Instead of impaling Karnot Vesher’s chest, the spike of the poleaxe cracked through the inquisitor’s left hip and pinned him to the wooden frame of the box gallery.

His outraged scream was as considerable as the quantity of blood that he began to leak. Around them, guards of both stripe opened fire, and cut the blameless captain down from several directions.

They were all idiots. The mind had already moved.

The galleries were emptying. Spectators, in great agitation, were fleeing to the comparative safety of the side rooms and the waiting chambers.

I knew it was time to withdraw. The bloodshed on the little galleried stage, which had taken on the ridiculous quality of some gruesome pantomime show, had been just that, a show. The majority of the most powerful and capable people at the symposium were on that stage, and the attack had been designed to occupy them, to confuse them, to create a debacle that would entirely focus the attention of the audience.

Their demise had not been the primary intention, however. If one of the ordos seniors had been the target, why begin with the guard?

I was sure I was the true target.

Somehow, some agency had learned of my presence. I seldom frequented public or populated areas, but someone had found out about this one, rare appearance.

Where had I slipped up? How had I shown myself? For many years, I had lived other lives, covering all trace of myself. Where had I made a mistake? What fragment of truth had I left uncovered?

Was it simply my determination to meet with him here? Had that been my undoing?

Who was to blame? Who had come for me?

I have, I am sorry to reflect, accumulated far too many mortal enemies.

And I share the same Archenemy as the rest of my species.

I left the gallery, and took the small back stairs, a dark flight of wooden steps with a tight turn. I pushed my way past straggling spectators who were making for the exit. Some cried out as I pushed them aside, afraid that death was coming to touch them too.

I was armed with a power knife in a sprung sheath along my left forearm, and a Tronsvasse auto in a flat holster under my coat, but my most dangerous weapon was inside my skull.

I reached a lower hallway under the lecture room. The floors were boarded with gleaming black timber, and dressed with old rugs. The walls were lacquered panels. Dim, ancient faces peered out of ancient oil paint scenes in ancient frames. Refugees from the audience had accumulated in the hallway, huddled savants and frightened scholars. When they saw me, and read my grim sense of purpose, they shrank from me and fled.