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  Markes hung back as the others descended, his hand on Naif’s sleeve.

  ‘I’m not sure when I will start to weaken.’

  Naif wanted to hug him and say that she’d do anything to find a way to reverse or remove the badge. But she lacked courage to do either with the others nearby. She settled for squeezing his arm. ‘My badge was revoked. Yours can be too.’

  ‘But if something happens to me . . . Please, will you see that Emilia and Jarrold are safe?’

  ‘Jarrold will take care of his sister,’ said Naif carefully.

  ‘I know,’ said Markes, a scant smile touching his lips. ‘But who will take care of Jarrold? I just want to know that you won’t abandon them. Please, Naif.’

  ‘What if they abandon me?’ Naif answered. ‘There is no way of knowing how any of our futures will play out.’

  Markes took her hand from his sleeve and pressed it to his mouth.

  The warmth of his breath eased her dread.

  He leaned in closer. ‘I haven’t had a chance to explain to you about Emilia. Naif, I feel for you. As I do for her. But differently –’

  Naif’s heart skittered at the untimely declaration. Her stomach curled on itself. ‘You don’t need to –’

  Ruzalia’s stern tones cut across her reply. ‘Naif! Markes! Attend us! We must lower the gantry now.’

  Naif pulled her hand from his and hastened down the steep steps.

  Jarrold and Charlonge were already on the gantry and the pirate Plank stood to one side manning the winch.

  ‘We’ll make two drops, the second with some supplies for you. Each drop must be done quickly,’ said Ruzalia. ‘When you’re down there, think twice before using the kars. Once you’re on them, you’re trapped.’

  ‘How will you know what’s happening?’ asked Naif.

  ‘There are prayer wheels near Illi, Vank and Los Fien. I’ll send draculins to them regularly. Leave any messages on the roof wrapped in cloth. They’ll bring them to me. Now, two more take the first ride so there’s room for provisions on the second.’

  ‘Me,’ said Liam.

  Naif glanced at Emilia and Markes. She could not bear to be on the gantry with them. ‘And me.’

  The four of them huddled together as Plank began to unwind. In jerks they were lowered into the dark.

  Ixion closed its sticky fingers around them as they descended and even the stunning night rainbow of party lights could not distract Naif from her fear. What would happen next?

  ‘Fross,’ said Jarrold. ‘It’s beautiful.’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Naif. ‘But deadly.’

  It had seemed so mysterious when she’d first come. Sinister but beautiful; a place like nothing she’d known, redolent with musk and moonflower and haunted by strains of music that fired her senses. Back then she’d found it hard to resist its lure, but now she felt only apprehension and a desire to make Ixion safe.

  ‘What are they?’ he asked, pointing at the bright lines that marked the cable kars, and the sparkling clusters of lights around the churches.

  ‘Ixion’s churches. Vank, Illi, Agios, Goa, Los Fien,’ she listed. ‘And at the top is Danskoi.’

  Less brilliant but just as alluring was the cobweb of fairy lights in between them.

  ‘And those are the clubs. Abraxas, Bella Death, The Drop, Grave Dance and Ravens. There are some smaller ones as well – they’re more like dugouts in the rocks than clubs,’ said Charlonge.

  Naif could see Jarrold quivering with excitement and she felt the weight of guilt at having brought him here. From the moment she’d asked for his help on Grave he’d become marked by the Elders as rebellious. Whatever happened, she must watch out for him. He could never return home because of her.

  ‘So the churches are where you rest and eat, and the clubs are where you party and dance?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlonge.

  ‘Don’t you get bored?’ Jarrold asked. ‘I mean . . . dancing?’

  ‘Hush,’ said Naif.

  The gantry swung closer to the ground. Naif saw the outline of bushes and Vank’s solid architecture looming in front of them.

  A few moments later, the platform suddenly stopped lowering and swayed. The ground was still too far away to step off. It seemed Ruzalia could get them no closer.

  ‘I’ll go first,’ whispered Charlonge.

  ‘No, let me,’ said Jarrold.

  He slid forward and dropped straight off the edge of the gantry. Naif heard the thuds of his landing, like a loose boulder skipping down the side of a cliff.

  ‘Him stupid,’ said Liam quietly. He pressed into Naif’s hand some rope that he’d unwound from around the pulley. ‘Use this.’

  She did as he suggested and managed to lower herself down the rope to the ground without falling.

  Charlonge came next. Then Liam.

  Liam let the rope free, sending a silent message to the airship. In a matter of moments the gantry began to disappear upwards.

  The three of them stood together in silence, listening, until they heard a groan.

  Jarrold! Naif took the lead, stepping quickly onto a lit path that wound through the bushes at the rear of Vank. She followed down the path’s incline, almost stepping on top of Jarrold, who was curled up in a ball close to the foundations of the stone wall.

  ‘Oww!’

  She knelt down next to him and took his hands.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked quietly. The others had stopped close behind her and squatted down as well.

  ‘I think so. I rolled down the hill,’ said Jarrold.

  Charlonge leaned forward. ‘Jarrold. You can’t just jump off things! You have to listen to me while we’re here. On Ixion, risks like that can be fatal.’

  ‘Char’s right, Jarrold. She’s been here the longest. Just like you and Gurney know the secrets of Grave, Char can show you how to do things here,’ said Naif. ‘Night Creatures watch from the dark. You have to be careful. Stay in the light.’

  ‘All right,’ he said in a small, defensive voice.

  Liam made a soft snorting noise of disbelief.

  Naif sighed. ‘Let’s go back and wait for the others.’

  The four of them climbed back up close to the spot where they’d got off the gantry.

  ‘Look,’ Liam said, pointing up. ‘Them come.’

  ‘It’s a fair drop,’ Naif called out as the gantry got closer. ‘Use the rope to let yourself down.’

  She watched Markes help Emilia negotiate her way down the rope. Then he threw a sack to the ground before he followed.

  Every moment they stood there on the edge of the lit path made Naif more uneasy. She could sense a presence watching them from the dark. How long before the Night Creatures came for them? Or worse, before they communicated what they’d seen to the Ripers?

  ‘Hurry!’ she breathed.

  ‘We are,’ said Emilia. ‘Markes is tired. Be patient.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Markes as he levered his body down the last length of the rope.

  The six of them huddled close to Markes as he opened the sack. He handed out wooden torches soaked in fire fluid. ‘Take one each. Char, you and Jarrold will need them on the walk to the Grotto,’ he said.

  ‘What is the Grotto?’ asked Emilia.

  ‘It’s a tiered garden where the monks used to congregate to pray,’ said Charlonge. ‘There are ledges cut into the rock. Seats.’

  ‘And moonflowers,’ said Naif. She remembered how they’d entranced her on the night all the gangs had gathered there. She’d never seen such a thing back on Grave; a flower that bloomed only at night.

  ‘Where’s the flint?’ asked Charlonge.

  ‘Here.’ Markes reached into the bag again and brought out three strips of strike, giving one to Charlonge and the second to Naif.

  ‘Don’t light them yet,’ said Naif, ‘not until we’re further away from Vank.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ said Markes. He felt once more inside the bag and produced several roughly hilte
d daggers and some short lengths of rope. ‘These were all she could spare. She said we could tie them to branches to make longer swords.’

  ‘Why would you do that?’ asked Jarrold, snatching one eagerly.

  ‘If you’re close enough to a Night Creature to use a dagger by itself then you’re lost already,’ Naif explained to him.

  ‘We should go,’ said Charlonge, nervously glancing around. ‘We’ll meet you at the Grotto as soon as we’ve found the books.’

  ‘Be careful.’ Naif gave Charlonge a hug and touched Jarrold’s shoulder. ‘Listen to Char.’

  Jarrod’s expression turned stubborn and she felt reluctant to leave him in that mood. He was used to doing as he wished.

  Emilia hugged her brother farewell while admonishing him, and Markes punched his arm.

  Liam stepped forward. While they’d been talking he’d already collected branches from the closest bushes and begun to tie the daggers onto them with the twine.

  As he finished, he handed them out. Everyone took one, except Emilia, who refused.

  ‘You’ll have to keep mine when I go inside,’ Jarrold said to Charlonge.

  ‘Of course,’ she said grimly. Then the pair headed down the slope again towards the walls.

  The others watched until they couldn’t see them anymore.

  ‘Take!’ said Liam to Emilia, holding out the remaining spear.

  But she shrank against Markes.

  Liam made a frustrated noise.

  ‘Leave her,’ said Naif. ‘Let’s go.’ She orientated herself between the lights streaking up the mountainside and the church. If they followed below the line of the kars, they wouldn’t get lost. ‘Char and Jarrold will have to be careful, so they could be some time. We must try to find Eve and Clash while we wait, tell them the news and get help to carry the books. My guess is that the League’ll be somewhere near Ravens. Charlonge said they always used the Lesser Paths around there to hide.’

  ‘So who are they – the Cursed League? Your brother’s g-gang?’ asked Emilia.

  ‘Dark Eve is their leader, but she and my brother Joel are . . . close. Here, he is known as Clash. They believed all along something was wrong on Ixion and they helped those who would to escape.’

  ‘How do you even know if this Eve’s still alive then? She could have been punished by the Ripers since you’ve been gone,’ said Emilia.

  ‘You clearly have not met Eve,’ said Naif. ‘And I would sense if Clash was in trouble.’ Despite their differences, Naif loved her brother. She’d come to Ixion to find him. She would go anywhere; do anything, to help him.

  ‘Just like you can sense Lenoir?’ asked Markes.

  Naif hesitated. Should she tell Markes that she had somehow broken her bond with Lenoir? ‘No. It’s nothing like that.’

  ‘Naif is right. I would know if Jarrold was . . . was gone.’

  Emilia’s support caught Naif by surprise and she was momentarily grateful.

  ‘You could take Emilia to the Grotto and wait. Liam and I will come after we’ve found the others,’ said Naif. ‘You could rest there.’

  ‘No! We should stay together,’ said Markes

  ‘Talk much,’ interjected Liam abruptly.

  He was right. Naif’s skin had begun to crawl, as she imagined the light breeze to be the breath of the Night Creatures watching them from the dark.

  She turned and headed uphill towards the cable kar line, stepping carefully along one of the hundreds of Lesser Paths that ran like tiny tributaries over the mountainside.

  Glancing back, she saw the others fall in behind her: Markes, Emilia and Liam, in that order.

  Naif pictured a rough map of Ixion in her mind. On foot it would take them some time to reach the area around Ravens past Illi, Agios and Syn.

  The memory of her last visit to Syn station made her hands clammy. Underneath its platform, in the tunnels that hid the Ripers’ cavern, she’d found Markes chained to a wall. Had she and Charlonge not gone there, she doubted he would still be alive.

  ‘Down!’ whispered Liam from behind her.

  Instinctively she dropped. From the scraping sounds behind her, she knew the others had done the same.

  They waited in silence, the thrum of music from the clubs like a quiet heartbeat in the background. Naif couldn’t hear anything else, at least, nothing that heralded trouble.

  The dark seemed to be warmer than when they had landed, or maybe her body was still trying to acclimatise to the humidity. She felt thirsty and desperate to move from her cramped position. Shifting her feet underneath her, she slowly began to get to her knees.

  As she started to push herself up, a pounding noise sounded close to her. She curled into a ball, making herself as small as possible. The noise got louder and louder until large mechanical feet slammed past. A Riper’s carriage.

  Lenoir!

  Fear shocked her into calling his name in her mind. In that instant their link pulsed alive as if a clamp had been removed from a vein. She felt his life force again and an unwanted exhilaration spread through her limbs. But he was a distance away. Whoever had just passed by them was not him.

  She tried to close the link down, hoping he’d not felt her reaching out, but the rush of energy refused to be staunched. With fierce concentration she managed to narrow the flow until her body felt her own again.

  As the pounding of the carriage receded, she waited, not game to move in case another followed it. Not until Liam crawled up alongside her did she shift a muscle.

  ‘Gone,’ he said.

  ‘How did you hear them coming from so far away?’ she breathed.

  He shrugged and flicked his tentacle across her cheek. ‘Hear good now – since . . .’

  He didn’t finish the thought. His deformity – the part of him that had become Night Creature – needed no explanation. Naif reached out and gently touched one of his tentacles. ‘I’m glad you can. Or they would have trampled us.’

  Liam shifted awkwardly under her touch and shrugged. ‘Good for some things maybe?’

  Naif took her hand away. ‘For many things.’

  She’s back. The knowledge seared through Lenoir. And she reached out for me.

  It took all his self-control not to respond. Instead, he let her test their bond, feel for him and then withdraw.

  As the intensity of her presence waned, the loss was excruciating, like tiny blades slicing his insides. He rode the wave of pain and let it subside.

  When he could breathe evenly again he sensed the bond still active, though barely. She had not cut him off completely as she had in Grave. A slim, quiet connection was still there and he marvelled at the comfort it gave him.

  Comfort was not an emotion Lenoir had experienced often, save in fulfilling the obligation he had to his people. But Naif’s return meant other things as well. She’d learned truths in Grave, he knew it. And now she would find her brother and the Cursed League and share information. He must find her. If he did not, then Brand surely would.

  And his brothers – the Night Creatures – they would want her . . . they would want revenge for Leyste.

  His sense of elation and comfort was quickly replaced by anguish. He had already killed two of his own. He could not . . . would not . . . harm Naif.

  ‘Lenoir?’

  He turned his attention to his second-in-command, Test, who waited for him at the entrance to the outer cave. She watched him with suspicious eyes, her face gaunt from worry.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘The uthers have brought our food. One of them would speak with you.’

  Lenoir drew his focus more intently back to his surroundings.

  Their present hideout was a cave system close to Vank and the uthers’ dam. He’d taken his followers there, knowing that Brand expected them to stay high up on the crater where the caves went deeper. These shallow caves weren’t easy to secure but at least the uthers could bring food to them with less likelihood of Brand knowing.

  Since Naif had told him that
the rebel Riper had betrayed him to the Elders, he’d begun to plan. Brand had spun her own deal with the Elders, which meant the time for hiding had almost passed. He must make a move or be taken.

  The scarred Riper still stayed in the cavern underneath Syn, keeping Varonessa and her loyalists close. Lenoir had to find a way to woo Varonessa to him. She held the balance of power, both by the number of followers she retained and her position among them as mediator. Whichever side Varonessa came down on would prevail.

  ‘Yes. Allow the uther to come,’ he said.

  Test retreated down the rough rock corridor and disappeared into the shadowy outer cave. As he waited for the uther to be brought in, Lenoir allowed himself a moment to dwell on the recent past.

  It had taken some time to quell their brothers’ agitation outside Danskoi. The Cursed League had antagonised them, and Naif’s presence there had only worsened their agitation. They held her responsible for Leyste’s death.

  Leyste had influenced them. It was the way, when one among a group had stronger abilities. Sometimes a Creature began transformation spontaneously, without the necessary nutrients. When that happened, it almost always failed and the Creature slowly starved. Though Leyste had not fully undergone transformation, he’d developed rudimentary language and his appearance had become unstable; one moment beast, the next something else. Modai had wanted to take Leyste to Danskoi to try to complete the transformation.

  Lenoir had refused. Though he still carried a knot of regret about having killed Leyste to protect Naif, he knew the creature would not have lived anyway.

  Modai would never forgive him and now sided with Brand. The pair continued to ignite both Varonessa’s and the Creatures’ mistrust of him. It had become unsafe to stay at Syn; his numbers had been too few.

  Lenoir turned to seal his empty sleep sac and stood among the other swaying globules, waiting. The silence of their sleeping chamber soothed his troubled thoughts.

  The uther’s arrival was so subtle he almost missed it; the merest distortion of the air and the sense of another presence. At first, he saw nothing, and then gradually the creature’s outline took shape.