“We know,” said Giles. “That’s why it’s forbidden.” He studied my armour. “Nice outfit. How do they get you out of it, with a can opener?”

“Show you later. Your carriage awaits; shall we go?”

Giles looked around him. “These gentlemen might have other ideas.”

“Hell with them,” I said.

Giles grinned. “My sentiments exactly.”

The armoured men finally got fed up listening to us talk and surged forward from all sides. There were ranks and ranks of them, but strangely they were all holding swords and axes now, instead of their energy guns. I really was going to have to talk to Giles about that later. At least these definitely were men in armour this time, and not cyborgs. So they should stay dead when I killed them. I grew long silver blades from my armoured hands, and Giles and I went to meet them.

There had to be over a hundred of them, all heavily armed, pressing in from every direction at once. They never stood a chance. Their swords and battle-axes glanced harmlessly away from my armour, and my strange-matter blades cut easily through every protection they had. I hacked about me with inhuman speed and strength, and blood flew on the freezing air, steaming in the moments before it hit the snow. Men fell screaming, dying, to every side of me, and I kicked them out of the way to get to my next victims. Giles stamped and spun and sliced about him with a speed and strength very nearly equal to my own. His long blade flashed through the air as he cut men down with almost clinical precision. No one could even get near him. We fought back to back, and sometimes side by side, and we were unstoppable. The dead piled up around us, the churned-up snow crimson with blood and guts. Screams and horrified cries filled the air, but always from them, not us.

It wasn’t a fight, for all their superior numbers. It was a slaughter.

I don’t usually kill on missions. Usually I don’t have to. The armour gives me all the edge I need. I’ve always thought of myself as an agent, not an assassin. The last time I had to fight and kill, on the Nazca Plain, I didn’t hesitate because the Loathly One drones weren’t human anymore. Killing them had felt like stepping on insects. This, here, was different. Giles and I were surrounded by a small army of enemies, intent on killing us. They’d already injured Ivor. In such circumstances, family training takes over. I did what I had to; I cut men down and ran them through, and all the time I did my best to feel nothing, nothing at all. I might have to kill, but no one had ever been able to train me to enjoy it.