There were doors up here, doors onto cramped rooms used by the servants, but also a side door onto the main staircase that crawled around the walls of the tower’s core, linking the suites of the noble residents. It was chilly, and the oil lamp mounted in a wall bracket hardly lightened the shadows, but it was enough to show Miriam which way to go. She pushed the side door open and stepped out onto the staircase to get her bearings. It was no brighter in the main hall: The great chandelier was unlit and the oil lamps on each landing had been turned right down. Still, she was just one flight of stairs below the door to Olga’s chambers. She was halfway to the landing before she noticed something wrong with the shadows outside the entrance. The door was open. Which meant, if Brill had gotten through in time—

Miriam crept forward. The door was ajar, and something bulky lay motionless in the shadows behind it. The reception room it opened onto was completely dark, but something told her it wasn’t empty. She paused beside the entrance, her heart hammering as she waited for her eyes to adjust. If it’s another hit, that would explain the lack of guards, she thought. Memories of a stupid corporate junket—a “team building” paintball tournament in a deserted office building that someone in HR thought sounded like fun—welled up, threatening her with a sense of déjà vu. Very slowly, she looked round the edge of the door frame.

Something or someone clad in light-absorbing clothes was kneeling in front of the door at the far end of the room. Another figure stood to one side, the unmistakable outline of some kind of submachine gun raised to cover the door. They had their backs to her. Sloppy, very sloppy, she thought tensely. Unless they knew there was nobody else in this wing because they’d all been sent away.

The inner door creaked and the kneeling figure stood up and flowed to one side. Now there was another gun. This is so not good, Miriam realized sickly. She was going to have to do something. Visions of the assassin in the orangery raising his knife and moving toward her—the two before her were completely focused on the door, preparing to make their move.

Then one of them looked around.

Afterward, Miriam wasn’t completely sure what had happened. Certainly she remembered squeezing the trigger repeatedly. The evil sewing-machine chatter of automatic fire wasn’t hers, as it stitched a neat line of holes across the ceiling. She’d flinched, dazzled and deafened by the sudden noise, and there’d been more hammering and she’d fallen over, rolling aside as fast as she could, then what sounded like a different gun. And silence, once she discounted the ringing in her ears.

“Miriam?” called Olga, “is that you?”