The platform was burning, the flames hissing steam as the rain thickened. Hurkel was burning, his heavy steps unsteady, lurching and lunging toward the bridge’s broken end. His face was lost within the flames, just a blistered, screaming husk at the heart of the firestorm. He seemed to be heading for Chel.

‘Little man!’ Rennic was calling, patting out one smouldering sleeve as he made for the rubble. ‘Little man!’

There seemed nothing human left in Hurkel’s searing armour, but still it moved, staggering onwards as if by demonic will, step after halting step. In its wake it left a blazing trail, and already the platform was sagging as its timbers blackened and burned. The handful of confessors who’d started forward in Hurkel’s pursuit fell swiftly back.

‘I should …’ Chel said, staring into the sizzling mass where Hurkel’s face had been. The pain had to be indescribable.

Hurkel lurched, reaching the platform’s end, only paces from where Chel stood. Already Chel could feel the incredible heat that boiled off the armoured form, seeing the plates blister and bubble within the tower of flame.

Make your choice, then make your peace.

The mace was back in his hand. ‘I should … show him mercy.’ He tensed to swing.

Hurkel swayed, stepped, and dropped from the edge. A puddle of flame marked his exit, along with a billow of choking black smoke. The world seemed suddenly darker. The rain was getting thicker.

Rennic called again, and Chel turned toward the city. He was thinking of Heali, the avuncular guardsman in the winter palace of Denirnas Port. The man who’d betrayed him, tried to stab him on the battlements, who’d fallen in flames to his doom below. The first man Chel had seen die.

‘Told you …’ Rennic wheezed, doubled over, ‘I’d call … for you.’

In the distance, thunder grumbled, then the lightning hit.

Chel saw the flash, then his eyes had only the after-image of the thunderbolt, a pulsing line of purple-black from churning cloud to darkened city, sending a cascade of sparks into the lightless sky. For a heartbeat silence reigned, then the thunder rolled over them, a terrifying crack as if the earth had torn. The rain began to hammer down, a gathering rush of water borne on the wind’s fury. In moments Chel was drenched.

Then he saw the bright burr of flames, carving outwards through the driving rain from the site of the lightning’s discharge. The workshop tower was aflame.

Rennic was still bent double, trying to draw air into his battered ribcage. He waved an encouraging hand toward the gate.

‘This has been a shitty day,’ Chel said, pushing his aching legs back toward the city.

THIRTY-EIGHT