With a cry, Pegeen crashes back against the wall, clutching at their chest. Falco screams in rage and grief and sends two charges flying, hitting the man twice in the shoulder, before dropping to her knees beside Pegeen. But the Marshal is still standing, and – with a wild grimace – aims the pistol directly at Falco’s head.

A path opens before me.

The knife is in my hand as I lunge, throwing myself across the room. He is not expecting me. The moment before he pulls the trigger, I lash out, slicing him across the face.

He screams, staggering back, dropping the pistols. Stepping behind him, I seize his greasy collar and bring the serrated blade against his throat. I see Falco stand and level her gun.

‘Stop.’

The voice cuts through the beating of the blood in my head, and at once I feel it, the violent shaking of the man’s body, the hot, clean iron of his blood, the stench of him: body odour and stale breath and urine. The blade has bitten into the surface of his skin, and it wants to bite deeper. Falco’s teeth are bared, her finger on the trigger.

‘Let him go.’

Esterházy stands in the doorway, the night behind her, a rifle levelled at the man who is almost a corpse in my arms.

At once, the clear path vanishes, leaving me stranded in a place without roads. I let the Marshal go.

He sinks to the floor, clasping at his bloodied face with his good hand. The bullet wounds smoulder in his shoulder, my knife cut him from chin to eyebrow, splitting one of his nostrils.

‘Get out,’ Esterházy tells him coldly. ‘And do not forget to tell your employers that I saved your worthless life.’

Shaking and gasping, the Marshal snatches up the guns and flees.

* * *

‘Will they be alright?’ Silas asks, as I close the door of Pegeen’s room, where Falco sits, her face tear-stained.

I nod wearily. ‘Peg is lucky. The bullet lodged under the collarbone. I was able to get it out. If it had been a charge pistol…’ I don’t need to say it. Instead, I stare down at my hands, rimed with dried blood.

‘Here,’ Bebe says, handing me a damp cloth.

The blood will not come off. For a few hours I had forgotten myself and what I was. What I had done. I feel tears rising in my chest and know I won’t be able to keep them back.

‘Come on,’ Silas says suddenly, guiding me away. ‘You can wash up in my room.’

As soon as the door closes behind us, the first sob escapes. I press the blood-stained cloth against my mouth, but more rise, hot and violent.

‘I can’t outrun it.’ The words come out thick. ‘I try to keep the tally, I try to preserve life, but everything I do…’

Silas doesn’t answer. Instead, he sinks onto the bed, lights the bowl of his pipe and takes a deep drag. ‘You think that bastard didn’t deserve it?’