Grifford's mind was empty of anything except for the need not to fall. He continually pushed the image of his brother's peril away from himself as he sought the next handhold on the tower's side. His foot slipped off the wet curve of a pipe beneath him, and he grabbed at the thin ledge of metal above his head, breaking off brittle Rachnid spikes, which tumbled about him, down to the waste reservoir's brown waters below.

He had not wanted to spend the time back tracking up the metal gantries and walkways in search of a way back to the tower's far side, and had instead decided to climb around its outside. Tahlia had wanted to go first, but he had pushed her away without bothering to give her reasons, or a chance to argue. He'd heard enough of her voice that morning.

He had pulled himself up to the nearest pipe that circled the tower and begun to climb. Tahlia had not followed him. She was doubtless making her own way around the tower's other side in her usual haphazard manner, but he no longer had the capacity to care for her safety.

All he could do was climb.

* * * * *

Dak tried to make no sound, and even though the wounded creature had no eyes it still came on towards her.

She cringed away from it.

'Oh, why was I not staying in bed this morning?'

That thought awoke some anger inside her. Why must she be such a coward? Why could she not be brave like Tahlia and Grifford? Somehow, the thought of her friend's brother increased the heat of her anger. She recalled the way he had spoken of her countless times that morning; calling her useless and a burden. Even claiming that he did not trust her.

All she had been doing was trying to help!

She felt her fists tighten, and it was only when she felt the heavy weight of it in her hand did she realise that she still held the valve lever.

The nadidge was almost upon her. It crouched down, preparing to leap at her with its two deadly blades, and something about that predatory stance stoked her anger still further. It reminded her of the implacable callousness of the thing; the uncaring way it had killed an innocent woman with a baby at her breast. It would kill her too without any thought.

When she spoke, the words hissed through her teeth.

"Oh will you just..."

The creature sprang towards the sound of her voice.

"Be leaving!" she yelled as she swung the lever, and the creature's mandibles smashed as the blow landed, halting it in the midst of its leap.

"Me!"

She swung the lever back, and the side of its face caved in, the sockets of its dead eyes breaking.

"Alone!"

She held the lever over her head with both hands, and swung it down, feeling the nadidge's skull crack beneath the weight of the metal.

The creature fell to the floor, its remaining limbs snapping closed against its body like a dead rachnid.

Dak could feel her breath whistling through her nose, and her heart beating fast in her chest. She pulled herself up to her knees, but her dead leg could not support her and she fell back onto her haunches.

Her breathing slowed, and her heartbeat along with it.

She watched the creature, curled up on the floor; mutilated, frozen and broken.

One of its arms twitched and uncurled.

What would it take to kill such a creature?

Dak's next blows were not like the first three she had landed. They had been frenzied, born of fear and anger, but those that followed were slow, heavy and methodical. The first ones landed on its head until it was utterly smashed, and the floor about it was covered in a halo of dark blood. Then she struck each of its limbs in turn, hearing the bones inside them crack. With that done, she levered it onto its back and set to work breaking its body, shattering its ribs and pulping the organs beneath until she was sure the job was done.

When she was finished, she was breathing heavily once more, and her arms were starting to ache. She dropped the heavy lever on the floor, and the echoing clatter as it landed brought awareness back to her. She looked at the lever lying there, mired in the creature's blood, and then she began to cry.

Vast sobs escaped her chest until she could hardly breathe, and her eyes were blinded by her tears. She did not know how long she wept, but eventually all her imprisoned emotions had escaped, and she was left empty and breathless. She lifted her head to see the open valve still emitting its icy cloud. The floor beneath it, and the walls around, were damp and dripping where the stuff had condensed, and the air in the room was cold like a fallow's morning.

She took the stained lever back into her numb fingers, and dragged herself into the pipe's spitting rain. She hooked the lever back into the valve's wheel and pulled it closed, falling heavily onto her side on the wet floor as the hissing cloud collapsed and the last few droplets of icy liquid fell on her shoulders.

She lay there panting, her eyes closed on the pain.

Then she remembered Kralmir.

He had remained silent all through her battle with the creature, and when she opened her eyes and looked across the room she saw that he still lay in his place by the door. Summoning her strength, she dragged herself across the floor towards him.

The child was still and pale, and when she picked him up his head flopped back and she saw, on each side of his soft white neck, two small puncture holes.

"No!" she sobbed.

Was everything she had done been for nothing?

* * * * *

Grifford hauled himself over the platform's edge and rolled onto his back. His breath was labouring and his body gone beyond protest, but he did not pause. He hauled himself to his feet, drew his sword, and staggered towards the tower's door, scattering the detritus of the dung bird's nest that still littered the platform. As he reached the dark entrance, his sister appeared from around the tower's far side, and the relief he felt at the sight of her surprised him.

They exchanged no greeting, but simply descended the stairs together until they came to the tower's inner chamber, its chain suspended floor empty except for the rounded bulk of the metal crousk that was still feeding on Cravit's corpse. Some smaller crousk had joined it, and the thug's body could not be seen under their close packed forms.

Grifford was heedless of the presence of the crousk, even when a number of them, disturbed by the shaking of the platform as the two children ran across, turned from their feeding and began to move after them, their long feelers scenting the air.

Grifford pushed his sister behind him as they began to climb up the spiral stair. His ears strained for any sign of noise from above, but there was nothing.

When they reached the head of the stairs they found out why. The doorway was blocked by another sheer slab of metal, as heavy and immovable as the one on the tower's farthest side.

* * * * *

Dak clutched the still body of Kralmir to her chest. She knew that what she should do was open the doors and wait for Grifford and Tahlia to return, but the red wheel she would have to reach looked so far away, and she could not make her legs move. Her eyes closed with painful exhaustion. The wound in her arm was still bleeding fiercely. She knew it would not stop, and she saw herself dying there, left a bloodless corpse, like the clerk Jerrus whose empty body lay in a dark tunnel somewhere far above her.

A new sound intruded on her pain, and she forced her eyes to open.

A doorway had appeared in the far side of the room.

It was a small doorway in an unremarkable face of a wall, and a blue light emanated from it. Dak's eyes were blurred with fatigue, making it impossible for her to bring the figure who stepped from the doorway into any kind of focus, so it remained a looming silhouette as it crossed the room and knelt down beside her. It was only when she closed one eye and strained with the other that she recognised the face above her.

"Engineer Drasneval!"

"Rest easy, Dakskansia," said the old tutor as she took a long slinged bag from her shoulder and opened it.

Dak struggled in an effort to sit up.

"I am sorry, Engineer Drasneval. I know that I should not be being here..."

Engineer Drasneval placed a strong hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her down.

"I believe that I requested you to rest easy."

Engineer Drasneval returned her attention to the bag, and took from it a sealed skin envelope. She tore it open, and Dak's senses were assailed by a bitter scent as the old tutor took out a thick pad of white woven wool and placed it over the wound on her arm.

"It will not stop its bleeding," said Dak as she watched her. "It will bleed until I die."

"No it will not," said the old Engineer as she took a bandage from the bag and began to bind her arm. "You are an Engineer."

Dak put her head back down, and then felt the dead weight that she still held in her other arm.

"Kralmir!" She pulled her eyes open again. "Commander Kralaford's baby is dead."

Engineer Drasneval finished her work, fastening the bandage with a toothed grip, and then stood, closed the bag and slung it back over her shoulder.

"No, he is not," she said as she turned away and crossed the room to the broken body of the nadidge.

As though intending to supply confirmation, Kralmir stirred in her arm, and when she looked down at him she saw that, though his eyes were still closed, his face was moving in a sleeping child's puzzled contortions. He gave an inquisitive whimper.

Dak looked over to Engineer Drasneval, who was bending over the nadidge's corpse, her hands clasped together behind her back.

"Hmmm," she murmured in seeming satisfaction, before turning to regard the pool of cold liquid beneath the unconnected valve, the chair lying on its back beside it, and the blood spattered table beneath the signalling machine.

"Someone will be here soon to be clearing this mess up," she said. "We had better be letting your friends in."

Engineer Drasneval crossed to the red wheel and turned it. The metal slabs blocking the doors ground upwards, and Grifford stumbled through one of them, into the room. Tahlia stood in the dark passage behind, her eyes wide at the scene. Her bow was in her hand, a skull arrow at its cord.

"What has happened!"

"You can be discussing the details on the journey upwards," said Engineer Drasneval. "It is a sufficiency to say that your friend has shown exceptional bravery, and your brother's life has been saved."

Grifford walked through the room, taking in the shattered body of the assassin, then stopped in front of Dak, looking down at her bandaged arm, then at her crumpled legs.

"You did this?"

"Yes," said Dak. "I was not meaning to, but your brother..."

Grifford bent and pulled Kralmir from her unresisting arm. He studied the baby's face, calm once more in sleep. His own face was creased in a frown.

"We must travel quickly and give him into the care of Doctor Fos," said Engineer Drasneval. "And Dakskansia is also in need of her ministrations."

"Sister!" snapped Grifford.

Tahlia, who had been standing beside the nadidge's corpse and poking it with the end of her bow, looked up, startled.

"Yes, brother?"

She crossed to him, reaching the arrow back into her quiver.

"Take Kralmir."

Grifford pushed his baby brother into Tahlia's arms, and she took him clumsily, struggling with the sleeping child in one hand and her bow in the other.

"Why should I..."

"Be quiet, sister!"

Dak watched as Grifford stepped towards her, and reached down his hand.

"I am sorry," he said.

"Why?" said Dak, feeling the heat of embarrassment on her face. "What have you to be sorry for?"

"For calling you useless." Dak looked at Grifford's outstretched hand, and then took it. "And for everything else."

He pulled her to her feet, then pulled her arm over his shoulder so that he could support her on her useless legs. She still felt utterly exhausted, but the pain in her wounds was suddenly not so bad.

Engineer Drasneval came to her other side.

"Let us be going, children."

Together they helped Dak across the room, to the small doorway through which Engineer Drasneval had entered just a few short minutes before. Tahlia followed, still juggling her baby brother and her bow.

"It will take an age to climb all the way back up," she complained, then she fell quiet when she saw that what lay beyond the doorway was a small featureless room, barely big enough to hold the four of them.

"No," said Engineer Drasneval. She pulled a lever on the wall, and the door slid shut behind them. "It will not."

She pulled a second lever, and Dak felt the floor jolt beneath her as the lift began to rise.