‘I don’t know. I don’t think we can. Perhaps I hurt her badly enough to stop her, for a bit.’ Mary snatched the geomancer’s stick away. It didn’t seem like it was a magic wand, or wizard’s staff, like she’d seen in films, but there was no point in risking it. It might just be a smoothed length of wood, but it might be as lethal as a loaded gun.

‘You did this to her? How?’

‘I came to find you, see if I could sneak into the castle and get you all out. She came at me as the dragon, tried to kill me.’ Thinking about it, even though she’d been utterly desperate and out of her depth, she’d been brave and resourceful, and in the end, despite her injuries, she’d won. Her chin came up. ‘I still beat her.’

The geomancer hung on to the edge of the table and pulled herself up. The brass thing rattled and rolled.

‘You were lucky.’

‘I beat your arse good and proper. Now, call off the heavies.’

‘That would be very stupid of me. And I’m not stupid.’

‘Dalip,’ said Mary. ‘You should leave.’

Everything close by that was loose, started to hum, chatter or buzz.

‘Mary, what are you doing?’

‘Finishing what I started.’

‘We can’t fight everyone.’

‘We don’t have to. We just need to fight her, and the whole place falls apart. Isn’t that right, your ladyship? This castle wasn’t built by you. Down gave it to you, and it can take it away just as easily.’

‘Mary, what are you talking about?’

‘She knows. She knows exactly what I’m talking about.’

‘Oh, I know far more than you do, girl. You caught me off guard before: not now. I know how to deal with you this time.’

‘You threw everything you had at me and you fucked up.’ Mary was still holding the stick, and she swung it at the geomancer’s head.

The blow was blocked by the sudden interposition of the same brass apparatus that the geomancer had gone to all the trouble of saving minutes before. Rather than a skull being cracked, it was metal that bent and twisted.

It fell, broken, between them.

Then it was the geomancer’s turn. After the first flung object came from behind Dalip and nearly took his head off on its way to bludgeon Mary, he ducked back down into the stairwell.

Mary squared up for the fight. She dodged the jar easily – its arrival had been telegraphed for longer than a drunken punch outside a kebab shop – and heaved the now-empty table up to be her shield.