The banqueting rooms — where a visiting Colonel and his staff were being wined and dined that evening — faced the parks to the front of the house; the lake with the stone boat was at the rear.

"Just going to walk round the lake, Sergeant," Cheradenine told the guard who stopped them on the gravel path towards the stone boat. The sergeant nodded, told them to walk quickly; it would soon be dark.

They sneaked onto the boat, found the rifle where Cheradenine had hidden it, under a stone bench on the upper deck.

As he lifted it from the flagstone deck, Elethiomel knocked the gun against the side of the bench.

There was a snapping noise, and the magazine fell off; then there was a noise like a spring, and bullets clicked and clattered over the stones.

"Idiot!" Cheradenine said.

"Shut up!"

"Oh no," Livueta said, bending down and scooping up some of the rounds.

"Let's go back," Darckense whispered. "I'm frightened."

"Don't worry," Cheradenine said, patting her hand. "Come on; look for the bullets."

It seemed to take ages to find them and clean them and press them back into the magazine. Even then, they thought there were probably a few missing. By the time they'd finished and got the magazine slotted back into place, it was almost night.

"It's far too dark," Livueta said. They were all crouched down at the balustrade, looking out over the lake to the house. Elethiomel held the gun.

"No!" he said. "We can still see."

"No we can't, not properly," Cheradenine told him.

"Let's leave it till tomorrow," Livueta said.

"They'll notice we're gone soon," Cheradenine whispered. "We haven't got the time!"

"No!" Elethiomel said, looking out to where the guard walked slowly past the end of the causeway. Livueta looked too; it was the sergeant who'd talked to them.

"You're being an idiot!" Cheradenine said, and put one hand out, taking hold of the gun. Elethiomel pulled away.

"It's mine; leave it!"

"It is not yours!" Cheradenine hissed. "It's ours; it belongs to our family, not yours!" He got both hands on the gun. Elethiomel pulled back again.

"Stop it!" Darckense said, her voice tiny.

"Don't be so…" Livueta started to say.

She looked over the edge of the parapet, to where she thought she'd heard a noise.

"Give it here!"

"Let it go!"

"Please stop; please stop. Let's go back in, please…"

Livueta didn't hear them. She was staring, wide-eyed, dry-mouthed, over the stone parapet. A black-covered man picked up the rifle the guard sergeant had dropped. The guard sear-geant himself lay on the gravel. Something glittered in the black-dressed man's hand, reflecting the lights of the house. The man pushed the slack form of the sergeant off the gravel, into the lake.

Her breath caught in her throat. Livueta ducked down. She flapped her hands at the two boys. "St…" she said. They still struggled.

"St…"

"Mine!"

"Let go!"

"Stop!" she hissed, and struck them both on the head. They both stared at her. "Somebody just killed that sergeant; just out there."

"What?" Both boys looked over the parapet. Elethiomel still held the gun.

Darckense squatted down and started to cry.

"Where?"

"There; that's his body! There in the water!"

"Sure," Elethiomel said in a whispered drawl. "And who…"

The three of them saw one shadowy figure move towards the house, keeping in the shade of the bushes bordering the path. A dozen or so men — just patches of darkness on the gravel — moved along the side of the lake, where there was a narrow strip of grass.

"Terrorists!" Elethiomel said excitedly, as the three all ducked back behind the balustrade, where Darckense wept quietly.

"Tell the house," Livueta said. "Fire the gun."

"Take the silencer off first," Cheradenine said.

Elethiomel struggled with the end of the barrel. "It's stuck!"

"Let me try!" All three tried.

"Fire it anyway," Cheradenine said.

"Yeah!" Elethiomel whispered. He shook the gun, hefted it. "Yeah!" he said. He knelt, put the gun on the stone bulwark, sighted.

"Be careful," Livueta said.

Elethiomel aimed at the dark men, crossing the path towards the house. He pulled the trigger.

The gun seemed to explode. The whole deck of the stone boat lit up. The noise was tremendous; Elethiomel was thrown back, gun still firing, blasting tracer into the night sky. He crashed into the bench. Darckense shrieked at the top of her lungs. She leapt up; firing sounded from near the house.

"Darkle; get down!" Livueta screamed. Lines of light flickered and cracked above the stone boat.

Darckense stood screaming, then started to run for the stairs. Elethiomel shook his head, looked up as the girl ran past him. Livueta grabbed at her and missed. Cheradenine tried to tackle her.

The lines of light lowered, detonating chips of rock off the stones all around them in tiny clouds of dust, at the same time as Darckense, still screaming, stumbled to the stairs.

The bullet entered Darckense through the hip: the other three heard — quite distinctly — the noise that it made, above the gunfire and the girl's scream.

He was hit too, though he didn't know by what at the time.

The attack on the house was beaten off. Darckense lived. She almost died, from loss of blood, and shock; but she lived. The best surgeons in the land fought to rebuild her pelvis, shattered into a dozen major pieces and a hundred splinters by the impact of the round.

Bits of bone had travelled her body; they found fragments in her legs, in one arm, in her internal organs, even a piece in her chin. The army surgeons were fairly used to dealing with that sort of injury, and they had the time (because the war hadn't yet started then) and the incentive (for her father was a very important man) to put her back together as best they could. Still, she would walk awkwardly until she stopped growing, at least.

One of the bone shards travelled further than her own body; it entered his. Just above the heart.

The army surgeons said it would be too dangerous to operate. In time, they said, his body would reject the fragment of bone.

But it never did.

He started to crawl round the pool again.

Caldera! That was the word, the name.

(Such signals were important, and he'd found the one he'd been looking for.)

Victory, he said to himself, as he hauled himself round, scattering a last few of the bird-droppings out of his way, and apologising to the insects. Everything was going to be just fine, he decided. He knew that, now, and knew that in the end you always won, and that even when you lost, you never knew, and there was only one fight, and he was at the centre of the whole ridiculous thing any way, and Caldera was the word, and Zakalwe was the word, and Staberinde was the word, and -

They came for him; they came down with a big beautiful ship, and they took him up and away and they made him all better again…

"They never learn," the sky sighed, quite distinctly.

"Fuck you," he said.

It was years later that Cheradenine — returned from the military academy and looking for Darckense, and sent in that direction by a monosyllabic gardener — walked up the soft carpet of leaves to the door of the little summerhouse.

He heard a scream from inside. Darckense.

He dashed up the steps, drawing his pistol, and kicked the door open.

Darckense's startled face twisted over her shoulder, regarding him. Her hands were still clasped round Elethiomel's neck. Elethiomel sat, trousers round his ankles, hands on Darckense's naked hips under her bunched-up dress, and looked calmly at him.

Elethiomel was sitting on the little chair that Livueta had made in her carpentry class, long ago.

"Hi there, old chap," he said to the young man holding the pistol.