Page 67 of The Devils

A War in Miniature

A swordfight is a war in miniature, and wars are often won and lost before a blow’s struck. In the training yard, the armourer’s workshop, the quartermaster’s office. In assessing your enemy, guessing his strengths, predicting his limitations, anticipating his tactics. In knowing your own.

A good swordsman can recognise another before their blades even touch. How they grip the weapon, draw it, present it. As Duke Michael took his guard before the Serpent Throne, he showed neither panic nor passion, neither fervour nor fear. He had the even gaze of a chess master, considering his opening.

His stance reminded Jakob more than he liked of Constans. That losing duel on the sinking galley. Perhaps uncle and nephew had sparred together in happier times. Perhaps the older man had been instructor to the younger. But there was none of Constans’s arrogant flourish in how his uncle presented his sword, perfectly still, perfectly level. The discipline of a man who’s suffered disappointments. Who knows the precipice of failure yawns always at his heels and takes nothing for granted. He might’ve been a few years past his prime, but Jakob had been past his decades before Michael was even born.

A swordfight is a war in miniature, and in war knowing the ground is key. Every hill, road, wood, and stream can be a weapon. Must be made into a weapon. Especially by the weaker side.

So as Jakob limped to the centre of the circular floor he glanced about the room, absorbing every detail. The marble columns a skilful swordsman might weave between, breaking up an opponent’s attack. Tapestries that could snare and tangle, statues that might be used as shields, hanging lamps that might shower burning oil. The Serpent Throne itself, so valuable yet so fragile, a thing Michael coveted so deeply he might fear to strike towards it. The armoury of captured weapons bracketed to the walls, ready to be snatched down and pressed into desperate service, centuries after they last shed blood.

Jakob came to a halt, maybe the length of a dead man from his opponent.

A swordfight is a war in miniature, and in war one must be ready for anything. Jakob had seen it all, then seen it all repeated, no man alive labouring under a greater weight of experience. As he bent his creaking knees, he spun out a thousand possibilities. The ebb and flow of combat. The likely techniques and the possible counters. He stored up a deadly arsenal of the tricks he might play.

Their blades touched, near the points, with the slightest pressure, and Jakob looked into Duke Michael’s eyes.

A swordfight is a war in miniature. There are patterns the veteran never forgets. The tense silences, full of doubt and discomfort, the brief interludes of frenzied terror when everything you’ll ever have is risked on one manoeuvre, one charge, one thrust. But no two are quite alike. And the outcome is never certain. That’s what keeps men fighting, even against the odds, even after countless defeats. There’s always a chance.

Perhaps Duke Michael felt the thrill of the gamble, because he smiled, ever so slightly, as Jakob felt his weight shift. Sensed the pressure against the point of his sword ease by a fraction. Felt the first strike coming. He stiffened in preparation for a cut, prepared to twist his wrist at a thrust, made sure he was fully ready for a feint and to turn defence in an instant into attack—

Michael’s eyes flickered sideways, the skin between his brows creasing with doubt. ‘Alex?’ he muttered.

Jakob glanced over, winced at the sting as his neck clicked.

There was a scrape of steel as the duke stepped in, lightning quick.

Jakob’s legs were sluggish after the climb, he could only push Duke Michael’s point down a few inches.

It punched through his shirt just under his bottom rib.

Jakob’s eyes bulged as the blade slid though him almost to the hilt, leaving him rocking slightly on his heels.

‘Oooooooooof,’ he wheezed. However often it happens, you never quite get used to the feeling of being impaled.

A swordfight is a war in miniature. Sometimes won by cunning or bravery.

More often lost through a dumb mistake.

Vigga had seen sights to make the bravest shit their trousers.

The first real battle she ever fought, the Gotlanders hurtling naked from the mist, partly peeled and their minds cracked by mushrooms. That mindless blob of wailing demon-meat those witches had been feeding in Germany. When the faces of those villagers split open in the painted cave, and she’d seen by garish torchlight what had been inside all along …

But not even Vigga had ever witnessed the obscene like of this, as it twisted, wriggled, grasped, and slithered from the darkness. Eudoxia had made monsters, but the worst by far was the one she threw together from the bits left over.

‘God help us …’ whispered Brother Diaz, tripping on his own feet as he stumbled back and sitting down hard.

It had so many limbs Vigga couldn’t count them. Far too many, was the number, sprouting every which way, hooked and crooked and horribly hairy, paws and claws and hands plucking at the night, legs with three elbows and two ankles and arms that were all knees, and it cocked one foot covered in ears, twitching and trembling, as if it heard distant music.

‘I should’ve quit …’ breathed Baptiste, her eyes going very wide, ‘after Barcelona …’

It wallowed forwards in lopsided lurches, its crooked body sliding through the grass behind as if it dragged an ill-stitched sack of plunder, but the riches within were its own misfiring guts. A great serpent of grafted carcasses, a motley wyrm of grey hide and tawny leather and striped orange fur and spotted yellow pelt. It kept coming, and coming, new horrors uncoiling from the darkness in sticky spasms, a patchwork Jormungandr, sprouting with horns, tusks, antlers, covered in weeping scars. An almighty slug, leaving a trail of glistening slime, spindly little bird limbs clawing helplessly, huge bull limbs bursting with hoofed muscle.

‘Odin’s … fucking …’ The broken spear clattered from Vigga’s limp hand. Odin’s what? Even the All-Father, who knew all tongues, would lack the words for this.

It saw her. So many eyes it must see everything and nothing, and it stiffened of a sudden, and the thicket of limbs at its head end curled back to reveal a round mouth, and that rolled open like a flower to show another mouth within, and another, a well of teeth that cried like a sad baby.

It rushed at her with awful speed and awful hunger, its many-fingered feet some forwards and some backwards and some sideways skittering on the grass, its dozens of hands springing open to grasp her, foul wind farting from the toothed tunnel of its maw, and Vigga remembered, for the first time in a long time, what it felt like to be terrified.

She’d let herself think she had the wolf muzzled. Tricked herself it was her pet. But the wolf was trickier than she, hiding its bulk in the shadows and playing good doggy. Now it seized its chance and tore from its flimsy cage inside her ribs and swallowed her in one bite.

So when Vigga opened her mouth to scream it was the wolf’s terrible howl that came, and as she tried to fend off that forest of mismatched limbs it was the wolf’s terrible claws that reached out, and as the horror plunged into her embrace it was the wolf’s bottomless hunger that it found.

The Vigga-Wolf took a violent tumble through the flowers with this coiling obscenity, wrestling and wrangling. The thing punched and picked and poked with its legion of limbs, but the Vigga-Wolf trapped them in her dagger jaws, twisting in bloodthirsty frenzy, bone cracking and sinew ripping, ruined arms and legs and bits of arms and legs flung all about.

She caught it with her front claws, ripped at its scarred belly bag with her hind ones while it slurped and slobbered at her with its mouths inside mouths, nicked and cut and gashed her with its thicket of teeth. She wriggled about and tore at it, digging, digging, for she knew that if the good meat was anywhere in the world, it must be inside this striped and fearsome offence against God, and she must open it and see what treasures it contained.

It was as she was biting she saw her mistake. While she gnawed at its head end the thing’s mass of body had tightened about her, till she was hemmed on every side by horned and scaled and furred flesh. She tore free as it coiled shut on her, raked by spike and bone as she popped from its clutches like a cork from a bottle, fur slick with her blood and the thing’s ooze, dancing and flailing and howling with shame.

The leftovers pawed the ground with purple-nailed hands, ripping up grass, showering sod, steam huffing from its clusters of nostrils, human eyes and goat eyes and snake eyes all bulging. It came on, crushing the earth with its great hoofs, making ground quiver and trees shake, ploughing a scar through the lawns and bringing down a rain of leaves and twigs and blossom.

But the Vigga-Wolf wasn’t just teeth and fury, she was deep grudges and poisonous patience, too, and she slipped away through the trees in a furry spiral, a streak of claws and slather. The horror slowed as it blundered from one trunk, rolled and reeled, limbs flailing as it shattered another, then plunged after the Vigga-Wolf through too narrow a gap and wedged itself between two thick-boled trees, straining towards her with all its many hands, howling and trembling, veins popping, but the more furiously it wriggled the more stuck it got, thrashing up a blood froth as the old bark ripped its patchwork hide.

The Vigga-Wolf slithered beneath its snapping teeth, slipped under its many-nippled underparts, and slit its belly open with one long claw. Black gore poured from inside, full of squirming young, worms big as snakes twisting and snapping at each other, some with mouths and some with hands and some with ears and the mother bellowed its mindless upset at the blind brood it had begot, trampling and squashing them in its rage.

The Vigga-Wolf slid free of its trapped body, howling her victory and taunting her triumph. The leftovers shrieked, every hand and foot and tongue straining towards her, and of a terrible sudden it tore in half, a soup of steaming guts oozing from its tattered midriff, the front part ripping loose, catching her with its dozens of crooked limbs.

The Vigga-Wolf bit at them but there were too many, too strong, and they dragged her in, and its blubbing, bubbling maw peeled open once again and she was sucked and scoured and swallowed whimpering into that toothed tunnel eaten whole and what an irony.

No wonder she could never find the good meat …

If she was the good meat …

All along.

Balthazar burst through the open double doors and skittered to a halt at the railing, gazing up in awestruck wonder at the darkened rotunda of the Athenaeum of Troy. The giant space was crowded with shadows, lit only by far-off firelight flickering through windows high above, striking here and there a precious gleam from a gilded spine on the ranks and ranks and ranks of books, soaring upwards uninterrupted towards the far-off dome, surely one of the most formidable gatherings of knowledge in the known world.

After the chaos outside the place was oddly silent, worryingly still, Balthazar’s every quick footstep and snatched breath raising a chorus of echoes. His heart played percussion as he padded down the steps to the great circular floor, his mouth dry as he crept out across it, the sweat springing from his forehead as fast as he could wipe it, ready at any moment for some lethal evocation to boil from the darkness.

Metal dully glinted in the marble. Conjurer’s rings on a vast scale, appended by chiselled sigils, runes scrawled in minute painted verses, preparations for a ritual of daunting scale and complexity. This must have been the venue for the mad Empress Eudoxia’s research, merging man and beast in her doomed efforts to locate the soul. And these, as he neared the centre, could only be the remnants of her final, fatal experiment.

A pursuit of the most dangerous sorceress he had ever encountered hardly offered the ideal opportunity for an exploration of arcane theory, but a magician of Balthazar’s insatiable curiosity could hardly help glancing towards the abandoned apparatus as he crept past. It was, after all, unlike anything he had ever witnessed …

This metallic rod, scorched by fire, or … he touched the ashy deposit coating it, rubbed it between finger and thumb … by a thunderstroke? These coils, copper stained powdery green as if by an instant of frenzied reaction, still with the lingering odour of acid.

An apparatus designed to harness lightning, that most arbitrary, fleeting, and violent of nature’s phenomena …

‘Impossible,’ he whispered.

And yet, these jars … clamped to either side of the rod with carefully calibrated precision. Was there something floating pickled inside? He wished he had more light, almost pressing his nose to the distorting glass. Feathers? He jerked away, the memory flashing up of Shaxep’s visit to the world at his desperate invitation. One jar held a demon quill. The other an angel feather. Opposite spiritual poles, positioned to contain and control the flow of mystic force. To balance the apparatus as the universe was held in balance. He stooped to brush the rune of cleaving set into the floor below it with his fingertips … he had never seen it used in such a manner … to split an energy … then direct it towards the two benches, furnished with straps, intended to restrain a reluctant prisoner … or to hold an insensible subject?

An apparatus designed not only to locate the soul, but to release it …

‘Impossible,’ he murmured.

And yet … two benches. He frowned at the labyrinthine inscriptions that ringed them, the geometry that both separated and connected them. It put him in mind of a pale chamber he had once seen, assembled then abandoned in haste by the Inquisition in Naples – no doubt using Oracles in their hunt for heretics, good God the irony – but there were differences. The work was passionate, imprecise, he took them at a glance for mistakes, but as he pored over them, he began to see otherwise. Here, aspects of channelling and movement. There, aspects of transformation and exchange. They were wilful alterations. They were intricate improvements. They were ingenious refinements! Sarcomantic elements had been elegantly interwoven – flesh and spirit – his mind reeled as he attempted to comprehend the sheer ambition.

An apparatus designed not only to release the soul … but to transfer it …

‘ Impossible … ’ hissed Balthazar, looking up—

And caught a glimpse of movement, reflected in the curved sides of those two jars.

He spun, throwing up a protective hand, to see Severa crouching, teeth bared, one finger pointed towards him.

There was an incandescent flash, the whole towering book-lined well of darkness made brilliant daylight to its mosaic ceiling, ranks of shelves etched with the pin-sharp shadows of teetering gantries, balconies, ladders.

There was no time for a gesture, nor even a word, only for one thought: that rune of splitting. Balthazar pictured it, so huge in his mind it filled his whole self, and with that rune and his raised hand he cleaved Severa’s lightning in two.

The shelves behind him were blasted apart, singed paper fluttering like confetti, two landslides of torn and smouldering books tumbling down to either side of him. His vision was etched with the jagged tree of the discharge, his ears rang with its thunder, his nose stung with an alchemical reek, his skin fizzing with the overwhelming power, jolting sparks still arcing from his outstretched hand to the floor.

Severa glowered at him, her finger still extended, her snarl lit by the flames of burning books, and Balthazar readied himself for another onslaught, his fingers twitching to make the forms, his heart pounding painfully as he wondered whether he possessed the mental wherewithal to withstand her next attack …

But it did not come. One more shelf gave way behind him, a few more singed volumes flapping across the rune-scrawled floor like fledglings flown too close to the sun and coming to rest.

‘You threw lightning,’ he whispered, unable to keep the awe out of his voice. His every hair still stood to tingling attention from its after-effects, some of those on his forearm gently smoking.

‘And you caught it,’ answered Severa, and did he dare to imagine the faintest admiring inflection of her own?

‘Eudoxia’s students told me the Empress could do it …’ Though he had not believed them until he witnessed it with his still-smarting eyes. ‘She taught you the technique …?’ But what practitioner worth their salt, especially one so infamously jealous as Eudoxia, does not keep their deepest secrets for themselves? ‘Or … could it be …’ Balthazar’s skin had gone cold. The back of his neck tingled. He felt he trembled at the brink of some grand revelation. He glanced to the apparatus: the rod, the pickled feathers, the twin benches.

Severa began to smile, eyes glittering with the flicker of burning paper. A smile quite out of place on that usually so dignified face.

Exultant. Triumphant. Irrepressible.

‘Eudoxia’s experiment …’ breathed Balthazar, ‘… worked .’

He recognised that smile. He had worn it himself, not so long ago, when he proved his theory of the nature of matter in the Basilica of the Angelic Visitation. The pride of the arcane explorer, taking the first human step into undiscovered country, plumbing the mysteries of creation, committing bold trespass where only angels and demons were permitted to tread.

‘ Your experiment …’ he barely whispered, ‘… worked .’

‘A good twist,’ said Lady Severa – Empress Eudoxia , as she was now revealed to be, wearing her servant’s meat like a fine new suit of clothes – ‘should come from a mystery in a stunning flash, like a stroke of lightning from an overcast sky.’

‘So, if I now have your absolute attention …’ Baron Rikard scanned the top of the Pharos to make sure all eyes were turned towards him, and they were, unerringly, in awestruck reverence. Placidia had dropped to her knees, hands clasped like a nun before a shrine. Athenais had forgotten to close her mouth and actually had a streak of drool at the corner. Alex, kneeling beside Sunny, gave a breathless squeak of excitement as the vampire glanced towards her.

‘And I believe I do … coming to my point .’ His skin was no longer perfectly smooth, there were laughter lines at the corners of his eyes, but those eyes … as if he looked into Alex’s soul, and knew her deepest desires, and was about to give them to her. She sobbed with disappointment as he looked away. ‘Now your name was …’

‘Zenonis!’ She thrust up her arm, hand flapping wildly, like a pupil desperate to show her learning to the schoolmaster.

‘And you are a pyromancer?’ The baron smiled, showing those beautifully pointed teeth. God, Alex wished she had teeth like that. ‘I well understand the fascination of the flame … so beautiful, yet so deadly, so beautiful because it is so deadly.’

‘He speaks really well,’ murmured Sunny, lying against the wall clutching her ribs, big eyes even bigger than usual as she gazed at Baron Rikard.

‘Shush! Shut up!’ Alex couldn’t stand the thought of missing a syllable. The only other sound was the faint hiss and crackle of Saint Natalia’s Flame, and even that seemed a little embarrassed to be getting in his way.

Her eyes followed the baron’s finger as it stretched out to point. ‘I think you should show her—’

‘Cleofa!’ said Cleofa, eagerly.

‘Such charming names for such charming ladies – I think you should show Cleofa the beauty of the fire.’

‘That’s an amazing idea,’ whispered Placidia.

‘That’s an incredible idea,’ breathed Alex. She vaguely remembered having some sort of squabble with these girls but that seemed so silly now, all of them happily united in their desire to do whatever the baron wanted. He couldn’t be a vampire. That was all a mistake. He was a saint. To doubt him was impossible, to refuse him unthinkable. He was an angel. Alex wished she knew how to burn someone for his amusement. He was a god , and she yearned to be burned herself if it would please him.

Cleofa stared at Zenonis and clapped her hands. ‘This is a fucking spectacular idea.’

‘Me next!’ said Placidia, nearly jumping up and down.

‘Don’t worry.’ Zenonis gave a blissful smile, the bones glowing white hot through the flesh of her fingers, her sleeves smoking, smouldering, scorching black. ‘There’s enough fire for all of you.’

Alex felt the searing heat kiss her cheek as Cleofa’s clothes burst into flames. She caught a last glimpse of her delighted face before her hair went up like a torch and her skin started to blacken and peel and she fell singing with joy, which only sounded a bit like an utterly hideous scream, thrashing and rolling on the ground in blazing ecstasy.

Alex felt a tear roll down her cheek. A tear of pure jealousy, that Cleofa should be the one shown the fire.

‘Why does no one ever pick me?’ she said, bitterly.

‘I picked you,’ said Sunny, through teeth gritted in pain.

‘Oh, fuck off.’ Alex shuffled a little closer to Rikard on her skinned knees, hoping against hope he might pick her next.

‘How beautifully she burns!’ Firelight flickered in the gaunt hollows of his face. The wrinkled skin about his eye twitched with effort.

‘I … suppose.’ Zenonis frowned slightly. ‘Are you sure we should—’

‘ Quite sure,’ snapped the baron, ‘and next you must introduce the joys of the fire to …’ And he glared over at Athenais.

‘Athenais,’ she said, and her perfectly plucked brows wrinkled. ‘But I’m starting to think—’

‘Think only of those dumplings!’ hissed the baron, through gritted teeth, his beard, and the hair about his temples, now shot with grey. ‘Pork, remember, with a little onion, in oil …’

But Alex didn’t find the dumplings so utterly fascinating as a few moments before, and her handmaidens seemed to feel the same. Maybe it was the smell of cooking meat that was so distracting, or the sheen of bloody sweat across the baron’s forehead.

Zenonis stared at Cleofa’s smouldering corpse, then up at Placidia. ‘Dumplings?’ she muttered.

Alex shook her head. Wasn’t there something really important they’d been doing?

Athenais’s eyes went wide. ‘Die!’ she shrieked, flinging her open hands at the baron. One of the pillars was ripped apart, a section of the dome went with it, chunks of stone hurtling into the empty night sky.

But Rikard was no longer there. He’d become a cloud of black smoke, ripped apart then flowing back together as Athenais spun, blasting wildly. Alex crouched, arms over Sunny’s head as plaster showered across the gallery. A lump of masonry, one curved side of it still covered in mirrors, crashed down right beside her. The smoke tore and eddied and gathered around Athenais and was the baron once again, wrinkled face fixed in a hungry grin, pinning her arms as he gripped her from behind, his mouth opening far too wide, his too many teeth too white, too sharp. He sank them into Athenais’s throat, ripping half her neck and a chunk of shoulder away, blood spurting from the yawning hole.

‘No!’ wailed Zenonis, raising her shimmering hands just as Alex staggered up, heaving that block of stone with her, mirrors flashing. ‘I’ll show you the – ugh!’ And Alex clubbed her on the back of the skull with a dull crunch .

Zenonis turned drunkenly, blood bubbling through her hair, trickling down her forehead. One eyelid flickered. One hand dangled, limp. She raised the other, heat still shimmering around it. ‘I’ll … show …’

Alex smashed her across the face with the rock. She stumbled back and Sunny groaned as she stuck out a boot. A very visible boot, for once, but no less effective for that. Zenonis tripped over it, staggering, falling, made a wild grab for the parapet – but it was gone. She fell through the great hole Athenais had blasted and tumbled out into the night.

Alex heard a snarl of triumph, turned blinking to see Placidia catch Baron Rikard, crystals of glittering frost spreading up his arms. ‘I have you!’

He showed his outsize teeth and gripped her back, flesh creaking and cracking as he wrapped his icy fingers around her arms. ‘No …’ Her feet slipped, slid, the skin of his face creasing, sagging. ‘I …’ he croaked as he lifted her, his hair withering away to a few frosty wisps, ‘have …’ Placidia kicked and flailed but with one last effort he bore her back and thrust her into Saint Natalia’s Flame, ‘ you .’

The brazier had been guttering, the flames no higher than her hips, but now Baron Rikard spoke a word, a puff of smoke from his blue lips, and the fire blazed up white hot, tongues of flame roaring through the holes in the broken dome.

Placidia screeched, clawed at the vampire with burning hands, but he kept his grip, his own arms on fire, his black eyes glittering with the flames. Her cries faded to a rattle and wheezed out. Rikard tottered back, every bit as ancient as the first moment Alex laid eyes on him, but covered now in melting ice and his arms looking like burned sausage. He tripped over his own foot and slumped against the parapet in a smouldering heap.

A column of sparks whirled up from the brazier where only glowing embers remained. Ash fluttered down around the ruined gallery, covering Alex, and Sunny, and the corpses of Eudoxia’s apprentices in black snow.

Jakob stood, skewered.

The agony was indescribable, of course.

But he could breathe. So it wasn’t through his lung. It wasn’t through his heart.

He stayed on his feet. He gritted his teeth. He looked up at Duke Michael, and shrugged. ‘Eh,’ he grunted. ‘I’ve had worse.’

Duke Michael stared back, unsure what to do next. To be fair to the man, running your opponent through is usually enough. He tugged on the hilt of his sword but Jakob caught the crosspiece with his left hand, groaned with pain and effort as he lifted his own sword in his right.

Michael let go, going over on his back with a shocked gasp as Jakob’s clumsy swing whipped over his head, heels of his boots squeaking on the marble as he wriggled away.

‘My God …’ he murmured, scrambling up as Jakob limped doggedly forwards with one sword in his hand and another through his belly, blood streaking the hilt and dripping from the pommel, scattering dark spatters across the tiles.

Jakob growled as he lunged again. Duke Michael dodged, nearly tripped, fell heavily against the wall as Jakob’s sword – the one in his hand, not the one in his guts – chopped the side from a great pot, chunks of gilded porcelain spinning away across the floor.

Michael caught one of the ancient spears but the brackets wouldn’t give. He lurched away as Jakob slashed at him, scoring the wall and sending plaster dust flying, then ducked as Jakob slashed again, leaving a long gash through an emerald-green tapestry.

Duke Michael’s fishing hand caught one of the elf-daggers. He dragged at it with all his weight but it came away easily and he nearly fell. He barely dodged Jakob’s flailing sword, catching him as they blundered together.

Jakob butted Duke Michael in the face and he stumbled back with a bloody nose, then slipped in Jakob’s blood, boot heel leaving a long smear as he went down, then several more as he scrambled up again. Their duel had become less elegant chess match than lethal slapstick. Jakob tottered forwards with something between a growl and whimper but Michael rolled one way, then the other, Jakob’s sword clanging into floor, leaving long scars and making his arm buzz.

He sagged against the Serpent Throne with his right shoulder, each breath faintly whooping, and looked down. The elf-dagger was buried in his ribs, bloody grip sticking out sideways. Must’ve happened while they were wrestling. He would’ve laughed if he could’ve got the breath. The elves had spent decades failing to stick him with one, now a prince of Troy had managed it.

‘Reckon that …’ he wheezed, tasting blood on each rattling breath, seeing red bubbles around the hilt, ‘ is in the lung.’

‘Have you even asked yourself,’ asked Duke Michael, backing warily away between the pillars, ‘what happens if you win?’

Jakob wheeze-groaned as he pushed himself from the Serpent Throne and doggedly limped after him, each step a new stabbing, each breath a new impalement. Labouring on down that dusty road, lined with bodies, on that endless retreat across the steppe. One foot after another.

‘The elves are coming.’ The room was getting dark. Lamp flames burning low, leaving glowing trails across his vision. ‘A pointy-eared tide of them, and their one desire is to wipe humanity from the world.’ The elves are always coming. Jakob had to squint to tell who was talking, who was fighting. Was it Szymon Bartos’s face he saw beside a pillar, ducking away before he could swing? ‘Troy will be the bulwark on which that storm first breaks. Will it be stronger with the Empress Alexia on the throne?’

‘That choice … is for God .’ Jakob spat blood, swung at William the Red, and hacked a chunk of marble from the pillar where his head had been, splinters bouncing across the floor. No one wants to see doubts.

‘They say God is blind,’ said the Emperor’s Champion, the Pope’s Executioner, the Grandmaster of the Order, backing towards a statue of some long-dead Emperor while Jakob struggled after, leaking air, leaking tears, leaking blood, leaving a pitter-patter crooked trail of all the stuff that should ideally stay inside a body. ‘I say he is deaf, dumb, and a fool besides. He chooses those who choose themselves.’

There was a loud crash upstairs, one of the hanging lamps wobbling, its flame flickering. Jakob stood, wobbling himself, point of his sword on the ground as a crutch. He shook his head, tried to focus. His sight was swimming.

‘And that is the sound …’ Duke Michael grinned towards the ceiling, ‘of him choosing me .’

‘You sure? I was thinking …’ The floor was spinning. Tipping, like the deck of a ship in a storm. ‘Might be Baron Rikard. Bloody vampires … always late.’ Jakob didn’t feel much like smiling himself, but he managed to show his bloody teeth. ‘Makes you wonder. Have you been playing for time … or have I?’

He made one last exhausted lunge but the Michael-shaped blur dodged it, stepped behind the statue as Jakob struggled to recover, and heaved it from its plinth. Jakob got his balance back with a stab of agony, just in time to see it toppling towards him.

‘Oh fuh—’

He went down under it with a sick crunch, his head cracking against the floor.

Most of the weight wasn’t on him, he didn’t think. But enough was. His left arm was crushed. And he was stabbed with a sword, of course. Not forgetting the dagger. He was still holding on to his blade. He wafted vaguely at nothing with it. A useless instinct.

‘Stay there,’ called Duke Michael, his voice drifting off. ‘We can finish this later!’

Jakob slumped back, each breath a bloody effort, and stared up at the ceiling.

It didn’t really hurt any more.

‘Here’s a pickle,’ he whispered.