“Not for me.” Vick was keenly aware that most of the considerable harm done to her in her life had been by her own countrymen, but foreigners were not popular with the mobs. A few days before, a dozen Gurkish immigrants had been burned as spies in the Three Farms. Being too dark or too fair or too rich or too poor or too mad or too sane was a bad idea in the new Union. Freedom did not seem to have made anyone any less angry. But then the price of bread kept going up, and Chairman Risinau’s oratory wasn’t edible.

“The vault’s this way?” Vick started walking. Matterno managed to keep pace with her while hurrying along sideways, rubbing his hands. “Inquisitor—”

“Inspector,” corrected Tallow.

“Sorry, yes, so many changes to keep track of… are you really sure you want to do this?”

“It’s not a question of what I want to do.” Vick wasn’t sure it had ever in her life been a question of that. “Commissioner Pike has ordered every branch of Valint and Balk shut down. At once.”

The man looked baffled. As though Commissioner Pike had ordered water to flow upwards. “But… it’s Valint and Balk. You can’t do that.”

“You didn’t see the cannon?”

He tried to explain it again. “The Banking House is owed money everywhere. Everywhere. So many, many friends, here in the Union and abroad. It would be very unwise… it would be utter madness—”

“Have you been outside lately? Wisdom is not at a premium, madness is the fashion, the balance sheets are all torn up and the friends that were assets have become liabilities.” Vick kept walking. “Threats for tomorrow don’t cut very deep when today is so damn threatening. You might want to keep ’em to yourself.”

It felt cold in the banking hall. Colder than outside, almost. Vick had to resist the urge to put her feet down softly on account of the volley of echoes produced by every step. The place was high as a Gurkish temple, carved from dark marble and dark wood, gilt glittering in shafts of dusty light from the high windows. There were little islands of expensive chairs where supplicants would wait to receive the bank’s blessing, or to hear their schemes ripped to tatters, but no business was being done today. The only merchants in attendance were marble busts of history’s richest men, frowning greedily at them from the past.

“Now that is a door,” said Tallow.

It was the door to end all doors, taking up most of the far wall and towering over the room, an expanse of black iron with the weighty names Valint and Balk etched in gold in the centre. Down near the bottom was a brass wheel like the wheel of a ship, a tiny-looking lock to either side.

Tallow gazed up at it, open-mouthed. “I’m guessing that’s the vault?”

“It’d be a fancy door for the kitchen.” Vick waved some of the Constables out into the room and they began to drag drawers from desks, root through papers, throw things around in that slightly disinterested way they had.