I rolled onto my belly and hauled myself up to peer over the peak of the roof.

  A woman with glossy black hair and eyebrows like needles had emerged, leaning to rest her elbows on the railing of the balcony. I think she had been trying to take a break from Siat Vort, but only succeeded in enticing him out after her.

  Tal retched at the sight of him, and I must say I felt the same. It was as if he knew of his reputation as a lech, and embraced it, even exaggerated it. He wore a robe of brilliant violet, loose and wide open at the front, giving us too good a look at him. He had a huge lump of a belly, and his chest sagged greatly, so that he looked a foul mimicry of a pregnant woman. His black hair was abandoning his forehead at a quick rate, and to compromise, he had let it grow long at the back, and oiled it to a sheen, so that it hung behind his head like an oiled sheet.

  He came at the woman from behind, encircling her waist with flabby arms. His too-long tongue painted her neck. She turned her head away from him, clearly not in the mood to play the role she had been taught, but this only made Vort lust over her more.

  “How can she stand him?” said Tal.

  “How could she ever leave?” I said.

  Tal growled.

  “All that power, and this is how he chooses to use it, preying on a girl who has barely blooded her sheets.”

  “At least it’s understandable, in comparison to why he lets himself look like that.”

  “They can’t use the Glimmer on themselves in any way,” said Tal. “It’s like a child eating its own flesh to grow. Or, so says Chuckles.”

  And what Chuckles says, goes.

  We continued to watch the vvytch molest the poor girl. She squirmed in his embrace, and he cackled and pulled her deeper into the pudgy swamp of his body.

  “Come on lover boy, turn,” said Tal. “Come on. Jussssssst a bit.”

  “Just be patient,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t shoot through her, don’t worry,” said Tal.

  “I would think not. She’s innocent. A victim in his madness.”

  “No,” said Tal. “Because I can’t guarantee a kill shot through a whole other person, even though she’s just a wisp of a thing.”

  I frowned. But I would come to learn that the wytch-killers would accept an awful lot of loss of life so long as it ultimately included the one they wanted.

  Another couple came out onto the balcony, a boy and girl potentially even younger than Vort’s current victim. They fooled around with one another, putting on a lewd display not just for Vort, nor for Tal and myself, but for the entire city. They were skilled, and proud, exhibitionists. A small crowd was gathering below, and I was thankful for somewhere to shift my attention. Then immediately ungrateful, as the crowd began to fondle themselves and others, extending the theatre on the balcony.

  This was the nature of living in such close proximity to a vvytch, I think. Their poison spread, through the ground and the air of their cities and the minds of their people, encouraging them to indulge in the same vices, like cultists seeking ascension by imitating their gods.

  The couple on the balcony, along with all the other supplicants behind them in Siat Vort’s apartment, were the anointed few. But they were not above reproach, as they found when they reached above their station, and were cast down. The couple tried to engage Vort and his chosen handmaiden. But when they got too close, he snarled at them like a starving dog protecting his meal. He backhanded the male, bruising his face, and sent the two of them running back inside.

  The interaction clearly pricked Vort, and all of his good humour drained from. He started licking and biting the handmaiden’s neck aggressively, and when she tried to pull away, he grabbed her chin and forced her head to turn over her shoulder so he could kiss her mouth. When she still tried to resist, he clamped his fat fingers around her neck and bent her backwards over the railing. Realising her predicament, the handmaiden went limp. She knew there was no enticing Vort back inside; he would have her right here. All she could do was bend her fingers around the railing to secure herself against falling any further past the horizontal plane. Vort released her neck, cast his arms wide, and smiled.

  So did Tal.

  There was a whispered ‘thwunk’ as the tension of her bowstring released. The bolt closed the distance in less than a second. It was a better shot than it needed to be, likely piercing Siat Vort’s neck just below the hollow of his jaw, by my estimate. The force would rip away half the man’s neck, obliterating his jugular.

  Except that, half a metre from its target, the length of metal halted, quivering in the air. Siat Vort stepped, his dark eyes fixing on the projectile. He frowned, curious, and reached out to tap it with his finger. Then he looked beyond it. Straight at us.

  “Shit,” said Tal.

  She was up and moving before I’d even thought to run, grabbing my shoulder and spinning me around. We made it halfway across the roof before a ‘whumpf’ of hot, compressed air slammed into my back, knocking me off my feet and forward into Tal. Bricks and dirt and noise were flung past us. And then we were sliding, through fire, and falling into the second floor of the building. The roof and most of the top floor had been obliterated.

  We rolled onto our backs. Siat Vort was floating high above us. The fingers of one hand moved constantly, working his glimmer to keep him levitating. The other hand was preparing something else.

  Tal was already on her feet, pulling me up and throwing me towards a corner before diving after me. Luck put the stairs here, for if we had gone for the other side, we would have been stuck like skinks against the wall as Vort’s next fireball blew a hole in the middle of the room.

  Instead we fell down the staircase, into a dense cloud of smoke and dust. We found a door leading out into the alley, and opened it just enough to breathe, but to exit the building would expose us.

  “Come out you rats!”

  I nearly leapt down the alley: the voice sounded like it had come from someone standing right beside us. But Tal grabbed me and held me in place, so much strength in her tiny frame. I grabbed her and held her in place., but it was only Siat Vort projecting his voice.

  “He’s just throwing his voice,” she said. “He doesn’t know which way we’ve gone. Otherwise why would he taunt us?”

  “Because he likes to play with his food?” I said.

  But I knew we had no choice. If we exposed ourselves now, we’d surely be burnt alive. Whereas, even though the heat from the burning house was starting to bake through our dusters, staying hidden as long as we could gave us a chance.

  We heard the displacement of air as Vort signed another fireball into existence. We braced for the impact. The explosion detonated on the other side of the building. Then there was another, even further away.

  Another voice came to me, also as if it were whispering straight into my ear: Samael Shint, telling me how the Hand would not hesitate to burn down entire cities merely to flush a few rats from the sewers. It seems he knew his brother well.

  Tal didn’t have to drag me on. I crowded her heels as she led me left, then right, then right again. We vaulted piles of rubbish and old crates.

  “What’s the plan?” I said.

  “There is no plan addressing something like this!” said Tal. “We’re in the shit now, just like I told you would happen. We’ve just got to stay alive.”

  “But you also said being in the shit was part of the plan,” I said.

  “Exactly,” said Ta, flashing me a mad grin.

  We crouched at the mouth of the next alley, which led to a broader street. People there were running, screaming in terror.

  I caught glimpses of Siat Vort as he swept back and forth overhead, but he seemed to have genuinely lost us. I drew my sword and pulled my pistol, checked the flint, then pulled back the latch. I pointed it at the sky, turning in circles, trying to spot Siat Vort. Tal grabbed my wrist and pulled my arm down.

  “You’ll give away our position, dickhead.”

  Then she looked me over a second time.

  “You actually know how to use those, huh?” she said.

  The notches on my blade, and the worn grip of the pistol butt that nestled my fingers so perfectly, spoke for me.

  Tal seemed about to ask something more, but another fireball exploded somewhere close by. I tried a door in the wall next to us, but it was bolted, and likely barred on the other side.

  “I bet that one’s open, though,” said Tal, pointing across the road.

  I suddenly gathered my bearings. We’d looped back around to where I’d first introduced the squad to Vort’s apartment block, though we were a little further down the road, the shadow of the gatehouse a thin, dark mark on the opposite wall.

  “You want to go towards the danger?” I said. “Are you insane?”

  “Are you?” said Tal. “Must have been, to have willingly joined such a half-cocked operation as this. But listen. The explosions are radiating outwards. Siat Vort expects us to run away. Ergo, we’re safer at the centre.”

  “Until the lion* returns to his den, to find the goat trussed and splayed for him,” I said.

  “Nah,” said Tal. “He’ll walk in and lay down on a bed of nails. The plan might have changed, Doc, but the mission hasn’t.”

  The street between us and Siat Vort’s door was empty now, and uncovered. But the Finger was easy to track by the sound of his explosions, and we knew him to be on the other side of the building. We sprinted across the road and leapt up the three stairs to the sheltered gatehouse landing.

  Briggs nearly cut us in half as we came flying round the corner into the barbican. He and Church were nervously on watch, while Chuckles stood near the wide double doors, holding a hand up to the wood and moving it in ponderous circles.

  “The hell are you waiting here for?” said Tal.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “Glad to see you’re not cooked, too,” said Briggs.

  “He wasn’t trying to roast you lot,” said Tal. “He doesn’t even know you’re here.”

  Chuckles turned, apparently only just noticing our arrival.

  “It’s not warded,” he said.

  “Of course it’s not!” I said. “It’s not even barred, man. Siat Vort is untouchable in this city. Why would he need any wards on the entranceways?”

  Old instincts had returned. In the Corps, they don’t teach you how to think. Not really. They teach you how to react. Anything that happens has a response that has been analysed and mapped and trialed, and then analysed again, until it had been optimised. Then trenchers are drilled and drilled, until they could start moving their bodies before their brains had even recognised the situation, because that was how instinctively they knew what to do. There was even a reaction for when you started doubting your reactions: suppress the doubt and trust the system. Tal had set the path, and I was eager to follow.

  I lowered my shoulder and burst through the left side of the door. Chuckles gave a little yelp, but I didn’t burst into flames, nor was I diced into a thousand pieces by a net of red hot filament. He was right to be wary. But I couldn’t stop. Adrenalin was pulling me on like I was caught in a rip, and if I stopped, it would leech through my pores and carry on without me. And then I’d be dead.

  The building encircled a courtyard, lush with ankle deep green grass, and a fountain of marble sending spouts of crystal water as high as the second floor. It was deserted: if Vort did employ any guards, they must have scattered into the city to help search for us.

  I scanned quickly, and found stairs on the far left side of the grounds. I ran side by side with Tal, Briggs and Church close behind us.

  As I had hoped, the stairs led directly to a long corridor, with more vases and tapestries than doors, making it easy to find our way to the room we had been lying across from moments before.

  We paused at that final door, allowing Tal time to reload. Her forearms looked like the trunks of Sippowoods, which grew the way weavers made rope: by binding several lengths together into one. The draw on the bowstring was insane, and yet she planted her foot in the stirrup at the bow’s mouth and hauled the string back with hardly a strain. Most men I knew would’ve needed to use a windlass.

  “Us first,” said Church.

  There were no arguments from me. The two heavies shouldered the doors and spread left and right, with Tal and I on a shoulder each, sweeping the room. Men and women screamed and shrank from us, but there was no one there armed or assigned to protect them.

  I knew from having looked in through the window that the room would be large, but still I was not prepared for just how extravagant it was. I’d seen entire barracks smaller than this one room. You could have comfortably billeted four squads in here, without even utilising how high the roof was. And it was luxuriously appointed. On every surface there was a rich tapestry or rug. They covered the walls, were thrown over lounges and tables, and even hung free from the beams of the roof, partitioning off smaller sections of the room. In every interstitial space, or what had been space, there were huge statues of marble plated with gold. None of it looked particularly impressive to my eye, but it was obviously expensive, for the sake of being expensive.

  A bed with a huge silk canopy - a small house in its own right - dominated one side of the room. In one corner, a bathtub that could fit four people at once, and would take nearly a hundred trips up two flights of stairs to properly fill. In another corner, a bar with a fully stocked shelf behind it. Spread all throughout the room were chaises, armchairs and lounges, the cushions of thick white silks.

  “I’m in the wrong profession,” said Tal.

  “If you were a tyrant like Siat Vort, you’d have squads like us coming after you,” I said.

  “Yeah, and he seems so concerned about it,” Tal scoffed.

  There was one woman who had not pressed herself to the corners of the room with the rest of the concubines. I recognised her by her thin eyebrows, which were now drawn at us not in concern, but in curiosity: it was Siat Vort’s chosen girl from the balcony, the one I had dubbed Handmaiden.

  “He will return,” she said. Surprisingly, she spoke Imperial, heavily accented, but understandable.

  “We’re counting on it,” said Tal.

  The handmaiden glanced at Tal’s crossbow, then looked back at the girl’s face.

  “You was the one try to kill him before?”

  “Yep,” said Tal.

  “Good,” said the woman. “Again, please. I will distract.”

  I could see now the bruises on her face and arms, which she had attempted to conceal with cosmetics. There were scars on her earlobes where the jewels had been ripped out and healed over, and over. I suspected it hardly took an assassination attempt to spark Siat Vort’s temper.

  “You want to help us?” said Tal. “Lady, you’ve already seen us fail once. No guarantees the second time, either.”

  “Maybe with the strong ones better,” she said. “But don’t care. You die, I die on side with you.”

  Tal raised an eyebrow at me. I shrugged.

  “What’s your name?” said Tal.

  “Ciacris.”

  Tal crossed to her. The woman flinched when Tal raised a hand, but when it was clapped upon her shoulder, she seemed to grow straight and strong before our very eyes.

  “Welcome to the vvytch-killers, Ciacris,” said Tal. “Glad to have you.”

  One of the other women present seemed to comprehend what was happening, and managed to peel herself off the wall to try and talk with Ciacris in a rapid, high pitch. Ciacris shushed her fiercely.

  “Trouble?” said Tal. “We’ve got enough to deal with. Can’t risk getting stabbed in the back.”

  She brought her crossbow up. The woman cowered, bent to the floor. When Tal continued to track her, she began to worm her way pathetically back towards the corner.

  “Tal, you wouldn’t,” I said.

  “We’re in the lion's den, Doc. You said so yourself. I’ve seen this trick before, at Aahram.”

  “Imperials opened up on those villagers first,” I said.

  “To prevent exactly this!” said Tal.

  “You think half starved peasants were planning to take down the Corps with rocks and planks of wood?”

  “It’s the mangy lions you have to be most wary of!”

  I felt like a rope being twisted tighter and tighter, and at any moment all my fluids would be squeezed from me, the room was that tense. I knew it was no time to be arguing humanitarian conventions, but we were cracking under the pressure of Vort bearing down on us.

  I wonder now, so often, what we had done to deserve Ciacris. It surely must be reward for our actions in a hundred previous lives. The girl was innured to living in fear of Siak Vort. She stepped between Tal and the other woman, and directed the crossbow to the side with a tender touch.

  “She worry for me,” she said. Say we have a soft life here. Nice. eat much. Beautiful clothes to wear. Servants of our own. He really only visit ten days out of a hundred.

  “But I tell her better to live in gutter, or not live at all. Only one thing worse than this.”

  “Yeah?” said Tal.

  “To live in gutter, and still be used.”

  Tal breathed out her nose.

  “Can’t argue with that.”

  “Incoming!” said Church. She had been watching the balcony, Briggs the door we’d come through.

  Tal moved quickly behind the bar in the corner. I vaulted into the indulgent depths of the bath, which I regretted a little when I found the remnants of Vort’s bath were still present. Church and Briggs were a little more conspicuous. Briggs almost tried to enshroud himself in a curtain, which would have been funny if our lives hand’t depended upon it, until Ciacris ushered them back out the doors and closed them to a crack behind them. We could only hope the charge distance wouldn’t prove too much, if it came to it. When it came to it. Because it surely would.

  Ciacris positioned herself at the foot of the bed just as Vort came back in through the balcony window, not breaking stride as his feet alighted on the stone.

  “The slippery pricks have melted back into the shadows,” he said. “But no matter. I’ve closed the gates. I’ll line up every scoundrel in this city and have them executed until the fountain in the market square runs red. Even if we don’t find them, this shithole could use a good deep clean.”

  “Can you believe it! Taking a shot at a man when he is at his most vulnerable: heart on his sleeve, dick in his hand. And in my own city? Shint warned us all, of course, I told you that. But we figured it was his arrogance that got him caught. Still, I never thought they’d be so audacious. Perhaps some precautions are necessitated. I may have to cut this visit short, my darling. But not before…”

  He plucked a goblet from a nearby ledge and skulled it in a single gulp, then cast it aside, all while stalking towards Ciacris like a predatory beast.

  “Come here. I’ve told you I do not like being denied, not even as a bit of play. You will submit to me as soon as I demand it, whenever I -”

  I heard him stop mid stride. I imagined him surveying the room, perhaps an eyebrow raised in confusion.

  “My pretties, why are you all up against the -”

  We all knew this was the signal, even though we had not discussed it. We were all fish hooked on the same line, responding in tandem. Everything happened at the same time.

  Tal popped up from behind the bar and squeezed the trigger. I was only a moment behind, my pistol spitting fire. The double doors slammed on their hinges and Church and Briggs came charging straight through anything in their line.

  The bolt made it closer this time, before ricocheting off at a right angle to embed itself a hand’s depth in the stone wall. My ball simply burnt up as it got close to the sorcerer, like a star falling to earth.

  Siat Vort made three quick signs, and the bathtub, with me still in it, flipped up and slammed into the wall. The bar and all the glassware and ceramics upon it exploded, the force throwing Tal into the corner, where she crumpled to the floor. The floor turned to quicksand beneath the heavies, and they stumbled before sinking to their waists.

  All done in an instant, though our actual deaths would take a little longer. I could feel blood pouring from my temple and down over my ear, though even if I wasn’t dazed, I was trapped beneath the bathtub as it leaned up against the wall, with barely a gap to see out of let alone squeeze through. I could only see Tal’s boots, which were not so much as twitching. Siat Vort had swatted us away like flies. How did we ever believe we could stand toe to toe with a god?

  “Did you amateurs really kill Shint?” he said. “Or is he fooling, trying to trick me into thinking he’s dead so he can make a play? That would be just like him, actually.”

  He stepped across the re-solidified floor, to where Briggs and Churchs’ top halves squirmed, their arms pinned to their sides. I pulled my heels to my bum, tensed, and tried to slide my body forward. That was a mistake. My vision swam. I tried to reach for my pouch of shot, to reload my pistol, but my left arm was having none of it.

  “What is it you hoped to achieve here?” said Siak Vort, leering over Briggs as if the heavy were a child answering to their father. “Who am I hurting? My people are happy. They are allowed to indulge their desires. Why does that make me worth killing?”

  “Suck my dick,” said Briggs.

  Vort kicked him. I heard the crunch of his nose breaking. Then Vort leaned down and licked the blood from Briggs’ face.

  “You do not deserve such pleasures,” he told the heavy. “But, tell me, would it be worth -”

  With a howl, Ciacris leapt on Vort’s back, wrapping one arm around his neck. In her other hand she held a knife, which she tried to plunge a into his neck. He wasn’t expecting it, but he reacted quickly enough, reaching up to grab her thin wrist. He flipped her over his head to hold her before him, feet dangling off the ground. His physical form belied his true strength.

  “My darling,” he said. “You can’t have been in on this. Not the whole time. So you should have continued to stay out of it. You should have told them they never had a chance.”

  With a twitch of his wrist, Siat Vort snapped her arm. Ciacris screamed, dropping the knife. But as it fell, she had the wherewithal to kick out at it, slicing her foot but also cutting Siat Vort’s thigh, just a little. He snarled and threw her hard onto the floor, then stomped on her stomach with his heel.

  “You have known pleasure beyond any mortal,” he said. “And now you will know the equal and opposing pain. And it will be never ending, because unlike them you know… nothing…”

  He drew back for another kick at the woman’s ribs, but wavered a little, trying to balance himself. Even when he put his foot back down, he still looked unsure.

  “Or perhaps I’ll keep you in… a cage, here and cut… cut you up in li’l… piece.”

  He was slurring his words. Ciacris smiled.

  “Toxin of the Nimak toad,” she said. “So many times I consider using it on myself. But I resist. Because this moment… is sweet. I was in on it, from the very start. I shared… spirit… with these…”

  She began convulsing and frothing at the mouth. Continental land mines, Trenchers called those toads. Just brushing past those infernal toads was enough to send someone thrashing to their death. She had nicked herself with the knife, knowing her end would be agony, to ensure Vort also died.

  He tried to use his glimmer, even though he must have known it was futile. Or maybe he was trying to bring a fiery vengeance down on us all. Either way, a rain of sparks fizzled and dropped to the ground around him. The poison worked by attacking the nervous system, affecting fine motor control. His fingers were too clumsy to make the right shapes for the signs. He began to choke, and collapsed to the ground. Sparks of random lights, and small, crackling balls of lightning continued to spring from Siat Vort’s convulsing body, the poison twitching his nerves at random and causing him to spew power undirected. The excessive number of rugs and tapestries quickly caught alight.

  Darkness. The toes of someone’s boots, outside my little bathtub cave. Darkness again. Flashes: Tal over the Captain’s shoulder. Briggs and Church on the floor below, framed by a hole in the floor, covered in flakes of plaster.

  Chuckles, crouched over Siat Vort’s body, holding two hands on the sorcerer’s chest. Where had he been lurking this whole bloody time? Lightning jumped between their bodies.

  Darkness.