She slid out her stick, heavy, hard and black. One thing that hadn’t changed when the Inquisition became the Inspectorate. A blunt tool for digging out answers, but a shockingly effective one, used the right way. Amazing, the problems you can solve with a piece of wood.

It all reminded her of the camps. The snow, the cold, the dark. The waiting for a man in the shadows with a stick and a clenched jaw. She heard him coming. Heavy footsteps, crunching in the snow. He saw the prints. A muttered curse. Then he strode past the doorway, head down, following the trail. His hand was in his coat, she thought. On the hilt of a weapon, maybe, and she gripped her stick tighter, and slipped from the doorway.

His back was still to her, but he was even bigger than she’d thought. A terribly sturdy look to his shoulders. No way she could risk giving him any chances. Hit first, hard as you can. Chances after.

Her heart was thudding in her ears as she crept up behind him. He’d reached the end of the trail, was casting about, trying to work out what had happened. She took one more careful step towards him, then winced at a twinge in that bloody hip of hers. Snow crunched faintly under her boot as she raised the stick.

His head whipped around, a glimpse of his grey-bearded face, the corner of an eye.

She bared her teeth as she swung for the side of his knee, but at the last moment he lifted his leg and it caught the meat of his calf with a dull smack. He didn’t go down. He didn’t even cry out. A little grunt, maybe, and a stumble sideways. As he turned, she’d set herself and was already bringing the stick down, overhand, with all the strength she had.

He jerked his head to the side and the stick thudded into his shoulder. He didn’t even grunt this time. Just took a half-step back. She swung again but he caught it on one forearm, brushed it off and came at her so fast she barely even saw it, let alone got out of the way.

Vick had been hit plenty. But she’d never been hit so hard.

She folded up like a paper bag, stick tumbling from her numb fingers, and she was on her knees in the snow with her jaw hanging open and a string of spit dangling from her lip, making a kind of helpless wheeze with her arms clutched around her and great jolting waves of pain throbbing from the side of her stomach.

She’d a knife in her boot. But she couldn’t move. She couldn’t even breathe.

He squatted down in front of her, but she couldn’t see anything higher than his knees.

“Inspector Teufel? The king’s servant told me to find you.”

There was no mistaking that high little voice. It was Bremer dan Gorst.

“There’s no one else here?” he asked as she shouldered the door open.