The Burners’ line was coming apart. She shrank back as horsemen thundered past. She saw one catch a spear in the throat, tumble from the saddle. She saw a man drop with his helmet dented right in. She saw Gorst, face locked in a snarl, savagely swinging.

A Burner stared straight at Vick. She stepped up, caught him by the paint-smeared breastplate. Before she could even lift her mace, Gorst’s long steel whipped past and took his head off, left Vick staring in shock at the squirting stump. Her hand was tangled with his armour and she was dragged down on top of him, fresh blood in her eyes, in her face.

She twisted free, spitting and coughing. A bearded man sat, very surprised, a shattered spear shaft sticking from his groin. A woman knelt blubbing, great strings of snot hanging from her nose. A rider with a soot-streaked face stared down at his stricken mount, lying on its side, hooves scraping weakly at the bloody flagstones.

“Where is she?” someone roared. “Where is she?”

“Help! Some help here!”

“For the king!”

“My shoulder! Please, my shoulder!”

Vick stood staring, breathing hard through her sore mouth, still gripping the mace so tight her hand ached.

Gorst held his bloody steels in clenched fists, staring up towards that great scaffold, the platform inching its way upwards. “Not again,” he growled. “Not again.”

The Burners were finished. Most of them dead or wounded, the rest throwing down their weapons. For better or worse, it looked as if the Great Change was done. Or maybe there was a new Great Change, but what it was a change into no one could yet say.

Brock sat above the whole mess on his high horse amid a cluster of dark-uniformed Anglanders, pointing towards the Tower of Chains with his sword.

“How does that bloody lift work? We have to get it down!”

Vick stared up towards the roof. The platform had stopped moving. They were already at the top.

She licked her split lip and spat yet again, then untangled the thong from her wrist with clumsy fingers and tossed the mace on the ground. After a moment’s thought, she sat down wearily beside it. Blood had trickled into one of the martyrs’ names and picked half the letters out in red.

“We’re too late,” she mumbled.

Broad stepped onto the roof of the Tower of Chains. It had turned out a fine day. Crisp and sunny, with a cool breeze carrying off the vapours so you could see across the city. That same mad view he’d witnessed a hundred times, but every time it somehow took him by surprise.

He caught Bannerman’s eye. The man had lost all his swagger. He looked scared and confused at once. Like he couldn’t see how they’d ended up here. Broad knew how. Some men can’t help themselves.

He wasn’t drunk. Hadn’t touched a drop all day. But he felt drunk. Head spinning. He wondered how many people he’d thrown down now. How many he’d seen thrown down. Never someone he knew well, though. Never someone who’d saved his life. His family’s lives.