Touchstone and Sabriel crawled forward, their pistols in their hands. The two guards who had also made it under the car crawled forward too. One was Veran, Sabriel saw, still clutching her pistol despite the blood that ran down her hands. The other survivor was the oldest of all the guards, Barlest, his grizzled hair stained and no longer white. He had a machine rifle and was readying it to fire.

The assassins saw the movement, but it was too late. The four survivors fired almost at the same time, and the laughter was drowned in an assault of sudden gunfire. Empty brass cartridges rattled on the underside of the car and acrid smoke billowed out between the wheels.

“To the boat!” shouted Barlest to Sabriel, gesturing behind him. She couldn’t hear him properly at first, till he had shouted it three times: “Boat! Boat! Boat!”

Touchstone heard it too. He looked at Sabriel and she saw the fear in his eyes. But it was fear for her, she knew, not for himself. She gestured back towards the lane that ran between the houses behind them. That would take them to Larnery Square and the Warden Steps. They had boats there, and more guards disguised as river traders. Damed had carefully prepared several escape routes, but this was the closest. As in everything, he had thought only of the safety of his King and Queen.

“Go!” shouted Barlest. He had changed the drum on his automatic rifle and he began firing short bursts to the right and left, forcing any of their attackers who had made it back to cover to keep their heads down.

Touchstone gripped Barlest’s shoulder for a brief, final moment, then wriggled around and moved across to the other side of the car. Sabriel crawled next to him and they briefly touched hands. Veran, next to her, took a deep breath and hurled herself out, leaping to her feet and running the second she was clear of the car. She got to the lane, crouched behind a fire hydrant and covered Sabriel and Touchstone as they followed. But for the moment there were no shots apart from the disciplined bursts from Barlest, still under the car.

“Come on!” roared Touchstone, turning at the entrance to the lane. But Barlest did not come, and Veran grabbed Touchstone and Sabriel and pushed them down the lane, shouting, “Go! Go!”

They heard Barlest shout a battle cry behind them, heard his footsteps as he charged out from under the car on the opposite side. There was one long shuddering burst of automatic fire and several louder, single shots. Then there was silence, save for the clattering of their own boots on the cobbles, the pant of their laboured breaths and the beating of their hearts.

Larnery Square was empty. The central garden, usually the habitat of nannies and babies, was completely devoid of life. The explosion had probably happened only a few minutes ago, but that was enough. There had been plenty of trouble in Corvere since the rise of Corolini and his Our Country thugs, and the ordinary citizens had learned when to retreat quickly from the streets.

Touchstone, Sabriel and Veran ran grimly through the square and clattered down the Warden Steps on the far side. A drunken bargeman saw them, three gun-wielding figures splattered in blood and worse, and was not so drunk that he got in the way. He cowered to one side, hunching himself into as small a ball as possible.

The Sethem River flowed dirtily past the short quay at the end of the steps. A man dressed in the oilskin thigh boots and assorted rags of a tide dredger stood there, his hands inside a barrel that he’d presumably just salvaged from the muddy river flats. As he heard the clatter on the stairs, his hands came out holding a sawn-off shotgun, the hammers cocked.

“Querel! A rescue!” shouted Veran.

The man carefully decocked the shotgun, pulled a whistle out from under his many-patched shirt and blew it several times. There was an answering whistle and several more Royal Guards leapt up from a boat that was out of sight beneath the quay, the river being at low tide. All the guards were armed and expecting trouble, but from their expressions none expected what they saw.

“An ambush,” exclaimed Touchstone quickly as they approached. “We must be away at once.”

Before he could say any more, many hands grabbed him and Sabriel and practically threw them on to the deck of the waiting boat, Veran jumping on after them. The craft, a converted river tramp, was six or seven feet below the quay, but there were more hands to catch them. Even as they were hustled into the heavily sandbagged cabin, the engine was going from a slow idle to a heavy throb and the boat was shuddering into motion.

Sabriel and Touchstone looked at each other, reassuring themselves that they were still alive and relatively unhurt, though they were both bleeding from small shrapnel cuts.

“That is it,” said Touchstone quietly, setting his pistol down on the deck. “I am done with Ancelstierre.”

“Yes,” said Sabriel. “Or it is done with us. We will not find any help here now.”

Touchstone sighed and, taking up a cloth, wiped the blood from Sabriel’s face. She did the same for him; then they stood and briefly embraced. Both were shaking and they did not try to disguise it.

“We had best see to Veran’s wounds,” said Sabriel as they let go of each other. “And plot a course to take us home.”

“Home!” confirmed Touchstone, but even that word wasn’t said without both of them feeling an unspoken fear. Close as they had come to death today, they feared their children would face even greater dangers, and as both of them knew so well, there were far worse fates than simple death.

part two

chapter nine

a dream of owls and flying dogs

Nick was dreaming the dream again, of the Lightning Farm, and the hemispheres coming together. Then the dream suddenly changed and he seemed to be lying on a bed of furs in a tent. There was the slow beat of rain on the canvas above his head, and the sound of thunder, and the whole tent was lit by the constant flicker of lightning.

Nick sat up and saw an owl perched on his travelling chest, looking at him with huge, golden eyes. And there was a dog sitting next to his bed. A black and tan dog not much bigger than a terrier, with huge feathery wings growing out of its shoulders.

At least it’s a different dream, part of him thought. He had to be almost awake, and this was one of those dream fragments that precede total wakefulness, where reality and fantasy mix. It was his tent, he knew, but an owl and a winged dog!

I wonder what that means, Nick thought, blinking his dream eyes.

Lirael and the Disreputable Dog watched him look at them, his eyes sleepy but still full of a fevered brightness. His hand clutched at his chest, fingers curled as if to scratch at his heart. He blinked twice, then shut his eyes and lay back on the furs.

“He really is sick,” whispered Lirael. “He looks terrible. And there’s something else about him... I can’t tell properly in this shape. A wrongness.”

“There is something of the Destroyer in him,” growled the Dog softly. “A sliver of one of the silver hemispheres, most like, infused with a fragment of its power. It is eating away at him, body and spirit. He is being used as the Destroyer’s avatar. A mouthpiece. We must not awaken this force inside him.”

“How do we get him out without doing that?” asked Lirael. “He doesn’t even look strong enough to leave his bed, let alone walk.”

“I can walk,” protested Nick, opening his eyes and sitting up again. Since this was his dream, surely he could participate in the conversation between the winged dog and the talking owl. “Who is the Destroyer and what’s this about eating away at me? I just have a bad influenza or something.

“Makes me hallucinate,” he added. “And have vivid dreams. A winged dog! Hah!”