“The only good way to fight is the one that kills your enemy and leaves you with the breath to laugh. If science can simplify the process, well, so much the better. Everything else is flimflam. Let’s get started.”

“I hear my captain general and obey.” Sesaria pulled the bag from his belt, bent down and started carefully tipping powder out, joining the trail up to the barrels. “Got to think about how you’d feel, though, haven’t you?”

“Have you?”

“One moment you’re going about your business, the next you’re blasted to bits. Never get to even look your killer in his face.”

“No different from giving others the orders. Is killing a man with powder any worse than getting someone else to stab him with a spear? When exactly did you last look a man in the face?” Not when he’d happily helped stab Cosca in the back at Afieri, that was sure.

Sesaria sighed, powder trickling out across the ground. “True, maybe. But sometimes I miss the old days, you know. Back when Sazine was in charge. Seemed like a different world, then. A more honest world.”

Cosca snorted. “You know as well as I do there wasn’t a dirty trick this side of hell Sazine would have balked at using. That old miser would have blown the world up if he thought a penny would fall out.”

“Daresay you’ve the truth of it. Doesn’t seem fair, though.”

“I never realised you were such an enthusiast for fair.”

“It’s no deal-breaker, but I’d rather win a fair fight than an unfair one.” He upended the bag, the last powder sliding out and leaving a glittering heap right against the side of the nearest barrel. “Leaves a better taste, somehow, fighting by some kind of rules.”

“Huh.” Cosca clubbed him across the back of the head with his lamp, sending up a shower of sparks and knocking Sesaria sprawling on his face. “This is war. There are no rules.” The big man groaned, shifted, struggled weakly to push himself up. Cosca leaned down, raised the lamp high and bashed him on the skull again with a crunching of breaking glass, knocked him flat, embers sizzling in his hair. A little closer to the powder than was comfortable, perhaps, but Cosca had always loved to gamble.

He had always loved triumphant rhetoric too, but time was a factor. So he turned for the shadowy passageway and hurried down it. A dozen cramped strides and he was already breathing hard again. A dozen more and he thought he caught the faintest glimmer of daylight up the tunnel. He knelt down, chewing at his lip. He was far from sure how fast the trail would burn once it was lit.

“Good thing I always loved to gamble…” He carefully began to unscrew the broken cage around the lamp. It was stuck.

“Shit.” He strained at it, fingers slipping, but it must have got bent when he clubbed Sesaria. “Bastard thing!” He shifted his grip, growled as he twisted with all his force. The top popped off suddenly, he fumbled both halves, the lamp dropped, he tried to catch it, missed, it hit the floor, bounced, guttered and went out, sinking the passageway into inky darkness.