Something came spinning from the crowd, missed her by a stride and clonked from the shield of one of Broad’s men. They almost charged then. She could feel their fury, harder to hold in than to release, like dogs straining at the leash, but Vick held up a trembling hand, giving it one last go, preaching patience while she fast ran out of it.

“Go home!” Her voice came out a warning growl, and she took one step forwards, soles of her boots grinding against the stones, while behind her back she slipped her fingers into her brass knuckles. “Because I tell you what—anyone tries to cross this bridge will regret it.”

“Maybe you’ll be the one with the regrets!” called a sly-looking bastard, wearing a tall hat with half the felt worn off and gripping an old piece of iron railing. “Thought o’ that?”

“I’ll file ’em with the others,” snarled Vick.

Something else came flying at her. A bottle, maybe. She whipped out of the way, and it spun past and smashed somewhere behind, and that was the end of the attempts at reason. As if it had been a signal, the two sides charged screaming at each other, meeting in the middle of the bridge with a clattering and shattering, a thudding of sticks and chair-legs and workmen’s tools.

That laundress came right at Vick, lifting her paddle high. “Fuck you!”

“Fuck you.” Vick slipped around the paddle and punched the woman in the throat with her brass knuckles, left her clutching at her neck, eyes bulging. The safe thing would’ve been to go for her knee and bring her down, but when it came to anger, Vick was not immune.

When the mob broke into the Agriont, they’d ransacked her mean little set of rooms. They’d taken what there was to take, which wasn’t much, smashed what there was to smash, which wasn’t much more, and left that ridiculous book Sibalt used to love torn on the floor. It had made her oddly furious.

So Vick punched this bitch in the face, snapped her head back, punched her again, and she tripped over someone’s outstretched leg and went down hard. She tried to get up, blood streaming from her nose, and Vick planted a boot on her chest and shoved her back down. “Stick to laundry,” she said.

There might’ve been a lot of them, and they might’ve been angry, but on the bridge there was no way the rioters could make their numbers tell. Broad’s men were all veterans and they formed an armoured line, shoving with shields, beating with sticks, trampling the fallen, making no distinction between perpetrators and bystanders, between rioters and demonstrators, trampling the lot just the same.

Vick heard cries further back, the Constables she’d sent around spilling from a side street and straight into the rioters’ flank. They came apart like a flock of starlings, taunts turned to whimpers, tossing down weapons and pamphlets and stolen food, crushing each other in their panic, one man knocked over the parapet, shrieking as he splashed into the canal. Here was the wisdom of crowds, and the courage of crowds, too.