She forced Bell out, deeper and deeper, until only the woman’s head and shoulders were visible.

‘During. It was during. I was supposed to go through and sign the register, and the door opened and there was Down.’ For the first and only time, the tears were no longer an act. ‘I ran.’

Mary remembered her own escape. The terrible fire, the heat and the smoke, followed by the unexpected, delicious coldness of the sea. Down had decided, for reasons of its own, that the two situations were equally awful, and she relented.

‘What am I going to do with you? Do you want me to kill you? Do you want me to hold you under until it’s over? Is that what you want? Do you hate yourself that much?’

‘Why?’ said Bell, her voice reduced to a childish whine. ‘Why won’t you let me win?’

‘Because you did a bad thing to us, and you need to be punished for it. Your punishment is all around you. It’s your dead guards, your burnt castle, your broken arm, your bruises, your messed-up plans and your missing maps. You need to learn that you don’t fuck around with people’s lives. Okay, you get away with it sometimes. But not this time. Just … just stay out of our way. We’ll go in the morning. You don’t follow us, you don’t try and stop us. That’s it. That’s all we want.’

Mary waded ashore and set off after Dalip. There was no pursuit, not this time.

32

32

He was only a man, and he was spent like the empty bullet cases that had belonged to his grandfather, and now, in another world, belonged to him.

She was not only a woman, and perhaps that was how she was able to catch him up and pull him to his feet, look hard and deep into his face, then drag his arm over her shoulder so that she could take some of his weight.

He was grateful, and not a little confused. It wasn’t how it was supposed to be – not how he’d been taught it was supposed to be – but perhaps he’d left all that behind along with so much else.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘Stupid bitch,’ she said, not at him. ‘I don’t know: she’s got her reasons, but not her excuses.’ She growled deep in her throat.

‘You all right?’

‘Just … you learn stuff about someone, and it makes it more difficult to hate them despite what they’ve done.’ She told him about Bell’s interrupted wedding. He listened carefully, and when she was done, he twisted his head around to look at the lake.

‘She’s gone.’

‘Do you think I’m going to regret it?’ she asked.

‘What?’

‘Not, you know: not killing her.’

He shrugged, not that he had much strength left to do even that. ‘Ask me if I regret killing Stanislav.’