Vick winced. “Fuck.”

“They didn’t all die right off. Had to have a Burner at the bottom with a pickaxe to finish the poor bastards—”

“All right, Tallow, I get the picture.” It was coming to something when a child of the prison camps was finding life in the capital too dark for comfort.

Her mind wandered back there. To the camps. To her own father, coughing blood in that cold winter. She’d tried to trade for a blanket, work for an empty sack, steal a little knuckle of coal, but it was never enough. Her mother, wasted away to nothing. So thin at the end you could see her bones. Her sister’s screams behind her in the mine as the floodwater rushed into the tunnel.

Vick came to a stop in the snow, watching the Constables herding her latest batch of prisoners across the Square of Martyrs.

“I’d hoped it might get better,” she muttered. “But it’s getting worse.”

Tallow hopped from one foot to the other for warmth. “You could’ve said that any time since I met you.”

“That’s your comfort? We’re not at the bottom yet? Judge is more powerful now than the king ever was. Even Harod the Great answered to Bayaz. Judge answers to no one but the fire. She won’t be happy till she’s burned it all to the ground.”

“Not even then, I daresay.” Tallow glanced towards another sorry set of the accused being driven hunched through the snow. “But you might want to keep your voice down.”

“This was meant to set us all free. Instead we’ve turned the whole Agriont into a prison.” Vick frowned at the names cut into the stones under her feet, half-seen through the slush. She wondered if Sibalt’s was there, somewhere. She remembered lying in his narrow bed, talking about how they’d change the world. She’d known they were dreams. But they’d been pretty dreams, at least. Was this the better world he’d died for? “We’ve made the whole city into a camp. The whole Union.”

“You always say we should stand with the winners…”

One of the prisoners broke from the line, chains on her ankles clanking, rag-wrapped hands clutching. Vick was ready to punch her. Almost did it. But all she wanted was to push something into Vick’s hands. A folded paper.

“You’ve a kind face! Take this to my daughter, please.”

“Come here,” grunted one of the Burners, grabbing her under the arm without malice, without gentleness. The way a shepherd grabs a sheep. “Sorry ’bout that, Inspector.”

“Please!” the woman blubbed as he dragged her away.

Vick knew she had nothing close to a kind face. A bag of chisels was how she’d always thought of what she saw in the mirror. She’d been given the letter, not Tallow or someone softer, because she looked like someone who got things done. She unfolded it, fingers cold and sluggish even in her gloves.

“What does it say?” asked Tallow.

There was no poetry to it. Scrawled on a scrap of candle-wrapper with a stub of charcoal from a dead fire. Just love, and best wishes, and keep going, and don’t forget me. She realised she’d no idea who to take it to. No idea who the woman had been. Could’ve been anyone. Could almost have been Vick herself. Except she had no one to write a letter to.