‘And why are you here?’ Smith walked up to Bernice and Alexander and then turned away again, with the air of somebody discovered in a misdeed. ‘To tell me more fairy tales? To try and stop me doing my duty? Well, it’s impossible! I wish you’d all just let me do what I have to do, be who I have to be!’

‘I wouldn’t dream of interfering,’ Bernice told him. ‘You and the boys can get on with your war. We’ll just sit here quietly and watch.’

‘One minute,’ Alexander whispered to her.

Outside the building, Greeneye and Hoff sheltered behind a line of bushes in alabaster pots.

‘That was some sort of projectile weapon!’ Greeneye was muttering. ‘And this is a school? For cruk’s sake, Hoff, when are you going to listen to me?’

‘I do not,’ Hoff told him, ‘believe that there are interventionists at work here. However, I do object to being shot at.’ He pressed a button on his cuff. ‘Let’s see what August has to say about it.’

August listened intently to the communication, and then looked at his watch. ‘Wait until the deadline expires. If one of these humans doesn’t come to a window and start talking about the Pod in thirty seconds, then you can retaliate.’

‘What’s retaliate?’ asked Aphasia.

‘It means,’ August cut the link and flicked the safety catch of his gun off, ‘kill most of the enemy and let the survivors apologize.’

‘Time,’ Alexander whispered.

‘Fire that gun thing some more,’ Smith told Phipps, almost embarrassed. ‘Make sure they stay ducked.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Phipps squeezed off another burst, Smith letting the oily belt of shells pass through his hands into the body of the gun. There were square bullets in with the round-nosed ones. Those were the ones that tore and splashed, that shattered inside so you became a blundering mass of organs, knowing that you were going to die, able to talk about the when and how of it.

But this was a battle, this was a whole system that swayed and changed on who died, not how. He remembered the books, the songs, the spectacles. Death was at the back of all the poetry, the muse that made it all so tragic and brave.

The rhythm of the gunfire blocked out everything else, and Smith gazed around the room as if it were silent and still. Joan, with her hands clasped over her ears, but her eyes still fixed upon him with a determined protest. Bernice, her anguish much more evident, huddling in the corner with Alexander. Anand was shaking his head.

Only Hutchinson was enjoying the spectacle, his smile growing wider and wider as he aimed through the window along the barrel of his rifle.

The burst finished. Silence crashed back in on the room. Phipps turned to seek the approval of his teacher. ‘I think that’ll give them something to⁠ —’