She let the thought go and filled her mind with a simple mantra she’d composed over the past few months with Delia’s help.

Her sword went up. “Io, Io, paean!”

The creature moved, rolling in the mud. Cut. You know how. Two-handed grip, turn, pivot, loose grip and then hard when it hits!

Striking at shoulders, elbows, wrists, like butchery in a nightmare abattoir where the flesh under the steel wouldn’t die.

Then the head lay looking up, dangling from a flap of muscle and skin. The eyes were open and looking at her; Mary’s spiteful, angry, blue eyes.

Cut.

The head rolled free. Tiphaine knocked up her visor, went to one knee and set the sword point down, bracing herself on the hilt and dragging in one raw cold breath after another. It was a bad thing to do to a good sword, but it would have to go too. Her body was streaming sweat under the armor, but shivering with chill at the same time. Bits of hair and matter and skin spattered her armor and gauntlets, but the rain was still coming down. She turned her face up to its cleanness, let the water flow into her mouth, spat, did it again.

Stratson came to her. “My lady?” he asked.

He looked more like a horse than ever, his long yellow teeth bared by a grimace that pulled back his lips, his eyes wide opened and staring.

He looks like he expects the pieces of her to come back together. I’m not surprised.

“Listen, she gets cremated tonight and everything with her.”

He nodded, the whites of his eyes showing. “I thought you might, m’lady. Got things going while you were busy.”

He signaled, and men came forward with barrels of the wood-alcohol mix used for lanterns; others dragged out a hose connected to the biogas plant, and still others made a chain to bring wood from the sheds that kept it more-or-less dry.

“Should I also . . . burn the room?”

“Probably. Spit, blood, hair, anything. Don’t touch anything with your bare hands. I’m going to strip when I’m done and we’ll burn even my armor and sword. It’s a good thing my Associate’s dagger is in my saddlebags. I’d burn that too if I’d been wearing it, and it’s a gift from the Lady Regent.”

The rain came down, but the wind was easing off. The prison guards rigged tarps to cover the soggy yard that sloped down to the swamp. One of them came forward with a torch and looked at her. She nodded curtly.

Whump! The alcohol caught, and then the wood below it as the heat drove out moisture and the gas played across it like a dragon’s breath. More wood, more barrels of alcohol, blue and red flames soaring up. Men came bearing the contents of the cell, handling them with gingerly reluctance and heavy gloves.