The five shots rang out almost as one, the orange muzzle flashes and smoke dazzling his eyes. Almost as loud was the bang-whinnnng of the soft lead bullets ricocheting and spattering off the diamond hard surfaces of the room; they left no mark at all. Something struck Raj in the foot with sledgehammer force, a bullet tearing off the heel of one boot. A long tear appeared in the floppy tweed of Thom's breeches. . Then nothing, nothing except an acrid cloud of dirty-white powder smoke that made Raj cough reflexively.

Raj's muscles seized halfway through the motion of reloading. A voice spoke: not in his ears, but in his mind. Spoke with an inhuman detachment that had a flavor of hard-edged crispness:

yes. yes, you will do very well.

Chapter Two

The floor had vanished, and the pillar of light. There was nothing beneath him, although he could feel the pressure of weight under his feet. The off-white haze of powder smoke cleared rapidly, as if the air was being circulated without a detectable breeze. Thom hung suspended also, still in the first motion of flight, as if this was the Outer Dark where those who rejected the Spirit of Man fell frozen forever.

He heard his throat trying to whimper, and that brought him back to himself. He was a Whitehall of Hillchapel, and a soldier, and a man grown. The worst this whatever-it-was could do was kill him, and a paving stone in the riots could have done that. Or a scropied in his boot on a hunting trip, or a Colonist bullet or a Brigade bayonet. His soul only the Spirit could damn or save.

yes. excellent.

"Who the Dark are you?" Raj said, trying for the tone his father had used on machinery-salesmen back at Hillchapel. Hillchapel, sweet wild scent of the silverpine blowing down from the heights, the sound of a blacksmith's hammer on iron—