“Once a week,” said Shivers, frowning down at Corleth. With his hair bound back to show the full scale of his scar he looked a monster, that metal eye flashing as the sun peeped through the clouds. How had she ever got halfway used to it? She couldn’t stop her eyes flitting about. Lot of hard faces up on that roof now and, given there was a battle unfolding in the other direction, a lot of ’em pointed at her.

“And they’re brewers, you know, these brothers,” Rikke was saying, “so they head out on carts all over. There’s one place their ale is very much appreciated.”

“Currahome,” grunted Shivers.

“Hold on, though.” Rikke frowned. “Who do I know lives in Currahome? It’s someone whose son I just killed. Name’s on the tip o’ my tongue…”

“Black Calder?”

Rikke’s tattooed face lit up. “That is the bastard.”

Corleth’s body was tensed to run, but there was nowhere to go. They were setting ladders, outside the walls. She could see a couple swung up against the parapet, men struggling to shove ’em back down.

Rikke was blathering away like there was no danger at all. “Last time one o’ those brothers headed up to Currahome, we stopped him ’fore he got there, and the strangest thing… his kegs were all empty.”

“Very disappointing,” said Shivers. “If you like ale.”

“And who doesn’t? Must’ve been some other cargo he was taking up there. He didn’t want to say what. But men tell Caul Shivers things they wouldn’t tell their own mothers.” Rikke clapped him fondly on the arm. “It’s that pretty metal eye of his, maybe.”

Shivers shrugged. “That or I just won’t stop cutting ’em.”

“Aye, maybe it’s that. Do you know what his cargo was?”

Corleth licked her lips. This wasn’t tied up neat at all. This was all coming unravelled. “How would I know?” she whispered.

“’Cause you gave it to him, silly!”

And Corleth felt herself caught from behind. Caught and held, the standard clattering on the stones. She struggled, more of an instinct than any real effort to get free, but one man had her left arm and another her right and a third caught her around the neck and held a dagger to her throat, and the cold brush of steel against her skin made her go slack as rags.

“Secrets,” said Rikke, walking closer, the pupil of her Long Eye yawning huge, the other just a blind pinprick. “That was the cargo. What we’re doing up here. How many men there are. Who’s fallen out with who. What I’m saying. What I’m thinking. Or what you think I’m thinking, anyway, which might not be quite the same thing. You told granny, and granny told the brothers, and the brothers toddled up to Currahome on their fucking empty ale cart and told Black Calder all about it.”

By the dead, not far away down the wall some of Calder’s men had made it to the top, blades twinkling as they struggled. Couldn’t be long, now, till the city fell. Too long for Corleth, though, maybe.