Duffirk bustled.

Cheer was busy during the infrequent markets but, by comparison with Duffirk, it was a ghost town. In Duffirk, people were everywhere and everywhere there were people. The cobblestone streets were lined by gutters into which the city’s waste flowed, adding its perfume to that of the tightly packed crowds. Grated holes placed at regular intervals let the liquid flow underground, but that just left a build-up of the solids. The piles weren’t huge, and Llew realized that someone must have had the job of clearing it; this was the price of civilization, she supposed. As much as she wanted to earn an honest living, Llew thought she would stick to picking pockets before she accepted that job.

The buildings in the center of town stood at least two stories high, with some having five, maybe six stories. They cast perpetual shadows across the streets.

And the air was thick with smoke. Llew and Braph had yet to walk past the source, but it choked every breath she took. How could people live like this?

People streamed around Braph under the shadows of tall stone and concrete buildings, and Llew only avoided being cut off from him by sticking close to his coattails. If she let herself fall back a step, the crowd would close her out. She might have been dreaming of being free of Braph, but she hadn’t been prepared for this. She knew the rhythms of Cheer, and no matter how busy the town center became, she could move between and around people unnoticed and yet continue to make her living. In Duffirk she kept bumping into people, and people kept treading on her. She just didn’t get it. People seemed busier, yet they were performing the same tasks as those carried out by citizens of Cheer. Maybe she just had to get used to the pace of city life again after days on the boat followed by the security of Lord Tovias’s estate, followed by the isolation of the Turhmosian plain and two days riding a lonely highway punctuated by only the smallest of towns.

It would be the perfect time to make a getaway. Braph had barely looked at her since they entered the city. But that very fact unsettled her to the point that she hadn’t been able to make a move. She would. She would veer off soon, into a gap. No, she would make a gap.

Why wasn’t he checking on her? Did he have some sort of invisible leash of which she was unaware? Was he just so confident that her skills didn’t extend to navigating through a Duffirk crowd? Well, he didn’t know much, did he, because she would be fine. She just had to... She would... Damn it!

The crowd thinned each time they turned down a new street. Llew was struggling to put her finger on why, but her nerve was gone. Suddenly, she wondered just how far out of Cheer she would have got if she hadn’t run into Aris and his posse. Would she have walked a few miles and then frozen at the concept of being truly alone? It shadowed her thoughts of escape: she would be on her own, in a country she didn’t know, in a huge continent she’d left when she was five. Sure, she’d been looking after herself for years. But that was in Cheer, and she knew Cheer; she knew how the people and the land worked. This was Turhmos. If she ran, where would she run to?

Finally, they turned down a quiet, almost deserted street. Braph pushed open a wrought-iron gate into an overgrown garden. A concrete path led straight from the gate, up concrete steps to a carved wood, black-painted door of a dirty-white, almost gray, two-story villa. Braph gestured her through the gate. With her nerve to run still shattered, Llew took a deep breath, closed her eyes, released the breath, and stepped through the gate.

Jonas hefted the man from the ground, hurling the flailing body aside. The Turhmosian landed like a sack of potatoes, accompanied by a “Hmph!“. That distraction out of the way, he was free to draw two knives and face his next opponent.

They had been surprised by a small contingent of Turhmos soldiers soon after dawn. It wasn’t a serious problem, but it was a hindrance. He had no idea how fast Braph was able to travel with Llew, and he had no doubt of their substantial lead. To top it off, he didn’t even know where Braph was taking her.

At a high-pitched whistle, he side-stepped in time for an arrow to fly past, digging deep into the dirt several feet behind. Then he ducked a sword swipe, executed a leg sweep, pulled the oncoming swordsman to the ground, and plunged a knife into the man’s flesh.

“Cass! Arrows! I’ll cover you!” He threw knives at two swordsmen near the blond man, freeing Cassidy to prepare his bow. Jonas pulled another two knives from his vest and went to fight by Cassidy’s side. Alvaro ran his sword through his opponent and moved closer to Jonas and Cassidy, helping to close Cassidy off from the nearby swordsmen, while Hisham fought three of the Turhmosians single-handedly. Perhaps Jonas should have been doing the same, but it was a risk. If any of the surviving men knew they’d been fighting Kara, it wouldn’t be long before Turhmos sent more men to find them. That would only serve to hinder their search for Llew if it didn’t result in a new Quaver-Turhmos war – and Aris might have a few things to say about that.

Cassidy loosed two arrows in quick succession. One hit the tree the Turhmosian bowman hid behind, the other sunk through his skull when the man dared gloat.

An arrow came from behind them, and Cassidy was quick to retaliate while Jonas returned to the closer fight. He was ill-prepared for the sword swinging at him and barely managed to leap out of the way. The blade caught his shirt, ripping it open.

“Syakaran!” the swordsman exclaimed at the sight of Jonas’s tattoo.

Jonas growled and lunged, but the swordsman leaped out of his way and ran back through the trees.

“Cassidy!”

“I’ve got him!” Cassidy released an arrow after the man. “I don’t got him. Sorry, Jonas, too many trees.”

“Damn it! Hisham!”

The other man nodded and joined Jonas in pursuit of the soldiers. Jonas caught the men up in a matter of seconds and sliced his knife through throats with a practiced ease. It was only as he dropped the last one that an image of Llew suffering the same wound in Stelt flashed behind his eyes. He shook his head to clear the image. A soldier didn’t think about loved ones. A soldier killed. And Jonas had been a soldier his whole life.

Hisham joined him on his return to camp.

“No Aenuks.”

“No,” said Jonas. “Just a patrol.”

“Still, you’d think they’d have an Aenuk with them.”

Jonas nodded.

“And us without our knives, in a forest teeming with life... You must’ve put a real dent in their numbers. Turhmos’ll be wishing that girl of yours was a teenage boy.”

Jonas turned a withering look on Hisham, who shrugged.

“I’m guessin’ she’d mind less, too— Hey, I don’t mean anything by it!” He held his hands up in propitiation. “What do you think Quaver would do to her if she weren’t your pet, anyway?”

Jonas didn’t answer. He knew. They’d kill her. They wouldn’t tolerate the destruction she’d caused in Aghacia, accidental or not. Actually, they probably wouldn’t kill her. They’d expect him to.

The ground around their camp was littered with dead Turhmos soldiers.

“Well, now we’re gonna attract trouble.” Hisham gave Jonas a wry look. “We’ve got to get you a new shirt. You can’t go anywhere like that.”

“You’ll have to get me one at the next town.” He looked around at Cassidy and Alvaro. Alvaro was holding his hand over his arm, stemming the flow of blood. “You alright?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. It’s just a cut.”

“Here, I’ll take a look.” Hisham stepped over the bodies to Alvaro. “That’s pretty bad. I can tie it off, but I’ll have to stitch it later.” Alvaro nodded. Hisham tore a strip of cloth from one of the dead men and returned to tie it around Alvaro’s arm. “That should hold till I can get supplies in the next town.”

Without another word, they gathered their things and broke camp, leading the horses through forest cover to avoid being seen on the road.

By late morning, the forest had ended, and a settlement appeared over the hill several hundred paces away. Jonas and Alvaro sat among the trees while Cassidy and Hisham went into the town for the supplies they needed. On their return, Jonas changed his shirt and Hisham cleaned and sewed Alvaro’s cut closed with a tiny needle and fine silk-like cotton. Alvaro was staunchly silent through the procedure.

On the road again, they traveled much faster, urging the horses on at a trot. They headed in a south-easterly direction, stopping the occasional traveler to ask if they had seen anyone that might fit Llew’s description. None had.

Jonas fought against the growing anxiety that they might not find her.

Any other hall with as many wall-hangings might have been cozy, yet Braph’s walls exhibited a hardness and lack of warmth that seemed a reflection of his character. Metal gadgets of manifold shapes, sizes, and purposes decorated either side of the dim hallway. There were no windows, and what light there was ducked through those doors standing ajar. Large and small polished copper and steel cogs hung from hooks on the walls, their functions, if any over and above decorative, indiscernible by Llew. Copper pipes ran along the bottom of one wall, and the tinkle of water trickling through metal underpinned every creaky floorboard.

Noticing Llew’s interest, Braph said, “You haven’t had a hot bath until you’ve had gas-heated.” His smile had the same cheek Jonas exhibited at times – the resemblance was such that she nearly forgot to fear the man; a glance at their surroundings set her straight again.

A door opened and an old man poked his head through. “Master, it’s you. I thought I heard the door.”

“You should have opened it for me, Nilv.”

“Yes. Sorry.” Then his eyes lit up. “Is that her?”

Braph nodded and the man’s glee spread to the rest of his face, his cheeks almost entirely smoothing of wrinkles as they plumped into juicy plums below each eye.

“The room is ready if you want to use it right away.”

“I think I might. But first I thought we should welcome our guest.”

Nilv’s brow puckered in confusion, and his smile dropped.

“Bring up the resident Aenuk.”

Nilv’s face lit up again and disappeared back through the door, letting it swing shut behind him.

Braph turned a smile on Llew. She suspected it was meant to be warm, but there was a look in his eyes that suggested he had to calculate just how much to stretch his lips and how tight to squint his eyes to portray what he thought she wanted to see. “I’d like you to feel at home.”

His lips twitched, but she couldn’t tell if he was laughing at her reaction. Her temper simmered, and she looked back at the door. He hadn’t snibbed it. He was Karan, but Llew thought she might have a chance over that short distance. Come on, feet. But her limbs would not move. It was as though her mind and body were disconnected. Then Llew remembered Anya unconsciously flailing a knife through the air.

A few minutes later, Nilv returned, dragging behind him an emaciated man who appeared to be in his sixties. When he looked straight at Llew, she recognized him: her father. His blue eyes were sunken, his cheeks hollowed. His mouth worked to form a word.

“Run.” The word rasped from his throat and, suddenly free of whatever had been keeping her tethered, Llew was able to follow the command she’d been trying to give herself for days.

Her mind swirled with conflicting thoughts as she turned back to the front door. Her father was there, a captive. Shouldn’t she be rescuing him? Hugging him? Slapping him? Her body now moved despite her brain, but she made it only a few steps before running into a woman coming from another room off the hallway. She shoved the woman aside.

Her hand reached for the door handle but just before she touched it, Braph grabbed her and, with an arm looped about her waist, dragged her back down the hall. She kicked out and things crashed from walls. She struggled, but his grip was too strong, and she cried out hopelessly.

Braph pulled her through a doorway into a room filled with gadgetry, in the center of which were two chairs, plain, wooden, like school room chairs, with leather restraints for wrists and ankles. The room was even colder than the rest of the house, with its floor covered in a thin layer of interlocking gray schist rock.

She screamed. She kicked. Braph half sat on her and strapped her arm to the chair, and all the while she lashed at him with her free arm.

“Like it?” he asked, unaffected by her efforts, his leather coat absorbing all impacts. “Your mother helped me design it.”

Not for one second would she believe that her mother had actually worked with this man. No, but she had once sat in this very chair. Nilv tied her father into a smaller chair just inside the door. The old man looked so tired, so... ancient. But he wasn’t that old, and it had only been five, maybe six, years since she had seen him as a strong, healthy man operating a smith’s forge. Llew couldn’t comprehend what could have happened in that time to have such an effect. He was Aenuk. Surely, he could heal from whatever had attacked him?

“What have they done to you?” she asked, as Nilv came to help Braph secure her firmly in her chair.

“I have been near death almost every day since I left you,” he said, sorrow curving his back and deepening each wrinkle. “I’m sorry.”

Sorry? He was sorry for what they’d done to him? Sorry for abandoning her. Sorry to see her there now.

Braph and Nilv moved behind Llew and the room filled with a grating metallic tick, tick, tick. The chilling sound was accompanied by a scratchy tapping noise, explained by the appearance of a spider-like creature... No, it was a device, a machine like Braph’s bracelet. It moved on eight spindly metal legs that terminated in sharp toes. Tiny gears and pistons turned and pumped as each leg moved, scurrying to Llew’s foot. She tried to shift away, but her ankle was firmly strapped to the chair. The critter ran up her leg and she shook her thigh to dislodge it, but it just continued up her torso to her shoulder, then down her arm, where it settled by the crook of her elbow. Her skin crawled. Where a spider’s mouth parts might have been a needle projected and plunged through her skin. Blood shot up the tube and began filling the glass globe that made up the creature’s abdomen. Seeing her own blood sloshing around brought bile to the back of Llew’s throat, and she turned her head away.

Another spider climbed her other leg. She squeezed her thighs together, feeling violated. The spider clattered up her body so swiftly it remained unaffected by all her efforts to dislodge it on its way up and then down her other arm. Chink. Plunge. Another climbed to her shoulder and probed a vein in her neck. The first two had stung briefly, but this one really hurt, and moving her head only made it worse.

Her flight response kicked in and her heart pounded faster. Blood shot into the glass baubles. Everywhere she looked, her own blood washed around her. She closed her eyes.

“I’m so sorry, Llewella. I never wanted this.”

Llew opened her eyes to look at her father. He seemed so pitiful. Her heart ached to see him like that, and years of thinking he’d cold-heartedly abandoned her fell away.

“You’re a pathetic old man, aren’t you? Running away from your own daughter,” said Braph, stepping up beside Llew’s chair.

“I ran to protect her. To keep you from finding her.”

“Much good it did her.”

“Six years. She got six more years.” Llew’s father coughed, a hacking, dry cough.

Llew sucked air through her teeth as her skin pulled around the needle in her neck.

Her father deflated. “I’m so sorry. I never wanted this for you.” He wept.

“It’s faster if you wear a dress.” Braph rested a hand casually on the back of the chair, oblivious to their distress. “There are some good veins in the thighs. Perhaps next time. Your mother did love it when I brought her a new dress.” His hand squeezed her shoulder.

She tugged at the straps across her wrists, to no effect. The leather was simply too strong, and too well secured.

“I’m afraid we’re a little short on captives at the moment,” said Braph. “You’ll have to recover on your own. But I do have a room made up for you. I think you’ll like it.” He smiled.

“I’ll replenish her,” said her father.

“You think I’m going to risk killing you yet? No, I still have need of you. And she’s too powerful. She’d drain you dry in a moment. Another time, perhaps.”

The glass vials filled, and the creatures retracted their needles and scuttled away behind Llew, only to be replaced by more. Llew felt herself becoming light-headed and tired. Her skin grew pale. Just as her heart began to falter, the last critter scurried down her leg and from her sight.

Braph and Nilv unfastened her and helped her from the room, one supporting her under each arm. Foggy vision prevented Llew from gaining any real sense of the layout of the house, but she felt them carry her upstairs where they lay her on a soft bed.

Nilv left immediately.

Braph stood beside her, eyes gentle and cold. Llew held his gaze, projecting all of her hate into that fatigued glare. He ran a leather knuckle down one cheek, then left the room, locking the door behind him.

Cassidy shook the man’s hand again. The shake went on longer than necessary, again.

Jonas figured it must get lonely on a farm in the middle of nowhere, especially for a couple getting on in years with no children. Still, the boys needed to get moving. They were wasting time. As nice as it had been to join the couple for a hearty lunch of stew and boiled potatoes, the couple hadn’t seen Llew and so had been of no other help to Jonas’s posse.

Jonas felt eyes on him and looked to the farmhouse door. The woman peered around the frame, not hiding, just keeping in her place. She didn’t look away when his eyes locked with hers. Jonas lifted his chin. What did the woman think she saw? Even that slight intimidation didn’t make her look away. What did she think she knew?

Come on, Cassidy.

The rest of them were already mounted and even the horses were impatient; Chino pawed the ground and shuffled the bit in his mouth.

Finally, Cassidy gave the man a hearty pat on the shoulder, disengaged his hand from their shared clasp, and mounted. With a nod to the rest of them, he nudged his horse on and they moved off, Cassidy affording the couple one more wave.

They’d been nice enough, but Jonas couldn’t help feeling the stop had been a waste of time.

Llew didn’t see her father again. She was allowed out of her room to eat with Braph and to bathe under the supervision of the brusque woman Braph kept to run the household. The man had little time for anyone except Llew, and even then, only at mealtimes. For the most part, he remained in the room of contraptions.

Llew spent most of her time locked in her room, reading: it was all she had to do. The room was sparse but for a well-stocked bookcase, although most of the books were dry tales of historic kings and kingdoms and of little interest to Llew. Aghacia barely had a leadership at all, and kings, emperors, or presidents had so far not impinged on Llew’s life. Although, when she got to thinking, she realised she would be spending the rest of her life in places governed by a higher power of some sort, and highly likely one that would take great interest in her. Perhaps it was time to learn about how these people worked.

Not that she could retain anything. Her brain felt like mush, as if she hadn’t had a proper meal in days, though Braph fed her well enough. Her mind only cleared for truly coherent thoughts late in the evening, and then they kept her awake late into the night. Locked in that room, in the dark, in a house she didn’t know, in a city she didn’t know, in a country she didn’t know, she formulated and rejected many plans of escape. But when morning returned, her mind rolled over under its fluffy blankets and refused to construct much in the way of a fully formed thought until night returned.

The villa filled with an almost constant cacophony of deep rumbles, high whirring sounds, and pops, and bangs. Once she’d narrowed the source to Braph’s room, it didn’t take long for Llew to tune it out.

What she couldn’t tune out was the wailing that filled the house several times a day. It sounded like cats – no, children. But she’d not seen one and couldn’t imagine Braph keeping any. Perhaps even more chilling than the crying was the occasional laughter that echoed down the halls, disembodied and ghostly.

Over meals, Braph told Llew how he was trying out new ideas for his device, striving to extract every last ounce of magic from Aenuk blood, so that non-Kara could achieve the same power he already had. Of course, he bemoaned, no matter how much more power he isolated, it would never be enough for the Turhmosians: not while he was still more powerful, which he could do nothing about. Someone, one day, would appreciate his efforts.

“I suppose I should feel proud of what I have achieved already. But is it so bad to want recognition? I have created a device that will put the power of the Immortals into the hands of ordinary men and women. How does no one see value in that?”

He spoke across the dinner table as though they were a long-time married couple, comfortable with each other in every way. He gazed at her, his elbow beside his dinner plate, waving his fork with his other hand as he spoke, emphasizing his points.

“Maybe they’re scared. My friend told me the Immortals were cruel.” Llew spoke to her own plate, but then lifted her chin in defiance. “Maybe, despite all these years of fighting, even Turhmos wants to live in peace.”

“But they can!” Braph pulled himself straighter in his chair, glowing with a childlike eagerness to share what he’d learned. “With my device, we can defeat our enemies and feed our people. With my device, we can turn the destructive power of Aenuks to good. The magic I create can be used to heal, or grow food, or, or... I haven’t even had the chance to explore its limits yet. And with more like you, Turhmos could be a beacon for good. Other countries will beg for such power. And if we had enough power to go around, there would be no need for wars anymore. Hunger, slavery, it could all be a thing of the past.”

But Llew’s ears had latched onto only one part of his speech.

“And just where do you plan to find more like me?” In different circumstances she might have found it laughable to hear someone talk of breeding people, of farming people for their blood, and with the very next breath speak of ending slavery. But nothing about Braph brought laughter.

“Well, you see, when a man and a woman love each other, or at least find each other attractive...” he began. Then all humour dropped from his features and his voice lowered. “Or the woman has something a man wants and needs...”

Llew glowered at him. Touch me and I will kill you, she sent silently through the look alone. You may be Kara, but I will kill you.