“Truly? How so?”

“I was expecting a Master Poisoner.” She rubbed at the mark on the back of her hand. “Who’d have thought I’d get such a little prick?”

Morveer felt his grin slip. It only took him a moment to regain his composure, of course. Once he had silenced Day’s giggle with a sharp frown. “I hope your temporary helplessness was not too great an inconvenience. I am forgiven, am I not? If the two of us are to cooperate, I would hate to have to labour beneath a shadow.”

“Of course.” She worked the movement back into her shoulders, the slightest smile at one corner of her mouth. “I need what you have, and you want what I have. Business is business.”

“Excellent. Magnificent. Un… paralleled.” And Morveer gave his most winning smile.

But he did not believe it for a moment. This was a most deadly job, and with a most deadly employer. Monzcarro Murcatto, the notorious Butcher of Caprile, was not a person of the forgiving variety. He was not forgiven. He was not even in the neighbourhood. From now on it would have to be caution first, second and third.

Science and Magic

Shivers pulled his horse up at the top of the rise. The country sloped away, a mess of dark fields with here or there a huddled farm or village, a stand of bare trees. No more’n a dozen miles distant, the line of the black sea, the curve of a wide bay, and along its edge a pale crust of city. Tiny towers clustered on three hills above the chilly brine, under an iron-grey sky.

“Westport,” said Friendly, then clicked his tongue and moved his horse on.

The closer they came to the damn place the more worried Shivers got. And the more sore, cold and bored besides. He frowned at Murcatto, riding on her own ahead, hood up, a black figure in a black landscape. The cart’s wheels clattered round on the road. The horses clopped and snorted. Some crows caw-cawed from the bare fields. But no one was talking.

They’d been a grim crowd all the way here. But then they’d a grim purpose in mind. Nothing else but murder. Shivers wondered what his father would’ve made of that. Rattleneck, who’d stuck to the old ways tight as a barnacle to a boat and always looked for the right thing to do. Killing a man you never met for money didn’t seem to fit that hole however you twisted it around.

There was a sudden burst of high laughter. Day, perched on the cart next to Morveer, a half-eaten apple in her hand. Shivers hadn’t heard much laughter in a while, and it drew him like a moth to flame.

“What’s funny?” he asked, starting to grin along at the joke.

She leaned towards him, swaying with the cart. “I was just wondering, when you fell off your chair like a turtle tipped over, if you soiled yourself.”

“I was of the opinion you probably did,” said Morveer, “but doubted we could have smelled the difference.”