“Those — um — corpses, General.” Catching up, Remora strode along beside her, his lanky legs making a single step of two of hers. “You were about to, er, um, propose that we afford them an — ah — sanctified burial? It would be most inconvenient, I fear. Most inopportune!”

“Granted. But there must have been bodies, and I’d think more than a few. The Ayuntamiento’s soldiers and this man’s bodyguards would have been shooting from these windows.”

Maytera Mint paused, drawing on her recent experiences to visualize the scene. “Floaters would have rushed the gate, and Guardsmen and General Saba’s pterotroopers must have swarmed through every break in the wall. Then my troopers from the city, thousands of them. Some must have been killed, I’d think at least a hundred. Some of the bodyguards and soldiers must have been killed too. See that line of pock-marks? Buzz-gun fire. A floater’s turret gun raked the front of the house.”

“I, an—”

For once she interrupted him. “We would have taken away our dead, or I hope we would. But what about theirs? They were retreating under fire, going down into the tunnels Sand talked about. Would they have dragged bodies along with them? I find it hard to believe, Your Eminence.”

“If I may.” Remora cleared his throat. “It seems to me that you have, ah, disposed of the, um, dead yourself, though I confess that I am no great hand at matters military.”

“Nor I. I was appointed by Echidna, you must have heard of that. What little I know I’ve picked up as I went along.”

“Defeating commanders vastly more — ah — schooled. I would conjecture, leastwise, that there must be something like our schola for the officers of the, er, Calde’s Guard. As we call them now, eh, General? The Civil Guard we used to phrase it, hey? Admirable, I, um, insist.”

“I’ve lost to them, too, Your Eminence. Lost nearly as often as I’ve won.” They were passing Scylla’s fountain, now sheathed in ice.