She smashed him across the side of the skull, even harder. So hard she knocked him back upright, spinning on one heel, tumbling into the portcullis and crashing down on his back, thrashing like a landed fish, foaming at the mouth in some kind of wild fit. His kicking leg lashed out and knocked a rack of spears clattering across the floor.

She tossed her mace as she dropped on top of him, struggling to pin him down. “Help me hold the bastard—”

There was a sharp crack as Gorst nailed him through the top of his broken head with his short steel. The man flopped down, suddenly still.

Vick rocked back on her haunches. “Shit,” she whispered. She should’ve known limiting the violence would be a forlorn hope. But it looked like their luck had held. They had the chain room, and that was the part that had worried her most. The place was designed to be held even if the walls around it were taken. Now they just had to lock themselves in—

There was a boy standing in the doorway, staring wide-eyed at Gorst and Vick, both of them covered in blood and kneeling over a dead Burner.

She struggled up. “Wait there!”

The boy bolted like a ferret. By the time she’d made it to the corridor, the only sign of him was the fading echoes of his slapping feet.

“Shit!” she hissed again, but a good deal louder. She caught the edge of the door, a good thickness of solid oak, and heaved it shut with a reassuring clunk. She reached for the bar to drop it into the thick brackets and froze.

There was no bar.

There was a hinge against the frame with a couple of dangling screws, but the bar itself was gone. She cast wildly about in the shadows, but there was no sign of it. Might be it got smashed when the Breakers took the Agriont. Or the Burners ripped it off along with the gates downstairs. It hardly mattered why it was gone. That boy would be bringing guards. Lots of guards. And soon.

“There’s no bar!” she snarled.

“Huh,” said Gorst, without emotion.

If there really was such a thing as good luck, it seemed there was a limited supply.

The Side of the Saints

“That’s it!” screamed Judge, springing up and smashing at the wounded table so savagely she put a great split in it. “Fucking stop!”

Savine had not paid enough for all the support that was coming from the galleries. Some of it must have actually been heartfelt. People taking no small risk to show their honest feelings. She had worked all her life to be envied. She had never imagined she might truly be liked.

“Broad!” Judge showered spit, tendons starting from her hand as she shook her hammer towards the galleries. “Next bastard makes a sound, get up there and show ’em the quick way down!”

Broad glared up, then towards Judge, then towards Savine. He had a paper crumpled in his fist. The letter she had given him? The hall had fallen quiet as the grave. Being liked was very pleasant. But its limitations as a shield against terror were starkly revealed.