"How much for the paper?" Florence asked.

  The boy looked at her with the practised assessment of a twelve-year-old entrepreneur. His eyes flicked to her dress, her satchel, the state of her boots—calculating, in the space of a heartbeat, which pitch to deploy.

  "Copper penny, miss," he said, and grinned. It was a good grin, quick and crooked, the grin of someone who had learned early that a smile sold more than a shout.

  Florence smiled back. She couldn't help it. There was something so thoroughly Dunwick about him—the oversized cap, the ink-stained fingers, the voice that could have carried across a parade ground. He was a fixture. A piece of the city made small and loud and alive.

  She reached for the satchel. Her fingers found the buckle, lifted the flap, and she was just working the drawstring of the coin purse loose when a shoulder hit her from behind.

  The impact was harder than the first—a man in a hurry, heavy-set, his elbow catching the satchel strap as he barged through. The leather jerked off her shoulder, the bag swinging wide on its strap before the momentum tore it free entirely. It hit the cobblestones with a heavy, graceless thud that made the newsie flinch.

  "Out of the bloody way!" the man barked, already three paces past and accelerating, his coat-tails snapping behind him like a flag of personal grievance.

  Florence stared after him. Her mouth had opened for an apology that died on arrival. She closed it.

  Dunwick.

  She crouched and retrieved the satchel from the street. The buckle was scratched, the leather scuffed where it had struck the cobbles, but the flap was still fastened and the contents hadn't spilled. She brushed grit from the canvas and slung it back over her shoulder, checking the strap. Secure.

  She fished a copper penny from the coin purse, pulled the drawstring tight, and handed it to the boy.

  "Cheers, miss," he said, snapping a folded paper from his stack and pressing it into her hand with the efficiency of a relay runner passing a baton. "Terrible business, that. You have a good morning."

  Florence took the paper and walked until she found a bench.

  It was a municipal affair—wrought iron and wooden slats, bolted to the pavement outside a stationer's shop on Greybridge Road. The wood was cold through her dress, and someone had carved initials into the armrest with the dedication of a man who had no other monument to leave. She sat, set the satchel on her lap, and unfolded the Dunwick Standard.

  The front page hit her like a wall.

  THE DUNWICK STANDARD

  Tuesday, 19th August, 1297 — Morning Edition

  TERROR AT THE LACQUERED SWAN

  Thirty-Two Dead, Scores Injured in Dunwick's Worst Atrocity in a Decade

  Masked Cultists Detonate Explosive Device, Execute Survivors; Constabulary Response Delayed by Thirty Minutes

  The headline stretched across the full width of the page in the heavy black typeface the Standard reserved for catastrophes. Beneath it, a dense column of text ran the length of the page, bordered on the right by a list of the confirmed dead. Thirty-two names in small, sober print, each one accompanied by an age and a district of residence.

  Florence's eyes moved down the list. She didn't recognise any of the names, but that didn't matter. They were real. Thirty-two people who had been eating dinner, or serving dinner, or clearing plates, and were now a column of typeset in a morning edition.

  She folded the list away and kept reading.

  The account of the attack was thorough. The Standard had clearly had reporters at the scene within the hour—the description of the breach in the wall, the burlap hoods, the white globe-and-line symbol was more detailed than Florence had expected. Witness statements were woven through the text, attributed to survivors by name. A Mr. August Poole, silk merchant, described the moment the wall collapsed. A Mrs. Meredith Garland, wife of a High Court clerk, recounted being pulled from the rubble by a constable. A waiter named Duncan Marsh had given a statement from his hospital bed.

  She read carefully, looking for the shape of the evening she remembered beneath the shape the Standard had given it. They overlapped, mostly. The details of the explosion were accurate. The description of the cultists' methods—systematic execution of the wounded, mages casting in support—matched what she had seen. The number of attackers was listed as "at least a dozen," which was close enough.

  Then she reached the second section.

  OFF-DUTY HERO: SENIOR INSPECTOR BANNERMAN'S LONE STAND

  Single-Handed Engagement of Eleven Armed Cultists Earns Inspector Unprecedented Praise

  Florence sat up straighter.

  The article opened with a physical description of Thomas that read less like a police report and more like a recruiting poster. "Senior Inspector Thomas Bannerman, 24, of the Department of Arcane Affairs Northern District, a decorated officer and the youngest Senior Inspector in active service—" Florence's eyebrows climbed. He'd told her about the promotion, of course, but seeing it in print, in the Dunwick Standard, in bold type, was something else entirely.

  The account of Thomas's actions was drawn from multiple witnesses. Mr. Poole, the silk merchant, described seeing Thomas vault the bar counter "with the composure of a man stepping out for a morning constitutional" and shoot the first cultist "before the poor devil knew he was in the room." Mrs. Garland reported hearing six shots in rapid succession, "each one followed by a scream from the attackers and a reduction in their numbers." Duncan Marsh, the surviving waiter, credited Thomas with saving the group of civilians sheltered behind the fallen chandelier—"He drew their fire. Every one of them turned on him, and he just kept fighting."

  Florence read the passage twice. The pride came warm and unexpected, swelling in her chest like a breath held too long. That was her brother. That was Thomas—the boy who had knelt beside her bed after the fever, the man who had ordered the highland stag with the satisfied expression of someone who had been saving for months. He had done something extraordinary, and the city knew it.

  She was smiling. She didn't realise she was smiling until she caught her own reflection in the darkened window of the stationer's shop, and the sight of herself grinning at a newspaper on a public bench made her look away.

  The witnesses, though. The witnesses were doing Thomas a great deal of generous work.

  "Inspector Bannerman, despite sustaining severe injury to his lower extremity, continued to engage the enemy force with devastating efficiency, nullifying their arcane assaults with a mere gesture of his hand while simultaneously returning fire with unerring precision—"

  Florence's lips twitched. Unerring precision. She had been there. She had watched him miss the axe-wielder entirely because his ankle had given out mid-pivot. Unerring was doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  "—displaying a mastery of combat sorcery that several witnesses described as 'almost inhuman' in its speed and ferocity. Bannerman's nullification field is estimated to have neutralised no fewer than a forty hostile spell-lattices over the course of the engagement—"

  Forty. Florence wasn't a very adept mage, but forty was a very large number and, she wasn't sure the figure of spells reached forty. Thomas was extraordinary. He didn't need the inflation.

  Then she turned the page and lost the battle entirely.

  There, occupying a quarter of the second page, was an illustration.

  It was Thomas. Or rather, it was a version of Thomas that had been fed through the imagination of a penny-press illustrator who had clearly never met the man but had been given the words "heroic" and "inspector" and told to make it dramatic.

  The figure in the engraving stood atop a mound of rubble, trench coat billowing behind him in a wind that had certainly not been present inside a bombed restaurant. His jaw was square and set. His revolver was raised at a dramatic angle, smoke curling from the barrel. His hair—Thomas's hair, which Florence had last seen matted with dust and plaster and sticking up in three directions—flowed back from his forehead in a windswept wave. Behind him, flames rose theatrically against a dark sky, and at his feet, a tangle of hooded cultists lay in various states of defeat, their bodies arranged with the compositional care of a classical painting.

  The caption read: INSPECTOR BANNERMAN HOLDS THE LINE.

  Florence pressed her hand over her mouth.

  The laugh fought its way up from somewhere deep in her chest—a short, convulsive thing that she smothered against her palm. She held it. Her shoulders shook. Her eyes watered. She looked at the illustration again—at the jawline, at the hair, at the operatic billow of the coat—and the laugh won.

  It came out as a single, undignified snort that turned the head of a passing clerk. Florence bent forward over the newspaper, her forehead nearly touching the page, and pressed both hands to her face while her shoulders heaved.

  Thomas is going to frame this, she thought, and the thought made it worse. He's going to frame it and hang it in his office and show it to every person who walks through the door, and everyone will never hear the end of it.

  She wiped her eyes, took a steadying breath, and kept reading.

  THE SPECTRE IN IRON: WITNESSES REPORT MASKED APPARITION AT THE SWAN

  Hooded Figure, Believed Summoned by Cult Ritual, Clashes With Inspector Bannerman in Ruins

  Florence's breath caught. She read the headline again. Then a third time, slowly, letting each word settle.

  The article was sourced from a cluster of witness accounts that had clearly been given by people who had been concussed, terrified, and viewing events through a haze of smoke and structural debris. The Standard had assembled them into a narrative that bore only a passing resemblance to reality.

  "In the final stages of the engagement, a masked entity emerged from the smoke on the eastern flank of the dining room. The figure was a flowing white shroud with a blank and terrible void for a face. Several witnesses reported that the apparition moved with unnatural speed, appearing and disappearing within the smoke as though unbounded by physical law."

  "Mr. August Poole, who observed the encounter from behind the remnants of the wine cabinet, stated: 'It came out of nowhere. One moment the smoke was empty, the next this thing was standing there. No face. No voice. Just that horrible mask. It fired twice and two men dropped dead. I thought the cultists had called up something from the other side.'"

  Florence pressed her lips together very hard.

  "The entity's allegiance remains unclear, though the prevailing account suggests it was a summoned agent of the Great Earth cult, possibly an arcane construct or bound spirit deployed as a final contingency when the initial assault faltered."

  An arcane construct. Alice—Alice, who couldn't hold a spoon this morning—was being described as a bound spirit.

  "Inspector Bannerman, despite his injuries, confronted the entity directly. Witnesses describe a violent struggle in which Bannerman grappled with the apparition at close range, sustaining a blow to the face—"

  There it was. "Sustaining a blow to the face." That was Alice breaking his nose. The Standard had framed it as Thomas bravely wrestling a supernatural horror, rather than what it actually was: a sixteen-year-old girl punching him in the jaw because he'd grabbed her wrist.

  "—before driving the creature back through the breach in the wall, from which it did not return. It is believed that Bannerman's nullification abilities were instrumental in dispelling the entity, though the Inspector himself has declined to comment on the specifics of the encounter."

  Driving the creature back. Alice had told Thomas to turn around. He had knelt in the rubble with his hands up while she walked out. That was what "driving the creature back" looked like, apparently, when filtered through a terrified silk merchant and a penny-press editor with a deadline.

  Florence loved this.

  She loved every word of it. The image of Alice—imperious, indignant, convalescing Alice—reading this account of herself as a "terrible apparition" and a "faceless horror summoned from the other side" was so magnificent that Florence had to set the paper down on her lap and press both fists against her mouth to keep from laughing aloud on a public bench.

  She's going to be furious, Florence thought, and the thought was warm. Absolutely livid. She'll read "arcane construct" and throw something.

  She picked the paper back up, still smiling, and turned to the inner pages.

  The smile faded by degrees.

  GREAT EARTH: WHAT DO WE KNOW?

  Shadowy Organisation Claims Responsibility; Authorities Acknowledge "Significant Gaps" in Intelligence

  The article was thin. The Standard had clearly gone to the Home Office, the Department of Arcane Affairs, and the Constabulary for comment, and all three had given back variations of the same carefully worded nothing. Great Earth was described as a "millenarian organisation of unknown origin and uncertain membership," which was a polite way of saying no one knew who they were or how many of them existed. The article referenced "previous incidents attributed to the group," none of which were described in detail, and quoted an unnamed Home Office official who called the Swan attack "an escalation that demands a proportionate and coordinated response," which Florence suspected meant they were frightened and trying not to show it.

  She turned the page.

  LORD JUSTICE ASHWORTH AMONG THE DEAD

  High Court Jurist, 63, Killed in Initial Blast; Colleagues Pay Tribute

  "HE WAS TWENTY-THREE": MOTHER OF SLAIN WAITER SPEAKS

  Helen Kramer Appeals for Public Inquiry Into "Catastrophic Delay" in Emergency Response

  The article beneath was brief and devastating. Helen Kramer, a seamstress from the Millfield district, had given a statement from the family home. Her son, Paul had been among the first killed when the cultists entered through the breach. He had simply been doing his job. He had been twenty-three. His mother's words were plain, stripped of rhetoric, the language of a woman who had been given the worst news of her life twelve hours ago and had chosen to speak to a reporter rather than sit alone with it.

  "I want to know why it took thirty minutes for anyone to arrive. Thirty minutes. My son was dead in three. What were they doing for the other twenty-seven?"

  Florence gritted her teeth.

  PARLIAMENT TO DEBATE EMERGENCY POWERS IN RESPONSE TO SWAN ATROCITY

  Home Secretary to Table Bill Granting D.A.A. Expanded Authority for "Duration of the Crisis"

  AN INSPECTOR'S BURDEN: CRITICS ASK WHETHER THIRTY-TWO DEAD CONSTITUTES A "VICTORY"

  Questions Mount Over Grid Monitoring Failure That Allowed Attackers to Strike Undetected

  Florence read the monitoring article with care. The Grid—the Empire's arcane surveillance network—had failed to detect the attack. The explosive device had detonated without triggering a single alert. The monitoring station had reported green across the board at the time of the blast. Thirty-two people had died in a building that was supposed to be watched, in a city that was supposed to be safe, and the system designed to prevent exactly this had seen nothing.

  She nodded along, slowly, the motion unconscious. She thought of the woman in pearls who had been crawling toward the door, dragging her broken leg. She thought of the child's wail, thin and piercing, cutting through the dust. She thought of Helen Kramer, sitting in a parlour in Millfield, holding a reporter's question in her hands like a stone she intended to throw.

  Thirty minutes. Someone should answer for that.

  Florence turned the page.

  Her hands stopped.

  FLORENCE BANNERMAN: THE SAINTESS OF THE SWAN

  A Personal Account by GEORGE ALDERTON , Proprietor and Editor-in-Chief, The Dunwick Standard