burst of fire. She opened her mouth to gasp in shock.
Something whizzed past. There was a loud popping sound and a strange silence.
A hot wind tore at her, twisted her back in her chair.
She could hardly see anything. Could hear absolutely nothing. Everything moved very slowly. As if she was underwater.
An armoured man blundered past, screaming silently, a smouldering shard of metal embedded in his breastplate.
There was something wet on her face. She touched it. Red fingertips. She realised High Justice Bruckel had pressed himself against her shoulder. How dare he? As she turned to remonstrate with him, she saw the side of his head was sheared away, blood spurting from the pulp inside and turning her dress red.
Probably she should assist. Very severe injury, by all appearances.
“High Justice?” she asked as he flopped into her lap, but she could not even hear her own voice. She did her best to hold his broken skull together but pieces of it slid between her red fingers.
She tried to stand, but the over-bright world tipped crazily and slapped her in the side. Dust and splinters. Boots shuffled. She saw someone staring at her. One of Curnsbick’s friends, blowing bloody bubbles out of his nose. It looked as if there might be an iron rivet embedded in the side of his neck. She realised they were both lying on the floor.
She tried to stand again, thought it prudent to clutch at something for support. The railing of the royal box, its gaudy decorations now red-spotted. Curnsbick stood swaying beside her. His hat had been blown off and his grey hair stuck out at all angles.
Terez clutched at his bloody jacket. “What happened?” Couldn’t hear herself speak. Couldn’t hear anything. Curnsbick clasped his hands to his face. Stared between his fingers.
Terez stuck her thumb in her ear and waggled it. It made nothing but a muffled squelching. She squinted into the sunlight. Towards the engine. Or towards where the engine had been.
There was nothing of it left now but a great claw of burning wreckage, sending up a thick plume of brown smoke. Papers fluttered down. Like the flower petals at her wedding, so long ago. Bodies were fanned out from the engine in rows. Mangled, tangled. Bodies still and bodies vaguely moving, twisting, crawling. A man wandered drunkenly. His shirt appeared to have been torn off.
There were people coming through the bodies. Not helping. Stepping over the corpses. People in dark clothes, with dark masks over their faces. One held a hatchet. One a long knife. One pointed towards the royal box with a sword. Where was Orso? By the Fates, where was Orso?
Beside her! He was beside her, staring, blood on his face. He had drawn his sword. A king should never have to touch his sword, let alone draw it. She tried to put herself between him and the assassins, but he brushed her away, pushed her back. He was so much stronger than she had expected. Had some part of her thought he was a snivelling toddler, still helpless in her arms?
Faint through the burbling in her ears she heard him speak: “Get behind me, Mother.”
Sofee came blundering through the murk, gripping her sword so tight her hand ached, hardly able to breathe even with the cloth over her face, and stumbled to an uncertain stop.
Bodies everywhere. Bodies and parts of bodies. More and more revealed as the breeze snatched the smoke away. Things dropped. A walking stick. A hat. A broken picnic hamper, spilling broken crockery. A glove.
No. It was a hand.
The pamphlets they’d made fluttered down. The explanations, the excuses, the justifications. One fell near Sofee’s boot, and began to soak up blood at one corner, and turn red. She’d been a governess for a year, before she was married, so she’d been very particular about the wording of that pamphlet. She’d wanted to convince people. To show them the truth.
Someone shoved her, near knocked her over. One of the other Burners, desperate to begin the killing. Wasn’t that what she came for? All she’d wanted, for so long. To kill them. Tear them with her bare hands. Bite them with her teeth. Now she wondered who “them” was. Whose enemy was the little boy with a fluttering pamphlet stuck across his face and his guts hanging out? She felt sick.
Brevan had been the kind of man everyone liked the moment they met him. The day they were married had been the happiest of her life. Suddenly special,