Ranks of militia charged the open spaces where the pickets were congregated. Men and vodyanoi wielded placards like badly designed clubs. Within the disorderly mass were brutal skirmishes, as militia agents swung spiked truncheons and whips coated with man-o’-war stings. Twenty feet from the front line of the confused and angry demonstrators, the first wave of uniformed militia dropped to their knees and raised their mirrored shields. From behind them came the gibbering of a shunn, then quick arcs of billowing smoke as their fellows hurled gas grenades over into the demonstration. The militia moved inexorably into the clouds, breathing through their filter-masks.

A splinter group of officers peeled off from the main wedge formation and bore down on the river. They threw tube after hissing tube of billowing gas into the vodyanoi’s watercræft ditch. The croaks and screeches of burning lungs and skin filled the hole. The carefully maintained walls began to split and dribble as more and more strikers hurled themselves through into the river to escape the vicious fumes.

Three militiamen knelt at the very edge of the river. They were surrounded by a thicket of their colleagues, a protective skin. Quickly, the three at the centre pulled target-rifles from their backs. Each man had two, loaded and primed with powder, one of which they set beside them. Moving very fast, they sighted along the shafts into the miasma of grey smoke. An officer in the peculiar silver epaulettes of a captain-thaumaturge stood behind them, muttering quickly and inaudibly, his voice muffled. He touched each marksman’s temples, then jerked his hands away.

Behind their masks, the men’s eyes watered and cleared, suddenly seeing registers of light and radiation that rendered the smoke virtually invisible.

Each man knew the bodyshape and movement patterns of his target perfectly. The sharpshooters tracked quickly through the fog of gas and saw their targets conferring with wet rags clamped to their mouths and noses. There was a rapid crackle, three shots in a quick tempo.

Two of the vodyanoi fell. The third looked round in panic, seeing nothing but the swirl of that vicious gas. He raced to the water walling him in, scooped a handful from it and began to croon to it, moving his hand in fast and esoteric passes. One of the riverside marksmen dropped his rifle quickly and picked up his second weapon. The target was a shaman, he realized, and if given time he might invoke an undine. That would make things vastly more complicated. The officer raised the gun to his shoulder, aimed and fired in one brisk movement. The hammer with its clamped shard of flint slid down the serrated edge of the pan cover and snapped, sparking, into the pan.