Two was trying to swing his pistol round, tracking a target that was moving with inhuman speed. All his enriched senses revealed was a blurred shape as Aaron danced across the path. He never got a lock, Aaron's hand materialized out of a dim streak to chop across his throat, overloading the force field. His neck snapped instantly, and the corpse flew through the air. Aaron snatched the jelly gun from Two's hand at the same time, wrenching the fingers off with a liquid crunching sound. It took Aaron a fraction of a second to spin round again. His force field expanded into the ground, an anchor snatching away inertia, allowing him to stop instantly, the pistol aligned on One as the dazed man was clambering unsteadily to his feet. Blood from the severed fingers dripped down on to the path. One froze, sucking down air as he stared at the nozzle of the jelly gun. Aaron opened his grip, allowing the fingers to slither away. 'Who are they? he yelled at Corrie-Lyn, who was lying on the sodden grass where she'd landed. She was giving One a bewildered look. 'Who? Aaron demanded.

'The… the police. That's Captain Manby, special protection division.

'That's right, Manby wheezed as he flinched against the pain. 'So you just put that fucking gun down. You're already drowning in shit so deep you'll never see the universe again.

'Join me at the bottom. Aaron pressed the trigger on the jelly gun, holding it down on continuous fire mode. He added his own distortion pulse to the barrage. Manby's force field held out for almost two seconds before collapsing. The jelly gun pulses struck the exposed body. Aaron turned and fired again, overloading Three's force field.

Corrie-Lyn threw up as waves of bloody sludge from both ruined corpses cascaded across the ground. She was wailing like a wounded kitten when Aaron hauled her to her feet. 'We have to go, he shouted at her. She shrank back from his hold. 'Come on, now! Move! His u-shadow was already calling down a taxi.

'No, she whimpered. 'No, no. They didn't… you just killed them. You killed them.

'Do you understand what this is? he growled at her, his voice loud, aggressive; using belligerence to keep her off balance. 'Do you understand what just happened? Do you? They're an assassination squad. Ethan wants you dead. Permanently dead. You can't stay here. They'll keep coming after you. Corrie-Lyn! I can protect you.

'Me? she sobbed. 'They wanted me?

'Yes. Now come on, we're not safe here.

'Oh sweet Ozzie.

He shook her. 'Do you understand?

'Yes, she whispered. By the way she was shaking Aaron thought she was going into mild shock. 'Good, he started to walk towards the descending taxi, hauling her along, heedless of the way she stumbled to keep up. It was hard not to smile. He couldn't have delivered a better result to the evening if he'd planned it.

When Edeard woke, his dream was already a confused fading memory. The same thing happened every morning. No matter how hard he tried he could never hold on to the images and sounds afflicting him every night. Akeem said not to worry; that his dreams were made up from the gentle spillage of other sleeping minds around him. Edeard didn't believe the things he dreamed of came from anywhere like their village, the fragments he occasionally did manage to cling to were too strange and fascinating for that.

Cool pre-dawn light was showing up the cracks in the window's wooden shutters. Edeard lay still for a while, cosy under the pile of blankets that covered his cot. It was a big room, with whitewashed plaster walls and bare floorboards. The rafters of the hammer-beam roof above were ancient martoz wood that had blackened and hardened over the decades until they resembled iron. There wasn't much by way of furniture, two thirds of the floor space was completely empty. Edeard had shoved what was left down to the end which had a broad window. At the foot of the cot was a crude chest where he kept his meagre collection of clothes; there was a long a table covered in his enthusiastic sketches of possible genistar animals; several chairs; a dresser with a plain white bowl and pitcher of water. Over in the corner opposite the cot, the fire had burnt out sometime in I lie night, with a few embers left glimmering in the grate. It was difficult to heat such a large volume, especially in winter, and Edeard could see his breath as a fine white mist. Technically, he lived in the apprentice dormitory of Ashwell village's Eggshaper Guild, but he was the only occupant. He'd lived there for the past six years, ever since his parents died when he was eight years old. Master Akeem, the village's sole remaining shaper, had taken him in after the caravan they had joined in order to travel through the hills to the east was attacked by bandits.

Edeard wrapped a blanket round his shoulders and hurried over the cold floor to the small brick-arch fireplace. The embers were still giving off a little heat, warming the clothes he'd left on the back of a chair. He dressed hurriedly, pulling up badly worn leather trousers and tucking an equally worn shirt into the waist before struggling into a thick green sweater. As always the fabric smelled of the stables and their varied occupants, a melange of fur and food and cages; but after six years at the Guild he was so used to it he hardly noticed. He sat back on the cot to pull his boots on; they really were too small for him now. With the last eighteen months seeing more genistars in the stables and Edeard taking on official commission duties, their little branch of the Eggshaper Guild had seen a lot more money coming it. Hardly a fortune, but sufficient to pay for new clothes and boots, it was just that he never had time to visit the cobbler. He winced slightly as he stood up, trying to wriggle his toes which were squashed together. It was no good, he was definitely going to take an hour out of his busy day to visit the cobbler. He grinned. But not today.

Today was when the village's new well was finished. It was a project in which the Eggshaper Guild was playing an unusually large part. Better than that, for him, it was an innovative part. Edeard knew how many doubters there were in the village: basically everybody. But Master Akeem had quietly persuaded the elder council to give his young apprentice a chance. They said yes only because they had nothing to lose.

He made his way downstairs, then hurried across the narrow rear yard to the warmth of the Guild dining hall. Like the dormitory, it was a sharp reminder that the Eggshaper Guild had known better times. A lot better. There were still two rows of long bench tables in the big hall, enough to seat fifty shapers and their guests on feast nights. At the far end the huge fireplace had iron baking ovens built in to the stonework on either side, and the roasting spit was large enough to handle a whole pig. This morning, the fire was just a small blaze tended by a couple of ge-monkeys. Normally, people didn't let the genistars get anywhere near naked flames, they were as skittish as any terrestrial animal, but Edeard's orders were lucid and embedded deeply enough that the ge-monkeys could manage the routine without panicking.

Edeard sat at the table closest to the fire. His mind directed a batch of instructions to the ge-monkeys using simple telepathic longtalk. He used a pidgin version of Querencia's mental language, visualizing the sequence of events he wanted in conjunction with simple command phrases, making sure the emotional content was zero (so many people forgot that, and then couldn't understand why the genistars didn't obey properly). The ge-monkeys started scurrying round; they were big creatures, easily the weight of a full-gown human male, with six long legs along the lower half of their body, and six even longer arms on top, the first two pairs so close together they seemed to be sharing a shoulder joint, while the third pair were set further back along a very flexible spine. Their bodies were covered in a wiry white fur, with patches worn away on joints and palms to reveal a leathery cinder-coloured hide. The head profile was the same as all the genistar variants, a plain globe with a snout very close to a terrestrial dog; the ears were situated on the lower part of the head back towards the stumpy neck, each one sprouting three petals of long creased skin thin enough to be translucent.