“Uh…”

“Set, now.” He grinned as he squeezed gently at her shrivelled legs from the tops of her thighs down to her knobbly ankles. She watched him touching her, like a cook kneading at a plucked chicken, and hardly felt it. “All quite set, and the screws removed. A wonder, believe me. If the doubters at the academy could see this now they wouldn’t be laughing. If my old master could see this, even he—”

“Uh…” She slowly raised her right hand. Or the trembling mockery of a hand that dangled from the end of her arm. The palm was bent, shrunken, a great ugly scar where Gobba’s wire had cut into the side. The fingers were crooked as tree roots, squashed together, the little one sticking out at a strange angle. Her breath hissed through gritted teeth as she tried to make a fist. The fingers scarcely moved, but the pain still shot up her arm and made bile burn the back of her throat.

“The best I could do. Small bones, you see, badly damaged, and the tendons of the little finger were quite severed.” Her host seemed disappointed. “A shock, of course. The marks will fade… somewhat. But really, considering the fall… well, here.” The mouthpiece of the husk-pipe came towards her and she sucked on it greedily. Clung to it with her teeth as if it was her only hope. It was.

He tore a tiny piece from the corner of the loaf, the kind you might feed birds with. Monza watched him do it, mouth filling with sour spit. Hunger or sickness, there wasn’t much difference. She took it dumbly, lifted it to her lips, so weak that her left hand trembled with the effort, forced it between her teeth and down her throat.

Like swallowing broken glass.

“Slowly,” he murmured, “very slowly, you have eaten nothing but milk and sugar-water since you fell.”

The bread caught in her craw and she retched, gut clamping up tight around the knife-wound Faithful had given her.

“Here.” He slid his hand round her skull, gentle but firm, lifted her head and tipped a bottle of water to her lips. She swallowed, and again, then her eyes flicked towards his fingers. She could feel unfamiliar lumps there, down the side of her head. “I was forced to remove several pieces of your skull. I replaced them with coins.”

“Coins?”

“Would you rather I had left your brains exposed? Gold does not rust. Gold does not rot. An expensive treatment, of course, but if you had died, I could always have recouped my investment, and since you have not, well… I consider it money well spent. Your scalp will feel somewhat lumpy, but your hair will grow back. Such beautiful hair you have. Black as midnight.”

He let her head fall gently back against the bench and his hand lingered there. A soft touch. Almost a caress.

“Normally I am a taciturn man. Too much time spent alone, perhaps.” He flashed his corpse-smile at her. “But I find you… bring out the best in me. The mother of my children is the same. You remind me of her, in a way.”