“Tallow had nothing to do with it,” she said. A mistake, of course. Breaking all her own rules yet again. She might as well have torn her shirt open and pointed out the exact position of her heart. But it was a mistake she couldn’t help making. As if she wanted, at the end, to have done one thing worth doing.

“You like the boy, don’t you?” Pike’s face was a mask again. “There’s no shame in liking someone. I like you, in fact. Far more than most. To put both Brocks and King Orso together in one scheme? Ambitious, to combine such volatile ingredients. Reckless, even. Not at all what I expected. You always struck me as cautious to a fault.”

“I always was,” said Vick. She thought of Sibalt, then. That sad little smile, in the half-light of the foundry, before the end. “But the time comes…” She supposed she could allow herself a little flourish. “You have to stand up.”

“Yes.” Pike’s burned lips curled back from his teeth. “There is the lesson the camps taught me.” He turned from the empty shelves to consider her, and took a long breath through his nose, and let it sigh away. Then he gave a neat little nod. “Proceed.”

There was a heavy silence in the vault. A muffled banging from somewhere behind, where the Constables must have found something still worth smashing. Again, it took a moment for Vick to catch up. Then she gently cleared her throat. “What?”

“The Great Change has done its work.”

“Its work?”

“A wise man once told me that sometimes… to change the world…

we must first burn it down. But Judge is a fire out of control. The time has come to douse the flames and restore order, before everything is reduced to ashes.”

“So…” The silence stretched between them. “Proceed?”

“Exactly. I wish I could offer you help beyond turning a blind eye, but I fear, under the present circumstances, there is no one in the Inspectorate that I fully trust. No one but you, of course, Inspector.” Pike turned back to consider the empty shelves, clasping his hands behind him. “It really has become almost impossible, these days, to tell where people stand.”

Vick stood and stared at him for a long moment. “You don’t fucking say,” she muttered.

Outside in the chilly street the snow was still melting. The queues still stretching. The crier still busy with his list of doomed names.

“You look pleased,” said Tallow, still hugging himself. “Must’ve been a lot o’ money in that vault.”

A rare smile was forming on Vick’s face. “It was empty.”

She wasn’t sure how it had happened, but she was starting to think they had a chance. If Pike was with them, or at least not against them. If Lord Marshal Forest and the Young Lion could do their part without killing each other. If Bremer dan Gorst could stay out of sight. If King Orso could keep his mouth shut. If they could avoid disasters for only a few more days, they had a chance.