Kasnor’s escorts forced back his arms. The rain beyond the walls didn’t do nearly enough to dampen the dry, rotten cracks of breaking bone – nor the ragged scream. Kasnor hung limp between them.

Elda planted her walking stick between her feet. “He’ll beg to die before I’m done. When he’s all used up, I’ll find another. And another.”

“Stop!” shouted Brask. “I’ll have her brought. Just leave him be!”

She turned for the stairs. Kurkas grabbed her arm. “There’ll be no trade.”

“As you wish.”

Elda gestured. Still staring ahead, the dead-eyed woman slipped a dagger into Kasnor’s armpit and wrenched the blade about. He howled.

Kurkas gestured at the sentry. “Shoot him.”

“Sir?”

Kurkas snatched the crossbow from his grasp, propped it on the rampart and fired. The shot was everything he’d come to expect from his post-Zanya aim. The bolt whistled past Kasnor and struck his captor in the shoulder. The woman staggered, each person in the crowd shuddering as if they too had been struck.

The woman stared disinterestedly at her blood mingling with the rain and twisted the dagger anew.

Kurkas snarled and thrust the crossbow back at its owner. “If you don’t put Kasnor out of his misery, I’ll toss you over the wall and find someone who will.”

The sentry’s throat bobbed. Then he reloaded the crossbow, his silence stark contrast to the small, whimpering screams rising up through the rain. After what seemed for ever, he levelled the crossbow and sent a quarrel whispering away. By luck or design, it found Kasnor’s heart.

Kurkas sighed and patted the sentry on the shoulder. “Good lad. Now, if she tries this again, you keep shooting until your pouch is empty, you understand me?”

The sentry’s eyes pinched shut, but he nodded. “Sir.”

Fighting to contain his nausea, Kurkas turned his back on Elda and her thralls.

Brask had gone.

Swearing under his breath, Kurkas lurched after her as fast as his wounded leg allowed. She waited at the base of the spiral stairs, eyes blazing hot as the sun.

“What did you do?” she hissed.

“Delivered a speck of kindness,” he replied. “Might be we’ll need the same before this is done.”

“Why should I care if she takes the prisoner? Kasnor was one of ours. One of mine.”

Kurkas supposed he should have applauded her loyalty, but his patience had all but dissolved in a corrosive mix of anger and terror. He grabbed Brask’s shoulder and shoved her against the stairway wall.

“Because that’s what she wants, you useless dreg. If Katya bloody Trelan crawled her way out of the mists and demanded you give her back her home and the Southshires alongside, you’d not bloody well do it, would you? So why now?”

Brask’s face paled, her resistance draining with it. “Because that’s the Tyrant Queen!”