The yard offered a quick death; the roof, lingering agony. If he stayed here, he'd be either cooked or smoked to death. The stone groaned and the tower lurched, as if a lower layer had become plastic. Falling into the inferno was his other doom. Nish hopped from foot to foot. The soles of his boots were smoking again. There was nowhere to go. Or was there?

The horned roof above him was framed with metal rods that had to be cooler than what he was standing on, and if the tower collapsed, there was a faint chance that the roof might hold together. If the tower stayed up, he might, just possibly, survive up there until the inferno went out. It didn't seem likely but he had no alternative.

Nish eased a smouldering beam out of the rubble, with much burning of fingers and the soles of his feet, and propped it against the wall. He dragged himself up it, caught hold of an iron rod and pulled himself up onto the roof framing.

It was worse than uncomfortable, for the rods cut into his flesh wherever he perched, but it was safer than where he'd been. Before long a curving crack appeared in the top of the dome. The chamber below had turned the orange-red of molten rock. If the conflagration inside was hot enough to melt stone, his end could not be long in coming.

And why delay it, he thought bitterly, since everyone I care about is going to die. Nish had no illusions about his friends' fate once they fell into the hands of the scrutators. There were no prisons on Santhenar. Minor miscreants were punished by servitude in the front lines, for men, or the breeding factories for women, or by other forms of slavery appropriate to the needs of the unending war. All other criminals were executed as an example to all, the only variation being in the ironically appropriate manner of their deaths.