He paused. It was late, and the stars were hanging bright and heavy over the humid, sleeping city. Now and then he would catch the cry of a night watchman or one of the city patrol. A dog barked and there was the sudden splurge of laughter from some revellers leaving an all-night tavern. The offshore breeze had not yet picked up, and the reek of the burning hung over the city like a shroud.

I tell you, Saffarac: leave Cartigella while there is time. This madness will spread, I am sure of it. Today it is Hebrion, tomorrow it will be Astarac. These holy men will not be happy until they have burnt half the west in their zeal to outdo one another in piety. A city is not a safe place to be.

Again, he stopped. Would it revert to the way it had been in the beginning? The Dweomer-folk reduced to petty oldwifery, the doctoring of dry cows in some mountain village. There would be a welcome in such a place, at least. The country-folk understood these things better. Some of them still worshipped the Horned One in nights of moon up in the Hebros.

He dipped his quill in the inkwell but the pen remained unmoving in his fingers. A drop of ink slipped down the nib and drip, dripped on to the parchment, like a raven tear. The imp watched Bardolin from its shelf, chirruping quietly to itself. It could sense his grief.

He knuckled his bloodshot eyes, grimaced at the blotted page, and then wrote on.

They took away my apprentice today. I have made protests, enquiries, even bribes; but nothing will answer. The Inceptines have begun to whip up fear, and with the news from the east that is no hard task. When it started, the soldiers would sometimes look the other way: now they also have the sniff of fanaticism about them. It is rumoured, though, that King Abeleyn disapproves of the scale of the purge and keeps the Prelate from even worse excesses. They burned forty today, and they hold half a thousand in the catacombs for want of space in the palace cells. God forgive them.

He halted a third time. He could write no more, but it would have to be finished tonight for there might not be time in the morning. He sighed and continued.

You are high in the councils of King Mark. I beg you, Saffarac, use your influence with him. This hysteria must be halted before it sweeps all the Ramusian states. But if you see no hope, you must get some of our folk out. Gabrion will take them, I am sure, and if not Gabrion then the Sea-Merduks.

Desperate times, to suggest such remedies. Take care, my friend. May God’s light shine ever on your path.

He signed and sealed the letter, and his eyes stung with tiredness. He felt worn and old. A dispatch-runner would take it on the morning tide, if this calm lifted and the north-west breeze struck up again.

His imp was asleep. He smiled at the little creature, the last in a long line of familiars. They would come for him tomorrow as they had come today for young Orquil, his apprentice. A promising lad, he had been, already at home in cantrimy and beginning to learn the way of mindrhyming, perhaps the least understood of the Seven Disciplines.

He knew why they had not taken him today.

Bardolin had been a soldier once upon a time. He had served with one of the tercios which currently garrisoned Abrusio and he knew their commanding officer well. His . . . abilities had begun to manifest themselves on a campaign against bandits in the Hebros. They had saved lives. The ensign had recommended him for promotion, but he had left to study thauma-turgics under Golophin, a great name, even then.

That had been thirty years ago, but Bardolin still had the carriage of a soldier. He kept his hair brutally short and his broken nose gave him the appearance of a prize fighter. He did not look like a wizard, a master of at least four of the Realms of Dweomer. He looked more like the hard-bitten sergeant of arquebusiers that he had once been, the tell-tale scars at his temples speaking of long years wearing the iron helmet of the Hebriate soldiery.

That’s why they left me, he thought. But they’ll be back tomorrow, no doubt, with one of the Ravens prodding them on.

A distant tumult outside. A rattle of hard voices, feet spattering on the cobbles.

Had they come for him already?

He stood up. The imp sprang awake, its eyes glowing.

The feet pattered past, the shouts faded. Bardolin relaxed, chiding himself for his hammering heart.

An arquebus shot. It ripped the night quiet apart. Another, and then a ragged volley. There was a huge animal howling, and men began to scream.

Bardolin leapt to the window.

Dark streets, the sliver of a moon shining faintly off cobbles. Here and there a yellow light flickering. If he leaned out far enough he could see the glitter of moonlight on the Western Sea. Abrusio slept like a tired old libertine made weary by his excesses.

Where, then?

“Go, my friend; be my eyes for me.”

The imp’s eyes dulled. The useless wings on its back flapped feebly. It darted out of the window and appeared to leap into empty space, though the air was so warm and thick it seemed a different element, capable of buoying the tiny body up like a leaf.

Now, yes. Bardolin was seeing in the spectrum of the imp’s vision. A lantern at a window was a green flare, too bright to look at. A rat made a small luminosity and the imp changed its swift scamper in pursuit, but Bardolin held it to his will again, reproved it gently and sent it on its way.

A leap between two roofs, an unbelievably quick series of gymnastic movements and the imp was in the street scurrying along in the gutter, ignoring the rats now. There was a confused glow up ahead, green figures dancing. But one towered over the rest, and shone as brightly as a bonfire. The heat from it was a palpable thing on the imp’s clammy skin.

A shifter cornered by the city patrol! And it was already badly wounded. Bardolin noted the three corpses which lay in fragments around the street. The shifter was giving a good account of itself, but that last volley had caught it at point-blank range and even its immense vitality was waning. The lead balls had ripped through the great chest and out of the muscles of the back. Already the wounds were repairing themselves, but the arquebusiers were reloading with panicked haste, not daring to go near the dying creature. The darkened street was sickening with the reek of gore and slow-match and powder smoke.

“Damn you all,” the shifter said clearly, despite its beast’s mouth. “You and all black-robed carrion. You have no right—”

A bang. One fellow, reloading faster than the rest, fired his weapon at the huge, long-eared skull. The shifter’s head bounced back to hit the wall behind it. The jaws opened, roaring, and the black tongue lolled wetly.

Others fired. Bardolin’s imp whimpered but remained at its station, impelled by its master’s will. It shut its sensitive eyes to the flashes of the volley, poked tiny fingers in its ears and cowered appalled as the patrol fired ball after ball into the massive beast. Pieces of flesh, dark-furred, were blasted off to litter the cobbles. One of the luminous yellow eyes went dark.

People began coming out of their houses. The entire district was waking to what sounded like a small battle being fought in their midst. Lantern light spilled out in pools and wands on the cobbles. The stouter-hearted ventured close to the inferno of noise and light that was the firing patrol, saw what they were aiming at and hurried back into their homes, barring their doors.

The noise stopped. The street was an opaque fog of powder smoke and the patrolmen shouted to one another reassuringly in the midst of it. They had used all their charges, but the beast was dead—sure to be after having thirty rounds blasted into it.