in the lap of its mother blinked at her through its tears.
Swan snapped her fingers loudly, and the infant stopped crying with a startled jerk.
The room was packed from wall to wall with seated men and women, the air thick with the heat of so many bodies pressed so closely together.
How can they sit like this, in each other’s stench?
‘We’re looking for Gant,’ her brother declared, loudly. ‘Please show him to us.’
Nobody moved. The man standing at the front of the room wrung his hands in dismay.
‘Are you Gant?’ Swan asked him.
He looked to the others for support, and Swan noticed a few men along the sides reaching beneath their coats for weapons.
‘Who wants to know?’
It was a man standing by the shuttered window, his arms folded across his burly chest. He had a pipe in his mouth, and a peaked cap on his head cocked over one eye.
‘I do.’
‘And you are?’
‘They call me Swan.’
‘Well, Swan, they call me Gant. And this is a peaceful assembly. We’re doing nothing wrong here.’
Her brother snorted. ‘I would say that planning dissent amongst your fellow chattel is very wrong indeed.’
Chairs began to scuff against the floor. People were standing, moving back towards the walls. A handful of men were taking up positions around them.
‘No trouble,’ Swan said with her empty palms raised. She nodded to the man Gant. ‘Good evening to you, then. Or what remains of it.’
Slowly, with caution, they both backed out of the room, their task here complete. Swan took a final glimpse of Gant’s curious expression then pulled the door closed behind her.
Instantly, her brother broke a bonding stick in half and used it to seal the door in its frame. The door handle rattled; someone trying to open it.
The voices grew loud again on the other side.
Swan and her brother hurried down the stairwell, racing each other. The Respite House was a tall building with many floors and rooms. Perhaps it had been an hostalio in its time, or one of the famous brothels of the district. People had scattered from the stairs and the landings when they’d first seen the two of them go up. Now, mutters sounded from behind closed doors, children’s cries stifled suddenly. Swan broke her own bonding stick in half, and helped Guan close the main exit of every landing as they descended, sealing each one in turn.
Her brother wouldn’t meet her eye as they did it.
Outside in the cobbled street, a stinking breeze was blowing down the narrow stretch of the Accenine – the only river on the island of Q’os – and amongst the twisting, diabolical streets of the slums that were the Shambles. The fumes from the nearby steelworks caught in the back of her throat, dark smokestacks pouring their affluence into the evening sky. Guan worked quickly to seal the main front door while Swan thrummed to her inner music, and observed the figures scurrying from the sight of their robes.
She stared at the distant Temple of Whispers above the skyline, a tall, warped sliver amongst smaller skysteeples. It was more brightly lit than before. She knew that the second night of the Caucus must be starting by now; felt a moment’s relief that they did not have to be there again tonight.
Much closer, on the opposite bank of the fast river, the Lefall family fortress stood in a brilliance of focused gaslights. Barges were filling up with soldiers along the quayside: General Romano’s own private troops, shipping down to the harbour for the fleet’s departure tomorrow. Swan still had to pack, she recalled, and see to it that her new house-slave understood how to care properly for her animals.
Guan nudged her side, and she returned to the business at hand.
He took out his pistol and stood watch as she lifted one of the unlit brands they’d left leaning against the wall. Swan aimed her own pistol at it and fired.
The oil-soaked wood ignited and a blue-orange flame sputtered in the breeze. Quickly now, Swan ran the torch along the side of the wall, leaving a trail of fire that quickly climbed upwards where they’d splashed it with oil.
She circled the building, leaving her brother where he stood, passing the two other doors they’d already sealed. By the time she returned to him, the entire structure was sheathed by flames.
Banging on the front door now. People trying to get out.
‘Remind me again: why aren’t the Regulators handling this one?’
‘Because, sister, the Matriarch’s family owns half the linen mills in