“HOLD ON!” OTAVIA GROWLED, slamming on the brakes and slewing the van to the left along another of the great avenues that encircled the palace at the heart of the city.

“What are you doing?” Valka asked. “The waterfront was that way!”

“We’re not going to last two minutes on the straightaway,” the captain said, teeth audibly clenched.

Otavia’s gamble paid off. The armored van pursuing us overshot our turn, and only one of the smaller cruisers managed it. The second collided head on with a civilian vehicle. The men on the chariots braked hard, repulsors flaring as they backpedaled and hurried after us.

“Move over!” Pallino said, thrusting the muzzle of his plasma burner through the slit and taking careful aim. He fired, and a shot of violet plasma streaked out, illuminating the still-dark street. For an instant, the nearest flying charioteer vanished in a nimbus of white and gold as the plasma cooled on impact, but the flier came on. “Earth’s tits . . .” he swore, firing again. “Bastard’s shielded.”

The charioteers opened fire, peppering the hull. A stray shot passed through the open slit and blew apart against one of the legionnaire’s shields. The man swore and ducked, covering his face.

“Wish we’d brought a lance,” Pallino said dourly.

“Next right! Next right!” Valka exclaimed, voice going high.

Two of the men caught me as I turned to peer through the hatch to the front compartment and nearly fell. As I stood, I heard Corvo say, “That was close.”

“What happened?” I thrust my head out between Corvo and Valka’s seats.

“Hit someone!” came Valka’s answer.

I had to brace myself in the hatchway as Corvo torqued us round the bend, feeling the ball-wheels grind underfoot as we rotated ninety degrees onto what I guessed was 85th Street. Except that traffic was rushing toward us.

“Noyn jitat!” I swore.

“Quiet!” Corvo said, voice dangerously calm.

Ahead of us, the mounting traffic of the early morning’s commute panicked and parted to either side. Warning horns filled the air. Rather than argue, I reassured myself that our van’s armor would be sufficient to weather any impact.

“Surely they won’t fire . . .” Valka said, “they’d hit their own people!”

As if on cue, another hail of bullets fell from the chariots behind us.

Evidently, that the good of all was the good of each was a maxim that ran in only one direction. We hadn’t far to go. I could see the steel fencing that marked the waterfront and the overlook to the great reservoir that made up the outer regions of First Dome. Ahead, the line of a monorail that connected the vuli blockhouses about the outer perimeter to the central district slashed across our street at an angle, and it was only another five blocks to the end.

Another hail of bullets peppered the rear of the van. A stray shot slammed against the inside of the windscreen, making Valka jump.

“Man down!” said one of the soldiers, and turning I saw another of the legionnaires had collapsed with a bullet in his throat, leaving a red streak down the inner wall. His suit had tightened automatically to stanch the bleeding, but it was too late.

“Baro?” said one of the others, crouching over his fellow. In the wounded man I recognized a soldier I’d fought with a dozen times. He’d done time as one of my personal guard on and off for decades.

I crouched beside him and took his hand. “Shield must have failed,” said the other soldier, and I recognized the man, Galba. “Anyone got a beta canister? We can stop the bleeding.”

But it was too late. The bullet had torn through his windpipe and out the far side—lodged in the far side of his suit’s underlayment. He was beyond saving. I tried to calm myself, to find the quiet clarity that allowed me to see time unfolded. For a moment, I saw two Baros, four, eight, sixteen . . . but there was no river of time down which the fellow’s life’s blood was stanched. I quested farther, looking for something—anything—that might avail. I tried to reach out as I had in my concussed state and change the world entire, to find a Baro who had not been shot.

Each passing fraction of each passing second drove those lines of potential farther from the shores of the real. I glimpsed far off along the shoreline where reality broke like a wave, a point where the bullet had struck just an inch to the left and spared his breathing. I reached for it, but even as I did it slipped away, further and further as the wound set in. I was not the Quiet—only its hand. Small as I was, I could not save him. Like the Galath blossom that withered, Baro’s life was gone.

“We need to do something about those damn chariots!”

Corvo’s words brought me crashing back to the present—the single present.

Pallino was looking at me, brows drawn down.

“What?” I asked him.

He shook his head.

Another hail of bullets struck the van, and Crim slammed the firing slits shut—too late to save Baro. “If we open the doors, I might be able to get a knife in one,” he said.

“No good!” I said, standing. “We’d be wide open.” I cast about the rear compartment, looking for something, anything to avail us. There wasn’t much: benches ran down either side, each with the space to seat five officers. A rack that once had held the Guardsmen’s rifles stood behind the driver, but behind Valka’s chair—above Baro’s body—there were rungs. Rungs and a hatch in the roof.

A terrible idea formed in my mind, terrible but so mad it might work.

“Help me get this hatch open!” I said, nodding to it.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to climb onto the roof and draw fire.” I tapped my belt. “My shield’s rated for three kilotons. I’ve got the charge. Should keep them off the van for a while.”

Crim threw out a hand to stop me. “What are you going to do, boss? Wave your sword around?”

“Something like that,” I said.

Valka poked her head around from the front. “Have you lost your mind?”

“I’m not letting anyone else die over this!” I said, did not say over me. Thrusting a finger at Baro’s rapidly cooling corpse, I said, “All those men we left at the embassy are dead. Everyone is dead!”

“You don’t know that,” Valka said. The van shook.

Corvo swore again. “Almost there . . .” She meant the waterfront.

“If they’re not dead they’ll be shipped to labor camps. The Commonwealth can’t leave any witnesses to this. They tried to make me disappear, but it didn’t work. They’ve overplayed their hand. They’re desperate. Let me do this.” I did not wait for her to object, but leaned forward and kissed her. I paid no mind to the others for a fleeting instant, a single sterling second. For that narrow space of time, everything dropped away. The deaths, the Commonwealth, the Cielcin.

Everything.

I drew back and nodded out the windscreen. “Help Corvo drive. I’ll be back.” And then I turned and leaped over poor Baro’s corpse and opened the hatch. The wind of our passage whipped at me and knocked my coif loose. Black hair streamed in the wind as I tugged myself up onto the broad, flat surface of the roof. Crouching like a boxer to steady myself, I stood tall and defiant as I was able.

I had not said I love you. That was the worst part.

A wave of bullets shattered against my body shield, sending fractal coruscations flickering in the gray air. All about us, the roofs of lesser vehicles—gray and white and tan—rushed by. I threw an arm across my face as another barrage flashed about me. Otavia struck a passing commuter and I lurched to one knee. For a moment, all was still, and looking up I saw the two charioteers draw back, contemplating their plan of attack. They knew I was shielded, knew their guns were useless. They’d have to adjust tactics. I had not drawn my sword. I did not want them taking into account the fact that I wanted them to come closer.

I felt sure they’d try.

Where had the other van gone? The rest of the Conclave Guard?

There was no time to ask such questions. One of the charioteers accelerated, swooping toward me. He meant to ram me, to knock me clean off the roof of the van and onto the street below. Precisely as I’d expected. Precisely as I’d hoped. I leaped as my enemy closed and wrapped my arms around him and the control column of his chariot. The impact was enough to knock the wind out of me, but I held on tighter. My feet dangled free, and I fought to overcome the sensation of falling.

My quarry was not so level-headed. The chariot depended on balance, relied on the placement of hands and feet to keep the craft stable and upright. As the charioteer flailed to disentangle himself from my clench, he released the yoke and the whole chariot tumbled down. I managed to land on top, the yoke and control column between us. Only then did I unsheathe Sir Olorin’s blade, and moving quickly placed the emitter against the side of the charioteer’s armored head. His visor had shattered in the fall. I remember his solitary black eye, shining at first, then dull.

The pedestrians about me screamed and drew back, and it was only then I realized they were there at all. Pitrasnuks, to judge by their suits and robes. They watched in horror at the murder in their midst and at the offworlder in his finery. I had confirmed in that moment so many of the fables the Party told of the Sollan Empire. I’d even stooped over the poor fellow like a vampire drinking blood.

I had no time for soliloquies. The other charioteer had not peeled off to catch me, and our van was speeding away at several miles an hour. I kicked the chariot free of its owner’s body and got my feet in the stirrups. The repulsors whined as I leaped into the air in pursuit. At rest, a man could stand upright in a chariot, his feet in the stirrups, controlling direction by his lean. At full bore, I leaned forward as on a skiff or bicycle, hands pushing the yoke as far as it would go.

I’d not ridden one in eons, but the things were built to be intuitive. By pointing my toes I drove myself upward, and so came down on the other charioteer from below. The poor fellow never stood a chance. Wounded, he flew at a sharp angle and crashed into the face of the nearest tower. Ahead, Otavia had made the waterfront. I overshot on reaching the end of the street and wrestled a powerful sense of vertigo as I flew out over the reservoir a hundred feet below the level of the street. In the distance, I thought I saw the opening of the spillway by the perimeter of the dome, and beyond that the awful tundra and the wastes of Padmurak.

Above it all, I had a moment to contemplate the lay of things. Corvo had perhaps less than a mile of road between her and the entrance to the tunnel back toward Eleventh Dome and the starport. The bridge was near, the same lonely span of concrete that passed the mighty sluiceways that had run fat with water to impress us when we’d arrived. The water was barely a trickle then, a thin, sad stream like the spit of a long-neglected fountain.

It was not the bridge I’d fallen from, but it was as good as.

Looking back I could see all the way down the radial street to the high wall that surrounded the People’s Palace, and I could see the Palace itself—a narrow slice of it, at least—surrounded by the high square towers of Vedatharad. I half-expected to see smoke from the burning embassy, but if the Lothrians meant to firebomb the block they’d not done so as yet. I never learned the fate of the men we left behind. I pray at least one made it to the warrens beneath the city. A man who could speak Galstani plainly might be precisely the kind of man Padmurak needed most.

A man who had a name.

I dove hard after the van, marking as I fell the trio of black cruisers in pursuit. To my astonishment, there were none ahead, nor any on the bridge as Otavia turned. I fired on the cruisers and broke their tight formation. They scrambled over the pavement, struggling to ascertain the source of their threat. I looped around, took aim at their tires. The smaller vehicles had ordinary wheels and not the huge spherical ones the vans relied on. I caught one, and the car flipped, rolling, bouncing like a cast-off shoe. One eye shut, I squinted through the reticle and fired again.

Click.

Empty.

Nothing for it. Spurring the machine forward, I dropped low until I was almost at road level, streaking just above the tops of the passing cars. Corvo had made the bridge, and was turning at last onto that straightaway and the approach to the steel arch and the gates that led to the highway and freedom. Only then did I understand why the Guard had not moved to cordon off our escape.

I had forgotten the gates.

And the gates were closing.

Why they were not closed already I could not begin to guess. Perhaps the Guard had been overconfident when their Commissar brought his men to the Sollan Embassy on Argyris’s invitation. Perhaps word had been slow to reach the keepers of the gate. Perhaps they had not known how we planned to make our escape until that very moment. I can’t say.

But the gates were closing.

“Go!” Without my helmet or the ability to touch my wrist-terminal, I could not communicate with the others. “Go, go, go!” I was not sure if I spoke to Corvo and Valka or to the iron horse I rode, but hardly ever in my life had I prayed so fervently for so little.

For so much.

Go.

I was gaining. The mighty portal was grinding shut on mechanisms little oiled and much neglected. I dropped then to the level of the pavement, pushing the chariot hard as it would go to close the gap between the van and me. The Conclave Guard came hard behind, sirens screaming in the pale dawn like the loosed hounds of some pagan hell. The whine of the repulsors drowned out everything. Even my scream.

A thousand feet.

It might have been light-years.

Corvo pushed the van to its limits. The mighty armored beast ground over the pavement, leaving black stripes where it passed. She was so close. They were so close. The doors were nearly shut, a slim sliver of orange light stood between their jaws, a narrow slit growing narrower still. It was the eye of a giant’s needle, but a needle all the same.

And Otavia Corvo threaded it. The van scraped by, leaving paint—I felt certain—on either side. They’d made it.

“Go!” I screamed, and knew then I screamed for Valka and the others, because I knew I would not. Still, I leaned almost flat, driving the chariot forward fast as any arrow. I let my vision stretch, blood pounding in my ears as a million million gates ground shut before me. On I stared, seeking one—somewhere in time—that stalled. Faltered. Failed.

My chariot struck the bridge beneath me, jarring me back to myself. The whole platform wobbled beneath me, and I clenched my teeth. The vision collapsed like a pane of shattered glass, leaving only the blood music and a dull ache behind my eyes. No use, I thought. Too late.

I was going too fast.

A thousand feet remained.

Three seconds.

Not enough.

The door ground shut. I could not turn away in time or tilt to brake. I leaped free of the chariot instead, momentum carrying me into the heavy steel door with a noise like a terrible gong. The chariot struck the door below and a dozen feet to my left. Relatively light without a driver, it bounced and caromed over the side and into the water far below. Dazed, I slid to the tarmac, my back against the door.

I’d taken too long to get my bearings in the air. I’d wasted too much time.

“Damn your eyes, Marlowe,” I cursed, keying my terminal. “Valka! Valka, it’s me!”

But there was no answer, could be no answer. The dome was sealed. No signal was getting in or out. For a moment, I entertained the thought of leaping into the reservoir again, but I knew that with prefects on chariots, they’d track me before I could swim a hundred yards.

There was nowhere to go, and so I did the only thing that seemed suitable.

I stood up and drew my sword.

Half a dozen of the smaller Conclave Guard cars screamed toward me, one of the riot vans in hot pursuit, and further off I saw the glare of four charioteers knifing through the air above. If I could get to one of them, I might win free. I entertained thoughts of carving my way out through the dome and driving the chariot to the shuttle port.

It was the only way I saw.

“Always forward,” I muttered to myself, tugging the coif back over my head and tapping the button inside the neck of my breastplate to tighten the metamaterial before I put on my helm once more. There was no point trying to cut through that gate. I knew its thickness, and knew also that if I carved a piece of it large enough to admit me that I would not have the strength to move it, much less the strength to run the length of that subterranean highway to catch up to Valka and the others. I had only to pray they might escape, and to pray also the Lothrians truly did want me alive. From the Tamerlane, Corvo and Valka might launch a true attempt to rescue me with ninety thousand soldiers at their back.

But I would not go quietly. I would not go gentle.

The masks and helms of Nipponese knights were fashioned like snarling demons, like ogres and other fell beasts, with feathered mustachios and eyebrows, their helms bristling with horns. The Cielcin—often as not—wore masks that left their horns exposed to vacuum, for their bony hide was bred to endure the titanic emptiness of the Dark between the stars. On Earth of old it was said a thousand tribes and kingdoms put on the skins of lions and wolves, or painted their faces unholy colors to frighten the enemy.

We Sollans—like the Romans, our forebears—had chosen the serene faces of gods. It was with just so serene a visage that I stood alone upon the bridge, my grim face concealed behind my mirror-black mask. I checked my shield in the corner of my eye. All systems still blue.

Good.

Every second I stood upon the bridge was a second I diverted at least part of their attention from the others. If I truly was the object of their desire . . . then all the better.

The cars all ground to a halt, half-turning to fan out across the width of the roadway ahead. Men in the faceless matte black of the Guard piled out, leveling stunners at me. Others pumped gas launchers and fired canisters in arcs over the heads of their brothers. They clattered about me, hissing like a den of snakes, belching their poisonous fumes into the oppressive air in noxious, gray-green clouds.

Safe in my suit, I smiled. One fell at my feet, and I kicked it scornfully aside, kindling my sword with a flourish.

They all opened fire at once.

Breaking left, I charged the line, weathering stunner fire as I came. Two men hunkered behind the right-hand door of the nearest car, using its armored steel plate for cover. I raised the highmatter sword and brought it down like a headsman. The pentaquark blade sheared through steel and ceramic and flesh alike, and the two men fell. Turning away, I dragged my blade through the front of their car, chewing through frame and fuel reservoir. I had only seconds to leap away as the fuel cell ignited, and the blast wave hurled me back—slammed against my shield as the whole vehicle went up in flames. The blast carried me into the bridge’s rail, and this time I did not fall over, but stood, shaking off the ringing in my ears. Between the others and myself the flaming hulk of the destroyed car stood burning, belching black smoke to mingle with the white and poisonous green of their gas.

Through that noxious fog, a stray shot caromed off my shield, and I lurched behind the burning car. I heard muffled shouts in Lothrian, but I could not make them out. Crouched behind the rear of the burning vehicle, I saw the shadow of one of the Guards cast dancing on the pavement before me, and with a roar I stood, blade cleaving the stock of his stunner in two and severing his left hand. The man staggered back and fell, and before I could follow through two of his fellows leaped at me. One seized me about the waist and the other grappled with my sword arm, trying to immobilize my wrist.

Struggling thus over highmatter was often lethal to both parties. It was so easy to torque one’s hand and drive the peerless blade through self and enemy alike. But my left arm was free, and I drove my elbow up and back and cracked the man who held my waist in the visor, rattling him. With him momentarily stunned, I dragged my knife from its belt-sheath and punched it into the man’s padded flank. His armorweave took the brunt of the blow, but the blade was sharp enough and wielded with enough force to pierce the soft flesh beneath the floating ribs. It was enough to slacken his hold, enough to gain a moment to bring the knife to bear on the other man.

There was no armor in the joint of his arm, and the blood ran free as he released his grip on my sword hand. The highmatter fell like the hand of Fate, and spinning I cut through the first man as four more came round to face me. I leaped and slid across the hood of the next cruiser, blade slashing through the windscreen and the far door as I went. The man there avoided being decapitated by mere inches as he fell backward, crawling away. Ignoring him, I cut the car’s wheel in half with a single stroke and advanced, half-ducking as another barrage crackled against my shield.

Stunner fire.

They were still not trying to kill me.

I worked my way up the line, moving from the left side of the bridge to the next, sketching a scarlet maze on the drab, gray pavement. Three more men fell and another of the vehicles before the others started to retreat, peeling off down the line, retreating up the bridge. I raised my sword. “Run, you dogs!” I shouted, fury for Baro and the other dead hot in me as my fear for Valka and the others ran cold.

But they had run to a purpose.

A hail of bullets rained about me, pocking the cracked roadtop. The charioteers had closed in, and the shine of their drive lights came so bright my suit’s optics had to polarize the glare. I weathered the onslaught a moment and dove behind the nearest parked car. I heard the noise of safety glass crunch and metal deform beneath that heavy rain, then the whine of repulsors dopplered as the charioteers streaked overhead. They would be shielded, and I had no weapon save knife and sword, and neither would avail.

But there was one of the dead men near to hand, his armored fist still clutching his disruptor rifle. Unkindling my sword and sheathing it, I leaped for the dropped weapon and snatched it up, left hand fumbling with the phase settings—still holding the knife. The indicators swapped blue for red, and tucking the thing to my shoulder I squeezed the trigger, aiming the best I could. The charioteer slewed to one side, crimson bolt missing him by whole feet as he returned fire.

My shield’s charge indicator shaded blue to yellow in the corner of my vision. I grimaced. Strong though the Royse barrier was, it would not hold forever. The nearest charioteer had slowed, orbiting me as he fired.

I fired back.

The red charge of the disruptor washed over the man’s shield. Useless. Swearing, I cast the thing aside. I was never going to defeat four shielded flying charioteers with a disruptor rifle, not in a million years.

But I could still render them impotent. Cavalier though their fellows had been about firing on the People, I felt confident these fine fellows would not fire on their own. Slamming the dagger back into its sheath, I swept free my sword and charged after the retreating members of the Guard. Palatine as I was, I gained swiftly, but before I’d closed half the distance, I drew up short.

Not one, but three of the riot vans had parked further down the bridge, their back ends facing me, their doors thrown wide. Thirty members of the Conclave Guard stood firm, advancing as a block behind their tower shields. Though I knew my sword could make short work of them, I could not stop the sense of numb terror that rose in me, so formidable was that sight.

They advanced in lockstep, each man carrying neither stunner nor gun, but a heavy ceramic baton with a head like a medieval mace. These they beat against their shields, creating a din like the noise of drums.

I settled into a low guard and thrust my sword in line. I could not fight thirty men and win, but I might engage them all the same. The words of an oath I’d sworn so long ago floated back to me in the Emperor’s voice.

Do you swear to see to its end any course begun?

I do.

I shifted my footing, mindful of the chariots circling me. They held their fire now, operating—I guessed—under new orders. Looking past the block of men advancing toward me, to the white-lit interiors of the van, I saw the jacketed and helmeted figure of another Lothrian Commissar standing arms crossed and admiring. He was indistinguishable from the one Otavia had killed, as though our defiance at the embassy had never occurred.

I was alone.

But I had stood alone on Berenike, on Arae, and—before that—before Prince Aranata.

I had not forgotten how to die.

I had not forgotten how to stand, either. When the battle line had come to within twenty of me, I charged. No Lothrian I’d seen had worn adamantine armor or carried highmatter themselves. The shields I could see were carbon fiber and ceramic as the ones the men in the embassy carport had used. I slashed them to ribbons, but even as I did, the edges of the block rushed forward to entrap me. I was surrounded.

By dead men.

Outnumbered as I was, out-positioned as I was, the Lothrians could not face my sword. They fell around me in awful pieces or staggered back slashed inches deep. The space about me was a charnal house, the pavement slick with gore. Behind me, one of the Conclave Guard smote me with his mace, and so terrific was the blow that I went to one knee, head ringing. My helm had spared me the worst of the trauma, but still I saw double.

There were hands on my arms, my shoulders. Howling, I stood and whirled, and three men fell dead. Still more leaped upon me, and I slipped on the blood-soaked concrete. My blade scored the road top, and I tried to roll.

“Hold the man!” came a distant voice in shrill Lothrian. The commissar? “Hold the man down!”

Boom.

A titanic blow rang my helmet like a bell. Indeed, I heard bells. The deep, temple-hushed tolling of the bells of Devil’s Rest. Was I going mad? My helmet’s vision sparked and fizzed, entoptics damaged.

“Valka!” I cried out, reaching for that quiet place in my soul.

I couldn’t find it.

“Valka!” It took every ounce and fiber to find hands and knees. Where was my sword?

There it was! Still in my hand.

But the act of striking out with it, slashing wildly to strike the foes on my right, only allowed the left wing to crush me to the pavement.

Boom.

Again the hammer fell. My suit’s vision sparked again and went dead. I was alone in the dark closeness of my armor, blind and bruised. I prayed for a miracle, but none came.

A boot—I think—stamped upon my face, and all my sinews went numb. I had a dim understanding of hands on me—many, many hands.

“Valka . . .” I said at the last. Or thought. Or screamed.

The boot pressed my armored face into the pavement, and a third blow wiped me out.