Vigga smacked a guard over the helmet with his own sword so hard the blade broke, the end bouncing away across the cobbles. Here was the problem with swords. Well, that and the silly prices and the endless oiling and polishing. Vigga had always preferred something with more heft. She ducked as another guard swung at her, wind of his halberd ripping at her hair. That definitely had more heft, so she smashed him in the mouth with her broken hilt and left his head flopping, tore the halberd from his limp hand as he fell, and flung it point-first at a third man. He got his shield up in time to knock it wide, send it ripping through the bushes, but by then Vigga was on him, punched him in one side then the other and left him tottering, picked him up by his dented breastplate, turned him upside down, and rammed his head into the ground.

Maybe they deserved it and maybe they didn’t, but that was a question to be asked after they were dead or better yet never asked at all. Life is complicated, but a fight has to be simple. The moment you spend mulling the rights and wrongs will be the moment you get a spear in your tit. Regrets are a wonderful thing after a fight, Olaf always used to say, ’cause they mean you lived through it.

‘Come on!’ Brother Diaz was running on through the slackening drizzle towards the Palace, a jagged shadow in the gathering dusk, lights burning at its many windows, Saint Natalia’s Flame still glowing blue at its very top.

‘Is he actually leading?’ grunted Baptiste, wiping a dagger on her sleeve.

‘Sticking his neck out!’ Vigga barked a laugh. ‘Who’d have thought?’ And she snatched up a spear and hurried grinning after him.

Made her think of those heady days, before the bite, when the world seemed bright somehow, and full of chances. Running up the beach with the old crew, taste of the sea in her mouth, smell of the wind in her face, feel of the axe-haft in her fists. Laughing as she pushed her hands into the stolen silver, cool coins tickling between her fingers. Chuckling as she killed a pig just ’cause it was alive. Smiling as she stabbed that fallen monk and he moaned and crawled and bled all over the spilled flour on the bakery floor, white as fresh snowfall. Watching as they herded the squealing nuns into the chapel and barred the doors. Frowning as the others tossed their torches onto the thatched roof. Tossing her torch as well ’cause that’s what you did. She’d asked Olaf if they deserved it, and he’d shrugged. If they didn’t, they could stop us. Staring as Harald pawed at her with one hand while he held his guts in with the other, bleeding a pink slick over the salt sand, trying to say something but only coughing blood, coughing blood halfway back across the sea till he stopped coughing and they rolled him over the side, out of sight of land, the best of them unmarked and unremembered. Sniffing as they divided his share, Vigga’s sight swimming with tears as she looked down at her handful of coins, wondering whether it had been worth it.

She felt tears on her cheeks now, and wondered if there had never been a better time, only dead friends and burned nuns and spilled guts and worthless coins and blood on the white.

Had things always been bad?

Had she always been bad?

Even before the bite?

‘You all right?’ said Jakob, limping up beside her, gripping his leg.

‘Me?’ She wiped her face on the back of her hand. ‘Course.’ She made herself laugh. ‘Just rain, isn’t it?’ Though the rain had stopped.

There’d been fighting in front of the Palace. Dead guards lay everywhere. She hadn’t killed these ones, she didn’t think, though when she saw corpses, she always did wonder. The smell of blood had the wolf up on tippy-toes, spilling slobber behind her ribs again, and she slapped at her breastbone and slapped it back mewling and showed it in no uncertain terms who wore the muzzle.

More guards running towards the Palace now, armour glinting in the light of their torches, and you had to hand it to these bastards, they surely kept coming.

‘You think these ones are friendly?’ muttered Brother Diaz.

‘Wouldn’t bet your life on it.’ Vigga jerked her head towards the big lighthouse. ‘Get up there and find our girls, Jakob. I’ll make sure no one bothers you down here.’

Jakob leaned back, teeth gritted, to look up towards Saint Natalia’s Flame. ‘Those steps might finally do for me—’

‘But it’d be a shame if I got all the way to Alex and ended up killing her.’ Vigga shrugged. ‘I mean, I’ve nearly killed her twice already.’

‘She has a point.’ Baptiste pushed Jakob towards the Palace with one elbow and stepped up on Vigga’s left. ‘I’ll watch your back.’

Brother Diaz clenched his jaw as he stepped up on Vigga’s right. ‘And I’ll watch … the other side of your back?’

Vigga laughed as she shoved the spear into his hand, threw one arm around Baptiste’s shoulders and the other arm around his.

Reminded her of those high times, before the bite, when the world was young and brimming with adventure. Just her and a few good oarmates against the odds. And she gave Baptiste a squeeze, and kissed Brother Diaz on the cheek. Not in a sex way, in a comradeship way, although thinking about it, the way his beard tickled her lips, maybe a bit in a sex way after all.

‘Never dull, eh?’ Vigga watched the guards close in, clenching her fists. ‘Never dull!’

Alex crept like a thief through her own Palace, aching with fatigue and trembling with fear, tiptoeing after Sunny as she blinked in and out of sight, from one doorway to another, one corner to another, one staircase to another, picking a careful path downwards.

‘Where are we going?’ croaked Alex.

‘Kitchens,’ whispered Sunny as she eased to a corner to peer down another flight of steps. ‘Lots of guards out front. Some have turned on you.’ She paused. ‘Most, maybe.’

‘All?’

Sunny pressed the tip of her tongue into that little gap between her front teeth.

Alex swallowed. ‘How do we tell who’s loyal?’

‘The disloyal ones will be trying to kill you.’

Alex swallowed again. ‘Probably best we avoid them all.’

‘That’s what I was thinking,’ whispered Sunny. There was no marble or gilding down here, behind the scenes, only a smell of old food. Must’ve been the staircase the servants struggled up with Alex’s wine, or fruit, or clean clothes, or hot bathwater. She only now realised that she’d never given much thought to where it came from. Strange, even if you grow up in a slum, how quickly you get used to being pampered.

‘What about the others?’ whispered Alex.

‘On their way. Jakob won’t give up.’

‘Long as his knees hold out.’ Alex’s own skinned knees were close to giving way and hers were about a century younger than his. ‘Balthazar might be some help, I guess.’ They crept from the bottom of the steps and down a shadowy hallway with walls of old bare brick. Black mould flared from the corner of a rotten window. ‘The man’s a prick but he knows his magic.’

‘The man is a prick,’ said Sunny. ‘Which is why he stayed on the boat.’

‘He stayed on the boat?’

‘Vigga came. And Baptiste. And Brother Diaz.’

‘Great. When the werewolf rips me apart the monk can say a prayer over the bits.’

Sunny shrugged. ‘Better than no prayer, I guess.’

Alex stared at her for a moment. Then she shrugged, too. ‘I guess.’

Fires burned low along one side of the kitchen – a long vaulted hall with a ceiling stained by decades of grease. A corpse lay face down over a stove, top half-cooked, legs draped across the floor. Another had burst open as if dropped from a great height, guts sprayed everywhere.

Alex covered her mouth as she crept on after Sunny. ‘Why did they kill them all?’

‘Because it makes me feel powerful.’ Cleofa, who used to pick Alex’s fingernails so carefully she hardly felt it, stepped through the far door with Athenais behind, blood smeared down one side of her beautiful dress.

‘Run!’ hissed Sunny, blinking out of sight.

Cleofa spoke a word and fog whipped from nowhere in a spiral cloud, a crouching shadow in its centre.

‘There!’ Athenais clawed at the air and a blast ripped the mist into swirling tatters. Sunny groaned as she crashed into the wall in a hail of loose food, clattering cutlery, shattering crockery. Alex gasped, splinters raking her shoulder, stinging her cheek. She heaved Sunny up, the two of them scrambling together through a doorway as another gust tore at Alex’s gown, a barrel bursting against the doorframe and showering them both with ale. They stumbled into a hallway, lined down one side with shelves holding hundreds of bottles of wine.

‘Your Resplendence!’ Zenonis stood grinning, no more than twenty paces off. ‘The stores are for servants only.’

She raised her hands, heat shimmering around them. Alex caught one of the shelves, shrieking as she hauled with all her weight and brought it over to crash against the opposite wall, bottles shattering.

Fire blazed up, a withering plume of it. Alex was just opening her mouth to scream as Sunny bundled her through a door, flames surging past the fallen shelves and licking hungrily around them as she kicked it shut, heaved across a bolt.

‘Oh God!’ Sunny’s back was on fire and Alex beat wildly at it, trying to slap the flames out with her hands.

‘Oh God!’ She realised one torn tail of her gown was on fire, too, for the second time that evening, and she yelped as Sunny slapped at that, the pair of them squealing and spinning and slapping till the fire was out, ash fluttering around them and Alex’s nose stung by the oily smell of char.

‘Oh God …’ There was a fork stuck in her shoulder. Not that deep. But definitely stuck. Blood ran in streaks as she gritted her teeth and eased it out, her burned palms singing with pain, her arm covered in bloody little cuts and scratches, riddled like a pincushion with slivers of wood, with shards of broken crockery.

‘There’s a passage,’ gasped Sunny. They were in some panelled boot room, stools and brushes and polish everywhere, shoes stacked up on racks. ‘Somewhere here …’ She fumbled at one of the panels, teeth bared.

‘Sunny …’ muttered Alex. She could hear the handmaidens out in the corridor, a crash as they ripped the shelves away, a tinkling of breaking glass. Sunny limped to the next panel, clutching at her ribs. ‘Sunny!’

‘I know!’ It popped open and Sunny darted in, Alex scrambling through behind her, shoving the door shut. A chink of light crawled across Sunny’s bloody face as she backed into the darkness, breathing hard.

‘Do they know about these tunnels?’ whispered Alex.

‘Shush.’ Sunny narrowed her eyes as she listened. The faintest scraping, then louder. Closer. Footsteps.

‘Oh God,’ whispered Alex. ‘They know about these tunnels.’

‘May God have mercy on their souls.’ Brother Diaz made the circle over the dead and, in one case, dying, as the last of the guards choked on his own blood.

‘Mercy’s overrated.’ Vigga wrinkled her nose at her broken spear haft, then tossed it into the bushes. ‘Souls, too, if you ask me.’

‘May God have mercy on them anyway,’ said Brother Diaz as the gurgle became a wheeze, then stopped entirely. ‘And ours, too …’

Wasn’t long ago, if asked to guess at the villains of the piece, he would’ve confidently pointed out the werewolf, the cursed knight, and the elf. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell who’s on the right side, and who the wrong—

He heard a desperate cry and spun about to see Lady Severa tottering down the Palace steps, her eyes wild and a smear of fresh blood across her cheek.

Brother Diaz caught her as she almost collapsed into his arms, gasping for breath. ‘Treachery … the handmaidens … the blackest of Black Art … Empress Alexia is in danger!’

‘Don’t worry.’ In spite of the circumstances, Brother Diaz managed to feel slightly pleased that for once he wasn’t the one panicking. ‘You’re safe now.’

‘No one’s safe!’ Severa struggled up, catching Vigga’s wrist. ‘But … you’re hurt.’

Vigga touched bloody fingertips to her bloody hair and laughed. ‘Believe me, I’ve had worse.’

‘And given it, too,’ said Baptiste, staring at the human wreckage scattered about the Palace doors.

‘No, let me.’ Severa reached up to touch Vigga’s face, but at the last moment twisted her wrist and nimbly flicked her forehead instead.

There was a puzzled silence. With Vigga’s back to him, Brother Diaz couldn’t quite tell what had happened. But Severa’s expression had changed. No longer fearful, or alarmed. She wiped the blood from beneath her nose, as calmly assured as she had been when they first met her on the docks. Vigga slowly turned.

There was a needle stuck in her forehead, with a little square of cloth on it, and stitched into the cloth, a single letter in an alphabet Brother Diaz didn’t recognise. A rune, one might almost have called it.

Vigga spoke, and Lady Severa spoke, their lips moving in time. ‘It would be best,’ they said, both with eyes narrowed in exactly the same way, ‘if you laid down any weapons.’

It was ever so strange, to hear Vigga speak in the cultured tones of a Lady of the Trojan Empire.

Ever so strange, and ever so chilling.

Jakob paused on the landing, hardly knowing which aching leg to grab first, and ended up wedging his sword under one arm so he could grab them both, grinding one aching thumb into a cramping thigh, the other into a throbbing hip. The man they once called the Hammer of the Elves, the Judgement of Livonia, the Terror of the Albigensians, laying down his arms so he could massage his legs.

‘Some champion,’ he hissed, through his eternally gritted teeth.

Why couldn’t it have been Paris, with that sprawling pile where the rulers of Frankia laid their heads? Hardly a step in the whole place. Or Burgundy, where the lame Emperor David had built his grand suite on the ground floor, and made the servants sleep upstairs.

‘But nooooooo—’ he growled, cut off in a gasp at a savage twinge through one knee.

It had to be Troy. The most vertical city in the known world.

They didn’t even have to send warriors. Steps were enough to defeat him. He looked on, up the grand staircase, one pitiless marble enemy after another, until it switched back and divided on the floor above, switched back again and came together on the floor above that. God, was there no end to it? A question he’d been asking himself for a century or more.

He should’ve thrown his sword in the sea and stayed on the boat with Balthazar. He should’ve stayed in the Holy City, for that matter, with his feet in warm water and something easy to chew.

‘But nooooooo—’ he growled, cut off in a groan at a brutal spasm through his back.

He had to find more unwinnable battles to lose. Limp on for ever up this crooked road to nowhere. Wrestle with himself to an endless, agonised impasse in his efforts to redeem the irredeemable—

A crash echoed down the stairway and he nearly fumbled his sword as he pushed away from the wall and ended up in a trembling crouch, trying not to breathe noisily.

He heard voices. Women’s voices, maybe? Angry voices, certainly.

He wiped sweat on the back of his sleeve. Wrapped his fingers around his sword’s hilt once again.

It fit there, as it always did, like a key into a lock. He set his aching jaw and squared his crooked shoulders. He reached the sad realisation he’d reached a thousand times before: he wasn’t really him without a sword in his hand.

He pressed on. One boot after another. One step after another. They were like an army. Together they might seem unconquerable, but each man was just one man. Each step was just one step.

He left them beaten behind him, as he’d left so many enemies ruined in his wake.

So many friends.

Sunny eased open the secret door and peered into the private chapel.

‘Careful,’ whispered Alex. She wasn’t looking her best – panting for breath, hair stuck to her sweaty face, gown singed and torn, splinter-riddled, fork-stuck, blood-sticky right arm clasped to her chest.

Sunny would’ve liked to give her an encouraging smile, but she was no good at them, and likely wasn’t looking great, either.

‘I’m always careful,’ she said, and held her breath, gripping her bruised side with her burned hand.

She slithered through the doorway and across the room, its walls covered in watchful little icons of the saints. They loved an icon, here in Troy. Sunny didn’t mind them on their own, but they put her off rather as a crowd.

Reminded her of the crowd at the circus, jeering and throwing coins.

The sun had almost set beyond the windows, down to a red clipping over the western sea, and the Imperial Bedchamber was full of tricking shadows. Some of the hangings were blackened by fire and there were dots and spatters all across the marble, as if someone had spilled a cart of butcher’s offcuts.

‘What is this?’ muttered Sunny. ‘Is it meat?’

‘It’s my husband,’ whispered Alex, peering over her shoulder.

‘Oh.’ What else was there say? Sunny had to pick her spots as she crossed the room so as not to step in all the mush, angling her feet this way or that, going up on tiptoes. ‘Is that an ear?’

‘Oh God.’ Alex put the back of her hand to her mouth as she followed. ‘Oh God.’ As she stepped in something, bare foot squeaking on wet marble.

‘There may have been messier wedding nights,’ murmured Sunny, ‘but this is right up there.’

Alex snatched Arcadius’s marriage tunic from a chair as she passed, grunting as she pushed her bloody arm into the embroidered sleeve. It was too big for her, and covered in flowers in golden thread, glittering brightly even in the darkness.

‘What?’ she hissed as she rolled the overlong sleeves up.

‘Doesn’t exactly fade into the background, does it?’ whispered Sunny.

‘If it’s all the same to you, I’m going to die dressed.’

The door was ajar, the darkened hallway beyond empty.

‘Where do we go?’ whispered Alex.

‘Make for the main staircase, try and get down that way.’

‘Won’t they be watching for that?’

‘Sometimes people look everywhere but the most obvious places.’

‘Sounds thin. Sounds thin as fuck.’

Sunny glanced around at Alex and shrugged. ‘You could stay here. With your husband.’

Alex swallowed. ‘Main staircase, then?’

‘Good idea.’ Sunny crept to the steps and peered down. Let go her breath to beckon Alex over, caught her hand as she came close, easing down the steps—

She stopped dead.

‘What is it?’ whispered Alex.

‘Shush.’

She heard a board creak below.

‘Oh God,’ whispered Alex.

Then voices. ‘She didn’t come this way.’ One of the handmaidens. Sunny had never been sure about those girls but lately she had really gone off them. ‘She must be above.’

‘We herd her, then, upwards. Her and the elf bitch.’

‘Rude,’ muttered Sunny, though far from the worst she’d ever heard.

‘She’s a tricky one,’ sang out from below, ‘but I can find her.’

‘Find her, then.’ Duke Michael’s voice. Sunny really wished she’d hit him harder. Maybe with an axe. ‘Sooner or later, they’ll run out of tower.’

‘Oh God …’ whispered Alex. She was backing away, in a tunic you really couldn’t miss, leaving bloody footprints on each step, but Sunny didn’t have the time or the equipment to mop up after her.

‘Back,’ she hissed. ‘Up!’

‘Up?’ Alex stared towards the next flight of stairs. The last one, leading to the throne room.

‘Or you could stay here. With your husband.’

Alex swallowed. ‘Up, then?’