The woman was turning away when her gaze stopped at Kiska’s chest. She extended a hand and Kiska felt her fingertips tap Agayla’s flattened scrolled letter. Kiska stared into the woman’s eyes, silently pleading. The woman met her stare, sympathetic but pitying too, as if Kiska was already dead. She approached the scarred man at the table.

‘She’s local talent,’ she said, her voice low. ‘Independent. Reports to Pell only’

The man shrugged as if he no longer cared. With one finger he traced a curve on a parchment spread across the table. ‘We’ll just go around. Ignore that crowd.’

‘What if we run into them again?’

The man looked up, stared in his bland manner. ‘Your job is to see that we don’t.’

The bindings cut into Kiska’s wrists. She ached to speak in her defence, to beg, stall . . . anything . . . but the words bunched in her throat, constricted by the intuition that if she spoke they’d just kill her to be done with it. So she remained silent, listening instead. What was this gang of brigands up to? Looting under cover of tonight’s chaos? If so, what did the cultists have to do with it? Had they clashed?

The woman glanced at her again, took a breath, and leaned close to whisper something to the scarred man. He smiled in reply, his lips merely tightening over his teeth, utterly empty of humour. ‘You going soft on us?’ he answered, without looking up.

Adjusting her vest, the woman offered Kiska a slight shrug to convey she’d done all she could. Though it was her life the man had just dispensed with, Kiska forced herself to respond in kind – a small nod. Fear no longer clenched her throat. She wanted to cry. Grotesquely enough, what stopped her was something she’d never have suspected: pride.

The parchment crackled crisply as the man rolled it up. Handing it to one of his followers, he beckoned the others to him. Kiska tensed, her breath shallowing; they were readying to leave and she wouldn’t be going with them.

The scarred man spoke to four of his men, one of whom was the man who’d snatched her. They were all older, more hardened and at more ease than the others. Kiska knew she wasn’t being discussed; her fate had been decided.

A young man at a front window yelped, then jumped away from the wall. ‘A Hood-spawned ghost! A shade! At the door!’

The scarred commander and his squad broke into motion without orders or comment, confirming to Kiska that they were a team of veterans, perhaps part of a unit of Imperial marines.

The one with the lozenge armour drew two curved swords and went to the door. With a sharp blow of his elbow he shoved aside the young hiresword who had been standing guard. Just back from the door two veterans knelt, crossbows levelled. The remaining soldier, along with the commander and the woman, positioned themselves behind. All of them waited, tense, focused upon the door. In her chair far to the back near stairs down to a lower room, Kiska watched as well. Oddly, she too had felt something at the door: a nagging pull like faint scratching.