#deleteres

How long has it been? The question has no meaning. Time is trapped here as surely as I am – whirling about madly but going nowhere. And yet I know the strength is fading from me, the endless circle of seconds wearing me away like a blade against the grindstone. That’s where father is, sharpening his axe so we can cut wood for the winter. That’s why he can’t hear me. 

But I can’t wait until…

Nyemo. The hectic Chiarian port at the heart of the Lake of Pearls.

I had only been here briefly, once before, and that years ago, but it was surprising how many memories came flooding back as I stole through the back streets. This was where we’d come after the Church’s execution of the Crossbred, where I had run from river gangs with a young delinquent before we ended up jointly bringing the boy…

Two hands came up in the same instant. Two voices cried out, overlapping. Two bolts of incandescent lightning burst into existence.

He was faster – ever so slightly faster – and ten times, a hundred times more powerful; so far as I was concerned, he might as well have been Celthis reborn, his powers insurmountably superior in every way.

Well, every way but one. He could put as much power into the…