Instead, as Jissie turned to exchange a greeting with a green-haired female runner, she revealed ... the sewn-up remnant of a sleeve which covered the stump at her left shoulder.

  Elva.

  How could Elva allow this in her realm?

  After what the tribunal did to me—

  Tom was on his feet then, and the girl turned at the movement. When she caught sight of Tom her mouth opened, unable to speak, face growing bone-white as she took a step back.

  Then Tom drew his cloak around himself, and brushed between two crowded tables where conversation stopped at his approach. He stalked with icy rage from the eatery, leaving the two Halberdiers to pay the bill, abandoning their half-finished meals.

  They caught up with him at the ceiling hatch, as the helical stair’s treads slotted into place.

  ‘My Lord. Are you—?’

  Fate. Tom slipped on the first step, caught the rail for balance. What am I going to do?

  The Halberdiers’ hands steadied him, then they withdrew quickly, their faces growing blank. If a noble-house Lord had taken offence at their familiarity ...

  Tom was shaking.

  ‘Not your fault,’ he said, noting the way his voice trembled. ‘Not your fault. There’s no need for you to worry.’

  ‘Sir?’ Ginvol looked concerned. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realize she’d be ... that there’d be someone like her there.’

  ‘No.’ Tom turned back to the stairway.

  Behind him, Arkin muttered: ‘I don’t know how they can do that to themselves.’

  Tom froze, feet rooted to the steps. Slowly, he turned back, and descended to the floor. ‘To themselves? They do this to themselves?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Ginvol swallowed. ‘It’s right across the sector. I’m afraid...’

  Arkin took a deep breath, swelling his chest.

  ‘Always gang leaders, my Lord. The more hardcore do their own cutting, instead of getting their friends to do it. Young Jissie ...’

  No. Tom’s head reeled.

  ‘... is definitely hardcore. I’ve known her for years.’

  Ginvol nodded quickly. ‘I’ve heard it’s spread to other sectors, too. Not just gangs as such, but any kind of...’

  He let his voice grow silent.

  Tom did not know what expression was on his own face, but Arkin, too, became quiet and took a quick step back when Tom looked at him.

  ‘How long has this been going on?’

  The two Halberdiers shrugged, though whether it was ignorance or fear which prevented them from answering, it was impossible to tell.

  When Tom reached the Palace core, he found Elva in her training chamber, inside a transparent-walled tank whose constant-convection aerofluid allowed her to swim suspended in one place. She was working hard against the current. As soon as she saw Tom, Elva stopped the flow and hauled herself out, dripping.

  ‘What is it?’ She descended the steps, her gymnast’s body moving easily, the wet fabric of her costume tight against her skin. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. You know ... In Realm V’Delikona, there’s a strange propensity for people to group together in fives. It’s a deliberately planted meme, an ancient throwback. And then there’s fashion in general, which is where memetic engineering really comes from.’

  ‘Tom ... You’re worried about the way people dress?’

  ‘Sometimes, you get waves of teen suicides. It happens in every culture. All sorts of self-destructive behaviour spontaneously arise, spread through a population and last for years, then just die out. It’s always been that way.’

  ‘Fate.’ Elva placed her damp hand against his chest. ‘What’s got into you, my love?’

  Tom shook his head.

  ‘They‘re cutting their own arms off. Did you know that? Because some mental image is growing in their consciousness. Lord One-Arm! But that isn’t me. Destiny damn it—’

  Elva clasped his face between her hands, let out a long breath, and said: ‘Tom, I love you, but you’re wrong in this.’

  ‘What—?’ Tom started to back away from her, but that clear grey gaze held him. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You’re the man I know, the one who cares about poetry and logosophy. But you are Lord One-Arm also. The icon people need to follow now.’

  ‘No ...’ It came out as a whisper.

  ‘Yes. That’s how it has to be.’

  Tom took hold of her hand, kissed her palm, stepped back. ‘I can’t allow it.’

  ‘You can’t control it.’

  ‘I—’

  But whatever his answer might have been, it was drowned out by a klaxon wail which cut through the chamber, accompanied by a sudden ozone charge upon the air. The blood drained from Elva’s face.

  ‘Fate. It’s here. The Anomaly ...’

  Tom spun round, as three Chevaliers ran into the chamber, weapons drawn, and turned away from Tom and Elva, forming a defensive arc to protect their Liege Lady and her husband.

  ‘... is here.’

  ~ * ~

  32

  NULAPEIRON AD 3426

  It took three hours for Realm Strelsthorm to fall to the Anomaly.

  In the outer chambers of Elva’s apartment, more Chevaliers took up formation, and in their midst stood someone whose appearance jolted Tom.

  ‘I know you,’ Tom said to the one-armed girl.

  Wide-eyed, she stared back, and said: ‘Lord One-Arm.’

  One of the soldiers moved to clamp his hand over her mouth, but Tom stilled him with a raised finger. ‘You’re ... Jissie, is that right?’ When she nodded, he continued: ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘We saw ‘em. Things with metal-like wings and, and…’

  ‘She warned Sergeant Ygralk,’ said a Chevalier. ‘Before he stepped into an ambush. Downstratum. Saved his life.’

  ‘My gang.’ The girl, Jissie, blinked. ‘They’re gone.’

  ‘Black flames, sir. Ma’am.’ Another Chevalier made his report. ‘They appeared in the air, revolving, and creatures of some kind just ... flew out. Directly below the Palace. Don’t sound right, and scanwatch systems ain’t confirming, but that’s what the witnesses—’

  ‘I don’t think, Corporal Druvan,’ said Elva, ‘that they’re making it up.’

  ‘Um ... No, ma’am. There are people appearing too, not just creatures. But some of our own folk are ... changing.’

  ‘Being Absorbed.’

  There was a distant crack of graser fire, and a high-pitched scream, suddenly cut off.

  ‘Move it.’ From somewhere, Elva had gained a graser rifle. She ejected the hafnium core, checked its status bar - ninety-five per cent - and snapped it back in. ‘Druvan and Biltwin, you’re point. E-and-E pattern beth-3. Got it?’

  ‘Ma’am.’

  With hand-signals, she directed the troopers.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ the officers answered.

  ‘Then go.’

  And the designated team leaders were directing their teams: ‘Go-go-go.’

  Time to get out of here.

  Choking dust billowed in the corridor outside. From the Chevaliers’ collars, protective membranes grew slick and shiny across their faces. They ran crouched, Tom and Elva and the girl Jissie in their midst, heading through the confusion with desperate determination.

  Faster now, as the dust cleared, they sprinted along a marble corridor while behind them the rearmost troopers went down on one knee and opened fire, just as a percussive thump sounded. The Shockwave knocked everybody flat.

  Shapes moved in the roiling clouds of dust and floating debris.

  ‘Move it.’ Elva was standing up alongside Tom, dragging Jissie upright. ‘Come on.’

  Grasers spat behind them.

  ‘Right.’ Druvan pointed. ‘Go right.’

  There was a cross-tunnel and the group went right. Three men broke away, digging at their equipment belts, one of them climbing up a toppled statue to reach the ceiling.

  ‘Setting booby-traps,’ muttered Elva. ‘Bastards’ll get a nice surprise.’

  If they don‘t just materialize in front of us.

  Tom guessed that the Anomaly could not manifest itself just anywhere: that there were constraints in the geometry of the Calabi-Yau crawlspace beneath ordinary reality.

  Graser fire sparked and cracked.

  Elva had ordered escape-and-evasion, not stand-and-fight. ‘We haven’t lost them yet,’ said Tom.

  One of the troopers spun around, then collapsed, inert. Dark blood spilled from his nostrils and ears.

  ‘Fate damn it.’ Elva turned to Druvan. ‘Are there any lev-bikes not in barracks?’

  ‘In the Outer Courts, near the crypto chambers. But the barracks are a lot nearer. We could go down the—’

  ‘What if the Enemy has plans of the Palace?’

  ‘Impossible.’

  ‘Not if Ambassador Lord Khaliran was something other than he appeared.’ Elva hefted her rifle. ‘And I think he was.’

  ‘No, not him.’ Tom remembered his vision of the ambassador’s slain daughters. ‘One of the aides, maybe.’

  ‘Surely not...’ Elva’s eyes blinked rapidly. ‘Ah, damn it. The one who sat to Khaliran’s left. His body language ... I didn’t see it at the time.’

  As a group, they shifted again into a diagonal corridor, while the sounds of fighting grew louder behind them; but it was simply fiercer, not closer.

  ‘None of us saw it,’ said Tom. ‘We didn’t know.’

  But I should have done.

  The floor trembled, and half of the Chevaliers tumbled over.

  ‘The Inner Courts,’ said Druvan.

  ‘Breached from beneath.’ Tom’s gaze met his in sudden understanding. ‘That’s why it manifested downstratum first.’

  They picked themselves up and broke into a staggering run.

  In the Outer Courts it was quieter, and they tumbled onto silver lev-bikes, Tom and Jissie each taking a place behind a Chevalier, while Elva mounted an armoured bike of her own.

  They rose like silent hunter bats and skimmed through long brown-stone tunnels where they caught glimpses of people running for cover, panicked by the distant screams and bangs. It was tempting to think that fast lev-bikes meant a better chance of getting away, but such reckoning was dangerous.

  This was the first phase of escape-and-evasion. Academy training had drilled into Tom the following dictum: that most people get caught because they shift into the second phase too soon. It is pointless to pick up speed if the Enemy knows where you are or can follow your trail or predict your route. They will surround you before you reach reinforcements or a pickup rendezvous.

  ‘Before you evade the bastards’ - Tom remembered the rasping voice of his instructor, Lahfti - ‘you gotta bleedin’ disappear, right?’

  They skimmed down a long ramp, moving fast. Slipstream tugged Jissie’s red hair around her face. Tom’s own breath was whipped away and his eyes watered as he tried to focus, checking her safety: her small hand was wrapped in the rider’s equipment belt. Safe enough.

  The chamber flickers.

  Tom shook his head. The memory-remnant formed the start of a koan, a Zen paradox learned during his stay in the monastery where monks’ zentropes had reacted so very badly with the logotropes in Tom’s mind.

  The flame is still.

  It seemed real, that vision of stone walls and candle and a perspective very different from normal; then a lurch brought Tom back to the moment.

  En masse, the bikes hurtled without a sound through a tight banking turn and were flying down a broken slope, heading for a wider cavern system. Tom glanced over. Stamped on young Jissie’s features was a fixed mask of determination.

  Snowy edelaces drifted high overhead, too disturbed by the lev-bikes’ sonar disruption to consider dropping down to hunt.

  The lev-bikes slowed, close to the ground.

  ‘Drop Tom here,’ commanded Elva. ‘And the girl.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Tom clutched at the rider but the saddle shifted, morphing, and it bucked Tom off. He hit the ground rolling - shale, not great to fall on, but he had experienced worse - and came up to his feet. The girl, Jissie, took the hint and slid off.

  Then the entire troop of Chevaliers ascended, their lev-bikes hanging too high up for Tom to leap.

  ‘I need to set a false trail.’ Elva stared down. ‘Sorry, my love. But I’m good at this.’

  ‘Destiny. I know that. But we have to—’

  ‘I’m not abandoning you. Run that way’ - Elva pointed into a broken tunnel - ‘for three klicks. You’ll find a docking area. If it’s not been compromised, there are submersibles that will get you away.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Fate, Tom. I’ll be there. But we have to make it look as though we’ve gone another way. The Enemy knows what it’s doing ... So we’re going to track wreckage and induction signatures in the conductive-ore deposits in Voelsing Cavernae. It’s a false trail, all right?’

  ‘And then you’re doubling back.’

  ‘Yes. You have to go on foot, just in case. But you’d better run, or I’ll be there before you. Have you got that, my Lord?’

  Tom stared up at her.

  ‘Yes, my Lady. And you know I love you.’

  ‘Of course you do. Right.’ Elva turned to her troopers on the floating bikes. ‘Ready? With me.’

  The bikes wheeled overhead, then shot off in formation towards a far tunnel. Tom continued watching even when they were gone from sight.

  After a time, Tom felt a tug on his sleeve. A smudged face with wide eyes was looking up at him. ‘We have to reach the ... rendezvous.’

  ‘Yes, Jissie.’ Tom squeezed her shoulder. ‘Yes, we do.’

  Together, they moved off at a brisk walking pace, heading towards the tumbledown scree which led to a narrow tunnel and perhaps to safety.

  Along the way strange visions assaulted Tom, knocking him aside with the force of physical blows. Seconds later, he was unable to recall exactly what he had seen or felt.

  What’s happening to me?

  Tom stumbled.

  ‘I’m sorry ...’ His voice degenerated to a mumble.

  He ought to make Jissie go on, but she was young and might not survive alone.

  ‘Lean on me, sir.’

  There was a kaleidoscopic flash of red and black and sapphire, and Tom fell again.

  ‘Get up, my Lord.’

  Forcing himself to his feet.

  It was an age before Tom and Jissie came out at the head of a ramp, and stared down at the docks and the dark confusion which swirled there; and Tom knew they had made the trek in vain.

  Refugees thronged the wharf, tens of thousands of people whose lives had shattered in an instant, trying to board a tiny fleet floating on dark-green placid waters beneath raw stone cavern ceilings. There was no possibility that more than a tiny fraction would leave this realm before the Anomaly subsumed the entire populace into its hungry, spreading self.

  Too late.

  It was like a swarm of glistening, mobile ants: a long dark column stretching down the broken grey stone path which led to the dockside, where a controlled pandemonium reigned. To either side, a dark plinth extended upwards to form a tall pedestal. Atop each one stood a squat, bronze-armoured figure. Suddenly it was obvious why the refugees had not resorted to violence to get aboard the boats.

  Jacks.

  The two bronze figures were Jacks, each with the firepower of a regiment built into his body, capable of sniffing the air and spectroscopically detecting mood-pheromones or toxins, able to filter out subvocalized thoughts from a babble of noise ... except that now, the sound was the Chaos-stirred susurration often thousand chests breathing, of muttered prayers. There was no shouting; even the children were shocked into silence by the drawn, bloodless masks of their parents’ faces.

  There were older people in the crowd - here, a frail figure simply sinking to her knees; there, a large man leaning against the rockface, his blotched face soaked with sweat - and Tom wondered how many would even reach the gangplanks.

  Mantargoi and other submersibles floated on the waves, using small boats to help the loading process. As Tom watched, one large grey rotund vessel sank down, followed by another.