“Well!” said the woman of a certain age, but her heart wasn’t in it. Her husband was already hiding behind her. I strode forward, and the crowd parted before me like the Red Sea. I kept my back straight, my head up, and my gaze straight ahead. When you’re walking through a pack of dangerous animals you can’t show weakness for a moment, or they’ll go for your throat. I opened the door to the bedroom, stepped through, and closed the door quietly but firmly behind me.

I sighed inwardly. It bothered me that they didn’t respect me the way they respected the Sarjeant-at-Arms. I was going to have to work on that.

The Matriarch’s bedroom was surprisingly intimate and cheerful, for all its size. Comfortable furnishings, lots of light from the big window, flowers everywhere. Cards and messages of support stood propped up on every surface. There was a handful of people in the bedroom, there to give comfort and pay their respects. They hadn’t expected to see me, but none of them said anything. They looked to Martha for their lead, but she didn’t even acknowledge my presence.

Alistair was sitting propped up by pillows in the great four-poster bed. He didn’t look good. Even now, weeks after what had happened, he was still swathed in bandages like a mummy. He had the blankets pulled up to his chest as though he were cold, though a blazing fire had the room hot as a sauna. The bandages I could see were spotted with blood and other fluids seeping through. His right arm was gone. The surgeons couldn’t save it, so they amputated it all the way back to the shoulder. His whole face was wrapped in gauze, with dark holes left for his eyes and mouth. I couldn’t see his eyes or his mouth.

That’s what you get, for messing about with Hellfire. He should never have tried to use the Salem Special. That weapon never did anyone any good. And I might have been more sympathetic to his condition if I hadn’t known that this was what he’d intended to do to my Molly.

Martha sat on the edge of the bed beside her husband, feeding Alistair soup from a bowl, one spoonful at a time. As though he was a child. I could remember her doing that for me, once, when I was very small and the doctors thought the fever was going to carry me off. She sat with me day and night, and fed me soup, and I survived. Maybe Alistair would be lucky too. Martha was dressed all in black, as though in mourning. Normally she was tall, proud, aristocratic, and intimidatingly composed. Now she seemed somehow . . . smaller, as though something important had broken inside her. I didn’t like to see her look that way. Her long gray hair, that she usually wore piled up on top of her head, was now allowed to fall just anywhere, hiding most of her face. But her hand was steady as she fed Alistair his soup, and the back she showed me so firmly was almost painfully straight.