They met mid-air, Erlan snatching desperately for a black-clad leg, and they fell together. By some miracle, the assassin caught the window ledge as it flashed by and clung on. The pair jarred to a halt. Erlan was still welded to the small feet that now kicked and writhed. He gave a desperate heave to throw himself upwards within reach of the ledge just as a kick caught his shoulder. The assassin slipped free. Erlan splayed his hand in blind terror and felt his fingers hook over the ledge before gravity took him.

He hung on, nails tearing, the breath heaving out of him in frantic gulps. He tried to swing up his right hand but missed. Then he felt his fingers crushed against the cold stone and smelled a familiar scent on the icy air.

‘Ágrios.’ A chuckle sounded smooth as velvet above him. ‘You don’t seem to do well with heights, do you?’

He looked up, feeling his knuckles crack. Almond eyes gazed down on him, bright with mischief.

‘You?’ was all he growled ‘Why?’

‘Arbasdos’s whip was cruel. Thanks to your stupidity.’

‘Help me up, damn you!’

‘I helped you once. Once was enough.’ She lifted her foot.

And Erlan fell.

He could have lived a dozen lives in those next three heartbeats. He fell without a cry, expecting many things – but never the sudden crash of fired clay and timber, the shower of dust, the jolt of pain and last of all a cloud of hay swallowing him up.

He lay quite still, stunned, his head numb. And through the shattered stable roof, he stared up into the evermore of night.

There was no alarm when he limped back into the Daphne palace. No outcry, no sign of a disturbance. He and Lucia seemed to have flown by like ghosts in the night. And she was long on her way by now.

He hobbled up the flights of marble doggedly, his head ringing. He needed to lie down. But first, he had to know. . .

The emperor’s solar was as it had been. Quiet, and dark now. The lamps had all burned out. He went inside, fearing the worst. The other guard’s body was sprawled, limbs crooked and hard, a pool of darkness spread around him. There was nothing to be done for him.

Instead Erlan went to the emperor. Leo was lying on his side, one arm flung out above him, facing the wall. Motionless. Around his head, too, was a puddle of blood, not so large as the other. Erlan knelt down beside him, his knees soaking instantly in the dark liquid.

If the emperor was dead, he dreaded to think what the future held, for the city or for him and his friends. He rolled Leo onto his back. His face was half-covered with blood, his eyes closed. Around his neck the cruel garrotte was still there. Erlan pulled it off him and tossed it away.