Going next was the very last thing that Jess wanted to do. It was all he could do not to bolt for the exit.

Khalila said, with forced cheer, ‘Better to get it over with.’ She walked towards the Obscurist, who was picking up the helmet.

Morgan had a horrified look on her face. She rushed to Wolfe. Before she could speak, he turned on her and snapped, ‘Wait your turn, postulant.’

‘But I saw—’

‘Postulant. Control yourself, or go.’ Wolfe’s stare burnt, hot enough to melt the Iron Tower itself, and she finally nodded and bowed her head. Stepped back. ‘Postulant Seif, you may proceed.’

Khalila squared her shoulders as the Obscurist settled the helmet over her hijab. When Wolfe moved forward, she shook her head. ‘Blue skies and clouds. Yes. I know. Just let me do this.’

Dario made a twitch of a move towards her, as if he wanted to drag her back, but he held himself still. ‘In bocca al lupo, desert flower.’

‘I’m from Riyadh,’ she told him. ‘It’s not the desert, it’s a modern city, with roads and carriages. And desert flowers have spikes.’ She somehow managed to smile beneath the weight of that helmet. ‘What does it mean?’

‘In the mouth of the wolf,’ Dario said. ‘Forget the clouds, and keep your eyes on me. I’m much prettier.’

‘And much more empty in the head,’ she said. ‘In bocca al lupo, Dario.’

The old Obscurist put his shaking hands on her head. Dario continued, somehow, to hold her stare and smile, though Jess couldn’t imagine what that cost him. She didn’t look away, either, even as the light began to swirl.

Even as it snapped in and broke her apart.

She didn’t scream. Jess felt the power blow over him, disorienting and visceral, and he wondered how the old man could bear that lash, time after time.

Dario must have felt honour-bound to go next, because he strode up and donned the helmet without a word. At the last second, he threw a dazzling grin at Jess. ‘Don’t ask me to look at you, scrubber,’ he said. ‘I’d rather think of the damned clouds.’

A soul-deep shriek of mortal pain and terror, blood, shock, and then he, too, was gone.

When Izumi’s turn came, it did not go the same. The Obscurist laid on his hands, and there was the same scream, the same whirl of blood and bone and flesh, but instead of collapsing inward, the whirling orange light exploded out. It washed over them in a wave of heat, and this time Jess ducked as if it was an actual, physical threat. He wasn’t the only one. Even Wolfe flinched.

When he looked back, Izumi was still there. Face down, sprawled on the marble, buried beneath the weight of her pack. Jess got to her at the same time as Wolfe, and helped loosen the pack straps to get the weight off of the slender young woman while Wolfe stripped off the helmet.

Wolfe turned her over.

Izumi’s eyes were open and staring, but … empty, of everything but a mute horror. Over their heads, a red light began to flash, bathing the whole room in flashes of crimson. A torrent of steam hissed out of valves and pipes in a deafening roar.

The old Obscurist was on his knees as well, but not to help. He was gasping for air, and shaking like an autumn leaf in a storm. His face was the colour of grey mud. He looked like he might drop dead. When Jess reached out to help him, the old man flinched back, as if he expected to be hurt. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Leave me alone. Not my fault. Not my fault.’

Wolfe pressed fingertips to Izumi’s neck, then his ear to her chest. ‘Help is coming,’ he told her. ‘You’re not alone. Can you hear me, Izumi? Show me you can hear me.’ She seemed frozen and unable to move, but her eyes cut towards him, and she blinked. His austere face softened into a relieved, fully warm smile. ‘Good girl. You’ll be fine.’

She swallowed and managed to whisper something Jess couldn’t catch, but Wolfe clearly did. He shook his head. ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Some can’t tolerate it. There’s no shame in that.’

The door they’d entered slid open, and a two-man Medica team carried in a stretcher. They loaded Izumi on, and whisked her away before any of them could comprehend what had really happened.

It was left to Jess to say, ‘She failed, didn’t she?’

Wolfe’s smile was gone now, and his face closed and stony. ‘There’s nothing I can do. The Artifex made it clear that anyone who fails on this journey loses their place,’ he said. ‘Not her fault.’

‘Has anyone ever died?’ Portero asked. His voice sounded higher than it normally did, his face two shades off his normal dull bronze.

‘Yes,’ Wolfe said. Just the bare word. He turned his eyes to Jess. ‘Are you ready?’

Jess realised that he was already standing in the centre, beside the fallen helmet. He felt the urge to bolt away. Instead, he raised his gaze to meet Wolfe’s and said, ‘I’m ready.’

The helmet felt suffocating and heavy as granite as it pressed down on him. It smelt of sweat and burning metal. Think of clouds. He couldn’t. He couldn’t think of anything but the torment his friends had endured before him.

‘Jess.’

He opened his eyes. Morgan had stepped forward, and she was holding out her hand to him.

He took it, and she squeezed his fingers. ‘In bocca al lupo.’

He said it back, and then she was gone.

The Obscurist shuffled forward, and pressed those shaking hands down on the helmet. The old man’s robes smelt of stale curry, and his breath was rank with it too. He’s too old, Jess thought. Maybe it’s his fault, what happened to Izumi. Maybe he’ll kill me.

He felt something rising around him like a storm of needles, and caught and held his breath. He squeezed his eyes shut, like a child hiding from a monster in the dark.

Somehow, he managed to hold on to the tattered remains of courage as the needles turned in, and began to rip him apart. It was an awful, horror-filled second of utter destruction, and he heard a scream wrenched out of his mouth that he couldn’t control. His vision went blood-red, and he felt himself convulse, and then …

… Then he was falling to his hands and knees on a stone floor, still crying out. Nothing worked. He flailed and rolled onto his back, managed to silence himself, and tried to breathe. Someone grabbed hold of his shoulders and was dragging him away … Dario? Yes. It was Dario Santiago, gripping him hard enough to leave bruises.

Dario propped Jess’s back against a wall and left him there. For the first time, Jess was grateful for the pack weighing him down; it felt soft as a feather bed now, a familiar anchor in a world that seemed to still tremble and dance in front of his eyes.

‘Easy,’ Khalila was saying to him, and her hands were holding a cup of water in front of his face. ‘Drink. You’ll feel better in a moment.’

He took the cup, mindlessly; his hands shook so badly that he spilt half of it on his face and down his shirt, but he got enough of it into his mouth to choke down, and as she’d said, it helped. The world steadied slowly into an off-kilter wobble, then finally righted itself.

Thomas arrived while he was still struggling to adapt, and Dario’s job evidently was to grab and drag the newcomers, which wasn’t an easy job, given the German’s bulk. Jess handed the cup back to Khalila, and she filled it from a jug and moved to administer the same kindness to Thomas. She didn’t seem to have any problems; she moved with calm grace, and her hand extending the cup was rock steady.

Jess still felt a horrible conviction in the back of his mind that some part of him was missing, lost in that bleeding whirl, though as he ran hands over himself he couldn’t feel any wounds.

He was better off by far than some of the others. Dario and Khalila seemed to have done best; Guillaume Danton, first to arrive, was lying still off to the side. A woman dressed in the sand-coloured overcoat of a librarian was tending to him – a Medica specialist, by the red blood-drop symbol on the lapel of her uniform. Guillaume looked icy pale, his face slack.