“Can’t see a fucking thing,” he muttered.

“Maybe it’s better that way,” she whispered, breath hot on his face and smelling like spirits. “Maybe it’s time to let go.”

She grabbed him. Or did he grab her? They were kissing, anyway, if you could even call it kissing. Too hard, too violent, too painful for that. Growling and biting. Like they were eating each other.

He tried to fling her away. Or did he pull her closer? Clutching at her. Tearing at her already-torn clothes, his fists tangled in the tatters of her ruined old dress and his nose full of the sour smoke smell of her. Wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anyone. Hated her more than he’d ever hated anyone. Except himself, maybe.

He had her by the dozen chains around her neck, and she had him by his belt with one hand, dragging it open, the other clawing at his face, hard, at his jaw, merciless, her thumb was inside his cheek, pulling his head down towards her, pulling him down on top of her. He wanted her to hurt him. Her bare feet around the back of his bare arse, stuck tight to him, and he ripped her torn skirts up over the tattooed treatise on her thigh, dragging his face close to hers, close enough that he could see the fire reflected in her eyes.

“You’re mine,” she hissed in his face. “You’re mine,” and they snapped and snarled at each other like coupling cats.

He’d promised no more trouble, and now here he was fucking it, or letting it fuck him, maybe, on the floor of the Lords’ Round. Or whatever they were calling it now.

He was crying while he did it, maybe. At least to begin with.

But that doesn’t mean you’re not doing it.

The World a Camp

The procession wended from the gloom of falling snow. The Burners walked ten abreast in their paint-spattered clothes, their red-speckled armour, each of them holding high a torch, light falling hard on their hollow faces. Everyone else had to scrape out of their way, press themselves to the buildings and the doorways. Even Vick and her Constables and their prisoners.

Now came the coffin, borne on the shoulders of eight women looking mighty cold in white dresses slush-stained around the hems. There was an antique feel to it all, as if the funeral procession of great Juvens had marched from the pages of the storybooks for this one moment.

“Who’s in the casket?” grunted Vick.

“Some Burner. Led the revolt in Keln, I heard.” Tallow glanced about, then leaned close to whisper, “They say he was killed by royalists, but he was a moderate.”

“Meaning what?” Extreme last week was moderate now. By next week it would have become collaboration.

“The rumour is Judge done away with him. They say she’s drunk on blood. Gone mad with it.”

“To go mad you have to be sane to begin with.” Vick watched the shuffling column fade into the snow, off towards the Mausoleum of