‘Your mate Charlie worked it out, didn’t he?’ He dusted himself down. ‘I’m just sorry I wasn’t quick enough to save him.’

Nor quick enough to save himself from waking up in the night, cold but sweating, as a phantom boar tore through his own guts.

Pigface took the apology with a shrug. ‘Stupid bastard got himself stuck the wrong side of the door, didn’t he?’

‘You know that’s not what happened,’ said Dalip. ‘She trapped him in here, held the door shut, then watched him die. Maybe you should ask her why she did that.’

Genuine fear washed over Pigface. He shuddered and shook his head.

‘I’m not stupid.’

Stanislav grunted. ‘No? Stupid enough not to realise that you are a slave like us. Can you leave the castle for somewhere else? No? Then you just have a better class of prison.’

Again, Pigface turned to leave, and couldn’t quite bring himself to go.

‘What is it? You want more?’ demanded Stanislav, but Dalip waved him quiet.

‘When’s the next fight?’ he asked.

‘No one knows. She’s been in her rooms, last few days. She’ll tell us when it’s time.’

‘What about the steward, the man with the cane?’

‘He’s around. More than usual.’

Dalip beckoned Pigface closer. After a moment’s reluctance, he crossed the pit floor, but still remembered to stand out of lunging range.

‘Is this the life you want for yourself? When you ran from whatever was trying to kill you in London, and you had your new start, is this what you imagined?’

Pigface worried at the ball of his thumb with his crooked teeth and listened very carefully.

‘Because this isn’t what I want. I want to go back home, but if that’s not possible, I won’t live like this. I didn’t run from the fire to become a pit-fighting slave in some witch’s dungeon. Do you understand?’

The guard nodded slowly.

‘You can get in the way, you can ignore us, or you can help us. Up to you. Just remember what happened to Charlie before you run off to the geomancer.’ Dalip bent down and retrieved his stick. ‘You’re as expendable as we are.’

Pigface left the room this time, shoulders slumped, back bent.

‘It will not work,’ said Stanislav. ‘I have met men like that before. They are broken. They prefer living in their own shit than the trouble of cleaning themselves off.’

‘If we don’t have to fight them too, it’ll be easier. Easier still if they’re with us.’

‘You cannot count on Pigface, or any of the others. Our plan will not include them because they will let us down.’ Stanislav punctuated his speech with finger-jabs into Dalip’s chest.

He knocked the man’s hand away. ‘I don’t know where you get this from, but not everybody is a …’