“Aye,” said the lad.

“Black Dow, or the Bloody-Nine?”

“’Course,” said the lad.

“How about Stour Nightfall?”

The lad narrowed his pale eyes a little.

“Can you tell me what all those fearsome bastards have in common?”

There was a pause, then, and a bird nesting somewhere among the library’s roofs tooted gently at the dreamy afternoon.

“Dead,” said the lad.

Clover grinned. “I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to have a quick pupil. The swordsman’s greatest ambition, if you’re asking me, should be not to join those heroes in the mud.”

“We all meet the Great Leveller.”

“’Course we do.” Clover sat forwards to shrug his cloak off, the wolfskin cloak Stour used to wear, a touch bedraggled now from hard use, and started rolling it up. “But I’d favour putting him off as long as possible. How about you? Planning to rush at him, trousers down?”

The lad’s black brows drew in slightly as he thought about it.

“In the end… the only thing a man can really do… is pick his moment. Watch for the opening, and recognise it when it comes, and seize it.” And Clover snatched at a handful o’ nothing and shook his fist. “Picking your moment. That’s the secret. You understand?”

The boy nodded, solemn as a grave-guest, and it seemed like all the wisdom Stour wouldn’t take in a hundred tellings this lad sucked straight up like a sponge. “I think so.”

“I think so, too. Now why don’t you show me your fearsome skills on one o’ them posts?”

Clover shoved the roll he’d made of his cloak behind his head as a pillow, and he crossed one boot over the other. He watched the lad’s sword darting. He watched the blade flash and flicker. He watched the evening sun gleam on the lake.

“That’s good!” he called. “That’s damn good. Pick your moment.” And Clover gave a contented sigh, and closed his eyes. Listened to that bird tooting high above. Listened to the wind whispering in the grass. Listened to the click and scrape of steel on wood.

Could’ve worked out worse, he supposed.

A Little Private Hanging

It was a highly exclusive affair.

No carnival atmosphere. No crowds of baying commoners. Certainly no tittering whores in attendance. A small cobbled yard behind the House of Questions, rather than one of the wide public squares in the heart of the city. The tone was sombre, one would have to say. But for Orso to lift the mood seemed a lot to ask.

“I bloody hate hangings,” he said, frowning up at the scaffold.

The innovations had all been rolled back. No pulleys, no cranes, no machinery. They were gone the way of Risinau, and Judge, and the Commons’ Round, and the People’s Inspectorate, and the Great Change as a whole. Just the gallows, and a rope, and a trapdoor, and a lever to open it.

And a prisoner to hang, of course. It would be a hell of a poor occasion without one of those.