He stared at me for a moment, then pushed the slide release pin on my Bambi, twisted the vortex chamber and drew the Venturi tube backwards. In an instant the weapon was in five pieces. He poured the components into my pocket with a metallic rattle, then dropped the power cell in last as if to punctuate the gesture.

‘I tell you what I’m going to do,’ he said. ‘You’re completely unimportant and a very, very small fish, so I’m going to throw you back. It’s win-win: you don’t have to die, and I don’t have to kill you. Do we have a deal? It goes without saying that you’ll not speak of this.’

I stared up at him. I could feel the taste of blood in my mouth, and my head ached badly. But through the lens of abject failure, my next course of action was suddenly brought into a sharp and painfully illogical focus. If I couldn’t leave with Mrs Tiffen, I wasn’t going to leave at all. My career ended right here, in the fire valleys north of Merthyr, defending someone who wasn’t able to care that I was trying to save her from a fate that she could never be troubled about. Perhaps that was what being a Winter Consul was all about. Defending the inalienable rights of the unaware.

‘There’s no deal,’ I said, my voice cracking, my mouth dry with fear. ‘Mrs Tiffen comes with me. And yes, it goes without saying we’ll forget this ever happened.’

Foulnap stared at me in disbelief and I exhaled and opened my mouth. Shock damage can be lessened if airways are open. But that didn’t happen.

‘What the hell’s going on here?’ came a voice from behind me, at the door.

It was Logan. I suddenly felt unassailably relieved – so much so that I actually felt tears well up in my eyes. I was safe.

Only I wasn’t. Not at all. Not even a tiny bit.

‘It’s not my fault, Jack,’ said Foulnap. ‘I thought you said your new Novice would be a pushover?’

‘I may have underestimated Worthing’s sense of intestinal fortitude,’ conceded Logan, staring at me with a sense of respect, I think. ‘This is all my fault; I never should have let Charlie even attempt to search for Mrs Tiffen.’

I closed my eyes and felt a tremor of fear. Logan had a different tone to his voice. I realised now why I’d taken it this far; I somehow knew Foulnap didn’t have murder in him. But Logan did. He would have called ahead to Foulnap to pluck Mrs Tiffen from my grasp on our way through to give him some deniability. He and Foulnap would be in the farming scam together. It would all have gone according to plan, too – except for me.