Savine cowered behind her father’s chair, staring between her fingers. Zuri twisted Sulfur’s head back, one hand hooking his top jaw, one hooking the bottom. She snarled as she began to drag them apart, his eyes bulging, his mouth gaping wider and wider until with a snapping crunch she ripped his face wide open, blood showering, tearing his bottom jaw from his head until it hung on strings of gristle.

He made a gurgling hiss as he fell, and they swarmed on him with a crunching, ripping, cracking, blood spraying the broken floor, spotting the walls.

The whole impossible fight had only taken a few breaths.

“Out.” Savine’s father was tugging weakly at her charred sleeve. “Out.”

Stupidly, she turned his chair, her shoes slithering on the smooth stones, leaving crooked tracks through the scattered ash and chips of masonry. She whimpered as she wheeled it to the door, got it caught on the frame, snarled as she wrestled it through into the great chamber, skinning her knuckles, the sound of ripping and gnawing echoing behind her.

She dragged the door shut and hung from the knob. Her eyes were swimming. Her legs wobbled. She could scarcely see through the smeared after-images across her vision, scarcely hear for the ringing in her ears. She stumbled, nearly fell, and someone caught her. Her mother. Holding her tight, stroking her head. Savine clung to her, making a little moan with every breath.

“Don’t worry. The children are safe.”

“Safe?” whispered Savine. Her hand was burned. The sleeve of her dress was scorched. The skin beneath tingled. Faint through the door, she could still hear them, eating. “Zuri is… Zuri is…”

“Yes. Did you think we picked her as your companion by accident?”

“You had to be protected,” said Savine’s father, baring the teeth he still had as he wheeled his chair towards her. “I made an arrangement with the only ones who could do it.”

Savine stared from one parent to another. “You used me as bait. Me and my children—”

“We used ourselves as bait,” said her mother.

“It had to be done, Savine,” said her father.

“God smiles on results, my scripture teacher would have said.”

Zuri shut the door behind her. Her dress hung singed and shredded and the bandages beneath were spotted red. Savine had never seen her so much as undo a top button before, had always taken that for fitting modesty, but without even knowing it the Burners had stumbled on the truth.

It was one of those moments—like the uprising in Valbeck, like the battle at Stoffenbeck—when Savine was forced to realise the world was not quite what she had thought it was. When the solid foundations were revealed to be shifting sands, and all her certainties no more than guesses. She wanted to back away. Wanted to run out into the hall and keep running. But she stood her ground. “Who was your scripture teacher?” she croaked.

“The Prophet Khalul,” said Zuri, stepping into the room. “As you have no doubt guessed.” Her hair had come unpinned on one side, hanging across her bloody face, her bloody chin, her bloody throat in a black curtain. “I wish I could have told you sooner.”