“This way.” Shivers followed his guide through the haze and down a shadowy corridor. A woman leaning in a doorway watched him pass with dead eyes, saying nothing. Someone was grunting somewhere, “Oh, oh, oh,” almost bored.

Through a curtain of clicking beads and into another big room, less smoky but more worrying. Men were scattered about it, an odd mix of types and colours. Judging by their looks, all used to violence. Eight were sitting at a table strewn with glasses, bottles and small money, playing cards. More lounged about in the shadows. Shivers’ eye fell right away on a nasty-looking hatchet in easy reach of one, and he didn’t reckon it was the only weapon about. A clock was nailed up on the wall, innards dangling, swinging back and forth, tick, tock, tick, loud enough to set his nerves jangling even worse.

A big man sat at the head of the table, the chief’s place if this had been the North. An old man, face creased like leather past its best. His skin was oily dark, short hair and beard dusted with iron grey. He had a gold coin he was fiddling with, flipping it across his knuckles from one side of his hand back to the other. The guide leaned down to whisper in his ear, then handed across the knife. His eyes and the eyes of the others were on Shivers, now. A scale was starting to seem a small reward for the task, all of a sudden.

“You Sajaam?” Louder than Shivers had in mind, voice squeaky from the smoke.

The old man’s smile was a yellow curve in his dark face. “Sajaam is my name, as all my sweet friends will confirm. You know, you can tell an awful lot about a man from the style of weapon he carries.”

“That so?”

Sajaam slid the knife from its sheath and held it up, candlelight glinting on steel. “Not a cheap blade, but not expensive either. Fit for the job, and no frills at the edges. Sharp, and hard, and meaning business. Am I close to the mark?”

“Somewhere round it.” It was plain he was one of those who loved to prattle on, so Shivers didn’t bother to mention that it weren’t even his knife. Less said, sooner he could be on his way.

“What might your name be, friend?” Though the friend bit didn’t much convince.

“Caul Shivers.”

“Brrrr.” Sajaam shook his big shoulders around like he was cold, to much chuckling from his men. Easily tickled, by the look of things. “You are a long, long way from home, my man.”

“Don’t I fucking know it. I’ve a message for you. Nicomo demands your presence.”

The good humour drained from the room quick as blood from a slit throat. “Where?”

“The usual place.”

“Demands, does he?” A couple of Sajaam’s people were moving away from the walls, hands creeping in the shadows. “Awfully bold of him. And why would my old friend Nicomo send a big white Northman with a blade to talk to me?” It came to Shivers about then that, for reasons unknown, the woman might’ve landed him right in the shit. Clearly she weren’t this Nicomo character. But he’d swallowed his fill of scorn these last few weeks, and the dead could have him before he tongued up any more.