He shoots the first person.

I flinch.

“You really thought that, in my own house, I wouldn’t sniff a rat?”

He shoots the next person.

“This is my house. You are mine.”

Another shot. Another fall.

“You should have learned this long ago. Most of you have.”

Bang.

“You cannot cross me and hope to live.”

Bang.

“Reward me with loyalty, and I will reward you.”

Bang.

“Cross me, and reap the consequences.”

All the men and women are dead, to join the other corpses on the ground.

“It’s simple, really.” He smiles at us all.

I look at all the bodies on the floor, numb. It feels like a warning. He’ll find out about me. And he’ll kill me. He’s walking toward me. Is he about to shoot me in the head?

He aims the gun. I squeeze my eyes shut. Better not to see it coming.

The gunshot is so loud my ears ring.

I’m not dead.

I open my eyes. Ensi has shot the man I captured. The blood spreads across the floor, a slow red tide. A woman’s crying, screaming, and I wish she’d shut up. More lines from the poem return to me. The paradise of Xanadu is ruined.

Then reached the caverns measureless to man

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean.

And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

Nazarin has a spray of blood on the left side of his face. He stands straight, at attention, his expression blank as a soldier’s.

Ensi stops in front of him. “Thank you,” he says. “Skel, isn’t it?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“You saved a lot of lives tonight. You’ll be rewarded. Speak to Malka about it.”

“Thank you, sir.” I almost wonder if Nazarin will salute.

Ensi looks around at the silent party. “Let this be a lesson to you all.”

Does his gaze flick to me? A shiver runs down my spine. He comes toward me, the gun still in his hand, and I steel myself. He’s going to kill me. Shoot me in the head. Even if I wasn’t involved with this uprising, if he knew about that, he must know about me.

He looks down at me with something very like tenderness. “You didn’t stay.”

“I couldn’t.”

He stares at the man I captured. The man that’s now a corpse, though not by my hand. “Good job.”

“Thank you.”

For a moment, I wonder if he’s going to hold out his hand, and lead me back upstairs. The blood has washed the last vestiges of the drug from my system, and I’ve scanned the notebook. I have no desire to go back up there. Then Ensi turns, his head down.

“Malka,” he says.