“I tried,” Scrannel claimed, eyes wide with earnestness. “But every time I got close to a door or window, the lights would come on and I’d have to run away. I don’t know how they knew I was there. It happened six or seven times.”

Annis crossed her arms. Her dress was shapeless and made of sackcloth. “Do you think,” she said, her voice quiet and filled with barely restrained rage, “that maybe they hear that stupid armour you insist on wearing?”

Scrannel frowned. “They hear this? I don’t think that’s very likely, Annis. They’re probably all psychics. That’s what I think.”

She resisted the urge to tear him limb from bloody limb. Scrannel was, for lack of a better word, a pet. His mother was a troll, to whom his father was nothing more than a drunken blur one dark and stormy night, and so Scrannel himself was a crossbreed, a mongrel, an oddity. He had milky-white eyes that were set too far apart, he had no nose to speak of and a mouth wide enough to swallow a decent-sized rock. He had tiny teeth and high cheekbones and only the barest hint of a chin, upon which he was trying to grow a beard. He had been trying to grow this beard for the past three years. His chin looked vaguely fluffy, but that was as far as it had got.

Scrannel was an idiot of a creature, who actually enjoyed living in a ditch, and the only reason Annis had not eaten him was because he tasted dreadful. The first time they had met she’d torn off a chunk of his leg, chewed it for a few moments before spitting it out. She’d spent the rest of the night being sick in a stream, and Scrannel had stuck around, eventually offering to hold her hair back while she vomited.

That had been twelve years ago, and he still hadn’t left.

“I have a bit of news,” he said, trying to sound casual. “I think I was followed.”

She stared at him. “What?”

“I can’t be sure now,” he said hurriedly. “But there was a woman, and she had blonde hair and a long coat, and I’ve never seen her before, and she looked, you know, out of place.”

“And why do you think she was following you?”

“Because when I ran away, she ran after me.”

Annis could feel her skin starting to turn blue.

Scrannel spoke quickly. “I might be mistaken, of course. Could just be coincidence. She might be a jogger, or something.”

“A jogger?” Annis growled. “In a long coat? At night?”

“Carrying a sword.”

“What?”

“I’m fairly certain she was carrying a sword.”

Annis felt her fingernails grow long. “That doesn’t sound like a jogger, now, does it?”