The flatbow twanged, deep and distorted, string twisting as it pushed the bolt towards him, swimming slowly through the dust-filled air as if through treacle, shaft flexing lightly back and forth. Shenkt snatched it from its path and drove it clean through a man’s skull, his face folding into itself, meat bursting from torn skin. Shenkt caught him under the jaw and sent his corpse hurtling across the room with a flick of his wrist. He crashed into the archer, the two bodies mashed together, flailing bonelessly into the wall, through the wall, out into the alley on the other side, leaving a ragged hole in the shattered planks behind them.

The guard from the door had his mace raised, mouth open, air rushing in as he made ready to roar. Shenkt leaped the ruins of the table and slapped him backhanded across the chest, burst his ribcage and sent him reeling, twisting up like a corkscrew, mace flying from his lifeless hand. Shenkt stepped forwards and snatched Sajaam’s coin from the air as it spun back down, metal slapping into his palm.

He breathed out, and time flowed again.

The last couple of corpses tumbled across the floor. Plaster dropped, settled. The tattooed man’s left boot rattled against the boards, leg quivering as he died. One of the others was groaning, but not for much longer. The last spots of blood rained softly from the air around them, misting across the broken glass, the broken wood, the broken bodies. One of the cushions had burst, the feathers still fluttering down in a white cloud.

Shenkt’s fist trembled before Sajaam’s slack face. Steam hissed from it, then molten gold, trickling from between his fingers, running down his forearm in shining streaks. He opened his hand and showed it, palm forwards, daubed with black blood, smeared with glowing metal.

“Neither heads nor tails.”

“Fuh… fuh… fuh…” The stuttering man still sat at his place, where the table had been, cards clutched in his rigid hand, every part of him spattered, spotted, sprayed with blood.

“You,” said Shenkt. “Stuttering man. You may live.”

“Fuh… fuh…”

“You alone are spared. Out, before I reconsider.”

The mumbling beggar dropped his cards, fled whimpering for the door and tumbled through it. Shenkt watched him go. A good thing, even to spare one.

As he turned back, Sajaam was swinging his chair over his head. It burst apart across Shenkt’s shoulder, broken pieces bouncing from the floor and clattering away. A futile gesture, Shenkt scarcely even felt it. The edge of his hand chopped into the man’s big arm, snapped it like a dead twig, spun him around and sent him rolling over and over across the floor.

Shenkt walked after him, his scuffed work boots making not the slightest sound as they found the gaps between the debris. Sajaam coughed, shook his head, started to worm away on his back, gurgling through gritted teeth, hand dragging behind him the wrong way up. The heels of his embroidered Gurkish slippers kicked at the floor, leaving stuttering trails through the detritus of blood, dust, feathers and splinters that had settled across the whole room like leaves across a forest floor in autumn.