"You know you won’t get out," the Mayor said. Her voice was steady. She even raised her pipe, as if she would smoke. "I can give you passage." She did not sound hopeful. She looked at her lover, and something went between them. A valediction, Ori thought, and for the first time felt a swell of something in him, a compound emotion he could not begin to parse. She knows.

"Hush, Mayor."

The Mayor and her magister looked again at each other. Eliza Stem-Fulcher turned to Toro, and though she did not take her hand from the man’s she sat up some, as if formally, and she did take a draw from her pipe. She held it and closed her eyes a moment, breathed it out in a great flow from her nostrils, and she looked at Toro again and, gods, Ori thought awed, gods, she smiled.

"What do you think you’ll do?" she said. Indulgent as a kindly schoolma’am. "What do you think you’re doing?"

She turned square to Toro and gave another smile, drew again from the pipe, held her smoky breath, and she cocked her face quizzically and raised an eyebrow- Well?- and Toro shot her dead.

Her lover jumped as the bullet took her, and bit his lip hard but could not control his voice, could not stop himself letting out a mew, a cat-sound that became a moan. He sat and held her hand while she emptied out, her head back on blood. Smoke uncoiling from her open mouth. Gunsmoke joined her head and Toro’s hand in a moment’s sulphur umbilicum. The man breathed out sobs and held her hand. But he made himself be done, and made himself look up at Toro.

Ori was deep and dreamishly stunned, but he felt in him the tremors of the knowledge that they were done, and not dead. He raised the thought that gods, they might get out, they might yet. Let’s go then.

"Watch him," Toro said and Ori raised his gun. Toro began to unbuckle the straps that held the huge metal head in place. Ori did not understand what he saw. Toro was removing the iron. "Watch him." The voice came again, this time uncoupled from whatever mechanisms made it so orotund, and it seemed to falter and become human.

Something went out of the air as Toro pulled the helmet away and broke a thaumaturgic current. Toro lifted the metal off, like a diver removing the heavy brass helmet. Toro shook out her sweaty hair.

Ori looked at the woman and his gun did not waver from the magister’s chest. He had not felt capable of surprise for a long time.