The cobbled, mercantile Felden Street was soon behind me and I entered the slums. The street lamps were sporadic here, many glass cases broken or simply stolen. I was in no hurry for a better look along the squalid alleyways; I would be no help to the mange-ridden cats and hollow-cheeked children that loitered there. Both would flee from me even had I wanted to help them. I told myself it was an inspector’s duty to be seen in, if not to see into, the darker parts of the city. But I knew this to be flimsy at best, vanity at worst. There was no way to St Leonars that didn’t cross paths with the politely ignored underbelly of the King’s city.

Entering a square, I happened upon a crowd in its early stages of formation and, like others, became part of its invisible pull. I drew no one’s attention, my cloak and hat working to hide my badge and any hint of my office: just another early riser seeking distraction on an otherwise routine night. Given what I saw at the front of the crowd, this was just as well.

A rope separated us from a low, shabbily-curtained stage. The curtain twitched with a clumsy flash of fingers and an enormous, watery eye took in the crowd. A child at the front squawked and backed away but I knew the effect to be an artless use of thick glass. The adults and older children tittered, unwilling to take their cue from one so young but otherwise unsure of what to make of it. Old Tanter must have been working the northern part of the city these last months.

The squat trickster sprang out from behind the curtain, his flourish of a worn velvet cape an attempt to hide a wobble in his knees.

‘Laugh if you must,’ Tanter called to one and all. ‘But is there anything more pure, more sincere than a child’s fear? Anything at all, in this Esteberg, this forsaken city?’ For emphasis, the stage lamps – pilfered street lamps – were put out by an assistant.

Tanter had misjudged this crowd, who didn’t take kindly to the sudden darkness. For myself, I put a hand on my coin purse just as the afeared child himself brushed past me, his fingers probing my cloak. I caught his arm and, meeting his now wide eyes, shook my head.

‘But…’ he whispered.

‘But nothing. No purses tonight.’

A flash lit the stage, followed by a plume of green smoke. Tanter did his best not to cough. We were both too old for this dance. I waited through his laughably short routine, noting when he sawed his assistant in half that he had finally taken my advice and put shoes on the fake legs. A blind drunkard could see fake feet, especially fake toes, from thirty paces. I also noted his flagrant use of pig’s blood and fester-root. But, for Tanter’s sake at least, he did not use even a modicum of actual magic. He was finally seeing sense in his later years.