don't want to go. Why would I? Look at it. It's lovely." He swayed.

"It's not," I said, more firmly. "It's evil, it's rancid."

He was laughing and crying all at once, torn in two by the contradictions of the place.

"Oh World, oh World, what's happening? Where the fuck am I?"

"Best not to think about it, is my notion."

"I can't help thinking about it. I'm here, aren't I? Aren't I? Like, some things you just can't help thinking about, because this isn't real but it's here, and, and those people were real, but they're _not_ here. Not anymore."

I knew that had been eating at him. He hadn't said anything, but I knew him well enough. If he had been the one to initiate the killing of those civilians he wouldn't be able to forget. Instead, he had treated it as if it hadn't been real. Now he was faced with the stark contrast between real and unreal, and it was up to me to help him make sense of it.

"Just take a step toward me." Still reaching out to him, inching closer, instincts telling me not to make any sudden moves.

He was sweating now, and breathing heavy, terror creeping in. Perhaps I should have told him not to look down, because one glance at the dazzling rays of daylight slicing up through the floor sent him spiralling towards abject panic.

"What wh-what? Fucking . . ."

"I know, I know." Moving closer. My earlier instincts proved correct as he flinched away angrily when I went to grasp for him.

"There's grass down there, Colonel. I can see it between the boards. How can there be grass?"

Colonel. He thought I was Andreas. His grip on the present had slipped. I saw his hand inch towards his holster. I put my palms up, in a conciliatory gesture. "I don't know. I'm sure there's an explanation. Come with me and let's get to the bottom of it." I spared a glance at the doorway behind me. It was thick with inky blackness and the wall surrounding it was obscured by a haze of dust motes and defused light. It looked like something viewed from miles distant. The other members of the unit were invisible.

I looked back. Gibbs had taken out his pistol.

"There's no explanation for this! Don't you fucking lie to me!" Anger and desperation were warring over him now, tears and sweat bathing his reddening face. "I said there was nothing supernatural going on." He laughed hysterically. "Oh no, of course not. How fucking stupid do I look now?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Yes it does. They'll all think I'm a fool." He grimaced, in genuine dread of losing the unit's respect, and started to sob.

"Thomas . . ." I had run out of words. I braced myself to lunge for the weapon and drag him out of the room.

He sniffed and brought himself up to his full height, trying to hold back the tears. "It doesn't matter, Andreas." He shrugged resignedly, spluttering as he did so. "It isn't real. Maybe nothing's real."

He put the gun to his temple.

"NO!" I screamed.

The room turned red.

*

I closed the door firmly behind me.

The men crowded, muttering questions.

"The room killed him," I muttered. Rarely had I felt so fragile. Was this the burden Andreas had to carry?

"What kinda explanation is that?" Fisk yelled.

"It is Truth," Starsmore pronounced.

"How do you know that, Frank?" Moriah asked, clearing his throat. "I couldn't see through the doorway."

"I saw not with my eyes. The Exalted granted me a vision of Thomas's torment. The same as he has sent me these doubts about my life with Tanya, to prepare me. I will pray for guidance." He got down on his knees, obstructing the whole corridor.

"Big lug is praying at a time like this . . ." Troughton muttered.

Fisk whacked him across the back of his head. "P'raps you oughta show some devotion yerself, 'stead of criticising. Leave him be."

Once Frank had finished, we made our way back along the corridor, towards the central stairwell, to explore the other side of the stairs (which way had we turned? Left or right?). We couldn't leave the red door behind quickly enough.

What wouldn't leave my mind, worse than the sight of Gibbs' head exploding across the wall, was the look in his eyes right before he pulled the trigger. The almost serene wistfulness, tinged with just that edge of fear that had taken over, screwing the eyes tight shut, as his finger squeezed.

Should I have noticed that look in his eyes sooner? Perhaps months sooner?

Fisk, Moriah and Troughton were carrying on their usual banter, as though things were normal. And why shouldn't they? Yes, we had lost two of our own, but fatalities were a hazard of our work, and humour was part of how the men coped. Only Frank and myself knew the terrible truth of how Gibbs had died.

We came back to the location of the grisly ornaments, but they were gone. Again we heard the high speed scurrying, back at a normal volume now. Instead of being all around it was impossibly distant, as though bleeding through from another world.

"This place wears sin like a medal. It must be purged," Frank intoned.

"It will be, friend, it will be." Moriah patted his back, then loosened his collar and the fastener for his mask. His rash must have been causing discomfort.

"You have permission to remove your mask," I said. "Just be sure to put it back on before we engage the Exalted's enemies."

Fisk muttered something and Starsmore emitted a rumble of disapproval.

"It's not a problem," Moriah said, but I could see his fingertips inching under his mask, scratching the sensitive spots along his chin. There were sores down his neck.

"Don't know why you got the fucking lurgy in the first place," Fisk bit. "You catch crotch rot? You ain't started gobbling knob have you?"

Nobody else noticed Troughton's hands clench, or heard his sharp intake of breath through clenched teeth. He was clearly offended. I was finding Fisk infuriating, and Moriah didn't seem amused either, but given Troughton's reaction I wondered if his objection was personal. Officially, I would be required to report any such violations of Exaltist doctrine, but I would not do so. Troughton was a good soldier, and loving people of the same sex was a capital crime. Again I found myself at odds with the accepted words of the Exalted, and wondering what that meant.

We reached the landing above the stairs, and a blur of twisted malice shot up them, out of the murk, across the broken steps like fluid, flitting this way and that, rippling distorted limbs here and then there. The face of a demon, one moment shrouded in the shadows of its evil home, then flashing into the corner of your vision, then right in front of your face, bearing down, then disappearing into the distance. A muddled haze of contorting limbs and malevolent features vanished down the corridor, into the unexplored region of the upper level, the nightmares yet to be found.

Fisk pulled out his spare pistol and held one in each hand, brandishing them at the awaiting dark. "I'm so gonna kill that thing."

"We all will play a part in its death," Frank boomed from out of the shadows behind me. "I especially am important to its destruction. The Exalted has willed it. He has shown me my weakness. Before I can be true to my wife, I must be true to Him."

"Sending you telegrams now, is he?" Troughton retorted.

"He speaks." Frank practically bellowed. "Can you not hear?"

I couldn't. And although it was unthinkable for any Purifier, or any Realm citizen at all, to question the existence of the Exalted, and even though Frank was the most gentle, unthreatening man I knew, something about having a black-clad, masked behemoth looming over me in the dark, shouting about hearing the voice of god, was undeniably unsettling.

"Cool down, big guy," I said, placing a calming hand on what was supposed to be his shoulder, but ended up being his elbow. "We'll catch this thing, then we'll deal with it in the proper fashion." He nodded, and it was like a mountain bending its summit.

I was too prepared to overlook his troubling behaviour, in light of the night's events. In the moment, it almost seemed appropriate—at least he was responding to what had happened. Gibbs' final moments replayed in front of my eyes, over and over. It wasn't supposed to end like that, not for a Purifier, not for anyone. He had seemed so alive.

The next room we came to was full of flies, buzzing over everything.

"Swarming like Dezkary immigrants," Fisk said.

Moriah rubbed his brow. "Give it a rest."

Troughton had gone quiet and now wandered over to the opposite wall of the corridor. He rested his head against the wall, with his hands interlaced over the back of his neck. I was getting concerned about him.

I gave Fisk a sharp shove in the chest. "That's enough, Fisk. Make one more offensive comment, I'm taking you off field duty for a month."

"What for? I ain't saying nothing that the Procurators wouldn't agree with."

"I'd find a reason!" I yelled back. "Andreas would back me up in whatever I say you've done, so don't challenge me, Fisk. Two of ours have died tonight, and you _will_ show some respect."

Maybe he hadn't fired the first shot when the unit had killed those civilians, but he had helped create the atmosphere of panic that had scared everyone, scared Gibbs, into such drastic action. In a way he was partly responsible for how things had eventually played out in the empty, impossible room. I wasn't letting the same kind of crushing despair be inflicted on Troughton.

He stood down and dusted himself off. "Awright. Everyone so damn touchy today. No-one knows how to take a joke."

After that incident, the Fallen was no doubt aware of our exact location, but we'd been kidding ourselves to think that hadn't been the case all along. I turned my attention back to the investigation. We had to locate the bastard and annihilate it, before it made its next move.

A broken window let the wind in to sift the stenches of the room, of faeces and decay. Mingled with that, yet again, was that sickly sweet smell of lavender. That day, I had been nine and my brother had been five. I'd been looking after him, and we'd gone barrelling through the hay fields. As the dying rays of sun had danced over the dust of the field we had kicked up, we had found a patch of wild lavender.

Was that the smell of the Fallen? Were there lavender plants in the building?

I peered into the room. Two armchairs and a two seater sofa were arranged facing each other. In the middle of them was a low table, bearing a vase of dead flowers. Lavender. Mystery solved.

The seats were all occupied by unmoving, vaguely human-shaped mounds. I went in, and clasped my hand over my mouth and nose. Moriah followed me in, coughing and retching. He started to peel off his mask.

"I really wouldn't do that if I were you," I warned him.

"I . . ." He hacked up phlegm inside the mask. "It's not that . . ."

I approached him, rested a hand on his back as he bent over and the cough rattled through him and into me. "Moriah?"

I helped him with the mask.

Beneath it, his face was a swollen cluster of weeping sores and pustules. His left eye was closed by the pressure of a massive boil on the bridge of his nose. Pus trickled down his right cheek from an opening that looked more like a bullet wound than a skin lesion.

"I . . . can't . . ." he rasped, and turned to grasp at the front of my uniform. Then he was sick. Dark, foul liquid poured over me, soaked through until I could feel the warmth of it and the stickiness against my belly.

Moriah collapsed, face first, against me, pushing me back. His face smeared through his own vomit as he slid down. I had just enough presence of mind to catch him and lower him to the ground.

Troughton stepped into the room, and into the faint illumination offered by the broken window. "Is he..?"

He was, but my throat wouldn't communicate the information. I waved Troughton back, paranoid that somehow the filth in this room had caused Brian Moriah's death. The grief overwhelmed me. I propped myself up on my knees. I felt dizzy. The stink of the room ceased to exist, and so did its contents. All I could see were the flies, already settling on the vomit and pus that was smeared across Moriah's inert face. All I could smell was the dead lavender.

World, I'd lost half the unit in one mission. I was failing them all, just like I had failed . . .

"You okay?" somebody asked. It was enough to snap me out of it. I looked up and my head swam. "Yes," I lied.

"Fuck me," Fisk said, looking down at Moriah's body. "He looks like he had Drellpox. Maybe he really was a homo."

Troughton rounded on him. "Drellpox has nothing to do with that, you idiot! And who cares who he slept with? He's dead on the floor in front of you!"

Fisk stumbled back against one of the mouldering chairs, shocked. The impact caused the occupant to lurch forward slightly. Fisk shook as he stood back up, and at first I thought it was with rage. I prepared for him to throw a punch or pull a pistol, but instead he said, "Hey, I'm sorry. Really, I . . . it's just what I do. To make things easier, you know."

Troughton relaxed, but just a little. He had always been edgy around Fisk, unsurprisingly.

I looked about the room. Frank started to pray again, this time chanting and swaying, oblivious to the stares of his two remaining team-mates. I decided not to challenge him. The incident with Gibbs had shown how the men's emotional wellbeing was important. If this helped Frank to deal with what had happened, it had my support.

Although the glass that remained in the window was filthy, through the shattered pane and the dead tree outside I could see over the Caldair rooftops. The sun was starting to emerge, picking out the details of the room, and if our quarry had the same vulnerabilities as most Fallen that would make our job easier. Even once we hit full daylight, the others would keep their masks on to remain the avatars of the Purifying flame.

The body that had lurched forward in its seat had left tendrils of congealed seepage, trailing towards the fabric of the sofa like unearthed roots. The man in the seat next to him was wearing a wooden mask, painted red and bearing a familiar, ghastly visage. It was the same demonic face that we had seen elsewhere: in the room of sacrifices, where Frank had started to come unstuck, and in the room that Gibbs had been unable to believe in and unwilling to leave.

I should have moved quicker, been more persuasive, been more attuned to his state of mind, done more to help him.

May as well wish that I'd been able to see the future.

"I really am sorry," Fisk was saying to an unreceptive but slowly relaxing Troughton. "I should never have said those things. I was blowing off steam."

The demon face grinned at me, a twisted reflection of our own masquerade.

"It's all right," Troughton replied, stiffly but amicably. "We all say things we don't mean under stress." His voice was strained. He had no real desire to reconcile with Fisk, but was making a valiant effort.

"I just . . . Moriah's dead and I feel bad for what I said. I should never have accused him of something like that."

My attention shifted, my instincts flared.

"Something like what?" Troughton bristled. It was his turn to shake. "Like what, Fisk?"

"You know . . ."

"No I don't," Troughton's voice was cracking. "All I remember was you accused him of sleeping with men." Perhaps he felt he had to speak out, but he didn't want to say this, and was terrified of Fisk. Perhaps he was even more afraid of what he might let slip.

"Well, that's a sin. You know that, buddy. That's what the Exalted says. It's not up to me."

"Guys, shelve it," I ordered. "Personal debates belong back at the Guardian House."

"Except we can't have debates like this at the Guardian House," Troughton objected, then laughed nervously. "Can't speak our minds."

"C'mon, buddy," Fisk said, genuinely concerned. "What's this about really? 'Cos you sound like you're saying . . ."

"I don't know what I'm saying. It's just . . ." he gestured towards Moriah's corpse. "He was so well respected and he would have hated to go out like that, in such a degrading way, and . . ."

"Yeah, I know that, buddy. That's what I'm saying. I hate it too. We lost Billy, Gibbs and Moriah tonight, and I mouth off when things get to me, is all. Especially cos of the way Moriah went. Like you said, degrading, looking like he was homo. You get that, don't you, buddy?"

"Stop calling me 'buddy'! I am not your damn buddy!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, fellas." Frank had ceased his prayers and stepped between them, keeping them at arm's length away from each other. "Stop it, now. Take it from me, arguments get a bit too personal when you're under strain. Turcotte's right, we shouldn't do this here."

"No. We should." Troughton flexed his shoulders, bracing himself, building up the fortitude for what he wanted to do. "This is the perfect place and the perfect time, for me to tell this fucking bigot what I think of him."

"Bigot? Cos I don't like homos and Dezkarians? The Exalted doesn't like them either. And if He says summin's wrong, that's good enough for me."

Troughton was silent for a moment but gestured angrily, trying to think of what to say. "It doesn't hurt anyone," he said at last.

"Stop this now!" I yelled. They didn't hear.

"I don't care if it hurts anyone," Fisk scoffed. "It's a sin. Why are you so worked up?"

"Because . . ." He bunched his trembling hands into shaking fists. "I just am. Because . . ." He reached up and ripped off his mask. He was hyperventilating and sweat was beading on his forehead.

"Troughton, Len," I said, "you don't need to do this."

"Yeah, I think I do. World help me."

"Come on, Len," Fisk said, almost pleadingly. "Don't do this. If you say anything else about this, you know I'll have to bring you in. After this is over, you'll have to come with me to the Procurators and . . ."

"Fisk, I'm warning you."

Troughton was chewing his lip, and his eyes were wide. He looked down at Moriah for a long moment, took in a giant breath and said, "I'm gay." That desperate laugh again. "I'm gay. And I don't think the Exalted would hate me for it."

"Aww shit," Fisk moaned, covering his face with both hands. "Shit, shit, shit. Why? Why did you have to say that for, Len?"

"Listen," Frank interceded. "We can pretend we didn't hear that. Nothing's changed here, Fisk."

"I follow my commands. I follow doctrine. To the letter. It's not up to me."

Troughton started to cry, more out of panic than anything. He turned away and walked towards the corner of the room, hands again linked over the back of his head.

"I have to report this," Fisk continued. "I'm so sorry, Len."

"You will do no such thing," I said, walking away from the sitting corpses and advancing on Fisk. "If you do, I will make you pay for it, and I will say that you are lying."

"No!" Troughton snapped. "Don't you dare. I'm standing by this."

"Don't be foolish," Frank said. "If you do that, you'll die."

"If I'm accused, I won't deny it. I can't."

"Look," Fisk said, "maybe you're just cracking under pressure or something."

Troughton closed his eyes and took three or four ragged breaths, then muttered, "fuck it," and ran for the window.

I don't believe he intended to do what Gibbs had done,

It had gotten to him, weighed him down. He had been so eager to impress, but it was easier to decide that none of it was real. The look in his eyes just before the room turned red.

Gibbs had been a man full of shame, wearing a veneer of pride, and Troughton was the opposite. I'm convinced he had planned to climb out the window, down the tree, and go AWOL. He never got that far. As he ran past the mouldering seats, his uniform snagged on something and he stumbled. It took a moment to see that it was the masked body's hand that had snagged him, reaching up to clamp decaying fingers around the seam.

The dead man rose to his full, imposing height, creating a tearing sound as fluids and decaying tissues that had seeped into the upholstery and then dried pulled away from their cushioned grave.

Fisk was first to react, letting off two rounds into the thing's chest before Frank and I had our pistols unholstered. It didn't react.

Its height combined with its emaciated build made it look impossibly gaunt. It grinned at our impassive masks, then its grin split apart, revealing lethal fangs. Troughton was struggling with all his strength and anger, but the Fallen had him by the shoulders. He couldn't move his arms, so he kicked and head-butted and writhed to free himself, bucked like a bull. I raced forward, firing at the creature as I moved, but again

" _Thomas . . ." I had run out of words. I braced myself to lunge for the weapon and drag him out of the room._

He sniffed and brought himself up to his full height, trying to hold back the tears. "It doesn't matter, Andreas." He shrugged resignedly, spluttering as he did so. "It isn't real. Maybe nothing's real."

He put the gun to his temple.

it was too late. The Fallen wrapped his fingers into Troughton's hair, dug his fingers into one shoulder, and pulled, exposing his neck.

Fisk, of all people, charged past me and tackled Troughton and the Fallen to the ground, bellowing as he went. Troughton scrambled out from underneath them and clawed his way up the side of the chair until he was standing.

Fisk being underneath gave us clear shots at the thing's back, but the silver bullets didn't seem to harm it. It juddered in Fisk's grasp, flickered, limbs flashing out in blurs to impossible lengths and angles. Within seconds, it had freed itself, gotten to its feet and clasped Fisk around the neck. Then, the mouth of its wooden demon mask opening wide like real jaws, it lunged and bit.

Fisk screamed with rage, tried to beat the Fallen's head in with his bare fists. Blood spurted out of his neck where the Fallen's mouth was clamped on. Frank and I raced forward and, with Troughton's help, tried to pull Fisk free. Fisk started to spasm, then fell still. The Fallen threw him at the window. The remaining glass shattered and fell to the floor with Fisk's corpse, and the Fallen advanced on the rest of us.

I gave the signal for everyone to withdraw swiftly while keeping the Fallen in sight, but as fast as we moved there was no way to outpace it—it's speed was as preternatural as everything else about that place. It lurched forward like a puppet with tangled strings, took three or four high-speed steps, then stopped for a split second, then raced forward again.

Frank yelled, "Get clear!" and I threw myself at Troughton, sending us both to the floor. Frank was about to use his weapon of choice.

He reached round to his back holster and drew the emitter for the flamethrower.

Silver was tried and tested against Fallen. The silver bullets should have worked. But I would dismiss all this as a dream if the flamethrower failed to dispatch it. Fire killed everything.

The flame thrower roared to life, engulfing the Fallen in orange and yellow petals. It shrieked.

Under any other circumstances, I would never have allowed Frank to use a flamethrower in a place like this, made almost entirely of wood, but given the immediate threat it was a risk worth taking. I counted on the pervasive damp to prevent the fire from catching.

The Fallen seemed to shrink and crumple as it wheeled back past the seats. It continued to edge back, up the wall, shrieking and flailing its blazing arms.

"Come on," I yelled. "It's done for, let's get out of this room and find whatever we were sent here for."

We sprinted from the room, up the still dark corridor, the Fallen's last gurgled screams dwindling behind us.

We ran around a corner and kept going, and quickly reached the end of the corridor without discovering any more rooms. It was difficult to understand what the corridor existed for, since it led to nothing except a dead end.

"There's nothing here, Turcotte," Frank growled. "We have spent our comrades' lives cheaply."

Troughton was examining the walls, by touch. "The big guy is right. There's no way through. It doesn't make sense."

"I don't think what's happening is quite real." I said. "I think our fears are being brought to life. Gibbs was scared of losing his notion of what was real, and of losing respect, same as Moriah was scared of being a hindrance and losing his dignity, and Fisk was scared of Fallen, that they would infiltrate our country with the refugees." I was thinking it through. Somewhere in the pattern was a solution.

"This is real," Frank insisted. "The Exalted tells me so. Our brothers' deaths were real."

"No. Think about it. Why did those charms disappear? Why do we keep seeing that same face? How did the mouth of that mask open like that? The Fallen made a noise as it got out of its chair, it had to tear itself free because it had started to seep into its seat. But how could it have been sat there decomposing at the same time as roaming the house?"

I turned back to face the way we had come, and shushed the others. Something, or someone, was shuffling towards us.

"It surely can't still be alive," Troughton said. "I heard it . . ."

"We all did," I confirmed, "but it shouldn't have survived those silver bullets either."

"This is the Ruiner's work," Frank rumbled.

The shuffling was getting closer, picking up speed. I pulled my mask back on to use the night vision, and twiddled the dial on the left eyepiece to zoom. The person approaching was far shorter and bulkier than the Fallen had been, and was stumbling along, dragging one foot.

"It's Fisk," said Frank. "He's alive!"

"Not quite."

Fisk's neck wound was no longer spurting but was still obscenely large. His lips were distorted by an overbite he hadn't had before. His eyes had a peculiar gleam behind them.

"He's Fallen," I said.

"Aw, World no," Troughton groaned.

Frank hissed through clenched teeth. "If your theory is true, then whose fear is this?"

"This is still Fisk's," Troughton said. "Nothing scared him worse than becoming Fallen."

"Enough!" Frank bellowed, pushing forward. "Enough of this hateful place, enough of its evil deeds. We will suffer no more sacrilege." He charged ahead, holding the flamethrower up. Purifying flame spurted out and engulfed Fisk, who bent over like a primate and roared in pain and demonic hatred. Starsmore kept the spurt of flame going far longer than he needed to, but it was best to make sure.

"Die, thing of evil!" Frank yelled as Fisk collapsed and started to disintegrate. "Get back to the hell from which the Ruiner spawned you!"

Still he kept the flamethrower gushing fire. I shared his anger at all the loss and suffering, but it was time to stop before the whole house went up. As rotten and mouldy as the boards were, eventually they would catch. I went up to him and gently rested a hand on his arm. "He's finished, Frank. You got him. You've done enough."

He extinguished the geyser of flame, but turned on me, aggressively. "Enough? How is this enough? The Exalted has shown me, I cannot be content with Tanya until I'm content with myself. I must prove myself worthy of the Exalted. This is a place of blasphemy and it must be purged!"

"Okay, Frank, okay. But let's get out of here first." The poor man had probably been in a constant state of anxiety over his marriage for ages. Like with Thomas, I wished I'd noticed sooner.

He didn't hear me. My voice was being drowned out by another. "Can't you hear that?" he asked.

"Hear what?" Troughton asked.

"The voice. His voice. I can hear His words." He gazed about at the sagging ceiling above us, in wonder.

"The Exalted?" I asked.

"Of course. His voice is like the wind and the rain, like birdsong and the howling of wolves, like a tree falling in the woods, that only I can hear. He cannot abide this place. I know . . . I know what He wants me to do."

Turning in dizzying circles, he ignited the flamethrower again. "This place of evil must burn!"

"Run!" I yelled to Troughton. He was already on the move. A spurt of flame shot out as we pelted down the corridor, back towards the stairs, singeing my back. I felt a tingling and curious numbness and wondered how much damage had been done. No time to inspect. Keep moving.

"The big guy's cracked," Troughton panted. "I knew he was devout, but this?"

The house was starting to catch. Smoke slowly filled the air, making breathing a struggle.

"It's something about the house," I said, stifling coughs. "Has to be. The Fallen is dead."

I glanced back. The section of corridor where it turned towards the dead end was being devoured by flames, licking up the ceiling and spreading along the walls towards us. From the middle of this conflagration, Frank's immense silhouette lumbered towards us.

"Maybe . . . Ruiner cult rituals?" Troughton said.

Despite the urgency, we stopped at the top of the stairs. The grotesque decorations had returned, twice as many as before. Charms in the form of esoteric symbols, made from woven plants, from broken objects, from organs. Hideous effigies dangled by their throats, many wearing the red demon mask, most obscene or made to look like they were dismembered or deformed.

"The room. Where Frank first started acting strangely," I said.

"With the sacrifices? What about it?"

From among the encroaching flames, Frank's voice intoned, "Now Purify all sin. Now burn the sinner. Now reap the ashes . . ."

"We have to go back there," I said.

Troughton paused before he responded. "It's gotten to you too, hasn't it? You're losing your mind."

"No. If this is about Ruiner rituals, that's where we can put things right. If this is about Frank, that's where we can make him confront what's happening to him."

He nodded. The fire was almost on us. We could feel the heat. Sweat poured into my eyes, the air stung my throat.

We ran to the room, a few feet away, Frank stamping towards us.

We stumbled in and slammed the door behind us, putting our backs against it, and stared at what we had found. The room that had held the defiled remains of the murder victims was now empty. A single window illuminated the stark reality of it.

"So much for that idea," Troughton scoffed. The door shook as Frank pounded it. The strength of the two of us was no match for his—soon the door would collapse. "Still, last ones standing. Guess you and I aren't afraid of much, huh?"

"You _were_ afraid of something, but not anymore, I think."

He nodded slowly. The door shuddered as Frank tried to open it, pushed his full weight against it. Troughton and I pushed harder to compensate, our feet struggling for leverage on the soft wood of the floor. "I was afraid of being discovered," he said.

"But you confronted it." I looked at the room. It wasn't just empty, it was bare, it was clean. There wasn't the slightest sign that dismembered body parts had been strewn across the room less than an hour before.

"What was in here wasn't real," I said. "If we just confront our fear of him, and show him that what he fears isn't real . . ."

We exchanged a look, and stepped away. The door burst inwards.

"The Exalted renews!" Frank yelled. Then he stopped, looked at the room as though it was an old friend, someone who had been absent from his life for so long that recognition came slowly, and with doubt.

"What is this?"

"It wasn't real," Troughton said. "I don't know what's going on here, but it's not a Ruiner cult. Why would they create fake evidence of their rituals when the real signs of them would be everywhere?"

Frank pulled his mask off. His bearded face was limp with astonishment and anguish. "I almost . . ."

"Don't worry about it," I told him. "You're not the only one to . . ."

And that was as far as I got, because at that moment the flames reached Frank's back, and his fuel tank exploded.

He cannonballed into the room as Troughton and I were both blown back against the far wall by the unstoppable, blistering force.

I was left lying face first on the ground, struggling for consciousness, struggling for breath, struggling to ignore the pain that covered every inch of my body so that I couldn't bear to move. I lifted my head. Troughton was in a sitting position, propped against the wall next to the window, uniform burned away in patches and red raw flesh beneath.

Frank had been blown apart and partially charred pieces of him were scattered across the room.

My ears rang, head spun. My nose was full of strange smells—charred meat, smoke, mould. A cigar my grandfather used to smoke, my favourite drink, and the scent of lavender.

I heard my brother's voice, calling to me in the corn fields.

"Troughton," I rasped. "Troughton."

He lifted his head, looked at me, then got to his feet with unbelievable ease. He ran across to me and gently turned me over.

"Go. Leave me," I told him. "Everyone who puts their trust in me gets killed."

"Well then, it's a good thing I don't trust you. Now get up."

"No. I've failed you all. I accept my death."

"It's not real. It can't hurt us if we confront our fears."

"How can I do that? My fear has already come true." They were nearly all dead. Their own fears coming true. Except none of them had feared death. For all their flaws, they were the bravest people I had ever known. Frank was willing to throw his life away to fight corruption. Fisk would have seen the final purifying flame as a blissful release after the horror of being Fallen.

I heard my brother yelling "slow poke, slow poke", saw him running through the hay, saw him stumble and drop, and fall into nothingness, into the ravine at the edge of the field.

Troughton slapped me awake. "It's not real. Confront it."

I forced my eyes open, not remembering when I had closed them, saw the ceiling being devoured by the fire. Realised the truth.

"This is _my_ fear," I whispered. "None of you feared death. I was afraid that I would get you all killed."

"So get up."

I forced myself to sit. As I pushed myself up, the devastation around us seemed to fall away. The flames dwindled, seemed almost to retreat. Frank's remains were hidden within the sifting shadows left behind.

With help from Troughton, I made myself stand. The room appeared to melt. Opposite the doorway, which flames and smoke were fleeing through, was an inbuilt cupboard space like the one we had found downstairs, which we had struggled to open. Aligning the spaces in my head, finally realising our earlier error about which side of the house was on our left and which was on our right, I figured out that this cupboard was directly above the one downstairs.

I stepped towards it, gripped the handle, and pulled. It opened without resistance.

I couldn't see within. The sun was rising on the opposite side of the house, and this side was still dark. From above, I could hear hushed voices.

I reached inside.

"What..?" Troughton asked.

"Shh." My fingertips brushed the back of the cupboard. I felt around, dust and webs coating my hand. Then I felt it: the rung of a ladder.

I gestured for Troughton to follow, and clambered in.

The ladder led up to a hatchway barred by a thin, light piece of wood that lifted as I pushed. Preparing for the worst, I unholstered my pistol and then sprang though the hatch.

It was an attic space, covered in worn carpets, knitted blankets and soft out-of-shape cushions, in shades of brown and red. A small, very thin woman in rags stood in the middle of the room. Judging by the red in her eyes that shone out from behind strands of long black hair, and the points of her teeth, she was Fallen. She stood facing me in a defensive, defiant, posture. Behind her, bundled in blankets and cushions, was a young boy and a woman, dark haired, grubby, terrified. It was like waking up. Not from a dream, but from a debilitating fever.

"What's going on here?" I demanded, climbing up into the attic. For a terrible moment I brandished the pistol at them, then thought of what I had learned that evening and lowered it.

"I've sworn to protect them," the woman said. "I'm all they have."

My arms flexed, fighting with me to raise the gun upwards. "You put nightmares into our heads," I accused. "You killed my men."

"No. Really, I didn't. Your men are safe. Even now, they're coming. To enforce your doctrines."

Sure enough, I could hear their footsteps throughout the house, presumably following the sound of the conversation. Troughton lifted himself into the loft behind me.

"As for nightmares," the woman continued, "all I did was bring to the surface what was already there. So much paranoia and hatred. So much hurt and fear. So much self-loathing. How can you bear to live in such minds?" The glow behind her eyes briefly shifted from red to green.

"I . . ." I began, unable to think of a retort. She was right. All the brutality and ugliness that had been unleashed that night, had already been within us. It hadn't come from her, it had come from the world we inhabited. The world we enforced.

"What about them?" Troughton asked. He was keeping his gun trained on the Fallen woman, but looking around her to the mother and child. "What are they protecting?"

She peered at him guardedly. "I don't understand."

"If you're protecting them, why do they need protecting? What are they hiding?"

Behind us, footsteps on the ladder. Then Fisk and Moriah entered. I heard Starsmore below, grumbling about the chute being too small for him.

"Spill, lady," Fisk growled. "Why did we have to go through this shit?"

Because it had to be exorcised. Because something had twisted our minds.

The woman didn't respond. Behind her, the soiled faces of the boy and older woman stared out from within their bundle of blankets, trembling. The boy moaned faintly, and the mother stroked his head and whispered words I couldn't understand.

The smell of lavender wafted through the air again, but this time I was sure it wasn't some echo of ancient traumas, it was real. I sniffed the air.

"Gyscarl," the Fallen woman murmured knowingly. She cocked her head. A tangled and wild plant was growing out of the unfinished walls, bearing red flowers above long stems and narrow leaves. "It has a similar smell to lavender, but it's a powerful narcotic. We are, mercifully, unaffected."

"But we aren't?" Moriah asked. His mask was off and his face, though sore, was not infected with a life threatening disease. "Is that what you're saying? So that's why there was so much messed up stuff on our minds for you to draw out?"

Again, no answer, just a coy smile.

"This Dezkary bitch don't want to give us nothing," Fisk said. "She's obstructing and she's a danger. We should Purify her."

"No!" I yelled. A vision of a family tumbling like reaped hay flashed across my mind. "That's not necessary. The danger has passed. We find what we came here for and leave."

A heard two more sets of steps in the room beneath us, but paid little attention, except to sip the relief of knowing all the men were alive.

The woman gazed at Fisk with amused contempt.

"What?" he asked. "What's that fucking look for?"

"I've never been to Dezkary, you paranoid moron."

Gyscarl. The name wandered through my mind in search of something to connect with, but all that it would summon were slideshows of long days in the fields, and an abrupt end to innocence.

"Was that you? Downstairs? The Fallen?" Troughton asked.

"Sort of. Sometimes. What you saw was an augmented reality."

"So when we shot you and you wouldn't go down . . . that was because it wasn't real?" I asked.

She shrugged and said, "why else?" But if that was the case, why were red blotches seeping through her poorly stitched rags? This woman was not generous with the truth. She was hiding possibly dangerous secrets. Extracting them would be a challenge.

As I assessed our options, a shot buzzed past my head, close enough to make the air whip my skin, and hit the wall behind the woman's left side. The mother and child screamed.

"Liar!" somebody screamed. "I can see the wounds. You were hit and you cheated death. You're a consort of the Ruiner. You've twisted our minds with sorcery. World, what did you do to me?"

The previously unflappable young-looking woman stared open-mouthed past my shoulder. Billy and Gibbs stood side by side in front of the hatch. Gibbs looked pale and shaky, and on the verge of throwing up. Billy was wild eyed, and manic, and trembling with anger. "Answer me!"

The woman put up her hands. "I didn't use sorcery. The plants exacerbated your fear of the danger you would face as a Purifier, and I used my psychic abilities to make that seem real. But it was just a trick. A way to deter you without harming you."

"You call this not harming me? I don't know what's real anymore. I was dead. I was _dead_. And there was no light beyond, and there was no coming back, and now, and now . . ."

"Stop this, Billy." Moriah said. "We're all okay, that's what counts."

"How can you say that? After the mind fuck she put us through?"

Fisk's eyes turned towards Troughton, and they met each other's gaze for a decisive moment. "Well, I don't remember any of it," Fisk said.

Billy sneered. "You fucking liar." His arms began to tremble more fiercely, his finger tapped at the trigger.

"Put the gun down, Billy," I said.

"No!" he snapped. "I'm going to kill her, and her pet immigrants."

His muscles twitched, just a fraction. A tendon flexed in the wrist, shoulders stiffened. It was enough to tell me what was about to happen.

I stopped struggling with my own reflexes. My arms jerked up, the gun found its mark, the bullet fulfilled its purpose.

*

I knelt down to the mother and child, now weeping in each other's arms. The Fallen woman was squatting next to them, offering what comfort she could.

"Translate for me?" I asked.

The mother chattered at me at high speed, and the Fallen woman listened intently then turned to me. "She said, 'thank you kind man, thank you brave man. Thank you for saving my son."

I swallowed my shame.

"Now tell her what I say." She nodded companionably, but her familiarity faded when she heard my message, and she hesitated before passing it on.

"Whatever secret you are hiding, whatever reason you have for being targeted, for secluding yourself here with the protection of Fallen, you must surrender it now. Because I have a duty to fulfil: obligations that I can't go against, no matter how much I might like to. And if you don't tell me what I need to know, I will have to take you and your son far away from here, to a place where very cruel men, very cowardly men, will find their answers any way they can.

"Please," I said, hoping that my sincerity would show, and not come across as manipulation, "don't make me do that terrible thing. Just speak to me."

The mother sobbed when she heard my message in her own words, and rocked the boy, who sucked his thumb blankly. She gabbled through tears and spittle, at times talking hurriedly, at times letting her words be drawn out into inarticulate wails. No translation was needed. From within the depths of the many-folded red and orange blankets, she produced a book. It was leather bound and heavily thumbed, and radiated a promise of devastating ramifications. The cover bore the title: " _Sanguinem Mittere._ "

As I took hold of the book, the Fallen woman stared in dismay and gripped my wrist so hard it hurt.

"Don't let it fall into the wrong hands," she warned.

*

When I reported back to Andreas, he was stooped over a desk, studying reports of national troop movements. I knocked on the open door of his office and stood to attention as he looked up.

"Please don't do that, Turcotte," he said, and waved me in.

I entered and took a seat at his desk.

"Sir . . ." I began, not sure of the next word.

He raised a hand to silence me, and stared at me for a long while with his inky black eyes. "I heard about Billy's incapacitation. It wasn't your fault."

I cleared my throat. "Thank you, sir."

"I will be advising against any kind of official reprimand, but you know how the Procurators can be. If you suffer any recriminations for your conduct I will fight them with everything I have. Do you have the item?"

I passed him the book, _Sanguinem Mittere_ , gingerly, as though it might explode.

"With apologies, sir, you put us through all that for a book?"

He was already thumbing through it, a smile dancing on the corner of his mouth. "This book may be the most important item I've ever held. But I regret the terrible things that happened in its retrieval."

I nodded. "Until what happened with Billy, none of it was exactly real. Just illusions created by the Fallen and the gy . . ."

"Gyscarl. " He finished for me. "Yes. Although they say that, even though it promotes paranoia and anxiety, it can't produce any thoughts or feelings that weren't already present, subconsciously. So in a way, everything that happened, barring the eventual deaths, was real on some level. On that note, I think we're done. Have your full report written by tomorrow."

"Before I go, sir? The gyscarl . . . the name sounded familiar but I couldn't place it."

He leaned back in his chair and offered a grim smile, as though pained by the knowledge he was sharing, but still glad I'd asked. "It's one of the components in regulation combat stimms," he said, and his eyes fixed on mine, taking in my reaction. "Dismissed."

Shaken, I got up and made my way to the door, then turned back with one last question.

"The Fallen showed us our worst fears. 'Killed' us with them." I allowed myself a wry smile. "I can't help but wonder what you would have been shown. What are you afraid of, sir?"

He didn't smile at that, just looked at me for an uncomfortably long moment, until I was sure I'd have to apologise. Then he tore a slip of paper from his note pad and wrote something hurriedly.

He turned it for me to read it, then pushed it across the desk to me, keeping his fingers on it.

It read: "I'm afraid that we are a part of something terrible."

Then he slid the note back and ripped it into tiny pieces.

*

The following week, I took a trip to Caldair and visited the old house that used nightmares to protect dreams. My judgements meant nothing to the righteous intent of the Procurators, and the house had been reduced to ash and rubble. I searched the ruins, but the devastation was too great to allow me to tell if the Fallen and the people she protected had escaped.

I returned the following evening and planted something to, in some small way, make penance for my many failures. Now, every summer, a small part of Caldair is entranced by the sweet smell of lavender in the ashes.

#  A Mutual Truth

I lay in the dark, mercifully without need for air, arms folded over my chest, my cross heavy against my skin, seeming to hold me down, hurting me. Why did He want to hurt me?

You know that feeling you sometimes get of a morning, where you're technically awake, or nearly, but can't move for a couple of seconds? That's how it felt. Perpetually.

In my mind's eye, I knelt before an altar, drinking the 'blood' of the Exalted and doused with colour from the sunlight pouring through a stained glass window. Trapped in the dark, the musty smell of earth all around me, my mind sought any escape.

***

I tried to escape into the glass, watched the light of the diminishing day refract over the angles cut into it, as I swirled the amber liquid around. My wife chastised me, yelled. Bad enough that I had been demoted, that I had the stigma of the Guardian House incident on my record. I should be grateful, she said, for the second chance they'd given me, not waste it by drinking myself into the grave. She kept ranting until her voice failed, but yelling and sniping had been normal for her since before we were married, so I paid it no mind and retreated further into the glass, reclined further into my chair and . . .

*

I woke up to the sound of my Purifier's alert pulsing and whirling. Word knew how long it had been running for. Being in uniform from the night before made things easier. My whiskey had spilled and soaked into the carpet. There was no time to clean. I was out the door in less time than it took to holler an apology to the wife.

At the rendezvous, Turcotte was addressing the unit and giving orders to each remaining member: Roberto, Fisk, Troughton, Moriah and Gibbs. It still didn't seem right, Turcotte making the strategy in Andreas' place, but he'd slipped into the role naturally enough.

"What time do you call this, Mister Starsmore?" he asked as I approached. The tone was jocular, but there was an undercurrent of reprimand beyond Turcotte's usual clipped, no-nonsense manner.

"Slept late," I replied, feeling like a little boy late for Education.

"A word," he said. The others drifted along the streets, some to fulfil their orders, others waiting at a distance for their signal.

"Frank, listen to me," he put a hand on my shoulder, "I can't believe that you are a _lazy_ man, I've never imagined you as a _layabout_. You have always worked hard for this unit. If you are having trouble sleeping, see a head doctor, or a Procurator if it's your conscience troubling you." He was looking me in the eye, getting exasperated as he tried to get through the wall I had put up since the incident. "If your heart isn't in this any more you can come to me about that, or take it up with the Exalted himself, but if you are doing what I think you are doing . . . If you are _drowning_ your guilt . . . if . . . I don't know what to _think_ anymore, Frank! World damn it, Starsmore! Talk to me!"

"There's nothing to talk about," I muttered. "I overslept. Won't happen again."

"You had better mind that it doesn't. Go attend your duties. You will be assisting Roberto on reconnaissance for this mission. Dismissed."

*

"So what's buggin' you, Franky baby?"

Our newest recruit, Bobbo, sat on the edge of the rooftop, legs swinging over the edge. I was perched next to him, squatting. We could see the entire street below. Our job was to raise the alarm if anybody passed but we knew nobody would or, if someone did, it would probably be some innocent pedestrian in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"Same thing as you, I'd wager," I said, adjusting my mask so it bit into my neck a little less. "This doesn't feel right any more. I go home and I can't stop thinking about what I've spent the day doing. I can't figure out what I feel worse about, wearing this uniform or betraying it."

"Doesn't the wife help 'take your mind off things'?" His round cheeks spread apart in a cheeky grin.

I snorted.

"How about praying? You always go to church don't you?"

I didn't answer. That wasn't quite the same either. My relationship with the Exalted was almost as strained as my relationship with my wife. I couldn't help feeling like we had let each other down. I had betrayed Him and He'd been unforgiving, or maybe it was the other way around.

"Anyway, don't let it get to you. I'm thinking of bugging out on this gig anyway, you should do the same."

"What's making _you_ doubt?"

He was silent for a long time. Below, nothing passed by except for sheets of paper blowing in the wind. We were on a four-storey hab-block, looking across at another building of the same size, and nobody came to their window. No curtains opened or even twitched. People knew we were there.

"It's not the same without Andreas, that's all." Bobby said. "I always felt he had my back. Turcotte too I guess, but not in the same way. Andreas I always thought wanted to do the right thing, wouldn't let things go too far. And I worry about him, you know?"

"I know."

From around the corner of the parallel hab-block a woman stepped out. Skinny, deep-set eyes, black hair tied in a ponytail, wearing a threadbare dress and no shoes. Attractive, in a way.

"Hold on," Bobby said. "I'll call it in."

I reached for his arm as he took out his radio. "Let's investigate first," I said, and we hurried down the fire escape ladder as fast as we could. As we hit the ground, the woman looked around, afraid, and ran down a large tunnel under a stone bridge.

By the time we'd gotten across the road, she was gone. Or, rather, she was making a heroic attempt to appear to be gone, hiding behind a cardboard shelter at the far end of the tunnel. I picked her up by the back of her collar like she was a kitten and she tensed up with a look of stubborn terrified defiance on her face, as though she expected me to take a knife out and open her throat. Instead, I put her down and turned her to face me, keeping a firm grip on her shoulders.

"Name?" I asked.

"Trixie," she replied.

Bobby looked over her shoulder at me, one eyebrow raised, a smirk spreading across his face.

"Name?" I asked again.

"Sara," she replied.

***

I dreamed of my last night as a mortal, of walking home and confronting my wife, her eyes staring in the slip of moonlight through the window. The dream wavered, blurred, and rippled apart, and I found myself in the dark again. The cross was burning my chest.

***

It was late afternoon, and the sun was fading as I approached the chapel. My cousin, Lucian, was there passing a goblet around the worshippers, as though nothing had happened. When he had finished, I saw him surreptitiously drain what was left of the wine . . . then refill the goblet.

"What is it . . ." he asked the room in general, "defines us as human? What separates us from lower life forms, from animals? The Exalted imbued us with the divine spark of consciousness but what use is that without moral direction? Consciousness is ours as a given but our _souls_ , our sense of what is good, our ability to love, that is where we feel the Exalted's touch." He sounded so impassioned, but I knew better. I could detect the slight sway in his step and slur in his voice that I knew of old. The listlessness in his eyes told me he was reciting a script. "Only if we let the Exalted into our hearts can he grant us these things. So what is it that elevates us above the animals? Our ability to love the Exalted unconditionally and be imbued with his love in return."

I genuinely struggled to think of anything else besides faith that did demonstrate my humanity. My love for my wife had shattered, if it had ever existed at all. I ate and slept and killed. If my faith faltered because I lacked the strength to do the Exalted's will, what then made me different from rats and wolves and other predators and scavengers?

When Lucian had a moment to himself, I coughed softly to draw his attention. He raised his infamously piercing eyes, moistened his thin lips, shoved his hands into his pockets, and wandered over to me.

"Hello Frank," he said. "What an unexpected pleasure. As . . . momentous as this occasion is, perhaps you'd like to explain your presence?"

"Momentous?" I asked.

"It means 'important'."

"I know what momentous means. Why is this momentous?"

He clasped my hands, briefly. "Because I haven't seen you in so long. And you're terrifying my congregation. Look at them, sat there goggling. Go on, have a good look!"

"I am."

"I'm talking to _them_ , not you." His glance panned across the room as he mumbled distractedly. "Coming here, every week, just to sit and stare. Bastards probably don't understand a word I say."

"Know how they feel."

"Know how they . . . ? Ha! Yes, of course you do. You and your simple giant's frame and ogival parietal protuberances are most welcome and entertaining but, I ask again, why have you chosen to break our long standing estrangement? _Please_ say it's not to complain about your problems."

"I wanted to be right with the big guy upstairs, is all," I told him, taking a drag from my cigar, making him wrinkle his nose.

"Well yes, commendable, truly. That one, there. No, don't look!" He glared at the man, regardless. "Comes here dressed like that, must be carrying half of Llangour's fleas between his many coats. _Fancies his sister_ ," he hissed. "Can't bloody stand these people." Then he drained the wine from the chalice again.

"You don't mean that . . ."

"So, thank you most sincerely for coming here. You can drag me into a long self-pitying speech about the world being out to get you, and tell me about all the arguments you've stumbled into with your wife and your General because . . . because you were too bloody dumb to avoid them. Go ahead, anything, so long as your formidable presence drives away some of these other leeches."

I'd gone there for assurances, reaffirmation of my faith. Andreas' rebellion had shaken me, made me question. Lucian's display of contempt wasn't helping.

I turned to leave.

"That's it, stomp away. Go home and stroke your beard. It is your best friend after all. Your beard doesn't care if you know what momentous means. Bye bye, see you again in another three years."

"No, you don't get to do that," I said, rounding on him. "I'm not going to stand here and watch you throw insults at my back as I walk away." He smirked. I knew I'd said something stupid. "Don't laugh at me. You were welcoming me a minute ago. Now you want to sink the barbs in to convince yourself it's me that's pathetic, when really you know it's you. A little bit of spiritual guidance, Lucian. Is that beneath you now?"

"You want . . . _me_ . . ." punctuated with a disbelieving hand pressed to his chest, "to help restore _your_ faith? I am flattered, truly, but not the right man for the job. They force me to play nursemaid to these waifs and . . . arseholes. Yes, it's beneath me. Makes one question the whole purpose of the Meritocracy. Is it to create and protect chattel like those?" He made a sweeping gesture between a man picking his nose and a woman staring at the wall open-mouthed.

"Go home," he told me, pleadingly. "Read something. Anything. Preferably something illegal. That goes for all of you!"

"You're going to get yourself in trouble."

"Yes." He pressed a finger to his lips, shushing himself. "Didn't mean that," he laughed. "Of course I didn't mean that. I meant . . . it as . . . a test. To see who would stay and . . . who would go. And since you all stayed, you . . . passed! Well done!"

*

When I got home, Tanya was looking into the smoky fireplace that I should have cleaned weeks ago, waiting for me. She looked more serious, and more frail, than I had ever known her to be. For the first time in months, I felt a faint echo of the love we'd once shared.

"Will you sit?" she asked politely, almost timidly. "I think we should talk about things. No yelling, no guilt, I promise. Let's just talk."

I sat on the sofa beside her, and felt it shudder beneath my weight. Tanya flinched. I think she was always a little intimidated by me. On the mahogany table in front of us was our wedding album, open where she had been looking through it.

"Remember how happy we were?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. "Of course." I flicked through, found my favourite picture, of the two of us gazing into each other's eyes. I was sweeping her up in my arms and she was laughing. There was a raven perched in a tree, looking down at us.

"It isn't you I'm unhappy with," I told her. "It's what's happening. The situation with Andreas, him taking the blame for what we all did. Even now, we don't know what's going to happen to him. It's being a Purifier when I'm not even sure what I . . ."

"Shh," she put a finger to my lips. "Don't speak so."

"But it isn't you . . ."

"It's _partly_ me. I know I've been hard on you. But I have faith in us. I believe that we can make it work."

I honestly wasn't so sure I could go on blindly accepting things the way they were, ignoring all the evidence that said Tanya and I didn't make sense together. I kept worrying about the consequences of our marriage failing, about it shining a spotlight on us and attracting the scorn of the Procurators. That wasn't the right reason to stay.

I looked at the lines of her face, her dry skin and tired eyes, her tolerant mouth. But my mind kept thinking of my job, of the things I'd done, the people I'd killed, and the rebellion, and my eyes kept drifting to the drinks cabinet.

"Say something, please," Tanya said. But I couldn't think of anything to say. All the things on my mind were either things I wanted to keep private, things I didn't have to the words to explain, or things that would prompt an argument.

I turned away, and she stopped talking and just sat next to me, awkwardly. When I glanced round, the firelight was reflecting off the tears on her face. I reached out for her, but she shied away, then got up and walked to our bedroom stiffly.

That night, I prayed. And when the Exalted didn't answer I prayed to the bottle instead.

***

Immortality plays tricks and teaches us lessons. Fallen memory is astounding, almost eidetic. Mortals can only imagine what it is like to never forget anything. Can only imagine the horror of it. All of today's mistakes and pains stay with us, never decaying. We change continually, but our pasts stay with us, stay the same. Hurts from a century ago will still be fresh after another century. Andreas rightly espouses Fallen rationality, our ability to suppress emotion, but no matter how deeply we bury our feelings they remain, preserved.

***

We were yet again on surveillance detail, which was meant as a punishment but was more of a blessing. Bobbo and I stood in the window of an abandoned hab-block apartment, watching for suspicious activity. Intel indicated that a black-market trader was operating from this street, meeting clients to exchange drugs, books, artefacts from false religions, blood and contraband.

Bobbo looked particularly twitchy that day. We had let Sara go, but Turcotte had been cagey with us ever since. He knew someone had passed through our zone but couldn't prove it, and perhaps couldn't let on that he knew. Bobbo kept breaking from his watch to pace around the bare apartment, which wasn't customary behaviour for him.

"Stop it, Bobbo, please," I asked, trying not to let my voice give sign of my headache and irritability.

"Sorry, man. This all seems . . . pointless."

"I'd rather be up here than down there," I said, peeking out at the street. I was relieved it wasn't me doing the Purifying. But it had been, just weeks ago, and I was still complicit, still raising the alarm, still standing by and watching as people were burned, or dragged away for 'interrogation'. Were the things we were doing wrong, or was I wrong for doubting the Exalted?

"Same here," Bobbo sighed, returning to my side at the window. "I'm just . . . frustrated."

"Frustrated?"

"I can't exactly indulge in my usual pleasures under these circumstances."

Baneful women. Bobbo liked Baneful women. It was bad enough he was giving in to his lust at all, but to do so while performing his duties as a Purifier, and with Baneful . . .

"Not much has changed," I said.

"Keep telling yourself that. They're watching us, you know they are."

The dealer arrived and shortly afterwards another man approached him. We called in the signal, then stood and watched.

*

"Forgive me, for I have _sinned_."

The words were moaned, whined even. Lucian had collapsed in the pew next to me, head tilted to one side, looking at me with pleading eyes. I had gone to confess to him, and found this. A sign on the doors, telling people to 'go away'. Air that smelled of wine more than incense.

"I watched a man burn today, Lucian," I said.

"I sent a man to burn. Or worse. Death by a thousand cuts could be an option. However they do it, it is likely to be slow, and agonising. They probably won't let him die until they've broken him."

"Who?"

"Andreas. He's to be made an example of."

I couldn't understand. "Why though? Why sentence him to a horrible death and let the rest of us off with a slap on the wrist?"

"Because that's the deal," Lucian muttered. "Because your unit are too good at what they do and have too many members with connections. Andreas is expendable, and clearly the most subversive member of your group, so the rest of you are kept in action, albeit at a reduced capacity, and ultimately not held accountable for the orders you were given. Andreas pays the price. That's the _deal_. That's what I _advised_. Don't say . . ." he faltered, looking dizzy or nauseous. "Don't say I never do anything for you, Francois."

I jumped out of my seat, appalled at what Lucian had done, appalled at my own relief and gratitude, and headed for the exit.

Outside, dusk was closing in. I looked at the sun setting over the trees, casting tiny flecks of bright yellow between the leaves, like deposits of gold in a stream. I sat on the marble steps of the chapel, their grandeur scuffed away by a thousand footsteps, and closed my eyes to the wonders around me, and prayed. I asked the Exalted for strength and forgiveness. I asked Him to cast away my doubts. I asked Him for help and I asked him for a sign. Trembling, tears rolling down my cheeks, I lifted my head and tried to stand. From the roof of the chapel, a raven flew like an arrow across the street and the clearing that lay on the other side, over the oak trees and towards my home, cawing.

*

I stepped across the threshold, through the door that was already ajar. What had happened?

My home was swallowed by darkness. All was silent. Is this what the Exalted had wanted me to find? Whatever had happened, He must have wanted me to get here in time to put things right. He had sent me a sign, and that must have been for a reason, so there must still be a chance. I walked in, out of the sheet of light pouring in from the front door, into the gloom, effectively blinded and forced to use my other four senses to find my way.

"Hello?" I called. Others might have tried to stay quiet, in case there was an intruder, but I was a Purifier. No intruder was going to present much of a threat, and drawing their attention would keep them away from Tanya. Besides, I had the Exalted on my side.

I pushed open the living room door, convinced I'd find nothing, that whatever had happened, or was happening, would be discovered upstairs.

There was Tanya, in her favourite spot in the chair. Head lolling. A crack of light filtered in between the curtains, illuminating her face; soft, thin lips, tired skin, vacant eyes.

"Where you been?" she slurred. Light glinted off the empty bottle as it tumbled from her loose fingers.

"Trying to figure things out."

"Me... too." She pushed herself upright, with great effort. "And you know what I figure out? I hate you."

She suddenly bent down, snatched the bottle off the floor, and launched it at me. It smashed harmlessly against the wall, a few feet away.

"You don't mean that," I tried. I'd seen this monster before. It was the one I'd been wrestling with for years.

"Yes I do. I don't love you. I may have to live with you, but I won't pretend to like it anymore." The words cut chunks out of me. I looked back on our years together and all my reasons for being with her no longer made sense. Our marriage didn't add up. She collapsed back into the chair.

I saw myself in her then, and it disgusted me. I saw what I had been, what I had infected her with. Not the drinking, but the poisonous feelings that motivated it. The resentment, ingratitude, indifference and contempt that I had allowed to fester in me and then put into her. I knew what I had to do, no matter what the Exalted may expect from me. No matter what I'd expected from myself. I no longer wanted to salvage things.

"I'm leaving you," I said.

"You can't. The Procurators will never allow it." It was an attack, but her voice cracked a little, showing that she cared. "You'll be hounded. You'll have nowhere to go."

"Yes I will."

***

When you lose someone or something that's special to you, it's a lot like dying. Your heart stops, feels like it will explode, and then you feel empty. Comforting assumptions that have been with you for years, keeping tiny hopes illuminated, sputter and disappear. The things you depend on abandon you. All the things you thought were solid and permanent erode and disintegrate like delicate fossils exposed to the wrong kind of air.

***

Andreas' sister, Cassie, is often torn between her two loves—medicine and archaeology—but on this occasion, she was getting to indulge them both. She had found a mass grave containing dormant spores that indicated the cause of a recent epidemic. Cassie had been in my life for such a short time, not much longer than Sara, but she had embraced the gifts that came with being Fallen so thoroughly. Seeing her there, bent over her microscope, surrounded by cluttered slides and home made gadgets, so excited by her latest discovery, I ignobly thought, _why does this dead woman get to feel so alive, when I feel so dead?_

I had gone straight to her home. I had nowhere else to go. Bobbo was sleeping at the Guardian House, at least when he wasn't in someone else's bed. Sara wouldn't divulge her address. It had been raining, and I must have been drenched by the time I reached Cassie's Caldair hab-block. I couldn't say for sure, my brain simply never stored that information. I remember I was followed by a wolf that whined at me for food until I shooed it away. The whole while, I wondered about the bird that had guided me home. Why had the Exalted sent it, if it was already too late for me to make peace? If it had come to me an hour sooner, perhaps Tanya wouldn't have reached that state. If I'd been there for her, perhaps she wouldn't have come to such a drastic conclusion. If we'd had one last chance to talk reasonably, perhaps we could have saved our marriage. And if and if and if.

I must have let myself into Cassie's apartment—her door had no lock—but I don't remember that either. She was startled when she noticed me. She rushed over, checked me for injuries, took off my wet jacket, with its Purifier emblems of phoenixes and suns.

"Are you ok? What happened?"

"My wife and I... it's over. All our promises of forever turned out to be comforting lies."

She hugged me, the spikes of her hair prickling the side of my neck, and I quivered and sobbed until I came back to myself. At some point, I asked her why she thought the Exalted had turned on me. Why had he taunted me with that sign?

"Oh, Frank," she sighed, stroking my hair. "He hasn't turned on you, and he never sent any sign. He doesn't exist."

"But that fucking raven . . ."

"Was a coincidence."

"You can't know that."

"I can. If the Exalted could be that cruel . . . what would that say about Him?"

"Or maybe it's me? If he hates me that much, what does it say about me?"

She busied herself with tidying away her microscope and other equipment. I kept talking about what I was thinking, feeling. Poured out every litre of my anguish until I suspected she had stopped listening.

"Frank!" Cassie reeled round on me, her patience broken. Then she saw the desolation on my face, and was overcome by guilt. "World, I'm sorry, after what you've been through tonight . . ."

"Is it bad . . ." I had to force the words out, "that I feel worse about what's happened to my faith than I do about what's happened to my marriage?"

Cassie leaned back on her workbench and judged me unguardedly for a moment.

"Yes."

"But it's how I feel. Like a piece of my soul has been torn out. I can't decide what to believe anymore."

She turned away again. "You know, sometimes I can't help but envy people who can _decide_ what they believe, who can just make themselves believe anything."

"Making a choice is the hardest part," I said. "If I _could_ choose to believe anything . . ." I struggled with the words. "I'd choose to believe that I wasn't to blame for what happened with Tanya."

Silence. Cassie probably didn't know what to say.

"What would you want to believe?" I asked.

"I guess I'd want to believe that I can find a cure for this damn disease. Then maybe I'd really be able to."

It was that comment, more than anything else that night, that caused me to blurt out, "Andreas is going to be put to death."

Cassie barely reacted, had perhaps expected this. She sat down next to me, put her hand on mine and asked, "Will you help us rescue him?"

***

_Making a choice is the hardest part._ Ain't that the truth.

We believe what we've been taught, for the most part, assume the ideas and beliefs of the time and place we are born into. Religion, politics, values, it's all the same. Having lived with a comforting idea all your life, it's not easy to let go of. No matter how much experience tries to extinguish the fire of faith, you keep stoking that fire, giving it fuel, seeking its warmth, even when it's boiled down to a small, smouldering wet cinder that can do nothing but cast up smoke to obscure your sight and suffocate you.

***

Apparently, it was Sara's suggestion to bury me. I had lain dormant for too long, and it was widely held that burial could hasten awakening—force the conscious mind to reassert itself, to recognise the difference between death and undeath.

While I was under, wallowing in my nightmares, the others prepared. Bobbo, showing a resourcefulness and assertiveness I'd never seen from him before, convinced Lucian to divulge Andreas' exact location.

"The boy can be remarkably persuasive, I'll grant him that," Lucian said later. "Persistent to a fault, kept repeating the same question, over and over. He's an unrelenting little migraine, isn't he?"

My role in the rescue was limited, and perhaps that's a story for someone else to tell. It took two weeks for Andreas to heal. We all stayed at Cassie's, although Sara and Bobbo would both occasionally spend nights elsewhere. In Bobbo's case, it was obviously somebody else's bed, probably a different somebody each time. Sara simply never gave any clue, and clearly wouldn't. In the weeks I'd known her she'd not been secretively exactly, more like intensely private. We all assumed she just went home sometimes, wherever home may be.

Cassie and I would talk at length, often about Andreas, sometimes about our former lives, hers as a servant, mine as a Purifier.

When Andreas was well, he was different to how I'd known him. Angry. He would talk at length about how the beliefs of the Baneful and Fallen were superior to Realm values. He spoke about how easy it was to control his emotions, but his seething resentment, and my inability to put aside thoughts of my wife, cast doubt on his words.

He had asked us to get him books to read, some from his old home in Llangour, some from black-market dealers in Caldair. One day he was looking through an old, battered copy of the Liber Colatra.

"Listen to this," he said, jabbing a finger at the pages triumphantly, "'The Exalted did say, that any child born of mixed blood be burned on coals, and that any woman who does produce such tainted offspring, be she human or Baneful, must be purified by the seed of a Procurator before condemned to drown'! Not exactly what you'd expect from a loving god, is it?"

"That would have been written by primitive Colatran tribesmen," I replied, sitting and listening patiently by his bedside. "It doesn't justify it, but that is the way they lived, unfortunately."

"Clearly the Exalted didn't really say any of it, but they claim that he did. How can anyone read such things and still _worship_ this character?"

I buried my face in my hands. I had been listening to this for two hours almost, and my endurance was running out. "Most people haven't read it themselves. Even you hadn't read it until yesterday, and you were a Purifier. Most people _can't_ read it. They only know what the Procurators tell them."

"And the Procurators relish that freedom to be selective with what they divulge. But how can _they_ believe in an Exalted that asks such things? I'll tell you how—they ignore any parts they don't like. Why put your faith in something if you have to use your own discretion to decide which parts you agree with?"

"People use it as a divining rod, I guess. They read it, and they absorb it all, good and bad—because there is good in there too –they find bits of themselves in the book, things they can relate to, and that helps them to find themselves."

"There are plenty other things people can use to do that," Andreas scoffed. He was getting haughty, and that was testing my patience. This was already the last thing I wanted to talk about, and the way he was going about it wasn't making things any easier. "There's art, literature, philosophy, music. Why would anyone swallow this twisted mess of contradictions and . . ."

"Stop it!" I snapped. "I don't know! I . . . don't . . . know. Okay?"

He looked stunned and confused. He probably couldn't understand why a fellow Fallen who had been through the same enlightening, assumption-shredding process as he had, would take offence at his words.

"There's no reason to get upset, Frank. I'm not talking about you. Even if you were a believer, it would be irrational to get offended. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, and atheist and theist ideas inevitably contradict each other. The Realm may take every comment that contradicts their beliefs as a personal attack, but we are far past that, are we not?"

"Of course we are," I grumbled. I was getting tired of his voice to tell the truth, but it was more than that. "I knew about these passages as a mortal, and accepted them, and continued to believe that the Exalted loved and was worthy of worship. That loss still stings. It was comforting to live by the words of a kind and benevolent being. And it's horrifying to think that we lived by words of hatred and violence, passed on by cruel bigoted men. It's even more horrifying to think that maybe there could be an omnipotent being full of rage, that would order the murder of babies and the defilement of women."

Andreas cocked an eyebrow, closed the Liber Colatra, and put it aside. "Do you think that's possible?" The derision was suppressed, but still clear.

I walked over to a chest of drawers that stood in the far corner of the room, behind the door that stood open on broken hinges. Three of the drawers were loose, and sat in the unit at haphazard angles. I needed to fix things, but there was no wood available, no screws or nails. Sara had been working on metalwork machines: a forge, a smelting machine. She had the theory worked out, but the difficulties in actually creating these were immense, and outweighed the benefits.

I wrenched one of the drawers open, balancing it with one hand while I pulled items out and piled them on the floor with the other. Then I closed the door, gathered up my collection and went back to Andreas, who was watching intensely, and put it all down on the faded blue sheets.

"These are texts and idols from twenty-five different religions banned by the Realm but still represented in Caldair," I said. "I've been reading too. There are dozens of myths about how the world was created, dozens of different ideals of how we should live our lives. Famirarism, Kantarr-har, Dithuge Alliyan. They can't all be wrong."

"I would say 'they can't all be right'."

"Perhaps there are slithers of truth in each of them. They're all unlikely, but they're all equally possible. They all share similar concepts of worship."

"I oppose the whole concept of worship."

"So if the Exalted existed, you still couldn't love him or be grateful to him for creating us?"

"I love my sister, I'm grateful to you for what you've done for me. Worship is different. It's the kind of notion that keeps dictators in power."

"Andreas, you're not the only one angry about being misled. You're not the only one trying to make sense of things."

He looked away, avoided making eye contact, but I could see the pain he was trying to hide.

*

"How is he?" Cassie asked. She was testing samples from one of her patients, and had bottles and beakers all over the room. The smell was atrocious.

"Why don't you ask him yourself?" I asked. It sounded harsher than I meant, but she didn't seem to notice.

"Mm," she said, dipping a strip of cloth soaked in chemicals into a beaker of urine. "Will later. How is he?"

"Still incensed at the Realm and the Exalted. Don't think I can be much help to him." I was carrying my collection of religious artefacts, bundled up in my arms, and as I walked past Cassie, one of the statues fell to the floor with a metallic thunk. Cassie whirled round, her attention caught at last, and saw what I was holding.

"What's all this?"

I carried on to my room, not paying her much mind, but she followed me. Things had been a little awkward between us for the past few nights. I arranged the statues, some on the furniture, some on the floor, and stacked the books in two corners, one pile for actual holy texts and one for books about beliefs.

"Frank?" Cassie asked.

"I'm trying to figure out what I believe," I said.

"Why?" Cassie asked. "Why should any of this be true?"

"Because there _could_ be something. Just because there's no proof, and the details don't add up, doesn't mean we should dismiss the whole idea."

"But . . . why the interest?" She was walking round the room, her boots thudding, picking up items and looking at them confoundedly as I opened a book about Dezkary religions and started reading.

"There might be something of value in these. I always felt there was value in faith when I was mortal. Many people do."

"Can't help you, Frank, I'm truly sorry," she said, respectfully replacing the idol she'd been examining. "Andreas may be a pain in the arse over this, but I'm basically of the same mind. We know this is all made up. There's almost zero chance of any of these myths being anything other than the ideas of primitive people from thousands of years ago. I can't imagine there's anything of value here."

I looked up at her. "I need to know if there's any chance of seeing my wife again," I said.

She fell silent, gaped at me for a moment, and then her attention was drawn by something in the window behind me. She stared at it, her brow furrowed, her mouth opened. I heard a scratching and turned around.

Perched on the frame of the open window, was a raven.

No, not a raven. It was a cantume bird, distinguished by the short, prickly feathers on its head and thick ruff of downy feathers around its neck.

It inclined its head, regarding me with one beady eye (reminding me of Lucian) then took to pecking the windowsill. It tapped four times, then stopped and looked at me again, then repeated. Peck peck peck peck, stare, peck peck peck peck. Then, in an instant, its wings burst to life and it was gone, swooping between the hab-blocks, over dumpsters and market stalls, wrecks and bunting and beggars.

I leapt to my feet, shot Cassie a glance, asking her to understand.

She nodded at me: _go. Fast as you can_.

*

I ran, faster than I had ever run before, faster than I ever could have as a mortal, nearly tripping and falling half a dozen times in my haste to catch up with the cantume. As I stumbled into a three-armed Baneful, mumbling an apology and half-hearing his yell of protest, I saw the bird squatting on top of a hab-block, watching me. It alighted again and soared on, casually.

I followed through thirty streets, past children playing with sticks and men fighting with knives, past junkies and buskers and a woman talking to herself about how she had "killed him, I've killed him." I barely saw them, barely spared a glance down from my soaring hopes.

Eventually, the cantume landed on a bronze, life-sized statue of a man, in a small courtyard bordered by buildings on three sides. The plaque identifying the man had long since worn away. The cantume cawed as I approached, but stayed where it was. I reached up to it, and it plucked at a thread on my glove.

The day was overcast, and specks of rain sprinkled down. From a few metres away, I heard a voice. "Hello, Frank."

My new friend squawked and flew away. The voice had come from my left, from the shade of a veranda. To my astonishment, I saw Sara there, half hidden by one of the supportive pillars, with the visible side of her face almost covered by her loose ebony hair gently floating in the breeze.

"Sara? Why are you here?" I asked. "Did you send the bird?"

"What bird? I'm just on my way somewhere."

"Where?" I asked, not expecting an answer. I was getting tired of Sara's vagueness and secrecy.

"Somewhere where you could find some solace, I think."

Startled by her openness, I began to blurt out more questions, only to have her press a finger to my mouth, tickling my bristles.

"You'll see," she said. "It's a place where you won't have to be ashamed of how you think, where people won't shun you or make a spectacle of you. A place where you can talk about whatever's on your mind, and nobody will be offended or think you're a fool."

She led me miles through the East of Caldair. Unlike when I'd been following the cantume, I paid attention to what I saw along the way. We passed a rubbish dump where children scavenged for food and fought over the rotten scraps. We walked through a street flooded with sewage, which an old woman was futilely trying to scoop up with a bucket. In the corner of an abandoned thoroughfare, a man sat and hugged himself, shaking from cold and rocking back and forth. His shakes and shivers turned to spasms and a full-blown fit. We stopped and tried to prevent any injury. When the tremors subsided, he spat and cursed and screamed at us until we left.

In the ruins of two collapsed hab-blocks, people slept in makeshift tents assembled from twigs and torn cloth. People changed and washed and made love in full view of their neighbours, because there was little choice.

The worst sight we encountered was a district of ten hab-blocks that had been burned down. People lay dead everywhere, men, women and children, human and Baneful. Some were burnt, others shot, or bludgeoned, or dismembered. The smell overpowered, forced its way through your nostrils and pervaded every cell of your body and mind.

A crowd wandered through, salvaging what few useful items they could find. Their filthy clothes were literally fraying off their backs, and they were as thin as the sticks that propped up the tents. There was despair here—total, abject misery that went beyond the simple absence of hope. This city had lost its soul. Sara offered no answers, no clue as to what truth I was supposed to learn from this.

Night had fallen by the time we passed the last of these portraits of human suffering. The darkness was welcome, blotting out the worst atrocities of the city.

At the eastern edge of Caldair, before the city gave way to hard-pan and the mountain range beyond, the panorama of hab-blocks dwindled away. In their place, people had erected a shanty town, which stretched for miles, all the way from Llangour in the north to the desolation in the south. These were sturdier structures than the tents we had passed, made from wooden boards and sheets of metal. Built to last, at least for a short while.

Fires burned. Their smoke was pleasant, smooth, aromatic and spicy. Fire light flickered, reflected off every surface it could find. A gentle wind billowed the curtains draped in the shacks' doorways. Voices in the distance, carried on the breeze. Children playing, yelling cheerfully. Deep voices in deep conversation.

I glanced at Sara. She was smiling, knowingly and kindly.

We walked on. Music played. Drums, oboes, gourds, horns. Sound drifted in and out, the air offered a draft of one, then a sip of another.

Footsteps then, rhythmic, dancing. Singing and laughter.

The shacks passed us by, and we were instantly surrounded by people. Men somersaulting over blazing fires. Belly dancers winding through the crowd.

People in rust coloured robes, humming and swaying and vocalising nonverbally. Women in sarees, playing reeds. At the edge of the festival, an old man singing cappella. And everywhere, the drums. A rhythm that made your feet itch to be off the ground.

Smoke and embers blowing in the breeze. Men cross-legged on the ground, eyes closed, heads back, praying or meditating. Moths pirouetting above and around us. People dancing naked around a totem.

The revellers gathered and wandered, chatted and laughed and whooped with glee at the dancers, at this overwhelming of the senses and mingling of styles and cultures.

Separate musicians played, music from all across the World, but each one harmonised with the next, and each rhythm had a counter-rhythm from another musician.

A man, bare from the waist up, tattooed, carrying a torch, stopped and smiled, swallowed the fire from his torch and blew it into the sky.

Sara laughed with amazement. The man bowed and moved on.

There were barrels and baskets filled with all manner of food, more food than I had seen since leaving Llangour. The disconnect bothered me; why was there so much here, and so little in the city?

"What is this?" I asked, raising my voice to be heard. Another geyser of song erupted behind me, a choir of children complemented by rhythmic chanting.

"People gather here once a month, to worship together and try to answer life's mysteries the best way they know how—by celebrating them."

"What are they worshipping?"

"Kal'blay. The universe. The Exalted. The old spirits. Yantaha, the blessed. The suns and moons and stars and the ground beneath our feet. The gods that live in the wind." She closed her eyes to savour the breeze against her face. "Anything, everything, nothing. It doesn't matter. I told you: nobody judges."

"Is there going to be a feast?" I asked, nodding towards the horded fruit and vegetables and meat.

She followed my gaze, then turned back to me, astonished. "No!" Then she laughed. "Well, I guess. We celebrate the common ground we all share, the one thing we all believe in."

"What's that?" I still wasn't convinced. I saw a lot of good here, people with no reason to come together, seemingly no mutual truth, were sharing their cultures and the joys they could bring. But I was still wary. "What could they all possibly have in common?"

Sara beamed up at me, a sort of mercy in her eyes. "Kindness," she whispered.

The music had stopped. People still talked and chattered, softly, but no-one sang or laughed. A cheer in the distance voiced anticipation for what was about to be done.

Members of the gathering picked up the barrels and baskets, bearing them in their arms, propping them on their backs, or balancing them on their heads. The people slowly wandered away from their camp towards the looming city.

Understanding coursed through me. This food was for the starving people of Caldair. These people, all probably needing food themselves, had come together to help whoever they could. Dozens of different faiths, many probably containing mistranslations and myths and prejudices just like Exaltism, and these people had all managed to hear the same message: _Be kind. Give._

The fires continued to spread their warmth behind me as I followed the pilgrims into the bleeding city that had become my home, a crate of food on my shoulders, borne by the strength that being Fallen had granted me.

#  Deluge

Our would-be saviour didn't scream as we burned him. Even at a young age—I must have been . . . what? Five?—I had been taught that Fallen don't feel pain, they pretend to when it suits them. This was one of the fallacies I had to unlearn when I grew older, when I met a Fallen named Andreas and he taught me the truth of things. Andreas told me that Fallen do feel pain, but have more control over their reactions. This Fallen who had tried to save us suffered unimaginable pain in total silence, because he refused to lose his dignity.

He had warned that Llangour's crystal Shimmer Barrier would kill us. Mum and Dad had said that was a lie, but I wondered if maybe he was being honest. Maybe he knew more than we did. I'd cried when we'd killed him, a deluge of tears. The Procurator conducting the ceremony had glared at us from under his black feathered cowl until my parents scolded me.

"Shush, Italy," Mum said. "You're showing us up in front of everyone!"

"I had to shake a lot of sweaty hands to get these seats," father chimed in. "Don't ruin this."

The vaulted ceiling, ivory with gold swirls, was obscured by smoke until I could barely see the glow of the chandelier.

"Mummy, it smells. Why do they have to burn him?"

"Burning will purge the Ruiner's demon that's keeping him 'alive'. You don't want him coming back to drink the soul from your blood, do you?"

I kept quiet and shut my eyes, and focussed on the chants of the Procurators and tried not to breath too deep.

Years later, Andreas said, "Demons don't exist. That's superstition. Fallen are kept alive by our own minds telekinetically stimulating and regenerating our cells. We heal quickly so long as our brains and circulatory systems are undamaged. Burning destroys the whole body, gives us no chance to heal."

According to him, there's no such thing as souls either, and that was hard to accept.

But Andreas wasn't right about everything. I'm not sure he was right to form the Sanguinem Mittere.

*

My family were well off but weren't extravagant with spending. I never knew any other place than Llangour, never went on trips, and for a while I thought that beautiful city was all I needed. The glass towers of Llangour put all other Realm regions to shame. They were the tallest, the most modern, the safest against undead Fallen and mutated Baneful. The crystal Shimmer Barrier that extended over the city cast an iridescent glow over everything, creating auroras even at night. In the right light, it conjured a halo over our statue of the Exalted, and at sunset it made the statue of the Phoenix ignite.

The streets were paved in marble, opal and peridot, and everybody was immaculately dressed and groomed. But people walked past my home on their way from watching ritual combats where warriors killed each other without spilling blood. These people were thrilled to their fingertips and the roots of their hair, drunk on wine, high on vapours and gorged on sweetbreads.

*

I used to dream of romantic adventures when I was growing up; far-fetched tales of distant lands and brave rebellious heroes. When I was little I saw a story book full of knights and wizards– that must have been what started it. Dad often had things like that around because it was his job to study art and literature and music and ensure it had no dangerous hidden meanings. I was lucky, I was being taught to read because I would be an Educator, like father.

Dad wasn't around much. Mum loved me, I know she did, but was always distant. Audrey Webster would always sit or stand just so, with never a strand of auburn hair out of place. We'd bicker and she'd shut down. I'd cry over something and she'd have no comforting words. I'd get excited over a new toy and she'd sharply tell me to calm down.

The things I'd do to get their attention—I'd sneak a read of any books within reach, and make up my own stories of magical creatures. I also loved to draw. I could create all the wonderful things inside my head, but I only had a pencil, so none of my creations could have colour. I believed these things were real, and that my stories could come true. When my teachers, and life, dispelled those illusions, it was a devastating loss.

I was always punished for doing these things—"We won't let you do that in _our_ house!" (It was always _their_ house). I'd run away, to my room when I was little, or out to the hills when I was older. Nature fascinated me. My parents had never taken me anywhere, so my storming off almost became an excuse to go exploring. But I never dared venture across the canyon into the city of Caldair.

*

I was sent to boarding school when I was six. St Deloun's was a sprawling manor with engraved banisters, expensive rugs and enormous portraits of former headmasters. They trained us to do the jobs we'd do when we grew up, and how to worship the Exalted.

They taught us that the Fallen were undead monsters that had no conscience because they'd lost their souls. They drank your blood, and then you became a soulless fiend too. Everyone knew that your soul lived in your blood, so if you lost your blood you lost your soul, obviously. Some of the other girls used to have nightmares and wake up screaming, but _I_ didn't.

We were taught about the Baneful too—they lived in slums because they were too lazy or stupid to improve their homes. We were shown pictures of disfigured half-humans. I felt sorry for them, but didn't dare say so.

We were told of the brave Purifiers who protected us with guns that shot fire and silver. White powder used to pour down from the sky, always from the north, and my classmates and I would play in the 'snow' as the black trains chugged past. Later, I found a massive chemical crematorium north of St Deloun's, where Purifiers took the condemned.

One day, my favourite teacher never came to class, and a different teacher came in her place and told us that Mrs Heegen had gone to live in a mansion. This was true, but I soon discovered that she'd been sent there to be a Procurator's slave, as punishment for some crime. On my way to the dorm I lingered near a Staff Only door, entranced by voices on the other side.

"They told her not to take any possessions, so she went with just the clothes on her back. When she got there, he took those away from her too. Cut them right off her with scissors."

I ran the rest of the way to the dorm, where I lay on my bunk with my head buried in the pillow, shaking.

We were told a lot of white lies at St Deloun's. It wasn't until I met Andreas that I learned how deceived I'd been, and how valuable truth is.

*

I calmed down when I became a teenager, but was still a secret rebel. The resistance in the disputed countries was romantic, and the Fallen were intriguing. They challenged everything we believed, but everyone that age wants to rail against the established order, and the Fallen did that, constantly speaking out against Realm policies.

When it was announced that the canyon between Llangour and Caldair would be filled with flowing blessed water, to keep the Fallen at bay, there was more talk about them than ever. The Educators kept trying to justify it.

"The Fallen cannot know the Exalted's love." Mrs Davenport told the class. "Symbols of our belief harm them, because they are corrupted by dark forces. Fallen cannot cross blessed water when it flows, so Llangour will be safer than ever."

"But where's the water coming from?" I asked, not expecting it to be a delicate question.

"That's beside the point," she replied. "You're not here to learn geology."

"I was just wondering. It has to come from somewhere. We're not close to the sea, so where could it come from?"

My classmates looked at me like I smelled.

"A river will be diverted, or a lake will be siphoned. It doesn't matter, Italy."

But doubt welled up inside me. Try as I might to dam it up, I could feel the pressure building.

My hand raised once more. Mrs Davenport suppressed a flicker of weariness, and hid it by straightening her silver hair. "Yes, Miss Webster?"

"Why keep the Fallen out of Llangour? Aren't they a threat to Caldair too? And, well . . . can't we make friends with them? Reason with them?"

My classmates sniggered.

Mrs Davenport sighed: "The Fallen are not capable of abiding by laws. They see themselves as superior. They have no souls, and no conscience. They are incapable of goodness because they reject the Exalted. Even if we formed a pact, they would find some apparently logical reason to break it." She took off her glasses to rub her brow. "As for the wretches in Caldair, they are a threat to each other already, and almost as dangerous as Fallen. A lot of them worship the Ruiner. We do what we can for them by sending Purifiers to keep the peace and save the souls of those who have strayed."

*

When I was sixteen, my classes changed. I tried not to worry, everyone's classes changed a little at that age, but I went from learning about art, music and literature, about Realm Lore and politics, to learning how to handle explosives, how to assemble shell casings.

*

After graduation, I was sent to work in a munitions factory. My life became drudgery, gruelling work, thirteen hours a day, with barely a break. I'd make bombs for the Realm to drop on people who didn't deserve to die, and then I'd go home, eat whatever I had the energy to make, then collapse into bed. Most people in Realm cities work as hard, it's considered the right thing to do, but I hated it. It was like slavery! People said I was childish for thinking that, but years later Andreas said the same thing in a way: "Wage labour is exploitative. People have to work for their masters instead of themselves, starve while their 'superiors' live in luxury. The only way to survive is by being of use to the people who have money."

The manager was a pervert whose eyes squirmed over me. I had a boyfriend at the time, my first, named Phillip. He was older than me, but it was perfectly innocent . . . and boring. There was no attraction or feeling.

"Please, speak to him," I asked him one day. "Ask him to treat me with more respect. He'll listen to you." It made me feel sick to have to ask him to speak for me, but I had tried objecting and the manager had only leered more. If I complained, there was a very real danger that it could be taken as an objection to the work in general.

"Maybe he isn't doing what you think," he whined, "maybe he's just watching you work."

I called it off. I was still making up stories about brave, righteous heroes who would save me from bad men. My parents were furious. Looking back, I'm not sure I blame them. If I'd stayed with Phillip I'd still be more like who I was then. That girl had seen horrible things, but she'd never seen wars, or explosions or throats torn out by teeth. She'd still been able to believe in an afterlife. She'd still been able to believe in heroes.

*

One night, I sat at my window too tired to sleep, watching the sunset, breathing the colours of the Shimmer Barrier, and the most heartfelt music trickled out of Caldair; A violin, a guitar and a woman's voice.

Hear me sing, traa lala,

The bells, hear them ring, tra lalalaa.

I'll take you away, singing traa lala,

I'll take you home and I'll traa lalalaa.

The words weren't special, it was the tune and the vocals. I'd never known music could be so emotional. In the Realm, the only songs allowed were hymns. I sang along, but shut up quick before anyone could hear. I wanted to be with the musicians.

The music came night after night, haunting and invigorating, an aurora of feelings. I sat at my window listening every evening until the music stopped, not wanting to miss a note, feeling the ecstasy and pain and melancholy and excitement in the music. I couldn't tear myself away, in case it suddenly stopped forever.

*

My parents invited me to the execution of a man who had spoken out against flooding the canyon. He was sentenced to death by a thousand cuts, the worst punishment the Realm inflicted. His blood would slowly be drained and his soul would drift away into the ether. I hadn't attended an execution since seeing the Fallen burned when I was a child, and I refused to go. It was horrifying, and I needed to stay home and listen to the music in case it stopped forever.

"How dare you?!" my mother snapped, her control wavering for the first time. "How dare you act like you're better than us? You can't stand to see an evildoer delivered to the Exalted, but you'll sit and listen to those deviants? You're disgusting!"

My father watched with disdain until she'd finished, then stepped forward and spoke to me quietly and firmly. "We are going to this event, Italy, and you can stay here and listen to your friends one last time. In the morning, I will report to the head of my department and Purifiers will be dispatched to Caldair. The next time we invite you to spend a night with us you will graciously accept."

"Come along," mother sighed. "Stop giving her attention."

Dad turned, put his arm round my mother's waist and they walked out. That was the night I left for Caldair, and the night I met Andreas.

*

The iridescent music came again, desperate and anxious, lonely and doomed, and I thought, _that's what the people in Caldair must feel like_. There were stone bridges across the canyon—just two back then, lots more now. They had high railings made of polished black metal, and massive iron gates on either end. The gates don't stop Fallen, who can jump or fly or climb over. The people of Llangour are issued keys. Who were they keeping out? Only the pitiful Baneful and humans living in Caldair. No-one who was any threat.

My legs trembled. The bridge was wide and sturdy, but I felt like I was going to lose my balance and plummet into the canyon. Halfway across, I clung to the railings.

Caldair buildings were very different. Three or four stories high, each covering so much ground that they must have contained about ninety rooms, made of crumbling bricks or rough hewn stones. There weren't any real pavements, everywhere was cobbles or flagstones, many broken or missing. Small animals would run past, then disappear down a drain or through a window.

I could still make out the music, but it faded and swelled as the wind whipped in every direction. My hair blew in my eyes and mouth. Then something barrelled into me and I was hitting the ground, and my ribs and ankle flared with pain.

The stinking man was growling, and had me pinned down. He was wearing rags and his body was hairy and muscular, his jaw distended like some wild beast and his jagged teeth plunged into my right breast. I screamed so loud I felt my throat tear. Then the man-beast was gone, spinning through the air into the steps of a nearby building. I heard bones break.

Two people loomed over me. The first was a tiny, slightly awkward woman with dark hair and a guarded expression, who had picked up my attacker and thrown him away like trash. She quickly slunk away, and when I later tried to recall her face it was as though the memory had been smudged out. The second stranger was a tall, thin man who stood a little too still. He was wearing old black trousers and a jacket of home-made leather. His hair was a long, black tangled mess. I couldn't see his features clearly in the darkness.

"Get to your feet, don't lie there in the gutter," he said. Was he trying to be inspirational or was that a tinge of reproach in his voice?

I remember being in his shadow and accepting his freezing cold hand. I got up, with his help, and got my breath back.

My attacker staggered away into a dark alley, and I saw that his arms and legs were too long.

"Is that a Baneful?" I asked.

"No, that was a human. Of sorts. That is what natural selection eventually did to groups of people that survived by being vicious and predatory. We call them 'depraedor'."

He spoke slowly and carefully. Even after his encounter with the depraedor, he seemed perfectly composed. He examined me with his glowing red eyes. "You haven't asked what I am," he observed.

"You're a Fallen."

"Yes. My name is Andreas Sorotos." He took a step closer. That wonderful music trilled the pungent night air. A breeze blew over me and I shivered.

"Are you going to drink my blood?" I asked.

"No," he answered. "I would never take blood without permission. Not from an innocent, anyway . . ."

In the space of a murmur, he disappeared into the alleyway, following the depraedor. I heard a guttural cry then silence again, save for the occasional sigh of violins.

I ran. At first I ran blindly, as far and fast as I could, in any direction that would have me, hearing nothing but the pounding of my blood, the gasps of my lungs and the echoes of my feet. Then the music came again, and I followed it. It floated on the air and echoed off the sad, strange buildings and every time I thought I was getting closer, I got further away. Other noises drifted through it, mingled with it—a squawking bird, the whistling wind, drunken voices, a crash. When I could run no more I staggered to a halt, hands on my knees to prop myself up, and dragged in cold, acrid air. I was back at the canyon, and standing in front of a low, collapsing wall. Three more steps and I would have fallen.

The violins drifted in and out of earshot before they were crushed by an unknown, unstoppable sound that pulverized the ears, a godly roar like the collapse of an empire. I looked up into a sky full of stars and mist sprayed my face, made me blink, pricked my tongue. Thousands of gallons of water poured into the canyon, claiming it, forcing itself in like a rapist.

I felt the Fallen behind me before he spoke. He'd kept pace with me effortlessly, without even getting short of breath.

"It's the deluge," he said. "It won't keep us out of Llangour. Blessed water will burn us if we touch it, but that stuff about crossing running water is a myth."

Without looking around (I was too transfixed by the view) I asked the question that had been on my mind since St Deloun's. "Where is the water coming from?"

"It's the water supply for Caldair," he said. "A dam's been built, some pipes have been redirected, a reservoir's been decommissioned, this is the result."

"Is it still . . . I mean, can people still drink it?"

"No, it will be too polluted." His voice was still measured, like he was weighing every word before speaking it, but there was faint anger. "It won't be treated anymore like it was at the reservoir, the walls and floor of the canyon are full of heavy metals, and several sewage outlets spill into the canyon. This water will be undrinkable."

As this awful folly blotted out the music, I decided that I hated Llangour and never wanted to go back.

I turned to face him. There was more light here, moonlight and a gas lamp, and I saw his face clearly. He was gaunt, with ruddy, blotchy skin, like a corpse I'd once seen carried out of a Purifier truck. His teeth were long and sharp, his eyes were passive and unblinking, his smile was knowing and cruel.

"The Realm is getting things really wrong, isn't it?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Can anything be done?"

"Yes," he said. "Things _will_ be done."

*

I was so excited to meet this Fallen. I had childish fantasies about him sweeping me off my feet (I _was_ only nineteen) but instead he found me a place to stay. We wandered Caldair for hours looking for an empty place. Caldair had fewer colours than Llangour, but it was more _colourful_. It lacked the floating light from the Shimmer Barrier, the monuments to the sun, the skyscrapers and exotic fashions, but it had a richness of character, freedom and honesty. Plants were growing out through the windows of one abandoned building we passed. They were tall and thorny, with drooping shrivelled black leaves, and covered in what looked like cobwebs. They were lovely.

The streets were no consistent size or shape—one street would be barely wider than an alleyway, crowded with hab-blocks, turn the corner and you were in a wide plaza, with buildings fifty feet apart. Sometimes hab-blocks ran parallel to each other, sometimes they clustered together, facing all different angles.

"People have big houses around here. Those buildings must have a hundred rooms!" I said, with no idea how naive I sounded.

"Those are shared," Andreas said. "People are crammed in five to a room in some places. There is no privacy, barely space to breathe."

"How many do you share with?" I asked. Was it obviously a dig for information?

"I . . . no, it's just me." He looked humbled, like he'd never thought about his unfair advantage. "But that's different, I don't have a family to share _with_ , and most mortals wouldn't willingly live with Fallen."

"Some people get all the perks." I teased.

He gave a rueful smile. "I guess there can be advantages to being feared, but I would prefer to be accepted and improve the lives of people in Caldair."

"How? How could you do that?"

He stopped walking and turned to face me, flashed that knowing smile, and said, "You'll see."

We were outside a building with half its windows boarded up. It looked empty, but Andreas was cautious. "Perhaps whoever is there just wants the place to _look_ empty, because they're hiding from Purifiers or they want to lure people in."

"But . . . wouldn't the landlords say anything about that?"

"Do you have money for rent?" he asked, rhetorically. "These are squats."

After we'd checked for occupants, he left without saying goodbye. The place wasn't pleasant (a hole in one wall was infested by tiny bugs with half-spherical shiny green shells) but it was _mine_.

The music was close to my new home. It poured through the broken windows, filled the rooms, vibrated off the splintering floorboards and cracked walls. I could pinpoint its direction, and it wasn't just drifting on the wind; the musicians were moving around.

*

It was ages before I saw Andreas again, and he became a symbol of this exotic place where people were free to sing and create. In my first few days in Caldair, I saw things I'd never seen—simple things like a man carrying a bag of potatoes, or lovely things like fireworks, or a woman reading poetry on a corner. Shocking things, like women selling themselves, or people passed out in gutters, or children scavenging rubbish. Strange things; a three-headed moth and an armadillo creature with a crest on its back that looked like a face. Wondrous things; a man levitating and spinning like a whirlwind in mid-air, to quake-like applause.

People's lifestyles were so radical, and there were people who did things I wasn't comfortable with, but Caldair had a vibrant side that Andreas doesn't appreciate any more.

The people of Caldair were wonderful! So friendly and diverse. I'd never met such fascinating people. I spent my first week there exploring, going wherever people gathered. I found a market a few streets away from my flat, filled with people of all colours, cultures and shapes. Baneful mingled with human. All were in rags but most had things to trade. A Baneful with scales traded a foot-tall brass idol of a bat god for a flute from a man smoking a funny smelling pipe, and one with ten tentacles sold shawls and paints from a tent.

"What you have offer?" The creature gurgled at me. I turned out my spare change, stupidly forgetting that I'd need money for food, and eagerly bundled pots of paint into my arms. A tentacle snatched my cash and the Baneful blew appreciative ink bubbles.

A man at one end of the market preached about the Exalted and praised the Purifiers, while in a stall on the other end a Fallen woman handed out pamphlets on the benefits of immortality. Some people walked past without looking, others jeered, a few stopped to chat. I walked over to the stallholder with my arms full of paints.

"Hi," she murmured. She was about my height, much thinner, raven haired and jittery. I picked through the pamphlets on her stall, struggling not to drop my purchases. "We, um, we have information on how you can beat hunger or starvation, on helping your education by Falling, and on how being Fallen can, heh, boost your confidence." She pushed pieces of paper towards me across the table and smiled nervously, amused and embarrassed by the irony. "I'm Sara. Mathias. Hi."

"You're Fallen?"

"Does it show? It doesn't show does it? But yes, I am. I like your paint. Nice colours."

"Oh, thanks!" I didn't know what to say, what to ask, I was just curious. "Why are you here?" was the best I could do. Then I added: "I'm new."

"Really?" she laughed. "You know, I'm not sure why I'm here. Most people can't read. No schools in Caldair. Fallen learn things a lot easier—I taught myself to read—but the pamphlets aren't useful to people who are already Fallen, are they?"

As if to prove her point, a man in a tatty blue robe stumbled past, muttering about "stuck-up undead scum".

I sighed, and adjusted my grip on my paints so I could offer Sara my hand to shake. "I'm Italy. Keep at it. At least you can do this sort of thing here. If this was Llangour you'd be dead by now. I mean actually dead. I mean . . ."

Sara laughed. "I know what you mean." She leaned over and tucked pamphlets under my arm. "Get the impression you might be interested. Have a look."

*

A week passed. I reduced myself to stealing a bag of plantroit roots, and eating them raw, one a day. With my few remaining coins I bought tiny portions of foul broth from the market, one every other day. It was gritty, with chewy strips of beige meat in it.

Eventually, the music came again, as I was looking through Sara's pamphlets. They were all written to be inspirational, to make you want to be everything you could be . . . only less corny and more long-winded. So, when that music came to distract me from the rumbling in my belly I resolved to go searching for it. Better than trying to clean stains off the stone walls with a dry cloth because my water was dirtier than the walls.

There had been an argument outside earlier, a man and woman screaming at each other, but it wasn't frightening. It was just part of the mad passion that made Caldair wonderful. It was good to be in a place where you could express yourself so intensely. It hadn't yet occurred to me that it could be a dangerous place, despite the depraedor attack. That had been a one-off. Depraedor were the one nasty thing in the whole of Caldair, I'd been unlucky to meet one at all, and there would always be an Andreas around to save me.

Two blocks from my home, following the music through pitch dark streets (the street lamps around my home hadn't been lit for two days), I was jumped. The woman was incredibly strong, and appeared from nowhere, pinned me against a wall and bit my neck. I felt the sting of her fangs, her mouth sucking the blood from me, the rough stones of the wall scraping the skin off my back. She made slurping sobs as she drank, and trembled more than I did. For a few moments I was sure I was going to die, and then I made myself act. I reached up and around, struggling for every inch, and grabbed the sides of her head. Then I dug my thumbs into her eyes with all the strength I had left. Surely even a Fallen would feel that.

As quickly as it started, the horror was over. The ragged, filthy woman lurched away, frantically clutching her eyes and wiping the blood off her mouth.

"I'm sorry. I was so hungry!" she pleaded, and I actually understand. She fled into the gloom.

I staggered back home, threw up blood and bile onto the floor and collapsed. In the middle of the night, I woke and could still hear singing, but I plugged my fingers in my ears and rocked myself back to sleep.

*

I kept listening for the musicians every night, but didn't dare to search for them again. As much as I loved my new home, Caldair in darkness hid terrors.

I didn't step outside the next day, or the day after. The tiny round green bugs had migrated to my mattress, and every morning I woke up with circular bites over my arms. After two days of counting bites and crushing bugs and memorising every crack and patch of mould and replaying the Fallen attack over and over, I gathered the courage to go back out. But only in the daytime.

At the end of a street full of red skips, with its entrance halfway up a rusted fire escape, I found an art gallery. And between a sculpture of a monkey-headed lizard and a painting of a red ink blot shaped like a bird or bat, I found, of all people, Sara Mathias.

"Hello there," she chimed. "We have to stop meeting like this!"

"Stop following me then," I joked back.

She smiled at me, friendly and thoughtful. "What brings you here?" she asked. It was almost rhetorical, as if she already knew. And why shouldn't she have figured it out? She'd seen me with paints, we were in an art gallery . . .

"I wanted to see what art the people of Caldair like . . ." I began.

"And see if you can create anything to match?" She finished for me.

"You read my mind!" I laughed. "Yeah, I admit, I'm out for fame. So what kind of art _do_ people here like?"

"Any," she said. "That's the great part."

"So long as they like it enough to buy it."

Sara cast an inspecting eye over me. "Less likely, I'm afraid. You're using money? That's not really how things are done around here."

"How do you buy things then?"

"Barter economy, sweet girl."

"I've nothing to barter. I'll be eating my last plantroit tonight, and I'm starving."

"Plantroit? You are desperate. I know people who prefer eating dog. You know, there's a simple solution to hunger. We Fallen don't need food. If we need blood, we feed each other."

"Oh, yeah?!" I didn't mean to sound confrontational, but I couldn't help it. I brushed my hair back and lifted my chin to show my wound. "Tell that to the woman who did this."

Her green eyes went wide with shock.

"Oh my World!" She gently brushing the scabs. "She must be so alone."

"Alone?" I asked.

"If she had anyone who cared about her, they would give her blood."

*

We met there a couple of times a week. She always wore the same black sackcloth dress, meaning she had fewer clothes than I did. But she never smelled, whereas I was becoming constantly aware of my reek. I'd tell her about what I'd painted, and she'd tell me about the latest offerings at the gallery. Sometimes she brought me food, or helped steal it from people who had plenty. To her, this wasn't stealing at all. "Property is theft," she said. She had an air of detached self assurance that made huge statements like that digestible. She always seemed half present, like her mind was full of private thoughts.

Typical of buildings in Caldair, the gallery was practically a health hazard but you never noticed the building itself, only the wonderful and terrible creations inside it. One week, a vase full of tall transparent lilies with glowing filaments stood next to a bare skull that may or may not have been real and may or may not have been human. The skull had a hole in the crown.

"Why . . ." I began to ask.

"It's called trepanation," she said. "It's a medical procedure, but some people do it because they think it will enhance their minds by altering the blood flow. Sort of trying to be like the Fallen, without actually becoming Fallen."

I peeked inside the hole, and shuddered.

"I'm painting a landscape," I informed Sara proudly.

She inclined her head, considering her words. "That's . . . nice. Traditional."

"Traditional?" I asked. "I don't _mean_ to be traditional. I don't think that's what I want to be. It makes me think of . . . well, traditions. Like the family gathering together to listen to Grandma tell our fortunes from the fireplace ash, then have her favourite meal and get out the traditional plates that've got chipped edges but we use them because it's _traditional_."

She paused. "It's a little . . . Realm art?" she looked like saying that hurt her more than me. "Isn't that what they allow in the Realm? Still-lifes and portraits and landscapes?"

"No no no!" I said. "Well, yes yes yes, but also no. This is different, because it's nowhere I've ever seen. It's nowhere anyone's ever seen. I'm making it up. I just want to invent somewhere beautiful."

"Ahh, I see . . . you're a dreamer."

"Yep!" I announced, proudly.

"I know a lot of dreamers," she said. "They wouldn't like Realm art, but they might like yours."

"I hate Realm art," I said. "And the Realm."

"Not many people would say that, except the Fallen. Even if they felt that way, they wouldn't dare say so."

"The Realm's evil," I said.

Some people passed by outside, and shouted, "Poncy artsy wankers!" We ignored them. I was getting used to the less pleasant inhabitants of Caldair.

"I like this one," I said. It was a painting of a tiger, with colours that changed depending on the light and which angle you looked from, making the cat change its colours like a chameleon. "This is amazing!" I stepped from side to side to see the effect.

"Why do you like it?" Sara asked.

"It's like that idea that a tiger never changes its stripes. Like, people do change, but they stay the same as well," I said. "Plus, tigers are cute."

*

I didn't work up the courage to look for the musicians that night, or the night after. I threw myself into my art. But when my painting was almost finished and I felt good about myself I found the courage to lean out the window and sing along. My voice squeaked and cracked, and I struggled to keep in tune or even in rhythm, but somehow managed to make my voice blend with their singer's in a fairly nice way.

One night, they passed by, drawn by my voice. A trio of sisters—Nancy, Isabelle and Darling—who wrote songs about life, with sexy rhythms. When they saw me singing out my window, Isabelle (who was enviously tall and thin and golden haired) paused her strumming and laughed, delighted. Nancy smiled and beckoned me down.

Nancy was the singer, the eldest sister, and wore this flowing red and black skirt and a checked shawl. She didn't say much, but what she said was usually kind and wise. Darling, their violinist, and the youngest and plainest of the group, showed me her instrument and how to play. She said I was a natural, but I knew she was flattering me, from the looks on the faces of Nancy and Isabelle, and the yells of "shut up!" that came from nearby hab-blocks.

From then on, the trio passed by every couple of days and I slowly got involved in playing with them and singing with them. After a few weeks, Nancy asked me if I knew any tunes. I didn't, so I made some up.

I started out playing guitar or violin and making slight changes to what Isabelle and Darling had been playing. Eventually I came up with some words, and tunes to go with them.

And if I Fall, I will land,

Safely, safely.

Those who burn, turn to sand,

Save me, save me.

My songs didn't really mean anything, but they sounded like they did and that made them daring. At that age, it was a thrill to buck the rules that had held me back. Nancy had reservations, kept telling me to change words, but the others got as carried away as I was.

"We're risking it," Nancy said. "We can't sing songs about the Fallen."

"It's not about the Fallen, it's about falling. They can't have us for that," I giggled, thinking I was clever. "It's open to interpretation."

"And I know how the Purifiers will interpret it!"

"We have to show the Realm they can't push us around," Darling said. "They can't tell us what to sing. What's the point otherwise?"

"The point is, we sing, whether we're allowed to or not. But I don't want to blaspheme and I don't want to sing songs about the Fallen. They're killers."

"They're not!" I retorted. "They're clever and they're free thinkers, and they wouldn't be scared to sing songs. I've read about them. I have pamphlets . . ." I realised how silly I sounded and I lost my nerve and went quiet.

"I've never even read a book," Darling said, "never mind a whole pamphlet."

"Ain't we a clever girl, knowing all about Fallen and reading all this stuff. S'pose the likes of us couldn't possibly know what we're talking about."

Isabelle put her arm round me. "She's just making a fuss because she knows your lyrics are better than hers." I felt so grateful to her for supporting me, and so guilty about being jealous.

*

We played to the whole world—Purifiers and Fallen, humans and Baneful, Exalted and Ruiner, Procurators and depraedor. We wanted everyone to hear our music. Andreas would have told me it was folly. And, blast him, he would have been right.

Eventually, we started singing on the border of Caldair, looking across the river. It didn't take 'protest' songs to anger the Purifiers. Within a couple of days, it happened. Nancy and I had worked on a song together, and we were singing on the bridge that I'd first crossed into Caldair. The suns were setting and Caldair lay in the embers of the day, while the crystal spires and Shimmer Barrier cast wisps of green and pink. It seemed like no-one had even heard. The people who passed the bridge's entrance didn't even look round. And then came a deep rumbling, gradually climbing in volume until our music was smothered by it. A truck emerged through the evening smog. It was a Purifier truck, made of bronze, turning green. It ran on tracks, and had weapon sponsons mounted on its sides. A gold Phoenix symbol was mounted below the windows. Everyone else froze, but my fear built up until I trembled and then, without conscious decision, I ran.

Behind me, the rumbling stopped, doors slammed open. Gruff, angry voices shouted orders. My friends sobbed, and I ran. They struggled and screamed for help, and I ran. Blows were struck, and I ran. My friends wailed in despair as their deaths were ordered and I ran and ran and ran, with Caldair a million steps away.

Exhaustion and guilt overcame fear and I stopped and turned to see the Purifiers, in their grey uniforms and black lizard-skin face masks, raise their weapons and set Nancy and Darling and Isabelle on fire.

All the music went out of the World, all sound reduced to a high pitched ringing. The world turned grey and filled with snow.

*

I woke up on a mattress in a small cluttered room lit by a dim yellow lamp. The walls were made of wooden planks. The floor was covered in rugs. Andreas was perched on a wooden desk, one foot on the floor, the other on a chair.

"Where am I?" I asked. "How did I get here?"

"Relax, you are safe," he whispered. "Sara found you."

"You know Sara?"

"Yes," he anticipated the obvious question. "She has been looking after you."

"You mean _spyin_ g on me!" I was outraged. Had her friendship been a lie?

He paused to choose his words, but it took him less than a heartbeat. "Looking out for you. Because we care."

He got down and sat on the chair, interlinking his fingers. His movements were economical, precise. He looked into empty space for a few seconds, contemplating. Then he spoke again.

"You are a remarkable person. You are rational and confident, open minded and courageous. I noticed you because, in the society the Realm has constructed, people like you are rare. You have the capacity to become like us."

"Like the Fallen?"

He looked me in the eyes. "Yes."

I got up and wandered the room, having a good look, partly out of curiosity, partly to learn where I was. "I got them killed. I thought we would be okay if our songs didn't mean anything, if they just _sounded_ like they did . . ."

"When Purifiers think they see a legitimate target, they destroy that target. They are more likely to be chastised for inaction than for overzealousness. You would have done better to sing songs that didn't sound like they meant anything, but did."

I didn't know what to say to that. "So, you think it _was_ my fault?"

"Quite the contrary," he said, leaning back in his chair. "I believe in self determinism. You did not force those women to do anything. They chose to follow your example. You showed the presence of mind to escape and ensure your own survival."

Andreas was detached in a different way to Sara. It was more like aloof arrogance. The world was a joke that nobody else was smart enough to understand. He took to watching me again for a few moments, then said, "Sara tells me you're having trouble finding food."

"It's expensive," I said, hoping it didn't sound like an excuse.

"That's because it's scarce."

He didn't offer to solve the problem. The option went unspoken.

Rain pattered on the roof, and dripped through.

"What's it like?" I asked, eventually.

"Have you ever had a moment of total clarity? Where you feel inspired, capable, quick witted, like everything makes sense?"

"A few times," I answered.

"It's like that," he replied. "All the time. Self doubt, superstition, paranoia, prejudices, assumptions, all get washed away by clear, rational thought. You are sharp and alert and calm at nearly all times. Your IQ increases, your cognitive functions improve, your memory becomes more precise. You feel confident and strong willed. You are seldom confused, seldom lose concentration. You never know apathy or lethargy."

"Why?" I asked, sceptical. "Why would being undead do that for you?"

"Because Fallen blood alters the brain, hyper-stimulates it. Neural pathways are restructured, freeing you to re-evaluate your perceptions and opinions. Your amygdala becomes more efficient, allowing greater control over unwanted emotions, which are less potent anyway because your body is essentially dead and its vital functions, such as glands, are maintained by telekinetic energy."

"Telekinetic?" I'd understood most of what he'd said, but some words, like that one, had jarred.

"Have you heard of psychomancy?"

It was the ability to move objects with your mind, by sheer belief. The King had demonstrated it, and there were rumours that some Procurators had the ability. I nodded.

"To us, it is telekinesis. The human brain has the potential for it. The Fallen brain harnesses that potential, fully. In the last moment before total brain death, this energy activates and reanimates us—we literally bring ourselves back to life. The brain gains telekinetic control over every cell in your body. This telekinetic energy is what grants us our abilities, though some we control consciously and some are involuntary. You would not believe the power we have. I can levitate. I can feel what you're feeling, right now, all the guilt, grief, fear. You've seen my strength."

"Is it true that Fallen live forever?"

"I don't know. I haven't reached forever yet. But I haven't aged a day in the past eighteen years, and I've easily survived things that would have certainly killed a mortal. I don't know if I can die."

"I'm sorry," I said, sitting back down again, dropping into my seat. "I'm having trouble taking this in. It's certainly not what school taught me."

"Your _Realm_ school. The Educators taught you what the Realm wants you to believe. I expect they told you we're like this because we have no souls."

I nodded slightly, dazed. There wasn't enough air in the room. The image of Andreas, silhouetted in the lamp light, wavered and I thought I might pass out again. But then his serene, sombre voice dragged me back. "And who would have contradicted them if you had never come to Caldair? No-one. The Procurators and Educators don't want you to think scientifically, it undermines belief in the Exalted. They want you to think that their enemies are irredeemable, so they tell you we have no souls, that anyone who disbelieves is evil. That makes you conform, to avoid being judged, and makes you reject those who threaten their ideas."

"I don't believe them. They've told me too many lies . . . But you _do_ drink blood."

"This is true. What of it? We feed off willing people or evil people, whenever possible. Is it worse than burning people alive? Worse than making people slaves or abandoning people to poverty and famine? Sara said you hate them. Do you?"

I paused. It was as though once I'd said it to Andreas there was no taking it back. "Yes."

"Thank you. That's the truth. Truth is important. I try not hate them, hate can be destructive, but I feel a volcanic anger towards them. They oppress and they kill and they stifle progress and enlightenment. One day, the fury of those who recognise this will erupt through the Realm and consume it."

"Do you worship the Ruiner?" I asked, afraid of the answer.

"I do not worship anything or anyone. Worshipping means bending the knee, obeying without question. The Ruiner and the Exalted are more lies, Italy—myths created to make the world easier to understand, and passed down through the ages. Many similar myths have come and gone. The Exalted is just a popular idea at this time and in this place."

I listened, nodding now and again as I thought about what he said. It was such a different view than what I'd always known. It was almost impossible to accept, but I couldn't deny that it made sense. "It all seems so clear now. I've always thought . . . things I shouldn't have. Like, why would the Exalted let horrible things happen, if he's so good? Why would he want people killed in his name?"

Andreas walked over to me and cupped my face in one hand. "You could be magnificent, Italy."

"I already am!" I retorted.

He chuckled, then stroked my cheek and said, "yes, you are, aren't you?"

*

We grew close. We spent almost every day together, at his, at mine, wandering Caldair and the hills and valleys bordering Llangour, visiting art shows and music halls. "It's a club, not a hall," he kept reminding me. He would tell me all his big ideas about how the world works and how society should be structured so everyone could be equal. He enjoyed telling these ideas to somebody they were still new to.

We used to talk about our dreams. I just wanted to rebel and be expressive. That was my idea of freedom. He was more interested in the _concep_ t of freedom. He had huge ambitious dreams. He never said so, but I knew he did. I thought I'd met a great man, who would change everything, and make everyone's dreams come true.

One day I told him about the Fallen man we had burned. He had said that our Shimmer Barrier would turn the suns' rays to poison and make lumps grow in our bodies. But the Procurators had said that all Fallen lie. The suns were embodiments of the Exalted and his Phoenix aspect. They only burned those with corrupt souls or, like Fallen, no souls at all.

Andreas corrected that as well. "The suns are merely giant balls of burning gas. They hurt us because of a psychosomatic reaction." At the time, I had no idea what that meant, but I listened anyway. "When we Fall, all our irrational beliefs are suppressed. We no longer feel superstitious fear or awe for objects, but those feelings manifest physically instead. The suns burn us because we've been taught to worship them. And that man was right, the Shimmer Barrier will cause a disease in mortals."

"They burned him for nothing then. I hate this."

He told me that meeting me had given him hope. "Talking to you, having someone other than another Fallen who agrees with my ideals, it makes the cause seem more feasible. There must be other people out there who want things to be better."

We were in a _club_ named Factor V, new and popular with Fallen. They met there to feed each other or look for willing human donors. Andreas said it was revolutionary, and the best way to prevent Fallen resorting to attacking people. The music was deafening, the light was dark and multicoloured.

"So what can be done?" I asked him.

"Very little at the moment. My allies are few and the time isn't right. Most people are not willing to accept the Fallen, even here in Caldair. This place is helping with that, though, bringing Fallen culture into the mainstream."

"But people in Caldair must want to fight the Realm, right? Fallen aren't the only ones the Purifiers target."

"Beware your preconceptions, Italy, they will misguide you. Most people here still worship the Exalted, though many support other religions. Purifiers mostly attack Fallen, and when they attack Baneful or humans, people convince themselves that the victims deserved it. It's easier than admitting that they're being oppressed. Then they'd have to consider taking action and that's . . . for an ordinary person, without power, without immortality, without the self assurance of being Fallen . . . the thought of fighting back must be terrifying."

"So convince people to become Fallen!" I exclaimed. These days I worry about the influence those words might have had– how he might have interpreted them.

He gave a wry smile and took a sip of blood. "You are the most open minded mortal I have met in Caldair for years, and I cannot even convince you. We have to wait for things to change. Although, it is frustrating at times."

"And in the meantime?" "

"Myself and Sara and our friends will continue to rescue people from depraedor and Purifiers whenever we can. Maybe one day we will be able to do more."

"Andy," I said, building up to the question slowly, not sure whether to ask it, "what happened to those Purifiers? The ones who executed Nancy and the others?"

He frowned at me, perplexed. "We killed them, obviously."

*

The day did come, many years later, when he was ready to do more, when it came to a choice between fighting or surrender. I wish that I could tell you about brave noble heroes that save the world from tyranny. I wish I could tell you some fantasy where I fall in love with the mysterious, tall, dark and undead man and we live happily ever after, but I can't. Because in time he would become a man of harsh reality, the man who would save and doom us all.

# The Central Point of Grief

What compels us to explore the darkest reaches of the unknown? Whether it be the depths of the ocean or the secrets of caves or the deeper, darker fathoms of our own minds, we are so often driven to seek out what lurks in these boundlessly hostile places, disregarding the knowledge that malevolent things may lurk within.

The maze went on for miles, even measuring from end to end, it probably stretched all the way under the mountain from Caldair almost to Dezkary. How many leagues of paths had lain forgotten and inexplorable, untouched by human feet, for years, as dust gathered and bricks cracked and nature reclaimed the underground. What now resided there, other than our most sinister, forsaken impulses locked away to be forgotten?

I took my shiv and tore open one of the bodies, from crotch to sternum. There was only just enough light to see, so I had to do most of my work by touch, using the almost useless taloned hands I was cursed with.

I dug around in the torso until I found the end of the intestine, then plunged my other hand in and carved through with the shiv, which I had fashioned from a sharpened piece of stone and carried for protection. The gut came loose and I yanked it free but it was slick with blood and flew from my hand. It flicked against my face, leaving me smeared and degraded.

This offal was my only chance of finding my way back out of the maze, I kept reminding myself. I had to find the man at the centre if I wanted to discover the truth. Without something to guide my way, I could be lost forever.

The presence of death didn't trouble me much. Death has been my shadow. The stench of it, the dread of it. It has taken so many people from me, and I know it will come for me soon. Somehow, I don't think that the Exalted will be waiting for me. They say that He does not admit Baneful, that our disfigurements are signs of spiritual corruption.

I repeated the process with all the other corpses, tearing and cutting and yanking on slippery reeking guts for hours. Most released foul gasses when I opened them. One man smelled strongly of sour milk and asparagus.

My name is Kyle Payton. I am a Baneful. My arms are twisted, elongated and lack flexibility. Instead of hair, I have tiny, almost invisible whiskers. They are very sensitive, but not in any useful way. They just make me prone to itching, like an extremely bad case of sensitive skin. One of my eyes is much larger than the other, and my jaw is distended. My mother was the same, and she claimed that this was normal for our kind of Baneful, the Chlethargan. I wouldn't know. They're all gone.

I crawled over the mound of naked dead in almost total darkness, hauling bodies into convenient positions for their 'procedure'. A couple of times, I put my hand on a breast or a scrotum, snatched it away and shuddered from redundant squeamishness.

I'd considered other solutions. If there had been more light, I could have marked the walls with my blade. The walls were jagged stone and concrete and my shiv wasn't sharp enough to make a mark that could be found by touch. Believe me, I tried.

I could have torn strips of cloth, but I had very little to wear as it was, the tattered rags on my back being my only possessions in the world, and the corpses had all been stripped. I'd tried sprinkling strands of hair to mark my route, but had only gone past a couple of turnings before I'd realised it was being blown away by a gentle flow of air through the passages.

Blood would have been less messy—there was certainly enough of it available—but too fast drying and hard to control to be of use. I had discovered this the hard way, on my second attempt to traverse the maze. I had taken a handful of blood. Most of it had spilled. The marks I managed to make were hard to see in the available light. Eventually, what was left of it had dried in my hand.

Even using severed body parts, fingers or toes, would have been less grisly than what I was attempting. But my blade was not sharp enough or strong enough to cut through bone, and I had nothing to carry the digits in. How long had I paced around this charnel house before arriving at a solution? Far too long. Hunger carved at my guts as I carved through the guts of the dead, placated only by the overwhelming revulsion. My bile rose over and over again, from the smell, from the feel of the innards slipping through my hands, or just from the hideousness of what I was doing.

***

There are many stories of what happened to my people. Once we lived peacefully alongside humans. Except we didn't, we had our own land and kept to ourselves, rarely interacting with others. Except we'd never had our own land, we'd always been outcasts, and when there were enough of us to call ourselves a 'race' we were segregated in labour camps.

Our people foolishly opposed the Realm, started a war with them. They lost and were wiped out. That's what my mother used to say. The Realm claims that most died of a disease, and those who survived were slaughtered by extremists.

What I remember is the Fallen coming for us. There were a lot of us together one night, I don't remember why, and the Fallen arrived without warning. There were screams in the distance, others of our kind being murdered, but screams in the night are a common thing in the city of Caldair.

The Fallen broke down the door with their unnatural strength and forced their way in to the room. It had been a large room with yellow walls and white tiles. Some kind of hall.

My mother had no memory of the place, or so she claimed. I suspect she was trying to dispel my hatred of the Fallen. She'd noticed my anger towards them, I hadn't tried to hide it. Part of me admired the Purifiers. Even though they were sometimes a threat to Baneful too, even though they would never accept someone like me as a member, they got to fight the Fallen, eradicate the undead pricks with silver and flames.

Chlethargan people (my family? I no longer knew) had been pounced on and drained by the invading Fallen. Men and women in dark coloured rags, with blotchy skin and glowing red eyes had buried their teeth in people's necks. Blood had spurted everywhere. People had tried to run, but the Fallen were too fast. One man had sprinted for the exit, but slipped on the floor, already slick with blood. He had fallen forward and his face had impacted the tiled floor, hard, and exploded.

Those Fallen who had finished their first course sprung on him, some feeding from his arms, from the inside of his legs, others lapping up the blood pooling on the floor. That was when my mother and I had escaped.

My mother had later tried to convince me that this was a bad dream, that it had never happened. I knew what I remembered, I knew that it tallied with what the Realm claimed, but there had always been a flutter of doubt within me.

Nobody knew the truth. Those who claimed to would be branded 'conspiracy theorists', which was a dangerous thing to be. It meant you were making up lies to antagonise people against the Realm, inspire riots or other violent action, and that made you a terrorist.

So imagine my eagerness when I heard of a woman who supposedly knew the truth.

Maybe, just maybe, I wasn't the last.

***

I set about joining the lengths of gut together. It was like tying knots in pasta. Thick soft reeking tubes of flesh, slick with bodily fluids, leaked nauseating waste matter as I clutched and squeezed them, trying desperately to form them into one length. Several times, I felt like I was about to pass out, but forced myself to stay conscious.

I gave up the thankless task, realising I needed to keep the lengths separate anyway, and draped the individual strands over my shoulders. They were surprisingly heavy. The fluids seeped through my thin, threadbare shirt, made the guts stick to the back of my neck.

The path through the maze was narrow, and my shoulders brushed the rough stone walls as I moved. I laid one length of entrails, then another, leaving gaps between each to ensure that they would not run out before I reached my destination, but made sure each could be seen from the location of the next. They were heavy enough not to be moved by the faint flow of cold air.

The draft was incredibly cold and made me shiver whenever it flowed past or crept under my ragged clothing. I had been in there so long already, sitting on the cold slate floor, dissecting the cold bodies, breathing in their filth. There was an ache in my ribs. Breathing became a chore. My chest burned when I breathed in, rattled and slurped when I breathed out.

The darkness became absolute as I moved deeper into the maze. I had to feel my way along, and extending my arms to do this meant I had to turn sideways a little and walk at an angle to fit between the walls. Why had they made this place so small? For that matter, why had they made it at all? The Realm didn't normally go to so much trouble to imprison people when they could easily kill them.

I came to open doors, but all led to empty rooms with bare stone and walls, slate tile floors. I learned this only through touch. Some contained metal benches or shackles. Some of these were still bound to long since deceased inmates. My hands and arms accumulated scrapes, scratches and bruises from stone, wood, metal, bone. I cut a deep gouge in my palm on some shackles, smelt the gritty pang of rust, and fears of tetanus came to mind.

Several times, I reached dead ends and had to double back, gathering up trails of gut, coiling it around my arm. It might have been better to cut it into smaller pieces and lay lengths only at junctions, to show the direction turned.

After many hours spent like this, the coldness in my chest got so bad that I was actually glad of the innards draped around my body, an extra layer of insulation for my lungs. I grew reluctant to take them off, laid fewer and fewer.

I took turning after turning, and each corridor was practically identical, as far as I could tell, except for the occasional doors and the shapes of the junctions at either end. The only change was internal; the gnawing in my stomach and the torment in my chest.

By the time I was down to one strand of digestive tract, the motivation to lay it had fled. It was no longer a priority compared to the warring needs I was experiencing. This piece of human offal, this length of distended gut, was now far more appealing as a potential source of warmth.

Or food.

***

My mother had been dead for two weeks, and I was now alone. No wife, no children. Who would have me? There was no other freak in the world like me.

I had nothing to do but sleep and try to find food. This wasn't an unusual way for any Baneful to live their life, if that life took place in a Realm city. Community, leisure, purpose, interaction: these things are for people with money. These things distract from the basic need to survive.

Wake, eat if you can, go out, forage for food, search for animals, search the bins, steal if you need to, fight if you have to, return home, eat if you can, sit and think (or try not think), go to sleep, repeat.

A normal routine.

But these typical struggles and indignities were further tainted by the knowledge that I would never again see a face anything like my own. When I returned to the flat each evening, and lay among the other kinds of Baneful squatting there, I was alone. I rarely spoke to anyone, they rarely spoke to me. I was lucky to be allowed to stay there, instead of being booted out onto the street.

Eventually, I tried to connect with other people. I spent nights out at Caldair's few nightspots and pubs, sober.

There were whispers of a man named Andreas, who was saving Caldair residents from Purifiers. I first heard of him from a stall owner at Caldair market—a round, childlike man, who said Andreas had rescued his brother. Some said Andreas was Fallen, no one knew for sure. A woman from my squat said she'd seen him in the town one day, shouting to a crowd about the rights of the Baneful, and the crimes of the Purifiers. A friend of my mother once talked about him at the bar in Factor V, said he had seen Andreas running from a street littered with bodies. They could have been Purifiers, or a cannibal gang, or complete innocents—there wasn't enough of them left to identify.

Some said he was terrifying, some said inspiring. Some thought he was a myth, others thought he might be the person to save Caldair. Many said he was just a total bastard.

I had a feeling he was exactly the sort of person who might know what happened. Or possibly the type of person who might be responsible for it. Either way, I wanted to meet him.

I met an excitable young woman out at Factor V one night, who couldn't stop bopping and couldn't hear a damn thing over the music, who kept shouting "what? What?" and would sometimes just nod and grin inanely, pretending to hear.

But after a lot of drinking and dancing, we left the club together and I started asking about her. I'd already learned her name, Italy Webster, but I wanted to know where she was from, what she did with her time.

"Oh, I help out a friend with some important things," she said, as she reeled off towards the corrugated metal wall of Factor V. "You've probably . . . oop."

Her skinny legs crossed over each other, she put a hand out to steady herself against the wall. "Probably heard of him . . ." she sighed, leaned back on the wall, then laughed up at the grim clouds.

"Why?" I asked, amused and curious, and charmed by this girl. "Why's that? Who is he? Someone important?"

She swayed back and forth, head still tilted up and resting against the wall, mouth clenched shut in a cheeky _I shouldn't tell_ face. After a moment she sprung forward, eyes and mouth wide, and whispered, "He's Andreas!" Then she clamped a hand to her mouth and giggled hysterically.

I was vaguely aware that I shouldn't take advantage of her drunken state to steal information, but curiosity got the better of me.

"Oh, okay, what's he like then? As bad as they say?"

"Oh no no no, he's . . . great! He just wants to help people . . ." she sighed hazily, attention wavering.

"Smart fellow, is he? I bet . . . bet he's smart. Bet he knows interesting things."

"Oh, he does. Say, why you asking all these questions?" She exaggeratedly narrowed her eyes through dangling black hair, pursed her lips and pointed an accusing finger. "You're not going to grass him up are you?"

"I lost my people," I said, "They were all killed and I want to find out why. And I heard Andreas is very knowledgeable about political matters."

She folded her arms and shook her head sadly. "He won't speak to you. But I know a woman who might."

*

I met the woman behind a collapsing hab-block on the West side of town, within view of the mountains that separated us from Dezkary, the nearest region still free from the Realm. There, people still had a right to freedom of speech. I wondered if the fate of my people would be more widely known, if people in Caldair weren't so afraid to speak of such things. One day, I would go there, start a new life. But not until I had solved my mystery.

It had taken me all day to walk to the meet point, and I was tired, impatient for answers. For an hour, I stood in the shadow of the monstrous building, shuffling my feet, blowing on my hands, hiding from passersby. The sprawling hab-block had lost its top floor, and claws of stone and tusks of metal tore at the night above.

The woman arrived, moving swiftly and quietly. She wore a black hood and black, form-fitting clothes. She stood with her back to the sunset, and I couldn't make out much of her face, only her chin and lower lip. She was dark skinned and probably quite beautiful, though she had a broad jaw and her lip moved stiffly. She looked young, but then how could she know about my people?

I tried to get a better look at her, in the dark, under her concealment, but even a brief glance told me she was not one of my kind. My most fanciful hopes were abandoned.

"You wanted to speak to me?" she asked. "Wanted to know what I know?"

"Yes."

"I know nothing. Nothing of value to you. There's only one man left who knows the truth, if he still remembers. He was arrested for concocting a conspiracy theory. He is trapped in a very special prison, and he would be very, very old by now."

She emphasised those last words—"very, very old . . ."—as if to imply something. "Is he . . . Fallen?" I asked. I bit down hard on the end of the sentence, to stop my voice turning into a growl of hate.

"Hell no."

"How can I break him out?"

"That I can't tell you."

"Then at least tell me what's so special about the place."

"I can't tell you that either. You have to learn your limitations and potential. Discover what talents you have. If you fail, you fail yourself. It is of no consequence to us."

"Us? Who's us? Do you work with Andreas?"

She raised a finger to her lips. "Do not mention that name. If you speak of him again, I will leave. To find your answers, find this man and release him. His name is Krada. He has a tattoo of a cross on his face. He will tell you what you want to know. Then return to me here, tomorrow night. Bring your new friend."

"Where can I find this prison? How in the World can I get in?"

She passed me a piece of paper. I unfurled it and saw a map of Llangour, Caldair's neighbouring city. The mountains were marked to the east of it, with a trail leading through them, ending at a red dot.

"You would be better off going directly there, instead of returning home first," my informant said. "It is closer to here than there, and there is a time limit. The guards have been . . . dealt with. For now."

"I thought you said you wouldn't help me."

"There's always an exception." She allowed herself a smile, and it was surprisingly friendly. But as she parted her lips I caught a glimpse of sharp points protruding from her upper teeth.

As I backed off, preparing to run, she grabbed my arm, urgently. "We are not responsible for what happened to your people!"

I pulled away from her, turned, and caught a glimpse of a figure, no more than a shadow, standing in one of the windows of the hab-block, watching through a shattered pane of glass. No telling who, or even what, the figure was, no telling if it was man or woman, but somehow I knew it was Andreas. Observing me. Studying me.

I looked back and saw the woman was leaving, feet splashing in the freshly pooling rain, splintering the reflections of orange light and grey hab-blocks.

***

Every route I tried stretched for miles.

Every time I turned a corner, I hoped it would be the end of my search. I had to feel my way along the walls, into rooms, around the floor and edges of each room I found, constantly fearing what I would touch next, what I would injure myself on.

My whole body ached, my feet and legs most of all. I rested as little as possible, not wanting to waste time, but my muscles kept seizing up.

The feeling of pervasive cold got worse. I started to cough.

I had been there for nearly a whole day, I thought, though it was impossible to tell. Robbed of sight and the sounds of the outside world, time withered. The only possible indication of how much time had passed, was my growing hunger. That alone would have driven me back to Caldair, except I had no more to eat there than I did here. The isolation would have scared me away, except I was no more alone in the maze than I was at home.

My fingers kneaded the drying but still soft guts hung around my neck.

I no longer remembered all the routes I had tried.

I thought of turning back, of giving up, so many times. I thought I could come back later, tomorrow, the next day, with some string, and matches, and maybe food if I could get some.

No, I'd remind myself. That's not possible. The Woman warned that I had to do this now, that the guards had been taken care of.

That thought evoked fresh fears: what if more Purifiers arrived while I was still here? They would kill me if they caught me, they would burn me alive. They would blame me for the dead guard outside.

Worse, would they even bother, or would they simply seal me in? How long could I survive on the remains of their previous captives? How long would I want to?

Stumbling around in the darkness, my thoughts turned to even darker places. I wondered and worried, why were all those people piled dead in that one room near the entrance? Who had killed them? The Purifier who had been guarding the door, until his head had been torn off? Or the Fallen who had killed him and broken down the door?

I grew jittery. I heard things in the dark, scrape, crash, mutter. The killer, or killers?

What if it was a germ? A disease that had spread among the inmates, compelling the Purifiers to exterminate them all.

Why had the Fallen been so keen to help me rescue this prisoner?

And why was I so naively trusting them?

My mind had wandered too far. And so had I.

Where was the last length of gut I placed? I dimly remembered leaving it behind and pushing on, thinking, _not much further, I'll just check around a couple more corners, I'll remember those . . ._

Of course.

I panicked—utter, unrestrained, insane terror possessed me like a demon. I ran blindly, hitting the walls, gasping for air, sweating, screaming to the empty corridors and rooms and the phantoms that were waiting to kill me and strip me naked and dump my body in a pile for somebody else to rob me of my innards.

My feet were bleeding. Blisters had formed, and burst and now were open wounds. Every hurried step was torture. I stumbled, I put my hands out to save myself, and one of them landed on something sticky, long and pliable.

The imagined sounds of unseen dangers grew louder as I scrabbled through the maze on hands and knees, clutching for the trail of guts, hoping desperately that I was following them in the right direction.

The sounds grew even louder. Hard, violent voices giving commands. Boots stamping. The shuffle of many men in heavy clothing pushing through the maze. Purifiers. If they found me, I would die. In agony.

Every time I reached the end of an intestine, I panicked again, convinced that it was the last. Every time, my lack of faith was rewarded. Eventually, the darkness receded enough for me to see where my trail was, and know that I was near the edge of the maze.

I turned left and could see the open door leading to the mountainside. Shouts came from the opposite corridor and I ran as fast as I could until the maze and guts and corpses and Purifiers were far behind.

I had been gone for much less time than I thought. For some stupid reason, I was compelled to make my rendezvous with the Fallen woman, even empty handed. It was the same unstoppable momentum that had driven me through the maze for hour after hour, fuelled by hate and grief. I couldn't let all that be for nothing. I had to find out what had happened to my people. Whether the Purifiers had killed them, or Andreas, or some unknown Fallen, I had to know, and find them, and confront them.

Part of me simply wanted to bargain for another chance. "Keep the place clear of guards," I would say, "and I'll try again. I'll be prepared this time. If you had only warned me what I was up against . . ."

The fact that they hadn't warned me, had treated this like some kind of test, like I had to earn the right to answers, made me angry, made me all the more convinced that Andreas had something to do with the genocide of the Chlethargan Baneful. But I would not let on. If I could get another chance to go back to the maze and retrieve this man, maybe I could get to Andreas himself.

Then what? Kill him? I didn't have the means. Silver was expensive, so was fuel to create a fire. The Purifier guard at the maze had already been parted from his weapon. I could fashion a cross . . .

The woman was there, as promised, leaning against the wall of the collapsing hab-block as if propping up the cracked wall. I approached from the east side, with the sun setting behind me. I could hear a fight breaking out on the other side of the building.

The woman looked up, not bothering to hide her face this time. Her eyes glowed red, her dark skin was marred by the dark blotches and slight ruddy tint that marked the Fallen. She had harsh, black spiky hair.

"You're alone," she said.

"It was impossible. It was a maze. Did . . . did you know it was a maze? The passages go on for miles and miles . . ."

She nodded, folded her arms, looked me up and down. "And how long did you search for?"

"All this time. I just got back to the city."

She raised her eyebrows, then thought for a moment, looking off to the side. She licked her thin lips. "How did you guide yourself through the maze? You searched extensively, without anything to mark your route, you'd still be in there . . ."

"There was a pile . . . of bodies . . . they . . . I took their . . ." I couldn't finish the sentence. The very thought of it made me retch. I could still smell the offal, all over me.

Her eyes narrowed, filling in the blanks. Her nose twitched. For a brief moment she looked astonished and maybe impressed. She quickly glanced up at the hab-block. At one of the windows.

"Who's up there?" I demanded.

"Nobody you need to be concerned about," she said, making her voice as close to reassuring as she could manage. It still sounded stern.

"If it's Andr . . ."

"Don't. Don't say it. The Purifiers have spies everywhere."

The fight that I'd heard out on the street had subsided, quickly and suddenly.

I peered at the Fallen woman, suddenly trusting her again. "Give me another chance."

"There's only one way for me to do that," she said. Then she lifted one arm and slid back her loose black sleeve, uncovered her wrist.

"What . . . ?"

"How far does your grief extend?" she asked, gripping one of my shoulders and brandishing her wrist at me. "Is it a brief, shallow thing, a short blank corridor leading to an unlocked door that you can simply step through if you choose, ignore if you wish to? Or does it lead deep into the very centre of your being? Is it twisted and coiled inside you? Is it a path that you could follow for the rest of your life? Would you explore where your grief leads, forever?"

I knew what she was asking me. It was an option I had never considered, would never have expected myself to consider. But the rage and pain and need for answers wasn't just what had propelled me through the maze, it was all that propelled me through life. "I'm here aren't I? I spent a day in that maze and I'm asking to go back. I have nothing else but my search for the bastards that left me alone in this world."

"Good," she sneered, then she tore open her wrist with her fangs and rammed it into my mouth.

I recoiled, by reflex, but it rapidly became pleasant. Within a minute, maybe two, I was slurping her blood like it was the most delicious thing I'd ever tasted.

My knees buckled as all the strength fled from me, as I lost the will to do anything other than drink. I gripped her arm in both hands and she easily supported my weight. Her other arm reached round and clasped my head, pushing my mouth more firmly against her gushing vein.

*

This time, I marked my trail by untangling the insides of my mind. Neurons and electrical impulses and billions upon billions of nerves stretched out behind me. I formed a map out of all the irrational, useless parts of my consciousness. At the first crossroads, I marked my chosen path with my self doubt. What a useless thing. When I returned that way, I would briefly recall it, but I would not take it with me when I left.

The guards at the entrance, a heavy iron vault door that only opened from outside, had been no trouble. I'd killed them easily, and they had nourished me. There were more Purifiers within the maze. I could hear their voices, their movements, their heartbeats and breathing. I could smell their sweat, their blood, the powder of their guns. The air wafted gently through the maze and clearly had more than one source. There were very likely other entrances and exits, perhaps on the other side of the mountain. The direction of the air flow would help to guide me.

I signposted the next junction with a memory of being beaten up by an older boy. The experience had taught me nothing but fear and timidity. I no longer needed those qualities. Such reticence would only hold me back.

Now that I could see the maze clearly, its incredible age was made apparent by the look of the rough stone, the crude way the doorframes had been installed into doorways not designed for them, and the simplistic wall drawings I occasionally glimpsed, glyphs of predatory animals and fire birds. The masonry was crumbling. I wondered if the maze was stable.

At the tenth turning, I signposted my mind map with my hatred of the Fallen. It was irrational, giving my lack of knowledge, and masochistic in light of my new existence.

There were only a few prisoners left, and they were all close to each other. I turned one way, then another, following the smells of stale sweat, dead skin, and human waste. The sound of whimpering and muttering, chains clinking.

The fiftieth turning was marked by my belief in the Exalted. Baseless, pointless, blind faith, in a deity that seemed to want me to suffer. I was embarrassed that I'd ever believed in him at all.

The Purifiers were around the next corner. They could only walk single file, because of the narrowness of the corridors. Now that I was thinking more clearly, it was obviously built that way in order to fit more turnings into the available space.

There were half a dozen of them, and they came at me one at a time from out of the murk. Strong, tough men charged at me, in grey and black speckled uniforms and lizard skin face masks. The goggles embedded in those masks had built in night vision, but still I could see them better than they could see me. I could see the heat of their blood.

Within a minute, they were a pile of corpses under my feet.

There were more in the distance, fanning out and exploring other corridors, in search of other prisoners to interrogate and exterminate.

My own target was much closer. At the sixtieth turning, I tried to leave behind my grief over my people, my family who I couldn't even remember. Perhaps, now that I was Fallen, I would finally be able to do that.

I found I could not. It would take a further step before I could free myself from that nightmare. I would have to find Krada, find the truth.

I came to the occupied cells, now miring myself in their stench and despair. This was the centre of the maze, I deduced, and therefore where the most dangerous or valuable prisoners were likely kept. Their cell doors were still locked tight and, unlike the others I'd seen, these were made of thicker wood and reinforced with silver crosses, which were densely arranged, leaving almost no wood bare.

There was a window in each door. They were barred, with each bar only half an inch apart, and each one engraved with tiny, ornately detailed silver crosses.

None of the occupants matched the description I had been given. One was a young woman, whose hair was falling out. Her head lolled against the wall of her cell as she sat slumped on her bench.

I wished I could help her, but could see no way through the door. The lock mechanism was operated by a small combination dial. More tiny crosses covered the grip of it. I experimented with stretching my sleeve over my hand and gripping the dial with the fabric over my fingers. It burned instantly, with the heat of sun. I snatched my hand away as soon as it touched the metal but still my fingers came away smoking. I moved on.

I peered in through each cell window until I found an old man, with long, tangled grey hair. Thin and filthy, in white tattered vest and shorts. He had a tattoo of a cross on his left cheek. He was sitting, shackled to the right hand wall, muttering incoherently.

"Krada?" I demanded. "Tell me what you know."

"I know that we're all going to die," he said in a nasal, weedy voice, without looking up. "Purifiers will see to that. If you're lucky, they won't interrogate you first."

"I was told you have specialist knowledge of my people. Of what happened to them. Why they were . . . killed."

"And who might your people be?" he sneered, looking up at last. The contempt on his face and the rhythm of his pulse, told me that this man didn't just know about the genocide of my people—he'd been involved. I wanted to force the door open, tear the man to pieces. I slammed my hands against the door, against the silver crosses, gritted my teeth against the pain.

"The Chlethargan, damn you! They're.. they were . . . a type of Baneful."

He peered towards the door for a moment. "One kinda Baneless or 'nother, all be the same to me." He smirked, viciously. "Who might you be?"

"My name is Kyle Payton. My people were all killed but myself and my mother escaped. Why?"

"I remember you," he said nostalgically. "You see, I was working for the Realm, I was an important Investigator, yer see, and, well, now, I knew yer mummy . . ." He leered.

I could feel the heat of the crosses on my chest, feel my skin cooking just from being close to the door. I pounded the door again, and pushed against it. The crosses scorched like flames, corroded like acid, seared like electricity, bit like dry ice. I screamed. "Aaargh fuck!"

I staggered away, against the opposite wall of the corridor, examined my hands. They were mutilated. The skin was blistered, swollen, mangled, weeping red meat under a layer of charcoal. There were massive welts, and areas were the cooked flesh was falling away, revealing my bones. I wailed in horror. Krada laughed.

I controlled my rage, assessed the situation, looked at my hands. Incredibly, they were already healing, though it would be several minutes before they were any use, before the agony passed.

The lock was inoperable, even with something covering my fingers. Why had they sent me here? For that matter, when I had come here as a mortal, without my enhanced Fallen hearing and intellect, I wouldn't have been capable of figuring out the combination. So what had been the point?

This corridor was even more narrow than the others. No kind of battering ram could be swung against the door with any momentum.

I studied the wall. The masonry was crumbling and there were large cracks running through it, leading right up from the floor and across the ceiling. The wall wouldn't be hard to break down, but doing so could possibly bring a thousand tons of mountain rock down on my head. Explosives were out of the question, for the same reason.

I went back to the window, to study the bars. There wasn't enough room between the crosses to get any grip on them. I leant too close to the door and felt a large cross burn my belly.

"Tell me what you know about my people, or so help me . . ."

"I'll listen to yer threats when I'm convinced you can follow through on 'em." He leaned back against the wall, peered at me sidelong. "Basically, I'll answer yer questions only if you can get through that door." He laughed again.

"Bastard!" Again, I put all my strength against the door, and this time it gave way. Just a little, but enough to urge me on.

The pain was no less than before. Overwhelming torture that seemed to spread to every muscle, joint, every nerve ending, every cell of my body. I wanted to shriek and cry, but I channelled the pain into a roar instead. As intense as the pain was, it was nothing compared to what I'd suffered through for the previous twenty years. I thought of my dead mother, of every wasted day spent wandering alone, of every friend I'd ever failed to make. I could have quashed the sorrow but it was allowing me to do what I wanted to do, what I _needed_ to do.

The hinges began to groan, and the door lurched. I pushed my whole body against it, pressing one foot against the opposite wall to get better leverage. I was sure my hands and arms and chest were being brutally damaged, but that would fix itself. My body was now able to regenerate itself endlessly, it seemed. I pushed the pain away, focussed on the emotional pain instead—the tsunami that would engulf the lake.

Krada was screaming defiantly the whole time, but was shocked into silence when the door suddenly collapsed into his cell, splintering the floor. A fragment of tile shot off, nicked the side of Krada's face, beside his left eye. Blood ran down his tattoo.

He clasped a hand to his wound, panting, eyes and mouth wide with disbelief and mounting dread.

"Stay away from me!" He held up one arm, pulled up his top with the other, jiggled his legs. His chains clattered. Tattoos like the one on his face were all over his body, down his arms and legs, across his torso. Where there weren't tattoos, there were scars in the same shape. He had even scratched the symbol into the walls and floor around him, so certain that the Fallen were coming for him that he had eschewed a typical tally of days.

"The Exalted's paltry symbols didn't stop me getting through that door," I growled. "They won't stop me ripping your throat out." I looked down at myself. The damage I had suffered was a fraction of what had been inflicted before. I hadn't just blocked out the pain, I had resisted the actual burning.

I stepped towards Krada. "Tell me what happened."

"I will, I will!" He waved his arms in front of himself blindly, palms towards me, to fend me off, then slowly lowered them. "I'll tell you everything."

He sat up, cross-legged. Coughed.

"I wasn't lying, with what I said before. I did know you and yer mammy. Your people were good servants. Very obedient, very . . . accommodating. But you were all unclean." He couldn't keep the loathing out of his voice as he said this, but he trembled slightly, knowing how I might respond. "Some of the Realm officials caught a disease, and the Realm decided that you all had to be eradicated, for the sake of public health." He had dropped his gaze to the floor, only occasionally stealing glances up at me.

"So why do I remember the Fallen coming for us?"

"You remember that?" he asked. "Well, it was the Fallen who finished the job, sure, sure."

That didn't sound true, now. He was seizing an opportunity to avoid blame. "Why would they do that?"

He shrugged, shook his head. "Beats me. They always been vicious cunts like that."

I lunged at him, gripped him by the throat. He turned red. "I remember a hall full of my people. The Fallen broke in and killed everyone, but . . . but they let me and my mother go. Why?"

He shook, shifted his gaze back and forth, fearfully weighing his chances as he struggled to breath.

He tried to say something: "Oo er ine!" I released my grip and let him fall on the floor.

"What was that?"

"I said you were mine!" he rubbed at his throat with one hand, pushed himself up with the other. He looked up at me, snarling through his ragged beard, baring rotting, broken teeth. "The pair of you belonged to me. You were a secret I guarded closely, but not closely enough. When the Purifiers came for you, you ran. Fell in with a Chlethargan community that had sprung up in the south of Caldair. But some of your people, a gang of them, they thought maybe they would be spared if they gave you up. The Fallen . . . didn't like that idea. But the gang went ahead and tried to make the exchange, because they knew you were valuable, because . . . you were mine. Your mother was _mine_ , to do with as I pleased. And so . . . were . . . you."

I was horrified. My world lurched around me. All the misery I'd suffered ever since childhood flared up, like a scabbed wound torn back open. Tears rolled down my face, welled up in my one enlarged eye. I couldn't handle it, didn't want to feel that grief anymore.

So I didn't.

In an instant, I made the decision not to allow those feelings to govern me. I had total control over my emotions. Anything I didn't want to feel, I could push down, ignore.

I hit him, as hard as I could. He spun to one side, his body lifting fully off the ground, and his head smacked into the rear wall of the cell. He landed in a heap, tangled in his chains.

Then I looked down at the disgusting man, emaciated, twitching, and broken. I didn't want to feel pity for him after what he'd done.

So I didn't.

I was still trapped within my mind map, with all the traumas of my life that I had used to mark my way. Until I dealt with Krada I could not willingly forget them, or even put them out of my mind.

I stooped over Krada and, guessing my intent, he scrambled away, sobbing and pleading.

I grabbed him by the hands, clamped them in my fists, raised them up and squeezed. They cracked and crunched. I felt his bones split and break though his abusing fingers. He screamed.

The bones ground together until they were splinters, then powder, until the skin burst and the mulched flesh spurted out and delicious blood poured down my arms. I had released nearly every emotion connected to the pitiful solitary life that had been inflicted on me—all the self pity, remorse, regret, loneliness and despair. I had given up all nostalgia for my lost people, my mother and all my family, real and imagined. This petty need for vengeance was the one thing I clung to, the one thing that sustained me.

I dropped him to the floor and took out my shiv, which I'd had tucked in my waistband. I raised it. Krada, on his knees, bent and weeping, gaped at the darkness around me, aware that something more was coming. I stepped towards him, then saw a figure a few metres away, standing in the shattered doorway, scrutinising the scene. He was tall and thin. He wore layers of tattered brown fabric, and tanned, homemade leather. Unruly dark hair cascaded over his face, around eyes tinted red.

Andreas. He had followed me, or found an alternate route on his own, and had come to check on my conduct

"Cassie hoped your grief, your need for closure, would alter your abilities and allow you to overcome his protections. Such things happen sometimes, a Fallen's state of mind alters their powers."

I froze, poised to strike Krada down.

"We need him alive," Andreas said, regretfully. "You gave your word."

I looked at Krada twitching on the tiles, trying to cradle each mangled limb with the other, covered by protective scars, jumping at every sound. He had lived in fear his whole life, even more isolated than I had been. How could I allow Andreas to end such exquisite justice?

"Give me some time with him first."

Andreas nodded slowly, processing this, then looked back at me. "That wouldn't be long, unfortunately. The Purifiers will likely be here before dawn."

"If they wanted to know his secrets so badly, they'd have them by now. They've had him for decades!"

"This isn't _their_ prison, you moron! This has been here centuries and runs right under the mountain. There's another entrance on the other side, in Dezkary. The Dezkarians didn't even build it, simply put it to use. The Purifiers discovered this place last week, searching for a way through the mountains, ready for an invasion. They've been interrogating the prisoners, then slaughtering them. You were our only chance of recovering Krada so we can discover what he knows."

"He's already told me what happened to my people."

"He knows more than that. He knows about the disease your people contracted. Cassie needs that knowledge, to save other Baneful."

The severity of the situation became clear to me, and so did the enormity of Andreas' manipulations. All this time I had thought that _I_ had found _them_ , used them to get what I wanted. Instead they had found me, knowing my past, my pain, would make me useful to them.

My old people were gone, I couldn't change that. I was one of the Fallen now.

I put the blade away and turned to leave. I stopped at the door, face to face with Andreas.

"His suffering is all that is left of my people. Why should he get to escape what happened when I never can?"

"Because it is what needs to be done. You should have been able to work through your grief by now." Nothing but cold contempt in his voice.

"I have. All I found was rage. I could smash that aside too, but I don't want to. I know we need his secrets, but I also need him to suffer."

Andreas looked aside, cocked his head. His hard eyes flitted towards Krada, then he looked back at me and half smiled.

"I can assure you of that."

"You'll interrogate him?"

"Torture. Those who wish to acquire truth should not barter with euphemisms."

At last I knew what was at the centre of the grief that I had spent my whole life exploring, trying to find my way through to the core of it: an ugly, angry, red smear of cruelty, nothing but rage and hatred. It was all I had left of me, and now I was supposed to let go of even that.

Andreas eyed me—slyly, I thought—taking the measure of my soul. "You could come with us. Help with his interrogation. It's a privilege you deserve."

Yes, perhaps. And perhaps I would find some new purpose. Maybe I would adopt Andreas' purpose, and join his crusade, because then he would own me.

I looked back at him, taking the measure of _his_ soul, and found that to be futile. This test of me, this redirection of my most sinister impulses, I suspected was the true purpose of his whole scheme. Krada was a trinket compared to the treasure of a new recruit, slaved to his intentions.

Wordlessly, I left Krada to Andreas. As I left, I came to another turning. I could turn right and leave the way I had come, back to Caldair, or I could turn left. At that junction I realised that I had not found my way out of my grief at all, I had merely found my way to the centre of it, to the meaningless destructive force at its core. The best way out of the maze, was through it. I marked my passage out of Krada's cell with all a lifetimes worth of fury and resentment, pictured the room crumbling, crushing him alive, perhaps trapping Andreas with him.

I pressed on through the constrictive passages, following the fragrance and caress of the Dezkarian air that whispered in from unknown doors. Somewhere out there was a new life, out on the other side of the mountain, with the fetid depths of the maze far behind.

#  Read more about these characters in the forthcoming novel, 'Heathen with Teeth'.

# Thank you for reading this book. I hope you enjoyed the stories within it. Please consider leaving a review at Smashwords.

Jonathan Jones

#  Connect:

On Facebook: <http://www.facebook.com/heathenwithteeth>

My website: http://www.heathen-with-teeth.weebly.com

