Jack felt it too. It was the same sensation he had when he saw a member of the Cult of Dionysus. There was something else there, a demonic presence his brain didn't want to recognize.

"Well observed, elf," the woman replied. In an instant her dress was gone, replaced by a hooded black cloak. Gone too was the candelabra. Instead, her hand was twisted as if she gripped a chalice, a cloud of ice-blue energy hovering in the center.

"Archbishop Nimue, I presume?"

"Correct, sir. And I believe you are the now somewhat legendary Sardar Rahnama, leader of the Apollonians, who so aggravated the fortunes of the late Iago?"

"Indeed."

"I must say," Nimue continued, her aristocratic manners apparently unchanged by the removal of her disguise, "it is a genuine pleasure to share conversation with other Enlightened folk." She swaggered across the room to seat herself in one of the high armchairs, which had now transfigured into a throne of ice. "We had a maid who happened to overhear a little too much yesterday and, well, fate didn't smile upon her-"

"What's this?" Sardar asked coolly, ignoring the elitist jibes and holding up the blueprints.

Nimue laughed: a high soporific tinkling. "Enlightened but nonetheless ignorant. Do you really think it was pure coincidence that you all ended up employed by us or our a.s.sociates? Iago's losing possession of his mirror only lowered him in our estimation. If he had not already suffered the worst punishment imaginable, it would have been multiplied a hundredfold. However, we know what you have seen of us. We made sure you were channeled into places where we could watch you until our work here was done. And here you are, and you are too late."

"You still haven't answered my question," Sardar replied, his voice rising.

Nimue laughed again. "This isn't a novel. I'm not some tragically flawed supervillain who'll tell you all my plans on the off chance you won't survive. Suffice it to say, though, you shall not be around to see them come to fruition."

She rose from her throne into the air like a banshee, lifted on alchemical winds which were now redirected upon the Apollonians. Jack stumbled against the growing gale drawing him into the center of the room, the cord of the Seventh Shard cutting into his neck as it was pulled towards Nimue's hand. On the other side of the desk, Bal struggled against the same alchemical force, the First Shard drawing closer to the Cultist's other hand.

Sardar leapt onto the table and bellowed another alchemical command. Instantly, the wind ceased and the room was filled with alabaster light as glowing weapons flashed into each of their grasps: swords for Jack and Sardar, an axe for Bal, and a spear for Ruth.

Nimue's gaze narrowed. "This grows tiresome. I am running on a tight schedule. We shall have to extract the more valuable artifacts from the wreckage upon our return."

There was a deep rumbling, and Sardar ducked as the slab of ice was rent from its socket on the wall, the frozen girl pulled through the air to float beside Nimue. Before any of them could react, the Cultist had flung a fireball to the floor, where it surged upwards. Indigo flames licked the walls and furnis.h.i.+ngs, forming a superheated wall between the two sides.

Nimue raised her hand, the familiar, th.o.r.n.y rose lacing over it, and vanished in a swirl of black smoke.

Jack summoned his energy and held his palms up, drawing upon the moisture in the air. A sphere of water formed between his hands and catapulted into the heart of the fire. He waited expectantly for a hiss of vapor, but none came. Instead, the flames rose even higher.

"It's Dark alchemy," Sardar called over the crackling.

"We need something stronger."

Bal raised his newly conjured axe. "We'll try something else, then." He tensed his forearm, and a thick wreath of crimson flame unfurled from the end of the weapon, arching into the purple wall.

Jack's surprise at the dwarf's willingness to resort to alchemy was quickly outdone by his dismay at its complete lack of effect. The wave of indigo engulfed the crimson, growing even stronger.

"What are we going to do?" Ruth exclaimed.

With a loud crack, part of the floor collapsed, remnants of flaming furniture tumbling into the dark hole that had opened.

The four of them backed against the wall, and Sardar began focusing bright light between his hands. Every few seconds, more of the floor disappeared in a flurry of sparks. The hideous furnis.h.i.+ngs had been nearly consumed; only increasingly charred plaster and wood remained.

Yells could be heard from the window near Jack. He leaned over and peered between the curtains at the street below. People were emerging from other houses on the street, staring up at the incendiary manor. As he watched, a wagon pulled up in front of the gates and a few navy-coated men clambered out to direct civilians away from the fire.

Sardar's cry of pain pulled Jack's gaze back into the room. Loosened by the flames, a section of ceiling had collapsed, crus.h.i.+ng one of the elf's legs. The light between his hands flickered and faded. The flames, seeming to sense this, took their chance. They began slithering over to him and wrapped their cords around his limbs, pulling him into the roaring fire.

Ruth and Bal took an arm each and hauled him back.

"This way," Jack shouted, ripping aside the curtains and yanking the window open.

"We can't jump from here," Ruth screamed, joining him at the window.

"What choice have we got?" Jack shouted.

The flames had consumed most of the room, leaving them with only a shrinking island behind the desk. Within moments, the desk was gone too, sliding into the corona oblivion below. Under other circ.u.mstances, Jack could have used the Seventh Shard to overcome this alchemy, but he knew that was exactly what Nimue wanted-for them to put out the fire and deal with the consequences whilst she continued with her plans unimpeded. At that moment, they had to flee rather than fight.

Jack and Ruth joined Bal in pulling Sardar to his feet and a.s.sisting him to the window. Jack looked at the three sooty faces: Bal nodding, resolute; Ruth shaking her head, terrified; Sardar grimacing, pained. He looked through the second-story window at the pavement below.

They jumped.

Perhaps naturally for someone who'd grown up on a steady diet of James Bond and Die Hard, Jack still retained some faith that leaping several meters down onto stone would be fine and would not hurt. It wasn't, and it did.

He hit the ground on his side and heard a couple of snaps, nuclear agony exploding across his upper body. He had spent three weeks in combat training, been hit by Dark alchemical lightning, and journeyed in and out of a volcano, and this still factored high on the pain scale. He tried to pull himself to his feet but was unable. He couldn't move his left arm at all, and even lifting his neck shot arrows across his nerves.

All he could see were the boots of those navy-coated men marching towards them. Ruth and Bal's explanations turned to cries of protest as they were hauled to the wagon. The dwarf's struggle was proving too much for the captor, but Bal was soon restrained by several more whilst one beat him to his knees with a truncheon.

Jack recognized his own voice shouting just as he felt a force on his shoulders. He was being dragged across the road towards the same wagon, his wounded arm sc.r.a.ping the street.

The pain was too much. He blacked out.

Chapter XI.

the slammer Jack became aware of the pain before he properly woke. As he rose out of the depths of his unconscious mind, the dull ache grew stronger and stronger, until he could feel he was lying on a hard surface. His eyes flicked open, and he got his first look at the room.

It was a small chamber constructed entirely of stone: underground, it seemed, by the way the barred window was crammed in the very top corner. The only light-that of the fog-masked moon and flickering street lamps-filtered through these bars, and from this Jack could just about make out the scene.

Sardar lay on a bench opposite him, unconscious, whilst Bal slumped on the floor rubbing his truncheon wounds. Ruth, the only one who looked unharmed, was standing, apparently unable to keep still. Seeing he was awake, she flurried over to him.

"Don't even think about it," she said as he prepared to hoist himself up. She smiled and stroked his hair lightly.

Despite the situation, he was struck again by how beautiful she was: her skin the tone and texture of warm chocolate, her eyes like large onyx jewels set in milky oases. The pain seemed to have made everything a little more poetic. He felt the almost euphoric urge to slide his fingers around the base of her neck and press his lips to hers.

The face of an irate dwarf plugged the empty s.p.a.ce in Jack's vision, somewhat ruining the moment. "Have you learnt any healing alchemy yet?" Bal said.

"No," Jack replied, trying to restrain his annoyance, "but I guess I can give it a go." Trying to stave off the pain a little longer, he placed his right hand on the dwarf's shoulder and closed his eyes. He knew healing alchemy was tied to Light, and so he focused on acc.u.mulating the powers of the different elements around him: the street lamps for fire, the dampness for water and air, the stone benches for earth. He channeled all of this into the Seventh Shard. Seeing it s.h.i.+ning even through his eyelids, he allowed it to flow down his right arm into the dwarf.

He opened his eyes.

Bal felt his bruises again. They seemed to have faded considerably.

"Great, now try you," Ruth said.

Jack looked down at his limp left arm. He thought he'd probably pa.s.s out again if he tried to move it. It looked broken in two places, judging by the way he seemed to have mutated additional joints on the bicep and below the wrist. A month ago, he reflected, this would have been monumental. Now, though, it seemed an expectable part of the whole sorcerer-fighting experience.

He placed his good hand on the bad arm and closed his eyes again, summoning the same elements as before and channeling them through the Shard. It was much harder this time, not only because his energy was diminished but also because broken bones were a much bigger deal than bruising.

He opened his eyes. The breaks seemed to be gone-his left arm was smooth-but something was wrong. He swung his legs down from the bench to sit up straight. There was only a slight twinge of pain, but he could feel the healed arm was now several inches shorter than the other one.

"How does it feel?" Ruth asked sympathetically, clearly having noticed the difference.

"It's okay. It'll have to do until Sardar can take a proper look at it. Is he okay?"

"I hope so. He's breathing, but that dark fire stuff can't have done any good."

Jack got up and checked the elf's breathing. His face was pale and plastered with sweat, and he winced even in sleep.

"So this is prison, then? How long have we been here?"

"I don't think this is actual prison. I think it's just a jail cell. And I'm not sure how long we've been here. A few hours, maybe?" Ruth, sitting with her knees to her chest, looked anxious. Jack remembered she'd been imprisoned in Nexus: their current predicament couldn't be doing much to a.s.suage her panic.

"So how do we get out, then?" Bal demanded.

Jack had to suppress another flare of annoyance. They were all in this cell. Just because Bal, a member of a royal family, had enjoyed free rein all his life didn't make this experience any worse for him than for anyone else.

"I don't know," Jack said. "We can't do much until Sardar wakes up. I don't really want to try any alchemy on him. I'm not sure exactly what's wrong with him. Ruth, don't you have that egg for The Golden Turtle? Can't you call up the crew?"

Ruth shook her head sadly and produced a mangled mechanism from her pocket. "It shattered in the fall. Ishmael gave that to me too."

They pa.s.sed the next few hours in uneasy silence. Jack put an arm around Ruth, and she rested her head on his lap. The cell stank-an unpleasant combination of urine and stale food that, contrary to expectations, seemed to become more noticeable the longer they stayed. Sardar didn't move at all. Though very uncomfortable against the stone, Jack eventually followed the other two into sleep.

After some imperceptible amount of time, Ruth shook him awake. She was sitting bolt upright, pointing at the barred window.

Blinking to adjust to the darkness of the cell, he tried to see what she was gesturing at. Something obscured the streetlight: a crouching figure, rattling the bars.

Bal awoke with a start and, as if by instinct, reached for his axe.

Jack stood and, motioning the others to stay back, crept towards the window. "h.e.l.lo?"

The figure drew out what looked like a glowing green wire from somewhere. There was a noise like a buzz saw, and the remnants of the bars jangled on the cell floor.

"Quickly," hissed a c.o.c.kney voice, "someone will've heard that." A rope was slung down to him.

Jack glanced into the cell, held up an index finger to Ruth and Bal, and proceeded to ascend the rope. It was a mark of his recent burst of fitness that he was able to do this with an injured arm: being bellowed at for his inability to climb a rope had been a recurrent feature of PE cla.s.ses.

He pulled himself through the window, trying not to sc.r.a.pe the remaining edges of bars, and hauled himself to his feet. They were in a side alley, and the first vestiges of daylight were breaking over the soot-encrusted sky.

Jack looked at his rescuer and started. It was the boy from the factory. "Dannie! What are you doing here? I mean, it's great, but how-?"

"We'll have plenty of time to talk in a minute," the boy replied, "but let's just get your friends out first. Oh, and there's something you should probably know." Dannie pulled off his flat cap, and a tightly concealed bundle of dirty-blonde hair was let loose. "It's actually Danielle, but the name Dannie's fine."

Jack stared at her blankly for a moment. "Erm, okay then. Let's help the others up."

Getting Ruth and Bal out was easy, particularly once the dwarf got over the initial surprise of being rescued by a factory colleague... who'd turned out to be a girl.

Sardar was more difficult. Whatever was wrong with him, he wouldn't wake up, so they had to find a way to maneuver him out of a window that was practically on the ceiling. In the end, they managed it by Bal supporting the elf's weight whilst Jack levitated him out alchemically. It looked a little like an alien abduction.

"Right, so where are we going? Back to The Kestrel's Quill?"

Ruth shook her head. "No point. The Cult will have left the city by now. And there's the small problem of us now being bankrupt escaped convicts. I think we should head back to The Golden Turtle."

They made their way down to the river as quickly and quietly as they could, a job made much harder because they had to carry Sardar like a corpse. To any pa.s.sersby, Jack thought they must have looked very suspicious.

The rising sun s.h.i.+mmered through the clouds of smoke and reflected off the rain-smeared rooftops as the river came in sight. The early risers were already up, including a newspaper vendor. Ruth peered round the corner of an alley to see her own face-badly rendered and made to look older and nastier-glaring at her from the front of a newspaper.

It was next to similar portraits of Jack, Bal, and Sardar under a thickly printed headline: THIEVERY AND ARSON AT CITY MANOR.

She waited until the vendor was distracted selling a paper, then signalled for the other three to follow her across the road. Jack and Bal hobbled along with a limp, Sardar clutched between them.

"I guess we won't be coming back here anytime soon," Jack said as they reached the riverbank.

"What a tragedy," Bal replied darkly.

The Golden Turtle was exactly where they had left it-or, rather, the rail surrounding the top hatch was still floating unnoticed several feet from the bank. Ruth dived in, followed by Dannie and then Jack and Bal, who dragged Sardar through the water as if they were towing a kayak.

Ruth scrambled onto the railing and pulled open the hatch. Dannie hopped in after her. Bal lowered Sardar to them and climbed down. Jack took one last look at the filthy city rising from the riverbank and followed Bal, not at all regretting their departure from Albion.

Chapter XII.

dannie The first thing they attended to was Sardar. Dripping river water all the way through the s.h.i.+p, Jack and Bal carried him to the command deck and laid him out on the map table.

Ruth had summoned Quentin, who apparently, in addition to being first mate, was the s.h.i.+p's doctor. He had brought a large leather case, which he set next to the elf's legs and opened to reveal a plethora of implements. Affixing a pair of thick-lensed spectacles to his nose, he made a set of initial observations before speaking.

"The fellow's been hit by some kind of Dark alchemy," Quentin confirmed in his natural Etonian accent, for once making no attempt to sound pirate-like. "I need to give him a rather strong stimulant to wake him." He searched his case and retrieved a syringe. Emptying a vial of clear liquid into it, he tested it and raised it over the elf's body.

"He's not going to enjoy this," Quentin remarked drily and punctured Sardar's breastbone.

The elf snapped up into a ninety-degree position, inhaling sharply, his eyes open so wide that white could be seen all around his pupils. It took several minutes for his breathing to return to normal, at which point he thanked Quentin with a pat on the shoulder.

"You can't keep on like this, old chap," Quentin reprimanded him. "All these d.a.m.n sc.r.a.pes you get yourself into. First the incident in the volcano, then that nasty business with Zalem, now this. Your body can only take so much alchemical injury before it snaps for good."