"Why on Tamriel would a blackmailer sign their name to a note?"

"I see your point."

"But if not her, that leaves me with you," she said. "Or someone else in your organization."

"Impossible."

"I argued against using you people in the first place," she snorted.

"The job was done."

"The job was not done. Attrebus lives, and someone has implicated me in the bargain."

"You've no proof Attrebus lives," the man asserted. "That's only a rumor."

"Wrong. A courier arrived from Water's Edge this morning with news that he is alive. It went straight to the Emperor. He's keeping it quiet, but troops have already been sent."

That's news, Colin thought. He'd written the "blackmail" letter himself, to draw her out, but he hadn't heard anything about a courier.

"Well, then," the man said. "I don't leave a job unfinished. I deal with it, at no extra charge."

"That won't do. Not now."

The man laughed. "Now, let's not get silly," he said. "If you don't want me to finish the job, fine, but you're not getting your money back. Don't forget who I am."

"You're a glorified thug," Arese replied. "That's who you are."

"I love your type," the man snarled. "You pay me to do murder so you can pretend your hands are clean, so you can continue to think yourself better than me. I have news for you-you're worse, because you don't have the guts to put down your own dogs."

"I wouldn't say that," she replied, a colder note in her voice.

"You're not threatening me."

Colin heard several doors open, and he could all but see the man's guards coming in. But then he heard something else, a sort of ripping sound accompanied by a rush of air and glass shattering. Every hair on his body pricked up.

The next thing he heard was something human ears were not meant to receive, the human brain not meant to interpret, the primal feral sound of which the lion's roar or the wolf's growl were faint shadows. Harsh yellow light shone up the stairs, and then darkness.

Then the screaming began, very human and beyond all terror. Colin began to shiver, then to shake. He was still shaking when the last of the screams abruptly choked off and he felt something ponderous moving through the house. Searching.

When light returned, Attrebus first thought he was plunging through a shimmering sky, but it took only a moment to understand that although he was in the air, he wasn't falling, but supported. The shimmer was glass-or what appeared to be glass-and it was all around him; was in fact what held him up in so strange a fashion that it took a moment to sort out how.

Some forty feet below him was a web that might have been two hundred feet in diameter. It looked very much like a spider's web, anchored to three metallic spires, an upthrust of stone, and a thicker tower of what appeared to be porcelain. Below the web was a long drop into a cone-shaped basin half full of emerald water and covered with strange buildings everywhere else. The web was made of glasslike tubes about the thickness of his arm. Every few feet along any given tube another sprouted and rose vinelike toward the sky. These in turn branched into smaller tendrils so that the whole resembled a gigantic bed of strange, transparent sea creatures-and indeed, most of them undulated, as if in a current.

Attrebus was about ten feet from the top of the bushy structure, where the strands were no thicker than a writing quill, and these were what held him up. They clustered thickly on the soles of his boots, pressed his back and torso and every part of him except his face with firm, gentle pressure.

He tried to take a step, and they moved with him, reconfiguring so he didn't fall. They cut the sunlight into colors like so many prisms, but it was nevertheless not difficult to see in any direction. He noticed Sul a few feet away, similarly borne.

"You did it!" he shouted. The crystalline strands shivered at his voice and rang like a million faint chimes. "We got away."

"I didn't do anything," Sul replied, shaking his head. "I never got close enough to the door to escape into Oblivion."

"Then where are we?" Treb asked.

"In my home," a voice answered.

Attrebus looked higher up and saw someone walking down toward them, the transparent tubules shifting to meet his feet.

He appeared to be a Dunmer of average size, his gray hair pulled back in a long queue. He wore a sort of loose umber robe with wide sleeves and black slippers.

"Amazing," the man said. "Sul. And you, I take it, are Prince Attrebus. Welcome to Umbriel."

"Vuhon," Sul snarled.

The only strange thing about the man's appearance, Attrebus noticed, were his eyes-they weren't red, like a Dunmer's; the orbs where milky white and the surrounds black.

"Once," the man said. "Once I was called that. You may still use that name, if you find it convenient."

Sul howled, and Attrebus saw his hand flash as when he'd fought and burned Sharwa, but the balefire coruscated briefly in the filaments and then faded. Attrebus ran forward, lifting Flashing, but after a few steps the web suddenly went rigid like the glass it resembled, and he couldn't move anything below his neck.

"Please try to behave yourselves," Vuhon said. "As I said, this is my home." He let himself slump into a sitting position a few feet above them, and the strands formed something like a chair.

"You've come here to kill me, I take it?" he asked Sul.

"What do you think?" Sul said, his voice flat with fury.

"I just said what I think-I merely phrased it as a question."

"You murdered Ilzheven, destroyed our city and our country, left our people to be driven to the ends of the earth. You have to pay for that."

Vuhon cocked his head.

"But I didn't do any of that, Sul," he said softly. "You did. Don't you remember?"

Sul snarled and tried to move forward again, without success.

Vuhon made a languid sort of sign with his hand, and the glassy vines rustled. A moment later they handed up to each of them a small red bowl full of yellow spheres that did not appear to be fruit. Vuhon took one and popped it in his mouth. A faint green vapor vented from his nostrils.

"You should try them," he said.

"I don't believe I will," Attrebus said.

Vuhon shrugged and turned his attention back to Sul.

"Ilzheven died when the ministry hit Vivec City, old friend," he said. "And the ministry hit Vivec City because you destroyed the ingenium preventing it falling."

"You were draining the life out of her," Sul accused.

"Very slowly. She would have lived for months."

"What are you talking about?" Attrebus demanded. "Sul, what's he saying?"

Sul didn't answer, but Vuhon turned toward Attrebus.

"He told you about the ministry? How we devised a method to keep it airborne?"

"Yes. By stealing souls."

"We couldn't find any other way to do it," Vuhon allowed. "Given time, perhaps we could have. At first we had to slaughter slaves and prisoners outright, as many as ten a day. But then I found a way to use the souls of the living, although only certain people had souls-well, for simplicity's sake, let us say 'large' enough. We only needed twelve at a time, then. A vast improvement. Ilzheven was chosen because she had the right sort of soul."

"You chose her because she wouldn't love you," Sul contradicted. "Because she loved me instead."

"We were always competitive, you and I, weren't we?" Vuhon said, almost absently, as if just remembering. "Even as boys. But we were friends right up until the minute you burst into the ingenium chamber and starting trying to cut Ilzheven free."

"I meant only to free her," Sul said. "If you hadn't fought me, the ingenium would never have been damaged."

"You put yourself and your desires ahead of our people, Sul. And all you see is the result."

"You're twisting it all up," Sul said. "You know what happened."

Vuhon shrugged again. "It's not important to me anymore. Did you find the sword?"

"What sword?"

Vuhon's eyes narrowed. "I suppose you didn't find it. My taskers certainly haven't." His voice rose and his calm broke. Attrebus suddenly seemed to hear boundless anger and violence in the Dunmer's tone. "Where is it?" he shouted.

"What do you want with it?" Attrebus asked.

"That's none of your concern."

"I think everything about you is my concern," Attrebus snapped back. "Whatever happened in the past, you're many thousands of times a murderer now. All those people in Black Marsh ..."

Vuhon sat back, seemed to relax. His voice became once again maddeningly tranquil.

"I can't really deny that," he admitted.

For a moment Attrebus was stunned by the casual confession.

"But why?" he asked finally.

"Look around you," Vuhon said. "Isn't it beautiful?"

Almost against his will, Attrebus once again took in the sight of Umbriel.

"Yes," he was forced to confess.

"This is my city," Vuhon said. "My world. I do what I must to protect it."

"Protect it from what? How does destroying my world save yours? Are there no souls to feed on in Oblivion?"

Vuhon seemed to consider that for a moment.

"I'm not sure why I should waste my time telling you," he replied. "I'll most likely have to kill you anyway."

"If that's so, why haven't you done so?"

"There are things you know that might be helpful to me," Vuhon replied. "Or, if you could be convinced, do for me."

"Convince me, then," Attrebus said. "Explain all of this."

Vuhon ran his thumb under his lips and shrugged.

"Sul told you how we were cast into Oblivion? How we met Umbra, and the deal I made with him?"

"Yes," Attrebus replied. "And how you tortured him."

Vuhon's grin turned a little nasty. "Yes, but I grew bored with that. I could never torture him as much as he tortured himself."

"A problem I won't have with you," Sul said.

"Ah, Sul. You really haven't changed."

The red bowls were gone, replaced by skewers of slowly writhing orange caterpillars.

"Vile had made it impossible for Umbra to leave his realm, and after your escape, Sul, he tightened his walls further so that I couldn't leave either, even if I'd had the means. The only way to escape was to circumvent his restriction, to remain in his realm, at least in a way. I built my ingenium, I powered it with Umbra and the energies he had stolen from Vile. I turned our city, wrapped those circumscribed walls around it. Twisted it like a sausage maker twists a casing to form a link, the way a child might an inflated pig's bladder to form a double ball. Twisted it until it broke loose, like a bubble."

He bit one of the caterpillars, and it exploded into a butterfly, which he caught by the wing and devoured.

"That was a long time ago," he went on. "We've drifted through many realms and places beyond even Oblivion. We cannot leave the city-Vile's circumscription still surrounds it. Nor would I want to leave it-I've come to love this place I built. To survive in those long spaces between the worlds, we had to become a little universe of our own, a self-sustaining cycle of life and death and rebirth, a continuum of matter and spirit-all powered, manipulated, mediated by my ingenium. We've moved beyond the inefficiency some call 'natural,' and in doing so approach perfection. Everything here is in a real sense a part of everything else, because all flows from the ingenium."

Sul-off to the right and in the corner of Treb's vision-made a sudden gesture with his hands. Without turning his head, Attrebus shifted his gaze the tiniest bit. The Dunmer's lips moved in an exaggerated fashion.

Keep him talking, Attrebus thought he was saying.

Attrebus put his full focus on Vuhon, who didn't seem to have noticed.

"Not so self-sustaining," he countered. "Your world feeds on souls from the outside world."

Vuhon nodded. "I said we 'approach' perfection. Beyond Mundus, our need for sustenance is minimal. In some places, not necessary at all. Here, on this heavy plane of clay and lead, much more is required."

"Then why have you come here?"

"Because this is one place that Clavicus Vile cannot pursue us, at least not in the fullness of his power."

"Then you've won," Attrebus said. "You're free. Why are you still running? Surely there must be some way to land this thing-in a valley, a lake-someplace?"

"It's not that simple," Vuhon answered. "Vile can still work against us. He can send mortal followers to assassinate me, for instance." He nodded pointedly at Sul.

"Sul's not an agent of Clavicus Vile," Attrebus protested.