“I’m sorry! So sorry.” He knelt beside her, gently pushed her hair back, touched her face with trembling fingers. That vision of innocence, never more to smile, never more to speak. “I’m so sorry, but… but why? I will always remember you, but—Oh… urgh!” There was a sharp smell of urine. The corpse voiding itself, an inevitable side effect of a colossal dose of Leopard Flower that a man of his experience really should have seen coming. The pool had already spread out through the straw and soaked the knees of his trousers. He tottered up, wincing with disgust.

“Shit! Shit!” He snatched up a flask and flung it against the wall in a fury, fragments of glass scattering. “Bully and coward in one?” He gave Day’s body another petulant kick, bruised his toes and set off limping around the barn at a great pace.

“Murcatto!” That evil witch had incited his apprentice to treachery. The best and most loved apprentice he had trained since he was obliged to pre-emptively poison Aloveo Cray back in Ostenhorm. He knew he should have killed Murcatto in his orchard, but the scale, the importance and the apparent impossibility of the work she offered had appealed to his vanity. “Curse my vanity! The one flaw in my character!”

But there could be no vengeance. “No.” Nothing so base and uncivilised, for that was not Morveer’s way. He was no savage, no animal like the Serpent of Talins and her ilk, but a refined and cultured gentleman of the highest ethical standards. He was considerably out of pocket, now, after all his hard and loyal work, so he would have to find a proper contract. A proper employer and an entirely orderly and clean-motived set of murders, resulting in “a proper, honest profit.”

And who would pay him to murder the Butcher of Caprile and her barbaric cronies? The answer was not so very difficult to fathom.

He faced a window and practised his most sycophantic bow, the one with the full finger twirl at the end. “Grand Duke Orso, an incom… parable honour.” He straightened, frowning. At the top of the long rise, silhouetted against the grey dawn, were several dozen riders.

For honour, glory and, above all, a decent pay-off!” A scattering of laughter as Faithful drew his sword and held it up high. “Let’s go!” And the long line of horsemen started moving, keeping loosely together as they thrashed through the wheat and out into the paddock, upping the pace to a trot.

Shivers went along with ’em. There wasn’t much choice since Faithful was right at his side. Hanging back would’ve seemed poor manners. He would’ve liked his axe to hand, but hoping for a thing often brought on the opposite. Besides, as they picked up speed to a healthy canter, keeping both hands on the reins seemed like an idea with some weight to it.

Maybe a hundred strides out now, and all still looking peaceful. Shivers frowned at the farmhouse, at the low wall, at the barn, gathering himself, making ready. It all seemed like a bad plan, now. It had seemed a bad plan at the time, but having to do it made it seem a whole lot worse. The ground rushed past hard under his horse’s hooves, the saddle jolted at his sore arse, the wind nipped at his narrowed eye, tickled at the raw scars on the other side of his face, bitter cold without the bandages. Faithful rode on his right, sitting up tall, cloak flapping behind him, sword still raised, shouting, “Steady! Steady!” On his left the line shifted and buckled, eager faces of men and horses in a twisting row, spears jolting up and down at all angles. Shivers worked his boots free of the stirrups.