She rolled to the side, and someone grabbed her arm and hauled her behind the monument: Ortus. Those assembled had run for what cover they could, mainly to the entranceways of SANITISER—PRESSURE ROOM—PRESERVATION. All except Protesilaus—he had unsheathed his rapier and was the last man standing, his cape a greenish-blue in the light of those blazing candles. He had slung the end of his etched metal chain, tied with a faded green ribbon, over the back of his neck; now the dead cavalier of the Seventh neatly flipped it off one shoulder and whipped the chain into a slow circle next to him, the links making a high-pitched noise as they cut the air.

“Don’t engage!” cried Abigail.

The Sleeper stood opposite, in its own doorway: haz mask gleaming dully in the candlelight, that enormous, wooden-stock gun cradled in its arms, the orange of the safety suit screamingly vivid. The Sleeper was not, in the end, of any great height or breadth, and the voice that had emerged from that mask was not inhuman. In fact, it was a woman’s voice.

“You wizards never learn,” said the Sleeper.

The nose of the gun jerked up with an ear-splitting bang. Protesilaus had already exploded into motion—with a great deal of grace for such a big man, he leapt to the side, and launched the whirring end of his chain out at the orange monster. It looped twice around the barrel and cinched tight. The Sleeper simply threw the gun away, and as Protesilaus tried to shake his chain free, there was another in her hands: this one so much smaller that it took Harrow a moment even to realise it was a gun.

The Sleeper walked forward, firing with each step, the hand gripping the gun supported on her other palm. These shots sounded higher and sharper, like whip cracks. The Seventh cavalier spun his chain in front of him, a blurred wheel in the air, and one of the ceiling lights shattered in a rain of sparks. The Sleeper tossed this gun to the side, broke suddenly into a run, and threw her haz-suited body into a diving handspring, jackknifing feet-first off the ground with a fluid agility that would have made even Camilla Hect erupt in a wild “Okay.” Protesilaus had braced his stance for an attack and had not expected his enemy to move past him; by the time he shifted and started to turn, the Sleeper was on her feet again, and yet another gun was in her hand. She pivoted lightly and shot him in the small of the back.