The town had not fared well since the Empire took control, and this was one of the poorer districts. There were puddles of stagnant, muddy water ranging from mere wheel ruts to large greenish pools across the street, all choked with refuse and buzzing with summer flies. Some of the soldiers were down there, their noses screwed up in disgust, their mud-spattered white cloaks hitched up around their thighs, but they didn’t seem to know exactly where I was. I risked a glance back the way I had come and saw three more working their way across the roof. I had to get down.

I leaned out over the edge, wondering if I could survive the drop, and found myself looking upside down into an open leaded window set in the plaster and timber wall below me. An elderly woman with a bucket of God knows what poised to be dumped into the street met my gaze and held it.

Without a word she pushed the window wider and stepped back. I swung myself down and through in a single movement that only five minutes ago would have seemed impossible.

The woman silently returned to the window, caught the eye of one of the soldiers, and pointedly emptied her bucket into the over-flowing drainage ditch below. A waft of shocking stench reached us before she shut the window.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I babbled.

“Shut up,” she muttered, “you’re not safe yet. They aren’t that stupid. Get a move on. Don’t gape, you idiot, do something. What kind of a fool are you anyway, hopping around on the roof while they shoot at you?”

I looked at her with more irritation than I would have thought possible in the circumstances, and wondered vaguely if she could be related to Mrs. Pugh.

There was an open doorway that led into the house proper, a bed, a small table, and a wall of pine boards where the wing had been built out over the street so it butted up against a house on the other side.