A Spitter’s pellet would break with a noise not unlike someone spitting—hence the name—when the trigger forward of the handle was pulled back very hard. Skilled Spitter marksmen tended to aim below their target, to counteract the upward motion caused by the trigger pull. The pellet contained highly compressed air, and the manufacturing of the things was a closely guarded secret, but involved magic, of course. A Spitter’s bolt would erupt from the end of the tube at high speed, much higher than one could get from a crossbow, leaving behind a burst of frigid but harmless gas, the bolt stabilized by a vapor-wrapped weighted ribbon faster than the strongest bowman could loose.

Kordas’s Spitter, formerly his father’s, had been modified with an unobvious difference. If its thumbspoons were pressed upward, a second break in the upper handle would open. If the handle’s decorative grip-ring was twisted halfway, a mercy-kill piston, pointed at each end, was dropped from its locked state in a short barrel to a ready position. If a pellet was inside that second chamber and the Spitter was used as a club, the impact of the piston’s exposed length would break the pellet, and fire the piston only about a hands-breadth’s distance with the same force as a bolt fired in the conventional way. If an animal had to be put down, better to kill it instantly that way than let it suffer trauma from a bolt.

The reason he hated the things was because although they were supposed to be used only for duels, they were most often used in acts of casual cruelty by the nobility. He’d seen that in play far too often when he’d been in fosterage. Servant annoy you? Put a bolt through a shoulder or a calf to teach him a lesson. Someone’s pet in your way? Kill it with the Spitter. Want to show off? Put some hapless servant against a wall and outline them with bolts.

But you also resent what that weapon means to you, because of what you have done with it. The things you did with it, thinking, “I am the Duke, and the Duke must serve executions personally,” except you knew all along you could just order it done, without even your presence required. It says a lot about what you really are, Duke or not. You wanted to feel deadly, yourself. Not deadly by proxy, but you. Executing. You wanted to know how it felt to kill, with your own hands.

“Ceri Foresaw you are going to be ‘invited’ to stay,” Isla said tensely. “Strip and change.”