And yet there was a part of her that told her otherwise, that Lief’s shed blood meant the gloves were off. She fought it down, but only after a moment’s wrestling with the conscience she had been trying to grow since meeting Dion.

“Just…” But she didn’t have the words. Instead she took out her frustration with a vicious hooking punch under the monk’s ribs, and then a smack of her dagger pommel across his head, and if he was still conscious after that then he was at least unlikely to come after her to complain.

“Drop him. Follow me. Defend me or yourself if necessary. No killing.” It was like trying to manage a child, she thought: a grotesque and murderous child of superhuman speed and strength.

The other monk, the one who was now most of the way up the stairs, saw the pair of them ascending and fled. Cyrene didn’t feel she had the energy to chase him down, and she didn’t want to let Enth off the leash either. Instead she just made a straight line for the front door.

It was locked. Some conscientious monk had come across it standing open and, no doubt, tutted over the carelessness of his peers. And closed off her easiest escape route. She looked around for a window, or…

“Can you break this down?”

Enth regarded her stiffly, his hands twitching. Perhaps he was looking from her to the door and back, but his black button eyes had no movement in them: they just stared.

“Break it down,” she instructed, because she was running short of a lot of things, and patience was one of them. Enth gave a businesslike nod—it was Lief’s nod, she recognized, which the creature had somehow come to adopt—and then took hold of the door. She was about to explain that, no, one broke down a door by charging at it, but then his fingers dug in, splintering the wood. Across his back and arms, the smooth interplay of his almost-human musculature convulsed, and then the door was out of its frame, still with the jagged stumps of lock and hinges dangling from it. Only then did she think what a picture this thing would make, naked and on the streets of Armesion.