But somehow it was getting harder and harder to keep her mouth

shut. “With respect, Commissioner, the Burners are as likely to punish the innocent as the guilty.”

Pike hardly seemed to hear her. “The banks remain our focus. Usury is the worst of crimes.”

“Worse than murder?”

“Murder leaves one Citizen dead. The banks infect us all with greed.” The flames down the street glimmered in the corners of Pike’s eyes. “Are we any closer to finding the manager of the Adua headquarters of Valint and Balk? I would very much like to see the inside of their vault.”

“We’re closing in. Questioning the employees. But there are hundreds, and most only know their little splinter of the business. The bank owns property all across the city. No one would ever have believed how much.”

“We will take it all back,” said Pike, “and give it to the people.”

Vick glanced towards the fire. “What’ll they do with it?”

“Sometimes, to change the world we must first—”

“Burn it down,” she finished, softly. But it was sounding more and more like something a madman says to justify all the fires he loves to start. “If the manager’s in the city, we’ll find him.”

Pike gave her a stiff nod. “Keep me informed.” And he strode away, a dozen Constables in tow, past someone standing in the shadows of a doorway on the far side of the street. A woman with a board propped against her hip, bright eyes darting over Pike and his retinue, towards the cellar and the cart, away to the firelit crowd.

“Make sure this all gets to the House of Truth,” Vick grunted at Tallow.

“We call it the House of Purity now, remember?”

She was already walking over, slipping her hand into her pocket, finding the chilly angles of her brass knuckles. Best to approach everyone as if they were a threat, though this woman didn’t look too formidable. Her lips had a bluish tinge, nostrils pink at the rims, an old quilt around her shoulders with a hole cut for her head to go through.

“Your name, Citizeness?”

“Groom, Inspector. Carmee Groom.” She lowered the board. There was a sheet of paper clipped to it, a stub of charcoal in the blackened fingers of her other hand. “I’m an artist.”

Vick relaxed a little. About as much as she ever did. “So I see.”

“I am sketching. For a painting.”

Vick frowned towards the bonfire, the ragged figures warming their hands, the Burners dragging people from the buildings, the Constables emptying out the cellar that had been a bank. “You want to paint this?”

“Future generations might never believe that it happened.” She blew some yellow hair out of her face with a smoky breath and went back to sketching, charcoal hissing on paper. “Then it might happen again.”

Lessons

“There was a hell of a battle fought here,” said Shivers, pausing on the side of the hill to frown across the snow-covered valley, all silent in that brittle way only winter countryside can be.