‘I have my orders. You, whatever you are, will not change them.’ He raised his arm to execute his final order.

The unmaker started its charge, and Benzamir lashed out his hand, finger extended. There were no preliminaries. A beam of blue-white light lanced down from the ship in the sky, cracked the air and carved the thing in two. It came tumbling on in its separate halves and fell in ruin at the officer’s feet.

‘Sir,’ said Benzamir, ‘if you want to save the empire, stand down.’ He sent his remotes to encircle the group. Fifteen men, some aiming at him, some at the spinning spheres, some at his friends. Despite all his toys, it was almost certain that it would end badly.

‘I will not. If you have any authority over those people, you will tell them to release His Imperial Majesty at once.’ Sweat was pouring off the officer’s face, and every line of his face was taut.

‘Authority, no. Influence, perhaps. But I can’t persuade the princess to put down her knife if she believes she’ll die in the next instant. It’s all up to you.’

While they thought round in circles, matters were taken out of their hands.

Va made a grab for Elenya’s blade, covered it with his hand so that even if she drew it back and across, she would not cut the emperor’s exposed neck. The sudden movement made one guard reflexively squeeze his trigger, and a bladed disc sang into the air.

Benzamir presumed it would come to this. It was quick, but not entirely painless. Almost before they knew it, the guards were twitching, stunned, unable to stand, speak, grip. One man stayed upright long enough to fire his magazine of bolts at Benzamir before succumbing to the fat sparks of lightning that crackled between the spheres.

And the same blue fire that brought them down enveloped the trio of emperor, princess and monk. Light danced along blade and jewellery. The emperor shuddered and shook, Va dropped, his teeth clenched and his eyes bulging. And even if she’d wanted it to, Elenya’s arm wouldn’t move, and in a sickening twist of recognition Benzamir realized that if he’d made his choices differently, Ibn Alam would still be alive.

The remotes spun away to defend their master from attacks from above. Benzamir ran forward, vaulted the fallen guards, landed next to the emperor. He hurriedly checked him, but he appeared unharmed.

As the emperor rolled aside, Benzamir saw that the front of Elenya’s dress was stained black with spreading blood.

‘Ariadne, get us up.’

Said looked out from between his fingers, then he shook Wahir, who had buried his head behind the man’s shoulder.

‘Master?’

‘Not now, Said.’

Benzamir tore Elenya’s dress and explored the wound. The cut was beneath her ribs, the material surrounding it soaked. He pressed on the wound with the flat of his hand, and her blood welled in the hollow and then seeped through his fingers.

Her skin was turning translucent. He didn’t have long. He couldn’t bring her back from the dead.

Alessandra, face and hands cut, eye swollen, cheek bruised, hair scorched, said: ‘What can I do?’

A lift disc hovered next to him, and presented him with yet another dilemma: there was not enough room for Ariadne to land, and not enough room on the disc for them all at once.

And if he moved his hand, she’d bleed to death.

‘Get on that. Drag the monk up with you. Hang on for all you’re worth, and when you get up there, don’t touch anything.’

She nodded once, pulled Wahir up and sent him on with the flat of her hand against his backside. Together, she and Said hauled Va on, and held his inert form there as the disc rose. As it did, so again did the rockets. Ariadne flicked them out of existence, and even then Benzamir curled his body around Elenya’s to protect her from falling shrapnel. At least, that was what he told himself.

The lift disc was swallowed whole by the ship, the door irising shut behind it. A moment later it was on its way back down.

People were stirring.

‘Your Imperial Highness?’ he said to the spasming emperor. ‘My humble and inadequate apologies, but we must go.’

He lifted Elenya up and stepped onto the disc. The wind tore at him. It was never intended to go this far, this fast. The remotes scattered as he burst through them, then caught them up in his wake. The few rockets that trailed up after him were intercepted in mid-flight.

The door spun open. Mindless of the drop beneath him, he jumped to the floor. The remotes spun back to their cage, the door closed, the ship started to move.

Va lay on the deck, unconscious. The others looked at Benzamir, and he at them. He had so much to say, but now wasn’t the time.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. His voice had gone quiet and controlled, in contrast to the turmoil he felt inside. But they stood aside instantly, and he carried Elenya from the cargo bay and towards the ship’s surgeon.

‘You cannot account for every twist of fate, Benzamir,’ said Ariadne. ‘Not everything is your fault.’

He turned sideways through the door and laid her on the surgeon’s table. Immediately arms with needles and scissors sprang out and started pricking and snipping. A scanner grazed her body, searching both for the projectile and the damage it had caused.

Benzamir stared at his hands, at the dark spots of blood on his tunic. He felt light-headed, and he sat down on the floor, his back to the coldness of the table plinth.

‘Not everything, no,’ he whispered.

He heard the pneumatic hiss of arterial shunts locking into place, the sucking of vacuum tubes clearing the wound.

‘Ari? I . . .’ He didn’t know what else to say. Something was sticking in his side, and when he touched it, he found the unmaker’s transponder. He held it carelessly between two fingers, watching the light slant through it and refract into rainbows.

Later he would use it to find his enemies, and wonder at the cost of such knowledge.

CHAPTER 36

THE SURFACE HE was lying on was hard and cold, yet obviously not the frozen ground of a Siberian winter. His head thrummed with a low bass note unutterable by human voice.

Then Va remembered. He dragged in a gasp of breath. Something scuttled away from him, and all he could see for a moment was a great steel spider, daggers for feet, as it spun and stabbed its way through the Kenyan emperor’s guards.

He saw a dull black crab-thing wave its antennae and hurry away through a hole in the distant wall.

‘Am I in Hell?’ The witch had killed him with sorcery, and this place was no heaven: full of shadow, evil and unnatural shapes, machines for company. He’d fallen and failed. The past five years of austere holiness hadn’t been enough to counter a lifetime’s worth of slaughter and sin.

He started to cry.

The voice in his head told him not to. It told him that he had to be strong, not to fear, that no one or nothing would hurt him.

Only when the voice switched to Old Russian did he pay it any attention.

‘Brother. Stand up.’

It sounded like the voice of God.

‘Lord?’ He hurried to his feet.

‘Listen to me, Va. You are not dead, and this is not the afterlife. Neither am I your god. My name is Ariadne, and I want to help you.’

Va darted his head this way and that, looking for the source of the voice. He realized that it came from above him.

‘Where are you? Why can’t I see you?’

‘You can see me. I am the room you are in, and every other place here. The walls are my bones.’

‘Show yourself. I can’t tell where you are.’ Va twirled around. ‘Where am I?’

‘This will be difficult for you, Brother Va. You are less adaptable than the others. Neither have you had time to become accustomed to acts of casual magic. One thing I cannot allow you to do is harm me. I will defend myself against you. Whatever your reaction, you must not attempt violence.’