“Be careful, Cousin,” came the parson’s smiling voice. “Mercy is a virtue. But weakness is a crime. Be careful.” But already chains and handcuffs were falling to the stones. First free, Jason Mock strode among the others with a ring of keys, while Abu stood in a circle of panderers. They were pawing him with flaccid fingers, their faces still incredulous. He was supremely happy. With an imperious flourish, he raised his arm, and the crowd split away from him all down the aisle, and far at the end he could see the open portal, the doors pulled back, the square black night, the sugar thick on the stone lintels. But just then, as if put in motion by the prince’s uplifted finger, high in the tower above them the bells began to ring, sounding the alarm.

“Enough,” said Spider Abject. “That’s enough. Leave the rest.” Among the hundred or so prisoners, perhaps forty had been freed; Abject took his father underneath the arm and dragged him towards the open door. Abu stayed behind, unable to relinquish so much power and popularity. But finally he turned, just in time to see the boy and his father vanish down the steps into the night. And in a crowd of hunchbacked, yellow people, the prince moved slowly down the aisle, an old woman hanging onto each arm. But when he was still ten paces from the portal, a young sacristan in red robes flung himself before the doorway and blocked it with his outstretched arms. It was a useless gesture, and perhaps he only meant to shine for his superiors. He could not have hoped to offer any real obstruction, for Abu’s strength by then was irresistible. But as the prince raised up his hand to show his palm, Jason Mock burst past him, unable to wait, unable to judge the outcome of even such a simple test of will. He broke the young man’s head in with a length of chain, and pushed him down the steps into the square.

That act of violence ended all their hopes. Mock stood in the doorway, framed by darkness, and past him the square had filled with people, summoned by the bell. Soldiers of the purge were there, and when they saw the young man fall, they came running up the steps, all doubts resolved, all weakness set aside.

Mock had dared to touch a priest. Trapped, he turned back towards the church, but there too soldiers were cutting through the crowd. Wildly he looked around. There was no escape, but above his head a cross of steel hung down from a stanchion over the door, supporting four red bulbs of burning gas. With a tremendous leap, Mock seized hold of the crossbar and pulled himself up until he squatted on it, chattering his hatred like a monkey, the fog drifting around him, sweetening his clothes. He pulled his chain up after him like a monkey’s tail.

Soldiers stood underneath him. The captain unbuckled his revolver. But the voice of the parson, still sitting in his litter at the back of the church, sounded out above the uproar: “Be careful! Be careful of the gas!” It gave Mock his idea. Grinning viciously, he wrapped his chain around his hand. That was the last the soldiers saw—Mock’s teeth shining in the middle of his black beard as he leaned down and smashed the glass bulb with his armored fist.