She blinked. ‘I hadn’t bought it yet.’

‘We are authorized to shoot looters on sight.’

Creedy laughed.

Ida felt strength draining from her legs. She cried out, ‘It doesn’t give you the right to shoot an unarmed-’

She didn’t get a chance to finish. The girl bolted away from her, down the aisle.

Ida half-turned.

And Creedy fired.

A flash erupted from the weapon, accompanied by a tremendous boom. The child shrieked as a second burst of light bloomed against her back. She dropped like a rag doll. Ida’s heart clenched in desperate panic. She felt as if the air had been sucked from her lungs.

Smoke leaked from the barrel of Creedy’s gun. He lowered the weapon and said, ‘Damn.’

Ida’s ears still rang with the sound of the detonation. It took her a moment to realize that the Unmer girl had not been harmed. Still clutching her doll, the poor child was trying to push herself upright amidst the piles of fallen treasure.

‘I shot her in the back,’ Creedy said.

‘Reload your weapon, Sergeant,’ the colonel said.

Creedy was shaking his head. ‘The round just vanished.’

The child was sobbing. She got to her feet and edged backwards away from the men. Behind her loomed one of the Trove Market’s many brine tanks, twelve tons of poisonous seawater glowing faintly behind its glass walls. A sharkskin woman stood in that brown gloom, watching the child approach. She thumped a fist against the inside of her container, but her warning made no sound.

Banks shouted, ‘The tank, Colonel.’

Creedy was hurriedly pouring powder into his gun.

The colonel nodded to the crows on the opposite bank. ‘Swan, Tummel, please do try to avoid any sort of mess.’

They raised their weapons.

The child wailed.

Explosions rattled the air. A hail of pellets crackled against the child’s red frock and flared out of existence. She screamed and dropped her doll. Through a veil of white smoke Ida saw her turn and flee.