“Murcatto? You listen to Murcatto over me? That degenerate, husk-addled and notorious butcher of the bloody battlefield? Oh, commendable guiding light! Curse me for an imbecile to trust either one of you! It seems you were correct, at least, that I am like to a baby. All unspoiled innocence! All undeserved mercy!” He flicked the vial through the air at Day. “Let it never again be said,” as he watched her fumbling through the straw for it, “that I am not,” as she clawed it up and ripped out the cork, “as generous, merciful and forgiving as any poisoner,” as she sucked down the contents, “within the entire Circle of the World.”

Day wiped her mouth and took a shuddering breath. “We need… to talk.”

“We certainly do. But not for long.” She blinked, then a strange spasm passed over her face. Just as he had known it would. He wrinkled his nose as he tossed his scalpel clattering across the table. “The blade carried no poison, but you have just consumed a vial of undiluted Leopard Flower.”

She flopped over, eyes rolling back, skin turning pink, began to jerk around in the straw, froth gurgling from her mouth.

Morveer stepped forwards, leaned down over her, baring his teeth, stabbing at his chest with a clawing finger. “Kill me, would you? Poison me? Castor Morveer?” The heels of her shoes drummed out a rapid beat on the hard-packed earth, sending up puffs of straw-dust. “I am the only King of Poisons, you… you child-faced fool!” Her thrashing became a locked-up trembling, back arched impossibly far. “The simple insolence of you! The arrogance! The insult! The, the, the…” He fumbled breathlessly for the right word, then realised she was dead. There was a long, slow silence as her corpse gradually relaxed.

“Shit!” he barked. “Entirely shit!” The scant satisfaction of victory was already fast melting, like an unseasonable flurry of snow on a warm day, before the crushing disappointment, wounding betrayal and simple inconvenience of his new, assistant-less, employer-less situation. For Day’s final words had left him in no doubt that Murcatto was to blame. That after all his thankless, selfless toil on her behalf she had plotted his death. Why had he not anticipated this development? How could he not have expected it, after all the painful reverses he had suffered in his life? He was simply too soft a personage for this harsh land, this unforgiving epoch. Too trusting and too comradely for his own good. He was prone to see the world in the rosy tones of his own benevolence, cursed always to expect the best from people.

“Thin as paper, am I? Shit! You… shit!” He kicked Day’s corpse petulantly, his shoe thudding into her body over and over and making it shudder again. “Swollen-headed?” He near shrieked it. “Me? Why, I am humility… its… fucking… self!” He realised suddenly that it ill befit a man of his boundless sensitivity to kick a person already dead, especially one he had cared for almost as a daughter. He felt a sudden bubbling-up of melodramatic regret.