Stars were dusting the mirror lagoons. Frogs were rasping. Mosquitoes were sewing the air with needle flight. This was the last night of his freedom. Carnelian was filled with a desperate longing, but Osidian was a tower invulnerable to assault.

'What're you thinking?' Carnelian asked.

The tower moved. 'Of many things.'

'Apotheosis?'

'Not just of that.'

'Would you have preferred to be now in the Labyrinth?'

The tower loomed close. Carnelian felt Osidian's arms encircling him, drawing him close. He rested his head in the angle between Osidian's neck and shoulder. Their clothes were masking the passion in their skins.

T would possess you,' Carnelian whispered.

'You do,' breathed Osidian on his neck.

They tightened the circles of their arms as if they wished to merge their flesh.

'Your bones are my bones,' breathed Carnelian.

'Your skin my skin,' said Osidian.

'My heart is yours.'

'My blood runs in your veins.'

At that moment they felt the moonlight falling round them. Carnelian lifted his head and looked into Osidian's dark eyes and was consumed by a fierce, terrible joy. He kissed Osidian as if he sought to swallow all the breath from his lungs. He disengaged. 'Shall we swim?'

'Like fish,' said Osidian and laughed.

They broke apart, tore their clothes off. Carnelian was free first. He raced off down the moon path towards the water. He could hear Osidian's footfalls hammering after him. Lily pads clustered at the shore like boats. Carnelian did not check his speed. He ran across the pads, felt them buckling, ran faster, lost balance, two more steps and then he was rifling through the air. He saw himself mirrored in the surface, smashed it and went under. The water was as warm as blood.

Carnelian came up first into the wafting warm perfume of the air. He turned to see Osidian rising from the pool like a spirit forming from the foam.

He heard something or sensed some movement. He tried to pierce the shadows under the trees with his eyes. Black shapes, like men. He stiffened. It was like the night they had wounded his father. He had half turned his head to give Osidian warning, when the air was ruffled by footfalls.

'What…?' Osidian said near him.

They crept into the moonlight. Swarthy stunted men, eyes round as if they were seeing demons. They lifted cudgels as they closed their crescent round them.

The Twins,' cried Osidian as he dashed his white body into them.

Carnelian groaned as he watched them blur his brightness with their squat bodies. Their cudgels raised and began to fall like hammers. It was the cries of pain from Osidian that freed Carnelian. He crashed forward using his fists like clubs. Each blow hurt his hands but he would not stop. Their attackers pulled back exposing Osidian. He was on one knee staring at his hand.

Carnelian moved towards him, turning round and round as he went, seeing their attackers closing, their cudgels lifting. He reached out behind him. His fingers found Osidian's shoulder. 'Get up,' he said.

Osidian did not move.

Carnelian whisked round and grabbed him. 'Get up!' he cried, yanking Osidian to his feet. He put his back to Osidian's. He glared at the little men. He felt the stickiness in his hand. He brought it to his mouth, tasted it. 'Blood…' He felt the rage surge in him. Osidian's blood.

After that he could see nothing. He was clawing through their flesh. He was smashing his head into their faces. Their rancid smell was smearing on his skin with their blood. Their grappling-hook hands dug into him.

Blows fell on his back, his arms. They were hanging off him. He swung, dislodging some. He was weakening. They were slowing him with their weight, with pain. A wall crashed into his head and their cries thinned to blackness.

A knife was stabbing into Carnelian's head, over and over again. His body was a piece of meat. He tried to move his hand up to his head but it would not budge. His eyelids felt as thick as his tongue as he opened them. He saw a glare that spasmed with each throbbing in his head. He screwed his eyes closed, breathing carefully till the pain lost its ragged edge.

A flapping like birds. He carefully reopened his eyes. Shape-changing light patches seared. He swivelled his head to angle the hammering and his sight into a dark corner. He found he was able to open his eyes wider. The shadows found their hard edges, straightened, became lines and curves.

When he tried to move his body, waves of nausea surged up from his stomach. He tried to pant away the need to vomit. His ears were hearing a linking counterpoint of lifting rising Vulgate in different voices. He turned his head gingerly to look at the light shapes. Bones of light, twisting. Water, undulating morning in its dimples far off, down a tunnel through ribbing. Wooden ribs. A sequence of them seeming to rock the water in their cradle. The ribs held something long and sleek and tooth-yellow, like a huge discarded arm. He focused his eyes on its skin. A curving surface of linked ivory shards. Bones. It was a bone boat leaning towards him, her prow post like a tree over their heads, her bow swelling off in the wooden cradle of ribs.

Men were growling Vulgate. Carnelian recalled the attack. Their blows were still playing his skull like a drum. He walked his eyes back from the water, a rib at a time. He ground his head round carefully as if he were afraid to dislodge the ache balancing on top. He saw Osidian, the marble of his face ruptured red near his eye. His lip as livid and bloated as an earthworm, twitching. Bruises like ink infusing alabaster. The eyes opened and they saw each other. Carnelian saw Osidian rising to the surface, shared his pain, bewilderment, watched the firming brightness of realization in his eye. Osidian opened his mouth as if to speak, but obviously became aware of the men talking behind him and narrowed his eyes as he listened.

'Hey…' he groaned.

Carnelian tensed as he heard the conversation stop.

'Hey, you, come here,' Osidian said in an imperious tone that made Carnelian scrunch up wanting to close Osidian's mouth, that made the pain twist its blade in his head.

'Shut up,' said a voice.

'Come here’ said Osidian, his swollen lips slurring his voice.

Carnelian could hear them getting up. He fought the ropes but they only burned his wrists. The rib he leaned against shuddered under someone's weight, then a foot came down beside him. He looked up the dark leg to the leather skirt. He could not see any more of the man but could certainly smell him. The man crouched. His face was like raw meat. Carnelian found the tiny eyes, the grey stumped teeth. He recoiled from the stench of the man's breath, from the animal intensity of the eyes looking at his unmasked face.

'How dare you look at me?' Osidian cried in outrage.

'How will you stop me looking, Master?' the man said.

His words sprayed saliva onto Carnelian's cheek. The rib shuddered again and as it released another man jumped down. Both men stood back. They were monstrously alike. Carnelian saw that the new one refused to look at him and was trembling.