Thackeray’s response was so littered with profanity that Romilla actually raised an eyebrow. Polenna took her shot and blew another grot sideways off the rooftops. Dozens remained, though, and they were bare yards away now. Dropping her bow, Aelyn reached into a pouch and raised the captain’s brooch high. It glinted in the moonlight.

For a moment she thought nothing would happen, that they would be left to their fates and overrun by stabbing grots. Then came a clatter as the windows along the guild house’s second-from-top floor slammed open in unison.

‘Fire!’ came the bellowed command, and a hail of pistol shot and hissing arrows filled the air. The grots were decimated. Stunted green bodies bounced and rolled down steep slate slopes, their black robes flapping around them as they fell. Some screamed in terror as they plunged to their deaths.

‘Again!’ came the commanding voice, and another withering volley hit the remaining grots. The few who survived turned tail and fled, their black hoods streaming behind them.

Aelyn turned to see a long wooden bridge, rather like a gang-plank, swing down out of the tallest window and thump into place. It spanned the gap between the platform they stood on and the guild house.

‘Romilla, one last effort,’ she said, helping her comrade to her feet. ‘Beware the drop, have a care not to fall.’

‘Oh, I won’t,’ Romilla replied with a scowl. ‘I’m staying conscious until I’ve given the officious arse in that window a black eye.’

In the event, they all made it across the plank-bridge safely and into the guild house beyond. Aelyn clambered through the window, the last one across, to find herself in a large gallery that she assumed must take up most of the entire floor. Wood and brass candelabras hung from the vaulted ceiling. A well-built firestep ran beneath the leaded windows all around the chamber, and Aelyn saw that a mixture of militia-militant and watchmen stood upon it. They had spyglasses with which to keep watch on the streets and rooftops all around, and copious stocks of ammunition close to hand. Much of the space was given over to solid workbenches and copious weapons racks, while through a nearby arched door she saw barrels marked with the Ironweld sigil for black powder marching away into shadow.

Aelyn took in a fair number of men and women in the gallery – easily more than a hundred at arms, she thought. From the faint sounds and smells of numerous unwashed and uneasy folk that came from elsewhere nearby, Aelyn assumed there must be refugees hiding here too. What was this place, she wondered. The watchmen had been cagey, when they were planning. They had only spoken of another safehouse, but this was clearly something more.