“Death to Aristocrats!”

“Enough bloodshed! Enough bloodshed!”

“Down with the Great Change!”

“Hang ’em all!”

“Bastards!”

There was even a plaintive cry of, “Long live the king!” Over-earnest, entirely mad or simply an early bet on a new reality, it was impossible to say.

“I fucking doubt it,” snarled Judge. She pointed at Orso with a finger sporting at least four stolen wedding rings. “Since you’re so keen to denounce yourself on her behalf, you can take the long drop with her. Corporal Halder, bind this fool!”

Halder looked like he’d much rather have slipped out of a side door, but the habit of obedience was hard to break. He and one of his fellows pulled Orso’s arms behind him and the cord painfully tight about his wrists, while Broad brought Savine down from the dock and bound her hands, his heavy jaw fixed, his red eyes staring.

“Burners, to me!” screeched Judge, and they began to converge from every part of the court. From the benches, from the galleries, from their places on guard around the walls. Men and women with red-daubed clothes, red-spattered armour, the fire of fanaticism still hot in their eyes. Men and women who would rather go down in flames than see any hint of the old Union return.

Halder grabbed Orso under the arm and started to march him towards the aisle, a good four-score Burners gathering around them in a grim knot, weapons drawn, with Judge their furious spear-point.

The door shuddered against Vick’s shoulder with a sound of splintering wood.

They’d brought an axe, then, and from the feel of it a big one. She wondered how long she and Gorst could hold the door shut. She wondered how many Burners were out there. She wondered what would happen when they got in. She didn’t like any of her answers.

The axe blows stopped and there was a sudden shove on the door, harder than ever, so hard it nearly flung Vick to the ground.

She’d wedged pieces of a broken spear into the brackets where the bar would’ve gone, but they didn’t fit, jumping and flexing. She could hear them outside, one voice calling the rhythm. “Shove! Shove! Shove!”

There was a faint squealing, and with a chill horror Vick saw one of the brackets was working loose, rusted nails easing from splintering wood at the pressure outside.

“The frame’s rotten!” she hissed through her gritted teeth. The door had eased open a chink, and then wider, the grunts and growls coming louder than ever from beyond.

Gorst’s eyes met hers, and she got the feeling they’d come to the same conclusion: they weren’t going to be able to hold that door shut much longer.

“On three,” he hissed, keeping one shoulder braced against the wood, but sliding out his short steel with the other hand, “we open it.”

“We fucking what?” Vick snarled back at him.

“And fight.”

The door jerked open another finger’s breadth. Something slid through, so close to Vick she had to twist her face away, staring at it cross-eyed. The blade of a spear. Someone was using it as a lever, working the door open.