“In life I was only a man,” the ghost agreed. “But the Ninth House granted me honour, and made me, unworthy, its servant. I speak with the voice of the Tomb, and my strength is the strength of the Black Gate—why am I talking in meter?”

The Sleeper fired twice, but the sword flicked up diagonally across Nonius’s body, hilt at his face, before Harrow had even heard the shots. One bullet ricocheted off into the darkness; the other seemed to hit the armour, and Nonius jerked slightly with the impact, but again the blade shot out so fast and sure that the movement hardly made sense to the eye. The Sleeper sounded a muffled curse through the face mask and dropped her weapon, which clattered on the tiles. Then she snatched back her hand and brought it out from behind her back holding a significantly longer and fatter gun. This one had a blunt, squat barrel that even to Harrow’s untrained eye looked like bad news. The Sleeper braced it in both hands against her shoulder, pointed at Nonius’s face.

“Go back to Hell,” she said, and pulled the trigger.

There was a flat metallic snap, and nothing happened. She pulled again: nothing. She threw the gun to the side, and before it had even hit the floor it had been replaced with a long, elegant rifle. This yielded a hollow clunk, and a distinct lack of anything else.

The Sleeper backed away a few more steps, her plex mask as impassive as ever. Nonius followed, not closing the distance but matching it, echoing her movements.

“You ought to look after them better,” he suggested.

“I killed wizard’s filth like you all my life,” snarled the Sleeper. This time the object that appeared in her hand was not a gun: it was some sort of fat cylinder. She flicked it downward and a slim black baton, perhaps three feet in length, telescoped suddenly outward with a noise like a bolt going home. “I killed them with guns, and bombs, and knives, and gas, and when I didn’t have any of those I just got in real close and put my thumbs through their fucking eyes. You can flick that little skewer around all you like, boy. I’ll choke you with it.”

“I certainly hope you’re a fighter,” said Nonius, and raised his dagger-hand. “God knows you’re not a debater.”

They both lunged forward at once. As the first crack of plex on metal sounded, Harrow dropped next to Ortus. She grasped him with her hands and with a pair of skeletal arms for good measure, and started to haul him to safety.