Run for the Agriont, that was all he could think of. He plunged through the crooked backstreets, his neck prickling with fear, his breath sawing at his chest. Damn weak lungs, he’d been cursed with them all his life. Can you name a lord marshal with weak lungs? his brother used to ask. Lungs define an officer! Adua’s foul vapours hardly helped. He sagged into a doorway, trying to suppress his cough. He’d dropped his sword somewhere. Or had he thrown it away?

“Bloody hell.” He stared down at his officer’s jacket. Bright red. How could it be redder? The whole purpose was to make him stand out. Like a bullseye on a target.

He stumbled from the doorway, struggling with the brass buttons, and almost straight into a group of heavyset men. Workers, maybe, from one of the foundries in the neighbourhood. But there was a wildness in their eyes, whites showing stark in their grease-smeared faces.

They stared at him, and he at them.

“Now listen,” he said, raising one weak hand. “I was just doing—”

They were not interested. Not in his duty, or his oath, or his sympathy for their cause, or his reasonable monarchism. It was not a day for the reasonable, let alone for whatever defines an officer. One of them put his head down and charged. Leeb managed to throw a single punch as he came. A harmless one, which missed the mark and bounced off the man’s forehead.

His brother had once told him how to punch, but he hadn’t really been listening. He wished he’d listened now. But then his brother hadn’t really known anything about punching, either.

The man caught Leeb in the side with his shoulder, knocked his wind out, lifted him bodily and brought him down on the wet cobbles with a stunning crash.

Then they were all on him, kicking, swearing. Slavering madmen. Furious animals. Leeb curled up as best he could, whimpering at each blow. Something hit him so hard in the back he was sick. To his horror, he saw one of them take out a knife.

It was a shock when Cal pulled the blade. Maybe it shouldn’t have been. Doors knew he carried one. He stopped kicking the officer to stare at it. Thought about shouting at him not to do it. But by then Cal was stabbing.

“Shit,” whispered Doors. Hadn’t planned on killing anyone when he left his spot in the mill and ran out to join the Breakers flooding down the Sparway. Not sure what he had been planning. Setting things right, maybe. Getting a fair deal for once. Not this, anyway. They all looked shocked. Cal most of all.

“Had to be done,” he said, staring down at the poor bastard wheezing and spitting blood and leaking red all over the street. “Had to be done.”

Doors didn’t see why. Wasn’t like this fool had set their wages. They could’ve given him a kicking. Taught him a lesson. Left it at that. But whether it had to be done or not, it was done now. No undoing it.