Fire licks up my spine. My face burns with heat and fear. Brin has betrayed Tug because of me. Tug has walked into his trap and will be taken and interrogated.

I scramble to my feet, the street noises filtering through my senses, returning me to my surroundings. Across the road, a man shouts at a boy, grabs him close, scolds him, and hastily pulls him off in the opposite direction. That is when I see them leaving the tavern--ten muscular men with shaved heads, wielding weapons in their bare arms, including swords, maces, nunchucks, and even a whip.

Tug's hands are bound, but he does not resist. Head lowered, he fixes his gaze on the ground, not flinching in my direction. He will not risk revealing my hiding place.

They move through the street like a dark mist, the way clearing around them. As they enter the archway ahead, a deep shadow swallows them and they are lost to darkness.

Rigid, I stare at the empty space left in their wake.

A far-off clatter breaks the spell, and I return to the living, pulse racing, adrenalin pumping. In the mind-world the Sai gang men remind me of a flock of starlings, a murmuration of dark cloud twisting and swooping in shape-shifting tornados and cloud formations. I bolt forward to catch them up, the street beyond Brin's tavern as eerily vacant as the one I've left behind. I hesitate when the writhing swirl of darkness sinks into the ground. Rushing onward so my eyes might understand what my mind does not, I turn into a narrow lane and see the last two Sai fall through a hole in the ground.

Once I am sure no one is watching, I creep to where the last man vanished. A large square hole covered by a metal grid sits in the stomped dirt. I sink down on my thighs, wrap my fist around a bar, and pull. Nothing moves. I try again, putting more muscle into the effort, but it's useless. The seal is implacable, as though rusted into place. It is locked from the underside. I yank again, almost tearing my muscles, refusing to admit defeat. I pull and kick my legs into it, growling in frustration, anger making me stupid and reckless. Finally, covered in dust and dirt, I stagger to my feet.

Tug's mind is already far away, and I must move to keep up with it—to know where they are taking him underground.

I hurry through gray streets until I arrive at a long row of tall, black stone buildings, leaning sideways like a row of drunks. There is no way through, so I run around, but the next side alley finishes at a dead-end. Tug's mind slips away. I scramble to try and sense him again, but it's futile; he's gone.

There is only one thing left to do. I will search Brin's mind for information as I should have done in the first place, except Tug declined, arguing there would be nothing to discern because of Brin's heavy drinking. A part of me knows Tug refused to let me try out of respect for his friend. I should have done it anyway.

I reach Brin's tavern with the shabby awning, and hide behind the tumble-down pile of black rocks, bent over, palms pressed into my thighs as I catch my breath. The rising sun heats the air, and I'm sweaty and thirsty.

I crouch down, eyes closed, and move through the mind-world into Brin's room. If there were a way to enter my old captor's mind intrusively and make him feel as though his memories were being pried open, I would do it. But I do not know how and am obliged to slip in unnoticed.

A mess of blurred shapes and colors. Bars. Laughing. Drinking. Arguing.

The memories are a soup. No beginnings or endings. Nothing distinctive. I withdraw from his mind and pace the alley. The only way to get information is to confront him, but it would go against the one thing Tug insisted I didn't do.

Tug didn't want me to search Brin's mind either, I think, stepping out from my hiding place. As I move toward the tavern door two men exit the ale house. I step aside, keeping my hood high over my head, face lowered. On the back of one of the men's hands, by his Sai tattoo, I see splattered flecks of blood. I hunch into my shoulders as he brushes past and I keep moving without looking back.

Inside the tavern, wreathes of smoke wrap the air in a dim gloom. I head for a back corridor the way I witnessed Tug doing when he came here yesterday. I leap up the stairs and run down the hall to Brin's room.

The door is ajar. I check the mind-world and realize apart from single occupants in each room there is no one else in or around the building. The Sai watching Brin have gone.

I swallow hard, breathe deeply, and push open the door. There is a four-poster bed with ruffled covers as though it has been slept in, but the occupant left quickly. On the wooden floor, sticking out from behind the bed is an arm.

I move towards the sound of raspy breathing. When Brin comes fully into view, the bile rises in my throat, and I clamp a hand over my mouth. His bare chest is bloody and torn. Blood pools around his arms. He is holding onto his neck where there is a great gash.

I stare at the mess, confusion tumbling over me—compassion mixed with a sense of justice. I step closer. His eyes shift to take me in. I see no sign of recognition. They are glazed, and it is taking all his strength to keep his palms pressed to his slit throat.

There isn't much time. I tear off a big strip of bedsheet and kneel beside him. I press the sheet against his ripped flesh to staunch the blood. It can only slow the process, but I hope it gives me enough time to extract some answers.

He cannot fight me. He cannot talk, but I hope my questions prod some memory to the foreground. As his eyes slowly focus, he starts to gurgle in protest.

"How is this for irony?" I murmur. "You will die with the one person you hate most in the world by your side for comfort." A horrible warble of blood bubbles up his throat as he tries to speak. The fury inside me fades.

"Where are they taking Tug ?" No response. Small, lost brown eyes stare through me. There are no flickers of image or color in the mind-world, as though the memories have bled out of him before the blood.

I press my hands harder on the cloth. Another spine-crawling splutter. "Tell me how I can get into the mine shafts."

Something moves to the surface of the mind-world. Blurs of shape, men surrounding Brin, moving with him through the dull light.

"Brin," I say, "please. I have to get to Tug I have to help him."

Another image. He must be focusing because though it is watery, like rain on an ink drawing, I know what it is.

An enormous dark forest surrounds him. It is winter and there is a fire burning. He stands in response to the sudden presence of a small figure visible in the firelight. The face before him, my face, is lean with dark, haunting eyes, and long dark hair in a tangled knot.

He is remembering the moment I gave myself up to him and Tug so that I could travel with them and stay with Kel. I sit back slowly on my haunches, letting go of the cloth. His mind grows fainter as he bleeds out.

Other memories now. Blurry, tattered. He is a boy in the rain.

Bare feet deep in mud. Farm animals. Grass and sunshine. A soft light oozes around the images and leeches the color from them. Life sinks from his eyes. His arms slump to the sides of his body.

I bow my head. Not in reverence or respect. I feel only the tightness in my chest hardening. His final moment, his last coherent thought, was of the night I gave myself up to him and Tug. When I asked how I was to reach Tug now, that was his answer: give yourself up.

Defiance flows through me, burning bright with the fuel of anger. Brin has destroyed himself. I will not let him annihilate Tug or me.

Hello and thank you for reading! Sorry about last week. My son spilt water over my computer and it stopped working. Fortunately the nice man in the computer shop fixed it and it's almost back to normal. (It won't charge while plugged in but I guess that's a small price to pay for recovering everything!) Have a lovely Easter week-end. Cxx