The officer’s faceplate shattered in an explosion of bloody mirror. A cloud of flesh burst from the back of his skull. His face was momentarily visible, a shocked gaze embedded with slivers of reflecting glass, blooming with blood from a hole below his right eye. He seemed to leap out backwards like a champion diver, sailing elegantly twenty feet to crack loudly against the base of the roof.

Derkhan bellowed with triumph, her cry becoming words. “Die, you swine!” she screamed. She ducked back out of sight as a rapid battery of shots smacked into the brick and stone above and below her.

Isaac dropped onto all fours beside her, staring at her. It was impossible to say, in the rain, but he thought she was sobbing angrily. She rolled back from the edge of the roof and began to reload her pistols. She caught Isaac’s eye.

“Do something!” she screamed at him.

Yagharek was standing, hanging back from the edge, grabbing glimpses every few seconds, waiting until the men were in reach of his whip. Isaac rolled forward, peered over the rim of the little platform. The men were drawing nearer, moving more carefully now, hiding at each level, staying out of sight, but still moving terribly fast.

Isaac aimed and fired. His bullet burst dramatically against slate, showering the lead militiaman with particles.

“Godsdamnit!” he hissed and ducked back to refill his gun.

A cold certainty of defeat was settling within him. There were too many men, coming too quickly. As soon as the militia reached the top, Isaac would have no defence. If the Weaver came to their aid they would lose their bait, and the slake-moths would escape. They might take one, two or three of the officers with them, but they could not escape.

Andrej was jerking up and down, arcing his back and straining against his bonds. The nerves between Isaac’s eyes were singing as the blast of energy continued to scald the aether. The airships were pulling near. Isaac screwed up his face, looked back over the edge of the plateau. On the broken plain of the roof below, drunkards and vagrants were rousing themselves and scurrying away like terrified animals.

Yagharek screeched like a crow and pointed with his knife.

Behind the militia, on the flattened roofscape they had left behind, a cloaked figure slipped out of some shadow, appearing like an eidolon, manifesting as if from nothing.

There was a flurry of bottle-green from its coiling cloak.

Something spat intense fire and noise from the figure’s outstretched hand, three, four, five times. Halfway up the slope, Isaac saw a militiaman bow away from the roof, collapsing in an ugly organic cascade down the length of the clay. As he fell, two more of the men staggered and collapsed. One was dead, blood pooling below his sprawled body and diluting in the rain. The other slid a little way and emitted a horrendous shriek from behind his mask, clutching at his bleeding ribs.

Isaac gazed in shock.

“Who the fuck is that?” he shouted. “What the fuck is going on?” Below him, their shadowed benefactor had ducked into a puddle of darkness. He seemed to be fumbling with his gun.

Below them, the militia had frozen. Orders were shouted in impenetrable shorthand. It was clear that they were confused and afraid.

Derkhan was staring into the darkness with a look of astonished hope.

“Gods bless you,” she screamed down the slate, into the night. She fired again with her left hand, but the bullet passed loudly and harmlessly into brick.

Thirty feet below them, the injured man still screamed. He fumbled ineffectually to undo his mask.

The unit split. One man ducked beneath outcroppings of brick and raised his rifle, aiming into the darkness where the newcomer hid. Several of the remaining men began to descend towards their new attacker. The others began to climb again, at redoubled speed.

As the two little groups moved up and down across the slippery roofscape, the dark figure stepped out again and fired with extraordinary rapidity. He’s got some kind of repeating pistol, thought Isaac with astonishment, and then started as two more officers reared up from the roof a little way below him and fell, twisting and screaming, to bounce brutally down the incline.

Isaac realized that the man below them was not firing at the militia who had turned and were approaching him, but was concentrating on protecting the little platform, picking off the closest officers with superb marksmanship. He had left himself vulnerable to a massed attack.

All across the roof the militia froze at the volley of bullets. But as Isaac looked down he saw that the second group of officers had descended to the base of the roof and were running in clumsily furtive formation at the shady assassin.

Ten feet below Isaac, the militia were closing in. He fired again, knocking the wind from one man, but failing to penetrate his armour. Derkhan shot, and below them, the poised marksman screeched an oath and dropped his rifle, which slid noisily away.

Isaac filled his gun with desperate haste. He glanced over at his machinery, saw that Andrej was curled under the wall. He was shuddering, with spittle fouling his face. Isaac’s head throbbed in time to some weird beat from the growing blaze of mental waves. He looked up at the sky. Come on, he thought, come on, come on. He looked down again as he reloaded, trying to find the mysterious newcomer.

He almost cried out in fear for their half-hidden protector, as four burly and heavily armed militia jogged towards the pitch-shade where he had hidden.

Something emerged from the darkness at speed, leaping from shadow to shadow, drawing the militia’s fire with extraordinary ease. A pathetic spatter of shots sounded, and the four men’s rifles were empty. As they dropped to one knee and began to reload, the cloaked figure emerged from the sheltering gloom and stood a few paces before them.

Isaac saw him from slightly behind, illuminated in the sudden cold light from some phlogistic lamp. His face was turned away, towards the militia. His cloak was patched and shabby. Isaac could just see a stubby little gun in his left hand. As the impassive glass masks glimmered in the light and the four officers seemed to falter into momentary stillness, something extended from the man’s right hand. Isaac could not see it well, squinted carefully until the man moved slightly and raised his arm, uncovering the toothed thing as the sleeve of the cloth fell away.

A massive serrated blade, slowly opening and shutting like wicked scissors. Gnarled chitin jutting ungainly from the man’s elbow, recurved razor tip gleaming at the end of the trapping jaw.

The man’s right arm had been replaced, Remade, with a vast mantis claw.

At the same instant, Isaac and Derkhan gasped and shouted his name: “Jack Half-a-Prayer!”

Half-a-Prayer, the Escapee, the fReemade Boss, the Man-’tis, stepped up lightly towards the four militia.

They fumbled with their guns, jabbed out with the glinting bayonets.

Half-a-Prayer sidestepped them with balletic speed and snapped his Remade limb shut, then backed easily away. One of the officers fell, blood bursting from his lacerated neck and welling up behind his mask.

Jack Half-a-Prayer had gone again, was stalking half in, half out of sight.

Isaac’s attention was diverted as an officer appeared over the brim of a window five feet below him. He fired too quickly and missed, but something snaked out above him and smacked violently against the man’s helmet. The officer reeled and fell back, gathering himself from another attack. Yagharek quickly gathered up his heavy whip, ready to strike again.

“Come on, come on!” screamed Isaac to the sky.