As soon as Cravit went down, Grifford sought his sword at the platform's edge, but could not see it. At first he assumed it had lost its precarious balance and tumbled down to the water below, but then he spotted it, lying not far from Tahlia's bow, miraculously thrown there with the platform's shaking. He leapt towards it.

Sabstan was slow. He was still gaping at Cravit, as the crousk continued to crack open his chest. Grifford had the rough made grip of the sword in his hand, and was already rising to his feet, when the man finally turned on him.

"Sword down, boy!"

"No," said Grifford, and charged.

Sabstan slashed with his sword at Grifford's stomach, but the blow was lazy and he parried it easily. The man struck again, this time for his head. He parried that blow, and the next, and it was then that Sabstan must have realised that he was not just fighting a child with a blunt sword. He straightened himself and raised Tahlia's knife.

"Come on then, boy, if you want to die a fool!"

He lunged with the knife, and when Grifford leapt back out of its range, he struck with his sword. Grifford barely parried the blow, and he could feel his anger returning, burning at the back of his eyes, intensified by the lazy sneer on Sabstan's face, but he remembered Lance-master Tzarren's words to him.

'You let your anger better you. Do that in a real fight and your opponent will take his advantage and you will be dead.'

He took a deep breath, and his rage stilled, though it did not leave him. He could still feel it through his body, tensed and ready.

"Come and die!" he said to the man who faced him, and Sabstan sneered as he struck again with knife and sword.

Grifford was used to fighting with a rail-shield, and felt the lack of it, but his Sword-master would often make him train without, and his blade was fast as he parried. Though he knew he had the measure of the man's skill, and was certain he could defend against him, Sabstan was twice his size and his blows were heavy. He understood that he would not stand for long against him. He felt the pain start to throb in his arm as he parried, and he took one step back, and then another.

"It will not be me who dies today, boy!" Sabstan grinned.

* * *

Like Grifford, Tahlia had been quick to move when Cravit fell. She went for her bow, but it was still lying close to Sabstan's feet when Grifford attacked, and it was between them when Sabstan's first blow was parried. She danced around behind her brother, looking for an opening, and she nearly tripped him when he leapt back from Sabstan's knife thrust. She jumped to the side as the blows fell on her brother, and as the man stepped over her bow to drive him back, she jumped behind him and scooped it up. Her quiver was lying close by, and she deftly undid its draw string and pulled out the first arrow her fingers found. She straightened up, the clash of swords still close behind her, nocked the arrow to the bow's string, and pulled it back, aiming across the chamber at Vlambra.

The one time Engineer had crossed the walkway and was at the platform's edge, the heavy cudgel in his hand.

"Drop that," hissed Tahlia.

Vlambra merely smirked.

"What are you going to do, girl? Shoot me with that little bow?"

There was a high thrum as the arrow left the bow string, and the echo of it had not died before Vlambra shouted his pain.

A fraction of a second before she released the arrow, Tahlia had focused on its head, and she cursed as the arrow struck. In her haste, she had pulled out a stringer arrow. When its wide rounded head, made for slicing through a karabok's tendons, struck Vlambra in the leg, it did not penetrate far, its force taken by his tragasaur hide trousers. Still, it was enough to make him flinch and crack his hand on the walkway's railing. In his clumsiness he dropped the heavy cudgel, and it disappeared into the vile waters below.

"Bitch child!" he growled as she bent down and pulled another arrow from her quiver, taking more time to feel the shape of the arrow's fletching. She glanced down as she fitted it to the string to be certain its head was the narrow spike of a skull arrow, and when she looked back up, Vlambra was already fleeing back across the walkway. She barely had the time to think before she let the arrow loose, but she knew the man had to remain alive. She wanted answers. She aimed again for his leg.

* * *

Grifford was finding it hard to strike back at his opponent. There was an unfamiliar feeling in his chest that he did not like.

He had faced opponents more skilled than Sabstan, but they had been armed with blunted swords, and more often than not he had been clad in training armour, and the worst he would receive would be bruises. Bruises did not bother him, but Sabstan's blade was sharp, the knife he had stolen from his sister even sharper, and he wore nothing to deflect their edges. His Sword-master had often accused him of attacking like a bull tragasaur, unmindful of injury, relying too much on his armour for protection rather than his skill, and the man's words now echoed in his head, making him unwilling to attack in case he opened himself to a deadly counter. All he could do was turn Sabstan's blows, barely having the strength to deflect them.

He heard the thrum of Tahlia's bow string, and Vlambra's shout of pain. When he glanced over his opponent's shoulder, he saw Vlambra limping away to the darkened doorway from where his brother's screams had come.

Idiot boy his sister might call him, but Grifford understood what the man intended. He jumped back from a sweep of Sabstan's knife, and barely turned the sword thrust that followed it. All thoughts of caution fled from him, his anger escaped with it, and his instincts took over.

When Sabstan next struck, aiming for his head, he ducked, and the sword whipped over him. As the force of the unopposed blow sent the man off balance, Grifford attacked. His sword caught Sabstan's knife hand. If there had been a sharpened edge to the blade, then the wrist would have been severed clean through, but as it was there was a snap, Sabstan cried out, and the knife went skittering across the platform. Grifford pressed his attack with a back hand, slicing at Sabstan's stomach, and it was the man's turn to step back and defend himself. He managed to parry Grifford's next angry blow, but had to step back once more and he collided with Tahlia as she released her second arrow.

His sister cursed as Sabstan stumbled away from her, his sword arm thrust out to keep his balance. Grifford watched as the arrow went wide, scratching a bloody path across Vlambra's waist before clattering against the tower's wall and falling to the boiling waters below. Vlambra flinched away from the pain, hissing another curse as he disappeared through the dark doorway.

Before Sabstan could regained his balance, Grifford struck him again. He aimed high, and the blow took him on the side of the head. Sabstan stumbled back, shaking his head as blood coursed down his face.

"Yield" shouted Grifford, but he gave Sabstan little chance to do so. His anger was still burning in him.

Sabstan parried his next blow in a daze, but could do nothing to avoid the next. Grifford's blunt blade caught him in his stomach, forcing the air out of him, and sending him back another step.

"Yield!" he shouted again when the man straightened up.

Sabstan, one eye closed by blood, the other unfocused and fearful, held his arms out to his sides and opened his mouth to speak, but whatever words he intended were lost. He took another faltering step backwards, and it was his last. He had come unseeing to the platform's edge, and his foot stepped on empty space. In a breath he was gone, his brief cry of fear swallowed by the tumbling brown water.

Grifford stepped forward and looked down into the maelstrom. He thought he caught a brief reflection of blue light from a sword blade, but then it vanished, and there was no more sign of the man. His body had been pulled below by the waste reservoir's foul currents.

"Grifford!" Tahlia hissed from behind him, and he spun around to see his sister at the platform's far side, another arrow on her bow string aimed at the doorway through which Vlambra had fled. Suddenly, their brother's cries started again.

* * *

Dak had not seen any of the fight. She had remained lying, with her eyes tight closed, her wrist still held in Cravit's dead grip as the metal crousk continued to crack and pulp his chest. Only when she heard Tahlia call Grifford's name did she open her eyes to see him running across the platform. There was no one else in sight.

Trying not to look at what the crousk was doing, she prized Cravit's fingers open with her other hand, and slid painfully free. She felt as though she did not have the strength to stand, only to kick at the metal grillwork floor with her bare heals and push herself away from the man, and the sounds of the crousk's feasting.

Then she rolled onto her hands and knees and crawled away.

She saw Tahlia ahead of her, already stepping onto the walkway as Grifford reached her. Her brother grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back.

"Wait!"

Dak managed to get herself to her feet and lurched towards them. Through the doorway, she could hear the sounds of a baby's cries, and they seemed to be growing fainter.

"Grifford!" Tahlia hissed.

He pulled her back, out of his way.

"I know," he said. "But I will go first."

He ran across the walkway and disappeared through the doorway. Tahlia was quick to follow.

Dak took one final look at the feasting crousk, and on faltering steps, stumbled after them.

* * *

Tahlia ran quickly after her brother. They came to a spiral stair, and followed it upwards to where a doorway led to a chamber, half filled with pipes and gauges. In the light from two blue strips high on the roof, the room looked deserted, but then Tahlia caught a movement in the corner, and heard a stifled sob.

Grifford raised his sword and Tahlia her bow, and she saw a young woman huddled there in the lee of some pipework. Her hair was dishevelled, and her eyes were wide with fear and wet from crying.

"Please!" she said. "I had no choice!"

Tahlia recognised her as Kamantha, Kralmir's nursemaid.

"Where is he?" said Grifford.

"They made me!" sobbed Kamantha. "I had no..."

"I said where is he!"

Kamantha pointed a shaking finger at the room's far end, where there was the deep darkness of a doorway.

Grifford ran for it, Tahlia followed after, and they found a short passageway sloping upwards. Above, she could hear once more the distant sounds of her brother's cries. She followed Grifford, and they exited on a metal platform on the far side of the tower. At its end was a square spiral stair, which was shaking with Vlambra's heavy footfalls as he fled upwards.

Tahlia saw him reach the stair's second landing, and she screamed at him.

"Stop!"

Vlambra looked down and grinned. He held something up in his hand. Kralmir. His face was red with screaming, and he was wrapped in tight swaddling, which Vlambra gripped firmly at his neck.

"It is you who will be stopping," he said. "If you follow me, your brother will die."

"We know how you plan to escape," shouted Tahlia as she pulled another arrow from her quiver. "You will never get to the Workshops."

Vlambra's triumphant expression changed to one of surprise, then swiftly to anger.

"Dres should have killed you!"

"Come down and submit to the Order's justice!" shouted Grifford. He walked forward to stand near the bottom of the stair.

"Your Order's justice will have its precious Pride chewing on my guts before the sun reaches noon. I will be taking my chances while I have this advantage."

Vlambra held Kralmir out over the edge of the stair. Below, there was nothing but the dirty waters of the waste reservoir.

"Throw down that little bow, and do not try to follow me."

Tahlia brought the arrow's rounded fletching to her cheek.

"Be ready, Grifford."

There was only one way that this would be resolved swiftly.

"Tahlia!" said Grifford, caution in his voice.

"The bow, girl," shouted Vlambra from above. "And your sword, boy."

"Tahlia. He has our brother!"

"Not for much longer."

The arrow thrummed as it left the bow string, but its speed gave Vlambra no time to move. He still held Kralmir out over the stairway's edge when its broad stringer head sliced through his wrist.

The tendons were severed, his grip loosened, and Kralmir fell.