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  The cloudbridge, a sharp and definite slice in the air, flew up towards and past Overchain on invisible ramparts. It cast a thin shadow through the sacristy window as the white Secondsun moved behind it.

  The Mother Superior sat on a simple wooden pew near an even simpler altar, her head bowed as if in prayer.

  The continual buzzing itch of the codespells occupied Shryke’s attention as he reached the Mother Superior. She didn’t look up but said: “Ah, Shryke, there you are at last. I trust you are refreshed?”

  “Yes, Mother Superior. I am. Thank you.”

  “I sense your turmoil, Quantum Assassin.” He did not deny it. “No one comes here when they are at peace. One like you, a soul with no need for God, or faith, one who has seen so much, but understood so little, needs to reach the very edge of their despairs to come to me for assistance.”

  Shryke felt the edges of his codespells begin to crumble.

  He knew that before long he would have to return… if the Assassins didn’t separate didn’t separate his head from his body first.

  “Tell me Shryke. Why are you here?”

  Shryke fought the hollowness in his chest, the ache in his head and the sudden dryness of his mouth. “Forgive me Mother Superior, for I have sinned.”

  “How long since your last confession?” The cloudbridge shadow chose that moment to fall across the Mother Superior’s face—or perhaps it was some other phenomena, Shryke could not be sure.

  “Thirty-seven thousand, four hundred and ninety-six years,” he said truthfully, even though his physical body was only nineteen summers old.

  The Mother Superior’s face was in deep darkness now. It shivered around her head. A cloud of flies on carrion. Her lips were a yellow rind around an infected wound of mouth. “This is going to take some time then?”

  Her voice cracked like wet bones in fire.

  “I have much to confess,” the words struggled from Shryke’s mouth. He tried to keep the trembling from his tone, but tears came unbidden from his eyes.

  The Mother Superior reached a hand towards his chest. In the flickering dark surrounding her tiny body he could not tell if there was any skin at all left on it or if the cogs and gears beneath were exposed like bones for all to see.

  “Start at the beginning,” the thing that used to be the Mother Superior said.

  “Difficult,” he said. And it was. Oh, so difficult. Almost impossible.

  “Start where you are comfortable starting then,” the thin metallic joints of her fingers drilled easily through his sternum with little resistance, getting almost to the jagged-edged cubes of her wrist joints before he was able to answer.

  “Thank you,” he gasped. His words continued the charade played out between the twin pillars of magic and murder. “I’ll start before the beginning.”

  The Mother Superior’s fingers curled around Shryke’s quivering heart. The gears and servos hissing and rasping, rasping and venting as she smiled a wound at him. Wet and slithering. Her eyes were alive with flies laying fat larvae in the folds of her lids. There was no skin. There was no woman here.

  The codespells crumbled, the lines of code streaming away into the processors of the void, filling the universe with his soul. Because what was a soul if it was not mathematics, biochemistry and luminal energy?

  There was nothing he could do.

  This thing never had been the Mother Superior of the Sky-Shrine of Thalladon.

  The God-Queen hissed and began to squeeze the lifeblood from of his heart and it was all he could do to die and die again.

  And die again.

  Again.

  Death became him.

  And he became death.

  Chapter 1

  The wood and rope bridge was slung between the two rock faces above a deep granite-splintered ravine.

  The drop beneath was a mile if it were an inch, and the driving rain stinging through the ravine made the heaving, swinging slats of wood deathly dangerous.

  Unhindered, Shryke might have covered it in seconds.

  The girl, unconscious in his arms, a deep and ragged-lipped gash across her forehead, wasn’t a heavy burden but she was limp and awkward, and carrying her was going to slow him down. The straps of his pack bit into his shoulders. The slanting rain hacked with savage gusts into his body; drenching the material and making it weigh on his bones.

  Going back wasn’t an option. The Raiders did not need to pick up his trail. They would know that the only way across the range of mountains was to cross at the Riven Bridge. The storm howled and boiled overhead. They were a good three hours from Quarternight and the cover of dark. Lances of lightning pierced the clouds. The boom of almost immediate thunder swelled all around them.

  The bridge was his only option.

  Unless he left the girl.

  Which he couldn’t do.

  Shryke spat an oath.

  Why could he never just walk on by?

  He shook his head. He refused to regret of his humanity. It was not weakness. It was what made him who he was. He put his foot on the first slat of the bridge.

  He wished that he could remember why he was here in the first place.

  Galdar knew something was wrong the second she woke.

  She rubbed her eyes to clear the sleep from them and wiped a hand across her mouth. The hollow where she’d slept the night was sheltered and still dry, but as she looked up into the sky, the barrelling thunderheads, doom grey, coalesced into an oncoming storm.

  She heard hooves and voices.

  The harsh, guttural dialects of Saint Juffour were not welcoming sounds. There was bitterness and anger in them. These were not the murmurings of prayers or the welcome sounds of the Congregation of the Moveable Church.

  She was in trouble.

  Galdar hugged herself and wished she hadn’t argued with Carlow last night.

  Hell, if only the pig-headed half-man hadn’t laughed in her face when she suggested a slightly different interpretation of the Holy Text in verse 906 things might have been so different. She wished, too, that she’d not flushed with embarrassment as Carlow and the other Curates had laughed at the “silly girl with her silly girlish ideas.” She wished that she hadn’t punched Carlow or ruptured his nose in a rush of blood—but most of all she wished she hadn’t run blindly from the camp, into the night, angry and tearful. That had been her worst sin. She had run so blindly, so recklessly, that she hadn’t been able to find her way back to camp, through the dark rocks and ravines of the Thalladon Climbs even as she regretted running and the blow and all the rest of it.

  Galdar had stumbled into the hollow at full dark, cold, sad and thirsty, determined, come first light, to find her way back to The Movable Church and apologise.

  “Fool,” she muttered, and she knew she wasn’t just thinking of Carlow when she said it.

  Galdar made the Firstsun prayer, working off memory to guess the rough location of the East Rim.

  As she finished the whispered prayer, she picked a few grains of earth from between the rocks, popped them in her mouth and swallowed the gritty powder down without water to complete her Devotion of the Land.

  Then she leaned against the rock and listened again for the voices.

  The wind whipped up, the distant storm making its way towards the range, and bringing a rough blanket of clouds with it.

  The distant rumble of thunder forced Galdar to make a silent Prayer of the Air. If she listened below the wind, she could just make out the voices but no actual words.

  The slang of Saint Juffour was difficult to penetrate at the best of times, but these were no native speakers. They were the defectors and the banished, the robbers and the criminals, the embezzlers, spies and the rapists who had escaped capture. In other words, Raiders of the western Thalladon Climbs. Dirty fighters. Murderers, land pirates and cutthroats. Lawless and itinerant, Raiders roamed the lands stealing and agitating for the highest bidders, or for the hell of it. They scavenged the land of the Climbs and beyond. They w
ere the scourge of the Third Link.

  Although sheltered, the hollow where she took refuge got plenty of First and Secondsun. Lichen and mosses stained its surfaces, making a decent enough mattress for Galdar to sleep on, but was close enough she felt trapped. There was single path in and out of her hiding place; if she just stayed put maybe the Raiders would pass her by? Anyone walking past would be able to see her if they happened to look up, and the hollow meant there was no escape.

  Better to run, she thought, knowing that to run first she had to crawl.

  Galdar crept along the south face of the hollow.

  There were five Raiders.

  Short and stocky, their black leather armour filthy.

  Five helms, rusty and stained, rested in a pile near their unsaddled horses. The animals tugged at rough grasses with yellow teeth.

  The Raiders had their backs to Galdar’s hollow.

  It was a blessing for which she immediately thanked The God of Safehome.

  Galdar was about to turn, intending to make her way across to the other face of the hollow and slip away, when the chilling scream stopped her dead.

  She couldn’t help herself.

  She had to look.

  Between the ring of five men, she could just make out a small thin figure lying in the dirt.

  One of the Raiders stepped away intent to retrieve something from his pack, and as her view cleared Galdar saw who was screaming. A boy. He was young, considerably younger than Galdar. Perhaps ten or twelve. He was dressed in a simple goat-pelt jerkin. He was terrified. One of the Raider’s knelt, pressing a knife at the boy’s throat. The point dug in with a broken smile, drawing a small prick of blood which swelled around the blade. It would take nothing to force it all the way in and end his screams.

  The Raider said something to him that was whipped away on the wind.

  The boy cried, his body convulsing, and for a moment she thought he had been butchered, then she heard the Raider’s questions:

  “Where is your skelling farm boy? Is there buldous grain? Are there hunfery women?” And knew the man wouldn’t waste his words on a corpse.

  The boy, even if he knew the answers to their questions, was too terrified to speak. Fresh tears squeezed from the corners of his eyes; they were lashed from his cheeks in the killing wind.

  Another Raider lifted an axe in preparation to dispatch the petrified child.

  She couldn’t help herself.

  She should have stayed silent.

  But she couldn’t. Silence was murder. Plain and simple.

  “No!”

  It almost didn’t feel like Galdar’s voice.

  It was though someone else spoke for her. Someone else took control of her limbs, forcing her to scramble out from the safety of the hollow and run headlong at the Raiders.

  Every sinew in her body was screaming for her to run the other way, but she wasn’t in control of her body. The God of Safehome wouldn’t allow the boy to be murdered like this, and she was his divine instrument. It was His courage coursing through her now. All she could hope to do was take the killing blow for the boy and give him the chance to run.

  The fight lasted two seconds and was no fight at all.

  Galdar crashed into one of the Raiders, spinning as she stumbled into the boy, whose screams had turned into a low sobbing.

  The Raider Galdar had bounced off reached down, his breath as foul as his grizzled face. As he came close to Galdar, dazed as she was, she was sure she could see things moving around in the crusts clinging to his beard. But that wasn’t the most frightening thing about the Raider; that was the glint of lust in his rheumy, bloodshot eyes. He smiled a mouth full of ruin and yellow spit. “Well, what do we have here then?”

  The Raider reached for Galdar’s throat.

  She recoiled instinctively.

  “Don’t touch me! I am a Follower of the God of Safehome!”

  The other Raiders laughed at her, their mocking laugher every bit as vile as Carlow’s. He hooked his index finger into the neckline of Galdar’s linen cotte. He leaned in for a look at the flesh he’d exposed.

  “You have three seconds to save your own life.”

  The Raider’s face was confused.

  The voice didn’t belong to the woman at his feet, or the boy.

  “Two.”

  All five Raiders stiffened and stood, reaching for the black-steel weapons at their sides as the voice mocked, “You should have run. Boy, go.”

  The boy next to Galdar did not need telling twice; he scrambled to his feet and ran.

  “Girl. Run.”

  The Raiders moved instinctively into battle formation. The nearest Raider, the one with the fell interest in Galdar, was their lead, his sword point wavered in her face.

  “You move, girl, and you die,” he rasped at Galdar. His eyes were fixed on whoever was behind her.

  Two storms hit. One storm with a fizz of lightning across the sky, the boom of thunder almost above their heads, and the lash of wild rain. The other storm was presaged by a boot in Galdar’s back that sent her sprawling forward, slicing her forehead open on the Raider’s blade. She’d been kicked so hard she crunched into his chest, her loose and whirling elbow smashing out two more of the fool’s rotten teeth. He wouldn’t need them where he was going.

  Galdar fell hard, smashing her bloodied head against a rock.

  The blissful silence of unconsciousness descended like the shroud of night.

  It felt like death.

  Shryke killed all five men without mercy.

  His blade slick with blood and rain worked its magic. He had given them a chance. They should have run. Instead they died. The Quantum Assassin was beyond anything they could stand against. Stabbing and slicing, the tall warrior felled all five with ruthless efficiency. It took five strokes to open their bodies to the rain and expose their secret innards to the lightning.

  He didn’t linger. He had no time.

  He knelt to tend to the girl, checking the open wound on her forehead, the drumming of hooves announcing the arrival of fifty more Raider’s horses as they crested the rise on the plateau above him.

  He couldn’t leave the girl.

  With her cradled in his arms, the assassin ran through the sheeting rain, surefooted as he drove himself on, up, up, up, only thinking to escape, and that meant reaching the Riven Bridge. If he could reach it first and cut the crossing behind him, they would live. But survival depended on getting there first.

  As he ran, he heard the shrill shouts of the war-party and knew they had found their slaughtered kin.

  They raged.

  They howled.

  They spurred their horses into wild chase up the mountain.

  Shryke ran on, his long legs moving fast and true, the girl’s head bouncing bloodily in the crook of his arm.

  The third slat of the Riven Bridge was slippier than the first.

  The soles of Shryke’s leather boots slipped more than once, making his stomach lurch, as the mile-deep drop into the ravine swung beneath him. The confusion was only exacerbated by his presence in the Thalladon Climbs. He had no recollection of making the journey, or how he came to be carrying an unconscious woman in his arms.

  The girl stirred.

  Waking up over the drop wasn’t ideal but knocking her out again wasn’t much better.

  “There he is!” The shout came from behind, too close for comfort.

  Shryke risked a glance back.

  A dozen Raiders scrambling up the Climbs on foot. They were maybe thirty yards from the first steps of the Riven Bridge.

  Shryke cursed. He had no choice but to risk everything and run. Slat after slat skidded beneath his feet. The rain swirled and gusted. The bridge lurched wildly, and then a second shout,

  “There he is!”

  Only this time it came from up ahead. He made out five more Raiders scrambling down the ridge at the far end of the bridge, black steel drawn, fifty-crowns worth of murder in their eyes. He didn’t have a prayer. Bu
t he wasn’t a religious soul.

  Shryke stopped.

  The only sound above the wild swirl of wind and the rush of the driving rain was his own ragged breathing. The rain streamed down his body. His hair lashed his face. He was the eye of the storm. The heart.

  He couldn’t go back.

  He couldn’t go forward.

  So, with no choice, Shryke did the only thing he could. He pitched the girl over the side, shrugged out of his pack and threw himself over the rope barrier behind her, welcoming the mile-long fall to the rocks below.

  Chapter 2

  Barl dragged the barrel of beer through the corn.

  Bringing the first beer of the day was an honour he didn’t feel like he’d earned.

  The sky was a bowl of blue, the sun a hot hand caressing his back and shoulders as he approached the circle. He heard men laughing. Women singing. Above it all, he heard his father, Garn, bellowing orders to the gangs of men as they toiled, raising the festival tents.

  Garn was a powerful man in all the ways that mattered and respected by his people. As Headman’s son, Barl knew well the pride that came with being at the centre of all things. He belonged. He was tall for his age—eleven summers—and wiry, with a keen eye and a sharp tongue. He was unlike the others, too, in that he had a wanderer’s soul. His gaze was always fixed on the horizon, looking into the far distance and the limitless upward curve of God’s Heart imagining the adventure it promised.

  The barrel stuck fast in a plough-line. Barl pulled several times on the fraying cord to free it from the sucking mud. It was too heavy for him to carry on his shoulder, and already tapped, it was impossible to simply roll it out to the circle without destroying the brewer’s tap. So, the fat-bellied keg had been placed on a small sled, the runners of which mostly slid easily over the harrows in the field.

  Mostly.

  With a crunch and a skitter of small stones, both sled and barrel came free.

  Now, the workers in the field were downing tools. The women were stopping their songs, and Garn, big, wide, glorious Garn was beckoning Barl over with a grin that spoke of love, pride and satisfaction.