The flight of the five pairs became erratic. They spasmed through the sky, broke formation.

thing coming, yelled one, and there was an answering welter of confused and fearful messages.

The dextriers fought to regain control of their flight.

In a simultaneous burst of wings, five dark, cryptic shapes launched themselves from some shadowed niche in the tight-packed confusion of Riverskin’s roofs. The snapping wafts of enormous wings sounded through several dimensions, up through the tepid air to where the handlinger pairs zigzagged in confusion.

The dog-sinistral caught a glimpse of great shadowy wings ploughing the air beneath it. It let out a mental keen of fright, and felt the Rescue-dextrier pitch nauseously beneath it. The sinistral fought to regain control of itself.

sinistrals together, it shouted, and then demanded of the dextrier that it go up, up.

The dextriers banked together, slid through the air to fall in beside each other. They drew strength from each other, reining in with hard discipline. Quite suddenly, they were a line like a military division, five blindfolded dextriers facing slightly down, their mouths puckered ready to spitsear. Their sinistrals scanned the skies avidly in their mirror helms. Their faces were pointing up to the stars. Their mirrors were angled down: they had a vision of the city’s dark vista, a crazily yawing aggregation of tiles and alleyways and domed glass.

They watched as the slake-moths drew closer at breathtaking speed.

how smell us? queried one sinistral nervously. They were blocking their mindpores as best they could. They were not expecting to be ambushed. How had they lost the initiative?

But as the slake-moths lurched up towards them, the sinistrals saw that they were not discovered.

The largest moth, at the front of the chaotic wedge of wings, was shrouded with a flickering encumbrance. They saw that the slake-moth’s fearful weaponry, its jagged tentacles and bone-serrated limbs, were flashing and cutting. Its massive teeth were gnashing at the air.

It seemed as if it fought a wraith. Its enemy wavered in and out of conventional space, its form as evanescent as smoke, solidifying and disappearing like a shadow. It was like some vast arachnid nightmare that pranced through close-woven realities and slashed at the slake-moth with cruel chitin lancets.

Weaver! gushed one of the sinistrals, and they bade their dextriers creep back slowly from the acrobatic melee.

The other moths spun around their sibling, trying to aid it. They took it in turns to sweep in, according to some impenetrable code. As the Weaver manifested they would attack it, cutting through its armour, releasing gouts of ichor before it was gone. Despite its wounds, the Weaver was ripping great clots of tissue and some crude tarry blood from the frantic slake-moth.

The moth and the spider attacked each other in an extraordinary blur of violent motion, each thrust and parry too fast to see.

As they rose, the moths broke the dream-cover over the city. They reached the level of the sky where those waves of mentality had confused the handlingers.

It was obvious that the moths could feel them too. Their tight-knit formation broke in momentary confusion. The smallest of the moths, with a twisted body and stunted wings, peeled away from the mass and unrolled a monstrous tongue.

The enormous tongue quivered and flickered back into the dripping maw.

With a lunatic erratic flight the smallest moth swivelled in the air, circling the savagery of the Weaver and its prey, hesitated in midair, then plummeted down and east, towards Griss Twist.

The desertion of the litter runt confused the slake-moths. They separated in the sky, twirling their heads around them, their antennae flickering wildly.

The spellbound sinistrals moved back in alarm.

now! said one. confused and busy, we attack with Weaver!

They dithered helplessly.

ready for spitsear, the dog-handlinger told Rescue-handlinger.

As the moths peeled away from each other, flying further and further around the tussling pair in the centre, they spun in the air. The sinistrals screamed at each other.

attack! screamed one, the sinistral parasitic on the thin clerk, a frenzy of fear audible in its voice, attack!

The old human woman bolted suddenly forward through the air, as the fearful sinistral goaded its dextrier on to a sudden burst of speed. Just as one of the moths turned and froze, facing the oncoming pair of handlingers and their hosts.

At that moment the other two moths swept in together, one plunging a massive bone lance into the Weaver’s distended abdomen. As the great spider reared back, the other moth lassooed its neck with a coil of segmented tentacle. The Weaver disappeared out of the night into another plane, but the tentacle snared it, dragged it half back out of a fold in space, tightened around its neck.

The Weaver jacked and fought to free itself, but the sinistrals hardly saw it. The third moth was careering towards them.

The dextriers saw nothing, but they felt the terrified psychic wailing of the sinistrals who wobbled to try to keep the approaching moth visible in their mirrors.

spitsear! commanded the clerk-handlinger to his dextrier. now!

The host body, the old woman, opened her mouth and jutted out a rolled-up tongue. She inhaled sharply and spat as hard as she could. A great gush of pyrotic gas rolled out of her tongue and combusted spectacularly across the night sky. A massive rolling cloud of flame unfurled itself at the slake-moth.

The aim was true, but the sinistral had mistimed in its fear. The dextrier spitseared too early. The fire unfolded in an oily wash, dissipating before it touched the moth’s flesh. When the burst had evaporated, the moth was gone.

In a panic, the sinistrals began to command their dextriers to swivel in the air, to find the creature, wait wait! screamed the dog-handlinger, but its warning was quite unheeded. The handlingers were bobbing in the sky as randomly as rubbish in the sea, facing all directions, gazing frantically into their mirrors.

there, screeched the young-woman sinistral, catching sight of the moth as it pitched remorselessly as an anchor towards the city. The other handlingers turned in the sky to see through their mirrors, and with a chorus of screams found themselves face to face with another moth.

It had flown over them while they sought its sibling, so that when they turned it was before their eyes, clearly visible with its wings outstretched, just beyond their mirrors.

The young man-sinistral managed to close its host’s eyes and command its dextrier to turn, spitsearing. The panicking dextrier, in the host of the young child, tried to obey, and sent flaming gobbets of gas spinning in a tight spiral, spattering the pair of handlingers beside it in the air.

The Remade-dextrier and its khepri-sinistral screamed sonically and psychically as they and their hosts ignited. They plummeted from the sky, immolating in agony, screaming until they died halfway down, their blood boiling and their bones cracking from the intense heat before they hit the waters of the Tar. They disappeared under the dirty water with a burst of steam.

The woman-sinistral was hovering in thrall, its borrowed eyes glazed by the storm of patterns on the slake-moth’s wings. The sudden hypnotized efflorescence of the sinistral’s dreams slid through the channel to its dextrier steed. The vodyanoi-handlinger winced at the bizarre cacophony of a mind unfolding. It realized what had happened. It moaned in terror with its host’s mouth, and fumbled with the straps attaching the sinistral and host to its back. The dextrier shut its vodyanoi eyes tight, even under the blindfold.