The world ended.

  Or rather, it ceased to exist in any real way Lowe could comprehend. The reality of the Celestial Temple's halls. The torn and shattered marble under his boots. The weight of his coat around his shoulders. It was just all gone. And in its place, he was transported into a nothingness. There was no light. No dark. No air. No up or down. He couldn’t make any movements, because to do so would require space, and space required rules, and . . .

  Well, here and now - if there was a ‘now’ and ‘here’ in any way Lowe’s mind could still understand - there were none.

  Lowe thought he could feel his pulse quicken and the dampness of sweat beading at the back of his neck, a cold trickle that shouldn't have been possible in a place without heat or gravity. That was a nice touch, Lowe thought. It appeared that his body still existed in some way here, but only - of course - because Arkola allowed it to be so. And his mind continued to exist only because the god hadn't yet decided to peel it apart and examine all the things that made it up

  Lowe had done this little dance before, but the performance hadn’t gotten any easier with repetition.

  He resisted the temptation to look around, knowing that Arkola would be in this nothingness somewhere, but wouldn’t be in any form he could see. There were no shapes here - no clear outlines of markers - only the awful knowing of something vast and unbearable examining him from a vantage point he could never perceive. The similarity between the aura of the presence and what Lowe had felt display such anger within the memory Grackle Nuroon had showed him was undeniable.

  Ah, so it us you again? the voice had said. Not through his ears. Not through any real sound at all, but more Lowe knowing, in retrospect, that he had been spoken to. In a blink, his mind had always contained the words, but was only now recognising it as a coherent message. The funny little Inspector who people keep punching in the face stands before me.

  “Yeah. Guess I do. To be fair, though, you did tell me to come up and see you.”

  The knowing pressed down again. Again, it was not words. Not even anything as ephemeral as concepts. But it contained some pretty heavy judgment. Then a hand rifled through his soul like it was a ledger and Lowe’s Core was thoroughly rummaged through. And all his sins were tallied. That took a bit longer than he might have hoped.

  Then he was lifted. Not physically. It wasn’t like his body moved. There was no body, after all. But Lowe felt like he was grasped all the same. Plucked up like a coin between uncaring fingers and then flipped. Something tore him apart, piece by piece, weighing each of his thoughts. Examining all his regret. Every moment where he had made a choice and let it unfold into consequence was looked at and considered.

  And then - just when Lowe thought he couldn’t bear it anymore - it put him back, with a quiet disdain.

  “Was that as good for you as it was for me?” Lowe asked. “I usually would have a smoke right about now, if you have one handy?”

  There was no laughter. Arkola had no laughter to give. But Lowe sensed that there might have been amusement - distant and impassable for sure - but still some sort of lop-sided grin. Maybe.

  You persist in your delightful irreverence. Even here. Even with me. Even now.

  “Well, I suppose I have to get something out of this, don’t I?” Lowe said. “Otherwise, all this soul exposing just becomes a bit like a forced striptease.”

  The silence stretched out between them. It wasn’t emptiness—it was impossible to be near Arkola and feel empty—but it was still a deep and abiding stillness. A withholding. Lowe knew better than to take that as permission to speak. He had not been granted that right yet. And he’d got that wrong before.

  Finally, though, the world… shifted again. It was not a change Lowe saw in anything like visual terms, but suddenly, he felt that Arkola was looking at something else. Lowe could sense it, like the way a trapped mouse might feel a cat look away. A crack of light in an otherwise sealed tomb.

  And then, impossibly, the sense of something else appeared. A form. An object.

  It was not clear what it was at first. Just a weight in the space beside him. An idea given shape, perhaps. But then it became a . . . statue. Something small enough to hold in one hand. Certainly plenty small enough to keep locked away in a chest, for example. It looked like it was the representation of a bird with a broad chest and curved beak, its wings folded down against its sides. The material from which the statue was made was dark. Matte. Something between stone and metal, Lowe thought.

  “You have got to be kidding me!” he said.

  But there was no answer. He doubted there would be to that that sort of statement. Those as powerful as Arkola never seemed to feel the need to explain. They only showed and demanded.

  “This is what the Mayor took?”

  Yes.

  “And I imagine that you would like it back, ever so much, please. If I would be so kind.”

  A further silence. Lowe knew that ‘like’ was probably the wrong word there. Arkola had no ‘likes’ or ‘wants’ as Lowe would understand them. It did not desire. But it certainly required.

  It must be returned to me.

  “Did I hear a ‘please’, there, mate?”

  You dare to speak to me like that?

  “I mean, I don’t know about that. This is your universe, after all. Do I dare? I imagine you can make it so I do or do not as you like. Must be nice having that sort of pull.”

  It must be returned to me.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Lowe decided not to push things any further. “Okay, so you want the statue back. Received and understood. Do I at least get to know why he took it? The Mayor, I mean. Because it was him with the sticky fingers, wasn’t it? Six years back, the Mayor took something of yours and, for whatever reason, you can’t simply kill him and get it back, can you? My! I bet that really grinds your gears, doesn’t it? To be an ineffable, supreme being and have a jumped up little guttersnipe like the Mayor hold something over you? Bet that really pisses you off.”

  This time, Lowe thought that the silence was different. It was heavier. Not stillness, but a thing closing down. A door not slammed, but deliberately being shut. No entrance. Lowe, who had never used the word ‘guttesnipe’ in his life before, wondered if he might possibly have taken things a bit far there.

  I am afraid that you ask the wrong question.

  “Do I?”

  Yes. But that is to be understood and, if not accepted, then at least forgiven. You are , after all,forced to move through time. In a straight line. I, of course, am not.

  That made sense, Lowe supposed. Something as trivial as time would mean nothing to Arkola. Cause and effect did not follow the same structure. The past. The future . . . it appeared to be able sift through them as easily as looking through pages in a book. It was said that if Arkola wanted, it could speak of things yet to come with the same certainty as things long since passed. It was no wonder it had made the First Floor its own. Hard to displace someone who, quite literally, could see you coming before you even got out of bed in the morning. It made Lowe wonder how the Mayor had managed to complete his little felony . . .

  You know, Inspector, should you think to ask, I could tell you the identity of the Black Knight .

  “I’m sure you could. But I guess it would all depend what it would cost me?”

  Nothing. Everything. I actually do not know. The cost will, ultimately, depend on you.

  Lowe swallowed down the bile rising in his throat. Then stopped. Funny that, when he wanted to, Arkola could ensure that he would have a gorge to rise. It was just that sort of manipulation that he absolutely could not stand. When the powerful in Soar would hold out a tasty morsel for the less privileged to grab hold of. It was how the world worked, he was told often enough. But that didn’t mean he had to play ball. “No, thank you. I reckon I’ll be able to sort that out myself. That’s not what we’re talking about right now.”

  We are talking about all things.

  Fury sparked, hot and tight in his chest. He took a step forward before remembering there was no ground to step on. Or anyone to move towards. “Don’t do that! Don’t play coy with me. If you want something from me, just come out with it and tell me what it is. Tell me what this damn bird is and who has is it. Don’t dangle rewards in front of me like I’m a baby bird. Just give me some straight fucking answers!”

  Arkola moved. Not in a way Lowe could see, but in the way gravity shifts when a planet tilts. The world around him tilted.

  It is what it has always been.

  Lowe hated all this cryptic bullshit. The evasions wrapped in false clarity. But that was how things like Arkola worked, wasn’t it? If Lowe wanted an answer, he was going to need to ask just the right question.

  “Just tell me! What is it, and how come the Mayor has his perfectly manicured nails all over it?”

  Arkola did not answer.

  Lowe growled and then thought of Whitlow sealing something within his Vault about which he had no idea. He thought of the Warden of the Reserve’s nerves. And the Mayor’s completely unshakable confidence. And the way he had made sure there was no Temple presence involved in its storage.

  What had happened six years ago? Had that been what sparked everything into motion? And what about the Black Knight? Why had he reappeared now? And how had he managed to steal something even Arkola hadn’t been able to access. That’s what made no fucking sense!

  “This thing—” He gestured at the statue. The bird. The object that was not just an object. “Is it, I don’t know, dangerous to you in some manner?”

  The pressure in the space changed. Arkola did not confirm. It did not deny. But that silence said everything.

  “Right. Okay. So you need it back because . . .”

  The weight of all of Arkola’s knowing suddenly pressed down on Lowe, its presence unbearable.

  You have been shown all that I am willing to show. But know this, return to me what has been taken, or all contracts between me and Soar will be null and void. I suffered the behaviour of that silly little man because his game was of no consequence. Now that the Cuckoo is free to call, that changes. I shall give you . . . a day. No. Let us make it two. I would not want to be judged precipitous and wrathful. At the end of the second day , the Temple - well, I - will take . . . action.

  “Action?”

  Lowe blinked, and the world was ash.

  The sky had turned white. Not the white of clouds nor light, but the bleached, pitiless void left when a thing is scoured down to nothing. The sun was a wound in the firmament, a black abscess bleeding heat, pouring ruin upon the city below. The air did not burn—it consumed, peeling flesh from bone before breath could turn to scream.

  Stone wept fire. The towers of Soar bowed their heads and crumbled, not in the slow dignity of time’s decay but in sudden, absolute surrender. But they did not fall. They were unmade. The streets split with a groan, their veins of mortar spilling red as the city hemorrhaged into the chasm yawning below. And that chasm . . . There was no molten glow. No depthless abyss. Only absence. An unshaped void that gaped wide to drink the ruin of man.

  Then came the sound. The dirge of a world betrayed by its own foundations. It rose, a vast throat clearing before speech.

  And the people. They ran, as ants might run from the shadow of a boot. But there was no escape. Their bodies lit like torches, blackening mid-stride, burning to silhouettes before wind could scatter their cinders. Some clutched their children, their limbs fused together in their final moments, a grotesque tableau of love and futility. Others did not even see the end coming, caught mid-word. Mid-thought. Mid-breath. Frozen statues of soot before the gale swept them into nothing.

  Still, the fire moved.

  It did not rage. It consumed. It rolled outward in a tide that left nothing behind, not ruin nor wreckage, only a vast and silent stillness where once there had been life.

  And then they came.

  Lowe saw them walk through the smoking bones of Soar—figures too thin and tall. They did not cast shadows, nor seem to move in any way a body should. Their shapes rippled, flickered, unmade themselves between one step and the next. They passed among the wreckage, untouched by the fire or the hunger in the sky. And where they trod, the last remnants of the city simply ceased to be.

  Then—nothing.

  Lowe gasped, and he was back. The world was unbroken.

  It had not been a warning.

  It had been a certainty. In the world of Arkola, it had already happened.

  Then, Lowe was standing in the Celestial Temple again, the portal stone cooling in his hands. The pressure in the air had lessened, but had not disappeared entirely.

  A whisper of suggestion curled through his mind.

  Find it. Or else. If I am denied in this, Soar will burn.

  Arkola did not demand. It did not threaten. It simply knew what would happen. What had happened.

  “Little man?” Latham was at his side. “You okay?”

  “Fuck no,” Lowe said.

  “Did you get what you needed?”

  “Absolutely not. But, on the plus side, it’s not like things have gotten worse.”

  “Really?”

  “No. Not really. They’re worse. So, so, so much worse. How quick do you think you can get me in to see the Mayor?”