“Might be safer to hang them now.” Jurand had become less sentimental than ever, recently. As though Leo’s new ruthlessness had given him permission. “We don’t want to send the wrong message.”

“Exactly.” Leo nodded towards scared faces at the windows. “Folk have seen enough executions. We have to show them we’ve come to stop all that.” He smiled up at a little girl. A glimpse of that Young Lion charm. “We can hang the bastards later. In private.”

“Think we’ll have trouble at the Agriont?” Forest frowned towards the far

end of the square, where the outline of the House of the Maker showed above the rooftops. “If they don’t know we’re coming already, they soon will.”

“We’ll have to trust Inspector Teufel to open the gates.”

“We bet everything on a woman who lies for a living?”

“It’s an upside-down world, all right.” And Leo bared his teeth as he spurred across the square. His stump was on fire from the hard riding, but he couldn’t stop, not now. The future of the Union would be settled in the next few hours. He’d made himself a promise that he’d never again be on a losing side.

“Ready?” asked Vick.

Gorst’s eyes gleamed in the shadows. “Ready.”

She fixed her face in the frown of a People’s Chief Inspector in a hell of a mood and shoved open the door of the chain room.

It was a cluttered, confusing place. Light shone inwards from slit windows at either end but upwards, too, from slots in the floor that looked onto the entrance passage below. The hanging chains, gears and mechanisms, racks of spears and armour, the wrist-thick gratings of the three raised portcullises, all cast tricking shadows. But it soon became clear there weren’t the eight men in there Vick had expected. There were only four.

It seemed there might be such a thing as good luck after all.

“You!” snapped Vick at the most dangerous-looking of them—a big, crop-haired bastard with cauliflower ears and a red smear across his jerkin. “What’s your name?”

He glanced at the others, nervously licking his lips, but found no way out. “Corporal Smiler?” he muttered, as if he wasn’t completely sure.

“Smiler?” she growled. “Is that a joke?”

“No! They started calling me that in Styria, ’cause I never smiled, and I guess it stuck, and…” He tried a weak smile on her and, indeed, was very bad at it. He cleared his throat and stood to attention. “I’m eager to help, Inspector!”

“Someone had better. Commissioner Pike has concerns about the loyalty of the men stationed here.”

“You’ll find no one more dedicated!” spluttered one with an oddly lopsided face.

“The Great Change!” shouted another, holding up his fist. As Vick turned to glare at him, he cleared his throat and hid it behind his back.

“Aren’t there meant to be eight of you?” she asked, frowning around as if she was looking for weaknesses to put right, rather than ones she could exploit.