The remaining machine skittered towards Benzamir across a field of broken chairs. He rolled and ran. He needed clear stone floor to give him grip and count against the points of the unmaker’s legs. A blinding arc of knives missed him by a fraction, air singing in his ears. The machine slid, collided with the wall and immediately started for him again.

He scooped up a hide shield and slammed it into the unmaker’s body, knocking it off course and off balance. It ripped the shield from his hand; blades stabbed their way through, trying to reach him.

He wasn’t there. He was underneath it, hitting joints and panels with his hands and feet, putting stress and strain on the metalwork, trying to hit something vital.

It wanted him badly. The intent to kill him was only an artefact of its programming, but it felt real enough. Feet came off the ground in a wave, one after the other trying to spear him, and again Benzamir had gone.

An undefended eye-stalk. He took it in both hands and spun his body. The stalk came off, and he kicked to push himself clear. The unmaker tumbled away and fell in a tangle of long sharp limbs.

‘Akisi! The throne!’ was all he had time to say before it was up and on him.

After that there was no time to think. He let his mind slip from conscious action. If there was a stab, a feint, a sweep, he was ready with an immediate counter-attack. He blocked, leaped, spun, turned, staying only and ever only just far enough ahead of it. In a trance, beyond the effort of concentration, he danced before the unmaker’s onslaught.

But it would have to end soon. He was tiring, and it was forcing him back. Once he was against a wall he’d be supremely vulnerable. It would pin him against a pillar and keep at him until his own protection was overloaded. He would die there.

Akisi had reached the throne, leaving a trail of bloody footprints through the shards of broken glass. ‘Now what?’ he shouted.

Time was at an end: it snapped back with a rush of noise and colour. Benzamir ducked. Chips of stone pinged across his back as a claw screeched across the wall, leaving a white gouge.

‘Look up,’ said Benzamir.

The sky above the smashed ceiling went abruptly dark, and a cloud of lights descended through the glassless latticework, spiralling down towards the dais. They resolved into shiny bubbles of metal, each the size of a melon, with dents and protuberances pocking their surface.

They streamed towards Benzamir, who arched his back to avoid one last impaling thrust. Then the unmaker turned to swing wildly at the first sphere. The leg joint flashed, metal cracked and the articulated limb went sliding across the floor, still spinning.

A cluster of spheres dived between Benzamir and the machine, driving it away, carving its legs from its body in bright sparks. It stumbled, fell, turned on its back, still lashing out but unable to move. It found itself in the centre of a gyre. Its body glowed and sputtered, craters torn explosively from its shell. Then it curled up in a ball and stopped moving.

The spheres descended. They sliced off the last three legs and settled on its still form. When they rose again, the thing had been dissected, its innards laid bare.

Benzamir started to run over, realized that his knee had been forced at some point, and limped to compensate. He bent down to inspect the unmaker’s guts: the power source, the liquid motors and the insulated block of electronics, preserved like flies in amber. He was after none of those. Finally he saw it, a black resin wafer: the transponder with its minute but vital memory. He pulled it out, cables trailing around it like cobwebs. He held it up, checked the wafer was still in one piece, then buried it in the folds of his clothes.

Akisi was still standing next to the throne, blood oozing out of his feet and mingling with that of the imperial guard. Benzamir trotted up to meet him, the spheres forming an ever-moving cloud behind him.

‘Solomon Akisi, the court is adjourned,’ he said in Swahili. One of the spheres glided forward. ‘Lift up your arms.’

Trembling, Akisi obeyed. The centre link of his chains glowed and melted, and he was able to move his hands apart. The chain joining his feet went the same way.

Benzamir looked at the man’s wide-eyed stare and slack jaw, and felt something close to pity. ‘I don’t know if this is punishment enough. As far as I’m concerned, you’re free to go.’

‘Who are you?’ Akisi breathed. ‘Are you a User?’

‘No, I’m a magician. Now, I’ve other, more worthy people to save.’ Benzamir turned away towards the splintered remains of the door at the corner of the hall. ‘Come, my pretties.’

The spheres strung out behind him like pearls, like the last echoing cry of Akisi: ‘Who are you? Where are you from?’

Benzamir had other things on his mind. ‘Where are they?’ he asked, and the voice in his head replied:

‘They have temporarily evaded the unmaker and are by the fountain you previously marked for rendezvous. They still have the emperor with them, but I estimate that their discovery will be in a matter of moments.’

‘Guide me.’

Schematics fell into place over his vision. Arrows and distances, hints of rooms beyond and a trail of dead people carved into the fabric of the palace by the passing of the unmaker.

Finally there was an outside door, half of it hanging on one hinge, the other half embedded in some soldier’s chest as he’d tried to hold the line.

Benzamir was in the gardens, getting a live feed from above. He glanced up and knew what it had to look like: there was, inexplicably, another building over the citadel, a flying building with stubby swept-back wings and a long neck like a goose. But it was his beautiful spaceship, his Ariadne, who had brought him here and loved him like a sister.

Her lasers were sufficient to contend with the rocket fire that rose from the rooftops. Puffs of smoke and flame surrounded her in a corona.

‘Where is the damn thing?’

‘You’re hurt,’ she said.

‘I’ll heal. Now, can you see it?’

‘No. It might have re-entered the palace.’

‘Might? Do an active scan. My cover is well and truly blown, anyway.’ He turned a corner and came face to face with the wide end of a handheld rocket launcher. The man behind it tensed, his finger twitching on the clockwork trigger.

Benzamir’s followers arrived behind him, bobbing and weaving through the air as they surfed the bend.

The soldier fired. In the time it took the gun’s mechanism to release the flywheel which spun the iron which made the sparks which lit the priming charge which ignited the propellant, Benzamir had grabbed the barrel and pointed it at a first-floor window.

The unmaker burst from the window in an explosion of wood and coloured glass, knives swinging. It met the rocket head-on and was instantly swallowed by a dirty fireball. It fell straight down behind a buttress, tangled and streaming smoke.

‘Good shot,’ said Benzamir, and punched his stiffened fingers into the man’s diaphragm. He fell open-mouthed, and the remaining imperial guard turned to him as one.

A moment before, they had been aiming their weapons inward. Wahir had been clutching at Said. Said still had the emperor in his hands. Alessandra had been shouting at the guards to get back. Elenya had a knife at the emperor’s throat, and the monk Va was pleading with her to put it down.

Now everyone fell silent as the unmaker rose unsteadily from behind the wall. They looked at Benzamir and his floating spheres, then at the smouldering machine with its blood-streaked blades. The only officer left standing, a young man who had seen more that day, that hour, than in all his brief lifetime, spoke up.

‘I cannot trust you. You must know that.’

‘You’re both brave and wise,’ said Benzamir, ‘but I’d rather you told your men to lower their weapons. I need my friends alive.’