Geis was breathing hard and looked flushed. He had been wearing trous and a slim-fitting tunic-top over a white shirt; Sharrow had torn the shirt into strips to tie him and Molgarin/ Chrolleser up with. She hadn’t bothered to put his tunic-top back on and he looked pathetic and vulnerable, stripped to the waist. She frowned at his midriff.

“Geis,” she said. “Is that the start of a paunch?”

“Sharrow!” Geis shouted, sucking his belly in. “Stop this nonsense! Let me go!”

“Maybe,” she said. “Once you’ve given me the key to the Lazy Gun.”

“I don’t have the key,” he said. “I do have clinics… which could perhaps help rid you of that awful thing in your skull which-”

“You don’t have the key,” Sharrow said, “but you do have clinics where they might be able to crack the lock’s genetic code and manufacture a key, yes, Geis?” she said, smiling. “Except you’re not supposed to know what sort of key is on the lock. Though, actually you might; old Molgarin here might have told you it was a gene-lock. There was no need to cover up there, but you did.” She shook her head. “You’re slipping badly, Geis.” She looked disapproving. “I have to say I think you’re letting the whole family down here.”

“Sharrow-” Geis said evenly.

“Oh, Geis, just admit it. You’ve been following in old Gorko’s footsteps, collecting all the things he tried to collect, trying to complete his work and somehow-I don’t know what your absurd scheme actually is-at least weaken the World Court, even if you can’t actually destroy it.” She looked at the bank of screens which filled one alcoved wall of the chamber. “Oh; how is our latest war going?” she asked. “Does it fit in with your plans, or not?”

“Sharrow,” Geis said again, struggling to control his voice. “I know you’ve been through a tough time recently-”

(She grimaced and shook her head and made a well-not-really motion with one hand.)

“- but you really are being quite thoroughly paranoid!”

“What a wonderful idea it must have seerned,” she said, ignoring him and crossing her arms as she sat up on the big stone table. “Doing that old Mind Bomb trick again. You know; the one old Ethce Lebmellin did for you, where one signal turns everybody’s guns off. But this time doing it with an entire fortress, and it meant your boys-well, not your boys, because you couldn’t risk your own people being caught, but the people you could use who nobody knew were yours; the Sad Brothers-they could come in like knights of old; with bandamyions! And swords! And flowing capes!”

She clapped her hands. “You’d get it all, wouldn’t you, Geis? Miz dead; taunted and played with for months using all that nonsense about the sial races in Tile so everybody thought he was being paranoid, and then finally killing him off with the paranoia made real! My, you must have been creaming your pants when you thought that one up. And you’d have all the things we looked for, all the things you wanted but couldn’t be seen to go for yourself, and you set up this dummy-” she nodded at Molgarin/Chrolleser, “- to be fall-guy, so you could blame it all on him. No doubt you told him he’d get away, but would he? Would he always be out there so you had something to keep me safe from, or were you going to run him through with your mighty broadsword, just for me?”

Geis stared at her, appalled.

“And I was supposed to feel so fucking grateful, wasn’t I, Geis?-” she said, shaking her head. “I was meant to fall into your arms. Or am I flattering myself?” She looked puzzled. “Was that part of the deal or not?”

“I loved you, Sharrow,” Geis said, sounding more sad than anything else. “I still love you. Just let me out of this and I’ll prove it all. I do love you, and I do love this family and our race-Oh, smile your cynical smile if you want, Sharrow, but I mean it. Everything I’ve had to do has been done for love.”

Feril turned to her then and said, “I think somebody is coming.” It nodded at the low door set underneath the two giant diamond leaf ikons.

Sharrow turned to face the door and pointed the gun at it. She heard the chink-chink noise of a chain and guessed who it might be.

The door opened and Breyguhn entered. She was dressed as Sharrow remembered, in a plain, grey shift, though the gown was dirtier than it had been. Her eyes looked wild; when she gazed at Sharrow, then at the android, then at Ceis, it was with a strange blankness. She carried a pile of books awkwardly in her arms. Her right hand was still joined to the track in the wall via a manacle and chain, but it was steel now rather than iron.

Sharrow let her gun down. “Hello again,” she said. “Feril; this is my half-sister, Breyguhn.”

Feril turned and bowed slightly.

Breyguhn dropped the books at the same moment, revealing a pistol. She fired it at Sharrow’s head as Geis half-stood and whirled round, whacking the back legs of the chair he was tied to into the legs of the android.

Sharrow felt something smack into the side of her head and spin her round. She slumped against the table, trying to bring the laser up to bear on Breyguhn, then fell to the flagstones, the gun bouncing out of her limp fingers.

She lay there. Her head was sore. As though through a fine mist she saw Feril staggering from the blow Geis had dealt it with the chair. Breyguhn fired at the android; Feril’s right leg blew off at the thigh. The android hopped round on one leg, trying to stay upright. Another shot cracked across its chest, raising sparks. It kept on hopping. It still held the laser rifle but it didn’t seem to want to use it. She tried to shout at it to shoot all the dirty bastards, but her mouth wouldn’t move. Feril kept on hopping and hopping, banging into the stone table and stumbling, the rifle still clutched in its hand.

Then Geis shouted something, and fell over on the floor still tied to the chair. Breyguhn came over and kept the gun on the hopping android while she pulled at the strips of shirt restraining Geis.

As soon as he was released Geis stood up, pulled the bluntbladed sword from its scabbard on the table, flicked one of its jewels so that its blade edges flickered with pink fire, and swung it at the hopping android.

It wasn’t a powerful stroke, but it separated Feril’s head from its trunk as though its neck had been made of paper. Feril had raised one arm over its head while trying to balance, and that was sliced off in the same blow. The head fell to the floor and rolled under the table; the arm fell onto it. The android’s headless body tottered on its single leg for a second. Geis raised the sword over his head and brought it scything down. Feril’s body parted down the middle and fell apart in halves, like something from a cartoon.

Sharrow made a last attempt to raise her hand, then gave up. She closed her eyes.

Are you all right?… Hello? I said, Are you all right?

… You… You again… Now what?

This isn’t really going as we hoped, is it?

…No.

Well?

Fate… Who cares?

Nobody, if you don’t. It’s your life.

… Exactly. Oh, I’m tired. Fuck it, just let me die.

No, I don’t really feel we’ve destroyed enough yet. One of us has to. We are each other, after all. We are the last of the eight.

Oh, fuck, yes, sure… We’ll see what we can do…

That’s right. Now wake up.

I don’t want to wake up.

I said, Wake up.

No, won’t.

Wake up!

No, wo-

Now!

No.

N

People were arguing. Her head hurt and people were arguing. She hated it when people argued. She screamed at them, told them to shut up; it was bad enough the Gun wouldn’t give her any peace. Screaming just made her head hurt worse. They didn’t seem to hear, anyway.

“You have to kill her.”

“No! There’s no need; I almost had her convinced before you came in.”

“Oh, it’s my fault now, is it? I save your skin and-”