Hingis had been waiting for the moment for ages. Dreading it. And finally it came. His twin sat her horse in the middle of the road, watching him. He swallowed. Esea thrived on conflict, and he hated it. Was that why she had waited so long?

“What did Tallia give you?” she said in a deceptively mild voice. Deceptive because she was not one to hold back her emotions. Unlike him.

They were halfway up a stony hill, one of many on the rugged Coast Way south. The winding road, here gouged into brown and white layered rock, was as rutted as Hingis’s face. It was a windy day, with scudding clouds and frequent chilly showers whistling in from the unseen sea to their left. He could smell salt and seaweed rotting on the shore. He glanced behind them. No sign of pursuit, yet.

“I can’t tell you,” said Hingis. Every jolting step his horse took hurt, and his ribs ached from the effort to breathe.

Wind whipped her blonde hair across her face. She raked it out of her eyes furiously. “We’ve always shared everything.”

“It’s a Magister’s secret.”

“Tallia was going to propose us to be Magister jointly. Why can’t I be told?”

“She said this secret could not be shared.”

“She’s trying to drive a wedge between us,” Esea said shrilly.

“She’s just doing what the Magister must.”

“After we risked our lives to save her!”

Hingis reined in, the agitation rising and sending his withered lung into spasms. It always started this way, and it was liable to finish with him on his back, feeling as though he was slowly suffocating. One of his recurring nightmares.

“Esea, please don’t.”

Raindrops peppered his face. He threw his shoulders back, trying to expand his chest, but the breath thickened in his throat, his sight blurred and his head spun. He swayed and clutched desperately at the saddle horn.

In a moment she was beside him, steadying him. “Sorry. I’m a mean-faced bitch. If it wasn’t for me —”

Her reiterations of guilt and self-blame were almost unbearable. “Let’s focus on getting to Sith.”

“Of course,” Esea said in an overly bright voice. She looked back the way they had come and swore. “They’re after us!”

Hingis turned too quickly, vertigo overcame him and he would have fallen had she not caught his arm. He tried to focus and could not, though one thing was clear. They were in deep trouble, and in his condition they could not hope to outrun it.

“How many?”

“About ten.”

Esea could not hold off ten by herself. Outdoors, her mancery was far less effective.

He clutched her wrist. “I’m sorry. I do care for you.”

“I’ve never doubted it,” she said harshly.

She pulled away and for a terrible second he thought she was going to leave. Reality intervened. Esea would give her life to protect him and he would do the same for her.

“We’ll head up the hill,” she said. “Can you ride by yourself?”

“Don’t get too far ahead; I can’t see far. What’s at the top?”

“No idea.”

The horses clattered up the corrugated track, Hingis lurching from side to side. It was all he could do to stay on. His ribs began to ache, then the bones of his ruined face. He forced the pain into the background; he had half a lifetime’s experience in that discipline.

He began to prepare a defensive illusion. A mancer’s power could either be drawn from himself, which was exhausting, or from a previously enchanted object, if he had one. Hingis’s power came from his own meagre body, and the process of drawing it was long and painful.

He looked up and Esea was gone. He choked. Curse being so useless, so helpless!

“Esea!” he gasped. His vision was closing in; he could not see beyond his horse’s head now.

“I’m right here,” she said from a few yards away. “Come on, you can make it.”

Make it to what?

The horses scrambled up a steep slope and then the ground was level beneath him; they were at the top. The gritty soil was littered with broken stone and the grass was scant, grey, tussocky. The hilltop had a mineral smell he could not place, a poisonous smell.

“What’s it like, Esea? Any place we can defend?”

“Some broken walls a hundred yards ahead, barely high enough to hide behind, and what’s left of a couple of chimney stacks.”

“From a house?”

“Furnaces, I’d say. There are mining pits on the right – worked out long ago. And mullock heaps and piles of slag.”

“What were they mining?”

“Lead ore, by the look of it, and smelting the lead out. Careful, there could be covered shafts.”

He heard her dismount. She took the reins and led his horse forward.

“Between the chimneys and the wall is our best hope. It’ll give the horses some protection.”

The panic faded a little and Hingis’s focus improved. The chimney stacks were about twenty feet high and eight feet across at the base. The closer one had a distinct lean to the right and a large crack halfway up, shaped like the profile of a hook-nosed man. There was little mortar between the stones – a crude job, only meant to last as long as the small ore deposits could be worked.

“Have we got a chance?” he said.

Her breast heaved and she said in a high voice, “There’s a way down on the far side. If you go now —”

“No!”

“Tallia gave you a special job. If I delay them —”

“No.”

“If we stay, we’ll both die.”

His eyes moistened. “You’ve always been beside me. If you’re going to die, I’ll die with you.”

She stamped her foot. “Then you’re a stupid bloody fool!”

“One of many personality defects,” he said with a lopsided grin. “Help me down.”

She reached up. He dismounted with the grace of a buffalo descending a ladder, almost bringing her down as well.

“How are we going to do this?”

“Start with your illusions. I’m at a disadvantage here.”

Buildings were easily taken apart if you knew where to apply force, then gravity did the rest, but breaking or moving rocks was hard work for a reshaper.

The wind was stronger up here, and colder. Hingis’s teeth chattered. He suffered from the cold at the best of times, there being little meat on his twisted bones, and it was worse in times of stress.

“I’ll get your coat,” she said, reaching up to his saddlebags.

“No, I need to be able to move freely.”

That was a laugh, given that he had the dexterity of a warthog. He inspected the ruins and his spirits sank further. Two people could not hope to defend them against ten, for the enemy could attack from three directions at once, and there was enough cover on the hilltop for them to get within thirty yards unseen.

He studied the area more closely. The walls formed a series of small enclosures but, being only a few feet high, were little use for defence; a running man could leap them. They were higher on the north side, though not high enough. A series of low slag heaps, the poisonous soil bare of vegetation, occupied the northern and western edges of the hill. The enemy would be exposed if they came that way. Beyond, the land dropped sharply.

On the eastern and south-eastern sides he made out five irregularly shaped pits, some partly filled with water, surrounded by scrubby vegetation. There could be other pits or shafts, unseen. Further on the mullock heaps – piles of broken rock – ran in tongue-like landslides over the edge of the hill.

Esea led the horses in between the two chimneys, where they would be protected from arrows. “No point making it easy for them. I’ll stay here. Go up there.”

She pointed to the far end of the low walls, where an angle, higher than the rest, would cover him from two sides. She never stopped trying to look after him.

“I’ll work on an illusion,” said Hingis.

He lurched along between the broken walls. At the end he clambered up onto the highest section and teetered there, scanning the hilltop and planning his deception. Esea was watching him anxiously, afraid he would fall. He suppressed his irritation.

She cocked her head, listening. “They’re coming up the hill.”

The wind whined between the broken chimneys. Raindrops spattered his face and neck, and his feet were freezing. Get on with it! He had to form his illusion before they saw the reality.

First, blur the hilltop so they wouldn’t see the dangers. The weather helped; it wasn’t difficult for a master illusionist to turn the showers into patches of mist. It was harder to make it cling to the pits to hide them, though, and Hingis was breathing raggedly by the time he had done it.

He copied the pit outlines and moved them south so they lay across the enemy’s most direct path, hoping to divert them towards the hidden pits. But large-scale illusions were difficult at the best of times; they would not fool the enemy long.

Esea was pacing back and forth next to the chimneys, moving her hands in the air. Hingis could not tell what she was trying to do; perhaps she did not know herself. She was as intuitive as he was logical, and often a reshaping only took form in the last desperate seconds.

He was creating wall illusions when their pursuers appeared at the top of the track. Nine soldiers, led by the gaunt mancer, Scorbic Vyl. He was unmasked and his head was bandaged.

Vyl’s bony head turned this way and that, studying the hilltop, then he raised a snake-shaped staff. A thunder crack echoed back and forth, and when the echoes died Hingis’s pit illusions were gone.

He felt that suffocating breathlessness again but fought it; he could not afford any weakness now. He crouched down and continued working on his wall illusions, afraid they would disappear too, but they remained. Perhaps Vyl’s spell could only disperse what he could identify as illusion.

Vyl’s cry rang out. “There they are! You two, take the monstrosity, alive. The rest of you, hold the blonde bitch for me!”

Hingis’s heart missed three beats in a row and he lost his vision for a couple of seconds. When it returned the soldiers were racing towards the ruins, seven of them heading for Esea, the other two and Vyl coming his way. Pain seared through Hingis’s jaw. What would Vyl do to his beautiful, tragic sister?

He lurched back towards her, vision blurred, breath ragged.

Esea raised her hands and pointed at the leading soldier. His pants fell down and he tripped and landed hard, the broadsword jarring out of his grasp. The next two men swerved round him.

She pointed at the first of them. He stumbled and landed prone – his boots had come to pieces. The man behind him yelped, dropped his sword, which had turned red-hot, and shook his smoking fingers. He snatched up the broadsword of the first man to have fallen and ran on.

The mancer let out a harsh cry and pointed his serpent staff at Esea. She screamed and doubled over.

“Take her!” bellowed Vyl.

Esea forced herself upright, her face twisted in agony. There was blood on her mouth and chin. She extended her hands towards the closest soldiers but nothing happened. Fear exploded in Hingis’s chest as they ran at her, unhindered.

“Come out!” said Vyl.

Hingis had no choice. He limped out from behind his walls and the two soldiers took hold of him.

“Bring her here,” said Vyl. “Hold tight to the monstrosity. He needs to see.”

They dragged Esea across, then Vyl prodded Hingis in the chest with his staff. “You’ve got a secret, and I want it.”

Hingis shook his head. He was too afraid to speak.

Vyl gestured to a bow-legged fellow with black fur coating his arms and the backs of his hands. “This man was hiding outside Thurkad when Tallia gave you the code to the council’s spell vault.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Hingis.

“Cut off his sister’s littlest left toe,” said Vyl.